Apparition (2 page)

Things were pretty great between us, even though we didn’t really hang out much outside of school on account of his parents. But then he took this job out of town this summer, working for guys in a Mennonite community who are experts at taking down old barns. He had hardly any access to computers or anything, and I only heard from him twice over two months. I found myself missing him more than I could have imagined, and I decided that when he got back, I was going to tell him I loved him, straight out, and hope for the best.

By late August, I was so excited to see him again I could barely stand it. When I finally did, a few days before the new school year started, it was like seeing him clearly for the very first time: his eyes, his smile, his long legs in those narrow black jeans. I couldn’t stop thinking,
Wow
. Seriously. The problem was, I was still too chicken to tell him the truth.

The first couple of weeks back at school were total agony. Then on Friday, something weird happened. We were sitting together after school in an empty corner of the library, doing some history homework. But mostly we were having one of our typical arguments. Matthew was saying that everyone believes in things they can’t prove, and I was bragging that I only believed in solid things like flesh. I was tapping my fingertips on his chest when I said that, for emphasis. We were laughing. I could feel his breastbone, and all of a sudden I started thinking about his bare skin under his T-shirt. I stopped tapping. The next thing I knew, my whole hand was flat
against his chest. I couldn’t help it. I don’t know what I was thinking, but the words just slipped out. “
Your
solid flesh,” I said.

I felt him inhale, and it caught me like the sensation of going over the crest of a roller coaster. I could feel his heart beating. He was looking at me with eyes wide with something like fear, his mouth partly open. And then he looked away and laughed in this nervous way he has. Shifting his attention to his textbook, he said, “I’m sorry. What question were we on?” Like nothing had happened.

That was the moment to say something. But I couldn’t. Instead, I pulled my hand away and said I should be heading home. I could barely breathe. I kept my head down and started throwing my books into my bag, grabbing my pens and stuff, shoving things in so fast that my papers got all mixed up. It was too much trouble to put on my jacket, so I just grabbed my school bag and jumped to my feet, my jacket hanging from one arm. But before I could make another move, his hand shot up and grabbed my wrist.

“Don’t go,” he said.

He held on tight to my wrist, looking down at my hand. And then he said in this quiet voice that it would be great if maybe I could come to a service at his parents’ church one of these days. A church service? Are you kidding me?

“Gee, I don’t know, Matthew,” I said, sarcasm creeping in. “Sounds awfully romantic.”

But he didn’t smile. Didn’t say anything. He just held on, staring at my hand so hard that I thought he was going to either kiss it or bite it. Finally I couldn’t stand the tension. I squirmed out of his grasp, told him I’d think about it and practically ran out the door. My heart was pounding. What had just happened?

I think about Matthew all the time. I love his eyes: dark, intense and narrow, like he’s always
this close
to figuring something out. Also
his grin. And his straight black hair hanging down his forehead, his square shoulders, his long legs. I don’t know why, but he makes me laugh. He can crack me up with a sideways glance.

Morgan always says I should take a chance and just fess up. But I’m a pessimist by nature. I figure it would never work out between Matthew and me. He’s a religious freak, and I’m just a freak.

Then last night there he was—grinning at the wheel of this pickup truck, looking like the sexiest guy on the planet. He said he could drop me off at my house if I wanted. I hesitated at first because I was a little bit in shock from running into him so unexpectedly. Also, my hair looked lousy. But I said, “Great. Thanks a lot.” I wasn’t going to turn down a chance to be with him, even for a few minutes.

As soon as I got into the passenger seat, even before I’d done up my seat belt, the truck took off, and that’s when I realized he was acting odd. I asked him where he got the truck. “My dad’s,” he said, kind of distracted. So much for worrying about what I looked like—he wasn’t looking at me at all. He said he had been on 12th Line earlier in the day, meeting with an old farmer about taking down his barn. It was going to be a big job, he said, talking even faster than usual and still grinning like crazy. Working after school and on weekends, it could take a month or more. He thought he could take all the boards down himself, and get help on the frame. Grey County is filled with big old barns that are close to falling down, each one about a hundred years old, the wood weathered grey. The boards are in high demand among people who make reproduction antiques. Every year a few more old barns disappear. Sad, really.

I hadn’t told him yet that I was moving—I guess I’d been hoping the deal would fall through—but that seemed as good a moment as any to face reality. “Believe it or not,” I said, “my grandmother bought a farmhouse on 12th Line. The blue one on the east side,
just past the bridge? For her horses, so she doesn’t have to board them anymore. We’re … we’re moving in about four weeks.” It was depressing to hear myself say it. “Maybe you can take that barn down too.”

He didn’t say anything. No sympathy, no reassurance, nothing. That surprised me, but he was acting odd and I thought maybe it had something to do with what had happened on Friday.

“Matthew, about what happened between us in the library yesterday …” I was searching for something to say, but when I looked over at him, I swear he wasn’t listening at all.

Then he shot a sideways look at me. “It was nothing.” He was smiling when he said it, but it was like he was thinking about something else.

After a moment of awkward silence, I asked him where he was off to, because it was almost ten o’clock. He just raised his eyebrows. As he stopped the pickup truck in front of my house, I joked that if he was up to no good, he didn’t have to tell me. But as soon as I said that, I got a bad feeling, like I had guessed right. Still grinning that strange grin, he looked out at the dark road and said, “If you must know, I’m meeting a girl.”

“Really?” The shock of his answer had almost made me forget how to unbuckle my seat belt. I was struggling with it like the truck was filling up fast with lake water, like I was going to drown. “Well, I hope you two have a nice time,” I managed to say, wrestling myself out of the truck and slamming the passenger door. I gave him one last look through the rolled-down window and said, “Isn’t it a bit late for church?” It was sarcastic but I couldn’t help myself.

“Who said anything about church?” He drove off down the road, leaving me there at the foot of my driveway. I would have been less shocked if he had said, “I’m going off to blow up the post office.”

As I walked up my driveway I was burning with a jealous rage, but by the time I got to the front door it had already turned into flat-out heartbreak. The idea that Matthew, having spent all those lunches and spares with me for almost three years, was hot for someone else made me feel like throwing up. Only the day before, I’d thought maybe something was happening between us. I’d felt, well, hopeful. But it had meant nothing. Just my sick imagination again.

A couple of loud sobs slipped out before I told myself to shut up. I was shaking so badly I had trouble getting the key in the front door, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the window curtains twitch. When I finally got the door open, I sneaked as quietly and quickly as I could past the living room, where Ethan was now back watching TV, and the kitchen, where I saw Joyce look up from emptying the dishwasher, to my bedroom at the back of the house.

I shut the door behind me, dropped onto my bed and pushed my face into a pillow to muffle the sound of my crying, unable to blot out the vision of his grinning face.

I’d thought Matthew and I totally belonged together. How could I have been so wrong?

I
’m grateful that it was my older brother who broke the news. Jack came home early Sunday evening and walked straight to my bedroom door, his face all white, breathing heavily through his mouth like he’d been running. He didn’t want to have to do it, I could tell.

He said they had found Matthew in an old barn on 12th Line. “Murdered. That’s what they’re saying.”

I looked at him. His eyes were red.

“Can you believe it? Less than a mile down the road from our new place,” he said.

“Wh-what?”

He started talking slowly, as if in a foreign language. “Run through the middle with some kind of old farm tool.” He stopped, watching me like he was afraid. “A pitchfork or something.” He made a little motion like a turtle, ducking his head into his shoulders. “Right through his stomach.”

He sat down beside me and put a heavy arm around my shoulders.
“God, I’m really sorry, Amelia. I know you two were close.” He hugged and rocked me and held the side of his head against mine. Just like he held my hand when Mom was lying dead in her blue hospital gown. I don’t remember when he left my room. I just remember hearing him say, “Not again.”

I stay in my room through Sunday supper. I want to call Matthew on the phone.
Do you know I hardly slept last night, Matthew? I was so upset with you
. I don’t feel like eating. I don’t feel like talking to Morgan, even when she calls a third time. I don’t feel like dealing with my grandmother, who wants to check on me constantly. Jack knocks gently and asks through the door a couple of times if he can get me anything. He’s a good brother. (Though maybe Morgan put him up to that. He’s got a crush on her.) But I’m okay. I’m really not feeling anything at all. Everything seems too far away. Even my own body. So far away I can’t move my arms or legs. Without turning my head, I study my bedroom wall. I look at cracks I’ve never noticed before. The pale green lines in the drapes, some thick, some thin. And at some point late in the night, when I can’t keep my eyes open any longer, I curl up on my side and go to sleep.

I open my eyes the next morning and it slowly dawns on me that I slept in my jeans and sweater on top of the bedspread, with the light on. Otherwise everything is normal. It’s Monday, and that means school.

Joyce knocks on the door and opens it a crack, and then a bit wider. She sticks her head in.

“Amelia, you’re going to have to eat something. I know you might not feel like it, but I’m going to bring you a bowl of cereal. Or even better, you can get up and eat it at the kitchen table.”

Joyce thinks cereal is the answer to everything. She just waits, looking at me. She’s not leaving.

I finally tell her I’ll get up. I’ll eat some cereal in the kitchen. But I don’t think I want to go to school.

She starts to say something, then stops. She nods and says, “No problem,” and shuts the door behind her.

Matthew, you’ll have to go to history class without me. You’ll have to lend me your notes
.

It takes me a while to get up off the bed. In the kitchen, Joyce has set a bowl and the carton of milk and the cereal box at one end of the table. She’s sitting at the other end, a cup of tea in front of her.

“The boys left already,” she offers, like she’s looking for something to say.

I sit down and look at the bowl, then pick up the box and pour some cereal. I feel a little hungry, but after only two spoonfuls I’ve had enough. Joyce asks if I’d like to eat anything else. She asks if I’m okay. I’m thinking that I must remember to ask Matthew why a loving God allows so much pain in the world.
What’s his problem, Matthew? Does he love us or not?

Joyce says she’s going to start packing up the dining-room hutch. That’s a big job. All the china, the crystal, the silverware—it’s all Mom’s stuff. Joyce is not really a “fine china” person. I tell her I’ll help, even though I feel sick.

We sit at the dining-room table, wrapping the fragile pieces in thin foam sheets and stacking them in empty boxes she got from the liquor store. I’m trying hard not to break anything, though my hands are shaky. Mom loved this pattern, turquoise and blue with delicate little gold scrolls. I keep my eyes on the colours, wrapping each plate and bowl and saucer and teacup in its own tissue, fitting it snugly into a box.
For you, Mom. You have such beautiful china
.

After a while, Joyce wants to take a break for lunch. I follow her into the kitchen and she puts some chicken vegetable soup in front of me. I try a bit, but it tastes weird and I’m not hungry. When the doorbell rings, she leaves the kitchen to answer it while I look down into my soup. I hear her greeting someone, then saying that the timing isn’t very good. She’s whispering in the hallway.

I get up to see who it is. Maybe it’s Matthew? But it’s a man in a suit and tie who says he’s come for a little chat with me. Joyce stands in the hallway between us.

“Amelia, this is Detective Grierson. He’s working on the … the case involving Matthew. Detective Grierson, this is Amelia. She’s not feeling well today, so we’re taking it easy. Doing some packing. We’re getting ready to move.”

Grierson nods like that’s interesting. He looks strong and a little rough, and like he’d rather not be wearing a suit. He leans forward and stretches out a long arm to shake my hand. I focus on the strength of his handshake.

“Do you mind if we have a talk, Amelia? It’s very important. I just want to check on a few things. Is there somewhere we can sit down? In the kitchen?”

I nod, but I’m hesitating. Joyce leads the way.

“This is about your friend Matthew,” he says.

It’s about Matthew
.

“Matthew …” he begins, then stops. “I think you know we found Matthew’s body yesterday. We think he died sometime Saturday night.” He pauses like he’s expecting me to have something to say about that. Then he goes on. “But we don’t know how he died. We don’t know the circumstances. We need to find out what happened. And according to some of the kids at school, you were his best friend, and the last known person to see him alive. Is that true? Can you tell me about that?”