B00B9FX0F2 EBOK Read online

  He scrolled through his recent contacts and put through the call to her house.

  He got it out in one breath. “Hi. May I speak to Lacey?”

  The voice on the other end was ragged when it finally answered. “Who is this?”

  “My name is Keith McKeller.” It was the name of an aging hippie his aunt had dated briefly, and the first alias that popped into his head.

  There was a sharp intake of breath, and then a weary exhalation. He could practically feel her father’s grief as he answered, “Keith, I don’t know who you are or how you knew my daughter, but she died last October.”

  There was a click as the line went dead. Jason called back more determined than he had been before. This time the “Hello?” had an edge.

  “Sir, I’m so sorry to hear about your loss. I don’t mean to bother you, but I’m the director of the, um, Orange County Guitar School, and we received an audition video from Lacey.” Jason felt sweat beading at his temple. Mr. Gray was going to see through his lies.

  “You’re mistaken,” said Mr. Gray firmly.

  “It was sent to us three weeks ago, sir.”

  “That’s not possible.” There was no mistaking Mr. Gray’s anger now. “There must have been some kind of mix-up.”

  “The video we have is from someone named Lacey Gray. She listed this as her home phone number. I was calling to tell her we’d love to accept her into our program.”

  “Are you listening to me? My daughter is gone. Whoever you are, leave my family alone. Please don’t ever call here again.”

  Jason’s hands were shaking when Ed Gray hung up the phone. It was like he’d been possessed during the call. During his yard work earlier, he’d been rehearsing what he might say, but he did that all the time — rarely did he follow through on the scripts. And maybe there was good reason for that. The conversation hadn’t exactly been a rousing success. In retrospect he realized how foolish he’d been. There wasn’t a chance he was going to hear what he wanted. Why yes, complete stranger, my daughter is alive, but shhhh, don’t tell anyone. Also, she would like to marry you. No, instead of that totally realistic and not at all crazy response, he’d been confronted with Lacey’s dad’s raw grief, and now he felt like a terrible person. He felt something else, too. Anger at Lacey. Why was she doing this? And why was she keeping him in the dark? He would help her, but she would have to tell him how.

  Parties didn’t happen at the bridge so much as they happened under it, on a dark cement landing about the size of a grade-school playground. The underbelly of the bridge was decorated with colorful graffiti that had been there at least since the current Roosevelt High seniors were freshmen.

  The first time they’d come to the bridge their sophomore year, Jason had been awed by the upperclassmen gripping red cups and dancing to music blasted from cordless iPod speakers. This was the high school of John Hughes movies, not just the sleepy continuation of his middle school existence. But he quickly realized that bridge parties usually ended with shouts from park rangers or local police to break it up, causing all the kids to scatter to their cars before regrouping in the Wawa parking lot or at Michael’s. Half the nights there was a squad car parked by the side of the road where you were supposed to hop the guardrail and trek down a steep wooded path to the flat concrete below. Jason was always secretly a little pleased on those nights — he didn’t have to risk his limbs to spend his evening fearing the cops’ arrival and they could go straight to the next location, where kids weren’t constantly encouraging one another to turn the music down and you could actually see the person who was talking to you.

  But tonight everything had gone according to plan, at least so far. The entrance to the bushwhacked path was open, and the cowboy boot–shaped flashlight on Jason’s key chain had guided them down safely. He and Rakesh and Lloyd had done a lap, scouting the different groups clustered about. Rakesh and Lloyd were in the middle of debating which members of the girls varsity basketball team they would choose to rescue them from a fire, when a group of non-basketball-playing girls standing to their right captured Rakesh’s attention. “Ladies!” he boomed, slinging his arms over two of their shoulders. “How goes it?”

  Lloyd caught Jason’s attention and rolled his eyes and then headed out to find a tree where he could relieve himself, and Jason turned to Gabe Wyffels. Hip-hop blared as he described his plans to become a competitive surfer after high school.

  “People think surfing is just, like, this thing that burnouts in Hawaii and Australia do, but it’s an art, man. I mean, naw, it’s not an art, it’s a sport. It’s a sport for warriors.”

  Jason stifled a laugh. He had watched the surfing videos Gabe had posted on Facebook, and there was no denying he could ride a wave, but he was far too easygoing to be called a warrior.

  “So, do they, like, have scholarships for surfing?”

  “I dunno. Sometimes I don’t really think college is for me. It’s just, like, this plan that they have for us, you know? But I don’t wanna live someone else’s plan. I’ll chart my own destiny. Oh, hey, did you just hear that?”

  Jason looked around. He hadn’t heard anything, but everyone around them froze, murmuring to one another about the noises. The vigilance wasn’t doing much to soothe Jason’s jangled nerves. He couldn’t stop thinking about Lacey. Lloyd had come with them to dinner, so he hadn’t had a chance to fill Rakesh in on the surreal events of the day. Instead he kept picturing Jenna’s pained expression as she talked about her friend, replaying their conversation and trying to shake the creepy feeling that someone had been watching him in the parking lot. He went over his chat with Lacey in his mind, trying to make sense of her requests, which seemed stranger and stranger with every passing minute. Why did she need to take the weekend before she could explain everything? What was she going to explain?

  Gabe excused himself to find something to drink, and Jason looked around for someone to talk to. To his left, Kelly Drummond was holding court with a group of guys he might otherwise have joined. To his right, a tight circle of girls whispered to one another. When they erupted in giggles, Jason instinctively smoothed his hair and then patted his face to make sure his glasses were on straight before he saw one of them point to someone making his way down the path. Feeling sheepish, he shoved his hands into his pockets and wandered off.

  The clusters were filled with familiar faces. Some he’d known since kindergarten, others he’d seen in the halls but never exchanged words with, but none of them were people he was in the mood to talk to. He checked the time — 11:45. Half an hour before they’d agreed to leave to make Lloyd’s curfew.

  Jason stepped off the pavement into the shadowy brush, walking until the thumping bass and laughter were nothing more than dull, distant notes. He could hear himself breathing, and he was about to sit on the ground and reread messages from Lacey on his phone when he heard something behind him. He froze. Kids came down this path all the time — to pee, or get away from the party for a minute like he had. The noise was gone, but the skin-crawling sensation of being watched lingered. He turned around slowly and asked, as calmly as he could, “Who’s there?” Silence. And then the sound of twigs breaking. He fumbled for his flashlight. It had been a gift from his dad, and though it arrived with the price tag from the Dallas airport still attached, Jason had still slipped it onto his key chain. It had been handy when they were navigating the steep rocky path, but out here its miniature bulb did little more than cast a harsh white glow over the shrubs and branches, illuminating their empty stillness. Was he imagining things? There was no one there. His phone buzzed and he practically jumped out of his skin.

  Rakesh: Where’d you go?

  Jason told himself he was just being paranoid, but he started back toward the party anyway, until the unmistakable sound of footsteps stopped him dead in his tracks. He pointed the cowboy-boot flashlight and his phone at the same time, shining them in two directions like a gunslinger in a Western. The ghostly pall covered the path, but again, he saw
nothing out of the ordinary. Calm down, Jason, he thought to himself, it’s been a rough day. But suddenly out of the corner of his eye he saw movement, and whipped his head toward it so quickly he strained his neck. A figure was speeding up the hill toward the road.

  “Hey!” Jason shouted, aiming the flashlight upward. All he could see were shadows, and he started up the incline but tripped on a root, sprawling forward into the dirt. The flashlight snapped off his keys and went flying, its bulb darkening as soon as his grip on it had been released. His phone tumbled out of his hand, casting its ray of light uselessly into the night sky. There was a jolt of pain when his knee came down on a rock, and he cried out. Panicking, he scrambled to his feet, but the figure was gone.

  Jason panted and scanned the terrain above him. Nothing but trees. His heart hammered away in his chest, and he tried to get a handle on what had just happened. Alone in the darkness, the person he had seen seemed like a figment of his fearful imagination.

  By the time he had limped back to the party, his breathing had evened out, but he garnered a few strange looks for the leaves and dirt stuck to his pants. He hadn’t been able to recover the flashlight from whatever bramble it had fallen into — not that he’d lingered a long time searching for it. He was just glad it hadn’t been his phone he lost. The kids who noticed whispered to one another, and he realized they thought he’d been in the woods with someone, which probably seemed about as plausible as the idea that he’d been pursued by the reportedly deceased girl from their rival high school.

  Just as he found Rakesh, his pocket buzzed again.

  “Dude, I’m right here,” he said warily. The vibrations from his cell weren’t helping Jason’s jangled nerves.

  “Are you just getting my text now? Yo, you need a new phone. I sent that thing like ten minutes ago. We gotta go if we’re gonna get Lloyd home.” Rakesh surveyed him, and finally noticed how disheveled he was. “Whoa, where have you been?”

  But Jason could barely hear him over the rush of blood that rose to his ears when he looked at the text on his iPhone.

  Before you start digging around, remember I’ve got more experience hiding in the dark than you.

  The number was blocked.

  “C’mon, let’s bail,” Rakesh was saying, oblivious to Jason. “This party is over anyway.”

  Jason didn’t argue; he was desperate to get out of the woods. They collected Lloyd and trudged up the path to the road. When Jason swung his leg over the guardrail, he was temporarily blinded by the headlights from an oncoming car coming speedily around the curve. The screech of the tires startled Jason and he held his hand up to shield his eyes. He couldn’t see the driver, but for a split second he thought he saw a shock of blonde hair. And then the boxy black Volkswagen was speeding away.

  The v-dubs is old, but trusty. I call her Vinnie cause she’s vintage.

  “Jason? You okay?” Lloyd was looking at him strangely, and Jason looked down. He had one leg on either side of the guardrail and his hands gripped it so tightly his knuckles had turned white.

  “Uh, yeah,” Jason said, hopping over to the road and trying to keep from shivering. “Those headlights just shook me for a second.”

  “I swear,” Lloyd said, “we’re lucky no one’s been run over yet.”

  “Seriously,” Jason said. But he was barely listening. His mind was back in the woods with his shadowy tail, and hurtling forward with the Volkswagen. It was stuck inside the phone in his pocket. It all seemed so surreal, like a dream, but it was Lacey he’d seen tonight. It had to be. Which meant Lacey was alive He shuddered. It was what he wanted more than anything, so why did he feel like something terrible was about to happen?

  Hey, buddy! Did you get a haircut? You look great!” Whenever Jason Skyped with his dad, the first question was always about his hair. He wore it the same way day in and day out, with a trim every five weeks, but that didn’t make a difference. It was always “Did you get a haircut?” or “I see you’re growing out your hair,” or once a knowing point to his own head and a suggestive, “Trying something new there, eh?” His dad hated that they only saw each other in person a couple times a year, but Jason wished he’d come up with a better way to express it than commenting on the brown mop Jason did his best to ignore.

  “Nope, same hair I always have.”

  “Well really, it looks great,” he repeated. “How’s life? How’s school? What’s new with you?” The barrage of questions was also standard operating procedure for their video chats.

  “Life is okay. School is fine. There’s not much new.” The answer was automatic, and most days it was even true. But a lot had changed in the last week.

  “‘Okay’? ‘Fine’? ‘Not much’? Come on, bud, what’s new? What’s been going on? How’s Rakesh? How’s Lacey?” Jason had forgotten he’d mentioned Lacey to his dad. He hadn’t meant to, but a couple weeks ago he’d been so fired up after a particularly great back and forth they had just had regarding Taylor Swift’s songwriting abilities (normally averse to all bubblegum pop, Jason had a soft spot for the country star. Lacey was convinced she had a staff of songwriters responsible for her best work) that he dropped her name accidentally when his dad asked what was making him smile.

  “Rakesh is good. Colleges keep contacting him about squash. He’s thinking about Stanford.” Jason didn’t know if it was true or not, but he knew his dad wanted him to go to college in California.

  “Stanford! That’s a great school! I’m in San Francisco all the time for work.”

  “If Rakesh goes there, you can see him all the time.”

  “Well, you know how much I like Rakesh, but you’re the one I’d like to see all the time. What else is new? What have you been up to this weekend?”

  Oh, just visiting my girlfriend’s memorial — you know, the one she has because everyone thinks she’s dead. I’m getting to know her friends, who like me, and her family, not so much. She won’t tell me what’s going on, but she is following me and texting me weird messages from strange numbers, so I’ve got that going for me. “Um, Rakesh and I went to a party last night. I talked to this dude in my class about surfing for a while.” He switched gears. “How are you, Dad? How’s work? How’s Emily?” Emily was his dad’s girlfriend. Jason would never tell his mom, but he genuinely liked her.

  “I’m all right. Same old, same old at the office — sales calls and meetings and trips up north. Between you and me, I think Emily might kill me if I work late one more time this month. But we’re getting by. Are you still thinking you’ll come out and visit over spring break?”

  “Yeah, but I’ll probably have to work for most of the trip — school has been crazy busy.” Jason filled his dad in on his classes and listened to him describe a gourmet business dinner he’d had in Napa. Their conversations were always like this — strained at first and then settling into something more comfortable. Jason still wished his dad lived on the East Coast — especially whenever Mark commented on his clothing or tried to bro down with Rakesh — but the hour they spent talking to each other every week was a lot healthier and happier than the relationships some of his friends had with their dads.

  When they said good-bye, Jason’s head was clear. Feeling inspired, he picked up his notebook, flipping to the back pages where he’d been jotting down lyrics.

  It was all turning gray

  It was all turning black

  Then you were there

  And you keep coming back

  These things tend to get ugly

  Or so I am told

  But now that you’re here

  Everything’s coming up gold

  Drive out, see the stars, in the car, we’re falling hard

  Wake up, feel the sun, touch your hair, see your heart

  He’d pressed his pen to the paper before he fully realized he wasn’t on speaking terms with the girl he’d been writing about, because the girl he’d been writing about didn’t exist anymore. It wasn’t that she was dead — Jason didn’t believe that,
despite the obituary — but Lacey had a secret, a big one.

  At the bottom of the page he’d written

  Everything’s coming up gold

  Everything’s coming up gold

  Everything’s coming up gold

  He could hear it in his head. This was how he’d been planning to end the song, but now all he could think about was the blonde hair he’d seen in the darkness the night before. Just until Monday, I swear. Do you trust me? It was 4:45 on Sunday afternoon. It would be Monday in no time. But Jason couldn’t wait any longer. He tossed away his notebook and opened a new document on his computer.

  Lacey,

  I don’t even know how to say this, but I Googled you last week. I know, I know, kind of stalkerish, but in my defense, I really like you and I just wanted to know more about you. Not the point. You probably know where this is going … I found your obituary. And then I found your memorial Facebook page. And then I visited your actual memorial in Brighton Park. And then I called your house.

  Jesus, typing this stuff out it seems crazy, and it has FELT crazy. I want to trust you, really, I do, and I want to give you all the time and space you need to figure things out, but you have to admit it’s kind of, um, insane? That everyone thinks you’re … dead? You’re not dead, right? Because this would be REALLY weird if you were dead. Haha. Sorry, that’s probably not funny.

  Look, I’m sure you have a good reason for all of this, and whatever it is, I swear, I will be there for you. I can’t even imagine what things must be like for you that you need to keep these secrets — I hate the idea that you’re in trouble or something. I think you’re great, and I don’t want to lose you, but you have to tell me what’s going on or else I don’t know if I can do this anymore.

  So, um, that’s it. I’m worried about you, and I want to help you. I hope you write back soon.