Golden (16 page)

Josh/Orion glances my way and I drop my eyes back to the journal. I'm scared to look at him because of what I know. I feel guilty for it. It's one thing to know the secrets
of someone you'll never look in the eye. But it's an entirely different thing to know things about the person standing in front of you. Painful things, that he's probably tried to bury deep in work and art. Maybe that explains why he is the way he is—kind of distant, always with a hint of sadness to him, always alone. He's one of those people who seem only halfway there, always listening to some low, wistful song in the background of his mind.

Behind the counter Josh grabs a big round mug, pours tea and then milk in, and takes it over to the steamer. He does it automatically, like he's not thinking about it, so much as just going through the motions. I stop my deep character analysis when he turns with the mug on a saucer and heads my way. I pretend to be looking at a picture to my right. It's part of the patchwork of art covering the walls. The still lifes and abstracts, paintings and sketches, all form the constantly evolving backdrop in the café. I've watched so many of my favorites move around on the walls to make places for new art, which is what I think this one that I'm looking at is. I've never noticed it before.

Clink
. Josh sets the chai on the table and I look up into warm brown eyes. “Thought that one might be cold by now.” He nods at my full cup, and then his eyes flick to the journal, which is sitting facedown on the table. “Must be some absorbing work there.”

“Thanks,” I say, and look back at the painting because if I don't focus on something besides him, I won't be able to keep all of my questions to myself. And I need to think about all this before I say anything.
If
I say anything.

“That one's something, isn't it?” He's looking at the painting too.

I nod. Where so many sunset paintings look peaceful and calm, melancholy is woven into every brushstroke of this one. It's a twilight image of the familiar dark razor peak silhouettes of the Minarets, looking icy and stoic. The only warmth in the painting comes from a barely visible sliver of golden light behind the mountains. The last of the sun. Above that the sky pales, then deepens to violet, faintly lit by a delicate wash of stars and the tiny sliver of moon. It's a skyline I've fallen asleep looking at most nights of my life, but the feeling in it is so lonely and sad it's hard to believe it's the same one.

Josh tilts his head one way and then the other, looking at it from slightly different angles. “It's called
Acquainted with the Night
.”

“Like the Robert Frost poem,” I say, still looking at the painting. At the stars. “That fits.”

And it does. I can't take my eyes off it. Not only does it capture the feel of the poem perfectly, but it seems to embody Frost's whole view of nature, with its austere but beautiful indifference to us and our comparably tiny lives. The little control we actually have over them. “It's a sad poem,” I say, glancing at Josh.

“Yeah? I don't know it. But it feels like that, doesn't it? Sad.”

His question hangs in the air above us a moment, and I'm not sure what to say. I want to ask him who the artist is. My eyes search the canvas for the answer, but there's no signature
that I can see. There is, however, something else. Something that takes my breath a second time, because I've already seen and recognized it once today. It's tiny—barely discernable if you didn't already know what it was: a set of three swirling spirals brushed into the dark silhouette of a mountain. It matches the one sketched on the pages of Julianna's journal—like a signature, almost, beginning with the day she wrote about seeing it on Orion's arm. The day that she said she knew something had changed in her.

“Did you paint it?” I ask him. It's an innocent enough question, but I watch closely for his reaction, because I think he's going to say no. Because I think I know who did.

“No,” he says evenly. “My uncle brought it back for me from his last vacation.”

He hasn't given me any reason to doubt his honesty. He told me the truth when I asked him about the sketch, but I don't believe him about this. That spiral in the corner has to be Julianna's. I search my memory for any mention she may have made of doing a painting for Orion. I don't recall anything, but that doesn't mean she didn't. Maybe that was what she meant when she said she tried to fix it. Maybe she went home and painted this, and wanted to give it to him. To see him again. Maybe she did, and that last entry wasn't the end of the story. And he's kept it all these years—his secret and hers.

“It's funny. I've never noticed it before,” I say. “Is it new? Did he just give it to you?” Somewhere inside my head I realize I sound more like I'm interrogating than making polite conversation, but the questions come out before I can stop them.

“It's new to the wall,” he says. “I just put it up a few days ago. But he brought it back from a trip last summer.”

Now it feels like he's covering. “Trip to where?” I ask. “Where did he get it?”

He looks at me, mildly surprised, or maybe annoyed by my sudden interest. “Some little hippie town on the coast near Hearst Castle. I don't remember what it's called. He goes every year.”

It's quiet as we both look at the painting again. And that's when I notice something else about it that cannot possibly be a coincidence. Or an accident.

“Anyway,” he says, filling the silence, “I've got a lot to do before I close tonight.”

He turns to go, and I know I should just leave it at that. Figure out exactly what I think is going on before I go any further or ask any more questions, but I can't stop myself. “Hey, Josh?” I say, though now it sounds wrong to me.

He pauses. Looks over his shoulder at me. “Yeah?”

“Did you ever notice the constellation in that painting?”

He glances at it, then back to me. Shakes his head. “No. You see one in it?”

I nod, making sure I look right at him. “I do. I see Orion.”

“A theory if you hold it hard enough

And long enough gets rated as a creed.”

—“Etherealizing,” 1947

By the time I burst through the double doors at school, sleep-deprived and wired on too much coffee, I've convinced myself that I'm either crazy or a genius because of where the words “what if” led me after I left Kismet yesterday. When I pointed out the constellation in the painting to Orion, he said nothing. He just dropped his eyes and ducked into the back room. I stayed then, leaving my chai untouched, listening to the rain pour down outside, and looking into the painting. The painting that had to have been done by her. All the while wondering—what if?

What if he wasn't hiding anything? What if he wasn't
lying about the painting? If his uncle really did bring it back from vacation? What would that mean?

And then—

What if there
is
more to the story? More than what I know, or what she wrote down. More—that happened after. What if I was the one who ended up with all the pieces to figure it out? Who was given the chance to see how they fit together? What if, after all these years, I found her journal for a reason. I know it's impossible to change the past, but what if I could uncover a version that's been hidden all this time. One that leads me to the most important question of all:

What if Julianna Farnetti is still alive?

I know it sounds insane. I'm still not sure how I'll be able to say this out loud, even to Kat. In the empty hallway, under the bad fluorescent lights, the question seems even more ludicrous in my mind. But then it doesn't. That “what if” kept me up all night, sent me to my computer to dredge up every article I could find on Shane and Julianna's wreck: the location of the Jeep in the icy river, the likelihood they'd been swept down it into the lake, where it was near impossible they'd ever be found. And then, the inarguable fact that they never were. That they disappeared into the swirling spring night, just like that. Case closed.

Or maybe not. Each time I tried to tell myself it wasn't possible, my mind went back to the painting hanging on the wall at Kismet. The palpable sadness in it, Orion visible in
the sky, but mostly, the title. Frost's title. I'd remembered it being a sad poem, but when I got home, the first thing I did was open up my anthology to “Acquainted with the Night,” and when I sat down to read his words, it was with a different set of eyes. As crazy as it sounds, I swear I could hear her voice in them.

“I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in the rain—and back in the rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.”

They're the words of someone who's been lost and lonely. Left something behind.

“I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.”

I see her in my mind, walking a lonely street, eyes downcast, hiding from her past someplace far from home. Maybe in that little artsy town where Josh's uncle found her painting, and where maybe . . . I can find her.

I can't let myself think that far ahead yet though. First I have to convince Kat to see what I see. I lean against her locker and wait, my mind buzzing and trying to fit something that I know will sound completely crazy into words that won't. But maybe it won't matter for her. Maybe she'll just go right along with it because it
is
so out there. She
always goes more on possibility than logic. I'm usually the one bogged down in needing facts. And right now the fact that I see her coming down the hall with Trevor Collins, looking more than friendly, gives me pause.

They don't see me yet, but as I watch them walk they look . . . close. She leans into him and says something that looks like it surprises him before it sends a grin from one side of his face to the other, then tugs at my stomach. I'm surprised. I didn't think she . . . or he . . . I just didn't think they would ever—

I tell myself I don't have any right to be jealous. He's not mine, and I've passed up the opportunity more than once. And after the way I acted yesterday I wouldn't blame him if he stopped trying. But still. Why would
she
be so like that with him, when she knows I—I stop my tangent. Clearly I've had too much caffeine and too little sleep and am overanalyzing. Kat looks like she's flirting no matter what she does. Even when she says hi to me.

“Hey, you,” she says with a smile.

I take a step forward to meet the two of them, loop my arm through Kat's, and words come out in one breathless rush. “Hey you guys, good morning, Kat can I talk to you alone?” I grab her arm.

They both look a little stunned.

“Morning to you too, Frost,” Trevor says. He's still wearing a hint of the smile Kat put on his face with whatever she said. “Guess that's my cue to go.” He gives Kat a look I can't read, winks at me, then turns and walks away from us without saying anything else.

“That was weird,” I say.

She looks me over. “
You
were weird. What's going on? You look like crap.”

I ignore the comment and pull her close so I can whisper. “I decided on my one thing.”

“Huh?”

“My one
thing
I promised you I'd do.” She's already looking at me like I've lost it and I haven't even told her what it is yet. “The unexpected
thing
?” Still nothing. I take a deep breath and try again. “You said I had to promise you I'd do one unexpected thing before graduation, and I have it.”

Recognition slides over her face in a smile. “Oh yeeaah. What is it?”

“I can't tell you right now. It's a long story and I have to finish the last of the journals for Kinney. Come with me to the library.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Look at you taking charge. It's too bad you didn't yesterday.”

“What are you talking about?”

She ignores the question. “Never mind. Let's go. I haven't been to first period for the last four days. No need to break the streak now.”