Two Imaginary Boys (4/5)

Leo parked a few blocks behind the school. We went through a back door he had to unlock, then immediately down a wide staircase and into the basement. Then down a dark hallway, presumably past some locker rooms, guided by the light coming from the gym. Elodie was already there, and much to my surprise, so was Jonathan, though he was wearing jeans and a turtleneck.

"Venturing out of the house for parties now?" I asked, unsure if I should be teasing him about it.

He gave me an nervous shrug. "Elodie wanted me to come."

"That's right!" Elodie said, sounding cheerier than I'd ever heard her. She'd struck me as quiet and bookish before, so I was surprised. In hindsight: she was covering her fear, and it wasn't even subtle. And yet, still effective. "I've missed you, you know," she told him.

Jonathan grumbled and shook Elodie's arm off his shoulders.

Not long after, students started trickling in. Some in uniform, some not. Very few of them were wearing their ties. As they came, I kept an eye out for the students from Ms. Catesby's homeroom. Twenty faces was a lot to remember, but I counted eighteen in the first half hour. One girl shrieked, then immediately covered her mouth, when she saw Jonathan. She and a couple other students hugged him. Then I got distracted by Leo's ex from the pizza parlor, Todd.

"Ms. Henderson?" he asked me, eyebrow raised devilishly. I could see why Leo liked him. It was easy to imagine them bantering and laughing together in their uniforms.

I chuckled and shook my head, then offered him my hand to shake. "Jamie. Nice to really meet you." It seemed imprudent to inform him that Henderson wasn't my real surname.

"Wait, so that really was you? You look so much younger!" exclaimed a girl whose face I recognized but whose name I didn't know.

"Makeup is magic," I told her, neglecting to mention that actual magic had also probably helped me out.

"Are you a boy or a girl?" someone else asked me.

I got so distracted by the throng of curious students that gathered around me—some of them could have even been new friends, if things had worked out differently—that midnight came and went without my noticing. It was only when someone said something about smelling smoke that I recalled the reason for the party.

I still remember the moment I noticed that Elodie and Leo were nowhere to be seen. When I made eye contact with Jonathan across the room, I could tell he'd noticed, too. Then we all heard the sirens.

"I'm going to look outside," he told the others. It made sense. His dad owned the school. He hadn't been to class in months. He was the least likely to face any consequences for getting caught outside. Nonetheless, the girl who'd shrieked when she saw him and a boy I'd seen him talking to at the edge of the room for the better part of the last hour followed him.

The girl came back first. We could hear her pounding down the stairs and through the hall before she got to the gym doors. "Whitby Hall is on fire!" she yelled.

"What?" someone screamed back. Several other students also screamed, but wordlessly. After a minute of frenzied murmuring, students started leaving the gym.

"Everyone listen up!" Todd called. Watching him go from mischievous to authoritative in no time at all was the last thing I expected from him, but it made sense once it happened. "We're all going to walk, calmly and quietly, to the field behind Barnaby Hall, just like in the fire drills. If we are quick, and quiet, it's possible no one will notice where we came from. Under no circumstances are any of you to say anything about the party, no matter what anyone tells you. We're all in this together. If we all keep our mouths shut, no one has to get in any trouble."

Jonathan and the other boy didn't come back until I was halfway down the hall, heading for the door with the students. By then, my heart was in my throat. The danger of staying piled higher and higher every second. If Jonathan had waited just a little longer, we might have missed each other.

His friend was the one who noticed me and waved. He had his other arm around Jonathan, all but holding him up. Jonathan was white as a tissue and visibly trembling. I thought maybe he'd sprained his ankle.

"J-J-Jamie," he stammered. "Jamie, they—they—"

"We think we found Leo and Elodie," said the other boy, heavily, as though that wasn't all there was to it.

Jonathan shook his head. "It was them, Anthony. It was them. I saw—I saw Leo's—his bracelet—"

My head swam. "Let's go back outside."

We were in everyone's way. I felt weightless, but not really, more like my spirit had stopped holding up the weight of my body, and my body could have collapsed at any moment. But it didn't.

"What happened?" I asked once we were outside.

"We found two human-sized cinders in the snow," Anthony said when Jonathan couldn't manage an answer. "Well, puddles in the snow. They smelled hideous. And we found what was probably a really pretty bracelet once on one of them."

I breathed in so hard it stung my lungs. In those moments, breathing seemed to become voluntary. As if I could have chosen to stop. In fact, I probably could have, but only for as long as it took me to faint and start doing it unconsciously again.

Instead, I focused on Jonathan. I tried to think of what Leo would do for him in that moment, if he could have helped. "Let's get you home, Jon," I said.

He didn't react to me shortening his name. Only nodded. I hadn't done it on purpose, so once I heard it come out of my mouth, I worried he'd be angry.

"Anthony, go," he told his friend.

"Are you sure—"

"Go, Anthony!" Jonathan howled. "You'll get in trouble!"

Anthony pressed his forehead against Jonathan's cheek, then let go and walked toward another one of the school buildings. A fire truck sped past Jonathan and I as we headed for his house. Past the school. Neither of us realized the significance of it until later.

As we passed a field, I noticed the tracks leading to two dark craters in the snow. It must have been school property, though I'm not sure if it was a playing field of some kind or just a buffer between it and the houses nearby. The stench of burned flesh hung heavy in the air. Without thinking, I stepped off the sidewalk and into the snow.

"Jamie," Jonathan said in a ragged voice.

I kept walking. The snow was well over a foot deep, probably almost two.

"Jamie!" Jonathan screamed. Then he lunged and grabbed my hand. I kept trying to walk, but he wouldn't let go. "Jamie, no! They wouldn't want this! Leo wouldn't want this!"

I looked toward the craters in the snow, and the next thing I knew, my face was full of tears. They wouldn't stop. In seconds, I could barely see.

Jonathan's voice cracked as he spoke. "Jamie, come on."

Hot shame washed over me as I wept. I was supposed to be helping Jonathan. Jonathan was Leo's brother. If he could see what he'd seen without crying, why couldn't I? Why couldn't I do even this one last thing for Leo right? What kind of witch was I if I couldn't control my emotions?

Somehow, we made it down the street. The tears stopped overwhelming me once the field was behind us. I wiped my eyes on the sleeve of my trench coat. And I didn't let go of Jonathan's hand.

Then we saw the fire trucks again. They were in front of the Marchetti house. Fire fighters were breaking the lock on the gates to the driveway with a sledge hammer so they could get closer. The house was still ablaze. It was a good thing it had so much space between it and the other houses. I felt Jonathan's entire body slump and put my arm around his shoulders to steady him.

"Okay," I whispered. "Plan B. Let's go to my house."

And so we walked on. The distance should have taken, and probably did, somewhere between thirty and forty minutes on foot. But it felt like hours. Or it felt like nothing. We stumbled home—well, home for me, at least—and went straight to my room.

"I'll sleep on the couch for now," I told him. "Don't need Mom finding you when she gets up before I can explain what happened."

Jonathan shook his head. "I can't sleep. Don't leave me alone. You can sleep, just don't leave me."

He meant that, too, even followed me to the kitchen when I made tea. Chamomile tea. I couldn't bear to drink it for years after that. I later learned he never liked it in the first place, but that night only, he drank it. We sat on my bed with our mugs. And we didn't speak. I have a vague memory of laying on the bed at some point and watching him sitting at my desk, reading.

I must have slept, because my mom woke me up the next morning, knocking on my door. "Jamie, are you still in there? You're going to be late for work."

Jonathan was looking at me, still sitting at the desk chair, bewildered and silent. "I'm not going," I called out to her, groggily. "Can you call Tammy?"

"Are you sick?" she asked.

"Yeah," I told her. Heartsick. Technically not a lie.

"What do we tell her?" Jonathan mouthed.

I shrugged. He shrugged shakily back, then went back to the book he must have pulled off my shelf at some point. I probably dozed off, but I was alert again soon enough.

"Okay," I murmured after sitting up. I was still in my clothes from the party. My shirt and vest were all wrinkled. I thought of all the ironing it would take to get them in good shape again, but couldn't bring myself to care. "Okay. She probably knows about the fires. You're here because your house literally burned down. That's all fine. All I need to explain is—is what I was doing out so late, in that neighborhood, in the first place. Any ideas?"

Jonathan put the book down and turned around in the chair to look at me. "You were... driving home from a college party in another town?" he whispered.

I chuckled sleepily. "I don't have any friends in college." Other than Elodie, I supposed, but I was aware enough not to say that.

"Visiting a friend?"

Candie was still talking to me. And as far as I knew, she hadn't moved out. "Suspicious, but workable. And technically true. Good job, Jonathan."

"You can call me Jon," he said.

I took off my party clothes and changed into pajamas while Jonathan kept his back to me and covered his eyes with his hands. Then I shambled out into the hallway to use the toilet, then find Mom. Jonathan didn't follow me.

"—three bodies were found in the house, though none have been identified yet. We'll keep you updated as more information becomes available—" said the radio news.

"Jamie, did you hear? The Marchetti house and one of the dorms from the academy burned down last night," Mom told me.

"Uh, yeah. I—uh—I was at a friend's house, and it got real late without us noticing. We didn't see the time until we heard the fire sirens."

She squinted at me. "I didn't hear you take the car last night."

"She picked me up," I said. "Candie. She lives near the fire station."

"And why were you visiting her if you weren't feeling well?"

I shook my head. "Felt fine yesterday. But, uh, there's something else."

"Yes?" Mom asked me after a few seconds. Coming up with the right words was hard.

"I walked home. And I ran into Jonathan Marchetti. He's in my room right now. 'Cause he couldn't exactly go home."

Mom froze, soapy dish and dish cloth in hand. She let them sink gently back into the dish water after a few seconds. "You walked home? In this weather? No wonder you're not feeling well."

I shrugged. There wasn't anything to say to that.

"You brought Jonathan here. So he's alive, then," Mom finally added.

"Yeah. I'm alive," Jonathan said from behind me. I hadn't realized he was there. Didn't look like Mom had seen him, either, so he must have just come out of my room.

She took one look at him and instantly went into mother hen mode. "Oh honey, I'm so sorry. Is everything—is there anything you need right now? You hungry?"

Jonathan shrugged and wouldn't meet her eyes.

"How do you like your eggs, sweetie?" Mom asked him.

"Any way is fine," he said.

"Scrambled it is, then."

He took a few more hesitant steps into the kitchen, then all but fell into one of the kitchen chairs.

"If you don't mind my asking, Jonathan, what were you doing out so late? It sounds like you had some lucky timing there," she told him while she cooked.

Jonathan looked at me, like he was checking in to see if he should let me speak for him. We didn't have much of a story to keep straight, and if he hadn't heard all of it, he could guess well enough since I'd gone with his suggestion. I shrugged and leaned against the counter.

"I like going out at night because there's no one around," he finally told her.

"A night owl, huh? You must take some awfully long walks."

Jonathan nodded even though she couldn't see him. She didn't ask him any more questions. Not until he'd put away most of the plate of eggs, at least.

"Now, Jonathan," she said, gently, "They haven't identified any of the bodies, but no one else from your family has turned up since last night, either. If you need time, I'm not forcing you to do anything. But I think you should talk to the police. Let them know you're okay."

Jonathan stared at his plate, then nodded after a few seconds. "Do you know the number? For the station?"

The police brought me in for questioning, too. They wanted to know how I knew Jonathan, and how it was that we ran into each other outside so late at night. Whenever they wanted specifics, like where exactly I found him or who my friend was, I gave them the vaguest possible answers and found something irrelevant to ramble about. Eventually they decided they had better things to do and sent me home.

Jonathan got a room in the hotel Leo had been working at, which he would end up owning. All his father's businesses had other people running them, so he left them to their own devices until his early twenties—at which point, he divided ownership up among the people who actually worked for and ran them (we both got radicalized in Portland in the early eighties, but that's getting ahead of myself). We invited him over for Christmas, but he ended up not coming.

Late at night, he would call our house. I was a light sleeper to begin with, but sometimes I would be awake anyway, ruminating about Leo and Elodie. So I usually got the phone after two rings. My parents weren't happy about the noise, but when I told them who it was they tolerated it.

Quietly, I would sit in the living room and talk to him about nothing. He would ask me my opinions on certain poets, most of which I hadn't read. If I hadn't, he'd tell me about them, or even recite poetry he'd memorized aloud. Or I would think of some weird historical or mythological tidbit and tell him about that. The point—for both of us—was to get our minds off Leo and Elodie and how they'd died.

This incident is what has me convinced that Leo knew what was going to happen to him: on Tuesday, December twenty-sixth, a padded envelope came in the mail with my name on it. No return address. Just a key in a little paper sleeve, and a tiny but familiar box. The one I'd put the shell cufflinks into when I sold him them. They were back inside it, along with a scrap of paper that said "play the tape."

I called Jonathan immediately. "Jon, I got a package in the mail from Leo."

"Are you shitting me?"

"I don't know who else could have sent it. It's got a pair of cufflinks I sold him."

"Anything else? You sure they aren't just similar?"

"I've never seen another pair like them."

I could hear Jonathan trying to slow his breathing down through the receiver. "So just cufflinks? No note? Was there a return address?"

"No return address, the note only says 'play the tape'—there is no tape—oh, and there's this key. Any idea what that could be for?"

Jonathan took a few seconds to answer. "Jamie," he said in a low voice, "do you remember where Leo parked his car that night?"

The pieces clicked together in my mind. "I—yeah. I think."

"Can you go see if it's still there?"

"Yeah."

"Do you know how to drive?"

"Yeah. I'll pick you up once I'm there, but it'll take me a while to walk to the school."

I put my coat on—the same trench coat from that night—and walked the way Jonathan and I had come home from the party, but in reverse. I was pretty sure I remembered what Leo's car looked like, but I didn't have the plate number memorized, and it wasn't all that distinct-looking. A silver Pontiac, but I wasn't sure of that until I found it. The sight of the little gold cupid hanging from the rearview mirror put my pounding heart at ease.

Sure enough, the key worked. When I sat in the front seat, it almost felt like I was just waiting for Leo. Like he'd come back at any moment. Except I was sitting in the driver's seat. I wasn't sure if that ruined it, or saved me from just sitting there for an hour and pretending he was still alive.

"Play the tape." He'd sent it to me, not Jon. That didn't mean it wasn't meant for both of us. But I could always rewind, couldn't I? So I put the key in the ignition but left it in park, and pressed play.

"I'm in love with you, Jamie." Compulsively, I closed my eyes. The words weren't quite sinking in, but I recognized Leo's voice immediately. If I closed my eyes, I could pretend he was there. "I don't know how to tell you in person. But I love you, from the bottom of my heart." He chuckled nervously. It was barely audible. "Don't forget, okay?"

The next thing I knew, I was screaming. Obscenities, insults. I don't remember exactly what words were coming out of my mouth when I noticed someone across the street leaning over and furrowing their brow at me, and inadvertently made eye contact with them. It was the most humiliating moment of my life. I felt feverish with shame, and whatever screams were left in me came out as sobs instead.

The tape eventually ended with a click. I still didn't feel composed enough to drive, but I didn't want anyone calling the cops on me, so I rewound the tape until I got to a part with music and decided that was good enough. I hadn't heard any music after Leo's recording, after all. Then I pulled into the traffic lane and headed for the highway.

Jonathan was waiting for me in the parking lot, arms crossed and scowling. I parked in the spot next to where he was standing.

"You're late—" he said as soon as I opened the door, but then he stopped, mouth still open. I wondered what was wrong, and then realized what a mess I probably looked like.

"You okay, Jamie?" he asked, voice quieter.

I shrugged. "Never been better."

Jonathan made his very best attempt at a smile. He was red-eyed, too. "Yeah, me neither. Did you find the tape?"

I nodded. "Yeah, but I don't want to hear it again." I got out and held the driver's side door open for him.

"That bad, huh?"

I didn't want to talk about it, but I didn't want to discourage him from talking to me about it either, so I didn't say anything, just closed the door behind him. I saw him laugh as he listened to the music, then pause the tape and roll down the window.

"This used to drive me batty," he said, but with a real smile that time. It might have been the first time I ever got a good look at him smiling. "They'd play until eight or nine at night! I had to stay up later than them to be able to write 'cause I couldn't concentrate when they played."

I was lost. "What?"

He gestured at the tape deck. "It's them. Elodie played piano. You didn't recognize Leo's voice?"

"Oh. Uh, I didn't really listen to that part. Leo recorded a message after the music. I didn't rewind it to the exact start 'cause I was in a hurry by then."

"Oh. Okay."

Jonathan rolled the window up again. I watched him fast-forward, little by little. It didn't take him long to get to the message. For the first minute, he kept a straight face. Then he frowned. His frown turned into a bewildered grimace. He'd been listening for longer than Leo's message lasted, I was pretty sure. He rewound the tape and listened again. And again. Finally, he opened the car door.

"It's backward."

"What do you mean?"

"Elodie's message. It's backward. We need to take the tape out and put it back in backward to hear it."

"What do you mean, Elodie's message?"

"The part at the end? You think it wasn't Elodie?"

"What do you mean, the part at the end?"

Jonathan groaned. "Get in here."

I got in on the passenger side and he rewound the tape, then hit play. I heard an "-ay?" in Leo's voice, then a few seconds of silent hissing. Then: Elodie's voice. Carefully reciting what sounded like complete gibberish.

"That's not Latin," I said when Jonathan stopped the tape. I'd never had any formal education in Latin like they had, but I still had a rough idea of what it sounded like.

"No shit, Sherlock. It's backwards."