So whose blood is it? And whose room is it? There’s that dress, and I doubt that the furniture, dappled with tiny flowers, belongs to him, but—
“Mackenzie,” my mother calls again, closer, followed by the sound of a doorknob turning. I curse, open my eyes, and jerk my hands up from the floor, the memory vanishing, replaced by a room full of boxes and a dull headache. I’m just getting to my feet when Mom comes barging in. Before I can get the silver band out of my pocket and around my finger, she wraps me in a hug.
I gasp, and suddenly it’s not just noise but cold cavernous cold hollowed out too bright be bright screaming into pillow until I can’t breathe be bright smallest bedroom packing boxes with B crossed out it still shows couldn’t save him should have been there should have before I can shove her tangled stream of consciousness out of my head. I try to force a wall between us, a shaky mental version of the ring’s barrier. It is fragile as glass. Pushing back worsens the headache, but at least it blocks out my mother’s cluttered thoughts.
I’m left feeling nauseous as I pull away from her hug and maneuver my ring back on to my finger, and the last of the noise drops out.
“Mackenzie. I’m sorry,” she says, and it takes a moment for me to orient myself in the present, to realize that she isn’t apologizing for that hug, that she doesn’t know why I hate being touched. To remember that the boy I just saw covered in blood isn’t here but years in the past, and that I’m safe and still furious with Mom for throwing away Ben’s things. I want to stay furious, but the anger is dulling.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I understand.” Even though it’s not okay and I don’t understand, and Mom should be able to see that. But she can’t. She sighs softly and reaches out to tuck a stray lock of hair behind my ear, and I let her, doing my best not to tense beneath her touch.
“Dinner’s ready,” she says. As if everything is normal. As if we’re home instead of in a cardboard fortress in an old hotel room in the city, trying to hide from my brother’s memories. “Come set the table?”
Before I can ask if she even knows where the table is, she guides me into the living room, where she and Dad have somehow cleared a space between the boxes. They’ve erected our dining table and arranged five cartons of Chinese food in a kind of bouquet in the center.
The table is the only piece of furniture assembled, which makes us look like we’re dining on an island made of packing material. We eat off dishes dug out of a box with a surprisingly informative label: KITCHEN—FRAGILE. Mom coos about the Coronado, and Dad nods and offers canned monosyllables of support; and I stare down at my food and see blurred Ben-like shapes whenever I close my eyes, so I wage a staring contest with the vegetables.
After dinner I put Ben’s box in the back of my closet, along with two labeled DA. I packed those myself, offered to make space for them, mostly because I was worried Mom would finally get rid of his things if I didn’t find room. I never thought she’d get rid of Ben’s. I keep out the silly blue bear, which I set beside the bed, and balance Ben’s black glasses on its button nose.
I try to unpack, but my eyes keep drifting back to the center of the room, to the floor where the bloodstained boy collapsed. When I pushed the boxes aside, I could almost make out a few dark stains on the wood, and now it’s all I can see each time I look at the floor. But who knows if the stains were drops of his blood. Not his blood, I remember. Someone’s. I want to read the memory again—well, part of me wants to; the other part isn’t so eager, at least not on my first night in this room—but Mom keeps finding excuses to come in, half the time not even knocking, and if I’m going to read this, I’d like to avoid another interruption when I do it. It’ll have to wait until morning.
I dig up sheets and make my bed, squirming at the thought of sleeping in here with whatever happened, even though I know it was years and years and years ago. I tell myself it’s silly to be scared, but I still can’t sleep.
My mind swims between Ben’s blurred shape and the bloodstained floor, twisting the two memories until Ben is the one surrounded by broken glass, looking down at his red-drenched self. I sit up. My eyes go to the window, expecting to see my yard, and just beyond it the brick side of Lyndsey’s house, but I see a city, and in that moment I wish I were home. I wish I could lean out my window and see Lyndsey lounging on her roof, watching stars. Late at night was the only time she let herself be lazy, and I could tell she felt rebellious for stealing even a few minutes. I used to sneak home from the Narrows—three streets over and two up behind the butcher shop—and climb up beside her, and she never asked me where I’d been. She’d stare up at the stars and start talking, pick up midsentence as if I’d been there with her the whole time. As if everything were perfectly normal.
Normal.
A confession: sometimes I dream of being normal. I dream about this girl who looks like me and talks like me, but isn’t me. I know she’s not, because she has this open smile and she laughs too easily, like Lynds. She doesn’t have to wear a silver ring or a rusted key. She doesn’t read the past or hunt the restless dead. I dream of her doing mundane things. She sifts through a locker in a crowded school. She lounges poolside, surrounded by girls who swim and talk to her while she flips through silly magazines. She sits engulfed in pillows and watches a movie, a friend tossing up pieces of popcorn for her to catch in her mouth. She misses almost every time.
She throws a party.
She goes to a dance.
She kisses a boy.
And she’s so…happy.
M. That’s what I call her, this normal, nonexistent me.
It’s not that I’ve never done those things, kissed or danced or just “hung out.” I have. But it was put-on, a character, a lie. I am so good at it—lying—but I can’t lie to myself. I can pretend to be M; I can wear her like a mask. But I can’t be her. I’ll never be her.
M wouldn’t see blood-covered boys in her bedroom.
M wouldn’t spend her time scouring her dead brother’s toys for a glimpse of his life.
The truth is, I know why Ben’s favorite shirt wasn’t in the box, or his mile patch, or most of his pencils. He had those things with him the day he died. Had the shirt on his back and the patch in his pocket and the pencils in his bag, just like any normal day. Because it was a normal day, right up until the point a car ran a red light two blocks from Ben’s school just as he was stepping from the curb.
And then drove away.
What do you do when there is someone to blame, but you know you’ll never find them? How do you close the case the way the cops do? How do you move on?
Apparently you don’t move on; you just move away.
I just want to see him. Not a Ben-like shape, but the real thing. Just for a moment. A glimpse. The more I miss him, the more he seems to fade. He feels so far away, and holding on to empty tokens—or half-ruined ones—won’t bring him any closer. But I know what will.
I’m up, on my feet and swapping pajamas for black pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt, donning my usual uniform. My Archive paper sits on the side table, unfolded and blank. I pocket it. I don’t care if there are no names. I’m not going to the Narrows. I’m going through them.