Daylight Saving (10 page)

I stumbled back through the forest. It seemed to be getting bigger, thicker. The coming darkness was like a gas swirling through the trees, filling my lungs. I thought of Lexi’s hand reaching out of the water, wrapping itself around Jack’s calf, and pulling him down. She had saved me. I thought of her shaking her head. The disappointment. The bruise around her eye had darkened even since the morning.

But why couldn’t the boys see her? At certain points it seemed like they couldn’t even see Jack.

I realized that I was limping, although I didn’t have to. My ankle was healed. I missed the wounds now. They seemed somehow to have connected me to Lexi. It did not take much time to fall in love, but it took even less to ruin it. Exhaustion overwhelmed me, and I sat down by a wide beech tree.

A few meters from the tree stood five little gravestones, roughly made. Dotty, Jacko, Rex, Tigger, and Ranger. A pet cemetery. In the distance I could see the house that had once been home to some rich family and was now an Italian restaurant. The dogs must have belonged to the people who used to live there. I stared at one of the gravestones.

My tired mind began to race back through the last few days, making connections. I thought back to eating fish with Lexi, her favorite dinner. I thought of her mother, defying festive tradition for Lexi’s sake, serving fish and corn on the cob for the family Christmas dinner. Her birthday. December twenty-fifth. 12-25.

I thought back to the numbers carved into the pine tree. The first number. 122593.

12-25-93

Her birth date. It had to be. AHC. Alexandria H. Cocker.

But if that was her date of birth, I had to accept what the second number must be. 10-31-10. The last day of October, two years ago.

I walked back, past the golf driving range and the all-weather soccer fields, where the ball made a tinny squeak as it bounced high off the red sandy surface. Night had fallen, and as I neared the cabins, I saw families riding their bikes out toward the restaurants, their lights visible first, like star clusters in the tunnels of dark between the trees.

I hated Leisure World, and I wanted to be home. I was scared and shaken, confused. But I knew I had work to do tomorrow. I owed Lexi, big-time, and I was getting closer to understanding her mysteries, strange as they were. Maybe if I could understand her, I could help.

The cabin was busy when I got back. Dad was laughing, listening to a man with pointed sideburns tell a story. There were other people there, too, sitting around the table in the dining area.

“Hello, Daniel!” Dad said. “We were about to get our flashlights and come out looking for you.” He was beaming. “This is Gavin, Mike, and Martha.” He pointed to the guests, who all waved. “And you know Tash, of course.”

“Hi,” I said. “None of you play bingo, do you?”

They looked puzzled. “No,” they said.

“Good,” I said.

“Hi, Daniel,” Tash said. She was walking toward the door. “What happened to your face?”

“Oh, I got in a bit of a scrap. We were just messing around.”

“You and the fellas, was it?” Dad called over.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I bet the other guy’s in worse shape, huh?” Dad said.

I thought of Jack scrambling out of the water, his eyes wide with terror. “Yeah, he’s struggling,” I said.

“Good lad,” Dad said. He turned back to the guests. “He’s a big old thing is our Daniel. Good healthy temper on him, and all,” he said.

I followed Tash out to the door. “How’s Chrissy?” I asked.

“She’s fine. She’s just a bit tired. How are you?”

“The same.”

We said our
good night
s
,
and she walked next door. I went through to my bedroom. I heard Gavin open the fridge. “Another beer, Ricky?”

“No, thanks, Gav. I’ve had enough,” Dad said.

These were strange times, indeed.

I opened the window in the bedroom. The darkness had a greenish, submarine tinge. I felt the surge of energy again, at once enlivening and calming. The trees looked like the thick wires of some giant machine. I could hear Chrissy and Tash talking in their garden.

“Don’t be silly, Chrissy,” said Tash. “He’s absolutely fine. This is just more of your hippie nonsense. You’ve smoked too much tofu.”

I sat on the bed and stroked the place on my leg where the long gash had been. I wanted it back: I wanted the connection; I wanted the trouble.

“I’m telling you, Tash,” Chrissy said, her voice weak and strained. “I’ve never felt energy like that before. If he’s not careful, something terrible is going to happen.”

The next morning, I biked to the Internet café round the back of the Dome. I took my code and descended to a basement lined with computers. This, it seemed, was where the Leisure World rejects hung out: a goth wearing big headphones, an anxious-looking woman, probably checking her work e-mails, and a boy with a cold playing
World of Warcraft.
These, I supposed, were my people. It was eight a.m. Everyone else was jogging in the clean crisp air or playing vigorous tennis while we withered under fluorescent lights and the haze of a standing heater cranked up to the max.

I turned my monitor away from the others. The search engine took me to the website of the
Derby City News.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010. A few days after the second date Lexi had carved into the tree.

The main headline for that day was
“
CITY STILL GRIPPED BY FREAK ICE STORM
.”
There was a picture of the freezing city center, a statue of a boy astride a ram. The animal had icicles hanging from his mouth and horns.

Lexi’s story must have been on page two of the hard copy.
“
GIRL GOES MISSING FROM PARTY
.”
I clicked the link and scanned the text: “Alexandria Helen Cocker, 17, who goes by the name of ‘Lexi’ . . .”

The article said she had been wearing a blue dress, with leggings underneath, and a black parka coat. She was last seen at a nightclub in town, talking to a tall man in his thirties who was wearing a suit and a long gray coat. The police asked for any information and requested that the man come forward. They said that accounts of Lexi’s movements were confused due to the clocks going back for the end of British Summer Time.

A teacher from her school said, “Lexi is a sensible, straightforward girl and always willing to help others. Obviously we’re worried because this is unusual — she’s so capable and never in any sort of trouble.”

I felt my hands trembling on the mouse. I was so mixed up. The article was describing the hours before she died — I could feel it — and I was so scared for her. But, on the other hand, I knew where she was. She had spoken to me. I hadn’t even met her before October 31, 2010.

I typed her name into the website’s search bar and read the other stories from the following weeks and months. They were shorter each time: further appeals for help from the police, a vigil organized by Lexi’s friends. In December there was a plea from her parents for her to come home. There was a picture of her father, a tall, lean man with longish curly hair in a checked shirt, and her mother, her head buried in her husband’s chest. The article quoted Mr. Cocker:

“We just want her back for Christmas. For her birthday. We miss her so desperately. Her sister misses her. We have hope, but that’s all.”

I thought of them eating Christmas lunch, fish and corn, without her. They had hope. Above the article was a picture of Lexi, in her swimsuit, her head thrown back, laughing. No scars or bruises. The caption read: “Alexandria: Still Missing.”

I kept going back to the first article, reading over the scant details of her last night out, as if the answers would somehow rise from the gaps between the lines. I thought of the man in the long gray coat and Lexi in her blue dress. There was still so much I didn’t know. Why were her wounds getting worse? Why did she run away from me that night? Where had my own injuries come from, and how could they just disappear?

I clicked on every article that had appeared in that day’s newspaper. I felt like crying. I printed some of the articles and went upstairs to retrieve them. I folded the sheets of paper and slipped them inside my sock so they wouldn’t fall out when I was biking. I walked outside and tried to clear my mind, but without the water, without the rhythm of the swim strokes, I couldn’t find any peace. On the breeze, I could smell the lake.

When I got to the clearing, she was hiding again.
This is what I deserve,
I thought sadly. I wouldn’t be surprised if she never spoke to me again. I felt something trickling down the back of my neck and heard a hissing sound. It was sand. I spun away and looked up. Lexi was in the high branches of a tree, the sand leaking out of her closed fist.

“You’ve got nerve coming back here,” she said.

“I came to say sorry,” I said.

“I can’t hear you,” she said.

“Well, come down, then.”

She shook her head. “I can’t believe you brought those hick perverts here to spy on me. Like you’re some idiot pimp. I should have known. It’s in your nature as a male.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Pardon?” she said.

“I’m sorry!” I called, louder this time.

“It definitely means more when you shout it,” she said. She slid down the tree in a seamless series of lithe movements, but remained on the other side of the trunk so I couldn’t see her.