As I enter Bram's, the sound of a gong just about makes me jump out of my skin.
"Nice doorbell," I say, and Seneca laughs.
"The Count just had it installed," he says. The Count is the owner of Bram's. His name is actually Kenny Lui, but he wears nothing but vintage, black Victorian suits (with occasional cape) and insists that everyone calls him The Count. Sounds creepy, I know, but he's a really nice man, and it kind of ads to Bram's whole horror-nerd ambiance.
"Hey, um, look," Seneca says. "I heard about that kid at Putnam."
I nod. It's the first time someone outside of who was there that night has brought it up and it hits me pretty hard.
"Was he a good friend?" Seneca asks. "I mean, Putnam's a small place, so I know you knew him, but were you close?"
"Not really," I say. "But I saw him a lot. He was going out with one of my best friends."
And there's this awkward moment of silence between us that's finally broken when The Count emerges from behind the red velvet curtain that separates the store from his office and storage room.
"Good afternoon," he says. The Count is in his suit, but not his cape, and smells of mothballs.
"Hey, Count," I say. "Your fangs must be burning. Seneca and I were just talking about the new doorbell." It feels good to change the subject and talk about something other than Justin.
"You like?"
"I think so," I tell him. "But it's a little intense."
The Count seems pleased by that. He plucks a Hershey's kiss from the candy dish, unfoils it and pops the little nugget into his mouth. Making a yummy sound, he stabs a box cutter into the cardboard flap of a new shipment, and carries the box over to a shelf devoted to psychological horror. A happy bobble to his movements - most un Dracula-like - he begins stocking the shelf with nine trade paperback editions of Preacher.
"The calligraphy was an inspired touch," I say.
"Hmm?"
"The bloody ink, the Edward quote."
Seneca shrugs and shakes his head.
"I left my copy of Twilight in the Gothic Reading Nook, and you dropped it by, right?"
Seneca's eyes widen. "Oh, man, you left that here?"
"Well, yeah," I tell him. "I was kind of distracted at the time."
Justin. Cheaters.
"And you bought the hard cover and everything," Seneca says. "No, Twila, I mean that's an expensive book and if I'd seen it here I would've definitely called you."
I look over at The Count and he's mumbling something about Twilight under his breath. He's not a fan.
"So, nobody from Bram's dropped it off?"
Seneca looks over at his boss, who shakes his head.
"It's just me and The Count here," he says.
"Oh." Weird.
"Twilight," The Count says. "Who ever heard of vegetarian vampires?"
Seneca rolls his eyes at him. "I'm glad you got it back, though. And if you want the rest of the series, I'll still get it for you on my store credit." He leans in to me and whispers, "With my employee discount."
I smile and try to seem engaged, but the truth is, I'm kind of spooked about the Twilight thing. I'm sure there has to be some reasonable explanation, but if no one from here dropped it off at my dad's...it's not like I had my name in it. The only reason I knew it was my copy was the way the pages curled up on the top right corner of each page. It's a habit of mine when I read - rolling the top corners. And I haven't even told anyone I read it. Then there's the Edward quote about being the bad guy, written in blood red ink, no less, and the apple-turned- dodgeball. It's all like somebody's idea of a bad joke given everything that's been going on.
"Dracula. The original. That's what you should be reading," The Count says.
"Oh, I have," I say. About five times. Right there in the Gothic Reading Nook, where I read Twilight. Where someone might have watched me read Twilight.
"Seems vampires are making a comeback - not that they ever really went away," The Count continues his train of thought. "One of your Putnam friends just bought the last three volumes of the Twilight series, and sales on that have been quiet for a while. At least here."
I'm trying not to be rude, stay connected to the conversation, but it's hard. I think I say something like, "You don't say?"
The Count hmms.
"People who shop here, their tastes tend to be a little more esoteric," he says. "I wouldn't even stock Twilight if it weren't part of the canon. Except for Breaking Dawn."
Seneca leans in to me. "The Count doesn't mean anything by it."
I assure Seneca I'm not offended.
"I mean everything by it!"
"But you don't say that in front of a customer!"
"It's my store, I can say it in front of anyone I want. And my customers come here for my curatorial instincts!"
"My curatorial instincts!"
"The piano thinks it wrote the concerto!"
I sneak away amidst the bickering that is as much a part of Bram's as its rug, its velvet and its new door chime. While Seneca's only been working there for a couple of years, it seems The Count makes a pattern of hiring passionate horror fans with strong opinions. Just so he can argue with them.
Outside, it feels like a cold, spring day. Rainy, no wind, a slightly verdant smell to the air, even though most of the trees and bushes are bare. As I settle into my trek home, I find myself walking faster and faster, until I practically run up my dad's porch. Inside, I take the stairs two at a time. Nobody's home, thank God(dess), but quiet as a whisper, I enter my room and shut and lock my door.
"To thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man," I say aloud. Hamlet, act one, scene three.
Under my bed is a big, powder pink lock box, and I scoot it out past my ruffled bed skirt and enter my combination into the lock - 4-23-15-64, William Shakespeare's birthday. Duh. Removing the lock, I creak open the box and look down onto dozens of journals and diaries. Every single one I've ever written to be precise, and I started writing in journals when I was in Kindergarten. At the very bottom of this time capsule of my most intimate thoughts, lies my copy of Twilight.
Looking at it makes my stomach drop.
I reach in and pick it up - the dodgeball drawn over the apple, the ghostly pale hands; it totally gives me the willies - then I open the cover, eyeing the curled pages at the top. It's like I have to make sure that I wasn't imagining things. That yes, this really was my copy, the copy I bought and in my post-Justin stupor left at Bram's.
I start flipping through the pages and immediately I notice the markings. The numbers of the first five chapters are circled in pencil, 6. SCARY STORIES, is skipped altogether, and seven and eight are circled again - the numbers, not the words. I start to scan through the book, looking for more pencil marks. On page seventy-four, "too-perfect face" is underlined, and on the next page, "Gym was brutal." Then nothing for a long time. On page two hundred twenty-four, the words "I apologize for scaring you" are circled. On page three hundred forty-three yet another sentence is underlined, but twice for emphasis. This one reads, "But as time went on, I began to see the monster in my eyes." The rest of the book is clean.
I put Twilight down carefully, like it could explode, and sit back. I suppose whoever read my book could have been making notes for themselves. I do that all the time - underline passages, write comments. Sometimes I write long paragraphs - questions for the author, or grievances I have with the story arch, or factual components of the plotline. But these few markings, I feel like they're meant for me. As if someone is trying to tell me something. God, I wish Mickey was here. And what is the deal with him anyway? Why hasn't he called me?
I lay back on my bed and stare at the chandelier Granny Lulu bought me for my 8th birthday. Designed to look like a cloud studded with light, it is perhaps my favorite thing in my whole room, but today, it makes me feel like crying.
My lavender walls seem to be closing in on me and my corkboard, tacked with pictures of me and Hannah and Taylor, Putnam events, me and my mom in zombie costumes, and the best ones from a trip my dad and I took - just the two of us - to San Francisco last summer, make me feel like all my good times are in the past. Sluggishly, as in truly like a slug, I crawl out of my room and into the hallway, where a small, round end table hosts an ancient, spin-dial princess phone. Picking up the receiver, I enter the appropriate digits. Hannah's dad answers her cell phone.
"Uh, hi, Mr. Kingston, this is Twila. May I speak to Hannah, please? Oh, of course. I see. Well, thank you. And, I mean, when it's okay, can you please ask her to call me? Yes, right. Okay. Thanks. I will. Goodbye."
Hannah's dad informs me that he and Mrs. Kingston have decided they want Hannah to be in a purely nurturing environment while Hannah examines her emotions about Justin's death with their family therapist. During that time, she will not only be banned from Putnam and all her extracurricular activities, but also from contact with any of her friends - including me. His apology seems sincere and he assures me that he'll give Hannah my message and that she'll be in touch as soon as their therapist gives her the thumbs up.
That's two down.
Yesterday I tried calling Taylor, but her mom answered her cell phone and told me she was much too upset to talk to anyone just yet. She explained how Taylor is an unusually empathetic person and that the death of a "classmate" has hit her particularly hard.
Taylor's mom, in classic form, talked around the whole situation, pretending that Taylor and Justin were never anything more than "classmates" who happened to see an awful lot of each other and spent all their time together holding hands and making googly eyes. If she had any inkling of just how close Taylor and Justin really were, she'd probably have a freakin' cow and make Taylor (who's nearly seventeen!) wear a chastity belt or something. My mom thinks Taylor's mom is a "psycho-bitch" and I'm starting to wonder if she isn't right.
But maybe all of my vitriol is stemming from the fact that I feel so completely alone, except for an anonymous stalker with a Twilight fetish. It's like ever since I walked out of Putnam's copper doors on the night of Snow Ball, I've found myself in an alternate universe. A barren, friendless wasteland that seems to spread indefinitely across the horizon.
Swallowing hard, I dial one more number. It's Easter's. And it's not that I don't want to talk to Easter or anything. I actually really do. It's that somehow I feel weird calling her house. It's like I'm afraid her parents are going to answer and I don't know what I'd say to them. I imagine them having heavy country accents and quoting the Bible and stuff, which I realize is so bigoted and ridiculous on my part, and I'm genuinely ashamed of myself. Because, so what if they do? They're clearly nice enough people to raise a daughter like Easter.
"Oh, hey. It's Twila," I say.
Easter takes me by surprise answering her phone. First up, she asks me if I know that school has been cancelled for the entire week and I tell her that I do not. Seems she just got the call about an hour ago, and no one's been home here.
She also tells me that Justin's funeral will be this coming week, but that it will be a private, family affair. In lieu of flowers, we're asked to send donations to the Ronald McDonald House charity, and offer up our memories of Justin to be read at a Putnam-sponsored memorial on his behalf. That one will take place next Saturday at the Unitarian Church downtown. Wow, this is all just becoming so real and feels exactly as terrible as I thought it would.
Then I give her my rundown.
I tell Easter about Twilight, and the note, and the fact that no one at Bram's delivered it. I tell her about the pencil markings - the circled numbers and underlined phrases. The one circled phrase, "I apologize for scaring you." Easter is silent for a long time.
"What are those numbers again? The circled ones?"
And I tell her.
"No six and nothing after eight," she says.
"I thought the six might mean something," I say. "It could be about absolute values, maybe?"
"Well, the absolute value of six is six," Easter says. "Maybe it's something simpler, like the number of a locker or a room?"
I run my fingers through my bushel of hair.
"Well, the number six locker would be in the lower school, so that doesn't make sense, and room six... Easter, room six is Dr. Fronk's classroom!"
I hear Easter take a deep breath.
"That could be a coincidence," Easter says. "And who knows if six means anything at all."
Or if any of this means anything at all. The more we talk about it out loud, the crazier it sounds. But somehow, the truer it sounds, too.
"Hey, look," I say. "Is there any chance you'd want to come over again and spend the night?" I think about Franco taking up residence at my dad's. Yuck. "We can probably go to my mom's, although words of warning: the food will be somewhere between vegan and barely edible."
Easter laughs. "I'm sure the food will be fine."