The Thread (13 page)

Neither Ricky nor his father have said anything for nearly a minute now, and beneath my fingers, even through his puffy jacket, I can feel the tendons in Kirin’s wrist getting tighter, like thick rubber bands pulled so taut they might snap.

“You want to know, Ricky?” his father says suddenly. “You really want to know? All right then. I’ll tell you. I buried the kid down by Newtown Creek. Behind the empty warehouse.”

“He’s—is he dead, Pop?”

The man gives a bark of laughter. “Of course the kid’s dead, Ricky. I wouldn’t bury a child alive, would I?”

Ricky makes a little noise, a noise that sounds like a sob mixed up with a gag, and his father laughs again. “So what are you going to do now, Ricky? Go put some flowers on the grave? Tell your ma? Or maybe . . . call the police? What do you say, Rick? You going to turn your old man over to the cops?”

Ricky doesn’t say anything, and then there’s that same thud again, the sound of a hand against a head, and then Ricky’s voice sounding shrill and scared: “No, Pop, no, Pop, no.”

There are more thuds, and I hear Ricky gasp with pain. And then his father says, “So come on then, son. You should be in bed.” He sounds patient and kind, like an ordinary father, not like a child murderer. “Your ma will have both our hides if she finds out we’re not where we’re supposed to be at this time of night.” He chuckles, and he sounds so much like a dad that something sour and nasty rises into my throat, and I have to gulp it back to keep from gagging. I should know by now that fathers can sound like ordinary dads one minute and be monsters the next. But this is different, this is even worse.

Their footsteps recede, and then we hear the thud of the door. Kirin inches up the lid over our heads.

“They’re gone.”

“Wait!” I whisper, and my fingers curl tight around his arm, holding him back.

“They’re gone,” he says again and shoves the lid all the way open. “Come on.” He climbs out, then pulls me up. My foot’s asleep, and I nearly fall as I try to step out of the box, but he catches me and holds me steady. Something about his automatic kindness to me, even when I know he’s desperate to be in motion, makes my eyes sting.

“Where, Kirin? Where are we going to go?”

“We have to call the police. We have to tell them where to find Amir.” Kirin yanks the door open onto the stairwell, and I hurry after him, stumbling down the steps behind him as he takes them three at a time.

I try to think, try to make sense of what he’s thinking, but I’m just so tired. I’m trying to keep up with him, but I keep stumbling on the dark stairs, and I feel like we’re falling down a hole. “Weren’t there lights here when we came up?” I ask, but Kirin’s not listening. He reaches back for my hand and pulls me behind him, and then we’re out in the street.

Kirin starts running—and then stops. He stares at the car that’s parked by the curb. “That’s a Prius.”

I’m so sleepy that I feel stupid, but I blink, blink again, and suck in a breath of cold air. The sleepiness starts to recede. “Oh.” Relief floods through me. “We’re back then.”

Kirin isn’t relieved, though. He’s kicking the tire of the modern car. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

I watch him for a moment, trying to understand his anger. “What good would it have done to call the police back then?” I ask. “Your brother was already dead. Ricky’s dad said he’d buried him.”

He stops kicking the tire and turns to me. “But don’t you see? We could have found the grave, at least. I could have done what Amir told me to do. I could have found his body.”

“Maybe we still can,” I say slowly. “We know where he buried him at least.”

Kirin shook his head. “After all this time? How are we going to find the grave? Newtown Creek runs for miles, with warehouses all along the length of it. But if we had gone to the police, back when the grave was . . . fresh, they would have been able to find it with dogs or something. They could have caught him and made him tell them.”

I shook my head. “Would they have believed us? How could we explain who we were?”

“We could have made an anonymous call. Told them enough to make them follow up, make them watch Ricky’s father. If they had, even if they couldn’t prove anything, maybe he would have stopped. Maybe he wouldn’t have taken any more kids. Maybe he would never have hurt Ayana.”

“Does it work like that?” I’ve never been able to understand time-travel movies. There are so many paradoxes, and in most of the movies, I don’t think the writers have figured it out either. There’s always stupid stuff where people start fading out of photographs because their parents aren’t getting together—but why would there have been a photograph at all, an empty square of nothing, if they had never existed?

Kirin stares at me for a moment, and I think he wants to say “shit” one more time, but instead, he sighs. “I don’t know, Callie. I don’t know how the hell it works. But there has to be a reason for what’s happening. Doesn’t there? What’s the point if we can’t change anything? If we can’t make
something
turn out right?”

“Maybe . . . maybe we can’t change the past. But maybe we can learn something from the past that will change the future. Our future. What happens next.”

We look at each other, and I know we’re both thinking, both trying to make sense out of what just happened.

“Can we go back?” Kirin asks. “Back in time again?”

I shrug. “I don’t know how we did it this time. How could we make it happen again when we don’t know why it happened in the first place? It’s not like there was some magic door or a time machine.” I shiver, suddenly aware of how cold I am. “Let’s go home.”

Kirin follows when I turn toward our building, but he lags behind me as I hurry down the familiar streets. Suddenly, he grabs my shoulder and pulls me to a stop. “It was the grandmother. She sent us back in time. It had to be her. So she can send us back again.”

I remember the dark little cave where she sent me on Christmas night, how real that felt, and yet it must have been some sort of vision. Maybe that’s what tonight was, not real, not
really
real. But I don’t know how to explain what I’m thinking to Kirin, and when I told him about my conversations with the old lady, I left out the part about the cave. I can’t tell him that part, because if I did, I’d have to tell him about Dad too. And I don’t want him to know about Dad. Not ever. If Kirin knew, he would never look at me as though he thinks I’m pretty, with that smile on his face, as though he thinks I’m something even better than pretty. I know I don’t deserve that look, but I love it. I can’t bear to wipe it off his face forever.

I’m thinking all this, all the while looking at the eagerness in Kirin’s face, and then finally, I realize I’m not following whatever it is that he’s trying to say. “And then what? If she sent us back again, what would we do? Call the police?”

He shakes his head, and he looks impatient, like I’m being stupid, but I’m cold, and I’m tired, and I want to go to sleep. Nothing makes any sense. I shiver, and Kirin’s face softens, as though he’s just noticed how miserable I am. “Don’t you see, Callie?” His voice is gentler now. “She could send us back
earlier
. Before he kills Amir. We could
stop
him! We could keep Amir from ever being killed.”

I shake my head. I still don’t think it can work that way. “I don’t know, Kirin.”

“You have to take me to her, Callie. You have to let me talk to her.”

“Okay.” I feel snowflakes on my face, their touch so soft that they make me think of the thread, and I know that whatever happens, it’s out of my control. “Let’s just get some sleep first,” I say. “Come on.”

We’ve reached our street now. All the streetlights are lit, just the way they’re supposed to be, and there’s Richard’s familiar dark shadow slumped on the grate beside our building. “Come on,” I say again, and then I stop, staring at Richard. This time, I’m the one who grabs Kirin’s shoulder and makes him stop. “Kirin?”

“What?”

“Richard.”

“What about him?”

I think about Richard’s bearded face and I try to imagine what he would have looked like when he was younger.

“Richard is Ricky,” I whisper. “He has to be.”

15

Kirin

“He can’t be,” Kirin said.

“Why not?”

Callie’s face was so pale, her voice so thin, that Kirin was suddenly scared. He put his hands around her shoulders, wanting to steady her, to give her some of his warmth.

“Why not?” she repeated. “Don’t you see, it makes sense? And that’s why we went back in time, so we could know the truth. So we could tell the police and stop him from doing it ever again.”

Kirin shook his head. “My mother said it wasn’t Richard. That the police cleared him.”

“But maybe they were wrong. And besides, maybe they cleared him of
killing
Amir—but he could still be the one who took your brother, who brought Amir to his father. And maybe he’s the one who’s doing it now. Who took Ayana.” Callie stared into space for a minute, like she was studying something Kirin couldn’t see.

He tried to think. “Maybe we could go back and stop it from happening. All of it.”

She shook her head. “Kirin, it’s
already
happened.”

Kirin looked down at her white face, and then he pulled her against him, just for a moment, just long enough that he could press his face against her hair. Then he let her go. “Come on. Let’s get some sleep. We’ll figure it out tomorrow.”

• • •

In the morning, Kirin forced himself out of bed at six o’clock, even though he felt as though he had barely closed his eyes. He wanted to catch Poppy alone, before he left for work.

He found his father in the kitchen, making his lunch, his hands quick and quiet as he moved between the counter and the refrigerator. He was humming softly under his breath, one of the old, nearly tuneless songs he’d brought with him from India. All alone like this, he looked different from his usual tense self. Kirin stared at him a moment, trying to identify what was different, and then he blurted, “Are you
happy
, Poppy?”

His father jumped and spun around, the knife he’d been using to slice a tomato held up as though he were about to stab Kirin. Then he gave his son a sheepish grin and lowered his hand. “Sorry, Kirin, I didn’t know you were there. What are you doing up so early?”

“I—I wanted to talk to you again. About Amir.”

His father let out a soft groan, and the relaxed look in his face faded. “Not you too, Kirin. Bad enough that it’s the only thing your mother can talk about. Now you’re going to join her?”

His father’s comment seemed unfair, since Kirin has spent his entire life listening to his parents talk about Amir. He felt a flicker of anger at his father, but he forced himself to give an apologetic shrug.
Well, folks, how do I play the amateur detective and get my father to reveal his secrets?
The audience was stubbornly silent, and the announcer in Kirin’s head had only questions, no answers.

Kirin stepped past his father and pulled the orange juice from the refrigerator. He decided to take a different approach. “So,” he said over his shoulder as he poured the juice into a glass, “why were you looking so happy just now?”

“Was I?” Poppy looked embarrassed, as though he’d been caught doing something inappropriate, like picking his nose or scratching his ass. “Oh. Well. I had a good dream, I guess. It lingered.”

“What kind of dream, Poppy?” As soon as he asked the question, he regretted it.
Please don’t tell me it was some hot sex scene.

His father poured himself a cup of coffee, then leaned back against the kitchen counter, looking down into his mug as he sipped the coffee. He was silent for so long that Kirin had decided he wasn’t going to answer.
Must be I’m back to being silent and invisible, folks.

Then Poppy looked up at him. “I dreamed about Amir, Kirin,” he said. “I’ve always dreamed about him. I wish your mother could.”

Kirin felt goose bumps prick across his arms. “What do you dream about him, Poppy?”

His father shrugged. “Nothing much really. He’s just alive. He’s a young man now. We talk.”

Poppy took another sip of his coffee, while Kirin gulped a swallow of orange juice. The silence between them now was somehow both awkward and companionable, all at the same time.

“Poppy?”

“Yes, Kirin?”

“I dream about Amir too.”

• • •

Later, Kirin waited for Callie in the lobby. They’d been meeting there a half hour before the bus came, but today she didn’t step out of the elevator until the bus had already pulled up at the stop. They had to run to catch it.

As the bus pulled away with them inside, Callie dropped into a seat, and Kirin clung to a pole next to her. She hadn’t said anything at all yet.

He nudged her shoulder. “You okay, Callie?”

She nodded, but she didn’t look up; her head didn’t even turn toward him.

As the bus lumbered from stop to stop, Kirin stood swaying in the aisle, looking down at Callie’s bright hair. The small warm glow left behind from his conversation with Poppy faded away. Something was wrong with Callie. Misery clung to her like a cloud, like a cloak, like something he could almost see, almost touch.
What’s wrong, Callie? What happened after we left each other last night?
He pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen; it was only a little more than five hours since he’d watched her go inside her apartment. What could have happened since then? Had her parents caught her coming in? Had they been angry?
Tell me. Trust me.

The bus stopped in front of the school, and Callie got to her feet. Kirin put out a hand and grabbed hers, made her face him. “What’s wrong, Callie?”

Her fingers didn’t curl around his; they just hung
limp inside his grasp, and she still didn’t turn her face toward him.

“Nothing,” she muttered. “I’m just tired.” She pulled her hand away and pushed past him.

Inside the school, the corridor was noisy with voices and banging lockers, but Kirin barely noticed. He navigated between the mass of bodies, thinking about the night before, about time travel, about Ricky and Amir. His thoughts always came back to Callie. He couldn’t think of any reason she might be mad at him. She had been scared last night, but she had been
with
him, the whole time. Now, when he passed her in the hallway, she wouldn’t even meet his eyes. Something must have happened once she got home, something with her parents. And whatever it was, it had hurt her. They must have yelled at her for sneaking out in the night, maybe for being with him.

At lunchtime, he found her sitting alone in the cafeteria, picking cheese off a slice of pizza. He knew Jordan and Anthony were watching him, that they’d pounce on him later with more questions about his “girlfriend.” Right now he didn’t care. He set his tray down on the table and slid into the seat next to hers.

“So did your parents catch you?”

“What?” She looked startled, as though he’d caught her sleeping, and her eyes flew to his face for just a second before her gaze dropped back to the pizza in front of her.

“Last night, when you got in. Did your parents hear you come in? Were they mad?”

She shook her head. “No, they didn’t hear me.” She pushed the slice of pizza away from her, as though she had suddenly realized how disgusting it was.

“So what’s wrong then, Callie?”

She looked up at him, then dropped her eyes again. He was pretty sure he saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes.

“Nothing’s wrong.” Her voice sounded dull, as though she were bored. “I told you. I’m just tired. I didn’t get much sleep.” She visibly swallowed, then lifted her face toward him and tried to smile. “I’m fine.”

He studied the circles under her eyes. They were the color of bruises. “You’re so pretty,” he heard himself saying, “even when you look like the poster girl for
Les Miserables
.”

He felt his face flush red, but she gave him a startled smile that was so genuine he was glad he’d said something silly. Her eyes were definitely full of tears now, swimming with them, in fact, but the look she gave him made him want to lean across the table and kiss her. He would have if he hadn’t known Jordan and Anthony were watching.

• • •

After school, when they got off the bus at their stop, she seemed better, though still subdued.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “About Richard. If he’s Ricky, then it
must
have been him who took Ayana. He must have started doing the same things his father did.”

“Couldn’t his father be the one? Still?”

“He’d be old . . .” Callie squinted, as though she were trying to solve a math problem. “Maybe we could trace him on the Internet. But we need to know Richard’s last name.”

The other kids who got off at their bus stop had flowed around them, and now they were alone on the sidewalk. Kirin looked down the street toward the umbrella that was tipped on the sidewalk. Long legs emerged from under the black satin, stretched straight out across the sidewalk so that passersby had to step over them, and snowflakes had accumulated in the folds of the ragged blue jeans. Richard’s body was so still that Kirin was suddenly frightened. He imagined himself putting his hand on the body, discovering it was cold and stiff, and then going inside to call the police . . .

He reached out and took Callie’s hand, steeling himself to take a step forward, close enough that he could lean down and touch Richard.

The umbrella shifted. Richard stared out from under it, his eyes gleaming in the shadows. “What’s up, kids?” He grinned. “Huh? Huh?” And then he pointed at Kirin. “If I were you, I’d start listening to my brother.”