You Have Seven Messages by Stewart Lewis Read Free Book Online Page A

turns around at my door and stands in this crooked way that means he’s going to get serious.
    “Something about Mom’s death was fishy.”
    I sit upright.
    “What?”
    “Don’t make me repeat it,” he says, and shuts the door.
    Some kids are brought up on Nickelodeon and Dr. Seuss, but Tile started reading my dad’s scripts at age six and memorizing all the juiciest lines. In this case, he read my mind, ’cause ever since finding that cuff link it’s like this little seed I don’t know if I want to plant.
    I go and find him in his room, throwing his dirty clothes into his hamper.
    “Why do you think that?” I ask.
    “Do the math,” he says.
    Okay, he’s definitely been reading Dad’s scripts
.
    “Right,” I say, smiling as I turn away. That’s Tile trying to be dramatic, pretending he knows something.
    Back in my room, I tell myself it’s now or never. Eventually I’m going to have to give Mom’s phone back, so I might as well continue. But slowly.
    I lock my door, breathe in, and grab Mom’s phone.
    I have been deleting them as I go, so as not to leave a trace, and there are four more.
    “To listen to your messages, press one.”
    “Hi, this is Angela, calling from Butter restaurant. I believe someone in your party left a personal item; please come by any time after four p.m. Tuesday through Sunday to retrieve it. Thank you.”
    I immediately go online and look up the restaurant. It’sonly three blocks from where my mother was hit. My heart rate speeds up. Did she go there the night she died?
    I go into my father’s office and he puts down the script he’s reading when he sees the look on my face, which I try to erase.
    “Can I ask you something?”
    “Sure, Moon, shoot.”
    “I know you weren’t with Mom the night she died, and every time I asked you, you avoided the question. But I really have to know. What was she doing?”
    He adjusts his glasses and looks out the window before turning to me.
    “She had gone to dinner with Maria, her yoga teacher. Moon, we’ve been through this.…”
    “You just kept saying the details didn’t matter, that she was gone. I only knew the intersection from the police report. I asked a lot and you never told me who she was with.”
    “Well, I did now.”
    My mother took yoga religiously, but only this particular class that was a combination of techniques. I went with her once and was embarrassed to run into Ms. Gray there. Something about seeing your teacher in real life is unnerving.
    “So tell me, how does it feel to be fifteen?”
    “Weird,” I say, and go back to my room.
    I grab my hoodie, my keys, and my MetroCard and leave without telling anyone. On the subway down toAstor Place, I notice a Hispanic girl about my age looking at me intently, as if I have something she wants. My pink hoodie? I give her a wave and she smiles, embarrassed. Then I notice a woman at the end of the car, her back to me, reading while slightly curled around the silver pole. Her hair is the exact length and color of my mother’s. As we rumble through the tunnel I walk closer, losing my balance a few times. I feel a strange magnetism, and as I am pulled closer I can even smell her. The train pulls into the station and I reach out to touch her, slowly, and wonder if I’m going crazy. Suddenly she twists her long neck and it’s someone with the shape of my mother’s face but completely different features. She looks at me like she understands, then gazes at her own feet, walking away. Until the next stop I hold on to the pole exactly where she did and close my eyes. When I get out of the subway, the fresh air feels good.
    Butter is closed but I can see someone mopping the floor, and I keep tapping on the window until he finally opens the big glass door just a crack.
    “What is it?”
    “I left something here, it’s really important,” I say.
    He shuts the door and holds up his hand.
    It starts to rain. Two guys whistle at me as they go by and I give them the finger.