When They Fade (6 page)

The music couldn't get loud enough.

Music was life. The way I felt when the sounds surrounded me, carrying me away to far-off places that didn't exist. The way it made me forget all my problems, not that they were really worth complaining about. It was as if something had been lying dormant inside of me my entire childhood. Once it awakened, it was the only thing that mattered.

I never told my dad I was going. I knew he wouldn't approve, even though Andrea had her beat-up Ford car that burned blue smoke but still managed to be reliable. We scraped together enough gas money to get us there and back. I borrowed a tent from one of the families I babysat for.

We did all this under complete secrecy. Andrea's parents were relaxed and fine with her attending the concert. They'd even expressed interest in going themselves for a bit. They gave her the lecture about not doing drugs or drinking with strange men and then gave her twenty bucks for gas. But I knew Dad would be furious if he knew my upcoming secret. I was only fifteen, and he wouldn't want me crossing state lines. That's why I never asked him. I figured I could deal with the consequences when I got back. Even if he grounded me for the rest of the year, it would be worth it.

Lucky for me, Dad was on the road, spending long hours driving from one end of the country to the other. I was the good kid, never doing anything that got me seriously into trouble. My brother, Marcus, was two years older and had a job at the auto shop that kept him busy. Dad didn't think twice about leaving us alone for weeks on end while he worked. He knew he'd come home after each shift and find the house still standing. Besides, he didn't really have a choice. Mom had run away when Marcus and I were both still little. They'd gotten married far too young, and I guess she never could accept the idea of staying in one place for the rest of her life. One evening she packed her bags, called a babysitter, and snuck out in the middle of the night while Dad worked a double shift. No goodbye kiss. No letter. Just the babysitter, angry and annoyed the next morning when Marcus and I awoke.

Dad did whatever he could to try and raise us kids. Trucking brought in good money. We needed the income. From the time Marcus was twelve and I was ten, we'd pretty much been keeping the house clean and doing our homework by ourselves. Our neighbor would keep an eye on us to make sure nothing bad happened, and Dad often made it home on weekends to check that we'd behaved while he was away.

Marcus and I were both self-sufficient and there were no pets to take care of. Dad was allergic to dogs. The town we lived in was amazingly boring and predictable. Nothing exciting ever happened. The “bad” families were just poor; there hadn't been a murder in twenty years, not since two brothers got into a fight over who got to keep a prized horse.

Dad was delivering a load of foodstuff out to the West Coast and wasn't due back until three days after Woodstock ended. I planned on going there and coming back before he even noticed I was gone.

“Where are you going?” Marcus asked when Andrea and I came into the kitchen. I had the suitcase under my arm, and Andrea was carrying the tent. So much for hoping he'd still be at work and I wouldn't have to say anything.

“We're going camping at the lake,” I said. I handed Andrea my suitcase, and she headed out the door, letting the screen slam behind her. I went over to the kitchen and grabbed a few items. “Where's the kettle? Do you mind if I take it? We might want to make coffee in the morning.”

Marcus opened the old Frigidaire and yanked one of Dad's beers from the back. “Yeah, sure. I didn't hear anything 'bout camping. Who's all going to be there?”

“It's just us girls, so keep it quiet,” I said. “No boys allowed.” I grabbed the kettle off the counter and packed it, along with a few other things I thought would come in handy.

My brother put his beer against the counter and used the corner to catch the edge of the bottle cap. Beer foamed from the top, soaking his fingers. The cap rolled along the floor and went straight under the fridge.

“You better replace that before Dad gets home,” I said.

“I will,” Marcus said. He turned and headed off into the living room, where he'd probably sit in front of the black-and-white television until he fell asleep. At seventeen, my brother was already getting old. Sure, he still liked to party and listen to music, but most nights he just wanted to relax.

When I look back on it now, I can see how easy it was to leave. I wanted adventure. I dreamed about it. Funny, when some of the ghosts around here talk about the choices that led them down their fateful roads, they often express regret, wishing they'd made different decisions. They wish they'd never left home and gone out on their own. They wish their spouses had been more attentive so they wouldn't have had to stray. If only they'd stopped drinking. Or not gone down that dark alley at night. Or never talked to strangers.

I never regretted leaving my house that night. No matter how short my life turned out, that time between the moment I left for Woodstock and the moment before I got into the van with Walter was the happiest in my life.

“Come on,” Andrea said, sticking her head inside the door. “Let's get going.”

I didn't stop to take one last glance at the worn-down kitchen before leaving. I was still under the impression that I'd be back in a week. And technically, I was. Julian drove me back so I could pick up more clothing and other personal items. But by then the place no longer felt like home. I'd already moved on.

I never intended to fall in love. But love is like that. It can easily slap you on the head from behind and you don't care.

We sit, our backs to the trees. Our faces stare dispassionately at the blue water.

“It hasn't happened yet,” I say. I'm leaning against the log beside Mary, waiting for Parker to return. “I'm sure of it. This thing I saw. I'm sure I'm being given enough time to make a difference. Do you think we can change fate?”

“I don't know,” Mary says. “We're puppets right now, ain't we? Being played on an imaginary string. Can't stop Fading.”

“But what if we can do something?”

“Like what?” Mary arranges her dress and yanks at her petticoats. I catch a glimpse of slender leg before it disappears under all that ruffle. “If I could change anything, I'd like me a new outfit. It gets boring wearing the same dull thing all the bloody time. Christ almighty, I just want to breathe.” She yanks at the strings on her corset.

“You don't breathe,” I remind her.

“Well, it feels like I do.” Mary finally lets the outfit settle against her chest. The way her breasts push up toward her chin, I can imagine that many a man found them attractive in her living days. Her brown hair falls gently against her chest, and she pushes it back aggressively. “What I'd like are some of those modern clothes they wear today. A pair of trousers! I'd kill to have that. Always thought dresses were too prissy anyway. When I was a wee girl, I used to run around naked. Always hid me dresses, I did. Ma was forever scolding me. She was constantly bending me over her knee. No wonder I turned out the way I did. If ever there was someone born to be a dance-hall girl, it was me.”

I think of Tatum and her warm winter clothes. They are so different from the styles I used to wear. Of course, I wore pants too: bell-bottom jeans with painted flowers across the denim. I also wore skirts, soft cotton that slid against my legs and spun outward when I twirled. As much as I'd like to see the way my breasts might rise up in a corset like Mary's, I'm thankful I'm stuck in my simple yellow blouse. But right now isn't the time to be discussing wardrobes, not when I have too many other thoughts on my mind.

“It hasn't happened yet,” I say again.

“What?” Already Mary's lost the plot.

“The girl is still alive. Maybe I saw it wrong.” I turn on my seat, my thoughts hopeful. “I warned her. She knows. She'll be able to protect herself. Stay away from wherever she's supposed to go.”

“It'll happen,” Mary says. “It always does. The living are too stupid to listen to warnings. Especially from a bloody ghost. I mean, come on, would you have believed it if some pale creature appeared to you and gave you a warning? No. You would have sauntered along, oblivious, like the rest of us.”

“I don't know,” I say, but I know she's right.

“It'll happen. And I wish I could be there, in all my finest ghostly getup, all cut and torn the way the bastard left me. No offense, chicky, you're too pretty a lass to scare anyone. But me? I'm the queen of gore. At least my killer had the decency to go after me alone. Of course, he was still mental. God-fearing bunch? I'll give them something to fear.”

I don't say anything. I don't see the point. Instead I glance out at the water and wait for Parker to return.

“I'm going to be late coming home.”

Tatum sits at the table while Mom spoons scrambled eggs onto a plate. That's the number one rule of the household: everyone has breakfast. No exceptions. Mom's a dietitian. She spends her days at the hospital, teaching people the benefits of following healthy guidelines and making sure everyone eats the right amount of each food group. Because of this, the kitchen cupboards are filled with all sorts of crap. There's not a potato chip or piece of bacon to be found. And Mom is constantly going off on rants about the proper way to eat. Tatum has officially heard “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day” more than any other teenager in the world.

“Why's that?” The toaster pops up, and Mom grabs the slices of sunflower bread, shoving them onto the plate before passing it over.

Tatum takes the salt, ignoring Mom's frown, and heavily flavors the eggs. Her mother might be good at making everyone eat, but she's never been the best at cooking. “I've got a paper due. Thought I'd get some work done on it today. Going to head into Seattle and hit the library.”

“Into the city? Tonight? Why don't you go to the library here…” The words get stuck in her throat.

Mrs. Paracini's sister runs the local library. The last time Tatum tried going there, the afternoon Tuesday book club, a group of middle-aged women, spent the entire time glaring at Tatum and talking loudly among themselves. And if someone tries to convince you that small-town people are always polite and friendly, they should spend a few days in Hannah. It ended with Tatum going home in tears, and the next day Mom got into a fight with a gossipy nurse while getting gas at the Shell.

Hannah is a town that Tatum no longer has any privileges in. No matter where she goes, people stop and stare. Then they talk.
Discreet
isn't a word in their dictionaries. Even Mom, with her “Ignore it and it'll all go away attitude,” has grown weary of hang-up calls in the dead of night. What's worse are the emails suggesting Tatum be “hospitalized.” She's become the town Lolita, the harlot, the girl everyone wants to see fail.

“Okay,” Mom says. “But be home by seven. And keep your phone on.”

“In the library?”

“There's no law against silent mode.”

Tatum's day is blissfully uneventful. Sure, there are the whispers, the laughter, more red lipstick on her locker—but that's nothing she can't handle. She's learned to deal with all of that stuff like a pro.

Lunch is spent in an empty classroom, once everyone has already headed to the cafeteria. Experience has taught her that unless she eats with her back to the wall, she's an open target for all sorts of food-related attacks. These days she's better off finding a quiet corner somewhere and eating alone with a book.

Hiding isn't what Tatum does best. She's always enjoyed being surrounded by groups of friends. She'd much rather spend her weekends at parties and socializing than sitting at home pretending to study. In the past few months, she's read more than she did in her entire previous high school life. Books may help her escape, but they're not the reality she wants. She misses sitting in the lunchroom with Claudette, Juniper, and the others, gossiping about the boys, comparing teachers, complaining about assignments, and all those other important things that make high school so much fun.

Now, when the bell rings for her last class, she makes haste. She heads for her locker, uses some tissue to remove the lipstick drawing of her weighing roughly six hundred pounds, grabs her books, and practically walks right into Graham and Levi, who have decided to corner her for a laugh.

“Looked just like you.” Graham tries to reach out and stroke her face, but she pulls back at the last second, nearly smacking her head into the locker.

Levi leers at her next. “I heard you go to Taco Bell every day and order twenty bucks' worth of food. No wonder the bio room smells so bad.”

Pushing past the guys, she ignores their taunts. It's not like she hasn't heard it all before. They're not exactly the most original when it comes to insults. Part of her always wants to respond—she's got some great comebacks for the never-ending fat jokes—but experience has taught her to stay silent. If she answers, they'll just follow her around. They're dogs that can't ignore the cat.

Outside, she makes it to her car without running into Claudette. All four tires are still full of air, and a quick walk around reveals no suspicious wet marks. Tatum jumps in and peels out of the parking lot. She drives carefully for the first few miles to make sure no one's tailing her.

All in all, it's been a good day.

At the Bellevue exit, she heads to the closest Seattle's Best Coffee and snags a good seat in the corner. She plugs her laptop into the wall and brings up Google. In another tab she loads the library website and puts in her PIN information. Accessing the newspaper catalog, she pauses.

There are so many. Hundreds of different papers in Washington State alone. Thousands throughout America. Quite possibly millions of articles to go through.

And all she has is a first name.

Suddenly Tatum feels foolish. What was she thinking? That she'd punch in a few letters and magically pull up all the information she needed to solve a murder? She doesn't even have a date. Sure, Molly did look like she was out of the sixties, with her long flowing skirt and love beads. But there are lots of girls who dress that way even now. The hippie style is always in. Even Tatum has a peasant blouse hidden away in her closet.

The odds of finding this girl are about as good as Tatum waking up tomorrow morning and discovering that the past few months have been nothing but a bad dream.

A needle in a haystack.

Sigh.

But she has to try. It's not as if she's got a million other things to do. Taking a sip of her mocha, Tatum stares at the computer screen. She goes back to Google and begins to type.

Molly. Murder. Hannah, Washington.

Millions of hits.

Refusing to be dejected, she reads through the first few pages. There's nothing useful, mostly information about the ecstasy drug with the same name, the occasional person named Molly involved in an obscure murder trial, movie reviews, and a bunch of inconsequential stories, mostly involving people named Hannah. Why couldn't she come from a town that didn't have a female name? Towns like Bellingham or Everett would be a lot easier to Google.

Tatum spends the next half hour going through different words, trying to come up with something. Anything. The front door to the coffee shop has an annoying bell that sounds every time it's opened. Each time it rings and dings, she looks up just in case. After the twentieth or so time, she sees a familiar face. She almost spills her drink all over the laptop in surprise.

Scott Bremer.

Okay, not worth getting upset over. At least she doesn't think so. Scott isn't part of Claudette's crowd. He moved to Hannah a year ago from the East Coast, and he's a bit of a loner. He sits in the back row and never speaks up in class unless asked a direct question from a teacher. She's never actually seen him hang out with anyone. Sure, he talks to a few of the guys, but not in a chummy sort of way. At lunchtime, he's usually in the cafeteria, surfing the Internet on his phone with his headphones on. Scott lives two blocks away from Tatum. She remembers how the girls thoroughly checked him out the first month. He was new meat and not bad-looking, either. He's got this amazing spiky brown hair and piercing dark eyes. But if Scott wanted a girlfriend, he didn't show interest. He even blew off Claudette's flirts as if they were nothing more than polite conversation from his grandmother. It ended with Claudette declaring him probably gay or a eunuch, and he was pretty much ignored from then on.

Tatum has talked to him an entire two times. Once because he sat behind her in chemistry class and asked to borrow her notes after being out sick for a few days. The second time was a polite hello when they came across each other on the street. He was walking their family dog, a big, hyper chocolate-brown Lab. The animal jumped on Tatum, and Scott seemed really embarrassed about it. He couldn't get away fast enough.

Actually, she's talked to him three times. He was the one to give her the napkins yesterday when she was trying to deal with the urine on the tires.

Is it possible that Claudette has recruited him in her games?

No, it doesn't seem that way. In fact, it looks like Scott actually has a job at the coffee shop. He goes behind the counter and starts chatting to the girl at the cash register. Running his hand through his hair, he briefly catches Tatum watching him. A look of surprise crosses his face before he nods in her direction. Then he disappears into a room in the back.

Tatum finds herself exhaling in relief. Nothing but a coincidence. She goes back to her work.

Molly. Disappearance. Washington State. 1960–1969.

Six hundred fifty thousand hits.

Maybe she should try looking at the missing-children website. How many Mollys can there be?

Nope, that turns out to be useless. A quick search tells her she's not going to gain any ground that way. Unless she finds a last name, she's going nowhere fast. Besides, the records don't go that far back. They focus more on people who wouldn't now be in their sixties.

“Hey.”

She looks up to see Scott Bremer standing over her with a broom in his hands. He's looking at her computer screen. His voice is soft and he doesn't sound sarcastic, unlike everyone else who talks to Tatum these days.

“Um…hi.”

“Lost someone?”

“No.” She closes the website instantly, feeling stupid. “Just doing some research for a project.”

“Really? What one?”

Of course he'd have to ask. She pauses too long, trying to come up with a reasonable answer. “Just my own thing. I'm writing a story.”

Scott leans on the broom. “Cool. Like a creative writing thing?”

“Yeah, something like that,” she says. A part of her wants him to go away. Another part wants him to stay. It's been too long since someone her age has actually talked to her. “A ghost story,” she adds.

“Very cool. What kind?”

“What do you mean?”

Scott looks back at the register to make sure it's still empty. “There's all sorts of ghosts. Poltergeists. Evil spirits. That paranormal-activity crap. Then there's the kind that are searching for something or can't cross over until their secrets are uncovered. True stories. Made-up stuff. All kinds.”

Tatum grins. “True story,” she says. “About a ghost named Molly. One I heard about recently. A girl who was murdered in Hannah.”

“I didn't realize Hannah had its own ghost story.”

“Neither did I,” she says. “But like I said, I just heard it.”

Scott tilts his head to the side and puts more weight on his broom. “So what does she do?”

“Do?”

Scott gives her a look as if to suggest that Tatum is way out of her league. “What's her ghostly shtick? Does she hang by the river and lure men to their deaths? Haunt castles while wearing a bloody gown? Freak out cats? All ghosts do something.”

“Oh,” Tatum says. “I think she's a hitchhiker.”

Now it's Scott's turn to smile. “Ahh, the old standby. Hitchhiking. Gets into a poor unsuspecting stranger's car, rides along for a while before disappearing from the passenger seat.”

Tatum's hopes soar. “You've heard about her?”

“Nah. But the hitchhiking ghost story is famous. An urban legend. She's always a local girl who gets killed by some crazy nutjob. There are different variations. My mom always uses hitchhiker stories to freak out my little sister and make sure she never accepts rides from strangers, that sort of crap. And my granny loves all that supernatural stuff. She's got tons of books.”

“Is your grandmother from here? Do you think she'd know any of the local stories?” Tatum can't help but think this could be a lead. “Molly haunts Frog—I mean, the road that goes past Evander, and it stuck with me. I found a forum with people who claim to have seen her. I thought it would make a good story. I do a lot of writing. Just me and my laptop.” She swallows hard, trying to make her mouth stop moving. She's overdoing it. Scott is going to call her bluff. The last time she wrote something for fun was years ago. She's no writer. Tatum can barely keep up with a diary. What if Scott asks her more questions? Oh God, what if he wants to read her nonexistent story?

Thankfully, Scott is cool. “Not sure. What do you need to know?”

“A last name,” Tatum says. “And some more information. I think it happened in the sixties. If your grandmother lived here then, she might have heard something.”

“Yeah, she's been here forever. My mom grew up here too.” Scott scratches his arm. “I'll ask for you. Like I said, Granny's really into all that spirit stuff. She's even gone to a séance before. She'll bore you to death if you ask about it. A ghost named Molly. Haunts the road by Evander. I can remember that.”

“That would be great, thanks.”

There's a bit of an awkward pause while they try not to stare at each other. The barista behind the counter starts up the espresso machine. The sound of milk steaming only intensifies the silence.

“Um…I didn't know you worked here.”

“I started a few months ago. Saving for college. But I'm surprised. You're the first person from school I've seen in here.” He absently kicks at the broom bristles with his foot. “It's a long ways to come for coffee.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes I need to find a quiet place where I can actually get work done.” She practically cringes at the lame excuse. And by the look on Scott's face, she knows he's thinking about Mr. Paracini. Of all the stupid things to say, she had to say the one thing that would bring attention to those horrible lies.