Forever

chapter SEVENTY-SEVEN

• ISABEL •

When we first moved to this house, the piano room was the only room that I loved. I’d hated that we’d moved from California to a state equally far from both oceans my country had to offer. I hated the old, moldy smell of the house and the creepy woods around it. I’d hated how it made my angry brother even angrier. I hated the way my bedroom had slanted walls and the stairs creaked and the kitchen had ants, no matter how expensive the appliances were.

But I’d loved the piano room. It was a round room made up half of windows and half of short wall sections painted deep burgundy. There wasn’t anything in the room but the piano, three chairs, and a chandelier that was amazingly non-tacky, given the rest of the house’s lighting decor.

I didn’t play the piano, but I liked to sit on the bench, anyway, my back to the piano, and look out the windows into the woods. They didn’t seem creepy from inside, with a safe distance between me and them. There might have been monsters in them, but nothing that could contend with twenty yards of yard, an inch of glass, and a Steinway. The best way to experience nature, I’d thought.

I still had days when I thought that was the best way to deal with it.

Tonight, I ventured down from my bedroom, avoiding my parents, who were talking in hushed voices in the library, and crept into the piano room. I shut the door so that it wouldn’t make any sound and sat cross-legged on the bench. It was night, so there was nothing to see outside the windows except for the circle of grass lit by the back door light. It didn’t really matter that I couldn’t see the trees, though. There were no monsters in them anymore.

I pulled my hoodie around me and drew my legs up to my chest, sitting sideways on the bench. It felt like I’d always been cold here in Minnesota. I kept waiting for it to get to summer, but it never seemed to make it that far.

California didn’t sound like a terrible idea at the moment. I wanted to dig myself into the sand and hibernate until I didn’t feel so hollow inside.

When my phone rang, I jerked and slammed my elbow into the keyboard of the piano, which let out a low, agonized thud. I hadn’t realized the phone was still in my pocket.

I pulled it out and looked at the caller ID — Beck’s house. I really wasn’t up for sounding like the Isabel that they knew. Why couldn’t they just give me one night?

I put it to my ear. “What?”

There was nothing on the other end. I checked to make sure the phone had a signal. “What? Hello? Is there anybody there?”

“Da.”

I had no bones left in my body. I slid off the bench, trying to hold the phone to my ear still, trying to hold my head up because my muscles felt completely unequal to the task. My heart was clubbing so painfully in my ears that it took me a moment to realize that if he’d said something else, I wouldn’t have heard it.

“You,” I snarled, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I was sure the rest of the sentence would come to me. “You scared the shit out of me!”

He laughed then, that laugh that I’d heard at the clinic, and I started to cry.

“Now Ringo and I have even more in common,” Cole said. “Your father’s shot both of us. How many people can say that? Are you choking on something?”

I thought about picking myself back off the floor, but my legs were still unsteady. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m doing, Cole.”

“I forgot to say that was who was calling.”

“Where were you?”

He made a dismissive noise. “In the woods. Regrowing my spleen or something. Also, parts of my thighs. I’m not sure my better parts work anymore. You’re welcome to come over and take a look under the hood.”

“Cole,” I said, “I have to tell you something.”

“I saw,” he replied. “I know what you did.”

“I’m sorry.”

He paused. “I know you are.”

“Do Sam and Grace know you’re alive?”

Cole said, “I’ll have a joyous reunion with them later. I needed to call you first.”

For a moment, I let myself just bask in that last sentence. Memorized it for replaying in my head over and over later.

“My parents are sending me back to California for what I did.” I didn’t know any way to say it other than just throwing it out there.

Cole didn’t answer for a moment.

“I’ve been to California,” he said finally. “Sort of a magical place. Dry heat and fire ants and gray imported cars with big engines. I’m imagining you next to a decorative cactus. You look delicious.”

“I told Grace I didn’t want to go.”

“Liar. You’re a California girl anyway,” he said. “You’re just an astronaut here.”

I surprised myself by laughing.

“What?”

“Because you have only known me for, like, fourteen seconds, and seven of those were us making out, and you still know more about me than all of my friends here in this stupid place,” I said.

Cole considered this. “Well, I’m an excellent judge of character.”

Just the idea of him sitting over at Beck’s house, alive, made me want to smile, and then smile some more, and then start laughing and not stop. My parents could be angry at me for the rest of my life.

“Cole,” I said. “Don’t lose this number.”





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