Since You've Been Gone (6 page)

“Holy crap,” Collins said, his mouth hanging open. “How’d
that kid get up there? And where’s his harness? Or helmet?”

Before I could say anything, Frank and Collins had taken off in the direction of the wall, and I followed. A crowd had gathered, and most of the climbers were rappelling down, out of the way.

“Emily!” Beckett yelled, waving at me, his voice echoing in the huge space. “Look how high I am!”

Both Frank and Collins looked at me, and I twisted my hands behind my back. “So, that’s my brother,” I said. I tried to think of something to follow this, like some explanation as to why he was currently humiliating me and jeopardizing IndoorXtreme’s insurance policy, but nothing else came.

“What’s his name?” Collins asked.

“Beckett,” I said. “But I’m sure he’s fine. He just—”

“Bucket?” Collins asked, then nodded as though this made sense. “Hey, Bucket!” he yelled up at my brother. “I’m gonna need you to come down from there, okay? Wait,” he said, shaking his head. “First, put your helmet back on and come down. Actually,” he amended, taking a small step closer, “first put on your harness,
then
your helmet, then come on down from there. All right?”

Beckett looked down at the crowd that was now staring up at him, then at me, and I tried to silently convey to him that he should absolutely do this, and as quickly as possible.

“Okay,” he said with a shrug, picking up his harness and snapping himself back into it.

The people below seemed to let out a collective sigh of relief and the crowd began to break up, people starting to climb the wall again or heading back to the bike course.

“See? All good,” Collins said, waving up at my brother, who was buckling the chin strap underneath his helmet.

“This is why you were supposed to be spotting,” Frank said, shaking his head as he strode toward the climbing wall.

“He’s coming down,” Collins pointed out, and my brother had indeed started to find the first foot- and handholds to take him back down to earth. “You don’t need to go up there.” But either Frank didn’t hear this or chose to ignore it, because he started climbing up the wall with a sense of purpose, heading toward Beckett. “Ruh-roh,” Collins said quietly, looking up at the climbing wall, his brow furrowed.

“It’s really okay,” I said. “My brother climbs stuff that high all the time.”

“I’m not worried about Bucket,” Collins said. “I’m worried about Porter.”

I looked up at the wall. Frank was almost halfway up now, moving his hands easily from one handhold to the next. He seemed fine to me. “Um, why?”

Collins took off his helmet, and wiped his hand across his forehead. His hair was dark from sweat and plastered down against his head, making him look like he had a bowl cut. It wasn’t the best look on him. “Porter’s got a fear of heights.”

I looked around, at all the many things in this establishment
that would involve climbing or skating or jumping over high things. “Oh,” I said. I tried to think of some way to ask why he worked here without being insulting. “But . . .”

“I know,” Collins said, talking fast, sounding defensive. “My uncle said the same thing when I got Porter the job. But he’s
great
with all things paintball,” he said, and I nodded, wishing I’d never said anything. “And there’s nobody better at the bike course,” he went on. “Dude can straighten jumps like nobody’s business. Also, he’s the most competent one here, so that’s why he’s the one in charge of the bank deposits. I was
terrible
at that.” I nodded; I could easily believe this. “But heights?” Collins leaned a little closer to me and shook his head. “Not his strong suit.”

I looked up at Frank, who was now pretty high, almost at the level of Beckett. “Then why is he climbing?” I asked, feeling myself get a little panicky on Frank’s behalf.

“Because he’s Frank Porter,” Collins said, and I heard a note of  bitterness in his voice for the first time.  “Captain Responsible.”

I looked back at the wall, thinking that despite this, maybe things would be okay—when I saw Frank reach for the next handhold, glance down, and freeze, his arm still extended.

“Told you,” Collins said softly, not taking any pleasure in the statement.

Frank was now holding on to the wall with both hands, but he still wasn’t moving. “What happens now?” I asked, feeling like I was seeing something that I really shouldn’t be.

“Well, sometimes he pulls it together,” Collins said, his
voice still quiet. “Otherwise, there’s a big ladder in the back.”

“Oh no,” I said, trying to look away but finding that it was impossible. It was clear to me that this was all because of Beckett—which meant, as far as Frank Porter was concerned, it was all because of me.

“I know,” Collins said, wincing.

Beckett had now reached the same level as Frank, and he said something to him that I couldn’t hear. Beckett kept on climbing down and I realized that he was now below Frank, who still hadn’t moved.

Doug from the front desk had come out to stare at the spectacle, his book abandoned on the counter. “Ladder?” he asked Collins, who nodded.

“I think so,” he said.

A second later, though, Beckett changed direction and climbed back up until he was level with Frank again. He said something to him, and Frank shook his head. But my brother stayed where he was, still talking to Frank. And after a long pause, Frank reached down for the handhold just below him. Beckett nodded, climbed down two handholds, and motioned for Frank to come down to where he was, pointing out the footholds. After another pause, Frank moved down to the next level again. It was painfully clear to me that my ten-year-old brother was talking the IndoorXtreme employee down the climbing wall, and I just hoped that it wasn’t as obvious to everyone else in the facility.

“Nice,” Collins said, as he watched the progress—slow, but incremental—on the wall. “Does your brother need a job?”

“Ha ha,” I said a little hollowly. I was watching with a tight feeling in my chest, and I didn’t really let out a full breath until Beckett jumped the last few feet to the ground and then looked up at Frank Porter, pointing out the remaining handholds for him and giving him an encouraging thumbs-up. Frank half stumbled down to the ground, and when he turned around, I could see that his face was almost as red as his helmet. Doug shrugged, then turned and trudged back to the register.

“Porter!” Collins yelled. “You complete moron. I thought I was going to have to get the ladder and pull you out like a damn cat!” The worried friend who had been there just moments before was gone, and I realized Collins had changed back into the guy I was used to from school, the one who was constantly pulling pranks and asking out the most popular girls in highly public ways that invariably backfired.

“Beckett,” I called, gesturing for him to come to me. My bother nodded, unclipped himself from his harness, and held up his hand for a high-five, which Frank listlessly returned. Now that he was safely on the ground, I could practically feel the embarrassment coming off Frank in waves.

Beckett reached me, and I grabbed him by the neck of his T-shirt, not wanting to let him out of my sight, in case he decided to scale the half-pipe or something. “See you around,”
I said to Collins, just out of habit, but without any expectation that this would be true.

“Yeah,” Collins said, and I could tell he was saying this the same way—just something you say, not something you mean. “Sure.” He headed toward Frank, who was still standing by the wall, and I watched him go for a moment before I looked down at my brother, who had the sense to at least pretend to look ashamed of himself.

“Sorry,” he said quickly. “I just wanted to see the view from the top, and—”

“Let’s go,” I said, steering him toward the front counter, Beckett dragging his feet and talking fast, trying to stall.

“We don’t have to leave,” he said. “I just won’t go on the wall. I can still do the bike course, right? Em?”

I didn’t even respond to this as we reached the counter and Beckett pulled off his climbing shoes. I wasn’t happy about leaving, because it meant I probably wouldn’t get to Sloane’s list today. But I had a feeling that even if I didn’t take Beckett away, he might be asked to leave, making this even more embarrassing than it already was. I pushed Beckett’s climbing shoes across to Doug, who was back to reading his paperback.
A Murder of Crows
, the cover read, featuring a fierce-looking bird about to alight on a flaming sword. He stood and got Beckett’s sneakers without looking up from his book.

“But,
Emily
,” Beckett whined.

I just shook my head. And we walked out to my car in
silence as I tried to steel myself for what I was going to have to do. I usually didn’t play the Big Sister card—Beckett and I got along fine, mostly because there were seven years between us, we’d never been competing for the same things, and I usually felt more like his babysitter than his sibling. But this was one of the instances where I knew I had to do it, since my parents certainly weren’t going to step up, not right when they’d begun a play. I put the key in the ignition, but didn’t turn it yet as I faced my brother, who was sitting cross-legged on the seat, glaring down at his hands. “Beck, you can’t do stuff like that,” I said. I suddenly wondered if it would have been better if Beckett had gotten hurt at some point during the years he’d been climbing, so he’d have a healthy degree of fear, or at least some understanding of the consequences. “You shouldn’t be taking risks like that. I don’t care what you climb at home. There were other people around. You could have been hurt, or you could have hurt them. It’s called being reckless.”

I started the car and headed home, Beckett not speaking, still looking down. I knew he was mad at me and figured he would probably sulk the rest of the drive, so I was surprised when he spoke up as I turned onto our street.

“But I wasn’t,” Beckett said. I wasn’t sure what he meant, and it must have been clear, because he went on, “I wasn’t hurt. Nobody else was, either. And I got to see a really great view. So what’s that called?”

I just shook my head, knowing somehow that there was a
flaw in his logic, but not exactly sure how to articulate what it was. “Just . . .”

“I know, I know, be more careful,” he said as I pulled in to the driveway. He contradicted this immediately, though, unbuckling his seat belt and jumping out before I’d even put the car in park. “I’m going to Annabel’s. See you later,” he yelled as he slammed the door and took off running behind our house. Annabel lived at the other end of the block, and she and Beckett had spent most of last summer finding shortcuts between the two houses that they guarded closely and refused to disclose.

I watched him go, then picked up my phone. I had pressed the button to call Sloane automatically, when I realized what I was doing. I hung up—but not before I’d heard the phone was still going directly to her voice mail, the one that I’d heard a thousand times, the one that she’d recorded with me next to her as we walked down the street. Toward the end, you could hear me laughing. I set the phone down on the passenger seat, out of easy reach. But it always felt like nothing had really happened until I’d talked to Sloane about it. I was used to recapping my experiences to her, and then going through them, moment by moment. And if she’d been here, or on the other end of the phone, I could have told her how bizarre it was that Frank Porter was working at IndoorXtreme, about Collins, and what I’d heard about their evening plans—

I suddenly understood something and glanced up at my bedroom window, picturing the list in my drawer. I got now
what Sloane meant by number twelve. It wasn’t just a bizarre fruit-gathering mission. She wanted me to go to the Orchard.

I waited until ten before I left. By this point, Beckett was in bed and my parents had retreated to their study at the top of the house. All their patterns from a few years ago were coming back, and this was how they had worked then: they would write all day in the dining room, usually forgetting about dinner, and then head upstairs, where they would go over that day’s pages and plan out the next day.

When I was thirteen, the last time this had happened, it wasn’t like I’d had much of a social life, or anywhere at all to go at night, so I’d never explored the possibilities their writing afforded. But now, things were different. During the school year, I had a pretty strict midnight curfew that Sloane—who had no curfew whatsoever—had figured all kinds of techniques for getting around. Now that my parents were otherwise occupied, I had a feeling my curfew had become more theoretical than something that would be enforced. But just in case, I scrawled a note and left it up against the TV in the kitchen, so if they found me gone, they wouldn’t call the police.

As I’d gotten ready in my room—this basically just meant putting on jeans instead of shorts, grabbing a sweatshirt, and adding a swipe of lip gloss—I’d stared down at the list. While I still didn’t understand a few of the others, I
really
didn’t get this one. It didn’t seem like it was going to be a challenge, since it wasn’t like I’d never been to the Orchard before. We’d gone
there one afternoon a week before I went upstate and Sloane disappeared. We’d had milkshakes—vanilla for me, coffee for her—and lain out on the picnic tables for hours in the sun, just talking. We’d been a number of times this past spring, usually at night, but occasionally during the day, when Sloane wanted a place where we could hang out in peace, working on our tans or just walking up and down the rows of trees, talking about anything that came to our minds.

I kept the Volvo’s lights off until I reached the street, even though the curtains in my parents’ study were drawn. And once I’d made it down the street without my cell lighting up with calls and texts asking me where I thought I was going, I figured that I was in the clear.

I turned my lights on and my music up, a Luke Bryan album I’d downloaded last month but not listened to until now, and headed in the direction of the Orchard. I was halfway through the album when I turned off the main road and on to the side street that would lead me there. Out here, the houses got farther and farther apart until there was nothing but empty land and, tucked away on an almost-hidden drive, the Orchard. I slowed as I got closer. The entrance was always, by design I was sure, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it. I was contemplating turning around and backtracking when I saw the fading sign and the narrow gravel driveway. I put on my blinker, even though I hadn’t seen any other cars on the road, and turned in, pausing for a moment to look at the sign.