CHAPTER 9 TIME MARCHES ON
TIME MARCHES ON
SIX WEEKS LATER
I wonder what it’s like to be a recluse.
That is sort of what I’ve become. Leaving the house still feels like it takes a lot of effort so most days I just stay inside.
I haven’t taken much time to reach out to my friends.
The cold still clings to everything. An alternating series of thaws and refreezing has left Ithaca a frigid icy mess.
Miss Cliff has joined me in my avoid-people-when-possible thinking. She moved to a house in South Hill and keeps mostly to herself. I’ve seen her once in the six weeks after Noah’s death, and the encounter left me shaken.
I was in a bookstore, humoring my mom’s request to get out of the house, when I saw Miss Cliff bob past the window.
I ran out to say hi, called her name twice, but she was on the phone.
She was smiling, laughing, saying something into the phone and then chuckling again as she disappeared into the co-op next door.
She must not have heard me or she ignored me on purpose, and either way, it was weird seeing her so jovial, so unaffected.
My mom says she hasn’t been in touch with her and gently reminds me that Miss Cliff has very recently lost her only child.
Whatever she is doing to keep herself sane is allowed even if that means finding things to be happy about.
I immediately feel terrible for being so judgmental.
It’s just that one of the last things she said to me was that she’d check up on me and she hasn’t.
Noah is gone and now it seems like she is too.
I still feel like an exposed nerve. Noah’s loss is just as fresh in my mind as the day it happened, and I am struggling every single day.
Everything is still too bright, too loud.
I can’t eat the food me and Noah used to eat.
I can’t listen to the songs Noah always sang along to.
More than once, I’ve picked up my phone and actually called or texted him and the realization that he won’t answer brings me so low I feel like I’m drowning.
I had hoped the grief would work some kind of magic in my brain, that it would let me dream of Noah, but I’m not that lucky. In fact, the opposite ends up happening. The nightmare has become more vivid in all its awfulness.
One night, almost two months after Noah’s death, the nightmare plays in my mind as soon as my head hits the pillow—me in the back seat of our car, the familiar but strange song on the radio, Mom in the passenger seat, Dad driving.
A flash—my mom’s body crumpled on the pavement as my dad crouches over her.
His face stuck in a horrible gaping scream.
And then, for the second time since my birthday, there’s something else—something new.
A bright light overhead, a small room, and a flash of something silver.
I awake, sitting bolt upright. A layer of sweat blankets my entire body.
My T-shirt sticks to my back and my shorts cling to my legs.
I swing my feet over the side of my bed and press them into the chilly floorboards.
I try to focus on the cold as I catch my breath.
I’ve been hoping for a change in my nightmare, a shift to something else—anything else.
This scene is new, but not any better. These images come with the same feeling of terror and helplessness as the rest of the nightmare.
I glance at my phone. It’s three in the morning and there’s a text from Caleb.
CALEB: Love you, boo. Just wanted to tell you that.
I text him back for the first time in weeks.
ME: Love you back.
I make a promise to myself that I will call him and Cip the next afternoon and make plans to get together.
I’ve continued the school year virtually because I can’t stand to be at Ithaca High, walking the halls where Noah and I spent so much time, but that means I haven’t seen Caleb or Cipriana either.
I miss them and my mom has been urging me to get out of the house more anyway.
I know she’s right. I have to find a way to keep moving forward but a part of me feels like that means leaving Noah behind and I don’t want to do that.
I move to the window and crack it open. The cold March air creeps in like an unseen hand and wraps itself around me. It helps clear my head a little, but as I breathe in the crisp late-winter air, something accompanies the chilly draft inside—the faint scent of roses.
I grab a hoodie and slip into the hallway.
The pipes knock and creak as they struggle to push hot air through the baseboard heaters.
Down the hall, my parents’ bedroom door sits ajar.
The pale light from the hallway seeps in enough for me to see that neither of them are in bed.
I take the back staircase down to the first floor and stop to listen.
All I hear is the boiler kicking up, the tap tap tap of the air trapped in the pipes, and the ticking of the grandfather clock.
There’s a rustling near the back door and I stifle a scream before I realize it’s just one of my dad’s ravens, come to scoop up what’s left of the seeds he’d left them.
Its body is like a shadow as it crowds the little glass window, then flies off.
A heavy, unsettling silence fills the house.
I grab a glass of water and am about to head back upstairs when I realize there’s a light on somewhere in the basement.
Not the main hallway light but something bright enough to faintly illuminate the wall by the back staircase.
Easing myself onto the steps I hold my breath and listen.
The distinct sound of air hissing out of a can wafts up.
Prepping a body at three in the morning?
We don’t do that unless it’s an emergency and those situations are always really obvious because my parents start running around the house, making calls, and ultimately, I’m roped into calling some poor family member at two in the morning to ask if they have personal items for the deceased and pictures of them when they were alive for reference.
Emergency situations are pure chaos. This is not that.
The hallway is cast in shadow and a thready light streams from the crack under the door of the prep room. I approach on tiptoe. My mom’s voice filters out in a whisper.
“Why would you get a different brand?” She sounds annoyed but hearing her pose the question tells me she isn’t by herself in there.
“It’s cheaper,” my dad says. “We go through so much I thought we could save a little money.”
“Right. And now look.” She huffs. “We can skimp on some things but not this.”
“I know,” my dad says. “You’re right. Forgive me?”
“Nothing to forgive,” says my mom as all the irritation goes out of her voice. “It’s okay. It’s just that the work has to be flawless and in order for that to happen, I need the right supplies. I really don’t know how much more—”
“Please,” my dad says softly. “Please don’t say that.”
I hover outside the door, confused. My dad rarely goes in the prep room when we’re doing makeup. He doesn’t know the difference between cobalt blue and lapis. He probably couldn’t shade match someone’s skin color if his life depended on it.
I step close enough to look through the window only to find it blocked by some kind of makeshift curtain.
I hear the air hiss again. They are definitely prepping a body in there, and I wonder how awful it has to be to have them doing the work in secret in the middle of the night.
I stand still, barely breathing, and listen, my ear almost touching the door.
“We’ve been using Smithfield’s since the beginning,” my mom says. “Nothing even comes close. It’s okay, though,” my mom continues. “We have more Smithfield’s on the way. We’ll just dump this other stuff in the trash.” She sighs. “I’m worried.”
“I know,” my dad says, dropping his voice even lower. “I haven’t heard anything. Nothing has changed. I think we’re in the clear.”
“And if we’re not?” my mom asks. “What then?”
Worried about the knockoff Smithfield’s? I know how seriously we take our work so it doesn’t surprise me but Mom sounds genuinely upset. I’m guessing my dad won’t cut that specific corner ever again. I leave them to figure it out and make my way back to my room as quietly as possible.
My room is now the approximate temperature of the inside of one of our walk-in freezers.
A gust of wind blows a swirling mist of powdery snow inside.
I grab the window and slam it closed when something draws my attention—movement next to the dumpster.
I peer into the dark expecting to see some racoons, maybe a possum.
Instead, I glimpse the shadowy outline of a person pressed against the side of the garage.
Maybe my mom is right. Maybe somebody has been pilfering our supplies. I shove the window back open.
“I can see you!” I shout as the cold blasts me in the face again. “Get the hell outta here!”
The figure doesn’t budge.
“Oh, you think it’s a game?” I quickly slip on a pair of boots and scramble out into the hallway and down the main stairs.
My mom and dad are coming up from the basement just as I’m barreling out the back door.
“Meka!” my dad shouts. “What is going on?”
“Somebody’s tryna break into the supply shed!” I holler as I careen down the back steps and onto the part of the driveway that wraps around the back of the house. My feet nearly slip out from under me as I skid to a stop. “Come out so I can put my boot up your—”
“Meka!” my mom yells. “Bring your narrow behind in the house right now!”
I stand still, staring into the dark where the figure had been, my breath pumping out of me in billowing white clouds. It is cold and silent and there is no one here.
“Meka!” my mom shrieks again.
I turn and stomp up the back steps as my mom slams the door and locks it.