Chapter Thirty-Two
Thirty-Two
I spend the entire walk over to Nora’s house planning out what to say to her, but as I head up the driveway, my half-assed speech disintegrates.
I pause on the welcome mat, a hand lifted to knock. There’s no going back from here. Nora may not believe me. She has no reason to. But I’m out of options.
I take a breath. Steel myself. And knock.
After a few agonizing seconds, the door whines open and Nora steps into the doorway. Her hair is damp from a shower and her lips are bare. She runs a hand through her hair, and it’s so like Finn, a bolt of recognition shoots through my chest.
I don’t really know if he’s still alive—Aisha and Sloane claim they don’t know how much time passes between fading and dying—but a huge part of convincing Nora to help me lies in finding a living Finn at the other end.
Nora clears her throat.
“Hey,” she says, a beat too many passing before she speaks. We both stand awkwardly on either side of the door, staring at each other, until Nora steps back. “Come on in.”
Cheeks flushing, I slip past her and into the foyer. Noise filters down the hall from the kitchen; laughter and seventies music. Nora’s mom and stepdad.
Nora says nothing as she heads for the stairs, and I follow her up to her room wordlessly. Only when we’re inside, the door shut behind us and Nora sitting on the end of her bed, does she look at me.
“Any updates on Jasper?” she asks.
I linger at the door, like an intruder.
“No,” I say.
Nora nods. Her gaze trails over my face, as if my reason for showing up here is written somewhere on my skin.
“I need to talk to you.”
She leans back on her palms. “What’s up?”
I gnaw on the inside of my cheek. Every instinct tells me to run.
“This is going to sound”—I let out a mirthless laugh—“like I’m out of my goddamn mind, and I know that, but I don’t know how else to do this, so I’m going to say it.” I exhale. Look at Nora and look away. “I have an idea to find Jasper and the others.” Another glance at Nora. “To find Finn.”
Now I have her attention.
I swallow, my tongue sticky and dry. “I think it’s all connected. Whoever took Finn is the same person who took Jasper and all the others. And I have no clue what’s being done to them, but I think I know where they are.”
As quickly as I got her, I lose her.
I move a bit farther into the room, but not much. Like distance will make the truth easier for Nora to swallow. “Finn didn’t disappear.”
His name at least halts Nora’s immediate protest, earning me enough time for another sentence.
“Whoever is taking these kids, I think they’re keeping them alive. I don’t know why. And after a few years, they…they die.”
Nora pushes to her feet, and I can see the argument rising on her tongue. Her frown pulls so deep, I wonder if it hurts. “How the hell would you know that if you don’t know where they are?”
She is giving me every chance to back out, but I have to push forward. “I know because Finn told me.”
The last of Nora’s resolve splinters—I’ve gone too far.
“Finn didn’t run away. He was taken,” I say. “He didn’t leave you. He misses the hell out of you, actually—”
Nora jerks forward, so fast I almost expect her to hit me. Instead, she folds her arms tight against her chest. Her jaw trembles with how hard she’s clenching her teeth. She is shaking as she says, “That’s enough.”
“He and two of the girls, Sloane Hart and Aisha Davies, are trapped in some kind of limbo. Like ghosts. They’ve been stuck in my aunt’s house for years, but they’re still alive—”
“What is wrong with you?” Nora snaps.
“Nora—”
“I tried to be your friend, Jo, I really did. Even when you gave me every reason not to be. But this is cruel.” She throws her hands up. “You need to go.”
She moves forward, shepherding me toward the door, and I scramble backward, digging my hand into my pocket. I came here with one fail-safe, and even it might be faulty. But it’s all I have.
I yank out the sheet music, the one with the song I started and Finn finished, and shove it at her.
She grabs it, mostly to get it out of her face, I think, but then her gaze falls to the paper, to the writing, and she freezes. Slowly, her head tilts and her lips part, then her eyes glaze over.
“This is my brother’s handwriting,” she says. “How do you have this?”
“Finn and I wrote it,” I say, voice soft. “Well, he really did most of it.”
I take her in. Nora is taller than me, as tall as Finn, but when her shoulders sink, and her chin dips, she’s the fourteen-year-old whose brother never came home. Her hand rises to her chest, above her heart.
“I know it sounds impossible,” I say. My chest tightens, and my words come fast. “But I’ve spent the last three months with him.
I know that he fidgets more than any human being I’ve ever met, and that he has to have music playing around him at all times.
I know that he secretly likes trashy reality TV shows.
I know that he’s thoughtful in a way that’s super weird for a teenage boy. ”
When Nora lifts her gaze to mine, I know why Finn kept so many of his own secrets, too.
It’s in her eyes. The shift from skepticism to hope, all of it shaded by fear. Hope is more dangerous than any grief. Grief may never go away, but it softens. Hope digs its claws in, down to the bone, and never lets go.
“The same people who have had your brother for three years have mine now, too,” I say. “I want to get them back.”
—
“Obviously, the police will be no help,” Nora says ten minutes later, pacing back and forth in front of a whiteboard she dragged out of the back of her closet.
“I wasn’t counting on it,” I say.
“And if they’re in on it, we tip them off,” she says.
“You think they are?” I ask.
Nora pauses as she thinks, her tongue poking against one side of her mouth, giving her a chipmunk-esque look.
“Why the power plant?” she asks.
“It’s a guess,” I say. “We’ve checked every inch of my house, and the one across the street. The only place we haven’t gone is the plant. And it’s hard to get to. It’s a decent place to hide.”
“If you’re right, this isn’t some small thing. It takes a lot to keep multiple people alive, and hidden, for years.”
“I know. But it’s better than the alternative, isn’t it?”
“Finn would do it for me,” Nora says. “So I’m in. Even if it is you and me against a twenty-year-old town conspiracy.”
I can’t help but smile. “It’s not just you and me,” I say.
—
“No offense, but I was expecting a little more than a fifteen-year-old as our cavalry,” Nora says.
In her defense, she doesn’t see the other two members of our sad little rescue squad. Aisha and Sloane stand on Margot’s right side.
“It’s like we’re not even here,” Sloane says, monotone.
Margot snorts. Since the incident at the creek, Margot and Sloane have become fast friends.
“Hilarious,” Aisha replies.
The five of us, or three, if you have Nora’s eyes, are gathered around the living room. My aunt dragged my mom out of the house earlier for grocery shopping. Really, I think she wanted to get her off the couch she’s been waiting on since Jasper disappeared.
“Two of the other girls who were taken are here.” I gesture to them, respectively. “Aisha Davies. And Sloane Hart.”
Nora looks in their general direction, skepticism in her tense expression.
“Can you guys…” I pause, not sure what I’m asking. Of the trio, Finn was the best at physical contact with inanimate objects. Sloane is a close second, though she can’t carry anything far. Aisha is really good with electricity.
A moment later, the lights shut off. Turn back on. Off, then on again.
“Aisha,” I say. It’s as much of a hello as she can give.
Sloane moves to the coffee table, staring down at the large books no one ever reads. Then she reaches down, her lips pursed in concentration, and swats one of the books onto the floor.
“Sloane,” I say.
“Ta-da,” adds Margot, before she drops onto the love seat.
Aisha sits beside her, and Sloane perches on the arm of the couch.
Nora’s eyes are wide, darting between the fallen book and the lights above our heads. “I want to believe this, Jo. But it’s—” She stops, gesturing at nothing.
“Can you tell her something for me?” Sloane asks.
To Nora, I say, “Sloane wants to say something. If that’s cool.”
“The ghost has a message for me. Super normal.” Nora nods a few times, but she hasn’t run out the door yet, so it’s progress.
I look at Sloane. And when she speaks, I relay the message.
“She wants you to know that Finn was like a brother to her and Aisha. She knows you worried about him, but the three of them took care of each other.” Tears well in my eyes as I speak, and my throat constricts.
“He made an unbearable situation feel a little bit like home, and she loves him for that.”
Sloane mouths Thank you to me, and I nod back.
“Was?” Nora says, and I realize my mistake. The past tense. “Where is he?”
“They come in and out,” Margot says, and I shoot her a grateful look. “The longer they’re…stuck, the more they fade. So he’s not here right now.”
Nora softens, assuaged for the moment. I’m hoping there isn’t time for further inquiry on the subject.
“So you two have really been here all this time?” Nora asks. She’s looking at the spot I pointed to earlier, which both Aisha and Sloane have vacated, but the fact that she’s trying to address them directly makes my heart swell.
Margot jumps in to the bridge the gap, translating between the three, and I step back, taking in the little team we’ve assembled.
Three teenage girls. Two teenage ghosts.
The five of us against whatever is waiting inside that building.