“It’s closed, Lake.”
“Give me a second,” I say. I then give each of the doors a quick tug. “Wait here.” Then I go around and tug on the back and side exits. They’re all locked. Determined, though, I go back around to the front, where I take my keys out of my pocket along with a couple of bobby pins. I crouch down in front of the doors and work to finagle the locks. I stick a bobby pin in one of the jagged holes. I jiggle a half-inserted house key. Each time I listen for a promising rattle. When I think I hear one I tug on the handles some more. But they don’t budge.
Okay, I admit, I’m starting to panic. It was a harebrained plan to begin with. I thought I’d get into the auditorium, find a spare cap stashed in the stage’s wings. I imagined myself pushing Matt across the stage and moving the tassel for him and pretending to create thunderous applause. I thought I could do this and it might mean something. But that’s as far as I’ve gotten. I was so eager to do something that meant something to him, that might make up for…for what I was going to do—or rather not do—for him, that I pushed ahead before I thought it through.
“Lake.” Matt’s voice is deep.
“Just—just one second.” I bite on my thumbnail. “This always works in, like, movies and stuff.” It was so ridiculous of me to think it was that simple. This wasn’t the movies. If this were the movies, my brother wouldn’t be paralyzed and my friends wouldn’t be dead and my boyfriend wouldn’t have a secret self too important to tell me about.
“Like, what’s the point? Like, none of this stuff is who I am on the inside.” Will’s words tumble through my head. I wish for them to stop.
“Lake, let’s go.”
“No!” I have my hand pressed to my forehead now and I’m pacing. “There’s got to be a janitor here or something. Hello?” I call out. “Hello? Is anyone here?” Silence. I don’t know why this matters to me. Only that it’s the one thing that Matt’s ever said that he wanted aside from my resurrection choice and coming on this stupid scavenger hunt, so I thought that at least this I could definitely give him. This one thing.
“Lake!” This time he shouts so loud that it makes me jump and I quit pacing. “Christ, you insensitive little…” He trails off. His tongue is stuffed between his teeth, seething. Meanwhile my mouth goes dry. “Did you really think wheeling me across a stage was—going—to—fix—anything?” He drags out the words and I feel like he’s dragging me along with them. But his voice is no longer deep. It’s strained. And I have to think that maybe it would have fixed something.
“I just wanted to try.” I sound so small.
Out here it’s like we’re the only two people left. Birds chirp and land on a nearby roof. Shadows stretch out, trying to swallow us whole.
“You have made me suffer for days on end with this will-she-won’t-she bull and now you are desperate to clear your conscience over it. Well, stop it. You don’t want to use your resurrection on me.” He lets the bomb land. I wait for it to detonate, to see if it still feels like the truth or if maybe it’s somehow, over time, morphed into a lie.
I direct my words at the pavement. I don’t know what’s made it harder to tell Matt that I won’t resurrect him, not now, not ever, but saying it out loud has started to feel about as easy as tearing holes through my skin. “It’s complicated.”
“Astrophysics is complicated. I am your brother.”
“No, you’re not,” I snap back. “My brother died five years ago. I don’t know who the hell you are.”
I can practically see the red outline of a hand having slapped him across the face. Never had I expected one of my remarks to land. We both know that this one has and it leaves us wide-eyed and blinking at each other.
Matt breaks the silence first. “Go get what we came for,” he says softly.
My forehead is blazing hot, but I obey. Behind me, I sense Matt wanting to crawl out of his body. It’s so saddled with limitations. It’s so dependent on everyone else around him. He’s a prisoner to me, to my parents, to all of us.
I want this all to be over. That’s why when I find the fourth clue hiding underneath the lunch table I tear it open and read the contents and don’t bother waiting for him at all.
Because, who even cares anymore? I’m already a promise breaker.
Aren’t I?
Lake, you’ll find your prize by light of the next full moon.
Wait! Wait! Not yet! I promise, you’ll learn the location soon.
This year your birthday happens to fall on a night that’s quite auspicious.
Look out for your invite and follow the directions to uncover all our wishes.
I don’t tell Matt that I’ve already opened the envelope. By the time I return to him at St. Theresa’s, he’s wiped his face blank again and makes a point of acting unfazed by my remark. Instead, he makes several jabs about my driving and then claims he’s too tired to have dinner. So I guess we’re both keeping things to ourselves.
After I’ve gone to bed, Mom comes into my room and sits down on my bed. I quickly stash Penny’s journal beneath the comforter. I notice Mom doesn’t have a magazine in hand and find that I sort of wish that she did, even if only for old times’ sake.
She has her hair pulled back in the white shell barrette. It’s not worth being mad at her any longer.
“Lake,” she says. It’s been too long since I’ve heard a version of her other than one who’s exhausted. “What are you doing with Matt?”
“What do you mean?”
Her fingers are long and bony and if you pinch the skin above the knuckle it takes a long time for it to go down. I watch her play absently with the folds on her hands. “I mean that you’ve been taking him on outings, spending time with him. Why?”
“Because he asked me to.”
“Asked you to what?” she says.
I sit up and use my toes to tuck Penny’s journal farther beneath the covers. I have a one-minute debate about how much to tell her and then decide that it doesn’t matter. I can tell her or not and it won’t change a thing, so I do what’s easiest. “Will set up this scavenger hunt for my birthday,” I begin. “He wanted me to get to the end of it because…because it would tell me something. Because it’s important, what’s at the end. Matt made me promise to bring him along on the hunt.”
Her mouth twists as if she’s fishing around in there for the right thing to say. I think she finds it. “Sometimes grief makes us hold on to things tighter than we otherwise would and search for answers where there aren’t any,” she says. It reminds me of one of Penny’s Buddhist quotes, transcribed carefully in her handwriting.