Flynn sits quietly, comfortably, next to me. His chair creaks as he crosses his legs again.
“That’s where you made your big mistake, kid,” he says slowly.
I drop my fists. I look up at him.
“You should have said yes,” Flynn says, even slower. “You should have just said yes to both of them. Then none of this would ever have happened.”
I stare at him, trying to breathe.
Flynn stares straight back at me. “Think about it. How much have you said no to? Representation. Recording deals. At least two TV appearances that I know of. Even this girl, Frankie Lynde.” Flynn shakes his head at me, grinning now. “What the hell are you doing, Anders?”
I blink at him. There’s something wrong here. Something about the way Flynn’s looking at me. I’m not sure what it is, because he’s never looked at me like this before.
“That woman,” I start. “The music rep . . .” Her eyes. The mud and pine needles on the soles of her boots. “It wasn’t right. Something about her. It just wasn’t right.”
“Sure.” Flynn nods. His voice is so dry, I can’t tell if he’s serious or sarcastic. “There’s always something, right? They only like you for the music, or they don’t like your music in the right way, or it feels like the music isn’t really you. There’s always something.”
“But it’s—” I don’t know how to finish. My thoughts are just a storm of noise.
“You know what it really is, don’t you?” Flynn scratches his arm again. The missing half finger twitches over his bicep. “It’s you. You’re sabotaging yourself. You’re keeping yourself from being what you’re meant to be. And that’s your choice, dude, but I’ll tell you what: I’ve never seen that choice end well.”
I choke on the words. “What do you mean?”
“You know what other people would give up to get what you have?” Flynn’s words are sharp. Or maybe I’m so raw it just feels that way. “You think opportunities like the one you just blew are going to keep piling up around you forever? You think you just get to take and take and take?”
A cold, numb feeling is traveling down from my shoulders, through my arms, into my hands. “I didn’t ask for any of this.”
“Oh, come on.” Flynn grins at me. His eyes are narrow. “Nine years of lessons. Practicing for hours every day. You can’t say you didn’t want this. Don’t even try to tell me that, Anders Thorson. Don’t even try.”
My hands clench my knees. I can’t look away from Flynn’s eyes, even though I want to. Nine years, like he said. Nine years, and I’ve never seen his eyes look at me like this. So cold and flat and hard. I barely recognize them.
Abruptly, Flynn sets both boots on the floor. His palms hit his knees with a slap. “All right. That’s it.”
The stare is broken. I’m reeling, lost. “What?”
“We’re done here.” Flynn gets to his feet. “I’ve taught you everything I can. I’ve done everything I could to help you. Most kids, if they want to just play the guitar for fun, goof around, never practice, and pay me my thirty bucks a week to waste both of our time, I don’t care. But you? I’m not going to give pretend lessons to you.” He picks up my guitar. “You could have been the real thing. But you made your choice.”
He pushes the guitar case into my hands.
I get up, robotically, like someone with a remote control is moving me toward the door.
“Wait. Flynn . . .” I hear myself say.
Flynn yanks the door open ahead of me. “It’s probably too late for you anyway,” he says. “You’ve burned your bridges. Set things in motion. Might be tough to stop them now.” His hand guides me through the doorway. “So long, Anders. Good luck.”
And the door slams shut.
Thea
When I tell Frankie about Carson and Sasha loosening the bolts on Anders’s wheel, she starts to cry. Her face is outlined by the faint evening light that slips down through the open cellar door. One tear glitters as it falls.
“Oh my God,” she says, wiping the tears onto the back of her hand. “You have to let them know I’m okay. Please. Someone will get hurt. Can’t you—can’t you just let them know I’m okay? They don’t have to know where I am. Just—please.”
I stare back at her. Frankie hasn’t had a shower in four days. Her dark hair is matted, and her face is streaked with salt and dirt. She’s still beautiful.
“No,” I say. “No one can know.”
Frankie lets out a sob. When I first brought her here, she didn’t cry. But now she’s getting exhausted. She still tries to hold the sob back, so the sound comes out crushed and thin. “Could you just . . . could you tell my mom . . .”
“I know you don’t understand,” I tell her calmly when her voice chokes off. I’m so tired of having this conversation. But I’ll do it again. “I’m keeping you safe.”
Frankie makes a sound that might be a snort. Derisive, or dubious. She doesn’t want to anger me. She’s probably tired of having this conversation, too.
She turns her face away, wiping her nose on the back of one tied hand. In a lower voice, she says, “This is all about Anders. Isn’t it?”
I don’t answer.
“Do you . . .” She’s trying to find the right words. The words that won’t make me mad. The ones that will lead to a magic way out. “Are you in love with him?”
I move the words around inside myself. They’re a handful of keys that don’t fit anywhere. Are you in love with him? Are you in love with him? Without trying, I can picture him onstage, raised above everyone else, his hair catching the light, his strong, quick hands moving over the guitar.
He’s beautiful, and awful.
“I’m protecting him,” I tell her.
And I am. Aunt Mae saw the white Nissan skidding out of control, Anders inside, smashed against the steering wheel. Just like she saw the fire at the Crow’s Nest. Just in time.
I could have fixed the loosened wheel myself, when I went to Anders’s house to find out what had been done to the car. But I put the note in Patrick’s locker instead. I saw the chance to bring Last Things back together, even for a few minutes.
“You’re protecting him? Like you’re protecting me?” Frankie’s voice is almost bitter now. “Thea. I want to believe you. But it’s hard to believe that you’re just trying to protect me when you kidnapped me, and tied me up, and left me alone down here in the dark for God knows how long.”
She stops herself. She thinks she shouldn’t insult me. Shouldn’t call me crazy. She knows crazy people always think they’re sane.
“I know you don’t understand,” I tell her again. “But maybe someday. Maybe soon.”
I turn and start to climb the stairs.
“No,” says Frankie quickly. “No. Don’t leave. Thea. I’ll give you anything. I’ll never speak to Anders again. I’ll do whatever you want. Just please. Please.”
But I’m already shutting the door.
I pull the bolts. Make the cut on my palm. Draw the fresh X across the door’s wooden surface.
I drag the boxes and bags back into place.
I shut the shed door behind me and turn its wooden latch.
It’s just nearing twilight. The woods are darkening, but I can see the circle of stones, glowing and unbroken, in what’s left of the powdery light.
The woods are strangely quiet. There’s only stillness. No wind. No birds.
I move over the crackling ground toward the house. Then something shifts in the distance, to my left, almost out of the range of my sight.
I turn in time to see it duck into a swale in the ground. It’s long limbed. Bony. It’s covered in thick, pitch-black hair, although the way it moves, one bent limb at a time, is less like a mammal than a spider.
I wait, staring at the spot where it vanished.
It can’t get to her. Not with both me and Aunt Mae here, not with the protections I’ve put in place. My heartbeat is steady. I breathe deep and slow. It won’t have any of my fear to feed on.
We’re safe.
When two whole minutes of stillness have passed, I move on, stepping in through the house’s back door.
Aunt Mae sits at the kitchen table. Her cards are spread out on the Formica, in a pattern that isn’t solitaire. There are two empty teacups beside her. The open, battered Bible.
She’s perfectly still. She gazes at me, but her eyes don’t take me in.
“Aunt Mae?” I say softly.
“They’re coming for him,” she says, in a cloudy but steady voice. “I see them getting close. Thieves in the night. They’re coming.” We’ve known this, of course. It was only a matter of time.
“When?” I ask.
“Soon.” She inhales, a shiver filling her body. “Tonight.”
I touch her shoulder. Aunt Mae doesn’t stir. “I’ll go,” I tell her. “I’ll keep him safe. You keep her safe.”
Aunt Mae gives a tiny twitch. She’s trying to pull herself out of something heavy, something that clings and drips from her like mud.
“Aunt Mae,” I say. “Keep her safe.”
Now Aunt Mae turns and looks up at me. Her eyes clear slightly. She gives a short nod. Then she reaches up and squeezes my hand.
Before I leave, I put a folding knife in my pocket. It’s no use against them, of course. But it’s good to have it. Just in case.
Then I slip out the door and onto my bike.
Anders
For a while I just drive.
I tear away from the studio, down Main, then left, right, left. I zig back and forth through quiet neighborhood streets like I’m in a hurry, but I’m not headed anywhere. I’ve got nowhere to go. Can’t hang out at Jezz’s; things are still too weird with us. Can’t waste time at the studio. Not ever again, now that Flynn has cut me off. And I can’t be at home, alone, boiling with all of this.
But I’ve only got a quarter tank of gas left, and no money to refill it.
Finally I pick a spot a few blocks past the high school, beyond the empty, soggy soccer field, where almost nobody comes. I park.
And then I sit.
I sit until the sky above the Nissan has soaked through with indigo, and the few cars I can see in the distance are switching their headlights on.
We’re done here.
Flynn’s words might as well have been a kick in the ribs. My chest actually aches.
It’s an empty, rejected, broken feeling. Like if one of your parents could dump you.
Nine years. Nine years of lessons, hours and hours of talking, laughing, confessing. Now it’s like all of that has been erased.
And I’m totally alone.
Frankie. Last Things. The songs. The way that I could play. My teacher. I’ve lost them all.
All the things you love. One by one . . .
The memory of the black-eyed woman’s words makes me sick.
I’m barely even myself anymore. What else can they take?
I slump back against the headrest. Beside me, Yvonne’s case leans against the passenger seat. Its surface catches a purple gleam of sky.
At least I can give one gift back.
I start the car.
I’m not going to look at Yvonne again. I’m not going to take her out of the case and play one last time. I’m not. I’m not even going to look down at the case, or I might back out. I veer back into the street and head north.
The sky darkens as I drive. Sunset glows through the trees. By the time I reach the Crow’s Nest, it’s nearly black.
The parking lot is sparse. I can see Ike Lawrence’s truck parked near the kitchen door and a few other cars scattered here and there. I don’t want to run into Ike. I don’t know if Jezz or Patrick have told him about the breakup, or if the word has gotten out some other way, but I don’t want to be the one to tell him about Last Things. He’s been good to us. Really good. And now that we’ve become his big draw, we’re ditching him without any warning.
I park way down at the opposite end of the lot. I try to find the very same spot where I parked on the night I got Yvonne. I kill the engine. Yvonne’s case gleams in the thin light. I’d kind of like to give her back in the same way that I got her, but I can’t just leave her here, at the edge of a parking lot. And I have no way to contact that journalist. I never even got his name. Just like the woman from the management company.
I should have known. I should have known sooner. But I didn’t want to know.
I get out of the car. My boots crunch on the black pavement.
I pull Yvonne gently through the door. I scan the lot. There’s no one on the patio, or smoking on the cracked pavement. For once, no one is watching me.
I head into the woods.
There’s no path. I’m not sure if I’m taking exactly the course that journalist and I took all those months ago, but it feels right. It feels familiar. The trees, the thick shadows, the cold breeze all feel the same. The only thing that’s different is Yvonne’s deadweight in my hand. It feels like I’m carrying someone’s body into the woods to bury it. The body of someone I loved.
I walk until I can’t see the Crow’s Nest anymore. It’s dark. Roots and rocks slide under my boots, and I stagger. Damn it, I should have brought a flashlight. I pull out my cell phone. The screen gives me a little blob of gray light. Not great, but it will help. There’s no signal out here, I notice. Not a huge surprise. It’s patchy enough all around town.
Following the splotch of light, I head forward. The ground is soggy and soft with all the recent rain. My heels keep sinking in, like the ground is trying to hold me here. I tell myself to stay calm, stay logical, act like an adult, but half of me is ready to crumble. Every sound I catch—chirps and buzzes and creaks and snapping noises in the branches—seems to have some terrible possibility hiding in it. It takes all my energy just to keep walking, not to turn around and bolt back to the car like a kid running out of a scary movie.
I need to finish this. But I can’t dump Yvonne just anywhere. I need to find a place for her that feels right. Finally I stumble into a little clearing where someone must have built a bonfire a long time ago. There’s still a little divot in the ground, with a few logs pulled around it like bench seats. The surrounding trees are pines, tall and sturdy. Their needles whisper.
I stop there.
My fingers clench and unclench on the case’s handle.
I’ve never understood the rock stars who smash their guitars at the end of a set. All those beautiful, expensive, state-of-the-art instruments, smacked into chunks of plastic. It’s such a giant middle finger to every broke music nerd who can’t afford a decent guitar of his own. I’d never hurt Yvonne. I can’t even stand to set her on the ground out here, in the mud and the dew and the rotting leaves.
But I have to.
I have to stop thinking of her as mine. I have to stop thinking of her as Yvonne. I have to stop thinking of her as her. I have to give this back before they can take any more.
God. I don’t think I can do it.
I pick out a spot that seems a little drier, a patch of moss and leaves in the shelter of one huge trunk. I put the case down gently.
And then, even though I’m still telling myself not to do it, I open the clasps and lift the lid.
She’s so gorgeous. Faint light from my phone glimmers over her dark finish. Her strings glint. I will never have another guitar like this. It will take me years to save up for anything close.
But it’s done. We’re done.
I pry my hands off the lid. My whole body is fighting me. What it really wants is to grab Yvonne, wrap her tight in my arms, and run off to some dark, safe place where we can sit and play for the next ten hours. Or ten years.
The lid thunks shut. I flick the clasps.
Okay. Okay. Damn it. There’s a lump in my throat.
I creep backward far enough that even if I reached out again, I couldn’t touch her.
Okay. It’s done.
I’m just about to turn around when I hear the twig snap.
Thea
I used to know what it was. To be afraid.
I was afraid of so many things. Nightmares. The dark. The emptiness under my bed. The inside of my closet, where anything could hide. The voices that I heard whispering to me in the night, that seemed to come from outside the house or under my pillow or, sometimes, inside my own ears.
My mother always knew when the fear had grabbed me. At least, that’s what I remember. I didn’t have to find her, force myself out of bed over that treacherous dark gap. She would just appear there beside me, settling down on my bed, under my rumpled quilts. I remember the smell of her hair, which was long and pale, like mine, and the feeling of her hands as she’d rub my forehead, over and over, until I finally fell asleep.
I was five when she died. Cancer. Fast. And after that, I wasn’t afraid anymore. Because the worst thing had already happened. There was nothing left to fear.
Now nothing can touch me. Nothing even comes close.
It’s already night as I ride to Anders’s house. And they are everywhere. The dark things. All around me. Clinging to the high branches, swaying back and forth with the wind. I can see their twisted bodies and their milky white eyes. I am not afraid. I’ve stared back at the darkness for so long now that what I feel is barely a feeling at all. It’s just recognition. Familiarity.
I know you. I see you. You mean nothing.
The Thorsons’ house is dim. No cars in the drive. I pedal to my usual spot, leave the bike in the shrubs, and creep though the trees.
I’m less cautious than I used to be. I don’t have time to be crafty. Both sides already know me anyway.
I can feel the emptiness even before I reach Anders’s bedroom window. I glance through the pane, just in case. A lamp burns on the bedside table. There’s Goblin, asleep in the twisted bedding. Rumpled clothes on the floor. The row of guitars. One missing. Yvonne.
My X on the window is faded but present, just starting to flake away. I slice my palm with my pocketknife. The cut from half an hour ago has already healed. I retrace the X on the glass before this cut can close, too.
Last Things Page 19
