Eye Contact (35 page)

“I know the guy you're looking for. I've seen him. Come here, I'll tell you where he is.”

Chris wanted to say
No, don't believe him. Don't go,
but he couldn't speak, couldn't open his mouth or say anything, because if he said anything Harrison would remember he was here and break his arm and maybe do worse with the knife. He thought about Viscous Liquid, who stuffed himself into people's mouths to drown them, and then disappeared without a trace. Chris tried to picture his own mouth filling up, stuffed with needles and dirt from the forest floor, rocks and blood, and maybe his own sock. It didn't matter what Chris said or didn't say because Harrison went over to her, grabbed her around the shoulders, and whispered into the back of her head, “What did I just say? Do you see how I have the knife now? How I could hurt you if I wanted to?” He started pulling her. “I don't want to hurt you, though. I want you to come over here. I want to be friends and you can see what I have. What it does. It's like a surprise.”

She walked with him because she had no choice, and Chris hoped that maybe she was young enough that she wouldn't know what was happening to her or remember it, anyway. And then he saw her feet dig in the mud, like maybe she could stop what was happening with her toes. “No,” she said and that's when he knew she wasn't too young, she was something else—crazy maybe, because she started calling really loudly into the trees, “
I'VE BROUGHT HIM! IHAVEHIM! DON'T BE SCARED
.

I'LL HELP YOU TALK TO HIM
!” And saying all that, being so weird, making no sense, she somehow got away. Harrison had her for a minute, moving her where he wanted her to go, and then she flew away, no problem, like nothing, and he was standing there, alone, with his thing hanging out of his pants.

Chris doesn't remember exactly what happened next. Harrison's face went red like his hair and he exploded. Chris thought maybe it's possible that real people can morph into other forms or energy forces. That they can get so angry they transform the landscape like volcano lava or a snowstorm. One minute everything is one color, and the next, it's another color entirely, which is how it felt, when he had her and lost her and then lunged at her again, and Chris thought there was a scream, but no sound came, only Harrison's mouth stretched open like a scream and everything went quiet, with only breathing and the sound of bodies colliding, and Chris squeezed his eyes shut the second he saw the knife disappear into her dress, inside a ring of blood, because he was scared that if he kept looking, he'd see organs slide out.

“Jesus fucking Christ. Look what you made me do,” he heard Harrison say. “You gotta fucking help me, this is your fucking fault.” And he knew that it was his fault, that he'd started it all by trying to speak up. That if he'd stayed silent and said nothing, they would have been fine. Chris didn't need Harrison's threats, or his talk when they walked back about killing him if he said anything. He already knew what he would do. He'd decided as he watched Harrison pull out the knife—his hands shaking—and wipe it off with the sock to stuff it in his jacket pocket. He knew when he closed his eyes and heard for the first time, what the girl had been listening to instead of Harrison—that somewhere else in the woods, a tiny flute was playing as if none of this had happened. Which is what he decided he would tell himself until he found a way to kill Harrison.

 

Morgan is pretty sure he's stayed long enough. They've talked mostly about hobbies and all of Chris's seem a little strange, to be honest. For a while he was into hot-air balloons, then tractors; now he's mostly interested in antique outboard boat engines, which seems strange to Morgan given Chris's feelings about water. It makes Morgan nervous to have so much in common with Chris, or at least this: old passions that don't work anymore. He thinks,
If Chris ever comes over, I'll have to hide most of my stuff.
Then he thinks of another possibility: Chris sitting in his room, looking over his notebooks, nodding and wheezing, pointing a bony finger at one of his gravestone rubbings and saying, “Wow. Where'd you get that?” Maybe his old life would look different with someone to show it to. Someone who understood.

“I should probably go,” Morgan says, and looks at the clock to see he's only been here twenty-five minutes, that it just feels like two hours. “I'll come back, if you want. I don't mind.”

Chris looks out the window. “Do you want to know why I went to the woods? The second time, when I ran away?”

Morgan sits back down. So far as he knows, Chris has told no one why or how he did this yet. “Sure.”

“I knew Harrison would come out there eventually, looking for me. I was going to kill him and bury him so no one would find the body and no one would care because the world would be a better place without him. He'd just be a missing person.”

Morgan can't believe he's saying this. For a second it feels like Chris is telling him everything, and Morgan fears maybe his brain will explode with all this information. He takes a deep breath and remembers this: Harrison's name was on the list he'd given Cara, and he'd put a star by it. “Wow. I have to say, I wouldn't mind if that guy died.”

“Now I keep thinking—” Chris starts to say more, and then stops.

“What?”

“There's a reason I can't do it. It's like that girl is inside of me.”

Morgan looks at the door and back at the clock. One minute has passed since the last time he looked. “
Inside
you?”

“It's like she keeps talking about this man and how she's trying to help him, but he ran away. I keep hearing her voice saying this stuff.”

Morgan tries this: “Sometimes when I keep thinking about something I just tell myself:
Stop.
”

“It was like she was in the middle of something and we stopped her. She kept saying, ‘He's hurt and I need to help him.'”

Chris must be trying to imitate her voice, but he sounds like he's doing a Snow White impersonation. Morgan wonders if he's having a nervous breakdown or if this is what going insane looks like.

“I keep thinking, what was it she was trying to do? Like maybe I could help. It was something about this man.”

And Adam,
Morgan thinks.
Don't forget Adam.

“Anyway.” Chris turns from the window, looks at Morgan, and seems to remember who he's talking to. “You should probably go. If you want, next time, I'll show you the rest of my origami. There's a frog that's pretty good, and a few more giraffes.”

 

It's twenty-four hours before Cara gets the whole story from Matt, who calls her at home. “This kid is a real case. It took an hour and a half, but we got a confession. For a kid, that's a long time. Usually they break down right away, but this one, he let his mother do all the talking, and then finally, in the middle of her going off on some tangent, he just exploded like a volcano. Started calling her a freak case who had no fucking clue what she was saying, that she should try shutting up for once in her life. Nice kid. He's a real gem.”

This should be a relief,
Cara thinks.
It's over,
she tries to tell herself, but all she can think of is the boy standing in the hallway wearing shoes that reminded her of Adam, with a mother she can't help feeling for; a mother whose life, as she's known it, has just ended.

“Did he say
why
?”

“I don't know if there is a why. He says it wasn't his fault, of course. It never is. His story is that he and Chris went out to the woods to fight and the girl was there already, holding a knife. She wouldn't leave them alone; she kept getting in Harrison's face, asking him if he had seen a man in a wheelchair. I presume she must have been looking for Barrows.”

Cara thinks of something, and can hardly believe what this story suggests. “Wait a second. Adam wasn't with her?”

“Doesn't sound like it. Harrison says he never saw another kid, though obviously Adam must have heard them shouting.”

“But he didn't see her get killed?” This comes as such a genuine relief and surprise that she wants to dwell on it.

“We don't think so, but there's a lot we don't know yet, a lot of questions we still have.”

“Like what?”

“Like, according to Harrison, she wouldn't back away, wouldn't leave them alone. She kept asking the same questions over and over, and eventually she started singing in his face. But why would a young girl do that to an older kid who obviously looks threatening? Why wouldn't she have backed away?”

Cara knows the answer, but doesn't know if she's supposed to say it. Obviously, Olivia has chosen, even in death, to spare Amelia the taint of labels. “Because she was autistic,” Cara says. “It was mild, but she would have had some residual tendencies. Singing in someone's face to dispel tension is a very autistic thing to do.” Cara can picture the whole scene, all too easily. In the days after her parents' accident, Adam coped with her grief, the mysterious disappearance of his grandparents, the stress of everything, by singing “The Wheels on the Bus” over and over, so incessantly that she finally had to threaten to take away all opera videos unless he stopped.

Matt whistles in surprise and then lets it go. “You know what I keep thinking?”

“What?”

“Adam gave us the name two days ago. He told us who did it. It's incredible, really.”

 

Adam nods because nodding means you're listening and he is.

“She's dead,” his mother tells him. “Someone got so mad he accidentally killed her, but I don't think he meant to, because she was a very nice girl. She was your friend and she shouldn't have died, but she did and I'm sorry baby. I'm so, so sorry, but that's what happened.”

Now he knows. Dead means forever and don't touch, and she's up in heaven where Grandma and Grandpa live, which is maybe in the clouds and maybe not. Once, his mother told him heaven is with God, and once Mrs. Ellis, his kindergarten teacher, said she didn't know where God lived, maybe in the clouds, maybe in plants and trees. It quiets him to know that she's dead but maybe living inside of trees, inside the woods she always wanted to go to.

Dead means he won't see her again because he's never seen his Grandma and Grandpa again.

Dead means people cry, though he knows he won't.

Dead means throw it away, like flowers or batteries.

Dead means asleep but you don't wake up.

He can hear her in his mind. Remember her singing. He never got to see the inside of her throat, but he can imagine it if he wants to: a long row of strings and tiny felted hammers, or a little bird with a beak that opens and closes inside of her mouth.

He doesn't have to worry about her anymore. Doesn't have to go back to school and look for her shoes. It's a relief to know this.

Sad, maybe. And a relief.

 

At night, Cara has an old dream she used to have years ago—that Adam comes to her bedroom one morning, speaking in full sentences, original thoughts, woven into paragraphs. At first, she is surprised and then, the longer he speaks, she is less so. They aren't the thoughts of a typical nine-year-old, but they sound exactly like Adam, the way he must think: “I heard something interesting. A
clackety-clackety.
” In these dreams, her impulse is always the same; if handed an Adam who could freely talk, she would start asking questions, which come so easily, it's as if she's been expecting this at any time and is ready:
Why do you laugh at fireworks? Cry when the water goes down the drain? Why do you hate certain doors at school? Why do you love Mr. Rogers still?
In the dream, there are answers for every question; simple, if-she-thought-about-it obvious answers.
Fireworks are dancing star rockets, funny. Water down the drain dies. Doors should open out, not in. And Mr. Rogers? His shoes.
When she wakes, she wonders why she didn't ask him to tell her more about what happened when he was with Amelia.
What exactly did you see in the woods? How bad was it?
She believes she knows her son, knows the answers already if they could come, but this part still eludes her.

She has seen Busker Bob's testimony and, from it, she knows that Adam
did
wander away from Amelia, doing what he naturally would have done, following the music, to find his way to Busker Bob. She knows it must have been Adam by the way he described him, standing across a clearing, listening to his flute, tracking the music with his hand. In the statement, Robert Phillips was kind enough to add this: “When I stopped playing, the boy sang back the last seven notes I played—quite lovely, perfect pitch.”

It also says Adam didn't stay with Busker Bob for more than about seven minutes, though.

To cheer Adam up, Cara checks out one of his old favorite videos from the library:
I Love Dirt Movers and Construction Machines.
It's been years since she's let him watch this one, targeted to toddlers, mindless and full of slow-motion payloaders shifting mounds of dirt, but five minutes into it, he's grinning. She's happy, too, because earlier today Morgan called to ask if he could stop by to bring a few things back that he borrowed from Adam.