Eye Contact (11 page)

In his regular notebook, she finds Boggle lists, handwriting practice sheets, voluminous pages of remedial work, nothing she hasn't already seen, until she gets to the zippered pencil pouch at the bottom. At the beginning of the year, she loaded it with new school supplies that look as if they haven't been touched, except for this surprise: there in the bottom, beneath the newly sharpened pencils, the unused eraser, and the ruler, she finds a fraying white rabbit's foot.

She takes it out and walks over to the sofa where Adam sits, listening to his music. “Adam, sweetheart, what's this?” She holds it out, into his line of vision. Seeing it, he begins to rock slightly. “Was it a present from someone?” She waits, watches his face, but can't read his expression.

It must have been a present, of course. If Cara didn't put it in here, someone else must have given it to him, but did that person know about his pouch, find it at the bottom of his backpack and zip it inside? Or—and this would be far more mysterious—did
Adam
put it in there? It seems so strange, zipped in his pouch, buried deep in his backpack, the best approximation she's ever seen of him trying to hide something from her.

 

The reason Morgan has gone for thirteen years of his life without making a single friend is simple really: there was never time. His interests made demands on him, filled his days. Trains, for instance, took a lot of time because he had to draw them and then write stories in which trains acted out trainlike dramas: derailments, crashes, tornado encounters. These stories necessitated trips to the library, books to copy from, facts to learn. Eventually he understood that nothing he could write or check out of the library matched the satisfaction of buying things. His Viking ship phase lasted only three weeks because there was nothing to buy, but electricity? Planets? Star charts and telescopes? Every new interest has filled their mailbox with catalogs full of the surprising products it is possible to own: a personal planetarium, a cricket-breeding kit, an aquarium for hatching and raising sea monkeys. He's only gotten a fraction of the things he wanted. Some arrived and were almost immediate disappointments. The sea monkeys for instance, which he should have guessed, his mother certainly did. “I told you they'd either be plastic or dead,” she said, staring down at the larval shrimp, which looked both, floating across the water's surface.

In between purchases, Morgan kept busy, filling his notebooks with pages of research, with his coin-collection sleeves, and with the gravestone rubbings he made one summer on a trip to Gettysburg, the vacation he insisted on after months of reading everything he could find on the Civil War. These days, his old fixations feel so distant he can hardly recall the pleasure attached to them. Did he really squeal uncontrollably, driving up the long dirt road to the Gettysburg battle site? Did he really run from the car to a cannon and throw his arms around it? (“I promise you, yes,” his mother says. “And when we drove away, you cried like a baby.”) He doesn't remember this, can't imagine such excitement and desolation over a field of green grass. He has become a boy who must not recognize the child he was, who must kick at piles of notebooks and wonder what he was thinking; a boy who, short fifty cents to buy lunch, will dip into his old fifty-state quarter collection and feel nothing.

The problem with Amelia's murder is that it has him going to notebooks again, filling them up with theories and facts:
Time between Amelia's disappearance and estimated time of death: forty-five minutes.
In Morgan's experience, forty-five minutes can feel like an eternity, especially if conversation is in any way awkward. He piles up more facts and observations on those facts:
Total days Amelia attended Greenwood Elementary School: thirty-one. Number of days absent: zero.
There is also this: they can't find the weapon. Judging from her wounds, it was small, no more than six inches long, one reporter has said. “It was probably an ordinary kitchen knife,” she said and then, on a cue from off-camera, “a serrated kitchen knife.”

Later that night, Morgan studies Amelia's school picture in the newspaper. He imagines speaking with her ghost, consulting it on questions he can find no answers for.
Did you take any music lessons, or meet Mr. Herzog in those thirty-one days? Did you ever find Ms. Tesler a little unfriendly?
In lieu of getting answers, his mind wanders onto the possibility of conversations that will never take place. He imagines warning Amelia about middle school, the loneliness of walking crowded halls wearing a backpack that weighs twenty-six pounds. “Appreciate your childhood while you can,” he tells the ghost-face of the dead girl who appears in his mind anytime he closes his eyes.

In the morning Marianne calls Morgan to say that Adam's mother likes the idea and wants to get started as soon as possible. Would Saturday be all right? “Sure,” Morgan says, and hangs up feeling both excited and nervous, which worries him. Sometimes when he's nervous, he can do certain things without being aware of them, like the time he spent most of the geography bee picking his nose, which he didn't realize until his mother told him afterward, laughing so hard there were tears in her eyes. He understood from this that it wasn't really funny, that part of the problem was they both made mistakes like this. Like his mother with her petitions and the card table she unfolds in front of the supermarket entrance. “Do you love your mother?” she shouts at people, meaning Mother Earth, the environment, the fourteen miles of wetlands she gathers signatures to save, though sitting beside her, he can see people's confusion. They look over their shoulder and back at her as if to say,
My mother? Where?

Morgan used to love spending a day at his mother's wetland stand, watching her approach unsuspecting strangers to say, “Sir? Excuse me, sir? Can you give thirty seconds for your planet?” But in the last year or so, he began to see the way people backed up their carts and took different doors out to avoid getting enmeshed in one of her harangues. He began to feel self-conscious at the way she yelled at them. “If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem!”

Morgan wants this to work with Adam, maybe even become friends with him, but he can already see the ways it might fail. Adam could hate him, or scream when he walks in the room. His mother could open the door, look at him, and say, “I've changed my mind.” If she tries this, he is prepared to say, “I have to come back, it's part of my class,” even though technically this isn't a class, it's only a Group for People Who Have No Friends, and there is no credit, no grade, so for college transcripts, none of this matters. Except that to him, it does. This is his one chance, he believes. If he does this right, he'll be able to go on—make his confession and not go to jail.

When he rings the doorbell in the morning, Adam's mother opens the door. “Morgan, hi. Come in,” she says. He can't look her in the eye, can't even look up. From his quick glance, he guesses she's pretty, younger than most mothers, with longer hair. His mother wears her hair short, cut in a style called wash-and-wear. This woman's shoes—the only thing he can look at for any length of time—are dirty, with broken shoelaces that have been tied back together. He thinks:
For some people, shoes aren't a big deal. They are just things you put on your feet in case of glass.

“Adam's in the den waiting for you. I've got some cookies I've made. I thought maybe we could try playing a game.”

“Sure.” He folds his jacket over his arm.

“I can take your jacket if you like.”

“That's okay. Look, I can't stay for very long.”

“That's all right. Shorter might actually be better for Adam. I'll be honest with you, Morgan, this may not work. I can't get him to play a game with me, I've tried. There's no reason to think someone he doesn't know will have better luck, so I don't have any big, high expectations, okay? I just want to remind him that there are
nice
people in the world who he
should
trust. Do you understand?”

No, he doesn't understand, but he nods because that seems like the right thing to do.

“Even if he says nothing, it'll still be a good thing that you came and tried.”

“Okay, yeah,” Morgan says, fearing if she talks any more he might run out the door.

 

Adam remembers something else.

In the bathroom, the girl leaned against the sink, one hand resting on the faucet. “Okay, Adam?” she said. “Say ‘Okay, I'll go.'”

He wanted the water to turn on but didn't dare do it himself, didn't dare risk touching her on the way. “Okay, I'll go,” he said.

There was a sound out in the hallway, someone calling his name, some voice he didn't know, which meant
Don't answer.
The girl heard it, too, and said nothing because she has her own rules, people it's safe and not safe to talk to. No one with red hair ever, or braids, she said once. He doesn't care about those things, doesn't usually notice hair unless it stands up by itself, which his mother says is electricity though he doesn't understand because electricity can kill people and shouldn't be in hair.

Now he doesn't look up. He can't look at the boy his mother has brought in who might be one of the people the girl says they're not allowed to talk to. “Those guys,” she says, pointing, though he's never looked. He's only heard their voices.

“Adam, you need to sit down, please. I've got cookies.”

He can't turn around.

“Right here, babe. Come sit. I'll count to three if that will help.”

He hears a shuffling, the sound of a stranger sitting down.

“One…Two…Come on, Adam.”

He hears his mother get up, move toward him.

“Let's go, sweetheart. I told you we were going to do this, remember? I said Morgan's coming over to play one game with you, that's all. One game and you're done.”

“Look,” says a voice. The boy's voice. “I was thinking, maybe we could play that sounds count?”

Adam breathes. This isn't what he expected. It's different from the voices he's afraid of hearing. He remembers this one from somewhere and then it comes back to him in pieces. He remembers the band in the background playing “America the Beautiful.” He remembers a saxophone he couldn't see but could hear. This is the boy who was once in the Boggle room. If he lives there, he will know things. Maybe he will know the girl with the pink dress. Maybe he will know where she is. Maybe he will know what happened to her after they walked into the woods and started talking to that man.

 

All morning Cara has worried that she's overbuilt this visit, hoping a thirteen-year-old boy will somehow pull them out of the frozen place they're in. Now she can hardly believe what she's seeing: Morgan's voice helps. Adam's body shifts slightly, and relaxes away from the window. “Come on, baby, over here,” she whispers, tapping the chair loud enough for him to hear. And he comes. For the first time in two days, she doesn't have to move him with a prompting hand on his shoulder. She is so astonished to see compliance again, she pushes their luck: “Can you say, ‘Hi, Morgan'?”

Her heart almost stops. His mouth opens.

“Hi, Morgan,” he says.

It's his voice, his old beautiful voice she's been waiting two days to hear. “Very good,” she whispers, knowing if she overpraises him or makes too much of this, he'll get confused, retreat back to the window where he started. Adam's eyes stay on the floor, but he sits down in the chair she has pulled out for him. She doesn't want to waste any time. For this to be a success, they need to get through it fast, ride on the momentum of Adam willingly coming over. “Let's see, should Morgan go first?” She opens the Boggle box, takes out the plastic cube and—Adam's favorite piece—the sand timer. “Here, Morgan. Will you start?”

Morgan shakes the cube and sets it down. She holds the sand timer poised, suspended in anticipation of a single gesture from Adam: Will he pick up his pencil voluntarily? Will he remember this basic component of the game? “Adam?” she says, not moving.
Give him time,
she thinks.
Don't tell him too fast.
And then: just when she's about to point to his pencil, give him that tiny visual clue, his own hand miraculously appears and reaches for it.

“Good boy,” she whispers again. “And, go.”

The top comes off, the timer starts. Morgan scribbles with the fierce determination of competitive player, and she worries the sound of his pencil scratching will be too much of a distraction for Adam to write any words of his own. For her, it is. She can't write, can't look at letters, can't concentrate at all until she sees Adam's pencil begin to move. There's no time left, but she lets it go, gives Adam a chance to write three words:
dig, pot, top.
Joy explodes in her chest like a tiny bottle rocket.

They've done it. He's back. He's played a game.

 

Morgan can't believe how grateful Cara seems at the end of his visit. He's eaten five cookies, played a game of Boggle, and said very little, though she acts like it has gone much better than she expected. “I'm just so happy you came over, Morgan. It's made a huge difference to us. I can't thank you enough.”