Hurt: A Novel (Solitary Tales Series) (25 page)

84. Lovely

What I really want to say is
I’ve missed you so incredibly much
, but instead I mutter a “Hi.”

What Kelsey probably wants to ask is
Why haven’t you spoken or contacted me these past few weeks and what’s going on to make you avoid me?
but instead she says “Hi” back.

My mom talks with her parents. They know each other from Thanksgiving, which we spent at their house, and Kelsey’s parents even invite us over, but Mom politely declines.

I want to say
Do you mind if I just borrow Kelsey for a week or two?
but instead I just listen to the parents talk.

Kelsey possibly wants to say
You’re an idiot if you think I’m going to wait around much longer for a moron like you
, but instead she does the same thing I do.

I want to hug her and tell her it’s okay, but I don’t know how to do it in this context. I’m already a bit disoriented from sitting in the church pew, feeling overwhelmed and both happy and sad. Now I only feel sad. Now Kelsey just reminds me that not all prayers are answered in the way you hope they will be.

Then Kelsey and her parents are saying good-bye.

There’s one moment.

Just one.

I go to say something, and then Kelsey looks at me and smiles and nods and says, “Bye.”

What does that mean?

Is she saying good-bye to us? Is she through?

But the smile—it was a sweet smile.

Does she have any other kind?

Has she moved on without my knowing?

She’d still be her sweet, adorable Kelsey self, right?

I leave church a bit confused but knowing that I can’t do anything to threaten her life. Well, to allow it to be any more threatened than it already is.

“She’s a lovely girl, Chris,” Mom says as we’re in the car driving back home.

“Yeah.”

Maybe Mom wants to say more about Kelsey, to ask where things are or make some suggestions, but she doesn’t. Which I appreciate, because I couldn’t even begin to try and explain where I’m standing with the pretty blonde.

Yeah, we’re a couple, kind of, but then again, who knows what’s going to happen these last few weeks of school and after graduation?

I just keep reminding myself of the pastor’s message, and of the words of hope I heard.

I keep reminding myself because I know eventually the reminders will fade away like they always seem to do around this place.

85. The Third Passage

Now that it’s warmer, I sometimes ride my bike around, trying to find the road that led to the Crag’s Inn. I still haven’t managed to find it; it’s as if it’s gone, just like those visions I used to have of Jocelyn.

One evening after trying to look for the road and coming up empty, I decide to look at something I haven’t bothered to check out for a while.

The laptop that Iris gave me.

Something always seemed wrong about using it. Somehow I don’t mind using the old motorcycle she gave me, since it had belonged to Uncle Robert, but this MacBook never really belonged to me. It was part of the project I did while working with Iris, the project about the history of the Crag’s Inn.

I open the laptop and start it up. I’m nervous; I feel like something’s going to happen, like Iris is going to be talking to me from the dead or wherever she might be. Or maybe a long-haired creepy girl will walk right out of the screen like she did in
The Ring
.

No no go back you’re in the wrong story!

I’m on the computer for five minutes when I finally start to relax. Creepy witch girl must be sleeping in a nearby well. I go to open the document I was looking for when I discover other files on my computer. Ones that I know I didn’t create.

One is called
A. Bridge.

Adahy Bridge?

I open it up and find a page of information just like it might appear on Wikipedia.

THE THIRD PASSAGE

THE SOUTHERN UNITED STATES

VERIFIED 1787 BY CHIEF SHANNAKIAK

CONFIRMED 1804 CALVIN JEFFERSON WALKER

AUTHENTICATED 1882 BY HAROLD ELLIS MARTIN

UPDATED 2000 BY IRIS

The Adahy Bridge

The word
Adahy
in Cherokee means “lives in the woods.” The bridge that was built back in 1820 was part of a road from Asheville, North Carolina, to Greenville, South Carolina. It is a stone bridge with a gothic arch that stands over the Little Dogwood Creek.

Activity at the bridge is high, steady, and somehow growing. Even with the stability of the inn nearby, the balance is still one-sided toward the darkness.

The resurgence began after the incident with Alice Kinner back in 1958. It has intensified with the arrival of Jeremiah Marsh in 1998.

By all accounts this could be one of the strongest passages in the country due to its secrecy and remote location.

I reread this just to make sure I understand everything. The whole “verified and confirmed” stuff seems formal and weird, like someone in the government wrote it. Then a simple
Updated by Iris
.

But the thing that really sticks out is the Alice Kinner “incident.”

I think back to my visit to the bridge and the sound of the …

Don’t go there. Just forget about it.

Maybe I need to pay Aunt Alice another visit.

This makes it seem like there are more of these “passages” out there.

I look back at the file names and try to open them, but I can’t. Along with A. Bridge, there are H. Caves, S. Quarry, and V. Ridge. The last two file names are identified simply with numbers, 6 and 7.

If there’re seven files, why do I only see six?

Part of me wonders if Iris put this on my computer on purpose, knowing or at least hoping that I’d open it up one day. I wonder what the other files say and if there’s more info on them.

I hear Mom calling for me, so I shut off my laptop and go downstairs.

I was hoping the days of discovering cryptic information were over, but I have to remember that I’m still in this crazy place called Solitary. I’m sure the weird info is going to keep coming until I’m finally (hopefully) leaving this place.

86. Driver’s Test

“Okay—start it up.”

I look at Mr. Taggart sitting in the old Subaru wagon that unfortunately is stick shift.

“You work here?” I ask.

“What? Disappointed to see me?”

Uh, yeah.

“I didn’t know—”

“That I gotta get other jobs?” He curses and shrugs. “Yeah, that’s what happens when you’re no longer the coach.”

My former summer school teacher—still looking like he just came back from a spring break gone bad—hunches over as he looks at me. “Come on, let’s go.”

“I’m not the best with a clutch.”

“Whatever. It’s my car, and it drives fine.”

I start it up and back it out of the spot and realize the car and the clutch are a lot like its owner. Worn and broken and difficult.

This is my driving test. I’m finally getting my license. Or so I thought until Mr. Taggart got in the car.

I mean, come on.

Seriously.

It’s a license.

I’m doomed to never get my license.

“Come on, we don’t got all day,” he yells, even though I’m driving through the town at the speed limit.

I do as he says and wonder if he’s even going to care how I drive or what I do.

Mr. Taggart leads me through Solitary to do some parking and various exercises. I do fine. Then he tells me to go on the winding side streets outside of town.

Suddenly I spot it.

The road leading to the Crag’s Inn. Or what’s left of it.

Without even asking, I turn the car and head up the hill. He doesn’t say anything. I don’t think he even notices. Sometimes he just stares ahead as if he’s on a beach, looking at the ocean, daydreaming, or sleeping.

We’re almost up to the top—almost—when Mr. Taggart tells me to turn around.

“How about I just—”

“Turn around.”

“Okay,” I say. “There’s a place where—”

“Here. Right here. Turn it around.”

We’re on a narrow stretch of the road where the hill juts upward on our right side and then drops almost straight down on the other side. Woods are on both sides, thick dense woods I remember from coming up here every weekend.

I slow the car down, drive it as far as it can go toward the ditch on our right side, then I turn. I don’t want to get stuck in the ditch, of course, but I don’t want to topple over on the other side. I turn, then back up, then turn a little more, then back up a little more.

I do an awful job. The stick shift keeps getting stuck, then grinding, then I’m nervous at wrecking his car, so I’m trying harder and sweating, and Mr. Taggart isn’t saying anything but looking at me like I just got off the stupid boat.

I have the Subaru wagon directly facing the edge of the sharp dropoff when I accidentally press the gas and send us jerking forward. Mr. Taggart lets out a curse and whips up the emergency brake, but that doesn’t really do anything except make him curse more. I jam on the brakes.

The front two tires of the car are nearly over. Nearly. Like inches or centimeters.

“Back it up.”

I start to, but the car is facing downward and it starts to lean forward.

“Come on, Chris.”

I try to control my breathing and my nervousness.

You can do this. Look at all you’ve gone through. You went soaring off a cliff and you survived while your driver didn’t. Come on, man. Get a grip.

I let go of the brake pedal while pressing the gas. But the thing is so dang slow. It starts inching forward again.

Mr. Taggart looks at me.

“Come on,” he says. “Just lay on the gas before letting go of the brake.”

“The stick keeps—”

“Shut it. No excuses. Come on.”

Okay, fine. This is it. Joke’s over. It’s time to grow up and be a man and stop being so afraid.

So I do as I’m told and am the man that I need to be. I give it gas as I gently take my foot off the brake. More gas. More. More.

“What the—brake! Put the—stop!”

I hear Mr. Taggart screaming as the Subaru slowly drives off the road and down the hill.

He’s screaming faster than the car is going. Because really, there’s a slight incline and then a bunch of thick bushes that look like they have blackberries on them. We land on top of them not with a crash or a boom but rather like someone trying to slide into home plate but instead slowing down to a rather anticlimactic stop.

I look at Mr. Taggart, who has ripped up the emergency brake in his car. It’s literally been torn off. He just looks at me and then looks at the brake in his hand.

Then something miraculous happens. Something that I couldn’t ever have seen coming.

Mr. Taggart, the miserable grump from the summer, starts to laugh. Not just laugh, but howl.

Soon I’m laughing too. Because laughter can be like that. A spontaneous, joyous sort of thing.

Especially after, you know, you survive death by stupidity in a car.

We’re laughing, and then I see something fluttering by my car window. I glance over and watch it land on a bush by my window.

The bluebird is back.

Of course it is.

Maybe if I knew what it sounded like, I’d know if the bird was laughing too.

A couple hours later, I arrive back home.

“How’d it go?” Mom asks me.

“Well, I drove us off the side of a mountain.” I chuckle again in complete disbelief.

“Yeah, right.”

I smile and then reach into my pocket. “There you go. A license. Well—not the official license—it’s just a temporary certificate for now. But I finally got it. Real one is coming in the mail.”

“Congratulations,” Mom says in an excited tone. “About time.”

“Miracles do happen.”

I think back to the tow truck and Mr. Taggart getting back to the town and still laughing at the whole driving off the side of the mountain.

“That car is a hunk of junk anyway,” he said to me. “You want to know the first thing I thought as we were going over the side of the mountain? Huh? I was hoping that we’d just blow up in a big ball of flames like they do in the movies. But no. We just—we just kinda got … stuck.”

He laughed again and then said he wouldn’t say anything about it.

So, yeah, I got my license.

And yeah, I got to see Mr. Taggart find the whole thing hilarious.

The license wasn’t the miracle.

It was that smile.

And it was finding that road again. Finally.

87. Start of the Breakdown

Man, my faith is weak.

That feeling I had sitting in the pew got washed away with this morning’s rain.

The vast, open, endless blue seems to be forgotten underneath this ceiling of gray.

Something about today is different, and I don’t know what.

Something about Kelsey is different.

Every day we pass and smile and say hi, but that’s it. She’s waiting but doesn’t understand why. And I know that one day I’ll be able to tell her more of the story, but I can’t. Not just yet. So I wait, and the days and the nights morph and then suddenly I see her on this gloomy, wet morning as I’m trying to dry off from my wet morning ride.

I see her talking to some other guy and smiling.

I see her smiling and laughing.

I try not to let her see me, but maybe she does. Maybe she wants me to see her.

You don’t understand, Kelsey.

But later when I pass her in the hall, she doesn’t smile or say hi. She just looks away.

Is this how it starts?

When one morning is enough, and that day is the day to change. When the hurting has morphed into something more. When the temporary break turns into a full-fledged breakdown.

I look for her at lunch, but she’s not in her normal place.

I look for her by her locker later, but that doesn’t work either.

She’s deliberately avoiding me.

Don’t give it away, Chris, don’t let them see you still care for her.

And then later I see her walking with her bodyguard Georgia. I start toward her, but then I see the same tall guy come up to her. A younger guy, a junior I think, but a jock and good-looking and so freaking tall.

I don’t understand you.

I let them go, and I let this day go.

This day in the middle of April when I’m trying to just be patient and wait.

But maybe she’s no longer waiting on me.