“I mean, there are lodges and stuff—”
“No, we’d camp for sure. That’s the only way to do it. In the summer.” She folds her arms over her chest again and flits her eyes as she looks at what must be an imaginary scene above her head.
I run my moist palms over my jean-covered thighs in an attempt to stem my nerves. It works for exactly four seconds. My heart is beating out random rhythms and my mouth is so dry.
“I have fishing rods. Oh, and sleeping bags. We have so many sleeping bags. Before Morgan moved out, we used to beach camp in Michigan, on the lake. My dad even bought a stove you plug in to that little cigarette lighter thingy.” She leans forward and taps the space where the Bronco’s lighter is missing.
“The twelve-volt,” I say.
“Sure.” She giggles. It’s the one technical automotive word I know, and only because it’s how I charge my laptop in my mom’s car.
Eleanor’s gaze drifts away again, but the smile lingers for almost a minute as we sit in silence, basking in this pretend world she’s built based on some whim that came out of my mouth. It almost feels real, and that makes me want to dive under the hood and get this thing running.
The longer the quiet lasts, the more the pressures on the other side of the garage door seep in. Life outside of this cabin is muted, and I can’t help but think that the minute we open our doors, the sounds of chaos will be waiting for us. The idea weighs on Eleanor too. I see it in her heavy eyelids, her dropped shoulders, and the tight grip her hands have on her opposite arms as she hugs herself.
It’s only in this stifling quiet that I regret not asking her where she would go. It’s too late to do that now. The mood has passed. That’s the thing about daydreams and fantasies—they’re fragile. One miscued thought allows reality to breach a carefully constructed bubble.
Eleanor pops open the door, pausing with one leg inside and one leg out. Her heavy braids glide over her shoulder as she twists back to look at me one last time.
“Thanks for letting me hide in here a while, Jonah.”
We exchange tight smiles that mask all the things we really think and want to say. My inner voice pleads with her to stay. Hers tries not to scream and cry.
“Anytime, Eleanor. Maybe I’ll see ya tomorrow?” The question feels ridiculous the moment it leaves my lips. My dream girl slips from the seat completely and offers me a polite smile in response that my gut tells me is charity.
I leave the shelter of the cab and move toward the garage button to open the door for Eleanor so she can head back out into a wild filled with wolves ready to eat her. I don’t know anything more than I did before she showed up, no news about her family or how they’re holding up, nothing about the investigation or when she might again show her face at school. I didn’t ask any of it even though the questions ran through my brain like ticker tape. I want this to be the place she comes to hide. That, and it’s hard enough for me to talk to her about normal things, let alone the awful tragedy she has to live with when she’s at home.
I press the garage door button with my thumb and take in her silhouette as the bright sunlight from outside overtakes the dim bulbs in the garage. She turns to walk backward and holds up a hand to say goodbye as her feet shuffle away. I do the same, my hand poised to close the door and keep the wolves out when she’s gone. Thankfully, though, I hold out for one more second.
“See ya tomorrow, Jonah.”
Five
I didn’t really believe Eleanor would be waiting in my garage the next day. It helped keep the disappointment at bay when it turned out that she wasn’t. She was right about the media being moved to the corner of our street, though. By the time I left for school Tuesday morning, the police tape was down. And when I got home, the cameras and big media trucks were gone too. Every now and then, someone stops by to do a report from the sidewalk or to take a photo, but for the most part, life outside our house in the space between where our property ends and the Trombleys’ begins is back to normal.
The shift in public attention is a welcome change in my household, but not because of the inconvenience of having to navigate through the media trucks while coming and going from our house. The media sparked more friendly household arguments than normal, and mostly because Grandpa Hank had a thing for the National Network News correspondent, Monica Correa, who camped out with her crew for two full days. My mom says the old man verged on getting a restraining order slapped in his face. He took her coffee seven times in the forty-eight hours she was here, and each time he failed to take what my mom said were clear hints that she was not interested in his old war stories.
Like the rest of the world, Grandpa Hank has been left to watch Monica’s reporting on TV. Not that there is much new to report about the “Mystery on Cedarwood Lane.” That’s what Addy’s case has been dubbed by the media. I’m not sure who was the first to coin the phrase—probably Monica—but it caught on. I’ll never be able to say my address without it jarring some memory. Every report feels the same, but we all hang on every word when the news is on. I think everyone in Oak Forest is praying for someone to announce “She’s
