B00B9FX0F2 EBOK Page 5

  “I hung up.”

  “Of course you did. Wuss.”

  “What was I supposed to do?”

  “Tell them their daughter’s not dead. Even though she’s probably dead.”

  “She’s not dead.” Jason surprised himself with the hard edge in his voice.

  “Dude, do you really even believe that?”

  He didn’t answer. Belief was beside the point, he needed Lacey to be alive.

  “Do you want me to come over?” Rakesh adopted a baby voice. “Do you want Daddy to make it better? I can rock you back and forth until you forget all about your lady trouble.”

  “Screw you.”

  “Hey, you called me.”

  Jason knew he was right, but he still refused to answer.

  “Well, can I at least come over and play Xbox? My dad is watching some documentary about Nazis on the History Channel, and my mom is driving me crazy.”

  “Fine,” he said sullenly. Another person in the house was better than the alternative, which was moving on to the really dark Mountain Goats songs. “How long will it take you to bike here?”

  “How soon can you pick me up?”

  They played video games long past midnight, and then Rakesh passed out on the sofa in the den, and Jason went up to his room and got in bed. Exhausted, he slept soundly, no haunting nightmares involving writer’s block and bad wardrobe choices. When he woke late in the morning, he came downstairs in his sweats to find Rakesh cracking his mom up as she cracked eggs into a bowl. Jason rubbed his eyes.

  “Hi, pookie,” she said when she saw him, “I’m making Rakesh pancakes. Do you want any?”

  “I can’t even remember the last time you made me pancakes,” he grumbled.

  “You know that’s because I’m her favorite son,” Rakesh said, beaming at Mrs. Moreland.

  She laughed. “It’s true, Rocky, you are.” No one had called him Rocky since elementary school, and he wouldn’t answer when his own mother used it, but he tolerated it from Jason’s.

  Jason turned to Rakesh. “You’re awfully chipper this morning.”

  “Dude, your mom’s making me pancakes. My mom barely even buys enough Cheerios to get me through the week.”

  Jason plopped down at the kitchen table while rolling his eyes. “Yeah, it’s a regular famine over at the Adams household.”

  “Hey, poor starving Oliver Twist,” his mom chimed in, “blueberries or chocolate chips?”

  “Chocolate chips,” the boys said in unison.

  She shook her head. “Why does that not surprise me?”

  Jason relaxed as they ate breakfast. His mom asked about their teachers and then entertained them with stories of gross things she’d seen at the hospital. Jason couldn’t count the number of times he’d sat at this table with Rakesh and his mom chatting easily while eating eggs or pancakes. It felt good to be normal.

  After Rakesh left, he carried their dishes to the sink and began washing up. He felt better than he had the night before. It was going to be a good Saturday. Mark would be at the driving range until nightfall. He’d call his dad when his mom left for her yoga class, and then he’d catch up on his homework. He hadn’t read Pitchfork all week — he could see if there was any new music worth caring about, and he could even drive to the city and buy it on vinyl if he felt energetic. He was going to keep boredom at bay.

  “Honey, did you take this out?”

  He cast a glance over his shoulder to see his mom holding the phone book. He could practically hear the record-scratching sound effect as the questions surrounding Lacey flooded back into his mind.

  “Oh, um, yeah. I needed it … to order pizza last night. The number on Little Johnny’s website is wrong.” Lying was definitely simpler than explaining the situation to his mother, but he still felt a pang of guilt as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

  “Do you still need it?”

  “No, you can put it away,” he answered. He said a quick prayer of gratitude that neither the fact that he ordered from Johnny’s often enough to know the number by heart nor the lack of pizza boxes in the kitchen had tipped her off to his dishonesty. He heard her replace it above the fridge, and then she patted him affectionately on the shoulder before heading to her class.

  Jason knew he wasn’t going to keep Lacey out of his head today. He thought about calling the Grays again, but he was still unsure about what he could say, or what a conversation with them would accomplish other than give Lacey doubts about whether she could trust him. Still, he was going to lose his mind if he didn’t do something. He grabbed his car keys from his room. He had an idea.

  There was a cold snap in the air despite the brightly shining sun. Jason hadn’t worn a scarf, so he zipped his jacket as high as it would go and shoved his hands in the pockets when he got out of his car at Brighton Park. He used to come to the park with his father when he was younger. It had a wide grassy field that was perfect for setting off the model rockets they built together. They’d leave the house early, and it always felt like an adventure, though in retrospect Jason wondered if his dad was just avoiding his mom. He kept moving. On the average summer day, Jason knew, the ball field would be filled with sounds of children playing and bats cracking, but today, maybe because of the March chill, the park was deserted.

  He made his way past the empty baseball diamond and through the well-manicured rocket-launching lawn. He saw a woman tossing a ball to her golden retriever, and two middle-aged men getting a morning workout in, but by the time Jason found the tucked-away semicircle of benches he’d been searching for, he was completely alone. There, in the open space the benches were facing, was the Lacey Gray memorial.

  It was only as he approached it that he realized, too late, why he’d really come. He’d wanted to find nothing. A pit in the ground or Hollywood sign–size letters indicating this was a site dedicated to someone else, someone whose name was not Lacey Gray. But this was definitely the memorial he’d read about in the Brighton Times.

  The copper sculpture was smaller than it looked in the photograph, but shinier, too. Even from beneath the shade of a Japanese maple it was glinting with sunlight. Hesitantly, Jason advanced, his eyes never leaving the dancing girl. Even in sculptural form, Lacey was captivating. He knelt over to read the plaque at its base.

  YOUR GRIEF FOR WHAT YOU’VE LOST LIFTS A MIRROR

  UP TO WHERE YOU’RE BRAVELY WORKING

  EXPECTING THE WORST, YOU LOOK AND INSTEAD,

  HERE’S THE JOYFUL FACE YOU’VE BEEN WANTING TO SEE.

  — RUMI

  IN LOVING MEMORY OF LACEY GRAY, DAUGHTER, SISTER, FRIEND.

  AUGUST 18, 1996–OCTOBER 5, 2012

  Jason lowered himself onto the cold, hard earth, pulling his knees to his chest. There were flowers laid carefully on the ground around the sculpture, and stuffed animals, some bearing notes. If it had been someone else, Jason would have been overwhelmed with the injustice of it. A girl named Anya in his grade school had passed away from leukemia. He’d been too young to comprehend the loss, but at odd moments she’d come back to him, and he’d realize how strange, how sad, how utterly unfair it was that she never lived her life past the third grade.

  But this was different. Lacey had IM’d him yesterday.

  I have a test and I’m going to be late for school.

  Anya didn’t have tests; she didn’t go to school. Anya had never even been on Facebook. Anya wasn’t alive. Lacey was. She had to be.

  Things are sort of … complicated right now.

  Complicated didn’t even begin to describe it.

  Once again, he ran through the possibilities.

  1. Lacey was communicating with him from beyond the grave. There were a lot of problems with this theory, not the least of which was that Jason was pretty sure he didn’t believe in ghosts. But say Lacey was dead — why would her spirit have chosen Jason, a person she never knew, to contact? Sure, he had reached out to her first, but judging from the gifts left for her at the memorial, Lacey was no
t a person who was lacking for friends.

  2. Someone was pretending to be Lacey. Compared to this option, Jason almost wished he had a ghost on his hands. Only someone cruel would impersonate a dead teenager, and whoever Jason was dealing with wasn’t cruel. And again, he had to ask, why him? Jason may not have had a boatload of friends, but he certainly didn’t have any enemies, and someone would have to want to hurt him to do this.

  3. Lacey was still alive. A little thrill ran through his body when Jason considered this one. It wasn’t just that he wanted it to be true — which he deeply, truly did — more that it seemed like the only real option. And yet it still didn’t answer why she would allow her family and friends to believe she was gone. The Lacey he knew wouldn’t hurt people around her like that.

  When he had read and reread their messages and conversations, a theory had begun to form, and something about being here, in this space dedicated to her, helped it crystallize: She had sought him out because she had known they would have a real connection. Jason knew if he said it out loud, Rakesh would laugh in his face, but it added up. He had recognized something deeper in her when he found the Mountain Goats quote on her Facebook page, and she had seen a kindred spirit in him. But she had to be sure she could trust him before she revealed her secret — whatever it was. Jason just had to prove that he was committed to her, no matter what she was hiding.

  “Did you know her?” The voice was soft and sweet, but Jason started when he heard it. He swiveled around and found a petite, fair-skinned girl standing over him. He stood, clumsily brushing the leaves and grass from his pants as he turned to face her. He tried to place her, but her face gave nothing away.

  “Did I know her?” he finally squeaked when it registered that she’d been speaking to him.

  The girl gestured to the sculpture. “Lacey. We built this for her. She passed away last year.” She was clutching a bouquet of daisies in one hand as she spoke.

  “Oh, um, no, I never met her.” At least it wasn’t a lie. Before she could ask what he was doing there, he hastily added, “I’m so sorry. Was she your friend?”

  “My best friend,” the girl said a little sadly.

  And then he remembered Lacey’s messages. Me and J Money have been friends practically since we were born — we’re family at this point. So that was why she seemed so familiar. Her full name had been in the Brighton Times — it was Jenny. Or Jenna. He couldn’t quite recall.

  She leaned down to replace the wilting flowers at the memorial’s base with the ones she’d brought. Jason took the opportunity to survey her more closely. She had dark hair that swung around her chin, and her pale skin and light eyes almost seemed to glow in contrast. The features on her face were small and delicate, and though she smiled at him as she straightened up, she had an air of mourning about her. “We wanted to make this the type of place that she’d want to visit.”

  “It’s really nice,” Jason said. “I mean, the sculpture. It caught my eye from the bike path. That’s how I wound up here.”

  “It’s funny. I think if she were around to see it, she would like it, and that makes it easier for me when I come here to talk to her.” She cast a sidelong glance in his direction. “I hope that doesn’t seem weird, you know, that I talk to her.”

  Not even close, he thought to himself. “I don’t think it’s weird.” For a moment they stood side by side, observing the sculpture. She was only wearing a thin jacket, and she crossed her arms over her chest to keep herself warm. Jason thought about offering his own coat, but decided it would be weird. Finally, he broke the silence. “You must miss her.”

  “All the time. But when I come here, it’s different. It’s almost like she’s not gone. I don’t know. I don’t talk to her because I think she can hear me, but sometimes it does feel like she’s listening.” As she spoke, she neatened up the tributes people had deposited there, lining up the stuffed animals, and brushing away dead leaves and twigs. She straightened up and studied Jason carefully — for a split second, he felt like she could see through him and knew exactly why he was there, but he realized he was being paranoid. “You must think I’m crazy,” she said with a wry laugh. “Sometimes I have no filter.”

  “I don’t think you’re crazy,” Jason said sincerely. “I can’t even imagine what it’s like to lose your best friend.”

  She smiled gratefully, before offering her hand to him. “I’m Jenna,” she said. Arm outstretched, the resemblance to the child in the photo with Lacey was almost eerie.

  “I’m Jason. It’s nice to meet you. I hope you don’t mind my being here.”

  “No, I mean, we wanted to put the memorial in a public park because Lacey liked being around other people so much.”

  It was as if Jenna knew one Lacey, the social butterfly, and he knew her shadow, who only had eyes for him. He was unsettled by it, as if one of them would slip away at any moment. He wanted desperately for his Lacey to come to life, but seeing the pained expression on Jenna’s face made him feel selfish about not caring more about the one she had lost.

  As shaken as he was by the duality, there was something about Jenna that put him at ease. When she spoke, the questions stopped swirling. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with someone who knew the flesh-and-blood Lacey made him feel connected to the person beyond the avatar. He almost felt like he could trust Jenna. For the briefest of seconds, Jason was compelled to tell her Lacey wasn’t a stranger, that, in fact, he knew her well. And then he remembered Lacey’s warning. A favor. I hate to ask. Can you not tell anyone we’re talking? Maybe this was all a test. Maybe she had known he’d come here.

  “I think I, um, read something about her. About Lacey.” He wanted to keep the conversation going, but he wasn’t sure how. “Like, maybe on Facebook or something?”

  Jenna studied him. “Are you from Brighton?”

  “No, Oakdale.”

  “I don’t know about in Oakdale, but around here it’s pretty big news when a sixteen-year-old falls off a balcony during a party.”

  He winced at the harsh image. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that’s how she …” He trailed off. For some reason the word “died” wouldn’t come out. He cleared his throat. “I didn’t realize that’s what happened.”

  “I didn’t mean to get so intense about it, it’s just … Facebook. It’s really weird after you lose someone, you know? Like, everyone’s posting random stuff about this thing that’s really personal and deep, and they’re all ‘LOL’ or they’re talking trash. It’s bizarre, like, Lacey’s gone, and Facebook keeps happening.” Jason couldn’t make himself look at her as she spoke. If you only knew … he thought silently.

  “I’m so sorry,” Jason said. Why did he keep apologizing? “Did I already say that?”

  “You did. But thank you.”

  He wanted to ask her more about Lacey, about what she was like in person and what kind of gossip people spread about her on Facebook, but he didn’t want to agitate her, so instead he turned to leave. “Well, I should go,” he said awkwardly. “I’ll let you talk to your friend.”

  She pushed her hair back behind her ears. “It was nice to meet you, Jason. Sorry that got kind of weird. I get emotional sometimes.”

  “It’s understandable. I’m sorry again. I’ll stop saying that.”

  She laughed, and he smiled back. “Well, see you around.” He wondered if he should ask for her e-mail or something, but he remembered he was just supposed to be passing through the park. He waved awkwardly, and made his way back along the path.

  When he got to the parking lot, he was sweating, even though it was still chilly out. He sat in his car for a few minutes without starting it. His beat-up blue Subaru had been joined by a gleaming black Mercedes, a beat-up Volkswagen, and a crimson Toyota. All of them were empty, but his guess was the Camry was Jenna’s. What had just happened with her? Jenna’s approach, her rushed outpouring of emotion about Lacey, it was all so strange and sudden. He’d come here searching for some kind of clue that Lacey was a
live, and instead he’d found the person who was supposed to be closest to her in the world talking frankly about how she wasn’t.

  When he put the key in the ignition he was overcome by the sensation that there was someone — or something — there with him. He scanned the rearview mirror, checking for company, and though he saw no one, his neck continued to prickle ominously. Leaning his head against the steering wheel, he whispered, “What’s the story, Lacey? What am I missing?” He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate, but there was only silence.

  Jason took the long way home so he could listen to the entirety of For Emma, Forever Ago. It seemed somehow appropriate — he knew Lacey liked Bon Iver, and it was the only thing he wanted to hear anyway. He turned the volume up as high as it would go, and when he pulled into his driveway and removed the key from the ignition an hour later, the peace was borderline eerie.

  Grabbing his phone from the cup holder, he saw he had a new message. It was from Rakesh.

  Bonfire at the bridge tonight. Can you drive?

  Some nights he’d have said no, either to avoid playing chauffeur or because he didn’t feel like making small talk with people who looked right through him in the halls at school. But right now he’d give anything to get his mind off of Lacey.

  Yeah, what time do you want me to pick you up?

  Come at 7:30 — we can go to Michael’s before.

  But when he got to his room, he sat very still on his bed and stared at his phone. Ever since he’d left Jenna, he’d been fighting the urge to call Lacey’s family again. It was like a scab he knew he shouldn’t pick at but he couldn’t help himself. He was finally starting to understand why pretty girls always went into the basement in horror movies, even when they had plenty of evidence that a masked murderer was lying in wait for them the second they got down the stairs. It felt a lot better than hiding under a bed. If he called Lacey’s parents, they were going to tell him she was gone, just like Jenna had, but there was something thrilling about your worst fears, and something powerful about ignoring them.