Текст книги "The Lost"

Автор книги: Sarah Beth Durst

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Seeing the dress, Claire claps her hands. “Ooh, can I try it on?”

Tiffany tosses it to her.

Squealing in delight, Claire squirms out of her princess dress and pulls on the 1980s prom dress. It hangs loose around her. She twirls, and the satin flaps. “Can I have it?”

Tiffany looks at me. “She hasn’t said yes yet.”

Claire turns her puppy eyes toward me.

“Fine. Yes.” For Claire. For her to find her parents. For her to have what she lost. And for me, to know if the star sapphire ring was a fluke or if I really am, as Peter would say, “interesting.”

“Yay!” Claire throws her arms around my neck.

I hope I don’t regret this. “If I’m not back in a few hours, tell Peter to save me. Maybe without the train wreck this time.”

Chapter Sixteen

I walk into the ocean.

I could walk east or west and enter the dust on foot, but I can’t resist the pull of the water. Tiffany has brought me a bathing suit. Even though the motel’s pool is cracked concrete coated in algae and filled with scummy water, she says she still finds new swimsuits, tossed into the bushes, draped on the diving board, bunched on the rusty deck chairs. She thinks they’re drawn there, and she isn’t interested in any theories why. She presented me with several sizes and styles, and Claire insisted that I try them on and fashion-model them for her. She selected a hot pink bikini, but I vetoed it in favor of an athletic-looking blue one-piece with a green racing stripe on the side.

I’d had a swimsuit like this once. Mom had bought it for me in high school when I’d decided to join the swim team. I’d quit after three weeks. I liked the swimming; I hated the accessories. I loved to swim as fast as I could, but I hated the pools and the stench of chlorine and the slimy feel of the showers and the odor in the locker room and the feel of the swim cap and the nose plugs and the goggles. So I took my racing swimsuit and lazed in the ocean with my waves and blue sky instead. I’m sure that this swimsuit isn’t that same one. Fairly sure. My high school swimsuit wouldn’t still fit. But this one reminds me enough of it that I can’t help feeling as if I am stepping into my old skin as well as my old suit.

Up to my hips in the ocean, I scan the waves, searching for my dolphin, but he doesn’t appear. I dive under the water, feeling it flow around me, and then I swim. I haven’t used my arms like this in years. It comes back fast, the stretch of my arms, the power of my legs kicking through the water, the feel of sucking in air in between the splashes. I don’t have the strength or stamina that I used to have, but my muscles remember that they are supposed to. My side cramps, but I keep swimming. The water is so very cool and sweet on my skin. I lose track of time and distance.

After a while, the water is replaced by dust, and I am swimming through it. Oddly, I don’t fall to the ground. It’s as if I’m still in water, but I know I’m not. I am swimming through the air. I keep going, not sure what will happen if I stop, not sure if there is a ground to stand on.

Eventually, though, my arms shake and my legs feel like rubber. I slow and feel my body drift down. My feet touch ground that I can’t see. Water drips off of me. I look in every direction. Like before, it all looks the same.

I don’t know what I was thinking coming back here.

It will swallow me.

Absorb me.

Destroy me.

Stop it, I tell myself. Stay focused. Help Tiffany. I picture Tiffany, her prom dress, her Goth outfit, her pile of suitcases. I think of her prom night. It sounded like it began like any other. I don’t know what could have changed to cause her to end up here. But something must have happened that night. Maybe someone was cruel, and she left the prom upset and wandered here. Maybe someone hurt her. I don’t know why she can’t remember, though. I can remember every instant of my drive here from the moment I chose to go straight through that light to the moment I ran out of gas inside the dust storm. Maybe Tiffany fell and hit her head. Maybe she was drunk and passed out.

I pivot slowly in a circle, looking in all directions. I don’t think it matters which way I go. Or if I go at all. Choosing a direction, I walk.

I had fun at my prom. Close friends. Bright future. All that. I’d worn a hideous yellow dress that was supposed to be a bridesmaid’s dress, though I hadn’t realized it at the time. It squeezed me so tight that it cut my breathing in half, and every picture of me has a half smile, half grimace. My friends and I had split the cost of a limo to drive us the three quarters of a mile to the high school. If we had to have our prom in the school cafeteria, then we were at least going to arrive in style. The prom organizers had laid out a moth-eaten red carpet (a prop from one of the school musicals) and decorated the cafeteria with life-size stand-up cutouts of movie stars and strung cardboard yellow stars from the cottage cheese ceiling. Toasting the fruit punch, we swore that we’d never drift apart and that we’d never become our parents and that we’d be stars or change the world or whatever our dreams were...I see a hint of color up ahead. Yellow. I pick up my pace and then I’m running toward it. I stop. It’s a pile of yellow fabric. I pick it up, and my hands are shaking.

My prom dress.

I feel shivers creep over my skin, as if a thousand eyes were watching me. It read my mind, like it did with the ocean. God, what the hell is this place? It’s...incredible.

“Um, thank you?” I clutch the dress.

I don’t know when I lost it. I’d assumed that it had been dumped with other clothes that I’d donated when I moved out of Mom’s and into my own apartment. But maybe it had stayed in the back of that closet, forgotten, until it ended up here...until my thoughts summoned it. I wish it could summon my old friends, as well. I’d let so many friendships slip when Mom got sick and life got difficult. It was too hard to balance everyone’s needs, too hard when they didn’t understand and equally hard when they did.

“I’m looking for Tiffany’s memories, not mine. Do you have a memento from her prom?” I try to picture her prom, everything she told me that she remembers. “Maybe a photo? Her corsage? Something to help her remember? It was 1986.” She looked the same age, and I remember her joking about being a perpetual teenager. I try to imagine that for a moment, never growing a day older than I am right now. Maybe never dying, at least not of old age.

I think of Mom.

If the void can produce whatever I think about...

Deliberately, I think about Mom. Last summer, we had movie nights every Saturday. We made popcorn, the kind in a popper not in a microwave, and we melted real butter. Mom always ate the pieces with butter first, carefully selecting her kernels, leaving the naked and plain pieces for me. Drove me crazy. You should grab a handful and eat what you get, buttered or not. We took turns picking the movies and often ended up choosing the same ones. We must have watched When Harry Met Sally at least a dozen times, also The Princess Bride. Also, every episode of Gilmore Girls.

Mom and I were always close. Maybe because it was her and me so much. My dad ditched us shortly after I was born, and we didn’t live close to many relatives. So I never did the teenage rebellion thing. Or at least when I did, it was a halfhearted attempt that only made me feel stupid. Mom would look at me with her patented you’re-being-an-idiot-but-I-still-love-you expression and somehow I’d end up not only apologizing but cleaning my room. Not that I ever actually got it clean. My walls were filled with art prints, so many that they overlapped, and my desk drawers and bookcase shelves overflowed with art supplies, each in its own labeled container: oil paints, watercolors, pastels, pencils, clay. An easel took up most of my floor space, and a bulletin board filled with sketches obscured the door. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t thrown away those sketches.

Maybe I’ll find them here.

No. I didn’t lose them. I threw them away.

I remember Mom seeing them in the trash. She hadn’t said anything, and I was grateful that she hadn’t. She’d watched me work every Saturday during high school at the museum gift shop to pay for art classes. She’d watched me take course after course in college: sculpture, collage, animation. She’d put up with me for the first few years after college while I immersed myself in the starving-artist image. I wore clothes from thrift stores that I splattered with stray bits of paint. I left the apartment with paint caked in my hair. I was convinced that if I acted like an artist, I must be an artist. I lugged my portfolio to galleries and to job interviews, and I had coffee at a dingy café filled with aspiring musicians. Through all of it, Mom supported me and never complained about how selfish and self-centered I was. Or at least she didn’t complain much. She’d only listen to my soliloquies about the creative life for so long before she’d stick a cup of coffee in front of me and say, “Just do your work, Lauren.” And at the end of my art “career,” she never asked me why I gave it up. Maybe she knew.

I don’t like the direction my thoughts are taking. I lift my hand up and examine it, searching for signs that I’m fading. I still look normal. But I think I should save musing on Mom and art for some time when I’m not in the void. Certainly doesn’t seem to be helping me find her. I suppose she needs to be lost first. Or maybe only the Finder can find people.

With a conscious effort, I drag my thoughts back to Tiffany and her prom and continue to trudge through the dust storm. Seconds later, I find the newspaper.

It lays folded in front of me, as if it were waiting outside a hotel room door. I kneel and pick it up. It’s dated May 24, 1986. My hands start to shake. I swallow hard, my throat feels like chalk.

I did it, I think.

Or the void did it, more accurately.

I don’t know how it will help Tiffany, but I want to be out of this dust now before it leeches more thoughts from my head. I don’t want to wait for Peter to find me. I want to go, go, go, now, now, now.

Clutching the newspaper and my yellow prom dress, I walk quickly. And then I run.

I burst out of the dust and stumble onto the chopped-up sagebrush-covered desert floor. My knee lands hard on the caked dirt.

Getting to my feet, I scramble away from the void. I don’t stop running until I’m a quarter mile away from the looming mass of reddish-beige. My knee is throbbing. Stopping, I sit on a rock and massage it. My still-damp swimsuit is coated with dust.

I did it! I left the void. And I found things. I don’t know how or what it means, but right now, that doesn’t matter. I didn’t fail or fade.

I unfold the newspaper and flip through it. The death toll in the Beirut bombing rose to nine, eighty-four injured and three still missing. U.S. and Britain vetoed sanctions against South Africa. A woman killed her former son-in-law in a courtroom and then killed herself. Locally, a man was arrested after falsely reporting a shooting. A woman sued the city over an issue with her dog. A teen was killed in a car crash... Oh, God.

A teen was killed in a car crash on the way to her prom. Three other friends were injured. The driver of the other vehicle was in critical condition and had a blood alcohol level well above the legal limit.

There’s a photo by the article of a smiling girl in a pink satin dress. She has a corsage on her left wrist that looks like a butterfly is attacking her. Her date is behind her, his hands near but not touching her waist. They’re standing on the front steps.

I feel like vomiting.

She died on impact.

She died.

She’s dead.

I shake myself. Maybe it’s a mistake. After all, I talked to her. She’s walking, talking, breathing, alive. It’s a mistake, a terrible mistake. She was lost and presumed dead. Maybe there was a car accident, but maybe she injured her head and lost her memory and wandered away from the scene and ended up here... Yes, that’s much more plausible.

Clutching the newspaper, I get to my feet. I’ll show her the newspaper and maybe seeing the article will jog her memory about what really happened. I trudge toward the house.

Both Tiffany and Claire are sitting at the edge of the ocean. Claire has her toes in the surf. Tiffany has her knees drawn up to her chest. Despite Claire chatting at her, Tiffany looks utterly alone.

I hesitate. Maybe it’s better if she doesn’t see the article. Maybe she doesn’t remember because the accident was too traumatic. On the other hand, if this will help her...

Claire sees me first. She points.

Tiffany gets to her feet.

It’s too late to change my mind. She’s seen me. I’m holding the newspaper and my yellow prom dress. It’s only seconds before the two of them reach me, running across the desert sand. The crash of the waves drowns out the sound of their steps.

Tiffany grabs the newspaper out of my hands. She drops down on the ground and opens it. I watch her as Claire tugs on my arm, demanding to know what happened, ecstatic that it worked. I give her the prom dress.

I watch Tiffany as she reads, and I know the instant she reaches the article. Her face drains of all color. Her makeup is stark against her bloodless face. She reads it once, twice, three times. She carefully folds the newspaper.

Claire skips from foot to foot. “What’s it say? Do you remember?”

“I’m dead,” Tiffany says simply. She stands up.

I want to tell her that she’s not. Of course she’s not. She’s right here talking to me. But the emptiness in her eyes... Words die in my throat. I think of when I first met her. One of the first things she said was she wanted to step in front of a train. Later, she fashioned nooses out of rope. A part of her must have known.

She looks at Claire. “Scottsdale. Your parents are in Scottsdale, Arizona.”

She doesn’t say anything else. She takes off at a run toward town. I watch her and don’t try to stop her. I feel Claire’s hand slip into mine.

Chapter Seventeen

A buoy tolls outside my bedroom window, and I wake. Shooting out of bed, I launch myself at the window and look out. Waves lick the baseboards of the house. Whitecaps crest directly beneath me. It’s coming, I think. The void is coming for me! I grip the windowsill as if it will keep me tethered to the ground, safe from the void. The air tastes thick with salt. My mouth feels as dry as the desert that the ocean has eaten.

I step back from the window and try to take deep, calming breaths. It doesn’t help. All it does is make me feel like I’m gasping for air like a waterless goldfish. “Peter?”

He’d slept in my bed again last night, his arms around me, his body warm. I hear the mattress creak and know he’s standing directly behind me. He puts his arms around my waist and draws me against him. I fit against the curve of his chest. “It’s high tide.” His breath is soft against my ear and on my neck.

“The void...”

“...isn’t any closer. Besides, you went in and you came out. You don’t need to be afraid of it.” He pauses. “Of course, it could destroy everything and everyone else, but c’est la vie.”

“I found my prom dress.”

“You told me.”

“Tiffany’s dead.”

“You said that, too.”

I’d nearly pounced on him when he’d returned last night, telling him everything that had happened from the moment that Victoria and Sean had shown up with the oatmeal through everything with the dead girl who ran the Pine Barrens Motel. He’d listened, and when I’d told him I’d come out of the void, he’d kissed me.

Thinking of that kiss, I take another deep breath, and it works better this time. I feel my rib cage loosen, and I can suck in air again. Out the window, I see he’s right—it’s only the ocean that’s closer. The void is a distant smudge on the horizon. At least “helping” Tiffany didn’t make anything worse. “The lie seems to still be working. And Tiffany didn’t send a mob with pitchforks after me. Maybe it will be a good day. Maybe you’ll find the Missing Man today!” As soon as I’ve said the words, I wish I could suck them back.

He releases me and steps away. Twisting, I see his expression is closed and guarded. “I’ll begin my search,” he says stiffly.

“Peter...”

Claire races into my room. Even though she’s a little girl, she has elephant-loud footsteps. She jumps on the foot of the bed. “Lauren, you have to get dressed! There are people outside. For you!”

Peter grabs my arms. “I’ll distract them. You climb out the back window and swim—”

Laughing, Claire bounces on the bed. “Don’t be silly! They don’t want to hurt her. Everyone wants her help.” She hops off the bed and skips to my dresser. “You can’t let them see you in pj’s, though. You need pretty.” She pulls out a blue dress. It flutters as she unfurls it.

“But—”

She steers me toward the shower.

Digging my heels in, I stop. “Claire, how many is ‘everyone’?”

She waves her hand in the air. “A bunch.”

“Claire.”

“Lots.”

“Claire!”

“It’s okay.” She darts into the bathroom and turns on the shower. She lays my towel out for me, fluffs it, and smiles. “You can do this! You can help them! Save them!” I picture Claire with tiny pompoms. Amused by the image, I stop protesting and let her shoo me in.

I take the fastest shower of my life. Scrubbing my hair dry, I study myself in the mirror. I look thinner, like my skin is pinching my skull. The shadows under my eyes are tinged purple, as if I’ve been hit in the eyes. I pull on the dress that Claire picked out for me, and I drag a brush through my hair as I walk out the door. Claire is waiting in the hallway. She frowns at me, and then she grabs my hand and marches me into the bedroom. I sit on the edge of the bed while she kneels on the mattress and combs my hair. She hums to herself as she weaves in ribbons that she produces from hidden pockets on her own yellow tulle dress. I begin to feel like an overly wrapped birthday present.

“Out of curiosity, are you making me look like a crazy person?”

“Yes.”

I turn my head to see her expression.

She pushes my head straight. “Stay still, please.”

I look out the window. I could stand up, walk away. I don’t think she’d resort to her knives to force me, but I’m transfixed by the view out the window. The ocean roils and rolls. I notice it has ships on it: tall ships with triple masts, sunfish, catamarans, sea kayaks, a cruise ship. All of them jostle between the waves. I don’t think they were there before my shower. I can’t tell if there are any people on the boats.

“You’re sure they aren’t here to kill me?” I ask.

“I’m sure. Mostly sure.”

“Where’s Peter?”

“On the roof,” she says. “He’s not as sure.”

I try to look at her again, and she yanks on my hair. I wince. Looking back at the water, I think of the Pacific. I used to wake to the sound of the ocean, back when we lived in a barely insulated cottage by the shore. At nine o’clock, Mom would knock on my bedroom door and tell me not to waste the day. You only have so many glorious days per lifetime, she said, and if you fritter them away, then you’ll come back as a penguin who has to brave winters in Antarctica as penance. I’d tell her I like penguins and go back to sleep.

When she was diagnosed, Mom said I’d never ignore her again. A side benefit of dying, she claimed. Your words carry a lot more weight. She then told me to floss daily, wear suntan lotion, and never, ever date a guy who doesn’t respect your dreams. I told her I’d listen to every word she said if she didn’t say the word dying. She told me I had avoidance issues and gave me a self-help book, which I avoided reading, and she continued to talk about dying.

Claire hops off the bed. She spins me so she can examine me from all angles. Bits of ribbon dangle at the edges of my vision. “Claire...” I’m not certain how to delicately break it to her that I don’t want to look like a half-wrapped present—or that I’m not sure I can “save” people. I don’t know how I found the ring and the newspaper.

“You look wise,” she says. “They need you to look wise. If they even think you can help them, even if you can’t, then they won’t kill you. Lauren, this is your chance to win them over, to fix what happened in the diner.”

Oh. That...makes sense. I nod slowly. “Okay, go ahead.”

Claire smiles.

“What?”

“You really trust me.”

“Sure.”

“I told Peter from the start that you’re different.” She sounds very satisfied with herself. “Most grown-ups wouldn’t listen to a kid.”

“You’re not an ordinary kid.” But I can’t argue with the sentiment. I had an uncle who liked to talk to me as if I was no smarter than his pet Maltese. Less smart, in fact. I had on occasion contemplated biting him on the hand as he patted my shoulder and told me how cute it was that I liked art, or how sweet that my mother still kept my artwork on the wall, even though I was well out of elementary school, as if the paintings I’d labored over and poured my heart into were no better than the drawing that I’d scrawled when I clutched a crayon in my hand, still plump with baby fat.

He was Mom’s older brother, and he’d talk to her that way sometimes, too. He’d notice what she hadn’t cleaned—the dust on top of the refrigerator, the eggs inside that had expired a week ago, the mail that hadn’t been sorted, the shoes that were scuffed, and he’d gently remark about how it was such a shame she was so busy, or how his wife miraculously juggled it all, even though they were married and childless and she didn’t work, unlike Mom. Mom always tolerated it. She let it roll off her back like water off a plastic tablecloth. Or at least she seemed to. It was one of those things we didn’t talk about, like my father, like her father, like why she never went home for Thanksgiving, like why I broke up with that boyfriend that everyone thought was better than sliced bread. He wasn’t. But he thought he was, too. And he took my best pair of sunglasses when he left. He didn’t respect me. Certainly didn’t respect my dreams. He might have respected my sunglasses.

Claire hugs me. “I trust you, too.” She releases me and skips out the door.

The dress that Claire picked out for me has a pocket, and I slide a knife into it. The weight makes me feel marginally better, even though I can’t imagine stabbing anyone with it. Following her, I head toward the front door.

I hear the crowd before I see it, a low buzz like a hornet’s nest, and I contemplate jumping out a window and swimming away. I could do it. I’m a strong swimmer. Or I used to be. I can find a new house, scavenge for new things. Claire would be fine, and eventually I could sneak back and fetch her and Peter. I’ve learned enough about how to survive here that I think I could make it on my own, at least for a little while. But Claire has a grip on my hand.

She flings open the front door. In a dramatic voice, she says, “She was lost, and she suffered. But she has forgiven you and is here to heal your soul!” I hear voices, rising in excitement—they’ve seen Claire’s glow.

Pulling my wrist, Claire yanks me outside.

I plaster a smile on my face and hope it looks more like a kind, benevolent smile, rather than maniacal, which is what it feels like. This is a terrible idea, I think. I’m no savior. I’m glad that Peter is watching from the roof. I force myself not to look up and give him away as I walk onto the porch. At least a dozen men, women, and kids are perched and lounging on the porch and junk pile. They’re rattier-looking than either Victoria or Sean. One man is dressed in a coat sewn entirely from socks. One of the boys is wearing rags with so many holes and stains that it looks as if a stiff breeze will blow it off his body. Another woman is in a sequin dress and draped with diamond or rhinestone necklaces. Every finger is covered with enormous rings, three on each finger so that her knuckles cannot even bend. Seeing me, all of them unwind from where they lay, and they rush forward.

Claire steps in front of me, at the top of the porch steps, and puts her hands on her hips. “One at a time!” She claps her hands for attention. “You know she can’t work a dozen miracles at once! Go in the order you arrived. I’ll give you numbers.” She marches off the porch. The crowd breaks. Some are glaring at her, some are glaring at me. A few look at me in what looks like awe. One lies on his back and counts, clouds I assume, except the sky is clear. He could be counting dust particles.

A young woman shoulders her way to the front. She wears a lacy hippie shirt, a bandana around her head, and Mardi Gras beads. Her eyes are sunken in with deep bruiselike circles under them, as if she hasn’t slept in aeons. Or as if she is on drugs. “I first.” She glares at me, and I shrink back.

Claire marches down the step and puts her hands on her hips. “You aren’t ready,” she announces. I stifle a smile. As my new self-appointed manager, Claire is acting more like a forty-year-old diva than a six-year-old little girl. Granted, she is older than she looks, and being on her own has aged her... My urge to smile fades. This place is robbing her of her childhood. How long has she been here? A year? Two? Three?

The woman switches her glare to Claire. “You don’t know anything. Just because you have the glow—”

“Come back later.” Claire points instead to a boy with a backward baseball cap and shorts that ride three inches lower than the waistband of his boxers, which are bright red with blue rocketships. “You first.”

The kid shrugs and saunters up to the steps. “I’m ready.”

I don’t know what he expects me to do. Everyone is watching me. I clear my throat. Claire is beaming up at me, her eyes wide and face expectant, lit by her glow. I wonder what Peter is thinking from his perch above me. “What did you lose?” I ask.

He shoots a look over his shoulder.

I think of Victoria, how she said no one asks about the past. “How about you come inside?” Stepping aside, I indicate the door. “Claire, let me know if...” I trail off, not certain how to communicate that she should let me know if any of the crowd shows homicidal tendencies. I’m also tempted to take her inside with me, my six-year-old bodyguard.

The boy peers into each of the rooms as I lead him inside. I take him to the living room and point to one of the chairs opposite the face of the steam engine. I sit nervously on the edge of the couch. I can see the ocean out of the window, also the void.

He nods at the water. “What’s up with the ocean?”

“I think it’s mine.”

“Sweet.”

“Thanks.” I look out at it, more for a safe place to look than anything else. How exactly did I get myself into this? Oh, yeah, I trusted a six-year-old. “Do you know what you lost?”

“Yeah. It was after school. A Thursday. Not that that matters. Girlfriend just broke up with me. Rightfully so. She wasn’t what I lost. Cheated on her. Totally deserved it. I was a douche-bag boyfriend.” He talks fast, clipped, the words popping out of him as if they’re shooting out of his mouth.

“That’s...good of you to realize.”

“Ran across some guys from school. Just hanging out, you know? Anyway, there was this pack of girls. You know the type. Pretty girls. Perfect hair. Swish when they walk. Not sure how they do that without falling over. The kind that want you to look at them but then yell when you look, you know? As if you don’t have the right to have eyes?”

I nod. I do know the type. I wasn’t one of them, but they never really bothered me. I ran with the artsy crowd. We considered ourselves superior because we’d mastered the art of publicly angsting over cultural decay, even if we were privately angsting over the basketball team.

“I was sick of them looking down at me. Sick of all of it. The guys were joking... Long story short, I singled one out, one that looked a lot like my ex, one with the superior smile and that look in her eyes, and I started talking about her. Lies. But detailed lies. And it spread. Got back to her. She denied it, but no one believed her. And so I thought I’d hit on a great way to bring them down to our level. Stop them from looking so superior, or something. It was stupid. It was petty. I knew it at the time. But I was the Robin Hood of the social order, you know? Restoring fairness to the high school hallways.”

He’s flushing fiercely as he talks. His neck is bright red.

“How did you wind up here?” I ask.

“That girl, the first girl, the one that I started with telling lies. She killed herself. And after that...I didn’t go to the funeral. Didn’t think I had the right. Stood outside the church, though, and when the family came out, I...took a walk. And kept walking until I was in this part of town I didn’t recognize. Turns out it wasn’t a part of my town at all. It was here.” He shrugs. “And that’s pretty much it.”

“Okay.”

He looks at me. “So, can you help me?”

I take a deep breath and meet his eyes. “You pretty much just confessed to causing an innocent girl’s death. I don’t know what I can find that will fix that.” He hangs his head, and I wish I hadn’t been so harsh. He’s a kid. He screwed up, yes. But he’s a kid, and what the hell kind of right do I have to judge him? Besides, maybe there’s more to the story. More gently, I ask, “What will you do if I succeed?”

“See if the other girls are okay,” he says immediately. “I keep thinking...I can’t undo it for her. But those other girls, yeah, maybe. I owe something, you know? And I can’t pay it back here.”

I nod. “I’ll see what I can do. No promises. I’m new to this. If there’s any hint you can give me as to what you expect me to find...” I can hear a voice inside my head screaming at me that this is not my responsibility! This is not my problem! I have my own problems, thank you very much. But Claire’s right—if I can win over the townspeople, I’ll be safer. And I did find the star sapphire ring and the 1986 newspaper.

“Her.”

I’m not sure I heard him correctly. “She’s dead.”

“So are some people here.”

I think of Tiffany. “But...” I don’t know how to phrase it nicely. I don’t even know if I’m right. “But if she intended to die, then she wouldn’t be lost. She’d be exactly where she wanted to be. Dead dead. Not lost-dead.”