The Vanishing Game (23 page)

I heard the truth in his voice. All the feelings I had for him from so long ago became as fresh as if we were kids again. He was close enough that I could just make out the concern on his features. Noah brushed a strand of hair from my face. I sensed his uncertainty.

“What is it?”

“I want to kiss you.”

I let out a surprised breath. “Okay.”

He slid his hand beneath my hair to the base of my neck, gently pulling me into him. I closed my eyes and we kissed, fulfilling my secret five-year longing. His mouth was tender and his kisses passionate. Images of a flaring vampire cape and a black-clad ninja came to mind before we finally separated.

“I've been waiting for you to do that since I was twelve.”

He chuckled. “Glad you didn't tell me that before I kissed you. That's a lot of pressure.”

“No, it was perfect. Do it again.”

The padding from the quilts wasn't enough to make a comfortable resting place. I slept fitfully. It was a couple of hours after midnight when I roused from a dream. Melody was crying about her lost love Calvert, and I slapped her. She turned and ran into the dark, leaving me with the old woman wearing the silver cross who touched my head and my heart before fading away. I woke up just enough to know how tired I was, my conscious mind barely breaking through the surface. I turned on my side and sank back into a deep sleep.

The next time I dreamed, it was a dream within a dream. Once again I was at Seale House, standing in the girls' bedroom, mesmerized by the walls. As young Jocey I'd just woken up from a deep sleep. At first it seemed I must have still been dreaming, because the wall had changed from plaster to flesh, the slowly undulating side of a giant
snake. Spellbound, I reached out and felt its pulsing life force beneath my fingertips. The beat was sluggish, like the thump of a heart big enough to belong to a great blue whale. Twelve-year-old Jocelyn's breath got trapped in her lungs as the wall continued to distort, taking on the appearance of a malignant growth. Crying out in terror, I staggered away.

Jerking awake, I found myself standing in a different room, this time in the small town house. My hand was against the wall, which pulsed beneath my fingertips. Disoriented, I stepped back, my heart racing, my body shivering with fear. I squeezed my eyes shut and reminded myself of what Dr. Candlar always said during our therapy sessions: realistic nightmares were simply my mind's way of dealing with past fear and pain. After I opened my eyes and reached out again, there was nothing but a normal wall.

I heard Noah's angry shout and hurried back downstairs. In the dim morning light he was sitting up and breathing heavily. His eyes were so furious that it reminded me of my last night at Seale House, just before I ran away.

“Noah? Are you okay?”

He shook his head and ground the heels of his palms into his eye sockets as if trying to wake himself. Had we both experienced bad dreams at the same time? We'd had enough stress during the last two days to give each of us nightmares and then some. Once he lowered his hands he seemed more himself, though his expression was still angry. I asked what was wrong.

“I dreamed about Gerard setting that bomb. He was
grinning the whole time, and I wanted to kill him.” His voice was enraged. Noah could be sarcastic and angry, but pure hatred was something I'd seldom seen in him.

“I can't blame you.” I sat down close by.

He grabbed the sweat-soaked hem of his shirt and yanked it over his head, using it to wipe the dampness from his chest before tossing it aside. In the growing light I could clearly see the muscular outline of his torso and arms, which only emphasized how much he'd changed since we'd last been together. The awkward kid from five years ago was gone, and if I'd been drawn to him during that gangly phase, he was much harder to resist now that he was older.

Noah stretched his arms and back. “It's just that I was finally on my own, getting some stuff I wanted. Even if it didn't look like much. I should've gotten renter's insurance, but who thinks about that until it's too late? Now everything's gone, including my computer and all the tech accessories I bought.”

“It's horrible.”

“I know it's just stuff, but that's pretty much all I've ever had. I wanted to make a home for myself that was different from Seale House.” He looked at me for a while. “It doesn't matter. We're both safe. And at least I still have my laptop.”

“It matters, Noah. Of course it does.” I moved closer. Reaching out and touching his face the way he had done with mine last night, I leaned in for a kiss.

“I didn't mean to upset you,” he apologized against my lips, the last of his words smothered by the kiss. Slow warmth
spread through me in response to what his mouth was doing, and my fingers traced the muscles of his chest as he pulled me closer. We parted, and I felt flustered but happy. He seemed better too.

The water in the row house was still turned on, but it was freezing so we didn't shower. We changed clothes, dressing warmly since the sky was even more overcast and the air in the house cool. I put on a black turtleneck that hid the fading finger marks on my throat.

By the time we'd tossed our things back in the bags and put away the quilts, there was enough light to read by. We sat on the floor and laid out the clues, looking at the puzzle pieces, the small key, and the scytale. We reread the verse about Hazel, and then I picked up the key.

“When we first saw this, you said it looks like a post office box key with the number scratched out. What if that clue on the bottom of the scytale,
two six nine
, is the number to a post office box?”

“Hmm … maybe.”

“I think we should try looking for it.”

“Do you know how many small postal outlets there are?”

“Then let's start with the main post office over on Arsenal Street.”

“Why there?”

“Because that's what I'd do if I was hiding this clue for you and Jack.”

“Okay,” he said at last.

We carried everything out into the garage and transferred our stuff to the older-model Toyota that Noah had the key to. Its windshield was grainy and chipped. The teal paint was also rusting away along the bottom of the car, deteriorated by years of driving on winter roads crusted with salt. Apparently it had sat idle for a while, since the engine didn't want to turn over. Noah jump-started it with battery cables from the Jeep, and then we climbed inside.

“Are you sure your friend will be okay with us using her car?”

“Yes. She doesn't need it right now, and we can't ride around in the Jeep because Gerard will be looking for it.”

Outside, the sky was a somber gray. The one sure thing about April weather in Watertown was that it always changed. Yesterday's wind had given way to a strange calm, and the clouds hung above us like soggy wool.

Noah said, “Let's grab some breakfast first.”

“Yuck! It's not even eight yet.”

“I don't think you eat enough.”

“Whatever. Were you always so bossy and I just forgot?”

His expression seemed to withdraw from me a little. I added, “Sorry. I didn't mean it like that. I know looking out for me seems the natural thing for you to do. Back then you were only a kid running everything at Seale House and keeping us all going. Especially on those bad days when Hazel was really stoned. You were a whole lot more of a foster parent than she was. It's one of the reasons I loved you so much.”

As soon as that confession slipped out, I felt nervous and a little uncertain; however, my embarrassment evaporated when Noah reached out and took my hand in his. It was surprising how comforting it felt to have his warm fingers encircle mine.

We pulled into the drive-through of a McDonald's. He ordered an Egg McMuffin, and I agreed to juice and hash browns.

The main post office was still closed, except for the lobby with its wall of boxes. We got out of the Toyota and went inside, where I took the key out of the envelope. It didn't take us long to find box 269.

“Here goes.”

I inserted the key and it turned, opening the box. Inside was only one item, a brown envelope. Opening it, I saw a handful of puzzle pieces and a half sheet of paper. We walked to a nearby counter stocked with mailing stuff and a chained pen. I put the puzzle pieces down and opened the paper. Reading through a list of six clues, I laughed.

“It's a logic problem.”

“Guess it was inevitable he'd leave us one, since they were his favorite. I'm just glad it's not encrypted.”

“Listen to the directions: ‘Five players are involved in a sudden-death playoff of Seale House Monopoly. They are: Jack, Jocelyn, Noah, Beth, and Hazel. Each player is represented on the board by a different token: the candlestick, the knife, the revolver, the poison, and the lead pipe.'”

“Wait a minute. Those are the tokens from Clue, not Monopoly.”

“So Jack bent the rules; let me finish. ‘In the final round each player gets one last roll of the dice to see where they end up. Can you figure out where each will be?'”

I flipped the paper over. “Here's the list of clues.” He looked at them too, and we read silently.

1. The five players are: the one with the poison, the one who landed on Oriental Avenue, Jocelyn, the person with the lead pipe, and the player who ended up in Marvin Gardens.

2. The player with the candlestick never landed in Jail or on Oriental Avenue, while the one with the revolver got stuck on the Chance square.

3. Jack and Noah wouldn't touch the poison.

4. Beth preferred the dark and so didn't use the candlestick. She didn't go to Park Place.

5. Noah never visited Oriental Avenue.

6. Jack drew the card that said:
Go directly to Jail. Do not pass GO
.

I said, “Look at that last clue. Is Jack hiding out because he's afraid of getting arrested?”

“I don't know, but that would explain a lot.”

“What could've happened? My brother's never done anything to break the law.”

“Not that we know of.”

“Hey, I'm telling you he wouldn't.”

Above the counter was a bulletin board with postal information and other papers. I tore off a sheet, flipped it over, and picked up the pen chained to the counter. To solve it, I needed to draw a graph for the clues.

I glanced at the jigsaw puzzle pieces. “It looks like there's enough to finish that. Why don't you see if you can fit them together?”

Noah pulled out the ziplock bag from the first envelope and dumped the rest of the pieces on the counter. We both worked in silence for a while, and I became engrossed in the clues as Jack's player went to jail and my character ended up stuck on the Chance square. That was fitting, since so much in my life seemed to have happened through chance.

“Heads up,” Noah said as someone approached the door. We watched an older man in a red driving cap enter the lobby and head for his postal box. Relieved it wasn't Gerard, I kept working.

“How's it coming?”

“A minute more.” I crossed out boxes on my scribbled grid and marked circles in the correct squares. “There, finished. According to this, Beth ends up on Oriental Avenue with the knife. No surprise with that, is it? And I've got the revolver.”

“You would, wouldn't you?” We both remembered what happened the night I ran away. “It looks like I'm on Marvin Gardens. That's clever.”

“Why?”

“The man Zachary Saulto works for is Sam Marvin. He's the founder of ISI. Didn't Jack mention his name?”

“Yes, but I didn't make that connection until you pointed it out.”

We paused, watching the older man pass by with a
handful of mail. He nodded at us and went out the door. I turned back to the grid.

“You've got the candlestick, but Hazel has the poison, which the third clue says you and Jack both refuse to touch.”

“Drugs.”

I nodded. “You used to say, ‘Why does she poison herself with that weed and powder?'”

Her addiction to marijuana and cocaine did more to turn us kids against drugs than any school program ever could.

“Noah, what about that other clue? ‘Tares of hazel, weeds that stink …' Do you think Jack meant her tokes?”

“Probably, though what does any of this have to do with finding Jack? Look at these jigsaw pieces. All his clues and we're still not there.”

The puzzle was nearly together, the edge pieces finished to form a frame that still had a hole in it. The black-and-white photo showed a small, seedy-looking building with narrow windows and a wooden door. Closer to the top, where the name of a shop might be, there were four missing pieces.

“Have you seen this place before?” I asked.

“Maybe. I can't be sure. There are dozens of rundown stores like that in the older sections of town. We could drive around looking for it, I guess. Except I don't know how long that would take.”