Vicarious (11 page)

“Winter. Let's go.” Jesse rests a hand on my lower back and I turn away. A smooth concrete path littered with dead leaves and patches of ice leads toward the river. It's just over the hill. What if the whole area is cordoned off with yellow police tape? What if I see Rose there, bobbing in the black water?

“Are you going to be okay?” Jesse's voice is full of concern.

Are you going to be okay if we find her body?
That's what he means. I don't answer.

Jesse slips his hand in mine as we traverse the path, guiding me around the slick spots.
I have to know.
I repeat those four words over and over in my head like a mantra. We turn onto the street that runs along the riverbank. The frozen cobblestones glint like jewels in the sun. I don't see any police tape or dead bodies. So far, so good.

It's not until we make our way down to the shoreline that I recognize the futility of our task. The river is wide, the current strong. The water is full of mud, driftwood, and litter. We're going to be searching for Rose in a giant churning garbage dump. Even if she's right in front of us, we might not find her.

Jesse senses my hopelessness. “Come on,” he says. “I know where we can get a boat. Maybe things will look different on the river.”

*   *   *

On
the river, things look even worse.

Starting just north of the Riverlights Hotel and Casino, we cruise along the western bank in a motorboat Jesse borrowed from a guy who owns one of the riverfront restaurants.

“It's too big to search everywhere,” Jesse says. “I'm going to stay near the shorelines.”

“Good idea,” I say. “She could have crawled up onto the bank somewhere.”

He licks his lips like he wants to say something, but finally he just nods.

“Do you see anything?” I ask. The riverbanks are a rainbow of grays and tans, the water greens and blacks. Complete contrast to Rose and her red dress.

“Nothing,” Jesse says grimly. We hug the bank until we're about a mile south of Riverlights, our eyes skimming the vegetation. The high grass is full of debris—beer bottles, dirty diapers, old truck tires—but there's nothing that could be Rose. Jesse pilots the boat across the river. Water slams into clusters of rocks and driftwood in the middle, its fierce current occasionally sending a shard of broken wood tumbling downstream.

The icy wind burns my skin and thrashes my hair against my face. I pull my hat down low over my ears. Jesse turns north and steers along the opposite bank. We're fighting the current now, so it's slow going. My eyes begin to water from the cold. Suddenly he yanks the wheel hard to the right so the hull is pressed up against the reeds and stops the motor.

“What is it?” I ask. “What do you see?” I peer into the high grass but see nothing except clods of mud and a half-buried rubber tire. Wait, no. As the wind folds the vegetation away from me, I see a flash of red.

 

CHAPTER 11

“Eonni!”
I am over the side of the boat before Jesse even brings it to a complete stop, sloshing through the knee-deep water.

“Winter, wait.” Behind me, Jesse swears loudly.

I ignore him. I ignore the wind biting at my exposed skin and the soft mud squeezing at my ankles. Pushing my way through the high grass, I make my way toward the red.

Desperate.

Hopeful.

She could be alive.

There has to be a chance.

But as I draw close, I see it's not my sister.

It's just a scrap of cloth tangled in the reeds.

Jesse comes up behind me. He's wearing gray hip waders that keep him dry. “Jesus Christ. You could've at least waited for me to anchor the boat.” He makes his way through the high grass and reaches out with one gloved hand to grab the scarlet fabric.

“Let me see.”

He tucks the red cloth into his pocket. “Once we're out of the water.”

I try to protest, but my teeth start chattering and I can't get the words out. I turn and retrace my steps through the mud. Jesse helps me over the side of the boat. My whole body is shivering now, my pants soaked almost up to my knees.

“Now let me see,” I demand.

He pulls the ball of crumpled fabric from his pocket. He holds it up and a couple of sequins flutter to the floor of the boat like glittering drops of blood. Both of us stare at the red cloth without speaking. Then finally Jesse says, “It looks like part of her dress, right?”

“That could be from anyone,” I say. “It could have been there for weeks.”

“Fabric left in water would break down quickly. This can't have been in the river for more than a few days.” Jesse's voice is deadly serious.

I hug my arms around myself for warmth. Inside of me, something snaps, subtle, pinching, like a guitar string. The scrap of red
does
look like a piece of her dress.

*   *   *

Jesse
takes me home and follows me up the stairs to the penthouse. When I open the door and slide out of my shoes, he starts to do the same.

“You don't have to babysit me,” I say. “I'll be fine.”

“Nice try, but I promised Gideon I'd stay with you,” he says. “You need to get out of those wet clothes before hypothermia sets in. I could try my hand at making some tea if you want to take a bath or something.”

“All right.” I am too hollowed out to argue.

I show Jesse where I keep the loose tea and fresh herbs. Then I head for the bathroom. My knees buckle when I see all of Rose's beauty products scattered across the vanity. Slumping to the tile floor, I pull my thighs up against my ribs, but tears elude me. When I played the ViSE, I felt like she was gone. Then, afterward, I let hope creep into my heart. But finding the fabric from her dress makes me realize I'm being stupid. Not stupid, crazy. I don't want to let her go. It makes me think of something Dr. Abrams said once, about how the mind creates delusions because people simply cannot live with reality. And so we block out what we don't want to remember and we change what we refuse to accept. That's what I'm doing—making loopholes, finding irrational reasons to believe Rose is still alive.
I've studied the neural sequences for death.… The science is definitive.
I'm rejecting reality for my own version of events.

Delusional.
The word stings, even inside my own head.

My wet jeans are sticking to my legs. I should be freezing, but I just feel numb. I curl my arms around my knees and dig my nails into my palms, embracing the pain. Jesse knocks on the door a few minutes later, probably wondering why there's no water running. I don't answer. He knocks again and then opens the door a tiny crack.

I am coiled into a ball. Lifting my head, I see him looking in at me. I drop my face back to my knees.

He slips inside the little room and sits down next to me. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I shake my head violently.

We sit side by side for a few minutes, listening to each other breathe. Then Jesse says, “I've lost people close to me. I saw their bodies.” He looks over at me. “It doesn't help. I don't want you to have to go through that.”

I blink rapidly. “I just can't believe she's gone.”

“I know. It feels the same way even if you're there. Even if you watch them die.” He leans back against the wall. “Everything sort of speeds up and slows down simultaneously. It's like people are dying, but the pain, the blood—it doesn't feel real.”

“Jesse,” I whisper. I never thought about who else might have been injured alongside him in the army. I never thought about the people he might have lost.

“Sorry,” he says. “I shouldn't make today about me.”

“I don't mind.” I reach up and run my fingertips along his scar. “Tell me. It might help.”

Except for his accident, Jesse's history is a blank to me. You can't grill someone about his past without offering up some information about your own. I've never wanted him to know I used to be a sex worker, at first because I was embarrassed, and then later because I didn't want it to wreck the apparent crush he has on me. As much as I try to deny his feelings, part of me thrives on them. I'm broken and he still likes me. I don't want to give that up.

He leans back against the bathroom wall and looks up at the ceiling. “I went into the army as soon as I turned eighteen. There was a critical need for MPs—military police—so they offered me a signing bonus. My parents told me not to go. My mom worried I'd get hurt. My dad is just not a huge fan of the American government.”

I have never heard Jesse talk about his parents before. For some reason I imagined he was an orphan like me. “Where are your parents?”

“They're in Albuquerque,” he says. “Anyway, I was nineteen by the time I deployed. My job was basic—be part of a routine checkpoint on a road that led to a makeshift US camp in Afghanistan. Easy breezy,” he continues bitterly. “Locals come. We stop them. We check their cars for weapons or explosives. We let them go.” He rubs at his disfigured ear. “There were five of us working that day. We had just finished our shift and were heading back to camp. I was driving. It was dark. We were all tired. I remember my staff sergeant was telling a joke, something about a one-legged man in a bar. I should have been paying better attention. Maybe then I would've seen something.” He says all of this in an emotionless, clinical manner, like he's practiced it before. I can almost see him sitting at a table with a couple of superior officers, going through the story one piece at a time while someone takes notes and fills out paperwork.

“Jesse,” I say again.

“They told me later it was the back passenger-side tire that triggered the IED. That's probably why I lived. I just remember all this heat, my body flying through the air. All I could smell was smoke and blood, burning flesh. I saw my friends, some dead, some screaming. Then I passed out. I woke up in the hospital.” He stares straight ahead at the cabinet underneath the sink. “Everyone else died, Winter, even though it was my fault. And to this day, I still sometimes have to remind myself they're gone. Sometimes I feel more dead than they do.”

I turn and brush my mouth against his jawbone. The gesture surprises both of us. He stiffens a little; then he reaches out and pats my hand. I want to tell him what happened wasn't his fault, but I know those words won't help. It's the same way he doesn't tell me everything is going to be all right. We didn't grow up in that world, the world where reassurances change things.

“I'm sorry,” I say finally.

“Yeah,” he says. “Me too. But enough about me. You need to get out of those wet clothes before you get sick.” He rises to his feet, starts the tap, and tests the water against the back of his hand. He turns back to face me. “Do you need help with … anything else?” It's an innocent question, but I am embarrassed at the thought of him undressing me like a child.

“I'll manage,” I say. “But could you get rid of that stuff?” I point at the counter, at Rose's collection of powders and potions.

“Sure.” Scooping the bottles, compacts, and tiny vials into his arms, he unceremoniously dumps them into the cabinet under the sink where they're at least out of sight if not out of mind. “I'll be right outside.”

I shuck off my zip-up hoodie and still-damp jeans and then sink into the hot water, embracing the heat as it wraps around me. Jesse has managed to get the temperature just right, almost hot enough to scald my skin, but not quite. I slouch down so only my face is above the surface.

My sister is dead. I shouldn't think about it, but even without her beauty products hoarding the counter, this room is full of Rose: the smudge of her trademark crimson lipstick where she blotted her mouth on our hand towel, the lingering hint of her jasmine perfume, her fingerprints on the mirror above the sink. It's just like Jesse said. She is the one who lives here. I am the ghost.

I close my eyes and try to concentrate on the way the warm water unlocks the knots in my muscles, but all I can think of is how Rose used to run herself a bath when I was blow drying my hair or brushing my teeth. She would toss dried lavender under the spigot and it would perfume the whole room.

A random memory flits in and settles in my mind. I was maybe seven or eight. It was Christmas at the orphanage in Seoul and one of the staff members had bought little gifts for each of us. I received my very first snow globe. It was made of cheap plastic, with a cluster of pine trees and a deer inside of it. I had never seen a real deer before and it felt like the most magical thing ever, like a unicorn. Rose told me that one day we would find the place where snow fell on deer. We could live there if we wanted, like queens of the forest.

That night, one of the older girls tried to steal the globe from next to my cot. Rose caught her and made her give it back. The next day, that girl fell down the stairs and broke her arm. She came back from the hospital a couple of days later and never bothered me again. I always wondered if Rose had pushed her.

I don't know what happened to that snow globe. It's just one more thing that was lost or stolen from me in Los Angeles.

The water begins to cool and I know I'll have to get out soon, but I don't want to. I want to stay here, submerged. Am I really supposed to keep on living like nothing has changed?

Everything has changed.

“You need anything?” Jesse calls through the closed bathroom door.

“I'm fine. I'm getting out now.” I pull the bathtub stopper out of the drain with my toes. The water makes a long slurping sound as it starts to disappear. I step carefully out onto the bare tile, wrapping a thick, fluffy towel around my entire body.

Of course I didn't remember to bring dry clothes in with me. I peek out of the bathroom door and don't see Jesse. I can hear the television in the living room. Quickly I scoot from the bathroom into my room and shut the door. I pull a pair of dark jeans and a gray long-sleeved T-shirt from my closet and dress quickly. The warm fabric feels comforting against my skin.