Hyacinth Girls (10 page)

I bit my lip and stared at my feet. The right words would make everything clear, but my mind stuttered and then stopped. I had the worst kind of stage fright, and I wanted to run back to my car.

“You want a cup of coffee?”

I followed him into a small office where there was an old metal desk and a matching filing cabinet. He offered me a squeaky swivel chair, and I sat there, watching, as he moved nimbly around the room, filling the Hot Shot with water, looking for a spoon, putting instant coffee in two mugs. Something about him reminded me of the guys who played Hacky Sack in college. There was a concentrated energy to his movements, as if he was the type of guy you'd ask to build your tent in the woods, or start a campfire from scratch. He wasn't fazed by a tongue-tied woman who stole letters off a grave.

I tried to relax. If I pretended this was just a small problem and even flirted a little, he might be more sympathetic. I crossed my legs awkwardly and leaned back in the chair.

He poured the hot water and began to talk as if nothing was wrong.

“I always drink two coffees in the morning—three on a Sunday. One before I leave and one when I get here. Sugar, a little cream. We've got half-and-half, okay?” He held up a single-serve creamer tub. “My six-year-old loves drinking these things. She thinks they're better than milk. Whenever she sees me making coffee, she's always like, ‘Can I cremate it for you?' Uh, okay. Cremate my coffee. She doesn't know why I'm laughing when she says it. Tell her when she's older. What can you do?”

He stirred the coffees and looked at me over his shoulder. I managed a small smile as he handed me the mug. Then I pressed the warm ceramic between my fingers and took a breath.

“My best friend is out there.” I stared into the brown liquid. “And you'll think this is crazy, but someone's been bothering us—me and her daughter—and I was worried that they might come back here and steal our letters.”

He didn't sip his coffee. He just listened, hands folded. He didn't wear a wedding ring; his eyes were on mine.

“I couldn't sleep last night because I found something on her grave.”

I began to describe Robyn's note and I could feel him watching me. He had a patient, steady gaze, and he didn't try to hurry me along. It had been a long time since I'd really unburdened myself and I started oversharing about Joyce, explaining how we visited her all the time and how important this was. When I mentioned that Callie had collapsed, he pressed his lips together. Then he shook his head like he couldn't believe the crap that people did.

“She lost both her parents, so she's already been through a lot. But imagine getting a note telling you to die like your mother.”

He asked me how Joyce had died and I told him the truth, even though I'd lied to Callie for years, saying she was hit accidentally. I don't know why I told him. I didn't even know his name yet. It was like being in some kind of Neverland, weightless and dreamy, where I could drink coffee with strangers and say words like
murdered
.

“Oh, shit,” he said. “The father, too?”

“No.” I reached for my hair. “Curtis killed himself.”

 

All My Interactions with Robyn Doblak, #6

For Rebecca/From Callie

Rebecca, remember last January when I told you I had to do a report on Sojourner Truth? And then I went to the library carrying a big bag full of scarves? I'd bought Robyn a little present. We didn't tell anyone we were meeting. And since nobody ever went in the library basement it was definitely the smartest place. Down there it smelled like radiator dust, old books, and baloney sandwiches. I had my Latin lessons in that basement, so I knew it would be safe. But I still had the jiggles walking in, like something bad was about to happen, even though meeting was my idea. I wanted to cheer her up.

Robyn was sitting at a table in the back, still wearing her coat and hat. I tried sneaking up behind her, but she heard my footsteps and fast breathing. “Boo,” I said, swinging my bag carefully onto the table. Robyn's eyes flicked behind me like I wasn't the one she was waiting for. Or like I'd brought someone else along and was hiding them in the stacks.

“I didn't know if you were coming,” she said.

“Why wouldn't I come? I told
you
to meet me.”

Robyn looked down at the table, holding her head with a thumb and two fingers, like a sleepy bear who wanted to crawl back into her cave.

“So.”

“Yeah.”

“Cold out.”

“Serious.”

“I'm still shivering all over.”

“Me too.”

I sat down at the table, but I kept my coat on. I thought we might leave in four seconds, forget we'd done this, never talk again. She felt eerily like a stranger, but it was worse than just a stranger, because we'd shared a lot of stuff but it was so awkward, face-to-face.

Robyn pointed at my bag. “Is that my present?”

You know the saddest thing I ever heard? That story about Robyn's dad. Not how he got leukemia and died, but how he planned to be reincarnated. Imagine if he did it. He comes back to be with Robyn. Only some other weirdo gets him because she's not allowed to have a dog. I was still thinking about it at the mall, when I went there with Dallas and Ella. How Robyn's dad wanted to stay with his daughter, and how my own dad was kind of different. I ended up walking into the mall's pet store and looking at all the puppies, even though I didn't have enough cash and I knew I couldn't do it. But when I turned to leave, I saw the tank full of moving shells.

Robyn stood up beside me while I unwrapped the plastic carrying case. I'd used as many scarves as I could to keep him from getting cold. But then my stomach was clenching up because how was I supposed to tell her? I should've messaged
her beforehand, pretended it was just a joke.
Here's a hermit crab, lol. Guess what? It's Papa!
It was too stupid to say in person. I looked down into his case. “Uh, yeah. For you.”

I watched Robyn's eyelashes dance up and down like shiny spiders. She tapped on the plastic and he pulled in his legs.

“I thought you could call him Papa.” I swallowed. “You know, instead of a dog.”

The radiator clanged. She seemed to be thinking. Then she smiled and opened her hand. I lifted his chalky white shell.

“Papa,” she repeated.

“Yeah, if you want to.”

I pushed back her fingers so her palm was flat, and then I put him in her hand, showing her how to hold him. She giggled when his legs poked out—they were kind of crooked. Then he moved his two black antennae, like he was considering who she was. We both sat down on the floor, and Robyn let him crawl across the rug. Then she lay down on her stomach after taking off her coat. And all the weirdness got wiped away when we started to build an obstacle course. We set up books all over the floor and Papa crawled around them, and we were being sports commentators, describing his every move. “Can he do it? Can he? He's over the top!”

“Woo-hoo! Papa! The gold goes to Papa.”

We were getting hyper-amused and Robyn took her boots off, then I was doing Papa's voice. I made him sound like Santa. “Robyn, have you been a good girl?”

“Oh, yes, Papa.”

“You don't pee in the bathtub?”

“No, never!”

We started laughing like e-tards and eventually Papa got tired, so we put him back in his case and started sprinting up and down the aisles. Up above us people checked out books, tapped on computers, and picked out novels, but down below we were doing cartwheels, climbing chairs, and up on tables. Robyn put her hands on her hips like she was surveying her kingdom, and I could smell the scent of her scalp because she'd just pushed her hat over my head. Then I was climbing up beside her and somebody shushed us, but it was just a nobody and Robyn's head went down on my shoulder. She burrowed against me, like a dog with a pillow, except my shoulder wasn't that soft. “Ow, bony!” Then something was racing through us, and we needed to keep it going, to keep this up, as long as we could. She put my boots on her feet. I tied my scarf around her waist. We were laughing and snorting because we would never leave this basement. We'd make clothes out of paper, lick the glue off the bindings, we'd live off the crusts of sandwiches people threw under the shelves. Who needed sunlight or snow when you were queens of the basement? Robyn's eyes were sparkly and excited, and then she swooped down to check on Papa.

“You okay?”

She picked him up and let him crawl toward her wrist.

“Robyn,” I said in his voice. “You don't have to miss me anymore.”

She didn't look at me, and then I wished I hadn't said it. I didn't mean to make her cry. I put my hand on her arm.

“Don't you miss yours?” she asked, and I had to shake my head. Then I tried telling her something I'd almost forgotten.

“On my bus, when I was little, we drove past a graveyard every day, and all the kids would hold their breath so that the dead people couldn't come get them. If you sneezed and no one said ‘bless you,' a ghost would steal your soul. And I used to dare myself to do it because I wanted to meet my dad. I did these tiny baby sneezes at first, so nobody heard me. And then I got louder and louder, but nobody came.”

I shoved my hair out of my face. “Lucky it didn't work. I didn't know him at all.”

Robyn was watching me sadly, her eyes like melting chocolate, and I wished we could run around again, stop being so intense. I tried being silly, pretending Papa had farted. Then I wondered out loud how it felt to live in a shell. I was just joking around, but Robyn took me seriously. She didn't say a word as she scooted behind me. Then she wrapped her arms around me, putting her chin on my shoulder. Her face was right next to mine, and I didn't try to push her off. “It feels like this,” she said, and then she squeezed me tighter.

“I was dreaming about Autumn,” Callie said, when I got home from the cemetery. She was still curled up in bed, her voice childish and sleepy.

“What?”

“I saw them kill her.”

I pressed my hand against her forehead—warm but not hot—and noted the dried rheum sticking to her lashes.

“They met her at the beach. Then after they held her under, they made it look like suicide. Or an accident. Whatever. They were the ones who cleared up her stuff.”

Are you asleep?
I wondered.
Who are you talking about?
The events of the previous day were still fresh in my mind.

“Are you worried that Robyn's going to hurt you?”

She shook her head, mouth pinched:
this isn't about that!
But her renewed interest in a crime from the past seemed deliberately timed.

“I don't want you to worry about people hurting you,” I said. “Is there anything you need to tell me?”

“I think she was being bullied and her bullies killed her.”

I pictured a girl covered in paint. “Bullets!” they chanted. “Bullets!”

“You're talking about—”

“Autumn.” Then she slapped her wall, exasperated. “I'm trying to remember.”

Her hand hadn't left a mark, but I stared at the wall, curious. An outburst like that
wasn't
Callie.

“Hon, this isn't healthy. I don't want you worrying about Autumn. Are you bringing her up because you think
Robyn
might be dangerous?”

An extravagant eye roll, perfectly executed.

“Everyone's dangerous. Or everyone could be. You can't tell just by looking at them. People are the same as pit bulls.”

I started questioning her more deeply, but I made no progress.
Why do you think she went to your mom's grave?
No clue.
How did she know where your mom's buried?
Don't know!
Did you speak to her much at school?
Almost never.

“Dallas said she was in love with you; do you think that's true?”

Callie squirmed, as always, at the mention of love.

“She just wanted to impress me, I guess.”

She sounded weary of guessing and explaining Robyn's motives. I was grilling her like I didn't trust her, falling right into Robyn's trap. I realized that Robyn was smart. Sneaky and bold enough to trick a school principal, and if she'd wanted me to second-guess Callie, her note was a good way to start. Whether Robyn was dangerous or not, I had to be cautious. Callie was obviously becoming anxious, dreaming about murders and missing girls. I told her that I'd met the cemetery caretaker and he'd promised to check on Joyce's grave. Then I mentioned that I'd removed all our letters from her mother's plot.

“Why? Those are private!” She bolted up in bed.

“I know. That's why I took them, so she couldn't come back and read them.”

She was shaking her head and I realized I'd made a mistake. I shouldn't have told her. She wanted her letters to stay with her mom.

“What are you going to do with them? Throw them out?”

“No, honey, they're in the glove compartment of my car.”

“I just feel sick,” she said, and then she slumped back down.

I let her stay home from school on Monday. I didn't think she was really sick, but I figured she'd been through a lot. If she felt safer at home, let her stay home. Baby her for a while until she perked up. I called my mother and she was repulsed when I told her about Robyn's note. “That's awful,” Mom said. “She sounds insane.”

I mentioned how I'd upset Callie, taking her letters off Joyce's grave, and my mom's high, scratchy voice immediately deepened with suspicion. “What's she hiding? I would read those if I were you.”

It wasn't unusual for my mother to be paranoid about everything. She was always searching for hidden motives in ordinary behavior. Flowers meant he cheated; a lost wallet meant a gambling problem. But Callie had a right to privacy when writing to her mother. I imagined her letters were heartbreakingly honest, raw, and sad. I wouldn't want people reading the things I wrote to Joyce, either.

“I used to read your diaries,” Mom said coolly.

“No, you didn't.”

“Oh, yes, I did. How else would I know about all your little crushes?”

She said this with such gleeful pride that I almost put the phone down. She seemed to find the memory hilarious: spying on me, the love-struck teen.

“And I knew this lady,” Mom was saying, “who had a sixteen-year-old daughter, straight-A student, never gave her any problems. So one day
she sees this e-mail, she'd left it open on the computer, and it turns out the girl was secretly working as a prostitute.”

“That was a TV show, Mom,” I said, disgusted. “This is exactly why I don't tell you anything.”

“That's why I had to read your diary,” she said. “You never tell me anything.”

I offered to make Callie's favorite for dinner that night—macaroni and cheese—and when it was ready, she came into the kitchen and began plucking the dying blooms off the bunch of chrysanthemums I'd put in a pottery jug. We sat down to eat and she started goofing around. She got cheese on the sleeve of her bathrobe and sucked it off: “Yummy!” Then when I went to get some paper towels, she started sucking the ends of her hair. “Cheese hair,” she said. She took the paper towel, dabbed her sleeve, and then, without taking her eyes off of me, licked the paper towel. “Mmm. Good cheese.” She looked at me and started to giggle, and maybe I should've been irritated, but her giggles were contagious. I watched as she picked up her water, tried to take a sip, and nearly spit it all out on the table. I put down my fork as tears seeped out of my eyes; it was the first time we'd laughed since we'd read Robyn's note. She was feeling well enough to fool around, and every time our giggles diminished into sighs, she caught my eye and made soft, encouraging puffs through her nose.

“You weren't really sick, were you?” I asked.

An hour later, she threw up in the bathroom.

I made an appointment to take her to the doctor after work on Tuesday. I knew it was probably just a stomach bug, but I was starting to worry. “I think it's just the flu,” she said, drooping. “I just need rest.” I needed rest,
too, but my mind circled endlessly. I thought about Cerise and Robyn Doblak. Then about Autumn and Lara and Joyce. I wasn't sure if I'd done the right thing, explaining Joyce's death to the man at the cemetery. He'd shaken my hand before I left, giving my fingers a fast squeeze, and I'd felt his calluses against my palm as he told me his name. Danny, he'd said. I blushed, giving him my phone number. He said he'd call me with an update, and I'd been waiting to hear his voice. He was no gateway man, of course. Unless your gate led to a cemetery. Or a place smaller than ours that probably smelled of sloppy joes. Okay, that was snobby. Who knew what foods Danny liked? I bet he'd enjoy my fritters—I'd been working on them all September. I was just starting to get the batter right, and the potato ones had been amazing: fluffy and crisp, not falling apart at all.

Now the idea gripped me. I would bring fritters to Danny's office. I could say I was just checking in on Joyce, and that I'd wanted to thank him. Not sweet fritters, though. Something savory. Forget pineapple and orange; he'd enjoy something with spice. I started whipping up the batter as I imagined finding him in the cemetery, following him to the stone building, slowly unzipping my jacket. I knew I couldn't have a boyfriend; I needed to focus on Callie. But my fantasy continued, and I began to feed him fritters. His lips opened. His eyes were sleepy and serious. And then he chewed and swallowed, his teeth brushing against my hands.

My phone rang while I was waiting in the doctor's office the next day. Callie had gone in to see Dr. Bishop alone, and I was nervously tugging my arm hair. She never usually saw her doctor without me, but now she'd decided that she was old enough. Fourteen years old, she could handle this herself. I felt like a cook who's been banned from her own kitchen, imagining pots boiling over, and it took all my strength not to burst through the door. Of course Callie would be fine, but she might not
tell him everything. He might ask the wrong questions. I might've had something to add. It took willpower to remain seated calmly, but my help wasn't needed. Then my phone was ringing and I heard a man's voice.

“Is this Rebecca?”

I actually smiled. I felt unexpectedly buoyant. Children were playing on the floor, clacking beads on an old-fashioned toy.

“It's Danny, from the cemetery,” he said, as if I wouldn't remember. “I don't want to freak you out.”

“No,” I said, encouragingly. I don't know what I thought—that he'd actually ask me on a date? That he just wanted to say hello?

“I found something,” he said. “You're not going to like this.”

I brought latex gloves and Ziploc bags to the cemetery. I'd dropped Callie home first. I ended my call with Danny just as she came out of Dr. Bishop's office. She was smiling and laughing at something the doctor had said. “I'm okay,” she mouthed to me. Then Dr. Bishop explained about the viral gastroenteritis. She hadn't thrown up that day, so she could return to school tomorrow. I told her I had to run a quick errand and then I sped over to Cansdown.

Danny met me at the cemetery. He'd found the note under Joyce's stone when he checked that afternoon. Robyn must've pushed down with her red pen, almost ripping holes through the page.

Nobody cares or understands me on this fucked-up planet and what if I wasn't meant to be here and everyone saw I was a mistake? Every day I walk around listening to them laugh and laugh and all of us know that I should be dead. I was a shitty mistake and I'm ready to be erased. I want to look up and the sky will be DIRT!

Danny cocked his head to one side, so he could see me under the brim of his cap. There were sweat stains under his arms, and his body radiated heat. Blood rose to my cheeks like a trigger had been pulled.

“They told me she was in love with Callie.”

“I didn't even see her here.”

“She must be getting desperate, trying to get our attention.”

Danny shuffled his boots against the grass and leaned close to my shoulder, looking at the note.

“It sounds—real.”

“I know. She must want it to.”

“You don't think it's a cry for help?”

“I think she wants Callie to feel guilty, like it's her fault. This girl is manipulative. Who knows how she's really feeling.”

Danny took a step back, moving away from my shoulder. Nice. I sounded like an asshole, discrediting a suicidal child.

“You gotta take something like this seriously, though, just in case. Kids end up doing stuff, spur of the moment.”

I wondered if Robyn knew anything about Callie's father. If she did, this was even crueler. She wanted to disturb her in a way that hit home.

“I'll call her mother,” I said, placing one hand on Danny's arm. “I'll let her know we're worried. But I just get the feeling she's playing with us, like this is all part of some game.”

 

All My Interactions with Robyn Doblak, #7

For Rebecca/From Callie

The only way I can really explain it is like with symbiosis, like how in science we learned about the microbes that live on our bodies. There's like 100 trillion of them—on our eyelashes and skin and in our mouths and stomachs—and it's like having all these secret lives growing inside us. They need us to survive and we need them, but we can't ever see them, nobody else knows they're there. That's how I think it was with Robyn and me. When we went back to school in January we didn't start hanging out. We didn't sit together in the cafeteria or wait for each other outside our classes. Robyn stayed with her group and I stayed with mine, but sometimes we caught each other's eye and smiled for a second.

We still talked every night, telling each other stuff nobody else knew. Her dad. My mom. The lives we wanted to have. I would become an ecologist and Robyn would be a famous blogger and we would share an apartment and adopt lots of dogs. Then when we were old we'd move to a nursing home and sit together on rocking chairs, until we both died on the very same day.

IM Jan 22 2009 15:16:21

15:06:41

robynroarxo:
Can't stop thinking about you today

15:06:55

LithoCALpus:
How many times?

15:07:28

robynroarxo:
Probably over 1000…when my alarm clock went off, when I opened my blinds, when I saw the sky, when I brushed my teeth…calliecalliecallie

15:08:31

LithoCALpus:
I thought about you too

15:08:40

robynroarxo:
?

15:09:24

LithoCALpus:
You were kind of in my dream last night. We were sleeping under a tree, and you were holding my hand, and when I woke up my hand was open like you'd just let go. 15:13:18

robynroarxo:
I wouldn't let go.

15:13:40

LithoCALpus:
((Squeeze))

15:14:00

robynroarxo:
Not. Letting. Go.

15:14:25

robynroarxo:
I wish you were here right now.

15:14:30

LithoCALpus:
I wish that too.

15:14:49

robynroarxo:
If you put your hand on my heart you wouldn't believe how fast it's running.

15:14:59

LithoCALpus:
I believe it. I can hear it.

15:15:12

robynroarxo:
It's saying I
u.

15:15:45

robynroarxo:
I really feel it Callie.

15:15:58

LithoCALpus:
I know. Me too.