Bright Before Sunrise(19)

I laugh. I can’t help it. “Plastic surgery. Then the cars.”

“Oh, so this is a joke to you? I guess you’d know. So tell me: Exactly how many sets of Cross Pointe boobs have you seen?”

The nail of her pointer finger is inches from my face. I push it away and snap back, “You think I’m cheating? Are you crazy?”

“We both know you are. At least be man enough to admit it.”

“That’s such crap. I can’t believe—”

“Don’t even try to deny it. I found this in your backseat last week.” She pulls the bright blue paper back out of her pocket and holds it like a murder weapon.

I have no clue what’s on it or why it’s made Carly psycho. I take it from her hand and hope it contains the logo from Punk’d. The creases are deep and smooth, like it’s been unfolded repeatedly.

She crosses her arms and watches my face expectantly. I look down—it’s a single sheet of paper. A flyer from Cross Pointe, like the hundreds of others that are hung on the school walls at neat intervals.

“So?” I’m baffled. So confused that I’m not even angry anymore.

“Are you kidding me?”

“Did you want to help put together care packages for last year’s seniors? I don’t know what the problem is. Yes, it’s a stupid project—but who cares if some idiots wanted to mail snacks and instant coffee to a group of spoiled college freshmen?”

Carly’s face is red, her lips pressed together so tight they disappear. “Who. Is. She?” She snatches the flyer from my hands and it tears in the corner. I’m left holding a jagged scrap of blue paper. Carly points to some handwriting at the bottom of the page: ten digits and a name.

Brighton.





10

Brighton

6:07 P.M.


18 HOURS, 53 MINUTES LEFT


The Sheas gave me a tour and left three different ways to contact them. Sophia’s already asleep and they promised to be home by ten, so the only real directions for the next four hours are: “Check the baby monitor and call if you need us. No, actually, if she wakes up at all, call us.”

It seems straightforward, and she hasn’t woken so I haven’t called. But this hasn’t stopped Mr. Shea from checking in three times already.

I reassure him, for the third time, “Everything is quiet here.”

“And the monitor is definitely working?” he asks.

“It is.” I hold it up to the phone and turn up the volume so he can hear the steady raindrop sounds of Sophia’s white-noise machine.

“Okay.” He exhales. “So, you’re all set?”

“Go enjoy your dinner,” I tell him. “Everything here is fine.”

“Great. Great, great. Thanks so much, Brighton. We’ll see you in a few hours.”

I hang up and pace from the kitchen to the living room, through the dining room and one of those never-really-used rooms with new “antique” furniture and a grandfather clock that bongs about seven minutes early. It almost looks like every other house in Cross Pointe, but there’s a hint of not-quite-there-yet—it’s apparent in the price tag still dangling from a throw pillow, and the dining room chairs, which look like they’ve never been sat on. Everything is slightly too matchy-matchy and too new. But the Sheas are still new, still trying too hard.

Not that everyone else in Cross Pointe doesn’t try; we just don’t let our efforts show.

I circle back to the kitchen. They have one of those floor plans where the rooms all connect with multiple entrances; it all flows around the staircase to the second floor where Sophia sleeps in the only room with an open door. Behind one of the other seven is all the information I’d ever need to know about Jonah.

The Sheas said I don’t even need to go upstairs—as long as she’s quiet, I should just let her sleep. I click the video button on the monitor—not awake.

On my second lap of the first floor, I check for photos of Jonah. Picking up frame after frame and trying to replace them in the exact same positions. The house is a baby shrine. There are an absurd number of photos of Sophia in every state of dress and pose—I particularly enjoy the one of her half-buried in a basket of laundry hanging above the washing machine in the mud room—but the only photo I find of Jonah is in the back corner of a bookshelf. It’s of him in a middle-school baseball uniform.

I fail at my attempts to translate the tanned, dirty-blond boy with a wide, metallic grin to the taller, darker-haired ghost who sulks in Cross Pointe’s halls. I can’t stop the comparisons. What happened to make him stop smiling so wide his eyes wrinkle in the corners? How come his broad shoulders are always creeping up and forward instead of squared and confident like his thirteen-year-old self?

I carry the picture frame to the kitchen without even realizing it. I lean against the marble countertop and tilt the photo so it’s fully illuminated by the track lighting—he was thin, didn’t quite fill out his red-and-white uniform. But even then you could see hints of the muscles he would develop. I can’t stop studying his grin—it’s confident, carefree. So open and sincere that I’m jealous of the boy he’d been.

If Jonah had attended middle school with the rest of us, he would’ve been prime crush material. If he’d stop scowling long enough to acknowledge anyone at CP High, he’d still be.