CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Is this a joke?” I said, half-unhinged, to the gold Vacheron Constantin around my wrist. Maybe I should’ve had more respect for an item that had haunted Penn’s grandfather and sent a young Penn into a full-blown seizure. Maybe I should’ve walked on glass or eggshells, treading lightly.
But I didn’t. I’d already chosen violence. Or in this case, direct defiance. I was in the tree-lined parking lot of a place I wasn’t supposed to be, on my way to find information I wasn’t supposed to look for. And by some joke or magical callout, the watch began to tick.
“Jesus, Sylvie,” Penn said after I turned the crown and he realized where we were.
My heart used up a few beats just looking at him.
He was wearing the same outfit he wore when he first appeared in my bedroom.
Blue-plaid shirt and medium-wash jeans, black sneakers.
Same pebbly scruff and disordered wave to his hair.
I wished my eyes were lenses and my memory were photographic.
“Listen. I can . . .” I trailed off because, no, I couldn’t explain.
I didn’t have a good enough excuse for being here other than .
. . “I’m a jerk.” I shook my head helplessly. “I’m sorry.”
He rolled my words over the outline of his jaw and swallowed hard. “Are you coming or going?”
“Coming,” I said, and the relief passing over his face shot my anxiety to cloud level. My lungs felt tight and lumbering, as if I needed to remind myself to breathe. What didn’t he want me to find?
“Why did you turn the crown here?” he asked. “Why not drive over to Cedar Street or something? I wouldn’t have known any better.”
It was an excellent question. Those were best for bringing out the worst truths.
“Because I’m tired,” I said over a messy huff.
“And I went through some stuff with Vivian yesterday. She called me out and gave me something annoying to think about—as she does. But I don’t want to do that because I’m still scrambled up and confused and, did I say ‘tired’? ”
“Sylvie.”
I barreled on. “I came here because I want things to make sense. I needed to do something big enough to shock me away from my own thoughts for five minutes.” I glanced down, my horror doubling.
“And now I’m bleeding again.” Not only from my palm, but my right arm too.
Twin blotches, seeping from bandages. “Do not tell me to go to the hospital. I can hear you thinking it.”
“You heard wrong, Syl. I’m not going to tell you to do anything.”
“Good, because I seem to be an expert at breaking promises to you. And I hate that. I am sorry.”
He nodded, softening. “It’s done, and we’re here, so here it’s gonna be.” He sucked in a jagged breath. “I’m pretty sure I know why your wounds won’t heal. It’s one of the reasons I wanted you to wait to look me up. I didn’t want you to go in there alone.”
Oxygen left my body. “You saw something bad. God, it’s the watch. I knew it. You tried so hard to get me to take it off.”
He glanced left, then right, and led me to a concrete bench on the far side of the library. “It wasn’t the watch. It was the color red,” he started when we sat. “At the beach.”
A color had flooded his memory? “The broken float?”
“Yeah, and then your hand. The blood.” He reached out with one gentle finger over my thumb, his warmth like a balm. “That one word unlocked everything. Red. Rojo. The red Camaro. Rojas.”
Tiny hairs along my arms sprang up. “That’s—”
“Your aunt, the famous artist. Vivian Rojas. She owns a red Camaro.”
“But I never told you her last name. I never even mentioned that car.” Just like I never told him about the canceled fireworks at Skinner Butte.
“You didn’t have to. Your aunt’s name and her car aren’t memories from you. They’re from me.”
My mind drifted back and forth, troubled with impossibilities. “But that would mean . . . our pasts are connected somehow?” This one thought was a diamond. I wanted to stuff it into my fist and never let go.
Penn pinched his eyes shut, breathing around my words. “We’re connected by one day.”
Which meant there could have been a before for us, an after past this summer and this watch. The sparkling thought I held so tightly was ripping me to shreds.
“Tell me,” I said, unable to keep up with the torrential rush of my head. My lungs felt as if they were housing sand more than air. “Real talk.”
“Then I need another promise. One you’ll actually keep this time,” he said. “What’s the first thing that comes to mind that feels majorly important to you? Like, precious—something you’d never want to lose. Don’t think, just say it—”
“You and me in my bedroom” came out as effortlessly as a reflex.
I could’ve said the cut-glass-and-wood tree lamp Tía Viv made for my quinceanera.
Or any one of those charmed and golden days with Grier and Ana.
But a head and heart knew better. “The night you asked me to take off this watch, and I wouldn’t.
The way you looked at me. That moment. Not even the kiss, which was .
. .” Life-giving. Realm-breaking. Heart-ending.
“It was.” His body whirred with good memory. “Swear on that moment.”
“Swear what?”
“We’re going to go into the library, and I’m going to give you the right keywords this time. And when you see what comes up, you have to promise that no matter what, you’ll stay with me. And we’ll figure it out together.”
“You’re scaring me. Again.” What about this boy was so damning?
His hand reached out, twirling like a breeze through my hair. “That first day I appeared in your room, you stayed. You let me explain until you understood as much as you could. You didn’t run.”
“I didn’t,” I said, ready to promise him everything I had left. “This time I’ll stay too. I swear on that look. On you and me.”
For a short time, we took whatever was left of that—of him and me and us—and hung it on a cloud. Strung it from tree to tree like a lit-up strand, so starry-bright, I almost forgot it would never work for wishes.
When we were ready, I said a quiet thank-you for that ratty orange carpet and the rickety chairs and musty gym-sock smell. Another for him, sitting next to me in front of a blinking cursor that flashed like a countdown timer.
“The first big thing,” he said when it was simply time.
“Penn isn’t my real name. That’s why your earlier searches came up empty.
” My mouth went slack and immediately, his hand went up.
“I mean, it is. Sort of. It’s the nickname my grandfather gave me when I was little.
He did it because I was named after him. ”
“Patrick,” I said hesitantly, testing its flavor.
He nodded. “Patrick . . . Gerrity. It’s, er, nice to meet you.”
The name echoed through my brain, but I didn’t know where to trap the sound. “You’ll always be Penn to me. Penn Gerrity.”
He smiled. “That’s still me. The first me you knew. I remembered my full name at the beach, but I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to find me until I came back.”
“Because of what else I’d find.”
“Because of what you won’t,” he said softly, letting a long pause dangle before he continued. “I’m not buried in a graveyard—anywhere. No gravestone, no ashes, no record of a memorial. There’s no death certificate issued for a Patrick Gerrity in Oregon. Because I don’t need one yet.”
A kind of hope I’d pushed away for so long ignited inside me.
I glowed like a lantern with it. That small taste of it went down like campfire and woodsmoke and fat, roasted marshmallows, charred at the edges.
It was beach-wavy hair and sunlight and saltwater skin.
It was dancing, and worn-out songs, and paper love notes folded up into little triangles. Most of all, it was a kiss.
“You’re not really a ghost.” My insides vibrated. My smile stretched so wide, it cracked through the L-shaped crease between my lips. “Jesus, Penn, you’re not dead.”
“I’m very much alive,” he said, but the words burned out before touching his eyes.
My arm waved across the scarred table. “Then what the hell are you when you’re here, with me? Like this?”
He exhaled roughly, pointing. “Remember I told you that when I was five, I tried on that watch and had a seizure?” I nodded, and he continued.
“After I got out of the hospital, Grandpa Patrick said I told him all this stuff from while I was unconscious—things I’d dreamed.
That day, the watch took a piece of me, Sylvie. It forged a link.”
“A link to what?”
“Right now, the real me is at home and asleep. I usually work nights, so my sleep schedule is off. And I’m dreaming all of this—us. It’s why I’m so limited here. When I disappear, that’s me waking up.”
“And when you fall asleep, that’s when the second hand ticks,” I said with total wonder. “The watch brings your dreaming self to me.”
“Right. The watch has made it so I can actually live through my dreams. My reality is locked away unless something triggers it, but I can think and reason.” His hand inched toward mine. “And I can feel. I can wish.”
His wish, and mine. That we would’ve met earlier.
That we would’ve had a chance for everything.
But he’d made that wish before understanding who and where and what he was when he was with me.
My heart raced, mind whirring. I didn’t have to find out how Penn had died.
I didn’t have to help him move on to his final home; he was home.
I only had to find out where that was. And then I could . . . We could . . .
Tingles tapped in double time, and I scooted my chair closer to the old desktop computer. “I need to see everything,” I said, and typed Patrick Gerrity Oregon into the search bar.
Penn hovered his daydream hand over mine. “There’s something else. I told you I’d give you the right keywords.” Anguish and the very definition of regret overtook his features as he said, “Eugene Vivian Rojas red Camaro.”
I obeyed but didn’t understand as I deleted and typed, staring at the implausibility of each new word. My temples throbbed, and my hand trembled over the keyboard.
Time grabbed my throat by the second hand after I hit the return key.
My lungs burned. I became past and present, current and tide and shifting phases of moons.
I wound, clockwise and counter, forward and backward over the first entry that appeared on the screen.
It was a local newspaper article from weeks before, dated the day after I arrived in Sacred with Tía Viv in her bright-red Camaro.
I ingested the headline. Scanned through the text as the most glaring keywords of my existence struck like fiery arrows.
TWO DEAD IN TRAGIC CAR ACCIDENT
South of Eugene near Sacred. Red Camaro. Ran off a cliff. Tire marks, swerve, ravine.
Vivian Rojas, sixty-two. Driver.
Eighteen-year-old female, passenger seat. Sylvie Castellano.
The artist had recently announced a limited run of her renowned cajas de suenos.
Sacred Heart Medical Center, Springfield. Both women died en route.
Died. Both women died.
“Oh God.” My body jerked, and the only thing I could lock on to was the exit.
All I could think was motion. I craved it, the rush-rush-rush of my blood closing me in like a vise.
And Penn had known. He’d known I’d want to break free and escape a terrible truth.
But it wasn’t his truth that would broadside me from every angle.
It was my own.
I fought the relentless pull of elsewhere, but I’d sworn, on him and me, and that one night in my cabin bedroom. I had to stay . . . One, two, set—-
How was I even breathing? How was I even here?
“Sylvie, I’m not going to insult you and say it’s okay. It’s not okay.”
No, it wasn’t. It couldn’t be worse.
“But I’m right here,” he said. “It doesn’t matter that I’m dreaming. I’m still here.” Penn leaned in close, his brilliant warmth passing over me. “Remember that night. Close your eyes and go there. Let’s remember it together.”
I tried so hard, lulled by the gentle rasp of his voice. I imagined myself as a bright-red balloon on a long, long string, clutched in the tiny hand of a child. Don’t let go. Don’t let go.
“I’m going to help you understand,” he said. I stayed in our day-dream, existing as wholly as I could inside the space he created.
“I was at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Springfield that night, working as an orderly. I heard the call come in over the emergency-room dispatch. All those words I told you—the red Camaro. Vivian Rojas, the accident, the eighteen-year-old passenger.” He choked over the next part.
“That’s what I saw at the beach. What I really am—or where. And what you had to be.”
“Oh God, Penn.” My eyes hinged open, time splitting me down the center. “You were never a ghost.”
“Never, Syl.”
“I am.”