Chapter 16 #2
He holds up a thermos. “I come bearing gifts. Homemade soup from Mom. And schoolwork. Most of it’s on Google Classroom, but I brought you the new chem packet so you don’t flunk out while you’re recovering, and your copy of The Scarlett Letter.
Mom had to bribe the custodian to let us inside your locker.
” He sets his gifts next to my half-eaten toast. “You look fairly normal.”
“Not like a vampire, then?”
He asks to see my teeth.
I bare my fangs, then show him the articles Walt sent.
He scans them with interest, then lets out a low whistle. “That’s a lot of tragedy to befall one family.”
My mind turns to Jude and the sad, lonely way he stared at his father’s name. Both of his parents are dead. I make a mental note to do some sleuthing. How, exactly, did they die?
I can tell Twig wants to stay and discuss the findings further, but robotics is calling and he must go.
“Oh,” he says, stopping at the door. He reaches into the pocket of his jeans. “I almost forgot. I’m supposed to give you this.”
He hands me a slip of paper.
There’s a phone number on it—the handwriting neat and slanted.
“It’s from Jude,” he says. “He, uh, came and found me in the hallway after school.”
“What did he want?”
“To know where you’ve been. I told him you were sick, and he gave me his number to give to you.”
I look down at the slip. “He wants me to call him?”
“Looks like it.” Twig gives his fingers a snap, then claps the palm of his left hand over the fist of his right. “I’m glad you’re lucid, Selah. Try the soup. It’s really good.”
When he’s gone, I twist off the lid and take a sip, and of course, he’s right.
Mrs. Calloway has always been a phenomenal cook.
I rest against my throne of pillows, sipping the soup, twirling the slip of paper until Dad returns with another bottle of Gatorade.
Happy with what he sees, he excuses himself to the great outdoors, determined to squeeze in as much work as possible before twilight chases the sun away.
I turn on Harry and the Hendersons—a feel-good movie about a cryptid who isn’t a murdering, ravenous monster. I vaguely recall a fevered dream about the Nachtdier. A weeping boy and two girls and Rafe, turning into a werewolf.
Outside, a chainsaw buzzes in the distance.
The sky is soft, the shadows long.
And Jude Vandenberg gave me his number.
Biting my lip, I type a hasty message into my phone and hit send.
Hi. It’s Selah. Twig gave me your number. Sorry I’ve been AWOL. Sick as a dog.
I stare at the screen, expecting nothing. If Jude replies at all, it will probably be later this evening, or sometime tomorrow. But a scrolling ellipse appears.
I sit up straight.
Jude: Hey. Sorry you’ve been sick.
I stare at the words, unsure how to reply. Normally, I’d pride myself in sending something smart and quippy, but my brain is full of fog. I think I should suggest we visit Maggie, as previously planned, but then … what if he already met with Maggie? It’s not like he needs me to make introductions.
The scrolling ellipse returns.
Jude: Will you be at school tomorrow?
I can’t fathom it. Untwisting the Gatorade bottle was hard enough. Walking through the halls with a backpack? No way. But I’m tempted all the same. Simply because he asked.
Me: Unlikely. But I am feeling more human. Good enough to meet at Evermore after school, if you’re up for it.
I hit send with a grimace, dreading his response. I’m sure he already went to Evermore without me. Or maybe he wants to drop the string again.
Jude: Can I call you?
My heart takes off, an aggressive hammer inside my chest.
Me: Sure
A moment later, the X-Files theme song fills my bedroom, giving me zero time to prepare. I accept the call and say hello, hoping I don’t sound as out of sorts as I feel.
“Hey,” he says, his voice soft in my ear. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
I’m thrown for a loop. Not by his words so much as his tone—gentle, and concerned. Like Jude Vandenberg has been worried. About me. “Me, too. I had some pretty gnarly dreams while I was in the thick of it.”
“About haunted dolls?”
“No, but there was a cryptid. And I punched Rafe in the face.”
A short pause ensues.
I close my eyes and tap my forehead with my fist.
Stupid, stupid Selah. Why did you bring him into the conversation?
But Jude only chuckles. “I would have enjoyed seeing that.”
And just like that, all my anxiety melts away.
I bite back a smile.
Jude is different on the phone.
Less guarded, somehow.
“So … Maggie’s tomorrow? Or did you give up on me and go there already?”
I hold my breath.
I really hope he didn’t.
The mystery of the portrait is a once-in-a-lifetime mystery. I want to investigate it with him.
“I haven’t been to the historical society. But we don’t have to go tomorrow. It can wait until you’re feeling better.”
“I think I’ll be fine. I’m already feeling loads better than I did a few hours ago.” I can hold my phone up without sweating, anyway. “But if, you know, something changes, I have your number now, which was brave of you. I can bug you whenever I want.”
“And I have yours. So I guess … same.”
The smile I’ve been biting back can no longer be repressed. Was Jude just flirting? He certainly doesn’t sound like he’s eager to get off the phone.
I climb out of bed, taking a blanket and a pillow with me, and make myself comfortable in the window seat.
I look at his bedroom window and imagine him in there, talking on the phone.
With me. I want to tell him about the research I’ve done—about the train crash and the bank robbery—but that would require a confession.
I took a picture of his family tree without permission.
I’m trying to figure out how to get out of this corner I’ve painted myself in when he speaks.
“I found the identity of the scorch mark.”
I sit up straighter. “Who?”
“Elijah Vandenberg. I found a record of his birth in 1844, and his marriage in 1867. But there’s nothing in our archives about his death. So I took a visit to the family graveyard.”
He pauses.
It’s a charged beat.
Perhaps he’s thinking of me in the graveyard. And Rafe, trying to kiss me in the graveyard.
“He doesn’t have a headstone,” Jude says. “His wife does. All three of his children do. But not him.”
“You think he was buried elsewhere?”
“I don’t know. But I did some research. And I kept coming back to a particular scenario that would make sense.”
“Which is?”
“Back then, there was a big stigma around a certain kind of death. So much so, anyone who died that way was often left out of family records.”
“Suicide,” I whisper.
“He would have been denied a proper burial.”
And most likely erased from a family tree.
There’s another pause. This one isn’t charged or awkward. But thoughtful. Almost intimate. I imagine Jude stretched long on his bed, staring up at his ceiling, messing with his hair.
“I have a confession,” I blurt.
He’s quiet on the other end.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “I took a picture of your family tree.”
“Oh.” It’s not a mad oh. It’s not even a surprised oh. If anything, he sounds a bit relieved, like he was worried my confession was going to be something worse.
So, I dive in.
I tell him about the train crash and the bank robbery.
He knew vaguely about the latter and nothing about the former.
I forward him the newspaper articles and listen as he reads them out loud, lulled by the hypnotizing timbre of his voice.
When he finishes, we talk. At first, about the tragedies, then about Elijah—born into Antebellum America, married after the Civil War.
What might have compelled such a man to suicide?
But then, the conversation shifts, and we’re talking about Harry and the Hendersons and The Lost Boys and Ghostbusters, and my deep and abiding love for all things supernatural pop culture in the 1980s.
I sit in the window seat as twilight turns to dark, telling him about Tales from the Crypt, which is campy and gruesome and delightfully over-the-top, and somehow, I’m back in bed while he downloads my favorite episodes, and we watch them together.
Over the phone.
Dad brings me more soup. Twig left a whole pot in the fridge. And we go on talking and watching and laughing.
We don’t say goodbye until midnight.