Messenger 93 Page 5

  I clicked into her social media. Her Ittch grid was full of selfies of Krista-in-all-her-glory, or snuggling with Boy, or her and her friends performing seductions for the lens. Parties, hangouts, shopping, coffee, new outfits, new makeup, new hairstyles. She was beautiful. I had to accept it. Or at least, pretty. Or maybe it didn’t even matter how she looked — she had something that I didn’t. Sparkle. Lustre. Fierce determination to be better than everyone else.

  I spent an embarrassing amount of time staring at the pictures of her and Boy.

  I don’t even want to talk about it.

  By the time I looked up again, it was dark out, and I was somewhere in the city that I didn’t recognize. Artificial lights had powered on inside buildings and glowed from streetlamps and passing cars.

  I flew off the seat and rang the bell. Jumped off the bus in a whirring panic. Where was I? Probably just a few steps from the scene of my death.

  I’d definitely ended up all the way on the other side of the city. It was the kind of street lined with grungy Mom-and-Pop stores and unappetizing restaurants. Where the streetlights don’t make much of a dent to the nighttime dark. Sketchy old people wandered around or leaned against buildings.

  I pulled my coat hood over my head and dipped into a beat-up diner. It was bustling inside and I pushed up against the front plate-glass window and pulled out Krista’s phone. I would call my dad to pick me up on his way home from work. He always worked late. Nine/ten usually. He’d be pissed, and probably confused, but so be it.

  The smell of fried food — chicken, fries, eggs — filled my nose and reminded me that I hadn’t eaten since the bowl of cereal that morning. Thirteen hours ago. My stomach rumbled. Loudly. My mouth watered. I was sure I was lightheaded, or low-blood-sugared. Maybe Dad and I could stop for fast food on the way home.

  My fingers hovered over Krista’s keypad … But I couldn’t remember Dad’s phone number. I started and stopped dialing a dozen times. I’d never had to phone him without using one-touch. Same with my mother. Same with our home line. If I’d known their numbers at some earlier point in my life, maybe forced to memorize them for circumstances exactly like this, they were gone from my brain now. Replaced by a million more urgent, necessary, life-saving details.

  “Table for one, sweetheart?” It was a tiny older woman with a super-cool bobbed haircut.

  I was voraciously hungry.

  “Yes, please.”

  I followed her to the next empty booth. She handed me a laminated menu, and I was so hungry, I didn’t even let her leave. “Veggie burger and fries, please. An apple juice. And a coffee.” I wasn’t much of a coffee drinker, but I needed the caffeine hit.

  She smiled at me in a knowing way — like she knew I was an imposter in her land, but she’d be hospitable as long as I didn’t cause any trouble.

  I contemplated Krista’s phone again. I could dial Information, or 911, or message my parents through their socials and hope they checked. There were options for help.

  But I didn’t do any of that. I lurked Krista’s private life some more. Ate my wondrous meal in glorious solitude. Pondered all the strange developments of that strange day.

  It said de boy will help you.

  What had Eddie meant by that? Was it truly another message from the crow?

  The boy.

  Was I supposed to contact Boy?

  And really, that would make sense. If anyone knew Krista’s secret thoughts, it would be Boy. Although I assumed that was the reason he’d been with Clio all day. Telling her and the cops everything he knew.

  Krista’s phone didn’t offer anything useful either. Nothing in her search history, or feeds, or texts with her friends. It was all so … boring.

  “Ooh, that’s cute.”

  It was the waitress picking up my empty plate, dropping the bill on the table. I followed her pointing finger. Krista’s Ittch feed was on the screen again, but this time it was showing one of the profiles she’d “liked” the most. Some random girl who lived on the west coast, who mostly posted photos of herself in tiny bikinis.

  The waitress’s finger landed on the screen. She was pointing at a photo of the the girl’s perfect bare legs. “Adding that one to the mood board,” the waitress said, her finger outlining a tattoo on the girl’s ankle, just above the bone. It was a simple silhouette of a black bird. Kind of like the drawing on the torn scrap of paper inside Krista’s locker.

  The paradox.

  Clio hadn’t taken any of those pictures off the locker door that morning. No one had investigated them. What if there was something there that everyone had missed?

  I grabbed my wallet. I didn’t have any cash, so I pulled out the family emergency credit card. The server brought me the machine and I made sure to key in a nice tip.

  If I could just get a look inside that locker, at that picture of the bird, maybe all questions would be answered, and this weird quest would come to its final and fated end.

  Only you can find her.

  AN HOUR AND TWO bus transfers later, I walked into Emmet Park — the largest park in our neighborhood. Haphazard pools of light illuminated a patch of playground sand here, or a curve of sidewalk there. I avoided the light and ran through the dewy grass. I remembered how our dog Pepper, before he got hit by the car, used to suck on the longer blades whenever I took him for a walk.

  I went all the way to the far end of the park. Across the street, my school rose up like a prison. I slumped onto a bench and caught my breath. I was getting tired now. It was late — 11:00. Then I realized I was sitting on the exact bench where Krista had sat on her last day, in her last recorded moments, and I launched up so fast, it was like escaping a monster. Or the ridiculous but so-possible possibility that the bench had sucked Krista into another dimension.

  I ran to the main doors of the school and wrenched at the handles. They were locked. I ran to the side doors, and they were locked too. I walked around to the side of the school that faced the football field. Without the light of day, the field was almost totally black.

  I peered through the dark and saw a yellow rectangle gleaming on the grass between me and the school’s back wall. A portal to an enchanted underworld. Its gate had swung open and it was luring me over. Oh hello, Crow. I’m coming to get you.

  When I was only a house-length away, a small red ember arced through the air and landed on the portal’s gleaming force-field. The ember hissed and expired, and the illusion broke. Just a cigarette stub on a reflection of light. I looked over and noticed there was a recess in the school’s back wall. Inside the recess — now it all made sense — someone was ending their smoke break at an open door. Shadows moved across the reflection on the grass — whoever it was had turned and was stepping back inside.

  The rectangle of light began to slowly narrow. The door was closing, pulled by one of those pneumatic arms. I ran towards it, sprinting over the last few feet, and dove into the alcove just in time to squeeze my toe under the door before it locked into place. Gulping air as quietly as I could, I hoped that Cigarette Smoker wouldn’t notice the door hadn’t fully closed. I waited a few minutes before daring to move, then contorted my body to replace my toehold with a fingerhold, and then my finger with my hand.

  I inched the door open and peered inside. At the far end of the hall, there was a pail on wheels with a mop stabbed into it and, beside it, a trolley of cleaning products. The janitor was nowhere to be seen, although I could hear echoed shuffling in the distance. I’d never met the nighttime custodian and had no idea if he could be trusted not to kill me.

  Still, I edged myself inside and squinted against the staggeringly bright fluorescents. Shielding my eyes so I could see where I was going, I ducked down the hall that led away from the mop and bucket, and into the hall with Krista’s locker. Just a quick peek inside and I’d be gone.

  Except they’d put a new lock on the door.
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  Respecting her privacy, or something.

  The outside of her locker had been plastered with messages and plastic flowers and taped-on stuffed animals. Krista, come home! Krista, we love you! Homages to everyone’s most cherished friend.

  I pulled out her phone and launched the browser and searched how to break a combination lock. It looked surprisingly easy. Apply pressure to the shackle, spin the dial, note the numbers where it catches. Rotate both ways until you find the single points of resistance, then try combinations of combinations until you get the right order. Five minutes, they promised, It can be done in under five minutes.

  I found a pen in my bag and began the process — rotating the lock clockwise then counterclockwise, feeling for each slight notch where the dial caught — a single point of resistance — then writing each possible number on my hand. I tried a combination and tugged on the lock, but the shackle clunked in the case. Listening for the janitor, I tried another set of numbers. I spun the dial and tugged on the lock. Again the shackle clunked and stuck. Another combination. Clunk, stuck. Then another. Clunk, stuck. Different arrangements of numbers. Dialing left past zero, then right again. Clunk stuck. Right, left, right. Clunk stuck. Right, left, right. Clunk stuck clunk stuck clunk stuck.

  More than five minutes.

  More minutes.

  Even more minutes.

  Too many minutes.

  I had to give up. I couldn’t do it. Why had I ever thought I could do it?

  The lock clicked and slipped open.

  I almost whooped, but I didn’t. I pulled the locker door as quietly as I could. The clang and grate of metal on metal echoed and I cringed and looked both ways down the hall. All coasts were clear.

  Inside was a neat stack of Krista’s binders and textbooks. I remembered Clio going through everything that morning, then returning the pile to its place and tweaking and adjusting until it was all perfect for Krista’s return.

  The ripped scrap of paper with the bird silhouette was still there, still taped to the upper left-hand corner on the inside of the door. I worked gently at the tape so I wouldn’t tear the paper. It was just a regular drawing, something like the one on the girl’s ankle in the Ittch photo. I turned it over. The back was blank. Nothing. A dead end.

  I was about to close the locker when I noticed one of those eight-by-ten plastic envelopes on top of Krista’s neatly investigated pile of stuff. The envelope was clear and logoed — Go-go Go-go Go-go stamped in rows across the front and back. Through the clear part, I could see it held a collection of instant photos. Ever since I’d known her, Krista had had one of those cameras.

  I couldn’t resist: I had to open the envelope and check inside. Just in case.

  But it was only a bunch of dramatic modeling shoots in theatrical locations featuring Krista and her friends.

  A rumble echoed through the hallway — the janitor was just around the nearest corner. The shock made me bumble the envelope. A bunch of photos skidded out and along the floor. I froze. It was deathly quiet in the halls — the janitor maybe frozen and listening too.

  I scrambled to gather up the mess, shoving the photos back into the envelope, trying not to make a sound, or lose my balance, or whack my head against the open locker door.

  Go-go Go-go Go-go written across the plastic envelope. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go.

  It was still absolutely quiet, the janitor maybe still listening, maybe sneaking up on me now.

  The last photo was in my hand. I was almost free.

  Before I could throw it inside the envelope, I was startled to see that it was one with Krista and me together. She was grabbing my face, which was squished and cringing, my eyes squeezed closed, my mouth stretched into a wincing smile. Krista was in profile, her lips were pressed against my cheek.

  I couldn’t remember the photo being taken, or who had taken it. Had it been Anusha? Hattie? Boy? I couldn’t confirm the location, or even the timing — except that it would’ve been sometime after we’d started school together and before the moment Krista had decided to erase me.

  Krista and me. Her kissing me. My own beaming surprise caught on bleached-out laminated film stock.

  I stood up and my shoulder banged against the metal door. The sound echoed down the hall. “Hey!” His voice echoed back at me from around the corner. Now I heard the beat of his footsteps advancing. But something else too. A rhythmic whack like he was using a long-barrel rifle to propel himself towards me.

  Go. Go. Go! Go!

  I threw the envelope back inside Krista’s locker and closed the door. Fumbled to get the lock back into the holster.

  “Hey! Hey!” He was thunking faster now, getting closer.

  It was too far to the exit at the end of the hall. I tested the doorknob of the nearest classroom. Open. I cranked the door as quietly as I could and ducked inside.

  It wasn’t a classroom I’d been in before, and it was like every classroom I’d ever been in. I crept to the back and camouflaged myself in a huddle on the ground, amid the skeletal legs of desks and chairs.

  The photo of Krista kissing me was still in my hand. I stuck it into my coat pocket along with her drawing of the bird silhouette. I held my breath, filling with doubt that I would make it out of there alive.

  FRIDAY, APRIL 13

  SIX DAYS UNTIL THE FALL

  1

  I DIDN’T LET MYSELF fall asleep. Actually, I tried everything in my power to not fall asleep. But, I fell deep. When my eyes fluttered open, it was dark in the classroom, and still dark outside through the windows. My body had twisted fetal underneath a desk. I began to shiver, chilled from so many hours curled on a hard tile floor.

  “Messenger 93.” There it was. The female/male voice. Its reasonable and patient tone. “She will fall in six days.”

  I bolted upright and looked around.

  But I couldn’t see the crow.

  The shadows in the room were epic. Like the set of a horror movie.

  I fought my body’s urge to blindly run.

  “Hello?” I whispered. “Are you there?” I unfolded my limbs slowly. “What do you want me to do?” Slowly pulled myself up into the terrifying darkness.

  Shoot the messenger. Wasn’t that an actual expression?

  “What am I supposed to do?” I whispered, louder this time.

  But the crow was gone. Or it wasn’t speaking to me anymore.

  Maybe I’d achieved a whole new level of invisible. Erased by my own haunting voice.

  She will fall in six days reverberated through my mind — a menacing countdown — as I stealth-crept out of the room.

  The janitor was clearly gone — all the lights in the school had been turned off — so I ran full-tilt. Nothing but echoes to chase me down the hall and out the side doors.

  I RAN THROUGH THE night. There were no buses running at that time. Whatever time it was.

  Before I knew it, I was standing in front of Boy’s house.

  The bird wants you to go. The black bird. It said the boy will help you.

  I stared at his house, remembering the old days — how we’d started off as kids in sandboxes, then graduated to schoolyards, and eventually to long bouts on his couch playing video games. By the time Krista showed up, his house had become our group’s central hangout because his parents were almost never home — his dad was setting up some huge office in Singapore, and his mom would go visit for long stretches. Just the nanny to watch us, who was too sweet and too busy to challenge any of our exploits.

  Except for some security lights, all the windows in the house were dark.

  Boy’s room was on the second floor, one window facing the street and one facing the side garden — a narrow strip of land occupied by a single, sturdy maple. It was the middle of the night, so I couldn’t just knock on the door and request his company. And I wasn’t going to ping stones at the w
indow until he opened it and let me in.

  I contemplated the maple, its branches arcing upwards like a fluted ladder. For a few years when we were young — eight, nine, ten — the maple had been our favorite point of entry into Boy’s house. We felt like we were accessing a secret club or fort. One at a time, we’d wriggle up the trunk and across the strongest branch. The first one up — usually Boy — would jam a binder edge into the bottom lip of the window and lever it up. Then, one by one, we’d each spill into his room.

  The sound of our laughter — cascading, ecstatic, pure — came back to me.

  If the crow wanted me to talk to Boy, if Boy was going to help me, then it must’ve meant he and I were supposed to find Krista together.

  A startling possibility.

  Except — what if I told him about the crow and he made fun of me like he used to?

  Maybe that would be okay too. Boy’s teasing would help me shake the crow off. I could get on with my life.

  Or what if talking about Krista devastated him? What if he didn’t want to be reminded that she was gone? He might be triggered to guilt and shame — he hadn’t been able to stop her from leaving.

  But then there was the possibility that Boy would be able to figure out the crow’s messages. He knew Krista better than anyone. There was a genuine chance — if I asked the right question in the right way — that he would understand everything.

  That would be a good thing, wouldn’t it?

  The boy will help you.

  I headed towards the maple as if I’d been training for that moment my whole life. In the opalescent midnight dark, the tree looked like a multi-limbed deity. My feet scrabbled against its trunk and I grabbed at the lowest branch. But with zero upper body strength — wearing a thousand-pound backpack and dedicating yourself to homework and streamed music will do that — I lost my grip and fell.

  I unstrapped my backpack and tried again. Then I tried again. And a few more times after that. Until I finally managed to lift myself high enough to hook my arm around the lowest branch and winch myself up. I caught my breath and began to climb higher, crouching up and hoisting myself onto the next branch. And then the next higher branch. That was the one I needed. The one that curved towards Boy’s house, brushing against the brickwork near his window. I wrapped my legs around it and scooted along until the window was within touching distance. His curtains were closed, and behind the curtains it was dark. Asleep, or not at home.