The Storyteller (27 page)

“And she didn't say anything else?” they asked.

Alistair shook his head and said, “She was confused.”

I nodded in agreement. The understatement of the decade.

The police didn't speak to us for all that long, though they said they'd probably want to speak to us again. They were too busy with Fiona and her parents, who they shuffled off to some undisclosed location.

The TV has been on in our house all day. I'm not sure who turned it on, but no one has bothered to turn it off. Whenever I glance over at it, I see either a news report about Fiona or some show counting down
The Best of the Eighties!
Music videos. Movies. TV shows. Et cetera. It'd be fun to watch that fluff if I didn't have so many other thoughts and images clogging my head.
The Worst of December 29 and 30!

The image of Fiona in the beanbag chair, befuddled and terrified, miles away from the daring and confident little Heavy Metal Fifi who had my brother wrapped around her bony finger. It crushed me and is still crushing me to be lost in her vacant eyes.

The image of her parents hugging her while she shivered and wept and the cops loomed in the doorways of every room of our house in a way that only cops loom.

The image of the Dwyers, standing in the road, peering over the barrier of police cruisers, asking, “Anything? Anything on Charlie?”

Nothing. Nothing on Charlie.

EVENING

In the madness of the last two days I haven't had much time to revisit my accusations of Alistair. Did he read my diary? Well, it seems that Mandy and Glen did, so it's certainly believable that he did too. Did he steal ideas and make up stories in some weird scheme to win me over? A bit far-fetched, I know, but consider the alternative. Do I care anymore, now that Fiona is back? Not really. And yet when I saw the unopened phone bill on the kitchen table this evening, I knew I had to put the investigation to rest.

I snatched the bill and the cordless phone and headed for the bathroom. I locked the door and turned on the shower, but I didn't shower. I sat on the floor and tore open the envelope. I found a number on the bill that had a ton of digits. This had to be it. I dialed quickly, so I wouldn't chicken out, and I let it ring a few times. Fourteen and a half hours ahead, if I remembered correctly. It would have been Sunday at noon where I was calling, a perfectly reasonable time to answer a few questions about what the hell is going on.

The voice that answered was low and scratchy, a just-woken voice, or maybe an exhausted one, considering what time it was there.

“Hello.”

“Hi,” I said. “I'm calling to speak to Jenny Colvin, please.”

A pause, and then, “Is this a joke?”

I knew at that moment who I was speaking to. The same woman who answered the phone before. Jenny's mother, I assumed. She had sounded so sprightly the last time, so happy, but now …

“I'm not joking,” I assured her. “I have a quick question for Jenny, is all.”

“So do I, dear,” she said, though the
dear
was anything but sweet. “Why won't she come home?”

“Excuse me?”

“If you're having a go at me … then I … certainly don't appreciate it,” she said, the words muddled by sobs.

“I'm confused,” I said. “You're saying she's not home?”

“Hasn't been home since before Christmas.”

I drew the phone away from my face. What I was doing felt absolutely filthy. My hand lingered over the button to hang up, and yet I didn't press it. I drew the phone back to my ear.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered. “I didn't know.”

“Not that it surprises us,” the woman said. “Her sis had these sorts of problems too, spouting fantastical nonsense, threatening to run off and never come back. But she never went through with it. She grew up and got better. Jenny, on the other hand, always has to outdo her sis. I guess that includes going through with the running-off bit.”

“Her sister?” I asked.

“Sigrid,” the woman said.

I hung up immediately. I tore up the phone bill and tossed the paper in the toilet. Then I flushed away the evidence.

 

THE BEGINNING

You can survive without a soul. Princess Sigrid did, after all. The Dorgon had consumed Tom Rondrigal, who had taken Sigrid's soul into the afterlife with him. The Dorgon had then consumed Sigrid's trusty advisor, Po, leaving the princess entirely alone in the onyx tower. The cook still put a drop of that potion of forgetfulness in Sigrid's evening stew, and her short-term memory was wiped clean every day.

Even though she didn't have a soul, Sigrid still had feelings, but like her new memories, they were fleeting. They abandoned her within moments of her feeling them. They never imprinted themselves on her because there was nowhere to imprint.

So Sigrid indulged in nostalgia, in the old memories and feelings she hadn't lost. Those included her journey into other worlds, into other bodies—her time as a girl made of candy canes, as an alien, as a dark and disturbing joke, and as thousands of baby birds. There was no doubt that the journey had been a harrowing and horrible experience, but she began to miss it. That's the thing about the harrowing and the horrible: you tend to underestimate just how harrowing and horrible they are. You tend to tell yourself that feeling something is always better than feeling nothing.

And that's what Sigrid told herself. Her life was now as bad as it gets, as empty as it gets. Having feelings and memories that didn't last was torture. Confusion, anger, and even pain were better than numbness.

So one morning, she opened the hollowed-out book that concealed that old Dorgon potion, the one that allowed her to live other lives, and she put a drop of it on her tongue.

Poof!

She entered the body of a girl named Kerrigan Cleary. Keri for short.

Keri was a mess of a girl, a bubbling cauldron of emotion and confusion. As Sigrid entered her body, she was flooded, overwhelmed with feelings. Immediately, Sigrid regretted her decision to take the potion. Having no emotions was bad, but being torn apart by emotions was perhaps even worse. What had she gotten herself into?

Sigrid knew that the only escape from a body was death, and she certainly didn't wish such an awful fate on Keri. The girl was a wreck, but she was also sweet, and very very funny, thank you very much. So Sigrid decided to try to make the best of the situation. She'd do whatever she could to help young Keri.

Since Sigrid no longer had a soul, all she could offer Keri was her old memories. They didn't seem like much, but they energized Keri. They coursed through her mind and emerged at the end of her pen. They became stories, written down in a diary, and those stories accomplished two things.

They made Sigrid feel like she had a soul again.

They made Keri feel less anxious, more in control of her life. Kinder. More understanding.

And together, the two girls got stronger.

Now, when Keri sat on her bed, staring at that diary and asking herself,
What does it all mean?
she could tell herself a new mantra.

“Who cares, as long as it's working.”

 

S
UNDAY
, 12/31/1989

MORNING

We're all overjoyed and we're all terrified. We don't know what the hell is happening.

The phone rang all morning, like a scream in a haunted house. Mom and Dad fielded the calls because the calls were for them. Until there was a call for me. Mom handed me the phone without saying who it was.

“Hello,” I said.

“Did you see the paper?” There was no need for formalities. I guess that's how far our relationship has gotten. I guess that's how far it's going to get.

“Why would you do that, Glen?” I asked. “Why would you read my diary?”

There was a pause. “So I could do something nice for you,” he said, in a voice so clueless to his violation that I knew this was the end of things.

“There's nothing nice about violating someone's privacy,” I said.

“But did you see the paper?” he asked, in that same voice.

What was he even talking about? Honestly, I didn't care. “All I see is that I don't know why I got into this relationship in the first place. I'm sorry, Glen, but it's over. It never should have started.”

I hung up.

AFTERNOON

Did you see it? Did you see it? Did you see it?

Did I see what?

Did I look out the front window and see Dorian Loomis walking down the street with Fiona, his hand on her shoulder? Did I see the two of them alone, sharing some private words, a conversation I'd never be able to hear?

I did.

Did I see a team of police and dogs out in the swamp behind my house, poking around past Frog Rock, searching for clues and appearing to find zilch?

I did.

Did I see my brother, lying on the couch on his side, looking bewildered? Did I see his eyes go wide when I asked him if there was anything I could do to help? And did I see my reflection in his eyes, my face crinkled with worry, when he replied, “Absorbing them all was a terrible idea, wasn't it?”

I did.

EVENING

After lunch, Mom told me and Alistair that we were all going for a drive and we followed her to the minivan, where Dad was waiting with thermoses of hot chocolate.

Out of the neighborhood we drove, past the news vans and cop cars. Through town, past the Skylark and the memorial tree. To the countryside, where fields crusted with snow looked like big sheets of blank paper.

I figured we were going to an early dinner somewhere, because no one was in the mood to cook today, but then Dad said, “Have Mom and I ever showed you the place where we met?”

“You mean you two actually existed before we were born?” I said.

“Barely,” Dad said.

And Mom said, “Aww. Still so sweet.”

Then Dad pulled us over to the side of the road next to some farm that looked like any farm on any road out of town. He cut the engine, which cut the heat, which was okay because we were all bundled up anyway, and Mom started pouring the hot chocolate into short plastic mugs.

“Everything all right?” I asked.

“Fine,” Dad said. “This is it.”

I rolled down my window and stuck my head out into the frigid air. It was dead silent. It was almost dark, but there was a rind of color on the horizon. “This spot?” I asked. “This is where you met?”

“This very spot,” Mom said as she handed us our hot chocolate.

Alistair leaned over me and peered out of my window too. “It's … stark,” he said.

Dad looked back at us and smiled. “It was even starker then. I was twenty-four and still in grad school. Sometimes I'd go for long drives to clear my mind, and on one of those long drives, on a cold winter day like this one, I ran out of gas. At this very spot.”

Mom picked up the tale from there. “I was twenty-three and I had my first job,” she said, “which involved driving mail from the processing plant in Ontonkowa to the post office in Thessaly. Not a bad gig for a kid. And the reason you two exist.”

“Really? What about the stork and the cabbage patch?” I asked as I rolled my window back up.

“That came later,” Dad said with a chuckle. “Your saint of a mother—”

“Let me guess,” I said. “She saw you on the side of the road, picked you up, and drove you to the gas station, and you fell in love and lived happily ever after.”

“Hardly,” Mom said. “You know me better than that.”

“As I was saying,” Dad went on, “your saint of a mother has always abided by the tenets of the United States Postal Service, and that day was no different. She slowed down, but didn't stop. The mail can't be late, after all.”

“What?” I hooted. “Mom! You didn't stop?”

She shrugged out a good old-fashioned,
Eh, whattya gonna do?

Dad passed his hot chocolate back to Mom and then he blew into his hands to warm them up. The breath snuck out of the cracks between his fingers and made extra, wispy little fingers in the air. “What exactly was it you shouted at me?” he asked Mom.

“‘Plan ahead next time,'” she said with a smile.

“And you just left him there?” I asked. I'm not sure if my lip curled in disgust, but Mom certainly recognized the sour look on my face.

“Oh, he was fine,” she assured me. “Someone helped him out a few minutes later.”

“That's right,” Dad said. “A kind old man who was on his way to do some ice fishing. He had a gas can and gave me a gallon to get me on my way. Poured me a cup of coffee from his thermos for good measure.”

“Sounds like you should have married that guy instead,” I said. “Jeez. This isn't a romantic story at all.”

“The romance happened soon enough,” Dad said. “I topped the car off in town and since I needed some stamps, I decided to stop by the post office. I figured if I saw your mom there, I could give her a piece of my mind.”

This time my lip didn't curl. It probably quivered a bit, though. 'Tis a foolish endeavor to cross Mom. “You didn't,” I said.

“I did,” Dad replied. “I stormed in there and shook the room with my hollering.”

“And what did she do?” Alistair asked. For most of the story, he'd been staring at his hot chocolate, but now that he looked up, he appeared as invested in the tale as I was.

“I did my job,” Mom said. “I sat in the back, sorting mail, trying to ignore him.”

“Except!” Dad said. “She's forgetting one thing. As I was on my way out, she jogged up and slipped me a note. It read—”

“‘Forgive me,'” Mom whispered in a very sweet way. “‘I get off in an hour. If you're still around, please let me buy you some pie.'”

“And you took her up on the offer?” Alistair said.