NAÏVETÉ
"Jane, do you have a moment?" I froze, stopping in my tracks, still deciding whether or not to look up.
I survived Monday mostly unscathed. I honestly believe everyone was too afraid to ask me what happened outright. Or they were disinterested.
The morning announcement included a moment of silence for the death of a classmate, but the room felt... unsure, not in mourning. I couldn't tell which made me more nauseous: the remind of my weekend or the general apathy.
"A moment, yes," I answered, finally looking up at Mr. Gabler. The guidance counselor looked at me, his eyes half-hidden behind the glint of thick glasses.
Books still clutched to my chest, I followed him into his office, sitting down in a standard, guidance counselor office chair.
"I understand you—"
"I saw her on the fence. Her mom was crying. No one else was doing anything," I interrupted. The apathy, again. I remembered the flicker of lights across the street while I tried to rub some kind of comfort into Mrs. Driscoll's shoulders.
"Yes." Mr. Gabler steepled his fingers, his eyes on me.
"I am okay." I don't mention the dripping, or the false alarm of a towel on the shower rod.
"My door is always open," he said anyway.
That was a lie. The door was closed right now so no one could hear us discussing Natalie's death.
"Thank you." I stood up, running my thumb along the spine of my English textbook.
All I wanted in the next five minutes was the opportunity to put my books away and walk home without further incident. The radar I flew under for a year in Cullfield finally picked me up just so I could become the girl who saw Natalie die for the last three months of school.
Talking about death was bad luck, probably. I couldn't remember if that was a particular rule, but Filipinos declared almost everything was bad luck. Clipping your nails at night was bad luck and could bring death. If that would do the trick, I was positive talking about it couldn't do any good.
"I heard you were there when she did it." Rhys Davenport slammed into my locker before I had the chance to get it open.
His height and his leaning had this effect of practically making me claustrophobic. He loomed, like he was trying to cast his whole shadow over me. My heart jumped into my throat.
"I didn't see it happen," I corrected, "if that's what you were hoping." A bit grim, really. Rhys generally was a bit grim. He sort of had that look to him. It was the black in his clothes and in his hair. And the looming.
"But you were there?" he asked, fixing his eyes on me. There was no escaping him once he had his gaze boring into me, hazel and intense.
As if I couldn't feel the stare, I pushed him over enough to swing my locker door open, putting a piece of metal between him and I.
"Did you know her?" I asked, finding the zipper pull on my backpack.
"Everybody knows everybody here." Rhys leaned around my locker door. That wasn't the answer I expected, but it wasn't any of my business to begin with. I was a messenger, not an investigator. I was not the person to question the motivations of a girl's last wishes.
I handed him his envelope as I swung my backpack over my shoulders.
"What's this?" he asked, "a little old for passing notes, aren't we?"
"It was in my mailbox," I shut my locker door, "I don't know what else I'm supposed to do with it. It's your name."
I walked away before he opened it, before he could ask more questions I didn't have the answers for. The quicker I got rid of all the envelopes, the sooner I wouldn't have to worry about them, the sooner I wouldn't have to wait.
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The walk from school back to my house was a short one, passing by blocks of Cullfield's old architecture. All those buildings, the looming church steeples, the pillars on the front of aged federal style houses holding up the weight of existing through years and years. Not as regal as the monuments of Boston, but practically as longstanding. Homesickness panged in me, longing for a place where I never had problems so dark.
Leaves crunched under my feet, but halfway home, the wind whips the sidewalk clear, but I swear I can still hear the crunchcrunch crunchcrunch of leaves crushed underfoot.
It was the middle of the afternoon, not a stroll alone in the dark.
I still didn't look over my shoulder, as if ignoring paranoia would help it go away.
The leaves whipped around me when a van zipped by, turning ahead of me into the Driscoll's driveway.
I stopped for a second on the sidewalk, watching the woman in a blazer throw open her door, talking on her phone. In the same motion, she slams the door shut behind her, walking up to the front door the house.
"Kate, honey, can you grab the sign, please?" she said over her shoulder before disappearing inside.
The rear door slid open, sign emerging first, then Kate.
The sign might've been about the same size as petite and unassuming Kate. Her mother was the opposite, her face prominent next to her name and the realtor company logo.
Two days before, the Driscolls lived there and already, Kate Haumann hauled the sign out of her mother's van to sell the place. She only made it a step or two out of the Grand Caravan.
"Do you need a hand?" I asked, without thinking, because Kate's face paled compared to usual.
She looked up, blinking. "I'm sorry?"
It was the stain. She was looking at the dark stain on the sidewalk lined up with the ground-off edges of the fence.
"Do you want some help?" I repeated, regretting offering it in the first place. Kate looked either bewildered or disgusted, her brow clouded, her lipsticked mouth turned down.
"Okay," she said finally, on the breath of a sigh.
The two of us silently position her mother's face on the fence, close to the gate.
"Did you know Natalie?" I asked, fastening the plastic to the iron of the fence.
"What?"
"Natalie? Did you know her?"
Kate's face twisted. "Of course I knew her. We went to the same school. Why are you asking?"
"I—" I gritted my teeth, but there wasn't a real explanation without the physical evidence. My side of the sign firmly attached, I fished her envelope out of my backpack.
"This was in my mailbox. That's all." I held it out to her while she hesitated, waiting for the reveal of some kind of trick. It took her a long moment of silent deliberation and a quick glance at the stained sidewalk before she took it.
"Kate, honey," her mom called from the house, giving us both an excuse to abandon each other without being impolite.
All I really wanted was to get home.
˚˚˚˚˚˚
For the sake of normalcy, I ate dinner, asked my parents questions about their days, and did the dishes.
I even did my homework, but mostly, I watched the house while I did all those things. It wasn't until I climbed out the window onto the roof that I made a deal with myself. If nothing happened, if there wasn't anything to see during all this watching I did, I would stop listening to notes. Maybe I would continue to flip through the diary, waiting be damned.
The house did nothing. It was only a house, but the air in Maine did stranger things. It weighed itself down under the thin layer of fog that Cullfield found itself famous for. Fog, collecting under shafts of light pooling down from the streetlights, misting through it like an ocean current.
Like everything in Cullfield, the streetlights were worn, looking classic like they were part of a great historical exhibit.
At some point, I crawled back into my room to find my book for English to use this watching time somewhat wisely.
My hands braced me against the windowsill, ready to push me up and out into the air.
I couldn't remember which hit me first: the chill that shot up my spine or the realization.
The lights did not flicker within the house, but at the window that only two days ago I watched flutter open in the breeze, stood a shadow. She was clear enough to identify her long hair, unnatural stillness.
If I moved, I wondered if she wouldn't see me. That was ridiculous. No one was in that house. I watched Mr. Driscoll pack up his bags and I watched Kate's mother put the house up for sale.
I blinked, releasing the breath I didn't realize I was holding and nothing was there but the rough shape of pale curtains.
My eyes followed the trajectory without thinking, flicking down to the empty fence where no body of a girl slumped over it.
Instead, there was a person in dark clothes. This time, the person moved.
Watch the house.
Which turned my blood cold?
Unlike the shadow in the window, the one on the ground did not feel as though it bore into me with eyes I couldn't see from up on my roof. Quietly, making no sound that I could hear, the figure walked up the steps to the house, trying the front door as if it might be open for anyone to walk through. It didn't. The figure lifted the doormat, searched around the porch, finding nothing.
The key. That's what it wanted. The key.
My heart jumped into my throat, and I backed away from the window, trading my English book for the one Natalie left me in my mailbox.
The book with the key.
I crept out of the hall, light seeping out from under my parents' bedroom door. For a moment, I forgot ninjas were Japanese and aimed for the kind of stealth that let an assassin sneak out of a house without making a sound so they can sneak into another one.
My back door squeaked only a little, opening only enough to let me out of it. Keeping in mind all that stealth of the Japanese assassin, I pulled myself through the fence, the spires wide enough apart for someone tiny to get between.
What was I doing?
The question only really struck me as I tried the key in the back door of the Driscoll's house. What kind of plan was this?
It wasn't a plan. It was following instructions. The Driscolls were gone. Maybe someone was trying to break in to steal whatever they'd left behind for movers to pack away.
The key turned in the lock. Natalie left me the key to her house. For this?
The wind rattled the leaves of the back garden, and I squeezed myself in the door before I could look over my shoulder.
The house looked exactly like everyone picked up and left, as if they planned on coming back in a few hours.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. My heart just responded to the gentle rattle of the doorknob at the front door.
My feet moved inches at a time, my hands stretched in front of me, groping for the furniture I couldn't see. Assassins never bumped into furniture. That was how assassins got assassinated.
The rug under my feet, an elaborate Persian one, kept my footsteps soundless between the back door and the front.
If the stranger on the other side of the door realized I was there, they hadn't shown any sign of it yet.
Briefly, I considered calling the cops, but how did I explain why I was there? I was their neighbor, but it was Natalie who gave me the key and she couldn't exactly confirm that for the authorities. Maybe I should've thought about 911 before I let myself into the house.
If I wanted to call the police, it was too late for that.
The most logical thing I could think of was to tiptoe up to the peep hole to get a better look.
Deep breath.
It was... a boy. Not any older than me, bent over to check under a rock in the front garden like the spare key would be taped under it. He sighed, rubbing his face as he stood up.
Dean Garnett. As in, Dean Garnett whose envelope I hadn't delivered yet.
My heart still banged against my ribs, but I pulled his envelope out of Natalie's book and...
I pushed it out through the mail slot, letting it drop from my fingers onto the welcome mat.
Dean froze, spinning around for signs of life he might've missed at the beginning of all his rooting.
But Natalie wrote him a note, so maybe the rooting was for good reason. Not that Rhys or Kate gave any indication of good reason for getting their notes. Maybe Dean could've answered Officer Schuttman's questions. Did Natalie ever say anything to suggest what she planned? Maybe she had. To Dean.
Standing on the tips of my toes, I watch him tear through the glued envelope and saw his eyes scan over whatever Natalie hand wrote him.
I opened the door and I swear to God, he almost tumbled backward down the stairs. His saucer eyes stared unblinkingly at me.
"What are you doing here?" For a moment, I held my head high enough to act as though I had anymore right to be there than he did. I carried just enough confidence to sound demanding.
It didn't look good for him. Warm, charming Dean Garnett dressed all in black, hood pulled loosely over his head. In this strange scenario I, Jane Madarang, a total of 5'1" tall, threw him off guard.
I never saw Dean off-guard. He was too casual, rolled too easily with everything thrown at him, which in the context of how I know him, only revolved around schoolwork.
"Did you know she would leave you a note?" I asked, giving him a second chance to recover.
"I had suspicions," Dean spoke, finally, "why are you here?"
"Neighbor." I tilted my head slightly in the direction of my house. My excuse was a good one. It didn't draw any attention to the fact my mother never borrowed sugar or brought over a casserole.
I let him step past me into the house. I stepped back, retracing part of the path I just took from the back of the house.
"You called 911." That wasn't a question. Dean only stated a fact, not needing my confirmation.
"It is truly amazing how fast news travels in this town," I scoffed. I preferred being Jane, the new girl no one really knew anything about. I enjoyed being Jane, the new girl who would graduate soon and leave Cullfield as suddenly as she arrived in it. Back to Boston. I was just biding my time.
I erased it in a moment of weakness. Or in strength, I suppose, considering I was the only person in the neighborhood brave enough to leave the safety of the front porch to help a poor woman discovering the morbid scene in her front yard.
"You haven't lived he—"
I raised a finger to my lips, the gesture evidently being clear enough in the dark for him to obey.
Tapping. Or scratching. It varied. Houses were supposed to feel safe, but not when I unlocked both the back door and the front door.
The scrch scrch scrch didn't come from the door, though. It came from the living room.
I looked to Dean, looking for some kind of explanation. Was he expecting company? Did he tell his company to try the windows if the porch light wasn't on or something like that?
He shrugged, the dim light from outside catching on his shifting shoulders.
Heading out the backdoor didn't sound like such a bad idea, leaving exactly the way I came.