“Me?” he asked, blinking in disbelief. “You should do something on Matt Bauer. He’s a senior, after all.”
“We still need content on the junior and sophomore classes, too,” I said. “Come on. Please? I think it’d be great.”
He thought about it for a few seconds, then finally broke into a smile, saying, “Okay, sure. Why not? How should we do it?”
“I have my phone with me,” I offered, slipping it out of the front pocket of my jeans, clicking the camera on, and holding it up so that he fit within its frame. “We can do it just like this.”
But over the next few minutes, while I asked him a handful of profile questions, recording his answers, I didn’t see anything on the screen of my phone other than the Barlows’ sliding glass door, with my own image reflected in it. I asked for his full name, his birth date and age, how he wanted to spend his senior year, how he first got into playing the saxophone, and if he had any special plans for his music after high school. All of that took no more than three or four minutes, and by the time I’d finished with my impromptu line of questioning, I still couldn’t see Timothy on my phone’s camera. I sighed, both frustrated and disappointed that this wasn’t working. But then again, I don’t know what I’d been expecting. Some kind of movie hocus-pocus?
“What date is it today?” I finally asked, scrambling for more questions to keep him talking, hoping that I would at least be able to capture his voice if not his image. And though the question was lame, since my phone had a time stamp on it, and though Timothy revealed how lame he thought it was by raising his eyebrows, he answered me.
“Um,” he said, thinking about it a little. “May fifteenth.”
I blinked, and looked up and away from my phone’s screen to stare at Timothy for a long moment. May fifteenth was nearly three weeks ago. May fifteenth was the day of the outbreak. May fifteenth was the last day Timothy Barlow had been alive and breathing.
I licked my lips, but I didn’t want to call any more attention to myself than I was sure I already had. He was starting to act funny, too, to seem suspicious, and I didn’t blame him. I was acting pretty suspicious. So I did what I could to wrap up my false yearbook profile and said, “Great, thanks. Why don’t you play that song you were just playing when I came over? Let everyone else have a chance to hear it, too. It was really good. You’re really good.”
“Okay,” he said, and then he lifted the saxophone to his lips, launching back into the same jazz melody that had drifted over our backyards, up high enough to slip through my bedroom window and reach me. It was a slow, sad song—something I recognized now, “My Funny Valentine”—and as I listened to him play it again, the sound made me regret having had the idea to come over here to record him to begin with. Every note he played sent a shiver through me, especially after I started to recall some of the song lyrics. The singer imploring the person they love to not change, to stay, to please stay.
But despite my regret for doing this, as I stood there listening, determined to finish my task before leaving Timothy’s ghost alone once again, I began to see something on my screen. At first, I thought it was just a thumbprint on the camera lens, but slowly and steadily the blurry spot began to take on a shape and details. It was like watching one of those old Polaroid photographs develop. There was nothing to see of him during our entire interview and then suddenly there he was—Timothy Barlow—swinging his hips slowly to the melancholy tune, his shaggy hair flopping over his forehead into his closed eyes, looking as though no one had ever played that song better than he did. And as far as I was concerned, no one ever had. I was privy to something special, being there to record it. I’d just had to wait for the right moment.
And then I understood: Timothy Barlow was his truest self when he was making music. I was witnessing his soul drift up into view.
When he finished playing, Timothy lowered the saxophone from his lips and looked at me with a satisfied grin, like he’d just scored a touchdown or tossed a winning free throw into the basket with only seconds left in the game.
I wiped a tear from the corner of one eye, and then clicked the camera off on my phone. “That was beautiful, Timothy,” I told him. And I meant it.
“Thanks for giving me a chance to play it for your video,” Timothy said.
I was about to tell him that it was no problem, that it would make an amazing addition to the yearbook, and that I couldn’t wait to hear whatever he’d end up playing someday in the future—not lies, really, so much as momentarily forgetting that Timothy was dead, that there was no future for him. But before I could say anything, I saw what looked like snowflakes surrounding his body, even though it was early June. As I continued to stare, though, I realized it wasn’t snow falling around Timothy so much as Timothy himself fading into the air around him. Bit by bit, molecule by molecule, until he was just the softly amorphous blur I’d first seen on my phone’s camera. And then, all at once, he was drifting up in a swirl, up and up, coalescing one more time to look like Timothy again, laughing as he hovered above me, looking down, and saying, “Ellie! I’m sorry for bothering you, but I have to go now! I have to go home!” And then he shot like a star into the bright blue sky above our houses.
Timothy Barlow had left, finally. And his soul—the soul that had drifted up into view after I’d waited for it to reveal itself—was gone now. Gone home.
After Timothy Barlow’s spirit disappeared, all I could think about was Becca. My best friend since kindergarten, the girl who held me as I sobbed after my first real boyfriend broke up with me in the tenth grade. The girl who patiently listened to my constant complaints about Ingrid Mueller being weird to me over the last few months. The girl who always said I looked fantastic on days when I felt sick or sad about something. The girl who gave me one half of a heart-shaped charm that spelled out the words Best Friends when you put the pieces together. I’d been wearing the charm every day since the outbreak, reaching to hold it between my thumb and forefinger whenever a memory of one of my friends would surge up out of the dark and set me crying. I’d stroke the letters of my half of the heart, the side that spelled out Friends, as if by doing that, I could bring all of them back to life again.
I kept thinking about what Becca’s mother had said at the memorial service. How she’d been seeing Becca nearly every night since she died. And because I’d been seeing Timothy Barlow’s ghost, I had to wonder if Becca had really been appearing to her mom so regularly. I wondered because I knew with certainty that the person Becca Hendrix wanted to spend the least amount of time with in life had been her mother.
It was no secret to anyone that Becca’s mom was domineering, especially when it came to her children. For years, Mrs. Hendrix had been trying to mold Becca into a younger version of herself, dictating the kind of clothes Becca wore, the way she did her hair, the extracurricular groups Becca could join, even the boys Becca could date—if she let her date anyone, which was rare. It’s like Mrs. Hendrix saw her and Becca as those nesting dolls that open up to reveal a smaller version of the bigger doll inside. And if Becca didn’t fall in line, if she didn’t at least pretend to, there was always hell to pay for it.
One time, when we were thirteen, Becca’s mom locked her in a closet after Becca confided to the school guidance counselor that Mrs. Hendrix had a drinking problem. Becca told me she’d done it because her mother would sometimes drink heavily at night, and if she drank too much, she’d get mean and start fights with Becca and even with Mr. Hendrix, who always looked away instead of meeting your eyes. Even in his own house, Mr. Hendrix seemed to spend all his time sitting in a reclining chair in the living room, staring at the TV, not seeming to care what was going on around him, as long as he didn’t have to talk. The guidance counselor, it turned out, knew Mrs. Hendrix from church and doubted Becca’s story. So she asked Mrs. Hendrix to come in and discuss how to handle “Becca’s lying.” Mrs. Hendrix had gone straight home and gr
abbed Becca by her ponytail, called her an ungrateful, worthless slut, no better than her brother, who would never again be welcome in their home. Then she pushed Becca into a closet, locked it, and left her there overnight.
Another time, when we were fifteen, Becca texted me at two in the morning, asking if I’d help her run away. What’s wrong?!?! I’d asked, and she’d replied, Everything.
After twenty minutes of texting back and forth, she eventually told me that her mom had seen her commenting on the Facebook wall of Marcus Benge, the track-star son of the only black family that lived in Newfoundland, congratulating him on going to the state finals. Mrs. Hendrix had come into Becca’s room and asked Becca if she was “keen on him,” because no daughter of hers would ever be seen with someone like that. She didn’t explain what she meant by someone like that, but Becca knew; her mother had said racist things before. When Becca argued back, told her that Marcus was her friend, Mrs. Hendrix calmly took Becca’s homecoming dress off the back of her door and cut it up with a pair of scissors. Then she made Becca phone Alex Marshall, a boy as meek as Becca’s father, who also attended their church, to call off their homecoming plans.
I knew Becca’s mom was horrible, but hardly anyone else in Newfoundland did, because she always came across as pleasant, if a bit awkward, in public. It was just me, Adrienne, and Rose who knew the real story. Becca lived in fear of others finding out, especially after she’d reached out to that middle school counselor, and instead of helping, the woman had gone straight to Mrs. Hendrix. After that, Becca trusted only the three of us, and we did the best we could to help her endure whatever her mother was putting her through at any given moment.
That’s why I had a hard time believing Becca had been visiting her mother every night since she’d died. Why, I wondered, would she want to see the woman who in life had been her tormenter?
The need to know the answer to that question grew bigger and bigger, taking up more and more space inside me, displacing the days and weeks of anger and guilt and the sheer horror I’d felt up until then for still being alive. For having survived when I should have been in that school with them. The need to know grew so big that, eventually, after I’d bitten my nails down to the quick and started to wear a circular trail into my bedroom carpet from all of my pacing, I knew I’d have to do something.
Which I did. Something that surprised even me.
The only way I could get the answers I wanted, I decided, would be to visit Mrs. Hendrix.
* * *
It was nearly mid-June when I finally went to see her. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was about to do, but I told myself to be prepared for anything. I walked, even though the roads were clear, so I’d have time to think, to pull myself together.
The Hendrix family lived in a burnt-red, two-story house that sloped down to one story in the back. Three black-shuttered windows faced the road from the second story, and two windows on the first floor bookended the front door. Mrs. Hendrix had always called their home a saltbox, which I’d eventually learned was an architectural style. But when I was little, it always made me think of a box of saltine crackers. The house was Mrs. Hendrix’s pride and joy, one of the oldest homes in Newfoundland. It had belonged to her great-grandparents and was passed down through the generations until it came into her possession.
When I came up to its driveway that day, I stopped to look at the place for a moment, taking in the tall, old maples and oaks that grew around it, casting shadows across the house and yard where Becca and I used to play as kids. The house hadn’t been touched during the outbreak, while just one street over, an entire cul-de-sac had been wiped out. Mrs. Hendrix said in a local TV interview that their house being spared was “the will of God,” never thinking about what that must sound like to the people just on the other side of the woods behind her.
I made my way up to the front door and knocked, hoping I wouldn’t lose my nerve once she answered. I’d already envisioned a scene in which she’d open the door, bring me into the kitchen, and offer me something to drink, after which she’d ask what she could do for me. And instead of telling her the truth, I’d break down crying, which was what I felt like doing most days in general. And I’d say something like how I wasn’t sure, that I was just missing Becca and I didn’t know who to talk to. Mrs. Hendrix would pat me awkwardly on the back a few times, because she was never a particularly warm person, and then she’d say how hard things were right now for everyone, how she understood, and how I shouldn’t cry like that, because Becca wouldn’t want that.
Which is close to what actually happened.
The door opened after I’d knocked three times, and there Mrs. Hendrix stood, in faded blue jeans and a pink T-shirt and an apron I knew she wore whenever she was cleaning. The apron had a picture of a black cat licking its paw on the front, and embroidered beneath it were the words Make it purrty! Becca and I used to make fun of the apron behind her mom’s back, and had developed an entire language around it to crack ourselves up. Purrfect score! What a great purrsonality. Are you feeling supurrior? Purrhaps, purrhaps! Or my purrsonal favorite, What a purrvert!
“Ellie!” Mrs. Hendrix said, looking surprised but in this way that seemed almost excited, almost…gleeful. It unnerved me. I hadn’t experienced a basic emotion like happiness for the last few weeks, forget about glee. How could she, the mother of a girl who died in the school’s collapse, possibly feel something like that? I had a hard time believing it was just because her daughter’s best friend was on her doorstep.
“What can I do for you, dear?” she asked, like I’d imagined she would.
So I played my part, too.
“Hi, Mrs. Hendrix,” I said, feeling hesitant and awkward. “I was wondering if you might have some time to talk. I’ve just been…I’ve just been thinking a lot lately…about Becca.”
Mrs. Hendrix made a face, her lips twisting in concern, then nodded quickly. “I know what you’re going through, sweetheart,” she said. “It’s terrible to lose someone you love. I’ve been hoping you’d come to see me. Believe me, you don’t have to feel alone in all of this. Come in. Let’s talk.”
After walking me into the kitchen, Mrs. Hendrix turned on her electric teakettle, then brought out a plate of pink, heart-shaped sugar cookies, which she set in front of me as if I were a five-year-old. She even took a moment to stroke the top of my head, making me stiffen a little under her touch, before she turned to go back to the teakettle on her kitchen counter. She was humming some sort of melody as she put tea bags into two mugs and then poured hot water over them after the kettle whistled. And, I swear, she was swaying her hips in time to whatever song she was humming. It was a happy sort of song, like something out of a Disney movie.
With the tea ready, she put my mug down next to the plate of cookies, then sat across from me. She was still smiling, beaming in this odd way. “Let me guess,” she said. “You’re feeling awful. You’re feeling left alone, because Becca and the others are gone. Am I right?”
I nodded, and though I was completely weirded out by the joyful vibe that surrounded her, I found myself fighting off the tears that burned behind my eyes whenever anyone said the names of my friends.
“That’s right,” I said, my throat clenching as I tried to keep myself together. Mrs. Hendrix must have noticed this and, in yet another moment of strangeness, flashed me an even bigger smile.
“I see your sadness, Ellie,” she said. “And I want to tell you, you don’t need to feel that way. The people we love aren’t gone. They’re still here with us. You can even see them, if you want to. If you know how to call for them. If you want them and need them hard enough, they’ll come to you. I can guarantee it.”
I squinted at her. It was as if she’d gone out of focus, and I needed to narrow my eyes in order to see her more clearly. “Mrs. Hendrix,” I said, “you said something to me at the funeral. Something about seeing Becca at night
. Is that what you’re talking about?”
She had started to nod even before I could finish the question, her already animated gestures seemingly able to grow even more energetic. “It is,” she said. “It is. Let me tell you, I had a dark night of the soul in those first few days after the storms, especially after they told me about what happened to Becca.” Here she paused to pat her chest several times before going on, unwittingly patting the head of the black cat on her apron. “I thought my heart was going to burst into pieces, it hurt so much. But on the fourth night, after Mr. Hendrix went to bed, I stayed up, crying into one of the couch pillows so I wouldn’t wake him, and all I could think as I sobbed was Becca, I need you. Baby, I need you. And then suddenly she was there, sitting on the couch.”
“Becca?” I said, cocking my head to the side, probably looking incredibly doubtful. After my own experience with Timothy Barlow, though, I had no reason to be a skeptic. I think I just didn’t like the idea of Becca coming to see her mother and not me.
Mrs. Hendrix nodded again, then pushed the plate of heart-shaped cookies closer to me. “Go ahead,” she said. “Have one, sweetie.”
I took one to be polite, brought it to my mouth to give it a mandatory nibble, but immediately I wanted to gag from the taste of sugar. It was too sweet, and the sweetness felt wrong, considering the topic of our conversation. Still, it seemed to make Mrs. Hendrix happy, because after I’d taken that nibble, she started to tell me about how Becca had sat on the couch in the clothes she’d worn on the day of the outbreak—she would know, considering she kept a constant inventory of Becca’s wardrobe—and how Becca had simply asked, “Why are you crying, Mom?” And how after Mrs. Hendrix had gotten past her initial astonishment, Becca had consoled her for more than an hour, rubbing her back while Mrs. Hendrix thanked God over and over for delivering her daughter to her, and how Becca had said, “Shh, Mom, shh. It’s okay. I’m here. You don’t have to cry anymore. Just calm down. I’m here for you.”