The Mystery of Hollow Places(14)

Thinking about Dad with no immediate plotting to keep me busy, I get this ache in my chest, pressure building up that curls my lungs like wet paper and makes it hard to breathe. Quickly I dig into the pocket of my puffy coat, find the stone, and hold it until the closet door rattles open.

“It’s me.” Jessa slips inside, twirling a set of keys clipped to a big plastic Minnie Mouse keychain.

“How?” I hadn’t realized how little I expected her to succeed until now.

“Mrs. Masciarelli is the health records manager. I help her file and move boxes and stuff in the summer. It’s literally the worst. But sometimes it’s okay because Mrs. Masciarelli has this thing. Incompetence? She has to go to the bathroom, like, every twenty minutes, so last summer I would file for twenty minutes and then go see Jake Elroy, who’s this really cute eighteen-year-old who had community service.”

I roll my finger through the air.

“Anyway, I said I wanted to gossip and brought her a coffee. It sped things up.”

“That’s devious.”

“Says you, 007.”

I stand and stretch, having cramped up on the mop bucket. I still hate to ask for help, hate needing help, but times are desperate. “So . . . where now?”

She holds up the keys. “To the storage room! If anyone sees us, say we’re new volunteers.”

“And they’ll just leave us alone down here?”

“No, they definitely won’t.”

We’ve left the closet, rounded exactly one corner, and gone exactly fifteen feet when Jessa’s phone jangles in her purse at top volume.

“Turn it off,” I whisper, giving her the evil eye.

“Wait one sec.” She digs it out and tucks it into her shoulder. “What?” she says into it.

“Turn it off!”

“Oh my god, calm down,” she says. “It’s my brother.” She listens for a minute and then elbows me, totally unnecessary since I’m still staring daggers at her. “Chad says he can only drive us home tonight if we meet him and Jeremy at the Friendly Toast at seven. Want to?”

Perma-crush on Chad notwithstanding, it is impossible to explain how much I don’t care. “Just get off the phone, Jessa. Please?”

“We’ll see you there,” Jessa whispers—a little late for stealth, if you ask me—and turns off the volume on her phone. “Okay, okay. It’s off. Happy?” There are locked doors on either side of us. Jessa points out the medical supply room, food supplies, linen storage, the big laundry room where they wash the lab coats and bedsheets and whatever else is bloodied up. “And here”—she sorts through and selects a key with a blue rubber cap, then slots it in a doorknob—“is the file storage. Voilà!” We hurry inside and shut ourselves in the musty dark before Jessa finds the switch. The lights flicker on halfheartedly.

“Shit,” I can’t help but mutter. Milk crates pale with dust are stacked on shelves around a storage room bigger than our whole basement in Sugarbrook.

“I know, right?” she says. “But it’s not that bad. It’s sorted by year, and then, like, alphabetically.”

I unzip my coat and stuff it in the corner alongside my messenger bag, cleared of schoolwork and all my books but one. “Okay, so I just have to find the box for S in 1998.” To my surprise, Jessa unzips her own jacket, lays it carefully on top of the only island above the dusty floor—my bag and coat—loops her hair into a loose ponytail, and heads over to the shelves, her skinny black cords swishing against each other as she goes.

“What’re you doing?” I ask.

“Baking.”

“I was thinking you could be more of a lookout.”

“Oh please, hardly anyone comes in here. Not even Mrs. Masciarelli, not without her keys. God, I can count and I can spell, so I think I can help.”

There are a lot of crates, and what could it hurt now, really? In for a penny, in for a pound, or whatever Lindy says. And as we search, I’m glad to have her here. Soon my jeans are smeared with filthy prints after wiping my dusty hands on my pants, and despite the cool in the basement, sweat beads up under my arms from climbing shelves and monkeying between the stacks. Jessa has a general idea where the oldest batches of patient folders are, and after what seems like hours but probably isn’t, we’ve found the 1998 files between us. Anxious now, I stumble onto the S’s first. Wow, are there plenty. The first crate alone only goes up to Scollay. In the second I find the many Scotts and thumb through dozens of them with shaking hands, then do it again.

“Is it there?” Jessa asks, her chin nearly on my shoulder, her familiar cinnamon-gum breath in my face.

“Hold on.” I grimace and flip through the folders more slowly this time. Scott, Rebecca. Scott, Samantha. Scott, Shawn. . . . Scott, Spencer. Scott, Thomas. “It’s not in here.”

“What? Look again.”

“I looked again.” I start to riffle through a fourth time, but stop myself. It’s not here. Panicking won’t help. I shove the crate back and think.

“Maybe you have the wrong name?” Jessa pipes up.

“I’m not stupid—” I start to snap, then pause. Because Miles Faye, handsome forensic pathologist, would ask himself, What do you know?

So what do you know, Imogene?