“I was thinking of asking a very crafty and stylish friend of mine to do it for me.”
“Amberlyn?”
“Guess again.”
Noemi’s smoothie was mostly juice now, speckled with a few strawberry seeds.
“Really, though, can you help me dye it?”
“Sure. But definitely at your house. I’m sick of Lamplight.”
“To-mor-row,” Lyle sang.
A sudden onslaught of rain chased Lyle into her Chevy, but before Noemi could follow, an orange cat darted past her legs to seek shelter under the bench where she had been sitting. Lamplight had two cats, Rosencrantz the calico and Guildenstern the stripy gray tabby, and Noemi considered them to be the only potential rivals Lyle had for the role of her “best friend.” Ignoring the rain—which would probably stop soon anyway, as the sun was still shining—she bent to peer at the visitor below.
“What are you doing?” Lyle called. She held her plastic smoothie cup above her head as she leaned out the car door, though it wouldn’t be enough to keep her hair dry.
The cat’s wide eyes fixated on Noemi’s dangling curls. Its pupils unspooled. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern played with her hair often at home, and she’d grown used to having her scalp tugged each time one of them pounced on a curl. She shook her head and made the ringlets dance for the new cat.
She wanted to bury her nose in its wet, golden-orange fur and breathe in the animal’s smell. There was something familiar about its coat: it reminded her of Link’s hair. If Link had had dark brown hair like Noemi’s, she’d have thought nothing of seeing that color in an animal’s fur. That color was everywhere: the soil in the terra-cotta pots on Lamplight’s porch, the branches of the dogwood in the lawn damp with dew, the Jacobean wood stain stored in the carriage house and how it looked when Matt used it on white oak. Link’s hair color, on the other hand, was not everywhere, and that’s why it was so hard not to notice when she did see it in a fox crossing the road in the early morning or in the white blush of dehydrated carrots.
• • •
Although he had died, Link had not stopped texting Noemi. The texts did not come from the phone number he’d had when he was alive. The messages arrived from Unknown.
It first happened in June, not long after Link’s funeral, which she had not gone to. Gaetan Kelly had come into school with an expletive shaved into the side of his head. If that was Gaetan’s way of grieving his friend’s death, Noemi didn’t understand it. She stood amid a crowd of other students and watched as two teachers dragged him to the principal’s office, while he shouted drunkenly about how the dress code made no mention of what words students’ hair could or could not say. Gaetan had friends besides Link, but Link was the most important and the only one who’d been a sobering influence. Noemi wondered if, without Link around, Gaetan had finally snapped.
That was when Unknown first contacted her, as though he too had been watching this scene unfold.
UNKNOWN
Keep an eye on Gaetan.
Noemi looked around her, searching to see who nearby was on their phone.
Who is this?
I would ask him to keep an eye on you too, but he already does.
Your number is blocked. Who is this?
I miss you.
She should not have thought of Link because, of course, it was impossible. But she did.
Stop screwing around.
Noemi was disappointed when no one answered.
In art class, she was reprimanded for being on her phone. She could not help but take surreptitious glances at it, which turned into not-so-surreptitious moments spent reading and rereading the few texts exchanged that morning. Then, as the school bus carried her home, and though Unknown had not contacted her since 8:00 a.m., she asked again:
Who are you?
Link.
She pressed her thumb beside his name and stared at the letters until they didn’t look like anything. Someone wanted her to think Link was texting her, but it was probably not anyone who had access to his cell. After all, if this person wanted to impersonate Link, texting from his number would have made better sense. That ruled out his sister, Amberlyn. This kind of nonsense had Gaetan written all over it, but he’d been detained by the teachers when she’d gotten the first text.
Who are you really?
Sorry.
Whoever was texting her was an asshole, and she told them so.
This is messed up. What do you want?
Someone killed me.
You going to tell me it’s my fault Link’s dead?
I would never say that.
The police had interviewed her, even though Noemi had been in Minneapolis for an art festival with her mother during the weekend Link had died. When the cops had told her what happened, she actually fell to her knees like someone in a movie. Noemi hadn’t believed emotions could be powerful enough to overwhelm her legs until it happened.
The bus arrived at her stop, and she disembarked. Instead of walking home, Noemi cut across the field and headed for the woods. She hadn’t stopped going even though Link had died there, though the visits were shallower and less frequent.
Then whose fault is it?
Hard to explain.
Noemi googled “texts from unknown numbers,” but her cell data slowed, then dropped off entirely as she got farther from the road.
You should stay out of that forest.
She stopped.
Where are you?
Here and not. I don’t know.
Noemi turned from the woods and ran back to the road, relieved her choice of shoes was more practical than usual that day. Once home, she knelt in the rose garden and set the phone in the soil. A green caterpillar explored the edge of it, then turned slowly away when the cell buzzed once more.
I’m sorry.
I wanted you to know I’m near. I feel like you’re mad at me.
I don’t even know who you are!
Her heart thrashed against her chest, and her skin prickled.
I drowned in the lake.
Noemi ran into the house. Matt washed paintbrushes in the sink, and Audrey sat in the living room with the television on. Noemi ignored greetings from both of them and ran up the stairs and into her room. The door slammed behind her. Though it was daytime, she flicked on the lights, then drew the sheer curtains across her windows. Finally, she looked again at the screen once she was tucked behind the gauzy drapes of her bed. A message was waiting.
The lake in the woods.
There is no lake in the woods.
Don’t pretend.
She wondered if Link had told anybody about the impossible lake. It had just appeared one day, fully formed, lighthouse and all. Some days it stretched so far it looked more like an ocean, and she couldn’t even see the trees on the opposite side. He’d promised to keep it a secret, but she could imagine him absentmindedly telling Amberlyn or Gaetan. Yet Gaetan couldn’t have texted—not this morning.