The Boys Are Back in Town (5 page)

In stunned silence, Will watched his best friend turn and walk away.

I still have nightmares about his funeral.
That's what Danny had said. But Mike could not be dead. Will had received an e-mail from him just a week ago.

And yet now, as he thought about it, tasted the concept with his mind, he found just a whisper of a memory in his head, something about a hit-and-run.

A funeral.

Up on the platform, Stacy growled into the microphone, smiling mischievously as she sang Sheryl Crow's “Steve McQueen.” Maybe a dozen people had abandoned their seats or their quiet corners and gathered to bump and grind in front of the platform. There were several Will did not recognize, but the others were all older versions of familiar faces. Others stood up behind him and started in dancing as well, so that he was caged on either side by laughing, gyrating people.

A frenetic, benevolent energy exuded from them just as surely as sweat and alcohol from their pores, and yet it touched him not at all. The evening's celebration churned all around him but he was no longer a part of it. The colorful dresses on the women seemed tacky all of a sudden, and the laughter perverse. A hollow place had opened up inside of him.

Will felt completely detached, as though he had phased into some gray limbo, passed out of existence completely, and the rest of the world went on around him as though he wasn't there at all. He had had dreams like this, and they had always terrified him. The room had taken on the texture of a dream now, and the air he was breathing was not quite right. The voices were too loud, the music somehow muffled.

He closed his eyes and felt himself swaying, knew he was about to pass out but could do nothing to stop it.

“Will?” a soft voice said, a gentle hand steadying him.

His eyes fluttered open. The delicate, almost otherworldly face of Martina Dienst swam into focus. Her eyes were narrowed with concern, but other than the tiny lines at the edges of her mouth, she looked as though she had not aged a day in the last ten years.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

He stared at her, his throat dry. The woman had changed not at all, and yet it seemed that his eyes had altered, or perhaps what had evolved was his way of seeing. Martina had always been beautiful, but now she was stunning. There was an elegance and grace about her that had always been there but seemed far more vital now.

“Hey,” he said, forcing a smile that felt stiff and false. “I'm . . . I'm OK. I've just had a really long week.” Will took a deep breath and raised his chin, stood a bit straighter, not wanting her to think he was drunk or high. “You look amazing, by the way.”

Her smile was sweet and yet somehow regal. There had always been a touch of majesty about her. “Thank you. You look pretty good, too, if we ignore the pale, nearly fainting part.”

Will laughed softly and felt as though some of the color flooded back into the world. The surreal quality of the room rolled back like a wave on the shore, but he was cautious, afraid it would wash over him anew. When it didn't, he smiled again and this time it felt more real.

“Very long week,” he reiterated.

“You're not alone,” Martina said. “I arrived from Vienna yesterday. I am still not in this time zone.”

For a brief instant it seemed to him that he was going to be able to do it, to take a breath and dive back into the flow of the evening. But then Danny's words came back to him, coupled with the ghost of a memory he did not recall ever experiencing before. It wasn't déjà vu. If there was an opposite to déjà vu, that's what this was.

Caitlyn sobbing, face streaked with tears. The strength going out of Ashleigh's legs as she sat down hard on the tile in the corridor, slumping up against a row of lockers.

I still have nightmares about his funeral.

Jesus,
Will thought, trying not to let Martina see how shaken he was.
Mike Lebo is dead?

It was fucking impossible. Completely, utterly impossible. He had no recollection of a funeral—
a sliver of a memory, a rose dropped upon a casket, already in the ground, loose dirt sifting down to spatter the wood
—but Danny wasn't fucking around. Will had seen that in his eyes. He might joke about a lot of things, almost everything, but not about this.

“Damn,” Will muttered, shaking his head. Then he focused on her. “Martina, you remember Mike Lebo, right?”

A veil of melancholy was drawn across her eyes. “Of course I do, Will. Who could forget? What a sweet guy. The day they announced it in school, when he was killed, that moment is burned into my mind. He's still the only friend I've ever had die. Maybe that makes me lucky.”

Will could not seem to catch his breath. His eyes burned as though he were about to cry, but no tears fell.

“Yeah. Maybe it does,” he rasped. That look of concern was back in Martina's eyes, but he could not bear speaking with her even a moment longer. Not right now.

“You know what? I'd love to catch up with you. I've been to Europe once, back in college, and I've always wanted to go again. I'd love to pick your brain, but I'm really not feeling well. Are you going to be at the other events this weekend?”

Martina nodded, frowning. “I'll be around all weekend. You just look after yourself and feel better, all right? Are you all right to drive? Maybe someone should take you home.”

“I live in Somerville.”

“A hotel, then?” she suggested.

He took another long breath and shook his head, trying not to be too dismissive of her kindness. “I'll be all right.”

They said their good-byes and he turned to walk back to the table. As he did he caught sight of Stacy. With a toss of her hair she strummed out the final chords of a song by the Eagles that had been released before any of them had been born.

“Thank you,” she said as the applause erupted. That knowing smile was there again. “It's great to see all of you. I'm going to take a break and then do one more set for tonight. It's really a pleasure to play for you guys. Thanks for having me.”

In the lights that illuminated the platform and the microphone stand, the spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose seemed somehow darker. When she put her guitar on its stand and came down off the platform, she had an expression of real contentment on her face.

Will had paused on his way back to the table. Now he waited as she approached him. When she had crossed half the distance that separated them, the smile on Stacy's face faltered and a kind of trepidation crept into her eyes.

“Hey. You all right?”

“No,” he admitted, hoping she read the regret in his tone. “I'm really not feeling well. I'm going to head out, I think. Will you be at the game tomorrow?”

Stacy looked pensive, gnawing her lower lip a moment. “Yeah,” she said at length. “I'll be there. Feel better, all right?”

“Probably just working too hard,” he lied.

She nodded, leaned forward and gave him a light kiss on the cheek, and then turned away. “See you tomorrow. You take care of yourself,” she said over her shoulder. Then she was off across the room, threading through the crowd, politely fending off the compliments she received as she went to mingle.

Will pushed her out of his head, along with everything else that had happened tonight. The only way he could put one foot in front of the other, the only way he could function at all, was to purposely avoid thinking about certain things. But he knew he would not be able to put those thoughts off forever.

He went to the table where his friends sat, moving amongst chairs that had been pushed too far out from their places, trying not to knock off jackets that had been hung off the backs. Several people greeted him and Will managed to smile and even shake a few hands, to promise he would catch up with them at the football game the next day.

Ashleigh noticed him first. She was in the midst of a conversation with Lolly and Pix, but her smile evaporated the second she spotted Will. Despite the mire of unsettling thoughts in his head, he could not help but laugh.

“I must really look like shit, judging from the expression on your face.”

At his words, everyone at the table turned to look at him. Will did not miss the cold glint of pain in Danny's eyes. It hurt him to see it, to know that at the moment his old friend thought he was a total asshole.

“You do, bro,” Eric said earnestly. “Absolute shit. What's the matter?”

“Something I ate, maybe,” Will said. His gaze ticked from one face to the next, lingering a moment on Ashleigh until at last he focused on Danny. “I'm headed home. Figure I should get some rest now so I don't miss the entire weekend.”

“Good idea,” Pix piped up. “You'll need all your energy to watch those cheerleaders at the game tomorrow.”

Will didn't have the energy to deadpan a grin, but Eric did it for him.

“We admire them for their athleticism. And all that synchronization. That's a science.”

Ashleigh rapped him on the shoulder and scolded him with a look. Then she turned to glance up at Will again.

“Drive carefully,” she said, playing big sister. “We'll save you a seat tomorrow.”

“You got it,” he promised.

Without further hesitation, he headed for the door that would take him downstairs and out of Liam's Irish Tavern, where he could get into his car and drive away from the impossible.

O
N THE
M
ASSACHUSETTS
T
URNPIKE,
Will turned the radio up loud and rolled the front windows down halfway, letting the chill air rush in, hoping it would clear his head. The sick feeling in his stomach that had combined with astonishment had been superseded now by a dark anger that surged up like bile in his throat.

Sick fuckers,
he thought.

It had to be a joke. The most disturbing practical joke he had ever even heard of—and far more clever than he would ever have given Danny Plumer credit for. There were images in his head, snippets of memory he didn't understand, fragments of emotions that slipped his mind even as he tried to grasp and make sense of them. But all of that might just be the power of suggestion thrown into the mix with what was genuine exhaustion. He was more tired than he had imagined. That part, at least, had not been a lie.

The flag at Eastborough High flies at half-mast. Will's parents have bought him a black suit, and his father is shining his son's shoes. If he lets his eyes close, Will knows he will see the brush moving across shoe leather.

But he wouldn't close his eyes. That was how idiots totaled their cars. Falling asleep behind the wheel.

A cross beside the road, a hasty memorial erected not with wood and steel but with flowers and cards and photographs and candles, flickering candles. In the street Will finds something the police have missed—a broken tooth, knocked from Mike's mouth when the motherfucking hit-and-run murdering son of a—

“No!” Will shouted, snapping his head up, jerking the wheel to the left to correct his course. He had started to fall asleep, started to drift into the next lane.

He shook his head and turned the radio up even louder. With his teeth grinding together, he accelerated, the needle leaping up past sixty-five to seventy and then to seventy-five. He had to get home. There were things he needed to look into, things he had to put his hands on, touch. He knew once he did that, he could flush all of this insanity right out of his head.

Insanity.
He didn't like the sound of that word.

The road hummed under his wheels. Taillights glowed ahead, and too-bright headlights glared in his rearview mirror. Will reached up and turned it down to get the brightness out of his eyes.

They still burned, promising tears, but he didn't have anything to cry about. That was the hell of it. After high school graduation he had lost contact with all but the closest of his old friends. He saw Danny the most because he was in the area, but he and Mike had kept in touch. Christmas cards, a flurry of e-mails four or five times a year. Hell, Mike had been at Ashleigh's party the night after they had graduated.

Will knew it. He
remembered
it. They had all been there. Mike had mixed rum and Cokes for everyone and Eric had ended up puking in the shrubs. After Will and Caitlyn had gone upstairs to Ashleigh's bedroom to have a little private time, Mike and Danny had serenaded them from the flower garden outside the window.

“This is fucked,” he said, cold wind whipping his face, wide awake, eyes staring at the road ahead. The engine thrummed and he saw that the needle had crept up to eighty. Will slowed down a little, knuckles white, fists tight on the steering wheel.

After graduation, he and Mike had hung out every time a holiday or summer break brought them both home to Eastborough. After college had come and gone, Mike had moved to Phoenix. His address was in Will's book back at the apartment.

The wake. The flowers. Mike's uncle Bill singing “Danny Boy”so softly under his breath that no one else can hear it.

No. Simply no way.

Will pounded the steering wheel and the horn let out a startled beep.

We just traded e-mails last week,
he thought.
That night at Ashleigh's after graduation, he signed my fucking yearbook. “To Will, a better friend than most of us deserve.”
Will could see the handwriting in his mind, right above Mike's picture.

Mike's picture. How could Mike even have his picture in the yearbook if he had died before those pictures could be taken? The answer was, he couldn't. Mike Lebo could not possibly be dead.