“She’s going to ask a million questions,” insisted Brady.
“I’ll handle this,” Kieren said, still not showing any emotion. “You should go.”
Brady, to my shock, nodded and left the room. What was happening here? Brady taking directions from Kieren struck me as bizarre. The balance of power seemed off somehow. And besides, what were they even talking about? A million questions about what?
“I’ll walk you back to class, M.”
“Kieren, what is going on here?” It still felt odd to look Kieren in the eyes. It was like both a hundred years and no time at all had passed in the same instant.
“Nothing. He’s overreacting. His girlfriend went to visit a friend and didn’t tell her parents first.”
I nodded. That explanation almost seemed to make sense. Almost. Until I started to think about it, and I realized that it left too many questions unanswered. What was DW? Why did she look so scared? And why did Brady? But something deep down told me that I shouldn’t let on to Kieren that I had any doubts about his story. Something was going on here, something that I wasn’t supposed to know about. You could get hurt. That’s what Brady had said. Hurt by what?
“That’s all you need to know, okay?” Kieren was already grabbing his bag from a nearby table. “Come on.”
I hesitated for a moment. I didn’t know why at first, but then I realized it was because I was still a little afraid of Kieren. Afraid that my parents would find out I was talking to him. Afraid that he could hurt me. Because of Robbie. Because of what he had done to Robbie.
Kieren put one hand on the door handle and reached out the other for mine. “Let’s go, M.”
I swallowed hard in order to find my voice. “I can walk by myself.”
He eyed me for a moment, and the darkness in the room obscured his expression just enough that I couldn’t read it at all. Maybe I was being ridiculous. Maybe everything my parents had told me about Kieren, about what had happened that night, was a lie. But maybe it wasn’t.
He stepped out of the way and I walked past him. I almost tripped down the stairs and didn’t feel normal again until I was back in the bustling hallway, all alone in the oblivious crowd.
CHAPTER 3
I was twelve years old when Robbie died. He was fourteen.
That year, Robbie and Kieren would always wait for me after school so we could bike to meet our dads at the train station. I always got a little rush of excitement when I saw them by the bike rack, like they were springing me out of jail.
We felt like royalty then. The coffee-cart girl smiled when she saw us. All Robbie had to do was tell her she was pretty, and she’d blush and toss us some Werther’s candies. All the girls loved Robbie, even if they were too old for him. He had a way of noticing details about you, of really looking at you, that made you feel like you were the only person in the world.
Kieren was the opposite. He barely spoke at that time, but when he did, it was usually to say something that he had considered quite carefully. I didn’t understand Kieren for a long time. I thought he just didn’t like me, or that he thought he was too good to hang out with Robbie’s little sister. He would tease me at times, laughing at the way I held a fork or correcting me when I thought eBay was an actual place. How was I supposed to know what eBay was? I was just a kid.
But over time I began to realize that Kieren thought of me as one of their gang—and it’s always okay to tease someone in your gang. He expected me to do it back, and probably didn’t understand why I never did. He would be surprisingly kind, then quiet again. He liked a girl at school, I think, but he wouldn’t talk about her when I was around. One rainy day, he and Robbie taught me how to play poker. We used matchbooks for the ante, and every time I lost, which was every time, they’d each take turns giving me half their matchbooks so I could keep playing. And when we biked to the train station, they wouldn’t let me cross the street without them. They knew I didn’t like Werther’s candies, so they stole me some M&M’s by shaking the vending machine when no one was looking.
I had known Kieren since I was seven, but that was the year he really started to feel like a second brother to me. A second protector. Kieren would pull the skateboard out of his backpack and show off on the railing of the stairway. Robbie and I would laugh and eat our candy.
I can’t remember the first time I noticed that they acted differently when other boys from their class would show up at the station. It was so subtle at first. But soon it became clear—the way they stood, making a little imaginary circle that didn’t include me; skating over to the other side of the parking lot, where only boys hung out. I would watch them, pretending not to care.
I played a game with myself where I would hold an M&M in my mouth for as long as I could, daring myself not to bite down. Sucking away till all the flavor had dissolved. Watching that endless train track, looking for the first microscopic dot of Dad’s train to appear on the horizon. Shivering a bit as the days got shorter and colder.
Someday I’ll leave this town, I would think. I’ll live in the city. With a bead curtain dividing the kitchen from the living room.
Soon Kieren and Robbie just headed straight over to the other boys. There was no pretense of spending any time with me. They’d still pick me up so we could bike over together, but that was it. No more skateboard stunts. No more stolen candy. I told myself I didn’t care. I’d bring a library book and read. Who wanted to hang out with a bunch of stupid boys?
I’ll paint the bathroom fire-engine red.
Once or twice, despite myself, I’d glance over there, just to see what stupid things they were doing. And a couple of times I caught Kieren staring back. I’d quickly look away. He couldn’t catch me caring. Couldn’t make me cry.
Fall turned to winter. It was getting dark by the time we got to the tracks, and the boys started gathering closer to the station, where the heat and the light from inside would spill out onto the platform. Some of them would smoke. Once I saw Robbie do it, too, but I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t a rat.
One day Robbie stayed home sick from school. I stood alone on the platform, shivering a bit from the cold. I couldn’t believe how dark it was already. I was hungry and bored.
Kieren and the other boys were gathered nearby. I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but I could tell from their tone that they were talking about me. One of the boys was laughing. I turned up my collar, pretended not to hear them.
“Hey, dweeb,” one of them called. My heart froze. “Why are you always alone?”
I rocked a bit, my heart racing.
“Where are your friends?”
I held my breath. I knew Kieren was with them. I knew he would shut that boy up in a second. I couldn’t wait to hear him do it. Maybe he’d even hit the kid. I got a little rush thinking about the fistfight that was about to break out, all because of me.
“Where are your friends, dweeb? Don’t you have any?”
This boy was relentless. I waited and waited for Kieren to say something. But nothing came. Had Kieren gone home? I didn’t dare turn around to look. I couldn’t confront this boy head-on. I knew I wasn’t strong enough. Where was Kieren? Why wasn’t he saying anything?
“She doesn’t have any.” I knew the voice immediately. It was Kieren. “She’s just a weird kid. Come on, let’s wait inside.”
I choked back a lump in my throat as they went into the station. My heart was thumping, breaking. I must have been wrong. That couldn’t have been Kieren. It must have been some other boy who sounded like him. I slowly turned and looked over my shoulder. They were inside, laughing and shaking the vending machine. And Kieren was there. He turned and caught my eyes. And I realized that tears were streaming down my cheeks. I couldn’t let him see me cry. Couldn’t let him have that satisfaction.
I jumped on my bike and started pedaling down the path along the tracks, pumping my legs as h
ard as I could. I pedaled and pedaled. It was dark by then and there were no lights on the path.
I heard a voice behind me, but I didn’t slow down.
“M!” Kieren shouted. I could hear the clinking of his bike chain. I kept pedaling. But he was faster and stronger than me, two years older. He caught up pretty quickly and cut me off, so I had to stop.
“What do you want?” I screamed.
“I’m sorry, okay?” he stammered. He sat on his bike and stared at me.
“I’m going home.”
“You’re not supposed to bike here by yourself. I’ll go with you.”
“I don’t want you to go with me!” I wasn’t crying anymore. I was angry.
Kieren got off his bike. “I’m sorry, M.”
I stayed where I was but flinched away from him, like he was made of acid.
“You just—you can’t hang around the station anymore, okay?”
“You can’t tell me what to do,” I insisted.
“Yes, I can. Your brother hasn’t told you this, because he doesn’t want to hurt your feelings, but you—you just need to get your own friends.”
I stood still, wanting to cry again. What was he talking about? He was my friend.
“Friends your age, you know? Like, maybe girlfriends.”
I shook my head. I was being kicked out of the gang. What had I done wrong? “But you’re my friends.”
“We can’t be your only friends, M. You’re a little girl. You need to hang out with other little girls.”
The ground beneath our feet began to tremble. I looked to the horizon and saw the bright headlight of the train growing larger and larger. As the train got closer, the wind picked up. I clutched my jacket tighter around me. I wished more than ever that I could magically appear back at the station, that I could be there when my father stepped onto the platform so I could throw myself into his waiting arms. But it was too late to get back.
Kieren had stopped talking. The approaching train made it impossible to hear anything. The whole earth seemed to be crumbling with its arrival. Kieren and I watched it getting closer and closer.
Suddenly, without warning, Kieren leaped for the tracks. I had no idea what he was doing. I screamed his name, but I knew he couldn’t hear me. He pulled something out of his pocket and quickly placed it on the rail. I don’t know why he thought it was so important to put it there, why he risked his life to do it. But then again, maybe he didn’t think about it too much. Kieren could be impulsive like that. It was impossible to know what he was thinking half the time.
The train whizzed by us, barely missing his hand as he pulled back. He came and stood next to me again as it passed. I looked in the windows for my father’s face, but all I could see was a blur.
Once the train had passed and the vibrations were dying down, it was just Kieren and me again, standing in the eerie quiet and darkness.
He walked up to the track and retrieved what he had put there—a penny, now flattened.
“Here. This is to keep you safe.”
“You’re crazy,” I said. “You’re completely crazy.”
I hopped on my bike and rode home as fast as I could. I was suddenly terrified. Terrified of the train, of Kieren and his dangerous act. Terrified of being out after dark. I pedaled so hard my sides ached. I pedaled and pedaled until I was safe in my kitchen. And it wasn’t until I was standing over the sink, catching my breath, that I took the penny and held it, feeling its sharp edges cut into my palm like a knife.
The accident happened at the end of May. There were two weeks left of school, and I was looking forward to our summer vacation. There’s a little town in Indiana where they have a lot of lakes. My dad was planning for us to take a trip there. We were going to rent a cabin and go fishing. It sounded extraordinarily boring, I have to admit, but I was going to bring a lot of books and sit by the water and read. And my dad said there was a river there where everybody went inner tubing. Hundreds of people went floating down the river, listening to music and talking and laughing.
And then the phone call came.
I was in the kitchen eating a piece of chocolate cake after dinner, thinking about those inner tubes and picturing my body stretched out across that warm dark rubber, gently flowing down a river. The thought made me so happy.
Robbie hadn’t come home that night for dinner, which had become more and more of a common occurrence. My mom was worried. My dad was angry. I was the only one at the table, and I was seriously considering getting a second piece of cake.
At first I didn’t think anything of the phone call. My mom’s voice filtered into the room, a series of tense little vowel sounds. I had become accustomed to hearing her voice grow tense more and more often since Robbie started ditching dinner.
My mother’s voice went silent. Soon there was a strange sound that at first I couldn’t understand. I thought a wild animal had come into the house. But it wasn’t an animal. It was my mother. It was my mother wailing. And I knew immediately that only one thing could be that wrong.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. I was afraid I might pass out, but I couldn’t move from the table. Time stood still. I heard a clock ticking. My throat closed around a little lump of chocolate cake, and the overly sweet taste of it dripping down with each gulp nauseated me. I tried to breathe. I was going to be sick. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe.
Before I knew it, my mother and father were sitting in front of me. I hadn’t moved from the table. My mother sat, rocking her body. My father put his large hand on her back. I had never seen him cry.
They said there had been an accident. They said Robbie wasn’t coming home.
I tried to breathe.
The train. The accident involved the train. The train came. They were on their skateboards.
“He was with that boy,” I remember my mother saying. She spat out the word like it was poison. “He was with that horrible little boy.” And saying it made her body shake again, made the tears start up again. I heard her wheezing, gasping for air.
The horrible boy must be Kieren, I realized. Was Kieren dead too? I didn’t dare ask.
We sat in silence for a moment. I wondered if I’d ever leave that table. I started bargaining with God—just let this moment be over. Just end this moment, and let my body disappear.
I stared at the table, at that stupid little plate of chocolate cake. My tears pooled around its rim, carrying away the little black crumbs, like inner tubes floating down a river.
CHAPTER 4
Piper McMahon. That was her name. And she had been missing for over a week. It was all over the local news. Flyers displaying her beautiful face, her flowing brown hair, had sprung up on every bare wall in the school. In the picture, she was wearing the same tan suede jacket she had been wearing when I saw her with Brady in the hallway.
Her parents were devastated, naturally. A mob of reporters camped out in front of their house. They appeared on TV at night, begging viewers for any information. Her mother’s eyeliner formed black tears that streamed all the way down to her chin.
And then the principal called an assembly. It started like all assemblies—long trains of kids lining up in their classrooms and shuffling down the hall like human tributaries converging into a reluctant river.
But there were no cheerleaders. No pom-poms. Only the school principal, a slight woman of Middle Eastern descent with bouncy black hair named Miss Farghasian. She looked somber. She looked like she had been crying.
Piper McMahon was last seen on a Tuesday.
And the rest of the words came out of the principal’s slight mouth, booming from her little body with a shocking amount of volume. Piper McMahon. She was seventeen. She was on the homecoming court. She loved The Smiths. She was missing.
I looked over at the part of the bleachers where upperclassmen sat. The rest of the homecoming court looked des
troyed. The girls caught their breath. Some of their boyfriends comforted them. Some just sat and stared at the floor.
Piper McMahon was a straight-A student.
Outside the tall window, the bare branches of the trees seemed to shiver, defenseless against the descending chill. My fingers clenched my jeans at the knees. I thought of my mother. I thought of our kitchen. The seat at our table that had been my brother’s.
And then I saw Brady.
Has anyone seen Piper McMahon?
Brady’s eyes pleaded with me, his lips curled into an almost painful circle, like he was about to speak. And I could hear the words he was saying to me, floating soundlessly from his eyes to mine: Please don’t say anything. I can explain. Just wait.
My body felt ready to explode, my heartbeat battering my rib cage. What was I supposed to do? Brady’s eyes continued to plead, and all I could think of was Piper McMahon, alone on a train headed west. Piper McMahon without so much as a toothbrush. What was she running from? Did Piper want to be found? Would she want me to speak up?
The shuffling of feet around me made me realize we had been dismissed. I sprang from my seat and ran as fast as I could out of the room. I’m sure I attracted more than a couple strange looks, and I’m pretty sure I could hear my homeroom teacher telling me to come back, but I couldn’t stop my feet.
I ran from the packed auditorium towards the temporarily empty school, and I quickly found myself completely lost in the labyrinthine hallways. This was a part of the building I didn’t know, and like the rest of the school, it made no sense whatsoever. Doors leading to half-finished hallways, windowless rooms that all looked completely identical. I ran farther until something looked familiar: blue lockers. I knew the blue section. And I knew what I would find there.
The door to the darkroom was in front of me. I ran up the stairs and into the blissful, quiet red light. The photographs were gone, and the room was empty and still. I quickly looked in the shadows for Kieren, who was not there. It struck me as funny that once you’ve seen a person in a certain place, you expect to see them there every time.
Down World Page 3
