The pictures would have to do, because there was nothing else remaining. A crooked license plate, stuck between river rocks the next town over; a section of the bumper, trapped in an eddy near the inlet; a single tire, washed up on a nearby beach.
The engine exhaust lingers in the parking spot as Hailey’s car pulls away. I can’t catch my breath. I picture Caleb running down the front steps, his head ducked low because of the rain, his wipers squealing as they cut through the torrent while he drives.
I wonder if he could see through the rain.
It’s just rain, our coach said. Just rain.
My mom used to say the car was the safest place to be in a storm, with rubber wheels that ground you in the event of a lightning strike. It’s a piece of metal, two tons, designed for our protection. There are airbags. Safety protocols. Antilock brakes. All to keep us safe.
The surge came later. A flash-flood warning on the radio, lighting up all our phones after the race, but we get those all the time. Turn around, don’t drown, says the alert, but nobody takes it too seriously.
The Old Stone River snakes through town, under Coats Memorial Bridge, and then continues on. That day, the river kept rising, with nowhere else to go; it breached the guardrail of the bridge. In six inches of water, you lose control. In twelve inches, the car will float. The current will take you.
The river curves through another town on its way to the coast, where it empties out into the Atlantic. A whole ocean, where he might be.
There was nothing to bury. Nothing to reduce to ash. Nothing to feel in the second-row pew of the church other than the fact that nothing was there.
I shiver, holding tighter to the coffee cup. I scroll through my phone until I reach Hailey’s name, see her photo: an up-close shot of the two of us with our eyes squeezed shut and our faces pressed together.
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to start.
Hi, I write.
I’m halfway to Caleb’s when I hear the ding in response.
The last few miles of the drive pass in a blur—the larger suburban homes giving way to narrow brick homes wedged closer together in a grid of streets. But you couldn’t beat the location. Caleb’s home was effortlessly close to the shore, and we could walk to the shops on the outskirts of town, with no highway or major roads cutting through the path.
I parallel park in the spot in front of his house that once belonged to him instead. I see the curtain shift in the front window, the profile of a little girl with dark hair. I wave, and the curtain falls shut. The little girl disappears.
I check my phone and see Hailey’s response. Hi, she says.
The front door opens, and Eve is waiting for me. Her mouth is set in a grim line, like she disapproves of the fact that the phone is in my hand.
“Who was that?” she says as I walk up the porch steps. Her gaze shifts to the phone still in my grip.
“Hailey Martinez,” I say. And then I show her the display, as if she has forced it from me. As if I have to prove that I have not taken up with some other boy who is not her son, to be granted access to this house. That I am loyal, even now, to his memory.
Eve is still looking at the phone, at the meaningless text, when she asks, “Do you have my number, Jessa?”
“No,” I say.
“Next time, call when you’re on the way, so I make sure I’m here in case anything comes up.” She holds out her hand for my phone, and I place it in her palm. If anything comes up. It’s an empty room. What could possibly come up?
She adds her number as a new contact, and I’m startled by the sound of footsteps behind me.
I turn just in time to see Mia disappear up the steps. Upstairs, I hear her door slam closed. Eve says nothing when she hands back my phone, so I make my way up the steps. I decide to make a visual dent this time. So it seems less and less like Caleb’s room, as if that might make it easier.
The door is closed, like yesterday, but I know Eve has been in here, because she has moved the boxes I finished. Most of what I packed was inside drawers, so the room doesn’t look much different, other than the walls.
Except it’s darker in here. The window curtain has been pulled shut, shadows dancing along the wall. The switch on the surge protector under his desk glows an eerie red, which you only notice when the lights are off and the shades pulled closed.
It’s not really a window shade but a shower curtain that hangs in front of his window. It’s white, with black birds. But, like, Alfred Hitchcock–level birds. Horror-movie-level birds. You don’t realize they’re birds at first: at first, it just looks like a bunch of thick black lines intersecting on a white background. A pattern you can’t quite figure out. You have to step back, see it from the entrance, look closer. Find one bird, the rest come alive.
Caleb put it up for Halloween last year to get into the spirit, he said—but he never took it down. When the light hits in the morning, they cast shadows across his bed, the walls, the floor. Us.
—
“And my soul from out that shadow…,” he said, my head resting on his chest. The words vibrated through his ribs, into my skull. We were lying across his bed. He ran his fingers through my hair, absently.
“Wow, so romantic,” I said.
The clock ticked above us. Just minutes after nine a.m.; I had woken him up. Or, I was still waking him. I’d walked right in the front door, up the steps, and let myself in his room. It was the first day of summer break, after we’d spent the whole school year together, and he was supposed to be babysitting Mia, who was watching television downstairs by herself when I arrived.
“You’re coming to the party this weekend, right?” I asked.
“Hmm?”
“Julian’s graduation party? It’s this Saturday.”
Caleb’s arm tensed under my head. “I don’t think he’d want me there. I don’t think I’m his favorite person.”
It was true. Julian had never quite fully warmed up to him, maybe because Caleb was my first serious boyfriend, maybe because our circles were overlapping in a way he wasn’t comfortable with. Either way, I knew Caleb could sense the discomfort, just as I could. “I want you there.”
“Maybe call me after, Jessa. I’m supposed to help my mom with something.”
“Right,” I said, pushing myself onto my elbows. Lately it felt like our days revolved around his schedule, his plans, his family.
“Wait, don’t get up,” he said, his fingers circling my arm.
“Your sister needs breakfast,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, and suddenly he was up, out of bed, searching his floor for a pair of pants to slip over his boxers. He looked over his shoulder, catching me watching. “But that’s not your job.”
He shut the door behind him, but said, before it latched, “Don’t move, I’ll be right back.”