Splinter (Fiction — Young Adult) Page 8

  Besides, I was such a bitch to Cass earlier that I figure I can offer peace through a Cassidy-approved outfit.

  Kismet licks my ankles, my elbows, the floor I walk on as I move from bin to bin. “Poor girl,” I say. “You miss me, don’t you?”

  She jumps up on me, even though Cassidy and I spent weeks at puppy boot camp with her to avoid this type of bad behavior. But I scratch her ears so she knows I miss her too. I never minded the jumping, anyway.

  Get another dog. Yeah, Dad. As if any other dog could take Kismet’s place.

  “Okay,” I say. “Let me find something to wear, and then we’ll play.”

  I pull a bin off the shelf.

  Kismet wedges her head under my elbow and peers into the bin with me.

  I yank out a pair of capri pants—stretch denim with turquoise pom-pom fringe along the cuffs and yellow bandana-type print rimming the pockets—and hold them up. “Should fit,” I say to my dog, “and not too crazy, comparatively speaking.” I peel off my leggings, toss them into the dirty clothes hamper, and step into the pants. They’re a touch snug, but they’ll do.

  I drape my hoodie over the edge of a box and go to work looking for a shirt to wear over my standard white tank top. But my dog’s patience is wearing thin. She nudges me with her cold nose and drops a soggy tennis ball at my feet.

  “Go get it, Kissy.” I toss the ball out the door, open another bin, and sift through outlandish jackets and fringe-adorned cardigans. After a few seconds, I hear my dog nosing around in the hallway; it sounds as if she’s getting into something.

  Sure enough, when I go to check on her, I find her with her face buried in a box. “Did the ball land in there?” I crouch next to her and open the box. The ball is resting atop a nest of linens. Great. Clean sheets, and they’re covered in Kismet slobber.

  “Are you about ready?” Cassidy calls up the stairs.

  “One sec,” I call back.

  I take the top layer of sheets to the laundry room and drop them in the washer.

  I open the door to the small laundry closet to retrieve the detergent. Just as I’m about to close the door, something catches my eye: a yellow-and-gray sleeve dangles from a box on the top shelf.

  With one yank, the box falls into my grasp. I pull out a long-sleeved, cropped jacket with big yellow flowers on it—very vintage-looking—with pewter, daisy-shaped buttons.

  Kismet appears in the doorway, looking guilty.

  I slip on the coat. It’s not my style. The print, for one thing, is far too busy for my solid-color-only fashion parameters. But the buttons . . . I feather a finger over one of them. “Daisies.”

  Kismet cocks her head and perks up her ears.

  “My mom used to love this color,” I tell her.

  She barks, which I take as her attempt to tell me the jacket is the right thing to wear.

  “Come on, Sam!” Cassidy’s yell echoes up the stairs. “I’ve already locked up and everything.”

  “Just cleaning up after the dog!” And I’m wearing this god-awful jacket because I don’t have time to find something else . . . and because all signs tell me I should.

  Two minutes later I’ve started the washer. As I steer the dog to her crate in the next room, I see a bunch of Cassidy’s old school projects strewn across the floor, spilling from an overturned box. “Oh no. You’ve really been wreaking havoc, Kissy, haven’t you?” I get Kismet settled in her crate, then return to the hallway to straighten up the mess. Working quickly, I gather Cassidy’s kindergarten letter books—some with a few more teeth marks than they had before—and construction paper art projects.

  Just as I drop everything in the box, something catches my eye. Peeking out from beneath the piles of paper is a fat envelope with my name on it, written in cursive across the top. Heather’s writing.

  I pull the envelope out of the box and then extract a stack of folded papers from it. A peculiar drawing sits on top: a storm with red rain, red puddles. A stick figure in the distance holds a flower-shaped umbrella and sprouts large raindrops of tears; a second figure lies prone, with xes for eyes and an enormous heart drawn at the center of its chest.

  I leaf through the remaining papers. There are about ten of them.

  Over and over again: red rain on a sunflower umbrella, a body on the ground, the heart.

  My sunflower locket burns against my ankle.

  Maybe the heart in the drawing isn’t meant to be a heart in the biological sense. Maybe . . . maybe it’s a locket.

  Ten of us sit around the bonfire in Brooke’s backyard. The eleventh guest, Ryan, hasn’t shown up yet. And considering that Brooke and Alex are engaged in a close conversation, and Cassidy and Zack haven’t come up for air in three songs, I’m starting to wonder why I’m here. I know everybody else, but I can’t think of anything to say, can’t keep track of the conversations around me.

  “Relax.” The guy next to me nudges me with his elbow. I hear the laughter in his voice.

  But it’s impossible to relax when an envelope containing my gruesome childhood drawings is tucked into the inside pocket of this borrowed jacket.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have taken the pictures, but technically, they’re mine. Even if I don’t remember doing it, I created the awful scenes; I should be able to take them if I want to.

  Before we left Cassidy’s place, I went to the bathroom, I snapped a picture of the first drawing, and emailed it to Eschermann. I called him, too, and left a message about it, but I assume he’s gone for the day. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to talk about it.

  Why would I have drawn something so terrifying, and so many times?

  Why would my drawings be mixed in with Cassidy’s old schoolwork?

  Does Heather suspect Dad knows something? Maybe she found the drawings and accused Dad, and that’s why they separated. Or maybe she wouldn’t have corroborated Dad’s story in the first place, if the police had followed procedure and interviewed them separately.

  I mentally repeat the story: Dad and Heather were out. I was supposed to be with a sitter, because Mom was leaving that day for a weekend trip to Georgia. Then I turned up at Schmidt’s place, with no sitter, and Mom was gone. No one ever saw Mom again.

  I can’t remember anything beyond being absolutely petrified until Schmidt walked me home.

  But where was Cassidy while Dad and Heather were out?

  I was supposed to be with a sitter.

  Where was Cass supposed to be?

  Why doesn’t anyone ask that question? Maybe Cassidy is the clue to testing the alibi. If Cass were with Heather, would she have been with Heather and Dad? Or was she at home with her mom, leaving Dad free to . . .

  Shut up!

  I spring to my feet and head toward the driveway. I just want to go home. I can’t call Dad, though, because I’m supposed to be at the bowling alley.

  I could walk, I guess. It’s not that far.

  But it is pretty dark.

  It was a night like this that my mother told me sunflowers were the luckiest of all flowers, because they were optimistic, always reaching higher. I see the scene in my mind. Chocolate melted between graham crackers and roasted marshmallows. Mom pointing upward, toward the tops of her favorite flowers.

  Once I step onto the driveway, the floodlight censor trips, and I’m bathed in light.

  There’s a spot on the cuff of this jacket. Oh, no. The first time I wear this sample, and I’ve stained it. What is it? Salsa from the nachos we ate earlier? I scratch a nail against it, but it’s embedded in the threads.

  The rumble of an engine fills my ears, and I’m momentarily blinded by the headlights of a truck pulling into the driveway.

  Ryan. Thank God.

  I take a few steps toward the truck.

  Ryan gets out of the car. “Hey, Sami.”

  I’m so happy to see him—he called me his best friend—that my pace quickens. Next I know, my lips are on Ryan’s, my hand is on his cheek, and he’s pulling me closer.

  Open-eye
d, we kiss, as if we’ve done it a million times under a million skies like this one.

  We stare at each other for a long few seconds once the kiss ends.

  “Sorry,” I whisper.

  “It’s, uh . . .” Ryan bites his lower lip. “Yeah, it’s okay.”

  I walk to the passenger side of Ryan’s truck and get in. “Mind giving me a ride home?”

  “No problem.”

  I shoot a quick text to Cassidy and Brooke: Left for home with Ryan.

  Once we’re on the road, I turn to him. “I’m sorry. I don’t really know how that happened. I just—”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Let’s just forget it, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  For a few moments we drive in silence.

  My phone chimes with a text from Brooke, telling me to come back. Two more come in quick succession.

  I switch my phone to vibrate.

  Ryan chuckles. “Forget it, Sam? Forget it?”

  And I know what he’s thinking: forgetting about that kiss might be impossible.

  Impulsive.

  Kinetic.

  Thrilling.

  That kiss was everything I’m not used to being.

  And everything I can’t afford to be. If I let him in, will it backfire? Will he judge us? How can he not? His uncle had no problem judging my dad. From what Dad’s said, in the early days after Mom left, the worst of the rumors came from Schmidt. He made a painful situation that much worse.

  So why I have an urge to unload the day’s events on Ryan Stone is beyond me.

  I stare out the window and see nothing but a black abyss of night.

  But I imagine my mother’s weaving her way through the darkness, touching down in all the cities on the map to reach me.

  I feel incredibly close to her right now. I feel her out there, in the great beyond, with such intensity that it feels as if I could reach out and touch her.

  It’s almost as if . . .

  I watch the little ghost on Ryan’s rearview mirror spin and dance with every bump in the pavement, with every breath of this second-chance-summer wind.

  . . . as if she’s trying to tell me something.

  “Sami?” Ryan touches me lightly on the elbow. “You okay?”

  She’s growing more and more vivid in my memory. More real than she’s ever been. Dimensions of her are carving out of my mind, details beyond her favorite lucky numbers. It’s as if she’s strategically placing clues in my path.

  “I think she’d dead,” I admit. There. I’ve said it. I don’t know how I feel.

  “Aww, Sami.” He grasps my left hand, gently squeezes it, lets it go.

  “I think she’s dead, and I think I saw it happen, or at least I may have seen her body.” I turn toward him. “Do you know what happened that day?”

  He raises his eyebrows. An invitation.

  “When Dad and Heather came home that evening, no one was there. I was supposed to have a sitter, but I don’t remember having one, and in any case she wasn’t there either. They assumed I was with Mom, that she’d left with me. And hours later, your uncle brought me home, saying he found me in his basement. And I was afraid of him.”

  A street lamp illuminates him as we pass beneath its beam. He licks his lips and gives me a nearly imperceptible nod.

  “And for the life of me, I don’t know why I would’ve been in his basement. I just can’t remember anything about why I went over there, what I could’ve been doing there for so long.”

  “Sami, my uncle didn’t find you in the basement that day. I found you. In the passageway. We were playing in the tunnel. We weren’t supposed to be in there, and he yelled at us. That’s why you were afraid of him that day.”

  I process this. “You found me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do the police know that?”

  “I’m sure my uncle told them, but they never interviewed me back then. I was already back home by the time the report was filed, and—”

  “You said we were playing. Did we have plans to play that day? A playdate?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I heard you in the passageway. You were crying, I think. I went in to get you, and I tried to make you laugh.”

  A fuzzy memory filters in. “You had sidewalk chalk. You were drawing on the walls.”

  He grins. “Yeah. But my uncle didn’t know where I’d gone. Eventually he came looking for me, and we got in trouble. He put a lock on the door after that.”

  And we stopped playing together, too, after that day.

  “You asked why I stopped coming to visit.” He pulls up to the curb in front of my house. “I stopped coming because, frankly, that day changed things.” He puts the truck in park and shifts to face me. “My uncle wasn’t always the grumpy old man of the neighborhood. Your mom’s leaving was a turning point for him.”

  Her leaving. Not her death.

  “Maybe a shift in the way he viewed humanity,” he continues. “I mean, think about it: either your mother walked away and cut off contact with everyone who cared about her—including you, and you meant the world to her—or something bad happened to her. Any way you look at this, there’s no happy conclusion.”

  “I used to think my mom was hiding in your uncle’s loft. And then you found her things. Do you think that’s too much of a coincidence?” I take a deep breath. “Now, understand that I live with the pressure of suspicion on my dad. I know how that feels, so when I ask this question, it isn’t because I think it’s probable. It’s because I need to rule out anything that’s impossible.”

  “You’re asking if I think my uncle had something to do with your mom’s disappearance.” He gives my hand another squeeze. “No. But maybe I’m too close to be an effective judge of that.”

  Have I been too close to my father to be an effective judge of his innocence?

  “And forgive what I’m going to say now because I don’t know if he’s right or wrong: my uncle’s pretty convinced your dad knows something.”

  I sigh. “Everyone is.” And now I’m starting to be part of everyone.

  There’s a light on in Gram’s motor home. Dad’s bustling about inside the house, and it’s early. It’s only a matter of time before one of them peeks out to see me in a parked truck with the guy I just kissed. And it’s been so long since I’ve seen Ryan, and he knows things I don’t remember. He found me in the passageway. I feel like if I let him drive away, he’ll be gone . . . along with everything he knows.

  In a split second, within a breath, I decide: I’m going to trust him.

  With my free hand, I pull the envelope from the inside pocket of my jacket. “I found this at Heather’s.”

  He drops my hand to take it from me and pulls out what’s inside. He looks at the pictures by the light of the dashboard, then turns on the dome light to look more closely.

  “I don’t remember, but I must have drawn them when I was little. Heather had them stashed in an envelope in a box with Cassidy’s school projects.”

  After studying them for a few more seconds, he hands the stack back.

  “That’s why I’m starting to think . . . that something happened to Mom, and I saw something. But how could I have forgotten seeing something like that?”

  “You could’ve blocked it out. Kids—people—can do that with traumatic experiences. And if you saw something and don’t remember it, it’s not your fault.”

  “But all these years, I’ve been defending my dad and blaming my mom, and—”

  “You were six.”

  I shut up.

  “Six, Sami. You were just a little girl. You have to give yourself a break.”

  It’s been suggested before. But it’s tough to separate me—just a girl—from the rest of my life.

  “Anyway, I have chocolate covered graham crackers. And some incredible late-season strawberries. You hungry?”

  “Actually . . . ” I can’t help laughing a little. “Famished.”

  Ryan walks half a step behin
d me through our backyards, from his Uncle Henry’s place to mine. “You got quiet fast.”

  “If she hears us”—I indicate toward the dark motor home in my driveway—“she might wake up, and then she’ll come out.”

  It’s not even ten thirty yet and my curfew is eleven, but I’m nervous about the consequences of what I’ve just done. I told Dad I was bowling with Cass and Brooke. My approaching the back door with Schmidt’s nephew—anyone’s nephew, but particularly Schmidt’s—probably won’t go over well.

  “Hey.” Ryan’s whispering now.

  I look over my shoulder at him.

  He leans against our carriage house, right next to the door with the three-paned window, so I stop walking too. “We learned some good things tonight,” he says.

  “Such as you don’t know how to shuffle cards.”

  “Such as you make a mean smoothie.”

  “Anyone can do that with the right berries. But you . . . you play a mean piano.”

  “And you’re going to read Gatsby.”

  “Definitely.” Mom’s book is the only object from the box Ryan found that I stashed in my backpack to take home tonight. The rest—along with the envelope of my crazy drawings—is still at Schmidt’s house. I left another message for Eschermann, telling him we’d found a few things he might be interested in seeing. Hopefully, he’ll meet me at Schmidt’s tomorrow morning.

  “I’ll let you catch up to me,” he says. “We’ll read it together.”

  I cross my arms and shiver. It’s a warm night for this time of year, but it’s still chilly when the breeze blows.

  “Shit, I left my jacket in the kitchen.”

  “Well, it was getting in the way during the marshmallow experiment.”

  I laugh. “Note: marshmallows roast better outside than inside over a gas stove.”

  “Maybe we need some longer chopsticks.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Want me to run back for your jacket?”

  “No, it’s all right. I’ll get it tomorrow morning.”

  He holds my gaze for a couple of seconds. It feels good to be back in his life, good to have plans to see him tomorrow, if only because I’m going to meet Lieutenant Eschermann at Schmidt’s place.