Rhythm & Clues: A Young Adult Novel (27 page)

As we stall during standstill traffic, Sabrina crawls back into the front seat. I ruminate the new info, unable to focus on one thread. Does knowing the second half of my history make me more complete? Or has the puzzle scattered into pieces that no longer fit together in this composite I’d created about myself?

Present Day

W
e spend the next half hour in silence until we reach Lockhart. Ivy curls around gothic buildings made of mismatched stone. They’re arranged in a semi-circle with a grassy quad filling the space between them where students sit on the grass and read or toss a football in a group. We circle around until we find parking behind the ornate buildings, where boxy modern dorms hide in the background.

Sabrina blinks, eyes wide, and the place that should have been her home. She lets out a little whimper in mourning for the life she never could have had.

Just as we’re pushing open our doors, Isla’s cell phone buzzes. “Hey, Becca!” she says too loud, clearly for our benefit.

I shut the door and lean forward to hear better. Isla sets her phone to speaker and rests it in the center console.

“You!” Becca screams into the phone. “Zack’s freaking out. He doesn’t know how to survive without you! Are you with Gavin? He’s not here either.” She finally takes a moment to breathe.

Isla ignores all that. “Did you get a chance to read the documents?”

“Ugh, yes. What I think it means is Sabrina’s dad drew up these legal papers in order to sue Dennis Cunningham over ownership of
Breaking Free of Silence
. But from the way the documents were left, it never went to court. And since Dennis never signed them, he still owns the rights legally.”

“Does it say
why
my dad wanted to sue?” Sabrina asks.

“Oh. Hi Sabrina,” Becca says. There’s a moment of silence as she continues to read. “No. Documents like these wouldn’t convey that information.” Becca gasps. “Oh, shit. Ms. Kennedy just spotted me. Gotta go.” She hangs up.

I tap the seat in front of me. “Why would your dad sue for ownership if he didn’t help write it?”

Sabrina shrugs. “Maybe he did.”

“Maybe we need to get out of the car and find answers.” Isla pushes open her door and we all scramble out. She pops her trunk and grabs the VCR. “I think we should bring this just in case.”

We set off for Lyman hall, trekking across the graveled parking lot toward one of the hulking stone buildings. My mind spins around the clues. An unsigned contract for joint ownership of a hugely successful song. A song Chuck and Josephine despise. In fact, they despise it so much they banned music from their children. A verbal threat. A dead guy named Omar Parks. A VCR. 90C. Unknown evidence. Sabrina’s parents fleeing like their butts were on fire. The question mark around what Gavin means by White Powder (one of two).

And Gavin, missing.

None of it seems to add up.

I’m in such a daze, I careen right into a guy rushing toward another building. The smack whacks the wind out of my lungs. The guy scrambles out of the way and raises his hand in apology.

I dust myself off and keep going, determined to keep my eyes peeled from now on. I can’t find Gavin if I have my head in the clouds.

Gavin
. Just thinking his name makes my chest ache.

Fire-escapes cover one entire wall of Lyman Hall like a woven basket, taking fire safety a little too far. One extends from each and every room, creating a complicated maze of metal ladders. Students lounge on some of the landings, books balanced in their laps. A guy with a goatee stumbles over guitar chords as he serenades a girl next to him.

Inside Lyman Hall, a bulletin board stretches along the back wall, the words “MEET AND GREET: TONIGHT” cut out of construction paper in bubble letters. Gray carpeting flecked with blue speckles leads our way toward the elevators.

The elevator doors open and we squeeze inside. The squeal of hydraulics grates on my pounding skull. When the doors pop open, we come face to face with the illusive 90C. My stomach flip flops as Sabrina pounds her fist against the door.

Collectively, our chests still. We’re banking on something being here, the key to everything, but what if it’s not?

A boy with a crew cut and acne marks dotting his face answers the door. He smiles brightly at Isla, then Sabrina, then me, as if he’ll take whichever one of us steps toward him first. “You my chick-stalkers? The love shack is open, I’ve been waiting.” The guy opens the door wider, and I need to squint from the bright light emitting from it. Sparkles of gold blind my vision.

“You must be Ty.” Sabrina pushes herself into the crevasse of the open door and gasps.

Isla and I rush in after her but stop short in the entryway. “Oh. My. God,” she says, plucking the words right out of my mouth.

Gold foil covers the entire walls, like a King’s royal bedroom where expensive gold encases every surface. No spot on the wall left untouched.

“Yogurt tops.” Ty gestures around his room. “I collect them. Been up for two nights gluing them. Had to find something to cover fifty years worth of tape marks.”

I groan. “Great, you’re as insane in person as you are on the phone.”

Ty lounges on his bed by the door, an unassuming navy bedspread looking out of place beneath him. Sports trophies line the shelf above his roommate’s bed, adding to the opulent ambiance. “So what brings you ladies to my humble abode? Beside my body, of course.”

Evidence
. I spin in circles in the room, unsure what exactly I’m looking for. Something written on the wall…beneath the yogurt tops? Something more obvious?

“We’re looking for something,” Sabrina says, “but we don’t know what.”

Ty eyes Isla’s VCR. “Is it a tape?”

We all glance at each other. “Maybe?” we say in unison.

“Why?” Isla squints at him. “Do you have one?”

Ty shrugs. “I collect yogurt tops, not ancient artifacts.”

“You know.” Sabrina cocks her head to me. “Gavin said in the first note how I would know the answers and you would know the destinations. Maybe this is what he wants
me
to figure out?”

I raise my brow. “Do you know the answer?”

She deflates. “No.”

Isla jiggles the VCR in her hands. “So, um, what now?”

Our eyes flick to the door, to defeat.

Ty wiggles his brows. “I can think of something.”

“Are you sure no one came in this room in the last few days? Anyone that looked like me perhaps? Did your roommate let someone in?” Sabrina asks.

Ty shakes his head. “No one except you three.”

I linger on Sabrina’s statement.
…In the last few days
… Maybe what we’re looking for wasn’t planted here recently. Several of Gavin’s clues point toward 1994. What if what we’re looking for was placed her back then?

But would it even still be here?

My eyes drop to the legal papers rolled up in Sabrina’s fist, the ones we pulled out of the closet wall. Gavin’s clue had said “
one of two.”
I gasp, covering my mouth with my palm. The only way something from 1994 would still be here is if it was buried in the wall, like the papers. Maybe Gavin meant that’s what Gavin meant by one of two. The papers were the first item we’d have to dig out of a wall. “What if it’s in the closet? Stuck in the wall. Like the papers.” My pulse thumbs as I trudge toward the closet.

Sabrina snaps her head up. “That’s crazy, it’s—”

“Worth a shot,” Isla says, shrugging.

Sabrina flicks her eyes toward Ty’s closet by the door and then to the window. She crosses the room. “My dad loved to tell the story of how he first met my mom.” She gets on Ty’s roommate’s bed, shoes and all. “He was lying in his bed and heard a commotion outside, so he sat up and looked out the window.” She demonstrates. “And Mom was down there getting harassed by guys.” Her voice gets into the story, raising in octave at the scary parts. “Dad ran down the fire escape to save her, blah blah, but don’t you see? He sat up to look out the window!” She pats the bed. “He slept here.”

I wrench open the roommate’s closet, relieved to see the walls inside void of yogurt tops. “Ty, do you have a hammer or anything?” I scan the room for a blunt object, focusing on the trophies. One of those will work. I hope they aren’t worth something.

“Whoa, what the hell? You can’t walk in here and just take something out of my roommate’s closet. Either you’re the best thief in the world—doing it in public—or you’re insane. I vote insane.”

“Sabrina, explain please.” Figurine in hand, I slide open the closet door. Ty flies to my side, pressing his hand against the door and opposing my force. I’m not strong enough to fight him, but Sabrina wraps her arm around Ty’s waist and pulls him to the nearer bed.

I crawl into the closet, kneeling on piles of shoes. Shirts graze the top of my head, and I hold my breath to avoid the stinky feet smell. I run my hand along the wall, not exactly sure what I’m checking for. It all feels smooth.

“My dad stayed in this room when he went to Lockhart,” Sabrina explains behind me in a super flirty voice. “We think he hid something here. In your roommate’s closet.”

“Like a pirate’s treasure?”

“Maybe,” she says, coyly.

I knock along the wall, checking for hollowness.

“And it’s in the closet. All these years?”

“My dad has a tendency to hide things in closet walls. We’ll pay for damages.”

All the knocks sound the same, muffled, except one spot. The very corner. It’s hollow here. I take a deep breath.

Clutching the trophy, I arc my arm backward and ram it into the wall. It only makes a small dent, but the noise is like a firework. I ram the object again and again until I create a hole. White particles fly out of the edges, plaster raining down.

I contort my body into a yoga pose, my arched stomach gracefully greeting the floor as I straighten out so my legs dangle inside the room. I sweep my hand inside the hole, meeting the cold, clammy air of empty space.

I pull my arm back out and grab the trophy again. I enlarge the hole to reach a different angle. This time when I wrench my hand inside, my fingers graze objects instead of air. My heart leaps. Holy shit. I was right. There’s something in here! “Yes!” Grasping the object tightly, I twist my hand until the rectangular object fits through the hole.

I exit the closet and wipe dust from an old VHS tape like a bone unearthed on an archeological dig. My fingers shake as I lift the tape high in the air in victory.

Isla and Sabrina do a mixture of gasps and cheers.

Ty raises an eyebrow. “That better be a lost JFK conspiracy tape. Was your dad on the grassy knoll?”

I roll the tape over in my hands. How did Gavin know this? Why didn’t he find it first? And more importantly, why did Chuck stash it in the closet for twenty years?

Isla quickly hooks up the VCR and we pop the tape in.

“Sit back and relax. Enjoy the show,” Ty whispers too loudly in Sabrina’s ear. I expect her to roll her eyes. But instead she giggles.

My back stiffens as static turns to scan lines and the tape begins.

Present Day