Page 32 of Fragments of the Lost
Password last changed 49 days ago. If this is incorrect, please click here to report.
I pull up the calendar on my phone. Look at the dates. Forty-nine days. I do the math. Check again. Look over my shoulder at the lacrosse stick wedged against the door.
His password was last changed two days after he died.
“Jessa?”
His mother’s voice funnels up the steps, the second before her footsteps. I exit out of the program so she won’t think I was snooping, shut down the computer, and turn the monitor to black before racing to the door. I slide the lacrosse stick from its position, opening the door just as her hand turns the knob.
“Hi,” I say.
She tips her head to the side gently, probably noticing I’m out of breath and flushed. “I wasn’t sure if you were still up here. It’s been so quiet.”
I nod, gesturing to the boxes. “I did the drawers. The sports stuff.”
My mind is swirling, the words on the tip of my tongue:Someone changed his email password. Someone else has been through his things. Through his email. Through here.
My first thought, the first image I see, is of Caleb, hovering over a computer screen somewhere, changing his password. But I shake the thought, the painful hope, before thinking of all the other possibilities: Eve, Mia, Max; a nameless girl whom he knew just as well, who sent him letters, who he met up with—
Eve frowns. “Will you be coming directly from school tomorrow?”
It’s then I notice that the sky has gone dark, the shadows from the fan slanting across the walls.
“I think so,” I say. I grab my purse and brush by her, my body trembling.
She grabs my bag as I pass, our bodies filling up the narrow stairwell. “Leave everything.”
I flinch. “I did.”
Her fingers don’t let up, but they don’t tug harder, either. “Can I see?” she asks.
I nod, offering my purse over to her. I have this fear that she will bar me from this room, from their lives, once more, and I’ll never know what happened. I have this instinct that she doesn’t trust me up here all alone, and I’m scared she will change her mind—that just as I’m peeling away the top layer, everything that is Caleb will be gone for good.
She unzips the bag, runs her fingers along my wallet, my phone, jangling the pack of gum and ChapStick, the spare coins, the extra tampon. The pictures are in my room, safely transported the day before. The bus ticket is wedged into the back pocket of my jeans. If she sees the strip of condoms I’ve stuffed into the bottom of my purse, she doesn’t say.
“Okay?” I ask, but I’m already pulling my purse away. I want her hands out of my things—mythings—but I don’t want her to keep me from coming back. It’s a tightrope, and I don’t know how to manage her. It must be the same for her: that she both wants me here, doing this for her, and doesn’t want me here, my hands in her son’s things, reminding her of the start of the chain of events—Caleb at my meet, the beginning of the end. All I know is there is not space for both of us in this room.
Eve says nothing, but she doesn’t object as I make my way down the staircase, my feet moving Caleb-speed, my body trembling, the air thrumming. I move quickly, terrified that she’ll notice the outline of the ticket in my pocket, that she’ll stop me, and call me back.
I burst through the front door and race to my car, and it’s not until I have the car running that I put my hands on my head and take a deep breath. I breathe slowly with my eyes closed before placing my hands on the wheel. The front porch light flicks on, and as I pull away, I see the curtains move.
—
There’s a note on the kitchen table:Took Julian to train station.
My house is too big for just me. The kitchen gives way to the living room and the dining room and the foyer, all at once. The staircase is twice as wide as the one at Caleb’s house, and the balcony overlooks the open layout of the downstairs. Our rooms are spread out upstairs beyond the balcony in the back half of the house, the windows facing the inclined backyard and the stone patio that’s rarely used once the weather turns.
Everything echoes here.
I leave on the light near the front steps and make my way to my room, keeping my door open so I can hear when my parents return.
I want to sort through the photos from Caleb’s room, which I’ve stored in my closet, on the shelf just out of reach. Now, I fan them over the blue bedspread on my full-sized mattress, adding the ticket from my pocket to the mix. There’s a canopy overtop the bed, strung from the bedposts, from when I was younger, and it’s blocking the light.
I remember Caleb running his fingers over the gauzy white material the first time he was up here, whistling between his teeth.
He fell onto his back, his hands behind his head, looking straight up. “I’m just trying to see it,” he said, “the world according to Jessa.”
My room might’ve been bigger, but his had far more privacy. He walked around mine that first day like he was in a museum gallery, his hands hovering over the decorations, the jewelry box, but never touching. Like there was something untouchable about the world I inhabited, still.
