I hadn’t had a crying jag in several days—at least not the sort where I shook and shook, unable to catch my breath as I tried to stifle my sobs so no one would hear me. But now one came on with the force of a train barreling down on me. I put my face in my hands and sobbed, trying to hold the cries in. And when I was afraid Mom and Dad might hear me, I got up and ran to the closet, closing the door, still cupping one hand over my mouth. I reached up and grabbed hold of the first thing I could find and pulled it from its hanger. It was a flannel shirt Noah had left in my car last fall, and it still held the faint scent of his cologne. I felt another wave of tears coming then, and I cried and moaned into the shirt over and over, until finally I felt empty. Empty and hollow, from head to toe, the way I felt after finding out how Noah and my friends had died without me. And just like then I couldn’t feel anything. Just that place that had opened up inside me, that cold crevasse where my heart used to beat.
Get up, I told myself. I didn’t have any tears left, and I wiped at my eyes, my cheeks. Get up. Go downstairs. Make coffee. Drink it. Talk to Mom like nothing’s happened. Now. Go. Now.
And that’s what I did. Forcing myself to act, to pretend. For the first time in weeks, I was playing the I’m fine, really game again.
* * *
At Dr. Arroyo’s, Mom and Dad did most of the talking. I answered questions when asked, and tried not to seem hyper from drinking too much coffee as a way to stay awake for as long as possible, to avoid dreaming.
Dr. Arroyo looked exhausted, too. The skin around her eyes sagged, as if she wasn’t sleeping much, either, and her hair was pulled back into a simple bun, nothing like the long, carefully tended waves and curls she had when she first came to Newfoundland. “It’s been a trying period,” she said when Mom asked if she was doing okay. “There’s so much work to be done, and my team and I only have so many hours in a day to do it.”
“I’m so sorry,” Mom said, and immediately thanked her for giving yet another one of those hours from her day to the Frame family.
“No need to apologize,” Dr. Arroyo said. She smiled then, and I could see her sit up straighter. She knew how to play the I’m fine, really game, too, I realized. As skillfully as I did. “It’s a pleasure,” she said, “to see you all here together. That’s the sign of a family that will not only survive their obstacles but become stronger once past them.”
She went on to ask what Dad and I had been experiencing, and though Dad didn’t hesitate to tell her about what he’d seen, I carefully omitted some details. I knew Dr. Arroyo didn’t believe Newfoundland was haunted by real ghosts so much as by “the ghosts of our wounded psyches,” which was how she’d phrased it in a TV interview I’d seen several days before. And I didn’t need to convince her. Convincing her that ghosts were real didn’t matter when nothing could be done about it anyway. We had no choice but to wait things out, like Rose had said. To hope that the gray area that spread over our small corner of the world would eventually lift—like fog from a field once the sun rose high enough—and things would go back to normal.
She advised us to hold open conversations every evening, to do it with purpose, to not let a night go by when we didn’t sit down together and talk about anything we felt, even if it was just ordinary sadness, even if no one had seen anything remotely resembling a ghost. “Because,” she said, looking at Mom, “I imagine that even though Patty hasn’t had those same experiences, it must still take a toll on her to volunteer at the shelters every day. To be constantly surrounded by the pain of others.”
Mom blinked, then nodded, a stoic warrior. “It does,” she said. “But I’m grateful to be able to do it. I just want Dan and Ellie not to have to go through any of this any longer.”
“Don’t deny your own struggle because you think the struggles of others are worse, Patty,” Dr. Arroyo said, leaning forward in her chair. “You’re strong, but remember you’re also human. You can’t save everyone, especially if you wear yourself down.”
Mom smiled and said, “That sounds like good advice for you, too,” and then they both laughed.
“This is why it’s a great pleasure to see your family,” she said. “You bring good medicine for me, too.”
She went on to ask more questions of me and Dad, but especially me. It was as if she had a pickax, and was trying to chip away at the walls I’d put up. Was I sure I was mostly okay? Were the things I’d been experiencing disturbing? Could I tell her about at least one incident so that she could get a better sense of what I’d been seeing?
I knew that at a certain point my vagueness might be the thing that gave me away, that it’d be obvious I was keeping secrets. So I decided to give her something to appease her. I had to think fast, though, to offer her something that was real but not so alarming as, say, sitting next to the ghosts of my dead best friends in their bedrooms. Something like that, I figured, or something like what happened with Timothy Barlow, would rate too high on the disturbance meter.
So instead I told her it was just weird little things. Like the search terms I found typed into my laptop’s browser and how I felt sure that Rose must have put them there. And how I had trouble sleeping because I always dreamed about Noah. I told her I’d think it was real, that he was really alive, and when I woke up and had to face the truth, it was like finding out all over again that he had died.
“I just wish I could get one decent night’s sleep,” I said, sighing, which actually wasn’t a lie. I did wish I could sleep; I just wanted to be able to do it without dreaming of Noah.
“You may have unconsciously typed those search terms into your laptop without realizing it,” Dr. Arroyo said. “Especially if you’ve not been sleeping well. You might have remembered your friend telling you about that superstition and attempted to look it up while being in a semiconscious state.”
I figured she’d say as much, particularly because I hadn’t told her the rest of the story about the search terms. That Rose really had done it.
“The sleep avoidance is understandable,” Dr. Arroyo said. “Especially because of the nature of your dreams. That is something I can help you with, if you and your parents would be comfortable with a prescription sedative.”
I was glad to see her feeling useful, so to seal the deal, I nodded enthusiastically and said, “I’d try anything at this point.”
Dr. Arroyo looked over to Mom and Dad, who were clearly still upset by my admission. “Oh, Ellie,” Mom said while Dad stroked the back of my head. “Why didn’t you tell us you weren’t sleeping?”
“This is why you need to talk openly every day,” Dr. Arroyo said. She pulled out a pad, put the nib of a pen against it, and scribbled out the name and dosage for the cure to my dreams. “I’m glad you’re willing to try this. Your mind needs time to heal. When you feel up to it, I think it would be good for you to begin to build some bridges to those around you who are still living.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Dr. Arroyo finished writing, clicked her pen shut, then ripped the prescription off the pad and handed it over to Mom. “I mean other classmates. Other friends you may have had, even if you weren’t as close to them as the friends you’ve lost. Or even the parents of your friends, or one of their brothers or sisters. It could help, I think, if you are able to share your feelings of loss with others who have lost the same person. Does that make sense?”
“It does,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure if I believed what she suggested would really help me in any big way.
“What about Couri?” Mom said beside me, squeezing my shoulder. Then she turned to Dr. Arroyo and said, “She’s the younger sister of Ellie’s friend Adrienne. She was in the other wing of the school that day, the wing that was…spared.”
“Couri,” I said, nodding. Adrienne and Couri had never really gotten along, but I said her name again and kept on nodding, agreeing that giving her a call might be a good
idea, if for no other reason than to make them feel like our meeting had resulted in some kind of progress.
For as many years as I’d known Adrienne Long and her little sister, Couri, I’d never once heard Adrienne say something nice about her. Couri was three years younger than us, a straight-A student, a cello prodigy, a star runner on the junior varsity girls’ track team, and, in the opinion of pretty much anyone who set eyes on her, possibly the most beautiful girl they’d ever seen.
Everyone in Newfoundland thought Adrienne hated Couri. And it wasn’t hard to understand why, considering the fights the two of them had gotten into over the years. Fights that Adrienne always started, and that could have been avoided if she had simply made it a point not to let her little sister’s vast talent, abilities, and popularity get to her.
But no matter what it might look like, one thing I knew about Adrienne Long was that she didn’t hate her little sister. She resented her. There’s a difference between those two feelings, and sometimes it’s hard to see it. Especially if you didn’t know their parents treated Couri like a princess and Adrienne like her handmaid. People like Rose, me, and Becca, though? We’d had special guest passes, first-row seats to the Long family drama ever since we were little girls. We were privy to the truth that fueled the public eruptions.
How it usually went was: Days would go by, then weeks, maybe even a few months, in which Adrienne would try her best not to let her parents’ preferential treatment for Couri get to her. Her mom would ask her to pick up Couri’s laundry from the floor. Her dad would say, “Hey, Adrienne, do me a favor and pick Couri up from her cello lesson tonight,” which ordinarily would be a typical annoyance for anyone, but constantly having to work around Couri’s schedule was what really got to Adrienne, especially when she’d already made it clear she had plans to hang out with me or Becca or Rose after school. Her time, the things she wanted to do, didn’t seem to matter. She was asked, or told, to do any number of chores around the house that Couri never had to do, and she was never once praised for doing any of it. I once stayed the night at Adrienne’s place, probably three or four years ago, and saw the Cinderella, Cinderella act for myself. I was shocked that the Longs were so oblivious that they’d call on her to do everything around the house, even when she had a friend staying over.
And it wasn’t as if Adrienne didn’t have her own gifts or talents. They just didn’t stack up to the level that Couri’s did. Second place in flute at regionals just wasn’t the same as first place at state in cello, and then top twenty at nationals. The most congratulatory thing I ever heard come out of Mr. Long’s mouth was: “Not half bad, Adrienne.” And from Mrs. Long, it was: “I’m sure you’ll do better next time, honey.”
From the front seat now, my mom said, “What are you thinking about, Ellie?”
I paused for a moment, not sure if I should tell her.
“You’re thinking about what Dr. Arroyo said, aren’t you?” she asked, turning to look over her shoulder at me after I didn’t answer.
I slid my eyes to the side, trying to avoid revealing just how much I was thinking about it, and said, “About calling Adrienne’s sister? Yeah. A little.”
Mom reached her hand over the front seat and gestured for me to give her mine, which I did, immediately feeling the comfort of her skin, warm and soft, better than any childhood toy or blanket. “Couri must be taking this so hard,” Mom said, squeezing gently, while Dad glanced back at me in the rearview mirror, checking to see if I was okay.
“Or something,” I said, not thinking.
“What do you mean?” Mom said, brows knitting together.
I thought about trying to recover from that fumble, but instead I decided to shrug it off, as if it were a matter of my own general confusion over everything that had been going on in Newfoundland. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know why I said that. I think it’s probably because I know Adrienne and Couri didn’t exactly get along.”
“Ah,” Mom said, nodding. “Well, sometimes it’s hardest on those who can’t make up with someone any longer.”
I nodded back at her, thinking of how right she was. How that was the exact reason I wanted to see Noah, how awful it was to know he was out there, unwilling to let me see him.
* * *
No one was in the mood to cook, and after leaving Dr. Arroyo’s, Dad declared that comfort food was in order, and we picked dinner up at the One Red Light Diner on our way home. It was literally a diner located at the corner of Newfoundland’s one red-light intersection, just a couple of miles up the hill from Main Street, where the school and library and town hall used to be. The diner had only sustained a few broken windows and roof damage during the outbreak, nothing that couldn’t be repaired very easily. So once the roads had opened again, so did the One Red Light Diner.
Dad came out with a bucket of chicken and a side of potato wedges with gravy. It wasn’t exactly comforting food, but then again, nothing had tasted good to me in the past month. I made a point of eating a little bit when we got home to assure my parents that I wasn’t going to waste away right before their eyes.
A convincing enough dinner consisted of one chicken leg and a few potato wedges. I didn’t take more than I thought I could actually eat, so that when I finished, it would at least seem like I was doing okay. And after wiping my lips with a napkin and taking my plate to the sink, I told them I was going upstairs to take a look at the flash drive of the school yearbook, which had gone unfinished.
When I had only one foot on the stairs, my mom said from behind me, “You should probably talk to the principal to see about having that released eventually.”
“If you want, I can give her a call,” my dad offered.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got it under control,” I said, giving them a quick smile, which forced them to smile and nod in return.
It wasn’t as if I had much of anything under control, but I couldn’t let them worry more than they already were. Dad had his own stress, and he was still working an unhealthy amount of overtime. Mom had started to say she should cut back on her volunteer work at the shelter, though. She said it was because she needed to get back into the groove of the real estate business—“such as it is”—but I knew it was because she wanted to be around in case I needed her. Thinly veiled behind her eyes was the real concern she wouldn’t directly state: she worried that I was seeing ghosts only when she wasn’t around. And she thought that by being at home, she could scare the ghosts of Newfoundland away from her daughter. It was a nice thought, but a little naïve. How could she think otherwise, though, since she seemed blind to their presence in the first place?
Upstairs, I pulled my phone out and opened up my list of contacts. I hadn’t updated the list since the outbreak, and there were a lot of numbers in there that probably no longer worked. Noah’s, Becca’s, Rose’s, Adrienne’s…But theirs weren’t the one I was looking for. The one I needed right then was Couri’s.
When I found her number on my screen, I touched it, then held my breath as the call went through. A few seconds later, the lines connected. But before I could say anything, a voice that wasn’t Couri’s answered.
“Hey, Ellie,” the voice said, tone casual. “Long time no see. I wondered if I’d ever hear from you.”
“I’m sorry?” I said, confused. “Do I have the right number? I was looking for Couri Long. This is Couri’s number, right?”
“Yep, it’s Couri’s phone, all right,” the voice said. “But Couri isn’t available at the moment. Ha ha ha. What? Don’t you recognize my voice, Ellie? It’s not been that long since we last talked.”
I inhaled sharply, realizing that I recognized the voice on the other end, but hoping I was wrong. So I stood there for a long moment, hesitating, until I finally made the guess I didn’t want to say aloud. “Is this…is this Adrienne I’m speaking with?”
Then suddenly my laptop came to life, l
ighting up as it shifted out of sleep mode, as if I’d stroked its keyboard with a finger. Then the sound of an incoming video call started to ring.
“Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!” Adrienne said on the other end of the phone. “Go to your laptop so you can see for yourself.”
I didn’t move right away, just continued to stand in the center of my room, phone pressed against my ear, hot and sweaty, as I listened to the video call ringing and ringing on my computer. After a while, Adrienne said, “What’s the matter, Ellie? Are you afraid?”
If Adrienne Long knew anything about me, it was that I caved whenever she challenged me. When we were twelve and I wanted a pixie cut but my mom wouldn’t let me, she dared me to cut my hair off in protest. And when I wavered, not sure I should go through with it, she told me I’d always do whatever my parents told me to. So I’d taken a pair of scissors into my bathroom and sliced off six inches of the long blond locks my mother loved so much. I couldn’t help but hear that same kind of challenge in her voice now, and like then she was able to bait me, because as soon as she said that, I went over to my desk and sat down, fingers hovering over the keyboard. Before I could change my mind, I quickly clicked a key to accept her call. And as the screen opened to show the person calling, I shivered.
It was Couri, sitting at her own desk in her own bedroom at home, where a poster of Jacqueline du Pré, this English cellist from the 1960s who became popular for her talent, stared at me from over her shoulder. She was Couri’s idol, the representation of everything Couri wanted to achieve with her music. She’d shown Adrienne and me some videos of the woman playing at some huge event that took place in a palace over fifty years ago. Du Pré had this weird way of playing—curling her body around the cello, throwing her head back and her elbows out in a wide arc—that had made her seem more like a rock star than a classical musician.