Tighter (8 page)

Finally, I’d said the exact right thing. “I’m sure you’re a welcome addition to the McRae household,” she assured me. “You’re so warmhearted. That little Isa probably needs you. She’s practically an orphan, poor thing.”

“Sure.” When it came to her kids, Mom was always selling us to us. We usually teased her about it, but after I exchanged goodbyes with my parents and clicked off, I mulled over her words.

Practically an orphan. Poor thing.

Had I once considered Milo and Isa as lonely spirits in need of my special attention? Not really. In fact, I’d hardly considered them at all. Now, in light of Mom’s words, this seemed unfair of me. Sure, the McRae kids might be privileged, even spoiled, but with one deceased parent, one absent parent and last summer’s plane crash like a big neon sign of tragedy blinking over them wherever they went, they’d had their share of knocks.

How surprising to be particularly needed. I’d spent these past few months barely controlling my own life. Now I’d been entrusted to care for someone else. It seemed like an absurd sort of joke on Isa and me both.

That last Ruby Tuesday lunch, Sean Ryan had sat across from me, his cherub face deflated, his blond brows knit. Keeping his distance with formal phrases like
hold on to boundaries
and
nip it in the bud
and
still want you to like me as your teacher.
He hadn’t wanted to hurt me. He’d only wanted me to go away.

Just thinking about it made my face toast up.

Just thinking about it more made me want to find another pill.

“Jamie.
Jamie.
Have you gone deaf?”

Connie stood in the doorway. I hadn’t heard her come upstairs. “What are you doing?”

“Me?” I looked around. We were on the third floor, in Isa’s old playroom. I’d been so preoccupied that I’d wandered up here without even realizing it. “I was just looking for my shoes so I can go outside, to find Isa. I’d kicked them off earlier.”

But of course my shoes weren’t up here. I could feel Connie’s exasperation as she followed me back down to my room. “You’d better hurry. Look what it’th doing outhide.” She pointed out to the sky, dark as pewter, the rain sheeting sideways.

This wasn’t just a summer storm. This was turning into a beast, and Isa might be out in it. Some babysitter-to-the-rescue I was.

“I’m leaving right now.” I was already yanking my nylon orange Windbreaker from its hanger. Totally inadequate for what was raging outside, but Connie just stood there, arms crossed in her usual way, and, true to form, didn’t offer me anything better.

NINE

Gusting winds drowned my voice as I released some key swears into the storm. I cursed out everyone, pretty much. The weather, Connie, even poor Mom for hunting me down and calling me out on the pill pinching. The slashing wind and angry sky agreed. But I knew that mostly I was swearing because anger was slightly more comfortable than fear.

What if something horrible had happened to Isa, on my watch? Oh Lord, I’d never forgive myself.

I started my climb to the lighthouse, working a slippery toehold, pushing uphill by way of the walkway. It was foolish to be out in a storm this electric. Surely there was an emergency number to a local patrol station I could have contacted, instead of taking on the search myself. I’d dashed out into the middle of this thing without

Crack!
White veins of lightning cut the sky and struck a large tree ahead, popping it full of light like an enormous firefly.

“Isa!” I hollered. And again. Yelled her name until my throat went hoarse. The rubber thong broke off my right flip-flop, so I took them both off and threw them over the rail and out to sea. Continuing my trudge barefoot, head low, arms tucked in front of me to break my fall.

And then up ahead, there they were. My cry caught and died in me the same instant. The pale-eyed boy, the lanky girl. Both standing in position at the edge of the outcropping. Not caring about the rain, or about my presence. Whatever doubts I might have, whatever desire to pretend away what I instinctively knew, I couldn’t shake the fact that in this sighting of them, they were as uncannily, as uniquely positioned as they had been the first day.

This was exactly as Uncle Jim and Hank had always appeared to me, too; as an imprint, as the lingering, unrelenting burn of a retinal afterimage. I squeezed my eyes shut into pulpy sparks of yellow and red but it was too late. They’d found me, they’d printed themselves on me, they were inside.

“You!” I yelled. I wanted their attention, even as my body zinged that I was calling to them, that I was acknowledging them at all. But there was no retreat, there was no denying it. “You!”

They couldn’t hear, or wouldn’t. They were turned inward on each other. I squinted through the downpour. Peter’s arm moved to encircle Jessie’s waist, pulling her in. Their thin, wet clothes made a cling wrap around their bodies. Her arms reached around his neck.

Jagged pain shot through my toe, and I howled and spun, my anchoring foot slipping on the grass, a splinter and it
hurt
, and when my gaze reconnected, I saw that, just as before, they stood hand in hand at the very edge of the cliff.

You don’t exist you don’t exist
as I made myself walk closer to them, steeling myself to confront them, no matter that every step I took forward was a step I could have just as quickly taken back
you’re nothing even if I see you so what you can’t hurt anybody and so that makes you nothing it makes you nothing nothing

And I knew they’d jump, too. Only this time I watched them—
a lover’s leap
, the quaint little phrase flitted through my head—as they joined hands and then, feet churning, sailed over the edge of the cliff into the darkness below.

Once I’d reached the same point where they’d stood, I dropped to all fours and crawled on my hands and knees under the railing to stare over the cliff at the dizzying vertical drop to the rocks.

Jump. Done. Peace.
The moment lured me, held me tight and tighter, transfixed me and then abruptly let me go.

They’d disappeared. Because they hadn’t really been here. They hadn’t even jumped
because you are dead to everyone even to me you aren’t here.

Trembling, drenched, my stupid toe throbbing, I steadied myself and scrambled back under the railing, then sprinted in the opposite direction toward the lighthouse. “Isa! Isa, answer me if you can! Are you in there?”

The door was unlocked, and I burst into the room’s stone-walled silence.

She was in the corner, painting at a small iron table. She barely looked up.

“Hey, Jamie.” With a nonchalant salute of the paintbrush.

“Isa, what are you doing out here? You gave me such a fright!” Still shaking, my fears now scrambled with relief that she was safe, I ran to her and flung my arms around her neck.
Practically an orphan.
“Why didn’t you come back to the house when the storm got worse?”

Her face tensed. “I
did
come inside, but I heard you bumping around on the third floor and it made me … I don’t know … I hate the third floor.”

“So you should have gone downstairs to the family room.”

She pouted. “It’s private here. I wanted to see if I could paint the storm.”

“And who were you running around with on the lawn earlier?” I skinned off my soaking Windbreaker, and then sat to check out the splinter tucked like a frown in my toe.

“Who?” she repeated vaguely.

It was lodged in there deep; I’d need tweezers and a steady eye, and even anticipating the project made me feel woozy. A steady eye was not my strong suit. I looked at her. “Over at Skylark, I saw some kid. Some kid you knew.”

“No, I was alone,” she said. “I was playing alone.”

I focused her in. “You know you weren’t. And it wasn’t Milo, either.”

Isa widened her eyes. “Who was it, then?”

“Come on, Isa, it’s not a game. You can tell me.”

She shook her head stubbornly. “I was all by myself.”

“All right, what about out here? The kids near the lighthouse?”

“Nooo. There wasn’t anybody. And I was looking out the window for a while.”

So Isa couldn’t see them. Or she didn’t want me to know that she could see them. I wouldn’t push it, though, not now.

“Let’s get out of here.”

“Hey, Jamie, did you see the lightning hit that tree?”

“I did.”

“It’s a good view from the fog bell. You should go up. Just for a minute. It’s something.”

“Okay, just for a minute. And then I want to get going.” I didn’t mind staying dry a minute or so longer, and I saw what Isa enjoyed about this place as a hideout. The round stone room was medieval but cozy, hung with bracketed lamps. A cookstove and a copper sink were tucked under a back window, and a circular staircase led up to the bell.

I took the stairs cautiously. When I got all the way to the top, the wavy glass offered a warped but breathtaking view of the sea, as well as of Skylark. It was hard to pick out too many details, but I could glimpse all the way through the drawn curtains into the canopy bedroom. Had I left that lamp on? I must have. Except that I knew I hadn’t, and remembering Isa’s story from the other day, about how she used to watch Jessie and Peter from this exact vantage point, I had to answer to that unrelenting tug of thought.
They were still here.
Of course they were, both of them, I knew it, had known it on some level almost from the moment I’d arrived at Skylark. The unrest of their death was defiant, it beckoned from the corners, from all of their favorite places
all their old haunts
taunting my peace of mind
pat her and prick her and mark her with a
J
and put her in the ocean
and if I stayed here they would

“Jamie?”

I turned with a jump. Isa had followed me, but at my sudden movement, she backed off. “Sorry.” Her eyes, watchful as spiders. “Are you all right?”

“Of course. I just … I have a splinter in my toe. It hurts. C’mon, let’s get back to the house.”

“You don’t like it here, do you?”

“What do you mean?” I swallowed. “Of course I do. It’s beautiful. And the beach … it’s all just so … great.”

“Sometimes you look sad.” Then, quietly, but with a sudden fervor in her voice, “Don’t leave me, Jamie, please? I didn’t mean it the other day, when I said that you were driving the car crazy like Jess. You’re way different. I feel like you understand things about me but you’re not trying to cure me, either, like Dr. Hugh.”

“Isa. Chill your drama, girl. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Promise?”

I went to her. Pressed my damp, cold hands against the sides of her face. “Promise, cross my heart. I am not leaving you.”

But it was as if Isa knew precisely where my mind was. That I’d never wanted to leave Little Bly so much as right that moment, and despite the firm conviction of my touch and my promise, I couldn’t help but resent her need, and all that I knew it would force from me.

TEN

Hours passed with no sign of Milo.

“Can I wait up for him?” Isa had been bugging me with this question all evening.

“Didn’t he say he was spending the night with some friend?” I asked.

“Uh-uh.” Isa shook her head. “Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll show up sooner or later. Miley’s got a million friends, but he always comes home to his family.”

It struck me how my dislike of that kid had been crawling up on me lately. Happy as Isa had been to see him that first day, Milo seemed to do her—and me—more harm than good, what with his snobbery and wisecracks and all his subtle undermining. He was just too snide for me to get comfortable with.

And yet he wasn’t going anywhere, either. Each time I’d tentatively suggested other things Milo might do to occupy himself this summer, like maybe visit his friends in Beacon Hill, or possibly even see about tickets to Hong Kong to visit his father, Isa and Milo had both wheeled on me. They were more bonded together than I’d have imagined; it was a longtime alliance. Any attempt to separate them proved to be almost immediately frustrating.

Tonight, though, Isa seemed especially tired and needy, so I put Milo out of my mind and focused on her. Against Connie’s wishes, she wanted dinner in bed, and so I ignored all the usual Funsicle grumblings as I cobbled together a tray of all my own comfort faves. Peanut butter and jelly toasties, cocoa, and a peach for dessert.

I worked to keep busy as Connie sighed about all she’d have to do to secure the house if the storm was upgraded to a hurricane, while doing not much else than fixing herself cup upon cup of Lipton. Last minute, I slapped together another PB and J toastie for myself so that I could duck the displeasure of her dinnertime company, and I ran for it.

Isa had barely finished our bedtime feast before she burrowed herself under the covers. Cocooned inside her pink butterfly room, she looked heart-achingly young and alone.
Practically an orphan.
“Will you leave the TV on?” she asked.

“How about I just turn it down?”

“ ’Kay.” She’d been watching
Blue Earth.
The flat screen over the mantel showed a couple of stoner koalas chewing eucalyptus leaves.

I stepped closer, using the remote to adjust the brightness. “Hey, Isa, you know there’s all these tiles missing around the hearth?” They looked so ugly, gapped teeth in the blue-and-white Delft design.

“That was Peter.” She yawned. “I saw him do it once. I told him I’d tell Dad. It was the only thing that made him stop.”

“Why would he do it at all?”

She nestled in deeper. “Oh, Pete was always messing up stuff.”

“What a joker.”

“It was just his way.”

I found a hearthside tile and tamped it back in. “Night, then.”

“Thanks, Jessie,” she murmured sleepily as she settled. I didn’t bother to correct her. “Don’t lock me in my room tonight, okay?”

“Of course not.” Weird. How often had Jessie locked Isa in her room to keep her out of the way when Peter was over? Jessie’s babysitting style officially unnerved me. Sometimes I wondered if she’d only agreed to the job so that she and Peter could have access to this house, so high and lofty on its hill, so far away from their parents’ judgment.