Not Quite Dead Yet, page 27
Jet moved past the photo, past the kitchen counter, stacks of used plates and glasses. Into the bedroom. The curtains shut, like they’d never been opened, because you couldn’t let daylight into a graveyard like this.
She darted through, avoiding the discarded clothes—not that Andrew would be able to tell if anything had been disturbed. It was all disturbed; that’s how he kept it.
She bent down to look beneath the unmade bed. Nothing here, just some socks that had escaped, found a place to hide.
Jet straightened up. Checked the closet instead. Not much left on the hangers, or in the drawers. And nothing that looked like it belonged to Nina. Damn. How long did she have left? Jet thought about Billy downstairs, fought a smile, thinking of the panic in his eyes. Smiled just to think of him anyway, actually.
Back into the living room, Jet skirted beyond the couch to the same closet Billy had in his apartment. Pulled one door open with her left hand, then shuffled back to open the other.
Stuff everywhere. Shelves full of it. Boxes lining the bottom.
Jet’s eyes scanned quickly across it all, squinting to try and stitch the world back into one. They did, just about, settling on a cardboard box tucked into the farthest corner. Nina scribbled across the top, flaps not quite meeting, too much inside.
“Yes,” Jet hissed, leaning forward to drag the box out, her right foot stepping in when it snagged on another box, helping her left hand to free it.
It slumped down onto the floor with a thunk.
Jet dropped to her knees in front of it, her thumb tracing across Nina’s name, dipping in and out of the ridges of the cardboard. She opened one flap, then the other.
The first thing she saw was a hoodie, folded neatly, balanced precariously on top. Dark burgundy with a bright yellow logo for Norwich University. The second thing she saw was a pile of loose photographs, fanning out against the fabric of the hoodie.
Jet scooped up the photos, looked at the first one. Nina and her mom, grinning behind a plate of homemade tacos, too many for a family of three. Shuffled that to the bottom of the pile, looked at the next photo. Nina’s clear skin pickling with acne, turning her back into a teenager. Her arm slung around a blond girl grinning at the camera, braces fixed to her teeth. Emily. She must have been about fifteen here, the photo taken on the patio in the Masons’ yard. Emily stared back at Jet, with the same brown-green eyes. One sister blinked, the other couldn’t. Emily’s hair was lighter than Jet’s, longer—too long, right down to her waist. So long it had killed her.
Jet placed the photos on the floor beside her, lifted out the hoodie, trying to keep its neat folds even though she only had one hand. Her stomach lurched—heart too—when she saw what was buried in the box beneath it.
A MacBook.
A rose gold MacBook Air, one deep scratch on its case, cutting the Apple logo into uneven halves.
“Yes,” Jet whispered, taking it out, tucking it under her arm. “Thank you, Nina.”
* * *
—
“Well, I’m going to hell,” Billy announced, opening the front door, freezing as he spotted Jet by the coffee table, two laptops open in front of her. “You actually found it?”
“Mission accomplished.” Jet grinned. “Also, side note: it is very, very difficult to open a laptop with just one hand, by the way.”
“Ah, but you’re a trouper.” Billy hurried over.
“I don’t give up,” Jet said, which wasn’t true: she did give up, all the time. But that was the old Jet. “And the battery was dead. Of course it was, been sitting in a box for eleven months. So I plugged it in with the ch-char-ch—white wire thingy. It’s just waking up now.”
The laptop burred, a whirring sound beneath the keyboard as the screen switched from the charging-battery symbol to the lock page. A matching whirring sound inside Jet’s head as she leaned forward, clicked the touchpad to enter.
The home screen sprang straight up.
“No password?” Billy asked. And then: “Why do you always have to sit on the floor?” He dropped beside her, legs too long, studying the screen.
Jet jostled, made space for him. “Maybe Nina never had a password. Or maybe Andrew had to get it unlocked after Nina died, documents he needed access to or something.” The something could just have been that he missed his daughter, hoped to find some of her still inside this machine. “That’s the first obstacle. Now we have to cross our fingers that Facebook is still logged in.”
Jet double-clicked on Safari to open the web browser. It was already connected to a WiFi, probably Andrew’s router next door. She moved the cursor to the URL box, started typing, one finger to one key at a time. F a c
“You’re typing like someone called Margaret.” Billy smirked.
“Funny.” She smirked back, stuck out her elbow.
e b
It auto-filled for her, some ID code at the end of the web address, and Jet pressed enter, crossing the only fingers she had.
The Facebook log-in page.
The username was already filled in: nina_diaz_smith_92@gmail.com.
But the password box was blank, waiting.
Jet’s heart sank. She clicked into it, to see if it would prompt some password manager to fill it in for her.
Nothing happened.
Except her heart sank farther, dropping into her gut.
“Fuck.” She slumped against the couch.
Billy un-slumped her, hand on her back. “Not a total fuck yet,” he said. “We have her email address, her Gmail, and maybe if she’s still logged in to that we can—”
“—reset her Facebook password,” Jet hissed, stealing his thunder. He would have given it to her anyway, she knew; he was Billy after all. She gave some back. “Yes, Billy, I love you.”
Billy tensed, tensed even more as Jet brushed against him, leaning forward, fingers on the trackpad. She clicked to open a new tab, guided the cursor to the URL. G m a. Pressed enter when it auto-filled. Held her breath. Billy had stopped breathing too, a little while ago.
The web page opened, pale blue, lines and lines of emails in Nina’s inbox.
“We’re in!” Jet laughed, turning to share it with Billy. “You can add shit-hot hacker to your résumé.”
He reached over, hugged her awkwardly. Awkward because of the floor-sitting and the one arm.
“Let’s do this.”
Jet flicked back to the Facebook log-in page, clicked on the Forgot Password? button. Let Billy type in Nina’s email address: it was faster that way. Clicked Yes to send a reset-password link to that account.
Skipped over to the Gmail page. The email wasn’t here. Refreshed it. Still not here. Refreshed again.
There it was.
Jet stabbed her finger against the trackpad, opening the email, following the link.
“What password you gonna use?” Billy asked as Jet started to type.
“Emily Mason,” she said, reentering the new password to confirm. “Think Nina would have approved.”
Password successfully updated, the page told her. It didn’t have to tell her twice. Jet flicked back to the log-in page, typed her sister’s name into the empty password box. Remembered to breathe and guided the arrow over to the Log In button. Pressed it.
The page disappeared, replaced half a second later with a Facebook homepage, blue and white, and all the other colors too, scrolling photos and status updates. A tiny picture of Nina on a sunset beach at the top, arms open like she didn’t have a care in the world. But Jet knew she’d had many.
“Can’t believe this worked.” Billy leaned closer. “There, click into Messenger.”
Jet did.
“Probably going to have to scroll really far down,” he said.
“Yeah, Emily hasn’t replied in seventeen years. She’ll be right at the bottom.”
Jet sat back, let Billy do the scrolling for her; it was easier with two hands, and they had years to get through.
The page stuttered, reloading each time they reached the bottom, a little spooling circle that started to test Jet’s patience.
“OK, last messaged a Mike Fraser in August 2012,” Billy read from the screen. “We’re getting there. Four more years.”
Down, down, down.
The conversations reloading.
The page slowing down, like it got harder the farther back they went, dragging those old messages back into the present.
“We’re here, 2008,” Billy muttered. “Now where is…ah.” His hands drew up. “There she is.”
Emily Mason.
The second to last name on the screen.
Offline, it said. Yeah, no shit.
Billy sat back, gave Jet some space. She took it, fingers back on the trackpad. She looked at him, held it for another second, then clicked her sister’s name, opening a chat box that appeared at the bottom of the screen. A conversation between the dead.
Jet’s eyes started reading before she was ready.
Nina’s final message to Emily, never opened, never read:
It was your funeral today. I sat with your family, held little Jet’s hand. I can’t believe you’re really gone. I’ll miss you forever. When I have a daughter, I’ll name her after you. Goodbye Emily.
Billy’s breath shuddered. “Hard to read,” he said, quietly.
That was June 8, the date of Emily’s funeral.
The next message up was from Emily, on Friday, May 30.
“This is the day before she died,” Jet said. “No, I started to,” she read her sister’s message aloud. “But she had to leave. I’ll do it next week.”
“What was she talking about?” Billy asked, but Jet was already scrolling up, to Nina’s message before that.
“Did you talk to Mrs. Finney yet?” Jet read, eyes catching Billy’s just as his caught hers. A lump in Jet’s throat, blocking her heart.
“My mom?” Billy’s voice dropped into a whisper.
“She was their math teacher too,” Jet said, around the lump. “Probably just school stuff.”
“Emily wanted to talk to my mom about something,” Billy said, not really a question. “But she never made it to next week.”
Jet scrolled up again, finding another back-and-forth conversation. “This was two days before that,” she said. “Wednesday the twenty-eighth. Emily wrote: I’ll tell you at school tomorrow.”
“What?” Billy said, taking Nina’s role.
“Nina, it happened again. Heard them talking, they didn’t know I was awake. Heard something. It’s ab-about…Luke.” That pause hadn’t been Emily’s, it was Jet’s, stumbling over the words. She read it again without the gap. “It’s about Luke.”
Then nothing, no messages until the weekend before, something about Andy White’s birthday party.
“Luke,” Jet said again, sounding out his name, as though the shape had changed, new angles, that crunch in the middle. The thirty-year-old and the thirteen-year-old that Emily was talking about, and one word that somehow described them both.
“You think that’s the secret Nina was talking about?” Billy turned to her. “It’s about Luke?”
“It’s about Luke,” Jet copied him, repeating her long-dead sister, like she’d lost all her own words, and maybe she had, out that black hole in her head or the one in her eye.
“Emily overheard them talking about him.” Billy returned to the screen. “She means your parents, right? Talking about Luke. You think this is the secret? Nina did say it was right before Emily…”
“Fuck sake, Emily,” Jet said, words all coming back to her at once. “Why did you have to tell her at school tomorrow? Why couldn’t you have just told her right now?”
“Maybe she knew she couldn’t,” Billy said, “in case someone ever read it. Do you think this is what Emily wanted to speak to my mom about? The thing with Luke?”
“I don’t know,” Jet sighed, scrolling back down. “We can’t tell from this. Could be something totally unrelated. It was a couple days after.”
“So, she tells Nina the secret at school, on the Thursday. And then, on the Saturday, Emily…dies.”
Jet didn’t like all the space Billy had left around that word.
“Her death was an accident,” she said, sharpening that last word into a point. “The timing is just a coincidence. You were there, Billy, you saw it: Emily was alone and it was just an accident. Nothing to do with this.”
“Yeah,” Billy said, staring at the screen, a silver reflection on the surface of his watery eyes, the scrolling words of two ghosts imprinted there, rippling when he blinked.
Twenty-Seven
Andrew Smith was slumped over the table in the farthest corner of the bar, head tucked into the crook of his elbow, passed out. People moved around him, talking, laughing, like the drunk man in the corner was invisible to them.
Jet hung back as Billy approached the table to return Andrew’s keys, carefully sliding them into the pocket of his jacket, hanging on the chair. Billy didn’t come back, not right away; he went to the bar first, grabbed a glass, and filled it with water. Left it there on Andrew’s table, for when he woke up. Such a Billy thing to do. Jet smiled to herself, watching him just be Billy, walking back over to her.
He didn’t make it again.
“Billy!” Allison called from behind the bar.
Billy made a face just for Jet, then turned, nodding to his boss. “Allison.”
“You told me you were sick. That’s why you’ve missed your shifts this week. Don’t look sick to me. Saw you buying a beer earlier.”
Billy didn’t say anything, hid his hands behind his back.
“If I can’t rely on you to turn up to work,” Allison said, pursing her lips, “then I’ll have to hire someone else, you know that.”
“Sorry.” Billy nodded, eyes like he meant it. “It’s just…I have something, m-more important.”
Allison’s hands went to her hips, widening her eyes, a question in them.
Billy didn’t answer it, didn’t even try.
He walked away, pressing one hand against Jet’s back, guiding her toward the door.
“Billy,” she whispered, something tightening in her gut. “You shouldn’t get in trouble for me. I won’t be here—”
“—Maybe it’s not for you,” he said softly, holding the door open for her, the breeze snatching Jet’s hair, throwing it across her eyes.
Billy rounded the corner, following the street, heading for his apartment.
Jet stopped, that thing in her gut pulling her the other way. She caught Billy’s arm.
“Can we just…” she began, feeling stupid, trying not to feel stupid. “I don’t know…walk?”
Billy turned, one thumb over his shoulder, pointing toward the stairs. “You don’t want to read more of Emily and Nina’s messages?”
“We’ve looked for hours,” she replied. “We’re not going to find anything. And I don’t think learning that Emily’s first kiss was with Chris Allen is going to help me solve my murder. I think…I want to walk.”
“Oh.” Billy took a few steps, back to her side. “You want to go talk to your mom now? Ask her what Emily overheard? I guess it’s late but—”
“—No.” Jet sucked in the air, filled herself with the darkness, breathed it all out. “I think I just want to walk. People do that sometimes, don’t they?” She turned, slowly, heading back beyond the bar. “Don’t need a reason to, or a place they’re going, or a dog to tire out. They just walk…for them.”
Billy walked beside her, a smile, its edges turned down, both confused and amused. “Yeah, people do do that.”
“Doo-doo,” Jet snorted, waiting for a car to pass.
“I just thought you’d be worried…about not having time.”
Jet thought she’d be worried about that too, but her gut had other ideas—her heart too, picking up against her ribs, a different kind of song.
“I have time,” she said as they crossed the street.
They walked, just walked. Like people did. Billy on her left side, two of Jet’s steps for every one of his, arm nudging against hers. Jet breathed in the night air, spiced with autumn and the first falling leaves, the earthy smell of half-rotting pumpkins on people’s doorsteps. Jet looked at the jack-o’-lanterns, but she didn’t glare back, didn’t feel like it anymore, almost smiled instead.
“This way,” she said, following her gut, crossing the street again, toward The Green in the center of the oval road. Patches of grass trampled into mud from the Halloween Fair, six days ago tonight.
They walked under the burnt orange trees, sugar maples, branches shivering but not cold, and not scared, even though it was late and Jet and Billy were the only ones here.
Jet looked up, spotted it just in time. Reached out with her hand, her only hand. The falling leaf whirled, sailing the breeze, round and round and down, falling into Jet’s open palm.
She closed her fingers around it, a perfect amber leaf.
Billy grinned. “That’s supposed to be good luck,” he said.
Jet grinned back. “Then you keep it.” She offered it out.
Billy wouldn’t take it, shook his head.
So Jet didn’t give him the choice. “Please,” she said, sliding it into his pocket.
