I looked out the window to see that the snow, which had fallen earlier, had all melted away, and the precipitation had stopped. But I didn’t have my bike to ride over to the cemetery. That’s what you were supposed to do, right? Go to the place and find the next clue? I kept looking for the key with my fingertips, feeling the warm metal now and again like a touchstone. What would that key unlock? What was the secret that Harvey Greenwald hid? What kind of an agenda was Luke running? And why did I care?
My friend was missing. My homicidal father wanted to talk. I had big problems that needed attention. Still, I felt that same urgency to play Luke’s game that I had when we were playing chess. Maybe, like in the chess games we played, he was way ahead of me-his moves already planned, and my demise already assured. Still I couldn’t keep myself from playing. I wanted to know what Harvey Greenwald’s secret was. I wanted to find that next clue. In that moment I wouldn’t have been able to tell you why. Maybe I just wanted to win. Or maybe, really, I was just looking for a distraction, a temporary escape from the ugly things looming. Or maybe, even then, I sensed that this scavenger hunt was more than just a child’s game.
I thought a moment about how I could get there, since my bike was still at Luke’s. I could use Beck’s bike; she wouldn’t care. I went into her room, which I knew had been tossed by the cops and her parents. Her mother had found her weed and confiscated it. Her dad found a pack of condoms in her makeup bag. Jesus Christ, he’d said softly. At least she’s being safe, Lynne said, and then started to cry. The only time we ever learn anything about our daughter is when she disappears. Really, I thought. Is it news to you that Beck sleeps around?
I felt bad for them. But I couldn’t answer any of their questions. Was she seeing anyone? Where would she go if she was angry or upset or trying to get even with them? She’d been talking about California over the summer, they said. She was thinking about looking for an internship at a movie studio. Might she have taken off for L.A.?
Our relationship had been strained this year; the truth was, we hadn’t been talking very much except to argue. And the first conversation we’d had since break was a fight. I had no idea what was in her head. I told them as much. Only Lynne didn’t quite seem to accept this. There was something narrow and untrusting about her gaze. I avoided her eyes.
Most people don’t see me. But there are always those that do, usually mothers. They see what I am trying to hide, even if they’re not quite sure what it is they’re seeing. I can tell by the way they can’t pry their eyes away. With my innocuous, androgynous wardrobe, my slight frame, my plain face, I usually just blend. Neither boys nor girls usually give me a second look. But sometimes, the sensitive, the keenly observant… they see me.
I slid open the narrow drawer in Beck’s desk and found the bike-lock key in the little corner pocket. I was slipping it out when something else in there caught my eye. I tugged on the corner of a piece of paper, a printout of a news story she’d obviously found online. I read the headline and I literally felt a pain in my chest. I thought of that bag of hers, which was now in the hands of the police, along with her laptop, journal, cell phone. What else was in there?
I folded up the piece of paper and shoved it angrily in my pocket. I could still smell her in that room, her perfume and hair gel. Why did she have to search and pry? Why did she want to know me so badly that she had to dig up the past? How was it possible to love someone and hate her at the same time? I was thinking this as I bundled up and headed outside. It was stupid; I knew this. But I had to get out of that room, out of my head. The scavenger hunt was the only thing I actually wanted to think about. Sad, I know. Maybe more than sad. Sick.
The cold air bit at my cheeks and any flesh that was exposed-my ankles, my wrists. I unlocked Beck’s bike, which she always kept right next to mine on the rack outside the dorm entrance. Everything was clattering-the bicycles, my teeth, my bones. It was so cold that the world seemed made of ice, everything brittle and wanting to break into pieces.
I kept looking around as I struggled with the lock. I kept expecting to see Margie the dorm mom come to the door, or Ainsley run out panicked and bleary-eyed. But it was dark and deserted.
As the lock fell away in my hand, I felt a shiver move through me. I lifted her bike off the rack and thought about Beck. Would she become one of those lost girls? A 48 Hours Mystery or a Dateline story of the week? Where no one ever knew what really happened to her? Or would they find her broken body somewhere like Elizabeth? Or her bones a decade from now? I just wanted to hear her voice, for this all to be over.
Look, I can’t keep going like this.
What are you talking about, Beck? Just leave me the fuck alone.
You know what I’m talking about. Don’t you? Come on. Don’t you? I had never seen her cry before.
As I rode toward the “haunted” cemetery, my thoughts turned to my mother and how I don’t believe in ghosts. Because if anyone was able to haunt another human being, my mother would have haunted me. She never would have left me to live this life alone, even with the things I’ve done. I know that about her. She would have done anything, even in the afterlife, to protect me.
We are all very clear on what my mother would have wanted. I’m not even sure how, because she wasn’t a person to ask for much. Sky, my lawyer, knows that she wanted me to help people, to make my own way. My aunt Bridgette knows that my mother would have wanted us to be close; she would have wanted Bridgette to love me as her own child. (And she’s trying, she really is.) And I know my mother wanted me to find a way to be happy, to protect myself and stay safe. She would not have wanted me to be on my bike in the freezing cold, riding to an abandoned graveyard on the outskirts of a weird upstate New York village. I didn’t need a medium to figure that out.
But my mother was dead, and everything about her-her soul, her essence, her personality, everything that made her who she was-went dark the day she died. She was not floating around in the ether, or living in heaven with God. She was dust in the wind, as are we all. At least I hope she’s gone; I couldn’t bear to think she was up there, watching. What would she think of me?
I whipped down the dark road from the school. Somehow miraculously avoiding any icy spots that would have sent me careening. Up to this point, I had successfully managed not to think about my father reaching out to Dr. Cooper. But thoughts of him came unbidden as I flew through town. I hadn’t talked to him in five years. After his last appeal was denied, Bridgette pressured me to find some closure with him. Not for him, for you.
But it was his hands that kept me away. I couldn’t bear to look at his long, strong fingers, his wide, square palms. I didn’t want to think of them on my mother, on me. I didn’t want to think of what I’d seen those hands do. They were white and roped with thick blue veins that wound up his pale, dark-haired arms. Just the thought of them made me want to retch.