I stand to leave. “Thanks for the drink,” I say.
“Lake?” He stops me as I’m about to take the first step down the ladder and onto the beach. “If it helps, my uncle, he was resurrected. You could talk to him, if you need to. About it.”
I swallow. “Right, I…appreciate that, Harrison.”
The sand prickles my bare feet against the wood.
“People can grow up, you know,” Harrison says to the back of my head. “If you give them a chance.”
I shrug, knowing what he means but not being sure what I can do about it now. I take the long way back to my car, walking along the lapping water where the day’s sandcastles are disappearing into the sand as the tide pulls them apart—either that or it’s putting the beach back together. It’s still hard to tell.
Love is For Fakers
I’m a mosaic made from sharp edges and broken things As long as no one looks too closely—not even me—none of the ugly bits show through Those parts that want to smash love and tear holes in hearts But I’m still made up of the broken things Even if nobody knows I still feel them
Ripping into my soul Did you write that?
A part of me did, yeah Is it true?
I think so, a lot of the time anyway Well, when you said it, did the ugly parts show through?
Yes
Maybe they’re not as ugly as you think Or maybe they’re even uglier I feel like that sometimes too Feel like what?
Like everything’s just an act. Like what’s the point?
Like none of this stuff is who I am on the inside Like I’m constantly on stage performing The part of great guy Are you not a “Great Guy”?
Maybe not a Great Guy But I’m a decent one I think I wanted to be a GG but I think maybe I’m just a phony instead It’s
…..
Exhausting?
Kill me, I’m whining
Stop. That’s the GG talking Just be the decent one today maybe The thing is
I don’t know that I can start that now You kinda already are I’m hijacking your thread You’re the only one reading it Still.
How long have you been writing poetry?
Is it poetry? I think they’re just words.
You’re lucky. You can write the true things On an anonymous message board…
It helps I think. Even if nobody reads it I know I’m there somewhere on the page Where I can find me I’ll read it
Do you write?
No. I draw. Stupid cartoons mainly I’d like to see one someday If you’re lucky
I thought we already established I am ^^
“Fine, you win.” I stare down my nose at my brother, wheelchair parked in the corner of his room, eyes fixed on a made-up point beyond his window while listening to an audiobook in French. I click pause on the media player. “I want you to give me the clue. So tell me your terms.”
I’ve given up. I’m exhausted. Last night, I managed two hours of sleep. The words in my head from the ChatterJaw thread would not stop whispering on and on and on until I would have pulled my hair out by the roots if it had made them go away.
Matt puffs into the straw and spins to face me. He stares hard in that unflinching way he has that makes you feel as if he’s uncovering some inner part of you that you’d rather keep hidden. I wait for the shift, for the flash of my brother before the accident, the one who sometimes appears so vividly on his face that I half expect him to stand up and declare that his paralysis has been some elaborate game of make-believe. But that alternate-universe brother of mine isn’t there, not even for the most fleeting of instants. In a way, it makes all this easier. “You have to promise to take me with you,” he says and there’s no hard edge of laughter in his voice now.
“Where?” I ask.
“On each stop of the scavenger hunt.” He enunciates his words like a professor.
“And why would you want to do that?”
The only reason my brother leaves the house is for doctors’ appointments, and it’s an ordeal. There’s the loading of him into the car. The exhaustion that takes hold of him so easily, he’s hardly able to withstand a trip for more than ten minutes before he’s cursing with fatigue and irritation. Not to mention he hates the outside world.
“Closure,” he says.
“Closure,” I repeat. “For who?”
“You.”
“That makes it sound like this will be the end of Penny and Will for me.” I narrow my eyes to slits. “It won’t. But even so, what’s in it for you?”
He blinks slowly, deliberately, refusing to rush even as he knows the minutes are barreling past me and my birthday is drawing closer and closer and closer. “I get the chance to make my case,” he says. “An audience, as they’d say in medieval times. To convince you that I am still the right choice.”
I peel my glance away to stare out the window. Yeah, except I’m not sure Matt was ever the right choice.
When I was younger, I used to pick my nail beds bloody, worrying about the day when my parents would stage an accident to help kill my brother. Even at fourteen I knew there’d be no coming back from that. Not as a family. Whether he drowned or fell from a balcony or they bludgeoned his head or he accidentally overdosed, they would willingly pull the last thread that held us together and they and my brother would no longer be the same people I loved. I was supposed to be a part of that.
“I’ll take you,” I say. “On the scavenger hunt. Just give me the first clue so that I can get on with this thing.” Before I was worried that if I let Matt be involved, I’d be giving a piece of Penny and Will away. Now I worry that if I don’t, I won’t get any pieces of Will or Penny back. So I vow not to let it happen. He’ll be a passenger and that’s all.
“Every stop of the way?”
“Every stop of the way.” I can’t find a way, not without the first clue. And I need it now more than ever. Because of what Harrison told me. Because she—whoever she was—had known something about Will that I hadn’t. He’d shared something of himself with this anonymous girl—assuming it even was a girl—that he hadn’t shared with Penny or with me.
After I spoke to Harrison and read the thread that turned everything upside down for me, I went back to Neville’s to see if Margaret could uncover the other user. I didn’t even care if I was overstepping my bounds and asking too much of a relative stranger or that the shop was twenty minutes out of my way back home. But Margaret and Ringo were both gone and I was left with a thousand questions and no answers.