The Raising: A Novel Part 40

"You guys are crazy!" Deb said. She leapt up and grabbed Craig's arm. "She's not there! She's not in Bad Axe! She's not on this earth because she's dead!"

"She's not dead," Perry said with complete calm. "I know. She's not dead. I saw her in Bad Axe."

"No. She's here," Craig said. "You gotta trust me, man. I saw her, too. She's-"

"Let's go, then," Perry said, and stood up, and Craig did not wait even the length of a heartbeat before grabbing his coat.

"Jesus Christ," Deb said, and sat back down, defeated. "Please, just-"

Craig tried to turn and smile at her apologetically-she was such a sweet girl-but Perry was pulling him out the door.

The town, the streets, the lawns, the roofs: it was like a moonscape. As if the thing hanging over them in the now-clear sky had projected its surface onto the earth. No one was outside but the two of them, and the snow had swallowed up all the subtleties, all the edges, all the sounds. The branches of the trees looked heavy, but not exactly burdened, with all the snow with which they were loaded down. They appeared renewed, rejuvenated, by their white cloaks. The shadows they cast were smooth and very still on the ground.

Neither Craig nor Perry said a word until they came around the corner of Greek Row and saw it there on the hill: Not a single light was on in the Omega Theta Tau house. It seemed to swallow up the light of the snow and the moon, casting no shadow, looking, instead, like a shadow of itself. Something scissored out of the air. A house made of outer s.p.a.ce, of silhouette, of time past. They stopped walking and stood looking up at it, and Craig said, "You remember the first time we were here?"

Perry looked over at him, and Craig could see that he didn't.

"Remember? We were here with Lucas? Lucas and I were drunk and screaming and s.h.i.t, and you were all p.i.s.sed?"

"No," Perry said. "But that sounds like the way it would have been."

Craig meant to laugh, but it came out sounding like a sob. "I'm sorry I've been an a.s.shole for a friend, Perry," he said, and Perry just looked at him, shook his head.

"You're not," Perry said. "You never really were. Let's go."

Craig and Perry walked on the side of the street opposite to the house, then crossed and trudged uphill along the tree line between the frat next door at the sorority's rear entrance. Craig walked ahead of Perry because he knew the way. He'd been at this back door before, tossed out of it.

Once or twice Craig turned to look at Perry, and saw that his own footprints in the deep snow seemed to be making a ghostly path for Perry to follow. Perry wasn't looking up at Craig, though. He was staring straight ahead, at the house beyond them. Still no lights. Maybe only a tiny glow from one room. Maybe the face of an electric clock, an iPod glowing in its dock, a sleeping computer's screen saver light pulsing.

Craig reached the door and turned the k.n.o.b, not really expecting anything-or maybe expecting the lights to flash on and sirens and alarms to begin wailing.

The k.n.o.b turned easily in his hand, and the door opened silently toward him.

G.o.d, he thought. All that trouble they went to when they had parties-the bouncers, the girls stationed at every entrance-and now, in the middle of the night, a houseful of beautiful dreamers, and the door was unlocked, like an invitation.

The darkness inside was total. How stupid, he thought, not even to bring a flashlight-and then a bright zero of light shone on the kitchen floor, and he gasped before he realized that it was Perry. Perry had a flashlight. Of course. Eagle Scout. Craig turned, smiled, gave him a thumbs-up, but Perry just walked past him into the OTT kitchen.

It smelled like cookies to Craig. The kind his mother used to bake before she went back to work, sort of, and quit baking. Vanilla, he guessed. Maybe some kind of spice. Nutmeg?

Perry moved the flashlight around on the counters, scanning, and Craig caught glimpses of white china behind gla.s.s cupboards-inst.i.tutional, heavy-looking cups and plates. He could imagine the heft of those. The sound of silverware on the hard, shiny surfaces in a roomful of girls eating salads or noodles or whatever skinny, pretty girls ate when they had meals together. He pictured Nicole-not Nicole as he'd known her then, but this new dark-haired Nicole of now-at the heavy wooden table in the center of the room, sitting down to dinner with her sisters. As Perry's flashlight skimmed over the clean, bare surface of that table, Craig imagined her bright-white empty plate. Would Nicole, now, need to eat? And if she ate, what would she eat? Snow? Petals? The breath of her sisters?

He looked up then. He must have stared at the kitchen table too long because now Perry was gone, already slipped through a doorway and into a dark room. Somehow he'd gotten far enough ahead that Craig could see only the distant zero of the flashlight against the wooden railing of the stairway, and hear the first few stairs make a m.u.f.fled groaning under Perry's steps before he saw something else there on the stairs ahead of him.

Perry must have seen it, too.

He stopped climbing.

The flashlight froze on it.

Something so pale and lacy it seemed to have been created by the light of the flashlight itself-like something crocheted out of a bit of light there on the air. A nightie sewing itself in complicated patterns around a pale form. The pale form of a dark-haired ghost on the stairway.

A ghost holding something trembling into the beam of light. Holding it up, pointing it. Saying something Craig couldn't hear. A whisper. And then the explosion.

And then the only thing Craig could see was the beam of the flashlight as it b.u.mped down the stairs to the landing, where it blinked out just before all the lights in the house came on at once and Craig could see that Perry was there on the floor in a spreading puddle of his own blood, and the girl with the gun was screaming, "Oh, my G.o.d, oh, my G.o.d, I shot him, I shot him, I killed the burglar!" as a hundred other girls swarmed down the stairs and through the house and all around Craig in their white nightgowns crying and calling to each other as if they didn't even see him, as if they didn't even notice that Craig was there.

103.

Jeff Blackhawk was asleep on her couch when Mira got back to the apartment. His socks were off, tossed on her floor. He had his jacket pulled over him as a blanket. She pa.s.sed him without stopping on the way to the twins, who were just where she'd hoped they would be: in their cribs, asleep. Matty had his cow down at the bottom of the crib, by his feet. Andy's rested against his cheek. She kissed their heads, breathed in the sweet sweaty scent of them. She closed their door softly behind her.

In the hallway, she hesitated, looking toward the couch. Should she wake him? Let him know she was back and he could go home?

But no one should be driving in this storm anyway, she thought. And, surely, if her opening the door, crossing the room, and clearing her throat hadn't woken him up, he needed his sleep.

She would not, she decided, wake him.

She changed into a T-shirt of Clark's and, after brushing her teeth quickly, got into bed.

"Jesus, Jeff," Mira said to him in the morning. Her hand was trembling as she put the phone back on its cradle. "I can't believe this. You're never going to speak to me again. I'm the friend from h.e.l.l."

"No." Jeff was shaking his head, rubbing his eyes. "It's fine."

"I'll tell him twenty minutes. That's it. I'll be back before the twins wake up."

"Believe me, if Fleming hadn't called, I'd still be asleep until then myself. I may never have mentioned this, Mira, but I sleep like the dead."

"Oh, my G.o.d," she said, and put her hands over her face. "What does he want, Jeff? Why did he call me in the morning, at seven o'clock? What's he even doing in his office at this hour? Didn't he think I got enough of a reprimand yesterday? He's hauling me back in already?"

Dean Fleming had said, "I need you to be in my office as soon as possible. I would prefer that it be within the hour," and the tone had taken her breath away. She'd started to shake-although, in truth, she'd woken up shaking when the phone rang, with no idea where she was, and only the vaguest awareness that she had run out of bed to answer it.

"The man's an administrator, Mira. He probably sleeps in his office. Or he doesn't sleep. Who knows where administrators go when the lights go out?"

She liked that Jeff was making light of it without trying to make her feel stupid for being worried. Clark would have dismissed it, been annoyed by her "overreaction to every little thing," but Jeff told her he'd be worried, too. "It's creepy."

But he didn't seem to have any guesses, either, about what the dean could want.

Mira did what she could with her hair, her face. She pulled on a white blouse, black skirt, and a sweater. Jeff was asleep on the couch again by the time she closed, and locked, the door behind her.

104.

Sh.e.l.ly woke in the morning on Ellen Graham's couch. Outside, the sun had risen fully, and it was as if the volume on the whole idea of light had been turned up. There was so much sun on the snow out there that the curtains couldn't keep it out. In the living room, everything seemed to be shining. The white carpeting, the k.n.o.bs on drawers, the down comforter Ellen had given her when she made up the couch-and the cat.

That cat.

Had he (she?) simply come back to the chair and sat on it through the night, watching Sh.e.l.ly as calmly and nonjudgmentally as it seemed to be observing her now?

Sh.e.l.ly made the little kissing noise that always brought Jeremy to her side, but this cat didn't move. This cat, Sh.e.l.ly thought, was as still as the Sphinx. She had an urge to ask it a question but was afraid Ellen might be awake, already up and around in another room, and if Ellen overheard she'd think she'd let a truly crazy woman spend the night in her house.

Sh.e.l.ly knew she would have to get up soon and use the bathroom, but for now she felt as if she'd entered some kind of eternity. With that sun reflecting so whitely on the snow outside, Sh.e.l.ly felt it wouldn't surprise her to pull the curtains fully apart and find that everything was gone.

Erased.

Nothing left of the world but herself, and this white cat, and the brightness shining on some motes of dust between them.

The cat continued to regard her. Not even blinking.

This cat was nothing like Jeremy. This cat had none of Jeremy's scruffy skittishness. Jeremy's fur had been rough, and his eyes, unlike this cat's eyes, had been a mottled olive, not this blazing marble green.

But here Sh.e.l.ly was, looking at this cat looking at her, and she felt certain of something she'd once or twice had an inkling of in the past: that each cat is part of some larger cat soul.

That this cat and Jeremy had come from the same place-whatever cat nothingness that was.

Sh.e.l.ly and the cat held that gaze in a trance of that certainty between them, and the incredible comfort it offered, and Sh.e.l.ly didn't even startle and the cat didn't move when Ellen called from the top of the stairs, "Are you decent? I was going to come down and make coffee."

"Thank you," Sh.e.l.ly called.

She would drink Ellen's coffee, and then she would head back to town, find Craig Clements-Rabbitt, tell him this new plan, ask for his help.

105.

The campus was empty. The sidewalks were slippery, lonely. The sun had come up on the horizon and turned the untrodden snow-the great mounds and blankets of it-into a blinding moonscape. Now, this was a perfect campus for ghosts, Mira thought. For the invisible. The gone. No one would be able to see them strolling along through this snow. There was no one to see them. The students were all in their beds, asleep. She thought of Perry, dreaming. She imagined his eyes moving rapidly behind his lids-that frantic dancing that was actually complete peace.

It was hard to walk through this much snow, and Mira tried to think but could remember no November snowfall like it in all the years she'd lived in this town. Luckily she'd worn flat leather boots. Although they were cold, with a bad tread, she could march through the snow on the sidewalks, trudge through the slush in the streets. It seemed that a few trucks and cars must have pa.s.sed already through town, because she could see the tracks of their tires, but she didn't see any vehicles now. At the corner she didn't bother to stop for the Don't Walk sign.

"Professor Polson," the man said, standing as she stepped into Dean Fleming's office. She had never seen him in person before, but she knew who he was from the photo on the university website, the photo that came up right next to the gold seal bearing the university's dates and the Latin motto under its name (Utraque Unum: "Both and One") every time she double-clicked on Home.

"President Yancey," Mira said.

The dean was standing in the corner, as if he'd been banished to it. He didn't meet Mira's eyes.

"Sit down, Professor Polson," the president said, gesturing to the seat across from him. He held a piece of paper in his hand. "This is very serious. Very serious indeed. Serious complaints have been filed against you by your students-" She sank into the chair across from him. He handed her the piece of paper he'd been holding, which she could only glance at before feeling as if she might faint, recognizing a few names and signatures beside them: Karess Flanagan. Brett Barber. Michael Curley. Jim Bouwers.

"But the real news of the day," President Yancey said-and there was no mistaking the hysterical little laugh in the way he said it-"is that one of your students has been killed. Shot. After a B-and-E at the OTT house-"

Mira was swimming through the initials, and found herself moving her arms at the same time that she stood up. "Who?" she said.

"Sit down," the president said, pointing at the chair she'd just stood up from. "Sit down, now, Professor. I have no doubt you'll be hearing from the police soon enough, but in the meantime you're to clean out your office. In the meantime, you're to tell me in all the detail you can come up with why it is that this student of yours, this Perry Edwards, this student with whom you were working closely, might have broken into a sorority at three o'clock in the morning and managed to walk straight into a terrified young lady with a weapon, and gotten himself shot."

"Oh, my G.o.d," Mira said, and fell back into her chair.

"Oh, my G.o.d is f.u.c.king right," President Yancey said. "Do you have any f.u.c.king idea what this will mean, Professor Polson, for this f.u.c.king university?"

Part Six.

106.

On the drive back to her apartment (snow giving the world the appearance of a moon, another world, an empty, perfect one) Sh.e.l.ly drove by the site of the accident.

Of course, she'd driven by it hundreds of times over the months since, and watched the changes to the shrine it had become to Nicole Werner. The teddy bears were occasionally replaced, the flowers rearranged. The crosses continued to acc.u.mulate. There must have been fifty of them out there by now, spread across the spot where the accident had been, lined up along the ditch. At least a dozen had been organized into the shape of an N at the edge of the field.

Eventually, Sh.e.l.ly thought as she approached the shrine, the sorority girls who saw to all this would graduate. Things would dissipate, decay. Maybe every year or two a relative would make the trip to town on Memorial Day, leave behind a bouquet.

She would, herself, Sh.e.l.ly thought, try to avoid this spot from now on. She would leave this town, but when and if she returned to it again, she would arrive from the other direction.

She wouldn't even drive by.

Her eyes watered in the snow glare.

She hadn't expected to slow down as she pa.s.sed. She hadn't even wanted to see it-but she also hadn't expected to see someone out there wading through snow four feet deep, wearing no coat, at eight o'clock in the morning, staring straight ahead as he made his way toward the snowed-over photo of Nicole Werner nailed to that tree.

No car was pulled over anywhere on the road that Sh.e.l.ly could see. How had he gotten here?

His shirt was white, and her eyes were watery, and Sh.e.l.ly wondered if maybe she was seeing things. Maybe this was the kind of hallucination people had in Antarctica when there was so little of anything real left to see. She rubbed her eyes.

No.

This was a young man, and he was talking to himself, or to Nicole Werner's photo, holding out his hands as he drew closer to it, not even glancing up as Sh.e.l.ly's car came closer-although certainly he must also have noticed her slowing down, approaching, as she was the only thing on the road.