'An accident? You mean you were aiming for someone else's lips and ran into mine instead?'
'I–I mean the kiss didn't mean anything.' 'I see.'
'Sometimes things just happen,' I said. 'They happen and don't mean anything at all.'
'Really.'
Paul called out to Mike then, asking for help in lifting a flat.
'Well, hope you're feeling better,' Mike said, and went to help his friend.
I took a deep breath and glanced down at the hammer. I couldn't bring myself to touch it again. My blue visions were becoming like the frightening blue dreams I'd had as a child-bizarre and yet very, very real.
The real 'Teen Psychic,' I thought. What if I were? What if the images that had seemed so strange to me as a child had been retrieved from other people's minds? Maybe Liza wasn't simply comforting me after those dreams; maybe I really did share her mind and the minds and lives of others.
If so, I must have learned how to suppress the ability. But the visions I had now felt too powerful for me to control, triggered by things that formed a physical link to Liza: the window seat where she had sat, the place on stage where she had liked to stand, pictures of her murder site, and now, the hammer. I couldn't prove it, but I knew beyond a shadow of a psychic's doubt, this hammer was the weapon that had killed my sister.
Chase Library kept short hours during the summer, so I went there directly from the theater, needing a college computer to access newspaper archives.
In every account I read, the facts were the same. The murder weapon was determined to be something heavy, a metal tool with a small blunt surface. The police believed it was a hammer, but the weapon had never been found. None of the news articles noted whether it was Liza's left or right wrist that bore the smashed watch.
At first I was comforted by my vision of the watch on the wrong wrist, reasoning from that small detail that the murderer hadn't known Liza. But the truth was that anyone in a hurry to escape the crime scene could have easily overlooked such a small matter.
I knew what I needed to do-carry the hammer to the bridge tonight and see what images came to me-but I was afraid. I didn't want to feel the crushing blow. Knowing what it was, realizing that I was reliving my sister's death, I felt sickened by it long after the physical pain receded.
As I gathered my things at the library, I realized that I had left my script at the theater. It was five-thirty when I reached Stoddard, but the back door was unlocked as usual, as was the room where we had been working. I retrieved my book from a bench.
Emerging from the room, I thought I heard voices at the end of the hall, but they had a strange, echoing sound, as if the people and I were separated by a very long passage. Curious, I followed the hall, rounding the corner, passing Walker's office, then Maggie's. No one was in sight. The next three doors, all offices belonging to professors, were closed. Then I saw the last door in the hall ajar and strode toward it.
I thought I was peering into a dark closet, but when I heard the voices again, I opened the door wider and saw the outline of a metal stairway. It rose inside the small, square space, four or five steps up one wall, then met the corner and turned, rising several steps along the next wall, continuing to spire up into the darkness, a murky darkness, as if there was light at the top. The steps to the tower!
I was tempted to climb them. The platform above the clock must have been high enough to command a view of both the river and creek. But the voices above me were becoming louder and more distinct. A guy and a girl-Paul and Keri, I realized-were coming down. I didn't want to meet up with them, not when I was alone. I exited quickly and hurried along the hallway. Then curiosity won out. Were they simply enjoying a romantic moment in the tower, or were they up to something? I ducked inside the room from which I had fetched my book, extinguished the lights, and hid behind the open door.
'You're losing your edge,' I heard Keri say, as she and Paul walked down the hall.
Paul laughed. 'I'm not here to entertain you.'
'But you do entertain me,' she insisted. 'That little mean thing that crawls around inside your brain fascinates me.'
I pressed my head against the door, watching them through the vertical crack between the hinges.
'Did you ever think that it might be crawling around in your brain?' Paul asked. 'You don't know who I am, Keri. You keep inventing me, trying to make me into the guy you want me to be.'
'That's good,' she answered sharply, 'real good coming from a guy who turned a girl into a fantasy, who made her so perfect in his mind he can't give her up, not even when she's a corpse.'
Paul turned away so I couldn't see his face.
'Do you know why Liza went out that night?' Keri asked.
'Why don't you tell me?' he replied. 'I know you want to.'
'She got a note from Mike asking her to meet him by the creek.'
I felt as if someone had just punched me in the stomach.
'If you're trying to turn me against Mike-' Paul began.
'I saw the note,' Keri went on. 'Liza couldn't wait to show me what he had written. It was poetic. He was counting the minutes till he could meet her by the water.'
'Maybe you should have shared that information with the police,' Paul suggested coolly.
'I've told you before, I don't go running to teachers or police. It's us against them. I'm loyal-unless, of course, someone gives me a reason not to be.'
Paul faced her.
'But I find it interesting,' she went on, 'that a note Liza would have saved for framing wasn't found on her body or in her room. Someone must have destroyed it before the police could get their hands on it. Was it you?' She stepped close to him. 'Was it?'
'Do you want it to be?' he asked, placing his hands around Keri's neck and running his fingers lightly over her skin.
For a moment she didn't say anything. She closed her eyes as if she hoped the tease would become something more, then she pushed him away.
'I just want it over,' she said, her voice low and angry. 'Liza's dead. Why can't you bury her?'
She turned and stalked away. I heard the outside door swing open and closed. Paul left a moment later.
I emerged from the room, still reeling from my discovery. I had made up my mind: after curfew tonight I'd go down to the bridge. I'd find out what happened when Mike asked my sister to meet him.
At eleven-thirty I climbed out the same window Liza had and followed the lane down to Oyster Creek. I didn't have the hammer with me. After Ken and Paul had left the theater, I searched the scenery and drying rooms, and even the stage, in case someone carried the tool upstairs, but I couldn't find it. I tried the tower, too, but the door had been locked.
Now, having escaped Drama House, I rushed down Goose Lane, then turned left on Scull, which ran parallel to the water. I didn't stop walking till I reached the bridge, afraid I'd lose my nerve. As I had hoped, the waterfront was deserted. I sat down quickly on the bank of the creek, pulling my knees up to my chest, pressing my face against them.
'I'm here, Liza,' I whispered.
Nothing happened. My mind felt rigid like my body, locked into a protective position. I took a deep breath, rose, and walked five feet down to the edge of the water. I lay on my back beside the water and ever so slowly let go, as I had learned to do in my relaxation exercises, allowing my shoulders, my elbows, the calves of my legs to sink down into the mud and stones. I cringed when I felt the trickle of creek at the back of my skull-it felt like blood-but I continued to work through Maggie's exercises till my body and mind relaxed.
The bridge above me was lost in darkness. I turned my head to the side and gazed at the creek, at the concrete pilings and the wavering reflections of the bridge's street lamps. The water shimmered blue. I closed my eyes and still I saw blue. I grew light-headed, so light I felt as if I were floating above myself. Suspended in the air, I looked down on a dark body and a glowing watch face. Someone in black bent over the body, drew back, then smashed the watch.
