Signs of You (11 page)

It's neither of them.

It's Noah. Standing in my doorway with his NASA-blue eyes and in a Milky Way galaxy T-shirt that says
you are here
. And he looks tired.
Really
tired.

Chapter 11

Tell Me Everything.

I drop the balloon light cover and pull him into my room. I wrap my arms around him and hold tight.

“I'm so glad you're okay,” I whisper over his shoulder. But then I pull back and look into his eyes, his pupils small black knots of worry. “Wait. You're okay? Right?”

He nods. “I'm okay.”

But it's totally unconvincing. And with that, everything comes f looding back: the 14,000 unanswered texts, the mad dash to Maryland, the terrifying trip into the cave to look for him. I want to sock him in the stomach.

“Where
were
you?” I hiss. It's a struggle to keep my voice down.

He looks at me sheepishly, stuffs his hands in his jeans pockets. “Would you kill me if I said I can't tell you?”

“Yes. Absolutely yes.”

“Well, I can't. I promised.”

“Promised
who
?”

“Promised
whom
, and I can't tell you that either.” He sits down on my bed. I've never seen him look so tired, so stressed.

“Did you seriously
just show up in my room after midnight, dodge my question,
and
correct my grammar?”

He f lashes me a quick and silent
I'm sorry.
“And I was going to text you from the front porch so you could sneak me in, but all the curtains were open and the lights were on, so your dad saw me come up the porch steps. Then he just let me in, like I didn't just show up at midnight. He seemed a little . . . distracted.”

“Yeah, I'm aware. He's on a date. But just tell me—” I stop as a warm breeze f ills the room, and I look at the large square of blackness that is my bedroom window. It's cranked open to let the night air in and a nearly full moon hangs in the sky. I think about all the research in Noah's room, the stuff about my mom, the stuff about the cross necklace. I sit cross-legged next to him on the bed and look directly into his eyes.

“Tell me what you know, Noah.”

He looks away and doesn't say anything. It's like he's waiting for something. Finally, he talks. “All I can tell you right now is—” he starts but stops again, hesitating.

“Tell me,” I plead, feeling my hazel eyes burn bright. I'm told they get more green than brown when I'm mad or when I really, really want something. And I bet they're near a deep emerald at this point.

“Just . . . pay attention,” he says.

“
I am.
”

“No. I mean, that's all I can tell you right now. To pay attention. To every idea you have. If you feel like doing something, stop and ask what it feels like in your body. Does it feel like a splat, like a drop of water hitting a stone? Or does it feel soft, like water hitting a sponge?”

“What the hell? Sponges? You're talking about sponges now? You sound crazy. You know that, right?” I scoot away from him on the bed. “Just tell me why your room was full of stuff about my mom, stuff that you got from
here
. Just tell me—”

“Okay, okay,” he says, taking my hand and gently pulling me close again. A shiver crawls over my skin; his touch is so soft. It
is
like water on a sponge; its warmth spreads from its source. “Don't bail on me. I was making something.” He looks straight at me as he says it, and in the harsh light from the bare overhead bulb, I see that same old trust-me look in his eyes, that same mix of worry and care I saw when he stood on my front porch with a handful of wildf lowers from the side of the road on Mom's f irst deathiversary. I see the Noah who always tells me everything. “Remember when I got in trouble at the start of the year?”

“For hiding week-old burritos in Mr. Schink's ceiling?”

“Yeah. That.” He cracks a half-smile. “Which was kind of awesome, you have to admit. I mean, it took them like
two weeks
to f igure out where the smell was coming from—”

“Yeah, yeah. Prank brilliance. Keep talking.”

“Right. Sorry,” he says. “So remember the old counselor in Back on Track, Ms. Thomas? The one who left right before winter break? Well, when I got caught for the burrito thing she gave me this whole lecture about how I was ‘acting out' because I hadn't really ‘dealt with my grief.' And she gave me a really stupid assignment. I had to make a collage about Cam. Fill it with stuff he liked, quotes, pictures. To like, honor him. And then I had to make one about the people my friends lost, too. She said it would help get me out of myself. To think of others.”

I picture the incredibly not-artistic Noah, busy with lefty scissors and glue sticks, putting together a tribute to my mom. And I bet my eyes are fading from hot green back to hazel.

“That's not such a bad assignment,” I say softly. “It's really kind of nice, actually.”

“I wanted to make it personal, so that's why I snuck in here. It was stupid and wrong, I know. But it came from a good place, I swear. I was going to give you the one about your mom on her next deathiversary and explain it all,” he says. “But I'm guessing it looked super creepy when you found all that stuff in my room . . .”

“The creepiest.”

He picks at a few stray threads that hang from a hole in the knee of his jeans. “Anyway, that assignment. That's how it all started. When I got to the collage for Jay, about his dad, I started reading about his dad's research. And I found all of Saint Ignatius's theories about spirits. And I thought that maybe if I could learn enough, I could f ind a way to talk to—” His voice breaks a little; one of the threads from his jeans comes loose in his hand.

“To talk to Cam?”

“Yeah,” he says. He looks up at my ceiling. Or maybe beyond it. “You know. To ask him why. Why he left us. Why he did it. And then when you saw your mom, I thought for sure I had a shot to see him again. You know?”

“Yeah. I know.” My heart shudders, dying a tiny little death for him. I uncross my legs, scoot close. I lean against him and lay my head on his shoulder. I want to know where he's been, where he took the cross; I want to know everything he knows, but I don't want to push. Not now. Not when he feels like this, not when I'm terrif ied he'll run off again. So we sit there like that, in the quiet, holding that thing between us that only survivors know—an ache to cheat death, to reach across, to ask what you forgot to ask, to say what you should've said, to see the one you've lost for even one second more.

“Wait,” he says, squinting up at the bare bulb. He gets up and f lips the light switch, plunging us into darkness. He sits back down beside me. “Look up.”

I do, and as my eyes adjust, I see the scattered glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling. They're burning a bright neon green.

“You know your plastic star constellations are
jacked
,” he says softly. “The Big Dipper isn't even in the right place. Is that corner supposed to be north?”

I smile a little. “I don't know. I stuck them up there when I was seven. What's a proto-astronomer charge for f ixing plastic stars?”

“
Super
pricey.”

Moonlight streams through the window, coating my room in silvery light. I look down at the comforter we're sitting on and run my hand over the pattern of balloons dancing across the cotton below us. And suddenly, I wish I hadn't torn down my balloon light; I don't want to get rid of my old, childish things that Mom gave me. I want to cover my room in balloons from f loor to ceiling; I want to f loat away like they can—light and free, full of color, empty of memories.

“I'm sorry I scared you,” Noah says. “And I think—” He stops and looks straight at me. But instead of f inishing his sentence, he leans in. So close I can feel his light breath.

But then it happens.

For just a heartbeat of a moment, something f lickers in Noah's eyes. Like a shadow passing over him. I blink and then blink again. But I still see it: f lashes of someone else in his place, someone I've never seen before.

And then it's over. Just like with my mom in the store, Noah is himself again.

My heart rattles away in my chest like my ribcage is a jail and it's desperate for the key. Noah looks worried and confused as I scramble off the bed, nearly getting tangled up in the comforter as I push off the mattress.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I shouldn't have come here like this . . .”

I don't hear the end of his sentence. Because I'm already out my bedroom door, racing down the stairs, blinking in the bright light of the hallway, coaching myself:
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

I run so fast, I miss the last stair and stumble onto the landing in front of the kitchen. I glance inside, but Sammy and Dad haven't noticed me. Dad has got the blender on now, making who-knows-what, and Sammy says something that makes him smile like crazy. I turn and keep going. I dash out the front door, take the porch steps two at a time, and then pound across the grass as fast as my legs will carry me. I hit the street, and I'm mildly aware of the pavement below my feet, the street lights whizzing past, as I run and run and run. Finally, lungs aching, I have to stop. I bend over, put my hands on my knees and gasp for breath.

Then I hear footsteps.

Noah is racing down the street after me. And I can't run anymore. I don't have enough air or strength left. I'm so afraid of what or who I'll see when he reaches me, and I put my hands over my face.

“Riley,” Noah says, putting a hand on my back. “What happened back there? Tell me.”

I drop my hands a little. And it's just Noah. He's himself and no one else. “I saw . . .” I begin, still a little breathless.

“Someone else?”

“Yes,” I say, nodding in the darkness. “And you have to tell me everything you know. Now.
Everything.
”

I can feel the pity he has for me. I can see it in his eyes as he nods and hear it in his voice as he says the thing I've been waiting for:

 

“I know why you saw your mom.”

Chapter 12

Goodnight Kiss

Two houses down, a porch light snaps on and a dog starts to bark.

“Come on,” Noah says, taking my hand. We hurry down the street, back to my house. The driveway light is on and Sammy's red Jetta is still parked on the street.

“I don't want to go back in there,” I say, pointing at the Jetta. “She's still here.”

Noah starts for the wooden swing on our front porch, but I let go of his hand and head for my car in the driveway. I try the driver's side door and it opens. I guess I was so tired when I got back from Maryland I forgot to lock it.

“Get in,” I say as I slip into the driver's seat. Noah climbs in on the passenger side.

“Are you sure you're ready for this?” he asks.

I nod.

“Okay.” He angles his seat back so he's almost fully reclining. I do the same. It's too dark to really see him, so I reach up and pull the sunroof cover open, letting the moonlight f ill the car. As I lean back in my seat, I catch the tremble in my hands. I close my eyes, willing the fear away. All I can hear is our breath. I look over at him, silently demanding:
Tell me everything.

“The research I did,” he says slowly. “About Saint Ignatius. One of his major theories is called the
discernment of spirits.
”

Just then, I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. My stomach twists as Dad and Sammy emerge on the front porch of our house. They're holding hands. I close my eyes and wish that I was a beautiful red balloon and could f loat up through the sunroof, high into the sky. Higher and higher, too far away to see hot-girl Jettas and parental PDA.

I open my eyes. “Put your seat down more,” I say, cranking mine as far back as it will go. “Or they'll see us.”

“They'll think we're—”

“Exactly,” I say, cutting Noah off before he can f inish his sentence. We hunker down as low as we can. We turn on our sides, facing each other.

“Go on,” I say. “I learned a little about this already. Looking for you, actually.”

He blinks and f lashes an apologetic smile. “So, the discernment of spirits is one of the foundations of the Jesuit Society, and Ignatius wrote about it in his famous book. During his enlightenment, when he wore his cross—the same
cross Jay's dad found, the
same
cross that you all wore—he had this f lash and was shown that spirits inf luence us all the time. Good ones and bad ones. They toy with our insides when we're trying to make important decisions. They give us chills, a sense of shock, or really strong urges to do one thing or the other.”

Noah stops and sneaks a peek at the front porch. But I know Dad and Sammy have moved. Now they're sitting on our porch swing that's almost directly in front of us. They swing and swing. Even through the closed car doors, I can hear the chains creak. Back and forth. Back and forth. Finally I have to look for myself.

Sammy has put her head on Dad's shoulder. They still haven't noticed us.

“
Keep going
,” I say to Noah in a whispery hiss. “Ignore them.”

“Okay. So Ignatius wrote down directions. Tips on how to f igure out which spirit is moving us: a good one or a bad one. We have to pay attention to how decisions feel in our body. Sometimes a spirit gives you a splat, like water hitting a stone. A little sign to go a different way. But other times it feels different, like water hitting a sponge.” He stops and sighs. He looks frustrated by trying to explain. “Anyway, that's what his famous book was about: how different spirits feel when they are in us. That's part of what he ran around teaching people: how to discern spirits.”

“I don't get it,” I say. “What does this have to do with my mom?”

Noah looks up at the night sky through the sunroof. “I'll think of a way to explain.” He looks directly at the bright moon, squinting. “Okay. Think about a decision you've made. Maybe one you regret?”

“Um,” I say slowly, more confused than anything else. I don't have to say anything; Noah can see the disbelief on my face.

“Just go with me,” Noah says. “Think back.”

So I do. And I know right away what decision I regret. It's the worst choice I've ever made, the last night I saw my mother alive. After our f ight, I watched her grab the car keys and head for the front door. I felt such a strong urge to tell her to stop, to not go, that it was too dangerous. I wanted to shout that I was sorry about our f ight, about what I said. I wanted to tell her that I loved her. But I didn't. I just stood there and watched her go.

“The night my mom died,” I say slowly. “After our f ight. I didn't try to stop her when she left with the car keys.”

“And when you didn't do anything . . . how did it feel in your body?”

I hate thinking about that night; I wish I could forget it, but I can't. I know exactly how I felt as I watched my mom head for the door.

“It wasn't a splat, exactly. But sort of like that. I had this sinking feeling.” I stare down at the darkened dashboard, the dials resting on empty, on zero miles an hour. “And then I wanted to say something.
Stop her
. That's what was running through my mind.
Stop her.
And
I was covered in tons of chills. Tons.”

Noah nods slowly. “According to Saint Ignatius, those chills weren't coming from you. A spirit was there that night, inf luencing you. Giving you those sinking feelings. Those chills. It was trying to get you to . . .”

He doesn't f inish his sentence because he can see that I get it. I get it all too well.

A spirit was there that night, trying to get me to save my mother's life.

The silence in the car is as unbearable as the thoughts roaring in my head. I look through the windshield fog and see Dad and Sammy again on the swing. Except now they're kissing. And kissing and kissing. Watching them feels like a swift kick to my ribcage. How
could
he? I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to block them out, trying to focus on my mother, to put it all together.

“A good spirit tried to get me to stop her,” I whisper. “Or maybe an evil one showed up and convinced me to stay quiet.”

I open my eyes and see Noah's face get a little melty with sadness. “Yes,” he says. “I'm so sorry but . . . yes.”

My breath comes fast and shallow, like I can't pull it in or push it out.
I ignored the urge to stop her.
And went with the urge to keep my mouth shut. I went with the wrong spirit. And my mother ran out the door and got behind the wheel. My mother died because I wasn't paying attention, because I'm so bad at f iguring out what I'm supposed to do.

Just like I thought.
It's all my fault
.

“That's Saint Ignatius's theory, at least,” Noah says. I can tell he's searching for something to say to make me feel better. “And that part is no secret. It was in his published version, that spirits give us ‘interior motions,' inf luence us when we make important decisions.” He pauses and then looks up through the sunroof again. “And I think that's why you saw your mom. Because you wore Saint Ignatius's cross. You can see what he could.”

My thoughts pop like f irecrackers, each one a jolt. I f ight to stay clear. “So I saw my mom's spirit,” I whisper slowly. “In the store. She was inside a living person.” I look at Noah again. “Mom was . . . trying to inf luence her?” He nods. “But
why
? What was she doing? I mean, the woman was looking at bubble bath.”

Noah shakes his head. He bites his lip, hesitating.

I glance at my Dad and Sammy again.

He's running his hand up Sammy's shirt. I'm desperate to look away, but I can't because now I catch a f licker where Dad sits, faint in the porch light. Dad's salt and pepper hair f lashes with red; his skin is suddenly pale. I don't recognize the man I see in his place. “It's happening again,” I say, pointing. “To my Dad. Do you see it? There must be a spirit—”

“I haven't worn the cross,” Noah interrupts, not listening. “I was told not to.”

Who told you not to?
But I don't ask him out loud, because I get hit with a horrible thought. I think back to the old fashioned bride I saw outside the gas station on our way to Maryland. How she f lickered inside that homeless woman. How she asked for my help. I look at my dad and then at Noah.

“What do they need our help with? The spirits?” I ask, frantic now. “Does my mom need help?”

Noah stares into my eyes. “I don't know that part,” he says. “Remember what's etched on the back of the cross? There's
magis—
more—to Ignatius's spirit theory that no one knows. That's what Ignatius hid in his original book. The one he never published, the one he hid from the Roman Inquisitors. Some scholars have guessed that it's about what the spirits are up to. Why they're messing with us in the f irst place. And that's what we have to f ind out.”

“So we need the original manuscript,” I say.

“Exactly. And Jay's dad knew where it was. It's in a cave. In Maryland. But he left it there. On purpose.”

“Where do you think we looked for you f irst?” I ask, my voice shaky. “We went there. We
found
it. I have it. And it's up in my room.”

Noah blinks several times. “You . . . you
what
?”

I nod. “But don't get your hopes up. It's impossible to read . . . we couldn't even f igure out the language.”

He looks away from me, then back. “We have to try. If you really did f ind it.” I can hear the panic in his voice, the panic I can feel. It f loods through me like liquid concrete, threatening to harden and swallow me whole.

But what if we can't f igure it out?

I thought there could be nothing worse than spending the rest of my life always looking for my mother, always checking strangers in the grocery store, random cars on the highway, never knowing when or if I might see her again. Never getting to say I'm sorry. But there
is
something worse. And it's this: Knowing that I wrecked my mom's life, and that now I'm somehow wrecking her afterlife, too. Because if she needs help, I can't f igure out how to give it to her.

Air. I NEED AIR.

I throw open the car door and stagger out, pulling in a long, deep breath. The chains on the porch swing rattle as Dad sees me. He bolts out of Sammy's arms, eyes wide.

“Riley? What are you doing in your car?”

Just then, Noah steps out of the passenger side of the fogged-up Wagon.

“Oh,” Dad says. He freezes. Slumps a little. I can feel his embarrassment in the dark and see the confusion on his face in the dim porch light. I can tell he's shocked, but not because he thinks he just caught me making out in the driveway. The way he looks at me and then at Noah, it's more like . . .
But I thought you liked Jay?

I storm up the porch stairs.

“Don't. Say . . .” I pause, still half-breathless. I look at Sammy as she adjusts her shirt on the porch swing. “A word.”

Upstairs in my room,
alone with Noah, I keep expecting Dad to knock. To hear his footsteps pounding up the stairs. There's nothing. Not a peep of protest. Maybe he's back on the porch swing with Sammy. I guess when your teenage daughter catches you making out with someone she didn't even know
existed
until an hour ago, you can't exactly negotiate house rules from a position of strength.

So I focus on my mother. On what matters. I show Noah the manuscript and explain how we found it, making sure to describe in extra detail how scary it was, to make him feel extra-guilty, which he
should
. And he does. But he still doesn't tell me where he went instead. After that, I tell him about our ingenious Napkinary.

Then I realize there's a big problem: I can't f ind the napkins.

“Shit,” I say, rif ling through my room. “Jay must have taken the napkins home with him.” Noah lies on the f loor, propped up on his elbows, paging through the manuscript.

“We looked up the history of this thing after we found it,” I explain. “We think it's his original. The one Ignatius never published. His signature and the date are on the last page.”

“
Exactamundo
,” Noah says. His eyes are bright and he sits up, cross-legged, f lipping through the wrinkled pages as delicately as he can. “The Vatican demanded to see what he was teaching people. The Inquisitors threw him in jail while they reviewed his book. Except he didn't give them this one.” Noah taps a f inger on the front cover. “He gave them a watered-down Latin version made by his secretary.”

“Saints have secretaries?”

“Yes. And they don't mess with Inquisitors.” He keeps turning the pages, eyeing every one. “The theory is that Ignatian relics, like the cross and manuscript, were sent over with Andrew White. The Jesuit who founded the Maryland colony.”

I shake my head as I watch him. I'm still stunned by how much he knows. “We didn't get very far with the Napkinary,” I admit. “We were only able to translate the major words on the f irst few pages.”

“That's okay,” Noah says. “Because we don't need the f irst few pages. In fact, we don't need the majority of them. We just need these.” He stops near the end and points at one of the f inal pages. I lie down next to him and peer over his shoulder. “I've read the published version cover to cover. And this has all the same sections, plus one extra.” At the top of the page is the word
magis,
written large. “There's no Magis section in the published Latin text.”

Below the word
magis
, there's a paragraph and then a lot of blank space. And then a sentence:

Nos omnostria sumus
. . .

The sentence doesn't end with another word. It ends with scribbles.