Carmiel Banasky - The Suicide of Claire Bishop

Nicolette.

“What’s she doing in my yearbook?” There, right in the B’s, on the same page as me, is Nicolette’s face in a half smile, not quite prepared for the release of the shutter.

“Oh, that was so sad,” Jules says, looking over my shoulder at the picture. Dan’s looking too, and I try to shield her face from him.

“How did she get in there?” I ask again. Slowly so they understand.

“I thought she was gone by then, too, actually. They must have used an old photo.”

“You know her?” I ask. My words feel like they are coming from a memory. Not here and now.

“How could I forget? West saw the most horrible thing. Did I ever tell you about that, Dan? The girl on the cliff?”

Dan’s looking hard at Nicolette’s face. I slam the book shut.

“Huh.” Dan straightens himself up, suddenly uneasy. “Enough reminiscing. You’re supposed to go to bed early,” he says to Jules. “Did you take your medicine?”

Jules groans. “No. Of course I forgot to pick it up.”

“Something’s wrong.” I try to tamp down my smile. Something is beautifully wrong. How did she get into my yearbook? My past? Is that where she’s been hiding all this time?

“Nothing’s wrong,” Jules says. “Just some pain.”

“I’ll run down to the pharmacy,” Dan says.

“No, I will. I can do that.” I stand quickly and give them my politest smile. “Least I can do, showing up uninvited.” Nicolette found her way into my past. But why would Jules remember her while I don’t? Some sort of time-traveling ethos? I can’t even begin to think about all the implications while I’m trapped in here.

“Thanks?” Jules says, a little surprised. “I’m going to take it that this new attitude also means you’re okay with the hospital tomorrow?”

“If it will make you happy.” Obviously, there’s no time for hospitals.

“I’ll call the pharmacy and tell them you’re allowed to pick it up.”

Dan glares at me and Jules smiles. I grab the painting and open the door.

“You can leave that,” Jules says. “West? Leave it.”

“It’s a present, you’ll peek,” I say, ducking into the hallway before they can stop me.

Down in the lobby, there’s a camera pivoting toward me like a duck’s head, filming me as I slip out the front doors and cross the street. If I could piece together the footage of my personal surveillance, from all the storefronts and ATMs and museums I’ve ever walked by, I could make a film of my true self.

I couldn’t think in there, with their threats of hospitals and Dan’s razor smiles, but out here, on the night street, Nicolette is everywhere.

Nicolette is in my past. Do you see how brilliant it is? But why? All I can think is she’s trying to send me a message. What better way to contact me than traveling back and inserting herself in my timeline, my very own high school? Artfully, through a story I told her, about the girl on the cliff. That must be where she’s been since she disappeared last year: fourteen years in the past, dropping breadcrumbs for me to find throughout time. But she wouldn’t have jumped. Would she? It must be another clue.

The tube swings at my side as I walk west. Maybe Nicolette is trying to tell me something about the painting — how to get it to her, where to go in order to do so.

But something is off with Jules and it cannot be a coincidence it’s happening now. Is it about her baby? Could they be after it? I have to find a way to once and for all convince Jules she’s keeping dangerous company. But I can’t protect anyone from inside a psych ward.

I shield my face as I pass the pharmacy with Jules’s medicine. There’s a homeless man wearing a plastic halo from a bachelorette party.

The homeless man is right about one thing — Jules is an angel. She’s too good. She can’t see what’s going on in her very own home. The nerve to go through my sister to get to me!

There’s a red no-walk sign and I can’t go any further, the universe slowing me down.

The Jews know suffering — they know it in their blood and in their bones. Every generation, Jews have been forced to deny their identity, or sleep on ashes. Jews were considered the mad ones — they chose ashes over un-knowing themselves; that’s the story, over and over again — except for our great-grandmother. My heritage is pretending to be sane with the rest of society. And Jules, the martyr, believes that’s an offense she must repent for. Anyone stuck between two worlds like her is bound to be impressionable. Dan’s been feeding on that guilt.

P7: DAN ABDUCTED JULES INTO HASIDISM BY PLAYING ON THE VERY COMPASSION AND GUILT THAT LETS HER LOVE ME.

But I don’t care if it would save a whole people from vanishing. I don’t even care if Jules would choose to sacrifice herself to keep them from disappearing. I can’t lose Jules. And Dan knows that! He thinks I would do anything for her, even give up Nicolette. But he’s wrong — I’ll save them both from the cliff edge, and Dan doesn’t know that.

C6 (FROM C5, A3, & P7): JULES IS A PAWN; SHE IS BEING HELD AS RANSOM TO PERSUADE ME TO HELP THE HASIDIM USE NICOLETTE TO STOP THEIR DISAPPEARING.

Dan nearly found out where Nicolette is hiding, looking at the yearbook. If I don’t get Jules out, she’ll get hurt, and the baby, too. People will drop like anchors.

I won’t let that happen. I loop counter-clockwise back around the block, past the homeless man with the halo, past the pharmacy, back to Jules’s building.

And there they are. The same two cops, on cue, materialize on the opposite corner of First Avenue, walking straight toward her apartment.

Kennedy airport is a carnival of pissed-off people. Not a minute has passed in my mind and here I am, at a counter facing a woman with a double chin and mean eyes, booking the next red-eye west with my nearly maxed-out credit line.

This is the only way. And Jules knows it, too. It was like she was handing me a clue on a silver platter and I almost missed it. The yearbook was obvious, but did you catch that bit about me being my child-self? On a silver platter over a bed of lettuce with some gefilte fish. I’m supposed to start thinking like a time traveler.

The past: it’s the only place to escape the Hasidim and their agents, A.K.A. “the cops.” They know where I am, always, in the present, and I can’t fight them from here. Jules will be disappointed in me for not getting her medicine. She’ll never know I’m saving her life, and they might take advantage of her with me gone. But if this works, I’ll stop it before it even began.

And that is where I’ll find Nicolette. In my past, I’ll give her the painting, and she’ll remember how good I am. She’ll know me again.

But Watson, what of the physics? You’re thinking that only a pro time traveler can move through time and space, that a newbie like me would be lucky to travel a millisecond in the same geophysical position. But maybe, you’re thinking, just maybe, if I find the right nexus point in my past, I can stay in the same place but emerge at Nicolette’s exact time coordinates.

That’s what I’m thinking, too.

In order to paint and therefore time travel, Nicolette had to get at that point of original pain. She had to return to the origin — the nexus — of her subject.

Which is why I’m going to my place of origin — that moment when my true self diverged from my imperfect self. That’s the portal, and it just so happens to be in the dragon’s lair. Straight into the arms of a woman who has herself run from the law. She’ll help me hide the painting, she’ll understand. To get there, I must travel three hours into the past, EST to PST. There, the physics will become clear.