Are You Still There (7 page)

“Hah! Good point.” Beth tucks her hair behind her ears. “How do they expect us all to get along when they've got this image of war greeting us every day?”

“Someone should suggest we change our mascot to Buddha.” I imagine this. “Wouldn't that be cute, to see him sitting there, happy in a diaper with cute, little fat rolls and a big smiling face?”

“Maybe we'd all get along then. You could suggest it.” Beth gives me a big, fat wink. “You know you're the kinda gal who can make things happen.”

“Somehow I doubt the football team would go for a fat-man-in-diaper image.”

“Forgot about that.” We chew quietly for a while.

Our Sunday morning helpline meetings break four rules. We (1) enter the public library before it's open (2) through the “staff-only” door, (3) talk above a whisper, and (4) eat and drink breakfast foods. Apparently Paisley is dating one of the head librarians. Pretty soon she'll (gasp) tell us we can check out more than ten books at a time. We're living it up.
Yeehaw!

We're parked in the children's section, which is built to look like a pirate ship. The ceiling is high and sloped, and there are wooden benches along the sides. A mast rises through the center of the floor, and large murals of ocean scenes line the walls. Janae has settled herself on my left, with a twisted glazed doughnut and a cup of orange juice. She leans into me and rests her head on my shoulder.

Paisley sits on one of the benches, facing us. She holds a large jelly doughnut over a paper plate. As she takes a careful bite, jelly squirts out the other side. She doesn't notice.

“Okay, guys!” She steps in front of a dry-erase board. On one side she's written
What's working
and on the other side
What's not working
.

“Everyone has had a chance to manage a shift in their pairs by now, so you've gotten a taste of the program. This is a work in progress, so I anticipate we'll have our fair share of glitches.” Paisley takes another bite of her jelly doughnut, and more of the red, gooey middle leaks out the back. I watch it roll down her plate. No one says anything.

We establish pretty fast that we need food (mini fridge) and entertainment. I feel like a wimp, but I raise my hand. “Safety issues.” I say. “It's dark outside when we're walking out, and we had a creepy caller.”

Cruz calls out, “We had a creepy caller too.”

Nate and Eric say, “So did we.”

“Really?” Paisley asks, her jelly doughnut poised midair, forgotten.

I add, “We got a caller that accused us of gathering information for the cops. Like we're trying to catch that bomber guy or something.”

Paisley sets down her doughnut. “This is a campus improvement project. We have nothing to do with police officers. If someone calls up and confesses, you should try to get them to turn themselves in.” She scans the room as if looking for comprehension. “But please know that the purpose of this line is to support people. Sure, it's a response to what happened on this campus, but it is run by
us
, not the police.”

I want to believe her. I really do.

“What should we do when we respond to a text, and then the texter leaves us hanging?” Cruz asks.

“Nothing,” Paisley says slowly, like she's surprised by the question and has to think it through. “The texter knows you're there and will text back when he or she is ready.”

“So what happens if that person texts back after we're closed?” Garth calls out.

“Great question.” Paisley wipes her hands on a napkin. “They get an automated text back, just like the callers get an automated answering machine saying we're closed for the evening and here are our hours.”

“That's good,” Cruz jumps in. “We had a last-minute texter who just said, ‘Are you still there?' and then after I texted back there was nothing.”

“That happened to us too,” a few people call out.

“Huh.” Paisley scans the room. “By a show of hands, how many people got a text like this right before closing?”

Every hand in the room goes up.

Stranger's Manifesto

Entry 6

What's this?

A helpline?

Come on.
Really?

I'm insulted.

Call me cynical, but I say,

“Too goddamn little … too goddamn late.”

Just who the hell is it supposed to support?

A sicko like me?

Might be fun

To watch them try.

10

Dad sits cross-legged on his bed, playing solitaire. I stand in the doorway, digging my toes into the carpet. He looks up from his game. “Oh hey, baby. You all set for bed?”

“Almost.” I sink down next to him, and my weight makes the cards shift position. Dad has played solitaire since I was a little kid, but I wonder if the cards have new meaning to him now. Does he see the blacked-out mouth of that queen? The ticking bomb by her feet? I consider asking him about it, but I don't want to get Chloe in trouble. She'd probably been digging through his wallet to scavenge for a loose ten or twenty, hoping he wouldn't miss it.

“Dad, did you hear about that helpline the school set up?” My throat closes up a little.

He deals the cards out again. They look so white against the dark navy comforter. “Yeah. I think it's up and running.” He says it as casually as if he's talking about pulling a bunch of guys together for a game of two-hand touch football.

“Could the police department place a wiretap on something like that?” I touch the bedspread.

“Why would they want to?” he asks, studying the cards before placing a few down. “Aren't those crisis lines supposed to be confidential?”

I am purposely vague. “Uh, maybe if there are risk issues or something like that.”

“Oh, you mean if someone's suicidal and says they just slit their wrists or something?”

Not really, but okay
. I just wait for him to go on.

“I think in an emergency like that, and with the person still on the line, the police could trace the call to save the person's life. That would be considered a kosher reason to invade someone's privacy.”

“Oh.”

“Why do you ask?” He looks up from his cards.

“No reason.” I kiss him good night on the forehead, and he returns to his game. But I peek back at him as I leave the room. His hands are holding cards, but his eyes are watching me. When he sees me looking back, he quickly looks down.

We have a safe under the desk in Mom's office. My parents keep private stuff in there. Documents, passwords, projects from work, and Dad's gun. Dad always says when you're a cop in a small community, you never know when you're gonna need your weapon. So he keeps one locked away.

I know the code to the safe. I'm not supposed to know it, of course, but I do. I'm responsible about it though. It's not like I'm gonna tell anyone. But I do sometimes take a peek. I know my parents each have wills. And that they have a document that separates their finances. And that Dad sometimes brings home photocopies of evidence so that he can study them after hours.

I don't touch the gun. I never do. Dad did a good enough job of scaring me away from guns when I was little. Guns and motorcycles. I won't touch either.

But tonight, after everyone's asleep, I creep down and look at Dad's work file. I find a photocopy of another playing card. A joker. It looks just like the one I'd found in my locker, with neat block letters in Sharpie edging around the perimeter. I
still hold a thousand lives in my hands. But you will never find me. I am invisible. I could be right under your nose, and you know it
.

After I read it, I wish that I hadn't.

I put everything back carefully, then scramble upstairs. I'm so spooked that it feels like the shadows have eyes and the corners of the banister are pulling at me with bony arms.
Yikes
. I try to laugh at myself, but fail. It feels a little too convenient that one of those same playing cards just
happened
to be in the slats of my locker. The bomber's got to be planting them. For me. For Dad. And maybe for other people too.

So even though I have no clue who
he
is, he knows who I am.

He's playing a game.

A game that I don't want to play.

And now I'm totally losing my mind, because I hear this clickety-clicking sound coming from the hall, like mice are tap-dancing on Chloe's dresser. I move forward and peek through the crack in the door to her room.

Chloe's up. She's typing on her computer, and since all the lights are out, there's a bluish glow emanating from the screen. The screen lights up her face with an otherworldly tint. I get the profile view, because from my position at the door, I just see the side of her face. I can't tell what she's typing, or even what site she's on.

I inch the door open, craning for a better look.

The door creaks. Her head snaps toward me. “Hey.” She seems surprised and quickly moves the mouse to close out of whatever she was doing. Her hair is sticking up in all directions, and she's wearing the nighttime retainer that makes her slur. “You can't sleep either?”

“Nah,” I lie.

“Wanna have a party?” When we were little and got scared at night, we'd sleep over in each other's rooms and call it a “party.”

“Sure,” I say slowly, thinking that it's been at least four years since we've done this. “My place or yours?”

“Yours.” She's moving the mouse around again, shutting the computer down completely. “I don't want you sleeping on the floor in your old age.”

“Very funny.”

Five minutes later, I'm in bed with the covers pulled up to my chin. I can hear Chloe shifting around on the carpet beside me. We've laid out comforters and pillows, and basically done everything but move her mattress over here. Chloe's breathing evens quickly. I try to match mine to hers. Try to take myself back to a time when nighttime sleepovers were the norm and my sister and I shared all our secrets.

When life was simple.

It feels so long ago.

Stranger's Manifesto

Entry 7

I found her, you know.

Jo.

Hanging like a puppet from the tree.

Swinging in the wind.

Eyes bulging and pointed right at me.

Accusing me.

Like somehow I could have stopped her.

Like somehow I
should
have stopped her.

I hate that

Shoulda-woulda-coulda
feeling.

It weighs down my chest

Like an avalanche of dictionaries.

But now,
I'm
in charge

And things will be different.

This time I'll deal the cards

In
my
favor.

11

EARLY NOVEMBER

“This is harder than it looks,” I complain. I'm sitting cross-legged on the futon, holding a tiny purple bead between two fingers and trying to thread wire through the microscopic hole. Janae searches through the pile of beads in the center of the futon.

“You want some help?” Miguel asks from my left.

Miguel and I were somehow paired together when Paisley made the executive decision that all helpline shifts would be run in coed teams. To “remedy safety concerns.”

Janae raised her hand in the meeting to say that bombs and bullets were equal opportunity killers. Walking out with a guy didn't necessarily increase her safety. But Janae's not complaining because she got paired with Garth. I made Janae promise to come with me for my shifts so I wouldn't have to be alone with Miguel. I told her I'd pay her back and come to her shifts too.

“Go for it.” I say, holding out the jewelry. Miguel takes it from me, his fingers brushing against mine. His skin feels hot, and the tips of his fingers are rough to the touch, but not in a bad way.

Miguel grins, his teeth flashing white against his dark skin. “I've rethreaded my mother's sewing needles a hundred times.” I watch as he licks his finger and then slips the wire through the small hole.

Riiiiiing
. We all jump. We've got to stop being so jumpy about getting phone calls. That is, after all, the whole reason we are here.
Riiiiiing
.

“I'll take it,” I say.

I sit in the chair, take a deep breath, and pick up the phone. “Helpline, this is Vanessa.”

“Oh, hi.” The voice sounds surprised, like maybe she didn't expect anyone would answer.

“Hi,” I tell her. “What's going on tonight?”

“Uh …” Her voice is shaky. “It's nothing really.”

“I'm here to listen,” I remind her.

“Okay, it's just that I moved here midyear, and no one at this school has ever heard of being friendly!”

I am momentarily offended. Of course we're friendly. I write on my paper:
Lonely. New to school. People unfriendly
.

Janae scribbles,
How does that make you feel?

I hate these pat answers and questions. They feel so forced. But I can't think of anything else to say. “So you're new to school.” This sounds even more ridiculous, but luckily the girl doesn't seem to mind.

“Yeah. I hate it here. I've been eating my lunch in a bathroom stall, because there's no place to sit. No one seems to want to get to know someone new.”

Miguel writes on the paper,
Get involved in a club? Or a sport?

I'll have to remind him later that we're not supposed to give advice. “Are there any groups you'd really like to hang out with?”

“At my old school I hung with the theater kids.”

“We have a drama program here too,” I point out. “The drama teacher lets people eat their lunches in her room if she's in there.”

“Really?” I hear the slight lift in her voice. “But I'm not in drama. And I haven't auditioned for any plays.”