CHAPTER 15 EVERYTHING IS FINE #2
Miss Cliff shakes her head. “No.”
“Good,” my mom says. “Do you have someplace you can go just for a day or two while we figure this out?”
Miss Cliff looks concerned. “I—I guess I could go to a friend’s house, but why?”
“Somebody else knows about us,” my mom says. “About Noah and me and I’m afraid they might come after us again. I’m worried and I can’t get ahold of Jonathan. We’re on our way to find him now but I think you should go to your friend’s house for the time being.”
Miss Cliff nods and looks up at Noah. “I’ll go to Katrina’s but when I come back I need you to be here so we can get you set up for school in the fall. You can go back virtually if you want.”
My mom is about to say something but quickly turns away.
“Mom,” Noah says softly. “You know that’s not going to happen, right? I really need you to understand that things are different now. I know you were hurting. I know it must have been hard, but did you stop to ask yourself if this is what I would have wanted?”
Miss Cliff stares at her son. “You’re angry with me for letting you come back? This is a gift, Noah! A second chance. It’s like a miracle.”
Or a curse, I think.
“I’m not mad,” Noah says. “Please don’t think that. It’s not about that. It’s just . . .” He trails off and he raises his hand to his face, touching the spot I’d filled in with mortuary wax. “Right now, I just need to know you’re safe. Can you get a bag together?”
Miss Cliff nods and goes off to get her things. She gets a Lyft and Noah and I walk her out to the waiting car.
“See you soon,” Miss Cliff says as she gets in.
“Love you,” Noah says.
“I love you,” Miss Cliff says.
The car backs down the driveway and disappears around the corner. Noah and I stand alone under the starry night sky.
“I think something is broken inside her,” Noah says. “This isn’t supposed to happen, you know? I’m not supposed to be here but I am and I think it messed something up in her mind.”
“I get it,” I say. Seeing Noah again almost broke my brain too.
Noah turns to me and takes my hands in his.
“I’m sorry for everything,” Noah says. “I should have said it before . . . well, just before, you know?”
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“I love you, Meka,” Noah says. “I think you know that, but I need to say it because I waited too long before . . . before—”
“I don’t care about what happened before,” I say as I try to wrap my head around hearing him say those words to me.
Noah presses his forehead against mine. “You should care. What happened before matters. It was just that I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to say it first in case you weren’t ready. I didn’t want to pressure you—”
I press my lips to his and stop him from saying anything else. Right now, all I want is him and I lose myself in the closeness of him. This is what I had spent so many days and nights mourning and missing. Noah presses his hands to my back and I wish the rest of the world would just fade away.
“Hate to interrupt,” my mom calls out.
Noah breaks away from me but I keep a tight grip on him. I don’t care if my mom sees. I don’t care if the whole world sees.
“We should get going,” she says. “I still can’t get ahold of your dad.” Her bottom lip begins to tremble and I shake myself out of the haze I’d been in and put my hand on my mom’s arm.
“It’s gonna be okay,” I say. “We’re gonna find Dad and figure this out.”
“I don’t know what there is to figure out anymore,” Mom says. “We can’t keep going on like this. I can’t—” She stops herself, touching her pursed lips with the tips of her trembling fingers. “Never mind. You’re right. Let’s just go find your dad.”
She walks to the car and Noah and I get in with her. Suddenly, her phone buzzes and she almost fumbles it before scrambling to hit the green button. My dad’s image flashes on the screen. Mom lets out a high-pitched squeal as she presses the phone to her ear.
“Jonathan! Jonathan! I’ve been trying to call you! Where are you? We were so worried! We—”
The joy goes out of her voice and her expression stretches into a grimace.
“What is it?” I whisper.
“Yes. I—I’m here,” my mom says. She sets the phone on the middle console and hits the speaker button.
“Listen to me very carefully,” says a voice that doesn’t belong to my dad. “Jonathan is here with us.”
My mom grips the edge of the seat. “Are you—are you going to hurt him?”
“Hurt him? We will kill him, do you understand me?” the voice says with a tone of malice so sharp I back away from the phone like the person speaking is going to jump out of it.
“We have Jonathan but he is only part of the equation,” the person says.
“What do you want?” my mom asks, her voice trembling.
“You already know the answer to that question,” the man says.
“No, I don’t!” Mom shouts. “I don’t know what you want!”
“The book, Mrs. Redwood. All we want is the book.”
My mom lifts her gaze to meet mine and in the dark confines of the car the terror etched on her face scares me.
“I—I don’t have it,” she says.
There’s a rustling on the other end of the line and my dad’s voice suddenly sounds in the phone but he’s not talking to us.
“She doesn’t know where it is!” he shouts. “And you’ll never have it if you kill me!”
More scuffling and then my dad is yelling. Screaming. I grab the phone and grip it in my fist. “Dad!”
“You can’t have it!” my dad screams as his voice moves away from the phone. “I swear on my father’s grave you won’t ever have it! On my father’s grave!”
The other man returns to the phone. “I think you know what you have to do. Do not keep us waiting. Answer the phone next time we call.”
The call ends and I stare at the phone in my hand.
My mom grips the steering wheel and presses her forehead into it.
“Who was that guy on the phone?” Noah asks.
My mom sits back and sighs so heavily I think she might deflate completely, like a balloon with a small leak that just can’t keep itself afloat any longer. “He was probably one of those people your dad left with. The same people who showed up at the house right before your accident.”
I search my memory and find the images of my dad getting up from our dinner table to answer the door. He’d seemed tense but I’d chalked it up to some annoyance at an uninvited guest.
“There was someone outside my school too,” I say. “I saw them across the street when I was in film studies. And now that I’m thinking about it, I also saw somebody at the cemetery one time too.”
My mom looks horrified. “The blond guy?”
I shake my head. “Somebody else. Whoever it was, they were way taller than the blond. I couldn’t really see their face. But it’s gotta be the same people, right?”
Mom angles her head to look at me. “It has to be. They know about us and if what you saw on the blond guy’s arm is any indication, they’re reanimates too.” She shakes her head.
“But they didn’t know about you until recently,” I say. “Or they would have come for you sooner.”
My mom nods. “I think you’re right. We covered our tracks after the accident. Nobody would have known anything was amiss.”
“So you and Dad thought somebody might be watching you?”
Mom thinks for a moment. “I thought we needed to cover our tracks so the general public wouldn’t ask questions. Family and friends, you know? But I guess your dad was always more on edge than I thought was necessary. These people must be the reason.”
“And we don’t know what they want?” I ask. “Besides this book?”
“And what kind of book is it?” Noah asks. “They’re willing to kill somebody over it. It’s gotta be something important.”
“From what I understand, the book is a sort of tool,” Mom says, shaking her head. “It has been with the Redwood family forever. Jonathan’s dad passed it down to him.”
Images from my nightmare-memory flood my mind. “This book, does it have a leather cover? With strange markings on it?”
My mom sits bolt upright in the driver seat. “I—I’ve never actually seen it so I don’t know but how do you even have any thought about what it looks like?”
“The nightmare,” I say.
“You were so little,” my mom says in a hushed tone. “I—I didn’t think you’d remember anything except bits and pieces of the crash.” She suddenly seems more upset by this than anything else. “You were there when he . . . ?of course you were . . .” she trails off.
It occurs to me in this moment that the memory of watching my father recite from the book at the head of a prep table had to have been immediately after the crash while my mom was actually dead— before the so-called reanimation.
“You were in the room,” she says. “Meka, I—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say. “Not right now.” I push away the swell of anger. I’ll deal with it later. Noah reaches forward and puts his hand on my shoulder. The weight of it is comforting. “These people, they want the book. So we have to make sure they don’t get it. Where is it?”
“I don’t know,” Mom says.
“You think he hid it?” Noah asks.
“He must have,” my mom says.
“Wait,” I say as my memory doubles back on itself.
“The night me and Dad picked up that old man something else happened.” I look down at my hand.
I remember the feeling, the way pain had traced across my fingers like a hot knife, the strange tingling sensation in my skin that had lingered for hours.
“I think Dad had the book right before Noah died.”
“What?” Mom asks. “How would you know that?”
“I think it was in the hearse,” I say. “I think I accidentally touched it.”
“The night that body sat up?” Noah asks.
My mom looks at my hands, stares at them, then lets her gaze move to my face. “A body—sat up?”
I realize I hadn’t had a chance to explain the incident to her. I assumed my dad would have told her. Noah died right after so I hadn’t even thought of it since.
“Yeah,” I say. “Scared me to death. Then later that same night I saw Dad go back to the hearse and take something out of it. It had to have been the book. And he had to have used it for Noah but then what? That means it’s probably close by, right?”
“Maybe,” Mom says quietly.
“Does your dad always swear like that?” Noah asks suddenly.
“Swear?” I ask. “I didn’t hear him swear.”
“Not like curse words,” Noah says. “He swore on his father’s grave that he wouldn’t let these people have whatever book you all are talking about. I’ve been around Mr. Redwood a lot. I’ve never heard him say anything like that.”
“He never really talks about his dad at all,” I say. “But Grandpa Redwood’s been coming up a lot more lately.”
“Did you know him?” Noah asks. “Your dad’s dad?”
I shake my head and then a thought occurs to me, something I don’t even want to say out loud, so I ease myself into it. “Where is Grandpa Redwood buried?”
Mom raises her gaze to meet mine. “He’s here in Ithaca.”
I touch the back of her hand. “Is he close? Like, somewhere Dad could get to quickly and come back without us noticing?”
Mom inhales sharply.
“What?” Noah asks. “What is it?”
“I think I know where my dad put the book,” I say.
My mom turns the car on and slams on the accelerator sending me and Noah back into our seats.
“Sorry!” she says as she wheels the car around and swings out onto the road leading away from Miss Cliff’s house. “I think you’re right. Let’s just hope Grandpa Redwood is still in his coffin.”