Higher Ground Read online

  I’m not sure how long I cling to him and cry silent tears. Eventually, he shifts to sit close enough to hold me. His body tugs away from mine for a moment, and I look up in time to see him pluck the picture I discarded earlier from the center of the pile in front of us.

  “Is this you?” he asks.

  Because it’s a shot of my profile and my lips are on someone else’s, it’s hard to tell. It’s something Wade’s never seen, something captured years ago by a wild boy with a camera.

  My fingers loosen on the book when he pulls it away from me. He glances quickly at the dedication, closes it to read the cover, and then asks the question that will change everything.

  “Who’s Oliver?”

  Chapter Two

  Then

  Summers in New Orleans were the same every year: hot, sticky, and boring. Predictable was another good word. Each one was forgettable.

  My parents, professors at Tulane, would take the whole family on a one-week vacation to celebrate the end of the regular school year and then teach a few summer classes. My grandmother, Miss Verity, would keep busy with “visitors.” My older sister would stay gone, working or spending time with her boyfriend, and my little brother would do his best to stay in the background.

  But the last summer of my youth was different.

  We celebrated my seventeenth birthday in Miami with my mom’s sister and her family. Cake on the beach and the warmth of the hot June sun on the sand between my toes were nice. When it was time to go, I begged my parents for an extra week. Van asked, too, and they let both of us stay.

  The day after we got back to New Orleans, he started his therapy sessions. Mom and Dad tagged along, which was good because they were the ones who needed help in the first place.

  Miss Verity suggested I get a job to keep me busy, so I left the house every morning to catch the St. Charles streetcar by 9:00. Faced with true freedom for the first time in my life, I did what any teenage girl would do: I wandered down Magazine Street while eating granola bars, people watched, and inquired within whenever a Help Wanted flyer presented an opportunity. It didn’t happen often, though.

  Most days, I ended up on the outer edges, leaning against a tombstone in the back section of Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, with a dog-eared copy of a Poe anthology and a one-hitter to keep me company. The graveyard was always nearly empty from when it opened until the tours began at 10:00. The grassy section in the back wasn’t popular, anyway.

  It was enough time for a few hits and a short story or two.

  My peaceful ritual was interrupted one random Tuesday in mid–July, when the sound of percussion started in the distance and moved closer until it sounded like Bourbon Street. I left my book and sealed bottle of cranberry juice in the grass to follow the melody through the maze of concrete and artificial flowers until I reached the front section.

  I’d heard of jazz band burials and had seen a parade on Canal once, but I’d never been this close. My curiosity got the best of me, and I spent my morning watching the family, the minister, and the crowd as they gathered to mourn and celebrate. A small group of tourists gathered away from them, down the row from my spot.

  One boy caught my attention as he snapped picture after picture of the band and the proceedings. We were both spectators that morning, but on some level, his intrusion felt worse than mine. At least I wasn’t capturing it for a vacation scrapbook.

  He stood in the shade of a stacked tomb, and he aimed and clicked over and over, irritating me more and more as the minutes passed. I dared him to look my way but was met with a view of dirty-blond hair on top of his head and a camera blocking his face.

  I left before the end of the funeral, mad at myself for getting caught up in something that should’ve been private and still mad at the stranger who’d captured it on film.

  The music started again and then faded in the distance when it was all over. I fell into the pages between my hands, lost in a dark cell and ignoring the occasional sound of a tour guide’s voice as he gave away secrets and doled out legends.

  “What are you reading?” A shadow darkened the paper and print before blocking the sun from the side of my body.

  Shielding my eyes with one hand didn’t help, but the dishwater locks were recognizable. My thumb slid between the pages to keep my place before I held up the book for him to see. “A book.”

  “Reading a dead guy in a cemetery full of dead people on a bright, sunny day?” He stepped closer, but even though I tilted my head, his face was still elusive in shadow. “May I?” He pointed to the ground next to me.

  “It’s not my tomb.” I shrugged and reopened my book, determined to ignore my unwelcome guest as he settled a few inches away.

  “Good thing,” he said. “You’re much too young to die, Violet.”

  My fight-or-flight instinct reared at the sound of my name on a stranger’s tongue. Every hair on my arms and the stubble on my calves stood on end. As calmly as possible, I closed the book and dropped it into my lap. Since he was only a foot away, I paused long enough to study his face.

  Soft blue-gray stared back, and a twisted, teasing smile helped ease some of my initial panic.

  “Do we know each other?” I asked. Handsome, with a boyish face and a lanky build, he was definitely hot enough to remember.

  The corner of his mouth turned up, and he shook his head. “Apparently not,” he replied, his hands busy closing the lens cap of the camera resting in his lap. It was an older model, one with film.

  “Okay. Do you know me?”

  “I was in Mrs. Wimberly’s third-grade class, too,” he said.

  “Wow.” I studied his face and tried to think back, but elementary school felt like a lifetime ago. “Do I really look the same as I did eight years ago?”

  His eyes lowered, and I felt my chest heat beneath his gaze. He licked his bottom lip when his eyes settled on my hips. “No. You’ve grown up… nicely.”

  “Um, thanks…”

  “Oliver.”

  “Oh, my God.” Memories of a scrawny boy who owned different colored suspenders for each day of the week swirled in the back of my mind. “Oliver Bergeron?”

  He winked and unleashed a smile that made my breath catch. “The one and only.”

  “You’re so different.”

  The Oliver I remembered was shy. He’d blushed and stammered anytime Mrs. Wimberly had called on him in class, and he’d spent most of recess on the sidelines. His mother had attended every class party, and he’d rarely left her side when she was near.

  “Not really,” he said. “I just didn’t have much to say back then.” He turned his body, angling closer. “You went to Academy when St. Luke’s shut down, right?”

  I nodded. “I did, but I’m going to Newman this year.”

  “Changing schools for your senior year? That’s unusual.”

  “My brother and I were kicked out.”

  His head tilted back against the sky, and he laughed. “You were kicked out of Academy?” After my nod, he continued. “I can’t wait to hear this. Let’s grab some coffee.”

  “It’s a hundred degrees in the shade, and you want to get coffee?”

  “It feels like a hundred, but we’re really skating in the mid–nineties. Unless… you can’t. Maybe there’s a boyfriend.”

  “No,” I said. “Not anymore. He’s part of the reason I was kicked out of Academy.”

  The smile on Oliver’s face widened. “This gets better and better. How about that coffee? I’ll throw in beignets at Café Du Monde.”

  “I don’t know… I didn’t tell anyone I’d be going downtown.”

  “Call.”

  It wasn’t that easy. Odds were Miss Verity was entertaining a client. Mom and Dad had taken Van for an appointment, and Ronnie had spent the night away from home.

  “Forget it,” I said. “No one’s expecting me back soon, anyway.”

  I tossed my book into my bag, stood, and brushed the dust and leaves from my backside. He followed my exampl
e, and we ended up face to neck with only a few inches separating us. I hadn’t realized he was so much taller than me until that moment. A deep whiff of cologne, smoke, and boy made my nipples harden a second time under his gaze.

  “After you,” he said, waving an arm toward the exit.

  I tried to let him lead, but he aligned his steps with mine. We didn’t say much during the walk over to St. Charles, and the short wait for the streetcar was uncomfortable until he finally leaned in close. “Are you always so talkative?”

  His open interest was intimidating. After having a boyfriend for so long, I’d almost forgotten there were other boys out there—good-looking boys with soft spots on their cheeks that had never been touched by a razor, and boys with big blue eyes as bright as the sky above us who wanted to listen and talk.

  “I spend my time with dead people, remember? They don’t talk much.”

  He laughed and let his fingers settle on the back of my arm. The car stopped in front of us, and he pulled lightly to guide me on before him. I chose a seat halfway back and slid in close to the window.

  “Do you do this every day?” he asked. “Hang out in the cemetery and read Poe?”

  “Not every day.”

  On the weekends, my parents hovered. Since the beginning of summer, they’d been trying to spend more time with us as a family. Our fall from grace at my dad’s alma mater had been epic. It was their way of trying to make up for what had happened to my brother, but it was too little, too late. The therapy they were shoving down Van’s throat wasn’t helping any. With most of their focus on him, I had a lot of free time on my hands. It was much different from the summer before, when my parents had been busy ignoring us and I’d had a boyfriend to spend long afternoons with on the hammock in the backyard.

  I let Oliver lead the way at our stop and followed him onto the street. He took the cap off his camera lens as we walked. “What were you doing there, anyway?” I asked. “At the cemetery, I mean.”

  “I followed the jazz band.”

  “I thought you were a tourist.”

  “Huh. I thought you were pretty.”

  I stared at my shoes, aware he was studying my face. “What’s with the camera?”

  “I take pictures.” To prove his point, he stopped in his tracks to catch a few shots of a scruffy guy playing guitar in a courtyard.

  “You walk around Uptown taking pictures every day?”

  “No. I live my life and capture the parts I want to remember.”

  He was so relaxed. One hand rested on the camera as we walked, and while I stayed quiet, the words rolled off his tongue. A painting in the window of a shop on Decatur spurred talk of his father, a steamboat captain on the Mississippi, and of his mother, who had stayed home until he was twelve and then took a job as the general manager of a hotel on Canal.

  As usual, the café was crowded, but we were lucky enough to catch a table being ditched by a group of hungover frat boys. The server came over quickly, and without ever glancing at me, Oliver ordered two cafés au lait and beignets. He waited until we were alone to ask about my parents.

  “Do they know you spend your days with dead people?”

  “They’re busy,” I told him. “I used to go twice a week with my grandmother when I was younger, so I don’t think they’d care.”

  “I’m guessing she likes dead people, too.”

  “Dad has to drive her now, but they make a trip every Sunday.” Our order arrived, and I took a sip of hot coffee. “My grandfather and my Aunt Violet are there,” I said before shoving the first bite of powdered heaven into my mouth.

  “Shit.” He leaned forward. “I didn’t realize—”

  “It’s fine. They’ve both been gone since before I was born. I’ve spent a lot of time at the cemetery with Miss Verity throughout the years, so I’m comfortable there.”

  “Aunt Violet?” He sat back in his chair and lifted his cup for a drink.

  “My dad’s younger sister. She died three months before I was born.”

  “That sucks,” he said. “Was she sick?”

  “Not at all. She was away at college in Florida and fell down a flight of stairs.” That was the official version. Miss Verity knew better but couldn’t prove anything.

  “Wow. That’s… fucked up.”

  “Yeah.”

  He was quiet for a while, focused on his snack and coffee. Every now and then, he’d glance up to study my face and I’d look down at the cup in my hand to avoid his stare. It was unnerving to be the center of someone’s attention.

  We left the café shortly after noon and walked over to the river. “You haven’t told me why you were kicked out of Academy,” he said.

  “This is between us, okay?” I stared at a steamboat upriver and waited for him to reply.

  “Sure.”

  We sat on big boulders and watched the action on the river as I explained the ways my little brother had changed after Christmas break. “It started with mood swings and random bruises on his arms and legs, and then he came home one day with a black eye. He said he’d ‘tripped getting off a bus.’ He wouldn’t talk to anyone. My parents tried. I tried. He ignored all of us.

  “Near the end of the school year, I caught four juniors—four of my classmates—harassing him in a stairwell. When he tried to walk away, one of the bigger boys, Lucas, tripped him. Van went down, but he took the kid with him and slammed his backpack on Lucas’ head at the exact moment the principle opened the door.

  “He expelled Van that afternoon after my parents were called to the school.” I laughed and shook my head. “There’s a zero-tolerance policy for fighting. The principle tried to say Van started it, so I called him a lying asshole. I was there. I saw the whole thing. If Van was going, so was I.”

  Oliver nodded. “Yeah. That’ll do it.”

  “My parents were so pissed. They’re talking to a lawyer about suing the school.”

  “How does the boyfriend fit in?”

  “Elijah was one of them.” We’d been together for over a year, and I’d never seen that side of him until that afternoon. “I didn’t know, and when I showed up, he held me back while his friends…” I couldn’t finish. Thinking about it hurt too much.

  The smile faded from Oliver’s face. “Why were they fucking with your brother?”

  I almost didn’t want to answer him, but if he was like them, it was better to find out sooner rather than later. “Because he had a crush on one of them.”

  He then stood, held out his hand, and helped me up. “People are assholes, Violet. You’re much better off without that guy.”

  “I know,” I agreed.

  We walked around Jackson Square, and a young woman in a hippie skirt asked if I wanted my fortune told as we passed her table. The thought of letting anyone other than Miss Verity near my future made me laugh out loud. Oliver hesitated.

  “Do you ever wonder?” he asked.

  “No.” I walked backward for a few steps. “I don’t have to.” He glanced at her one last time before falling in step with me again. “My grandmother’s gifted. If I wanted to know something, I’d go to her.”

  “Gifted? As in…”

  “Palms, cards, numerology, and sometimes gut instinct and or dreams.”

  “Holy shit. You’re serious,” he said.

  “She’s had the same clientele for forty-five years. Now their kids and grandkids see her. There are a few vacationers from the old days who drop in whenever they’re in town.”

  “I guess you can’t get away with shit, huh? That must suck.”

  “Miss Verity tries to let us live our lives. I remember a worried look once when I was twelve. She’d been studying my hand in the back seat on our way to the airport for vacation. Other than that, she’s never offered and I’ve never asked.”

  He asked me to share some of her scariest predictions, and by that, he meant the most accurate. Talking about her took my mind off the constant guilt over Van, the nervousness of being so close to Oliver, and the b
oredom that spending my free time with dead people had induced. I told him story after story as we walked. Occasionally, he’d stop to take a picture of something, listening to me ramble next to him. He didn’t miss a word, though. He asked questions and laughed, and when I told him I needed to get home, he stayed with me until we were back in Uptown, standing at the end of my block.

  “Can I take your picture?” he asked. I’d been expecting a “goodbye” or maybe an “it was good to see you again,” but not that particular request.

  I swallowed down a nervous lump and nodded. “Sure.” The smile I managed was bigger outside than in, but I stared at my shoes until I heard the click.

  “I’ll see you later, Violet.” He turned to leave before I had the chance to look up.

  “Thank you,” I said to his back. “For the coffee and beignets.”

  He turned, grinned, and nodded. “You’re welcome.”

  Miss Verity was waiting by the door when I walked in that afternoon. “You’ve been gone for a while,” she said, glancing at me in question.

  “I know. I lost track of time.”

  “I’m glad you’re home,” she said. “Now I can catch a small nap before dinner.”

  I ended up doing the same thing, sleeping until the heat from the afternoon sun and the kitchen beneath my room combined to wake me. Covered in sweat, with my hand tucked into my panties, my first thought was of the dream I’d just had about a boy I barely even knew.

  My father’s voice boomed up the stairs to announce dinner around the same time I stepped out of the shower and onto my bathmat. The rest of the family was already seated at the dining room table when I took my place next to my mother. My parents made small talk about a farmers market they stopped at on the way home, but they avoided any mention of Van’s therapy session, the reason they’d been out in the first place.

  “How was your day, Violet?” my mother asked midway through dinner.