Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
The halls of Six Rivers High School were still filled with students when I arrived, and I found Olivia standing in a sea of paintings that stretched like a patchwork blanket across her classroom.
The tables were covered in large sheets of paper that had served as the canvas of what looked to be a landscape assignment. The paint was still wet on many of them, and the earthy smell of it filled the air, transporting me right back to the studios at Byron. Those two images in my mind, the overlap of before and after, gave me an almost out-of-body experience. The girl I was in this classroom and the one I’d become at Byron were like two different species. I didn’t know anymore which I really was.
Olivia’s hair was pulled up into two buns on top of her head and her thick-rimmed glasses were swapped out for a funky green pair. It would be easy to confuse her with the kids out in the hall.
The smile on her lips made the glasses cinch up on her nose when I came through the door. “Hey!” She had one of the paintings balanced on her arms, trying to find space at the end of the table for it.
“Hey, need a hand?”
“That would be great.” She tipped her chin at the other paintings, motioning for me to slide them over.
I set the tote of groceries on one of the chairs and shifted the pages down until there was enough room. Olivia carefully situated the piece beside the others, making sure the edges weren’t touching.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
I took a step closer, studying the landscapes more carefully. There were definitely ones that didn’t show any promise or skill, but to my surprise, there were several that did.
“Some of these are actually quite good,” I said.
She came to stand beside me, looking over the table. “They really are, right? I think we’ll have a few in this class that stick with it. I hope they will, anyway.” She turned to look at me, setting her hands on her hips. “So, what’s up?”
I hesitated, hands nervously fidgeting with the edge of the painting I was still looking at. I wasn’t totally sure that what I was about to do wasn’t a mistake. If Johnny had been in the gorge with Autumn that day, it would open up a whole host of questions. Ones that would need to be answered. But that didn’t change the fact that it still felt like a kind of betrayal.
I cleared my throat, going over what I’d planned to say. This was delicate, and I didn’t want to imply anything to Olivia that would plant an idea in her head that wasn’t already there.
“I wanted to see if you could tell me more about Autumn, the student Johnny was working with?”
Olivia’s head cocked to the side. “Oh, sure. Why do you ask?”
“No reason, really. Micah mentioned her the other day and I guess I’m just…” I shrugged. “Curious.”
Olivia leaned one hip into the counter behind her, pushing the glasses up her nose. “Well, Autumn is one of those kids who got dealt a bad hand. But she also happens to be immensely gifted. Her mom’s a mess, and no one seems to know anything about her dad, which means she basically brought herself up. People around here tend to try and look out for one another, but there’s only so much you can do, you know?”
“Sure.”
I did know. It was one of the double-edged swords about this town. Johnny and I had pretty much been on our own for most of high school, and people had mostly looked the other way. But I’d known even then that if we’d needed something, they would have come through.
“The art teacher at the middle school had given me a call about Autumn before she started as a freshman here, because he saw something in her that he thought was special. As soon as I met her, I could tell that he was right. She was just… extraordinary, ” she said, a little breathless. The look in her eyes changed, as if she was remembering the exact moment she first thought it. “She was drawing mostly at that time, and it seemed like the art just came easily to her. She was immensely dedicated for someone her age, and photography became a focus for her sophomore year. Johnny started working in the darkroom around then, and Autumn had been learning what she could from YouTube videos and that kind of thing, but Johnny saw her work and took a genuine interest in it. I asked him to come by because I thought it would be inspiring for her to meet a working artist, and they just hit it off.”
Hit it off. Those words rubbed me the wrong way.
She pointed behind me, getting back to her feet. “This is some of her work here.”
I followed Olivia to the glass case fixed to the far wall, where a row of black-and-white photographs was on display. The subject of the images was the same in each one—they were trees. But not just any trees. These weren’t like the lush, life-filled giants that filled Six Rivers. They were bare-branched and gnarled. Strangled, even. One was blackened, split down the middle like it had been hit by lightning. But the photographs themselves had an almost human quality about them, as if they were portraits of people.
A cardstock marker that read SRHS Alum Autumn Fischer was mounted beneath them.
“Incredible, right?” Olivia’s voice was almost a whisper.
“Yeah.”
I meant it. They were good. Better than a lot of the self-indulgent, overdramatized work of the students I’d been surrounded with at Byron. This was a unique point of view. The photographs felt inhabited, somehow. Lived in. To be honest, it reminded me of Johnny’s work.
But when my gaze focused on a small mark in the corner of each of the photographs, my stomach twisted. It was a five-pointed star with looping ends, just like the one that marked the note I’d seen pinned above Johnny’s desk.
You changed my life.
I could see it now, the distinct way the proportions of the shape were intentional. It was a star, but it wasn’t. It was an A . An artist’s signature for Autumn.
Slowly, the words I’d read became misshapen, contorting themselves into a number of possible meanings. But in the context of what I’d learned in the last couple of days, they felt intimate. Too intimate.
“This series got her an interview for a grant program at Byron, and Johnny pulled some strings through CAS to get her considered for a scholarship.”
That made me pause. If Johnny had wanted to pull strings, why hadn’t he done it through me? I was an alumnus. I’d even served as a visiting artist for a stint a few years ago. But Johnny had never mentioned a thing about it.
“We were so excited when she got accepted. All the teachers took up a collection to buy her bus ticket and the other stuff she needed to get started—prepaying her cellphone for the next year and getting her books. All of that.”
“That’s…incredible.”
“It is. Like history repeating itself, you know?” She pushed her glasses up again, her eyes locking with mine.
She was talking about me now, but the turn of phrase was a little too close to the unnerving feeling I’d had that day in the gorge. Like this place—this forest—was telling the same stories over and over again.
“Some people are just lucky,” she said, a little more quietly.
I stared at the lightning-struck tree, emotion gathering in my chest like a storm. Autumn’s life and mine felt uncomfortably similar.
“Does she come back much to visit?” I asked, trying not to sound overly interested.
“Oh, no,” Olivia scoffed. “Honestly, I doubt we’ll ever see that girl again. She couldn’t wait to get out of here. I’m sure you know what that’s like. And really, Autumn doesn’t have anything to come back for.”
But that didn’t line up with the story that Johnny’s photographs told. She’d been in the gorge in November.
“So, she hasn’t been back at all since she left?”
Olivia’s gaze grew more focused on me, as if she was trying to puzzle me out, and I instantly regretted pressing the question. “No. Why?”
I let my eyes wander over the paintings on the wall next to me, trying to appear distracted. Like my insides weren’t twisting with the uncertainty of what all of this meant. If Autumn hadn’t been back since she left for school, then how could she have been with Johnny that day? Unless she’d never come back to Six Rivers. It was possible she’d made the drive from San Francisco and met Johnny at the gorge.
“I was just thinking maybe I’d get a chance to meet her while I’m here.”
“I’m sure she’s got herself very busy down there in the city. I mean, Autumn is really just a typical teenage girl. Emotional, passionate, looking for adventure. During high school, she spent pretty much all of her time out shooting or in the darkroom, and if she wasn’t doing that, she was with Ben.”
That got my attention. “Ben?”
“Yeah, she dated Ben Cross for a couple of years before graduation.”
“Sadie’s son?”
Olivia nodded. “Yeah. Kind of a fragile kid. I never understood what she saw in him, honestly. Autumn was such a…force. But he was crazy about her and absolutely devastated when she left.”
The fact that Autumn had a boyfriend was at least some comfort, but I still didn’t like the way things looked. Judging from Micah and Olivia’s casual take on Johnny and Autumn, I seemed to be the only one concerned about it.
Olivia’s phone chimed and she went to the desk, picking it up. She hissed, wincing. “Sorry, I gotta go.”
“Oh, no problem. I appreciate you letting me come by.”
“Of course.” She smiled, reaching for the ties of her apron. “Any time.”
I picked up the tote and crossed the room, my steps slowing as I passed Autumn’s series on the wall. The fluorescent lights bounced off the glass, distorting my reflection. I looked at each of the photographs once more, eyes lingering on the dead, gnarled branches.
When I started for the hallway again, Olivia’s voice stopped me.
“He really helped her find her voice, you know. Encouraged her to pursue this series she was doing with the trees.” She gestured to the mounted images on the wall. “It’s pretty rare to have a mentorship opportunity like that, particularly at that age.”
You changed my life.
I smiled, but it was heavy. “Yeah, it is.”
I pushed through the double doors that led to the parking lot, starting the walk back toward town. But my curiosity about Autumn had only intensified now. I only made it a few blocks before I couldn’t resist the urge any longer. When I had enough bars of service, I ducked into the little alleyway behind Main Street, leaning my back against the brick wall as I pulled out my phone. I opened the Instagram app, finding Johnny’s account, and his photos populated in the grid.
I clicked on his followers and the list of handles popped up, all 34,000 of them. When I typed the name Autumn into the search, only one was filtered out. I tapped it.
The screen loaded and I stared at the profile picture at the top. A girl with wide, round eyes looked into the camera, the waves of her chestnut hair falling over one shoulder. Beneath it, only a few words were written in the description.
Give me donuts or give me death!
I bit down on my bottom lip, scrolling down to the grid. The photos were a mix of artistic and candid, a few of them featuring dead trees similar to the series I’d seen displayed in Olivia’s classroom. Others featured ordinary things like coffee cups or an ice cream cone. There were really none of people, which I thought strange for a teenage girl. Where were the selfies or pictures from parties? Where were the group photos with friends?
The posts were inconsistent, some of them months apart, with the last one being a kind of farewell post before college. It was a photo of her reflection in the window of a car, but the phone was lifted up, hiding her face. The caption read, Last party in Six Rivers. At dawn, we ride.
There were only a few comments.
@g4life231 Gonna miss you girlie
@firstfrostchronicle Bright and early!
The last one from @marimarimayhem was just a motorcycle emoji followed by a fire emoji.
Only a few of the posts featured Autumn herself. I clicked on one of them and it filled the phone screen. She was sitting on a curb with her hands in her lap, legs extended out into the street. The background was only partially visible, but it looked like the downtown strip. Her long hair was in a thick, messy braid and the gleam in her eyes was bright. She was beautiful. A sweet kind of beautiful. There was no denying that. The curve of her cheek was sharp, the angle of her jaw severe, but it balanced the softness of her face perfectly. She had a mysterious look, like there were secrets folded behind those eyes.
There were twelve likes on the picture, and I couldn’t help myself. I clicked on them, looking for Johnny’s handle, but it wasn’t there. When I went to the next, I didn’t find his name on that one, either. Of the several I randomly chose from the grid, many of the same handles appeared in the likes and comments. @firstfrostchronicle, a @sooziekyoo, and @marimarimayhem were among them, but Johnny hadn’t liked or commented on any of the posts.
When I went back to Johnny’s page, the opposite was true. Autumn’s handle showed up on the likes of every photo I clicked on.
I let out a breath, ashamed of the relief I felt. Like somehow, I’d been afraid that Johnny was about to let me down in a way that I didn’t think I could come back from. But if there was anything going on between Autumn and my brother, it could have been no more than the infatuation of a young girl, cast on an older man. I remembered what it was like to be on the edge of adulthood. How tiny the steps were between one thing and another. You could just wake up one day and be standing on the other side of a line you didn’t remember crossing. For Johnny, I’d done it many times.