Now You See Me ... (6 page)

Abby printed out the two articles, and the girls hurried out of the microfilm room.

“Thank you so much,” Lena said as they passed the information desk.

The librarian checked his watch. “You ladies work fast,” he replied, setting his stack of books aside. He escorted them to the front door, and after a couple of clicks and turns, released them back into the September morning.

“Enjoy your jam,” Abby said with a wave as Lena began to unlock the bikes.

“I most definitely will.” He chuckled to himself and closed the door.

“I think you've broken the ice with Captain
Whiskers,” Abby said as she grabbed the handlebars of her bike and wheeled it off the rack.

“Come on, slowpoke!” Lena called from up ahead. She was out of breath from pumping so hard, but her body seemed to be on autopilot. They had to get to the gallery!

“What did you put in your cereal, girl?” Abby panted as they raced up Main Street.

“Milk!” Lena replied over her shoulder with a nervous laugh.

The girls skidded to a halt in front of the Barloga Gallery and parked their bikes. Before Abby could even get the lock out of her bag, Lena was pulling open the door.

“You go ahead — I'll lock up,” Abby offered sarcastically to her friend's disappearing back.

Inside it was quiet, so quiet that Lena was sure anyone in the gallery could have heard her thudding heart. But the place was empty — even the gallery owner was nowhere in sight.

Abby caught up, out of breath, and the two hurried to the wall of photos at the back of the room.

“Robbie Henson,” Lena confirmed, reading the
little plaque below the photographs. She was right — it was the same boy!

“Interesting kid,” a voice said from behind.

Both girls jumped.

Abby found her voice first. “You knew him?” she asked, looking up at the tall, salt-and-pepper-haired man they'd seen the day before.

“I did indeed. In fact, I'd say I knew
both
of them.”

“Both?” There were
two?

“Don't look so startled,” Mr. Barloga said to Lena with a gentle smile. “I can explain. You see, as the owner of this gallery, I always judge the contest myself. I do it blind, which means that I never look at the names of the photographers while choosing the winner, for fear it might influence my decision. I certainly never intended to pick the same photographer two years in a row. When Robbie came into the gallery after winning the second year, I was shocked — for two reasons. The first was that I had chosen the same boy twice. The second was that he didn't even
seem
like the same boy. In one year he'd changed dramatically.”

“He's dramatic, all right,” Lena said darkly.

“Changed, like how?” Abby wanted to know.

“Here, I'll show you.” Mr. Barloga pulled out an
album filled with newspaper clippings and photographs, all seeming to have to do with the yearly photo contest. In the 1996 clipping, Robbie was standing with his parents next to his prize-winning photo, the one with the three pairs of feet dangling off a dock. His smile was so wide, Lena had to look at his eyes to make sure he was the same boy. The picture from the 1997 clipping was starkly different. Robbie stood with only his mother beside the prize photo — the one of the coffee-stained napkin. A deep scowl marked his face. Lena knew that scowl well, and looking at it now made her feel as though she were standing in a walk-in refrigerator — chilled to the bone.

“See what I mean? He looks like a different person. I had no idea I was awarding the prize to the same boy. Never would have guessed. Still wouldn't, I don't think.”

“I don't think I would have either,” Abby agreed.

“He was a talented kid. Absolutely loved to take pictures, from what I understand. Though I've also heard that wasn't all he liked to take.”

Lena's head snapped up. “What do you mean?”

“Well …” Mr. Barloga paused, seeming to choose his words carefully. “There were rumors in town.
Things tended to go missing when Robbie was around. Small things, mostly. Trinkets. He got chased out of a few shops in Narrowsburg, and didn't seem to have a lot of friends….” He trailed off, and a worried look came across his face. “But …”

But what? Lena stared at the picture in the scrapbook trying to see … something. When she finally did, it was as obvious as the nose on her face (or the camera around her neck). Robbie was wearing the Impulse!
Her
Impulse. Or rather, she gulped looking down at the gray box,
she
was wearing
his.

Abby saw it, too. She shot Lena a sideways glance.

“Anyway, it doesn't matter now. The kid had a great eye. No doubting that,” Mr. Barloga went on. “It was such a shame, his dying so young.”

Lena stared at the Robbie in the second picture. Except for his menacing expression, he looked pretty much like a typical preteen in jeans and a T-shirt. He wore a crooked baseball cap on his head and carried a yellow duffel over his shoulder.

Lena blinked. The duffel! The yellow duffel! She'd seen it before, and she knew where it was.

All she had to do was go and get it.

The N16 bus to Phelps was not exactly crowded. Besides the driver, a woman holding a paper sack of groceries, and a guy texting with such ferocity you'd think he was sending Morse code, Lena and Abby were it. They had been unbelievably lucky with the timing, too. It turned out the N16 traveled from Narrowsburg to Phelps three times a day, and they had been able to catch the second bus just outside the gallery with only a ten-minute wait.

“Do you think I should ask to borrow his phone so we can call my house?” Lena asked, pointing at the texter.

Abby wrinkled her brows, which meant,
probably.
But what she said was, “We'll be fine. Everyone thinks we're hanging out in town — and we are. Only
it's a different town. We'll be back before they even realize we were gone.”

Abby was right. They
were
fine. Phelps was familiar territory, and only twelve miles from Narrowsburg. Nothing was going to happen, and they'd be back by dinner. Still, Lena felt a little guilty. She didn't usually take off without telling her parents. But the truth was, she couldn't risk having them tell her she couldn't go. Time was running out. She had to get her hands on that yellow duffel! And getting on a bus to Phelps was the only way to make that happen.

Even before Abby laid down the law and put the one-day limit on the mystery, Lena had been anxious to get to the bottom of this. Since she'd woken up she'd been overwhelmed by a new urgency. She felt like Robbie was with her all the time now, and not just in the pictures. It was as though she were walking with a strong wind at her back. She felt pushed, and whether or not she
wanted
to move forward was irrelevant.

The girls lapsed into silence as the bus rolled along the road between the two towns, stopping here and there to pick up and let off passengers. The
lady with the groceries got off in the middle of nowhere. Two teenagers swung aboard, their chatter mixing with the hum of the bus engine. The guy with the phone lost his signal, leaned his head back, and was now snoring softly. Lena stared out the window, trying not to think about going back to see the shop owner. She definitely wasn't looking forward to
that.

The pines and oaks and maples began to give way to farming fields, and Lena felt her pulse quicken. They were getting close.

“Is that it?” Abby asked. “Is that the field where the tower was?” Pressing her face against the window, she let the cool of the glass sink in to her skin and stared. All of the strawberry fields looked pretty much the same. But the one the bus had just stopped beside was eerily familiar. There were the roses, and at the end of the field, the shuttered U-Pick shack. It could definitely be the field, and there was only one way to find out.

“Take a picture,” Abby prodded.

She didn't need to make the suggestion — Lena already had the camera raised. She peered through the viewfinder and pushed the button. After waiting
impatiently for a moment, she pulled the film from the Impulse with trembling fingers while the bus rumbled on.

Lena didn't take her eyes off the developing shot.

“Well?” Abby leaned in and the two of them hunched over the image, staring hard as colors began to appear. Oh so slowly the tower Lena had captured nearly a week ago began to take shape.

“Now you see it,” Abby whispered.

Lena looked back over her shoulder to make sure she wasn't out of her mind. No tower. She would have been able to see it rising above the fields even as they pulled farther away. All she saw was September haze. “Now you don't,” she said softly.

“Lena, look.” Abby tugged Lena's sleeve, bringing her attention back to the photo.
“He's
there, too.”

Sure enough, Robbie had shown up in the picture as well. He was tiny, standing on a small walkway that circled the metal bulb at the top of the tower. He was really far away, but it was clearly Robbie. In fact, Robbie was the most in-focus part of the image. He was staring — not out at them like he usually did, but at something in his hand. The look on his face could only be described as intense.

Lena gulped, struck by a revelation. “That's where I fell from,” she gasped. “I was up there.”

Abby sat back and gave Lena a “huh?” look. “Uh, I hate to point out the obvious, but how could you have been ‘up there' when the tower was torn down years ago?”

“In my dream.” Lena explained quickly. She wanted to get that information to her friend before her eyes popped out of her head or she asked the bus driver to take a detour to the psych ward. “That's where I climbed in my dream.” Lena nodded, thinking back. Robbie must have wanted her to see something in the tower. Only, how could she when the tower was gone?

“This is us.” Abby reached up and tugged the cord that lit the
STOP REQUESTED
sign at the front of the bus. They rolled to a stop at a crossroad. The doors opened, the girls clambered off, and the bus huffed a hydraulic sigh before leaving them in a cloud of dust and fumes. The air cleared to reveal Ruth's Thrift, the shabby-looking shop they had visited several days before. It looked as though it had been waiting for them.

Lena braced herself and without a word the girls crossed the street and made their way up the
cracked walkway. When the door opened, Lena exhaled. She had not realized that she'd been holding her breath. In the back of her mind she'd been worried that the store would be closed, or perhaps not really there at all. Or maybe those were hopes instead of worries.

The bell hanging over their heads rang loudly and the old woman behind the desk lifted her head. Her brow was furrowed. She didn't look at all happy to see them.

“Back again,” she muttered.

Abby raised an eyebrow at the lackluster greeting and mumbled something about the feeling being mutual. Normally, Lena would have laughed or elbowed her best friend, but something had caught her off guard. She stood there and stared at the old woman behind the desk. There was something in the way she looked at them — something familiar — that had Lena frozen in her tracks.

With a light shove, Abby got Lena to take a few stumbling steps forward. “Where are we headed?” she prompted as they made their way through the musty store. Her patience seemed to be wearing thin.

“Over here,” Lena whispered as she led Abby to
the shelf where she had found the camera and remembered seeing the bag. It was still there — the yellow duffel — nestled beside the stack of tattered
National Geographic
magazines. “It's right here.” She started to reach for it when a voice behind her made her jump.

“That bag is not for sale!”

The shop owner had followed them. Her voice was scratchy with disuse and startled Lena so badly, she knocked several magazines off the shelf and nearly dropped the duffel.

Without another word the woman snatched the duffel from Lena's hands.

The gray-haired woman loomed much taller than Lena expected. She was faster than Lena expected, too. Lena had flinched when the woman's hand shot out to pull the bag away from her.

But Lena's reflexes were quick, too. Without thinking, she'd reached out and grabbed ahold of one of the duffel bag handles. She had to have that bag!

For a long moment the two stood, each grasping one handle, staring hard at each other. It was a standoff.

“Uh, Lena …?” Abby said cautiously, backing away. “I think maybe it's time to go….”

Lena had other ideas. She held the old woman's gaze, noting the dark intensity of her eyes, and felt
the same weird déjà vu she'd had when they'd walked in. There was something here. A connection, or … She shivered, unable to put her finger on it.

Whatever it was, it ran deep.

“I need it,” Lena said, pulling the bag closer. As she said it she knew it was true. She
needed
the bag, or something inside of it. The angry intensity of the woman's stare made Lena's voice quaver. “It's for Robbie,” she ventured uncertainly.

With those words the old woman's eyes changed, just as they had the day Lena bought the camera. It was like watching a cloud pass over the sun. The searing anger turned to gray sadness, and she dropped the handle, staggering back as if Lena had pushed her.

That was a risk, telling her the truth about why we're here,
Lena thought as she gently grasped the old woman by the elbow, steadying her. “He needs our help,” she explained.

“Robbie.” The woman breathed out the boy's name and closed her eyes. She brought her hands together, holding her left ring finger, and gave a slow nod. “Robbie,” she sighed again. “He's gone, you know.”

“We know,” Lena replied gently.

Still the woman kept her eyes tight shut. She looked like a little kid making a wish. Lena and Abby exchanged worried glances, but a moment later the woman straightened and her eyes fluttered.

“I know. He needed help,” she said at last, gazing into Lena's eyes. “I just wish I could have been there for him when he was alive.”

“So you knew him?” Abby blurted.

“Of course I knew him,” the woman replied. “I am Ruth Henson. Robbie was my grandson.”

All at once Lena understood why she had gotten that déjà vu feeling. Robbie had his grandmother's dark, intense eyes.

“I believe we could all use a little explanation,” Ruth said. “Why don't you girls come with me?”

Abby's eyebrows shot up so high, they practically touched the colorful necktie encircling her hair. But she was silent as she followed Lena and the woman through a door at the back of the shop marked
DO NOT ENTER.

“Have a seat.” Mrs. Henson directed the girls as they stepped into a kind of parlor. Lena glanced around and spotted a small kitchen off the room they were in and a hallway at the other end. This was obviously where Robbie's grandmother
lived — the rooms of the house that weren't part of the shop.

Abby crouched on the edge of a faded couch. Her eyes darted around the room nervously.

“I'll get us a little something. Then we can talk,” Mrs. Henson said. She shuffled in her house shoes to the kitchen and began to rummage around.

Sinking down beside Abby, Lena felt her friend's body tense. Abby was ready to make a break for it. And, Lena realized, now might be their only chance. Mrs. Henson was busy and in another room, and Lena was still holding the yellow duffel.

A back door at the other end of the parlor looked as though it opened onto a small yard on the side street. It probably wouldn't be difficult to get away, and Lena could tell from Abby's caged-animal expression that she desperately wanted to escape.

But Abby had promised to devote one day — today — to this haunting craziness. And they were so close. Lena had to stay, had to do everything she could to get to the bottom of this mess. For herself. And for Robbie.

“I'm sorry if I startled you when I grabbed the bag,” Mrs. Henson called from the kitchen. “I've been a little rattled ever since I sold you that camera.
Even after all these years it's hard to let Robbie's things go. I've already lost so much….” Her voice trailed off, punctuated by the clatter of dishes.

Lena and Abby were silent. The bag on Lena's lap was still zipped, and it took all of her restraint not to open it and peek inside — the clue they needed could be inches away. But it wasn't hers. Not yet.

“He had it with him when he fell,” Mrs. Henson said matter-of-factly. Lena felt goose bumps rise on her arm as the woman appeared in the doorway with a tray of glasses and some juice. “The police gave the bag and the camera to his mother, but she couldn't keep them, so she left them here.”

Mrs. Henson set the juice on the table and sat down across from them in a sagging wingback chair that had once been a bright royal blue. “I didn't even realize that old camera was out there.” She gestured to the door that led to the shop out front. “Since I live and work in the same house, things seem to spill over from one side to the other.”

The girls could have guessed as much. The living room, though small, looked a lot like the store — filled with knickknacks, porcelain figures, and spice tins old enough to be antiques — the kind
of stuff that could be treasure or junk depending on your point of view.

A few dusty photos sat on a bookshelf, reminding Lena of why they had come back to Phelps. And it suddenly occurred to her that the bag was not the only place to look for clues. Essential information might be locked in Mrs. Henson's memory.

“Mrs. Henson? Can I show you something?” Lena asked timidly. She reached into her messenger bag and pulled out the Polaroid pictures.

Ignoring Lena's question, Mrs. Henson brought up what had clearly been on her own mind since the mention of her grandson. “How do you know about Robbie, anyway?” she asked, squinting at the girls. “He was about your age when he … passed away, but that was probably before you were even born. He would be twenty-five this November the fourth.”

“Well, we saw his pictures,” Abby explained, being intentionally vague.

Lena cut to the chase. She held out the photos she had taken, the ones with Robbie in them. “These,” she said. She laid them out in order, noticing again how Robbie's image became clearer — more in focus — with each shot.

Mrs. Henson put on her reading glasses and took a close look at the images.

“But Robbie …” She looked at the girls, clearly bewildered. “He can't be …” Her eyes welled with tears.

“We know,” Lena replied gently. “It's sort of crazy, but he keeps showing up in my pictures. I think … I think he might be haunting us.”

Mrs. Henson stared at Lena for a long time, her dark eyes boring right into her. Lena shivered slightly but held the woman's gaze. A single tear slid down Ruth's wrinkled cheek.

“He was a good soul,” she finally whispered. “Just misunderstood. And terribly shy. I think that's why he liked his camera so much — it put a little distance between him and the world. He was always happiest when he was behind it.”

“He doesn't really seem —” Abby interrupted, but Lena nudged her to keep quiet. Mrs. Henson was on a roll, and it would be best to just let her keep talking.

“After his father left, he stopped smiling. He stopped trusting people, I think. And that made it even harder for him to make friends. He even told me once that he didn't need friends — just his
camera.” She shook her head. “Of course that wasn't enough.”

Lena pretended to drink her juice. Abby did the same, and Mrs. Henson got up and walked over to a tall, painted bookshelf against the wall. She ran a wrinkled finger along a row of brown vinyl photo albums, clearly looking for a particular one.

Above the shelf was a small window with a deep sill. The sun streamed through the glass, catching the light of tiny, colored bottles arranged across it. The bottles stood side by side, pressed close together, with an odd gap here and there where a bottle might have fallen or been removed.

Mrs. Henson sat down and began to flip through the album. Abby craned her neck for a peek, but Lena's eyes kept darting back to the collection of bottles on the windowsill.

“This isn't the one.” Mrs. Henson got up to retrieve another album, slipping the first one back onto the shelf.

Though she tried to resist, Lena found herself raising the camera toward the light and snapping a shot of the bottles. Abby looked at her strangely as the camera spat out a square of film. Mrs. Henson, still over by the bookshelf, didn't seem to notice.

“Here it is,” the woman called. She turned with a second album open to a page of family photos — Robbie in better days. There were all the typical things you would see in a family album: Robbie in diapers, Robbie and his mom at the zoo, Robbie studying a starfish with his father, and several birthdays sprinkled throughout.

Mrs. Henson touched the photo of Robbie and his dad. “His mother never understood him, really,” she said thoughtfully. “She's so outgoing — loves to be with people. Robbie was much more like his father, my son the wanderer,” Mrs. Henson sighed. “Always with his head in the clouds. That's his problem — he's a dreamer, a dreamer with restless feet.”

Mrs. Henson turned another page and Robbie grew older. He was pictured mostly alone now, and sometimes with his mom. The familiar scowl showed in each shot.

“Marie did the best she could on her own,” Mrs. Henson murmured. “But after Robbie died, she fell apart. She tried to rebuild her life here, but in the end she packed up and moved away. She felt terribly guilty, of course. And I don't know if any mother recovers from the death of a child. But it wasn't her
fault, of course — it was a terrible accident.” Mrs. Henson's eyes welled up again.

Lena tried to look away, but found she couldn't. She was staring at Mrs. Henson as she nervously twiddled the knuckle on her left hand. Lena felt nervous, too — twitchy and squirmy like she had invisible wires pulling at her, compelling her to … Once again she was not sure what the feelings wanted her to do.

“So when did he start taking things?” Abby asked bluntly, interrupting the silence. “Was it after —”

“What do you mean ‘when did he start'?” Mrs. Henson cut Abby off sharply. “Nobody ever proved anything!” She slammed the book shut and gave the girls a withering look. “If you're here to bring up old charges …” Her voice was clipped and started to break. She stopped, took a breath, and started over. “Robbie wasn't a thief, and if that's why you've come, you can leave right now.” Nobody moved, though Abby looked like she wanted to.

At last the old woman let out a breath that was half sigh and half sob and collapsed back in her chair. The anger that had quickly flared burned out just as fast, and Mrs. Henson buried her face in her
hands, shaking her head. “I never believed it. I never wanted to,” she mumbled to herself.

“Mrs. Henson, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to upset you,” Abby apologized. She looked helplessly at Lena, her face full of regret. “Maybe we should just forget the whole thing.”

Lena gulped. Her mouth was dry. The strings were pulling, and she was losing control.
No,
she thought desperately.
Now is not the time to take a picture!
But the camera was already against her eye. She aimed. She pressed the button. She captured the old woman in anguish.

Mrs. Henson's head snapped up with the flash and whir. Her weary eyes blazed fury. “I think you'd better go,” she snarled.