Page 45 of A Sea of Unspoken Things

Not at all. See you in a few.

I slid the phone back into my pocket, finding Amelia in the crowd again. I was suddenly unsure if I should have said anything at all or if I hadn’t really said enough. There was part of me that felt like I’d just walked into some kind of trap. Something about Amelia’s response felt as if sheknewI was hiding something, but I wasn’t ready to tell her about the photograph of the backpack. Not yet.

My mind went back to the night I’d gone to her office, replaying that conversation in my mind. What was it she’d said? That she had aworking theory? Now that I thought about it, I couldn’t remember her actually saying thatshebelieved Johnny’s death was an accident.

Fifteen

The halls of Six Rivers High School were still filled with students when I arrived, and I found Olivia standing in a sea of paintings that stretched like a patchwork blanket across her classroom.

The tables were covered in large sheets of paper that had served as the canvas of what looked to be a landscape assignment. The paint was still wet on many of them, and the earthy smell of it filled the air, transporting me right back to the studios at Byron. Those two images in my mind, the overlap of before and after, gave me an almost out-of-body experience. The girl I was in this classroom and the one I’d become at Byron were like two different species. I didn’t know anymore which I really was.

Olivia’s hair was pulled up into two buns on top of her head and her thick-rimmed glasses were swapped out for a funky green pair. It would be easy to confuse her with the kids out in the hall.

The smile on her lips made the glasses cinch up on her nose when I came through the door. “Hey!” She had one of the paintings balanced on her arms, trying to find space at the end of the table for it.

“Hey, need a hand?”

“That would be great.” She tipped her chin at the other paintings, motioning for me to slide them over.

I set the tote of groceries on one of the chairs and shifted the pages down until there was enough room. Olivia carefully situated the piece beside the others, making sure the edges weren’t touching.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

I took a step closer, studying the landscapes more carefully. There were definitely ones that didn’t show any promise or skill, but to my surprise, there were several that did.

“Some of these are actually quite good,” I said.

She came to stand beside me, looking over the table. “They really are, right? I think we’ll have a few in this class that stick with it. I hope they will, anyway.” She turned to look at me, setting her hands on her hips. “So, what’s up?”

I hesitated, hands nervously fidgeting with the edge of the painting I was still looking at. I wasn’t totally sure that what I was about to do wasn’t a mistake. If Johnny had been in the gorge with Autumn that day, it would open up a whole host of questions. Ones that would need to be answered. But that didn’t change the fact that it still felt like a kind of betrayal.

I cleared my throat, going over what I’d planned to say. This was delicate, and I didn’t want to imply anything to Olivia that would plant an idea in her head that wasn’t already there.

“I wanted to see if you could tell me more about Autumn, the student Johnny was working with?”

Olivia’s head cocked to the side. “Oh, sure. Why do you ask?”

“No reason, really. Micah mentioned her the other day and I guess I’m just…” I shrugged. “Curious.”

Olivia leaned one hip into the counter behind her, pushing the glasses up her nose. “Well, Autumn is one of those kids who got dealt a bad hand. But she also happens to be immensely gifted. Her mom’s a mess, and no one seems to know anything about her dad, which means she basically brought herself up. People around here tend totry and look out for one another, but there’s only so much you can do, you know?”

“Sure.”

I did know. It was one of the double-edged swords about this town. Johnny and I had pretty much been on our own for most of high school, and people had mostly looked the other way. But I’d known even then that if we’d needed something, they would have come through.

“The art teacher at the middle school had given me a call about Autumn before she started as a freshman here, because he saw something in her that he thought was special. As soon as I met her, I could tell that he was right. She was just…extraordinary,” she said, a little breathless. The look in her eyes changed, as if she was remembering the exact moment she first thought it. “She was drawing mostly at that time, and it seemed like the art just came easily to her. She was immensely dedicated for someone her age, and photography became a focus for her sophomore year. Johnny started working in the darkroom around then, and Autumn had been learning what she could from YouTube videos and that kind of thing, but Johnny saw her work and took a genuine interest in it. I asked him to come by because I thought it would be inspiring for her to meet a working artist, and they just hit it off.”

Hit it off.Those words rubbed me the wrong way.

She pointed behind me, getting back to her feet. “This is some of her work here.”

I followed Olivia to the glass case fixed to the far wall, where a row of black-and-white photographs was on display. The subject of the images was the same in each one—they were trees. But not just any trees. These weren’t like the lush, life-filled giants that filled Six Rivers. They were bare-branched and gnarled. Strangled, even. One was blackened, split down the middle like it had been hit by lightning. But the photographs themselves had an almost human quality about them, as if they were portraits of people.

A cardstock marker that readSRHS Alum Autumn Fischerwas mounted beneath them.

“Incredible, right?” Olivia’s voice was almost a whisper.