Under the Light - By Laura Whitcomb Page 0,58

larger than a coffin, really. The water was higher now, nearly to the ceiling. It tasted of metal and earth and an odd mix of plant spices, a recipe made by nature in a wild tantrum. Sage, mint, and honeysuckle, but also anise, parsnip, and the bitter bloom of chrysanthemum.

Above the cellar door, as seen through a gap where a tree limb had torn through, lightning flashed, sending a moment of blue-green brightness into the water. The storm danced outside to its perverse music—the familiar din of thunder cracks, the hiss of rain, and that singular howl that always sickened me.

It used to be that my hell was alive and screaming, winds blowing, water spraying, thunder and lightning in full flash and roar. Now, though, it stopped, still and mute. The cold was there, though—I could feel the chill deep in my soul. Perhaps this pause in my hell was worse than its past torment. Movement might imply the possibility of an end someday. But this stillness was unbearable. Perhaps it wasn’t that time had frozen but that it was now moving at the pace of infinity. A moment now becomes a century.

I could see through the dark pool two pale shapes, my hands, like drowned doves floating just under the surface two feet before me. Tickling at my scalp, a crown of water, for I had been swallowed up.

CHAPTER 24

Jenny

I COULDN’T BELIEVE MY MOTHER WANTED me to go to the library. Billy wouldn’t be there. I had no reason to go anymore. But she gave me lunch money and her phone.

“Some of the women from church are coming over,” she explained.

I assumed they would be talking about my father. “I could stay in my room,” I told her.

But she dropped me off at the usual stop and all she said about it was “I’ll call when I’m ready to get you.”

I climbed the steps to the entrance as slowly as if my veins were filled with lead. Helen had left me. I waited until after midnight for her to speak to me, but she never answered. Not this morning, either. Maybe she was done watching over me. Maybe I was crazy and had just imagined her. Nothing would surprise me anymore.

And Billy had had enough of me too. He’d told his brother that I’d broken up with him, but it didn’t feel like that to me. I wanted to see him again—I hadn’t said goodbye. So I stood on the steps to get decent reception and used my mother’s phone.

Instead of hello, a man answered saying, “Mitch?”

The voice didn’t sound like Billy or his brother.

“No,” I said. “It’s Billy’s friend.”

“Yeah?” He waited.

Mitch had said something was going to happen to Billy today. I had nothing to lose—I started lying. “I was supposed to go with them,” I said. “Am I too late?”

“They left half an hour ago.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I thought so. Can you give me the address? I’ll meet him there.”

“It’s the Prescott building, the one downtown that looks like a resort, with the palm trees.”

After hanging up I went inside the library long enough to find out where the Prescott was and which bus would take me there.

It was a three-story building covered in blue mosaics. I walked in and read the directory by the elevator. I had no idea where Billy was or what he was doing in this kind of place—most of the offices belonged to lawyers. I couldn’t hear Billy’s voice, or any voices, but I started walking down every hallway listening. As I came up to conference room number nine on the first floor and looked through the window in the door, I saw Billy. He wore a blue pullover sweater and sat in a wooden chair in front of a long table. The room was huge—they were only using one end. Billy looked tired but sat straight, his sneakers planted firmly on the floor. He wasn’t facing the door, so he didn’t see me spying on him.

A woman and a man, both wearing dark suits, sat at the table taking notes, though there was a microphone and a recorder doing the same thing. Four people were sitting in folding chairs near the table: Mitch and an older woman and a middle-aged couple. They sat several seats apart as if they didn’t know each other.

The woman at the table had a cardboard nameplate that read MS. IVERS and the man’s plate read MR. SAWYER. At the far end of the table, a man