Whisper to Me(115)

Which was what the voice wanted.

Which was part of me.

So why was I crying?





I dialed Dad’s cell number. After a few rings he answered—I could hear the bubbling of voices in the background, the scrape of knives, the chinking of glasses. “Yeah?” he said.

“Hi,” I said coldly.

“You okay, Cass?”

“No I’m not okay. What do you think?”

Silence.

“So what did you call me for?”

A pause.

“Listen, Dad.”

“Yes?”

“You don’t have to worry about ‘that boy’ anymore. And I kind of hate you right now. Just so you know.”

The line went dead. He had hung up.





I’m so sorry.





I walked all the way home.

It took hours.

It took hours, but I felt like I deserved the punishment. I didn’t even care if Dad got back before me; he might want me to take buses because of the killer, but I could give a **** what he wanted.

You were sitting on the grass of the yard. Of course you were.

Not on a deck chair, but right on the ground; it must have been damp—there was a storm supposed to be coming and the air was thick with moisture—but still you were sitting there. Like you had just run out of kinetic energy, as you crossed from the sidewalk, like your mind had been so blank that you had just dropped, like a puppet let go by its master.

****, I thought.

You looked up. Your eyes were red.

The moon rotated a thousand times around the earth, in its cold black vacuum. The stars wheeled around us for aeons; the universe was born and died, and was born again, and fast-forwarded from the big bang to a night in Jersey, in the twenty-first century, the crickets buzzing in the undergrowth.

“Who was that guy, Cass?” you said.

I wanted to be able to fly. I wanted to be a bird. I wanted to step forward into wings, unfolding from my back, the softness of feathers, and step again up into the air this time, pinioned on those wings, strong, pressing down on the suddenly viscous air, and spiral up, away from you, through the window of my room.

Or away. Away into the sky, like I had dreamed about, drifting into the piled black clouds of the horizon, the dull light of the moon. Float, forever.

But my feet were concrete, bolted to the ground.

“I’m sorry,” I said, the words glass in my throat.

“I said who is he.”

I shook my head. “No one.”

You kept your eyes on mine. Your expression was horribly, horribly calm. “Seriously, Cass?” you said.

“What do you want from me?” I said, trying to keep the shaking out of my vocal cords, the tears, the ocean of tears that would come spilling out if I let it, break over the sea defenses, wash everything away, the sidewalk the grass the bushes the crickets.

“How about the truth?” you said.

“I can’t do that,” I said.

You nodded very slowly. “In that case, I’d like you to get out of my sight.” You didn’t say it like in a movie. Not dramatically. You said it smooth and frictionless as marble. No intonation at all, no rise and fall. Stone.

“Okay,” I said.

And I did.

When I got to my room I lay facedown on the bed, pressing the duvet into my face, wrapping myself in it.

What do I do now? I thought. What am I supposed to do now? I felt like a clockwork toy with a broken spring, like a puppet with wood where a heart should be. No Paris. No you.

No way to get you back either. Not without telling you the truth, telling you everything, and the dead would talk through the tongues of birds, I mean really talk, before I was going to do that.

“Find Paris, then,” said the voice.

Yes, I thought. Yes. It was something to cling onto. A piece of driftwood, floating on the open ocean, after a wreck.

But no. I’d had a warning, hadn’t I? Dad had told me, the police were onto me. They didn’t want me interfering. They didn’t want me getting myself killed.

“So be careful,” said the voice. “Don’t let him know you’re still after him.”

“Shut up,” I said.

“I’m trying to help.”

“So help by shutting up. I don’t want to hear from you right now.”

I wanted to be sharp, so I was glad Dr. Rezwari had lowered my dose a little. It wasn’t great, as far as alertness went, but it would have to do. I wasn’t about to get myself locked up again.

I rolled over on the bed and realized I had no idea how to find Paris. How to find the killer.

“Call Agent Horowitz,” said the voice. “Ask about Paris’s dad. The alibi. Find out what he’s doing.”

“He’ll tell my dad. He’ll … I don’t know. Give me an official warning or something. And anyway, what if Horowitz is the killer? We still think it might be a cop. Say he decides I’m poking my nose in, and that I would be better off … dead?”

“Fine,” said the voice. “So don’t take any risks. Let the killer go. Just like the guy who smashed your mom’s head in.”

“**** you. Don’t use Mom.”

“Also, you know how the killer is out there somewhere, out there in this town, maybe even torturing Paris right now?”