Oblivion (12 page)

Shattered in tattered sheets torn from the will of salvation.

Close the crimson door in your mind.

I
’m turning through my deck of Tarot, musing that every time Elijah crosses my mind, I flip over the Magician. Maybe he’s smoke and mirrors. “I’m becoming my mother.”

“Fight it tooth and nail.” In the damp confines of the shed, Lindsey brings a lit joint to her lips and breathes in a lungful of cannabis.

Blue October blasts through the new iPod speakers Mr. Hutch delivered to us last night. We knew he’d give in eventually, if only so he didn’t have to listen to us complain about how empty our lives had become without music to share. Lindsey’s head bobs in time with the beat—lackadaisical, carefree.

I guarantee her tune would change if she knew I hadn’t
cut class alone yesterday, if she knew that John and I shared a moment, if she knew he held my head in his hands.

And, God, I can’t stop thinking about it. It wasn’t an overt move … not really. I mean, sure, there was energy there, but … but it was probably because of the words, because he knows things about me, about my past.

He doesn’t mean anything by it. I don’t think, anyway.

“One thing I’ll never be,” Lindsey says, “is my mother.”

“I don’t mean I’m becoming Serena in the way most chicks fear in their late thirties.” I shove a lollipop—yum, cream soda—into the hollow of my cheek. “I mean I’m going crazy.”

Lindsey’s ponytail whips around when she shakes her head. “Impossible.”

But the words in my head won’t stop. This alone I can handle, but combined with the slide show in my mind, with the memories popping up out of nowhere, with the hints of images I can’t explain, I’m scared.

Confused.

A hazard to myself.

My phone buzzes with a text message. It’s from John. It’s the third one inside ten minutes. I turn over another card: a Knight.

“Give my love to the soccer stud,” Lindsey chokes out because she thinks I’m messaging with Elijah.

John:
c me 2nite?

Me:
time? place?

“Dude, I’m definitely gonna ask Jon to homecoming. Maybe double-date again. That was fun.”

I don’t think it’s a good idea for the four of us to be together. I fear John’s stare will linger. I fear I’ll respond.

Lindsey kicks her feet, clad in red-and-green plaid Keds—which are new, but came out of the box faded and ripped, to look old—against the wall of the shed in rhythm with the music.

“Elijah’s not the school dance kind of guy,” I say.

“The old Elijah isn’t, but he’s a kick-it boy now.” Lindsey nods toward my phone, still cradled in my hand and presently buzzing with John’s reply. “Go ahead. Ask him.”

John:
pick u up at harbor, 11ish
.

Me:
will b there. ask L to HC
.

John:
?????

“Jon hasn’t asked anyone else, has he?” Lindsey asks.

I shrug. “How would I know?”

Buzz.

John:
would rather ask u
.

A warm sensation floods my heart, and my cheeks are probably flushing with something between satisfaction and flattery. A second later, however, I’m nervous. He can’t mean that. We can’t go there. He’s Lindsey’s.
Lindsey’s
.

“What’d he say?” Lindsey obviously assumes I asked my pseudo boyfriend to homecoming via text message.

I don’t like lying to her, but the whole truth will never suffice. “He says we’ll talk about it later.”

“Figure it out. I’m asking Jon tomorrow.”

“I’m going to meet him tonight.” My voice is hushed, as if I’m far away from myself, although I know such a thing is impossible. “We’ll figure it out by morning.”

“Cool,” Lindsey says, bringing the joint to her lips and again assuming I’m talking about Elijah.

I close my eyes and lean against the slats of the shed wall. It’s raining again. A slow trickle of water beads down the wall, beneath the place where a few shingles have failed above. The scent of autumn encompasses me: crisp wind and wet leaves.

The shed is fading, regardless of my holding fast to the wall.

A barrage of raindrops pelts the back of my neck like bullets from an automatic weapon.

Dig. Chink. Sift.

Dig. Chink. Sift.

Classic rock—some song about a Christian girl about to lose her virginity—filters out of the speakers of John’s enormous SUV, when I slide onto the heated leather seat at the harbor.

My skin and clothing are damp with rain, despite my bringing an umbrella, which I’m shaking beyond the door so as not to drench the floor mat. The ink on my jeans blurs with rainwater.

“Hi.” He turns down the radio.

“This is crazy.” I slam the car door.

“Yeah, really coming down out there.”

“No, I mean this.” I wave my hand back and forth between us. “You and me. Sneaking away.”

His warm right hand closes around mine, after he puts the vehicle in gear. “So what do you say? Homecoming?”

“Yes,” I say before I have time to stop myself.

He grins, tightens his grip on my hand.

“But,” I continue, “there are two people who wouldn’t be too happy with that.”

“Two people on your side of the fence.” He clears his throat. “What’s with you and that guy, anyway? He’s hardly around—and trust me, if I had a girl like you, I’d be hard-pressed to leave you—and when he is, he barely looks at you.”

“That’s not true. You don’t know Elijah at all.”

“Sorry.” John’s thumb roves over my knuckles. “But it’s true enough. Is he taking you to homecoming?”

“Mine or his?”

“Either. Both. Just figured you’d be going with him, since you want me to ask someone else.”

A canyon depresses into my soul, leaving me feeling empty. I suspect Elijah and I aren’t going to either of our schools’ dances. Last year, we wouldn’t have even known when homecoming was taking place, but things are different now. “I think he’s seeing someone else at Lakes.” Suddenly, I feel as if I’ve missed out on a lot of things, sort of like a patient
emerging from a coma. “But you should ask Lindsey.”

“I like Lindsey,” he says, shrugging a shoulder.

“Good.”

“But we don’t have anything in common. There’s just … nothing there.”

A dash of heaven erupts deep inside me.

I pull out my last card: “If you take Lindsey, you’ll at least be able to spend the evening with me, too.”

“What if I want to spend the evening with just you?”

“John …” I sigh and stare out the window. “We can’t.”

He turns onto a gravel path, twisting and turning through a wooded knoll. “You can’t tell me you don’t feel this connection.”

I wouldn’t dare. I feel it everywhere.

The SUV comes to a bumping stop beneath a massive maple tree. He puts the car in park and shifts in his seat to engage me.

Although I meet and hold his glance, I’m acutely aware of our surroundings. Maple leaves slap against the windshield in my periphery. Toward the rear of the vehicle, illuminated by the red glow of the taillights, an expanse of prairie grass bends to the whims of the wind. “Where are we?”

“Near Highland Point.” His tongue momentarily touches his lower lip.

I’m powerless to look away.

His lips part into a brief smile. “Feel like walking in the rain?”

With a swift yank, hooking me under the arms, he artfully pulls me across the consul to his lap. The maneuver is so smooth that I imagine he’s done it before—probably countless times, but I’d guess with only a choice handful of other girls. I’m sitting sidesaddle, with my back against his door. When he gives me another hike to readjust, my foot hits a Red Bull nestled in a cup holder. The crown of my head bumps against the roof of the car. Maybe he isn’t as practiced as I assumed.

“Sorry,” he whispers. “But I can’t stop thinking about you. Can’t stop thinking about your voice, the words you write …”

For a few moments we sit in silence, our mouths lingering dangerously close to each other. His breath carries a faint hint of chocolate mint, which always reminds me of the Vagabond, of the scents of sweet coffees wafting from the kitchen.

“I can’t do this,” I say. “Lindsey’s way into you.”

“Lindsey and I don’t make sense.”

“You might. If you tried.”

His hand burns against my leg, atop a meter of vengeful poetry:
pay no dues to the years in kind, tear and gnash, rip the ties that bind.
“Can I trust you?”

I wonder how most girls my age would react to this inquiry, whether I’m a freak for answering: “I don’t know. Can anyone really trust anyone?”

“Good question.” His fingers knead my leg, as if
massaging the words like lotion into my flesh. His breath wafts over my lips.

For a few seconds, nothing is wrong in the world. I’m safe and cozy in his arms.

Half a breath later, however, I’m tumbling out the door when it gives way behind me.

John’s hand grips my wrist; his arm folds around my waist to catch me.

But it’s too late.

Suddenly, we land—laughing—in a heap on the soft, wet terrain of the Point. The cold, wet earth bleeds up through my jeans, through my sweater. His body acts as an umbrella, shielding me from the heavenly pelting, but soon, he’s drenched. I’m completely wet, too.

His laughter rings out in a hearty chuckle, which reverberates against me, inside me. “Sorry,” he whispers.

When he sits back on his haunches, and pulls me up with him, I realize I’m still laughing. Straddling his lap now, I’m surrounded by his strong frame. He gathers me against his chest and encloses me into his now sopping fleece-lined flannel coat.

He draws a wet curl over my cheek and tucks it behind my ear, then he trades glances between my mouth and my eyes. Licks rainwater from his lips. “I want to show you something.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

The beam of light filtering over us from the open car
door slants over his eyes and casts the rest of him in shadows. He peels one of my hands free from its position on his shoulder and presses something cold and metal to my palm.

My thumb travels over the object, deciphers its shape. It’s a cross, attached to a string of beads.

Memories flash. I remember worrying the beads, reciting a prayer I never learned at Holy Promise. A prayer to the holy mother. “The infamous rosary,” I say on a breath. “You think it’s mine.” It’s too dark to see its details, but I feel the shape with the pads of my fingers. Draped with a shroud. Crown of thorns hanging from the neck. Just like Mom drew.

“Come on,” John says. “Let me show you where it was buried.”

In a heartbeat, I’m on my feet, grasping the rosary with one hand, while holding him tightly with the other. Together, we’re running through the wet and darkness, leaving the open vehicle behind, as if ignoring a homing beacon.

I stumble when he stops short.

“Careful.” He catches me a hairsbreadth before I slide to the earth, my feet slipping on the mud.

The scent of the lake carries in on a gust of wind.

A flash of lightning illuminates the view before me, but its impermanence leaves me uncertain about what I think I just saw.

“John?” We’re standing on the high land, overlooking a rocky shore.

His arms envelop me; my back rests snuggly against his chest. He presses his moist cheek to my temple. “The Vagabond mystic … she told me I’d find a rosary buried up here. Twenty-five paces southwest of the old lighthouse foundation. Was
that
a cold read?”

I tighten my grip on the rosary.

“She also said I’d find the body of an angel here.”

“She said that?” Once again, the yellow sundress protrudes into my senses. I feel it clinging to my skin. My mother was sent away months before Hannah disappeared. I wonder what she was talking about, if she was giving bogus information, or if she knew something. Did she know Palmer had been planning to take Hannah?

“I’m thinking she must’ve meant it metaphorically. Like maybe I’d find you here.”

Lightning again splits the midnight sky, awarding me another glance at what’s down below. Amidst the rough terrain sits an old, overturned rowboat.

“My God,” I manage to say, although my head spins and my tongue suddenly feels too large for my mouth. “It’s
real
!” If the rowboat’s real, maybe I’m writing more than words. More than vague memories. They
mean
something. I’m trying to remember something.

And the rosary exists, which means my mother’s trying to remember, too.

Words begin to emerge, as if from mist, in my mind:
Close the crimson door. Close the crimson door. Close the crimson door
.

I’m already brushing my lips against John’s.

Crimson door, crimson door, crimson door
.

My fingers feather over the rosary. It’s a piece of the puzzle. And somehow, John is, too.

“I wish I could remember,” I say.

Close the crimson door in your mind
.

“Well, maybe you will someday.” Cradling my head in one hand, he brushes his lips over mine.

I smooth a hand over his chest.

His lips part, and he deepens the kiss. Our tongues meet.