Silver is for Secrets (14 page)

“I was actual y planning on having you come over today,” she says, trying to keep pace with me. “Just later. I mean, don‟t you think I should hang around your place for a little while . . . try and patch things up with Drea?”

“Wel , I have a confession to make. I‟ve already been to your place.”

“Huh?”
She stops. Her mouth drops open.

“When I couldn‟t find you early this morning, I thought that maybe you went back to your cottage.”

“And?”

“And I went inside.
We
went inside—Drea, Amber, and me.”

“What?”
She gasps. “You guys went into my house? Without me? You just broke in?”

“The door wasn‟t locked, Clara. I was worried about you. We al were.”

“So what happened? What did you see?”

“I‟m sorry,” I say, ignoring the questions. “I know—it was wrong. But if you knew me, you‟d know; it‟s only because I thought you might be in danger. You
are
in danger,” I remind her.

Clara studies me for several seconds. “What did you see?” she repeats.

Instead of answering, I look up at her cottage. It‟s just a house away now. “Let‟s go,” I say, holding out my hand. Clara takes it and we climb the back steps, the bamboo wind chimes so loud and clamoring that I almost can‟t think straight. I wrap my hand around the doorknob, almost as though it‟s my house, and guide her inside.

We enter her room and Clara sees it right away. It looks even worse with the sunlight shining in through the windows. Clara starts trembling. Her stance begins to wobble a bit.

I help her to sit down on the bed and do my best to turn her away from it. But she can‟t stop looking. “Do you know who did this?” I whisper.

She swallows hard and shakes her head.

“Are you sure?”

She nods.

“Maybe someone who‟s angry at you, somebody who wants to try and scare you

—”

“I told you, I don‟t know,” she snaps. She flops back against her pil ow, pul ing the slack of covers up over her, revealing a large manila envelope, sitting beside her on the bed.

I pick up the envelope, trying to concentrate on the fibers, the way it feels in my hand.

Clara sits back up. “What is that?”

I shake my head, noticing the chill coming from the seal, the coolness of the edges.

“Oh my god,” she says, her mouth trembling. “Where did you get that?”

“It was on your bed, under the covers.”

I bring the envelope up to my nose. It smells like butterscotch. Like her.

“What is it?” Clara asks. “What‟s wrong?”

“It smel s like you,” I say.

“What does that mean? It was in my bed.”

“I know. It‟s just, whatever‟s in here . . . I feel like it captures you in some way.” Clara covers her eyes and rubs her forehead. “I don‟t want to know, okay? I don‟t want to see what‟s inside. You look and then just tel me if it‟s bad.”

“Okay,” I say, knowing already that it is bad. I turn away and tear at the flap, the envelope getting colder in my hands by the moment, like my skin is icing over just holding it. I peek inside and see a stack of Polaroids, reminding me of the ones that Amber found earlier. I look down at the floor by the bed. They‟re stil there—a picture of an almost-arm and a possible butt-cheek.

“What is it?” Clara asks. She‟s looking at me now.

I reach inside the envelope and pul out the photos. They‟re pictures of Clara, at least thirty of them. They‟re al taken, it seems, from outside various windows of her cottage—Clara pulling off her sweatshirt, changing into her shorts, getting ready to take a shower, wearing only a towel . . .

“Tel me!” she demands.

I look at her and bite my bottom lip. “We should cal the police.”

“Show me!” Clara holds her hands out for the pictures. “I have to see.”

“Are you sure?”

She pauses a moment before nodding.

I hand them to her and watch as she flips through each one—as her mouth trembles and her chin shakes. After seeing about ten, she throws them down on the bed and clenches fistfuls of pillow fabric.

“It‟l be okay,” I say, sitting down beside her. I pick up the other photos, the ones from the floor. “It looks like whoever left these dropped a couple.”

“What?”
Clara grabs them from me.

I peek over her shoulder at the pictures, trying to make out blurs of peach mixed with globs of red and brown.

“It‟s like they‟re playing games with me,” Clara snivels.

“Nobody makes mistakes like this. Nobody puts photos in an envelope, puts it in your bed, and then happens to drop some on the floor.” She clenches the pil ows harder, her knuckles turning to bone.

“It‟l be okay,” I say. “Just breathe. We‟l get through this.” I pluck a tissue from the box beside her bed and blot the tears that stream down her cheeks.

Clara takes a giant breath, blowing out her mouth, trying to calm herself down.

After several moments and even more tissues, she seems just a little bit stronger, more stable. She looks at me and tries to smile, her hands letting up a bit from the clench-hold on her pil ow. “I‟m sorry,” she says.

“For what?”

“It‟s just that I hardly know you. I‟m not usual y like this.”

“Of course not,” I say, patting her forearm. “I mean, this isn‟t exactly the most usual of circumstances. It‟s not every day you come home to—”

“That,” she finishes, looking up at the words again.

“Hey,” I say, turning her face away from it. “You need to be strong. You need to cal the police. Get them over here. Have them see everything.” Clara nods and grabs the phone.

“Wait,” I say, pausing her from dialing. “Do you think it might have been that photographer guy next door?”

“I don‟t know,” she says. “I hadn‟t real y thought about it ... maybe.” The idea of it seems to upset her even more. She nearly bites through her cheek and resumes dialing. It takes her a couple times to actually get her jittery fingers to work right. “Hel o,” she stammers into the receiver. “My name is Clara Baker. I‟m vacationing at 24 Sandy Beach Lane. I need you to come right away.” She pauses a moment to stare into my eyes. “Because someone wants to kil me.”
twenty

In practically less time than it takes me to stuff the photos back inside the envelope, to try once more to sense something from them through touch, the police arrive.

Clara does all the talking, which both surprises and impresses me. I think it‟s healthy that she‟s talking about everything, taking things seriously, and being proactive.

She leads them through the living room and into her room, telling them how we came in here this morning and saw the graffiti on the wall, and then how we found the envelope of photos stuffed beneath her bed covers. But what‟s weird is that she fails to tell them how Amber, Drea, and I were actually here earlier this morning

—how that‟s when
we
saw the message on the wall.

I look at it, at the blood-red words sprawled across the wal , wondering if Clara‟s intentional y leaving that detail out, if maybe she‟s trying to protect us. I guess, as Amber pointed out last night, it
would
look kind of suspicious for us. I cringe just thinking how openly Drea and Amber have expressed sheer loathing for Clara. If the police started asking questions about that, about whether all of us got along as friends, after hearing that the three of us broke in here, it might not look too good for us.

So, while I can understand why Clara might be protecting me, I‟m wondering why she‟d bother protecting them. Unless, of course, the detail just slipped her mind. I ponder that possibility a moment, but then Clara looks directly at me. “Stacey,” she says, her face al flushed, “I‟d real y like to speak to the police alone now.” She grabs a tissue from the box and dabs her eyes. The two police officers stare at me

—one woman with dark, slicked-back hair that curls around her ears, and an older skinny guy with tiny round glasses.

“Oh,” I say, taken aback completely.

“But I‟l come over after,” Clara says. “We can talk more then.” I nod and look at the police, wondering what she‟s going to tel them. The female officer takes my name, address, and telephone number, and tells me she might need to talk to me some more later—even though I didn‟t get to say much at al .

So now what?

I head back to the cottage, eager to hear back from Clara—to see what else she said to the police, to see if they might have said something insightful to her. Though now, after being asked to leave just as the questioning was starting to heat up, I know I can‟t rely solely on her for information. There‟s obviously stuff she doesn‟t want to tell me.

I enter the cottage, and Jacob is sitting at the kitchen table eating a bagel.

“Where have you been?” he asks.

“I could ask you the same.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I got up this morning, you‟d already left.”

“I went for an early swim.”

I look toward his swim trunks. “Then how come your bathing suit is dry? How come your hair isn‟t wet?”

“It‟s practical y ninety degrees out, Stacey. It doesn‟t take much for something to dry.”

I nod, trying to decide whether or not to believe him. “So?” he asks again.

“Where were you?”

“With Clara,” I say. “Talking to the police.”

“What happened?”

“Total bust.” I sigh, leaning back against the door.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine. Tired. Hungry.”

“Wil a bagel make it better?”

“Only if it has extra strawberry jam.”

Jacob gets up and pops a frozen one into the toaster oven for me. He pours me a glass of iced coffee, adds in a little cream—just the way I like it—and sets it on the kitchen table beside the jar of strawberry preserves.

“Perfect,” I say, already feeling a smidge better. “Thank you.”

“Sure,” he says, sitting back down at the table. “So?”

“What?”

“What happened? I heard about the graffiti on Clara‟s wal and how you went over there to show her.”

Plate in hand, I position myself beside the toaster oven, waiting for the ping.

“There were pictures, too,” I say. “Polaroids of Clara—a whole envelope of them.”

“Were you able to sense anything from them?”

I shrug. “Just more of the same—coldness, chills. But I was also able to sense
her;
it was like I could smel her, her butterscotch scent.”

“Wel , they
were
photos of her.”

“I know. It probably doesn‟t mean anything. The whole thing‟s a puzzle.” I take the bagel out and join him at the table for some muchneeded fueling.

“Maybe some ex of hers did this,” Jacob says. “Maybe someone she might have upset . . . someone who may have thought she was cheating? I mean, she does seem kind of—”

“Flirty?”

“Wel , now that you mention it.”

“You‟ve obviously been talking to Drea and Amber,” I say, spreading on a thick layer of jam.

“Actual y, I was talking to Chad. He said she real y came on to him last night.”

“And he was a helpless victim?” I take a bite of my bagel, noticing right away that the center is still cold from the freezer. But my stomach has been growling for at least the past hour, so with the sweetness of the jam, I don‟t even care.

“I‟m not saying he was a victim,” Jacob continues. “It‟s just that we
know
Chad.

We don‟t exactly know Clara.”

“And what does that mean? Just because I don‟t know Clara that wel , I‟m not going to help her?” I get up and grab a stream of paper towels from the rol and a red dry-erase marker from the board on the fridge. At the top of the paper towels, I write Clara‟s name. Then, below it, I write the words I‟LL MAKE YOU PAY, trying to make it look like it did on her wall—the pointed capital letters, the
K
and the two
Ys
the most pronounced. I concentrate a moment on the color, wondering why someone chose to use red paint, if it has any significance.

But I just don‟t know. I can‟t seem to think straight. I push the towels to the side and resume eating breakfast, hoping a little food energy will help do the trick.

“That‟s not what I‟m saying at al ,” Jacob continues. He eyes the paper towels, my attempt to make sense of the message. “I think you
should
help Clara.”

“Then what?”

“It‟s al about trust.”

“Wel , obviously Clara doesn‟t trust me enough to tell me everything. And why should she? It‟s not like I haven‟t broken into her house behind her back.” I take a sip of iced coffee, hoping to cool the agitation I feel boiling up inside me. I mean, why am I feeling al defensive? It‟s obvious that Clara
does
have a flirting fetish. I mean, between Casey, PJ, and Chad . . . and those are just the guys we know about. “I‟m sorry,” I say, final y. “I‟m just frazzled.”

“It‟s okay.” Jacob reaches across the table to take my hand, not even minding that my fingers are sticky from jam. “You‟re not alone on this, Stacey. I‟m wil ing to help you. I
want
to help you.”

“I know.”

“Then why don‟t we do a spel together? Something to help us focus on Clara, on the graffiti message, the photos, or the cold vibrations you‟ve been getting.” He squeezes my hand and concentrates on me hard, making my heart do that rattatap-tapping thing; I picture it like a cartoon, when the giant red animated heart starts pumping out of the character‟s chest.

“Maybe I just need a little break.”

“Anything particular in mind?”

“How does an overnight frat cruise sound?”

“Are you serious?” he asks, his eyebrows arched high for surprise.

“Chad told me you didn‟t want to go.”

“And you
do?”

“I just thought you might have asked me.”

“Sorry,” he says. “It just didn‟t sound like your type of thing.”

“It isn‟t, but I might have to go anyway.”

“Why?”

“Clara. I think she might be going and, if she is, I should probably plan on going as wel .”

Jacob looks away, completely avoiding the unspoken question.

“Wel ?” I ask.

“What?”

“Tel me you‟l go, too.”

“I don‟t know,” he sighs. “It sounds kind of lame.”