CHAPTER SEVEN
The next morning, I found a use for the brown leather notebook I’d bought at Spines and Pines.
I thumbed through the first few pages I’d already filled over the last couple days: my attempts at drawing an open rose with lifelike petals.
Various calligraphy versions of my name.
Then a drawing of a tree I liked on the Bearberry Creek bank.
The trunk curved, as if the notions of up!
and tall! were all wrong for this particular tree.
It wanted to bend, so it did, bowing its shaggy head of greeny-yellow leaves over the water.
I left these pages instead of tearing them out, keeping them as a weird prelude to page four, where I began recording everything I knew about Penn so far.
The gold Vacheron Constantin magically appeared in Sacred.
The ghost appears when the second hand ticks and I wind the crown.
Name: Penn
Birthplace: Oregon
Penn’s clothes can vary.
It wasn’t much. But Ana and Grier and I loved true crime pod-casts, and I had to start somewhere.
Senior year, we listened to them while studying—the weirdest background noise ever—but somehow, we all crushed calculus.
After finishing dozens of episodes, I learned: big things are simply a whole lot of little things put together.
How to release Penn from my watch and send him off to his final resting place was a ginormous thing.
I hoped that by listing every little detail, seeing if some overarching truth about his cosmic purpose or any unfinished business revealed itself, we could solve it.
Yesterday Penn had disappeared roughly ten minutes after I’d offered my help. As part of my promise, I kept the gold watch fastened around my wrist.
Now it was late morning. Tía Viv worked outside, measuring and cutting a new set of balusters for the creek bridge.
And though I’d tried to check as often as possible, the second hand hadn’t moved yet.
I decided to make peace with the fact that I might not catch the ticking every time it happened.
I had to sleep, after all—something I’d been doing particularly well since we’d arrived in Sacred.
They were dead and dreamless sleeps; I liked those best. With how my life was going, I didn’t need vivid, lucid dreams to stretch my imagination.
My conscious mind was being dazzled enough.
Of course, I’d gone to Google first, immediately after Penn had vanished the day before.
I’d set a timer for five minutes to limit screen time and typed Penn Oregon in the search bar just to see what might pop up.
It was all I had. Then another problem: the color wheel had spun and spun.
Even when I’d switched from Wi-Fi to the cellular network, my browser had crashed before I could read a word, kicking me out to my home screen. Four times in a row.
Frustrated, I’d clicked on Instagram, which did manage to load.
Slowly. A quick scroll pulled up a post from Ana that I hadn’t seen.
The photo was moody and artful. Ana’s arms stretched over the bow of a boat cutting through the blue Atlantic.
Grier’s hands were in the frame, gripping the railing.
I knew that green Pura Vida cord bracelet she rarely took off.
The caption read, Wish you were here. The you they’d written was clearly me, and my heart had squeezed so hard, a dull ache had spread down my sternum.
I’d swiped away the scene without even attempting to leave a comment.
It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because the whole app kept crashing, making it an impossible research tool.
That left the computers at the library, which was one of the few services Sacred did offer. The branch I’d passed on my first visit into town was open four days a week. Today was one of them.
I tried to lob a goodbye at Vivian, but she was too far into her craft.
Clouds gathered through the sky, thickening as I made the trek toward town.
The library was a stand-alone building a couple blocks west of Cedar Street.
Red brick and chipped tan stucco, the letter a from the word “Sacred” knocked off-center.
I parked and stepped into a time warp. The place smelled like junior high and a janitor’s closet. Bulletin board flyers announced: lost dog, tan boxer, goes by Cookie. Then an upcoming county fair. Amateur night, Saturday at the Stump (that bar on Cedar Street).
I sailed past the checkout desk. The two clerks were engrossed in their work.
Fine with me. I didn’t need them asking what, exactly, I was hoping to do with the computers.
For all the town’s eccentricities, I didn’t think the people of Sacred would take too kindly to me researching a ghost who lived in my watch.
Three updated-enough computers were set up in a vacant rear alcove.
Computer monitors weren’t as risky to my post-concussive health as phone screens, but they still demanded limits.
There was no way I’d log in to any of my personal accounts from these rigs, though.
This whole place reeked of unsecured. I slid into a stained tweed chair in front of the first PC.
Penn Oregon, I typed into my phone. My hopes deflated inside another round of color wheels. It wasn’t just the cabin. All of Sacred hated my network or my phone.
Penn Oregon, I typed again, this time on the smudged computer keyboard, first testing the search boxes on popular social media sites. When those queries led to precisely zero accounts that matched the boy behind the name, I went global and typed the same words into the web browser.
Instantly, pages upon pages of results popped up, and I started scanning through them. Ana, Grier, and I often joked that the FBI should be run by teen girls because we could find anyone and anything with the smallest piece of information. But my skills were failing me now.
The search results only led to stationery stores and Penn tennis balls and a country club in Bend. About a million other entries spat out results for Oregon Penn.
I went deeper, making his name a requirement and trying: “Penn” Oregon high school football baseball basketball quarterback play game.
Penn looked built for these things. I hoped for an archived newspaper or high school journalism article detailing a winning goal or grand slam from a local star. But nothing. Next I tried: “Penn” Oregon teen boy actor school play graduation high school scholarship award.
And zilch.
My fingers hovered for a moment before typing in my next search.
“Penn” Oregon teen accident injury murder cold case unsolved mystery obituary funeral death hospital.
Each one of these words strained my fingers. My typing was slow, my body tense as I braced for terrible news. But . . . nothing.
For three solid beats, I held a sense of relief. But I had to remind myself that Penn was still really, truly dead. Even if his death didn’t make headlines, it did happen. Finding out who he was wouldn’t save him.
I shook the thought away and focused again on my search. The lack of info or leads was weird. How does a teen boy’s death go unnoticed?
I slumped, plunking my elbow on the computer table.
“Penn” Oregon teen brown hair blue eyes mosquito bite tall handsome curious.
I knew this search would lead to nowhere. It was just for me. Still, a hundred faces popped up. I scanned each one, trying to match noses and eyes, chins and cheeks. None matched the features that had been etched into my brain.
I checked my watch. The second hand was frozen stiff. I pulled out my brown notebook and added another entry:
Keywords “Penn Oregon” give no leads from internet searches.
He was truly a ghost online and off.
After I closed the notebook, I didn’t get up and head back to the cabin. I didn’t even give my eyes a break from the computer screen like my doctor recommended. Instead, I typed another set of keywords into the search bar:
Delilah Abernathy Portland Sacred Oregon.
Del was still a new fixture in my summer stay, and I really didn’t know that much about her. Since social media apps kept crashing on my phone, I wondered if Google had anything to say about Del. I pressed enter. And what popped up made the tiny hairs along my arms stand tall.
The top listing on my screen was an article from a regional paper. Divine Intervention in Sacred? I leaned in and scanned through the story.
An ordinary July morning at Needles Coffee and Tea could’ve turned tragic if not for Sacred summer resident Delilah Abernathy. Seventeen-year-old Abernathy was waiting in line at the Needles counter when she suddenly dashed to a window-adjacent table.
Four-year-old Lucy Hall was sitting, enjoying a raspberry muffin while her mother stood in line at the register.
Witnesses claim Abernathy yelled Lucy’s name, ran to the table, and yanked the four-year-old from her chair.
Moments later, a Jeep lost control on Cedar Street and crashed through the Needles bay window.
“Oh, it was just awful! Everyone screamed and jumped out of the way, and wood and glass went everywhere,” says Rose Daughtry, owner of an antique store down the street from Needles. “If it wasn’t for Delilah, we’re not sure little Lucy would be with us today.”
But could a bigger miracle have happened that day? “I was looking out the window during the whole thing,” said another coffee shop patron. “You couldn’t even see the Jeep until it came sailing through the wall. I don’t know how the girl knew. But she knew.”
So how did Abernathy act in time? The seventeen-year-old has refused to comment, but the coffee shop owner reports that just after the crash, a distraught Delilah was repeating the words “the Jeep and the window and the blue bow” over and over.
Some are suggesting the teen had some sort of vision before tragedy struck.
“My daughter was wearing a blue hair bow that day,” says Allison Hall, the child’s mother.
“I had my eye on Lucy the entire time she was in that booth, and I never would have guessed . . . I never could have known . . .” Hall took a moment to collect herself.
“Lucy would’ve been crushed if Delilah hadn’t pulled her away from the window when she did.
Del had to have seen or known what was going to happen.
I can’t explain it, but I’m okay with that. My daughter is alive.”
My hand clenched and unclenched at my side.
The rest of the article mentioned that an investigation into the Jeep’s mechanical system was still underway, and the middle-aged driver was emotionally distressed but physically unharmed.
Included was a picture of the aftermath at Needles.
There was the razed interior of the local coffee shop and the front of a Jeep Wrangler wedged into the street-facing wall.
Pieces started to join together in my mind. At the farmers market last Saturday, I’d overheard the soap maker begging Del to help her, to “see” something about someone. Earlier, at Spines and Pines, Corbin had mentioned asking if Del could “see” something about his high blood pressure.
Was it possible Del was . . . psychic? I didn’t even know the word for it.
My breathing quickened as I considered what this revelation could mean for me.
And more importantly, for the paranormal being who had ticked his way into my life.
Had Del actually seen Penn at the farmers market?
Could she sense his presence in the golden watch around my wrist . . . or somewhere far beyond?
And did I trust her enough to risk it?