I'll Stop the World (116)

Or will I just go on existing in this dull, gray world, living my dull, gray life?

The front door slams. “Stan? Justin? Anyone home?”

I stare at the mostly empty bottle of whiskey in my hand. Lissa can’t see this. Can’t know I ever had it in the house.

“I’m here,” I call, rising slowly to my feet, my joints creaking and popping. The old scar tissue around my knee aches as I teeter to the door of my room and close it, then flip the lock. I glance around, then stow the bottle under a pile of dirty laundry. I’ll get rid of it later, when Lissa’s not here.

Funny, in the thirty-eight years I’ve had to think about what happened tonight, I’ve never really given much thought to what would happen to me—the me who is fifty-six years old, the me who has been here since 1985, the me who is Stan—after the Justin I used to be went off the bridge. Even as I traveled from city to city, bounced from job to job, changed my name, made up stories and toyed with the idea of ending it all, it somehow never occurred to me that after I left, I’d also still be stuck here, forced to watch my mother discover that her son is gone without a trace.

Of course, she doesn’t know she’s my mother. I could never tell her that. She’d think I was crazy, and maybe I am. Who else but a crazy person would spend thirty-eight years trying to solve a case that I know is unsolvable, because I remember watching Stan—watching myself—trying to solve it when I was a kid. And I remember him failing.

And yet, here I am. Who’s that Greek guy who was constantly pushing the boulder up the hill, even though it kept rolling back down? King Sissy-something.

Well, that’s me. Forever the King of the Sissy-somethings.

Will the police find my car? I always wondered if the car disappeared, too, or if it completed the drop down into the river. I wonder if that asshole Kenny Gibson will assume I drowned, or think I ran away from home.

I wonder if that’s what Rose’s family thought, when she disappeared. I wonder if they thought I had something to do with it.

I don’t think I did. We weren’t together that night, after all. I went to the school, hoping I might get there in time to stop it all from happening again, but of course I was too late.

The thing I didn’t realize—or really, the thing I never bothered to pay attention to, since it’s not like I didn’t make sure to tell Justin this a hundred times—was that when they rebuilt the school, the layout changed. The offices moved to the opposite side of the building from the auditorium. I forgot about that, of course, until I was standing in the parking lot, looking at an entrance that was cold and dark, while from the opposite side of the school, smoke twisted into the night.

Everything was lit up by the time I got to the right entrance. I couldn’t even get near the building. Their car was in the parking lot, with Millie crying inside. The keys were still in the ignition. I climbed into the driver’s seat and drove away from the school, parking closer to the middle of the lot, far enough away that the fire couldn’t reach us. We both stared at the leaping flames, held at bay by the rain, her screeching, me silent, until I heard sirens approaching.

Then I left, heading straight for the bus station, finally using the ticket I’d purchased that morning. The next time I set foot in Stone Lake was fifteen years later.

All those years, I’d assumed Rose was safe at her mom’s debate. That our fight meant she was done with me, with this whole scheme of ours. That she was out there in the world somewhere living her life, and that it was better without me in it.

I never looked her up, not wanting to give myself the temptation of stepping back into her life and messing it up again. I knew Gibson had won the mayoral race, and that her family must have left town at some point, because a different family was living in her house when I came back. But I never asked where they went or why they left.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to know. But I never belonged in her world, and if I found her, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay away. Leaving her alone felt like the best gift I could give her. The only way I could ensure I wouldn’t screw up her life, the way I screw up everything else.

But yesterday, when the police pulled those bones out of the river—just like they did back when I was eighteen—I suddenly felt sick. I couldn’t explain it, other than I knew something was very wrong. I had gotten something wrong.

In all the confusion of waking up in 1985 and meeting Rose and focusing on the fire, I’d forgotten about the body the police had pulled out of the river the day before I went off the bridge. In my anger at Stan for the things he’d said, I’d forgotten to consider the thing that set him off in the first place. In my obsession to figure out where I’d gone wrong in 1985, I’d forgotten that the answer was waiting for me in 2023.

Except, in all that time, I’d never really forgotten. It was always there. I just didn’t want to see it, until it became impossible to ignore. Like I’d spent my whole life pretending I didn’t notice a monster in the dark corner of my room, only for it to finally step into the light and tear me to shreds.

Today, once I knew the other me was gone, I finally let myself google her.

Rose Yin was officially declared dead in 1992, after no new evidence was discovered following her sudden disappearance in the fall of 1985. It turned out Gibson won the election only by default; Diane withdrew following the disappearance of her stepdaughter. Her name stayed on the ballot, but there was only one candidate actually in the race.