up posters of football games, victories made memorable by the mischief perpetrated later beyond the sidelines. There were ticket stubs and receipts, kept to remind her of special moments with old boyfriends, most of whom she still cared for in some small way, but seldom thought about anymore. Pennants and flyers, old high school and even middle school notebooks, branded with scribbles of trivial significance now, but which had had monumental import back then; love letters from nervous young boys on the threshold of puberty; report cards which had earned her $50 a piece from her father, allowing her to save up and be the first of her group of friends to own a car; the police report of the drunk-driving incident that had seen that car totaled; video cassettes of long gone birthdays and Christmases her mother had wanted to throw away after her father died, too pained by the memory of his prominent role in them; brochures from vacations with her family, getaways with Daniel and her friends; the audio CD Daniel had given her of love songs for Valentine’s day. She hadn’t cared for most of the songs, but had appreciated the sentiment.
And of course, there were the photo albums.
She looked at the slip of paper bearing Daniel’s cell phone number and felt a tightening in her throat.
Then she thought of Muriel Hynes, and though her face was hard to recall, Claire remembered she’d been a mousy, shy girl with glasses, lank brown hair, and a prominent overbite. She remembered feeling sorry for the girl, then being ashamed that she had. It was not her place to pity anyone, and by doing so was subconsciously assuming herself on a higher position on the social ladder. But as wrong as it felt to think it, she realized it was true. Claire had always been popular, blessed (and often cursed) with long blonde hair, generous breasts, and a trim figure. It had made her passage through high school much easier for the most part, despite the disdain her appearance and the company she kept instilled in the other cliques. The Goths had viewed her as a stuck-up rich girl, though she’d been neither. The art students and rockers had sneered at her as if though one day she might provide them inspiration for their work, they wouldn’t be seen dead with her. The “nerds” worshipped but never dared approach her, conscious of their appearance and the stigma long-associated with the intelligent. Among them had wandered the painfully demure Muriel Hynes, but only for one semester. By the next, she’d already been interred in Oak Grove Cemetery after slashing her wrists in the bathtub. She’d been dead for over four hours before her father kicked in the door and found her.
Claire looked down at her own wrists, at the angry red lines carved into the flesh, and thought of Muriel, of the picture hanging in the hall at school. The girl in the portrait was smiling, but only just, as close to an imitation of the Mona Lisa as Claire had ever seen. In that moment, forever frozen in time, it seemed as if Muriel had been privy to knowledge that the Goths, for all their posturing and claims to the contrary, didn’t know:
The night of Muriel’s funeral, Claire had booted up her computer, logged on to the Internet and checked her old email folder until she found what she was looking for. It was the one and only communication she’d ever had from the dead girl. Eight weeks before her suicide, the girl had written to Claire with one odd simple message: “I like ur hair.” Confused, Claire hadn’t written back, but that night, as she reread those four words in an attempt to derive some greater meaning from them, some hidden significance that might help her understand why Muriel had taken her life, she wished she had. And then a strange and not entirely pleasant thought had occurred to her as she looked from the message to the girl’s email address.
And even more unsettling:
The uneasiness these thoughts summoned had been enough to make her shut down the computer in a hurry.
Now, looking at the picture of Daniel, and the number scrawled on that small piece of paper—
She struggled to remember what had become of Daniel’s cell phone during the attack. Panic had blinded her, of course. She’d only been aware of the impossibility of what was happening, sure, right up until Katy was stabbed, that it had all been some kind of sick joke. She did not recall seeing Daniel reach into his pocket for his phone, and later, did not see their attackers take it.
But she’d heard it ringing.
In her prison, as the strength tried to leave her, consciousness flickering like a candle flame in a draft, she’d been pulled back into the cold horror of her circumstances by the distant sound of a computer circuit’s attempt to replicate Mozart’s “Symphony Number 9”—the familiar sound of Daniel’s phone as someone tried to call him. Then his agonized scream had drowned it out.
Claire peeled the protective plastic away from the page of the photo album, and gently removed the yellow slip of paper. She held it in her trembling hands for a moment, then looked at the photograph of her dead boyfriend.
She had only memories from which to draw an answer, but even they betrayed her, for Daniel had never told her he’d loved her, and so she would never know.
Unless she asked.
She turned her head.
The phone, girly pink like the rest of the room, sat on her nightstand, silent.
She pushed the photo album aside, eased herself across the bed, and picked up the phone, then set the number beside it, under the tasseled pink lampshade.
Her heart began to race.
Carefully, breath held, she dialed.
The digits, registering as dull beeps in her ear.
Silence. The faint hum of the connection racing through space, running through wires. Then silence again. Time seemed to stretch interminably.
A crackle, a click…
Then the connection was made.
Claire’s stomach contracted. She thought she was going to be sick. Bile filled her mouth as panic seized her.
Beep beep. Silence.
Beep beep. Silence.
She imagined the sound of Mozart, playing his music with none of the beauty or fervor or passion it had been written to convey.
She imagined hearing it out there in the night, a thousand miles away and yet still audible, carried to her by her desperate need to hear it, to know her boyfriend was alive and would answer at any moment.
Beep beep. Silence.
Then Kara at the door, gently easing it open, her look of concern quickly turning to curiosity as she stepped inside.
“Claire?”
Beep beep. Silence.
“Claire? Who are you calling?”
“No one. I’ll…”
Kara approached her, slowly, but urgently.
But what she heard was: Beep beep.
