Notes from Ghost Town (19 page)

“Because Marietta doesn’t have any friends.”

A brief, awkward silence.

“Look,” I say. My impatience is mounting. I watch her perfect little body move through an intentionally distracting warm-up routine. “We’re music acquaintances, okay?” I step closer to the doorway and peer inside—long, clean, glassy hallways—a big mirror in the foyer, no family photos in sight, the edge of a shiny Steinway grand in the living
room visible from where I stand snooping. “And I need her advice about a piece I’m going to play soon … it’s an audition piece … for Juilliard.” I bite my lips, hoping she won’t read the lie on my face.

Just then, there’s a noise from inside. A girl’s fingers appear, curled around the upstairs banister. The fingers—clean, well-manicured—are all I can see clearly. Everything else is in shadow.

“I don’t know who you are and I’m not interested in talking.” Marietta’s steely voice echoes through the big, open house. “Shut the door, Annabelle. I’m taking a nap.” The fingers disappear from the banister. A door shuts.

Annabelle moves to shut the front door. Austin and I both put our hands out to stop her. “You’re her sister?” I ask.

“Yes.” She twists the toe of her left foot into the ground, spins around twice, landing perfectly.

“You’re a really good dancer,” I say, smiling at her, trying a new tack. A soft floral smell reaches me from inside, mingled with something metallic, robustly sanitized. “Do you want to go to Juilliard, too?”

“Mayyybe,” she says, cocking her head now to look at me, raising her arms overhead, fingers arched. “But if you were coming here to ask Etta about Juilliard, she
definitely
won’t talk to you.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Austin chimes in beside me. “Does going to Juilliard make her too good to talk to ‘regular’ people now?”

Annabelle laughs openly at us, as though to demonstrate
how completely pathetic she finds us. “You guys are bad liars.” She spins around once more, lifting her right foot about six inches off the ground and arching it behind her weirdly muscular back. “If you were
really
friends with her, you’d know that Juilliard
revoked
her acceptance.” She narrows her eyes, smirking. “She broke a girl’s fingers at her high school. Another pianist—right before their senior year.”

Austin and I share a look of surprise. Sabotage.

“And she stole this guy’s inhaler. He wasn’t even a pianist. He played violin. She just didn’t like him. He almost died.” Annabelle crosses her arms and smirks. “And you know what? The inhaler was in her piano the
whole time
. Stupid.”

“Wow,” Austin says. “Sounds pretty
psycho
.”

“You don’t understand,” Annabelle says, “and you couldn’t.” She again starts to shut the door in our faces. Austin puts his hand out, as before, to stop her. She tries to push back but he’s far stronger.

“Come on, just talk to us. What don’t we understand?” Austin asks her.

“Ugh.” She gives up trying to close the door. She looks around quickly, and then steps outside with us, closing the door behind her. She blinks in the sunlight, shields her eyes with the flat of her little hand—even this pedestrian move looks graceful. Out here, in the light, she looks even younger. “We don’t have a choice, okay? You don’t know what it’s like with our parents….” She shoots
another worried glance over her shoulder. “We have to be the best,” she continues, dropping her voice. “Or else.”

“Annabelle!” A man’s voice sounds, loud, angry, muffled from within the house. Annabelle leaps where she stands. “That’s my dad. I gotta go.” My heart sinks a little as she turns to the door, starts to open it.

“Hold on, Annabelle. One more question.” Austin’s voice is smokey, a voice that would make any girl stop dead in her tracks and turn—which Annabelle does, blushing. “Was your sister in Miami this morning?”

“Miami?” She shakes her head. “She hasn’t left the house in weeks. She’s been depressed ever since … You Know What.”

“ANNABELLE!”

Annabelle jumps again, twists the door open a crack and leaps inside, mouthing
bye
to us before shutting it in our faces.

We stand there on the front step, staring at the closed front door, the smell of sweet acacia lining the front lawn growing suddenly rank, awful.

Five days and nothing solved. Five days and not a single step closer to helping Stern—or my mom. Austin moves his hand to my back and ushers me toward the car. I let him guide me; I don’t have the will, or the energy, to move myself.

We sit in his car, at the end of Marietta Jones’s driveway. It’s nearly six now. Late afternoon light pours its last balmy dregs through the windows.

“So, I guess she’s not the one who slashed your tires, then,” Austin says.

I close my eyes, lean my head against my window. “Guess not.” Between the door and Austin’s car I grew exhausted somehow.

“So maybe it was just … someone random?”

“No. I don’t think it was random.” I draw my knees into my chest. Austin doesn’t yell at me for putting my feet on the seat.

“Why? What’s the deal here, Tithe? Spill it.”

I sigh, deep, and wrestle the words out. “It has to do with my mom.”

“Yeah, you said that earlier.”

“All of this shit started happening when”—I stop myself from mentioning Stern—“when I started to think maybe … maybe she didn’t do it after all. Ever since I’ve started looking into her case, I feel weird—like someone’s watching me or something.” I stare at him, anxiety flashing:
Including you. You were an asshole … now you want to date me all of the sudden
. “And everyone’s telling me to stop looking, to let it go. It’s like … it’s like there’s something else going on. Something bigger.”

“Wait, wait … let me get this straight. You think there’s a chance Marietta Jones killed that kid instead of your mom?” He runs his hand along the gearshift. “And everyone is, like, covering for her?”

That kid
. It occurs to me: Austin hardly even knew who Stern
was
.

“Did you hear what her sister said? That they had to be the best,
or else
? I mean … who knows what she could have been driven to do? She already almost killed some violin player! Maybe she hired someone. Maybe the same people she got to knock Stern off are the same people who slashed my tires.” Increasingly, as I talk, it seems possible. No. More than possible—it seems right. “Maybe she’s not really depressed. Maybe she’s faking it, because she’s worried I’m getting closer. She’s hiding out, you know?”

“Hiding out?” Austin shakes his head. He winces, like he’s just swallowed a mouthful of lemon juice. And I know what’s coming next. “I don’t know, Olivia. From an outside perspective, it seems pretty whack.” I start to protest, but he hushes me. “Just hear me out.” He reaches for my hand again. I don’t mean to relent, but somehow I’ve got to—under his spell, his touch, the warm, citrus-spice tangle of his scent. “My dad put the best lawyer in town on her case,” he continues, softly, in that smoky
let me undress you
voice of his. “If there was any
chance
she was innocent—even if she did it, and there was some weird legal loophole that would have gotten her off—she’d be free right now. And if the best lawyer in Miami couldn’t do anything, there’s nothing you can do.”

“See what I mean? Why is everyone discouraging me?” I snap. I feel dark, helpless.

“Because we’re on the outside of it, and you’re not.” He turns the key in the ignition and, finally, we start to pull away. “Everyone else can see what you can’t: that you just
need to let it go. And trust that when
everyone
you know is saying it, they might know something you don’t.”

Everyone besides Stern
. My breath sticks in my throat, shallow, tight. The palm trees sway like grass skirts above us.

I study his face in profile: his insanely perfect, Greek-god face. If Austin ever knew suffering the way some kids learn it, early, when it sits there for life like a malignant, steady-growing tumor, most of it’s lost to him now. His dad died when he was too young to miss him. Lucky boy, to have the kind of suffering that ends up benign, removable by time, or drastically reduced. I didn’t learn it early. But I’ve sure learned it by now.

Everyone gets theirs in the end;
it was something I remember my mom telling me one day after I’d come home crying from school because Bobby Roache thought my hair looked too much like tomato sauce and threw a rock at my forehead on the school bus.
He’ll get his in the end, Livie. Everyone gets theirs in the end
.

Austin’s right. I do want to let go. At this point, I just want to let go of everything. “You’re right,” I say in a small voice.

“I know.” He tries to get me to smile, but I’m too tired to fake it right now. A few moments later, he starts Bon Iver back up on his iPod. He drives with one hand only on the steering wheel, the other teasing the gearshift. “Look. My mom’s been texting me since I left to pick you up. Dinner’s at six and she made some linguini and crab shit and if you don’t come she’ll pretty much stab me in the eye.”

Exhausted as I am, this time I manage to smile. “Eye-stabbing? That’s pretty serious. Sounds like I’m not the only one with a crazy mom.” I fiddle with my hands in my lap. “But I don’t think I can, Austin. I’m really—”

“Hungry? Me, too. And, look, Clare and Ted seriously won’t get off my back until you do. You
have
to come. It’s Sunday Dinner. It’s like, a thing. Also, I won’t be able to drive you around anymore if I’ve only got one working eye.”

“You’d adjust. Eventually.”

“You’re a tough one, Red. You know that?”

“I don’t know anything, Austin.”

“So that’s a yes then? Cause I kind of want to know right now if I’m going to be able to play lacrosse this year or not.”

“I guess I’ll let you keep both eyes,” I say, pressing my knees into my chest, staring out at the wide-bright of the streetlamps, which click on to greet the rising dark. “But only because I’m in no position to forfeit a chauffeur.”

W
e’re so glad you could join us, Olivia,” Ted says, winking as he pours wine into each of our glasses. I love Ted Oakley for not thinking twice before pouring two sixteen-year-old kids giant glasses of wine. Austin and I both set to drinking ours. I wonder if this “double date” with his parents weirds him out as much as it weirds me out.

Austin is sitting close to me at the dark-wood table. His knee just touches my knee, but heat radiates between us. I push the crab around on my plate. Clare smiles encouragingly at me.

“Good?” she asks, leaning slightly forward to better hear my answer.

I nod enthusiastically, smile back, chew, swallow, smile some more. “It’s great, thank you. Really, really great.” Their kitchen is bigger than Oh Susannah: shiny-tiled, tall-ceilinged, an island with a giant, gleaming stovetop for cooking, two separate convection ovens, giant fridge, six-foot-tall expressionistic paintings Clare probably bought for a million bucks a pop.

Austin stifles a laugh by shoving a forkful of pasta into his mouth, which makes
me
laugh. I haven’t really had much to eat today. Four or five sips into my wine, I’m already feeling tipsy.

“Ausy—where’s your napkin?” Clare asks, like he’s a little kid. “Why isn’t it on your lap?” He reaches for it, gruffly, off the table and settles it across his lap.

“There, Mom. Happy now?”

“Austin. Enough with the lip,” Ted says. “We have a guest.”

I feel Austin’s fingers at the inside of my knee, tickling slowly up my thigh. I swat it away, noticing Clare’s eyes on us from across the table. She and Ted exchange a glance. I clear my throat and take another gulp of wine.

“So, how is everything at home, Olivia?” Ted asks. “You’re glad to be back? Job at the park okay?”

“Yeah, it’s … okay.” I pack my mouth full of pasta so he won’t try to ask me too much else. I notice how dark the skin is beneath his eyes, like he hasn’t slept—not proper, at least—for a while.

“Just okay?” He is obviously not deterred.

“No, I mean, everything’s fine. I’ve just been tired, I guess. It’s hard to sit on a bench most of the day and wait for something to happen.”

“Tired? Have you been sick, honey?” Clare asks, peering at me with concern.

“I mean, you know …” I meet Austin’s eyes and quickly look away. “The hearing. Mom stuff.”
Don’t act like your
life is perfect, either
, I think, remembering what Austin told me on the boat—about Ted and Clare, his late nights, the lies he may or may not be telling. If nothing else, they’re both masters of illusion. I’m starting to think that most people are, in one way or another.

Ted frowns and nods. “Any news on that front?”

“I’ve just been … looking into things,” I say, taking another sip.

“What sorts of things?” Clare asks.

“I’ve been talking to some people,” I elaborate vaguely. I wonder what they would do if I confessed that one of the “people” I’ve been talking to is a ghost.

“Are you having any success?” Ted asks, standing up from the table to more easily top off everyone’s glasses with fresh wine.

The wine has made me feel open, friendly, eager to talk. I sit back in my chair. “Not yet,” I tell them honestly. “But I feel like I’m getting closer to understanding what really happened. And I know everyone keeps trying to tell me to give it up, but I’m still not convinced. At all.” I shrug, look to Ted, standing beside Clare’s chair now, appealing to him with my eyes. “I’m not going to give up. I know she didn’t do it. I
know
it.”

“Shit!” Ted exclaims, jumping back—he’s accidentally knocked Clare’s glass over, and wine is spilling everywhere, including all over his crisp white dress shirt, narrowly missing Clare. “Damn it!” The wine blooms down his shirt like ink into snow.

“Calm down, Teddy,” Clare says, standing from the table to wet a napkin at the sink and bring it to him. “I’ll take it to the dry cleaner’s tomorrow.” She lays another napkin on top of the wet table and I watch it sop up the liquid like a thirsty plant.

“This is brand new,” he huffs, rubbing frantically at the stain with the wet linen napkin. “Jesus, Clare. Can’t you
do
something? Don’t you have any stain remover?”