Oblivion (11 page)

Laughter echoes in my mind, the giggly cadence of girls playing yard games. Red rover, red rover …

Static washes through my system, and my eyes glass over. Girls’ black patent leather Mary Janes—straps crossed over white ruffle-cuffed socks—crunch against pink quartzite stones. Their hands brush against juniper, shedding tiny blue buds from the branches; the berrylike things bounce to the ground and roll to the dirt beneath.

I pinch my eyes closed, and in time with the
whoosh
and
squeak
of the paddles, I count my heartbeats. Push the oars forward, pull them back again. Listen to the little girls in my mind. Pocketful of posies, pocketful of posies.

The scrape of land against the keel is music to my ears.

On shaking legs, I climb out of the boat into ankle-deep water, sink into sandy muck and reeds, and yank the vessel ashore in a small alcove between boulders. I’m at the foot of the cottage. Exhausted. Wet. Cold. The sunlight is the deceiving sort—bright and luminous, yet not warming.

I rest on a boulder and wait, as I can’t possibly climb up the rocky terrain after that voyage.

I curl into a shivering ball, tucking my dirty, bare feet beneath the soaked cotton sundress.

The shiny necklace in the boat draws my attention. Small
beads of pink topaz, larger of peridot. My fingers ache to hold it, to curl it around my palm, to pray.

Fingers snap in front of my face.

I startle.

“Dude.”

I flinch again. I’m in Lindsey’s car. We’re parked at Carmel High. I’m wearing my uniform. My hair is a tangled mess of damp strands, and my stomach threatens to turn out onto the floor mat.

“Dude, maybe you should go home,” Lindsey says.

My fingers tremble, still holding the red felt-tip I pulled from my bag at the onset of this trip.

I glance down at my notebook:

crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson crimson.

“You look like hell.”

“I have a French test today.” My backpack rests at my feet. I grasp a strap and open the car door.

“You okay?”

No.

“Yeah.”

She’s rifling through her suitcase of a purse and finally produces a lip gloss. “Hungover?”

“No!” Lindsey knows my vices; she knows alcohol isn’t one of them. I open the car door, and my feet find purchase on the blacktop. The ring slung on a chain around my neck bounces against my chest. I caress the precious metal, feather a finger over the marquise ruby.

“Must’ve been a late night with Elijah for you to be worn out like this.” Lindsey turns the rearview mirror toward her and touches up her lipstick.

I couldn’t explain, even if I wanted to, even if I thought Lindsey might understand the growing connection between the most recent object of her infatuation and me. Because I don’t quite understand it myself. It was a good night, but not the kind of night I usually spend with Elijah. It was intellectual and intense. Stimulating. Contemplative.

Lindsey casually slings her purse over her shoulder and glides out of the car, as if she’s on some sort of pulley system for how smoothly she moves. I wonder why John doesn’t want to get to know her better. She’s got it all together—looks, money, family. Compared to her, I’m an unraveled sweater.

And these daydream/nightmare sequences are almost pushing me over the edge.

I can’t be sure the events in my memory are snippets of my life, but they don’t seem to be solely figments of my
imagination. The business with the little girls running through the labyrinth … that was real. I was watching the younger children of the congregation from my post in the bell tower the morning Palmer committed my mother to the asylum.

But the rowboat? The yellow sundress with faux pearl buttons? I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing such a prissy thing, particularly if I’m rowing a boat. Is it possible to meld memories with daydreams? I feel as if I’ve physically experienced the occurrences spinning in my mind, as if I’m an actress who has played these scenes on screen. I’ve experienced them vividly, but they have no correlation to my reality.

I do know this: I haven’t slept. My eyes threaten to close, and my limbs are still heavy and aching, as if I really did row miles across Lake Nippersink.

Crimson. Crimson. Crimson.

“Are you coming?”

I cap my pen, hike my bag higher on my shoulder, and follow Lindsey into the building. At the first fork, I turn right when she turns left. I stow my navy blue peacoat in locker number 1307. There’s a box of red felt-tip pens on the top shelf. I take another one from the box—can’t hurt to have a spare—walk a few hundred paces to homeroom, collapse into my assigned chair, and rest my head on my folded arms against my desk. The pounding in my brain pumps through my fingers, my toes, my eardrums.

“Hey, beautiful.”

I momentarily lift my gaze to acknowledge John Fogel, who isn’t sitting where he ought to be, but my head is too heavy. I can’t hold it up.

“Listen.”

At his insistence, I reengage. He’s wearing a vintage leather bomber over his Land’s End apparel. The dark umber of the jacket makes his eyes look bluer.

He licks his lips. “Wanna get out of here?”

I shun the Jiminy Cricket in my head—the voice telling me not to cut class, not to go anywhere alone with John Fogel—and nod. While Jiminy might be right to warn me, he’s neglected to realize I’m in no condition to learn right now, certainly no condition to pass a French test.

“Grab your coat on the way to chapel, and meet me in the parking lot.” He drums his hands against the desktop for the few moments it takes for me to nod my head again. He offers a quiet smile—“Great”—then saunters across the room to occupy the desk at which Mrs. Kenilworth expects to see him seated.

Crimson
.

I’m stunned that he brought me here.

“We don’t have to stay long.” John walks beside me at a lazy pace, his hands stuffed into his pockets. “It’s cold.”

I spread my arms wide and float in my tired delirium toward the winding paths of the labyrinth behind Holy
Promise. The wind cuts through me like a razor blade, a blunt reminder of all that’s happened here over the years, yet also proof that those days are nearly three hundred sixty-five behind me. Ewing would call me a survivor, and every day that passes is another victory over Palmer Prescott.

I close my eyes, if only to test myself. I can traverse this trail in the pitch-black of night. How many times had I traveled these paths on my mother’s hand? Countless. Too many. And on my father’s?

“You’ve been here before,” John observes.

“My father insisted walking the labyrinth was an exercise in spiritual centering,” I say. “If you concentrate on a question as you walk, you gain direction by the time you reach the center.”

“Direction might be good in a place like this. What do you do if you get lost?”

“You can’t get lost.”

His fingers hook around my hand. “Because you know the way.”

“Because there’s only one way. No dead ends, no tricks. That’s the point. The complications of life are mostly human-handed. Cleansing the spirit ought to be as simple as meditation, reflection, and prayer.”

“This is a place of new beginnings.” He slows his pace—and therefore mine, too—until we’re standing face-to-face between two seven-foot-high walls of juniper. “Did your father tell you that, too?”

We’re hidden here, but someone’s watching us. I feel it.

Crimson crimson crimson
.

“Do you know what happened here?” he asks.

I sweep my glance over my shoulder, over the white stone path behind us, the last known location of Hannah Rynes.

I see no one, nothing out of the ordinary.

Much like the day she vanished.

What was I missing that day? What am I missing now?

“This is the church, the last place anyone’s seen Hannah Rynes.”

My heart kicks up its pace. My name’s been kept out of the newspapers for most of the past year, but I’m not naïve enough to think people can’t put two and two together. Anyone who was paying attention to the case would remember that the original report included two missing girls—and I was one of them.

I can tell by the way he’s looking at me—narrowed gaze, brows slightly slanting downward in a minute frown—John knows who I am, knows how I landed at Carmel Catholic. He knows about the girl whose memory Hannah Rynes’s family rests their hopes on. The girl who can’t remember what she saw, or if, in fact, she saw anything at all.

A fiery blush crawls up my neck. I don’t know how I can’t remember what happened that day. I fear it’s written all over my face—guilt, frustration. Humiliation. And his stare is so relentless that I can’t hold it, can’t bear its weight.

“Your father had lots to say about this labyrinth, and this is Palmer Prescott’s church. Is Reverend Prescott your father?”

I consider ignoring the question. If I could find a way to answer cryptically, without lying, I’d do so in a second. But I know it’s futile. “Yes,” I say. “He was.”

“Was?”

I shrug. “Is, maybe.”

“I know he’s supposed to be some great man, but …”

I involuntarily shudder with the assumption.

“Do you think he took Hannah Rynes?”

“I can’t prove it.”

“But do you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

“So do I.”

The threat of a memory stretches at my brain. The truth of what happened is here … in the center of the labyrinth. Just out of reach. At the fountain.

The groundskeepers have already drained the water in preparation for the upcoming winter, but I imagine it in all its glory, spouting the essence of rebirth. When I was four years old, Palmer baptized me here for the first time, yet despite the purity this location represents, memories of its evil haunt me. He had me in this fountain several times, attempting to show me a better way, trying to force me down a purer path. Even the thought of my mother—a softer, kinder, saner version—can’t soothe the prickles of dread taunting me now.

The marble ledge surrounding the fountain at the center of the labyrinth is cold against my back; it chills me to the bone. The stone always feels cold, even at the height of summertime, because the sun rarely shines down upon it. I think that’s why Palmer chose this place to release his wrath on me.

I try to drown the bad memories with better ones. But shadows flash. I wonder if I’ll ever forget.

No one climbed up to the bell tower without Palmer’s permission, and the bell tower is the only vantage point from which one can view the paths of the labyrinth. He knew when no one would be looking. He knew when it would be safe to strike.

Distant memories course through my mind; dreamlike apparitions dance in the dark recesses of recollections, so vague they must be part of a collective subconscious. I wonder if I’ll ever trust my memories again, or if I’ll live in a perpetual fog, recalling things I couldn’t possibly have witnessed.

My head pounds with the words and spins with every breath I take until I feel as if I’m spiraling in midair.

I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. Notebook, notebook, notebook, notebook.

The zipper on my bag. It’s stuck. Won’t open.

I struggle to inhale.

Watch John’s nimble fingers work on the zipper.

I need my pen need my pen need my pen needmypen!

Kissing Andrew Drake on the altar; Palmer drags me out the door. The juniper branches scratch my skin as I brush past them.

Slash!
My father’s leather belt bites across my back, the scent of holy water swims in my nostrils.

Slash!

Blood—my blood—drips into the fountain, a curdling red ribbon quickly dissipating into the pool—red to pale pink to nothing. Fading.

My vision goes fuzzy.

I’m in the garden house beyond the labyrinth, where the gardeners keep their tools. There’s a cot in here, too, although I’ve never understood why. I’m lying on the cot, and I can hardly breathe in the musty, cool air.

He’d dunked me in the fountain to cleanse my soul. I’m drenched and shivering.

Stone-cold eyes like coal penetrate my gaze when he leans over me.

A stale breath puffs in my face. I tense on the spot. Sweaty palms crush me.

John’s voice gives me a jolt. “Callie?” A bright light blinds me.

I tumble back through the tunnel, toward the light.

Tears trickle down my cheeks as the feeling of cold marble permeating through the backs of my thighs slowly pulls me back to reality. The brisk breeze washes over me, sends a chill through my veins. I’m sitting on the ledge
surrounding the fountain. My hand aches with the grip on my pen.

“Callie, breathe.”

My eyes open. I wheeze a “sorry” before I know what I might have to apologize for.

He’s squatting before me, and he’s cupping my face.

I hook my hands over his wrists, caress his watch. “John.”

His concerned stare settles on me. “Breathe.” A smile twitches at the corner of his mouth. “I’ve got you. You’re okay.”

I am.

I draw in a slow breath, breathe in the scent of him.

My fingertips are tingling.

He gives his head a shake. “You’re kind of amazing, you know that? Don’t fight this. Let it come to you.”

“I feel like a carnival sideshow.”

“It’s just something you do, all right? It isn’t who you are. It’s like … football. I play it. But it doesn’t define me. This isn’t any different.”

“There’s a point to football.”

“Yeah, I guess.” He bites his lip for a second. “But there’s purpose to these words, too.”

I swallow over the lump in my throat and brave a glance at my notebook:

Close close close close close the crimson door crimson crimson crimson crimson door crimson door door door close the crimson door in your mind … close … shattered shattered shattered tattered tattered tattered. Shattered in tattered sheets sheets sheets sheets shattered in tattered sheets torn torn torn torn torn from the will of salvation.