And it’s only ten after nine.
SIXTEEN
I get through the day. I don’t know how. But time passes, and you have to go to class, and take your French quiz, and hide in the bathroom next to the gym during lunch period, and scurry to your classes while kids whisper about you, and then, boom, after about twelve thousand hours of agony, school is over and you can go home.
There are cliques in my high school, like all high schools, but it’s small, so everyone sort of hangs together in a crisis, and Mason was having a crisis, and if Marigold’s blaming me for it, well, kids just kind of go along with that. Nobody’s mean to me or trips me on purpose or writes SKANKY FREAK on my locker, but nobody gives me a “hang in there” sign, either.
That feeling I had at my locker, that feeling of being completely alone in the world—it’s still there. It’s like I’m standing still, and Diego and Shay are moving away. What I thought was family is just three people living in a house.
I make my way home on my bike. The cool wind hits my face and feels good. I wish it were colder. I wish it were freezing. I wish that every time I start to cry, the wind would freeze my tears and they would break like glass.
Shay isn’t home from work yet, and neither is Diego, so I’m on my own. It’s only four o’clock, and it’s close to dark. I turn on some lights and I still feel spooked. Even though I don’t want to see them right now, I wish they were here.
“This is ridiculous,” I say out loud.
What is it about this house that is spooking me?
And do I really want to know?
What I need is some hot-water therapy, I decide. I turn on the shower and wait for the water to get hot, then climb in. I let the water pound my back, sluice down my short hair. I scrub with Shay’s special oatmeal soap, the kind that has little nubby pieces of oatmeal in it, the soap Diego swears has twigs in it, it hurts so much. I like how it feels, like I’m washing the whole day off my skin. I scrub until my skin is pink, and then I turn off the water and pull back the shower curtain and the light dims and there is blood on the curtain.
There is blood on the curtain and the curtain is on the floor and the body is lying on it.
When I wrap the curtain around the body, it makes a crackling plastic noise that makes me jump.
At least it covers his face.
It’s a body. It’s not a person. Not anymore. Don’t think of it as a person. That’s how you’ll get through this.
It is so heavy to drag. But it’s not far to the door.
The smell is so awful.
I don’t want to see this, I don’t want to know this, I don’t want to feel this…
And I am myself again, my eyes wide open, standing in the bathtub. My hand is clutching the curtain.
I am shaking with cold, shaking with terror. I reach for the towel.
And then I hear it.
Footsteps.
Now, I know the footsteps in this house. Shay’s quick step. Diego’s work boots.
These are stranger’s footsteps. I am not having a vision. I am hearing them.
I look over at the door. I can’t seem to swallow, can’t seem to move.
The doors in the house were shaved on the bottoms years ago, before Shay had the house, to make way for the horrible shag carpeting that Shay tore up. There’s a good two or three inches of space at the bottom of the door.
So when someone moves, I see the shadow.
SEVENTEEN
I look around the bathroom for some kind of weapon. There isn’t much damage you can inflict with a loofah.
I hear the footsteps, so soft outside the door. I hear them stop. I see the shadow. I know if I kneel down and look underneath the door, I could probably see shoes, but I’m too scared to move.
And what if I bend down to look, and someone is bending down at the other side of the door, looking at me?
That thought sends such terror through me that it makes me move. I lunge toward my pants hanging on the hook on the back of the door. My cell phone is in the pocket.
I punch out Joe’s number. Why didn’t I ever put him on speed dial?
Because I never thought I’d need him so fast.
I get his voice mail, but I pretend he picks up. If I can hear the person’s footsteps, the person can hear me.
“Joe! Joe! There’s someone in the house. I hear them. Come right away! You’re already on your way over? Oh, hurry. Don’t use the siren, maybe you can catch them…”
I hear the footsteps retreating. Fast.
That’s when my knees give way, and I fall on the floor. I feel myself shaking and I can’t stop.
I can’t get up. The floor is so cold.
The phone rings next to my hand. “Gracie! Gracie!”
It’s Joe. He must have picked up on his voice mail.
“Joe, someone is here. Please, hurry.”
“I’m on my way. I’m close. Is the intruder still there?”
“I…I don’t know—”
It is as long as forever, but I hear footsteps in the house, and I know it’s Joe. I realize I’m lying on the floor in a towel, and I struggle to my feet and get into my clothes as fast as I can.
Joe knocks on the door. “Gracie, open it. It’s me. No one’s here.”
I open the door. My knees are shaking, and I fall into his arms while he fires questions at me, and I’m trying to talk, and he’s gently sitting me down on the hall floor.
“This is where he died, Joe,” I tell him. “This is where Billy was killed.”
He frowns, not wanting to believe me. “Are you sure someone was here? There’s no sign that someone broke in—”
“I didn’t lock the door. I never lock the door. I didn’t imagine it, Joe!”
“No, I don’t think you did.”
Joe is looking past my shoulder. It is clear in the light from the living room lamp. A muddy footprint outside the bathroom door.
EIGHTEEN
It doesn’t take the police long to figure out the brand of the shoe, an athletic shoe in a size that pretty much rules out the intruder being a woman. Within half a day, they discover that a pair was sold to Mason Patterson at the Athletic Aerie over in Ardsley. Then the police search the school, and the shoes are found dumped in the waste can in the gym. Way to go, Beewick Police Department.
There’s only one problem—Mason has an alibi. He was hanging with two of his buddies, Andy and Dylan, goofing off in the woods outside school.
Or so they say.
I ask Joe what he thinks Mason’s motive was, and for once he lets me in on what he’s thinking. He’s come over to give us the news, and he and Shay have a truly awkward conversation, and I offer to walk him to his car. We stand by his car in the driveway. Joe must be distracted, because he doesn’t seem to mind answering my questions.
“He might have broken into your house just to scare you because he’s got it in his head that you’re a pipeline to me,” Joe says. “The Pattersons are furious that I’m including their son in the investigation. So just because he broke in doesn’t mean he killed Hank Hobbs.”
“Why would he kill Hank Hobbs?”
“Maybe Hobbs caught them at the house, they were in the middle of some prank, and he tried to stop them, and things went bad.” Joe’s hands are in his pockets, and he stares back at the house. Behind the lighted windows, Shay is moving around, preparing for evening, switching on lamps, bringing a wool throw to the sofa. She was wearing her work clothes, but she disappears and comes back in sweats. The woman can’t bear to wear a piece of clothing with a zipper, I swear.
“Maybe Hobbs had his boat at the dock, and Mason was aboard, and pushed him or something, and he fell off into the water,” I say. “So they take the boat out to sea and just hope the body never turns up.”
“Not quite, Gracie,” Joe says. “Leave the detecting to me, remember?”
Joe turns and opens his car door. He looks back at me. “Go back inside. I’ll wait.”
“You’re going to wai
t for me to go back inside? It’s right across the lawn!”
But the shadows are lengthening, and I suddenly do feel spooked. Joe just looks at me. So I turn obediently and start back across the lawn, secretly glad he is there to watch me.
I’m just waking up the next morning when I hear it. Dah doh din daa do. In my head, it’s a familiar tune. But then I’m fully awake, and I realize it’s not a tune, not really. It’s a series of notes. Like something out of that movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, when they communicate with the alien spaceship through this giant synthesizer.
Dah doh din daa do.
The tune is still in my head as I stumble into the kitchen for my morning cereal. Diego is chomping on some toast. We haven’t really talked since the Marigold incident, or since Joe told us the footprint belonged to Mason’s shoe.
“How’re you doing?” he asks.
“Okay.”
“Mom says I should take you to school today. She’ll pick you up.”
I look up, surprised. “Why?”
“Because she’s worried about you, spook doozy.”
Diego calls me spook doozy sometimes, and I don’t mind. It’s kind of cool to have a nickname, and he says it with affection. But this morning, it hits me wrong.
“I don’t want to interfere with your morning plans,” I say huffily.
“I talked to Marigold,” Diego says. “She’s sorry about what happened. She was upset. Her parents are freaking out.”
“You told her that my father could be the killer,” I say, looking down into my cereal bowl. “You told her all about him.”
I sneak a look at Diego. He doesn’t look guilty, and that makes me more angry at him.
“But your father could be the murderer,” he says. “You think that, too. And why shouldn’t I tell Marigold that your father came to see you? She’s my girlfriend.”
“She told the whole school that he could be a murderer!”
“The whole school thinks that Mason could be a murderer. Looks like you’re even.”
He’s not on my side. He’s on Marigold’s side.
What is family? It’s people there to catch you when you fall. What happens when they step back, when they’re looking at someone else so hard, they don’t notice that you’re falling?
Dah doh din daa do.
The music in my head sends a shudder through me. I am afraid of this house.
Diego gets up. “Let me know when you’re ready to leave,” he says.
Dah doh din daa do.
I realize something, something I picked up in my vision, and I didn’t even register it.
The killer is thinking about killing someone again.
He is thinking about killing me.
NINETEEN
It is a cold Saturday morning before Thanksgiving. Nate and Shay meet at the lawyer’s office so that Nate can sign over the house to Shay for me. I watch them sign about a million papers, and the whole time I’m thinking, After this he’ll leave.
I’ll never know him.
I’ll never know what he really is.
They finish signing the papers. They shake hands.
“Can I talk to Gracie?” Nate asks Shay.
He has to ask permission. My own father has to ask permission to talk to me. This is one seriously screwed-up situation.
“Of course,” Shay says.
We go outside. Shay’s lawyer, Debra Peterson, has an office in her house, an old white frame farmhouse. We go out into the backyard. Nate climbs up on the picnic table and puts his feet on the bench. He motions for me to join him.
We look out at Debra’s son’s wooden swing set. Nate doesn’t say anything for a moment. We just listen to the wind.
“How’s this for an insane proposition?” he says. “You, me, and a turkey.”
“What?”
“Why don’t you come with me today for Thanksgiving vacation? You’d have to miss three days of school.”
I shrug. Missing school is not exactly a hardship.
“I could drive you back on Sunday. Rachel would love to meet you. I’m under this delusion that we’d get along, all of us.”
I’m so surprised, I don’t know what to say.
“I’d really like you to come,” he says in a very gentle voice.
I breathe in and breathe out. I stare at Deborah’s son’s playground set. I babysit for him sometimes. Jared.
There’s a red ball on the grass. There’s a green pail. A blue train car left underneath the swing. Here is a kid who is loved. You can just see it. You can see it in the living room, in the basket of toys. In the kitchen, stocked with granola bars and fruit and oatmeal cookies. You can see it in the framed photograph on Deborah’s desk, of her son and her husband on the beach.
I can open my heart and feel how much he’s loved.
I was loved. My mom loved me. But there was always a shadow there, a shadow where a father should be.
I don’t know if I can love my own father. But I do want to know him. I need to know him.
Nate peeks at me, but he bursts out laughing when he sees my face.
“Oh, man,” he says. “It’s not a root canal. It’s a nice house in the ‘burbs.” He nudges me with his shoulder. “Who knows, maybe you’ll even like it.”
And I think—Where is home? Beewick Island started to feel like home. Shay’s house started to feel like home.
But people like Mason don’t want me to feel at home here. And Shay and Diego are a unit, woven as strong as steel mesh. Shay has invited all my confidences, but kept so much of herself secret from me. Maybe the oppression I feel in that house now has more to do with how I feel about the people in it.
My father is a stranger. I don’t know what sports he likes, or music. I don’t know if he’s grumpy in the morning. I don’t know if he likes Christmas, or knows how to cook. I don’t know any of the million details you’re supposed to know about your father.
But something vibrates between us. We can pick up on a rhythm together. We can be silent together. We can hook on to a feeling and ride it, even if it’s sadness.
It’s something to go on. And it’s somewhere to get to.
TWENTY
Shay sits with her mouth open for at least five seconds.
Then she shakes her head. “I can’t let you.”
“It’s just Thanksgiving.”
“But…we don’t really know him, Gracie. We don’t know anything about him, what he’s been doing.”
“He’s been working. He got married.”
“We only know what he’s told us. And there was a murder here.”
“If Joe thought he was a suspect, he wouldn’t let him leave.”
Shay shakes her head again. “I can’t let you go.”
“He’s my father. I have a right to make this decision.”
“I’m your guardian and I love you. I have a right to forbid you.”
We stare at each other.
“I just want to know him, Shay,” I say.
“I need to talk to him first,” she says.
Shay talks to Nate. Shay calls Rachel. They talk for a long time. When she gets off, Shay finds me in my bedroom, where I’m lying down reading a book. “She sounds nice,” she says. “I already called Nate and told him to pick you up. Go ahead and pack.”
I’ve already packed. I point to my suitcase. She gives me this sad little grin.
“And wear your gloves,” she says.
Nate pulls up and honks. I go outside. First Diego gives me a quick hug, and then Shay gathers me up into one of her enfolding extravaganzas.
“Just come back to us,” she whispers in my ear.
I feel surprisingly throat-lumpy about this, as if Shay’s fear is right, as if I’m leaving forever.
We don’t say much as we drive to the ferry. Nate pulls in back of the line. I look a few cars ahead to see who else is in line. I realize that it’s a Beewick Islander thing to do. You usually know at least one person in the ferry line if you’ve lived here
long enough.
And sure enough, I see Zed’s Subaru up ahead. We still have a few minutes left before the ferry, so I tell Nate I’ll be right back.
Zed is reading a book behind the wheel when I approach. I have to tap on his window to get his attention. He looks up at me and I get the gift of his smile, which just about knocks me backward. For a moody, complicated individual, Zed can sell the simple stuff.
He gets out, even though it’s started to rain. It’s a Pacific Northwest rain, a mist that nobody would dream of carrying an umbrella for.
“Hey, heading to the city?” Zed asks.
I tilt my head toward Nate’s car. “I’m going away for Thanksgiving. With my father.”
“Oh, cool. You’re coming back, though, right?”
Why is everyone asking me that? “I guess,” I say.
“You guess?”
“Well. Things haven’t been going so well here,” I say. “Ever since Hank Hobbs got murdered, things are so screwy. School is completely wrong.”
“I heard what happened,” Zed says. “Marigold went ballistic on you. She and Mason are tight.”
“Everybody keeps saying that, as though that’s an excuse,” I say angrily. “You islanders really hang together.”
“Not really,” Zed says mildly.
“I’m just so tired of not belonging anywhere,” I say in a sudden rush. “I mean, I really feel tired, you know? Tired of making an effort all the time. School. Home.” I wave around at the trees. “Here. And with Shay and Diego. Everyone of us tries so hard, and should we have to? Should a family have to try so hard?” Suddenly, the lump in my throat is back. I don’t know why I’ve chosen this day to finally talk to Zed, and when I do, I blurt out my feelings like an idiot.
Zed’s silver-moon eyes regard me carefully. I wonder what he’s thinking. I can’t read him. Once, when I first met him, I read his sadness. His mother is dead, just like mine, and that’s something you don’t get over. His dad is an okay guy, but he works all the time, so Zed was basically raised by his dad’s succession of live-in girlfriends. No wonder Zed seems remote. Here’s a guy who’s used to being left.