Towering - By Alex Flinn Page 0,95

Greenwood paused the television just as the starry background came onscreen, before the announcer said, Space: The final frontier. “And the only thing I could think was that it was Danielle.”

“Danielle?” I said at the same time Rachel said, “My mother?”

“Yes. Rachel, I told you I had seen Danielle in my dreams, just a few months ago. She came in a dream and spoke clear as day. She said that Wyatt should come here, that he could help Rachel to fulfill the prophecy. I brushed it off, but the next day, Emily Hill called me.”

“She did?” I said.

“Out of the blue. I mean, we’d exchanged Christmas cards, and once, she came up to visit. But I hadn’t heard her voice in years. But that day, she asked if Wyatt could come stay here.”

“Did she know?” I asked. This was a big shock to me. I thought she’d just wanted to send me here to get me out of town.

Mrs. Greenwood nodded. “Just yesterday, I asked her, and she said she had had the same dream. She just hadn’t told me about it because she thought I’d freak out.”

“Good call,” I said.

“And then, when you came, you saw Danielle yourself.”

“Twice,” I said.

“Twice?”

Oops. I hadn’t told her about the second time. “So you think she, what, facilitated my communication with Rachel? Like a ghost or something?”

“A ghost or maybe a vision. I think she loved Rachel and wanted to help her, somehow.”

At this point, it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that had happened. Not by a long shot. I said, “Do you think she’ll be coming back again?”

Mrs. Greenwood shook her head. “I don’t think so.” And then, she un-paused the television, the announcer’s voice, blasting: These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise.

The rest of the week, the town saw more action than it had probably seen in twenty years, as the police solved numerous missing persons cases, including finding Bryce Rosen, the guy on the Missing Person flier outside Hemingway’s. Dateline NBC was there and every news station in the country. Parents flocked to pick up their children, all believed dead, some for as long as thirty years. The Fox brothers had held them all this time, and now they were released, some to loving families, others to rehab centers.

And Mrs. Greenwood was right. The only one who wasn’t found was Danielle.

“Suzie told the truth,” Mrs. Greenwood said. “She really is gone. I never fully believed she was. I guess that’s why I never cleaned out her things. I should do it now.”

Rachel had been staying in Danielle’s room since she came home. We looked at each other and said, “We’ll do it,” because we knew it would be too painful for her.

“Thank you.”

One thing that hadn’t changed about Rachel was her hair. It was still short, and it wasn’t growing. Or, I guess, it was growing at a normal rate, not a crazy one. Her magical tears too were gone now that they had served their purpose. And if I wanted to talk to her, I had to go find her.

Which wasn’t that hard, since we were both living at Mrs. Greenwood’s house for now. We had both started classes at the local school, not online, so we had to wait until Saturday to clean out the room. That morning, we put Danielle’s things in bags, some for the garbage, some for charity, some for Hemingway’s junk shelves, “Because, really,” I said, “you never know when someone might want a pair of shoe skates—some people might think in-line skates are dumb.” And some things, like old yearbooks and photographs, Rachel kept for herself.

Rachel took out one of the desk drawers so she could go through it. When she tried to put it back, it wouldn’t go in. “Check underneath,” I said. “Sometimes, something gets stuck in the tracks.” I had to tell her things like this all the time, because she’d never done normal stuff like other people did. Even the dishwasher fascinated her completely, and she kept putting dishes in so she could run it and see them come out clean.

Rachel held the drawer up and looked under it. She drew out a blue envelope.

She looked at it, then gasped.

In what I recognized as Danielle’s handwriting, the letter was addressed to Rachel.

Dear Rachel,

I am writing this to you because I know you will be born, and I know you’ll be a girl. I’m going to tell whoever takes you to name you Rachel because that’s my favorite name.

I