Pretend She's Here(31)

*

After school, Chloe came downstairs to find me.

I was lying on the bed with my notebook open. I wanted to write, but I felt stuck. My insides were churning. I couldn’t find the inspiration that had always found me—I’d never had to go looking before. Without writing, without being able to create characters who expressed their feelings (that were really mine), I felt like a cove jammed with debris—fallen trees, sunken boats.

“Come on,” Chloe said. “Let’s go out.”

“‘Out’?” I asked. It sounded like a foreign word.

She nodded and held out her hand. I wouldn’t take it, but I followed her up the stairs. The parents were nowhere to be seen. We walked out the back door, onto a narrow trail that led into thick woods, the trees bare of leaves. The afternoon was warm with ripples of a chilly breeze slicing through the sunlight. I heard a brook rushing, then saw the thread of silver water spilling over rocks.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“You’ll see,” she said.

“Do your parents know about this?”

“I told them we were going for a walk. I didn’t say where. As long as we stay hidden, it’s okay. Mom’s tired of keeping you in the basement.”

“How can you go along with them, Chloe?”

We walked along in silence for a while, dead brown leaves crunching under our feet. Then she stopped short and wheeled around. Her face was bright red. Her green eyes sparkled with tears.

“I don’t have a choice,” she said. “You must see that.”

I couldn’t say a word in response. I used to think all people had choices, but over the last forty-two days, that belief had been wiped out. We kept walking, crossed the brook. My foot slipped on a wet, moss-slick stone, but I caught my balance.

In the distance, beneath the sound of wind whistling through branches, I heard music. At first I thought it was Irish—it reminded me of the Celtic bands my family loved so much. But there was also a country twang. The sound was so sweet, it actually made my heart soar.

The path climbed a hill, then rounded a bend. There in the clearing was a dilapidated hut—basically just a roof held up by stone pillars, no walls. A band of remarkably cool and raggedy-artistic-looking kids perched on milk cartons and bales of hay, playing instruments. And I knew them—or had seen them before: Casey Donoghue and the friends he’d been with at the cider mill.

There was that ethereal-looking girl on a fiddle, her wavy strawberry blond hair cascading down her back, wearing a sheepskin vest over a long yellow-print dress; the dark-haired boy playing guitar, his head bent low in concentration as his fingers flew over the strings; the stocky boy with shaggy red hair and beard, wearing a T-shirt that said MERLEFEST and playing an odd-looking guitar with a large silver disc where the sound hole should have been; and Casey in his torn jeans and barn jacket, his turquoise eyes seeming to scan the sky, coaxing heart-piercing sounds from his mandolin.

Drawn by the magical strains of music, I started walking out of the trees toward the hut. Chloe gripped my wrist.

“We can listen, but we can’t talk to them,” she said.

“Do you know them?” I asked.

“Casey, of course. The others, no. They go to the high school; they’re older than me,” she said. “They’re a bluegrass band, and they practice here almost every day.”

“What’s the name of the band?” I asked.

“Sapphire Moon. I don’t know that much about them. They’re Lizzie’s age. Your age. I just like coming out here.”

We sat on the ground, in tall, dry grass. I watched as Casey’s fingers danced over the mandolin strings, tickling and chopping them into a cool, thumping melody. The girl’s fiddle tugged at every emotion I’d ever known. One guitarist played a rhythmic bass line and the other made this haunting, sliding sound. All four voices harmonized, rising and combining, high and low, singing the song:

Last night I dreamed of the mountain

And our cottage in the dell,

And I dreamed a love story,

Of the girl I knew so well.



I tapped my knee in time to the beat, feeling a combination of unbelievable bliss and sorrow. I heard true love in the lyrics, and the feeling resonated deep inside my chest. I wondered who I felt it for. I wished it was for a boy. I tried matching it to Dan Jenkins, but that didn’t feel right.

Maybe it was for my family.

For my sisters.

For Lizzie.

For myself—the girl I used to be.

I had no clue. Instead I just listened to the band. Had one of them written the song, or was it a folk tune from long ago? I watched Casey play the mandolin. I stared at his beautiful, cloudy eyes and wondered exactly what he could see.

“We’d better go home now,” Chloe whispered.

“What happened to him?” I asked, reluctant to leave.

“To who?”

“Casey. His eyes?”

“His mother had some kind of disease when she was pregnant. She was raised overseas and didn’t get the right vaccines as a kid, and he wound up with birth defects—vision problems. I don’t know, that’s what my mother says. Come on, let’s go. She’ll be waiting.”

She: Mrs. Porter.

As we headed back through the woods, I walked as slowly as possible, to hear the song to the end. Someone in the band began to play a harmonica, its crooked, keening sound adding an extra note of poignancy. Then Chloe and I rounded the bend, and the music was lost.