Promise Bound (18 page)

“Building a castle,” she said without looking up. “Want to help?”

I sat down and scooped at the sand, watching her and what she did, pushing wet sand into a fortified wall and poking it with a stick. I glowered at the misshapen building. If you could even call it that. It didn’t want to keep its form. I stomped on the wall.

“Hey!” she said. “Don’t do that.”

“It’s stupid,” I said.

“You just need more water.” She got up and dug a moat around the castle with a plastic shovel, then ran toward the lake with a bucket, filling it in the surf. Wet sand fell in heavy clumps from the bathing-suit ruffle that ran around her belly
like a shrunken skirt. Yellow pinwheels of light swirled from her shoulders and her elbows and her heels as she ran. It almost made me cry out with pain, but I bit down on my tongue instead.

When she returned, I pressed flat rocks into the side of the still-standing castle wall. “Where’s your mom?” I asked.

The little girl didn’t look away from her work. “She’s reading. Up there. By my dad. Where’s yours?”

“Out there,” I said, looking out toward the water. She didn’t notice.

“My name’s Ashley Marie Abbott,” she said. “Everyone calls me Lee-Lee. What’s your name?”

“Calder.”

“Don’t you have a last name?” she asked.

“Sometimes.”

She looked up then, for the first time.

“Do you need more water in your bucket?” I asked.

“Yeah. It keeps soaking into the sand. A moat needs to look like a river. Like a doughnut river.” She drew a circle in the air above the castle mound.

“I’ll help you,” I said.

“I only have one bucket.”

“That doesn’t matter,” I said, shrugging. “I can get more water for you.”

She stood up and ran for the lake. I ran behind her. I said, “If you fill your bucket out deeper, it won’t sink into the sand so fast. You’ve been getting the water too close to shore. That’s why it sinks in. It’s not the good kind. It’s already lost all the magic.”

“Magic?” she asked.

“The magic water is out deeper,” I said. “I used to be like you, but now I only play in the deeper water.”

“How deep? Can I still touch?”

“If you’re scared, you can hold my hand. I won’t let you go.”

“Promise?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I promise.”

That’s where the memory ended. Or, almost ended. Even now I could recall the effervescence of her yellow light fizzing in the recesses of my heart, making the world look bright and clean and hopeful again. That was all I let myself remember. I couldn’t do this. There were far too many stories to read through. I didn’t want to face any more names.

My phone was still blinking. I finally picked it up to see Lily’s response to my last text.

I stared at those words, until the salty sting became too much to bear. I balled up my notes and threw them at the table. They bounced once and landed on the floor. When I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer, I dropped my head into my hands. Shaking. Grateful there was no one else around. My vision blackened, and my soul swirled through me like water down a drain. I hated my memories. I hated
Lily for making me remember. No, it wasn’t Lily. I hated me. If I could, I would have just lain down on the carpet and waited to die.

The Chelsea girl came up behind me and placed one hand flat on the table. Her nails were bitten down to nubs and painted black. I snapped my phone shut. She leaned in. Her long hair fell over my shoulder. “Everything okay?”

“Fine,” I said, my voice rough.

“Sorry if I was rude before.”

I refused to look up at her. “S’all right.”

She didn’t leave. Why didn’t she leave? She kept talking. “You just seemed like one of those guys who thinks the library is some kind of joke.”

I hunched over the keyboard and nodded.

“Well, like I said, I’m sorry about before. If I was rude.”

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. Then I pushed my chair back and stormed out of the library, leaving the computer screen blinking behind me.

I
didn’t know a lot about film noir. Actually, I had to look it up on Wikipedia after I hung up with Gabby, but a night of cynical high-crime movies? Well … that seemed like a perfect distraction from the fact I’d just completely bombed with Pavati. Her promise to let Danny think that she loved him rang a little hollow now that I’d stepped away from the dock. It wasn’t anywhere near what I’d set out to get in exchange, and what would I tell Mom?

So yeah … the distraction of a night out with Gabby, a little escape from reality, seemed like a decent way to kill the
evening. Plus there was the added benefit that we wouldn’t have to actually talk to each other, which meant I could avoid another conversation about Jack. Double whew.

Gabby was standing outside the theater when I pulled up. By the looks of things, the building hadn’t been remodeled in nearly a century. Gabby mentioned it had once been a vaudeville theater, which made sense because the interior was ornate; the high ceiling was decorated with hand-painted cherubs and roses, and a red velveteen curtain with gold fringe covered the movie screen. There were only twelve rows of seats—each broken-spring chair covered in the same velveteen and mounted on a wrought iron base.

The best spots were already taken by the time we arrived, so we had to sit close to the screen to get seats together.

“Jack and I liked to go to these Bogart and Bacall marathons together,” Gabby said, leaning into my ear. “Besides parentage, it was about the only thing we had in common. ‘Dangerous love,’ he called it.”

“Yeah?” So much for a Jack-free night.

“He appreciated film noir from an artistic point of view,” she said, gesturing dramatically on the word
artistic
. “I just find it ironic. I’m going to get popcorn. Want some?”

“No, I’m good.”

Gabby tossed her sweatshirt onto the seat and left for the lobby. I dug around in my pocket for a half stick of gum I thought I’d left there. Violin music enveloped me as the curtains separated, exposing a screen crowned by an intricately carved proscenium arch. Prominent at the top: a life-sized mermaid, with peeling paint and glass eyes. No wonder Jack
loved this theater. It sent the creepy-crawlies up my spine. Or maybe it wasn’t the wooden mermaid at all—something cool and shivery was trailing up my neck.

“Lily,” a voice whispered from behind me.

I whipped around and found Maris withdrawing her long, cool fingers.

“What are you doing here?” I hissed through clenched teeth.

“I’m a sucker for Bacall,” said Maris with a thin-lipped smile. Her long blond bangs slipped across her face, and she pushed them back so I could better see her eyes. If she was trying to push her thoughts onto mine, the dim lighting was interfering. I couldn’t feel any invasion of my mind.

“Be serious,” I said, turning around to face front. I hoped I sounded irritated but controlled, because my heart was anything but. It raced in an uneven pattern of fearful spasms. What was she really doing here?

Maris leaned farther forward, her chin nearly touching my shoulder. I shuddered. She squeezed my neck with icy fingertips. “Have you ever known me to joke? How do you think we learned to be so perfectly human? Mother brought us to the movies every week. We even practiced our reading at the foreign film festivals. Subtitles, you know.”

I turned my head only halfway to the left, saying, “I think you need further study when it comes to imitating humans.” But I had to admit, it explained a lot. “Now get out of here.
Please
.”

“I can’t. I need to talk to you.”

I turned around again—this time to the right—as a woman
claimed the seat on my left. “How did you know where to find me?”

“Pavati.”

“She told you?” I asked incredulously. That didn’t seem likely.

“More or less.”

Great
. Gabby returned and Maris leaned back in her seat. Gabby ripped open a bag of M&M’s and dumped them on top of the popcorn. “This was the way Jack liked to eat it,” she said. She raised the popcorn bucket like she was making a toast. “To Jack.”

“To Jack,” I said halfheartedly, feeling Maris’s death stare on the back of my head.

“May he rest in peace,” said Gabby quietly.

I had a sudden surge of panic as it occurred to me that Gabby might choose this moment to bring up the dagger again. Right here. Right now. With Maris just inches away. We were so screwed. Obviously I couldn’t see Maris’s reaction, but I could feel the electricity in my hair. I whispered, “Gabby, I told you—”

“It’s all right. We don’t need to talk about this now.” The last light went out in the theater and the projector went
clickety clickety
as the first silver frames of
The Big Sleep
appeared on the screen. As the names Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall materialized in stylized script, Gabby leaned against my shoulder again. “You probably didn’t know Jack well enough, but he was a romantic at heart.”

“You don’t say.”

“
The Big Sleep
was his favorite.”

Überdramatic music swelled like a wave, and the audience fell silent, except for some coughing. I didn’t get past the first scene before understanding what Maris had been talking about. With the exception of hair color, the character of Carmen Sternwood was amazingly Pavati-esque. Or the other way around, I guess. The father, General Sternwood, sat in a wheelchair, requesting a favor.

Fantastic
. So much for an escape from reality.

There didn’t seem to be much ventilation in the theater, and the seats suddenly felt small and cramped. I pulled at the collar on my shirt and—would you believe it—Bogart’s Detective Marlowe did the same thing.

Just as the Pavati character was described as a “little child who likes to pull the wings off flies,” Gabby stopped eating her popcorn, her fingers frozen midair between the bag and her lips. I looked over and noticed a shiny tear trail on her left cheek.

“You okay?” I whispered.

“I know it’s stupid, but I just wish I’d listened to Jack last year. About the mermaids. I wasn’t a good sister to him.”

“Hush! We’ve already talked about this. Jack was … confused,” I said. It was the most generous adjective I could find. I sank down low so my head was barely above my seat back. Gabby turned to me expectantly, light and shadow flickering in silver and gray across her face.

“All those people,” Gabby said. “Dead.” The man sitting to Gabby’s right shushed her, and she waved him off.

“Let’s not do this right now,” I said. “People are trying to watch the movie.”

“They do this marathon every year. Everyone here has seen it at least a dozen times.”

“Well, I’ve never seen it,” I said.

Gabby said, “Sorry. I’ll be quiet,” just as Maris whispered through the space between my and Gabby’s chairs, “Your friend isn’t going to be a nuisance, is she?”

Gabby shot Maris a dirty look and said, “Sor
-ry!
”

The woman sitting on my left turned to scowl at me, then at Maris. I raised my shoulders apologetically. The last thing I needed was Gabby getting Maris all riled up, or making Maris think Gabby was another threat. I’d been down that Pettit road already.

“Dad bought a sonar for our boat,” Gabby whispered.

“Shhh,” I said, elbowing her hard. Maris’s breath was cold on my shoulder.

When the first movie was over, the projection slipped seamlessly, without an intermission, into
Dark Passage
. I wanted to go. The seat was lumpy and uncomfortable, but more than that, knowing Maris was right behind me had me sitting so rigidly that by the end, my back ached and my head pounded. But I couldn’t go. Gabby had me under surveillance, looking for the slightest word or gesture that might give her more clues into Jack’s disappearance. And Maris … well, if I walked out, I was afraid she’d follow. Or worse, that she’d say something to Gabby.

It was nearly midnight when the double feature was over, and I thought I was going to die. When the lights came on, I shielded my eyes and turned to find Maris’s seat empty.

“What did you think?” Gabby asked.

I massaged my left shoulder, then stretched my back. “Great cars. Lots of cigarettes. Awesome hats.”

Gabby cracked a smile. “ ’Bout sums it up. There’s more tomorrow.
Key Largo
and
To Have and Have Not
. You in?”

“Actually, that might be a little much for me,” I said, following her out into the lobby. I kept my head down but still searched for Maris. She was gone. Apparently, Maris could slip in and out of a theater as easily, and as silently, as she moved underwater. I had to hand it to her. It was mighty impressive.

As we headed toward our cars, I noticed a strange high-pitched sound. “New shoes?” I asked.

Gabby stopped walking. “What?”

“Your shoes are squeaking.”

She and I both looked down at her feet. Right behind her heels, two gray-brown rats scratched, their tails writhing. One raced around Gabby’s feet and climbed over the toes of her shoes. She screamed. I think I screamed. Rats? I’d never seen a live rat before. Well, except in the science lab, but those were kind of … cute.

“What are they?” Gabby shrieked. She hopped backward, lifting her knees high, but the rats followed her and three more joined them, matching her progress. Chirping and hissing, they slowly swept their tails back and forth on the pavement. My stomach rose up in my throat.

“Lily!” Gabby screamed, tripping over an empty beer bottle. It spun like a dial and clanked off the brick wall, ricocheting toward me. “Do something!”

“Do what?”

“Anything!”

I picked up the bottle and threw it into the rats’ midst, but they ignored me. They were focused on Gabby and herding her into an alley, like border collies with a sheep. I kicked one, but it only bounced off the wall and ran to catch up with the others. Horror-struck, I watched as another dozen flooded into the alley after Gabby. My hand raised shakily toward my mouth.