Signs of You (6 page)

“Pardon?” Noah asks.

“The necklace,” she says. “The Saint Ignatius cross necklace. We're going to get rid of it.”

Jay's eyes get wide. “Did you guys see . . . ?” he stops, unable to f inish. I nod.

“Not my mom,” I say. “But yeah. Kate and I both saw these people, like, old-fashioned people . . .” but I stop, too. I just can't say any more out loud.

“I'm in,” Jay says. “This is going to drive us all crazy. Let's go get it and just destroy it. Or throw it in the river or something.”

“But we can't,” I say slowly, softly. “Maybe it's the only way to my mom.”

“I'm with Riley,” Noah says. “We're
not
throwing a priceless religious artifact into the Cuyahoga River.”

Kate gets up, but then sits back down. It looks like fainting is imminent. “I'm freaking, I'm really freaking,” she says. “I mean, what if we aren't the only people this is happening to? Maybe
everybody
is seeing what we are, and it has nothing to do with the necklace. And maybe everyone is afraid to say something about it. Maybe the zombie apocalypse is starting, and we're just the f irst to know.”

Miraculously I sort of laugh. Only Kate or Noah could make me laugh at a time like this. “I
don't
think this is the zombie apocalypse. But there's an easy way to test it out.” I spot a fellow nerd coming out of the school. Her name is Jackie. She plays the trombone, and she has on a long-sleeve T-shirt that says
treble maker.

“Jackie?” I wave her over.

“What's up?” she asks. “Can you believe they picked a song without guitar in it? I mean, seriously.
Why
the school forces us to go watch this is
beyond
me.” She rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, super lame,” I say, gathering my courage. “Um.”

“Yeah?” she looks concerned now because I'm acting so awkward.

“Um, have you ever, like, seen someone who's died? Like, seen a glimpse of them?” I ask.
This must sound so absurd.

“What?” she asks, clearly taken aback by the absurdity. She pushes a strand of frizzy brown hair behind her ear and looks at me like I'm a total asshole.

“Like a ghost. But not a ghost. Have you seen someone who's already died, like either they faked their death, or maybe they're back from the dead? And then you go to talk to them and they turn into someone else?”

Her face goes from confused to angry as she backs away from me. “Have you gone to the dark side? You're picking on people now? What's your problem?”

“I'm not trying to mess with you, I promise . . .”

But she's already walking away. Then she gives me the f inger. That makes twice in one week that someone has felt the need to f lip me off. Can't really blame them in either case.

I turn back to my friends.

“I think it's safe to say she hasn't seen anything,” Noah says. “If it's any consolation, Riley, I can relate.”

I laugh again, miserably this time. “Yeah. I think it's just us. The ones who wore the necklace.” My mind whirls, trying to make sense of something that is senseless. “Maybe . . . I don't know. Maybe we should leave this to the experts. Let's go get it and take it up to the archeology department at Case Western or something. Where Jay's dad was a prof. Maybe they can help us.”

“Sorry,” Jay says. “I'm still in the ditch-it camp.”

I don't like the sound I hear in Jay's voice. Like something's broken, or missing. “Don't you want to f igure this out?” I ask him.

“I don't know,” Jay says softly. His eyes are on the ground. He bends down and picks up a small stone. Then he pulls his arm back and throws it as hard as he can. We watch it arch high in the sky and come down near the big pine tree. “I just want to get rid of it. Get rid of all of it.”

“Okay,” Noah says. His voice has an edge. “I'm empathizing here, I really am. I get that this is sad and awful. But really, I'm so annoyed with you all, I'm going to have to put all my reasons in list form.” He starts pacing again like he did in Kate's basement. “One: The cross necklace is like,
old.
It's like, an
artifact.
It took Jay's dad's
whole career
to f ind the thing—it does
not
belong in the river or a dumpster somewhere. B: We
can't
turn it over to the university. They'll take it from us, but they won't believe us or help us. Three: I'm starving, which doesn't help.”

I decide it would be unwise to point out that Noah started his list with a number and inserted a letter halfway through. Jay and Kate roll their eyes at Noah's speech and take off toward my car.

“Wait,” Noah calls. “Hang on.” They stop and look back. “Before you go, before we decide on anything, let me run into the computer room and at least do some research. My phone will be too slow here. The service sucks.”

“Research on what?” Jay asks, sounding fed up.

Noah pauses. “On our options. I mean, if it is some sort of crazy Catholic curse, and we're going to destroy the necklace, we need to make sure we do it the right way. So all this really does stop.” Noah pauses again, gauging our reactions. “And if we're going to ask somebody up at Case Western for help, shouldn't we know who to go to? I can research some profs. Why don't you guys go get some food and bring it back here so I don't pass out from hunger? I'll meet you in the computer room.”

Jay narrows his eyes, pondering Noah's idea.

“I actually think it's a good plan,” I chime in. Of course, I'd say anything to buy some time, to prevent Jay and Kate from taking off to get rid of what might really, truly, crazily be a means to connect to my mother. “If we're going to do something, let's at least get it right.”

After a long moment, Jay nods. But he's still glaring at Noah. “Fine,” he says. “Taco Bell?”

Noah sighs in relief. “Seven-layer Burrito. Times two.”

I go with Jay
and Kate to make sure they don't convince themselves to pick up the cross on their way. Taco Bell is all the way in North Royalton, which takes like ten minutes to get to. Everyone behind the counter moves so slowly, we can only assume they're all stoned. But still, we make it back to the school in about thirty-f ive minutes.

The sounds of air band practice echo down the hallway as we head to the computer lab, loaded down with food. A knot pulls tight in my stomach; I don't want to look into the gym as we pass. I don't know who or what I'll see. We duck into the computer lab.

The room is full of gently humming hard drives; the walls are covered with posters about learning to code. Yellowed laminated charts about Pascal, Fortran, and C++ stare down at us. But other than that, it's deserted.

“Where is he?” Kate asks.

I peer under the desks, just to make sure Noah isn't sneaking a nap or looking for something he dropped. But he's not there.

“I'll text him,” Jay says, putting the burritos down. “But this is super annoying. I'm hungry. And cold Taco Bell kind of sucks.”

We all wait to hear Jay's phone gong and f ill the air with the sound of crashing waves as Noah texts back. But nothing comes. I pull out my cell and call. It goes to straight to voicemail.

I'm hungry, too, but now we're all a little concerned. None of us need to say anything; we all have the same idea:
Find Noah now
. We skip the food and search the school. I make Jay search the auditorium while Kate and I take the grounds. We look by the pine tree, by the side entrances, and even around back by the statue of our school mascot—a bronzed Woodhull High Bee whose wings have been defaced with about a million wads of dried, chewed gum.

Jay comes out of the gym, shaking his head. He doesn't look annoyed anymore. He looks nervous.

And I can feel it. Noah is gone. Totally and completely
gone.

Chapter 6

The Family Rule

There are probably at least f ifty gray Honda Civics that cruise through Brecksville, Ohio on any given day. But there's only one that's plastered with NASA mission stickers. And that's Noah Digman's.

Jay, Kate, and I drive around town in the Wagon, craning our necks as we look for Noah's NASA sedan. We check his typical hangouts: the camera store that sells telescopes, Game Stop, even Taco Bell to see if he's circled back to get those burritos. But we have no luck. And at this point, we've each texted him about 14,000 times. No response.

“Okay, before any of us get panicky, let's think,” Kate says. But she already sounds panicky. “Where the hell would he go? Is there some science convention he forgot about?”

“Maybe he went to the library,” I say. “Like, the
real
library, in town.” It wouldn't be the f irst time he's run off to f ind a book, just to make sure that something he'd read on the web wasn't complete crap. One of the things I love about Noah is that he loves proving know-it-alls wrong, especially Internet know-it-alls.

“But why wouldn't he answer our texts?” Jay asks, cranking the AC. “Or tell us that he was taking off? He knew we were coming back with the food . . .”

“And it's not
like him to miss Taco Bell. For
any
reason.” Kate stretches out in the backseat. She f ills the car with sounds of loud gum chewing.

“Wait, wait, wait.” Jay sits up straight in the passenger seat. I take him literally and slow down. “No, keep driving. Go to my house. He knows where we hide a key.”

He does? Why don't I know about this?

I don't get to ask about it because Kate leans into the front seat, blowing and then popping an enormous bubble. “Why would he go to
your
house? You
never
have food at your house.”

“Maybe he went to get the cross,” Jay says, his voice shaking. “Because he was so freaked out that we'd decide to get rid of it. He didn't want us to get our hands on it.”

Now I feel vaguely sick. “And the whole food-run thing was to get rid of us so he could go pick it up . . .”

Kate stops chomping. The car is silent.

We're right, of course.
I knew we would be. We all knew.

The three of us stand in a semi-circle in Jay's living room, collectively willing Jay's father's prized artifact to return. Willing Noah to return. But the house is empty, and there's nothing on the little table but an outline in the dust where the glass case used to be.

Without a word, we drive straight to Noah's house, but no one answers the doorbell. And none of us know where they might hide a key. We don't see his Honda parked outside, but it could be in the garage. So we go around to the side and look up at his second-story bedroom window. We can't see into his room; the blinds are pulled.

“He's obviously not here,” Kate says. “Let's just go. Let's check the library.”

Jay ignores her and starts throwing rocks at Noah's window. They ricochet off the glass, getting louder and louder as Jay throws each one harder than the last.

“Dude,” I say. “Slow down. You're going to break it.”

“He stole something from my house,” Jay says, his jaw clenched. “Something important. It belonged to my dad. He deserves a broken window.”

“Oh, I love how you're mad now,” Kate says with a teasing smile, plopping down in the grass. I know she's trying to soothe him, lighten the mood. Maybe she's as worried as I am that Jay's on the brink of exploding. Behind all of his mellowness there lurks something dark and angry, but then, we all share that to some degree—even Noah. Grief and darkness: they're kind of a package deal. “Just an hour ago you were ready to dump the damn thing in the river.”

But Jay keeps throwing rocks. After three more stones, I'm about to rule this useless and head back to the car when something happens: Noah's blinds move. Just a little. But they totally move.

“Did you see that?” Jay asks. His face is still twisted, but his brown eyes sparkle. “I
knew
he was hiding in there. Come on, I think I can guess the garage code. And we can get into the house that way.”

We head around front quickly, and Jay starts punching codes into the keypad. But the garage door doesn't budge. The buttons f lash alarm-green, and I'm hoping this isn't linked to a security system or something. Like where our f ifth incorrect guess at the code will send an alert to the cops and they'll show up, sirens blaring.

“Do you actually have any idea what the code is?” Kate asks, leaning up against the house. “Or are these totally random guesses?”

“I was here when they set it up,” Jay mutters, still punching away. “His parents let him pick the number. He never said what it was, but he said something like he wanted it to be a constant so he'd never forget it. I mean, how many constants are in his life? His Honda's model year? His birthdate? The date he f irst got laid? Wait. That would be never. Maybe four zeroes?”

“He said it was a constant?” I ask, rolling my eyes at Jay's cheap shot. “It's Noah we're talking about. I bet he meant a
mathematical
constant.”

Jay smirks. “Um, if I knew what that was, I might be able to wager a guess.”

“I bet it's pi,” I say. “He loves thinking about Cantor's proof. Move over.”

Jay looks confused, but steps aside.

“Cantor's proof?” Kate asks. “A: How and why do you know what that is? And B: Given the fact that you know something like that, why are you failing math?”

“It's about irrational numbers. Like pi. How they're uncountable. Which really messes with your head when you think about it. Plus, pi is a constant,” I say, punching it into the keypad. “And I'm failing math because you don't have to care to understand it, but you
do
have to care in order to do things like complete the homework. Or stay awake during the tests.”

After I punch in 314, I hit enter. But the garage door doesn't budge.

“Garage codes are usually four numbers,” Jay says. “Not three.”

“Then somebody Google pi, and give me three decimal places.”

Kate jumps on it, swiping and jabbing at her phone. “It's 3.141,” she announces, looking up. “And if that works, I am conf ident that this is the dorkiest garage code in all of Ohio. And perhaps the world.”

We barrel into the
house and head straight for Noah's room. Jay swings the bedroom door open. It's a mess. Like, a total and complete
disaster
area. This is troubling; Noah is the neatest, most methodical guy we know. Anal. He even keeps his pens organized by ballpoint size. His desk, usually organized and super clean, is covered with dusty books and piles of papers. There are several half-full coffee mugs by his green reading lamp.

And sitting in the middle of the desk is his white cat, Sophie. She stands up and purrs, her long tail bumping Noah's blinds.

“Guess that's who we saw in the window,” Kate says. She walks over to scratch Sophie behind the ears. Then she peers into one of the coffee cups. “And OMG. There are like, f loating spores in there.”

Jay picks up a few of the papers that are strewn all over the f loor, and Kate goes right for Noah's shelves.

“You guys,” I say. “Should we really be going through his stuff like this?”

“We're not friends,” Kate says. “We're
family
. And there's a family rule: if we're worried about you, we get to go through your stuff. Besides,
he
felt comfortable enough to go through Jay's stuff and take something that wasn't his, right?”

I shrug and accept this, even though Kate has just proved that the Family Rule is morally dubious. I scan the spines of the books that are piled on the desk. There are titles like
Famous Catholic Mystics
and
The Truth about the Counter-Reformation.
There's one with a map of Rome on the front titled,
First Jesuit Pope: The Francis Effect.
There are books about Spain, orders of priests, religious relics, purgatory, and Catholic teachings about angels and demons. There's one book called
The Afterlife: Visions Shared Across Faiths.
This makes no sense. Of all of us, Noah is the least religious, the least spiritual. He's not into this type of stuff. The nausea I'd felt back in the car returns. My hunger is long forgotten.

“These are my dad's,” Jay says, as if reading my mind. He's f lipping through the papers on Noah's f loor. “I mean, these are the articles he published about his research. And some of his sketches and notes.” He gets quiet for a minute. “Noah took these from our house,” he says slowly. “These drawings were in a box in my dad's closet.”

He holds up a sketch: a drawing of the cross necklace. And the word that is scratched onto the cross is written over and over again in the margins:
magis
.

I stare back at him. Jay's eyes suddenly look empty and sad, like he can't believe his best friend would take this stuff, like he's hoping he's wrong and Kate and I will be able to offer some alternative explanation. We can't.

Instead, I pick up another book and read the title out loud. “
Saint Ignatius of Loyola: The Mysterious Father of the Jesuits
.” I sigh. “He's not reading this because he's Catholic. He isn't really
anything
. And if he
had
to pick a religion, he said it would be Buddhism.”

“What the hell?” Jay whispers. “Why does he have all this? We
just
told him about wearing the cross—”

“Today,” I say. “We told him today. But look around. He didn't run out and start looking into this in the past hour. Remember how he said the word ‘research' right before we left? That's exactly what he's been doing. For a long time.”

Jay doesn't respond. Surveying the room again, he takes a deep breath and runs a hand through his thick brown hair.

“I don't like this, you guys,” Kate says. She looks pale. “I mean, it's really, really freaky. Why was he researching this? Before he even knew what happened?”

Ignoring my guilt, I decide to embrace Kate's Family Rule and start to rummage through the desk and drawers. The f irst drawers I try don't help at all; they're just full of school stuff. I slide out the bottom drawer. It's f illed with papers and folders and scraps. But they don't look like they're related to homework. I pick up a handful of notes and start to read.

As soon as my eyes focus on the words and my mind puts them together, I let them fall out of my hands. They f lutter onto the f loor around me like skinny, underfed birds. I grab another handful of papers and read. And then another. And another.
Oh my God.
Now the nausea threatens to make me physically ill. I'd been hoping for clues about where Noah might have gone, where he might want to take the cross. But that's not what I f ind. The notes are all about the people we've lost—my mom, Kate's aunt, Jay's dad. I f ind pictures of my mom and notes about things I've said about her. My hands shake as I clutch the papers, my eyes wide at my own handwriting. He's stolen things from me, too. A list I kept in my desk drawer of my mom's favorite things, like hummingbirds and irises. There are funny quotes from Kate about her aunt Lilly and her obit from our local paper.

But he's collected the most—and written the most himself— about Jay's dad. There's a timeline of his research, his discoveries. There are lists of people he worked with and a list of Jesuit universities. And he's printed out at least thirty Internet articles about his work.

“Oh, this isn't good,” Kate says.

She's grabbed a journal from one of the bookshelves. There's a Black Sabbath bumper sticker on the cover. I recognize it; Noah always claimed it was a math notebook. She opens it and starts reading some of the entries out loud. My ears are buzzing; none of them are about math. Most are about suicide and the afterlife. And every one is dark. “Listen,” Kate mutters. “This is his last entry: ‘The dark season of fall is cursed. I can't breathe when the leaves start to change. The whole season should be erased because it's the season of rejection.'” She looks up from the pages. Her hands are trembling, too.

“Noah? Suicidal?” Jay asks of nobody in particular. The anger has evaporated. “I don't get it. It's like I don't know him. At all. How could I not know him?”

“And why is fall a time of rejection?” Kate asks. “We haven't even started applying to college yet. Do you think he applied a year early or something? I mean, man cannot get into college on decent science grades alone.”

“Hold up,” I say. “Let me see that.” I take the notebook and heave a sigh of relief. This isn't Noah's handwriting. It's too erratic, too unhinged. “I don't think Noah wrote this,” I say, f lipping to the front. “Here, look. It says Cam Digman. It was his brother's.” I keep searching through the journal, and I spot Noah's writing in the margins. He's taken notes about his brother's entries. Especially the ones Cam made right before he committed suicide. Noah has circled things—like movies Cam watched or things he ate, books he read.

“And check this out,” Jay says, moving to Noah's bed. On the wall is a laminated map with pins stuck in it. “Look, it's Catoctin State Park. In Maryland. Where my dad found the cross necklace. It's near a Jesuit retreat center.”

Kate f lops down on Noah's bed and puts her hands over her face. “This is all so awful. Just awful.”

I clutch the journal, trying to stay calm. “What are you thinking?” I ask Jay.

“Maybe he's on his way to put the cross back where my dad found it. It was in a cave somewhere in Catoctin.” Jay hesitates, chewing his lip. “Maybe it's like
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
. Remember when they tried to take the Holy Grail out of the cave? The German chick who was a spy fell into a chasm, another guy turned to dust, and the whole mountain started to collapse. It was a real spiritual shit storm. It's like a rule or something. Creepy religious artifacts—
you have to put them back
. Maybe Noah f igured that's where it belongs, to appease the spirit world or something.”