44 Book Four (3 page)

I figured it might be a little awkward at first, but that after a few games people would forget about Jack. Until then, I would just have to focus on keeping my lunch down whenever his name came up.

I kicked the ball too far ahead and it rolled over by the river, stopping just short of the sloped embankment. I walked down to the water, staring out at the Deschutes gliding by peacefully as I caught my breath.

“Nice jacket,” I heard from behind.

I lost my balance for a moment as I turned, following the voice. It belonged to a man, about 30, wearing an Athletic Bilbao jersey, drinking water from a plastic bottle.

“Thanks,” I said, thinking how he was probably the only person in Bend, maybe even the entire United States, with that shirt. “You too.”

But I had let my guard down. I hadn’t seen the stranger, who was standing only a few feet away from me. I looked around and was surprised that no one else was nearby, just the two of us by the river. I felt for my keys in my pocket, for the Mace that was clipped onto them. I felt a little better as I touched the cylinder.

“Well, see ya,” he said before running off.
“Agur.”

I should have been more aware of who was around me.

I walked in the opposite direction, trying to calm down.

“Relax,” I told myself. I watched as he ran far off into the distance, only a small speck now, taking the path that led toward the Old Mill stores. I started dribbling again.

I went for another half an hour, in the end leaving behind the jittery feeling. Most of the time, I was good about paying attention to my surroundings. But obviously, sometimes I wasn’t.

On my last lap around the park, I looked for Jesse. I hadn’t seen him for a while and was expecting him to show up soon. We usually met in the park after a run, or down by the river. But not too often. Only a couple times really since we’d gone over to his dad’s motorcycle shop and had a sit down.

It had been a good meeting. Jesse said he wasn’t sure if his dad had believed it, that Jesse was actually there as a ghost, but even though Mr. Stone had been quiet afterwards, I could tell by his energy that something in him had changed. He wasn’t as sad. I had seen him once since our meeting, and he greeted me with open, hopeful eyes and a large smile. He believed, I could tell. And after I handed him a box full of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, he gave me a hug and thanked me. And I knew it wasn’t for the cookies.

I never called out to Jesse anymore. In the months since I had been kidnapped, I realized that he needed to move on. And it was important that he knew that I could live without him. I didn’t want to, and it ached when I thought that there might be a day in the near future when I didn’t see him walking along the river toward me. But I was trying really hard to show him that I could do it. That I could make it on my own.

Still, it was hard to think that way. And sometimes, usually after we got to talking about basketball or soccer or the people I worked with at the coffee house, I would forget. I would forget that Jesse was a ghost, and didn’t belong in this world anymore. And then, just for a minute or two, my heart would break all over again.

There was so much of Jesse’s world that I didn’t understand and I always got the feeling that he didn’t either. He would walk with the others, the ghosts and the dead, but he didn’t talk much about it. And when I asked, he said that he didn’t know enough to say anything for sure.

And he told me that he would hang around for a little while longer to make sure I stayed safe. He promised he wouldn’t just disappear one day.

I ran to the Jeep as the rain turned to hail.

I called Kate to tell her I was on my way home, hoping she had made dinner.

CHAPTER 5

The coffee house was packed as I walked through the door on Wednesday afternoon. The three o’clock through closing shift was my favorite, even though it didn’t go by as fast as the morning hours. After dinner, things got pretty quiet. But the energy in the place shifted as well. The customers were more relaxed and friendlier. And in the last hour, hardly anybody came. I was never sure why Mike wanted to stay open until nine, especially on week nights, but he seemed to think it was worth it.

After saying hello, I walked to the back and checked the schedule and saw that I was closing with Mo. We would be together, just us, for two long hours. I cringed. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her, it’s just that I never knew what to say to her. She was even quieter than I was and when it was just the two of us working together, there were a lot of strange long silences throughout the evening. I didn’t take it personally. Mo barely talked to anyone. 

“What’s up, Abby?” Mike said. Both David and Mo were behind the espresso bar.

“Hey,” I said, taking over the register.

There were only a few people in line and I took their orders.

“Super fun times,” David said to me and then told me he was taking his break.

The first few hours flew by and then the place emptied out and quieted down. Mike went home. He told us that he was forcing himself to leave and have dinner with his wife and kids at least three times a week. Mo nodded a goodbye to him without eye contact.

It seemed we were destined to have a quiet night. David went in the back to work on inventory and Mo put in the new Chilblains CD. Mike wanted to start promoting some of the local indie bands that played in the clubs on the weekends and gave us a stack of music to go through. He told us to categorize them according to the best times of day to play them. There were various genres. The alternative music could be for the afternoon and evening. And the string quartet would be perfect for the lunch hour.

David had told me that Mo played in one of the bands in the stack of CDs, and I was looking forward to hearing what she had going on besides, of course, a winning personality.

“It’s harsh, harsh music,” he whispered, when I had asked about her band.

Mo had been working at Back Street for three years and David was sure that she was some sort of relative of Mike’s. Mo wasn’t that much older than me, but she seemed like it. David said he sometimes saw her at the clubs on the weekends.

She turned up the music louder than usual, the bass pumping steadily through my body. The guitar riffs reminded me of the grunge sound of the 90s. It was pretty good stuff, and I made a note to myself to borrow the CD and add some of the songs to my running playlist.

Two men came in and I dialed down the volume. I took their orders and when their drinks were ready, they headed for opposite corners and sat at small tables.

“Going on my break,” Mo said, her eyebrow rings glinting in the light. The place was empty now and I was wiping down tables, killing some time.

“Okay,” I said.

I watched her for a moment as she walked outside and pulled a cigarette from her pocket, lit it and sat down on the curb. Soon she was engulfed in white smoke.

I went over to the espresso machine and dumped out the grounds into the bags that we gave out for free to gardeners, and washed out some canisters. David came back up to the front and turned down the music even lower.

“This band sucks,” he said. “Hey, how’s it going out here?”

“Good,” I said. “You off soon?”

“If soon means right now then, yes,” he said, smirking. “Scary, huh? Being left alone with Mo.”

He laughed. He was just having fun. Out of everybody, David was probably Mo’s favorite. He knew that I was a little intimidated by her.

“Must be awfully quiet in here with the two of you. Sorry to miss out on all the fun. Just remember. Her bark is worse than her bite. Actually, she doesn’t even have a bite. Really. She’s very cool. Just low energy, that’s all.”

I shrugged.

“So how’s that beautiful boyfriend of yours?” he asked as he grabbed a towel and wiped down the counter.

I gave him a look and held it for a minute before rolling my eyes. I didn’t exactly like that term, and he used it often. I wasn’t even sure if Ty was exactly my boyfriend. We were friends, did things together. Kissed sometimes. I had strong feelings for him. But I told him I needed to go slow, really slow. He said he completely understood and that he wanted to give me room to recover from everything. That’s what we were doing for now. So I wasn’t sure if that really qualified as being a couple.

But I wasn’t going to go into all that with David.

“Ty’s good,” I said. “How’s your beautiful boyfriend?”

He laughed and leaned up against the wall.

“Wow, look at you,” he said, shaking his head. “It only took five months for you to warm up to me, but here we are. Abby Craig, I never gave up hope.”

David always called everyone by their first and last names, like we were all stuck in a Stephen King story. I thought it was odd the way he did that, until I found out he was actually from Maine, just like King and most of the characters in his books and movies. I guess that was just how they talked back there.

“Come on, now,” I said, smiling. “I warmed up to you at least a week ago.”

He laughed again.

“And by the way,” David said. “Eduardo DaCosta is just fine. You should come out with us sometime. We’re going to the clubs on Friday night.”

David was a big partier and was always coming in looking like what the cat dragged in on Monday mornings, with lots of stories about his crazy weekends. He also had a hard time remembering that I wasn’t 21 yet and couldn’t get into the bars.

He looked at me, his light eyes wide, waiting for an answer.

“Can’t,” I said. “Not until the end of June anyway.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m always forgetting that,” he said. “You just don’t seem 20 years old, Abby Craig. You’re much older and wiser. An old spirit or something.”

I nodded. It made me kind of sad, David saying that.

 “Well, June’s not so far away,” he said. “We’ll paint the town red on your birthday weekend.”

“Okay,” I said.

At least I had a few months to figure a way to get out of it.

“So I’m gonna go clock out,” he said. “You can always call me if you can’t take Mo anymo’. I’ll talk you through the rest of your shift.”

I laughed.

“We’ll be fine. We’ve done it before, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. I remember. That’s why I’m saying it. I got your back.”

I threw a towel at his head, but he ducked out of the way before it hit his face.

Mo and I said almost nothing to each other after David left, even though we were working side by side. The music had gotten louder again.

“Maybe we could close early tonight,” she said as I stood by the window, watching the steady rain fall. Most of the light had left the sky.

 “Sure, if you think,” I said. I was sure Mike would be fine with it. He did that sometimes too if things got slow.

I yawned, stared over at her for a minute as I collected some packages of Guatemalan coffee to put out on the shelf. She had a small diamond stud in her nose. Her hair was different shades, shoulder length with lots of product so it could stand up in parts.

I tried to think of something to say or something to ask Mo, but it was hopeless. I didn’t want to come across like those nervous customers who felt compelled to make small talk with her. I just let the silence sit and grabbed the broom and started sweeping as I heard the door bells chime and saw two women come in.

“Looks like you two are having a good time,” one of them said. Mo didn’t answer, but cut the music as I walked over to the cash register.

Most of the customers who came in were either attracted to Mo or scared of her. She never smiled or said much, but her piercings and tattoos earned her a certain amount of respect. Even the bank ladies and men in suits who came in at the lunch hour would be friendly, even if they looked at her with fear. They would ask her about where the best place to get a tattoo was in town, or if it hurt. Or if she was going to get more. Most of the time she would nod and not even respond.

“Really, you’re seriously getting one?” she’d say once in a while, staring at them with her dark eyes until they squirmed.

Although she was pretty scary looking, I knew she really wasn’t that bad. David didn’t need to tell me. I watched her slow, gray energy move around her. She wasn’t full of life, but she wasn’t dark either. The way it floated around her reminded me of Dr. Mortimer’s energy, the way it looked right after he had killed Nathaniel. I figured that Mo probably carried a deep sadness of some sort with her, buried behind walls.

I finished ringing up the women. They were just buying beans. I was glad that we wouldn’t have to wait for them while they finished drinks.

“Thanks, hon,” the older one said, pulling up her hood and heading out into the rain. After the bells rang and they were gone, Mo came up to me.

“I hate that
hon
shit,” she said.

“Me, too,” I said, smiling.

I boxed up the remaining pastries and left it on the counter. Mike donated them to the homeless shelters and every morning they came by to pick up the day-olds right before we opened.

I grabbed a pound of the dark roast espresso beans from the shelf, and put it next to the register so I wouldn’t forget to take it home. It was one of the perks of the job. Free beans every week.

It was pouring outside now, heavy drops pounding on the roof in a steady rhythm.

“Let’s call it,” Mo said. I nodded and she turned the sign over and brought down the blinds.

Mo cleared out the cash register, counted the money, and took it in the back to put away in the safe. When she came back out, we both started working on the espresso bar. We were working again side by side in complete silence, and once again I caught myself looking over at her arms. 

They really were striking. Both arms were covered in ink. Some of the tattoos were large, some small, all of them making some sort of statement. I made out a large heart with a crack down the middle, a girl holding an electric guitar, and a large cross.

My eyes had stayed on them too long.

“Thinking of getting one?” she said. I inhaled suddenly when our eyes met.

I smiled awkwardly and shook my head. I tried to think of something smart to say, a good way to describe them that didn’t sound like those nervous women. They weren’t exactly beautiful, but they did have an interesting charm.