“Her dad died. But that was before I knew her. She and her mom moved into the neighborhood—sheesh, when was that—well, it was the summer before fifth grade, so . . .”
“A century ago?”
He laughs. “Something like that. But then her mom died, and that was worse. A lot worse.”
“How so?”
“It was a fire. We were there when it happened. Burned hot, burned fast.”
“
You
were there?”
“Yeah, gah, it was awful. A fire at the school, her mom was
inside, parent/teacher conference or something. Just, you know, one of those freak things, I guess.”
“Freak thing? How did the fire start?”
“I couldn’t say, really. I was a kid. Eleven maybe. Ten. There was an investigation, though, I remember that. I remember the police combing the neighborhood, so I bet we could find details online.” He pulls a smart phone from his pocket and opens the browser.
“But what were
you
doing there?”
“Flirting.”
“With Olivia?”
He sets the phone down. “Okay, I’ll admit, it’s weird to see her all over your dad, but back then, she was this gorgeous young thing in a neighborhood that was a little desperate for beautiful things.”
It’s strangely therapeutic to know I wasn’t the only one with a fractured childhood. “I didn’t realize you grew up poor. I thought your dad had money.”
“Sometimes. He had these ideas. Always with the ideas. Half the time we were rolling in cash, the other half we were scrounging the couch cushions for change to pay rent.” He slides his finger over his phone again. “Internet’s slow here.”
“It’s Stratus.”
“Right. Hey, can I ask you something?” he says. “I just . . . Hang on a sec.”
“Sure,” I say to his back. He’s already halfway down the hall. I think of Olivia, of a story that feels familiar, like a book I’ve read in the distant past. I can’t place the title and I can’t remember the players, but the plot rings true. I take another sip and Marco’s back in his chair, flipping through a leather journal.
Ali’s journal.
I can’t help but notice it’s taken quite a beating since he was here last, creased down the middle like it spends a lot of time in his back pocket.
“I’m glad you keep it with you.”
He keeps flipping. “I like to read it. It’s her, you know? I mean, I know it’s not, but she’s in here somewhere, in these pages. It’s stupid, because I always thought I knew her so well, but she was brilliant, you know? Like, really brilliant. Her words make me think.”
Memories tackle me, tickle me, summon a smile. “I always loved that about her.”
“Here,” he says, turning the journal toward me. “This quote, it’s not Shakespeare like everything else in here. Do you know it?”
A single sentence lines the top of the page:
Men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
I know it. This quote. I know where it’s from. But it’s the drawing below it that splits my world in half. It’s a pencil sketch of a woman’s hand.
Rings adorn her index and middle fingers, manicured nails gently curving toward her palm. Her forearm is exposed, three jagged lines marking the skin.
“Elle?” Marco asks, his hand suddenly on my wrist. “You okay?”
I search the page for something, anything to put this in perspective. But all I see is the girl in the marble hallway, Javan digging invisible claws into her arm. Somehow this girl made it to adulthood, otherwise how could Ali have seen her arm? How could she have drawn it? And now the child in the hospital makes sense—Ali’s journal putting it in perspective.
I haven’t been dreaming recent events. I’ve been dreaming about things in days gone by.
But why?
“Are you all right?” Marco asks, his hand on mine.
“I’m sorry. The apostle John wrote those words,” I say, my voice a hoarse whisper. “They’re from the Bible.”
At the word
Bible,
the halo thrums against my arm. It’s not a soft, subtle thrumming. The thing is shifting. I let my arm fall to my lap, but the halo’s unraveling, moving slowly, reforming into the crown. It rubs against the underside of the table, the gold rim sliding against my arm.
This is a different kind of terror. Different from a sketch that mirrors my nightmares, different from my mom’s empty grave. What do I tell Marco if he sees the halo move? I’m neither qualified nor prepared for that conversation.
My brow breaks out in a sweat, and I swallow. I have nowhere to hide this thing. I’m wearing a sundress, for crying out loud.
“Brielle? Are you all right?” Marco leans forward, looking into my eyes. “You’re pale.”
I want to reassure him, but mostly I want him to back away. Far away from the halo warming my arm. I lean against the table and press it against my stomach, wrapping it in the material at my waist. Standing, I turn away from him.
“Brielle?”
My sandals sound like army boots banging away at the floor as I run down the hall and into Jake’s room. I try to slam the door behind me, but it bounces off of something with a dull
thud
.
I hear it vibrate open and turn back to close it.
But Marco’s there. Followed me down the hall, his face concerned.
Stupid chivalry.
“What’s wrong?” he says, grabbing my shoulder.
That’s all it takes. My dress shifts, and the halo slides down my arm, tumbling into the air. It’s about halfway between the cuff and the crown when Marco catches it. But even his grip can’t stop it from reforming, and he jerks his hand away. I’m not sure if it’s the heat or the foreign feeling of metal moving under his touch, but the halo falls, landing on a pile of neatly mated socks.
Marco crouches, peering at the halo like a boy staring at a wriggling earthworm.
What is he thinking?
I want him to say something.
No, I don’t, because it’s sure to be a question.
A question I don’t know how to answer.
“Please tell me this is a homing device,” he says. “That it’ll take us back to the
Enterprise
if we click our heels together and say sweet things about home?”
I sink to the floor, kneading my face with the heels of both palms as the halo finishes its transformation.
“You know, I—I haven’t tried that.”
His eyes are reflected in the burnished surface. They look bulbous, amplifying this ridiculous geek-out. “Where did you get it?”
I don’t know what he’ll do if I tell him, but I know this: I won’t lie to Marco like my dad lied to me. Not even to make
this
conversation easier.
“Jake gave it to me,” I say.
“Can I touch it?”
I nod. He’s not looking at me, but I do it anyway. “It won’t hurt you.”
He presses his face closer and his fingers prod at it, like he plans to dissect it next. After a minute he slides his index finger around the rim. “It’s so hot. It’s like . . . like your hands,” he says quietly, his emerald eyes finding mine. “The night we found the children.”
He’s talking about something that happened at the warehouse. I reached down to help Marco up, and after wearing the halo for several days, my hands had taken on its heat. At the time he looked . . . well, like he looks now. Confused and in awe all at once.
It’s a feeling I understand.
“It does that,” I say.
He finally plucks up the courage and lifts the halo in his hands. I nearly have a heart attack, but I let him.
“What
is
it?”
And there it is. The question I really don’t want to answer.
“It’s a halo.”
I jump at the voice, but it’s Jake, standing in the doorway. Suddenly the world weighs half as much.
“Halo? Like the game?” Marco’s eyes haven’t moved from the crown in his hands.
“It’s nothing like the game,” Jake says.
And then he does it. There isn’t time to do anything but gasp before Marco has the thing on his head. It’s that fast. My throat makes a strange sound, and Jake looks as stupefied as I do. But he holds his hands up, his eyes telling me to wait.
Waiting is hard.
“It’s so hot,” Marco says. His shoulders sag and his eyes flutter and I don’t know what to do, what the halo will do. Jake must sense my discomfort, my need to act, because he signals again that I should wait.
Marco’s cheeks flush red, and his eyes, though closed, move back and forth behind his lids. He takes one . . . two . . . three . . . four peaceful breaths and then his breathing accelerates, faster and faster. He groans and cries out, jerking upright and sending the halo tumbling to his lap.
His upper lip breaks out in beads of sweat and his face takes on a slick, white pallor.
“Marco?” I say, crawling closer. “Are you all right?”
His Adam’s apple moves up and then down as his trembling hands push the halo off his leg, flinging it from him. It tumbles to a rest under Jake’s bed, but Marco’s standing already, holding every bit of my attention.
“Marco?” I ask again.
He shakes his head and turns away, toward the door. Toward Jake.
“Sit down, Marco. We’ll explain.”
His head turns left and right, and his hands continue to shake. I remember a time, in this very room, when mine did the same. I realize only half a breath before it happens that Marco is going to run, just like I did.
And then he does.
His shoulder connects with Jake’s as he pushes past him and down the hall. I stand and lurch toward the door, Jake already pursuing him. Before I make it halfway down the hall, I hear the front door open and close.
Marco’s gone.
As I round the corner into the kitchen, Jake flings open the door, his momentum propelling him onto the porch. I’m right behind, but when I fall into step next to him, his arm wraps my waist and I stop.
“Let him go,” Jake says.
“What if he saw the Celestial, Jake? He won’t understand that without help.”
“Not now. If I know Marco, he needs to try to figure this out on his own. When he reaches the end of his understanding, he’ll be back.”
“Jake . . .”
“Waiting is a part of the process, Elle. His mind can’t be forced.”
Canaan’s said those very words to me. On that same night. The night of the warehouse. The night Marco touched my hands and realized something was different. What did he tell himself about that? Did he reason it away?
What will he tell himself about the halo?
And how long will it take him to realize he needs help understanding?
I lean into Jake and watch as Marco disappears. He’s headed toward town. Toward Main Street.
There’s not much there, but I hope he finds what he’s looking for.
Y
ou have time for a drive?” Jake asks.
He’s released my waist and stepped away. It’s weird to have distance between us. I try to shake off the look on Marco’s face and focus on Jake. On this moment. But he’s walking away from me, down the stairs.
“I have something to show you. It’s not far.” He opens the passenger door to his car and holds it for me. I turn toward my house, toward the conversation waiting there for me. The sheriff’s cruiser is still in the drive. Dad will be fine. He has company and I’m still not ready to see him, so I drop down the stairs and slide into the Karmann Ghia.
Jake wasn’t kidding when he said we weren’t going far. He pulls off the highway and parks as near to the Stratus Cemetery gate as he can. Yellow caution tape marks off several areas where dirt and rocks seem to have been displaced.
“Is this all from my mother’s grave?”
“Yeah,” Jake says. “Crazy, huh?”
Being back here is strange. It feels very disconnected to me, and yet if I’m to believe Virtue, all this turmoil was caused
because the grave was empty. Because my dad hid emptiness below the ground.
All this because I wanted truth
.
I expect to be sad or angry being here again, but I’m just numb. We duck under the caution tape, and I let Jake lead me through the gate and along the path. It’s quiet. Birds zipping through the summer sky, chattering. Dragonflies escort us, unaware that this place has been violated. And still Jake says nothing until we’re standing beneath the mangled branches of the willow tree.
“I found something,” he says.
“Here? When?”
“Last night. This morning, actually. I came back,” he says. “Waited till the police cleared the area, and then I searched.”
“What were you looking for?”
“Anything,” he says. “Just something to point us in the right direction.”
Us.
“I really am sorry about that night. About sending you away like that.”
“Stop,” he says. “I’m not mad.”
His face is tighter than I’m used to, but I’m not about to call him a liar.
“Okay.” I squeeze his hand. “So you found something?”
“Look up,” he says.
The leaves of the willow are singed in places, branches bent and broken. Amongst the wreckage, it takes my eyes a second to find it. But there, hanging from a splintered branch, is a necklace.
It hangs about twelve feet up, a circlet of beads with a single wooden ornament decorating it.
A flower.
I refuse to sink to the mud here again, so I grab Jake’s arms. “I know that necklace. I’ve seen it.”
“Where?”
“I had another . . . it was . . . in a nightmare.”
“You had another nightmare? A different nightmare?”
“It started Saturday night, before the cemetery. You think that was buried with my mom?”
“Elle, we need to talk about the nightmare.”
“I know, and we will, but—”
He growls, frustrated.
“Jake! Do you . . . do you think it was in her casket?”
He releases my hand with a little more gusto than absolutely necessary and moves to the tree. “The thought crossed my mind,” he says. “I don’t know any other way it could have gotten up there.”
Jake grabs hold of a low-hanging limb. Hand over hand, he works his way up to the necklace and with deft fingers works it free.
“Catch.”
The necklace falls straight down, the wooden ornament tugging it toward me. I catch it easily and set to examining it. The beads are multicolored and strung in no particular order. There’s no clasp, just a knot holding it all together. The wooden ornament is circular and smooth, a white plumeria painted on it. Its yellow center is faded, the white petals scratched, but there’s no mistaking it. This is the necklace from my nightmare.