Oblivion (32 page)

“Nothing will change,” Mr. Hutch says, as if he can read my hesitation. “Not your name, not your relationship with your mother. We’ll be giving you a permanent address and benefits beyond what the state gives you. Security, if you will.”

Translation: college. Opportunity.

“Thank you,” I say because I don’t know what else to
say. I don’t want to sound ungrateful. I hope it’s enough of a retort.

“But, Lindsey …” Mr. Hutch, shaking his head, drops her hand. “What would possess you to say such a thing?”

I brace myself for whatever may flow from between my sister’s lips.

I’m tired. Exhausted. I don’t know if I can stomach a tirade about my “stealing” John Fogel out from under her thumb. I don’t know if I have the wherewithal to defend my chastity—or lack thereof—or to explain to Mr. Hutch that Lindsey makes a game out of trashing a girl’s reputation if she thinks she might be muscling in on her territory. I stare down at my practically untouched dinner.

“Lindsey Michelle Hutch. Do you understand the ramifications of what you’ve done? If the authorities find just cause to investigate this rumor, Callie goes back to County until the investigation is complete.”

My heart pounds with the thought of it. Sure, I survived County once, but I had Elijah there to help me through it.

She smacks an open palm against the table and rises. “She deserved it, okay? She fucking deserved it!”

“Watch your mouth.”

“You go out of your way to help her! You don’t help me! When do you ever help me? Why is she even here?”

“Sit down.”

Defiantly, Lindsey slams back onto her chair.

Mr. Hutch draws in a measured breath. “I got a call
from a dean at Carmel last week. You’ve spread some pretty nasty rumors about an honor student. And now all this … with Callie. Why are you doing this?”

“I want to win,” Lindsey says. “Just once, I want to win. I want to be important. Just once. And then Callie comes to Carmel, and she ruins it all, and I can’t win anymore.”

“I’m not trying to win,” I say. “I’m just trying to survive. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“You didn’t mean to be a whore.”

“Lindsey!” Mr. Hutch interjects.

“You just were.” A sly grin threatens to spread over Lindsey’s face.

My head is in my hands now, the flush of embarrassment rushing up the back of my neck, and over my cheeks, like flames. I hear, in the recesses of my memory, Palmer’s voice, rising from the confessional:
honor thy father
.

Words fly between Lindsey and her dad, but I can’t hear them, can’t concentrate on what they’re saying because the words are gnawing at my brain, itching in my fingertips:
something in the breeze, something in the breeze
.

“I need …” I need another notebook. Guidry took mine. “I need a pen.”

But they can’t hear me. They aren’t paying attention until I push back from the table, the legs of the chair scraping against the hardwood floor.

“Callie?”

I’m tearing through my backpack, yanking out a pen.
Nothing to write on, nothing to write on. Nothing to write on!

Lindsey’s class ring sparkles as she withdraws the plate before me and replaces it with a sheet of paper.

I hear my mother’s voice, echoing from the confessional:
I’m remembering. Something in the breeze reminded me. I’ve forgotten where I came from. I don’t know where I came from, don’t know where I came from …

My cell phone buzzes, jarring me from the memory.

I study the words I’ve just written:

Something in the breeze freed lakeshore memories inside me beside beside beside me abiding like the tide abiding like the tide abiding like the tide.

“Are you okay?” This is the first time I’ve graphed out in front of Mr. Hutch. He’s leaning over me, a hand on my back. “Is she breathing?”

I draw in a sharp inhale. “Yes.”

Lindsey’s fingers are wrapped around my wrist.

Through my tears, I see her turquoise eyes. “I’m sorry,” I say.

The corners of her lips threaten to turn upward. “Me, too.”

A sigh escapes my foster father.

“I need to lie down,” I say. “May I be excused?”

“We’ll talk in the morning,” Mr. Hutch suggests. “Get some rest. Lindsey, stay put. You’re not going anywhere.”

I shove the latest poetic splattering of my brain waves
into my bag and walk up the stairs.

Once I’m safe in my room, I pull out my phone to see a message from John:
harbor. midnight
.

Must sleep. I don’t think I should be going out tonight. But I text back:
chaos here … confirm later
.

I dry my tears on the crocheted scarf my mother made for me when I was little, and I reach for my deck of Tarot.

Just feeling the cards in my hands brings me closer to my mother. I don’t believe in the cards, but I do believe in her. I close my eyes and breathe in her essence. No matter what the doctors at the Meadows tell me she is, I know she’s my mom beneath it all.

I lay the cards on my heart and pray for the answers to come.

T
attered sheets
. I first hear the scream in the back of my mind, but it soon shrills in my ears, like a sharp whistle blown for two-second intervals, and stirs me from a deep sleep. My heart is beating like mad, and my head is pounding in time. I try to reach for the lamp switch, but my fingers are numb.

I’m in my bedroom at Lindsey’s house, but I feel as if I’m on a boat, rocking in the moor.

I want to write the words etching into my brain, but I feel paralyzed, as if I have to concentrate on each individual muscle motion in order to move even a smidgen. I throw all my energy into getting another notebook from my nightstand drawer.

I’m panicked. What if I’m tied? What if I can’t move, no matter what I do to try?

When my fingers touch the drawer of the nightstand, the screaming in my head stops. Tarot cards, abandoned on my mattress, bend beneath my elbow. I yank on the glass knob and open the drawer.

My hand, damp with sweat, meets first with the edge of a notebook, which I pull out before grabbing a felt-tip pen from my surplus supplies.

I bite off the cap and scrawl
tattered sheets the ties that bind.

The light on my ceiling illuminates the space, although I thought I’d turned it off.

I’m hyperventilating, my head resting on my notebook, my eyes pinched shut to ward off the unwelcome, bright light. I hear footsteps in a distant hallway.

“Callie?”

Yeah.

“Callie?”

Lindsey?

I try to focus on my foster sister, but she’s fuzzy, just an outline of a person.

She fades away, but the light doesn’t. It blinds me. Everything turns white: the square of shag carpeting like a polar bear hide, the sheers billowing in from the white-framed windows, the caps on the waves in the distance.

And across the miles, a crew of men is digging up the
cobblestone walk. There’s a body beneath the stones.

“Dude.”

I hear Lindsey’s voice in the periphery of my mind. Smell raspberry Tootsie Pops, which I assume she’s eating. Feel the cold white gold of the rosary against my chest.

“Wake up,” she says. “You’re having crazy dreams.”

I feel her pulling the notebook from my lap.

Without opening my eyes, I lift the covers, and into my bed she climbs.

She rests her head against mine; we’re sharing a pillow.

I want to drift back to sleep, but when her feet begin to swish against the covers, I concentrate on the motion, on the sound, and commit it to memory.

“Are you up now?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“What do you dream about, when you start thrashing around like that?”

“Hannah, mostly. My mom. My father.”

“Life’s pretty fucked up sometimes, huh?”

“Lately, it’s like someone took everything I knew as normal and put it in a confetti cannon.”

“Your normal wasn’t too normal to begin with,” she says.

And now, I have all these little pieces, all these clues, and I don’t know what to do with them. “I don’t even know what’s real anymore,” I confess.

“I’m real,” Lindsey offers.

I open my eyes, meet her gaze. “You hate me.” I listen to the swishing of her feet against the linens. “And I don’t blame you.”

Swish, swish, swish, swish
.

Finally, she responds: “Do you love him?”

My every muscle stills. “I don’t know.”

She slurps on her candy. “If you love him, I’ll back off.”

“We don’t really talk about that sort of thing, you know?” I focus on the little green light on the smoke detector. It’s blinking at me. Needs a new battery. “Lindsey, do you believe in serendipity?”

“I don’t know what to believe anymore.” I feel the shrug of her shoulders. “I can’t rely on anyone. Not even you, and I used to think you were my rock.”

“I didn’t think someone like you needed a rock.”

“Everyone needs a rock.”

I digest this for a moment, think about what Ewing said:
Lindsey has her own share of problems
. “This thing with John … it isn’t just a fling designed to get back at Elijah. It’s sort of … he’s helping me deal. I’m remembering things. I’m getting better.”

“Seems like you’re getting worse, no offense.”
Swish, swish, swish
. “You think you’ll ever stop writing like that?”

I think about this for a minute. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

“And you think John’s helping?”

“Look, this thing with John … It sort of just … happened, you know?”

“Oh, I know ‘just happened,’ all right.”

“He met my mom, before she went away. On Fortune Night at the Vagabond. She knew about his watch … and it turns out this watch used to be his cousin’s, but his cousin’s been missing most of our lives.”

Her feet stop moving for a few seconds, but then resume.

“He knows things. Has information I need. And I know this must sound cliché to you, but I tried not to do this. It just sort of …”

She finishes my sentence: “Happened.”

“Yeah.”

“So … you love him?”

“There’s too much going on right now to think about it. But I think I could. Maybe. Someday.”

“Why’d you take the heat for me tonight? After everything I said about you? I’ve been a royal bitch, and—”

“Yes. You have.”

“—and you still tried to cover for me. Why?”

“You’re my sister.”

A few silent seconds pass before she replies: “Just like that. You’re over it.”

“No. It hurts. But”—I came here six months ago with nothing—“you’re all I have.”

She hesitates for a moment before saying, “You’re all I have, too, now.”

This isn’t even remotely true, but it illustrates the vast differences between us. I don’t expect everything is going
to turn out okay, I don’t think some guy is going to fall under my spell just because I’ve given him a glance, and I don’t think I deserve the moon every time I bat my pretty lashes. “I’m just a girl, okay? Just trying to survive. I don’t expect anyone to make it easy for me. But you … You have different expectations about this world, so you react differently. This thing with John … if I’d been with him solely so you couldn’t have him, it’d be one thing, but it didn’t happen that way.”

“You still kept it from me.”

“Do you think it would’ve made a difference, if I’d told you?”

“Do you think it would’ve made a difference, if I’d told you what happened at that party last spring? How Jon and I just sort of … ended up together? I mean, I didn’t plan on hooking up with him that night, to tell you the truth. It just sort of …”

My turn: “Happened.”

“Yeah.”

“You know, just ending up with someone doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, even if you don’t make anything of it. So you hooked up. You learned something, even if all you learned was that you didn’t like hooking up with him. Doesn’t make you a whore.”

At the mention of the word, her feet still. “I’m sorry about calling you that.”

I don’t know what to say. It isn’t okay.

“I can tell people what I said wasn’t true.” Lindsey tilts her head to touch mine.

After a few moments, she presses a kiss onto my cheek. Lays her head on my shoulder. Begins to move her feet again.