I had gotten dressed and run down the stairs and waited on the front porch, mumbling some frantic excuse to my parents, who were too confused to object, who seemed to sense that we were fighting against some inevitable outcome.
I had thought Max was coming so I could help in some search, so we could figure out where Caleb truly was, and we could all breathe a sigh of relief. But he wasn’t. He drove to their house, with the cop cars in front, and the men framed in the doorway, and then he kept going, and I realized he didn’t know where to go at all, so we just kept driving.
After a while, I focused on the smiling face of the bobblehead toy on the dashboard in front of me, and nothing more. Watching as it bounced along. Something so normal, so simple.
We drove and drove, for hours. Until his phone rang in the cup holder, and he pulled over to pick it up, and I could overhear, with finality, in the moment he squeezed his eyes shut.
He picked me up so we wouldn’t be alone, when we heard.
Max sees me staring at it now and says, “That was his, you know.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“He won it in one of those toy vending machines on the boardwalk. Determined it was a piece of crap. Stuck it there on the way home. Said it fit the décor.”
I laugh, slightly. We were always teasing Max about his car.
“But he was right,” Max says, grinning. “It really does.”
The whole time I’d been focused on this, trying to keep my mind from drifting to Caleb—when really it was him, all along.
No one answers the door at Caleb’s after school. The car is here, and after enough time has passed, I try the handle. It turns, and the door squeaks open as I gently push it ajar.
“Hello?” I call, my voice echoing off the walls. I peek inside, and the paintings and pictures are down. The area rugs removed, so all that remains are discolored squares of wood, darker than all the rest.
“Eve?” I’ve beaten Mia’s bus by at least an hour, given that I’ve left before last period, like I promised. I take out my phone, standing just inside the entrance, and scroll to the contact she’s entered in my phone. I send her a text: I’m here.
I hear a chirp from somewhere in the house—through the kitchen. Eve is nowhere to be found. I call her name again, softly. I don’t see her phone anywhere. Peering down the hall, I see her bedroom door is closed. I send another note: The front door was open.
This time, the chime comes from close by. Through the closed door leading to the garage. I place my ear to the door, and I hear something moving across the floor. My phone chimes as I’m reaching for the handle: Go on up. I’ll be there shortly.
The door to Mia’s room is open on the second-floor landing, and the floor looks exactly the same as the last time I peered into her room. As if even the disarray and life I had envisioned was an illusion. Maybe everything was frozen in time here too, after all.
As I step through the entrance of her room, the surface of her desk beside her bed comes into view, covered in books and pencils and crayons. Everything’s scattered. And then I see a navy blue edge, and I’m propelled across the room on a mission.
Half-buried under an open sketchpad is the case for his glasses.
I wasn’t even looking for them today, but here they are, in my hand. The last piece of Caleb that I thought would lead to some other understanding, that could lead me to where he might have been going. But instead they have been here, in Mia’s room, all along.
And I realize the truth then, have to look it in the face. That maybe I’m only seeing what I want to see. That maybe there is no other place Caleb was going. That his mother was right, and he was coming back to talk to me, and he was angry, and he lost control of the car, and he drowned. And it’s as simple as that—what everyone already thought.
And then I hear footsteps, coming from above. From Caleb’s room. Down the stairs. I’m trapped. If I go out into the hall, try to make it down the steps, I’ll be seen. So I hold myself very still instead, hoping the footsteps keep going.
But they don’t. They round the corner, and suddenly Mia’s standing in front of her open doorway, staring at me—holding Caleb’s case of glasses.
“I just wanted to know where they were,” I say. I’m appealing to a child, I’m begging, I’m pleading. Please don’t tell.
“Give them back,” she says, stepping closer. Her eyes are wide and she speaks with a strength I’ve never heard from her before.
“Okay.” I hold them out in my hand, and she swipes the case from me, gripping it in both hands. I wonder what story she has, what piece of Caleb she sees in these glasses. I want to tell her, suddenly, about the moment I saw him in them, and loved him. I want to hold the glasses and tell her the story and let her see it, too.
“He can’t read without them,” she whispers.
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. The words I want to say are caught in the back of my throat. I crouch down in front of her, nod, try to think of some comforting words, something someone else would say. “You can keep them,” is all that comes out.
She shakes her head, quickly. “They’re not yours.” She juts her chin up high, daring me to say otherwise. Then she steps aside so I can see the door, and understand that she’s sending me on my way.
I pause in the entrance, confused as to why she’s home this early. “Why are you home from school?” I ask.
“I’m sick,” she says, like it’s obvious. Then she shrugs, as if she can tell how flat the lie falls. “We’re moving anyways.”
I’m just glad she’s talking to me, and I try to keep up the momentum. “Do you know where you’re going?” I ask.
Then she narrows her eyes and closes her mouth, remembering who I am, why I am here. “My mom was right. You’re sneaky.”
I jerk back. “No, I’m not. I’m just…” Is that what she thinks of me? That I’m in here doing something I’m not supposed to do? “I’m just asking because I’ll miss you,” I say, and I realize that’s true.
But Mia just steps aside from the door, until I get the message. “You were sneaking around my room,” she says.
“I saw the glasses from the hall. I had been looking for them.”
“They’re not yours, Jessa,” she repeats.
Her gaze shifts to the window as I repeat my own plea. “Please don’t tell.”
I’m still shaken by the conversation with Mia. About what she said, and what she thinks. What else am I supposed to be doing in this room, other than sorting through his things? That’s the entire point. Eve asked me to do it.
I’m getting down to the basics up here. There’s the bedding, the computer, the backpack, the odds and ends. But the shelves have been cleared, and his desk drawers have been emptied; his clothes have been packed away, and the walls are bare.