The Murmurings (13 page)

“Well, we’ll be right here when you’re ready,” he says, his voice barely concealing the threat. “Do come back and see me soon. I’m very eager to speak with you.”

I move my mouth up and down a few more times before
I give up. I’m halfway down the corridor before I remember to breathe again.

At the Plexiglas door, I pause for only a second to peer at the place where Kenny usually stations himself building his towers. The chair where I was sitting is still on the floor, its legs jutting out like roadkill. Scattered Legos litter the carpet. Kenny’s broken tower lies amid the wreckage on the floor—cracked into pieces, probably because it was used to hit me in the side of the head. I try to make my brain focus on what happened right before he snapped, but everything hurts. I just want to get out of here as soon as possible.

When I look up to the little room for someone to activate the inner Plexiglas door, Gladys the Pigeon is poised with her finger over the button. She hesitates for a moment, staring at me like she’s trying to decide whether or not to let me go. I stare back, hoping the fear doesn’t show on my face.

They couldn’t really keep me here, could they?

Before I can answer my own question, the inner door swishes open. I’m in the vestibule once again, staring at the foggy reflection of myself, which is thankfully me this time—not the horrible thing with the wordless mouth and stretched lips.

The second set of doors slides apart and ushers in the smell of the desert. I can hear the last hums of the cicadas before they quit for the night, and their shift is slowly being picked up
by the chirping crickets and groaning toads of a nearby pond.

I slide into the driver’s seat of Mom’s old Buick and immediately lock the door behind me—a silly precaution, I’m sure, but an urge I don’t fight. The thought of Gladys the Pigeon or Dr. Keller climbing into my car and dragging me back to that little gray room is enough to make my breath catch. I keep my gaze locked on the sliding glass doors just in case they try to approach.

I fumble through my cluttered messenger bag and quickly find what I’m looking for. Evan’s number was the last one I dialed. I hit the call button and pray he picks up.

“Hey, I was just thinking about you.” His voice sounds so good, I have to smile, even though my head still feels pulverized. “I didn’t see you at school today.”

“Hi,” I say, not even bothering to mask my relief. “Can you come and get me? I’m . . . I’m at Oakside.”

“You’re what? You went there alone? What were you trying to do?” He sounds genuinely worried, and I’m just fine with that.

“I have no idea,” I lie, but the silence that follows makes me try a little harder. “I’m okay, I just can’t drive. I’ll figure out how to get my car later.”

“I’m not thinking about your car,” he says sternly, but then his voice softens. “I’ll be right there.”

“Don’t worry, okay? I’m all right,” I say, not really believing that’s true, but hoping it’ll be enough to keep him from worrying, at least until he gets here.

He doesn’t sound satisfied, but he says, “I’m on my way.”

I lean over to toss my phone back into my bag when I hear a crinkling from someplace inside my jacket. When I press my side, I hear it again.

Reaching into my inside pocket, I pull out a wrinkled white piece of paper, folded into quarters. My finger brushes the margin’s frayed edge where it looks like it’s been torn from a book or binding of some sort. Faded pink lines cross the page, and I can just barely make out the impressions of writing on the inside. Before I can even read what the words say, I know who wrote them.

It’s Nell’s handwriting. And I know exactly where the page came from: the middle of the composition book I found on my car seat in Jerome a week after Nell was found dead.

Nell David

December 6

There’s a reason Cleopatra built her hill so high.

Up there, the air is thinner, and it makes it hard to think.

There, the cottonwoods breathe in shallow gulps.

And the ladies rock

Cribs for babes whose cries make men flock.

And the ground is hollow.

The cacophony will hush beneath so much pain.

Jeweled wrists will wink, but we don’t know why.

Time is captured like a ship in a bottle,

Its waves long dried up, turquoise stains all that remain.

Holes that hold more than the mistaken treasure

Tunneled away, smuggled strife.

I’
M DRIVING US TO
J
EROME
, mostly because I’m the only one of us who has ever been there, but also because I don’t want to risk getting carsick. I’m normally fine, but the switchbacks leading up Cleopatra Hill are enough to make even an iron-clad stomach feel unsettled.

But if I’m being totally honest, that’s not the only thing that has my stomach in knots.

“So you haven’t been back here since that time . . . ” Evan starts to say, and I shake off the idea that he’s somehow managed to see straight into my brain.

“Right,” I say, doing my best to sound like I’m completely okay with visiting Jerome. It might have been my idea, but the thought of going back has left me with a hollow feeling
deep in my gut all week. I can feel flutters in the space where my organs should be. It’s like I’ve been dreading it and restless to get there all at once.

“Well, I pulled up directions just in case,” he says, jiggling his phone, a little smile sneaking to his lips. “Not that I don’t trust you.”

I just sigh and roll my eyes. I have no real reason to be irritated with Evan, but I’ve been resisting the urge to pick a fight with him all morning. As the days of the week crept by, the thought of our trip consumed me like some sort of disease. If it’d been up to me, I would have come here the day after my ordeal with Kenny and Dr. Keller and the Pigeon at Oakside. But Evan had a game on Friday, and he couldn’t risk ineligibility by skipping class. Coach Tarza has this policy about ditching. I, on the other hand, couldn’t give a shit about school right now. I guess I should be thanking Evan for making sure I don’t get kicked out of high school, but I seem well on my way to trying to make that a reality.

“Did you bring that sheet of paper Kenny gave you?” Evan asks while he fiddles with the GPS feature on his phone.

“Yes, of course I did,” I say testily, jabbing a finger toward my messenger bag on the console between us.

“Yikes, sorry,” he says, but he starts digging through my bag for it anyway.

“Careful, don’t spill all my stuff,” I scold.

“Just watch the road. What? Are you afraid I’ll find your girly things and know how hard you try to look pretty for me?” he teases, but he doesn’t sound confident.

I keep my eyes on the road, my fingers gripping the wheel with forced concentration. “No,” I say, indignant as a five-year-old. “Just . . . just be careful with everything in there, okay?” I say, hoping he understands I need him to be careful with one thing in particular.

As I finish my plea, his hand emerges from my bag with the page from Nell’s journal, still folded in quarters, just as it had been when Kenny slipped it into my pocket. Among the hundreds of questions I’ve asked myself since my last trip to Oakside, the question of how Kenny had Nell’s journal page is at the top.

“I promise you I’ll be careful,” he says, and in an instant, all my frustration with him evaporates.

Evan unfolds the page gingerly, and his head bows to look at Nell’s faint writing.

“Can you read it to me?”

Evan starts to read, clears his throat, and starts again.

I regret it almost immediately. Hearing Nell’s words on someone else’s lips—even lips I’m dying to kiss again—feels wrong. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m somehow betraying her by letting someone else read her poetry.

But if I can trust anyone, it’s Evan. After all, he’s sort of in the same boat as me. If this were Deb’s journal that someone had secretly smuggled to him, I know he’d want to share it with me. I guess I’m just not used to feeling . . . not alone.

“What do you think she meant by that part about cribs? ‘Cribs for babes whose cries make men flock.’ I mean, I don’t claim to get, well,
anything
about poetry. But that part has me really confused.”

I shrug, a casual response to a question I feel anything but casual about. I’ve retraced that same line over and over since Monday, scouring the words for any hint of a clue. But I’ve come up short every time.

“I have absolutely no idea. I don’t get any of it,” I tell him.

“Oh,” Evan grunts, but I detect a hint of disappointment.

“Hey, just because I’m good in English doesn’t mean I get poetry. It’s like a whole different language.” I know I shouldn’t be so defensive. It’s hard to explain what I’m feeling. It’s like I’m ashamed that I couldn’t figure it out. Like Nell’s left me this clue, and I’ve got one last chance to try to help her, but I can’t crack the code.

Once again, I’m letting her down.

“Sorry.” Evan rests a big, calloused palm on my thigh. My leg tenses so hard in reflex that I almost shove my foot straight into the pedal and send us careening off the road.

“No,
I’m
sorry. I’m just a little on edge.”

“I don’t know how you wouldn’t be.”

We’re silent for a while. Evan finds a playlist on his phone and plugs it into the adapter I can’t believe I actually remembered to bring along. We listen to his mix of Portishead and Mazzy Star and Jeff Buckley. It’s strange how the simplest things can stay constant when everything else seems to be in chaos. A life can come to a stuttering halt, but the music, the lyrics, the melodies—they’ll never change. It’s like they stay the same just so you have one thing you can hold on to.

“Have a thing for the ’90s, huh?”

“That and Gatorade,” he replies. I sneak a look at him just in time to catch his wink.

“Hey, can you pull over for a sec?” he asks, and I obligingly pull off the road at the next rest stop.

We’re directly in front of the small stucco building before I recognize where we are. Evan unfastens his seat belt and slides out of the car. He disappears around the side of the building, his hand fishing in his pocket, and I brush off an expected tingle of déjà vu. When Evan reappears, he’s rattling two yellow packets in his hands like maracas. He climbs back into the car with such ease, I get fluttery in my stomach just like the first time he did this.

“A little nostalgia for the road,” he says, his brilliant smile lighting up his entire face.

“M&M’s!” I gush like I’ve just won a million-dollar prize. “Sir, you’re too kind!”

I reach for my packet, but he snatches it back.

In one quick movement, his lips are on mine, both soft and commanding. They move from my upper to my lower lip, fast at first, then slower as we find a rhythm. Jeff Buckley’s version of “Hallelujah” pipes through the speakers with the same kind of urgency as my thrumming heart. Evan’s hands move from my hair to my neck, from my neck to my shoulders, my shoulders to my back.

He pulls away just long enough to find my ear, his lips brushing my earlobe as he breathes into it: “You have no idea what you do to me.”

I feel the faintest tickle of his tongue as it lightly skims my neck before his lips find their way back to mine.

It takes every ounce of strength I never knew I had to pull away.

“We, uh . . . we should probably get back on the road.”

Evan’s cheeks are splotchy, and his eyes search my face as though looking for the proper response before he nods his agreement.

“You’re right. You’re right. I guess I just—I didn’t mean to—”

“No! No, no,” I try to reassure him, but I sound frantic. Who could be reassured by that? “I wanted to, it’s—let’s just get going,” I stutter, but he smiles that amazing smile that tells
me he understands, and I pull back onto the highway a little too fast to be fooling either of us.

“So how much farther is it?” I ask, desperate to find a safe topic of conversation.

Evan checks his phone’s GPS. “Looks like about sixty-five miles.”

“Guess you’d better find us another playlist.”

•  •  •

I’m only going about fifteen miles per hour, but it doesn’t matter. After almost half of a mile uphill, the switchbacks make both of us feel like we are going to pitch off the side of Cleopatra Hill at each sharp turn of the steering wheel.

“Jesus, how much longer?” Evan asks, his hand shielding his eyes. I know the feeling. Nell and I used to hang on to each other in the backseat on trips up here, our stomachs unaccustomed to experiencing this feeling outside of a roller coaster.

“We’re about halfway there,” I say, getting only a groan in response.

“Don’t you get hit in the stomach, like, every day?” I tease, but I keep my eyes fixed to the road in front of me, glad to focus on something other than the sheer drop to my left.

“Okay, first of all, getting hit in the stomach when you’re on level ground is nothing like being dropped off a mountain
side in a car,” he pipes up while gripping the passenger door handle. “Second, I have pads, and I only get hit when I’m not the one hitting first. And third, did I mention that I don’t play football on a mountainside?”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “It’s a lot better on the way down.”

“I bet it is,” he says. “Less distance to fall when we go hurtling to our deaths.”

“Exactly.”

•  •  •

Half an hour later, Evan and I climb out of my car and do our best to breathe the thin, mile-high air of Jerome, Arizona—the “Wickedest City in the West.” For the millionth time, I scold myself for forgetting to slip a travel deodorant into my bag. The tense drive up the hill has left wet rings under my arms. I’ve parked us in the nearest lot I could find. Outside the visitor center, which is inconveniently closed today, the asphalt square of the parking lot is nearly empty.

“Closed on Saturdays? When do they expect people to visit, during the week?” Evan complains. He’s still grumpy from the trip uphill.