Сиболд Э. Милые кости (The lovely Bones) 9785949622360

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ALICE SEBOLD ABRIDGED BESTSELLER

THE LOVELY BONES

Адаптация, сокращение и словарь: А. В. Шитова

Санкт-Петербург

ББК 81.2Англ С34

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Сиболд Э. The Lovely Bones = Милые кости : книга для чтения на английском языке / Адапт., сокр. и словарь А. В. Шитовой. – СПб. : Антология, 2013. – 128 с. – (Abridged Bestseller). ISBN 978-5-94962-236-0 Действие романа происходит в одном из штатов США – Пенсильвании – в 70-х гг. ХХ века. Четырнадцатилетняя Сьюзи становится жертвой серийного убийцы, умело скрывающегося под маской добропорядочного гражданина, живущего по соседству. Заключённая между мирами, Сьюзи наблюдает за тем, как её трагическое исчезновение меняет судьбу друзей и родных. Веря в невозможное, она отчаянно пытается хоть на мгновение вернуться в мир живых, чтобы помочь разоблачить убийцу и исполнить своё самое заветное желание... Для широкого круга изучающих английский язык. Текст сокращён и адаптирован. Уровень Intermediate.

ББК 81.2Англ

ISBN 978-5-94962-236-0

© Шитова А. В., адаптация, сокращение, словарь, 2013 © ООО «Антология», 2013

Inside the snow globe on my father’s desk was a penguin in a striped scarf. When I was little, my father would put me onto his lap and take the snow globe. He would shake it, and the two of us would watch the snow fall gently around the penguin. The penguin was alone in there, I thought, and I worried for him. When I told my father this, he said, “Don’t worry, Susie; he has a nice life. He’s trapped in a perfect world.”

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One My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name – Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his garden flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer. On December 6, 1973, it was snowing, and I took a shortcut through the cornfield back from my high school. It was dark outside because the days were shorter in winter, and I remember how the broken cornstalks made my walk more difficult. The snow was falling lightly. Six feet from where Mr Harvey stood, I stopped to taste a snowflake. “Don’t let me frighten you,” Mr Harvey said. Of course, in a cornfield, in the dark, I was frightened. “Mr Harvey,” I said. “You’re the older Salmon girl, right?” “Yes.” “How are your parents?” “Fine,” I said. I had never been comfortable with adults. I was cold, but the fact that he was a neighbor and had talked to my father about fertilizer made me stay and chat with him. “I’ve built something back here,” he said. “Would you like to see?” “I’m cold, Mr Harvey,” I said, “and my mom likes me to be home before dark.” “It’s after dark, Susie,” he said. I wish now that I had known this was weird. I had never told him my name. I guess I thought my father had told him about his children.

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Mr Harvey would later say these words to my mother when he met her on the street: “I heard about the horrible, horrible tragedy. What was your daughter’s name, again?” Then Mr Harvey would tell her the usual: “I hope they get the bastard. I’m sorry for your loss.” I was in my heaven by that time and couldn’t believe his boldness. Mr Harvey said it would only take a minute, so I followed him a little farther into the cornfield. “I’ve made a little hiding place,” said Mr Harvey. He stopped and turned to me. “I don’t see anything,” I said. I saw that Mr Harvey was looking at me strangely. I’d seen older men look at me that way before. I was wearing my blue parka and yellow bellbottoms that day. “You should be more attentive, Susie. Try again,” Mr Harvey said. He sat down and knocked against the ground. “What’s that?” I asked. My ears were freezing. I didn’t want to wear the colorful hat with the pompom and jingle bells that my mother had made for me, although I had it in the pocket of my parka. “It’s wood,” Mr Harvey said. “It’s the entrance. The rest is all made out of earth.” “What is it?” I asked. I was no longer cold: I was curious. “Come and see.” It was awkward to get into, but then we were both inside the hole. I was so amazed by how he had made it that nothing awkward was on my mind. “This is neat!” I said to Mr Harvey. I can still see the hole like it was yesterday, and it really was, because life is an eternal yesterday for us. The hole was the size of a small room. I could almost stand up in it. Mr Harvey had made a bench along the sides of it where he sat down. “Look around,” he said. Amazed, I stared at the shelf with different things – matches, batteries and a lamp that was the only light in the room. There was a mirror on the shelf and a knife. I thought

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that was strange. Why would he need it there? But I guess I was thinking that Mr Harvey was just a strange man, and I liked the room, and it was warm, and I wanted to know how he had built it. By the time our neighbors’ dog found my elbow three days later, Mr Harvey had destroyed the hole. I was in transit during this. I didn’t see him take away the wood and any evidence together with my body parts, except that elbow. My mother sat on a chair by the front door with her mouth open. Her face was unusually pale. My father wanted to know details and to go to the cornfield with the cops. I still thank God for a small detective named Len Fenerman who helped my father a lot. No one had told my sister Lindsey, who was thirteen and old enough, or my brother Buckley, who was four and would never understand. Mr Harvey asked me if I would like something to drink. I said I had to go home. “Be polite and have a Coke,” he said. “I’m sure the other kids would.” “What other kids?” “I built this for the kids in the neighborhood. I thought it could be like a secret club for them.” I don’t think I believed this even then. I thought he was lying, but I thought it was a sad lie. I imagined he was a lonely man who never married, ate his lonely meals every night and didn’t even have any pets. I felt sorry for him. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll have a Coke.” A little later he said, “Aren’t you warm, Susie? Why don’t you take off your parka.” I did. After this he said, “You’re very pretty, Susie.” “Thanks,” I said. “Do you have a boyfriend?” “No, Mr Harvey,” I said. I finished my Coke and said, “I have to go, Mr Harvey. This is a cool place, but I have to go.” He stood. “I don’t know why you think you’re leaving.” Now that he was blocking the door I understood that Mr Harvey was not just a strange man.

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“Mr Harvey, I really have to get home.” “Take off your clothes.” “What?” “Take your clothes off,” Mr Harvey said. “Mr Harvey,” I said, “please let me leave.” “You aren’t leaving, Susie. You’re mine now.” I fought hard. I fought as hard as I could not to let Mr Harvey hurt me, but it was not hard enough, and he pushed me to the floor. I was so alive then. I thought it was the worst thing in the world: to be trapped inside the earth and no one knew where I was. I thought of my mother. My mother would be looking at the clock by then. She would be worried and angry because I was late. “Where can she be, Jack?” she would question my father. “Maybe it’s just an early spring, Abigail,” my father would joke to calm her down. Mr Harvey started to kiss me. He kissed my face and put his hands under my shirt. I cried and fought so I would not feel it. I began to leave my body; I began to live in the air and the silence. I had been kissed once by someone I liked. His name was Ray and he was Indian. He had an accent and was dark. My school friend Clarissa said that he was weird but smart. He kissed me by my locker one day. In the yearbook he wrote “My heart belongs to Susie Salmon”. I think he had had plans for us. “Don’t, Mr Harvey,” I kept saying. “Please. Don’t.” Sometimes I combined them. “Please don’t” or “Don’t please.” When he became tired of hearing me, he took the hat my mother had made and put it into my mouth. The only sound I made after that was the jingling of bells. He did this thing to me and I lived. That was all. I was still breathing. I heard his heart. I smelled his breath. But I knew he was going to kill me. “Why don’t you get up?” Mr Harvey said. His voice was gentle, like a lover’s voice in the morning. I could not move. I could not get up.

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When I didn’t, he turned to the side and took his knife. Then he pulled the hat from my mouth. “Tell me you love me,” he said. I did. The end came anyway.

Two When I first entered heaven, I thought everyone saw what I saw and that in everyone’s heaven there were the same things. After a few days in heaven, I realized that the others around me were all in their own version of heaven but had a lot of the same things going on inside. Their heavens just fit with mine. I met Holly, who became my roommate, on the third day. She was sitting on the swing near the high school. I wasn’t surprised that a high school had swings because it was heaven. Holly sat reading a book in a weird alphabet. Now I know Vietnamese because Holly taught me. “Hi,” I said. “My name is Susie.” “I’m Holly,” she said. I looked at her black hair. It was shiny like in magazines. Later she told me that she got her name from a movie, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Because she wanted to have no accent in her heaven, she had none. “How long have you been here?” I asked. “Three days.” “Me too.” I sat down on the swing next to her. “Do you like it here?” she asked. “No.” “Me neither.” So it began. We had been given, in our heavens, our simplest dreams. There were no teachers in the school. We had to go inside only for art class for me and jazz band for Holly. Our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue. And our heavens became bigger as our relationship grew. We wanted many of the same things.

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Franny, my intake counselor, became our guide. Franny was old enough to be our mother and soon Holly and I realized that this had been something we wanted: our mothers. In Franny’s heaven she served and was rewarded by results and gratitude. On Earth she had been a social worker for the homeless. She worked at a church that gave meals to women and children only. She was shot in the face by a man looking for his wife. Franny walked up to Holly and me on the fifth day. She gave us two cups of lemonade and we drank. “I’m here to help,” she said. I looked into her small blue eyes and told her the truth. “We’re bored.” “What do you want?” Franny asked. “I don’t know,” I said. “All you have to do is wish for it, and if you really want it and really know why – it will come.” It seemed so simple and it was. That’s how Holly and I got our little house and a gazebo. Our house looked out onto a park, and in the distance, just close enough to know we weren’t alone, but not too close, we could see the lights of other houses. Later I began to wish for more. What I found strange was how much I really wanted to know what I had not known on Earth. I wanted to grow up. “People grow up by living,” I said to Franny. “I want to live.” “That’s out of the question for you,” she said. “Can we at least watch the living?” asked Holly. “You already do,” she said. “I think she means whole lives,” I said, “from beginning to end, to see how they did it. To know the secrets. Then we can pretend better.” “You won’t feel it,” Franny explained. “Oh, thank you,” I said, but our heavens began to grow. There still was the high school, but now there were roads leading out. “Walk the roads,” Franny said, “and you’ll find what you need.”

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So that’s when Holly and I set out. Our heaven had an ice cream shop; it had a newspaper where our pictures appeared a lot and made us look important; it had real men in it and beautiful women too, because Holly and I loved fashion magazines. Sometimes Holly seemed distant, and other times she was gone. That was when she went to a part of heaven we didn’t share. I missed her then, but it was a strange type of missing because by then I knew the meaning of forever. I could not have what I wanted most: Mr Harvey dead and me living. Heaven wasn’t perfect. But I believed that if I watched carefully, and desired, I might change the lives of those I loved on Earth. My father was the one who took the phone call on December ninth. It was the beginning of the end. He gave the police my blood type and described the color of my skin. They asked him if I had any special features. He began to describe my face. Then Detective Fenerman said it: “Mr Salmon, we have found only a body part.” My father stood in the kitchen, shocked. How could he tell that to Abigail? “So you can’t be certain that she’s dead?” he asked. “Nothing is ever certain,” Len Fenerman said. That was the line my father said to my mother: “Nothing is ever certain.” For three nights he hadn’t known how to touch my mother or what to say. Before, they had never found themselves broken together. Usually, it was one needing the other but not both needing each other, and so there had been a way, by touching, to get strength from the stronger one. And they had never understood, as they did now, what the word horror meant. “Nothing is ever certain,” my mother kept saying. My mother had been the one who knew the meaning of each charm on my bracelet – where we had got it and why I liked it. She made a list of what I’d carried and worn. If found, these clues might lead a policeman to link them to my death.

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After Len’s phone call, my parents sat in the bed together, staring in front of them. When it began to rain, I could feel them both thinking the same thing then. That I was out there somewhere, in the rain. That they hoped I was safe. That I was dry somewhere, and warm. They did not speak. They just looked at each other. My mother began to cry, and my father held her and kissed her very gently on the eyes. On the morning of the tenth Lindsey asked my father about the phone call. “What phone call?” my father said. “I heard you say something about Susie’s smile.” “They found a body part, honey. It might be Susie’s.” It was like a hard rock in the stomach. “Dad, I want you to tell me what it was. Which body part?” Lindsey asked. “It was an elbow. Nothing is ever certain,” my father said. Later that morning, when the weather changed, the police began their search in the cornfield. There was an area where the earth had been dug not long before. They began there. The lab later found that there was a lot of my blood mixed with the dirt, but the police became more and more frustrated, looking for the girl’s body. My father and mother stayed at home. Lindsey sat in her room. Buckley was at his friend Nate’s place, where he spent a lot of time these days. They had told him I was on a sleepover at Clarissa’s house. I knew where my body was but I could not tell them. I watched and waited to see what the police would find. And then, late in the afternoon, a policeman put up his hand. “Over here!” he shouted, and the other officers ran to him. He held up a paperback copy of To Kill a Mockingbird – the novel we had been reading at school in the ninth grade. Detective Fenerman called my parents to say that they had found a schoolbook which they believed might have been mine. “But it could be anyone’s,” my father said to my mother. “Or she could have dropped it along the way.” They didn’t want to believe the evidence.

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Two days later, on December twelfth, the police found my notes from the biology class. In between the pages they found another kind of paper with something written on it. A girl at my school recognized some of the handwriting. It was not my writing, but the writing of the boy who had a crush on me: Ray Singh. On his mother’s special rice paper Ray had written me a love note, which I never read. He had put it secretly into my notebook. Ray nodded as the policemen questioned him. Yes, he had written Susie Salmon a love note. Yes, he had put it in her notebook during the lesson. Ray Singh became the first suspect. I watched my family and knew they didn’t believe it had been Ray. In the end the police had to admit his innocence because he had an alibi. All this made me crazy. Watching but not being able to direct the police toward the green house so close to my parents, where Mr Harvey sat making dollhouses. He watched the news and read the papers. Now he was calm and even comfortable, pretending to be innocent. I missed our dog Holiday most of all, in a way I hadn’t yet let myself miss my mother and father, my sister and brother. That way of missing would mean that I had agreed that I would never be with them again; it might sound silly but I didn’t believe it, would not believe it. On December fifteenth there was a knock on the door that made my father finally believe. It was Len Fenerman, who had been so kind to him. “We’ve found a personal item that we believe to be Susie’s,” Len said. Len was careful. I could see him choosing his words. “What?” my mother said. She crossed her arms and waited for another detail. She was a wall. Notebooks and novels were nothing to her. Her daughter might live without an arm. A lot of blood was just a lot of blood. It was not a body. Jack had said it and she believed: Nothing is ever certain. But when they showed the evidence bag with my jingle-bell hat

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inside, something broke in her. My mother made a sound and stretched out her hand. “We’ve tested it,” Len said. “It seems that whoever attacked Susie used this during the crime as a way to keep her quiet.” My mother took it out of Len Fenerman’s hands, the bells jingled, she bent over my hat and began to cry. “Mr Salmon,” Len Fenerman said, “with all the evidence and blood we’ve found, and the violence I’m afraid it means, from now on it will be a murder investigation.” “But there is no body,” my father protested. “I’m very sorry. All evidence shows that your daughter has been killed.” My mother was sitting on the floor in the living-room. My father could not let his family see him crying. He went upstairs to his study and cried there, hugging Holiday. Nate’s mother knocked on the door to return Buckley. No one answered. She walked away, knowing something had changed inside the house. I worried that my sister, left alone, would do something foolish. But that night Lindsey lay on the floor of her room and worked on hardening herself into a stone. She did sit-ups, push-ups and biceps until her muscles ached. She focused only on her breathing. The in. The out. She chose to go to school the following day. The next day, at school, everyone stared at her. “The principal would like to see you, dear,” the homeroom teacher said. Lindsey didn’t want any sympathy. “I got a call from the police this morning. I’m sorry to hear of your loss,” Principal Caden said when she came into his office. She looked right at him. It was like a laser. “We’re here to help you in any way we can,” Mr Caden said. He was doing his best. “I’m fine,” Lindsey said. My sister was like a rock. “But I think it would be hard for me to play soccer on the soccer field when it’s about twenty feet from where my sister was probably murdered.”

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I sat in the gazebo in my heaven and watched my sister’s anger. Before I died, my mother hung on the refrigerator a picture that Buckley had drawn. In the drawing there was a thick blue line between the air and ground. Now I understood that this blue line was a real place – an Inbetween, where heaven met Earth.

Three The strange thing about Earth that we saw when we looked down were souls leaving bodies all over the world. A soul would run by a living being, touch them softly on the shoulder or cheek, and continue on its way to heaven. The dead are never really seen by the living, but many people feel something change around them. They say there is a chill in the air. The friends and family of the dead might wake from dreams at night and see a figure standing at the end of their bed, or in a doorway, or getting on a city bus. On my way out of Earth, I touched a girl named Ruth Connors. She went to my school but we’d never been close friends. She was in my path that night when my soul flew out of Earth. I could not help it. I didn’t have time for thinking. In violence, you just want to get away. I just saw Ruth standing there in the street. When I flew by her, my hand touched her, touched the last face, to feel the last connection to Earth. On the morning of December seventh, Ruth told her mother about a dream that was too real to be a dream. When her mother asked her to tell it, Ruth said, “I was crossing the street, and suddenly, I saw a pale ghost running out of the cornfield toward me. It was female, I could see that. It flew up out of the field. Its eyes were empty. It had a thin white cover over its body. I could see through it its nose, its eyes, the face and the hair.” “Ruth,” her mother said, “it’s just your imagination.” Ruth shut up. She did not talk about the dream that was not a dream again, even ten days later, when the story of my

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death began to travel around the school. But the details were still missing, and I could not point Ruth to what no one had found: my silver charm bracelet. I thought it might help. It lay in the open, waiting for a hand to take it, a hand that would recognize it and think it might be a clue. But it was no longer in the cornfield. I wanted Ruth to go to my family and talk to them. In my heaven I would sit whole days and nights in the gazebo and watch. I would watch my family, neighbors and school friends, for example, Clarissa who started dating Brian Nelson. I would also watch Ruth. One night while watching I was visited by Franny. I stood and looked at her – at the laugh lines around her eyes and mouth. “Why are you so sad?” Franny asked. “I can’t help thinking of my mother,” I answered. Franny took my hand in both of hers and smiled. I wanted to kiss her on the cheek or ask her hold me, but instead I watched her walk away in front of me. I knew that she was not my mother; I could not pretend, so I turned around and went back to the gazebo. On the morning of my eleventh birthday I had woken up very early. No one else was up, or so I thought. I went downstairs and looked into the dining room, where I expected my presents to be. But there was nothing there. Same table as yesterday. But when I turned around, I saw it lying on my mother’s desk in the living room. It was a camera – what I had asked for and had been sure they would not get for me. I went over to it and looked down. It was an Instamatic. It was my first machine, my first step to becoming what I wanted to be – a wildlife photographer. Then on the porch of our house I saw my mother. She was sitting on a chair, looking at the garden, so she didn’t see me. In her hand she had her usual cup of coffee. That morning there was no lipstick on her lips because she would put it on later for ... who? My father? Us?

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In that moment she was not my mother but something separate from me. I looked at what I had never seen before – not my mother, but just Abigail – moments before she would become the mother of the birthday girl, owner of the happy dog, wife to the loving man, and mother again to another girl and a little boy. Homemaker. Gardener. Sunny neighbor. My mother’s eyes were oceans, and inside them there was loss. I thought I had my whole life to understand them, but that was the only day I had. That was the first photograph I took with my new camera. I was in the gazebo thinking of the photo, thinking of my mother, when Lindsey got up in the middle of the night and went to my room. I knew she would go in, but what would she do in there? It had been my private territory. My mother had not touched it. My bed was still unmade from the morning of my death. I thought Lindsey would take one or two of my things to wear – but she didn’t. She didn’t even pick them up. She was just looking around the room. Then she saw it and took it. It was the picture. She sat down on the floor, her mouth still open and her hand still holding the picture. She too, like me until the morning of that photograph, had never seen the motherstranger. She had seen the photos taken right after. But I had wanted to be the only one in the house that knew my mother was also someone else – and kept this photo a secret. This was the first time I broke through by accident. It was December 23, 1973. My father’s father had taught him how to build ships in bottles. They were something my mother, sister, and brother didn’t care about. But it was something I loved. I would hold the bottle and my father would pull the string to raise the sails. Then he would burn the end of the string off and he needed to do it very carefully not to burn the ship. My father’s den was full of ships in bottles. Some were perfect, but their sails browned; some became damaged after

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years. Then there was the one that had burned in the week before my death. He smashed that one first. My heart stopped. He turned and saw all the others, all the years they marked and the hands that had held them. His dead father’s, his dead child’s. I watched him as he smashed the rest. He christened the walls with the news of my death. The bottles, all of them, lay broken on the floor. He stood in the wreckage. It was then that, without knowing how, I showed myself. In every piece of glass there was my face. My father looked down and around him. It was just for a second, and then I was gone. The truth was that the line between the living and the dead could be blurred.

Four In the hours after I was murdered, as my mother made phone calls and my father began going door to door in the neighborhood looking for me, Mr Harvey had destroyed the hole in the cornfield and took away the bag filled with my body parts. He walked not far from the houses where my father stood talking to our neighbors, leaving traces of me behind him – smells the neighbors’ dog would pick up and follow to find my elbow, smells the rain of the next three days would wash away. He carried me back to his house, where, while he went inside to wash up, I waited for him. After the house was sold, the new owners saw the dark spot on the floor of their garage. The realtor had said it was oil, but it was me, leaking out of Mr Harvey’s bag onto the concrete. The beginning of my secret signals to the world. Later I realized that I wasn’t the first girl he’d killed. He knew to take away my body from the field. He knew to watch the weather and to kill right before the rain because it would wash away all the evidence. But he was not careful enough. He forgot my elbow and used a cloth sack for a bloody body.

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As he washed his body in the hot water of his bathroom, his movements were slow. He felt calm. It was dark in the bathroom and he felt the warm water wash me and the thoughts of me away. Mr Harvey put the bag with my body in an old safe and drove it to a sinkhole eight miles from our neighborhood. In his car he played a radio station with Christmas carols because it was December. He whistled and congratulated himself. Better and better he was getting now, never killing in the same way, but making each kill a surprise to himself, a gift to himself. I had a memory of going down this road with my father and Buckley. My father had asked if any of us wanted to watch a refrigerator disappear. “The earth will swallow it!” he said. “The earth has a mouth?” Buckley asked. “I’ll go,” I said. My father had told me that there was a huge sinkhole, now used for garbage. I didn’t care; I just wanted to see the earth swallow something. So when I watched Mr Harvey take me to the sinkhole, I thought how smart he was. How he put the bag in a metal safe. It was late when he got there. He left the safe in his car and walked to the house of the Flanagans who lived near the sinkhole and owned it. The Flanagans made money letting people dump their waste there. Mr Harvey knocked on the door of the small white house and a woman opened it. “Good evening, sir,” Mrs Flanagan said. “Got something?” “It’s in the back of my car,” Mr Harvey said. He gave her a twenty-dollar bill. “What have you got in there, a dead body?” she joked. She didn’t really think so. Mr Harvey smiled. “An old safe of my father’s, finally got it out here,” he said. “Wanted to do it for years.” “Is there anything in it?” she asked. “Just air.”

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“OK then. Need any help?” “That would be lovely,” he said. The Flanagans never thought that the girl they had read about in the newspapers was in the gray metal safe that a lonely man brought there one night and paid them twenty dollars to throw it in the sinkhole. On the way back to his car Mr Harvey put his hands in his pockets. There was my silver charm bracelet. He didn’t remember taking it off my wrist. He didn’t remember putting it into his pocket. He fingered the Pennsylvania keystone, the ballet shoe, the tiny bell, and the bicycle. Then he drove down the road to a building site. No one was around – only me. I stayed with him to see what he saw, to go where he would go. He got out of his car and fingered the charms one last time. He liked the Pennsylvania keystone with my initials, so he pulled it off and put it in his pocket. Then he threw the bracelet into the mud. Two days before Christmas, I watched Mr Harvey read a book which gave him an idea to build another of his shelters. He decided he wanted to build again, to experiment as he had with the cornfield hole. He would get the simple materials and build it in a few hours in his backyard. After smashing all the ships in bottles, my father found him there. It was cold out, but Mr Harvey wore only a thin cotton shirt. He had turned thirty-six that year. “What’s this?” my father asked. My father was strong. He was a bigger man than Mr Harvey. So when he walked around the front of the green house and into the backyard, where he saw Mr Harvey building something, Mr Harvey became alert. “What’s this?” my father asked again. Mr Harvey stopped to look at him and then turned back to his work. “A tent.” “What’s that for?”

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“Mr Salmon,” Mr Harvey said instead, “I’m sorry for your loss.” There was a moment of quiet, and then Mr Harvey asked my father if he wanted to help. So it was that from heaven I watched my father build a tent with the man who’d killed me. When the basic structure was done, Mr Harvey went toward the house without giving a reason. My father thought it was a break time. That Mr Harvey had gone in to get coffee or tea. He was wrong. Mr Harvey went into the house and up the stairs to check the knife that he had kept in his bedroom. It was still on his desk where he also kept his sketch pad in which, often, in the middle of the night, he drew the designs in his dreams. My blood on the knife had turned black. It had begun to snow outside. It was the first snow since my death, and my father noticed it. “I can hear you, honey,” he said to me, though I wasn’t talking. “What is it?” I focused very hard to give him a vision. I thought I could do it, but on Earth nothing happened. Through the snow I noticed that my father was looking at the green house in a new way. He had begun to wonder. When Mr Harvey came out of the house, it was like an electric shock. “You know something,” my father said. He met my father’s eyes, but did not speak. When my father moved toward him, Mr Harvey put his hand up. “That’s enough now,” he said. “Why don’t you go home?” The time had come for my father to think of something to say. But all he could think of was this: “Susie,” he whispered. “We’ve just built a tent,” Mr Harvey said. “The neighbors saw us. We’re friends now.” “You know something,” my father said. “Go home. I can’t help you.”

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Later my father checked what he knew about Mr Harvey. Had anyone asked this man where he was the day I disappeared? Had anyone seen this man in the cornfield? I stood alone in my heaven. On Earth the snowflakes fell softly.

Five Part of me wanted revenge, wanted my father to turn into a different man – a violent man. That’s what you see in movies, that’s what happens in the books people read. A usual man takes a gun or a knife and kills the murderer of his family. Before my father left for Mr Harvey’s, he had written in his notebook this: “I think Susie watches me.” I was so happy in heaven. I hugged Holly, I hugged Franny. My father knew, I thought. My father had a suspicion and repeated it in his mind. Harvey, Harvey, Harvey. I watched him as he went to call Len Fenerman. The police in those first weeks were very careful. Missing dead girls were not an everyday thing in our town. But with no clues on where my body was or who had killed me, the police were getting nervous. “I don’t want to sound stupid, Detective Fenerman,” my father began. “Len, please.” On his desk there was my school picture Len Fenerman had taken from my mother. He had known, before anyone said the words, that I was already dead. “I’m sure there’s a man in the neighborhood who knows something,” my father said. “Who is it, and why do you think so?” Len Fenerman asked. My father told him about the tent, about how Mr Harvey had told him to go home, about saying my name, about how

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weird the people in our neighborhood thought Mr Harvey was with no job and no kids. “I’ll check it out,” Len Fenerman said, because he had to. “Don’t talk to anyone and don’t go to him again.” When my father hung up the phone he felt strangely empty. He went to his den and then closed the door quietly behind him. When Len Fenerman had gone from door to door asking people in the neighborhood, he had found nothing unusual at George Harvey’s house. Mr Harvey was a single man who had wanted to move in with his wife. She had died sometime before this. He built dollhouses for sale and kept to himself. That was all anyone knew. No, Harvey said, he didn’t know the Salmons well. Yes, he had seen the children. Everyone knew who had children and who didn’t, he said. “You can see the toys in the yard. The houses are always more lively,” he noted. “I understand you had a talk with Mr Salmon not long ago,” Len said on his second trip to the green house. “Yes, is there something wrong?” Mr Harvey asked. “Let me get my glasses first.” Len followed him into the back, where there was a large table with a dozen of miniature houses on it. A little strange, Fenerman thought, but it doesn’t make the man a murderer. Mr Harvey got his glasses and said, “Yes, Mr Salmon was on one of his walks and he helped me build the tent.” “The tent?” “Each year it’s something I do for Leah,” he said. “My wife. I’m a widower.” Len felt uncomfortable. “I understand,” he said. “I feel terrible about what happened to that girl,” Mr Harvey said. “I tried to say that to Mr Salmon. But I know that nothing can help at a time like this.” “So you build this tent every year?” Len Fenerman asked. “In the past, I’ve done it inside, but I tried to do it outside this year.” “Where inside?”

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“The basement. I can show you if you want. I still have all of Leah’s things down there.” But Len didn’t go to the basement. “I think I’ve got enough information, thank you,” he said. “I just wanted to check the neighborhood a second time.” “How’s your investigation going?” Mr Harvey asked. “Have you found anything? I wish I could do more for you.” Len thought that he was sincere. “He’s a bit strange,” Len said when he called my father, “but I have nothing on him.” “What did he say about the tent?” “That he built it for Leah, his wife.” “I remember someone said that his wife’s name was Sophie,” my father said. Len checked his notes. “No, Leah. I wrote it down.” My father doubted himself. Where had he gotten the name Sophie? He was sure he had heard it too. That evening my father wrote “Leah?” in his notebook. Then he wrote, “Sophie?” He didn’t know that he had begun a list of the dead. On Christmas Day my family would have been more comfortable in heaven. Christmas was mostly ignored in my heaven. Some people dressed in white and pretended they were snowflakes, but other than that – nothing. That Christmas Samuel Heckler came to our house on a surprise visit. “Lindsey,” said my mother who opened the door. “There’s a visitor for you.” My father watched my sister get up and leave the room. We both did. I sat with my father then. I was the ghost. Samuel Heckler, thirteen, combed his hair back and dressed in black leather, like a teenaged vampire. Lindsey thought that Samuel Heckler was cute. “Merry Christmas, Lindsey,” he said to my sister and gave her a small box wrapped in blue paper. I could see it happen: her heart was beating fast. My death didn’t matter at that moment: she was thirteen, he was cute, and he had visited her on Christmas Day.

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“I heard you are going to the gifted camp,” he said to her, because no one was talking. “Me too.” My mother remembered then to switch on her autopilot hostess. “Would you like to come in?” she asked. “I have some hot drinks in the kitchen.” “That would be wonderful,” Samuel Heckler said and, to Lindsey’s amazement and mine, offered my sister his arm. Buckley walked with the three of them into the kitchen and asked, as he had at least once a day, “Where’s Susie?” They were silent. Samuel looked at Lindsey. “Buckley,” my father called him from the living-room, “come play Monopoly with me.” My brother had never played Monopoly. Everyone said he was too young, but this was the magic of Christmas. He ran into the living-room, and my father picked him up and sat him on his lap. “See this shoe?” my father said. Buckley nodded his head. “I want you to listen to everything I say about it, okay?” “Susie?” my brother asked, somehow connecting the two. “Yes, I’m going to tell you where Susie is.” I began to cry up in heaven. What else was there for me to do? “This shoe was the piece Susie played Monopoly with,” he said. “And the board is the world. Now if I tell you that one of the pieces would be taken away, what would that mean?” “They can’t play anymore?” “Right.” “Why?” Buckley asked. He looked up at my father. “Why?” my brother asked again. My father did not want to say “because life is unfair” or “because that’s how it is.” He wanted to say something else, something that could explain death to a four-year-old child. “Susie is dead,” he said now. “Do you know what that means?” Buckley covered the shoe with his hand and looked up to see if his answer was right. My father nodded. “You won’t see Susie anymore, honey. None of us will.” My father cried.

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“Are you going to open your gift?” Samuel Heckler asked my sister. They were standing in the kitchen. Lindsey smiled and pulled the white ribbon on top of the box. She took the blue paper off the black velvet box. Carefully she held it in her hands. In heaven I was excited. “Open it,” Samuel Heckler said. “I’m scared.” “Don’t be.” He put his hand on her arm and – wow! – what I felt when he did that. Lindsey had a cute boy in the kitchen! This was news – I suddenly got to know everything about her. She never would have told me any of this. In the box there was a gold heart-shaped pendant. Samuel had given her a half a heart. And from inside his shirt he pulled out the other half that hung around his neck on a cord. Lindsey’s face turned red; mine too turned red up in heaven. At this moment I forgot my father and my mother in the living-room because I saw Lindsey move closer to Samuel Heckler. She kissed him; it was wonderful. I was almost alive again.

Six Two weeks before my death, I left the house later than usual, and by the time I reached the school the classes had already started. A monitor from the office would write down your name if you tried to get in the front doors after the first bell rang. I had never been late before, but those who were usually used the back door to the stage of the school theater, which was always left open by the kind janitor. So that day I walked into the backstage area. I stopped and put down my book bag to brush my hair. “You are beautiful, Susie Salmon.” I heard the voice, looked around me, and saw Ray Singh. “Hello,” he said. I knew Ray Singh had a crush on me. He had moved from England the year before but Clarissa said he was born in India.

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“Hasn’t the first bell rung?” I asked. “What are you doing here? Are you going to stay here all day?” “Just until English class is over,” he said. “You’re cutting English!” It was as if he said he’d robbed a bank. Ray was smart. This combined with being an Indian from England had made him a Martian in our town. For a while Ray and I were quiet. I could feel Ray’s body moving closer to me. He is from England, I was thinking. His lips moved closer. I was suddenly dizzy – about to have my first kiss, when we both heard something. We froze. A moment later, the theater door opened and in walked Principal Caden and the art teacher, Miss Ryan, whom we recognized by their voices. There was also a third person with them. “We are not punishing you this time, but we will if you do it again,” Mr Caden was saying. “Miss Ryan, did you bring the materials?” “Yes,” she said. “I’m only doing the tasks.” It was Ruth Connors. We couldn’t see her but I recognized the voice and so did Ray. “This,” Mr Caden said, “was not the task.” We knew what they were talking about. A copy of one of Ruth’s drawings had been passed around the school. “If I’m not mistaken,” said Miss Ryan, “there are no breasts on our anatomy model.” “There isn’t a nose or mouth on that wooden model either,” Ruth said, “but you told us to draw in faces.” “That’s enough, young lady,” Mr Caden said. “Without the drawing there would be no problem.” “So it’s my fault then,” Ruth said. “Understood?” “Yes,” said Ruth. The doors opened and shut, and a moment later Ray and I could hear Ruth Connors crying. I walked out from behind the stage. Ruth didn’t move, just looked at me. “Susie Salmon,” she said.

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I stood in front of her. “So you heard?” she asked. “Can I see?” Ruth gave me the book of her drawings and I looked. “You’re really good, Ruth,” I said. Ruth became special for me then. The drawings were so good that in that moment I forgot the rules of school and all the bells and whistles. That week Ray would kiss me by my locker. Our only kiss was like a beautiful rainbow. After the cornfield had been searched and the police had left, Ruth went walking there. She started doing this in the mornings to avoid the school bus. It was cold, very cold, before the sun rose. So she began to walk directly through the cornfield and quite fast. She talked to herself, and sometimes she thought about me. We met each morning in those first few months. After Lindsey had left the gloves for me on the cornfield on Christmas, I looked down one morning and saw Ruth pick them up. She looked up to the sky and said, “Thank you.” I liked to think she was talking to me. I loved those mornings with Ruth, feeling that although we were on our opposite sides of the Inbetween, we were born to keep each other company. Strange girls who had found each other in the strangest way – in the touch she had felt when I passed. Ray was a walker, like me. He had seen Ruth Connors walking alone out on the cornfield. He wanted my killer to be caught almost as much as my parents did. One morning he filled his father’s thermos with his mother’s sweet tea. He left early to wait for Ruth. When he saw her walking, he rubbed his hands together and prepared what he wanted to say. His bravery this time came from being, at fourteen, absolutely lonely. I watched Ruth come to the field, thinking she was alone. She saw Ray stand up when she was still some distance away.

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“Hello, Ruth Connors!” he called and waved his arms. Ruth looked over, and his name came into her head: Ray Singh. But she didn’t know much more than that. She had heard the rumors about the police visiting his house, but she believed what her father had said – “No kid did that” – and so she walked over to him. “I prepared tea and have it in my thermos here,” Ray said. I blushed for him up in heaven. “No thank you,” Ruth said. “I was there that day, backstage, when you and Susie talked in the school theater,” Ray said, “Susie Salmon, I mean.” “I know who you mean,” she said. “Are you going to the memorial service?” “I didn’t know there was one,” she said. “I don’t think I’m going.” I was staring hard at his lips. They were redder than usual from the cold. “Do you want some lip balm?” Ruth asked. Ray lifted his wool gloves up to his lips – the chapped surface that I had kissed. “That’d be nice,” he said. “Will you sit with me until the buses come?” They sat together on the cement platform. Again I was seeing something I never would have seen: the two of them together. It made Ray more attractive to me than he had ever been. His eyes were the darkest gray. It became a ritual for the two of them. Every morning Ray and Ruth talked and drank sweet tea. They were cold as hell, but that didn’t seem to matter to them. They talked about what it was like to be a foreigner in our town. They read poems. They talked about how to become what they wanted to be. A doctor for Ray. A painter/poet for Ruth. And, sometimes, they would talk about me. “It’s so strange,” Ruth said. “I mean, it’s like we were in the same class since kindergarten but that day backstage was the first time we ever looked at each other.” “She was great,” Ray said. “Do you think they’ll find him?”

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“I guess so. You know, we’re not far from where it happened.” “I know,” he said. They both sat on the cement platform, holding tea in their hands. The cornfield had become a place no one went. “I found these here,” she said, showing him the gloves. “Do you ever think about her?” he asked. They were quiet again. “All the time,” Ruth said. “Sometimes I think she’s lucky, you know. I hate this place.” “Me too,” Ray said. “But I’ve lived in other places. This is just a temporary hell, not a permanent one. She’s in heaven, if you believe in that stuff.” “I do,” Ruth said. “Is she happy?” “It is heaven, right?” “But what does that mean?” When my father knocked on the door of Ray Singh’s house, he was met by Ray’s mother, Ruana. It was not that she was very welcoming, and she was far from sunny, but something about her dark hair, and her gray eyes – all of these things impressed him. He had heard the comments the police made about her. In their opinion she was cold and snobbish and weird. And so that was what he imagined he would find. “Come in and sit,” she’d said to him. She led him into the small front room of their house. There were open books lying on the floor. There also were rows of bookshelves on the walls. Ray’s mother was wearing a yellow sari. Her feet were bare. “Something to drink?” she asked, and he nodded his head. Mrs Singh brought tea on a tray, put it down on the carpet in front of him, and they sat down. “Is Dr Singh a professor?” my father asked, though he knew this already. “Yes,” she said. “Ray was with him the day your daughter was killed.” “That must be why you’ve come,” she added.

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“Yes,” my father said, “I want to talk to him.” “He’s at school right now,” she said. “You know that. He did nothing wrong and loved your little girl. A schoolboy crush.” I watched my father. I had never seen him so lost before. In those first two months my mother and father moved in opposite directions from each other. One stayed in, the other went out. “I’m glad that a nice boy like him loved Susie,” my father said. “I’ve come to thank your son for that.” She smiled. “He wrote her a love note,” he said. “I wish I had done the same – to tell her I loved her on that last day.” They looked at each other in silence. “I know who killed her,” my father heard himself say to Ruana Singh. “Have you told the police? What do they say?” “They say that for now there is nothing but my suspicion to link him to the crime.” “What are you doing?” “I’m investigating,” my father said. “I have to do something.” “What is the man’s name?” “George Harvey. He lives in the neighborhood.” It was the first time he’d said it aloud to anyone except Len Fenerman. She stood up. Turning her back to him, she walked over to first one window and then the other. She watched Ray as he walked up the road. “Ray will come now. I will go to meet him.” She paused. “Mr Salmon,” she said, “I would do exactly what you are doing: I would talk to everyone I needed to, I would not tell too many people his name. When I was sure, I would find a quiet way, and I would kill him.” Len Fenerman visited our house on the day that my father went to visit the Singhs. My mother opened the door to him. “Jack would like to talk to you,” my mother said. “But I’m sure you’re too busy to wait.” “Not too busy,” Len answered. “He went over to that poor Ray Singh’s house,” she said.

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“I’m sorry we had to question him,” Len said. “He has an alibi.” “Yes,” she said. “No young boy could ...” She couldn’t say it. At first my mother and I thought that Len Fenerman was obviously different from the rest of the policemen. He was just smaller. Then there were other things too – the way he often seemed to be thinking to himself, and how serious he was when he talked about me, the clues and the investigation. But, talking with my mother, Len Fenerman had shown that he was an optimist – he believed my killer would be caught. “Maybe not today or tomorrow,” he said to my mother, “but someday he’ll make some mistake and will be caught.” My mother didn’t say anything. “You remind me of my wife,” Len said after a long silence. “She wasn’t much of a talker when there was nothing to say.” A few more minutes passed. “I noticed that you used the past tense,” my mother said. They both heard the garage door open and my father’s car drive in. “She died soon after we were married,” Len said. “Daddy! Daddy!” Buckley shouted when my father came in, smiling. Even if it felt false, smiling and looking happy at least for my brother was often the favorite part of my father’s day.

Seven “Do you see her?” Buckley asked Nate as together with Holiday they walked up the stairs. “That’s my sister.” “No,” Nate said. “She was gone for a while, but now she’s back.” I had never even let myself think about showing myself to Buckley, afraid he might see my image in a mirror. Like everyone else, I was trying to protect him. “Too young,” I said to Franny. “Where do you think imaginary friends come from?” she said.

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“Last night she came in and kissed me on the cheek,” Buckley said. “Really?” “Yeah.” “Have you told your mom?” “It’s a secret,” Buckley said. “Susie told me she isn’t ready to talk to them yet. Do you want to see something else?” “Sure,” said Nate. “Come look,” Buckley said. They were in my room now. “Susie’s room,” Nate said. Buckley got down on his belly and Nate followed him. They crawled under my bed into my secret storage space. In the material on the underside of the bed, there was a hole where I kept things that I didn’t want anyone else to see. One of them only Buckley and Nate would recognize. Buckley unwrapped my father’s old handkerchief and there it was – the stained and bloody twig. The year before, a three-year-old Buckley had swallowed it. Nate and he had been playing and putting rocks up their noses in our backyard when Buckley had found a small twig under the oak tree. He put the twig in his mouth like a cigarette. I watched him from my bedroom window, where I was sitting painting my nails and reading Seventeen. I was always given the job of watching out for my little brother because Lindsey was not old enough. “Susie, Susie!” Nate was suddenly crying. I looked down and saw Buckley lying on the ground. I ran down the hall and almost rolled down the stairs. I called Lindsey’s name, then forgot her, ran out to the backyard through the porch and then to the oak tree. Buckley couldn’t breathe. His body was shaking, and I carried him into the garage, where my father’s precious Ford Mustang stood. I had watched my parents drive, and my mother had shown me how a car went from park to reverse. I put Buckley in the back and grabbed the keys from the terracotta pot where my father hid them. I sped all the way to the hospital. I burned out the brake, but no one seemed to care.

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“If she hadn’t been there,” the doctor later told my mother, “you would have lost your little boy.” Grandma Lynn said I’d have a long life because I had saved my brother’s. As usual, Grandma Lynn was wrong. “Wow,” Nate said, holding the twig. “Yeah,” said Buckley. I felt faint in heaven that day. Had my brother really seen me somehow, or was he just a little boy telling beautiful lies?

Eight For three months Mr Harvey dreamed of buildings. He saw Yugoslavia with thatched-roofed houses. There were blue skies and the sea. Along the fjords of Norway, he saw wooden huts built by Vikings. Dragons and local heroes made from wood. But there was one building, from Vologda, that he dreamed about most: a church. And it was this dream – his favorite – that he had on the night of my murder and on the nights following until the other dreams came back. The notstill dreams – the ones of women and children. I could see all the way back to Mr Harvey in his mother’s arms, looking at a table covered with pieces of colored glass. His father sorted them by shape and size. His father’s jeweler’s eyes looked deeply into each one to see if it was good enough. And George Harvey would look at only one jewel that hung from his mother’s neck – a large oval piece of amber set in silver, inside of which was a whole and perfect fly. “A builder,” was all Mr Harvey said when he was young. Then he stopped answering the question about what his father did. How could he say he worked in the desert, and that he built huts of broken glass and old wood? He told George Harvey about what made a good building and how to be sure you were making things to last. So it was his father’s old sketchbooks that Mr Harvey looked at when the not-still dreams came back. He would imagine other places and other worlds, trying to love what he did not. And then he would begin to dream dreams of his

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mother and the last time he had seen her, running through a field on the side of the road. She had been dressed in white. His father and she had fought for the last time in the car. He had pushed her out of the car. George Harvey sat still in the back seat – his eyes wide open, not afraid but just watching it all as he did everything by then – in slow-motion. She had run without stopping, her white body thin and disappearing, while her son held the amber necklace she had taken off to give him. His father had watched the road. “She’s gone now, son,” he said. “She won’t be coming back.”

Nine My grandmother Lynn arrived on the evening before my memorial in her usual style. She liked to hire limousines to drive in from the airport drinking champagne and wearing what she called her “thick and fabulous animal” – a mink coat she had got secondhand. Without her thick and fabulous animal, my grandmother was really thin. Even at sixty-two she looked perfect in strait-cut dresses and wouldn’t be seen without makeup. In late January Principal Caden had initiated the idea. “It will be good for your children and all the students at school,” he had said to my parents. He volunteered to organize the event at our church. My parents were like sleepwalkers saying yes to his questions, nodding their heads to flowers or speakers. When my mother said it on the phone to her mother, she was surprised to hear the words “I’m coming.” When I was alive, everything my grandmother did was bad. But a strange thing happened when she arrived in her rented limo that day, opened the door of our house, and walked in. She was, in a way, bringing back the light. “You need my help, Abigail,” was the first thing my grandmother said. “Grandma Lynn?” Lindsey asked shyly after dinner that evening.

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“What?” “Could you teach me about makeup?” “My God in heaven, praise the Lord, yes!” “Are you laughing, Abbie?” My father smiled. And she was. My mother was suddenly laughing and she was crying too. “Susie was a good girl, honey,” Grandma Lynn said to Lindsey. “Just like you. Now lift up your chin and let me have a look at your eyes.” Then she noticed the pendant. “I am amazed,” Grandma Lynn said and put her hands on her hips. “What?” my sister asked. “Lindsey Salmon, you have a boyfriend,” my grandmother announced to the room. My father smiled. He was liking Grandma Lynn suddenly. I was too. “Do not,” Lindsey tried to protest. My grandmother wanted to say something when my mother whispered, “Do too.” “Bless you, honey,” my grandmother said, “You’re young and you should have a boyfriend.” Mrs Utemeyer was the only dead person my sister and I ever saw. She moved in with her son to our neighborhood when I was six and Lindsey five. My mother said that she had lost part of her brain and that sometimes she left her son’s house and didn’t know where she was. She would often come to our front yard, stand under a tree and look at the street as if waiting for a bus. My mother would take her to our kitchen and make tea for the two of them, and after she calmed her she would call her son’s house to tell them where she was. Sometimes no one was home and Mrs Utemeyer would sit at our kitchen table for hours. She would be there when we came home from school. She smiled at us. Often she called Lindsey “Natalie” and touched her hair. When she died, her son asked my mother to bring Lindsey and me to the funeral. “My mother seemed to like your children,” he said.

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At the funeral Mr Utemeyer came up to the two of us. “Which one of you is the one she called Natalie?” he asked. We stared at him. I pointed to Lindsey. “I’d like you to come say goodbye,” he said. “You can come too,” he said to me. It wasn’t Mrs Utemeyer in the casket. It was something else. But it was Mrs Utemeyer too. I tried to look only at the gold rings on her fingers. “Mother,” Mr Utemeyer said, “I brought the little girl you called Natalie.” A second or two later it was over and we went back to our mother and father. I wasn’t very surprised when I first saw Mrs Bethel Utemeyer in my heaven. And I wasn’t shocked when Holly and I found her walking hand in hand with a small blond girl she introduced as her daughter, Natalie. The morning of my memorial Lindsey stayed in her room for a long time. She had also told herself it would be okay to take a dress from my closet. That I wouldn’t mind. No one, not my mother or father, nor Buckley or Lindsey, confessed to entering or taking things from my room, blaming only Holiday, our dog. But each of them came and visited me there. It was weird to watch. Lindsey opened the door to my room. She wanted to look nice for Samuel. She had always wanted the clothes I owned. “Gosh,” she said, looking into my closet. She realized with guilt and happiness that everything she saw was hers now. Lindsey jumped as Grandma Lynn came in. “Sorry, honey,” she said. “I thought I heard you in here. I need help with this zipper.” Grandma Lynn turned, and Lindsey zipped her dress up. “It’s one of the reasons for a man – you can’t do this stuff yourself.” “I’ve forgotten what she looked like,” Lindsey suddenly said. “What?” Grandma Lynn turned. “I can’t remember,” Lindsey said. “I mean her neck, her back, you know, did I ever look at them?”

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“Oh honey,” Grandma Lynn said, “come here.” She opened up her arms for a hug, but Lindsey turned to the closet. “I need to look pretty,” she said. “You are pretty,” Grandma Lynn said. Lindsey couldn’t believe it. One thing Grandma Lynn never did was give out compliments. So when they came, they were unexpected gold. “We’ll find you a nice dress in here,” Grandma Lynn said and walked toward my clothes. “Voila!” She pulled out a dark blue mini-dress that my sister had never seen. It was actually Clarissa’s. “It’s so short,” Lindsey said. “I’m shocked at your mother,” Grandma Lynn said. “She let the kid have something stylish!” My father called up from the hallway that he wanted everyone to be ready in ten minutes. When we came downstairs, my mother noticed the shortness of Lindsey’s dress. Only then my sister and I realized that Grandma Lynn didn’t have any makeup on her face. Samuel Heckler was standing by the church door. He was dressed in black, and beside him stood Hal, his older brother. “This must be Samuel,” my grandmother said as my family came up to them. “I’m the evil grandma.” “Shall we go in?” my father said. “It’s nice to see you, Samuel.” Lindsey and Samuel led the way, while my grandmother walked on the other side of my mother. Detective Fenerman was standing by the door in a suit. He nodded at my parents and gave my mother a long look. “Will you join us?” my father asked. “Thank you,” Len said, “but I just want to be around.” My family walked into our church. The truth was, the memorial day was not the worst day. At least it was honest. At least it was a day about my absence. Today my father would not have to pretend he was getting back to normal. Today he could show his grief and so could my mother. It has been about two months and it wasn’t news anymore for everybody except my family – and Ruth.

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She came with her father. They were standing in the corner, talking to the others. “My wife likes Principal Caden’s idea,” Ruth’s father was saying, “that the memorial will help the kids to accept it. I actually think that we should let bygones be bygones and leave the family alone. But Ruthie wanted to come.” Ruth watched my family and noticed in horror Lindsey’s new look and how Samuel Heckler was holding my sister’s hand. “Ruthie,” her father asked, “what is it?” “I like the way the graveyard looks.” Clarissa was there too, with her boyfriend Brian Nelson. She walked up to my family and talked to my father first. “How are you and Mrs Salmon?” “We’re fine, Clarissa,” he said. What a lie, I thought. My mother was in a trance and was staring at Clarissa’s face. Clarissa was alive and I was dead. Clarissa began to feel it and wanted to get away. Then she saw the dress. She said nothing. Clarissa looked at the dress again and knew she could never ask for it back now. Ray Singh stayed away. He said goodbye to me in his own way: by looking at a picture – my photograph that I had given him that fall. He looked into the eyes of that photograph and saw right through them. What did dead mean, Ray wondered. It meant lost, it meant frozen, it meant gone. He knew that no one ever really looked the way they did in photos. He realized something as he stared at my photo – that it was not me. I was in the air around him, I was in the cold mornings he had now with Ruth, I was in the quiet time he spent alone studying. I was the girl he had kissed. He wanted, somehow, to set me free. He didn’t want to burn my photo, but he didn’t want to look at me anymore. I watched him as he put the photograph in one of his volumes of Indian poetry. At the memorial they said nice things about me. But my father and mother sat through it numbed. Samuel kept holding

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Lindsey’s hand, but she didn’t notice him. Buckley too sat in a small suit. He watched my father. It was Grandma Lynn who did the most important thing that day. During the final hymn, as my family stood up, she turned to Lindsey and whispered, “By the door, that’s him.” Lindsey looked. Standing just behind Len Fenerman was a man from the neighborhood. He was dressed more casually than anyone else. For a moment Lindsey thought she recognized him. Their eyes met. Then she passed out. Unnoticed, George Harvey passed between the gravestones behind the church and walked away.

Ten Each summer, the gifted kids from different schools would get together for four weeks at a camp. These were the kids that could break down an engine and build it back again. They understood things in a real way. They seemed not to care about their grades. My sister Lindsey was among the gifted and so were Samuel and Ruth. Samuel’s heroes were Richard Feynman and his brother, Hal, who had a bike shop near the sinkhole. Hal smoked, lived at home and had many romances. When people asked Hal when he was going to grow up, he said, “Never.” Inspired by this, when the teachers asked Samuel what he wanted to be, he would say: “I just turned fourteen. I don’t know. “ Almost fifteen now, Ruth Connors knew. She sat in the darkness of the shed behind her house and concentrated until she had a headache. Then she would run into the house, past the living room where her father sat reading, and to her room, where she would write her poetry. “Being Susie,” “After Death,” “In Pieces,” “Beside Her Now,” and her favorite – “The Lip of the Grave.” Ruth was late for the gifted camp bus that morning because she had a stomach ache. She was trying to become a vegetarian

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and the night before had eaten a whole head of cabbage for dinner. Her mother didn’t like the idea of vegetarianism that Ruth had got after my death. “This is not Susie!” her mother would say trying to make her eat some fried chicken. At the camp, Ruth looked at the kids getting their nametags. She noticed my sister Lindsey who had decided not to put her last name on her nametag and had drawn a fish instead. She wasn’t lying that way, but she hoped the kids from the other schools wouldn’t know the story of my death or at least wouldn’t connect her to it. All spring Lindsey had worn the half-a-heart pendant while Samuel wore the other half. They were shy about their love for each other. They did not hold hands at school, and they did not pass notes. They sat together at lunch; Samuel walked her home. On her fourteenth birthday he brought her a cake with a candle in it. The following morning at the gifted camp Ruth was up early. She didn’t belong to any group, just like Lindsey. They met at the dining hall. Ruth hadn’t talked to my sister since before my death. But she’d seen Lindsey walking home with Samuel and seen her smile with him. She had tried to imagine herself being my sister as she had spent time imagining being me. “What’s the fish for?” Ruth asked, pointing to my sister’s nametag. “Are you religious?” Lindsey shrugged. “Ruth Connors, poet,” Ruth introduced herself. “Lindsey,” Lindsey said. “Salmon, right?” “Please don’t,” Lindsey said, and for a second Ruth could feel the feeling a little stronger. How people looked at Lindsey and imagined a girl covered in blood. “K-I-S-S-I-N-G!” the other kids greeted Lindsey and Samuel wherever they went. With the heat of the summer

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love grew bigger and bigger in them. But they were careful and followed the rules. They set up little meetings outside in the back of the cafeteria or by a certain tree. They kissed. They wanted to do more but couldn’t. Samuel wanted it to be special. He thought that it should be perfect. Lindsey just wanted to get it over with. Have it behind her so she could become an adult sooner. “They’re going to do it,” Ruth wrote in her journal. She told her journal about me passing by her in the parking lot, about how on that night I had touched her – literally, she felt. What I had looked like then. How she dreamed about me. How she had the idea that a spirit could be a second skin for someone, a protective layer. How maybe if she could free us both. I would read over her shoulder as she wrote down her thoughts and wonder if anyone might believe her one day. When she was imagining me, she felt better, less alone, more connected to something out there. To someone out there. She saw the cornfield in her dreams, and a new world opening. “You’re a really good poet, Ruth,” she imagined me saying. She thought that the power of words could resurrect me. By that summer I had begun to spend less time watching them from the gazebo because I could still see Earth as I walked the fields of heaven. If I walked too far and wondered loud enough, the fields would change. I could look down and see horse corn and I could hear it then – singing – a kind of low humming warning me back from the edge. My head would ache and the sky would darken and it would be that night again, that perpetual yesterday lived again. My soul growing heavy. I came up to the lip of my grave this way many times but had yet to stare in. I began to wonder what the word heaven meant. I thought, if this were heaven, truly heaven, it would be where my grandparents lived. Where my father’s father, my favorite of them all, would lift me up and dance with me. I would feel only joy and have no memory, no cornfield and no grave. “You can have that,” Franny said to me. “Many people do.” “How do you make the switch?” I asked.

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“It’s not as easy as you might think,” she said. “You have to stop desiring certain answers.” “I don’t understand.” “If you stop asking why you were killed instead of someone else, stop investigating the vacuum left by your loss, stop wondering what everyone left on Earth is feeling,” she said, “you can be free. Simply put, you have to give up on Earth.” This seemed impossible to me. Ruth came into Lindsey’s dorm that night. “I had a dream about her,” she whispered to my sister. Lindsey stared at her. “Susie?” she asked. “I’m sorry about the incident in the dining hall,” Ruth said. “Can I get into bed with you?” Lindsey nodded. Ruth crawled in next to Lindsey in the narrow bed. “What happened in your dream?” Lindsey whispered. Ruth told her. “I was inside the earth,” Ruth said, “and Susie walked over me in the cornfield. I could feel her walking over me. I called out to her but my mouth filled with dirt. She couldn’t hear me no matter how much I tried to yell. Then I woke up.” “I don’t dream about her,” Lindsey said. “I only have nightmares about rats.” “Are you in love with Samuel?” Ruth asked. “Yes.” “Do you miss Susie?” Because it was dark and because Ruth was almost a stranger, Lindsey said what she felt. “More than anyone will ever know.” The last week of the camp was always spent developing a final project. It was always a better-mousetrap competition, and so it was more and more difficult to design something new. No one wanted to repeat a mousetrap that had already been built. The next morning the new assistant principal of the camp announced that year’s challenge that she created overnight: CAN YOU GET AWAY WITH CRIME? HOW TO COMMIT THE PERFECT MURDER. She wanted to do something different from mousetraps.

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The kids loved it. They began to think of whom they could plan to kill. It was all good fun until 7:15, when my sister walked in. She was still unaware, just feeling the excitement in the air, thinking that the mousetrap competition had been announced. Samuel kept his eye on Lindsey and rushed to her the moment she walked up. All my hopes were on this boy. “Catch her,” I said. A prayer going down to Earth. “Hey, Lindsey, have you heard?” Samuel asked when he reached my sister. Lindsey looked at him. “What?” “They changed the competition,” he said. “To what?” “Lindsey,” he blurted. “The competition is about murder.” She stared at him. “I wanted to tell you first,” he said. “I don’t understand. What’s going on?” Lindsey looked helplessly at Samuel. “This year’s competition is how to commit the perfect murder,” Samuel said. Samuel and I saw the tremor. The inside shaking of her heart. “Are you OK!” he asked. “I’m fine,” she said. But Samuel knew she wasn’t. So he took my sister away to talk. Outside the rain started quickly and then stopped. Sun came through the clouds and branches of the tree above her, and Ruth looked up as Lindsey and Samuel passed by walking toward the lake. “I think she listens,” she said, too softly to be heard. It became common knowledge at the camp who my sister was and how I had died. And they listed the dead they knew. Grandmother, grandfather, uncle, aunt, some had a parent, rarer was a sister or brother lost young to an illness – heart

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disease – leukemia – cancer. No one knew anyone who had been murdered. But now they knew me. Under a rowboat that was too old and worn to float, Lindsey lay down on the earth with Samuel Heckler, and he held her. “You know I’m okay,” she said, her eyes dry. “I think it is going to help me.” At fourteen, my sister sailed away from me into a place I’d never been. In the walls of my intimacy there was horror and blood; in the walls of hers there were windows. “How to Commit the Perfect Murder” was an old game in heaven. I always chose the icicle: the weapon melts away.

Eleven When my father woke up at 4 a.m., the house was quiet. My mother lay beside him, breathing lightly. Before leaving the house, my father would check on Buckley – to make sure he was asleep, to make sure he was fine. Then he would put on his sneakers. Then he would put Holiday’s collar on. It was still very early and he could almost see his breath. The morning dog walk gave him an excuse to pass by Mr Harvey’s house. He slowed only slightly in front of the green house. My father was sure that if he just stared hard enough, just looked long enough, he would find the clues he needed in the windows, in the green paint, or on the driveway with two large white stones. By late summer 1974, there had been no movement on my case. No body. No killer. Nothing. My father thought of Ruana Singh: “When I was sure, I would find a quiet way, and I would kill him.” He had not told this to Abigail. He’d felt my mother leaning heavily on the police. If my father said something that contradicted the police theories my

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mother would immediately reply, “Len says that doesn’t mean anything,” or, “I trust the police to find out what happened.” Why, my father wondered, did people trust the police so much? Why not trust instinct? It was Mr Harvey and he knew it. The green house was exactly like ours. I knew the floor plan of Mr Harvey’s by heart. I had made a warm spot on the floor of the garage until I cooled. He had brought my blood into the house with him on his clothes and skin. I knew the bathroom. In Mr Harvey’s house the bathroom and kitchen were spotless. The porcelain was yellow and the tile on the floor was green. He kept it cold. Upstairs, where Buckley, Lindsey, and I had our rooms, he had almost nothing. He had a straight chair where he would go to sit sometimes and stare out the window over at the high school, listen. But mostly he spent his hours in the back on the first floor, in the kitchen building dollhouses, in the living room listening to the radio or, sketching blueprints for some things like the hole or the tent. No one had bothered Mr Harvey about me for several months. By that summer he only occasionally saw a police car in front of his house. He was smart enough not to change his routine. If he was walking out to the garage or the mailbox, he kept on going. He set several clocks. One to tell him when to open the blinds, one when to close them. He would turn lights on and off throughout the house. When an occasional child happened by to sell chocolate bars for a school competition, he was friendly but businesslike, unremarkable. He kept things to count, and this counting reassured him. They were simple things. A wedding ring, a letter in an envelope, the heel of a shoe, a pair of glasses, an eraser, a small bottle of perfume, a plastic bracelet, my Pennsylvania keystone charm, his mother’s amber pendant. He would take them out at night long after he was certain that no newsboy or neighbor would knock on his door. He would count them like the beads on a rosary.

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For some he had forgotten the names. I knew the names. The heel of the shoe was from a girl named Claire, whom he had convinced to walk into the back of a van. She was younger than me. He had taken the heel off her shoe before he let Claire go. That was all he did. He got her into the van and took her shoes off. She started crying, and the sound made him crazy. He asked her to be quiet and just go. Step out of the van barefoot and uncomplaining while he kept her shoes. But she wouldn’t. She cried. He started working on one of the heels of the shoes with his knife, until someone knocked on the back of the van. He heard men’s voices and a woman yelling something about calling the police. He opened the door. “What the hell are you doing to that kid?” one of the men yelled. “I’m trying to repair her shoe.” The little girl was hysterical. Mr Harvey was all reason and calm. But Claire had seen what I had – his wanting something unspoken. Quickly, as the men and woman stood confused, unable to see what Claire and I knew, Mr Harvey gave the shoes to one of the men and said his goodbyes. He kept the heel. He liked to hold the small leather heel. When the alarm told him to shut the blinds and turn off most of the lights, Mr Harvey would go down into the basement. By the time he killed me, he still liked to sit in the basement in an easy chair that faced the dark hole up the wall. He would often fall asleep there, and there he was asleep when my father passed the green house at around 4:40 a.m. What I discovered, when I followed Mr Harvey’s stare were these animals from all over the neighborhood that had disappeared more than a year ago. No one could imagine an appetite like the one in the green house. Someone who would put quicklime on the bodies of cats and dogs, to have nothing left but their bones. By counting the bones and staying away from the letter, the wedding ring, the bottle of perfume, he tried to stay away from what he wanted most – from going

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upstairs in the dark to sit in the straight chair and look out toward the high school. Once he had even taken a long look at Lindsey, the lonely girl. What I think was hardest for me to understand was that he had tried each time to stop himself. He had killed animals, taking their lives to keep from killing a child. By August, my father had called the police too many times which irritated them and which wouldn’t help anyone. The final straw had been a call that came in the first week of July. Jack Salmon had explained to the operator how, on a morning walk, his dog had stopped in front of Mr Harvey’s house and started barking. No matter what Salmon had done, the dog wouldn’t move from the spot and wouldn’t stop barking. It became a joke at the station. Len finished his cigarette standing on the porch of our house and rang the bell. The door opened and there were Lindsey with Buckley in the hallway. “I need to talk to your father, kids,” Len said. They heard my father’s footsteps. He came downstairs and shook Len’s hand while Lindsey took Buckley into the kitchen. “Should I get Abigail?” my father asked. “Jack,” Len said, “I’m not here with any news – just the opposite. Can we sit?” I watched my father and Len go into the living room. Len sat on a chair and waited for my father to take a seat. “Listen, Jack,” he said. “It’s about George Harvey.” My father brightened. “I thought you said you had no news.” “I don’t. I have something I need to say on behalf of the station and myself. We need you to stop making calls about George Harvey. There is nothing to connect him to Susie’s death. Dogs and tents are not evidence.” “I know he did it,” my father said. “He’s strange, I agree, but as far as we know he isn’t a killer.” “How could you possibly know that?”

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Len Fenerman talked, but my father couldn’t hear him. As Len denied it, my father grew more certain. “You are stopping your investigation of him,” my father said. Lindsey was in the doorway, “Hello again, Lindsey,” Len said. “Detective Fenerman, you’re giving up.” My mother came downstairs too. “Len,” my mother said, “is there any news?” “Detective Fenerman is here to tell Dad to stop calling them,” Lindsey said. That night, as he had more and more often, my father stayed up by himself in his study. He could not believe the world falling down around him. He wrote in his notebook: “Abigail thinks Len Fenerman is right about Harvey.” As he wrote, the candle in the window flickered and distracted him. He stood up and stretched his arms. He turned off the desk light, leaving only the candle. As he was about to let go for the night, we both saw the same thing: another light. Outside. It looked like a penlight from that distance. One white beam slowly moving out across the street and toward the school. My father watched it. It was after midnight now, and the moon was not full enough to see the shapes of the trees and houses. My father watched the flashlight move in the direction of the cornfield. “Bastard,” he whispered. “You murderous bastard.” He dressed quickly from the closet in his study. Downstairs he went into the front hall closet and found the baseball bat. First he turned off the porch light they kept on all night for me, even though it had been eight months since the police said I would not be found alive. He opened the front door and came out on the dark front porch. He walked through the front yard and across the street. His heart was beating fast, but he could not feel anything but

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the knowledge in his brain. George Harvey had killed his last little girl. He reached the soccer field. To his right, far into the cornfield he saw the small light. He tightened his fingers around the bat. For just a second he could not believe what he was about to do, but then, with everything in him, he knew. The wind helped him. Once he was among the rows of corn, his focus only on the light, the wind covered his presence. The sound of his feet crushing the stalks was not heard in the whistle of the wind in the broken plants. Then the flashlight shut off and everything went dark. He took a few more steps, then stopped. “I know you’re here,” he said. I flooded the cornfield, I sent fires through it to light it up, I sent storms of hail and flowers, but none of it worked to warn him. I was trapped in my heaven: I just watched. “I’m here for it,” my father said, “Nobody’s awake. I’m here to finish it.” “Brian?” Clarissa’s shaking voice came out. She didn’t recognize my father’s voice, now full of hate. “Brian?” My father’s hand let the bat fall to the ground. “Hello? Who’s there?” Brian, who had parked his car in the school parking lot, walked toward the cornfield with his flashlight. Finally he heard what he would later say were Clarissa’s cries for help. My father ran blindly into Clarissa – Susie’s silly friend – and knocked her down in the darkness. Her screaming filled his ear. “Susie!” he screamed back. Brian ran when he heard my name. His light searched the cornfield, and, for one bright second, there was Mr Harvey. No one but me saw him. Brian’s light hit his back as he crawled into the high stalks and listened, again, for the sound of struggle.

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And then the light hit target and Brian pulled my father up and off Clarissa to hit him. He hit him on the head and back and face with his flashlight. My father shouted and yelled and moaned. Then Brian saw the bat. I pushed and pushed against the borders of my heaven. I wanted to reach out and lift my father up, away, to me, but couldn’t. I had to turn my back in heaven. I could do nothing – trapped in my perfect world. I wanted my father’s love for me. But also I wanted my father to go away and leave me be. Then I was granted one wish. Back in the room where the green chair was still warm from his body, I blew that lonely, flickering candle out.

Twelve I stood in the room beside my father and watched him sleep. The police understood: Mr Salmon was crazy with grief and had gone out to the cornfield seeking revenge. It fit what they knew of him, his persistent phone calls, his obsession with the neighbor, and Detective Fenerman visited that same day to tell my parents that my murder investigation had ended: no clues were left to pursue. No body had been found. That night my mother and sister and brother woke to the sounds of the police sirens and came down into the dark kitchen from their bedrooms. “Go wake your father,” my mother said to Lindsey. And so my sister had gone up. “Dad’s not here!” my sister yelled as soon as she realized. “Dad’s gone. Mom! Mom! Dad’s gone!” For a moment Lindsey was a frightened child. She rushed into the kitchen. “Mom?” Lindsey asked. “We have to do something. He’s gone after that man and gotten himself in trouble. I’m going out to find him. What if he’s hurt?”

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My mother gave Lindsey a meaningful look. “We are not discussing this further. You can go up to your room and wait or wait with me. Your choice.” Lindsey stared at our mother and knew what she wanted most: to flee, to run out into the cornfield where my father was, where I was, where she felt suddenly that the heart of her family had moved. But Buckley stood warm against her. “Buckley,” she said, “let’s go back upstairs. You can sleep in my bed.” He was beginning to understand: you were treated special and, later, something horrible would be told to you. When the call came from the police, my mother immediately took her coat and keys and lipstick. My sister felt more alone than she had ever been but also more responsible. My sister called Nate’s mother. She called Samuel next. Within an hour, Nate’s mother arrived to take Buckley, and Hal Heckler pulled up to our house on his motorcycle. My mother was not in the hospital room when Lindsey and Hal entered; it was just my father and me. She came up, stood on the other side of his bed and started to cry quietly. “Daddy?” she said. “Are you okay, Daddy?” “Lindsey,” Hal said, “I’ll wait for you out in the visitors’ area in case you need a ride home. I’ll tell your mother you’re in here if I see her.” Lindsey took my father’s hand and watched his face for movement. My sister was growing up before my eyes. “When the dead are done with the living,” Franny said to me, “the living can go on to other things.” “What about the dead?” I asked. “Where do we go?” She wouldn’t answer me. Len Fenerman had rushed to the hospital as soon as they put the call through. When my mother saw Len approaching from the end of the long white corridor, she relaxed.

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“Abigail,” he said when he came closer. “Oh, Len,” she said. His name had been the sign she needed. Everything that came next was not words. Len and my mother touched hands. The nurses at their station turned their heads away. They could see this man meant something to this woman. “Let’s talk in the visitors’ area,” Len said and led my mother down the corridor. As they walked she told him that my father was in surgery. Len told her what had happened in the cornfield. “Obviously, he thought the girl was George Harvey.” “He thought Clarissa was George Harvey?” My mother stopped just outside the visitors’ area. “It was dark outside, Abigail. I think he only saw the girl’s flashlight. My visit today couldn’t have helped much. He’s sure that Harvey is the murderer.” “Is Clarissa all right?” “She was checked and sent home. She was hysterical. Crying and screaming. It was a horrible coincidence.” Hal was sitting in a darkened corner of the visitors’ area. When he heard the voices he moved. It was my mother and a cop. My mother recognized him as Samuel’s brother. “Let’s keep walking,” my mother said. They found a door to a small balcony near my father’s room. They stood there smoking cigarettes and looking at each other as if they had suddenly moved on to a new stage. “How did your wife die?” my mother asked. “Suicide.” I was struck by my mother’s red mouth with the cigarette and smoke trailing out. I had seen this mother only once before – in the photograph. This mother had never had us. “Why did she kill herself?” “That’s the question that I ask myself when I’m not busy with things like your daughter’s murder.” A strange smile came across my mother’s face. “Say that again,” she said.

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“What?” Len looked at her smile. “My daughter’s murder,” my mother said. “Abigail, are you okay?” “No one says it. No one in the neighborhood talks about it. I just want it to be spoken out loud by somebody. To have it said aloud. I’m ready – I wasn’t ready before.” My mother dropped her cigarette and took Len’s face in her hands. “Say it,” she said. “Your daughter’s murder.” “Thank you.” She pulled Len to her and slowly kissed him on the mouth. He hesitated at first. His body telling him NO. But my mother was, in her need, irresistible. As a child I had seen her effect on men. She was known as one of the pretty mothers in the neighborhood; every man who met her always smiled. My mother had gotten her master’s in English – and still had ideas of teaching when the two of us were old enough to be left on our own. As her firstborn, I thought it was me who took away all those dreams of what she had wanted to be. But then my mother’s escape, her return to the outside world, had been destroyed when I was ten and Lindsey nine. She’d missed her period and had taken the car trip to the doctor. Now I see how the books on my parents’ bedside table changed from catalogs for local colleges, encyclopedias of mythology, novels by James, Eliot, and Dickens, to the works of Dr Spock. Then came gardening books and cookbooks until for her birthday two months before I died, I thought the perfect gift was Better Homes and Gardens Guide to Entertaining. When she realized she was pregnant the third time, she locked the more mysterious mother away. It was not easy for me to watch it, but I did. Their first hug was quick and passionate. “Abigail,” Len said. “Think of what you’re doing.”

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“I’m tired of thinking,” she said. Len looked at her. Marvelous, dangerous, wild. “Your husband,” he said. “Kiss me,” she said. “Please.” I was watching as Len kissed her forehead and closed his eyes. She whispered in his ear. I knew what was happening. She needed Len to drive the dead daughter out. It was my father who grew toward us as the years went by; it was my mother who grew away. My mother passed by Hal Heckler in the visitors’ area, and a moment later so did Len. Hal didn’t need more than this. “Your daughter’s in there,” Hal called out. She turned. There was an awkward pause. He said, speaking slowly. “I just wanted to let you know that your daughter is in there with your husband. I’ll be in the visitors’ area if you need me.” “Thank you,” she said. She never guessed for a second that that had been Hal’s purpose in greeting her. Inside the room it was dark now. My sister was in a chair pulled next to the bed. My father, asleep, was lying on his back. My mother could not know that I was there with them, that here were the four of us so changed now. Now she saw the pieces. She saw that my sister and father, together, had become a piece. She was glad of it. As she stood in the darkened room and watched my sister and father, I knew one of the things that heaven meant. I had a choice, and it was not to divide my family in my heart. Late at night the air above hospitals and senior citizen homes was often thick with souls. Holly and I watched sometimes on the nights when we couldn’t sleep. We understood how these deaths seemed planned from somewhere far away. Not our heaven. And so we began to suspect that there was a place greater than where we were.

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Franny came to watch with us in the beginning. “It’s one of my secret pleasures,” she said. “After all these years I still love to watch the souls, all of them at once inside the air.” “I don’t see anything,” I said that first time. “Watch closely,” she said. But I felt them before I saw them, small warm sparks along my arms. Then there they were, fireflies lighting up and expanding as they left human flesh. “Like snowflakes,” Franny said, “none of them the same and yet each one exactly like the one before.”

Thirteen When she returned to junior high in the fall of 1974, Lindsey was not only the sister of the murdered girl but the child of a “nutcase,” and this hurt her more because it wasn’t true. Brian and Clarissa spread rumors by retelling throughout the school what had happened that night in the cornfield. Ray and Ruth still walked together. Clarissa had “unlocked her privates” and slept with Brian. Buckley entered kindergarten and had a crush on his teacher. Everyone I’d known was growing up. My mother had become aware of what she did. She still cut carrots and celery for dinner. She still washed thermoses and lunchboxes. She still washed clothes. Which she picked up from the floor every morning or from the car every evening. Which she folded. Which she ironed and which she put on hangers. She still cleaned the rooms and opened the windows to let the air and light in. And while doing this, she would allow herself to think not of her house and home, but to think of Len. By October my father was beginning to get up and around, and by November everyone knew what was coming: the first anniversary.

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It had been a combination of things – his injury that had made him stay inside the house for a long time and not go to work at his firm. His boss acted differently around him now, and so did his coworkers – as if having a dead child were catching. No one knew how he continued to do what he did. He regularly came to work, and his boss just easily agreed that he could take another week, another month off if he had to. My father stayed away from Mr Harvey and even tried not to think of him for a while. He would use his name only in his notebook, which he kept in his study. He had apologized to me in his notebook. “I need to rest, honey. I need to understand how to go after this man. I hope you’ll understand.” But he had set his return to work for December 2. He wanted to be back in the office by the anniversary of my disappearance. And away from my mother. How to swim back to her, how to reach her again? She was pulling and pulling away – all her energy was against the house, and all his energy was inside it. He decided to get his strength back and find a way to watch and follow Mr Harvey. Grandma Lynn was coming for Thanksgiving, and Lindsey had kept beautifying herself. One day my father accidentally discovered Lindsey in the upstairs bathroom, shaving her legs. “What are you doing?” my father said. “You’re too young to shave your legs, honey.” “Grandma Lynn started shaving at eleven,” she said, letting him in. “You can stay if you want.” “Okay, honey,” he said. “We haven’t talked about your sister in a while.” “Who needs to?” my sister said. “She’s everywhere.” My father nodded. “Dad? Are you still sure that Mr Harvey had something to do with it?” “There is no doubt in my mind, honey. None. When I met him that day, in his backyard, and we built that tent – the one he said he built for his wife, whose name I thought was Sophie and Len wrote down as Leah – there was something about it that made me sure.”

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“Everyone thinks he’s weird. Even Holiday doesn’t like him,” Lindsey said. “Exactly. I’ve never seen that dog bark so hard. The fur on his back stood straight up that morning.” “Then why doesn’t Len arrest him?” “‘No evidence’ is all they can say. Without evidence they have no basis for an arrest.” “What would be a basis?” “I guess something to link him to Susie. If someone had seen him in the cornfield or even around the school. Something like that.” “Or if he had something of hers?” Both my father and Lindsey were talking very emotionally. What Lindsey realized as they talked was that as long as they were on this subject – Mr Harvey, my clothes, my book bag, my body, me – it made my father see her as Lindsey and not as a tragic combination of his two daughters. “So you would want to be able to get in his house?” she said. They stared at each other. It was a dangerous idea. My father finally said that that would be illegal, and no, he hadn’t thought of that, but she knew he was lying. She also knew he needed someone to do it for him. Grandma Lynn arrived on the Monday before Thanksgiving. With the same laser eyes she now saw something suspicious in her daughter’s smile, in her calm movements and in how she reacted when Detective Fenerman or the police were mentioned. When my mother said no to my father’s help in cleaning up after dinner that night, the laser eyes were sure. “Abigail, I am going to help you clean up. It will be a mother/daughter thing,” Grandma Lynn announced to everyone’s surprise. “Mother, really. This isn’t necessary,” my mother tried to protest. Grandma Lynn had never done dishes. “I want to have a real conversation but I’m afraid I can drop these things. Let’s take a walk. I know I’m whatever I

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am and you’re whatever you are, which isn’t me, which makes you happy, but I know some things when I see them and I know something is going on that isn’t right. Understand?” Grandma Lynn said when they were finally alone in the kitchen. “What?” my mother asked. “I have suspicions and I don’t want to talk about them here.” My mother was silent. She saw no other option. It was easy for the two of them to leave the house alone. It was still early and bright enough for their walk. They had never been close. They both knew it, but it wasn’t something they liked to discuss very much. They had passed a couple of houses before my grandmother said what she had to say. “Your father had a long-term affair in another city. Did you know that?” Grandma Lynn said. “No.” My mother focused her eyes in front of her. She thought of her childhood. There had been no one else in the house with her but her mother and father, and then her father had gone. “I guess I never told you,” Grandma Lynn said. “I didn’t think you needed to know. Now you do, don’t you think?” “I’m not sure why you’re telling me this.” “Susie’s death brought the thoughts about your father back to me,” my grandmother said. “Do you know how alone I’ve always felt?” my mother suddenly asked her mother. “That’s why we’re walking, Abigail,” Grandma Lynn answered. “I can’t describe what I’m feeling to anyone,” she said. “And I don’t know what to do. It’s all over now.” I watched Grandma Lynn turn when my mother turned. “Would you promise me not to see the man anymore?” my grandmother asked. “Who?” “The man you’re involved with. That’s what I’ve been talking about.”

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“I’m not involved with anyone, mother,” my mother said. “But if I needed to get away for a while, could I use Daddy’s cabin?” They kept on walking. Grandma Lynn suddenly realized that she would do nothing but sympathize with her daughter. No affair of her husband could change it. She would tell my mother in the morning that the keys to the cabin would always be there for her if she needed them.

Fourteen For a week Lindsey watched my killer’s house. She was doing exactly what he did to everyone else. Lindsey had been training all year preparing to play in the high school soccer team. Samuel, to show his support, trained together with her. While they ran around the neighborhood, each time Lindsey looked toward Mr Harvey’s house. Inside the green house, Mr Harvey was looking out. He saw her watching and began to worry. It had been almost a year now. It had happened before in other towns and states. The family of a girl suspected him but no one else did. He had perfected his behavior with the police: to ask about their procedures or give them useless ideas as if they might help. The lie that he was a widower always worked. He created a wife out of his victims and his mother. He left the house every day for an hour or two in the afternoon. He would buy any groceries he needed and then drive to the local park and walk the roads just to be near schoolchildren. This would make him happy – these moments when the children were around him. Sometimes one of the parents or teachers would notice him standing there – a stranger – and he would be met with a questioning stare. He had a thousand answers to give them: “I used to bring my children here.” “This is where I met my wife.” Then the women would smile at him.

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Other times, when he met a teacher’s questioning stare, he would walk away and go somewhere else inside the park. He watched mothers with their children walk along the paths. But mostly he watched teenagers who were cutting school. Sometimes they would look back at him and see his wild and endless need. On November 26, 1974, Lindsey saw how Mr Harvey was leaving the green house, and she began to fall behind the running team. I watched my sister and wondered. She was becoming everything all at once. A woman. A spy. She walked, holding her side pretending to be tired from running, and waved at the team when they looked at her. She kept walking until they turned the corner at the far end of the block. At the edge of Mr Harvey’s property was a row of tall, thick pines. She sat down by one of them, still “tired”, in case any neighbor was looking, and then, when she felt that the moment was right, she rolled in between two pines. She waited. She was alone. She calculated that she had forty-five minutes before our father would begin to wonder when she’d be home. She walked to the basement window at the side of Mr Harvey’s house. Being so close to the green house, she got goose bumps from fear. She had already thought of a story if she was caught. She was running after a kitten that she’d seen between the pine trees. She would say it was gray, that it was fast, that it had run toward Mr Harvey’s house and she’d followed it without thinking. She could see the inside of the basement where it was dark. She tried the window, but it was locked. She had to break the glass. She worried about the noise, but it was too late to stop now. She kicked once, twice, three times with both feet until the window broke – and got in. The basement looked tidy and clean, very different from our own. Inside she saw the easy chair and a little table beside it. She saw the large alarm clocks on the metal shelf. I

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wanted to guide her eyes to the place where she would find the bones of the animals, but I knew, too, that she would imagine that the bones were mine. For this, I was glad she didn’t go near them. I couldn’t appear or whisper, push or pull, but still Lindsey, all alone, felt something. She went up the stairs to the first floor. What she was doing was criminal – and she knew it. If she thought about it later, she would say that she had needed air and so that was what had made her go up the stairs. She opened the basement door and came to the first floor. Only five minutes had passed. She had forty left, or so she thought. There was still a bit of light coming in through the closed windows. She stood, waiting, in this house which looked exactly like our own. My sister told herself that she was inside a series of rooms and spaces in which she could find what she needed – something that she could take home to our father. But Mr Harvey’s house was much emptier than ours. Lindsey walked into what in our house was the living room. Then she saw it. My back, me, running into the next room. Our dining room, the room with his finished dollhouses. I was a child running just in front of her. She hurried after me. She ran with me through the rooms and couldn’t catch me. She became dizzy. I was pushing so hard on the Inbetween to get to Lindsey that I suddenly felt I might hurt her when I wanted to help. My sister sat down on the wide steps at the bottom of the stairs and closed her eyes, focusing on her breath, on why she was in Mr Harvey’s house in the first place. She felt heavy. She knew that our father had walked into the cornfield with the same feeling that was growing in her now. She had wanted to bring back clues he could use, to bring him facts. Instead she saw herself falling into emptiness. Now she had twenty minutes. Inside that house my sister was the only living being, but she was not alone, and I was not her only company. I could see his other victims as they occupied his house. The bodies of the girls my murderer had left behind began to show

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themselves to me now that my sister was in that house. I stood in heaven. I called their names: Jackie Meyer. Delaware, 1967. Thirteen. She wore a striped T-shirt and nothing else. Near her head there was blood. Flora Hernandez. Delaware, 1963. Eight. He’d only wanted to touch her, but she screamed. A small girl for her age. Her left sock and shoe were found later. The body, not found. The bones lay in the basement of an old apartment house. Leah Fox. Delaware, 1969. Twelve. He killed her very quietly under a highway ramp. He fell asleep next to her body. Sophie Cichetti. Pennsylvania, 1960. Forty-nine. A landlady, she had divided her apartment into two parts and rented one to him. He liked it, and the rent was cheap. But she talked too much about her son and read him poems from a book of sonnets. He hit her on the head once when she started to talk and took her body to the nearby river. Leidia Johnson. Pennsylvania, 1960. Six. He dug a cave inside a hill near the town and waited. She was the youngest one. Wendy Richter. Connecticut, 1971. Thirteen. She was waiting for her father outside a bar. He raped and then strangled her. Lindsey stood up the moment I focused back on her. Together the two of us walked up the stairs. She came to what was my parents’ bedroom in our house and found nothing. She searched the hallway upstairs. Nothing. Then she went into what had been my bedroom in our house, and she found my killer’s. It was the room with the most of things in the house, and she did her best not to touch anything.

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Nothing. But then, as she heard something but could not understand what it was, she turned toward the bed and saw it. Lying in the circle of light from a reading lamp on the bedside table was Mr Harvey’s sketchbook. She walked toward it and heard another sound. Car driving. Car stopping. Car door shutting. She quickly turned the pages of the sketchbook, looking at the drawings, and saw the measurements and notes which meant nothing to her. Then, as she reached a final page, she thought she heard footsteps outside and very close. As Mr Harvey turned the key in the lock of his front door, Lindsey saw the pencil sketch on the page in front of her. It was a small drawing of cornstalks above a hole. Below the drawing he had written “Cornfield.” Now she saw what I wanted her to know. I had died inside that hole; I had fought and lost. She tore out the page. Mr Harvey was in the kitchen making something to eat. He heard a floorboard creak. He froze. He heard another and suddenly understood. He dropped the food on the floor, while my sister in the upstairs room jumped to the window and unlocked it. Mr Harvey ran up the stairs two at a time, and my sister got out onto the porch roof and rolled down it as he came into the upstairs hall. As he reached his bedroom, she fell into the bushes. But she was not hurt. Luckily not hurt. Wonderfully young. She stood up as he reached the window to climb out. But he stopped. He saw her back as she was running toward the road. “Where have you been?” my mother asked Lindsey, shocked by her cuts and bruises. But Lindsey turned to our father. “Daddy, I did it. I broke into his house.” She was shaking and trying not to cry. “I brought you this. I think it might be important,” Lindsey added as she handed him the drawing.

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She had held the drawing in her hand. It had made her escape harder, but she had come away anyway. Then my father saw it: the possible plan of my grave. He looked up. “Do you believe me now?” he asked Lindsey. “Yes, Daddy.” My father – finally – had a call to make. Franny walked toward me from the cafeteria. I could hardly raise my head. “Susie,” she said. “I have something to tell you.” She gave me a piece of paper. “When you feel stronger, look at it and go there.” Two days later, Franny’s map led me to a wheat field that I had always walked by but which, though beautiful, I’d never explored. The drawing had a line to show a path. Worried, I looked at the rows and rows of wheat. Just ahead I saw it then, and as I began to walk between the rows, the paper in my hand disappeared. I could see an old and beautiful olive tree in the middle of that field. The sun was high, and in front of the olive tree was a clearing. I waited only a moment until I saw the wheat on the other side begin to move – and there came a girl. She was small for her age, as she had been on Earth, and she wore a colorful dress. She paused and we stared at each other. “I come here almost every day,” she said. “I like to listen to the sounds.” All around us, I realized, the wheat was rustling as it moved in the wind. “Do you know Franny?” I asked. The little girl nodded. “She gave me a map to this place.” “Then you must be ready,” she said, but she was in her heaven too. I sat on the ground under the tree and watched her. She came toward me and sat down. “I was Flora Hernandez,” she said. “And what was your name?”

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I told her, and then I began to cry with comfort to know another girl he had killed. “The others will be here soon,” she said. And other girls and women came through the field from all directions. Each time I told my story, I lost a bit, a drop of my pain. It was that day that I knew I wanted to tell the story of my family. Because horror on Earth is real and it is every day.

Fifteen At first no one stopped them, and it was something his mother enjoyed so much, when they ran around the corner from some store and she took out and presented the stolen thing to him. George Harvey would laugh and hug her while she was busy with her new prize. It was a relief for both of them – getting away from his father for the afternoon and driving into the nearby town to get food or other things. They were scavengers and made their money by collecting scrap metal and old bottles. When his mother and he were caught for the first time, the woman in the shop said: “If you can pay for it, do. If you can’t, leave it on the counter.” His mother took the small bottle of aspirin out of her pocket and put it in front of the woman. She was really upset. Getting caught became another moment in their life that they feared. So his mother began giving him the stolen things to hide on his body, and he did it because she wanted him to. If they got outside and away in the truck, she would smile and call him her little accomplice. He remembered the advice she gave him the first time they drove in her truck in Texas and saw a white wooden cross at the side of the road. “You have to be able to look past the dead,” his mother said. “Sometimes there are good things you can take away from them.” Even then, he could feel they were doing something wrong.

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One night they slept in the truck, too tired to drive back to where his father was working. In the middle of the night, as he was dreaming about the palaces in picture books, someone knocked on the roof of their car, and George Harvey and his mother woke up. There were three men, looking through the windows in a way George Harvey recognized. It was the way his father looked when he was drunk sometimes. He knew that he shouldn’t cry out. “Stay quiet. They aren’t here for you,” his mother whispered to him. One of the three men was standing in front of the truck. The other two were knocking on the sides of the truck’s roof, laughing. His mother shook her head, but this only made them angry. “I’m going to move slowly,” his mother whispered, “and pretend I’m getting out of the car. I want you to turn the key in the ignition when I say so.” He knew he was told something very important. That she needed him. Although she seemed calm, he could hear the metal in her voice, getting through her fear. She smiled at the men. “Now,” she said to him, and George Harvey reached forward and turned the key. The old engine of the truck came to life. The faces of the men changed. She reversed back and they stared after her, not sure what to do. She switched into drive and screamed, “On the floor!” to her son. He could feel the bump of the man’s body hitting the truck. He had understood how life should be lived: not as a child and not as a woman. These were the two worst things to be. George Harvey’s heart had beaten wildly as he watched Lindsey run for the road, but then immediately he had calmed. He saw the notebook and the missing page in his sketchbook. He checked the bag with the knife. He took the knife with him to the basement and dropped it down the big hole that was drilled in the floor. From the metal shelves he took the group of charms that he got from those whom he had killed. He took the Pennsylvania keystone charm from my bracelet

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and held it in his hand. Good luck. The others he wrapped in his white handkerchief and put inside the hole, too. Five minutes at the most had passed. Now he had to call the police. He prepared his version of the story. “My home has been broken into. I need the police,” he said. Inside, he was thinking about how quickly he could leave and what he would take with him. When my father called the station, he asked for Len Fenerman. But Fenerman couldn’t be found. My father was told that two policemen had already been sent to the green house to investigate. What they found when Mr Harvey opened his door was a man who was terribly upset. Even though the information about the drawing that Lindsey had taken had been given to them over the radio, the officers were more impressed by Mr Harvey’s wish to have his home searched. He also seemed sincere in his sympathy for the Salmon family. “Oh, that poor girl,” he said. The officers became uncomfortable. They searched the house and found nothing except the evidence of extreme loneliness and a room full of beautiful dollhouses on the second floor. “Sir,” one officer said, “we can take you to the police station for questioning, and of course you have the right to have a lawyer but –” Mr Harvey interrupted him. “I would be happy to answer anything here. I am the victim in this situation, though I have no wish to sue that poor girl’s family.” “The young lady that broke in,” the other officer began, “took something. It was a drawing of the cornfield and some kind of structure in it ...” Mr Harvey had a very realistic explanation that fit so perfectly that the policemen did not see him as a murderer. He placed his fingers to his lips and turned to his sketchbook. “I was trying to understand it,” Mr Harvey began. “I have to say that the horror of it has haunted me. I think everyone in the neighborhood has tried to think how they could have done something about it. Why they didn’t hear or see anything.

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I mean, surely the girl screamed. After hearing about how much blood there was in the cornfield and the nature of that area where it was found, I thought that perhaps the person who did it had built something underground, a hole maybe. “ “Why didn’t you call us?” “I wasn’t bringing back their daughter. When Detective Fenerman questioned me for the first time, I gave him some of my ideas which were all wrong. I didn’t want to interfere with any more of my silly theories.” The officers documented my sister’s path of break-in from the basement window and then out through the bedroom window and discussed the damages. I saw the chances of Mr Harvey’s arrest drop as I watched the end of my family begin. After Lindsey’s arrival with the drawing, my mother left the house immediately. She stopped at a payphone to call Len at home. She told him to meet her at a store in the mall. As Len was driving away, the phone in his house was ringing but he didn’t hear it. He was inside of his car, thinking of my mother, of how wrong it all was and then of how he could not say no to her for reasons he couldn’t understand. While Mr Harvey was explaining his theory of my murder to the two policemen, my mother was waiting for Len inside a store in the mall. I saw him before she did. Standing alone, he watched her for a moment, seeing the need in her eyes. He was sorry for my father, for my family, but he fell into her blue eyes. He touched her, and she turned. Still, she could not really look at him. She turned only to see Len Fenerman’s back as he walked out of the store. He did not turn around. She kept following him, at first excited and then annoyed. Then she saw him unlock a white door that was set into the wall, which she had never noticed before. Ahead in the dark corridor Len brought her into the inner rooms of the mall. She didn’t care. I watched them and felt their kisses. They were whispers calling her away from me and from her family and from her grief. She followed her body. A brief vacation from her life as Mrs Salmon.

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She could never know, I thought, that while she was touching Len’s hair and he was holding her close, the man who had murdered me was letting the two police officers out of his front door. At his house, Mr Harvey began to pack his things. While my mother was trying to find a doorway out of her ruined heart, he left his house for the last time.

Sixteen A year to the day after my death, Dr Singh called his wife to say he would not be home for dinner. Ruana turned over and over again her husband’s absences in her mind. She did not believe it was a woman, or even a student, that made him late more and more often. She knew what it was because it was something she too had. It was ambition. The doorbell rang. Ruana was happy for the escape. She stood up, put on her shawl that was hanging on the back of a chair, and walked to the front hall. She thought only for a moment that it might be a neighbor when she opened the door. Ruth stood on the porch, holding a grocery bag. “Hello,” Ruana said. “May I help you?” “I’m here to see Ray.” Ruth walked into the front hall. “Go on up,” Ruana said, pointing to the stairs. “Ray is in his room.” I watched Ruana look at Ruth’s clothes critically. Ruth had been shopping in the grocery store with her mother when she saw the candles. At school that day she had remembered what day it was – the anniversary of my death. She decided to do something. When she saw the candles, she knew immediately that she would go to Ray’s house and ask him to come with her. Because of their morning meetings, the kids at school had made them a couple.

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What no one understood was that it had been an experiment between them. Ray had kissed only me, and Ruth had never kissed anyone, so they had agreed to kiss each other and see. “I don’t feel anything,” Ruth had said the first time they kissed. “Neither do I,” said Ray. “Did you feel something when you kissed Susie?” “I felt that I wanted more. That night I dreamed of kissing her again and wondered if she was thinking the same thing. Now I kiss you and it’s not the same.” “We could keep trying,” Ruth said. “Just don’t tell anyone.” Ray was dancing around his room when Ruth walked in. He stopped dancing as soon as he saw her standing in the doorway holding the grocery bag. “Hello,” he said and turned the music off. He now stood on the other side of the room, and in between them was his bed over which hung a drawing Ruth had done of me from memory. “What’s in the bag?” Ray asked. “Candles,” said Ruth. “I got them at the grocery store. It’s December sixth. I thought we might go to the cornfield and light them. Say goodbye. But we can kiss for a while if you want.” He walked closer to her, smiling. He had begun to like the experiments. He was not thinking of me anymore – though he couldn’t tell that to Ruth. He liked the way she cursed and hated school. He liked how smart she was, and how she tried to pretend that it didn’t matter to her, and how she loved books. They sat down next to each other on the bed. And so on the anniversary of my death, Ray and Ruth kissed and at some point she looked him in the face. “Gosh!” she said. “I think I feel something.” When Ray and Ruth arrived at the cornfield, they were silent and he was holding her hand. She didn’t know if he was holding it because they were remembering my death

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together or because he liked her. Her brain was a storm; her usual insight gone. Then she saw that she had not been the only one to think of me. Hal and Samuel Heckler were standing in the cornfield too. Ruth saw yellow daffodils on the ground. “Did you bring those?” Ruth asked Samuel. “No,” Hal said. “They were already there when we got here.” Many of our neighbors decided to come to the cornfield that day in the memory of me. Lindsey was looking out the window when she saw some of them walking past. “Something’s going on in the cornfield, Mom,” she said. My mother was sitting in her chair reading one of the smart books she had studied before in college but hadn’t looked at since. She had taken her books off the shelves in her bedroom and promised herself she would reread them that year. “I’m not interested,” she said to Lindsey, “but I’m sure your father will be.” There was something on the other side of the icy surface. Lindsey was sure of it. She stayed by my mother, sitting by her chair and watching our neighbors outside the window. When it became dark, the candles the neighbors brought lit the cornfield. It seemed like everyone I’d ever known or sat next to in a classroom from kindergarten to eighth grade was there. In my heaven I was getting excited as more and more people reached the cornfield, lit their candles and began to sing songs. The rumors of Mr Harvey’s guilt had spread from neighbor to neighbor. Was it possible? Could that strange man who had lived so quietly among them have killed Susie Salmon? A murderer had lived among them. He passed their sons and daughters on the street. It was the only thing the neighbors could talk about.

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Our house looked the same as every other one on the block, but it was not the same. No one had come to my house to find out the details. My family was left alone. Lindsey finally realized what was happening on the cornfield. My mother never lifted her eyes from her book. “They’re having a ceremony for Susie,” Lindsey said. “Listen.” She opened the window. In came the cold December air and the distant sound of singing. My mother used all her energy. “We’ve had the memorial,” she said. “That’s done for me. I don’t believe she’s waiting for us out there. I don’t think lighting candles and doing all that stuff is honoring her memory. There are other ways to honor it.” “Like what?” Lindsey said. “Like being more than a mother, for example.” Lindsey thought she could understand this. She wanted to be more than a girl. “Go get your father,” my mother said. “Are you going to leave us?” Lindsey suddenly asked. My mother paused. How could she say what she already knew? Instead, she told a lie. “I promise I won’t leave you.” My sister found my father in his study. Yes, they would go, he said. Of course they would go. My neighbors and teachers, friends and family, stood in a circle not far from where I’d been killed. My father, sister, and brother heard the singing again when they were outside. My father wanted so much to have me remembered in the minds and hearts of everyone. I knew something as I watched: almost everyone was saying goodbye to me. They would go back to their homes and put me to rest, a letter from the past never reopened or reread. And I could say goodbye to them, wish them well, bless them somehow for their good thoughts. With the camera my parents gave me, I took many pictures of my family. So many that my father made me choose

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which rolls of film I thought should be developed first. It would be years before all my pictures were printed. I loved the way the pictures marked a moment that had passed, one that would now be gone forever. I saved the moments by using my camera and in that way had found a way to stop time and hold it. No one could take those images away from me because I owned them. On a summer evening in 1975, my mother turned to my father and said: “Have you ever seen the ocean?” He said, “No.” “Neither have I,” my mother said. “Let’s pretend the cornfield is the ocean and that I am going away and we might never see each other again.” The next day she left for her father’s cabin in New Hampshire. In the fall, four months after my mother left, my father picked up the phone one afternoon and it was Grandma Lynn. “Jack,” my grandmother announced, “I am thinking of coming to stay. I would like to help you with the children.” My father tried to say no, but my grandmother insisted. She stayed in what used to be my room. By December 1975, a year had passed since Mr Harvey had packed his bags, but there was still no sign of him. Finally Lindsey asked Hal to give her a ride to the police station. She wanted to know what exactly they were doing. While Lindsey and Hal waited sitting outside the detective’s office, she thought she saw something that she recognized. It was on Detective Fenerman’s desk and it stood out in the room because of its color. Her mother had always called it a Chinese red and was proud to be able to wear it. “Do you see that red cloth?” Lindsey asked Hal. “I think it’s my mother’s.” Len entered the room from behind where Lindsey sat. Lindsey turned around and stared at him. “Why do you have my mother’s scarf?”

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He didn’t expect this question and didn’t know what to say. “She might have left it in my car one day.” “What was she doing in your car?” Then there was sudden understanding. Later Lindsey cried telling it to Samuel. When my brother turned seven, he built a fort for me. It was something the two of us had said we would always do together and something my father could not make himself do. It reminded him too much of building the tent with the disappeared Mr Harvey. On a hot day in the fall of 1976, Len Fenerman visited the evidence room. The bones of the neighborhood animals that he had found in Mr Harvey’s basement were there. But no other bones or bodies had been found. Len had taken a team of policemen back into the field, and they had dug and then dug again. Finally they found an old Coke bottle at the opposite end of the field. There it was – a link: fingerprints matching Mr Harvey’s prints, which were all over his house, and fingerprints matching those on my birth certificate. There was no question in his mind: Jack Salmon had been right from the beginning. But no matter how hard he looked for the man himself, it was as if George Harvey had disappeared. He could find no records with that name. Officially, George Harvey did not exist. I felt sorry for Len. He had tried to solve my murder and he had failed. He had tried to love my mother and he had failed. Len looked at the drawing of the cornfield that Lindsey had stolen and realized that he had let a murderer get away. He was guilty. He knew that by being with my mother in the mall that day he gave George Harvey freedom. But he did not know this: In Connecticut on September 10, 1976, a hunter on his way back to his car saw something shiny on the ground. My

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Pennsylvania keystone charm. Then he saw that the ground nearby had been dug by a bear. And there were bones of a child’s foot. My mother spent only one winter in New Hampshire before she got the idea of driving all the way to California. It was something she had always thought she would do but had never done. A man she met in New Hampshire had told her about the work at wineries around San Francisco. It was easy to get, it was physical, and it could be very anonymous. All three things sounded good to her. She packed her bags for California and sent cards to my brother and sister from every town she stopped in. In the fall of 1976 she reached California. That same week she found work at a winery in the valley. She wrote my sister and brother postcards filled with the bright fragments of her life, hoping in a postcard’s space she would sound happy. On her days off, she would walk the streets of the nearby towns and, no matter how hard she tried to focus on the sunny unfamiliar, when she walked inside a cafe she would feel it then inside of her – the grief coming, the tears coming, and she would breathe in and ask for coffee. She often went into a flower shop and asked for daffodils. It was such a small wish – a bright yellow flower. The first memorial in the cornfield opened in my father the need for more. Every year now, he organized a memorial, to which fewer and fewer neighbors and friends came. People started to forget me. In just a few short years Ray Singh grew very handsome: his adult face with his long lashes, his thick black hair and delicate features. I would watch Ray with a desire to touch and hold him. When he packed his bags for the university, Ruana searched the house for something, anything, that her son might take with him that would, she hoped, keep the family moments alive. Without his knowing, she put the book of Indian poetry into his luggage. Inside was the long-forgotten photo of me.

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When he unpacked inside the university dormitory, my picture fell on the floor by his bed – he could not avoid them, the lips he had once kissed. In June 1977, on the day of what would have been my high school graduation, Ruth and Ray were already gone. Ruth moved to New York City. Ray, who graduated early, was already at the end of his first year at the university. Sometimes my mother called from California. My parents had quick and difficult conversations. She asked about Buckley and Lindsey and Holiday. She asked how the house was and if there was anything else he needed to tell her. “We still miss you,” he said in December 1977. “I know that,” she said. “What about teaching? I thought that was your plan.” “It was,” she answered. She was silent and then she said, “Plans change.” In New York, Ruth was living in a small flat. It was the only thing she could afford, and she had no plans to spend much time there anyway. She wrote small poems and prayers in her journal at the cafes and the bars. She had become sure that she had a second sight that no one else had. She didn’t know what she would do with it, but she didn’t fear it. The world she saw of dead women and children had become as real to her as the world in which she lived. Mr Harvey had been living wild. He would find easier work and fewer questions. He had learned to pick wild mushrooms and would eat them sometimes when staying overnight in the fields or a park. He had always liked Pennsylvania. He still liked to drive close to the old neighborhood when he could. He took these risks early in the morning or late at night, when there were few people in the streets. In December 1981, after a girl’s body had been found in 1976 in Connecticut, the keystone charm in the Connecticut case was finally linked to my murder.

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For almost eight years Hal had quietly used his network of biker friends trying to find George Harvey. But he had never been sure. One night a biker named Ralph Cichetti said that he thought his mother had been killed by a man she rented a room to. Hal began asking his usual questions. The man’s name was not George Harvey, although that didn’t mean anything. But the murder itself seemed too different. Sophie Cichetti was forty-nine. She was killed in her home and her body had been found nearby. Hal had read enough crime books to know that killers had patterns – the special ways they did things. So at first Hal thought that it must have been a different man. It was only when Cichetti mentioned something else that Hal decided to call Detective Fenerman immediately. “The guy built dollhouses,” Ralph Cichetti said. Years passed. The trees in our yard grew taller. I watched my family and my friends and neighbors, the teachers whom I’d had, the high school I had dreamed about. As I sat in the gazebo I would pretend instead that I was sitting on a branch of the tree under which my brother had swallowed a twig. Or I would sit on the stairs in New York and wait for Ruth to pass by. I would study with Ray. Drive to the winery with my mother. But I would end each day with my father in his study. I would lay these photographs down in my mind, those gathered from my constant watching, and I could see how my death connected all these images. No one could have predicted how my loss would change small moments on Earth. But I held on to those moments, collected them. None of them were lost as long as I was there watching. One night, while Holly played her sax, I saw him: Holiday, running to me. He had lived a long and happy life on Earth. He had slept at my father’s feet after my mother left, never wanting to let him out of his sight. He had stood with Buckley while he built his fort and had been the only one on the porch while Lindsey and Samuel kissed. And in the last few

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years of his life, every Sunday morning, Grandma Lynn had made him a peanut butter pancake. I waited for him to sniff me, anxious to know if here, on the other side, I would still be the little girl he had slept beside. I did not have to wait long: he was so happy to see me that he knocked me down.

Seventeen At twenty-one Lindsey was many things I would never become, but I didn’t feel sorry about this list anymore. Still, I went where she went. In watching her I found I could get lost more than with anyone else. On the night of their graduation from the university, Lindsey and I received her college diploma and rode to my parents’ house on the back of Samuel’s bike with her arms around his waist. On the way it began to rain. Lightly at first, but soon the rain became heavy enough, and Samuel shouted back to Lindsey that he was going to stop. They rolled the bike under the trees at the side of the road and decided to find shelter from the rain somewhere. So they left the bike behind and started walking up the hill. “Happy graduation,” Samuel said in the darkness, and stopped to kiss Lindsey. Since their first kiss in our kitchen two weeks after my death, I had known that he was her one and only. Samuel laughed and grabbed her hand to start walking again. The moment they did, they heard the first thunderclap and Lindsey jumped. He held her hand. The lightning was still in the distance, and the thunder would grow louder. Lindsey had never felt about thunderstorms the way I did. I loved them, but they made her jumpy and nervous. She imagined trees falling down and houses on fire. They walked through the bushes for a while.

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And then, through the thick tree branches and darkness both of them saw the broken windows at the top of an old Victorian house. “Do you think there’s someone inside?” Lindsey asked. “It’s dark.” They looked at each other first, and then my sister said what they both were thinking. “It’s dry!” They held hands in the heavy rain and ran toward the house as fast as they could, trying not to fall in the mud. “Let’s explore,” said Samuel. As they came closer, Samuel could see the house better. Most of the windows on the first floor had been covered over with wood, but the front door was open. They stood in the doorway, shaking and staring into the hall in front of them. Quickly I scanned the rooms of the old house. They were alone. No scary monsters in the corners, no strange men. “Wow!” Lindsey said. “How old do you think this is?” The boarded windows on the first floor made it hard to see anything, but with the help of Samuel’s torch they could find a fireplace and some chairs along the walls. “This is a beautiful old house. I think it is Victorian? It was probably built after 1860. Look at the floor and the ceiling,” Samuel said. “Do you see the work? These people had more money than their neighbors.” Lindsey remembered the feeling she had had in Mr Harvey’s house. She had often felt that I was with her somehow, in her thoughts and body – moving with her like a twin. “I want this house,” Samuel suddenly said. “This house needs me, I can feel it. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” That fall my father had developed the last roll of film that I’d kept in my closet, and now, as he often did, he opened his desk drawer and carefully took the printed photos in his hand. I had taken pictures of Holiday, birds, trees and flowers. But I remember that at some point I had decided to take portraits of my mother. When he’d picked the roll up at the photo lab, my father sat in the car staring at photos of a woman he felt he didn’t know anymore.

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Each time he looked into the face of this woman, he had felt something growing inside him. It took him a long time to understand what it was. Only not long ago he managed to name it. He had been falling in love all over again. He didn’t understand how two people who were married, who saw each other every day, could forget what each other looked like – but this was what had happened. And the last two photos in the roll gave the key. My father had just come home from work that day. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my father walk through the door into the hall. I took the last photo of my mother alone. Already her face had begun to change somehow into a mask. In the next photo, the mask was almost, but not quite, in place and the final photo, where my father was kissing her on the cheek – there it was. “Did I do that to you?” he asked her image as he stared at the pictures of my mother. “How did that happen?” “The thunderstorm has stopped,” my sister said when she and Samuel had finished exploring the house and were standing in the doorway again. Samuel got on his knees in front of her. “I love you,” he said. “No, I mean I love you and I want to marry you, and I want to live in this house!” She started crying. He stood up and held her in his arms. “Marry me, Lindsey. I’m tired of doing all the right things. Marry me and I’ll make this house beautiful.” She nodded. “I think I can,” my sister said. “I mean, yes!” At that moment I ran around my heaven! I was so happy I screamed over and over and over again. My sister! My Samuel! My dream! By the time the two of them returned to my house, the rain had stopped and people were beginning to look out their windows. At home Lindsey suddenly was covered in goose bumps and smiling ear to ear.

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“We’re getting married!” she announced to my father, Buckley and Grandma Lynn who came out to greet them. Samuel was quiet and I was watching him. “Mr Salmon,” he finally said. “I’ve asked Lindsey to marry me.” Lindsey’s heart was beating fast, but she wasn’t looking at Samuel. She was looking at my father. “What do you say, Dad?” she asked. “I’d say,” he managed, starting to shake Samuel’s hand, “that I couldn’t wish for a better son-in-law.” As my father and sister listened to Grandma Lynn’s toasts, it was Buckley who saw me. He saw me standing under the old clock and stared. He was drinking champagne. There were rays of light all around me. Someone passed him a piece of cake. He held it in his hands but did not eat. He saw my shape and my face, which had not changed – and wanted to call my name. It was only a moment, and then I was gone. Over the years, when I became tired of watching, I often sat in the back of the trains that went in and out of the central station. Passengers would get on and off as I listened to their conversations. I listened to the sounds and felt the train’s movement and sometimes, by doing this, I could hear the voices of those who no longer lived on Earth. Voices of others like me, the watchers. Almost everyone in heaven has someone on Earth they watch, a loved one, a friend, or even a stranger who was once kind, who offered warm food or a bright smile when one of us had needed it. And when I wasn’t watching, I could hear the others talking to those they loved on Earth. After I turned away from Earth that day, I rode the trains until I could think of only one thing: “Hold still,” that my father would say while I held the ship in the bottle and he burned the strings to raise the sails with. And I would wait for him, feeling the importance of that moment when the world in the bottle depended on me only.

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Eighteen When her father mentioned the sinkhole on the phone, Ruth decided to plan a visit home at once. She had known that she would want to see it before the developers closed it up. She loved places like the sinkhole, and it was a secret she kept, as was my murder and our meeting in the street that evening. These were things she would not give away. In New York she kept writing her journals and her poems. “Inside, inside,” she would whisper quietly to herself when she wanted to tell, and she would also take long walks through the city. She had kept in touch with Ray. But Ray was different. Their kisses were the memories that she kept safe. She saw him every time she visited her parents and had known immediately that it would be Ray she took when she went back to see the sinkhole. He would be happy for the vacation from his constant studying. Ruth didn’t know that she was something like a celebrity up in heaven. I had told people about her, what she did, how she saw things when she walked through the city and wrote small personal prayers and poems in her journal. The story had traveled so quickly that many women wanted to know if Ruth had found where they’d been killed. She had her fans in heaven. I was the one who had a chance to follow and watch, and I often found these moments painful and amazing. Ruth would get an image and it would burn into her memory. Sometimes they were only bright flashes – a fall down the stairs, a scream, a blow, hands around a neck – and at other times she could see the whole picture in her head of how the girl or woman had died. Once Ruth was walking in the park. She sat on a bench and looked at children with their nannies and lonely adults reading books in the shade or sun. She was tired from the walk, but still she took her journal out from her bag. She put it open on her lap, holding the pen, thinking.

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Not far from her a little girl tried to walk away from her sleeping nanny into the bushes. Ruth became worried. As she was about to do something, the nanny woke up and called the girl back. In moments like this Ruth thought of all the little girls who grew up and those who didn’t. It was then that Ruth saw her – another little girl who had walked into the bushes one day and disappeared. She could tell by the clothes that it had happened some time ago, but that was all. There was nothing else – no nanny or mother, no idea of night or day, only a little girl gone. I stayed with Ruth. Her journal was open and she wrote it down. “Time? Little girl in central park. Walks toward bushes. White lace collar, fancy.” Then she closed the journal and put it back into her bag. Now Buckley was in the seventh grade, bought his lunch at school and was on the debate team. He didn’t like sports. His favorite teacher was not really a teacher at all but the school librarian. That year Buckley had asked my father if he could take care of the garden my mother had once kept, and my father had said, “Sure, Buck, go ahead.” And he had. He read garden catalogs at nights. He slowly planted the whole garden with a spade. He didn’t like what he read in books and planted flowers, vegetables and herbs together. He expected all his vegetables – tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, beans and eggplants – to grow all at once. That morning Buckley was carrying a box of old clothes from the basement and through the kitchen when my father came downstairs for his coffee. “What have you got there, Farmer Buck?” my father asked. He had always been at his best in the morning. “I’m making stakes for my tomato plants,” my brother said. Later through the back window my father saw what Buckley had taken from the box. They were my clothes. My clothes, which Lindsey had wanted to have but never really did. My

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clothes, which my grandmother, when she had moved into my room, had quietly boxed while my father was at work and put in the basement with a small label that said, simply, SAVE. My father put down his coffee. He walked out of the kitchen, calling Buckley’s name. “What is it, Dad?” Buckley asked, annoyed. “Those clothes are Susie’s,” my father said calmly. “Why can’t I use them?” he asked. My father looked up. He saw his son standing there. “How can you ask me that question?” “It’s not fair!” my brother cried. “I’m tired of it!” “I’m sorry,” my father said. “These are Susie’s clothes and I just ... It may not make sense, but they’re hers – something she wore.” “She’s dead.” It never stopped to hurt. “I know that.” “But you don’t act that way. What about us? Us, Dad. Me and Lindsey. You have to choose. Mom left because she couldn’t take it.” “Oh, Buck,” my father said. He was trying to be calm and gentle, but his heart was beating very fast. Then a little voice in him said, Let go, let go, let go. His feet had grown very cold. His chest felt empty. Let go. “I’m sorry,” my father said. “I’m not feeling very well.” My father dropped down to his knees. My brother rushed to him. “Dad? I’ll get Grandma.” And Buckley ran. As he lay on his side with his face turned in the direction of my old clothes, my father whispered: “You can never choose. I’ve loved all four of you.” That night my father lay in a hospital bed. I could not help thinking that if he died I would have him forever. Was this so wrong to want? At home, Buckley lay in bed in the dark. My brother had felt guilt thinking about Lindsey’s two repeated questions: “What were you talking about? Why was he so upset?”

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My little brother’s greatest fear was that the one person who meant so much to him would go away. We stood – the dead child and the living – on either side of my father, both wanting the same thing. To have him to ourselves, forever. To please us both was impossible. “Please don’t let Daddy die, Susie,” Buckley whispered. “I need him.” When I left my brother, I walked past the gazebo and along the brick path. I walked until the bricks disappeared, and there was nothing but earth for miles and miles around me. I stood there feeling some change. I had been in heaven long enough to know that something would happen. And as the light began to fade, I saw someone walking to me. It was so far away that I could not at first see if it was man or woman, child or adult. But then in the moonlight I could see that it was a man’s figure. Frightened now, I ran forward just far enough to see. Was it my father? Was it what I had wanted all this time so much? “Susie,” the man said. I came closer and then stopped a few feet from where he stood. He raised his arms up toward me. “Remember?” he said. “Granddaddy,” I said. I ran up to him, pressed myself into my grandfather’s chest and smelled the old-man smell of him. When I was six and he was fifty-six, we went to visit him, and he taught me to dance. Now in heaven there was music, and again we danced slowly to the song that had always made my grandfather cry. When the music stopped, my grandfather took a step back, and there was yellow light behind his back. “I’m going,” he said. “Where?” I asked. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. You’re so close.” He turned and walked away, disappearing into infinity.

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Nineteen When my mother reached the winery that morning, she found a message waiting for her. The word “emergency” was clear enough, so she found the phone and called the number in Pennsylvania. No answer. Then she called the hospital – the same hospital where I had once brought Buckley. “Jack Salmon is still here, in emergency,” answered a nurse on duty. “Can you tell me what happened?” “What is your relationship to Mr Salmon?” She said the words that she had not said in years: “I’m his wife.” “He had a heart attack.” My mother hung up the phone and sat down. She sat there until the manager arrived and she repeated the strange words: emergency, husband, heart attack. Soon she was driving toward San Francisco International Airport. Standing outside the airport terminal, she reached into the back pocket of her jeans, where she kept the wallet. In her wallet were pictures – pictures she looked at every day. But there was one that she kept turned upside down. It was the same one that lay in the evidence box at the police station, the same one that Ray had put into his mother’s book of Indian poetry. My class photo that had been in the papers, on police fliers and in mailboxes. In the eight years she had looked at it so many times that I had been almost buried inside of it. My cheeks never redder, my eyes never bluer than they were in the photograph. She sat down on a bench and took the photo out. When she heard the announcement for her flight, she stood up. Turning around, she saw a small tree. She left my class portrait there under that tree and hurried inside the automatic doors.

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When the plane landed in Pennsylvania, she could hardly recognize her own children waiting for her in the lounge. If she had counted, as I did, she would have known that in seventy-three steps she had done what she had been too afraid to do for almost seven years. It was my sister who spoke first: “Mom,” she said. My mother looked at my sister. In the years that had passed, Lindsey had become tall and thin. “Lindsey,” my mother said. Lindsey stared at her. Buckley was looking down at his shoes and over his shoulder – but not at his mother. “How is your father?” my mother asked. “He’s not in the greatest shape, I’m afraid,” Lindsey said. “Buckley?” my mother called. He turned his head toward her – whoever she was. “Buck,” he said. “Buck,” she corrected herself and looked down at her hands. They were on the highway driving home when Lindsey spoke next: “They won’t let Buckley in to see Dad because of his age.” My mother turned around in her seat. “I’ll try and do something about that,” she said, looking at Buckley and trying to smile for the first time. Buckley turned away. It was the same hospital that my mother had come to eight years ago in the middle of the night. Everything in her wanted to run – to fly back to California, back to her quiet life, working safely among strangers, among so many foreign plants and people. As she walked forward into the room, everyone else – her son, her daughter, her mother – stayed behind. My father’s eyes were weak but he opened them when he heard her come in. She took his hand and cried silently. “Hello, Ocean Eyes,” he said. She nodded her head. This broken, beaten man – her husband.

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“My girl,” he said heavily. “Look what it took to get you home.” “Was it worth it?” she said, smiling sadly. “We’ll have to see,” he said. He tried to touch her cheek, but his arm was too weak. She came closer and laid her cheek in his palm. To see them together was like a dream come true. Grandma Lynn was walking in the waiting area when she met a nurse with a message for Jack Salmon in Room 582. My grandmother had never met the man but knew his name. “Len Fenerman, will visit soon. Wishes you well.” She folded the note carefully and put it into her purse.

Twenty By the time Mr Harvey reached a small shack in Connecticut that night, it started raining. He had killed a young waitress inside the shack several years before and then bought some new pants with the tips he’d found in the front pocket of her apron. By now the rot would have been finished, and so as he approached the area, no unpleasant smell greeted him. But the shack was open and inside he could see the earth had been dug up. He breathed in and walked into the shack. He fell asleep beside her empty grave. Len Fenerman had not had much to write in my file for a long time, but some new evidence had been found in the last few months: the name of another potential victim, Sophie Cichetti, the name of her son, and another name of George Harvey. There was also what he held in his hand: my Pennsylvania keystone charm with my initials on it. The charm had been checked for clues it could give and had been found clean under the microscope. Len had wanted to give the charm back to my father from the first moment he was able to say for sure that it was mine.

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It would break the rules, but he had never had a body for my parents, just a schoolbook and the pages from my biology class mixed in with a boy’s love note. A Coke bottle. My jingle-bell hat. These he had kept. But the charm was different, and he wanted to give it back. Len had decided that he would visit my father in the hospital and bring my charm along with him. In Len’s mind he saw the charm as a talisman that might help my father to get better. I had both pitied and respected Len in the years since my mother left. He followed the physical to try to understand things that were impossible to understand. In that, I could see, he was like me. Mr Harvey did not dream of the girl whose body the police had been taken out of the shack and that was now being analyzed. He dreamed of Lindsey Salmon, running for the road. He had this dream when he was afraid. He had begun to lose control over his life. Outside the hospital, a young girl was selling small bouquets of daffodils. I watched as my mother bought them all. Lindsey, Samuel, and Grandma Lynn had taken Buckley home earlier in the evening. My mother was not ready to see the house yet. She focused on my father only. Everything else would have to wait, from the house to her son, daughter, and mother. First she needed something to eat and some time to think. Instead of going to the hospital cafeteria, she left the building and walked to a small diner across the street. She sat there alone and ordered chicken and tea – which she never had in California. When her dinner arrived, she just focused on her food. She did not think she could stay home for more than a few days. Everywhere she looked she saw me, and in every lonely stranger she saw the man who could have murdered me. She decided that she would spend a few hours with my father and when he woke, she would say goodbye. As soon as

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her decision was made, she felt calm. The sudden relief of responsibility. Her ticket to a far-away land. Back at the hospital, my mother opened my father’s door, walked in, and shut it behind her. Alone. I felt I did not belong there, that I should go too. But I stayed. Seeing him sleeping in the dark, she remembered standing in this same hospital and taking steps to get away from him. I saw her take my father’s hand. My mother sat with my father’s hand in hers for a long while. She thought how wonderful it would be to get on the hospital bed and lie beside him. And how impossible. She leaned closer. Even under the smells of antiseptics, she could smell the smell of his skin. When she’d left, she had packed her favorite shirt of my father’s and would sometimes put it on just to have something of his. She never wore it outside, so it kept his scent longer. She remembered one night, when she missed him most, putting it over a pillow and hugging it to her as if it were my father. She knew now that he was the stronger one, and she was the weaker. She laid her face on the side of his pillow to watch him breathing while he dreamed. How could it be that you could love someone so much and keep it secret from yourself? She ran so far from home and thought that that would make him, their life, and children disappear? It was so simple, as she watched him, that she did not even see it happening at first. She began to think of the rooms in our house and the hours spent inside of them that she had tried so hard to forget. She looked at new lines on my father’s face. She liked the silvering of his hair. Shortly after midnight, she fell asleep after trying as hard as she could to keep her eyes open, so that when he woke she could say goodbye.

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It was near four when I saw my father’s eyes open and saw him feel the warmth of my mother’s breath on his cheek before he knew she was asleep. We wished together that he could hold her and make her stay. There was another way and he took it. He would tell her the things he had felt after my death – the things that came into his mind but that no one knew but me. But he did not want to wake her. It was then that I appeared inside the room with my mother and father. I was present somehow, as a person, in a way I had never been. I had always been around but had never stood beside them. I made myself small in the darkness and didn’t know if I could be seen. I had left my father for hours every day for eight and a half years as I had left my mother or Ruth and Ray, my brother and sister, and certainly Mr Harvey, but my father, as I now saw, had never left me. His devotion to me had made me know again and again that I had been loved. In the warm light of my father’s love I had remained Susie Salmon – a girl with my whole life ahead of me. “I always thought that if I was very quiet, I would hear you. If I was still, you might come back,” he whispered. “Jack?” my mother said, waking. “I must have fallen asleep.” “It’s wonderful to have you back,” he said, now to her. And my mother looked at him. Everything was clear. “How do you do it?” she asked. “There’s no choice,” he said. “What else can I do?” “Go away, start over again,” she said. “Did it work?” They were silent. I faded away. “Why don’t you come lie down here?” my father said. She didn’t move. He looked around him and saw a sea of yellow flowers. “Daffodils,” he said. “It’s Susie’s flower.” My father smiled beautifully. “See,” he said, “that’s how. You live by giving her a flower.”

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“That’s so sad,” my mother said. “Yes,” he said, “it is.” My mother then managed to sit beside my father so they could look into each other’s eyes. They were silent for a moment and he took her hand. “You look so different,” he said. “You mean older.” I watched them from my heaven. “I fell in love with you again while you were away,” my father said. I realized how much I wished I could be where my mother was. His love for my mother wasn’t about looking back and loving something that would never change. It was about loving my mother for everything – for her weakness, for her running away, for her being there right then. My mother could not make herself to say “I love you.” “Will you stay?” my father asked. “For a while.” This was something. “You were sleeping,” he said. “You didn’t see her.” “Who?” “Someone came in the room and then left. I think it was Susie.” “Jack?” my mother asked. “Don’t tell me you don’t see her.” She let go. “I see her everywhere,” she said, breathing out in relief. “Even in California she was everywhere. On buses or on the streets outside schools when I drove by. I’d see her hair or the face or I’d see her body or the way she moved.” “So if I tell you that Susie was in the room ten minutes ago, what would you say?” “I’d say that you were crazy, and that you were probably right.” “You have to lie down,” he said, “I’m still a sick man.” And I watched as my parents kissed. They kept their eyes open, and my mother was the one to cry first, until my father started crying too.

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Twenty-One After I left my parents in the hospital, I went to watch Ray Singh. Once we had been fourteen together – he and I. Now I saw him sleeping. I had always been in love with him. I counted the lashes of each closed eye. He had been my almost, my might-have-been, and I did not want to leave him any more than I did my family. That day behind the stage, with Ruth crying over her drawing, Ray Singh had got close enough to kissing me. I was afraid of what I wanted most – his kiss. That it would not be good enough. I feared that I would not be good enough – that my first kiss would bring dislike, not love. Still, I collected kiss stories. “Your first kiss is your destiny,” Grandma Lynn told me over the phone one day. “What was it like, Grandma?” She was quiet for a while. “I was your age, and my first kiss came from a grown man. A father of a friend. But I hope you’re not going to tell on me, are you?” “Grandma!” I said, shocked. “It was wonderful, though,” Grandma Lynn continued. “He knew how to kiss. He really knew how to use his lips.” “So what happened?” “Joy,” she said. “I knew it wasn’t right, but it was wonderful – at least for me. I never asked him how he felt about it, but then I never saw him after that.” “But did you want to do it again?” “Yes, I was always looking for that first kiss.” “How about Granddaddy?” “Not much of a kisser,” she said. “Is there a boy who wants to kiss you?” Neither of my parents had asked me this. I now know that they knew this already; could tell by the way they smiled at each other. “Yes,” I said. “What’s his name?” “Ray Singh.”

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“Do you like him?” “Yes.” “Then what’s the problem?” “I’m afraid I won’t be good at it.” “Susie, just have fun, kid,” Grandma Lynn said. But when I stood by my locker that afternoon and I heard Ray’s voice say my name – it felt like anything but fun. It didn’t feel like not fun either. I felt happy and frightened. “Ray,” I said, but before the name had left my mouth, he leaned down and kissed me on the lips. It was so sudden, even though I had waited weeks for it, that I wanted more. I wanted so much to kiss Ray Singh again. In the morning, while Ruth dressed, she and Ray discussed the Flanagan sinkhole and how it was going to be filled in. “They are going to fill it with concrete, but now the hole is filled with dirt,” Ray explained. “I know,” said Ruth. “Such a huge project.” They got into Ray’s car and drove towards the sinkhole. They saw signs of new construction down the road. When Len Fenerman had called the hospital, he was told that Mr Salmon was with his wife and family. I could see Len trying to find the right words for what he had to say. He felt guilty because he understood that after almost seven years since late 1975, what my parents would hope for most was a body or the news that Mr Harvey had been found. What he had to give them was just a charm. My mother was standing with her back toward him when he walked in. When she turned, I could see how her presence hit him. She was holding my father’s hand. I suddenly felt terribly lonely. “How are you feeling, Mr Salmon?” Len asked. “I’m here to tell you that we found an item of Susie’s.” He had used almost the same phrase when he had come to our house with my jingle-bell hat.

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The night before it had been my father who’d finally said it: “She’s never coming home.” Clear and easy truth that everyone else had already understood. But he needed to say it, and my mother needed to hear him say it. “It’s a charm off her bracelet,” Len said. “A Pennsylvania keystone with her initials on it.” “I bought that for her,” my father said. “Remember, Abigail?” “I remember,” my mother said. “We found it near a grave in Connecticut – not Susie’s grave. What it means is that Harvey has been linked to other murders in other states.” Len handed the charm to my mother, and she held it in front of her. “Don’t you need this, Len?” my father asked. “We did all the tests on it,” he said. “We’ve documented where it was found and taken the necessary photographs. The time may come when I would need it back, but until then, it’s yours to keep.” “I’m very glad to have the charm, Len,” my father said. “Are you sure he killed these other girls?” my mother asked. “Nothing is ever certain,” Len said. I followed Ruth and Ray, but I saw Mr Harvey instead. He was driving an old orange car. He had slept next to an empty grave, and while he’d been sleeping he had dreamed of Lindsey. When he woke up, he decided to drive to Pennsylvania. The image of Mr Harvey seemed strangely blurred. For years he had tried to forget the women he killed, but now, one by one, they were coming back. The first girl he’d hurt was by accident. He got mad and couldn’t stop himself, or that was how he began to view it. Then what I saw was what Mr Harvey felt beside him. This first girl. She was sitting in the front seat. I wondered how long it would take before he began to remember me.

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The only change since the day Mr Harvey had taken me to the Flanagans’ were the orange posts set around the sinkhole because it had expanded. Ray parked on the other side of the road. “What happened to the Flanagans?” Ray asked Ruth as they got out of his car. “My father said the corporation that bought the land gave them enough money to move to another place.” “It’s spooky around here, Ruth,” Ray said. They crossed the empty road. Above them the sky was light blue. Then they turned toward the sinkhole. The Flanagans’ old house was now sinking into the earth. There were spots of grass around it. “Everything is changing here now. Every time I come back something is gone,” Ruth said. “How do you know the sinkhole won’t swallow us?” Ray asked. “We’re not heavy enough,” Ruth said. They were quiet for a while. “Do you ever think about where Susie Salmon’s body ended up?” asked Ruth. I was so excited in my heaven that I wanted to shout, “It’s here! You’ve found it! Bingo!” “No,” Ray said. “I leave that to you. Do you want to go inside the house?” Ray was thinking of me. How his crush had come when he was thirteen. He had seen me walking home from school ahead of him, and it were simple things that mattered: my skirt, my coat, the way my brown hair caught the afternoon sun as we walked home, one behind the other. Ray walked toward the house that would soon be destroyed, but Ruth stayed by the sinkhole. Ray was already inside the house when it happened. As clear as day, she saw me standing there beside her, looking at the spot Mr Harvey had dumped me. “Susie,” Ruth said. But I said nothing. “I’ve written poems for you,” Ruth said. What she had wished for her whole life was happening, finally.

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“Don’t you want anything, Susie?” she asked. Then I disappeared. Ruth stood there, waiting in the gray light of the Pennsylvania sun for my answer. Her question still rang in my ears: “Don’t you want anything?” I could see Mr Harvey turn into my old neighborhood in broad daylight. Here, in the neighborhood where so many people had said they would never forget him, had always thought of him as strange, had suspected that the dead wife he called different names had been one of his victims. Lindsey was at home alone. Mr Harvey drove by Nate’s house. Nate’s mother was picking the flowers from her flower bed. She looked up when the car passed. She saw just an unfamiliar, old car. She had not seen Mr Harvey in the driver’s seat. He turned left onto the road, which lead to his old street. Ruana Singh stood with her back to him. I saw her through the dining room window, carefully arranging books on the bookshelves. Then Mr Harvey saw his old house, no longer green. The new owners had painted it lavender and built a pool and a gazebo for their children. He heard the sound of girls laughing in the backyard, and a woman wearing a sun hat came out of the front door. She stared at the man sitting in his orange car and felt strange about it. She turned and went back inside, looking at him from behind her window. Waiting. He drove down the road a few houses further. There she was, my precious sister. He could see her in the upstairs window of our house, sitting at the desk and reading a book. It was then that I began to see them coming down the road. While he watched the windows of my old house and wondered where the other members of my family were, I saw the last ones of the animals and the women leaving Mr Harvey’s house. He watched my sister and thought of building the tent.

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He had looked right in my father’s eyes that day as he said my name. And the dog – the one that barked outside his house – the dog was surely dead by now. Lindsey moved in the window, and I watched him watching her. She stood up and turned around to take another book. As she came back to the desk, Mr Harvey noticed a police car stopping behind him. He knew he should not run. He sat in his car and prepared for the talk. As the officer came up to him, the women got in through the windows and the cats curled around Mr Harvey’s ankles. “Are you lost?” the young policeman asked. “I used to live here,” Mr Harvey said. He had chosen to tell the truth. “I didn’t mean to scare anyone.” “Yes, we got a call.” “I see they’re building something in the old cornfield,” Mr Harvey said. “They’re expanding the school.” “I thought the neighborhood looked better,” he said sadly. “Perhaps you should move on,” the officer said. Ruth did not tell Ray what had happened. She promised herself she would write it in her journal first. It was only then that I realized that it wasn’t Lindsey for whom he had come. Mr Harvey had come to see the sinkhole. He had dumped a body there. He remembered his mother’s amber pendant, and how when she had handed it to him it was still warm. Ruth saw the women in blood stuffed in the passing old car. She began walking toward them. On that same road where I had been buried, Mr Harvey passed by Ruth. All she could see were the women. Then: blackout. That was the moment I fell to Earth.

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Twenty-Two I saw Ruth falling down on the road. But I didn’t see Mr Harvey driving away, unnoticed, unloved. Helplessly, I fell through the open doorway of the gazebo and out past the farthest boundary of the heaven that I had lived in all these years. I heard Ray shouting. “Ruth, are you okay? Ruth, Ruth! What happened?” And I was in Ruth’s eyes and I was looking up. I could feel her body lying on the ground. I felt everything – the warmth of the sun, the smell of the earth – but I could not see Ruth. I could see Ray standing above her body, his gray eyes looking up and down the road for help that was not coming. He had not noticed Mr Harvey’s car – he just turned around and there was Ruth, lying on the ground. Ruth pushed against her skin, wanting out. I was inside now and she was fighting to leave, struggling with me. I pulled her back – but she wanted out. There was nothing and no one that could keep her down. Flying. I watched as I had so many times from heaven, but this time it was beside me. It was a wish flying upward. “Ruth,” Ray said. “Can you hear me, Ruth?” Right before she closed her eyes, I looked into Ray Singh’s gray eyes, at his dark skin, at his lips I had once kissed. To be alive again on this Earth. Not to watch from above but to be beside him – the sweetest thing. Somewhere in the blue Inbetween I had seen her – Ruth touched by me as I was leaving Earth. She was a smart girl breaking all the rules. And I was in her body. I heard a voice calling me from heaven. It was Franny’s. She ran toward the gazebo, calling my name. Holiday was barking so loudly. Then, suddenly, Franny and Holiday were gone and all was silent.

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I felt something holding me down, and I felt a hand in mine. I opened my eyes for the first time since I had died and saw gray eyes looking back at me. I was still as I understood that the weight holding me down was the weight of the human body. I tried to speak. “What happened?” Ray said. I died, I wanted to tell him. How do you say, “I died and now I’m back among the living”? Ray had got down. He put a finger on my wrist to check my pulse. “Did you faint?” he asked. I nodded. I knew I would not be given this chance on Earth forever, that Ruth’s wish was only temporary. “I think I’m fine,” I said, but Ray did not hear me. My eyes looked into his eyes, opening as wide as they could. Something was lifting me up. I thought I was flying back to heaven, but I was trying to stand up. “Ruth,” Ray said. “Don’t move, you feel weak. I can carry you to the car.” I smiled at him. “I’m okay,” I said. I watched his beautiful face smile. “So you’re all right,” he said. He came close enough to kiss me. I was feeling an awesome responsibility. I was a soul back on Earth, from heaven, I had been given a gift. “Ruth?” I tried to get used to the name. “Yes,” I said. “You’ve changed,” he said. “Something’s changed.” This was my moment. I wanted so much to tell him, but what could I say then? “I’m Susie, I have only a little time.” I was too afraid. “Kiss me,” I said instead. “What?” “Don’t you want to?” “What’s happened to you?” he said. Ray stared at me, mystified. He leaned down and our lips touched. Another kiss, precious, stolen. His eyes were so close to me that I could see and count his every eyelash.

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I took his hand, got up, and we walked back to the car in silence. He opened the door of the passenger side, and I got inside. He looked hard at me once more. “What’s wrong?” I asked. He kissed me lightly again, on the lips. What I had wanted for so long. The moment slowed down, and I drank it in. I had never been touched like this. I had only been hurt by hands of Mr Harvey. But there was something that had brought me joy in heaven – Ray Singh’s first kiss. Somehow Ruth knew this. I was hiding inside Ruth in every way but this – that when Ray kissed me or as our hands met it was me, not Ruth. I could see Holly. She was laughing, and then again I heard Holiday barking because I was back where we had both once lived. “Where do you want to go?” Ray asked when he got in the car too. And it was such a big question, the answer so unclear. I knew I did not want to go after Mr Harvey. “Ruth?” “Yes?” I said. I looked at Ray and knew why I was there. To take back a piece of heaven I had never known. “Can I kiss you again?” “Yes,” I said, my face turning red. When Ray sat back, he looked at me surprised. “What is it?” he asked. “When you kiss me I see heaven,” I said. “What does it look like?” “It’s different for everyone.” “Who are you?” he asked, but I could tell he didn’t know what he was asking yet. “Give me just a little time, Ray,” I said. “Then I’ll explain.” “Susie,” he suddenly said. My heart stopped beating. “What did you say?” I asked. “You called me Susie.”

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There was silence, and then a moment later he looked at my face differently. “Susie?” “See me,” I said, my eyes full of tears. “Please, see me.” I closed my eyes and waited. “You’re not Ruth,” he said, amazed. “Ray?” “I don’t know what to call you.” “Susie.” I put my fingers up to his lips to stop his questioning. “Remember the note you wrote me?” Then I took his face in my hands and kissed him as hard as I could. After a full minute, he pulled away. “Please tell me what the heaven looks like.” “Sometimes it looks like the high school,” I said. “I never got to go there, but in my heaven I can do what I want. But it doesn’t always look like that. It can look like any place. It looks like anything you’ve ever dreamed.” “Is Ruth there now?” “Yes, but she’ll come back.” “Can you see yourself there?” “I’m here right now,” I said. “But you’ll be gone soon.” I would not lie. I nodded my head. “I think so, Ray. Yes.” “Don’t go,” he said. “My name is Susie,” I whispered and closed my eyes for another kiss, “last name Salmon, like the fish.” When I opened my eyes, I could feel that there was not much time left. But I knew I didn’t waste my precious chance. I had taken this time to fall in love again. Ruth’s body was weakening. I knew that I was going soon. I looked at Ray and touched his face with my fingers. “Do you ever think about the dead, Ray?” He looked at me. “Sometimes I do,” he said. “I’ve always wondered.”

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“We’re here, you know,” I said. “All the time. You can talk to us and think about us. It doesn’t have to be sad or scary.” It was then that I saw something. It was cloudy and still. I tried to tell myself that it was just a trick of light, just dust in the sun. But when Ray touched me again, I didn’t feel anything this time. Ray kissed me lightly. I didn’t feel it. Nothing. The cloudy mass began to take shape now, and I saw men and women in it. “Ray,” I said. I wanted to say “I’ll miss you,” or “don’t let me go,” or “thank you.” “Yes.” “You have to read Ruth’s journals,” I said instead. I looked through the cloudy mass and saw him smile at me. His lovely face – a wonderful memory. I closed my eyes. “Susie?” Ray asked. When I did not answer, he saw Ruth instead of me. He touched her shoulder and, sleepily, she opened her eyes. They looked at each other. She did not have to say anything. He knew that I was gone. I had to leave Earth the second time. But this time I was not alone, and I knew we were taking a long trip to a place very far away. Leaving Earth again was easier than coming back had been. I could see two old friends sitting in the car silently holding each other, neither of them ready to say aloud what had happened to them.

Twenty-Three The next morning Ray and Ruth lay together in Ray’s room. Overnight, their world had changed. It was that simple.

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After I had been gone, Ray and Ruth drove in silence back to Ray’s house. Later that night, Ruana found the two of them together asleep and fully dressed in Ray’s room. She was glad that Ray had at least this one friend. Around 3 a.m., Ray had woken up. He looked at Ruth, at the beautiful body which he loved, and felt a sudden warmth inside of him. Just then the moonlight fell across the floor, and there on the floor was Ruth’s bag. He remembered my last words. Careful not to wake her, Ray got off the bed and walked over to it. Inside was her journal. He took it out and began to read: “At the tips of feathers there is air and at their base: blood. I hold up bones; still I try to place these pieces back together, to make murdered girls live again.” He read ahead: “Time? Little girl in central park. Walks toward bushes. White lace collar, fancy.” He kept reading, looking up only when he heard Ruth wake up. “I have so much to tell you,” she said. My father was returning home from the hospital. I watched the four of them: Buckley and my father walking ahead while Lindsey and my mother followed behind, their arms full of daffodils. Lindsey looked at the bright yellow flowers. She remembered that Samuel and Hal had found yellow daffodils lying in the cornfield on the afternoon of my first memorial. They had never known who placed them there. My sister looked at the flowers and then at my mother. Back at home Grandma Lynn was setting the table for the celebration with champagne. I had come to love her more after death than I ever had on Earth. Her Abigail was coming home again. Her strange Abigail, whom she loved. But when she looked up and through the window, she thought she saw a young girl, wearing a blue parka and yellow bell-bottoms, sitting outside in the garden and staring back at her.

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The next moment the girl was gone. She shook her head. The day was busy. She would not tell anyone. When my father’s car pulled into the drive, I was beginning to wonder if this had been what I’d been waiting for, for my family to come home, not to me anymore but to one another with me gone. My mother, for her part, was thinking moment by moment that she might be able to survive being home again. When the four of them got out of the car, my mother had given the daffodils to Grandma Lynn and gone upstairs almost immediately. Everyone knew where she was going: my old room. She stood in the door of it, alone, as if she were standing on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. It was still lavender. The furniture was unchanged. “I love you, Susie,” she said. I had heard these words so many times from my father that it shocked me now; I had been waiting to hear them from my mother. She had needed the time to know that this love would not destroy her, and I had, I now knew, given her that time, because I had a lot of it – the eternity. She noticed a photograph, which Grandma Lynn had put in a gold frame. It was the very first photograph I’d ever taken of her – my secret portrait of Abigail before her family woke up and she put on her lipstick. Susie Salmon, wildlife photographer. Were my parents back together forever? Would my father’s heart truly heal? I knew they were meant to be: the four of them together, alone. I was not in the house or anywhere around. I was done missing them, needing them to miss me. Though I still would. Though they still would. Always.

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As I watched my family drink champagne, I thought about how their lives went backward and forward from my death. But now together they were moving away from it. These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events that my death brought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unknown time in the future. What I came to see was this amazing body that had once been my life. My father was looking at the daughter who was standing there in front of him now. The shadow daughter was gone. I realized then that they would not know when I was gone, just as they could not know sometimes that I was in the room. I became real in whatever way they wanted me to be. And there was Ruth, too. She would always feel me and think of me. I could see that, but there was no longer anything I could do. All of it, the story of my life and death, was hers if she chose to tell it, even to one person at a time. And I was gone. Bones. You don’t notice the dead leaving when they really choose to leave you. You’re not supposed to. At most you feel them as a whisper or the wave of a whisper. I still watch my family sometimes. I can’t help it, and sometimes they still think of me. They can’t help it. Grandma Lynn died several years later, but I have yet to see her here. I imagine her in her heaven, drinking scotch with Tennessee Williams and Dean Martin. She’ll be here in her own sweet time, I’m sure. My parents kept sharing when they felt me. Being together, thinking and talking about the dead, became a perfectly normal part of their life.

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My father dreamed that one day he might teach another child to love ships in bottles. He knew there would be both sadness and joy in it; that it would always hold an echo of me. Lindsey and Samuel got married and bought the empty Victorian house in which they had once found shelter from the rain. And then ten years after my fourteen years on Earth my sister gave birth to a sweet little girl they named Abigail Suzanne. Little Susie to me. And my sister, my Lindsey, left me in her memories, where I was meant to be. Ray became Dr Singh. “The real doctor in the family,” as Ruana liked to say. Ruth was still trying to find a way to write down whom she saw and what she had experienced. She wanted everyone to believe what she knew: that the dead truly talk to us, that in the air between the living spirits cry and rejoice and laugh with us. They are the oxygen we breathe. Now I am in the place I call wide Heaven because it includes all my simplest wishes. The word my grandfather uses is comfort. I would like to tell you that it is beautiful here, that I am, and you will one day be, forever safe. But this heaven is not about safety or reality. We have fun. We do things that make humans grateful, like Buckley’s garden blooming all at once. I did that for my mother who, having stayed, started taking care of it again. One afternoon I was looking at Earth with my grandfather. I saw him: Mr Harvey coming out of the doors of a Greyhound bus. He went into the diner and ordered a cup of coffee. He still looked very ordinary. A teenage girl came in. She also ordered some tea, and when she finished it, he followed her out. I watched him walk behind her in the snow back to the bus station, where she stopped to have a smoke. While she

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stood there, he joined her. She wasn’t even scared. He was another boring old man in bad clothes. He planned his business in his mind. The snow and cold. The ravine in front of them. The dark woods on the other side. “Long ride,” he said. She looked at him at first as if she couldn’t believe he was talking to her. “Um hmmm,” she said. “Are you traveling alone?” It was then that I noticed them, hanging above their heads in a long row. Icicles. The girl finished her cigarette and turned to go. “Creep,” she said, and walked fast. A moment later, the icicle fell. The heavy coldness of it unbalanced Mr Harvey just enough to stumble and fall forward. Only weeks later the snow in the ravine melted enough for the body to be found. And in a small house five miles away was a man who gave my muddy charm bracelet to his wife. “Look what I found at the construction site,” he said. His wife fingered the tiny bike, the ballet shoe, the flower basket and the thimble. “This little girl’s grown up by now,” she said. Almost. Not quite. I wish you all a long and happy life.

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VOCABULARY

Abbreviations

Ñîêðàùåíèÿ

adj – adjective adv – adverb interj – interjection n – noun prep – preposition pron – pronoun v – verb

амер. – американизм бот. – ботаника груб. – грубое выражение зоол. – зоология идиом. – идиоматическое выражение мед. – медицина разг. – разговорный стиль техн. – технический термин фраз. гл. – фразовый глагол юр. – юридический термин

A

affair n отношения «на стороне» afford v быть в состоянии позволить себе afraid adj испуганный; be ~ бояться afternoon n дневное время agree v соглашаться ahead adv of впереди air n воздух alarm clock n будильник alert adj (быть) начеку, настороженным alibi n алиби alive adj живой allow v позволять, разрешать alone adj один, в одиночестве aloud adv вслух

absence n отсутствие absolutely adv абсолютно, конечно accent n акцент accept v принимать accident n несчастный случай, происшествие; by ~ случайно accidentally adv случайно accomplice n сообщник, соучастник ache 1) n боль; 2) v болеть act v действовать adult n взрослый advice n совет

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although adv хотя amazed adj поражённый, изумлённый amazement n изумление amazing adj поразительный, изумительный amber n янтарь ambition n честолюбие, тщеславие among prep среди anatomy adj анатомический anger n гнев, злость, ярость angry adj сердитый, злой ankle n лодыжка anniversary n годовщина announce v провозглашать, объявлять announcement n объявление, уведомление annoyed adj раздражённый anonymous adj анонимный, безымянный answer 1) v отвечать; 2) n ответ antiseptic n (мед.) антисептик, антисептическое средство anxious adj взволнованный, обеспокоенный anyway adv всё равно, в любом случае apologize v извиняться appear v появляться, возникать appetite n аппетит approach v подходить, приближаться apron n передник area n территория, местность arm n рука arrange v устраивать, организовывать, расставлять arrest v арестовывать arrive v прибывать, приезжать art (class) n рисование (школьный предмет) asleep adj спящий aspirin n аспирин

assistant n помощник attack v нападать attentive adj внимательный attractive adj привлекательный, красивый automatic adj автоматический autopilot n автопилот avoid v избегать aware adj знающий, осознающий awesome adj благоговейный, почтительный, потрясающий awkward adj неловкий, неудобный

B back n спина backstage adv находящийся за кулисами backyard n задний двор balcony n балкон ballet shoe n балетная туфелька bare adj голый, обнажённый barefoot adj босоногий bark v лаять base n основа, основание basement n подвал basic n основной basis n основание, фундамент bastard n (груб.) ублюдок, подонок bat n бейсбольная бита bead n бусина beam n луч света beans n (бот.) фасоль bear n (зоол.) медведь beat v (beat, beaten) бить beautify v украшать beginning n начало behavior n поведение believe v верить bell n колокольчик; ~-bottoms брюки-клёш; ~s and whistles (идиом.) «колокольчики и

Vocabulary свистки», ненужные элементы или украшения belly n живот belong v принадлежать bench n скамья beside adv рядом biceps n pl бицепсы bicycle n велосипед bike n мотоцикл biker n мотоциклист bill n счёт Bingo! interj Бинго! Получилось! Удалось! birth n рождение; ~ certificate свидетельство о рождении blackout n затмение, потеря сознания blame v винить, обвинять Bless you! (разг.) Будьте здоровы! blindly adv слепо blinds n pl жалюзи, шторы на окнах blood 1) n кровь; ~ type группа крови; 2) ~y adj кровавый bloom v цвести blow 1) n удар; 2) v (blew, blown) дуть, задувать blueprint n план, проект blur n расплывшееся пятно, неясные очертания blurred adj размытый blurt (out) v сболтнуть, выпалить board n доска boarded adj заколоченный досками boldness n наглость, смелость bone n кость bookshelf (pl bookshelves) n книжная полка border n граница bored adj скучающий boss n начальник, босс bother v беспокоить, тревожить bottle n бутылка boundary n грань, граница, предел

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bouquet n букет bracelet n браслет brain n мозг brake n тормоз branch n ветвь bravery n храбрость break (time) n перерыв; ~-in взлом, незаконное вторжение; ~ through v прорваться, пробиться breast n грудь breath n дыхание breathe v дышать brick n кирпич brief adj краткий bright adj яркий brighten v проясняться, радоваться broken adj сломанный bruise n синяк brush v расчёсывать building site n стройплощадка bump n глухой удар, столкновение bury v хоронить burn v жечь, гореть bush n куст busy adj занятой bygone n прошлое, минувшее; (идиом.) let ~s be ~s что было, то прошло

C cabbage n капуста cabin n хижина cafeteria n кафе-закусочная, кафетерий calculate v подсчитывать, рассчитывать call v звать, звонить calm 1) adj спокойный; 2) ~ly adv спокойно camera n фотоаппарат camp n лагерь

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cancer n (мед.) рак candle n свеча card n открытка care 1) n забота; 2) ~ (about) v заботиться careful 1) adj осторожный; 2) ~ly adv осторожно carpet n ковёр carrot n морковь carry v нести case n (юр.) судебное дело casket n гроб casual adj обычный, повседневный casually adv случайно, мимоходом catalog n каталог catching adj заразный cave n пещера ceiling n потолок celebrity n знаменитость celery n сельдерей cement n цемент central station n главный вокзал ceremony n церемония, ритуал certain adj определённый challenge n сложная задача, проблема champagne n шампанское chance n возможность, шанс change v меняться chapped adj обветренный, потрескавшийся charm n подвеска, брелок chat v болтать, разговаривать cheap adj дешёвый check v проверять cheek n щека chest n грудная клетка childhood n детство chill n холод, озноб chin n подбородок choice n выбор choose v выбирать christen v крестить

Christmas carols n pl рождественские гимны church n церковь cigarette n сигарета circle n круг clean up v (фраз. гл.) делать уборку clearing n лужайка, полянка close up v (фраз. гл.) закрывать навсегда closely adv близко closet n гардеробная, встроенный шкаф для одежды cloth n ткань cloud 1) n облако; 2) ~y adj/adv облачный, облачно clue n (юр.) улика coast n побережье coincidence n совпадение coldness n холод collar n ошейник, воротник collect v собирать comb v расчёсывать combination n сочетание combine v сочетать come true v (came, come) осуществляться, реализовываться comfort n уют, комфорт comment n комментарий, отзыв commit v совершать common knowledge n общеизвестный факт competition n конкурс, соревнование compliment n комплимент concentrate v сосредотачиваться concrete n бетон confess v признаваться confused adj сбитый с толку, озадаченный congratulate v поздравлять connect v соединять connection n связь constant adj постоянный construction n стройка, строение continue v продолжать

Vocabulary contradict v противоречить conversation n разговор, диалог convince v убеждать cookbook n кулинарная книга cool v остывать cop n коп, полицейский cord n шнурок corner n угол cornfield n кукурузное поле cornstalk (бот.) стебель кукурузы corporation n корпорация, большая компания correct v исправлять corridor n коридор cotton n хлопок count v считать counter n прилавок couple n пара cover v покрывать coworker n сотрудник, коллега crawl v ползать, ползти crazy adj сумасшедший creak v скрипеть create v создавать creep n (груб.) придурок, урод crime n преступление criminal adj преступный, уголовный critically adv оценивающе cross 1) n крест; 2) v пересекать crush 1) n влюбленность; 2) v давить, крушить cucumber n огурец curious adj любопытный curl v обвивать(ся) curse v ругаться cut 1) v (разг.) прогуливать уроки; 2) n порез cute adj симпатичный

D daffodil n нарцисс damage n урон, ущерб

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dance v танцевать dangerous adj опасный darken v темнеть darkness n темнота date n свидание daylight n свет дня dead 1) adj мёртвый; 2) n мертвец(ы) death n смерть debate team n дискуссионный клуб decide v принимать решение, решать deeply adv глубоко delicate adj тонкий, изящный deny v отрицать depend (on) v зависеть describe v описывать desert n пустыня design n план, проект desire v сильно желать чего-либо desk n рабочий стол destiny n рок, судьба destroy v уничтожать, разрушать detail n деталь develop 1) v 1. развивать; 2. проявлять и печатать фотографии; 2) ~er n застройщик, разработчик devotion n преданность different 1) adj другой, иной, отличающийся; 2) ~ly adv иным образом, иначе difficult adj трудный dig v (dug, dug) копать diner n закусочная, бистро dining hall n столовая diploma n диплом direction n направление directly adv прямо dirt n грязь disappear 1) v исчезать; 2) ~ance n исчезновение discover v обнаруживать discuss v обсуждать disease n заболевание

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dish n тарелка, блюдо dislike n неприязнь distance n расстояние distant adj отдалённый distract v отвлекать внимание divide v делить dizzy adj испытывающий головокружение, ошеломлённый document n документ dollhouse n кукольный домик doorbell n дверной звонок doorway n дверной проём dormitory (dorm) n общежитие doubt 1) n сомнение; 2) v сомневаться downstairs adv на первом этаже дома/квартиры dozen n дюжина drawer n выдвижной ящик drawing n рисунок dress 1) n платье; 2) be ~ed in быть одетым в drill v сверлить drive out v (drove, driven) (фраз. гл.) вывести, удалить driveway n подъезд к дому drop 1) v ронять; 2) n капля drunk adj пьяный dump v сваливать, выбрасывать duty n дежурство

E earth n земля easy chair n кресло echo n эхо edge n край, грань effect n эффект, воздействие eggplant n (бот.) баклажан elbow n локоть electric shock n электрошок emergency n непредвиденное обстоятельство emotionally adv эмоционально

emptiness n пустота empty adj пустой encyclopedia n энциклопедический словарь end 1) n конец; 2) ~ up v (фраз. гл.) оказаться, очутиться; 3) ~less adj бесконечный energy n сила, энергия engine n мотор enjoy v наслаждаться, радоваться enough adv достаточно enter v входить envelope n конверт eraser n ластик, резинка escape 1) n побег; 2) v бежать, избежать, спастись eternal adj вечный eternity n вечность event n событие everywhere adv везде evidence n улика, свидетельство evil adj злой exactly adv точно except prep кроме excited adj взволнованный excitement n волнение excuse n повод, уважительная причина expand v расширяться expect v ожидать experience n опыт experiment 1) n эксперимент; 2) v экспериментировать explain v объяснять explanation n объяснение explore v исследовать extreme adj крайний, чрезвычайный eye n глаз

F fabulous adj легендарный, изумительный

Vocabulary face 1) n лицо; 2) v обращаться лицом к fade v бледнеть, исчезать fail v терпеть неудачу faint v терять сознание fair adj справедливый, честный fall 1) v (fell, fallen) падать; ~ behind (фраз. гл.) отставать; ~ in love влюбляться; 2) n (амер.) осень fan n фанат fancy adj причудливый, нарядный far-away adj далёкий farmer n фермер farthest adj самый отдалённый fashion magazine n модный журнал fast adj быстрый fault n вина fear n страх feather n перо feature n черта; special ~ отличительная черта foot (pl feet) 1) n ступня, нога; 2) фут (единица длины = 30,48 см) female n особь женского пола, женщина fertilizer n удобрение few adj несколько figure n фигура fill v наполнять final adj итоговый, конечный, последний find out v (found, found) (фраз. гл.) обнаружить, узнать finger 1) n палец; ~print отпечаток пальца; 2) v перебирать пальцами, трогать fireplace n камин firstborn n первенец fit v (fit/fitted, fit/fitted) подходить, соответствовать fjord n фьорд, пролив flash n вспышка flashlight n фонарь

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flee v (fled, fled) спасаться бегством, бежать flesh n плоть flicker v мерцать flier n листовка float v плыть, держаться на поверхности flood v затапливать, заливать водой floor n пол, этаж floorboard n половая доска, половица flower bed n цветочная клумба fly v (flew, flown) летать focus v сосредотачиваться fold v складывать follow 1) v следовать; 2) ~ing adj следующий foolish adj глупый footstep n шаг foreign 1) adj иностранный; 2) ~er n иностранец forever adv навсегда forget v (forgot, forgotten) забывать fort n крепость, форт fragment n часть, фрагмент frame n рамка free adj свободный freeze v (froze, frozen) мёрзнуть, замерзать frighten 1) v пугать(ся); 2) adj ~ed испуганный front n перед frustrated adj расстроенный, разочарованный fun n веселье; have ~ веселиться funeral n похороны fur n мех

G garage n гараж garbage n мусор

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gardening book n руководство по садоводству gazebo n садовая беседка gentle adj осторожный, нежный get away (with) v (got, got/gotten) (фраз. гл.) убежать, избежать (наказания) get down v (фраз. гл.) опуститься, спуститься ghost n привидение gifted adj одарённый, талантливый give away v (gave, given) (фраз. гл.) выдать, разболтать glad adj довольный, радостный glass 1) n стекло; 2) ~es n pl очки globe n шар, сфера; ~ globe n стеклянный шар, наполненный глицерином с мелкими белыми частичками, имитирующими снег (традиционное рождественское украшение) gloves n pl перчатки Go ahead! (разг.) Давай! Вперёд! goose bumps n pl мурашки Gosh! (разг.) Господи! Боже мой! grab v хватать, выхватывать grade n класс (в школе) graduate v окончить (школу, вуз) graduation n выпуск, окончание (школы, вуза) grant v даровать grass n трава grateful adj благодарный gratitude n благодарность grave n могила; ~stone могильная плита, надгробный камень; ~yard кладбище greet v приветствовать “Greyhound” n «борзая», название американской междугородней автобусной компании grief n горе, печаль, скорбь groceries n pl (амер.) продукты grocery bag n (амер.) пакет для продуктов

ground n земля grow (up) 1) v (grew, grown) (фраз. гл.) взрослеть, расти; 2) ~n man adj взрослый (человек) guess v считать, предполагать guide 1) n гид, консультант; 2) n руководство; 3) v вести, направлять guilt 1) n вина; 2) ~y adj виноватый gun n ружье, огнестрельное оружие guy n парень

H hail n град half n (pl halves) половина hallway n прихожая, холл handkerchief n платок (носовой) handsome adj красивый handwriting n почерк hang up v (hung, hung) (фраз. гл.) вешать (трубку телефона) hanger n вешалка happiness n счастье hard 1) adj трудный; 2) ~en v затвердевать; 3) ~ly adv едва hate 1) v ненавидеть; 2) n ненависть haunt v мучить, преследовать headache n головная боль heal v заживать, залечивать(ся) heart 1) n сердце; by ~ наизусть; ~ -shaped в форме сердца; ~ attack (мед.) сердечный приступ, инфаркт heat n жара heaven n небеса, рай heavily adv тяжело, сильно, в большой степени heel n пятка, каблук, задник (у обуви) hell n ад

Vocabulary helplessly adv беспомощно herbs n pl травы, пряно-ароматические приправы hero n герой hesitate v колебаться hide v (hid, hidden) прятаться hiding place n тайник, укрытие highway n шоссе hill n холм hip n бедро hire v нанимать hold v (held, held) держать hole n нора, дыра, отверстие homeless adj/n бездомный homemaker n хозяйка дома, мать семейства homeroom teacher n классный руководитель honest adj честный honey n (разг.) милая, дорогая (обращение) honor n честь hope 1) n надежда; 2) v надеяться horrible adj ужасный horror n ужас horse corn n (бот.) кормовая кукуруза hostess n хозяйка hug 1) v обнимать; 2) n объятие huge adj огромный humming n жужжание hunter n охотник hurry 1) n спешка; 2) v спешить hurt v (hurt, hurt) причинять боль, болеть hut n хижина, барак, лачуга hymn n гимн, песнопение hysterical adj истерический

I icicle n сосулька icy adj ледяной idea n мысль, идея, понятие

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ignition n (техн.) зажигание ignore v не обращать внимания, игнорировать illness n болезнь image 1) n образ; 2) ~ine v представлять, воображать; ~inary adj воображаемый; ~ination n воображение immediately adv немедленно, тотчас же importance n важность impossible adj невозможный impress v впечатлять incident n случай, происшествие include v включать, содержать infinity n бесконечность initials n pl инициалы initiate v начать, положить начало inner adj внутренний innocence n невинность innocent adj невинный inside adv внутри insight n проницательность, понимание insist v настаивать inspire v вдохновлять instead adv вместо instinct n инстинкт intake 1) n приём, набор; ~ counselor куратор новичков interrupt v прерывать intimacy n близость introduce v представлять, знакомить investigate 1) v расследовать; 2) ~ion n расследование involve 1) v вовлекать; 2) adj be involved with быть замешанным в чем-то iron v гладить утюгом irresistible adj неотразимый, непреодолимый irritate v раздражать item n предмет

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J janitor n (амер.) сторож, уборщик, дворник jeweler n ювелир jingle bell n бубенчик join v присоединяться joke 1) n шутка; 2) v шутить journal n дневник, журнал joy n радость jumpy adj (разг.) нервный, неспокойный

K keystone n (архит.) замковый камень, краеугольный камень kick v пинать, бить ногой kid n (разг.) ребёнок kindergarten n детский сад kitten n котёнок knee n колено knife n нож knock 1) v ударять, стучать; ~ down сбивать с ног, валить на землю

L label n ярлык, этикетка, пометка lace n кружево lake n озеро land 1) n земля, участок земли; ~lady n домовладелица, хозяйка lap n колени, верхняя часть ног сидящего человека large adj большой, обширный laser n лазер lash n ресница last 1) adj последний; 2) v длиться lavender adj лавандовый, бледно-лиловый цвет

lawyer n юрист, адвокат layer n слой lead 1) v (led, led) вести; 2) n ключ, намек leak v протекать, вытекать, сочиться lean v (lent/leaned, lent/leaned) наклоняться, склоняться least 1) adj наименьший; 2) at ~ по крайней мере leather n кожа (материал) leave v (left, left) оставлять, покидать, уходить leg n нога letter n письмо leukemia n (мед.) лейкемия, белокровие librarian n библиотекарь lie v (lay, lain) лежать lie 1) n ложь; 2) v лгать lift v поднимать light 1) adj светлый; 2) v (lit/ lighted, lit/lighted) зажигать; ~ly adv легко; ~ning n молния limousine (limo) n лимузин (автомобиль) line 1) n фраза, строчка; 2) ~s pl морщинки link 1) n связь, связующее звено; 2) v связывать, соединять lip 1) n губа; ~ balm бальзам для губ; ~stick губная помада list 1) n список; 2) v перечислять literally adv буквально lively adj оживлённый, активный, бодрый living being живое существо lock away v (фраз. гл.) запирать locker n личный шкафчик школьника loneliness n одиночество lonely adj одинокий long-forgotten adj давно забытый look for v (фраз. гл.) искать

Vocabulary lose v (lost, lost) терять, проигрывать loud adj громкий lovely adj милый, прекрасный luckily adv к счастью luggage n багаж lunchbox n контейнер для школьного завтрака

M machine n механизм, автомат mailbox n почтовый ящик make sure v (made, made) (фраз. гл.) убедиться makeup n косметика, макияж mall n галерея магазинов, торговый комплекс manage v справляться map n карта mark v отмечать, обозначать married adj женатый, замужняя marry v жениться, выходить замуж Martian n марсианин marvelous adj изумительный, превосходный mask n маска matches n pl спички material n материал, ткань matter v иметь значение meal n еда, пища mean 1) v (meant, meant) иметь в виду, значить; 2) ~ingful adj значимый measurement n расчёт, измерение melt v таять memorial service n поминальная служба memory n память, воспоминание mention v упоминать merely adv просто, только, единственно

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message n сообщение, послание metal 1) adj металлический; 2) n металл microscope n микроскоп middle n середина midnight n полночь mile n миля (единица длины = 1609 м) mind 1) n ум; 2) v быть против miniature adj миниатюрный mink n (зоол.) норка mirror n зеркало miss 1) v скучать по кому-либо; 2) ~ing adj пропавший mistake n ошибка moan v стонать moment n миг, мгновение, момент monitor n контролёр, староста класса monster n чудовище, монстр moonlight n лунный свет mostly adv в основном, главным образом motorcycle n мотоцикл mousetrap n мышеловка mouth n рот move v двигаться; ~ in with переезжать, съезжаться вместе; ~ closer приближаться movement n движение movie n (амер.) кинофильм mud 1) n грязь; 2) ~dy adj грязный murder 1) v убивать; 2) n убийство; 3) ~er n убийца muscle n мышца, мускул mushroom n гриб My God in heaven! (разг.) Боже всемогущий! Бог ты мой! mysterious adj загадочный, таинственный mystified adj озадаченный mythology n мифология

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N nail n ноготь nametag n значок с именем nanny n няня narrow adj узкий nature n природа, естество nearby adv близко, рядом neat adj (разг.) милый, клёвый necessary adj необходимый neck n шея; ~lace ожерелье neighbor n сосед; ~hood квартал, соседство nervous adj нервный newsboy n разносчик газет nightmare n ночной кошмар nod v кивать головой note n записка; ~book записная книжка, дневник; ~s pl конспект, записи (урока, лекции) notice v замечать, обращать внимание not-still adj неспокойный novel n роман (литературное произведение) numb adj онемелый, неподвижный nurse n медсестра nutcase n (груб.) псих

O oak n дуб obsession n одержимость obviously adv явно, очевидно occasional adj редкий, случайный, периодический occupy v занимать (дом), оккупировать ocean n океан offer v предлагать oil n масло (машинное) olive tree n (бот.) олива once adv однажды, раз

opposite adj противоположный optimist n оптимист ordinary adj обычный, ординарный organize v организовывать outside adv снаружи overnight adv за ночь own adj собственный oxygen n кислород

P pack v паковать (вещи), собираться в дорогу page n страница pain 1) n боль; 2) ~ful adj причиняющий боль, болезненный paint 1) n краска; 2) v красить; 3) ~er n художник pair n пара palace n дворец pale adj бледный pancake n блинчик pants n pl брюки paperback n книга в бумажном переплёте park 1) v парковать (машину); 2) ~ing (lot) n стоянка для машин, парковка parka n куртка-парка с капюшоном part n часть pass v проходить; ~ by (фраз. гл.) проходить мимо; ~ out (фраз. гл.) терять сознание passionate adj страстный path n дорожка, путь pattern n образец, уклад pause 1) v сделать паузу, остановиться; 2) n пауза, колебание, замешательство payphone n таксофон, телефонавтомат (уличный) peanut n (бот.) арахис

Vocabulary pencil n карандаш pendant n кулон, подвеска penguin n (зоол.) пингвин penlight n лазерная указка, маленький фонарик perfect adj идеальный, совершенный perfume n духи perhaps adv вероятно period n цикл, месячные permanent adj постоянный perpetual adj бесконечный, вечный persistent adj настойчивый, упорный personal adj личный phrase n фраза physical adj физический pick up v (фраз. гл.) поднимать, подбирать piece n кусок, часть pillow n подушка pine n (бот.) сосна pity v жалеть, испытывать жалость place 1) n место; 2) v класть, размещать plane n самолёт plant 1) v сажать (растения); 2) n растение pocket n карман poet n поэт poetry n поэзия point 1) n точка, отметка, пункт; at some ~ в какой-то момент; 2) v ~ to указывать на что-либо pool n бассейн poor adj бедный, несчастный porcelain n фарфор, фаянс, керамика porch n крыльцо possible adj возможный, вероятный post n столб pot n горшок (керамический)

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potential adj потенциальный, вероятный power n сила, власть Praise the Lord! (разг.) Слава богу! prayer n молитва precious adj драгоценный, дорогой, любимый predict v предсказывать pregnant adj беременная prepare v готовить, подготавливать presence n присутствие pretend v делать вид, притворяться pretty adj симпатичный, красивый principal n директор школы print v печатать private adj частный, личный prize n приз, награда probably adv вероятно procedure n процесс, процедура, мероприятие project n проект, творческая работа promise v обещать protect v защищать protective adj покровительственный, защитный protest v возражать, протестовать proud adj гордый pull v тянуть, тащить; ~ up (фраз. гл.) подъезжать; ~ out (фраз. гл.) выезжать (со стоянки); ~ off (фраз. гл.) отъезжать pulse n пульс punish v наказывать purpose n цель purse n женская сумочка pursue v преследовать, выполнять, продолжать push v толкать push-ups n отжимания

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put v класть; ~ down (фраз. гл.) опускать; ~ to rest окончательно оставлять в покое; ~ through (фраз. гл.) соединять (по телефону)

Q question n вопрос; out of the ~ исключено questioning 1) n допрос; 2) adj вопросительный quicklime n (техн.) негашёная известь quiet adj тихий

R raise v поднимать ramp n (амер.) пандус, съезд с автомагистрали rape v насиловать rare adj редкий ravine n ущелье, овраг reach v доставать, дотягиваться react v реагировать realistic adj правдоподобный, реалистичный reality n действительность realize v понимать, осознавать realtor n агент по недвижимости reason n причина, повод reassure v убеждать, заверять, уверять receive v получать recognize v узнавать, распознавать record n запись, регистрация refrigerator n холодильник regularly adv часто, регулярно rejoice v возрадоваться relationship n отношение, взаимоотношение

relax v расслабить(ся) relief n облегчение remain v оставаться remember v помнить, вспоминать remind (of) v напоминать rent 1) v сдавать внаём/снимать жилье; 2) n плата за проживание reopen v открыться вновь repair v восстанавливать, ремонтировать, чинить repeat v повторять(ся) reply v отвечать reread v перечитывать respect v уважать responsibility n ответственность responsible adj ответственный rest (of) n остаток, остальное resurrect v воскрешать retell v пересказывать return v возвращаться revenge n месть, отмщение reverse n (тех.) задний/обратный ход reward v награждать ribbon n лента, ленточка ride 1) v (rode, ridden) ехать, кататься; 2) n поездка, езда ring v звонить, звенеть ritual n обряд, ритуал, традиция road n дорога rob v грабить rock n скала, камень roll 1) v катиться; 2) ~ of film n бобина (катушка) фотоплёнки romance n роман, любовные отношения roof n крыша roommate n сосед по комнате rosary n розарий, чётки rot n гниение, разложение routine n режим, порядок действия, рутина row n ряд rowboat n вёсельная лодка

Vocabulary ruin v уничтожать, разрушать rule n правило rumor n слух run (ran, run) v бегать; ~ around (фраз. гл.) бегать кругами, повсюду; ~ away (фраз. гл.) сбежать, убежать rush v броситься, устремиться

S sad adj грустный safe 1) adj безопасный, в безопасности; 2) n сейф sail 1) n парус; 2) ~ away v уплывать sale n продажа, распродажа salmon n лосось sari n сари (женская одежда в Индии) save v сохранять, сберегать sax n саксофон scan v просматривать, сканировать scare 1) v пугать; 2) ~ ed adj испуганный; 3) ~y adj/adv страшный, страшно scarf n шарф scavenger n мусорщик, сборщик мусора scent n запах, аромат schoolbook n школьный учебник scrap n отходы, скрап scream 1) v пронзительно кричать; 2) n крик search 1) n поиск; 2) v искать seat n место, сидение secret n тайна, секрет seem v казаться senior citizens n pl пожилые люди sense n смысл; make ~ иметь смысл, значить separate adj отдельный, отличающийся

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series n ряд, серия serious adj серьёзный serve v служить, работать several adj несколько, некоторые shack n хижина shade n полумрак, тень, прохлада shadow n тень shake 1) v трясти(сь), дрожать; 2) ~ing n тряска; 3) ~ hands v здороваться за руку, пожимать руку shape n форма, фигура share v делить, делиться shave v брить(ся) shawl n шаль shed n навес, сарай shelter n укрытие shelf n (pl shelves) полка shiny adj сияющий, яркий ship n корабль shirt n рубашка shock 1) v шокировать, поражать; 2) n состояние шока shoe n туфля shoot v (shot, shot) стрелять shortcut n короткий путь shortly adv вскоре shortness n короткость shoulder n плечо shout v громко кричать shrug v пожимать плечами shut v захлопывать(ся); (разг.) ~ up заткнуться shyly adv смущённо, застенчиво, робко sick adj больной sight n видение sign n знак signal n сигнал, знак silence n тишина, безмолвие, молчание silent adj тихий silly adj глупый silver adj серебряный

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simple adj простой sincere adj искренний single adj незамужняя, неженатый, одинокий sinkhole n провал, просевший грунт siren n сирена situation n положение, ситуация sit-ups n pl подъём торса для тренировки мышц живота size n размер sketch n набросок; ~ pad блокнот; ~book альбом для рисования skies n pl небеса skin n кожа skirt n юбка sky n небо sleepover n ночёвка в гостях sleepwalker n сомнамбула, лунатик slightly adv слегка slow 1) v замедляться; 2) adj медленный; 3) n ~-motion (тех.) режим замедленного воспроизведения smart adj умный smash v разбивать вдребезги smell 1) n запах; 2) v пахнуть sneakers n pl кроссовки sniff v нюхать, обнюхивать snobbish adj снобистский snowflake n снежинка soccer n (амер.) футбол social worker n соцработник sock n носок softly adv мягко, тихо, нежно somehow adv каким-то образом somewhere adv где-то, где-нибудь son-in-law n зять sonnet n сонет, стихотворение sort v сортировать, распределять soul n душа sound n звук space n пространство, место

spade n лопата spark n искра speaker n оратор, спикер, выступающий с речью spirit n дух spooky adj (разг.) жуткий, страшный spot 1) n пятно, место; 2) ~less adj безупречный, незапятнанный spread v распространять(ся) spy n шпион stage n сцена stain n пятно stake n подставка, подпорка stand out v (фраз. гл.) выделяться stare 1) v пристально смотреть, уставиться; 2) n пристальный взгляд state n штат stay 1) v оставаться; 2) ~ away (фраз. гл.) держаться подальше steal v (stole, stolen) красть, воровать still adj тихий, неподвижный stomach n живот, желудок stone n камень storage n склад, хранилище store n магазин straight adj прямой; ~-cut (dress) платье прямого покроя strangely adv странно stranger n незнакомец, чужак strangle v душить straw n соломинка; the final ~ (идиом.) последняя капля strength n сила stretch v тянуть, вытягивать string n шнур, верёвка stripe 1) n полоса; 2) ~ed adj полосатый structure n строение, конструкция

Vocabulary struggle n борьба stuff 1) v наполнять, заполнять; 2) n (разг.) штуковина, чепуха stumble v спотыкаться stupid adj глупый style 1) n стиль; 2) ~ish adj стильный suddenly adv внезапно, неожиданно suicide n самоубийство sunny adj ясный, солнечный support n поддержка surely adv несомненно, конечно surface n поверхность surgery n хирургия, операционная surprise 1) n удивление; 2) v удивлять survive v выживать suspect 1) v подозревать; 2) n подозреваемый suspicion n подозрение suspicious adj подозрительный swallow v проглатывать sweetheart n (разг.) милая, дорогая (обращение) swim v (swam, swum) плавать, плыть swing n качели switch 1) v переключать, включать; 2) n переключение, изменение sympathize v сочувствовать sympathy n сочувствие

T take v (took, taken) брать; ~ away (фраз. гл.) забирать, отнимать; ~ off (фраз. гл.) снимать (одежду); ~ care заботиться, беречь talisman n талисман

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talker n болтун target n цель task n задача, задание taste v пробовать на вкус tear v разрывать, рвать; ~ out вырывать tears n pl слёзы tell v рассказывать; ~ on доносить, выдавать, ябедничать temporary adj временный tense n грамматическое время tent n навес, палатка, шалаш terribly adv ужасно territory n площадь, территория textbook n учебник Thanksgiving (Day) n День благодарения (праздник в США) thatched-roof n соломенная крыша theory n теория, предположение thermos n термос thick adj густой, толстый, плотный thousand n тысяча throughout adv везде, на всём протяжении thunder n гром thunderclap n удар грома thunderstorm n гроза ticket n билет tidy adj убранный, прибранный, опрятный tighten v сжимать, зажимать tile n керамическая плитка tiny adj крохотный, малюсенький tip n конец, кончик tips n pl чаевые together adv вместе torch n фонарь, осветительный прибор touch 1) n прикосновение; keep in ~ (идиом.) поддерживать связь, отношения; 2) v трогать, прикасаться

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toward prep по направлению к toy n игрушка trace n след tragedy n трагедия, драма tragic adj драматичный, трагичный, печальный trail v тянуться следом train 1) v тренировать(ся); 2) n поезд trance n транс, в состоянии транса trapped adj пойманный в ловушку tray n поднос treat v обращаться, обходиться tremor n дрожь trick n трюк, обман trip n поездка truck n грузовик trust v доверять truth n правда turn v поворачивать(ся); ~ into (фраз. гл.) превращаться twig n ветка twin n близнец

U unable adj неспособный unaware adj незнающий unbalance v нарушить равновесие unchanged adj неизменившийся, прежний unclear adj неясный uncomfortable adj неуютный, неудобный, неловкий uncomplaining adj безропотный, терпеливый underground adj подземный underside n нижняя часть, обратная сторона understand v (understood, understood) понимать unexpected adj неожиданный

unfair adj нечестный, несправедливый unfamiliar adj незнакомый unlock v открыть ключом unloved adj нелюбимый unmade adj несделанный, неубранный unnoticed adj незамеченный unpleasant adj неприятный unremarkable adj неприметный unspoken adj невыраженный, невысказанный unwrap v развернуть upset adj расстроенный upside down adj перевёрнутый вверх тормашками upstairs adv наверху, на втором этаже дома/квартиры upward adv вверх useless adj бесполезный

V vacation n отпуск vacuum n пустота, вакуум valley n долина vampire n вампир van n фургон vegetarian n вегетарианец velvet n бархат version n версия, вариант victim n жертва violence n жестокость, насилие violent adj жестокий, насильственный vision n видение visit n посещение, визит visitor n посетитель, гость; ~s’ area приёмный покой, комната ожидания voice n голос Voila! interj Вуаля! Вот так! volume n том книги volunteer n доброволец, волонтёр

Vocabulary

W waist n талия, поясница waitress n официантка wake v (woke, woken) будить, просыпаться wallet n бумажник warm adj тёплый warmth n теплота warn v предостерегать, предупреждать wash v стирать, мыть; ~ away (фраз. гл.) смывать, уносить прочь; ~ up (фраз. гл.) мыть посуду waste 1) n мусор, отходы; 2) v тратить впустую watch v наблюдать wave 1) n волна; 2) v махать way back n обратный путь, путь назад weak adj слабый weakness n слабость weapon n оружие, орудие wear v (wore, worn) носить (одежду) wedding n свадьба weight n вес, тяжесть weird adj странный, с причудами welcoming adj гостеприимный, доброжелательный wheat n (бот.) пшеница whisper 1) v шептать; 2) n шепот whistle 1) v свистеть; 2) n свист; свисток whoever pron кто-либо whole adj целый, весь wide adj широкий; ~ open широко раскрытый widower n вдовец

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wife n жена wild adj дикий wildlife n дикая природа, живая природа winery n винодельня, винное производство wish 1) v желать; 2) n желание within prep в, внутри, в пределах wonder v задумываться, интересоваться wonderfully adv замечательно, чудесным образом wood n дерево, древесина wooden adj деревянный worn adj изношенный, потёртый worried adj взволнованный worry v беспокоиться, волноваться worst adj худший worth v стоить wrap v завёртывать, обёртывать wreckage n обломки крушения wrist n запястье wrong adj неверный, неправильный

Y yard n двор Yeah! interj Ага! yearbook n школьный ежегодный альманах yell v кричать, вопить

Z zip v застегнуть на молнию zipper n застежка-молния

ABRIDGED BESTSELLER

ALICE SEBOLD

THE LOVELY BONES

 ñîîòâåòñòâèè ñî ñò. 19 ÷. 2 Çàêîíà ÐÔ «Îá àâòîðñêîì ïðàâå è ñìåæíûõ ïðàâàõ» â êíèãå ïðåäñòàâëåí òåêñò, îñíîâàííûé íà ïðîèçâåäåíèè A. Sebold “The Lovely Bones”.

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Èçäàòåëüñòâî «Àíòîëîãèÿ» 199053, Ñàíêò-Ïåòåðáóðã, Â.Î., Ñðåäíèé ïð., ä. 4 òåë.: (812) 328-14-41 www.anthologybooks.ru Отпечатано в соответствии с предоставленными материалами в ООО «ИПК Парето-Принт», г. Тверь www.pareto-print.ru