Andrew Klavan - The long way home

I had to turn away again. I looked out the window, down at the cemetery. It was all blurry for a couple of seconds, but when my eyes cleared, I saw the mourning woman again with her blank stare from under her cowl and her grief-stricken gesture at the empty air. So much was gone, I thought to myself. My family, my school days, my safety, my childhood, a year of my life. I'd lost so much.

But not everything. My friends were here. My friends were still here.

"Okay," I said. I turned back to them quickly, speaking brusquely to hide my emotions. "Okay, if that's the way you want it… But if we're gonna do this, we gotta do it right."

"Okay," said Rick. The others nodded. "Like how?"

"Well," I said. "Like, how did you all get here?"

"We parked over in the Lake Center Mall," said Miler. "Then we cut through the housing development to those woods back there. No one could've followed us without our seeing them."

"Good," I said. I took a few pacing steps into the room. "That's really good. You gotta do stuff like that every time you come. Change things up. Make sure no one's watching."

"Okay," said Rick. "What else?"

"Well, you can't tell anyone. Not anyone." I looked at them, searched their faces. "The more people who know, the more danger there is. No matter who it is, no matter how much you may think you can trust them, you can't tell them I'm here or that you're working with me. Not your parents, not your teachers, not your girlfriends, no one."

There was a long silence in answer. Miler and Rick looked at each other and Josh looked at both of them and then they looked at me.

I felt something sink inside me. They'd already told someone.

"What?" I said.

They all looked away.

"Who did you tell? Don't you understand? There's no one else we can trust."

Rick took a deep breath. He screwed one eye shut and sort of looked off with the other eye at nothing in particular. "There's just one other person," he said.

And just then, as if on cue, I heard the front door open on the first floor. I tensed. I glanced at my friends. They continued to look away from me.

The front door gave the same soft, high moan as before and then a soft thud as it swung shut again. There were footsteps rising quickly up the stairs.

It came to me then. I knew who it was. My breath caught. Suspense pulsed through my body. I turned slowly to face the door.

The footsteps crested the stairs and came down the hall toward us. I saw her in the shadows first, her figure obscure but still recognizable. And then my breath came back and something-my heart, I guess-seemed to crack open inside me and a kind of wild heat flooded through my body.

Beth Summers stepped into the doorway and into the light of day that was pouring through the window.

Beth I guess there must be more beautiful girls in the world than Beth, but not to me. I mean, a lot of guys looked at her and kind of shrugged. They thought she was just okay. But not me. I mean, I knew she wasn't gorgeous or glamorous or anything the way some of the other girls in school were. She was of average height with a graceful figure. She had ordinary, honey-brown hair that fell around her face in ringlets. She had small, smooth features: blue eyes, a quick kiss of a mouth.

But somehow, after you talked to her for a while, after you got to know her, she started to look really awesome. I thought so anyway. After you found out how warm she was, how kind, how interested she was in what other people had to say. It changed the way she looked… I don't really know how to describe it.

She was wearing khaki slacks now and a pink sweater and a long blue coat against the autumn chill. She had one of those extra-large purses over her shoulder-I don't know what they call them-a carryall maybe.

She stood there-just stood there-a long time, and I just stood there and we looked at each other, not knowing what to say. It was a strange situation, that's for sure. It was awkward. Really awkward.

On my side, I felt the same way I'd always felt about her. I liked her a lot, more than I knew how to put into words. Back in school, whenever I saw her, I felt a kind of emptiness inside me, as if there were a Beth-shaped hole in me that I hadn't known about until I met her.

But now-now there was a history between us.

See, somehow, during this year, this missing year, Beth and I had fallen in love with each other-but I couldn't remember any of it. I'd won the love of the single sweetest girl I'd ever met, and I couldn't remember how or what it felt like. I couldn't remember our first date or our first kiss. If there were private jokes we had, or secrets we'd shared, they were all gone. We had been in love… and I couldn't remember. I couldn't remember any of it. It made me feel-I don't know what-stupid? No, guilty. It made me feel as if I'd done something wrong to her. As if she'd given me some wonderful and expensive Christmas gift, and I'd lost it.

Before I could figure out what I was supposed to say to her, she gave a little ticktock wave of one hand and said, "Hi, Charlie." Her warm voice was low and uncertain, but it seemed to bring some light and heat into that empty, dusty, drafty, deeply shadowed room.

I licked the nervous dryness off my lips before I answered her. "Hey, Beth," I said as casually as I could. "It's good to see you."

Rick cleared his throat. I'd forgotten he was there. I'd forgotten all the guys were there.

"Well, uh…" Rick said.

"Yeah," said Miler. "We gotta… uh…"

"Right," said Josh. "We got a lot of things we have to… uh…"

"Exactly," said Rick.

They bumped into one another as they all started moving at once. They gathered up their sleeping bags and their litter-all except one bag and one flashlight. They left those for me. Then they headed quickly for the door.

Beth smiled to herself and looked down at the floor. She came into the room and stepped aside so the guys could get past her.

Josh was the last one out. Just as he was leaving, he turned back to me and said, "What we're gonna do: we're gonna go get some stuff. Stuff that'll help. I got all these good ideas for how we can start to find out…"

Rick grabbed his shirt collar and yanked him out of the room.

Beth and I stood silently, each avoiding the other's gaze. We listened as the guys' footsteps thumped down the stairs. We heard the door down there open and thud shut. Then we were alone.

I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came to me. We went on standing there a long time.

Finally, Beth gave me a nervous smile. She moved past me over to the window. She set her carryall down on the floor. She put her hands in the pockets of her coat and shivered.

"It's really chilly in here."

"Yeah," I said. "The window…" I gestured lamely at the broken pane.

She seemed then to come toward me almost by accident, as if she was just wandering around the room, you know, and just happened to find herself standing right in front of me. Then she was close, looking up at me, her eyes on mine. She went up on tiptoe and kissed me.

It was just a quick kiss, quick and soft, but it made the warm, empty feeling flood through me again.

"Hi, Charlie," she repeated. It was almost a whisper this time.

"Hi," I just managed to say.

"I know you don't remember. But I remember."

Then, as if she had embarrassed herself, her cheeks turned red and she moved away.

"I brought you some food," she said quickly.

"Oh, hey, that's really nice."

"It's just some sandwiches and an apple. A couple of bottles of water. But I figured the guys wouldn't think of it or they'd just bring you chips or Pop-Tarts or something."

"Yeah." I gestured lamely again-this time at the empty soda bottles lying on the floor.