Losing Faith (16 page)

Reena heads for the house, but stops and checks their mailbox on the way. I figure she must be expecting a delivery because she slides her hand in twice and double checks that it’s empty. I march across the street to talk to her, but the front door thuds shut before I even get halfway. The porch light goes out a second later and the house appears totally black. I check my watch and it’s almost ten thirty. Not an acceptable time to knock on a stranger’s front door.

Peering down the side path, I see a garden swing in the backyard. A beat-up red bike leans against the wall near the corner. It has the old-fashioned straight handlebars and a seat that looks off center and really uncomfortable. Faith’s voice is noticeable in my head again, but I’m glad. It’s been so long since I’ve really noticed it and it drowns out the thumping of my heart.

I scan the house again, and a curtain shifts in an upstairs window. Standing under a streetlight, I suddenly feel very exposed. I inch into a shadow and grab for the zipper on my backpack. I rip off a piece of notepaper and crouch in the driveway to write, “Call me. Please,” followed by my home
and cell numbers. As much as I want to talk to the guy, I’d be almost as happy if his sister called. She knew Faith. I’m pretty sure she knew her well.

After pinning my note under the windshield wiper of the Honda, I take one more glance up at the window and the curtain moves again. It’s a creepy feeling like I’m being watched, and now I just want to get out of here.

I pick up my backpack and run all the way to the bus stop.

chapter
SEVENTEEN

w
hen I get home, it’s after eleven thirty.

I tiptoe in. My mind’s been racing with all sorts of possibilities that someone’s following me since I saw the curtain move in that upper floor window at the Monachie house.

I place my keys on the hall table right beside the phone when it rings. I snap it out of its cradle in half a nanosecond. No one ever calls this late. Except possibly Dustin—drunk. Or Amy—broken-up. But if they ever did call me again, it would be on my cell. Maybe it’s a wrong number.

“Hello,” I whisper.

“Stay … away … from … my … house.” The voice sounds stern, but young. Male.

“Who is this?” I cup my hand above my mouth to shield my volume.

“You know exactly who this is. Just leave us alone.”

“Leave you alone?” I whisper, suddenly defensive. I think back to the moment we shared in the hallway and wonder if I read him wrong. The thought brings a flush of embarrassment to my cheeks. “What’s with my sister’s grave? What’s with you running away every time I see you? It seems like you’re the one—”

“I mean it. Just let it go. You don’t know what you’re sticking your fingers into.” He softens slightly; I hear it in his voice. The sternness is a definite act and I don’t think I did misread him.

“Okay, okay. I’ll do what you want, but please, meet with me once. Just once. Then I’ll leave you alone. I promise.”

Silence. For a long time. Did he hear me? Should I ask him again?

“Fine. Tomorrow, three o’clock. Grant Park.” And he hangs up.

When I set the phone down, I hear a noise and look up the stairs. Dad stares down from above. I’ve already gotten my shoes off, thankfully, but I’m so close to the front door and so
far from the kitchen where I might have been getting a drink of milk or something. I wonder if he suspects I’ve been out.

“You okay?” He grumbles, still half-asleep.

“Yeah, fine. Dad, I—”

He holds up a hand. “Get some sleep, honey.” He skulks back to his room without another word.

The next morning, Dad stops me on my way out the door.

“Who called?” he asks.

“Huh?”

“On the phone last night. Just before midnight. Who called?”

“Oh, uh, no one. Wrong number.”

He nods. “There were a couple of hang ups before that. Did they wake you?”

Huh? “Oh, yeah, they did.” I’d accidentally left my cell on silent, but there were three missed calls on there, too. I try to come up with something to make my lies sound a little more believable, but when I look up, Dad’s eyes are scanning this morning’s newspaper and he walks for the kitchen, the conversation already forgotten.

When I get to school, Tessa waits at our lockers, looking anxious to talk to me. Tessa Lockbaum. Anxious. Unreal.

“So did you go there, or what?”

I feed my books into my cavern of uncompleted assignments. “Yeah, I went there, but calm down. Nothing really happened.”

“You chickened out, didn’t you?” She huffs and rolls her eyes before I even have a chance to answer.

“Kind of. But I did leave a phone number.”

She glances up.

“And he
did
call.”

Tessa Lockbaum turns downright eager on me. “What did he say? Tell me.”

Of course if it was about a normal crush, it would never garner this reaction from her. Something’s weird, haunting, mysterious. That’s what’s hooking her. I gloss over the details and can tell she’s hinting for me to tell her which park I’m meeting him at, but I don’t. This guy runs away from me enough as it is. And Tessa’s wearing her dog collar today.

chapter
EIGHTEEN

Plan S: Find out why this guy is bent on staying away from me.

He’s standing at the fountain when I get there. At least he chose a park close enough to the school that I could walk. He looks pretty nonthreatening—a little on the skinny side, wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, earphones tucked into his ears, and his red-checkered Mack jacket. Not exactly stylish, but this doesn’t surprise me. He is homeschooled, after all.

His hands rest on the cement ledge of the fountain. He has strong-looking hands. Faith’s humming grows louder in my ears, or in my head, or wherever it emanates from, when I approach.

“Hey.” I edge up beside him at the fountain, but don’t
look directly at him when I say it. This whole meeting feels very covert.

He reaches down and switches off his MP3 player. “What do you want from me?”

He gets straight to the point, doesn’t he? I want him to look at me so we can share a connection again, but he keeps his eyes straight ahead. “Well, your name for one. I found out your last name. Should I just call you Mr. Monachie?” I snicker, but he doesn’t even crack a smile.

“Alice,” he says.

“Huh?” falls out of my mouth, loud and rude. I snap it shut.

“Alice,” he says again. “That’s my name.”

Alice for a boy. Okaaaay. “Like Alice in Wonderland?” I force a deliberate laugh. The tension is killing me.
Lighten up already!

He shakes his head. “No, my full name is Alistair. I hate it.
A-L-I-S
.” He spells it for me, very slowly and methodically, like I’m in first grade.

“I’m Brie,” I say, in my same chipper tone.

“Like Brianna?” he asks after a pause, and I realize that we are having an actual conversation. Just not the kind I’m used to. Even before Dustin, I knew how to flirt. I cracked jokes or giggled at the ones boys told me, and there was just an
understanding that I liked the guy. My methods didn’t seem to be working here. At all.

“No,” I say, trying harder. “More like as in Camembert. You know, the cheese?” I feel like a flailing stand-up comic.

A hint of a smile breaks at the side of his mouth.

“Brie,” I say again. “That’s all I ever got. My sister got the holy, religious name. I guess my parents knew she’d be her and I’d be the cheesy one.” I’m about to leave it at that, like I usually do, but something compels me to tell him the truth. “Actually, I have an Aunt Brie. She’s battled with a list of different cancers. More than once, the doctors told her she wouldn’t live.”

“And she did?” Now he looks at me, but I can’t meet his eyes. Not on this subject.

“Yeah, still is. So, really, I guess the name has kind of a connotation.”

When I tilt my head to finally look at him, he’s turned away again. I stare at the side of his face. His skin isn’t acne-covered like most guys my age. In fact, it appears completely unmarred. Baby soft. I want to reach out and touch it, run my hand along his perfect cheekbone.

“Listen,” I say after way too long of a silence. “I’m sorry if I make you uncomfortable. I just noticed you knew my sister. I’m trying to learn more about her and thought you could tell
me what you know. Then I’ll leave you alone,” I add, testing him to see if he still wants that. Hoping he doesn’t.

He mulls it over for a few seconds. “Well, I don’t know much about your sister. Actually, I never met her.”

I study him to see if there’s a joke or some hidden meaning in his words. “Right,” I pronounce in a stern tone. “So you hang out at graves of people you’ve never met.” I nod. “Makes sense.”

“It’s not that … you don’t … Look, I was there because I felt bad. I don’t know, my sister knew her.” His pinched face shows the same kind of confusion I feel.

“Can you tell me anything?” I feel like this is another lost cause and resignation tinges my voice. Maybe no one really knew Faith, not even Celeste. Alis and I both stare at the water.

“My sister Reena was friends with Faith.”

I already knew this, but I let him go on.

“They were meeting most nights with a group of girls and one guy in my sister’s room for a few months, you know, before.”

I look up in surprise. Home group. Maybe there is something to learn here. “So if they were at your house almost every night, how could you have not met Faith?”

His face tenses again. “My sister, she’s, um, pretty secretive.”
He picks at the edge of his jacket. “I didn’t answer the door or anything.”

“And what went on in her room?”

He scratches his fingers along the cement barrier to the fountain. “There was always lots of singing. Worship singing. Shouts of hallelujah, yelling things to God, stuff like that. At first they went to different churches, but then Reena came home one night saying she couldn’t hang out with those ‘lukewarm Christians’ for another second. She didn’t want their habits rubbing off on her. I thought that meant she’d just stop going, but next thing I know, our house is worship central.”

So definitely home group. With something finally making sense, I suppress a smile. “And your parents didn’t care about the noise or anything?”

The question makes him flinch, and suddenly I remember the article about Annie Monachie, found dead in a car.

Could that be his mom? I divert my eyes for a second to think about this, but Alis turns away from me and takes a few steps toward the trees. I glance down and see what looks like the end of a pocketknife sticking out of his back jeans pocket. For a second it makes me catch my breath. But no, he doesn’t seem dangerous.

“Sorry.” I say, trying to rein him back. “Let’s stick to the subject of Faith. You said you never met her, but you must
have seen her, right? I mean, she was over there so much.” I can sense that he knows more. I just need to pull it out of him.

“Sure, I saw her. But when they started taking over the living room, I stayed out of the house during meetings. Reena liked it that way.” He reaches near the cement wall for his backpack. “That’s all I know.”

“But I still don’t get it.” He starts to walk and I follow. “Why did you show up at her grave?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I guess I wondered—”

“Wondered what?” I hope he’s not going to bring it back to the possibility of suicide.

“I just wondered what happened that night.” He stops in place and looks from side to side, as though deciding which direction to bolt. “I wonder why they even went to The Point.”

His last line stills me in place. I don’t want to picture their decision to go up the mountain. “Who else was there?” I force out.

He twists his lips to the side. “I don’t know who was with them. Sorry. I remember Faith because she’s the only one who ever stood up to Reena. The only one who ever argued with her.”

The way he says it, he sounds like he admires my sister. And okay, maybe I do too. Reena seems older and sounds a little controlling, but Faith still stuck up for herself. This
feels like one of the first good memories I’ve had of Faith since she died. The first piece that I know is really her. A wave of assurance washes over me. This sounds like the sister I remember—arguing over the finer points of religion.

“I guess it wasn’t so much guilt,” Alis goes on. “More like I wanted to understand.”

I move in front of him and put my hands on his shoulders. “That’s exactly it!”

He just shakes his head, like he’s already decided he’s done with this conversation.

Being so close to finally getting some answers, an indignant feeling rises up in me. “I guess I’ll have to ask Reena, then—”

“No!” He grabs my wrist and his hands are even stronger than they look. But I don’t pull away. His strength makes me feel grounded, and I know he’s not going anywhere, at least not this second. “The deal was, you leave my family alone, remember?”

I remember. But why is he acting so protective? “Well, you have no idea what it’s like, what I’m going through. To have so many questions.”

He stares at me for several seconds before he lets go of my wrist and replies quietly. “I do know.” He clears his throat and looks away and I feel like such an idiot. “You can ask
as many questions as you want,” he goes on, “but you won’t find closure. You’ll only find more questions. I don’t know anything else about your sister.” He backs away. “If I did, I’d tell you.”

This time he doesn’t run and I don’t follow. He picks up his bag and marches purposefully away from me.

On my walk home, I try to process. Maybe he understands more than I gave him credit for. And maybe he’s right. So far everything I’ve tried to do to find some kind of closure, to fill this emptiness, hasn’t worked. Maybe it’s time for a new tactic. If only I knew what.

One thing I figure out by the time I get home: I will leave Alis and his family alone, even if it means missing out on the one guy I’ve felt this kind of connection with. But I promised, and he seems like a good guy. He doesn’t deserve me making trouble for him.