The Silent Scream (7 page)

“In June?” Jess said. “How do you know?”

Linda got up to take her glass to the sink. “I was here for that orientation day they had. Weren’t you?”

“No.” She
had
wanted to see the university before she made up her mind, but she hadn’t had time. The brochures they’d sent had had to suffice.

“Ian was here,” Linda said, turning away from the sink. “And Jon. I saw them on campus.”

Ian nodded. “Came with a bunch of guys from my high school. They didn’t like it, but I did.”

Jess felt a little left out. They’d all visited campus last June?

“It was a scorcher that day,” Linda said. “It almost made me think about finding a school in Alaska. But everyone kept saying it was just a weird heat wave, not normal, so I decided to come here, anyway. But I didn’t know then that I’d be living at Nightingale Hall. It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t see it first. I might have changed my mind and gone somewhere else.”

Jess could understand that. If she had known she was going to be sleeping in the room of a girl who had died, would she have moved in, anyway?

I don’t
think
so, she told herself.

“So,” Ian said, standing up, “anyone sorry they decided to come here?” Smiling, his eyes found Jess’s. “I know I’m not. Look at the great class of people this university attracts.”

“Speaking of people,” Jon said, “where’s Cath? How come she’s not pigging out like the rest of us?”

Milo jumped to his feet and left the room. Linda quickly followed.

It was left to Ian and Jess to fill Jon in on the trouble between the three.

He took Cath’s side, which didn’t surprise Jess. “Milo’s too far off center,” he said as they left the kitchen.

“I think he’s just shy,” Jess said.

But hadn’t she, at first, thought Milo was unfriendly, and a bit odd? And that look on his face when Cath accused him of stealing … that hadn’t looked like simple anger. There’d been something strange in that look.

Something that scared Jess.

B
RIGHT SUNSHINE LIGHTING UP
Jess’s room the following morning failed to dispel the pervasive chill. Goose bumps formed on her arms as she dressed quickly in jeans and a white T-shirt that read,
I IS A COLLEGE FRESHMAN,
a going-away present from her sister Nell. She ran a brush through the shiny dark hair that was beginning to grow longer. The short haircut had been easy to take care of, but not much fun. Now a few thick strands curled softly around her high cheekbones.

Maybe, she thought, I’ll actually be able to do something interesting with it by the time the Fall Ball rolls around. Laughing softly at her own unintentional pun, Jess escaped into the warmth of the hall.

In the kitchen, Linda was expressing disgust over Jon’s choice of breakfast.

“A hot dog and ice cream?” She made a gagging gesture. “Your body is a temple, Jon, and you’re tossing a wrecking ball at it.”

Jon continued munching with pleasure. “Food is food,” he mumbled around a mouthful of hot dog bun. Swallowing, he added, “You see anything wrong with this body?”

As Jess moved to the refrigerator for a glass of juice, she thought about the formal Linda had mentioned the night before. Hurry up and ask me to that dance, she ordered Ian silently. Time’s a-wastin’. A boy in her history class had been hanging around a lot lately. What if he asked her first? Would it be totally rotten to turn him down, hoping that Ian would ask her? And then what if Ian didn’t?

“What did Maddie bring us yesterday?” Linda asked, lifting a blue cloth napkin to peer into the wicker picnic hamper sitting on the kitchen counter. “Gee, isn’t it great that she gets rid of her guilt about not moving in with us by baking goodies?”

“What would I do without her?” Jon said gratefully, biting into a strawberry muffin from Maddie’s most recent care package.

Laughing, Jess wondered where Cath was. Had she already left for school? Had she finished the essay rewrite?

As if on cue, Cath appeared in the kitchen doorway. She looked terrible. Her eyes were shadowed with purplish raccoon-rings, her hair a tangle of dark waves hanging limply around her pale, strained face. She was wearing the same tan skirt and green blouse she’d worn the day before. The skirt was wrinkled, the blouse drooping over the waistband.

It’s not just her clothes that looked wrinkled, Jess thought with a wave of compassion. Every inch of her looks wrinkled, as if she’d spent the night tumbling around in a clothes dryer.

Cath waved a sheaf of white paper in the air. To Milo, she said, “I finished, just like I said I would. So you can forget about turning in that paper you stole from me.” Her smile was cold. “You wouldn’t want to be accused of cheating, would you? Although for someone like you, that probably wouldn’t be a first.” Aiming one last contemptuous glance in Milo’s direction, she hurried from the room.

The front door slammed a moment later.

Shaking his head in disgust, Milo got up, muttered, “That girl is crazy! I never went near her room,” and left the kitchen. Linda did the same. Their footsteps echoed through the house as they went upstairs.

Jon followed a moment later.

“Cath is so positive that Milo took her paper,” Jess said to Ian when they were alone. “She’s never going to forgive him. We’ll have to draw up battle lines to keep them away from each other.”

Ian nodded. “What’s the quote? The one that goes, ‘United we stand, divided we fall’? Sounds like us, doesn’t it?”

Jess agreed. We
are
living in a house divided, she thought dispiritedly. “I wonder if Milo ever
did
do his paper?”

Ian, at the back door with an overflowing wastebasket in hand, asked, “You think he took Cath’s paper, don’t you?”

She was saved from a reply by the peal of the front doorbell. Ian went out back with the trash and Jess ran into the hall to yank open the front door.

A short, stocky young man in a military uniform stood before her, twirling his Army cap in his hands. His straw-colored hair was cut very short and neatly parted to one side. He had deep brown eyes that seemed sad to Jess, almost melancholy.

But he smiled at her. “I’m Avery McKendrick,” he said. “I had a telephone conversation with Mrs. Coates a few weeks ago about picking up my sister’s trunk. She said it would be okay.”

“McKendrick?” Jess echoed. McKendrick? As in … ?

“Giselle was my sister,” he said quietly.

“Oh, I’m … I’m sorry,” Jess stammered, “please come in.”

He stepped inside. “Thanks. I’d have been here sooner, but I was stationed in the Philippines. I just came back to the States last week. Is Mrs. Coates in?”

“No. No, she’s … she isn’t.” Jess searched for the right words. “You … you said you came for your sister’s trunk?”

Avery McKendrick nodded. “It’s in the cellar. There was a guy in overalls outside … dark hair? He volunteered to go find the trunk for me. I’m not sure we can manage it alone, though.” He smiled sadly. “My sister was a pack rat. She saved everything. The trunk probably weighs a ton.”

Jess would have gone in search of Ian to help with the trunk, but Milo, Jon, and Linda, books in hand, came hurrying down the stairs.

“Well, hey, Milo!” Avery said, extending a hand, “how
are
you? Never expected to find
you
here. So you decided to go to school, after all? That’s great!”

Jess stared as Milo, looking uncomfortable, shook Avery’s hand. “You two know each other?” she asked.

“Who
is
he?” Linda asked Jess in a near-whisper.

“He’s Giselle McKendrick’s brother,” Jess said clearly, adding, “Milo, I didn’t know you knew Giselle.”

“Really?” Linda breathed, giving Milo an inquiring look.

“Well, sure,” Giselle’s brother said. “Milo practically lived at our house when he was a kid. He went all through school with my sister. They walked home together every day until high school. Right, Milo?”

Ian arrived, and Jess sent him a confused glance. Milo had
never
said a word about knowing Giselle, much less that he had been a close friend of hers. Why had he kept it a secret?

“Like I said,” Avery continued, “I might need help with the trunk. Giselle never threw anything away. And it could have books in it.”

“She still has stuff here?” Jon asked, frowning. “After all this time?”

Avery nodded. “I’ve been away, and my dad was too ill to come get it. We arranged to have Mrs. Coates put all of Giselle’s stuff in a trunk and keep it for us until I could get here.”

“I’ll give you a hand,” Milo volunteered, and, handing his books to Linda, loped off toward the kitchen and its cellar door.

“I’m sorry about your sister,” Jess said as Giselle’s brother followed Milo.

Avery McKendrick turned around. “She didn’t commit suicide,” he said bluntly. “I don’t care what you heard, what they told you. She didn’t. Not Giselle. It’s true that she went through a bad time when our mother became terminally ill. But even on her worst days, Giselle was an optimist.” Shaking his head, he added, “My father never believed what they said about her death, and neither do I.” He sighed and added, “I just wanted you to know that.” Then he left to join Trucker and Milo in the basement.

But when Jess went into the kitchen, Trucker was standing at the refrigerator filling a glass with lemonade.

“I thought you were helping Milo,” she said.

“I was. He sent me up here to get some rope.”

Upset by her conversation with Avery McKendrick, Jess snapped, “We don’t keep the rope in the refrigerator.”

Trucker raised dark eyebrows. “That trunk is heavy. Hefting it made me thirsty, okay?”

Jess flushed. “I’m sorry, Trucker. I shouldn’t have bitten your head off. I just feel so sorry for Giselle’s family.”

Trucker nodded. “Yeah. Me, too.”

“Forgive me?”

“No problem. Don’t worry about it. I’d better get back down there. It’s going to take at least two people to haul that trunk out of here.”

“Avery’s down there, too.”

“Good. Three people is even better.”

The minute the car had pulled out of the driveway and onto the highway and Trucker had gone back to whatever he’d been working on, Jess turned to Milo. “You
knew
that girl?” she asked. “I can’t believe you never said so. That first night, when Ian told us what had happened to her, you never said a word!”

Milo hunched his thin shoulders in a noncommittal shrug. But as he turned to take off for campus, Ian put a hand on his arm. Linda and Jon watched with interest.

“Hey, what gives?” Ian said. “Jess is right. It was pretty weird having that girl’s brother talk to you like an old friend.”

Milo jerked free of Ian’s hand. “I don’t make a habit of telling my life story,” he said. “And I don’t remember anyone else telling
theirs.
”

“None of the rest of us,” Jess pointed out, “knew a girl who
died
in this house. But
you
knew her.”

“Not in high school, I didn’t.” Milo’s blue eyes behind the wire-framed glasses studied the gravel at his feet. “Her brother was gone by then, so he doesn’t know …” his voice trailed off. This time, when Milo began walking, Ian didn’t try to stop him. But he did grab Jess’s hand and follow Milo down the driveway. Linda and Jon came out of the house then and joined them.

“What happened in high school?” Ian asked Milo.

Milo continued walking. “Nothing. She was a big deal. I wasn’t. End of story.”

“And end of friendship?” Ian’s voice was kind.

Milo didn’t answer, but Jess had no trouble picturing what had happened. She’d seen it happen to other kids. Best friends in grade school and maybe middle school, sometimes even the first year of high school. Then one person found new friends, new interests, and left the old friend on the outside looking in … an awful place to be.

Giselle had been pretty and popular, a “big deal,” as Milo put it. And he hadn’t.

Sighing, Milo turned to face them, his mouth grim. “Look, this isn’t anybody’s business but mine, okay? Giselle and I were friends and then we weren’t, that’s all. I was never her boyfriend. Her boyfriend was some guy from out-of-town. I never met him. Now, can we just forget about this, okay?”

Because Jess felt sorry for him, she nodded. Taking their cue from her, the others did the same. “Old news, Milo,” Ian said. “Forgotten.”

Milo nodded and said in gruff voice, “Thanks. I mean it, thanks.”

But as he turned and resumed his walking, Jess knew she couldn’t forget the surprising revelation. Milo hadn’t even said how he
felt
about Giselle’s death. If they’d been that close, even if it had been a long time ago, he must have been upset by her suicide.

Yet he had shown no emotion of any kind when Ian had told that story during their get-acquainted party on the porch … and no emotion when he’d first seen Avery McKendrick standing in the hall waiting to collect Giselle’s things.

Weren’t poets supposed to be emotional?

Hurrying to class a while later, Jess wished that she could stay forever among the beautiful, red brick and stone buildings covered with ivy, and under the sheltering trees whose leaves were just starting to turn blazing yellows and purples and scarlets. She wished she could stay there forever and never have to return to Nightingale Hall, with all of its unanswered questions.

I
N SPITE OF JESS’S
wish that she could linger on campus indefinitely, the day passed quickly. After attending a brief meeting of the Fall Ball planning committee at the Student Center, she reluctantly returned to Nightingale Hall.

No one else was home. The house was dim and eerily silent. No pipes groaned, no shutters banged, no wild wind shrieked. All three stories of brick sat in silence as if … as if the house was waiting for something to happen, Jess thought as she climbed the stairs.

She quickened her steps, eager for her own room, sunnier and brighter than the rest of the house.

But her anticipation died a quick death when she reached the top of the stairs. Staring in dismay, she let out a soft “Oh.”

A trail of muddy footprints oozed straight down the middle of the hall. From one end to the other.