People will cover the shore with flowers that stand out bright against the melting patches of snow. They’ll leave prayer candles, whose glass will crack from the cold, spilling out wax of different colors. The whole town will come to the memorial at the edge of the half-frozen lake. A little girl will watch the grief hang heavy on the people’s faces, not understanding or really knowing what was lost.
Until ten years later.
It’s unsettling to think that this is what happened two days before. Two days before they left a party together and ended up dead. From a car crash. In his Jeep. Where maybe they had a fight. It could have just been the icy road and the blinding snow that caused it. But what if that wasn’t it at all? What if she told Shane about Orion, or he found out some other way? Maybe anger or hurt or shock was what sent them hurtling over the edge. And all this time they’ve been remembered as something that wasn’t true at all: Lakes High’s golden couple. A legacy unknowingly built on a lie.
I don’t know what to think. The second I start to judge her for what she did, I feel bad. She was seventeen. Torn. Felt something for Orion that was enough to make her question what she had with Shane. But it’s unnerving to find out something isn’t actually like you always imagined it. To see the tarnish just past the shine, or find a crack in the glossy finish. And there’s something else. The sketch that she wrote about sounds eerily similar to one I’ve seen hanging behind the counter at Kismet. It’s one I’ve noticed before when I ordered, but never really looked at.
A fat raindrop plops onto the open page of Julianna’s journal, smudging the ink, and then another and another. I shut it quickly and tuck it up under my shirt, then make a run for the trail down. Miraculously, I make it to my car just before the sky opens up. I sit in the seat for a moment, catching my breath and watching the rain pound the windshield. Julianna’s journal rests on the dash, damp but safe. There are two more entries before her story ends and the pages go blank. I don’t want to get there just yet, so instead I turn the key and I drive. I need to see that sketch up close.
14.
“But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone really find us out.”
—“REVELATION,” 1915
Inside Kismet it’s warm and cozy, and surprisingly empty for a rainy day. The bells on the door jangle when I step in, but no one’s behind the counter, which is actually perfect. I spent the entire drive down from the lakes trying to figure out how I could get a closer look at the sketches hanging on the wall behind the register. Whereas all of the art on the walls of Kismet is in constant flux, these three have never moved. They’ve always been there, for as long as I remember, right in front of me.
I know it’s a crazy thought, but I have to see if one of them could possibly be the one of Julianna that Orion drew that day at the lake. Because if it is, that means . . . I don’t know exactly, but it feels like something. Maybe that Josh knew Orion? Was friends with him? Or maybe he’s his brother. Ex-tattoo-artist-turned-coffee-shop-owner? That would explain the full sleeves on both arms. I realize as I think each of these things how crazy they’d sound if I said them out loud, but at the moment I don’t care about the lack of logic in it. For now I hope that maybe the feeling is enough to lead me to something.
I stand in the middle of the empty café a moment, waiting for someone to appear from the back room, and hoping it’s Lane. He’s not intimidating to me in the same way Josh is, so I could actually carry on a conversation with him. Maybe even ask him if he knows anything about the sketches. No one comes out, but I can hear a steady rhythm from the back room that sounds like something heavy being moved and then stacked. Whoever it is working back there probably didn’t hear me come in, which means I might have a minute or two to inspect the sketches before they even realize I’m here.
I inch my way toward the register and the three frames behind it. After one look over my shoulder, and another at the door of the storeroom, I step through the opening in the counter, past the register and stacks of paper coffee cups, and come face to face with three framed sketches, the middle of which is the “sexy girl,” as Kat calls her.
The picture is of her in profile, and she’s lying on her back on what I always pictured as a beach rather than the shore of a lake. She’s stretched out on her back, one knee bent so her leg forms a triangle, chin tilted toward the sky, eyes closed, hair tumbling down over her shoulders. She’s smiling, just barely, like maybe she’s dreaming. Or soaking up the sun after a swim. Nothing about it jumps out at me as distinctly Julianna, but there isn’t anything that says it couldn’t be her either. From what I know, a sketch is an imprecise art form.
I look at the two on either side, the ones I never paid much attention to before today. They’re of trees. Not dying trees, but trees with branches that wave like arms on the page so that I can practically see the wind in them. I lean in closer, sure I’m going to see I WAS HERE carved into one of them, and—
“What can I do for you?”
The voice makes me jump—no, leap—backward. “Oh, God,” I say, hand to my chest. My heart pounds so hard against it, I think Josh must be able to hear it too. “I’m so sorry,” I add. “I just . . . I just was trying to get a closer look at these drawings.” I point, as if that will somehow explain everything and lessen the sudden burn in my cheeks.
Josh nods slowly but doesn’t look at them or say anything and I feel like I’ve been caught trying to steal something.