Page 75 of Fragments of the Lost
And I know what I must do.
By the time the alarm goes off in the morning, I haven’t slept at all. I hear my dad leave for work in the morning, before dawn. By then, it’s too late to try anymore.
“I don’t feel good,” I tell my mother in the morning, in the kitchen, as she’s draining the last of the orange juice from her cup. I don’t even have to fake it. My stomach churns, and I catch sight of my reflection—pale in the window.
She places a hand to my forehead. “Do you want me to make a doctor’s appointment?”
I shake my head. “Feels like the stomach bug,” I say. Feels like betrayal. Like lies. Like disorientation.
She looks from me to the clock, as if she’s debating staying home with me as well. I hold my breath until she swings her purse over her shoulder and grabs her keys. “Call me if you need anything, okay?”
I nod, and she pauses at the doorway, as if she senses something. But in the end, she doesn’t press, and she waves once, shutting the door behind her.
Immediately, I lock the door. There’s a piece Caleb left for me. A memory he shared. The house he grew up in. If I had the address, I could check back through the public records, to see who owned it when he was younger. I can barely remember the town name. I have to pull up the map program, trying to remember where Max’s game was—but the names all blend together. I remember there was a toll. We veered off course. I think I could find it if I retraced our route, imagining Caleb beside me as we drove.
—
I take a shower to wake up, then pull together the directions and head to my car.
I’m halfway down the driveway when I see Max, walking up the path. He freezes, midstride. “You weren’t at school,” he says.
He showed up, like I did for him. My eyes shift down the road, making sure I don’t see Eve watching.
He eyes my bag, the keys in my hand. “Where are you going?” he asks.
“To find the house where Caleb grew up. He took me to it, once. On the way to one of your games. There was some sort of accident there, a fire or something. But I figure if I can get the address, I can get the names, and then some answers.”
He stands farther away, an adequate distance to keep. His words travel the expanse between us. “Want some company?” he asks.
“I could use some help with the directions,” I say. “I don’t know exactly where I’m going.”
“Which game was it?” he asks.
“Playoffs. The other team wore black. You won by one run. You beat the throw to home.”
He raises an eyebrow, and I remember our last conversation about baseball, on the subway, where I told him I didn’t pay attention anymore. Except I obviously was.
“I remember,” he says with a grin. “I know the way.”
We drive down the same highway, and I start rummaging through my purse. I have the coins out just as Max sees the sign for the toll and says, “Crap, toll.”
I can’t help the smile, the echo of the moment. I hold my hand out to him with exact change. “I remember this part,” I say. But that’s the last thing I remember well. I remember we veered off at a diamond-shaped sign, and Max and I take a few wrong turns before looping back to the exit and trying again, on a different route. “There,” I say as we pass the cornfield, the thickening forest. “Take a right.”
Then I’m directing by gut, by my memory of the landscape, how it led to someplace less occupied, abandoned, forgotten. There’s the dirt road, I’m sure of it. I direct Max to turn, and then I see it: a little sharper than the last time.
The eave hanging off the porch. The singed steps, splintered edges. The grass that looked scorched from the sun, or more. Boarded-up windows and an overgrown driveway, with no mailbox to designate the address.
—
I walk as if in a dream into the house. The numbers are gone, once nailed into the post beside the door. But the shadow remains, whiter than all the rest, aged with time.734.I have the start of an address. Max opens the map program and reads off the street name. “Briar Rock Road,” he says, and it feels so fitting, as if the road name came after the house, and all that happened here.
Then I push at the door and stand in the same spot I stood with Caleb, months earlier. But now I’m someone new, and I am propelled toward the steps to the second floor.
“Jessa,” Max calls from the entrance.
“Caleb went up here,” I say. “I didn’t. But I have to see.”
The steps creak and sag under my weight, and I’m not sure whether they’ll hold me. I keep my hands planted against the walls, covered in what remains of a floral wallpaper, which is starting to give way, with the elements. But eventually I make it to the top. The dark hall with missing doors and half a wall burned straight through.
