Emily, where are you?
If I can pick up the feelings of strangers, why can’t I feel you here?
I saw the house in the dunes as we drove down the harbor road, but I can’t see it from here, it’s around the point. It looks like an old fisherman’s shack. It couldn’t be more than one room.
“I’m sorry I got up and left,” Shay says finally. She still looks out at the fading light. “I was just so mad.”
“I was just asking,” I said.
“But you thought it might be true.”
“I don’t know you,” I blurt out.
She looks at me.
“I don’t know what kind of person you are,” I say. “So I don’t know if you would be the kind of person to have a crush on Rocky, and bring him food, and think that comforting him would…”
Shay’s mouth twists. “Get me what I want?”
I don’t answer.
“Okay,” Shay says. “I’m not that kind of person, first of all. I’m more the kind of person that does dumb things like bring people food when I don’t know what else to do. I was a friend of both Rocky and Laura when they were together and I’m still a friend. Not a close friend, but a friend. I’m not attracted to Rocky. He’s a piece of work, if you want to know the truth. I like him, I just wouldn’t want to be involved with him. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say. The ice cream is melting on my hand, and I lick it off.
Shay takes a breath. “What hurts me,” she says in a slow, careful voice, “is that I felt like you wanted it to be true.”
I think about this and realize that she’s right.
Mostly, I don’t want to be having this conversation. The light is going, and I need to find a way to leave and prowl around that shack. But it would be too weird to get up now.
“I don’t want to get all psychodrama-ish about this,” Shay says, “but has it occurred to you that resenting me for not being your mother is a waste of time?”
“You’re just so not like her,” I say. “Like you’re from a different family.”
She grins and takes a lick of her cone. “True. We were always opposites. Your mom knew what she wanted to do, and she did it. She was on the debating team in, like, fifth grade. She always knew she wanted to be a lawyer. Graduated from college right before her twentieth birthday. I was on the five-year plan. Me, I just wanted to sleep at the beach, tool around in a boat, go crabbing. It wasn’t until I was thirty that I realized that loving water could be a profession. That’s when I went back to school to study wetlands. You should have seen your grandparents. They turned cartwheels. They thought I’d end up, I don’t know,” and Shay waves her icecream cone to take in the shop, “dishing up ice cream on the boardwalk in New Jersey.”
Shay crunches on her cone. “Carrie was a force of nature, that’s for sure. She never let up; she never gave in. You should have seen her on the swim team in high school.” She smiles. “You should have seen that water churn.”
I didn’t ask for a eulogy, I want to say. But I’d said enough mean things to Shay already that day.
“Being opposites doesn’t mean you can’t be close,” Shay says. “Look at you and Emily.”
Everyone thinks I’m Emily’s best friend. The truth is, I care about her more now that she’s missing.
Guilt may be a pathetic propellant, but it works. I want so badly to get up from the table that my knees are shaking.
“One time, your mom and I decided to become blonds together,” Shay says, a smile on her face. “We had to hide the box from your grandmother. Carrie went first. She—”
But I switch her off. I don’t want to hear Shay’s memories. I can’t handle the memories I have. I sure don’t need anybody else’s.
I don’t care how weird it looks. I have to get out of here.
I stand up. “I need to take a walk.”
Shay’s face flushes. She’s not angry. She’s kicking herself because she thinks she’s handled this badly. “I’ll come with you,” she says, starting to stand.
“That’s okay. I just want some air.”
I leave her there, her chocolate ice cream dripping down her hand, staring after me.
The air is cooler off the water. I walk down the street, away from Shay’s sight line. I’ll have to double back, go under the piers so she won’t see me. I don’t have much time. As soon as I’m out of sight, I start to jog.
There’s no moon tonight. The lights from the restaurants don’t penetrate the dark of the beach. The sand sucks at my shoes. I begin to feel something skitter along my skin, ruffle the hairs on my arms. If I’m right, what will I find in that shack?
Emily wasn’t moving in my vision. She was so still.
For the first time, it occurs to me that Emily could be dead.
TWELVE
Dark…light. Dark…light. The beam from the lighthouse sweeps the harbor. As I walk, it sweeps over me. Every few seconds, I feel exposed, even though I’m walking up near the dunes and there are scrubby pine trees here for cover.
There are curtains at the windows of the shack, and no light seeps out through the cracks. I leave the shelter of the trees and walk toward it.
When I’m up against the wall of the shack, I try to peer into the window. Not only does it have a curtain, the windowpane is frosted with salt. I can’t see a thing.
As I try to peer in, the window moves slightly, and I realize that it’s hinged on top. All I have to do is pull the bottom out, which I do. I look around. The beach is deserted. I pull the window open and put in my foot.
It’s hard to climb in a window, especially when you’re so scared your muscles aren’t working right. I manage to slither inside, still holding the window out. I let it fall behind me.
It’s too dark inside to see more than shapes at first.
“Emily?” I whisper. My heart is booming, rushing in my ears.
I am able to make out now that the shape in the corner is a bed. There’s one chair, one small table. A few books are stacked on the floor. There’s no sink, no bathroom. Just a bottle of water by the bed.
No Emily.
My heart is beginning to slow down. I start to explore what little there is. I go through his books, which are mostly art books, with some fiction by young male writers thrown in.
I flip through the books, and a piece of paper flies out of one and slowly wafts downward, where it hits my shoe. I pick it up.
It’s a copy of an e-mail.
To: glazboy
From: eminel
Subject: book
Z,
This was life-changing. Which means you are, too, I guess. Too much pressure? Sorry. Only I’m not.
E
Emily.
I stare at the paper, knowing what it means. It means Emily and Zed had something going on.
Then something touches my ankle.
I scream. I leap off the bed and land on the other side of the room. I’m backing up toward the window when a gray cat pokes its nose out from under the bed.
I put my hand on my chest and beg my heart not to explode. I bend down and look. The cat’s yellow eyes shine out at me.
“Hey, cat,” I say softly.
She stretches, then steps out daintily a few inches, just like cats do, telling me that she’s not in the mood to socialize, but she’ll endure me.
I tuck the note into my pocket and replace the book on the floor with the others. That’s when I notice a small dish of dry cat food in the corner, along with a bowl of water. If I’d seen it on my first inspection of the room, I would have spared myself a major heart attack.
As I stare at the cat food, it occurs to me that if there is a cat here, with a full bowl of food, it stands to reason that the cat’s owner is currently in residence, and not an hour away in Seattle. He’s here, now. Somewhere.
Crunch, crunch.
It isn’t the cat, munching on her kibble. It’s footsteps. On the beach. Coming closer.
I peer out the window. It’s Zed.
&n
bsp; I jump back, even though I know he can’t see me. There is nowhere to hide in a one-room shack. The door and only window face the beach, where Zed is. There is nowhere to go.
I touch the paper in my pocket. I have proof that Zed had some kind of relationship with Emily, something he’d hidden from Rocky. That doesn’t make him guilty, but it does make him a suspect. Which means he could be dangerous.
I look outside again and see Zed trudging toward the shack. And then suddenly the moon comes out, and I see that it’s raining.
Zed is carrying a body in his arms.
A girl.
She’s wearing a nightgown, and the rain is starting to plaster it to her legs.
Her head lolls back, and he tries to keep it up.
I feel cold, frozen to the bone.
I know that the girl is dead.
Then something happens—I blink, or the world shifts and turns a fraction—and it’s Zed again, just trudging across the sand, tired after a long day.
It was a vision. Of the future? Of the past?
Of Zed carrying Emily.
And Emily is dead.
But had it really been Zed? Had it been Emily?
Now I’m not so sure.
Enough! I want to scream. I can’t figure it out, I can never figure it out, and yet the visions keep on coming. And Emily is getting farther and farther away.
I won’t be able to find her, I won’t be able to interpret what I see, and it will be too late, and all my life I will know that I could have saved her, could have done something, only I was just too stupid to figure it out!
I am shivering now, shaking. The cat jumps back down and scoots under the bed.
I have a more immediate problem. Zed is going to arrive any minute and find me.
I hear someone calling Zed’s name. Even through the closed window, I can hear it.
I see Diego running down the beach, running fast, calling as he runs. Zed stops and waits for Diego to catch up. Diego says something I can’t hear, waving his arms, pointing. Zed shrugs. Diego talks again.
Zed has turned his back to the shack to talk to Diego. I push the window open and climb out, managing to do it without falling or making noise. My legs are shaking as I run around the back of the shack and into the dark pools of shadows from the pines. I can’t get to the road from here; I have to walk down to the beach and retrace my steps. I start to walk along the dunes, hoping that it’s too dark for Diego and Zed to see me.
I could wait in the shelter of the pines, but I have a feeling that if I’m gone much longer, Shay will be calling Detective Pasta. I walk quickly across the pebbly part of the dunes. It’s really awkward trying to walk quickly and quietly on rocky sand.
“Gracie!”
I want to keep walking, but I turn. Diego is waving at me, with a big, stupid grin on his face. I’ve never seen him direct that grin toward me before.
Zed looks at me. It’s too dark to see what his expression is. I walk slowly toward them, wishing with every step I was walking the other way.
“Hi,” I chirp. Once, a mouse got in our kitchen and climbed into the trash can and started squeaking. Our dog, Pooka, went over, jumped up on the can, looked in, and barked at the mouse, which promptly dropped dead of a heart attack.
I feel like that mouse. My teeth are chattering, and I grind them into a smile. I feel like I might pass out. I can’t look at Zed. I can only remember him walking with a dead girl in his arms. I can only push back the fear that it was Emily.
“Where’ve you been?” Diego asks amiably. “Shay is about to call in the FBI.”
“I told her I was going for a walk,” I say.
“Did you get lost?”
I realize he’s given me a great save. “Just a little.”
He reaches out and knocks my head with his knuckles. “D’oh.” What is this big-brother act he’s putting on?
“Thanks, anyway,” he says to Zed. “I guess we found her without looking.”
Zed’s eyes are the color of the moon, and just as remote. “See you, then.”
“See ya,” Diego calls, already walking without waiting for me to catch up. Which I do. I run. I’m glad of the company, even if it’s Diego.
For a while I just hear the soft slap of the water and the scrunch of our footsteps in the damp sand.
Then Diego explodes. His voice hisses like the waves. “Are you nuts? Who do you think you are, Nancy Drew?”
“I don’t know what you’re…”
“I saw you come out of Zed’s shack, Gracie, okay? I had a feeling that’s where you were heading. If you want to be a detective, get a new face. I saw how you were looking at Zed at Rocky’s studio. At first, I thought you were into him, but then I realized you were after him. It’s insane to investigate on your own. Whoever took Emily…she could…anything could have happened, okay?”
It’s the longest speech Diego has ever given. He’s really steamed.
We’re under the piers now. It’s a creepy place to be, in the dark. I look over my shoulder. The beach is deserted. No one is behind us. But the pillars make me nervous. There are so many places to hide.
“Could we just get to the sidewalk, please?” I ask.
He shoots me a look. Then he does a nice thing. He takes my hand and helps me up the slope of sand. He practically hauls me up onto the sidewalk.
“Explain,” he says. “Here. Now. Shay can’t see us. We have about thirty seconds before she freaks.”
I hand him the note. He reads it.
“I found it in one of Zed’s books,” I say. “In the shack. Eminel is Emily’s screen name.”
Diego still stares at the note.
“When I was at Rocky’s, I had a vision,” I add. “I saw the light from a lighthouse sweeping over a bed. Emily was in the bed.”
Diego looks up, out to the bay.
“The lighthouse,” I say, even though I know he gets it. “And I saw oyster shells, lots of them. Shay said Zed was the champion oyster shucker. And I remembered something Emily said about weekends at Rocky’s. I think she had a crush on Zed, and that note proves there was something between them.”
“What else?” Diego asks.
I shake my head and turn away.
“Something spooked you, and it wasn’t this note,” Diego says. “You’ve got to trust someone, Gracie. Don’t you see that this is too big for you to handle alone?”
Fury balls up like a fist inside my throat. Who does he think he is? I’ve handled the biggest thing in the world all alone. “I am alone,” I say coldly.
“You’re not alone,” Diego says.
I don’t say anything, I just look out at the water.
“When you first came to live with us, I was scared of you,” Diego says. “Shay told me that you had some psychic experiences. I was scared that having some spook-doozy living with me would invade my privacy or something. Or that you’d see things about me, and they’d be all bad.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” I say defensively. “I’m not an X-ray machine.”
“I’m just saying, that’s one reason why I didn’t talk to you much.”
“That’s really stupid.”
“Yeah, well, the other reason is that you’re really a pain.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. Diego calling me spook-doozy helps somehow.
“So I just wanted to say that,” he says.
“Okay.”
“So tell me what else you saw.”
I look at him and I see kindness in his face. He wants to help, and at least he doesn’t think I’m crazy. “I saw a vision when Zed was crossing the beach,” I tell him. “He was carrying a girl. A dead body. In the rain.”
Diego sucks in his breath. “Was it Emily?”
“I assumed it was,” I admit. “But I don’t know for sure. I didn’t see her face. I’m not even sure I saw his face.”
“You know what we have to do, don’t you?” Diego says.
I am already shaking my head, but I know I’ll lose.
>
“The police have to know,” Diego says. “That means we have to tell Shay first.”
I just look at the sidewalk.
“She’ll be cool,” Diego assures me. “C’mon.”
We start to walk back toward the ice cream parlor. I’m not too thrilled about the prospect of seeing Joe Fusilli again. But I’d much rather face the police than Shay.
THIRTEEN
One of Dr. Politsky’s questions in therapy was “Can you name one thing that made you happy today?” I don’t know why a question that always really bugged me won’t get out of my head. So if I have to find a ray of sunshine in my current state, I’d have to say that after all, it is a relief to tell Shay that I’ve had a little episode of breaking and entering.
She doesn’t yell. She doesn’t move. She listens without talking, which is a highly unusual trait in a person, if you ask me. Diego is there for support. We sit in the living room, which feels weird and formal, because we’re always in the kitchen. And after I am through and Shay looks sort of pale and shaken, she says we need to go to the police, which is exactly what Diego said would happen.
But she doesn’t get up. She looks at me. “You have to trust me,” she says. “You have to now, Gracie. It’s too dangerous for you not to. You have to tell me what you know, and even what you suspect. Do you understand?”
I nod.
“I can’t believe that Zed has anything to do with this,” Shay says, shaking her head. “I’ve known him since he was a boy.”
“You have to admit he’s a weird guy, Mom,” Diego says.
Shay looks reluctant to call anyone weird. “He’s…different, okay,” she says. “He’s had it tough. His mother died when he was seven, and his dad works all night at the restaurant. He was raised by his dad’s girlfriends. I can’t imagine him kidnapping Emily, or being involved somehow.” She shakes her head. “I hate going to the police, but we have to. This could be all my fault.”
“What do you mean?” Diego asks, because Shay looks stricken. I see a vein throb in her forehead I’d never noticed before.