Ashlyn's Radio (15 page)

Maybe it’s been looking for you.

“No, he won’t leave his wife! He said … he said that they were working things out! That he loves her. More than he loves me! More than he ever did!” With a long drawn wail, Ms. Degagne started crying all over again.

Ashlyn couldn’t blame her. She hadn’t liked Berg since that first day of detention, but what she was hearing now solidified him as a total jerk in her mind.

As Ms. Degagne cried, Ashlyn’s eyes never left the yearbook sitting on the shelf. Her fingertips trembled as she hooked on to the top of it and tipped it down. She grabbed it with her right hand and gently placed it on her lap.

Crouching even lower, she ran her hand over the cover.

This was it. Amidst these strange, surreal circumstances, Ashlyn was about to get her first glimpse of the father she’d never known. A little pang of sadness went through her. She’d be getting a different glimpse of her mother too. A glimpse of a younger, less troubled young woman. Not the woman she now was, locked in the psych ward.

Oh, Mamma, I miss you so much.

“Mom’s going to kill me!” Ms. Degagne cried into the phone, sounding so much younger than an adult ever should.

Ashlyn drew an oh-so-silent breath, and opened the yearbook.

Stanley Maggs. That was the first picture she opened to. And she’d know that geeky lump anywhere. Hall monitor / student security. Now, why didn’t that surprise her? She flipped to the graduates’ pages and her eyes instantly fell on her mother’s image at the bottom of the first page. Leslie Lee Caverhill. The eyes — those Caverhill greens — stood out even in the black and white photo. Her hair was 80s-high, and under different circumstance (i.e., not trapped in the library with Losing-It Librarian) Ashlyn might have laughed out loud rather than biting down on her lip.

Helen Emma Moss
. She was the last picture on the first page. Which meant Ashlyn’s father’s picture was on the second page, at the top. Slowly, Ashlyn forced her gaze up to the picture of Patrick Scott Murphy.

Her eyes stung with sudden tears.

“Hey, Dad,” she whispered. Not meaning for the words to sigh out, but feeling the heaviness in her chest as they did.

Patrick Murphy had been a handsome young man. God, a kid. Not much older than she was now. His eyes were dark and lively, and his blond hair curly and spilling down over his ears. Instantly, Ashlyn loved his smile. How it curled up a little crookedly, but was so genuinely full of fun. Full of life.

But not for long. How short that life had been.

But there was something else about this picture of Patrick Murphy. There was a familiarity there. Not just in a
I’ve-got-his-chin
(and she did) kind of a way. Something more. A genuine, fleeting and inexplicable recognition. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but neither could she deny it. She’d seen this man before.

It would come to her. Surely it would come to her, if she thought it over hard enough. Looked over the picture long enough….

But the yearbook was a reference book. Reference books couldn’t be signed out of the library.

Well, if anyone deserved this yearbook, she did.

Ignoring the stab of guilt, Ashlyn found the thin magnetized strip hidden between the book’s pages. She pulled it out slowly, carefully, so as to not rip any pages. She balled the thin strip and tucked it behind the other old yearbooks to hide there with the dust bunnies. And with a mental promise to bring the yearbook back, Ashlyn tucked it into her backpack.

“I … I don’t know what I’ll do.” Ms. Degagne sniffled loudly. She blew her nose. As if on cue, the first bell rang. Ashlyn peeked around the corner of the stack.

The hallways were filling with people. Ashlyn spotted Rachel, more witched up than ever in a dramatic, high-necked black blouse and a long black sweater over that. Some asshole pulled her hair. And when he turned around laughing — surprise, surprise — it was Brian Caldwell again. More and more Ashlyn did
not
like that guy. And she so badly wanted to race out there and tear him a new one. But she still wasn’t clear to get past Degagne. Fortunately, Rachel didn’t need any help. She turned on Brian, holding up her crossed fingers in a hex sign and the big, macho jerk practically fell over himself trying to get away.

“I’ve got to get going, Sis,” Ms. Degagne said.

Good
, Ashlyn thought. It sounded like the librarian was wrapping it up. She might actually get out of here and into homeroom before the second bell.

“Remember … just remember, no matter what happens, you’ve been the best sister a girl could have. Even a … a messed-up one like me!” She clumped the receiver down. Wheels rolled over the carpeted floor as she pushed her chair back and rose. The office door closed, and when Ashlyn looked up, Degagne was busy in her tiny office, a mirror in her hand as she tried to repair the ravages of that crying jag.
Good luck with that.

Ashlyn shook her own head. In truth, she hated to leave her like this, so clearly upset. Still, what was she supposed to say? “Hello, Ms. Degagne, we’ve never met, but I’m a student here at Podunk High, and I hear you’re knocked up by that married shop teacher you’ve been boinking.”

Diplomacy had never been her strong suit.

Still, as Ashlyn prepared to make a stealthy exit, she made a mental vow to drop in to check on Ms. Degagne, somehow.

Right now, though, she was outta here. Quickly, she glided back up the stairs and out through the library doors, where she blended in with the other students flowing through the hallways. She opened her locker, looking both ways before sliding the stolen prize out of her bookbag and tucking it out of sight.

She couldn’t help herself. She dared one more look at her father’s photograph. And just like that, it hit her. Oh, God! She knew where she’d seen Patrick Murphy before.

The train.

Her knees turned to rubber, and she put a hand on her locker to steady herself.

Oh, God, it was
him!
Her father had been the one in that final car, the young man who’d raced the length of it as though to preserve his glimpse of her as long as possible. The one particular soul who’d looked out at her so terrified, so damned tormented, had been her father’s.

He was stuck on that soul-sucking, evil train!

S
OMEHOW SHE GOT THROUGH
the school day.

After seeing her dad’s picture in that yearbook, Ashlyn thought she was going to lose her breakfast right there in front of her locker. But she’d kept the muffins down, and as she moved to her first class, she found she was able to keep that new knowledge down, too. Not that she was able to forget it; she felt it there all day like a leaden weight in her belly, but she was able to push it away and not think about it. Much.

Now that she was home, however, she didn’t have classes to command her attention or Rachel’s banter to divert her. She didn’t even have the distraction of her mini cold war with Maudette. She arrived home to find a note from her grandmother to the effect that she was out running errands, and to help herself to the pizza she’d left in the fridge. Homemade pizza, too. With onions and olives. Her favorite. Except she couldn’t have choked it down right now if she tried. Maybe it was a good thing Maudette was out. She’d have had to make up a lie about her lack of appetite.

All the way home — or rather, the last leg of the walk after she and Rachel had parted company — she’d agonized about whether or not to tell Maudette. But what would that accomplish? The locals already believed the legend. Because Ashlyn’s father had died by the tracks, Maudette must already presume that Patrick Murphy’s soul rode that evil train. All that she’d accomplish by talking about it would be to confirm Maudette’s worst fears.

But mostly, she just didn’t want her grandmother to know how close she’d gotten to that train. Close enough to feel the conductor’s seductive pull, even though it was Rachel he was after. Her instinct — just like any other self-respecting teenager’s — was to conceal the close brush with disaster. Like that time back home when she and Hoopz had been just two cars behind the action when gunfire had erupted between rival gangs. One 17-year-old boy had died and two other young men were hospitalized, one of them an innocent bystander. When her mother mentioned hearing it on the news and urged Ashlyn to be careful out there, Ashlyn had assured her she always was. Some things a parent — or a grandparent — just didn’t need to know.

But if Mom was here … and if she was well … wouldn’t you tell her?

Yes. Yes, she’d tell her. In a frickin’ New York minute. And then she’d bawl. And her mother would put her arms around her and rock her and rub her back and tell her it would be okay. God, she wanted that. Needed it.

But she couldn’t have it.

Instead, she went out to the kennels and turned the dogs out into the exercise pen. They bounced and bounded and generally acted the fool, but their antics didn’t delight her today. As the Airedales cavorted, all she saw was her father’s pale face, features twisted in torment and his hands pressed to the wide window as the train receded down the tracks.

Then Lolly-Pup, after a few dashes around the fence with the other dogs, came over to where Ashlyn sat on the grass, nudging her face with a cold nose.

“Oh, Lolly-Pup, I saw my dad.” She reached up and hugged the dog, burying her face in the fur of her neck. Lolly-Pup didn’t move away and Ashlyn hugged tighter. The poor dog even whined a little, as if feeling Ashlyn’s pain. “My father’s suffering so much. They all are. But he … I think he knew me. I’m almost sure he knew I was his daughter. And to think he’s been there my whole life, on that hellish train! While I was in Grade 3 and making up stories about a father who was an astronaut on a space station and he wanted to be with us but he couldn’t. While I was in middle school and telling kids my dad was some bad-assed gangster in Montreal. And later, in high school, when I denied him altogether. I told my friends my mother used a sperm bank, and that my father was an anonymous donor.” She choked a laugh. “How do like that, Lolly-Pup?”

But Lolly-Pup did not appear to think any the less of her. She just whined and licked Ashlyn’s face, then cast a look at the other dogs and whined again.

Ashlyn laughed. “You’re right. Stupid to sit around crying, huh? There’s nothing to be done about it, right?” She pulled back and gave the dog a reassuring scratch. “Go ahead, girl. Go play with the others.”

With a deep woof, Lolly-Pup gamboled off.

Ashlyn wiped her tears away, willing her mind to go blank. She couldn’t think about this anymore.

But what if there
were
something to be done about it? What if the train could be defeated somehow, the conductor destroyed? Could those souls be liberated? Could her father’s soul be delivered from torment? But if so, how? And who could tell her? Her grandmother? Her mother?

Her heart skipped a beat, then started pounding heavily.

The radio.

If anything could tell her what to do, it was the radio. It knew things, all kinds of things. Of course, the radio could also send her to her death. And Maudette believed it was truly evil. But what if it held the key?

Ashlyn lifted her chin. She’d make up her own mind about the radio, she decided. And when it played, she would listen. It couldn’t hurt just to listen, after all. Could it?

Well, she’d soon find out. This year in Podunk, she would damn well find out.

T
HEY
’
D BEEN STANDING OUT
by the kennels early Wednesday evening enjoying the cool fall breeze, when Ashlyn first learned of her grandmother going to the dog show in Saco, Maine.

“The show runs this Saturday and Sunday, so I’ll be leaving at the crack of dawn on Saturday. I want to get there early so the dogs can be at their rested best for the show. Hector especially needs some wind down time after the drive. I expect to get back late Sunday night.”

Ashlyn had been beyond excited by the prospect of having the house to herself for the weekend.