The Girl in the Wall (21 page)

I am still broken by what happened here, by what I lost, and I know that part of me will never heal. But I have Sera and my dad’s company and Abby, I have Abby.

It is enough to keep me here.

One week later, the halls of NCCD are crowded. The last bell just rang and most of us are packing up to go home, just the jocks and debaters are heading for practice. It’s like any other Friday afternoon, people running down the polished wooden floors, grabbing stuff out of their oversized lockers, looking at the screens hung up on the walls that flash information about next week’s big game against Greenwich, SAT prep classes on Mondays, and the half-day next Thursday.

“Bye Sera,” Cassidy calls, giving a little wave as she passes me in the hall on the way to cheerleading practice. Her finger is still in a splint but other than that she is the same golden-headed cheerleader as always.

I slam my locker shut and hoist my bag over my good shoulder. Carson walks by with a few other football players and he reaches out to give me a silent high-five, which is what all the football guys do, as though actual words are beneath them.

It is though everything is the same as it was before Mexico, before my months as a pariah, before the party.

But you don’t have to look too closely to see that really it’s all different now. There are piles of flowers by Mike, Lulu, and Ella’s lockers, marking an emptiness that will always be there. People stuff money into the boxes that are collecting funds to bring cupcakes and balloons to Ravi, to send care packages of French chocolate to Franz.

The biggest differences are the ones you can’t see though. I’m not sure how they’ve changed Cassidy and Carson and everyone else who was there that night. It’ll probably be a long time before I fully understand how they have changed me. But there are certain things I know now, certain things I do now because they matter.

I call my sister and tell her I love her, even though she laughs and calls me a cornball. I hug my mom when I come home from school and I let my dad cook me eggs in the morning because it makes him happy. I sit with Ariel in what used to be a guest bedroom but is now her room, chatting about things like movies and TV, or just sitting, silent, being with her so she knows that she is not alone.

I also work really hard in my classes. Ariel has a clear career path now and I want that too. I’m not sure exactly what I want to do but I want it to be meaningful, for my life to be about more than just me. So while I know I’m a shoo-in for Brown, I want to earn it as well, to arrive knowing it was my work that got me there, not the silver spoon in my mouth.

There are also other changes, the dark ones, the ones that wake me up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, reliving the stabbing of The Assassin or Mike’s death. Those are the changes that have me scanning a room before I walk into it and always needing to sit facing the door in a restaurant, that get my heart pounding when I see someone in army green. I’m not sure if these will fade over time but I suspect I will always carry a shadow of them.

A couple of freshman are walking by and I tune into their conversation when I realize they are talking about last night’s Letterman.

“I don’t know, I think he’s kind of a jerk for lying about his family,” the first girl says, fluffing her blond curls.

“But at least he admitted it,” her friend says. “And he looked awfully good doing it.”

“Did you see his oldest brother when Letterman had his whole family come out on stage?” the third girl asks. She is rifling through her bag and pulls out a tube of lip gloss. “He is way hotter than Hudson.”

Not true,
I think silently as their voices fade down the hall.

As soon as he got plugged back into the world Hudson wasted no time coming clean about his family and how he lied. It’s been the talk of every gossip site out there, with some people skewering him and others calling him a hero for stepping forward. He’s been on an intense media tour and while he was in LA he did a big fund-raising concert for tornado victims in the Midwest. He’s looking for something more meaningful too, though I wouldn’t know what he’s thinking about it. He warned me he’d probably be too busy to call but at the time I didn’t realize how crummy that was going to feel. A week later it’s like I never even knew him, like that kiss is a figment of my imagination.

I can’t say I’m happy about it but I figure it is what it is. Maybe our connection was just meant to be for those fifteen hours. Maybe we both have too much else we need to be focusing on right now. Plus, when do romances between rock stars and flat-chested high school girls actually work out? I don’t need the drama of a long-distance romance with a guy who has models throwing themselves at him every night.

I just wish I didn’t miss him so much.

I slam my locker, sling my pink book bag over my shoulder, and head for the front door. Abby will be over in a little while and if Ariel feels up to it we will go to the playground and maybe even get ice cream afterwards. Otherwise we will just stay in and help Abby create an elaborate tea party for the stuffed animal collection that is starting to pile up in Ariel’s room.

A sophomore guy holds the door open for me and I walk out into the bright afternoon sunlight, blinking as my eyes adjust. And then I stop.

A sleek black car waits at the curb, quite possibly a Porsche 911 though my heart is pounding so much it’s hard to focus on details like that. Because slouching against the car in beat-up jeans and a black T-shirt, his eyes hidden by sunglasses and his hands holding the biggest bouquet of lilacs I’ve ever seen, is Hudson.

When he sees me he smiles a slow smile that sends shivers down my whole body. And then my bag is flying off my shoulder and I am running, squealing, jumping into his arms.

Let the drama begin.

It is the last time I will be here, in the house where I grew up, and I take my time, going from room to room to make sure I have all that I want. The floors have been scoured clean, the walls washed, and soon it will go on the market looking pristine and luxurious, all signs of the horror that took place here scrubbed away. The mist will always be here though, clinging to the walls and drifting through the hallways.

I don’t take a lot. Clothes, shoes, books, the stuffed frog my mom got me when we went to Disneyland when I was seven. The photo album, of course, and the pictures of my parents.

My last stop is the small room on top of the garage, the room where Nico lived. It smells like him, a mix of fresh soil and Ivory soap, and this brings tears to my eyes. I’m not sure what might have been. Relationships between penniless gardeners and rich girls work best in the movies. In reality money makes things really complicated, one of the many things I learned when my dad’s right-hand man killed him over it. But I know that Nico and I had a connection, that it meant something. Maybe we weren’t going to be a great love affair, though that kiss was pretty amazing, but I do know we would have been lifelong friends. And I really would have liked that.

The room is sparse, a vase of fall flowers cut from the garden that have now wilted, a few pictures of his family, a pile of books in Spanish. I take the pictures and the most well-worn book, as well as the red T-shirt lying on the bed. There’s more there but I don’t need it and I want his family back in El Salvador to have it. Back when the bag holding his body was finally loaded for the trip to the morgue, I thought he was leaving me. And of course in the obvious way he was, or already had. But I didn’t realize that next to the emptiness, the absence I will always feel, there would come to rest a little piece of him, the piece that belongs to me. So in some way he will never leave me.

I walk down the stairs and out into the yard. Landscapers have been hard at work and the front lawn is satin smooth and emerald green, like the tire tracks and blood stains were never there.

I head for my car and start loading my stuff into the trunk. The pictures, the frog, and Nico’s things go on the front seat next to me. Then I get in, turn the key in the ignition, and drive down the driveway one final time. I don’t look back because what matters now are the things that come next. Staying at Sera’s, seeing Abby, and then in the fall, Harvard. I will choose Harvard because of the business program and I will get my MBA from them too, so that I will be near Abby as she grows up. That is also why I will establish my branch of Barett Pharmaceuticals in Boston.

The lawyers say the copy of my dad’s will will hold up and I will be named the heir. Next month, as long as I feel strong enough, I will go into the city and meet with the board, to select the person who will run the main company, for now, while I am learning, but probably beyond that as well. I’m not so interested in the money-making part, I’m more interested in what we do with that money.

I am driving along the wooded road, the tall trees majestic with red, orange, and yellow leaves, sunlight slipping through to make lacy patterns on the road.

I will start up carefully, gathering a team of researchers to see what agencies that help refugees truly help them, and then giving them money so that they can do more. Maybe one of them will find a kid who loves flowers so that one day he grows up to run his own gardening shop and be in charge of his own destiny instead of a pawn to people with power. Later it will grow into the agency I will found that provides funds for homes, food, and schooling.

I am now at the edge of the trees and the space above me opens so that sun streams down, the sky wide and open and stretching before me as I drive.

What I learn from my agency here will inform the next project, the one I start in El Salvador.

The one I will name Victory of the People.

Blue Ash, Ohio 45242

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ISBN 10: 1-4405-5270-3

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