Gravestone (8 page)

15. Lost

When I get home, I can’t find Midnight. It takes me five minutes of calling out her name and looking around the house before I admit she’s missing. It takes another five seconds for me to go completely bonkers.

Mom’s not home. This is something I already knew. I race up the stairs and go into my bedroom again, looking in the closet and under the bed and in the covers. I scan the bathroom quickly again, then look in the small room that’s used for storage, even though we have nothing to store.

Midnight’s nowhere to be found.

I call her name. Over and over and over again. Each time I get louder. Each time I sound more terrified.

“Midnight!”

I look everywhere. In my mom’s room, in her bathroom, in our kitchen, in the laundry room. It’s not like this is a huge mansion or anything.

I search the kitchen cabinets. I even find myself opening one above the counter, and then I stop myself when I realize that dogs can’t fly.

Maybe they can in Solitary.

“Midnight!”

I go outside on the deck that is cleared but still a bit slippery, and I call out her name. It’s getting dark. I scan the road below.

For a second I begin to think bad thoughts. Awful thoughts.

I picture Jocelyn.

No please no.

I begin to hear the thoughts. The judging, condemning words. I see the pointed finger. The eyes of shame and blame.

“Midnight!”

The ten minutes feel like my body being stretched out ten more inches. My hands and legs are attached to separate chains, and they’re being pulled separate ways.

If she got out and roamed away I might never find her again.

I feel sick. Really physically sick.

I shout her name over and over like a crazy person, and in fact I’m shouting so loud I don’t hear the noise until I stop to take a breath.

A scratching sound.

It’s the last gasp of a dying dog before she departs.

Then I hear a little whimper of a bark.

That’s outside. No, wait, it’s inside.

I go back inside through the open door. The scratching is coming from the kitchen.

Then I realize that it’s coming from the back door. I grab the handle, and it turns—something it doesn’t do when it’s locked.

Dogs can’t open and close doors.

When I open it, I see the black little Shih Tzu standing there wagging her tail and looking up at me with a mischievous face. I pick her up and bring her face to mine.

She’s fine, besides feeling a little cold. As she licks my face, I realize that she’s also licking tears.

16. Don’t

Chris.

The voice hovers, yet isn’t audible. It’s in my head, in my dream. I open my eyes to familiar darkness, to familiar silence. I move and sit on the edge of the narrow mattress—one day I’m bound to turn and fall right off of it. I sit and wait.

Chris.

It’s Jocelyn’s voice, crashing in like a wave at high tide. I’m half asleep still, my eyelids shutting and staying shut, then opening again.

I need to talk to you.

I get up and walk down the stairs. Somewhere in the darkness at the foot of my bed, Midnight must surely be wondering what I’m doing. I wouldn’t be able to tell her if she asked.

The steps creak, but creaks can’t awaken the dead or the drunk. Actually, I’d bet that I’m more likely to talk to the dead. Ritualistic killing is one thing, but bad vodka is another.

You’re growing so cynical and so mean.

It’s her voice, but it’s really mine warped into the memory of her words. It has to be. I’m awake, and I know what’s going on.

You don’t have a clue.

I stand for a second, wondering if I’m supposed to go out. She sounds like she’s outside on the deck, outside in the cold night.

As I reach for the handle, I feel a gust of wind, and I shiver.

Get a coat, stupid. And some shoes.

So I do.

Then I go outside.

The air isn’t just cold. It’s hard and empty. It’s so cold that it’s hard to breathe, hard to think.

I can see the deck and the dropping terrain underneath me just fine in the light of the liquid moon. I don’t see a ghostly apparition hovering anywhere. I don’t see someone flying on a broom. I don’t see anything unusual.

Except the shadow of the approaching figure.

And I turn and see Jocelyn walking toward me.

“Jocelyn?” I ask.

Her face hides under a fur-lined hood, the smile impossible not to see. A scarf covers her neck, her face so beautiful and angelic. I guess ghosts or visions or dream dates still have to wear warm clothes. Wouldn’t want to catch a cold.

You’re not dreaming.

I’m so cold and the voice sounds so real and maybe I’m not dreaming, maybe I’m really outside talking to myself or whoever this is.

It’s me.

I go to touch her, but she pulls back.

Don’t. Just—just look at me and listen.

“You’re so beautiful.”

Listen.

“What is this?”

There is a place that is somewhere between every day and every dream, a place like this.

This doesn’t feel like either every day or every dream.

Not everybody can see it, but when you can, you have to take the light with the darkness.

I shake my head and reach out to touch her, but this time she shouts an emphatic
no!

I can’t help you in any way or give you anything you don’t have or don’t know.

As I glance at her, I can’t help thinking that of course she can’t give me anything I don’t have or don’t know because this is a dream.

Your mother needs you.

I nod. That’s nice to hear. The whole world knows that.

No, she really needs you, Chris. Don’t.

I wait for more.

“Don’t what?” I eventually ask.

Don’t.

I’m still waiting.

It’s good to see you.

“Is this all—is this happening?”

Don’t let anybody tell you you’re not.

“I’m not what?”

She smiles, reaches out her hand, and goes to touch my lips with her finger.

Then I blink, and just like that, she’s gone.

But I felt something, a slight little tap on the edge of my mouth.

I don’t wake up in bed.

I’m still here, standing on the edge of the deck. I stay there for a while, watching the moon and feeling the chill and desperately longing for Jocelyn to come back.

17. Reaching Out

“Have you thought about getting a job?” Mom asks me the next morning as I’m wolfing down a bowl of cereal.

“Sure,” I say.

“Have you thought long and hard about it?”

I nod, but we both know I’m lying.

“You’re going to have to start saving money, Chris.”

“For what? A car? Gotta get a license first. And I’m still waiting to take a driver’s ed class.”

“You have to plan things out.”

Oh, like you plan anything out.

“Yeah,” I say.

“I want you to start looking, okay? It’d be good for you.”

Oh, okay, and you know what would be good for you? Sobriety.

As I get ready to head out the door, she asks me where I’m going.

“Just out. Hanging out with a guy from school.”

“What’s his name?”

“Jerry,” I say.

Yeah, that’s a lie. Kinda maybe. I mean, maybe Jerry is short for Jared.

“What are you going to do?”

“When did you get home last night?” I ask.

“I don’t know. Late. Brennan’s was packed.”

“Did you stay later?”

She looks at me with a confused and hurt and slightly irritated look. “Chris—”

“Questions are great, aren’t they?”

“Don’t be like that.”

“Then you don’t,” I say.

“I’m just asking what you’re going to be up to.”

“I don’t know. Maybe just hanging out.”

“Be careful,” she says.

My mother has never been the type to say things like that, not with me.

But Solitary has changed everything.

The sun seems to be helping melt some of this snow and ice. The temperature from the middle of the night/morning when I had whatever sort of thing I had with Jocelyn seems to have been a dream. I walk on the street just like I’m supposed to and wonder when everything’s going to get nice and mushy.

I’ve been walking for a while and see that it’s ten minutes after ten, and I’m just wondering if I’ve gone down too far and should turn back when I hear a vehicle—the first I’ve heard today.

A blue truck pulls up next to me. Sure enough, I see Jared at the wheel. I open the door and get inside.

“How’s it going?” he asks.

As if we’re going into town to shoot some pool and pick up some chicks.

“Haven’t been threatened yet today, so things are looking up,” I say, trying to sound like I’m taking all of this with humor and coolness.

Jared doesn’t smile.

He probably knows that deep inside, underneath this really cool and composed exterior, is a teenager who is pretty much freaking out beyond anything his mind and heart can comprehend.

“You have breakfast?”

“I could eat more,” I say.

“Good. There’s a little diner that serves awesome food.”

“But?”

“But what?”

“But there’s gotta be a catch. Around here there’s always a catch.”

“The catch is that it’s cheap and I’ve been eating there all my life and their omelets are to die for.”

“That’s not my favorite expression.”

He glances at me and chuckles. “You’re a witty one this mornin’, aren’t you?”

“I used to be a lot more witty.” I think of my mother and of our last conversation and realize she’s not the only one who’s changed.

“Just relax, okay? We got some talkin’ to do.”

He turns up the radio, and a country singer belts out a loud and wild song about a loud and wild night.

When I grow up I want to be this singer and have his life. I want to sing about the ladies and the long nights.

Maybe I’ll move to Texas. Or Alabama. Or Tennessee. Or Georgia. Anywhere but here.

Anywhere but this tiny ugly town.

I guess I’m hungrier than I realized. The meal isn’t just food. In some weird way, it’s relief.

“You like grits?” Jared asks.

“With butter on them, sure.”

“Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if I had never tasted grits. You ever think about things like that?”

“Grits?”

He shakes his head. “Life. Destiny. The big-picture stuff.”

“What’s that have to do with grits?”

“If I’d been raised in California or New York, I wouldn’t know the wonderful and mesmerizing thing called grits.”

What is he saying?

“Do you ever think what life would have been like if you’d been raised around here?”

I swallow and laugh. “Maybe I wouldn’t know any different. Maybe I’d be like the rest of them.”

“I don’t think so.”

I wait for him to say more, but he just sips his coffee and watches me.

“Tell me about school.”

“You’ve been there,” I say. “You’ve seen the place.”

“I used to go there. What I mean is—anything strange going on?”

I tell him about Rachel’s disappearance, though I don’t tell him about her letter. I mention that Poe is blaming me for her two friends disappearing. “They don’t know that she’s dead.”

“Want to hear a story, Chris?”

I shrug.

Honestly, I’m not sure, because stories around here are not the warm and fuzzy kind that make your heart go boom boom.

“I never bothered to go to college, but I read a lot. You don’t need school to learn. I was reading this book about World War II. Did you know that a lot of Germans—the good Germans, the ones who weren’t with the Nazis, the ones just trying to live their lives—still knew what was happening in their backyard?”

“With killing the Jews?”

“With the Holocaust. People who couldn’t do a thing about it. People who had to just keep living.”

“You can always do something,” I say. “I don’t believe you just sit by and watch something like that happen.”

“That’s what heroes say.”

“Is that bad?”

“Heroes end up dead.”

I’m about to snap back at his comment when a heavyset woman interrupts our conversation to pour Jared more coffee. He lets her walk out of listening distance.

“Look—I can’t say it’s
bad
,” he says. “But
foolish
, well … it’s something that my father probably said. And now he’s missing.”

“What was he trying to do?”

“I don’t know. Have you found anything on him in that house? Any information?”

“Lots of eighties records,” I say.

Why don’t you mention the other things?

“Any clues will help. I know that somebody was helping him, giving him information.”

Why don’t you also mention that lady in the shades who picked you up in the expensive SUV and told you she was a friend of your uncle?

But again, another voice, or maybe not a voice, but a feeling or premonition prevents me from saying anything.

This guy across from me seems trustworthy enough.

But I need more time to make sure.

That woman, the movie-star lady who gave me a ride and directions to the clearing in the woods on New Year’s Eve, said she wasn’t sure where Uncle Robert went. Nobody seems to know.

“I’ll keep looking around,” I say. “But what should I look for?”

“Names. Addresses. Details. He just disappeared.”

“Do you think—?”

I don’t want to finish the statement because uttering it seems wrong.

I want to ask if Jared thinks his father might be dead.

He nods, glances around. There is only one other patron in this restaurant, an older guy eating his breakfast and reading the paper. Nothing too suspicious.

“I think that if he’s alive he’s in trouble. Maybe he’s like me, hiding. I don’t know. I just know that if he’s still alive and can come back to this town, he’ll do it. And he’ll contact you.”

“Why me? Why not my mom?”

I receive another hard look from the guy across from me. “Would you contact your mother?”

Does he know about my mom’s condition, about her state of mind?

“I don’t know,” I say.

“If my father is going to reach out to anybody, it’s going to be you.”