Towering - By Alex Flinn Page 0,67

or lilies. It was ten dollars. I decided to buy it for Rachel.

I approached the guy. “Hello?”

Nothing. Maybe he was deaf. I walked closer and raised my voice slightly. “Hello?”

He jumped, then, like he hadn’t realized anyone was there. He’d forgotten he was in a public place and was just caught up in his own little world. “Oh, you scared me. Hello.”

“I’m Wyatt. Mr. . . .”

“Jerry. Do I know you?”

I held out my hand. “We met the other day. You were in here buying a television set.”

“Yessiree, it was a good one too.”

“It actually worked?”

“You bet it did. Watched the Sugar Bowl on it.”

I fought the urge to ask which teams had played because, if he’d watched it on that TV, maybe his house was some kind of portal to 1985 or something. But I didn’t ask. I remembered how it had been with my grandfather, after he’d lost it. He didn’t remember things that had happened the day before, but the past, he remembered really well. I wanted to ask Jerry about the past.

I picked up the Battleship game. “I think I’ll buy this. I want to play it with my friend, Danielle. Do you know her? Danielle Greenwood?”

He took his hand off the set of hot rollers he’d been contemplating and stared at the ceiling, like he was trying to remember. “Danielle Greenwood . . . I think Suzie has a friend named Danielle.”

“Suzie?”

“My daughter, Suzie. She’s about your age. Do you know her from school? She’s a cheerleader.”

I nodded. “I think so. Does she know Danielle?”

“Yes, I’ve seen her at the house. Pretty girl, long, dark hair, right?”

“Yeah.” I wondered what year he was thinking it was, how old Suzie had been when Danielle disappeared.

He shook his head. “I know Danielle. Poor girl.”

“Why?” We were getting someplace now.

“I’m sorry to break it to you, boy, but I don’t think you’ll be able to play Battleship with Danielle Greenwood. She’s disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” I looked to see if Josh was anywhere around.

“Yes, disappeared. The police think she’s just run away, but Suzie said she’s dead.”

In the empty store, the word dead sounded like a door slamming.

“You know about Danielle?” I asked. “You know what happened to her?”

“I don’t know, but Suzie does. She said she couldn’t tell me, though. If she told anyone, they’d kill her, and they’d probably kill me too.”

“Who are they?” The game felt suddenly heavy in my arms. I put it down, the hairbrush on top of it.

“The people with the rhapsody.”

“Rhapsody? What’s rhapsody?”

“A leaf. A drug, actually. It grows somewhere, maybe deep in the woods, and people will kill for it.”

“Is that why they killed Danielle?”

“I told you Suzie didn’t tell me anything!” He stomped his foot. “Don’t you think I’d remember if she had?”

He was shaking. I placed my hand on his arm, to calm him. It was rigid, but under my touch, he relaxed. “I’m sorry. Of course that’s true.”

He looked into my eyes, pleading.

“Do you know where Suzie is? Do you?”

“What? No. You said she was missing.”

“Missing? Suzie?” His face crumpled, and he began to cry.

“Wait. I could be wrong. If you tell me more about it, I could help you find her, maybe.”

“I told you I can’t talk to you. Leave me alone!” He was flailing his arms now, beating his fists into me, the shelves, everything, and all the while, sobbing. “I can’t tell! I shouldn’t have told! Now, Suzie will be lost forever!”

I heard footsteps, Josh’s footsteps running toward me. He grabbed the old man. “Jerry. Jerry, it’s okay. He won’t tell anyone. Look, we got some new stuff in. I saved it behind the counter, old clocks like you like.”

“It’s no use,” the old man was sobbing. “Suzie’s gone. He’s right. She’s dead.”

“No, it’s okay. We’ll find her. There’s a box on the counter over there. There are cameras too.”

“Cameras? Do they have any pictures in them?”

Josh nodded. “Some might.”

Finally, Jerry calmed down enough that Josh could escort him to a new box of old junk. He was still looking at it when I left with the Battleship game, the old hairbrush, and more confusion than I’d felt before.

38

Rachel

For hours after Wyatt left, I could do nothing but stare at the photograph he had shown me and read the diary he had left. My mother’s diary. Her photo. Up until today, I had known I’d had a mother, and yet, she had never seemed quite real. Now, I looked at her picture, and I saw a girl