Paper Towns(41)
Looks like Madison Estates isn’t going to get built; my husband and I bought property there, but someone called this week to say they’re refunding us our deposit because they didn’t presell enough houses to finance the project. Another paper town for KS! —Marge in Cawker, KS
A pseudovision! You will go to the pseudovisions and you will never come back. I took a deep breath and stared at the screen for a while.
The conclusion seemed inescapable. Even with everything broken and decided inside her, she couldn’t quite allow herself to disappear for good. And she had decided to leave her body—to leave it for me—in a shadow version of our subdivision, where her first strings had broken. She had said she didn’t want her body found by random kids—and it made sense that out of everyone she knew, she would pick me to find her. She wouldn’t be hurting me in a new way. I’d done it before. I had experience in the field.
I saw that Radar was online and was clicking over to talk to him when an IM from him popped up on my screen.
OMNICTIONARIAN96: Hey.
QTHERESURRECTION: Paper towns = pseudovisions.
I think she wants me to find her body. Because she thinks I can handle it. Because we found that dead guy when we were kids.
I sent him the link.
OMNICTIONARIAN96: Slow down. Let me look at the link.
QTHERESURRECTION: K.
OMNICTIONARIAN96: Okay, don’t be so morbid. You don’t know anything for sure. I think she’s probably fine.
QTHERESURRECTION: No you don’t.
OMNICTIONARIAN96: Okay, I don’t. But if anybody’s alive in the face of this evidence . . .
QTHERESURRECTION: Yeah, I guess. I’m gonna go lie down. My parents get home soon.
But I couldn’t calm down, so I called Ben from bed and told him my theory.
“Pretty morbid shit, bro. But she’s fine. It’s all part of some game she’s playing.”
“You’re being kind of cavalier about it.”
He sighed. “Whatever, it’s a little lame of her to, like, hijack the last three weeks of high school, you know? She’s got you all worried, and she’s got Lacey all worried, and prom is in like three days, you know? Can’t we just have a fun prom?”
“Are you serious? She could be dead, Ben.”
“She’s not dead. She’s a drama queen. Wants attention. I mean, I know her parents are assholes, but they know her better than we do, don’t they? And they think so, too.”
“You can be such a tool,” I said.
“Whatever, bro. We both had a long day. Too much drama. I’ll TTYS.” I wanted to ridicule him for using chatspeak IRL, but I found myself lacking the energy.
After I hung up with Ben, I went back online, looking for a list of pseudovisions in Florida. I couldn’t find a list anywhere, but after searching “abandoned subdivisions” and “Grovepoint Acres” and the like for a while, I managed to compile a list of five places within three hours of Jefferson Park. I printed out a map of Central Florida, tacked the map to the wall above my computer, and then added a tack for each of the five locations. Looking at the map, I could detect no pattern among them. They were randomly distributed among the far-flung suburbs, and it would take me at least a week to get to all of them. Why hadn’t she left me a specific place? All these scary-as-hell clues. All this intimation of tragedy. But no place. Nothing to hold on to. Like trying to climb a mountain of gravel.
Ben gave me permission to borrow RHAPAW the next day, since he was going to be driving around, prom shopping with Lacey in her SUV. So for once I didn’t have to sit outside the band room—the seventh-period bell rang and I raced out to his car. I lacked Ben’s talent for getting RHAPAW to start, so I was one of the first people to arrive at the senior parking lot and one of the last to leave, but finally the engine caught, and I was off to Grovepoint Acres.
I drove out of town on Colonial, driving slowly, watching for any other pseudovisions I might have missed online. A long line of cars trailed behind me, and I felt anxious about holding them up; I marveled at how I could still have room to worry about such petty, ridiculous crap as whether the guy in the SUV behind me thought I was an excessively cautious driver. I wanted Margo’s disappearance to change me; but it hadn’t, not really.
As the line of cars snaked behind me like some kind of unwilling funeral procession, I found myself talking out loud to her. I will play out the string. I will not betray your trust. I will find you.
Talking like this to her kept me calm, strangely. It kept me from imagining the possibilities. I came again to the sagging wooden sign for Grovepoint Acres. I could almost hear the sighs of relief from the bottleneck behind me as I turned left onto the dead-end asphalt road. It looked like a driveway without a house. I left RHAPAW running and got out. From close up, I could see that Grovepoint Acres was more finished than it initially appeared. Two dirt roads ending in cul-de-sacs had been cut into the dusty ground, although the roads had eroded so much I could barely see their outlines. As I walked up and down both streets, I could feel the heat in my nose with each breath. The scalding sun made it hard to move, but I knew the beautiful, if morbid, truth: heat made death reek, and Grovepoint Acres smelled like nothing except cooked air and car exhaust—our cumulative exhalations held close to the surface by the humidity.