Sometimes my son comes with me. And the girls treat him like a pet, doting on him and telling him how cute he is. He still does have that delicate, doll-like beauty he always had. I have discovered about him that he feels comfortable surrounded by the company of women and girls. Something about him relaxes and grows easy; he smiles with them, even laughs. He fits in with a group of girls struggling to find themselves, to find their way. He lets them dress him, put makeup on him like a doll. And maybe it’s weird. But he seems so happy that I let it be. He wipes the makeup off in the car, before we get home to his father.
So that is our life right now. And even though I wouldn’t say that we are happy and there are so many things I’d like to change, I don’t see how things could be any different than they are. We have reacted to our circumstances, and those reactions have formed our life.
I think this will be my last entry, diary. I hope you won’t be offended, but I am not sure I need you anymore. It’s time to move on from navel-gazing and moaning about the hardships in my life. Journaling about my feelings is starting to feel like a waste of time. There are no answers here with you. And I think it’s time to start the business of accepting my life as it is, and just living every day the best way that I can.
I have come to believe that all those New Age ideas to which my sister clings, and which sound so nice on paper-all of that stuff about choosing your own destiny and making your life and asking the universe for what you want-that maybe all of it is just bullshit. There’s no divine and mystical force, no karma, no what-you-give-you-get-back kind of balance. No, I no longer believe that we create our lives. I think that maybe life creates us.
25
I climbed the ladder and it creaked beneath me. A heavy, musty smell wafted down on a breath of cold air as I emerged into a large, nearly empty space. A milky light washed in from a round window on the far side of the attic, and the effect was to give a misty-gray, nearly ghostly quality to the air.
It would have been spooky if not for the litter of candy wrappers on the floor. Kid contraband. The type of sweets-Snickers, Milky Way, Mars bar, gummy worms, Swedish Fish-that Rachel would never allow Luke. Sugar turns him into a monster. We both know it and he craves it just the same.
I followed the trail of crinkled colorful paper to a pile of boxes stacked like a fort at the back end of the room. I wondered briefly how either of them, Rachel and Luke, had managed to get the boxes up here. Both of them were slight and not especially strong. Then I realized that the boxes were empty. Luke must have smuggled them up at some point to construct himself a little hiding spot.
As I passed the row of boxes, I saw that he’d brought up his beanbag chair, an iPad, three giant bags of candy. There was a stack of magazines and books, a couple of photo albums. I sank into the beanbag and started sifting through the pile. There were library books about the history of The Hollows, some psychology texts. There was an old Vanity Fair magazine that held one of the more in-depth articles about my mother’s murder. Where had he gotten it? It was three years old.
I imagined him up here, eating candy and reading library books. And I almost felt sorry for him. Was he lonely like I had been? Did he come up here to hide from the stressors in his life, as I did when I disappeared to my spot in the woods? I could envision him, reading, eating candy, feeling that special kind of freedom you have when no one knows where you are. He probably came here while his mother thought he was locked away, and maybe it made him feel like he wasn’t a prisoner after all.
I picked up a slim book from the stack. It was heavy, in spite of being a paperback: Mines and Tunnels of Upstate New York. It was a photography book and trail guide to various sites around the areas where hikers, spelunkers, and cavers could go beneath the earth and explore the natural caves, crevices, and tunnels, as well as those blasted by the iron miners that helped settle some of the area, including The Hollows.
In fact, the largest section of the book was about The Hollows and some of the neighboring areas. I felt a catch in my throat as I started flipping through the chapters and came to a dog-eared page. It talked about a site about a mile into The Hollows Wood, not far from where Beck and I had been that night. There was a brief passage about the woods, and how it was known by area residents as the Black Forest because of the resemblance of its flora and fauna to the forest in Germany by the same name. It is the haunted forest of fairy tales and nightmares, declared the author, so creepy and quiet that one could almost believe it was home to the witch’s cabin and the Big Bad Wolf, and populated by the restless spirits of the forest. Something about the area confounds cell signals. So make sure you take your old-school compass with you and that you let someone know where you’re going.
The wind was picking up, and I rose to look outside again. I was alone, and no one knew where I was. Suddenly that didn’t seem like such a good thing. We need other people, we really do. As much as I’d always liked to think that I was better off on my own, I wondered if it was true. There were people who wanted to help me, who cared about me in spite of everything. I thought about Bridgette, who was probably having a cow. In that moment, feeling my isolation in a way I never had before, I thought about calling her. But I didn’t want to hear the fear and disappointment in her voice. I didn’t want to deal with her expectations of me. Maybe that’s why we choose to isolate ourselves, those of us who do. Because in so many ways, it’s just easier.
I went back to Luke’s depressing little hideout and picked up the book again. It meant something. Why had he marked off that page? Was it the next clue in the scavenger hunt? The last poem hadn’t ended with anything that led me to another place. It was angry, as if he’d lost his focus. It wasn’t like the other clues, which was why I suspected someone else had written it. But what if I was wrong? What was I supposed to take away from it? Had he known I’d be lost, that I’d come here for answers and find his aerie? No, that was giving him too much credit. I was certain that he would be furious at me for being here.
I’d come to see who he might have been communicating with, and quickly discovered that he really didn’t have his own e-mail account, just as Rachel had told me. Maybe he had access to another computer somewhere. But where? At school? At the library? I sank back into the beanbag and closed my eyes. I felt just like I did when I was playing chess with him, five moves behind, certain he had a master plan for my destruction, though I had no idea what it was. And, there was some kind of clock ticking, apparently. But only he knew when time ran out.
I got up from where I lay beside Beck and awkwardly started pulling myself together.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I’m freezing,” I said. “It’s thirty degrees.”
I was shivering but not from the cold. I was afraid, angry. Passion and desire had abandoned me, and I felt myself shutting down. Even though I could still smell her on me-her skin, her hair, her perfume. Even though I knew I loved her and maybe had for a while, I wanted to be as far from her as I could be. She knew too much. She’d seen too much. What had I been thinking? I remember the simmer of a terrible rage, the rage of the liar discovered.