Truest Page 6

  I let myself into their house several times that week, heading up the stairs to Silas’s room and rapping on his door as annoyingly as I could. But he always opened it grinning, as if our day included wild adventures instead of detailing cars, talking about books, and watching WARegon Trail. Our plans never included Laurel; our conversations rarely.

  On Friday, I let myself into their house as I’d been doing and started up the stairs, declaring loudly, “If that creepy little-girl zombie in the white bonnet shows up again, I swear I’ll—”

  But my words and my feet both stopped short as I was hit by a wall of sound: wailing coming from upstairs, loud and feral. My heart thudded hard against my chest, but I was struck immobile by the sound of wild despair. Laurel?

  Questions unspooled in my mind. Is this a real-life horror movie? Is someone in trouble? Are the Harts witches? Is this how a banshee sounds before somebody dies? What the hell is wrong?

  But I landed on only one answer: I don’t want to know.

  I started to retreat back down the stairs, eager to escape without notice. Despite how badly I had wanted to know the Hart family’s secrets, in this moment my insides were begging to be kept in the dark.

  Then—quite suddenly—Laurel was at the top of the staircase, her face spotty and wet from tears, her cry spiraling upward into alarming pitches. Silas was behind her, clutching her elbow and shouting, “Laurel! Listen!” They both looked at me for a second—a second that felt like a slow-motion minute—then she wrestled her arm away from him and disappeared back down the hallway.

  Silas looked at me, frowning hard, and I swallowed in fear of having seen something I shouldn’t have. “I—I’m sorry. I—” But my tongue felt too thick for my mouth, so I just turned around and bolted for the front door, my hand gripping the smooth banister.

  “West,” Silas said, angry or annoyed, I couldn’t tell. When I reached for the doorknob, he called louder. “West!” And then he was right behind me, a strong hand on my shoulder, turning me roughly to face him. But when I looked at him, he didn’t look mad at all—just regretful. “I can explain,” he insisted, leading me out the door to the porch.

  He sat me down on the swing that hung from the rafters, standing in front of me as if I was about to be in trouble. Laurel’s banshee cries still ricocheted off the walls of my skull, but I finally found my voice. “What is going on?” I panted. “Did—did something—are your parents okay?”

  Silas’s mouth tightened into a bow, but he nodded. “Yes, they’re fine. Everyone’s fine. Everyone’s fine except for Laurel.” He breathed out a long sigh that made him seem older than seventeen.

  “I’m sorry you had to hear that,” Silas said, nodding toward the house. “It still gets under my skin. . . . I know it’s not . . .” I nodded a little, as if prodding him toward his promised explanation. “Look, Laurel has a . . . well, I guess it’s like a depersonalization disorder. This . . . this . . . it’s called solipsism syndrome. It’s not really that easy to explain.”

  “Solip-what?” I asked, not understanding him.

  “Solipsism syndrome.” He sat down beside me on the swing, then looked out across his yard while he scratched the back of his head, leaving his hair there standing up. “I didn’t really want anyone to know,” he said, almost to himself. Then he laughed without humor. “Two weeks. We didn’t even make it two weeks.”

  He looked so grief-stricken that I almost wanted to lean over and put my hand on top of his. “I’m sorry,” I said to him, even as I blushed a little at the thought of touching him.

  Silas shrugged. “It’s not your fault.” He struggled to find words.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” I said quietly.

  He shook his head. “No. No, it’s okay. Laurel . . . she got it into her head that she’s living in a dream.” When Silas saw my look of incredulity, he explained, “She’s only sure that she exists—but not that anyone else does. It’s a mental state. A detachment from reality. Basically, it either makes you lonely and depressed or an asshole. Some days are worse than others. Today is worse.” He smiled weakly.

  It was the very last thing I would have expected him to say. Even now, as I sat blinking on the porch swing, I wondered if I had heard him right. “So . . . wait—what? She just woke up one day and decided reality wasn’t real, or . . . how did that happen? Is this okay that I’m asking?”

  “Yeah, it’s fine. I don’t know. I honestly don’t. It’s been like this for a few years. But Laurel has always been this way—where she gets hold of an idea and then throttles it. Or it throttles her. She and whatever idea put the screws to one another. I think it started with philosophy books and some cracked movies.”

  My mind clung insistently to the word “philosophy.” I tried to remember something I’d heard on August Arms about René Descartes, but I came up blank.

  “And the polar twilight,” he added. “That even messed with my head a little.”

  “So is that why you guys moved?”

  Silas nodded again. “We had to get her out of Alaska.”

  “But—I mean, we’re seventeen. Doesn’t everyone have these weird thoughts at our age? I know I have—well, maybe not that one, but . . . other things.”

  He was quiet for a little bit and seemed to be formulating an answer. “It’s—it’s not the same,” he said. “Yeah, I think everyone thinks up some crazy shit from time to time, but—I don’t know to explain it—it’s not like that with Laurel. It consumes her. She lets it drive her crazy. It’s like these ideas have eaten away part of—part of who she is. They dominate her.”

  Silas looked so sad that I thought he might cry, and I had no idea what I’d do if he did.

  And then just as quickly, he shrugged and pulled himself together. “Now you know. Life with the Harts. We should have a reality show. Or nonreality, I guess,” he said. Silas looked at me out of the corner of his eye, then cracked a tiny grin, permission to laugh.

  But I saw right through it. It was such a contrast from the normal beaming smile I was becoming accustomed to, and I wondered how such joy and heartbreak could live inside the same person.

  “You realize what this means, don’t you?” he asked.

  “What?” I asked—or rather, leveled at him, suddenly alarmed.

  “We have to be friends now, Westlin Beck.”

  “Oh, do we?” I asked, but my voice was feeble. Silas looked so broken.

  “Yup,” he said. “Afraid so. You know my secret . . . well, one of them.”

  “One of them?” I raised an eyebrow. “You don’t have any other siblings, do you?”

  “I’m for real, West.” He shoved my shoulder with his own. “Let’s be good to each other.”

  “Friendship doesn’t work like that, Silas. You don’t just decide to be friends.”

  “I just did.”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  He looked me in the eye. “My girlfriend is in Alaska, and my sister is messed up. Your boyfriend lives on a tractor, and your best friend ditched you for summer camp.”

  “Hey!” His choice of words stung. “She—”

  “Let’s be good to each other,” he repeated, and his eyes were so sad and serious and intense.

  “Starting when?” I said, trying to mask the panic in my voice.

  “Starting now.”

  nine

  What I really wanted was to talk to Dad about Laurel’s condition. In the days following Silas’s revelation, I even wandered over to my dad’s office in the church to chat, but I looked through his office window and saw he had people inside. So I went up to the bell tower for a while to read—but when I came back downstairs an hour later, there was a different set of people in his office. And another person waiting outside his door.

  Forget it, I thought, then called Silas and biked over to his house.

  I had this thrill of nervousness, returning to Heaton Ridge so soon after Laurel’s banshee cries had rocked my world, but knowing the Hart family’s secret felt like m
y reinforcement. And when I arrived, the only sound I heard was some unbelievably loud music blasting from Silas’s bedroom stereo. I tiptoed past the first door in the hallway, which I was pretty sure was Laurel’s, and knocked on Silas’s door.

  “Come in!” he called, and I entered, seeing him fussing over something on his bed. “I found some awesome garage sales,” he said, proudly presenting his discoveries to me before turning down the volume on his old CD player.

  “So this is why you need a summer job,” I said as I surveyed his finds, which were laid out across his unmade bed like cheap museum displays: a dollar-sign ice-cube tray, a medium-sized box of ancient eight-tracks, a pair of lightsaber chopsticks, and a “D-Bag Poet” Magnetic Poetry set. I held up the magnet collection. “Really?” I asked.

  “It’s missing ‘dayam,’” he said, trying not to crack a smile, “so I won’t be able to write a poem about you, sorry.”

  I burst out laughing but tried to stifle it. On his nightstand, his cell phone vibrated. I picked it up, glancing at the screen. “Beth,” I said, handing it over. He pushed a button to ignore the call, then slipped it into his back pocket.

  Hmm.

  “What are you going to do with a box of eight-tracks?”

  He shrugged. “Dunno, but aren’t they great?” I noticed his shirt for the first time then—it featured a unicorn rearing before an American flag. “Pearl of great price,” he said, looking down at it with tenderness.

  The thrift-store scent of used goods mixed with the smell of his room: boy, sweat, and sandalwood, all rich and milky and fresh-cut cedar. “You . . . are so . . .”

  “Enchanting? Delectable? Ambrosial?”

  “Weird.”

  He grinned at me.

  “I saved the best for last,” he insisted, and I realized that he was hiding something behind his back.

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “Macaroni art of Steve Buscemi?”

  “I wish!” he teased. “But no.” Silas revealed a carrot-colored plastic transistor radio. It was a little larger than his hand—an awkward size, like an old Walkman on steroids.

  “What do you want that for?” I asked.

  “Because it’s awesome. Durr,” he said. “And because we’re going to use it to listen to that radio show of yours. Yes?”

  Just a small token—but it felt like he’d just promised to build me a house or buy me an island. For the first time this summer, I felt like someone had heard me.

  I couldn’t find my voice for a second, but pressed my lips together and nodded. “I’d like that,” I said softly.

  That evening, Silas and I returned to his house to listen to August Arms. Mr. and Mrs. Hart were in the kitchen—and they were arguing. From the front door, I couldn’t hear much of what was said, but I had little doubt it was about Laurel. “Well, just don’t let her!” Glen insisted. “Just don’t—let—her.”

  “I’d like to see you try, Glen. And instead you’re planning—”

  “Hi,” Silas shouted awkwardly, announcing our arrival. “We’re going up to the roof!”

  Teresa came out of the kitchen and into the hallway. “Westlin! Hello! How are you? How’s your family?” Big smile, no trace of conflict. My parents could turn it on just as quickly. How many times had Dad been yelling at us kids and then answered the phone in his best pastoral voice as if he were a totally different person?

  “Everyone’s good, thanks, Teresa.”

  Glen stood in the doorway to the kitchen. “Busy day today? Silas says you’re teaching him to be a detailing machine.”

  “I’m learning lots from him too.” I looked at Silas and muttered, “A lamentation of swans.” Silas grinned. His parents looked unperturbed. I guess when you had one child who was a trivia factory and another who lived on that blurred line between reality and reverie, you had to be choosy about which questions to ask.

  The roof was even better than the rumors I’d heard. The famous fire pit was the stunning centerpiece, a huge slate-colored stone ring that matched the giant planters around the edges of the patio, most of them holding plants with lemon-scented petals and waxy leaves. Set up in the corner of the roof was some large apparatus with a protective covering over it—probably Mr. Hart’s telescope.

  The patio faced east toward Green Lake, and the sun had nearly set behind us, turning the lake dark and steely. The moon was just starting to hint at its place in the sky. I settled myself into a patio chair near the fire pit, and Silas handed me the little orange radio. “See if you can figure this out while I start the fire.” It was made out of thick plastic—like my old Fisher-Price toys—with a clear face and dial for the stations. Even with the patio lights, it was still hard to see the dial, so I tinkered with it until I found the right station and then turned the volume up. Meanwhile, Silas had made a tepee of firewood and lit the kindling beneath it.

  Tonight’s show had just one feature story, this time about Heaven’s Gate, a cult that had committed mass suicide in 1997 in expectation of reaching an alien spacecraft in the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet. Sullivan Knox detailed the death scene: bodies of men and women dressed in black, purple shrouds covering their faces, and brand-new Nikes on their feet. The fire warmed the soles of my feet, Sullivan’s voice was comfortably familiar, and Silas furrowed his brows in the most adorable, thoughtful way as he scratched something in his notebook.

  “What did you think?” I asked Silas when the show was winding down. “Interesting, right?” I was surprised by how badly I wanted him to love it as much as I did.

  He nodded, impressed, and put his Moleskine in his back pocket. “Is every night like tonight?”

  “Some nights they do three shorter stories instead.”

  “Cool.” Silas poked at the fire with a stick, his long shadow stretching out behind him till it joined the darkness of the night.

  “Can you imagine being convinced of something like that?” I asked, leaning back in my seat and staring up at the stars. “That the earth was going to be recycled and your one shot at survival was to evacuate by eating some tainted applesauce and boarding a UFO to another level of existence?” I shook my head in disbelief. “It’s like sci-fi.”

  “Yeah,” said Silas, still moving embers around in the pit, his face orange in the glow from the fire. “I think something would have to be off in you in the first place to be able to make that jump. I mean, Laurel . . . she gets convinced of some weird stuff, but I don’t think it was just the books she read that did it. She’s really sick to start with.” He paused, and in his silence I heard the dog-day cicadas singing. Then he asked, “But how do you unlock someone’s mind?”

  And when he looked up at me, I swear he was hoping for me to have the magic answer. “I—I don’t know,” I managed.

  “Does anyone? It’s like a code only God can crack.”

  Those words sat in my stomach, this image of God as a detective, as a sleuth or a computer hacker, one with the best of intentions. God dressed in black with glasses and a goatee, typing in confident keystrokes as he solved the puzzle of Laurel Hart.

  Silas phoned me later that week, a business call: his dad had met one of their neighbors and mentioned our detailing business, and the neighbor wondered if we could see to one of his cars in the morning. “Just come to my house tomorrow,” Silas said, “and we’ll go over together. Not sure which house yet—I’ll check with my dad.”

  In the morning, I drove over to Silas’s house, our supply bin in tow. I let myself in, announced “I’m here!” up the stairs, then—hearing the sound of the bathroom shower and fan from upstairs—sat down at the bottom of the steps to wait.

  A voice came down the hall. “West?”

  “Yeah?” I asked, hesitantly.

  “I’m in the sunroom. Come wait with me.”

  Laurel.

  My pulse quickened. I didn’t want to—not without Silas. I glanced toward the top of the stairs, hoping that he would suddenly appear and save me. But the noise from the bathroom droned on, and I knew I w
as trapped. Suck it up, you baby, I told myself. I thought you were curious.

  I walked down the hallway to the sunroom, where I’d first seen Laurel. Since the sunroom faced west, early-morning, sleepy-eyed sunshine was only starting to fill the space. Laurel sat on the same white couch she had before, wearing jeans and a peach-colored tank top and reading a novel, which she bookmarked and set beside her when I stepped into the room.

  “Sorry about the last time you saw me—I was a wreck that day,” she said, immediately acknowledging the elephant in the room. “Come and chat?” She gestured to the chair beside her couch. Laurel was pale, and her posture was perfect. I would not have been at all surprised to have walked into the sunroom to find her in the lotus position, fingers making the okay symbol of the chin mudra I’d learned in our yoga unit last year. The white couch was her peculiar throne.

  I stepped awkwardly into the sunroom and sat down in one of the wicker chairs near her. She was so gorgeous, her beauty was like spurs; I felt stunned, but Laurel’s mouth—at least today—was the same as Silas’s: friendly, encouraging, smiling with a hint of humor, and there was no trace of the banshee. So I took a deep breath and began to relax. She’s just a girl, I told myself, willed myself to believe.

  “So, you’ve been hanging out with my brother a lot lately, I hear,” said Laurel, smiling softly.

  “Yeah. Yes,” I agreed. “Silas, he’s . . .” I searched for the right word.

  In true Hart fashion, Laurel had a handful. “Remarkable? Brilliant? Prodigious? Charming?”

  “All of the above,” I said with a little laugh.

  “Attractive?” she asked, with a sly smile.

  “Oh, I have a boyfriend,” I said.

  “Doesn’t mean you’re blind.”

  “Ha!” I was confused but kind of pleased: this Laurel seemed so far removed from every idea I’d had of her so far. It was astonishing to think that this beautiful teenager with the knowing grin was the same person as the wailing devastation.

  “What has Silas told you about me?” she asked.