I punch in a tip, then swipe my credit card through the machine in the cab and wait as it’s approved. Then I bolt outside and up Astor’s stoop. When I get to his door, I pause. The code. His town house has a code.
I stop and think. I saw him type it in, remembered, what? His birthday. Not Valentine’s Day, but close. I close my eyes and call it up: 0215.
But it’s breaking and entering to use it.
I only stop for a few seconds, though. Then my fingers are working on their own. The door clicks unlocked. It’s not until I’m pulling it open that I think about the possibility that his dad is here. I hear his voice from this morning rattling around inside my brain. Angry. Screaming. Terror chimes in my chest
right along with the panic. Right along with my heart.
The house seems quiet and empty, but I know that can be misleading. I don’t stop to find out if I’m right, though. I just zip up the stairs and down the hallway, and then I swing Astor’s bedroom door open.
Except it isn’t his bedroom. I’ve chosen wrong—all the doors in the hallway look the same—but once I get inside, I’m not thinking about that. I’m not thinking about anything. Because what I see has pushed every prior thought out of my head.
The room is blue, just like his bedroom, but it’s brighter—it has been painted more recently. There are some pillows in the far corner—the big kind you can sit on—and one painting with a spotlight over it on the wall. A piece of modern art, all black lines and red squares.
But none of that is what I actually look at.
Against the near wall there is a bench, no bigger than a wide, low coffee table. On it are rows and rows of pictures. Framed, in all different shapes and sizes. One large image sits in the middle, like Buddha on an altar. It’s a photo of Astor’s mother. They’re all photos of Astor’s mother.
Her face. Her body. Her smiling. Her looking at the camera head-on. But what makes it disturbing, what makes me want to drop to my knees right there, is that they are only of her. There are no pictures of Astor. No shots of his mother
holding him. No images of Christmas morning, portraits of a smiling baby in her arms. All the photos are cropped to cut others out. They’re jagged, ridged. Some even have holes.
And there are candles on the table, in between the photos. Long-stemmed ones with gold bases. Dozens of them. They drip down onto the wooden table, newly lit.
Someone has just been in here.
There is a dresser next to the—what? Shrine?—and I make my way over to it. I already know what I will find, but I tear it open anyway. The faint hint of lavender hits me as I pull out sweaters, tops, jeans—all women’s clothing. I start to feel sick. Like I’ve had too many funnel cakes and gotten on some dizzying amusement park ride.
And then on the floor I see it. The framed photo I picked up in Astor’s room last night. The one of him with his mother, his arms around her waist. It’s lying faceup, but the frame is shattered; like it was thrown down with force. I see Astor underneath the broken glass—smiling, young, happy.
I look from the candles to the dresser to the broken frame on the floor. It’s all a big memorial. Like the flowers people leave along the road at the site of car accidents. But there isn’t anything sweet about this. Nothing tender. It’s creepy, disturbing in a way that makes me back up against the door. And I know this is Astor’s work. I know that he took scissors to every one of these pictures, that he lit these candles. That
he keeps her wardrobe in a wooden dresser. That he preserves her memory like a corpse.
The same intensity that compelled me to his house just a few minutes earlier now drives me away. It hollers and screams inside me to get out. Run. Go as far from this room as possible. I turn toward the door, but something makes me spin back around. The photo. I can’t leave it on the floor like that. It feels wrong somehow, disrespectful. I bend down and pick it up in my hands, careful to avoid the sharp edges. I layer the stray glass shards on top of the frame, and then I set the whole thing down on the altar. I close my eyes as I leave the room. I don’t want to remember what’s inside.
I call out to Peter when I get home. I want to see him, to tell him what I have found, to tell him I’m sorry. But our house is quiet. As quiet as Astor’s. Peter is gone.
I sit down on our stairs, put my elbows on my knees, and take a few deep breaths—inhale and exhale. Anxiety sweeps over me, tugs at my center, and radiates out my limbs. The feeling of slow panic mixed with deep-seated sadness—the kind that makes me want to flee the country at the same time as I want to go upstairs, pull the covers over my head, and never come out. I keep seeing those pieces of shattered glass on the floor. The photos. The sweaters kept like mummies wrapped and pickled in their cases.
My phone lights up—Astor calling. His face pops up on
the screen, his black eyes piercing. It makes my heart beat frantically.
I hit ignore and exhale the breath I’ve been holding. I have no idea what to do. Am I overreacting? Is it possible this, too, has an explanation?
My phone rings again. Astor. I pick it up with shaky hands and hit the green button this time. My fingers work without me, like they did on the keypad of his town house.
“Caggs?” His voice is sweet on the phone, liquid, like it’s pouring through.
I clear my throat. “Hi.”
“I just saw all your missed calls,” he says. “Is everything okay?”
I hike my shoulder up to keep my cell in place and sit on both my palms, digging my nails into the backs of my legs. “Sure,” I say. “Yeah. You didn’t come to school.”
“I got caught up,” he says. Then he lowers his voice. “You ran out so fast this morning I didn’t get a chance to tell you.”
“What?” I can’t even hear my own voice over the beat of my heart.
“I had some appointments today and had to call in.” He stops; I hear him breathe. “I’m all done now, though; can I see you?”
“It’s the middle of the afternoon.”
“But you’re not at Kensington.”
I yank my hands out from under me and look around, panicked. How does he know? Is he here? Can he see me?
I swallow. “Yes I am.”
“No, you’re not,” he says.
“How do you know that?” I know I’m being ridiculous, but I can’t seem to convince my pulse. It lurches forward, like it’s prepping me to run.
“Because I’m here.” He pauses. “I came to drop off an assignment for fifth period. Is everything okay, Caggs? You’re acting kind of strange.”
My mind is working overtime trying to convince me of a million opposing things. He understands me. He’s dangerous. He’s grieving. He’s crazy. I don’t know which to believe.
“Look, I’m gonna come over,” he says. “You home?”
I answer automatically. “Yes.”
I’ll give him the chance to explain it all to me. Why his dad wants to send him away, and why he has a shrine to his mother. He’s my boyfriend; the least he deserves is a chance to tell me what is going on. I’ll listen. There are always reasons things are the way they are. I think about Kristen on that rooftop. I think about
me
on that rooftop. About what people believed. People assumed what they saw was real, and they were wrong.
“I’m on my way.”
I let my hand go slack and the phone fall. I don’t get up. I hug my knees to my chest. I wait.
It took the paramedics five minutes to get to our house the night Hayley drowned. I pulled her out of the pool and called 911 on my cell. I explained to them what had happened, with Hayley in my arms. I gave her CPR. I knew she was dead, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell them. I thought if they knew there was no hope it would take them longer to get there.
They were calm when they came in. One of them took me off Hayley and the other put his hands on her. Not on her chest, though, on the sides of her face. They didn’t give her CPR. They didn’t compress her ribs. One of them asked me what had happened and I told him. He asked me how long it had been and I said I didn’t know. Then they asked where my parents were, and if I had called them. How do you tell your parents you lost their child? How do you tell them that you weren’t paying attention, you failed, and their daughter has died? How do you tell them you didn’t save her? That you were too busy thinking about your boyfriend and your homework and what to make for dinner to notice their ten-year-old girl was drowning?
The police called them. I didn’t hear what happened on the other end of the line. I just know that my mother collapsed. They brought her to the hospital, the same one where they took my sister’s body.
I’d be lying to you if I said I didn’t remember everything from that time—those hours, days. I do. I remember the screams and the hushed voices and the fights. I remember the paramedic who had come to the house talking to one of the police officers. He probably thought he was out of earshot when he said, “For the rest of her life, that girl is going to wish she had died instead.”
I’m still on the steps when Astor rings the bell ten minutes later. I get up and walk to the door slowly, and pull it open.
He has on corduroys and a light pink oxford shirt with the Polo horse embroidered on the pocket. Brown leather belt. Brown loafers. Slight smile. Slick hair. Same as always.
“Hey.” He pulls me toward him and I fold, just a little. It’s not the same as last night, though. Something is different, and we can both feel it. Something has slipped into the impossibly small space between us. Or maybe it’s the space itself I feel.
I pull back. “Come in.”
He tilts his head to the side and purses his eyebrows, but he follows me in. “How was your day?” he asks.
I shrug. “Good.”
He takes my hand, swings me around to him. “God, I missed you.” He starts kissing me, his hands strong on my back. He presses his lips to my cheek, touches his forehead to mine. “Last night was really great.” He takes my hand and
sets it up against his chest. I can feel his heart beating—steady and strong.
“I went to your house.” The words just fall out. China cups from an unhinged cabinet shelf. They’re loud as they crash.
He pulls back and looks at me, takes my face in his hands. “Hey, what’s going on?”
I peel his hands off me and hold them down in front of us. Between us. “I went to your house to see if you were there. I was worried you . . .” My voice trails off. He doesn’t know about this morning, about what I heard his father say on the phone.
“Hey, hey.” He squeezes my hand. “Whatever you have to tell me, it’s okay.”
“I saw that room.” I drop my gaze to the floor and stare at my feet. They feel like they’re getting closer. Like I’m shrinking down toward them.
“What room?” His hands are still in mine, but his voice is cold. Like it’s dropped twenty degrees in the last half second.
I look up at him. “The one with the altar to your mother, Astor.”
He blinks, drops my arms, but his face doesn’t change. “Why were you in there?”
“I was trying to find you.”
He shakes his head, just slightly. “That’s not really any of
your business.” He turns away from me and goes to sit on the stairs. He folds his arms across his chest and leans his head back. “Jesus,” he says. He says it again.
I stand above him, my feet shuffling side to side. “I know, but I thought it was your bedroom.” I pray he doesn’t ask how I got into his house to begin with. That I’d have a harder time explaining.
He pinches the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. Then he pats the step next to him.
I sit down, press my palms together, and tuck them between my knees.
He rubs his hands over his forehead and then turns to face me. He takes a breath in. So do I. “When she died, my dad wanted to get rid of everything. Clothes, pictures, her jewelry. He wanted to sell the house.” Astor closes his eyes. Opens them. “I didn’t want to be here either, but I didn’t think it was right to just throw it all away. He wanted to make it like she had never existed.” He searches my eyes. “I know it sounds crazy, but I kept thinking maybe she would come back, you know? Maybe she would come back and she would need this stuff.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t want to believe she was really gone.”
I think about my dad’s absence. About his unwillingness to look me in the eye, let alone even be here. I think about the paints in Hayley’s studio, about her shoes stacked and tucked
away at our door. I remember not wanting to throw away her hair clips in the bathroom or her collection of American Girl dolls. I didn’t even want to box them up. Wouldn’t I have done anything I could to preserve whatever part of her that was left?
I reach across and take his hand, and when I do, I feel his body relax. “I know,” I whisper. “I understand. When Hayley died, I wanted to keep everything.”
“Did you?” His eyes look bright. Hopeful, even. I understand he’s asking me about more than her stuff.
But I can’t lie. Not this time. Not with him. “No,” I say. “Not like this.”
Grief is a strange thing. It makes you a little insane. It torments you. Harasses you incessantly about what you could have done differently. You begin to believe things that you know aren’t possible. You believe that you cannot throw away your dead sister’s raincoat because she will need it when she comes back. It’s almost impossible to think about the finality of death, to wrap your head around forever.
Astor looks up at me, and his eyes are sad. Heartbroken, even. He looks younger than he ever has. Younger than he did that night I met him. Younger than a senior in high school, even. “I know it looks creepy. I’m sorry you saw it. It’s just all I have left of her.” He exhales, runs his free hand over his lips.
“I used to think there was something I could do to bring
her back,” I say. I sit up straighter. “I even went to one of those psychics.” Astor keeps looking at me, but he doesn’t make a sound. “I found her online, and I went down to her office. Well, it was her apartment. Somewhere in Chinatown. She read my palm and drew cards and told me I had suffered great loss.” I shake my head. I almost laugh. “But when I asked to talk to Hayley, she said her spirit had moved on.” I look up at him. “I think that’s crazier than a room full of photos, don’t you?”