Towering

formally, the woman wearing a 1920s wedding dress; a little boy by a boat. The spicy scent strengthened. I didn’t know which room was mine, but all the doors but one were closed. One was open barely a crack. I chose that one. The light there worked, and as I entered, I saw there were photos there too, all of a young girl with long, dark hair and an impish grin. Was this Danielle? My question was answered as I studied the room, finding more photos of the same girl. In a Girl Scout uniform. Dressed in an old-fashioned gown in a school play. And, finally, arm in arm with a blonde girl whose face I knew well. My mother. In the photo, my mother was laughing. Danielle stared at something in the distance. I had dozed on the train, and now I felt too awake to sleep, so I examined the books on the shelves. Mostly, they were romance novels with open-shirted guys staring at heaving-breasted women in Victorian dresses. But finally, I found something interesting. A yearbook. It had The Centurion emblazoned in gold letters on a black cover. I drew it out and turned to the index, searching for my mother’s name, Emily Hill. The first page number led me to the student photos, black-and-white faces, all with the same stick-up bangs that had been in style back then, the same dopey smiles. Danielle was on the same page, her long, straight hair a darker shade of gray than the others. I wondered what had happened to her. Then, I remembered she was probably dead.
    Without thinking, I turned the pages. The book was thinner than my yearbook at home. It looked like there had only been a few hundred students in the whole school. I found another photo of Danielle, a candid shot of her in a winter coat, about to throw a snowball. Danielle hadn’t collected friends’ signatures in the yearbook. Only one page had an inscription, and that inscription was from my mother, a long block of text about “weird Mr. Oglesby” and “that day in chemistry class.” Instead of the usual “Stay sweet” or “Have a good summer” before her signature, Mom had written, “Don’t worry. It will be okay.”
    The date was eighteen years ago. Weird thought that, only a year later, my mother had been pregnant with me. And Danielle, she’d disappeared.
    I flipped through the other pages. Finding no more inscriptions, I returned the book to the shelf.
    But when I tried to push it in, it wouldn’t go. Something behind it blocked its way. With my almost-thawed fingers, I pried the books apart. Suddenly, I wondered if maybe I should put everything back the way it had been. Exactly the way it had been. Maybe the old lady was keeping the room as a shrine to Danielle. Maybe I shouldn’t even be in here.
    But when I reached between the books, I found the obstruction, an old, green notebook with crooked spirals. Was it a diary? No, I had no idea why I’d thought that. It was a notebook for school. Still, I wondered why it was hidden. Probably, Danielle had shoved it on to the shelf when her mother had told her to clean her room. I did that all the time. Probably, the first thing Mom would do now that I was gone was clean out my stuff. But Danielle’s mother hadn’t cleaned out, and that was understandable. The mess was all she had.
    The notebook smelled the way old books do, like dust and unrealized potential. I opened it, expecting algebraic formulas or American history notes, and I wasn’t disappointed. Or maybe I was. On the first page, neatly copied, was the periodic table of elements.
    I was about to close it and move on. I was tired again. A glance at the clock told me it was nearly two, and the cold air didn’t help. I wanted to curl under the too-thin blanket on the bed and go to sleep. But then, I noticed the second page.
    It was a diary.
    The handwriting was feminine but not cutesy like the girls who put hearts over their i ’s. It began:
    It poured all day. Of course, that’s nothing unusual. It poured all day yesterday and the day before and the day before that. What does it really matter anyway because, rain or shine, I am stuck in the house with my mother? She’s barely let me go anywhere these past few weeks, and since Emily left, I have no friends over either. But I mention the rain so you can understand the utter depths of my misery and also, how unusual it is that I saw a guy (!) outside my bedroom window.
    Well, not a guy even, but a MAN. A hot-looking one, from what I could see of him. He was tall (or, at least, his chest came up to