Q mumbled something under his breath, and when my new friend came back with a couple of sodas, Q glowered so hard the poor guy didn’t dare say another word to me the whole night. But when the house lights came up, Good Q was back, bouncing around and pumping his fist, seeming almost as thrilled as I was to be there.
As great as that show was, the best part of the night was how close I had felt to Q again. Since Mom died, when I was six, it had always been Dad, Q, and me, looking out for one another. But lately Q had been spending all his time with his buddies, and acting distant and scornful on those rare occasions when he actually was home. This new wrinkle—accusing Hence of being some kind of criminal—made me wonder whether Q had completely lost his mind.
But I wasn’t about to waste my night stewing over my stupid brother. Upstairs, with my bedroom door locked, I wrote in my journal, describing that day’s observations of Hence. Maybe I’d eventually write a poem about him, or maybe I’d make him a character in a short story, but for the moment I was just enjoying gathering the details that might help me figure him out. A small grave smile, I wrote, describing the look Hence had given me that afternoon when we’d waved good-bye to each other. As if he was touched that somebody had thought to be nice to him. As if he wasn’t used to having a reason to smile.
I filled another page before I turned off the light and slipped into bed. I’d stopped writing in my last journal after I’d left it in my sock drawer and Q had picked the lock to my room and read the entries out loud to his friends for laughs. Now that I’d started writing again, I needed a secure hiding space. By the time I fell asleep, I had figured out the perfect spot for my new journal—someplace Quentin would never think to look.
Quentin’s grumblings about Hence being a thief or a spy turned out to be based on nothing but jealousy. This became clear one afternoon when I came home from school to find Dad and Hence taking a break from work, jamming on their guitars in the main concert space. “Look who’s here,” Dad said distractedly around the guitar pick between his teeth as he stopped to tune his trusty lime-green hollow-body Gretsch. My heart twisted in my chest. Dad didn’t take his guitar out often anymore, but having Hence around must have reminded him of how much he used to love playing. Hence looked up from his guitar—a beat-up modified Stratocaster—and gave a nod in my direction.
“What’s this?” I dumped my backpack from my shoulders. “A jam session? Mind if I watch?”
“Suit yourself, Cupcake.” Dad gave his guitar a strum and the two of them dove into “You Really Got Me” by the Kinks. I perched on the edge of the stage for a closer view. Dad was beaming, and Hence seemed utterly absorbed. I took note of how he bit his lower lip in concentration and how nimble his fingers were on the strings.
Dad and Hence knew a lot of the same songs—Creedence, The Beatles, The Small Faces. As he and Hence worked out the live intro to Lou Reed’s “Sweet Jane,” Quentin came in the door, a basketball tucked under his arm, looking surprised to find us all together and having fun. Caught off guard, I patted the stage beside me, thinking he might want to watch, maybe even join in the way we used to, but from the look he shot me you’d think I’d done him some kind of rank insult. He stormed past us to the elevator and didn’t make an appearance for the rest of the night.
That’s when light dawned. Q has always complained about Dad being way too wrapped up in The Underground, and it was true: Dad never made it to very many of Q’s lacrosse games; he was never all that interested in watching football or baseball on TV with his son, like a lot of fathers do. In turn, Q flat out refused the music lessons Dad wanted him to take, which didn’t exactly do wonders for their relationship. So now Q was bugged by seeing Dad treating Hence like the guitar-playing son he’d never had.
I stayed put for the rest of the jam session, until Dad got a phone call and Hence remembered some crates that needed unpacking, but it wasn’t as much fun after Q snubbed us. Afterward, I went upstairs and knocked on his door, hoping to explain that I knew how he must feel, and that I missed the way we used to hang out together, but he responded with grunts and monosyllables until I gave up and went to my room to study for the next day’s history quiz.
When I got bored with that, I pulled out my journal and added to my scribblings about Hence. I tried to capture the expression on his face as he played a guitar solo with my dad looking on, an openness so different from the guarded look he usually wore. How could I break past that guardedness, I wondered, and what would I find when I got there?
Chelsea
On the slow, creaky elevator ride to the fifth floor, I kept trying to pump Cooper for information. There was so much I didn’t know, so much I needed to find out. “Does Hence live above the club? Is he married? Does he have kids?”
Cooper gave me a wary look, as if I were asking for state secrets.
“What kind of name is Hence, anyway? Is it his first name or his last name?”
This, at least, got a response. “It’s his whole name.”
“So he’s only got one name? Like Madonna?”
The elevator creaked to a halt. “Yes,” Cooper said in a tired voice, like I’d worn him out. “Exactly like Madonna.”
The door opened on a surprisingly cute studio apartment, with lace curtains at the windows and white bookshelves taking up most of the walls. A brass double bed sat below the biggest window, and a small kitchen held a daffodil-yellow table with two chairs. Above a blue love seat hung a painting of a young blond girl in a windswept dress clutching a bouquet of daisies. The room could have used a good dusting, but it was homey compared to the industrial gray and exposed brick of everything else I’d seen so far, and I had the unsettling feeling this little apartment had been waiting just for me.
“Whose room is this?” I asked Cooper.
Again, no answer. Instead, he plunked my backpack unceremoniously on the floor.
I opened the refrigerator—empty—and the cupboards—full of sky-blue dishes and bowls—and turned on the small TV in the corner. Still no cable. I snapped it off. Then I ran over to the bed to peek out the window for another glimpse of the traffic whooshing past and the trendy cafés and high-fashion boutiques beyond the building’s black iron fire escape.
“Bathroom’s over there.” Cooper held up the keys he’d used to let us in. “This one unlocks the apartment door, and this one’s for the front entrance. Don’t lose them.” He tossed me the ring.
Before he could slip away, I planted myself in his path. “Why does Hence hate me?”
Cooper looked pointedly toward the door. “I guess you have everything you need, then.” He started to go, but I placed myself in the way again.
“My mother disappeared,” I told him, thinking maybe I could win him over by making him pity me a little. “I’m trying to find her. If I have a lot of questions, that’s why.”
An ironic smile flickered across Cooper’s lips. “If you have a lot of questions?”
“I don’t have much time. I’ve got to figure out where she is before my dad guesses where I am. Maybe Hence won’t help me….”
“He’s letting you stay here.”
“Maybe he won’t answer my questions, but that doesn’t mean you can’t.”
Cooper stood there a moment, hands deep in his pockets, light brown bangs in his eyes. He seemed to be considering the point. Without warning, he slipped between me and the door. “He’s my friend,” he said before he disappeared.
Feeling abandoned, I sat down on the edge of the brass bed, then jumped up again. My encounter with Hence had left me more shaken than I’d realized. Pacing the floor, I replayed our conversation, remembering his smugness about how well he’d known my mother and his certainty that she must be dead. How could he be so sure, unless—the thought chilled me—he’d had something to do with her death? He was so dour, so intense, the kind of person I could imagine committing a crime of passion.
And here I was in the guy’s home. To say I hadn’t planned things out very well would be a ma
ssive understatement. You don’t think things through, Chelsea. Hadn’t my dad said those words a hundred times?
But there had been an investigation, I reminded myself. Wouldn’t the cops have looked into the return address on my mom’s letters? Apparently Hence had been cleared. Besides, would my mother’s murderer really invite me to stay under his roof? It didn’t seem likely, and anyway, I couldn’t afford to be afraid of Hence. If I left now, how would I ever find out what had happened to my mother?
I dropped to the bed and switched on my phone, a pay-as-you-go number Dad had bought to replace the one I’d accidentally left in the pocket of my jeans and washed. There were three voice messages, all from Dad. By now he knew I was gone. I didn’t need to listen to his messages to know what they said. Guilt washed over me, followed swiftly by resentment. If Dad had been honest with me in the first place, I wouldn’t have to be here, risking my life to find out what had really happened to my mom. Seriously, shouldn’t this have been his job?
Well, it was mine now. I turned my phone off again and fished out my laptop, planning to dig up some dirt on Hence. The Underground had a WiFi connection, but it was password protected. I wasn’t about to run downstairs and ask Cooper one more question he would refuse to answer. Instead, I jumped up and pressed my forehead to the window, trying to see down to the street below, feeling utterly trapped. Whose room was this, anyway, with its lacy curtains and its bookshelves? Did Hence have a teenage daughter? So many of the books were the same as the ones on my own bedroom shelves. There was a long row of familiar yellow spines—Nancy Drew mysteries. I moved in for a better look and found others I’d read and loved: National Velvet. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. On an impulse, I reached for Half Magic, another personal favorite, and opened it to the first page. There, in the upper right-hand corner, I found my answer in familiar handwriting: Catherine Marie Eversole. My heart began to race.
This had been her room.
My mom had loved to read; I knew that much. She and Dad met in a used bookstore near Harvard Square. He’d ducked into the dusty little store to get out of the rain, but when he saw the pretty girl behind the register he made up random questions so he could get to know her better. Dad had told me the story once after he’d had a couple of glasses of wine with dinner: “I fell in love the minute I laid eyes on her. I couldn’t help myself.”
“Why? What was it about her?” This was a few years back; I was maybe fourteen or so. Though he constantly compared me unfavorably with Mom, telling me at every turn how studious, talented, and focused she was, Dad hardly ever told me stories about her, and I wanted to make the moment last.
But his eyes got wet with tears. I hadn’t seen my father cry before or since, and it scared me. I didn’t press the point.
Catherine Marie Eversole. I brought the book to my chest and inhaled its old-book smell. Had she read it in the bed I was sitting on, fallen asleep with it open beside her? Below her name she’d written a date in purple ink. I did the math: My mom had read this very book when she was ten years old. Holding it in my hands, I felt close to her, as though it could somehow lead me to her.
I could imagine it so vividly—a door opening and my mother on the other side. She’d be older, but still beautiful, and she would take one look at me and know who I was. She’d throw her arms around me and cry with joy. I could stay with her at Christmas and during the summer, and she would understand me the way Dad never had. Maybe her sheer wonderfulness would rub off on me and I’d become a star student, a budding writer, irresistible to every passing guy.
I flipped through the pages, looking for more evidence of her, maybe a dog-eared corner or some finger-smeared type. But that was it. I made my way around the room, tugging out a random volume here and there. Anne of Green Gables. Betsy-Tacy and Tib. All My Pretty Ones. Sonnets from the Portuguese. Inside each front cover I found her name and a date. The dates got later as I worked my way along the shelves, so I skipped forward in time and pulled out a thick volume with a familiar title—Wuthering Heights. I pawed through the pages restlessly and then… bingo! On page 139, in blue ink: This is the truest book I’ve ever read. Goose bumps rose on my arms. I did the same thing—writing little notes to myself in the margins of books I owned, registering delight or frustration when a character did something particularly unbelievable. Talking to myself. Talking to the book.
I leafed through Wuthering Heights, more carefully now, and on the last page I found another doodle, a little heart pierced through with an arrow, and below it, in frilly script: Weird, weird, weird. I think I’m in love with Hence. I think maybe I have been all along?
I stared at the words, doubting my own eyes. That was my mother’s handwriting. But how could she have loved—or even liked—the grouchy man I’d met downstairs? Could there be another person in this whole city with the bizarre name of Hence? Remembering his tone when he’d admitted to knowing my mother—a tone that implied much more than their having just been friends—I flinched and shut the book. But a moment later I was picking through the next novel on the shelf, and the next.
Strange ideas pinged around in my mind like pinballs. I didn’t want to think about my mother with Hence, but I couldn’t help it. Had she really been in love with him? And had he loved her back? I thought of what he’d said—If she were still alive, I’d know. I, of all people, would know—and it seemed possible, even likely. Had she run away from me and my dad to go back to him? The woman my father had always described as practically perfect, the one I could never hope to live up to—surely she couldn’t have left her husband and daughter for another man.
I spent the evening paging through book after book, pausing only to run to a nearby grocery store for Cap’n Crunch and milk. I scanned the pages until my eyes itched. Mostly what I found were elaborate doodles—of electric guitars, swans, kittens, beautiful faces with high cheekbones and big dark eyes—funky and graceful enough to be framed and hung up on a wall. Yet another thing she was great at.
When darkness fell, the building grew oddly silent. Shouldn’t there be a concert or something? It gave me the creeps to think that Hence was lurking downstairs, but as much as I disliked the idea, sooner or later I’d have to confront him again. He had information I needed. I had to talk him into letting me stay in this apartment until I unlocked all its secrets, or until my dad tracked me down and dragged me home, defeated, to Massachusetts. But no—I had to find my mother. Leaving wasn’t an option. I had to figure out a way to make Hence let me stay for as long as it took.
Catherine
It took something horrible to crack open Hence’s shell and give me a glimpse into his personality, and I was surprised by what I saw.
The Splendid Weather was playing that night. Dad had been raving about them for weeks, and he’d given me their new album. He even suggested I sneak down to the club and check them out live. It wouldn’t be the first time. Though I was underage, and technically my being there was against the law, Dad had this whole stance about drinking laws being shortsighted and oppressive. “Just stay out of the way and don’t talk to anyone,” he’d say.
Dad believed in me; he was wonderful that way. I didn’t have a curfew, like the other girls at school. I’d always been allowed to come and go as I pleased. Dad said his own parents were like jailers, and he swore he’d never be like them; he expected us to have minds of our own. “My daughter has street smarts,” he’d say proudly. “I know she’ll make good decisions.”
Dad’s faith in me made me want to prove him right. And I did have enough sense to look out for myself. I was used to customers hitting on me, and I’d always known how to tell them no firmly and politely, just as Dad had taught me. The guy who approached me that night, with his gelled hair, superstrong aftershave, and beer breath, didn’t seem all that different from the others I’d dealt with. First he asked me to dance, and I said no. Usually that would be the end of it, but when another song started, he asked again. I could tell
he was drunk—they were usually drunk—so I found the dark corner I always retreated to when I wanted to hear the music but wasn’t in the mood to deal with customers. But Mr. Won’t Take No for an Answer followed me. I looked up, and there he was again, right in my face.
“A pretty girl like you”—he slung an arm around me—“I can’t let you get away without a dance.”
“Go away.” I shrugged his arm off, no longer interested in being polite. “I said no.”
“But you’re my type, baby. You’re the girl I was looking for tonight,” he wheedled in that thick-tongued, self-pitying, drunken way that made me sick to my stomach. “Let me buy you a drink.”
For a second I thought about telling him my dad owned the bar and I could have all the drinks I wanted, if I drank, which I didn’t. But that seemed like too much trouble. I wanted to hear the band, and he was distracting me. “No, thank you,” I said. “Would you mind leaving me alone?”
“Come on, baby. I’ll make you feel really good.” Now he was right up against me, the front of his cheap polyester shirt brushing my chest. I took a step back and hit the wall. It occurred to me that maybe I should be careful of this guy. I tried to look for Dad or Eddy, the bouncer, who would have beaten the guy to a pulp if he could see what was happening, but he was big enough that I couldn’t even see over his shoulder. He had his hands around my waist, his big clumsy thumbs trying to cop a feel, and he was planting a sloppy kiss on my mouth, except he missed and was sliming my face. I may not have been strong, but I was quick, so I could slip out of his grasp and get around him and away. As I bolted I could hear him shouting behind me, “You think you’re some kind of princess?”
By that point, I’d stopped caring about the Splendid Weather. I only wanted to get out of there. So I slipped past the EMPLOYEES ONLY sign and into the service elevator, planning to escape to my room. And I almost made it; one second later, I would have been clear. But he was right behind me. His thick arm jammed into the door to keep it from closing, and before I could do anything about it he’d forced his way into the too-small elevator and the doors had clunked shut behind him.