No One Knows Us Here(56)

“There’s no sense in risking it. There’s no need.”

I didn’t venture outside the rest of the day. Not because Leo had told me not to, but because I didn’t feel like it. I enjoyed it, the novelty of it, of sitting on my couch and watching the snow fall outside the window, landing on the treetops, coating the branches. Down below, children were making snowmen on the sidewalks. An elderly couple glided down the middle of the street on skis.

I texted Wendy to see how she was feeling, and by way of reply she texted me a photo series of her and Hannah, the two of them frolicking in the snow in a city park. They made a snowman, dressed him in one of their scarves, and posed with him between them. They were laughing. They were having a great time. She posted the last picture on social media with the caption SNOW!!! followed by a series of snowflake emojis.

That night I pressed my ear against my bedroom wall. I kept my ear there for a long time. If I closed my eyes and concentrated, I could hear footsteps padding back and forth across the floorboards. I could hear Sam and Imogene laughing and talking, but I couldn’t make out any words.



The next morning the snow was still falling, but slowly, gently. The streets below had been refreshed with another layer of white. I wanted to go out in it. I’d throw a snowball and look up at the frosted branches and feel the snow crunching under my feet. This type of snowstorm, in Portland, happened once every five years, at the most. Once every decade. Everything shut down—the schools, the offices, half the shops and restaurants.

Wendy was going to stay with Hannah until the roads cleared. I asked about her parents, if they were okay with this. Was Wendy feeling okay? She had just fainted in school. Didn’t she want to come home? She said she was fine. This was exactly what she needed, actually. A forced vacation.

I didn’t need to leave the apartment. It just looked so beautiful out there. Besides, I needed milk.

I bundled up in wool sweaters and scarves and a thick stocking hat with a pom-pom on the top. My feet were swaddled in thick socks and stuffed into my rain boots.

Outside the streets were quiet. I felt like a character in a story, like a tiny figure in a snow globe, with flakes whirling around me. I held out my mittened hand to capture the snowflakes and inspected them. Perfect six-sided snowflakes. All these winters in Portland, I’d never seen one; the snow was usually too loose, too wet, falling to the ground in clumps.

At Fred Meyer people scurried around with carts loaded with supplies. The vegetable bins had been scooped almost clean. Delivery trucks hadn’t been able to get in, I overheard someone say. Shipments full of kale and lettuce were shriveling and turning to slime somewhere out there, in the cold.

In my basket I collected some carrots and a potato, a carton of milk, a loaf of bread. I wandered up and down the aisles, picking up items that appealed to me. A jar of peanut butter. A pint of ice cream. A box of Grape-Nuts, Wendy’s favorite cereal. She soaked them in skim milk and sprinkled them with packets of artificial sweetener. She must have inherited that from her father, that love of fake sugar. I grimaced and shook my head, erasing the thought from my mind. Wendy was nothing like her father.

As soon as I stepped back in my apartment, I knew something was wrong. It wasn’t obvious, not right away. The Mirror, which I’d left behind on the dining room table, was glowing. It wasn’t lit up, exactly, or blinking. It was charged with a very subtle, eerie light, like those glow-in-the-dark stars kids stick to their bedroom ceilings.

“Sorry,” I said into it, knowing Leo was there, connected through it somehow, waiting. “I accidentally left it at home.”

“I told you not to leave.”

We stared into our Mirrors, at each other. “I thought you were joking.”

“You don’t have a coat.”

“Seriously?”

“When I say not to go out, I mean—”

“I didn’t sign up for this.” I was furious.

Leo’s face revealed nothing. His features remained frozen in place for so long I wondered if a glitch had occurred, if the transmission had stopped, freezing his image like a pause button. Then his eyebrows came together, slowly. He let out a breath. “Stay safe,” he said, his voice a robotic monotone. “Anything could happen out there.” Then the screen faded to black.





CHAPTER 18


I didn’t leave the apartment for four days. I didn’t call Alejandro and ask him to deliver me supplies; I made do with what I had on hand. Crackers and cereal and buttered spaghetti noodles. Wendy remained at Hannah’s. She was fine, doing much better. That fainting spell was a fluke. A human head emerging from a woman’s body, all red and slick with mucus. It was horrifying. No wonder she’d passed out, just at the sight of it.

“How are you doing?” Wendy asked me one night. I had called her, just to hear her voice. Just to hear anyone’s voice. I must have sounded sad, or deranged. I said I was doing fine, and she said maybe she should come back. We could drink hot chocolate and watch movies. Unexpectedly, hot tears burbled from my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. No, no, I insisted, keeping my voice bright. Normal. I didn’t want them out on the roads, not in these conditions. Cars were veering off the streets, people were abandoning their vehicles on highway overpasses and braving their way home by foot. Stay there, I told her. Where you’ll be safe.

I was bored out of my mind, pacing the floors of my apartment, pressing my ear to the wall between my room and Sam’s, hoping—or desperately not hoping—to hear him. Him and Imogene. I heard only one set of footsteps, the usual set of footsteps. Sam padding down the hall and into his room. Sam—only Sam—practicing the viola. Imogene was gone, I decided. Long gone.