Megan MIRANDA - The Perfect Stranger

The rest of the papers were full of ideas that were akin to functioning in a state of fear. Proposed safety measures like two monitors at each bathroom, or that student cell phones be allowed to remain on, or that they escort each other in pairs, like in kindergarten, to bathrooms and cars and the front office. Cameras in the classrooms. In the halls. In the bathrooms.

They threw around terms like accountability and privacy and remote classes . I heard echoes of their parents in their words. There were no extra notes slipped in. There was nothing about any rumors, and nothing to build on from IT WASN’T COBB.

I had been wrong. There was absolutely nothing in these pages for me. Nothing but kids phoning in an assignment. I had expected too much. As if, buried in the sea of faces, there might be someone just like me – someone who knew where the truth could be found, if only they reached the right person.

The note about Cobb probably had been from Theo, as a joke, to shake me. Just like the newest assignment from Theo, an assignment that I had given them all carte blanche on and allowed to be anonymous.

From Mitch’s warning, I knew this Davis Cobb thing was going to swing back around unless something changed with Bethany Jarvitz. I’d heard nothing more about her – not from the police, or the students, or the teachers. It was beginning to feel like she was a ghost already. Who, even if she woke, might not remember or be trusted to remember.

I just wanted it all to go away. And the only person I’d feel comfortable talking it all through with was gone.

The space Emmy had occupied only grew more insistent, demanding my attention. I’d taken to sleeping in her bed out of habit. I’d taken to trying on her clothes and looking in the mirror, to remember. Sliding John Hickelman’s watch on and off my wrist. Sitting cross-legged in the dirt, staring off into the forest. Wondering what she was really looking at or for.

Shh, she’d said.

Be quiet.

As if I might spook it. Or as if something had spooked her instead.

EMMY HAD BEEN FLIGHTYat times, but never easily spooked. She could brush off anything and anyone. The crowd was ever changing on us eight years earlier – that summer, we were the only constant. On weekdays, I had my internship and she’d sleep in – and when I got home, she’d be dressed for the night, on her way to a bar across town. On weekends, she worked days. But Friday and Saturday nights belonged to us. On those evenings, she’d wave from across the bar, call my name, push someone over to make room, drape an arm over my shoulders in the already hot and sweaty bar, and I’d feel at home. Let’s dance, she’d say, and I’d hook a finger into her belt loop as she led me through the crowd, so I wouldn’t lose her.

And eventually, in between the laughter, in between the drinks and the friends she’d just made and the people who smiled too big, she’d lean toward me and say, This is boring, let’s get out of here –and, head spinning, we’d spill out into the night, dizzying and electric and ours.

She kept everyone else at a distance. Even the guys she brought home from time to time.

But this was the biggest thing I knew of Emmy – the reason I thought she’d invited me here to begin with: She hated to be alone. It was why she’d wanted me for a roommate eight years ago, even though I couldn’t pay. And why she’d brought people back during the week when I didn’t go out with her. Why she’d liked the voices outside our apartment at all hours of the night.

Why she’d looked so panicked and stricken in that barroom where I found her again. My being here was supposed to help her. It was supposed to make her better, bring her back.

And I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had somehow left her alone again. Not realizing she was already gone.

I HAD FALLEN ASLEEPin Emmy’s bed and had just hit my alarm in the early morning when my phone rang on Emmy’s bedside table.

“Did I wake you?” A man’s voice, heavy with sleep. “This is Kyle Donovan.”

“Nope,” I said, “I’m up.” Though my own voice must’ve given me away.

“Can I swing by this afternoon? Once you’re home? I thought we could go through some of the phone calls.”

“Sure,” I said. “Any news from the Peace Corps?”

There was a pause. “No, not yet.” He paused again. “So, how’s five?”

“Sure, five. I’ll be here.”

He’d give me something, and then he’d want the take. And I needed to know what was really happening. If, like Mitch said, they truly were going to let Davis Cobb go back to school. If people believed he had done nothing wrong. If that was true, what the hell did Bethany Jarvitz have to do with anything?

THE JANITOR HADN’T BEENby my classroom yesterday. He worked on an every-other-day classroom schedule, alternating halls. I noticed the garbage can in the same position I’d left it, and I took the balled-up piece of paper left by Theo from the top with the tips of my fingers. I unfurled the edges, smoothed it along my desk. It was a landscape scene, sketched in pencil. I ran the side of my hand against the page once more, ironing out the creases, and my fingers began to shake.

The image was of tall weeds. The surface of the lake beyond. It was drawn from the angle I’d stood at that morning and seen the blood.

I took a deep breath and looked again. It was a crumpled-up piece of paper, a scene of the lake – as anyone could see it.

It was nothing. Or it was everything.

The note I believed he’d left in between assignments: It wasn’t Cobb . Because it was him? He’d come in late that day. I’d sensed someone behind me as I walked back from the lake. . Was it Theo Burton, even then?

I slid the paper into a folder in the bottom drawer of my desk, the beginning of a file. And then I did exactly what Theo Burton would accuse me of doing: I looked up his information on my class list. Pulled his birthdate, his parents’ names, his phone number, his address. Wrote them all down on a slip of paper and clipped it to the drawing.

Played the game right back – balling up a random piece of paper, throwing it in the trash, so he wouldn’t think I had noticed. So he wouldn’t know it was missing.

ON THE WAY HOME,I swung by the hospital. Although swung by makes it seem like it was on the way, which it wasn’t. The hospital was a good thirty minutes away, off the highway.

Inside, I gave Bethany’s name at the front desk and followed the signs for the intensive care unit. I’d been told to check in with the ICU visiting station, but the desk was momentarily vacated, and I found her room first. I peered through the small square window, saw a prone body on a single bed, the tube snaking out of her mouth, the bandages around her head, the curtain covering her lower half.

I imagined it in print: The halls are empty outside Bethany Jarvitz’s hospital room. A monitor beeps inside the room, her chest rises and falls in time to the rhythm–

I heard footsteps approaching and made myself stop.

“Can I help you?” A woman in scrubs peered in the window beside me. “Visiting hours don’t start for another hour. Do you want to wait?” She gestured down the hall toward the lobby I’d just come from.

“No, it’s okay. I can’t today.”

Her eyes traveled quickly over my face. “Are you a relative?”

“No. I just live near her. I was hoping to hear she was getting better.”

The woman placed a hand on my arm, not saying what I already knew: She wasn’t. “Come back. Visitors help. She could use them.”

I thought of what Kyle had told me, that Bethany Jarvitz lived alone, had no family, was not from around here.