Burn (12 page)

“Can I ask you a question?”

Hypothesis:
Flattering the flamehaired boy by asking for information will make him feel important. Will make him feel inclined to offer assistance. Tit for tat.

He looked surprised but pleased. “I wish you would ask me a question.”

“Have I been in this room before?”

“Do you remember having been in this room before?”

It was annoying how he did that – answered a question with a question, refused to give up a nibble of information without asking for a bite in return. “It feels familiar.” There. That was an answer that didn't give away too much.

“What feels familiar about it?”

“Have I been here before?”

“It's been a long time. But you remember it?”

“I might.” It was difficult, actually, to put into words exactly what felt familiar. The dimensions. The position of the door. The hinges of the closet. Hazy but familiar. “I might remember it.”

“What's your earliest memory?” the boy asked.

The prisoner didn't answer. The goal was to get information from the boy with the red hair, not to divulge personal information. The prisoner didn't have enough personal information to spare. Nickels worth, not dollars. The currency was too dear to spend recklessly.

“I have two earliest memories,” the boy continued, forgiving the silence. “I have my first memory as Julian. He was three, maybe, or four. We were on a merry-go-round at the park with some other kids we'd just met that day. One of the girls wasn't fast enough. She couldn't jump on when it started spinning. She held on because she was too scared to let go, and soon her knees were dragging in the gravel, bloody and red like raw meat.”

The prisoner's stomach turned at the image. Today the boy had brought pâté, it looked like, or some other meat paste, smeared on small, square pieces of toast. Now the pâté just looked like knees.

“As soon as Julian saw, he made them stop the merry-go-round. He gave the girl a tissue from his pocket. All the grownups said he was such a good boy. So empathetic.” The boy smiled. “That's how Julian learned what empathy meant. That's how I learned, too.”

“That's a nice first memory,” the prisoner said. “Actually, it's not, it's grotesque, but I can see how it would be an important first memory. It's young, too. Most people don't fully remember things that happened before kindergarten.”

“I also have a first memory as myself,” he said. “I was just a few weeks old. I was hungry and my mother didn't want to feed me. She told my father that she didn't like the way I looked at her. She said she could tell I had evil in me. So I bit her. I bit her hard on the breast.”

Bile rose in the back of the prisoner's throat, tart and acidic. “That's impossible. It's impossible for you to remember something that far back, from when you were only a few weeks old. Your consciousness hadn't developed enough to retain memories then. You only think you remember that. Maybe you remember a story someone told you about yourself.”

“Is it impossible?” the boy said lightly. “I don't think so. I think with the right tools, we can remember back and back and back. But the right tools are so important, don't you think?”

“I'm not sure what you're talking about.”

“I can remember Julian's memories. And he was older than twenty before I was born.”

He was gaining control of the conversation. The prisoner wasn't even sure how it had happened. He'd taken the question, about whether the room was familiar, and he'd spun it back so they were talking about something completely different.

“Soccer,” the prisoner managed.

“Soccer?”

“My first memory is playing soccer with my father in the yard of the apartment complex we lived in until I was five. The ball came up to my knees. There were grass stains on my shorts. The dog kept getting in the way because she wanted to play, too, until finally my dad put her inside and she left nose prints on the sliding glass door.”

“That's a nice memory. That's a nice, all-American memory. Even more American if you were playing baseball or football.”

“My dad didn't like football or baseball.”

The boy leaned in close, resting his elbows on his knees like a child at a library story hour. “That's your earliest memory. What's your
latest
memory?”

“My latest memory is you asking me what my latest memory is. And now it's me telling you that my latest memory is you asking me what my latest memory is. Latest memories are whatever just happened. As soon as you articulate them, they're not your latest memory any longer.”

“But that's not what I meant. I meant, what is your latest memory before you came here? Before this room?”

That was the problem, though. That's how the prisoner had become the prisoner. All prior memories before this room had been chopped up, remixed, blended together. The ingredients might be there, but it was impossible to reconstitute them into whatever they had been before.

“I don't have memories of before this room. Did you do that to me?”

“You did that to yourself.”

“I don't think so. Why would I?”

The boy sighed. “I don't think we'll have to wait much longer. I think everything will work. I have faith. In the meantime, maybe you're ready to meet the others.”

“The others?” The prisoner was confused. What others? It was as if a page in the manuscript of their conversation had gone missing.

“The others,” he smiled. “You didn't think we had you in here alone, did you?”

“Can I help you?”

The man who answered the door was portly, with a wide neck disappearing into a neat pink polo shirt. “My wife usually handles all of our charity things, if that's what you're here for.” He didn't say it rudely – just as if there was a certain way things happened in this house, and he was well-trained to the procedure.

“I'm not selling anything,” Lona assured him. “I'm just – I'm sorry, are you Mr. Lowell?”

The street was wide and quiet. The houses were split levels, whitey-beige, only differentiated by the colors of shutters. The shutter colors unfurled in a pattern. Blue ones, then green, then brick red, then gray, then blue, then green.
Like my name
, Lona thought. Her name also seemed unique, until you understood how it worked. She was Lona because she was born December 15. If she had been born one day earlier she would have been Lnna, and if the Lowells had bought the house one door down, their shutters would have been green.

Behind Lona, the sound of tires whirring on pavement. A kid on a scooter, small with floppy hair. “Hey, Mr. Lowell,” the boy called. “Can I use your driveway to make circles? My dad's car is in the way in ours.”

The man looked over Lona's shoulder. “If your mom says it's okay, Zeke.”

He turned back to Lona. “Can I help you?” he asked again. She hesitated. She'd done exactly what she promised Fenn she wouldn't do. Her stomach plunged when she thought of how she had left him at home with another lie.
Going shopping
, she'd said.
Thinking about starting college makes me want to update my wardrobe. That's nice to offer, but you don't need to come. I'd prefer to go alone.

Why was she here? Why would she do this to Fenn? She should turn back now, before anything went further.

“I'm sorry – what did you say you wanted?” the man asked.

“You're Mr. Lowell. Mr. Edward Lowell?”

He flinched, quickly, like the name caused him pain. “Ned,” he said.

Her heart raced. “Do you go by Ned?”

“No, I mean, you want my brother Ned, but he's dead. I'm Thomas. Ned left me and Marlene his house, you know, since he didn't have any other living relatives.”

Died. One of the men she was trying to find was unfindable. The other was dead. She pushed back her disappointment long enough to find her manners. “I'm really sorry. Do you mind if I ask how—”

“Last year. Pancreatic cancer. He didn't suffer long.”

Last year. If Ned Lowell had died last year, he couldn't have had anything to do with her dreams. Unless he'd time-released them. Path knew how to do that – the drugs that had nearly killed Fenn took almost a year to leave his system. But what were the chances of this man setting up such an elaborate plot just to invade the dreams of a teenage girl he'd never met?

Thomas cocked his head at her, in a way that reminded her of a dog, one of the bounding, friendly breeds like a Labrador or golden retriever. “You didn't know him, did you?”

“No. I didn't. I just—”

“I didn't think so. You're too young to be a friend. Obviously. I just wondered.” He shook his head. “Sorry – why don't you come in?” She started to protest, but he beckoned her in with both hands. “Please. Mar's out of town with the kids, but she left a bunch of stuff in the cupboards if you're hungry. I always get sort of lonely when she's away.”

The interior of the house was orderly and precise – tasseled pillows neatly centered on a floral sofa, a matching straight-backed chair. Thomas Lowell gestured for Lona to sit there while he settled himself into the only comfortable-looking piece of furniture in the room: a tattered recliner with stuffing poking out on the side. He took a sip of the soda sitting next to him on an end table, but apparently had already forgotten about his promise of a stocked pantry.

“I like getting a chance to talk about Ned,” he said. “We weren't close when we were growing up. I thought he was kind of a weenie – hanging out with the chemistry club and those guys when he could have gotten a position on the wrestling team. I mean, he didn't have the natural skill for it, but I would have helped him out. He was the smart one, I was the jock. That's what people were always saying about us.”

“That's  …  interesting.”

“Not that I was a dummy. I went to college. It just happened to be on an athletic scholarship. And that's where I met Marlene, anyway.”

Lona scanned the room. The magazines on the coffee table were all neatly spaced and alphabetized, something she couldn't imagine Thomas Lowell having done. It must have been his vacationing wife. Thomas was lonely; he would have invited the postman in to chat, filling up hour after hour with tepid cola.

“So, Lona, was it?” he asked. She nodded. “Lona, why were you looking for my brother?”

What could she say? She'd planned on saying she was updating his current address for a college alumni directory, but that wouldn't work now. Current Address: six feet underground. She stalled for time. “I'm sorry – did you say Ned was a member of the chemistry club?”

“He always knew what he wanted to do. He used to ask for – what do you call them? – Bunsen burners for Christmas. He loved running the lab for that Joshua Program thing.”

“The Joshua Program?” she repeated.

“The Johnny Plot?”

“Do you mean Julian Path?”

Her heartbeat had grown very slow. She could hear every beat thudding against her sternum. The pumping blood whooshing from her chest sounded like a seashell.

Ned Lowell ran the lab. That was his job. He ran the lab of the Julian Path.

“Yep. That's it.” He nodded. “So is that why you wanted to talk to him? The Julian Path?”

She listened for notes of caution in his voice, for the wariness that made Ned Hildreth's conversation go so horribly wrong. But she heard none. Thomas Lowell seemed perfectly nice. Bland. The pleasant consistency of pudding. “Yes,” she said. “Sort of. He was—” She swallowed, wishing that he'd thought to offer her a drink. “He was working on a project that my professor was thinking of including in a new textbook. About modern discovery. I'm her research assistant – she asked me to help track Ned down and ask him a little more about – about the lab environment. You know, how creativity develops.”

“For a textbook?”

“For a pull-out box, maybe. One that highlights different inventors.”

“Huh.” Thomas leaned against the sofa, cradling his can of soda. “Ned would have liked that. He was super into his work.” He shrugged, equivocating. “At least, from what I could understand of it. That is, he was in the beginning.”

“Toward the end he wasn't? Into it?”

“It sounded like office politics. High-grade office politics. Put a bunch of PhDs in a work environment together – it's not like their IQs keep them from arguing. They just use bigger words to do it. Anyway, Ned was really worried about his boss misusing some of his work, or not giving him the credit. I can't exactly remember. And of course, he'd gotten really fat, too – stress will do that to you. That's why Marlene makes me come to spinning class with her two days a week.”

“He'd recently gained weight?” Lona had a flashback to the beachball tummy from the dream, to the ungainly way it had felt to move with that stomach, like it wasn't weight that the body was used to. She strained to remember anything else she could about the physical appearance of the person in her dream.
Scrambling on the floor. Reddish bangs falling in front of his eyes.
“Did he have light hair, like you?” Thomas's hair was graying, but she could see that it had once been strawberry blonde.

“Right and right. To both things. A little darker than mine.” Lona tried to keep steady, but she was trembling with excitement. Ned Lowell had worked in a lab. He had been unhappy in his job. He felt his work wasn't being respected.

This was the man she was looking for. This was the man whose dreams she was living. She knew it. “What weren't they giving him credit for? Did he say? What he was working on?”

Thomas looked at her strangely. “Well, you'd know better than me, wouldn't you? Aren't you working on a project about his work?”

Calm down,
she warned herself, but now her knees were shaking too. “Of course. Yes. I just meant – I wondered if he ever talked about it with you.”

“Sorry, he really didn't.” Thomas shrugged. “Wish I could help.”

“But you know it had something to do with office politics. Something that was making him unhappy. And you're sure this is while he was working for the Julian Path?”

“It would have to be – it's the only job he ever had. Sorry I don't know more. So I guess you're not going to be able to do the box, huh?”

“I guess not. But it was nice to talk with you anyway.”

“Yeah.” Thomas nodded, and then his eyes brightened again. “Hey, if you were just looking for personal biography stuff, my parents left me everything from when we were kids. I have some of his science fair ribbons in the basement. I could bring those up.”

“That would be nice.”

She had found him. She wasn't crazy – she hadn't invented the nighttime play that had plagued her dreams for the past weeks. The man in her head was real. He was real. When she told Fenn, he would see that this was important; he would understand why she had to keep doing this.

“And I guess you could always go talk to Zinny about Ned, if you could find her. She might be able to tell you some things.”

“Zinny?”

“Zinny Croft,” he explained. “Zinedine or Zineria or something – I only met her a couple times, but I think that was her name. She and Ned ran the lab together. If anyone could tell you what he was working on, it would probably be her.”