This Is How It Ends (19 page)

CHAPTER 32

OF COURSE, I REALIZED IT
was the final pieces.

Why Trip had never seen anything in the binoculars. No future.

How I'd pay for college.

It took Tannis a few days longer, but one day at lunch she said it. “We have to get rid of them. It's all coming true.”

I looked at Natalie and Sarah, their eyes deeply vacant, something I'd come to accept as our general state of being. We were in a vacuum of meaning. We were statues, sitting together but none of us really there. Nothing mattered. Nothing seemed possible.

I would take the SATs the following weekend. I was leaving Buford. I'd go to college next year.

I didn't give a damn about any of it.

“You guys do it,” Natalie said. “I'm not touching them. I don't even want to see them again. Ever.” Her voice was high, hysterical. Not that Tannis was much better.

I nodded. Thinking was so hard. Just do it. Go with it. “Okay. They're at my house. We'll go after school.”

“I can't,” Sarah said. “I have an appointment.” She smiled mirthlessly. “My dad's making me see a shrink.”

It would have been funny. But it wasn't. Sarah was the worst of all of us. I wanted to talk to her, tell her the things I wished I could believe about how it wasn't our fault and there was nothing we could have done. But she wouldn't even get near me alone. I hated it, and I was worried about her—it was the only real feeling I had these days—but I understood.

“So, just you and me,” I said to Tannis. “You okay to go?”

“Well, my back hurts all the fucking time, I have to puke every morning, and I'm exhausted,” she said, “but I don't think I'll ever sleep again until I know they've been mashed, bashed, burned, or destroyed. So, yeah, I'm good to go.”

I nodded. “It's a date.”

***

We walked to my house, her and me. Neither of us had a car that day. We could have asked her brother or someone else, maybe Matty, but it was too much effort.

“How are things with him?” I asked her on the walk. “And . . . stuff?” I couldn't bring myself to say “baby” or “pregnant.” I didn't even like thinking it.

“Okay. I guess. We're talking about what to do.” Tannis smiled vaguely. “He really digs me,” she said, looking over. “Isn't that funny?”

“Why? You're hot,” I said. “At least that's what you've always told me.”

Tannis nudged my arm playfully. “I just never thought . . . I don't know. He's not my usual type.” She finished quietly, the sense of who her type was—had been—hanging there.

We walked in silence for a few minutes until Tannis asked, “Do you think they'll ever find out who killed Nat's dad?”

“Does it matter?” It slipped out before I realized how it'd sound.

“What do you mean?” Tannis looked at me like I was crazy. “Of course it matters.”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry,” I said, not meaning any of it. I couldn't tell Tannis the things Sarah and I had talked about. What we'd been planning to ask Trip. And how the whole thing was wrapped up in his death for me now. And because of that, wrapped up in my role in it, something I couldn't bear to think about too much. “No,” I told her honestly. “I don't.” Whether that was because the murderer was dead himself or because what Trip had known had been a key to the puzzle, I didn't know or care.

Tannis nodded. “Yeah, I've kind of been thinking that too,” she said. “I read somewhere that most murders are solved in the first forty-eight hours.”

“You can read?”

“Shove it, Ri,” she said, before continuing. “I guess if the police haven't figured it out yet, they're probably not going to.”

Tannis and I turned onto my walk. The power had been back on for almost two weeks, but I still had a second of apprehension when we pushed into the living room. I flicked on the light switch, and everything worked.

But something was still wrong.

It was that same prickly not-right feeling I'd had the day I'd caught my mom with Trip's dad.

“What?” Tannis asked, seeing me motionless just inside the door.

I listened, and a soft sound confirmed what I'd been thinking. “Someone's here,” I told her quietly. Her eyes went wide. “Mom?” I called, already knowing from the missing car that it wasn't her.

No one answered. There was a creak and another, moving faster. The squeal of rusty hinges. My thoughts flew to my room. Moose's lighter in my drawer, traces of Mr. Cleary's blood on it. I should have given it to the cops.

“Stay here,” I told Tannis. I strode through the hallway to the kitchen and yanked the back door open. I stepped out into the yard just in time to see a shadowy figure disappear into the woods.

“Stop!” I yelled. Like they were going to listen. I sprinted after them, dodging the branch that hung low at the start of the trail. It had been years since I'd hiked it, but I still remembered every twist of the path. I jogged up the steep section, careful to keep my eyes on the ground. It was easy to hit a stone or hole and sprain your ankle. I could hear the person ahead of me crashing through the brush, stepping on twigs as they went. What could they possibly want? The money Trip's dad had given me was tucked securely in a bank account. We had nothing else of value. Except the lighter, of value to only one person.

The trail's incline evened out as the path zigzagged around trees and brush. I kept up a jog. The person sounded farther ahead, but I knew I'd catch up. Another forty feet, and the trail seemed to disappear. To find it you had to climb through two fallen trees, their branches forming a knotted obstacle not unlike the maze of strings Sarah and I had created in the physics closet and at Natalie's trailer. I doubted the person ahead of me knew that.

I rounded the last bend, stepping into the small clearing before the trees.

It was empty.

And then I saw the slightest movement. Someone crouched behind a bush to the side of the trail. I might not have noticed if it had been a little darker. Or if her coat hadn't been bright red.

“Sarah?”

Nothing.

“I see you.” I took a step closer. “You can come out.”

She stood slowly, her long hair tangled, pieces of twigs and dead leaves clinging to it. There was a scratch across her cheek. She looked wild, her eyes jittery and desperate. It struck me that this was the first time since Trip had died that I'd actually seen her eyes, that she'd looked at me straight on.

“Sarah,” I said gently, stepping toward her. “Are you okay? I've been really worried—” I stopped, seeing her shrink from my reach. I let my hand drop back. She didn't want me to touch her. I understood, but it stung. I'd only wanted to comfort her. She looked like she needed it.

“You were in my house,” I said softly, afraid to scare her away. “Do you need something?”

She nodded, her eyes filling with tears. I could see them glittering.

“What, Sarah? Did you need to see me?”

She shook her head. Then said something, her voice too quiet.

“What?”

“The binoculars,” she said louder. “I need the binoculars.”

“What?” I noticed the deep hollows of her face and circles around her eyes and wondered if she'd gone over the edge. “Why?”

“Please, Riley,” she said, the tears now running down her cheeks. “Please don't make me explain. Just . . . just let me have them.”

I felt a tickle of something, the same kind of warning I'd felt when we'd first found them that night at the cave.
Just give them to her
, my inner voice said.
Don't ask questions
. But I hadn't listened to it before, so why start now? I'm a slow learner like that.

“Sarah,” I started. “I don't think that's a good idea,” I said. “Why do you want them?”

She wiped at her face, leaving streaks of mud from the tears and dirt. “Riley . . . I . . .” She took a shaky breath. “I'm so sorry.”

“For what, Sarah? The stuff that's happened . . .” I didn't want to say his name. “It's not your fault.”

“No.” She shook her head miserably. “You're wrong, Riley. It
is
my fault. All of it.”

“Sarah—” I stepped toward her, meaning to soothe, but again she shrank away.

“They're mine,” she said starkly. “The binoculars.”

I froze. “What?”

“I'm the one who put them in the cave,” she said. “Before that night when we found them. I've known what they were—or what they were supposed to be—all along. I just . . . I never thought . . .” She stopped, crying too hard to continue.

I didn't move, struggling to work through the words. I wanted to believe she was crazy, as horrible as that would be. She
looked
crazy. But something told me she wasn't.

“What do you mean?” I heard myself ask.

Sarah pinched the bridge of her nose, her eyes squeezed shut. Then she wiped her hands harshly across both cheeks and took a deep unsteady breath. “My mom gave them to me. Before she left.” Sarah barked an angry laugh. “I guess that's the thing. When you abandon your family, you leave something behind. Nat got a vase. I got these effed-up binoculars.

“She called them her déjà vu glasses,” Sarah said hoarsely. She cleared her throat before continuing. “The first time I saw them, I must have been seven or eight. She was all excited about them, a new project she was tinkering with. I'd hear her and my dad talking about them from time to time, tossing around ideas of hypnosis and brain function. That was the kind of background chatter that went on in our house.”

“Yeah, mine, too,” I said, but Sarah didn't crack a smile.

“It's not a joke, Riley.” She sucked her lip in, biting at it. I knew it wasn't. I didn't feel like laughing either. I felt like screaming or running away, the way I'd felt at my dad's grave on our anniversary visit. Wishing I could rewind time. “I didn't think anything of it,” Sarah continued. “I mean, why would I? I was a kid and there were always things my mom was making, new machines, new projects. This was just another of them, right?

“One day when I was ten, she sat me down in the kitchen. My dad was out, and I knew it was serious, because my mom didn't have sit-down conversations. That meant she'd have to stay still. And focus.” Sarah smiled bitterly. “She brought them out.

“‘Do you remember these?' she asked me.

“‘Yes,' I told her. ‘Your dish-a-view glasses.'

“She laughed. ‘Déjà vu,' she corrected me. ‘Do you know what that is?'

“I didn't, and she explained it. ‘These glasses
make
that happen,' she said—”

“What does that mean?” I interrupted. My mouth was dry, and every nerve thrummed with energy. And fear.

She had known, I realized. That's what she was telling me. This whole time Sarah had known what they were. And now I was about to know too. Had I really seen my future?

“There are big parts of our brain that we never use,” Sarah said. “That's what my dad's dissertation was about. The one my mom got so interested in. Dormant centers. There are a lot of theories about what goes on in there and whether people have untapped powers, ESP, telekinesis—”

“Crazy shit,” I interrupted, feeling my heart pounding.

“A lot of it, yeah,” Sarah said. “But there's
something
there. And my mom—and dad—thought there were ways to tap into it through a sort of hypnosis.”

“The binoculars—her déjà vu glasses—hypnotize you?”

“They put you into a state where you can access things you normally can't.”

“What kind of things?”

“Memories,” Sarah said. “From the future.”

I stared at her, her tangled hair and torn, dirty face. My mind was spinning through the possibilities and impossibilities of what she was saying. “Sarah—” But I couldn't finish the thought. I didn't know where it led.

“Do you remember what Mr. Ruskovich told you?” she asked. “About things traveling the through space-time continuum?”

I nodded. “Matter can't,” I croaked.

“But energy can,” Sarah finished quietly. “And brain waves create energy.”

She let that hang, and I tried to process it. But my brain felt swollen, pounding against my skull.

“So the things we saw,” I said slowly, “are thoughts and memories we have
in the future
?” I was trying to find sense in the words as I said them, but mostly it felt like I was just repeating what she'd said.

“Yes,” she said, sounding relieved. “That's right, Riley. That's why she called them déjà vu glasses, because that's what gave her the idea to start with.”

I just stared, and Sarah explained, “My mom thought that feeling of having done something before is so intense because we have the memory of it, the way it feels and looks and smells, it's all”—Sarah tapped her head—“stored up here.”

It was so impossible, so crazy. There were so many ways I should have been able to shoot holes in this ridiculous story. If only I could think. “Why didn't you tell us before?” I asked mechanically, not even really aware that the words had come out, until I saw tears pooling in Sarah's eyes.

“She told me I couldn't,” Sarah said.

“Who? Your mom?”

Sarah nodded. “She left about a week after the day she explained them to me. I heard her and my dad fighting downstairs. They didn't throw things or yell, but there was a certain way their voices were.” Tears spilled over, running through the mud on Sarah's cheeks. “I was on my bed when she came in and sat beside me.

“‘I have to go,' she told me. ‘I wanted you to come, but . . . well, it's not that simple.'” Sarah was openly sobbing, her words coming in bursts between broken breaths. “I remember her winking at me,” Sarah said bitterly. “Handing me that case with the binoculars and saying, ‘It's just as well, sweets. I've got a job for you here. An important one.' Like my life wasn't falling apart. Like I gave a shit about her stupid glasses.” Sarah spat the words out, swiping at her nose, her cheeks, with the sleeve of her jacket. She was a mess, her eyes wild, and I wondered again about her sanity.