The Alchemy of Forever (10 page)

Several of the portraits look like Kailey herself, but they’re fantastical. In one she is kneeling next to a fire hydrant, a pile of broken glass in front of her, wings erupting from her shoulders. In another she has her hand outstretched, one finger pointing down a deserted street to a dragon who stands next to a parked car. They are gritty, realistic, but always with one detail that tells me this is a girl who believed in magic.

It reminds of Cyrus’s book, the carefully painted manuscript where he recorded his research. My stomach twists at the thought of Taryn poring through it just as I’m scouring Kailey’s journal now.

Flipping to the inside back cover of the sketchbook, I find a cryptic message: “FB—fairy510, EM—same.” I immediately grasp what it is: her Facebook and e-mail passwords.
Score,
I think, and settle in for some research.

Her e-mail doesn’t provide much personal information, though I do find an attachment with her class schedule. I pull up the website for Berkeley High School, which has a map. The campus is made up of many different buildings arranged in a square, with common areas mostly outside. I compare the layout to the locations of Kailey’s classes and commit everything to memory.

I click over to Facebook and log in. Kailey has more than seven hundred friends. My mind reels—Despite my long life, I can’t even think of seven hundred people that would know my name, let alone those that I would call friends.

I begin to sort through her list of friends and am quickly overwhelmed. There’s no way I can memorize them all. My heart sinks. I start scrolling faster, and the faces blend together and become meaningless. But one face jumps out at me. It’s the neighbor boy, and his name is indeed Noah. Noah Vander.

Scanning the posts on her wall, I see that there are only four girls who write with any regularity. These must be her close friends. There’s Leyla Clark, the girl with the magenta-streaked hair who I recognize from the photos. It seems that she is Kailey’s best friend, and therefore will be the hardest to fool. The easy camaraderie of her posts makes me sad; I miss Charlotte deeply. I wish I could contact her somehow, let her know I’m okay and ask for her help, but I know it’s impossible. She could never keep the secret from Cyrus. He would punish her for her involvement, then come straight for me.

I copy down the names of Kailey’s other close friends—Chantal Nixon, Madison Cortez, and Piper Lindstrom—and study their photos. There’s one girl who appears in many of the group shots, though oddly she’s not on Kailey’s friend list. I note her name as well: Nicole Harrison. She’s pretty, with shiny brown hair and a light dusting of freckles. She appears to be friends with the rest of Kailey’s crew. I wonder what happened between her and Kailey.

Kailey’s profile says she’s single, and though there are a couple messages from boys in her in-box, they’re not overly familiar or flirty. No boyfriend, as far as I can tell, which will make things easier. Although it does deepen the mystery of where Kailey was going the night she died. Like her parents, I realize I had assumed she was going to meet a boy.

A
thwack
from the direction of the window sets my heart thudding, and I leap up and back away toward the door.
Oh God
, I think, suddenly sure I will see Cyrus’s face at the window. The thought arrives with a sheen of sweat and a shot of adrenaline coursing through my veins.

I grab the nearest heavy object—a metal jewelry box from Kailey’s dresser—and flick off the light switch next to the door. The room is plunged into darkness, and I kneel on the floor. I hear sounds from outside, scratches and scuffles on the exterior walls. I squeeze my eyes shut and then open them, my breaths coming in alarmed gasps.

“Kailey! It’s okay,” a voice whispers. I open my eyes and reluctantly look at the window, where a face slowly comes into focus. It’s Noah.

“You scared me!” I say sharply, standing up. I am furious, but relieved.

He rather unceremoniously climbs the rest of the way through the window, a canvas grocery bag banging into the wall. I hold my finger to my lips and murmur a low “Shh.”

“I hear you’re grounded,” he whispers with a smile. “Bryan told me.” He climbs over the bed and stands next to me. He’s quite tall and is wearing gray corduroy pants and the same black sweatshirt he had on the first time I met him. I can smell the night air from the folds of his clothes.

“You really shouldn’t sneak up on people. You almost gave me a heart attack,” I hiss, gesturing for him to sit on the bed. I flick on the light, but it feels overly bright. I’m hit with the fear that it will bring the Morgans in to check on me and quickly turn it off.

Noah unzips his hoodie. “You know, light doesn’t actually make any noise,” he informs me. I can’t suppress a small laugh.

“I’m sorry if being on lockdown’s made me paranoid!” I whisper, sitting in Kailey’s desk chair, but pushing it back a few feet. There’s an awkward silence.

“Yeah, I heard you did some hard time today.”

“The hardest,” I joke feebly. “Two whole hours.”

He rakes back his black hair. It’s hard to tell in the dark, but I think I detect a blush on his tanned face. For some reason I’m reminded of the first time I met Cyrus, and I wonder why Noah has come here tonight. Is this a usual occurrence?

As if reading my thoughts, he clears his throat. “
Any
way, I knew you were trapped in here, so I come bearing gifts.” He reaches into the bag and pulls out treats: a cupcake, a brownie, and a bottle of sparkling pomegranate soda.

“Thank you,” I say, sincerely touched that Kailey had someone in her life who would sneak her cupcakes.

“Sure.” He looks away and fiddles with the shoelaces on his worn sneakers. “It’s no big deal.”

There’s another long silence, but I make no move to fill it. Experience has taught me that people will always start talking if the gap is long enough, and right now I need as much information as possible.

“So where did you sneak off to today?” He looks me in the eye.

“I didn’t sneak off anywhere. I just wasn’t in the mood for school,” I say curtly. “Did anyone ask about me at school? You didn’t say anything about my accident, did you?”

He tugs at the collar of his button-down shirt, looking stung. “Of course not, Kailey. I promised.”

I realize I’ve hurt his feelings. “I’m sorry.” I heave a sigh. “I’ve just had a long day.”

He smiles again, brightening. “Yeah, I suppose a run-in with the law could take it out of you.”

“You have no idea,” I admit. “Thanks for the cupcake, though. Chocolate is my favorite.”

“Anytime. I guess I should leave you to your beauty sleep.” He flashes me another smile as he climbs onto the ledge, and I’m struck again by his deep blue eyes and strong jaw. “Oh! I almost forgot.” He jumps back down and picks up Kailey’s iPhone. “I assume you’re not allowed TV. What about phone?”

“They didn’t mention the phone,” I reply.

“Fair game, then,” says Noah, tapping on the touch screen. He hands it back to me. “Good night,” he says softly, slipping back out the window. I close and latch it behind him, shutting out the autumn night air, then look to see what he typed into Kailey’s phone.

He’s opened Words With Friends, the free Scrabble-like application. I tap the icon and see he’s already started a game with me. His first word is “sneak,” the
K
landing on a double-word square.

I look at my own letters:
ZPJNMNY
. No vowels at all. I build off his
S
, writing “spy,” then sit back down on the bed where he had been sitting. It’s still warm.

I wonder what Noah and Kailey’s relationship was like—Were they actually friends? I pick up the jewelry box from the floor and return it to the dresser, turning on a lamp. A small framed photo catches my eye—it’s a picture of her and Noah when they were kids, maybe five or six years old. She looks impatient, hands on her little hips, her eyes looking straight at the camera with a challenging glare. I guess she didn’t feel like smiling.

Tuesday morning dawns gray and rainy, water coursing down the old wooden windows of the Morgan house. The morning plays out as the previous one did, except Mrs. Morgan is icy toward me and now Bryan makes me sit in the back, not because I’m an invalid, but a “criminal.” Little does he know.

We drive in silence, listening to Noah’s new Broken Bells album, and arrive in the school parking lot much too soon. I check Kailey’s schedule for the umpteenth time, then get out of the car. Once again Noah jets away, but now that I know they share the same first-period biology class, I wonder why he runs off without his friend. Bryan motions me forward, and we hurry across the parking lot, dodging puddles, their filmy surfaces covered by rainbows from the oil slicks on the asphalt. This time—no doubt on his parents’ instruction—he waits to make sure I’m actually inside the building before he takes off with a quick “See ya.”

Then I’m on my own. Taking a deep breath, I enter the fray. I’ve seen depictions of modern teen life on TV, but I’ve never actually set foot in a school. My first impression is that it’s noisy, students laughing and jostling, their shouts echoing off the bright white stucco walls of the various buildings. The architecture is an eclectic mix of 1930s to recent styles, and the student body is just as diverse.

Which way to go? I try to reconcile the physical place with the map I’d studied and take a few hesitant steps to my right. Fat drops of water fall in my eyes from a leak overhead, and I quickly dodge out of the way, swiping at my eyes.

A couple kids say hello to me, and I wave uneasily in return. I try to walk faster and with confidence, but I soon realize I’m completely turned around, and turn on my heel in the opposite direction. A bell rings, and I jump, panicking. Unless I can figure out where to go, I’m going to be late. Everyone will stare at me.

I pass the girls’ bathroom and gratefully duck inside, locking myself in a stall and closing my eyes till my breath has returned to normal. Digging in my pocket, I find the map I had sketched out the night before. Suddenly, I realize where I am.

More composed, I leave the bathroom and find my way to the biology classroom. I don’t think the classes will be difficult. Cyrus, for all his faults, was an excellent teacher, giving me a solid education in mathematics, sciences, and literature. I could easily solve chemical equations, debate the finer points of Socratic discourse, or expound on the entire history of Greece.

I reach the door of the classroom and freeze—where should I sit? I spot Noah near the front and wonder why he would drive me around, bring me cupcakes, and then ignore me at school. My many years of living have not made the actions of teenage boys any less enigmatic. Still, I start to make my way toward him—he is, after all, the only person I know—but the teacher stops me. “Ms. Morgan,” he says in a gravely voice. “Please take your
assigned
seat so class can begin.” I stop in my tracks and look where the teacher gestured.

There are two empty seats near each other, and I move toward them hesitantly. “Any day now, Ms. Morgan,” the teacher prods. I take a breath and flip an imaginary coin, choosing the seat in front of a pretty girl with long, shiny brown hair. She gives me a smile, but her eyes are cold. I glance once more at Noah before sitting down, the girl following my gaze. With a start, I realize this is Nicole Harrison, the girl Kailey wasn’t friends with for whatever reason.

The other students already have notebooks and textbooks open on their lab tables, and I follow their lead. Kailey’s notebook is filled with doodles in the margins: flowers, portraits of other students, abstract patterns. Art was clearly where she excelled.

I turn to a fresh page and write the date, October 18, in my old-fashioned script. I stare at it for a moment and realize I’ve got to try to copy Kailey’s handwriting, which is, to my discerning eye, atrocious. I turn to a new page and start again, letting my hand relax and relying on muscle memory to approximate her stylized printing.

“Cellular respiration,” the teacher writes on the white-board behind him, then begins the lecture. I dutifully copy down the phrase, but my mind starts to drift almost immediately.

How am I going to make my escape? I realize now that I can’t just disappear. The Morgans would no doubt issue an AMBER Alert, and my face would end up plastered all over every major news outlet in the state. An AMBER Alert for a teen girl in the Bay Area would likely catch Cyrus’s notice. I silently thank the officer who picked me up yesterday.

No matter which train of thought I follow, I keep coming back to the same conclusion: The Morgans will need to think Kailey is dead. It’s the only way to stop anyone from looking for Kailey ever again. Should I fake another car crash? A fire? Plant a suicide note saying I’ve leaped from the Golden Gate Bridge?

Bile rises in my throat at my callous planning, although in an odd way, I know that staging an accident is the kindest thing I can do for the Morgans and the truest way to respect Kailey’s memory. Beyond that, all I can do is promise myself that Kailey’s is the last body I’ll ever inhabit. I will stay in it for as long as possible, till the last damned breath it’s able to breathe. It feels paltry, and it is, but it’s all I’ve got.

A buzz from Kailey’s iPhone, wedged in the back pocket of my jeans, brings me back to the present. The clock on the classroom wall tells me class will be over in a few minutes. The teacher is droning on, and I wonder how any of the students are able to stay awake. Glancing around, I see a sea of sleepy, bored eyes.

Surreptitiously, I pull the phone from my pocket and glance at it underneath the desk. It’s a text from Leyla.

i miss you! are you actually here today?

Not really,
I think as the bell rings.