Between the Notes (9 page)

“E
xcuse me?” I squeaked.

“Okay, I hope this doesn’t creep you out, but there’s this cemetery I like to go to sometimes. It’s a great place to think, to unwind. Whatever. It’s quiet. Nobody bothers you. It has these massive old trees, and . . .”

He glanced over to gauge my reaction. “You . . . don’t like trees?”

“Love trees. Trees are good. I’m not so sure how I feel about the graves, though.”

“You’ll like these graves.” He nodded knowingly.

“We’ll see,” I said.

“You’re a skeptic. Not a blind follower, then.”

I remembered what Molly had said. “I don’t want to be a sheep.”

“I always thought sheep should have different names for singular and plural,” he mused. “Like, one sheep and two sheepies. Or one shep and two sheep.”

“Same with moose,” I said. “One moose and two meese.”

“Or one moo, two moose.”

I laughed again. “I
really
don’t want to be a shep or a moo.”

“Or a deer,” he said, pointing to one of those fake deer standing behind a low hedge in someone’s yard. It had been decapitated. “Especially
that
deer.”

I laughed. It felt so good to laugh.

We sort of giggled back and forth for the next mile or two. This neighborhood we were driving through was some sort of haven for weirdness. I spotted a tree-shaped sculpture made with sticks and empty wine bottles. Just as we passed that, we saw an all-white house with a single window on the second floor with a bright-yellow frame.

“What do you think?” I asked, nodding toward the house. “Paint job interrupted? Or unusual design choice?”

James stroked his chin as if he had a beard. “Maybe it’s a portal to another world, a bright-yellow one. I’ve been trying to figure it out for a week now.”

“You could knock on their front door and ask,” I said. “Solve the mystery once and for all.”

“Nah. What if it’s some lame reason?”

I shrugged. “At least you’d know the truth.”

“Truth is overrated,” he said. “It’s hardly ever as good as what you imagine.”

I nodded, keeping my eye on the yellow window until it disappeared from sight. We drove in silence for a few minutes. My
relationship with the truth was complicated at the moment, and if James wanted to stick to imagination, I was all in favor.

He pulled into a little strip mall and parked in front of a flower shop. “I’ll be right back,” he said, jumping out. He returned with a small bouquet of daisies, and for a split second I thought they were for me. But he put them in the backseat.

“I like to bring flowers,” he explained.

“Oh! Is someone you know buried there?”

He hesitated, which seemed strange. Either he did or he didn’t. But he said no, and explained, “I come here a lot, so they all feel like family, I guess. I just like to leave flowers.”

“That’s sweet.”

He flashed me an embarrassed smile as we turned into the parking lot of a large brick building with a white steeple—the Northbridge Methodist Church. The cemetery was massive, with stone pillars on either side of a black arching gate. James grabbed the daisies and we walked toward it. He lifted the heavy latch and swung the gate open far enough for us to squeeze through. It clanged loudly when he pulled it shut, the noise echoing off the sea of tombstones sprawling out before us.

“This way.” He started up a grassy hillside, cutting diagonally across a row of graves dating back to the early 1900s, and glanced over to make sure I was following.

I stepped gently, calculating where the coffins might be buried in relation to the headstones and trying to walk around their edges.

“You can’t hurt them, you know. They’re already dead. And they like visitors.” He waved to some nearby graves as if they were old friends. “Hey, folks. This is Ivy. Ivy, that’s, uh . . . Eunice and Gerald.”

I pretended to curtsy. “Pleased to meet you.”

James laughed. “See? They love you already.”

“As long as they don’t start talking back.”

He leaned down to speak in a hushed voice, as if the tombstones might hear us. “That’s why I like it here so much. Nobody talks, nobody tells you what to do, nobody judges. They only listen. That’s all they can do.”

I smiled. “I think I like this,” I said.

“Told you.” James beamed at me and stretched out his hand. “Come on.”

He pulled me along the rows, zigzagging between stones.
Holding my hand.
This was so much better than sitting in the cafeteria with everyone staring at me.

A twinge of guilt fluttered in my stomach. If Reesa knew where I was and who I was with, she’d kill me. But James had barely spoken to Reesa, I reminded myself. How could she claim to like him so much?

James slowed our pace among the tombstones, swinging my hand in his left hand and the daisies in his right. We took turns reading the names of people who were long gone, imagining who they were and how they had died. There were entire families buried together. One man had a beloved wife on both sides. The
first had died young, only twenty-eight. The other had outlived him. James pointed to one who shared his birthday. I couldn’t find any with mine. We entered the oldest part of the cemetery, where some of the stones were barely legible. I started to read out the more interesting names:
Adaline
,
Selinda
,
Cletus
,
Bertram.
We saw plenty of men named James, but not a single Ivy.

“There’s got to be an Ivy somewhere,” I said. “Maybe if we went row by row . . .”

“I’ve done it,” said James. “There aren’t any.”

“Oh!” I blinked a few times.
He searched the entire cemetery for . . . for a dead woman with my name?

He noticed my expression and his eyes went wide. “I mean, I’ve walked all the rows. Lots of times. I would’ve noticed . . . if I saw . . . I’d remember an Ivy, is all.” He swung the daisies nervously from hand to hand but kept strolling.

I walked a bit closer to him, so our arms brushed, and after a bit he took my hand again. This time it wasn’t a sudden grab and pull but a gentle slip of his fingers between mine. It sent tingles up my arm. He pointed to the far end of the cemetery, where a giant oak tree stood. The rows of graves fell away from it like folds of a billowing skirt. “That’s where we’re going.”

I had a sudden urge to run, to release all the tension and worry that had been coiled up inside me these past few weeks. And the coffin-width path of grass before me was so inviting.

“Race you.”

“Serious?”

“On your mark, get set . . .” I dropped his hand and took off.

“What happened to ‘go’?” he called, laughing. I could hear his feet pounding after me.

It was a straight shot for fifty yards or so; then I’d have to cross a few other rows of headstones and run up a hill. I pumped my arms and sprinted, then darted at an angle, weaving between the graves on the final stretch. James appeared in my peripheral vision, leaping over the stones like a gazelle. He surged past me but slowed just before reaching the tree, so we both touched the trunk together, panting.

“You’re fast,” he said, dropping the daisies to the grass so he could lean both of his hands on his knees.

I shook my head, still trying to catch my breath. I leaned my back against the tree. “You’re like a track star.”

“I never hurdled dead people before,” he said. “Hope they don’t mind.”

From this vantage point, the tombstones looked like seats in an amphitheater. And we were at center stage. They sat quietly, patiently. Listening.

“I don’t think they mind,” I said softly.

He leaned his shoulder against the tree, next to me. His face was inches from mine, close enough that I could see the silvery bits that made his pale-blue eyes shine the way they did. As if sensing I wanted a better look at them, he pushed his hair back. It flopped right down again.

“Need a haircut,” he murmured.

I shook my head. “No.”

James bit his lip as an awkward silence passed between us. Was he going to kiss me, here in the cemetery? I couldn’t decide if that would be romantic or creepy. My lips felt dry thinking about it, but if I licked them now, he’d know I was thinking about kissing.

He picked up the daisies instead. “Here.”

“For me?”

He smiled. “Or you could pick who we leave them for.”

My eyes widened. “Ooh, yes,” I said, clasping the daisies to my chest.

He nodded toward the nearest row of tombstones, and I strolled along, reading the names and dates. I stopped in front of a heart-shaped stone that happened to memorialize a man named James and his wife, Clara.

“This one,” I said. “James Aloysius Robertson and his wife, Clara Rose.”

James had a funny look on his face, like he really
had
seen a ghost.

“Do you know them?” I said.

He shook his head. “No, I . . . uh . . .” He stepped back and sat on the bench in front of their grave. “I always sit here when I come. It’s just funny you picked that one.”

I squatted in front of the stone and traced my fingers over the dates etched there. They had both passed in September, five years before—Clara on the sixteenth, and James on the twenty-third.

“That’s today,” I said. “He died exactly five years ago today.”

James nodded. “A week after his wife,” he said quietly. “Couldn’t live without her.”

“It’s sweet, isn’t it? In a sad way,” I said.

I laid the flowers in front of the stone and joined James on the bench. We sat quietly, the breeze rustling the leaves above us. A few fluttered to the ground with each gust of wind.

“You were right,” I said. “It’s nice here. The trees . . .”

“Trees are good,” he said, smiling.

I was tempted to ask him if the books in the supply room were his, to be sure. But I liked the secretiveness of it. It got me through each day, anticipating a book or a note, a little treat just for me. If I revealed myself, it wouldn’t be the same.

James stood up suddenly. “I have to show you something,” he said.

I got to my feet and followed as he led me to the edge of the highest point of the hill overlooking the cemetery. We faced the rows and rows of headstones. Then he said the one word that frightened and excited me more than any other in the English language.

“Sing.”

I snapped my head around to face him. How did he know? How could he . . . ?

“Or yell, or shout, or recite poetry, or tap-dance.” He held his arms out wide. “Yodel, maybe.”

“Yodel?”

He laughed. “Maybe not. Here. I’ll show you.”

James gently nudged me to the side, turning my shoulders to face him. “No laughing.”

I shook my head.

Then he spoke, with a hint of a British accent. “‘But, soft! . . . What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.’”

He flashed me a quick smile.

I’d never seen or read the play version of
Romeo and Juliet
, but I’d watched a movie version with my mom, the one with a very young Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. I hadn’t understood everything they were saying, but the way they looked at each other was explanation enough.

I lifted my hands to my face, squinting at James through my fingers.

“‘See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand! O, that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek!’”

He stopped, backed up as if stepping off the stage, and was James again. “Good timing with the hands,” he said. “Now your turn.”

I kept my face covered and shook my head. “Uh-uh.”

“Come on.” He grasped my wrists and pulled them toward his chest, shaking me gently. “It’s fun. Dead people make a great audience. You can do anything.”

My wrists were still in his hands, and I made no move to take them back. His hands were warm and strong, and I needed all the
strength I could get if I was going sing to these tombstones. Or scarier yet, to James.

But then I saw my watch peeking out between his fingers and the time . . . oh, no. “What day is it?”

“Uh, Tuesday?”

“Oh, my gosh. I’m supposed to be home for the twins’ school bus. I promised I wouldn’t forget.” It was already four o’clock, and the bus would be dropping them off in ten minutes. “If I’m not there . . . if my brother . . . Can I use your cell?”

“I don’t have one.” He patted his empty pockets. “There’s a phone back in the church, though.”

I started walking. Fast. As we got closer to the gate, James said, “This way,” and led me down a little path that emerged between some trees at the edge of the parking lot. Our feet pounded on the asphalt as we sped for the church. James yanked open the massive door and I dashed inside, blind for a moment until my eyes adjusted to the darkness. The scent of candle wax and old Bibles wafted over me.

“In there.” James motioned to a vestibule off the entrance area. A black phone hung on the wall, with a sticky note posted above it. “Dial 9 for outside line.” I picked up the receiver and punched 9 on the keypad, then stopped. If I called my mother, she’d be furious. I couldn’t call Reesa, who was already mad at me for consorting with the enemy, and anyway, she might refuse to drive to Lakeside. For a single, crazy moment I considered
Lennie but quickly shook that awful idea from my head.

“You going to call somebody?” said James.

“Yes, I . . .” It had to be Carla. But I didn’t know her number. “I need to look up a number.”

James found a phone book on the cloakroom shelf. I flipped through it and found Carla’s name and my own address. I dialed quickly and the phone rang three, four, five times. It was ten past four now and the kids would be stepping off the bus any second, locked out of their house and alone. I wasn’t even sure the driver would let them off if there wasn’t an adult to meet them.

On the sixth ring, Carla answered.

“Carla? This is Ivy. Ivy Emerson, from upstairs.”

“Well, hello, Ivy from upstairs.”

“I’m running late and the twins’ll be home any minute, and Brady . . . I was wondering, if you . . . would you mind . . .” I hadn’t been very nice to Carla the other day and I felt weird asking her for help.

“No problem,” she said. “I see the bus pulling up right now.”