State of Grace (11 page)

“Bye,” I mumbled and then turned and ran out of the clearing. My heart felt like it was trying to jump out of my chest. My head pounded and I felt the contents of my stomach rising up. Too scared to stop, though, I ran until I was within a hundred yards of the Mercantile. I turned to look behind me, but no one was there. I stopped, and tried to control my breathing. He had just wanted to hug me good-bye, I told myself. That was all. Still, I shivered.

I never talked to anyone about hearing Grace's voice—not even with Natalie, who had taken me on as her personal project. While all I wanted was to be alone, she was determined to make things the way they were before Grace's death. Each day at school, we would walk the halls before and between classes, talking with other kids. Natalie carried the conversations, keeping me involved, but not requiring me to really participate. By sheer force of her personality, she kept me a part of the social structure of our small school even though I struggled to feign interest. Inside I felt flat and disconnected.

I was Natalie's project outside of school as well. She tried everything she could think of to shake me out of my haze—including devising the types of adventures that in the past, I would have embraced. “Let's climb down the concrete pillars on the Settler's Creek Bridge.” “Let's sneak into the Masonic Lodge Hall and see what they have hidden in there.” “Let's get Mom to take us out to Mr. Jenkins' field to look for arrowheads.” But each time, I met her suggestions with a shake of the head or a shrug or a halfhearted “Maybe later.” I knew that she was trying to make things the way they used to be, but our former fearlessness had become terrifying to me.

In many ways, I resented Natalie because she had rebounded in a way that I just couldn't seem to. We handled our grief differently. Whereas I wanted to pretend like none of it had ever happened, she took it upon herself to figure out who did it despite the fact that professionals that included her father, were unable to. It became her obsession and as with anything Natalie became fixated on, those of us around her were pulled into her orbit.

“Tell me about what you saw,” she would say at least once a week. “Please.”

At first, I resisted, telling her that I didn't want to talk about it. But over time, her relentless questioning wore me down. It was a Wednesday afternoon shortly before Easter when I finally told her what she wanted to know. Grace had been dead for nine months.

“I wish I could see my Dad's case files,” Natalie groused. It was a common refrain. “If I knew what the crime scene looked like, I might be able to see something they missed. I mean, I was her friend, after all. We knew her better than anybody. And besides, you were there. What did you see?”

We were sitting in the tree house in my backyard. Though we had originally agreed to call it Grace's Nest, neither of us called it that. For both of us, Grace's Nest was in the clearing in the woods next to Brush Creek. The tree house in my backyard was simply called “the tree house.”

“Natalie, I don't want to talk about it,” I said for what seemed like the hundredth time. “I've told you. I just want to forget it happened.”

“But Birdie, we can't,” Natalie said. “Don't you see that? We owe it to Grace. We need to figure out who killed her.”

I sighed.

“Listen to me,” Natalie pressed. “There's a clue there that they're just not seeing. You might have seen something that they didn't know was important.” Her eyes glittered with intensity. Meanly, I wondered if Natalie really wanted to avenge Grace or if what drove her was actually having the fame that would come from solving the case. “We owe her this,” Natalie insisted. “Please.”

I sighed and dropped my head so that I didn't have to look at her. My hair had grown since Grace's death and I was thankful for
the ability to hide my face behind a veil of mousy curls.

“Please,” Natalie said again.

I was about to refuse when I felt the familiar stirring in the back of my skull.

“Tell her,”
Grace said, her voice soft and resigned.
“You might as well.”

“But I don't want to,” I murmured.

“It's okay,”
Grace said.
“Tell her.”

“Please,” Natalie said at the same time, “Tell me.”

“I'll protect you,”
Grace said.
“I won't let the memory hurt you.”

After several seconds, I nodded.

“Excellent,” Natalie said. I could hear the excitement in her voice. I didn't look up—not even when I heard the zipper of her book bag being pulled open and the crackle of paper as she dug around for a notebook and pencil.

“So,” she said when she had her notebook open and was ready. “What was the first thing you noticed when you went into the clearing—the very first thing?”

I closed my eyes and, for the first time since Grace's death, willingly tried to summon up the image of what I had seen. I had become so used to pushing down—pushing away—the memories that at first, it was hard to let myself remember.

“It was quiet,” I said finally. “I was pushing my bike up the path and it was quiet. There were no bird sounds or bugs or anything.”

“Interesting,” Natalie murmured. “And then what?”

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I saw her . . . body.”

“Where was it?” Natalie asked.

“Near the big rock,” I said. “She was . . .” I took a deep breath before continuing. “She was on her side . . . facing the big rock.”

Natalie scribbled in her notebook. “What was she wearing?”

“A sock.”

The scribbling stopped. “Oh,” Natalie said, her voice shaky.

“Her clothes were all over the clearing,” I continued, oddly pleased that I was making her uncomfortable. “All she was wearing was a sock.”

Natalie swallowed, but said nothing.

“Part of her face was covered by her hair, but I could tell it was Grace. There was blood all over the place.”

In my mind, I could see Grace's pale body, the smeared blood standing out in garish contrast to the chalky skin. I shook my head to dispel the image, wondering if Grace, from her perch inside my head, could see my memories—if they were as upsetting for her to see as they were for me to recall.

“Did you touch anything?” Natalie asked.

“No,” I said numbly as I remembered the glassy blankness of Grace's eye as it stared back at me—recalled the big, black ant that had crawled across her eyeball as if it were nothing special. “I just stared at her. I knew I should go for help, but I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything. I just stared. And then finally, I went for help.”

Natalie cleared her throat—for once, too uncomfortable to speak. I had intentionally left out the details of Grace's eye and the ant. I didn't want anyone, even Natalie, to know about this final injustice.

“Did you see the knife?” Natalie asked. “Was there anything that seemed out of place?” They were, I knew, questions she had heard her father ask or perhaps heard on television.

“It was all out of place,” I said tightly. “Nothing was the way it was supposed to be.”

Natalie cleared her throat and I finally raised my gaze to meet hers. Her face and her eyes were red.

“I don't want to talk about this anymore,” I said.

Surprisingly, Natalie nodded.

It was the one and only time I talked to her about what I had seen.

Chapter 12

Slowly, inevitably, life in Edenbridge settled back into its familiar pattern. The first few weeks after the murder, there had been outrage that anyone could do something like that. And there had been fear. Hopes were high that the murderer would be caught. When no one was, outrage gave way to frustration. People's expressions were pained as they talked about what had happened. I knew, from talking to Natalie, who eavesdropped on her parents when she was supposed to be in bed, that there were suspects, but not enough evidence to charge anyone. Frustration eventually gave way to resignation. People still talked about the murder of Grace Bellamy, but as time wore on and no one was ever charged with the crime, it was more with the sense of something that had happened “in the past.”

I first noticed it at the annual Firemen's Chili Supper, which was held on the third Saturday of October. It was more than a year after the murder and as I walked around the school gymnasium and looked at the tables of donated prizes and desserts, I realized conversations were no longer exclusively about Grace's murder—or even partially. Instead, people talked about the high school's football team and plans for the annual Halloween hayride. Parents had begun to relax their rules and once again, children rode their bikes around town with relative freedom. It wasn't that people forgot; it was just that the killer hadn't been caught, and their vigilance weakened. Eventually, even Natalie moved on.

I, apparently, was the lone exception.

Grace was never far from my mind. I thought about her during the day; and at night, if I didn't dream about finding her body, I dreamed of being abducted myself. Sometimes it was Don Wan and sometimes, it was a faceless dark-haired man. Sometimes he grabbed me from behind, though more often than not, he approached me from the front, his face in shadows, his voice velvety and smooth.

The dreams almost always were set in the clearing below the Nest and they were always the same. It's nighttime. A man approaches me, the orangish-red tip of his cigarette glowing brightly as he inhales.
Even though I can't see his face, I can feel his eyes watching me.

“You should be home in bed,” he says. “It's way too late for a little girl like you to be outside.”

In the dream, I have a good reason for being there, though I never know exactly what that is—I just know it's important.

“This is where Grace died,” he continues almost conversationally as he drops the cigarette to the ground and grinds it out with his boot. “But you know that, don't you? You found her body.”

He blows the smoke out in a ghostly plume. I nod but don't answer. He moves closer.

“Are you scared?”

The question is unexpected and suddenly, he's standing right in front of me.

I nod again.

“Good.”

The voice is soft and although I can't see his eyes, I can see his white teeth, his cruel smile. And even though I know it's coming, the first slap always takes me by surprise. I'm shocked and confused. I begin to cry.

“Don't you dare cry,” the man snarls, his lips twisted in anger.

From up in the tree house, I hear a rustling and then the sound of wood on wood. Someone is up there and is moving the milk crate we use as a bookshelf.

He slaps me again—this time with the back of his hand. I feel the bumps of his knuckles as they strike my skin. I can't stop crying.

“Stop it,” he growls through clenched teeth. “You need to learn how to do what I tell you.”

I struggle to stifle the sobs.

“Take off your clothes,” he says. “Except your sock.”

I begin to tremble so hard that I think I'm going to collapse.

“No.”

The word doesn't come from me. It comes from above me. It's Grace. She is climbing down from the Nest.

“Leave her alone,”
she says.
“Take me instead.”

“Grace, no!” I gasp. “No.”

“Birdie, it's okay,”
she says.
“I'm already dead.”

“No!” I scream. “No!”

“Birdie, it's okay,”
she says as she steps off the last rung onto the hard-packed dirt at the base of the tree. She walks toward me.

“No!” I repeat “No! Stop!”

“Birdie, wake up,”
Grace says, her voice strange-sounding.
“You're having a bad dream. Wake up.”

The man, who has been watching this exchange, now reaches out and grasps my shoulders. He begins to shake me.

“Birdie, wake up.”

It was usually at this time that the voice trying to wake me became my mother's. It was not uncommon to wake with her sitting on the edge of my bed, her face scrunched into a worried expression. I remember one night in particular—the night when my parents began to argue in earnest about what to do with me. It had been more than six months since Grace's murder and I had awakened everyone with my screams. My mother had come into the room and was trying to wake me.

“Birdie, baby, you're having a nightmare,” she said, shaking me. “Wake up.”

“No,” I say again, this time, not a scream, but a murmur, uttered in one world and heard in another. The clearing, the Nest, and the man faded. I opened my eyes to see my mother's worried expression.

“Birdie, sweetheart, wake up,” my mother said again, this time calmly. “Are you with me?”

I nodded as she pulled me into her arms and rocked me slowly back and forth. Over her shoulder, I could see Tara in the doorway, her blue eyes wide.

“Shhhhh,” my mother said softly. “It's okay. You're safe.”

Tara stared at us and then slowly approached the bed. “It's okay,” she said softly, echoing our mother. “You're safe.” She reached out and petted my arm. I tried to smile. “I can sleep in here if you want,” she offered.

I blinked and shook my head. “That's all right,” I said as I pulled away from my mother and lay back down. “I'm okay.”

“Do you want some water?” my mother asked as she bent over the bed and pushed my curls back from my forehead. When I said no, she nodded and kissed my forehead.

“I'm okay,” I said again.

Later, when Tara had been put back to bed, and the house was quiet, I listened to the murmur of my parents talking. Occasionally, I caught snatches of the conversation.

“—not healthy.”

“—it'll pass.”

“—don't think so.”

“—needs help—professional help.”

“—just . . . time.”

“—too long already . . . what's it going to take?”

“—not crazy . . . psychologist . . . weakness.”

I rolled over onto my side and hugged my knees to my chest.

My mother, I knew, wanted me to see a professional—a psychologist. My father, however, was more of the “pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps” school of thought. He believed, as did most of Edenbridge, that only crazy people or people who were too weak to handle their own problems saw a psychologist.

“—give it some more time,” I heard my father say.

“I think we've given it enough time,” my mother said loudly enough for me to hear her entire sentence. She was angry.

“—calm down,” my father said.

“Birdie?”

The whisper was so soft, I almost wasn't sure my name had been spoken. I rolled over onto my back and then looked at the doorway. Tara's pretty face was cast in the shadows of the night-lights that were plugged into all the outlets in my room.

“Can I sleep in here?”

“Yeah,” I said and scooted to the far side of the small bed. Gratefully, Tara hurried across the room and slipped under the covers. I curled up behind her and wrapped her in my arms.

“I don't like it when Mom and Dad fight,” she whispered.

“Me neither.”

Tara was silent for several minutes—so long that I wondered if she had fallen asleep.

“Birdie, are you crazy?” she asked suddenly.

“I don't know,” I said miserably. “I think maybe sometimes I am.”

“I don't think you are,” she said. “I think Grandpa is wrong.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, surprised that my grandfather was weighing in on my mental health. “When did he say that?”

“Last week,” she said. “When I went with Dad to Grandpa and Grandma's. Grandma asked how you were doing and Dad said you were still having bad dreams. And then Grandma said it was no wonder given what you saw and Dad said he and Mom were thinking of taking you to the doctor. And Grandpa said those kinds of doctors are for crazy people and that was more of Mom's hippy thinking.”

“Hmmm,” I said.

“I don't think you're crazy,” Tara said. “I told Grandpa that.”

“Thanks, Tara.” I squeezed her against me in a hug.

“Besides,” she said with a yawn, “Even if you were crazy, you're still my sister, so I would love you anyway.”

I smiled a little and impulsively kissed the back of her head. In the next room, my parents were no longer speaking, though I could hear them moving around in a way that suggested their conversation had ended badly and they were still awake. Next to me, Tara began to breathe deeply. She had fallen asleep.

“I'm sorry I'm so mean to you sometimes,” I whispered to Tara, even though I knew she couldn't hear me. “And even though I don't say it, I love you, too.”

The nightmares never completely stopped and my father must have won the argument because I never went to therapy. Still, their frequency lessened and as Natalie and I passed from junior high into high school, life assumed a certain normalcy. I did my best to forget about what had happened, though that was easier said than done. Finding Grace's body and the burden of her continued presence within me, even though she rarely “spoke,” marked me in a way that people sensed even if they couldn't identify specifically what about me was “off.” As a result, I turned inward. I pushed people away. I developed a reputation for being standoffish and came to be
regarded by the other kids at school as “weird.” Most of my friends drifted away toward more normal companions—all except Natalie. She was the constant—an anchor, but also a reminder.

Each year, on the anniversary of Grace's death, the two of us would find a way to sneak off to the Nest. Usually, we would climb up into the tree house, clean away the remnants of leaves, and squirrel and bird droppings, and then sit quietly on the old cushions that each year grew more sour with mildew and rot. Natalie would talk about Grace or remember aloud something the three of us had done, but most of the time, we sat quietly and simply marked the passing—that was, until the summer before our senior year in high school.

It had been seven years since Grace's murder and we were at the clearing for our yearly vigil. As was often the case when my emotions were heightened, I felt Grace's energy stirring at the base of my skull—a tingling that made me feel jumpy and fragile.

“It never changes, does it?” Natalie asked as we stood at the base of the tree and looked around the clearing.

“Not really,” I said matter-of-factly. “We have, though.”

Natalie grinned and shot me a mischievous look. Her hair had deepened into an enviable shade of auburn and though she was still pale, she covered her freckles with makeup. She had lost the little girl pudginess and had become decidedly pretty. I, too, had changed. I had grown tall—almost as tall as my father. And my hair, which had been an uncontrollable mop when I was younger, was now held in place with barrettes or hair bands. Three years on the track and cross-country teams had given me the lean body of a distance runner.

“So, I've got a surprise,” Natalie said once we had climbed up into the Nest and settled ourselves in our respective corners.

“Yeah?” I spread out the old wool blanket Natalie's father insisted she carry in the trunk of her beat-up white Chevrolet Chevette.

“Yeah.” She waited until she had my full attention before unzipping her gym bag, reaching inside, and producing a bottle of vodka. “Check this out.”

“Where did you get that?” I asked and looked nervously around.

“Borrowed it,” she said with a laugh. “From my dad's liquor cabinet.”

“Nat, you're going to get in trouble,” I said anxiously. “
We're
going to get in trouble. We're not old enough.”

“Jesus, Birdie, lighten up,” she said. “Why do you think I brought it? You need to relax a little. You're so concerned about breaking rules.”

“There's a reason why rules are rules,” I said. “And when you break them, there are consequences.”

“Uh huh,” she said and twisted off the screw top. She sniffed the liquid inside, shrugged, and then raised the bottle to her lips. “Cheers.”

I watched as she took a large gulp and then began to cough.

“Smooth,” she said with a grin, her eyes watering.

I frowned and shook my head when she offered the bottle to me.

“Come on,” she said and pressed it into my hand. “Just take a swig.”

Grudgingly, I raised the bottle to my lips and drank. The first swallow made me choke and sputter. “Oh my god,” I gasped as the alcohol burned a hot path down my throat and into my stomach.

“I know,” Natalie said. “It's rad.”

“I hate it when you talk like a valley girl,” I said and handed the bottle back to her. She laughed, flipped me the bird, and took another drink. This time she didn't cough at all.

“Try again,” she said. “The second one's a lot better.”

Rather than argue, I took the bottle and took a swig. She was right; the second mouthful was better.

“Not so bad, eh?” She raised her eyebrows.

“Not so bad,” I admitted and leaned back on my elbows. The vodka settled comfortably in my stomach and for the first time since I could remember, I felt my body relax a little. I closed my eyes and exhaled. A comforting warmth enveloped me and I smiled. When I opened my eyes, Natalie was watching me. I held the bottle out to her, but she shook her head.