Paper heart, p.10
Paper Heart, page 10
I toweled off and dressed as fast as I could, my clothes sticking to my still-damp skin, not wanting to pull up or lie flat in the right spots. My wet hair soaked the back of my T-shirt as I shoved everything I wasn’t wearing into the beach bag.
The hair dryer shut off, and wiping tears from my eyes, I waited for the other person to leave, fearfully glancing over my shoulder to see if a new message had somehow appeared.
The steam was fading, the spot I’d erased still there. There was nothing new.
I rushed out of the locker room, head down, nerves electric. Wiping at my face again, I pushed through the double doors to the lobby and told the front desk worker to tell Karly I went home sick. I’d probably get in trouble for not telling her myself, but I didn’t care.
Turning toward the main entrance, I ran smack into Izzy, hitting him hard. My forehead smashed into his cheekbone and made a thunk that didn’t sound or feel good.
“Whoa, Tess, what’s the rush?” he asked, touching his cheek gingerly.
“I didn’t see you,” I said, rubbing my forehead.
“I know,” he said, wincing. “I was just looking for you . . . Want to play Ping-Pong?”
“I’m leaving,” I said, adding, “I’m sick.”
“Oh bummer,” he said. “Maybe I’ll text you later?”
All I could think of was the message.
HELP ME
FIND BILLY
“Is that okay?” Izzy asked, but I didn’t answer. I wanted him to go away because everything was buzzing.
HELP ME
FIND BILLY
“I have to go,” I said, starting toward the door.
“Okay, see ya,” Izzy said, disappointment in his voice.
I heard it but didn’t react. I barged out into the bright sunlight, me on the front steps of the rec center and Jackie and her friends behind the fence near the pool area, watching me.
I ignored them; they were nothing compared to this. Jackie was a girl who was jealous for no reason.
I was a girl who was either being haunted or going crazy.
No one could tell, because they couldn’t hear my thoughts, but inside, I was screaming.
chapter 13
My entire life, drawing had calmed me—and I craved calm now.
Drawing had been something I could do well for as long as I remembered. I was quiet about it, but people noticed, like when the elementary school principal had selected my sketches to be on the cover of the yearbook three years in a row or when my science teacher had asked me if he could use my diagram of a frog as a teaching tool for all of his classes.
Back at the cabin, desperate for anything other than ripping my hands and lips to shreds, I took my sketch pad, charcoals, and a full can of bug spray to the rocker on the front porch.
Driving back from the rec center, Aunt Maureen had asked if I wanted to talk, and when I said no, she respected that. Right now, she was inside playing a matching game at the kitchen table with Kane. Uncle Bran had taken the day off work so he and Kennedy could go fishing.
A blank page on my lap, a pencil in my right hand, I rocked, still buzzing inside, staring at the landscape. If I jumped the four feet from the porch, I could walk across the freshly mowed, prickly, brownish-green prairie grass until I ran into the hip-high, rickety wood fence. Just beyond that was the highway, then more prairie grass. Here and there, with tons of land between, gravel driveways led to houses dwarfed by their detached garages. Beyond the houses were shadowy gray-blue hills in front of white-capped mountains. Above it all, the dramatic sky.
Earlier, the day had been bright blue enough for sunbathing, but now menacing clouds moved in fast motion, climbing on top of each other, fighting for the best spot overhead.
I could tell it was already raining a few miles to the east—at least I thought that direction was east—because the space between the clouds and the grass was smudged, vertical streaks that made it so I couldn’t see the hills and mountains there, the sun finding breaks in the clouds to sneak through.
I inhaled the fresh, heavy, therapeutic smell of rain on the range.
Looking down at the sketchbook in my lap, I brushed away a gnat that’d landed on the paper.
I needed to draw.
I couldn’t draw.
It’d been clear from Karly’s worksheet what my “special project” was meant to be. Since we hadn’t been required to turn in the worksheet, I’d been honest—and all of my answers had pointed in the same direction.
Question: Who are you?
Answer: A sad girl
Question: What do you like to do?
Answer: Nothing now
Question: What’s the most significant thing, happy or sad, that’s happened to you in the past year?
Answer: My best friend died
Question: What form of art do you most identify with?
Answer: Drawing
Question: Who inspires you?
Answer: Colette
So, there it was: I needed to draw Colette. Except the problem was that I couldn’t. I couldn’t make my pencil touch the paper. I couldn’t use pictures of her for inspiration. It sounds awful to say, but I didn’t want to look at her.
You’ve hit a new low, not wanting to look at your best friend’s face.
A dust devil formed in the driveway, and watching it spin, I thought I should take a video and send it to Frankie, but I didn’t. Except then, like she’d been listening to my thoughts, she texted.
FRANKIE
M and AM are talking about you right now
TESS
??
MOM AND AUNT MAUREEN
TALKING
ABOUT
U
How do you know?
Kai and I are stealing candy from the cottage
She doesn’t know we’re here
They on speaker
What are they saying?
AM says maybe M should make you come home
That you’re freaking out
Being weird
Maureen said I’m freaking
out???
No but basically
I don’t want to go home
When I typed it, I realized it was the truth. I didn’t want to be anywhere without Colette, but I wanted to be here more than I wanted to be there.
Ok
Bye
Wait, what else are they saying?
Frankie didn’t reply; my phone screen said the message was delivered but not read. I pictured Frankie and Kai leaving the cottage and running out to the beach to eat whatever candy they’d found, Frankie giving Kai a tornado report and him telling her about a new skateboarding trick he’d learned.
I couldn’t make myself draw a picture of Colette—or even look at one. And Frankie didn’t seem changed by her death. I didn’t understand it at all.
Were we really that different?
The huge red truck Uncle Bran had rented turned and bounced up the driveway toward me. When it got close enough, I saw Kennedy was in the passenger seat. Uncle Bran waved as they went by, around to the back of the cabin. I heard the truck stop in the spot between the cabin and the garage.
Heavy truck doors closed loudly; I heard Kennedy laugh at something her dad had said. It made me miss Charles.
The back cabin door opened and slammed shut; footsteps crunched through the gravel on the side of the house. Kennedy stepped up onto the porch and sat in the rocker next to mine. She had on ripped black denim shorts and a cold-shoulder black top, with a hideous tan vest that had tiny pockets everywhere. I thought for a second she was wearing a choker, but realized it was the tied cord of the fishing hat hanging down her back.
“I caught a twenty-inch brown trout!” my cousin said excitedly. “I used a Rabbit Strip Streamer fly, size eight. It was wicked awesome.”
I looked at her blankly for a second, then said, “Congratulations?”
“Yeahthanks!” she said, the words running together like they were one.
“I didn’t know fishing was . . . your thing?”
Kennedy shrugged. “Grandpa taught me last summer when you guys were out running around. It sucks he’s not here this year.” Yee-ah. Grandpa was on a cruise with a woman he’d met at his yoga class. “I’m going to text him a picture.”
“Tell him hi,” I said, rocking slowly, finding pictures in the clouds.
“So, what’s up with you?” Kennedy asked, eyes on her phone, typing away.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Maureen called Brandon when we were coming off the river, and I don’t know what she said, but it was obviously about you.” She glanced at me with heavily lined eyes, then looked back at her device. “You keep screaming in your sleep.”
“I thought that only happened once,” I said.
Kennedy shrugged again in response.
“Is it because that ghost touched you in South Pass City—”
“It wasn’t a ghost,” I interrupted, unsure, wishing I hadn’t told her about that.
“I mean, you kinda freaked out there. And you look like you’re going to jump out of your skin every time we’re in the car?” Cah.
Only when we drive under the animal crossing, I thought defensively.
“I don’t know!” I snapped. “Will you stop asking me questions and just leave me alone?”
Kennedy looked at me, surprised.
“Whoa, cousin, I’ve never heard you get mad before.” She grinned. “I think I like you more now.”
I shook my head at her, saying sarcastically, “Gee, thanks.” My eyes welled up with tears and quickly overflowed.
Kennedy stopped her chair from rocking and leaned forward. “Don’t cry, I was just kidding,” she said. “I know I don’t always act like it, but I do like you. You’re my cousin.”
“I’m not crying because of that,” I said, wiping away tears.
“Then what?” In her weird Goth-fisherwoman outfit, Kennedy did look like she cared.
“Either I’m losing my mind,” I began, “or Colette is haunting me.”
Kennedy opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. She tilted her head to the side and asked, “Are you serious? Because I was just messing around about the whole ghost-touching thing.” She laughed once. “I don’t actually believe in ghosts.”
“Well, I do,” I said.
“Okay,” Kennedy said. “And you think the ghost is Colette?”
I wiped away the tears that kept falling even though I was angrier than sad. “I don’t know!” I said forcefully. “I know that sounds crazy, which is why I said it could also be that I’m losing my mind!”
Kennedy looked down at my sketchbook, which made me look down, too. I realized I’d been tearing the top page into paper crumbs, some now resting on my lap, some in piles on the wooden porch slats beneath my chair.
“She’s who you’ve been dreaming about?” Kennedy asked, softer, probably pitying me.
Pathetic!
I said yes and continued to rip. Better the paper than my skin.
“And you think she’s who touched your head?”
“I don’t know, maybe?” I sighed, eyes on the paper. “We were in a ghost town.” I looked back up at my cousin. “But today at the rec center, something else happened. I went up to the third floor, and it was really hot at first, then the temperature dropped. Like, a lot. And it felt like someone was there.”
“For real?” Kennedy asked.
“Yes, and then I took a shower and there was a message in the steam on the shower door.”
Kennedy’s eyes widened. “What, like someone wrote in the steam?”
“Yes!” I said. “While I was in the shower!”
She twisted her lips in concentration. “You mean it appeared when the glass got all steamy?” she asked. I nodded. “But you didn’t see anyone?” I told her I hadn’t. Kennedy twisted one of the bracelets on her wrist, then said, “’Cause that’s a known prank, right? You can do that with rubbing alcohol. You know that, right?”
“Of course,” I said quickly.
Mean Me discounted it. You are such a colossal liar. You did not know that!
“Probably someone was pranking you or pranking someone else, and you saw it on accident,” Kennedy said. “It is a wicked awesome classic prank.”
“Except the message was for me,” I said quietly.
“Did it say Tess?” Kennedy asked, starting to rock again, which made me think she was losing interest in the conversation.
“It said Help me,” I said, pausing. “And then it said Find Billy.”
“Like all one thing? Help me find Billy? Or help me . . . find Billy.”
I thought about it. There wasn’t a comma, but the statements were on two lines.
“The second one,” I said, guessing.
“Who’s Billy?”
“He’s . . .” I sighed again. It was exhausting to try to explain to my cousin, who seemed to be growing less interested by the second. “Last year I told Colette a ghost story I’d made up about a guy named William. In the story, he was killed by his wife and his head was held on by a yellow scarf.”
“Gnarly,” Kennedy said before laughing.
“Colette kept telling me William went by Billy, and she said I should change his name to Billy the next time I told the story.” I was in a trance, ripping paper and remembering. “But I never told the story again to anyone else.”
“She’s the only one you told? You’re positive?” Kennedy asked.
“Yes,” I said confidently.
“But there could be other Billys in the world,” Kennedy said. “That message could be for anyone who lives around here and knows a Billy.” She thought for a second. “I wonder how many Billys or Williams live here, though. It’s a pretty small town. Then again, your Billy is just a made-up guy in a story. He’s not real.”
“Except . . .” My words trailed off.
Don’t say it.
“Except?” Kennedy stopped rocking again.
Don’t say it!
“What?” Kennedy asked.
Don’t.
“Except there’s this old man I saw in the park the second day we were here, and he did this really weird tapping thing when I went by him, and he wears a yellow scarf! In the middle of summer!”
“Okay, now that’s weird,” Kennedy said.
“And another thing,” I said.
My cousin leaned forward again. “What is it?”
“In this picture I took at Rendezvous? Of the crowd at the street fair?” I took a breath. “He was in the background.” I dropped the paper and put both hands to my mouth, whispering the last part through the holes between my fingers. “He was staring right at me.”
Kennedy stood up so abruptly it made me jump, sending the rest of the paper crumbs to the ground.
“I think there’s a logical explanation, and I’m going to help you find it,” she proclaimed. “I’m doing this partly because I’m so over you screaming every night but mostly because I don’t want all this for you.” She waved her hand in a gesture that moved from my head to the floorboards and back again. “Besides, you’ve been through enough.”
I looked away and sniffed, feeling a lump rise in my throat.
Kennedy grabbed my hands and yanked me up, too; my sketch pad dropped to the ground.
“There’s only one way to know if the man is scary, dead William-Billy or if he’s just some freezing old man who likes to wear scarves,” she said.
I guess I already knew what she was going to say next, but her words made my insides do somersaults anyway:
“We have to find him and ask.”
chapter 14
I told Aunt Maureen I needed a break from camp, and she didn’t question my motives. For the next four days, Kennedy and I either rode bikes to town or had an adult drop us off. They didn’t know it, but we were searching for the old man in the yellow scarf.
We’d start at the park by the general store, then make our way up one side of Pine and back down the other in what seemed like an infinite loop but usually only lasted two or three hours. That was all we could stand before heat or boredom got to us.
At first, I was afraid we’d find him.
By Sunday, I was mad we hadn’t.
That afternoon, full of the ice cream we’d just inhaled across the street, Kennedy and I sat on the park bench where I’d first seen the man.
“Maybe you imagined him,” Kennedy said.
There’s a word for seeing people who aren’t there, the voice said with disdain. It’s called hallucinating.
I didn’t hallucinate! I said defensively in my head—and weakly out loud.
“I didn’t say you did.” Kennedy bounced her knee. “Want to play Frisbee again?”
“Not really.” I watched a little girl fall off her miniature pink scooter, her dad rushing to help her up.
“Maybe he was a tourist,” Kennedy said. “Maybe he doesn’t even live here, and he’s back home in Montana or whatever.” Whatevah.
“Maybe,” I said, defeated. My sundress blew in the breeze and tickled the back of my calf. “We should just have Uncle Bran pick us up and forget it. I’m going back to camp tomorrow.”
“Don’t lose hope!” Kennedy said with forced energy. “Remember that book we found that lists people’s phone numbers and addresses? Which is so stalker, by the way. But we can use it to our advantage! We’ll find every William, Will, or Billy in town, then go to their houses.”
The internet had told us that there were more than four million people in the country with the name William, and that it was the sixth most popular name. Even though Pinedale was a small town, there still had to be a lot of them.
