Cryer's Cross (18 page)

She thinks about their romance, how it came as a by-product, an experiment in their friendship. Their parents always talked about them being together forever. It was just a given as they grew up.

She thinks about how she never really felt comfortable calling him her boyfriend until after he was gone. He was in love with her, she knew. But she just loved him. It wasn’t the same. He was such a good person that she knew she should be in love with him. Who wouldn’t? But there was no passion. It was sweet, she realizes now, and that’s all it was. She thinks about what was special with them. How kissing him wasn’t all that important. But loyalty? Loyalty was everything.

The tears stream down her face for the goodness that Nico was. For the memories she will never forget. For all the times he stood up for her, the only girl in their class, and for all the times she beat him honestly, at soccer or tests or a footrace down to the river. She cries for all the people he won’t get to help, for the diploma he’ll never earn, for his parents and family, who will never be the same again. For the hole in her heart left by the loss of a best friend.

And then she cries for the way he died. She knows what he went through, and she can only hope he was so under the influence of the possessed souls in the desk that he didn’t know what horror he was doing to himself. She
wonders whose voice he heard. Maybe it was Tiffany’s. He’d be the guy to want to save someone in trouble, there’s no doubt about that. She’ll never know the answer to that one.

It was the OCD that saved her. She knows that. And as much as she hates how it rules and ruins her everyday life, she vows that she will never complain about it again.

She’s sitting up in a chair, showered and slightly exhausted from the effort, but still wishing she could just bust out of the hospital—when the phone rings. She shuffles over to it and answers, her voice still husky but no longer sore from all the beatings it took.

“Hello,” she says.

“Hey.”

Her stomach twists. “Hey . . . How are you?”

It’s quiet on the line, and for a minute Kendall thinks Jacián might have hung up. But then he speaks. “I’m fine. I’m . . . I just wondered if you were doing okay. Is this a bad time?”

“No. I mean, yes, I’m doing okay. No, it’s not a bad time.” She sits down on the edge of the bed. “I saw you on TV, at the memorial service. . . .”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, it wasn’t on for long before they cut to the next tragedy, though. You looked nice.”

“Thanks. Look, Kendall?” he sounds anxious.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry to bother you. I know this is a tough time for you, with Nico and all, and you probably don’t want to see me. But I’ve just been thinking about you . . . God. All the time. Do you mind if I come up to your room?”

Kendall blinks. “Where are you?”

“In the lobby.” He sounds miserable.

Kendall’s stomach drops to the floor. She swallows hard. “I look . . . pretty terrible. Bruises, scratches . . . I guess you’ve seen that already, though.”

“If you don’t want me to come up, that’s cool. It was just an impulsive thing. I went for a drive after the service and ended up here. I can go.”

“No! I mean, please. Come up. I was just, you know, warning you. I’m in four sixteen.”

There is silence. An intake of breath. And then, “I’m on the way.”

Kendall hangs up the phone. She dashes to the bathroom and checks her hair, shakes it in front of her face to try to hide the scratches, but it only makes her look worse, so she smoothes it back again. She slips into her robe. A moment later she hears a soft knock on the door.

She takes a deep breath and opens it.

He walks in.

Stands there hesitantly for a minute, still wearing his
suit from the memorial service, shirt untucked, black hair disheveled from the wind. He takes her in from toe to head. His eyes land on hers and stay there. And he says softly, “You don’t look terrible.”

Her stomach flips over, scares her.

He goes to her, opens his arms, and she wraps hers around his neck, feels the chill of the evening on his jacket.

They hold each other gently, thoughts rushing through their minds, memories of when he found her. She buries her face in his neck. “Thank you for saving my life,” she says. “That was really scary.” From nowhere and everywhere, the sobs come.

He runs his hand over her hair and swallows hard. “You did it yourself,” he says. “I don’t know how you did that. How you did what Tiffany and Nico couldn’t do. But you saved yourself,” he murmurs. “You did it. All you.”

“I would have frozen to death out there without you.”

He holds her tighter. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers. He presses his lips to her hair.

Everything inside her body melts.

She is chocolate in his fist.

We scream but the noise is lost. No listeners remain. A sliver of Us is gone, trapped, dormant inside the life. Ancient heat hovers at the edges of Our face, manhandling Us, bumping and shoving, away, away. Perhaps now We will find heat, life anew. We settle. And once again, We wait.

She’s nervous her first day going back to school. She waits by the cold window, fogging it up with her breath, until she sees the truck. Then she kisses her mother and father good-bye. They wave and go back to their newspapers and coffee—a small reward, a luxury for another harvest completed.

Jacián pushes the door open for her from the inside, and she hops in. He turns the truck around and takes off down the driveway.

“Where’s Marlena?”

“She’s been hitching a ride with Eli the past few days. They hung out after the memorial service, and I think maybe they’ve got a little thing going.” He glances sidelong at her.

She grins. “How cool! Eli’s a sweet guy. That’s perfect.”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Little things are overrated if you ask me.”

“I see.”

“Yeah, it’s sort of all or nothing with me. Yep.”

Kendall’s eyes narrow. “I’m feeling an urge to smack you again.”

“Ooh,” he says. He slows the truck.

“No! We have to get to school. No time for that now.”

“Right. My bad.”

“Please just tell me somebody straightened the desks while I was gone.”

“Sure. I did.”

“You did that for me?”

He looks at her like she’s nuts. “Um . . . no. I’m not that good.”

“Oh. Ha, ha.” Kendall takes a deep breath and lets it out. “God, I’m nervous to go back in there.”

Jacián pulls into the parking lot, takes her hand, kisses it, and peers at her through his thick lashes. “You can do it.”

It’s weird being here again. She walks in and looks around. Turns the wastebasket, straightens the markers. Opens the curtains and checks the locks, whispering, “All checked and good.”

Then she looks at the desks.

They’re all there. Twenty-four of them. She breaks from her usual pattern and goes first to the senior section. Stops at Nico’s place. Jacián watches her quietly.

“It’s a different desk,” she says.

“Yes.”

“I’ve never seen this one before.” She draws her fingers across the graffiti carefully, ready to pull back at the first whisper. But nothing happens. It’s just a desk. “I’m glad they replaced it. It would look wrong if there was a hole in this spot.”

“I mentioned that,” Jacián says. He walks over to her. “It’s from the storage room. I said I thought it would be less conspicuous to the other students if they put a new one here, that you and I would be the only ones who noticed the switch.”

She nods, deep in thought. She turns, searching his face, his eyes. “Hector says you heard the whispers too.”

He nods. “I did. I thought it was my mind messing with me. But then I remembered the way you wrapped yourself around the desk whenever you sat there.” He touches her arm. “I held my hand to it for longer than I want to admit. I couldn’t stop. It almost had me too, Kendall.”

Kendall bites her lip. “Whose voice did you hear?”

He swallows hard. Touches her face. “Yours.”

* * *

After school Jacián and Kendall drive to the church graveyard. Little bits of snow fall to the graying ground. Kendall gets out of the truck and walks slowly to the grave site, Jacián holding back, giving her some space. She stares at the fresh dirt and shudders with cold and memories, memories of his decomposing face that she knows she’ll never forget.

She fights the demanding thoughts that want to swirl around her head. Instead she forces new ones, remembering the good times with the best friend anybody could ever have. She beckons over her shoulder and reaches for Jacián, threads her arm around his waist. He slips his hand to her shoulder, absently weaving his fingers through her hair as they silently pay their respects together.

She is out of tears.

She kneels by the grave as the snow falls on it. Closes her eyes and pictures him, long blond hair swishing around his head, that grin. She smiles back at him. “I’ll miss you,” she whispers. “Good-bye, Nico.”

At Hector’s that evening, Jacián and Kendall sit around the table with a computer and catalogs, researching.

“There’s NYU’s Tisch in New York,” Jacián says. “Or FSU Dance. That’s Florida. What about Hartford?”

Kendall pages through the options. “There’s a lot of dance schools,” she admits.

“San Diego, Ohio, or hey, maybe University of Arizona. That’s down where we used to live.”

“No potatoes?”

Jacián smiles. “No potatoes. Lemons, limes, avocados. Horses nearby.”

“I like horses. Hate potatoes.”

He squeezes her thigh. “You’ll have a lot of excellent choices once you pull your grades up again.”

Kendall sighs. “Yeah. I guess spending all that time ignoring everything wasn’t such a good idea, grade-wise.”

“Hey,” he says. He turns her chin so he can look into her eyes. “You survived it.”

She nods.

“Let’s go take a break.”

They slip their jackets on and step out onto the porch. It’s bone cold outside. Jacián leans against the railing and pulls Kendall to him. He kisses her softly. She leans into him and holds him, feeling the shape of his body through his shirt, his heartbeat against hers. She counts the beats lazily, more as a comfort than a compulsion.

“I smell a bonfire,” Kendall says after a while.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Want to walk? Go check it out?”

“Sure.”

They walk hand in hand until they can see the flames, hear the crackle. Hector and old Mr. Greenwood hold
shovels. The firelight against their bodies makes huge jumping shadows along the tree line behind them. The carcass of the desk stands on metal legs, fire licking, angry smoke erupting from it.

Jacián and Kendall approach with caution, and then they watch, silent alongside the solemn-faced men thinking about the boys who died on that desk so many years ago, and the students who died this year because of it.

Kendall clears her throat. “Whatever happened to the boy in the story? Piere?” she asks.

Hector pulls himself from his thoughts and glances at old Mr. Greenwood, who frowns mightily at the fire. “He made it,” Hector says softly. “He did himself proud.”

When the wooden desktop collapses in on itself and shudders in the ashes, Kendall feels a rush of cold escape her lungs and hears a faint drawn-out scream.

But then it’s gone again.

We feel the heat, and for a moment, We believe! Life is back. But this heat is intense, not gentle. Not submissive but searing. Painful.

We moan, scream, Our face cracking like gunfire . . . like a whip. Thirty-five, one hundred. One hundred! ONE HUNDRED!

The fire consumes Our wooden host. It burns, breaks, explodes. Releases Our remaining souls to travel to Our final resting places.

Or.

To find new places to hide.

And wait.

Touch me
.