Oblivion (10 page)

At last, my fingers close around a pen; a searing pain zaps me between the eyes simultaneously.

I bite off the cap, pull off one of my gloves, and press the felt-tip to my palm. Instantly, I’m sucked into a memory, as if a photograph has suddenly come to life and I’m in the center of it:

I’m running, looking over my shoulder. Palmer. He’s coming for me. He’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming! I dive into the juniper bushes, the taste of Andrew Drake’s kiss still lingering on my lips, but I’m too late.

Hand on my ankle.

Pulling me from the brush.

White gravel skidding over my flesh as I squirm to get away.

Thwack!
Thick strap of leather biting my back. Over and over and over again.

My head submersed in holy water.

My God, he’s going to kill me! Drown me!

Water rushes into my lungs, and I … I … I …

“Callie!”

What?

My pen falls to the pavement, jarring me from the vivid memory.

Hot tears wet my lashes, a sharp contrast to the winter-like wind whipping through my hair. I wipe them away with my multicolored scarf—one my mother crocheted for me when I was small, one of the few tangible items from
my past—and acknowledge John Fogel. “Hey.”

He crouches, when I do, to retrieve my pen. He grasps it first—“You okay?”—and locks me in a gaze. Slowly, he starts to smile.

“Yeah.”

We stand.

“Were you writing?” His eyes, illuminated by the streetlamps, reflect a deep navy tonight. He cups my left hand in his, scrutinizing what I scrawled there. “On your hand?”

“Yeah.” I attempt to coax my hand away, but he folds his fingers around mine. I’m freezing. He feels good and warm. A split second later, he withdraws.

“Hey … you know, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but …” He wets his lips with his tongue. “How often would you say you … you know … write like that?”

I think about it for a few moments, and consider perhaps downplaying the affliction.
Few times a week
, I could tell him. Or maybe I could respond with
oh, rarely ever
. Although we’re still blocks away, I smell the lake; the distant scent is already working its magic on my wired nerves, calming me with every inhalation. And then I blurt out the truth: “Sometimes I fight the impulse to write all day long.”

“Why fight it?”

I feel my defenses rising. Adrenaline rushes through my
system, like it does when some injustice has been carried out in front of me—like when Palmer would criticize my mother for the way she was raising me.

In the back of my mind, it’s happening now. I hear his boom of a voice from the other side of the confessional door:
She’s a child! And you reason with her!

“What I’ve read so far,” John’s saying, “It’s beautiful. You should put it to music. You sing beautifully, you know.”

I outwardly ignore the compliment, although it stirs up warmth within me. What can I say? That I don’t see my graphomania as art so much as a curse? That I don’t sing because it reminds me of my locked-up mother?

“You should join me in choir. Or at the very least, keep singing in chapel. Your pitch during the bridge this morning was …” He shrugs. “Perfect harmony.”

I briefly consider engaging in the conversation, but to me, bridges are things you use to cross bodies of water. If I sing in perfect harmony, it’s accidental, not a practiced skill, and I don’t have the slightest idea what he’s talking about. With a shake of my head, I change the subject: “So what’s the emergency tonight?”

“I never said it was an emergency. I just wanted to see you.”

“It wouldn’t wait until homeroom tomorrow.” I glance at him out of the corner of my eye.

He twitches a smile. “Well, I guess it is sort of an
emergency, then.” After a few steps, he clears his throat. “So what’s up with you and that guy?”

“Elijah?”

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t we talk about a more pertinent subject?”

“Pertinent?”

“Pertinent.”

“Everything is relevant, Calliope.”

I’m accustomed to the shortening of my name, as most people find it cumbersome, if not silly, to say, let alone to label a girl with. I feel mocked when people say it, or reprimanded, sometimes. But when John says it, it sounds nearly musical.

I glance at the words I’ve just written on my hand: Flutter shy, shutter click. Cluttered skies, scuttle quick.

He brings a warm index finger to my cheek, brushes away a few windblown strands of my hair. “Come on,” he whispers, nodding toward the harbor.

I shove my hands into my pockets and follow like a lemming. Then again, why should I come to my senses now?

After a few steps, I look over my shoulder. It feels like someone’s following us, but no one’s there.

Flutter shy, shutter click. Flutter shy, shutter click. Cluttered skies, cluttered skies, cluttered skies scuttle quick
.

My heart kicks up a few notches, along with the pace of my feet. In my mind, I’m rushing through the labyrinth
behind the Church of the Holy Promise. Trying to get away, trying to disappear in the hedges. He’s close … so close. Can’t let him see me.

Flutter shy flutter shy flutter shy
.

We conduct the remainder of our walk in silence, but my head is pounding with the cacophony within. As much as I want to sink into the comfort John offers, this was a mistake, coming out here tonight. Too much at stake—and Lindsey’s trust is just the tip of what I might be risking. Every time I sneak out at night, I risk the Hutches sending me back to County, back to the group home to wait for another suitable foster family. Yet even when he leads me onto a pier, I comply, the soles of my boots clicking against the maze of aluminum planks, as if announcing my arrival. I climb up the ladder of a vessel at least forty feet long, bobbing in dark waters in slip 43, one of the outermost slots.
Ikal del Mar
is lettered in flowery blue script on the side.

I wrap my fingers around an ice-cold rail on deck and stare out into the darkness. In my mind’s eye, I see the rocky shoreline at Highland Point. Hear the shovel. Smell the loam.

Lake Nippersink rages tonight. We could disappear in the waves, if we were aboard any lesser boat. The waves could swallow us, drown the words bobbing in my brain. I could set sail northward, fade into the forests, fade from Lindsey’s memory—and Elijah’s, too.

“Come on.” With a hand on my elbow, John leads me
down into the cabin, where it’s considerably warmer. He takes my vest, hangs it on a hook near the stairs we just descended.

I wonder if my father stole Hannah Rynes into the waterways, if I’ll see either of them again, if I’ll ever look at anyone in the same way after this experience. I glance at John, who is busy pulling a white duvet from a cedar-lined chest. The ambrosia of the wood, combined with the scent of apples and furniture polish, suggests the vessel is meticulously tended, despite—or perhaps because of—the end of the season at hand.

“Have a seat.”

I lower my body to a built-in sofa and unlace the pompom strings to remove the boots from my feet. My toes are cold, and so are my legs. Jeans would’ve been a better choice than cable-knit leggings, but I don’t have any that aren’t riddled with random lines of compulsive poetry.

He tosses the duvet over my lap, then sits next to me. Close.

“May I?” He caresses the tiny ring on my necklace. “Beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“My mom. When I was little.”

“Huh.” He squints at it.

I wonder why he’s so interested in it. “So now that you have me here …”

Shapes and bright colors tumble in the irises of his eyes, as if I’m staring down the barrel of a kaleidoscope. Squares become rectangles become lighthouses. Blinding beacons cross my line of sight at intervals.

I’m digging in the black of a rainy night.

There’s a rosary in my pocket.

I hit something hard. Tap it with the blade of my shovel. Tap again just to be sure. Sounds like wood. Is this it? Is this the makeshift casket that holds my father’s corpse?

The voice in my head spews clues. Must write.

It’s too much, too much, too much!

I need a pen. The words echo:
flutter shy, flutter shy, flutter shy
.

John’s speaking, but I can’t concentrate on what he’s saying.

Flutter shy, shutter click. Cluttered skies scuttle quick into the vast unknown, into the vast unknown, into the vast unknown. Flutter shy, shutter click. Into the vast unknown beyond … Cluttered skies scuttle quick … Flutter shy, flutter shy, flutter shy …
The pressure’s building. Must write it.

Tears build, encouraging me to let go, already. I flinch. Pain stabs me between the eyes. I rifle through my bag, grasp my pen. “Flutter shy, shutter click.” The words come out in a whisper.

“Hmm?”

I rip my notebook from my bag. Tears blind my vision,
but I see John’s blurry silhouette in the periphery. He’s going to think I’m crazy, but …

“What did you …?”

I pinch my eyes shut, closing him out of my mind.

I’m there again, at Holy Promise. I hear my mother’s muffled cries, coming from beyond the closed door of the confessional, along with the slash of leather on flesh. I run through corridors, past the dark walnut carvings of Jesus and John the Baptist, to the door that leads to the bell tower. I imagine I can still hear her:
Don’t you touch her! Don’t you touch her!

“Callie?”

My eyes open, only to be accosted by John’s concerned, blue-eyed stare. He’s holding my head in his hands, catching my tears.

Flames lick at my body from the inside out. I wonder if I’m housing a demon, if the words come from some otherworldly parasite, eating away at my chance to live a normal life.

Coming here was a mistake. Letting anyone close enough to hear the voice of the demon is a risk I shouldn’t take again. Elijah and Lindsey. They understand, they accept, they love me anyway. I don’t need anyone else.

I swallow some tears and attempt to sit up. “I have to—”

“You okay?”

I catch a tear on my knuckle and look to my notebook:

Flutter shy shutter click. Cluttered skies scuttle quick
into the vast unknown beyond the rain. Rumble high humble thunder. Tumbled nigh, never wondered for the fast controlled, consumed with rage.

“Flutter shy?”

God, he’s reading what I wrote. I whip my notebook closed and shove it into my bag.

“There’s a boat, few slips over, called the
Fluttershy
.”

I’ll have to remember to mention that to Ewing. Maybe these words are the product of suggestion, just like the rosary in my dream. My hand falls upon my deck of Tarot, which is almost always hidden in my bag alongside the tools of my trade. I pat it in homage to my mother. “I should go before—”

“You have talent, you know. This doesn’t have to be the curse you make it.”

An icy current rushes through my system, followed by warmth and comfort when I meet his glance. I’d give anything to stare into his calming gaze, a look that says I don’t have to prove anything, I don’t have to change. I’m good enough the way I am.

I was wrong about him. He does understand.

I
’m shivering.

Nauseated.

Swaying, rolling, bobbing.

My black surroundings gradually mutate along a spectrum, softening first to a midnight blue, then raging through a cone of greens, yellows, oranges, until a screaming red speeds through my pupils, ricochets in my brain, needles me until I open my eyes.

Light blinds me, as the morning sun beats down on my body, which is wrapped in wet clothing. The scent of the lake rises around me, or rather, from me, as I’m lying in a pool of it at the bottom of a rowboat.

Sobs rack my body, but I express neither sound nor tear. I hurt, I hurt, I hurt.

My head aches with every bump of the oars against the shell of this craft. When I push myself up to a seated position, my stomach retches. I lean over the side of the boat to purge my innards, but nothing comes up. After a few dry heaves, I surrender to the misery, complacent that nothing will come from nothing, and I can’t remember the last time I ate. I breathe through the queasiness and try to relax. But it’s hard to ease tense muscles while trembling.

A thin, pale yellow cotton sundress clings to my skin. The pearlescent buttons threaten to split open like the Red Sea, but I’m certain if Moses were here, he wouldn’t be parting waters to carry me home. A prophet wouldn’t help a sinner like me.

And a sinner I am.

Palmer is sure to remind me of that. Every second he gets.

My teeth chatter as a breeze whips around me. I gauge my surroundings, which include nothing but water. Silvery water, twinkling with diamondlike reflections of the early morning sun. In the distance, I see it: a white cottage. So far away.

How long have I been out here?

Too long.

I’m so cold, so weak. But I take up the oars and row. With every pull, the muscles in my arms, in my back, in my neck, strain with lethargy and stiffness. Something shiny entertains me from its position on the boat floor near the
aft of the vessel. To thwart my discomfort, I focus on it, as I draw the oars through the water. It’s a beaded string. A necklace, maybe. The pendant clangs against the inside of the hull.