The Mostly True Story of Jack (16 page)

“No,” he said honestly. “I’m really not. But whatever. Don’t worry about it.” He turned away, blinking hard until she closed the door. After wiping his eyes with the hem of his shirt, he sat at his desk and opened the book.

“Jack?” Mabel opened the door.

“Huh?” Jack turned with a start.

Mabel had a wide, slightly forced smile across her face. “My sister is on the phone,” she said.

“What?” Jack stared at her, openmouthed. He thought
for a moment, and narrowed his eyes. “But the phone didn’t ring. Did
she
call
me
, or did
you
call
her
?”

Mabel shrugged and covered up the receiver with the heel of her hand. “Do you want to talk to her or not?” she whispered impatiently.

Though he strongly suspected that his mother had not called at all and, what’s worse, that it didn’t even occur to her to do so until Mabel placed the call for her, Jack took the phone anyway. He had a strong urge to call his aunt a busybody, but he resisted.

“Hi, Mom,” he said, and Mabel left the room.

It was the first time he heard her voice in three weeks. This was not for lack of trying on Jack’s part. In addition to his attempts at letter writing, he had also tried his mother’s voice-mail system, his father’s cell, his mother’s cell and her other cell, and both of their assistants. Each time, either the numbers would scramble, or his voice wouldn’t go through. Sometimes the cell towers failed or the phone lines went suddenly haywire.

He had so much to tell both of his parents—or, more specifically, he had so many questions to ask. So many, he kept a list of them in his notebook. The first question:
Why?
The second question: Also
Why?

However, with his mom chattering away on the other line, Jack now found himself suddenly tongue-tied and embarrassed, his adventures so far seeming far-fetched and vaguely ludicrous, as though he had simply made them up on the spot.

“Mom,” Jack said, “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for weeks.”

“What’s that, honey?” His mother yawned. It was early in Iowa, so it was insanely early in San Francisco. What was his mother doing up that early, Jack wondered. He sat down at his desk and took out his notebook and started to draw. At the corner of the desk, the small round stone that Frankie had given him sat and glinted. It was still warm to the touch, and Jack was simultaneously unnerved by it and fascinated too. He picked it up and held it in his left hand.

“Is Dad there?” Jack asked.

“No, honey. Your father’s at his new apartment. Honestly, dear, the housewarming was just yesterday. I thought you were having a nice time.”

“What housewarming?
You
might have been there, but
I
wasn’t, Mom.” But on the other end, the kettle screeched and the microwave beeped, and Jack wasn’t sure if she’d heard him.

“The decorator was here until late last night,” she said, “and you won’t believe what this place will look like when he’s done with it.”

She went on for a long time about fabrics and furniture, about tasks done and undone. She told him about specific details at work, about people he did not know. She spoke like a boss giving updates to an employee. Jack kept drawing. He liked to draw pictures of his mom.
She was tall and stately, with wide-set eyes and long brown hair that she always kept swept off her neck.

“But,
darling
”—his mother yawned again—“you simply
must
tell me what you’ve been doing….”

If his mother had been truly interested, Jack would not have known where to start. Fortunately, she wasn’t interested at all and didn’t allow him a moment to speak. Jack stopped listening to her words and focused his attention on the sound and rhythm of her voice as his pencil made curves and shades and emerging shapes in his notebook. He finished the sketch of her and stopped when he noticed he was making a figure coming through a darkened doorway.

He turned the page. He started a new picture, of the schoolhouse, but it made him shudder, so he turned the page again. He drew another picture of Frankie with half his body faded into a pale gray cloud. Jack drew the stone that Frankie had given him—the shimmery pearl color shot with blue veins swirling randomly across like clouds. He reached across the desk and hefted the real stone. It felt good—solid, reassuring, and strangely warm.

“And just
wait
until you see your new room. I know you’re going to say you’re too old and you don’t want your mother decorating your space for you, but you should see what I have picked out.”

“I’m sure whatever it is—” Jack began.

“I’ve put up picture rails so you can finally hang up
those photographs that keep littering your desk, and I’ve set up a whole rack for your trophies and team photos.”

Wait
, Jack thought.
What photographs? What trophies?
But he did not speak.

“I want you to walk into a room that just sings
Baxter
.”

Jack dropped the phone onto the table. He felt his blood leave his face for a moment before rushing back. He felt cold, then hot, then sweaty, then clammy. He picked the phone back up and cradled it next to his ear.

“Mom,” he said, trying very hard to force down the sick feeling that bubbled in the back of his throat. “Who do you think you’re talking to right now?”

“Hmmm?” was his mother’s musical reply.

“Who do you think this
is
?” Jack stood. He still held the stone in his hand. It heated quickly until it became uncomfortable. He didn’t care. He just held on tight.

“Darling, it’s too early for this sort of—”

“I’m not
Baxter
, Mom, I’m
Jack
. Jack!
Why aren’t you listening to me?
”

And she
wasn’t
listening. She was singing—a high, light sound with words so quiet that he couldn’t catch them.

“Mom,” he said, trying desperately to calm down. “It’s Jack.”

She paused. “Ja-a-a-ck,” she said, very slowly, as though saying the word for the first time. “
Handy Pandy, Jack-a-dandy
,” she crooned.

“What?”

“Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick.”

“Mom, what are you—”

“Jack and Jill went up the hill.”
Her voice was high and reedy, like that of a small child singing a song she just learned.
“To fetch a pail of water.”
She paused. “You know, that one never did make much sense.” Her words thickened and slowed as though swimming out from a heavy dream. “You can’t go
up
to get water. You have to go
down
. You have to go
inside
. Poor Jack. Poor Jill.”

Jack held the stone tightly in his hand. He couldn’t stand it anymore. Bringing his fist to the desktop, he shouted, “
Clair!
”

“There’s no need to shout, dear. I’m right here.”

“And where am I, Mom?”

“Well, don’t be silly, honey. You’re at your father’s house.” She gave an impatient sigh. “
Men’s night
,” she added derisively. “What’s gotten into you anyway?”

“Thanks for calling me, Mom.”

“What are you talking about, Baxter, dear?
You
called
me
.”

She told him about the little old lady on the first floor who claimed she could give the evil eye. She told him about her new driver, about the upcoming election, about his dad’s new place.

I don’t exist for her anymore
, Jack thought.
I’m the grafted branch that’s been ripped away.
There was a lump in his
throat sharp as a fishhook. He tried to swallow it down. He tried to spit it out. But his sadness hooked deeply into his flesh and wouldn’t go away.

Jack didn’t ask her any more questions, and after a while he stopped listening altogether.

I
T WAS STILL LIGHT AFTER
W
ENDY AND HER FAMILY HAD
eaten, but her mother had already fallen asleep on the couch watching the early news. Wendy tiptoed upstairs to check on her brother. As usual, he slept on his back, his eyes loosely closed, his lips a thin line, and his breathing so gentle you had to know him to know he breathed at all. She slipped on her shoes and checked the time. Her father, who, in addition to his job at the Exchange, sometimes worked the swing shift as a janitor for the college, didn’t get off until nearly midnight.

She had time, she told herself as she shut the door as silently as she could and tiptoed down the squeaky wooden steps. She was, after all, the one no one worried about. Wendy had known from the time she was very young that this lack of worry translated to an abundance of freedom. It also gave her time to think.

She went back in her mind to the day that Frankie disappeared, when the lost boy appeared in the cornfield out back, the boy only Wendy could see. The cops had assumed she was lying. They called it
attention-seeking
. The psychologist called it
transference
, and the minister said that she was constructing a hero’s narrative in her hope of finding her brother alive. Adults, Wendy knew, said a
lot
of things. And while it wasn’t polite to tell them their ideas were completely idiotic, it certainly didn’t stop her from
thinking
it.

Wendy had seen that boy each day that Frankie was gone. She had called to him, yelled at him, left bowls of cereal and milk at the edge of her yard, but she never saw him up close. When Frankie returned, scarred and silent, she didn’t mention the boy in the cornfield. And anyway, after she threw that rock, the boy had disappeared, so it didn’t much matter anymore. Some things were better left unsaid.

And, more importantly, some things were up to her to find out, because if she waited for the grown-ups in her life to tell her the truth, she would probably wait forever.

Two months before Frankie disappeared, when they were both eight years old, Wendy, Frankie, and Anders were all playing with some boys in the schoolhouse, throwing rocks into the open door, and screaming with laughter when they didn’t hear the rock land. On a dare, one boy named Anthony went through the door. He did not come out. The children ran home, crying that the schoolhouse had collapsed with Anthony inside, but when a pack of panicked parents arrived at the scene, the schoolhouse was leaning on its dusty foundation, unchanged.

By that same evening, the adults had forgotten about Anthony. They accused the children of making the story up and inventing an imaginary boy. By the end of the week, most of the children had forgotten about the missing boy—only Frankie, Wendy, and Anders seemed to remember—or, at least, they were the only ones who claimed to remember. People said they were nuts.

Then Frankie disappeared. And though it took a little longer, well over a week, people started forgetting about him too. Wendy had to repeat his name again and again, show the fading photographs to their parents, hang on to his memory by sheer force of will. They remembered, though barely.

In the years that followed, Wendy would return to the schoolhouse with Anders. They ran their hands along the walls and floors, looking for… well, anything really. A door. A trick panel. A clue. But there was nothing. The
schoolhouse had gone quiet. Just an empty, dusty space lit by daylight seeping through missing slats on the roof and walls, and no answers anywhere. And it had never done anything overtly
odd
until yesterday.

The schoolhouse, then
, Wendy decided.

If only, for no other reason, to finally know.

She
had
to know.

I
T WAS NEARLY THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, AND THE MOON
shone like a spotlight into Jack’s room. The wind turned suddenly cool and dry and whipped through the wide windows, flipping the pages of his notebook, which lay open on the desk. Jack mumbled and rolled, hooking his pillow under his arm and folding it over his head.

There was, he noticed, a tapping sound.

No, he thought, more like a
thunk
coming at regular intervals.
Thunk.
Pause.
Thunk.
Pause.
Thunk.
Finally, there was an extra loud
thunk
, followed by a sharp pain
on Jack’s shoulder. Jack sat up, looked around, and saw that the pain had been caused by a rock that someone had thrown at the window, sailing easily through the hole in the screen. He climbed out of bed and shuffled to the window. Outside, the wind quieted the crickets. Half the sky was lit by the bright moon and pale stars. The other half had been covered by a velvety blackness that moved slowly across the sky. Soon, the moon would be obliterated. Soon. But not yet. Standing in the yard, lit by a bright patch of moonlight, was Frankie. He looked up and waved.

“Frankie,” Jack whispered loudly. “
Frankie.
” He did not respond. “Oh, for crying out—Don’t move. I’ll be right out. I’ll take you home.”

He pulled on shorts and a clean T-shirt, and was just about to head for the window when he could have sworn he heard a voice say, “
The Portsmouth.
”

“What?” Jack said, spinning around but seeing no one there.

“
The stone. Don’t forget it
,” the voice said again in the faintest of whispers, like the rustling of leaves.

“But who—” Jack said, but didn’t continue. It didn’t matter who had said it, he decided. It was just good advice. He grabbed the stone—it was warm to the touch—and put it in his pocket and, with a deep breath, attempted once again to climb down the trellis. He hoped it would be easier this time. It wasn’t.

Once on the ground, Jack knew it was a mistake not
to wear a jacket. He rubbed his arms briskly and shivered and approached Frankie.