The Pact Read online

  NOW

  Mid to Late November 1997

  In the days after Emily's death, Melanie found herself riveted by the most ordinary things: the whorl of the wood of the dining room table; the mechanism of a Ziploc baggie; the pamphlet on toxic shock syndrome in the tampon box. For hours at a time she could stare at these things as if she had not seen them a million times before, as if she had never known what she was missing. She felt a call to detail that was obsessive, but necessary. What if, tomorrow morning, one of these things turned up missing? What if her only knowledge of these items came from memory? She knew now that, at any time, she might be tested.

  Melanie had spent the morning tearing off the pages of a small notepad and throwing them into the trash can. She watched the white pages pile up, a tiny blizzard. When the trash bag was half full, she yanked it from the can to carry it outside. It had started to snow, the first snow of the season. Mesmerized, she dropped the trash bag, oblivious to the cold or the fact that she was shivering without her coat, and held out her hand. As a snowflake landed on her palm, she brought it close to examine, and watched it melt before she'd had the chance.

  The telephone startled her, its harsh jangle wrangling through the open kitchen door. Melanie turned and ran inside, breathlessly reaching for the receiver on the wall. "Hello?"

  "Yes," a floating voice said. "I'd like to speak with Emily Gold."

  Me, too, Melanie thought, and she silently hung up the phone.

  CHRIS STOOD UNCOMFORTABLY in the office of Dr. Emanuel Feinstein, pretending to look at the photographs of covered bridges decorating the walls and glancing surreptitiously instead at the secretary who was typing so fast her fingers were a blue blur. Suddenly there was a buzz on the intercom. The secretary smiled at Chris. "You can go in now," she said.

  Chris nodded and walked through the adjoining door, wondering why he'd been cooling his heels for the past half hour if there wasn't another patient in there. The psychiatrist stood up, walked around his desk. "Come on in, Chris. I'm Dr. Feinstein. It's nice to meet you."

  He nodded to a chair--not a couch, Chris noticed--and Chris sank into it. Dr. Emanuel Feinstein was not the old geezer he'd conjured up in his head based on that name, but a guy who would have looked just as comfortable hauling wood as a lumberjack or manning an oil rig. He had thick blond hair that brushed his shoulders, and he stood a good half foot taller than Chris. His office was decorated much like Chris's dad's study--dark wood and tartan plaids and leather books.

  "So," the psychiatrist said, taking the wing chair across from Chris, "how are you feeling?"

  Chris shrugged, and the doctor leaned forward to pick up the tape recorder on the coffee table between them. He played back the snippet, hearing his own question, and then shook the device. "Funny thing about these," Dr. Feinstein said. "They don't pick up nonverbal clues. There's only one rule in here, Chris. Your answers have to actually emit a sound frequency."

  Chris cleared his throat. Any begrudged liking he'd started to have for this shrink vanished again. "Okay," he said gruffly.

  "Okay what?"

  "I'm feeling okay," Chris muttered.

  "Are you sleeping all right? Eating?"

  Chris nodded, then stared at the tape recorder. "Yes," he said pointedly. "I've been eating okay. But sometimes I can't sleep."

  "Was this something you had a problem with before?"

  Before, like with a capital B. Chris shook his head, and then his eyes filled with tears. It was an emotion he was getting used to; it happened whenever he thought about Emily.

  "How are things at home?"

  "Weird," Chris admitted. "My father acts like nothing ever happened, my mom talks to me like I'm a six-year-old."

  "Why do you think your parents are treating you the way they are?"

  "I guess it's because they're scared," Chris answered. "I would be."

  What could it be like to find out, in a matter of minutes, that the kid you believed the sun rose and set on was not the person you'd thought? Suddenly, he frowned at the psychiatrist. "Do you tell my parents what I say here?"

  Dr. Feinstein shook his head. "I'm here for you. I'm your advocate. What you say here, stays here."

  Chris eyed him warily. Like that was supposed to make him feel better. He didn't know Feinstein from a hole in the wall.

  "Do you still think about killing yourself?" the psychiatrist asked.

  Chris picked at a hole in his jeans. "Sometimes," he murmured.

  "Do you have a plan?"

  "No."

  "Do you think Friday night might have changed your mind?"

  Chris looked up sharply. "I don't understand you," he said.

  "Well, why don't you tell me what it was like for you. Seeing your friend shoot herself."

  "She wasn't my friend," Chris corrected. "She was the girl I loved."

  "That must have made it even more difficult," Dr. Feinstein said.

  "Yes," Chris said, watching it all over again, Emily's head snapping to the left as if an invisible hand had slapped her, the blood that ran through his fingers. He glanced at the psychiatrist, wondering what the man expected him to say.

  After prolonged silence, the doctor tried again. "You must be very upset."

  "I pretty much cry at the drop of a hat."

  "Well," the psychiatrist said, "that's perfectly normal."

  "Oh, right." Chris snorted. "Perfectly normal. I spent Friday night getting seventy stitches. My girlfriend is dead. I've been locked up in a psycho ward for three days and now I'm here, where I'm supposed to tell someone I don't even know everything that's on my mind. Yeah, I'm a perfectly normal seventeen-year-old."

  "You know," Dr. Feinstein said evenly, "the mind is a remarkable thing. Just because you can't see the wound doesn't mean it isn't hurting. It scars all the time, but it heals." He leaned forward. "You don't want to be here," he said. "So where would you like to be?"

  "With Emily," Chris said unhesitatingly.

  "Dead."

  "No. Yes." Chris averted his gaze. He found himself looking at a second door, one he hadn't noticed, one that did not lead back to the waiting room through which he'd entered. It would be, Chris realized, the door through which he'd exit. A way out so that no one would ever have to know he'd been inside.

  He looked at Dr. Feinstein and decided that someone who protected your privacy could not be all that bad. "Where I'd like to be," Chris said softly, "is a few months back."

  THE MOMENT THE ELEVATOR DOORS OPENED, Gus was fluttering all over her son, slipping her arm about his waist and falling into step and chattering as she whisked him out of the medical building where Dr. Feinstein's office was located. "So," Gus said, the moment they settled into the car. "How did it go?"

  There was no answer. Chris's head was turned away from her. "For starters," she said, "did you like him?"

  "Was this a blind date?" Chris muttered.

  Gus pulled the car out of the lot, silently making excuses for him. "Is he a good psychiatrist?" she pressed.

  Chris stared out the window. "As opposed to what?" he asked.

  "Well ... do you feel better?"

  He turned to her slowly, pinned her with his eyes. "As opposed," he repeated, "to what?"

  JAMES HAD BEEN RAISED by a set of Boston Brahmin parents who had elevated New England stoicism to an art form. In the eighteen years he'd lived in their household, he'd seen them kiss publicly only once, and that was so fleeting that he came to believe he'd surely imagined it. Admitting to pain, to grief, or to ecstasy was frowned upon: The one time James, as a teenager, had cried over the death of a pet dog, his parents acted as if he'd committed hara-kiri on the marble tiles of the foyer. Their strategy for dealing with things unpleasant or emotional was to push past the mortifying situation and get on with their life as if it had never happened.

  By the time James had met Gus, he'd fully mastered the technique--and had rejected it out of hand. But that night, alone in the basement, he tried desperately to recapture