The Existence of Bea Pearl, page 1
The Existence of Bea Pearl
Candice Marley Conner
Owl Hollow Press
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Owl Hollow Press, Springville, UT 84663
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
The Existence of Bea Pearl
Copyright © 2021 by Candice Marley Conner
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Existence of Bea Pearl / C.M. Conner. — First edition.
Summary:
Sixteen-year-old Bea Pearl doesn’t believe her brother is dead, even when everyone else has given up on finding him. She decides it’s up to her to figure out where he could be. With minimal clues and her own shaky convictions, Bea Pearl is determined to unravel the mystery of his disappearance.
ISBN 978-1-945654-74-9 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-945654-75-6 (e-book)
LCCN 2021932611
To Momma and Daddy,
for giving me the best kind
of swamp-wild childhood.
I wouldn’t have been able to dream up this story without it.
1
Fake Funerals & Catfish Barbs
We are a murder of grounded crows, shrouded as we are in our black. The raw, red clay rectangle in the ground fills my vision, shoving out every other color besides shades of shadow. My eyes refuse to take in the scene, though the casket on the plastic carpet is empty, its plush pillows undented by my older brother’s body. I force myself to listen to the words hanging in the air, catching ragged bits like “Jim Montgomery is by God’s side for Eternity” and “Isn’t our God great to want us next to Him forever?” The utter and complete wrongness of it all almost knocks me back. How could they abandon Jim when he’s still alive? He’s waiting on us to stop playing around with this stupid, sad funeral and get searching.
Pressure builds inside me. The black crepe dress constricts and slides around my chest and neck. I whisper something, or maybe it comes out as a yell. Momma bursts into more heart-wrenching sobs and tries to crawl into Daddy. Something touches my hand, and my first instinct is to snatch it away. I dart to the side, pushing against the solid blackness just wanting—needing—to get away from this atrocity. It gives, throwing me off balance as I pitch forward and take off running, deeper into the graveyard. I chuck my heels at a live oak cloaked in Spanish moss, finally hiding behind a crumbling mausoleum. A mourning cherub has its head bowed, perhaps in shame of the event unfolding, its poor wings caught in concrete forever. Time spins like a falling, dead leaf. I can’t hear the god-awful drone of the officiant, thank goodness. I desperately need peace.
Though I don’t deserve it. I was there. The last one to see Jim alive.
“Bea Pearl?”
Someone calls my name, but I’m incapable of answering. My best friend’s head pops around the side of the sepulcher, the weakening Alabama daylight still bright enough to make her blonde hair shine as if with angelic light. I scowl at her. She drops my heels covered in graveyard dirt at my bare feet.
“It’s the stupidest thing my parents have ever done, getting Jim declared legally dead,” I spit out once I find my voice. The safest emotion for me is anger. Otherwise, my life would be spinning like Alice’s Caucus race when she first realizes she’s stuck in Wonderland. All those giant tears were in vain, and this time the subsequent flood would be my fault, too. I’m stuck in Jim-less land, and the Jabberwocky that I must battle lives inside me.
Honey sits on the moss-covered cement bench beside me and takes my hand. I squeeze back. “You know why they did it,” she says.
“But it’s only been six months.” Half a year of waiting for news. Of making a nuisance of myself in the horrible weeks that followed so that I’m banned from the police department. Endless search parties. Of coming home horse-fly bit and hollowed out on the inside. Of the fear of failing him. If I really tried and couldn’t find him, then he would be actually gone. “By declaring him dead, no one will keep looking for him.” My voice is as crumbly as the old gravestone next to me. A centipede buries itself in a crack.
Honey nods and swivels slightly to face me. “That’s true. But I think they think it’s the only way to get you to live again. They want you—and themselves—to have closure. To lay him to rest. It was an accident, a crazy, random, wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time situation.”
We’ve had this conversation before. When the search parties soured and withered away. When I did too. “The only way I can live again is when Jim returns,” I force through clenched teeth. “He’s not dead.”
Because if he really is, then it’s my fault. And I don’t think I can live with that.
“I miss him too,” she says and lays her head on my shoulder, and we both cry. Because I can’t hold the tears back any longer. Jim deserves for me to cry over him, and who knows, maybe another flood will bring him back.
After a while, Honey’s tears turn to hiccups and then she surprises me by letting out a giggle.
“What’s so funny?” I ask.
“Beth’s face as she was trying to crawl out of the grave.”
My jaw drops. Beth’s a new girl, by Georgefield standards anyway. In a place where no one leaves—except if you mysteriously disappear in a flood surge—and no one moves in or if your grandparents weren’t born here, you’re considered new. She moved here with her parents a couple years ago, during our eighth-grade year. “What the hell was she doing in there?”
This time Honey laughs. “I’m sorry. I know, I have the worst, most inappropriate reactions, but I can’t help it. Her face!” Her shoulders are shaking, she’s laughing so hard.
I’m too confused and heart-shattered to find anything humorous. She must notice my expression because she wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and straightens her shoulders. And then I recall that blackness I pushed against when escaping that farce of a funeral. “Oh, Jesus Tap-dancing Christ. Did I knock her in?”
Honey explodes into fresh laughter, scaring a couple crows who take to the sky, cawing out their displeasure. “Brother Matthew slipped trying to help her out.”
“He fell in, too?” I’m both amused and appalled. Not nearly as much as being forced to bury my not-dead brother in the first place. Jim would’ve enjoyed this, appreciated the Monty Python humor in the situation. Too bad he’s not here to see it. My lips tighten.
Honey’s trying to calm herself down again. “What is it, Bea?”
“Jim’s somewhere, and I’m going to find him.”
“But your parents want closure.”
I nod. “That’s what they say.” I’d overheard a conversation before the funeral that it would be better for the town if he could be put to rest. No use making everyone suffer when he could lay in peace. I snort.
Honey raises her eyebrows like she knows a tempest is stirring inside me. A line of shelf clouds waiting on the horizon. “Why do you think they declared Jim gone?”
I stand, brushing the moss and clinging graveyard off my black dress. “That’s something else I need to figure out, isn’t it?” She reaches her arms out to me, so I hoist her up. “Why did Jim stupidly go down to the river as it was flooding? Where is he now?”
Honey chews on her lip at my questions she’s heard a thousand times in a thousand different ways, but her eyes are encouraging. “What’re you going to do?”
I knock the dirt off my heels. “A resurrection of my own. I’m going to bring Jim back from the dead.”
My parents haven’t even commented on Beth’s fall into the grave. It’s as if they buried their last bit of life into that empty casket, trying to fill it up with something. But if I’m going to find out what happened to Jim, I need to start somewhere. I decide the best place for that is his bedroom.
The door creaks slightly, as if already accustomed to disuse. I take it all in: his basketball hoop hamper hanging from the closet door empty of dirty clothes, swim trophies adorned with deflated balloon-like swim caps and goggles. It’s just as he left it, as if he could come back at any moment and demand why I was snooping in his room. I close the door behind me.
Clues will be impossible to find in this mess, so I start by picking the clothes off the floor, checking pockets before tossing them into the basketball hamper. Mostly it’s just spare change, gum wrappers, and gas receipts. Looking more closely, I find that a good number of the receipts are for marine fuel. Paid with cash. It’s weird
I toss the jeans behind me but it’s a crappy throw and the whole hamper falls, the metal rim crashing into the hardwood floor. I wince. That’s going to leave a dent.
A shriek comes from somewhere in the house and I instantly cower, the sound so wretched that goosebumps prickle my arms even in this warm, musty room. Momma’s footsteps pound down the hallway and I wildly look around for a hiding spot. My reaction surprises me. It’s just my own mom, right? But the pumping adrenaline tells me to run. I’ve done something very, very wrong and it’s somehow worse than knocking a girl into a fresh-dug grave.
The door is thrown open so hard it bounces off the closet door behind it. I’ve only had time to move behind the bed and I crouch there, feeling and—more than likely—looking guilty as my mom scans the room with harsh eyes.
“Ji—” Her eyes settle on me and her bottom jaw drops slightly as if she can’t quite catch her breath. “What are you doing in here?”
She’s staring at the fallen hamper, but I’m pretty sure she’s asking me. “Looking for clues,” I whisper, unsure of the right thing to say, or even if a right thing exists. I clear my throat and try to sound more confident. “To find Jim.”
That was apparently the wrong thing to say, because she lunges at me and I belatedly notice she’s carrying a catfish. She and Daddy had been on the dock in an attempt to get her out of her bedroom and in the sunshine. I notice the fish because she raises it at me as if it’s a weapon.
“Momma…” Incredulity floods my voice as I back up, throwing my arm up to keep from getting attacked by a fish.
“Don’t touch his stuff!” she screams as she whacks me on the arm, a barb going deep enough that when she lets go, the fish stays, hanging like a remora from a shark. She collapses on the floor, crying into her palms.
I run.
Away from her, away from a musty room whose hinges shriek at us, away from the pain pulsing in my arm and the sharper ache in my heart at the sight of my mom breaking down like that.
Why does the possibility of Jim being alive seem to destroy my mother, while it gives me hope? A reason to go against everyone I know in search for him. I stop running when I reach the road to Honey’s house, then rub the catfish’s slime over the wound to stop the pain, mixing it with my blood. I’ll have to be more careful at keeping my searching from Momma, maybe protect her broken heart a little better.
Even though secrets drive wedges.
2
Phone Calls & Snapchats
My brother’s name hasn’t been spoken out loud since the fake funeral and the fish attack. As I say his name into the phone receiver, it tastes like that sweet moment caramel goes from hard to chewy. “Jim.” It’s a short name. I try to savor the way my teeth click.
“Yeah, Jim Montgomery. Is he there? Is… is he okay?”
The voice on our landline isn’t familiar. Maybe because I’m more focused on the echo of my missing brother’s name in my head. “No.” It comes out as a whisper. I clear my throat. “No, Jim’s not here.” I want another excuse to say his name out loud. As if saying it aloud will bring him home.
“Can I leave a message? When will he be back?”
I cradle the phone on my shoulder. “I don’t know.”
The wooden creak of a floorboard behind me makes me jump and I scramble to hang up.
Daddy enters the kitchen, empty coffee cup in hand. “Morning, Bea. Who was on the phone? Anyone calling in sick?”
“I don’t know.” I touch the empty spot on my chest. The catfish incident made it clear we don’t talk about Jim. Daddy might be willing to listen at some point, but now his focus is on putting Momma back together again.
Why would the caller ask if he was okay? What does he know? My throat aches. Maybe he simply doesn’t know our town pretends he’s dead.
Daddy refills his cup. “Telemarketers.” He shakes his head. “The girls from your cheerleading squad are taking pictures in front of Lake George right now.”
My eyes slide back to the phone. I run my tongue over my teeth, unsticking them from my lips. I should’ve asked who was calling. The caller must know something if he’s asking after Jim. The missed chance crushes me.
“Shouldn’t you be out there?” His spoon scrapes the sides of his coffee cup as he swirls it around.
Then the kitchen is quiet. If the phone rings again, it will echo against the silence. His spoon clanks against the spoon rest. I turn to look at him. His thick eyebrows raise expectantly. “I didn’t know about it.”
Daddy frowns. “Oh. Are they being rude? Should I go get your mother?”
I sigh. “I’m not cheering this year, remember?” Ever since Jim disappeared, lying low is the easiest way for me to deal with uncomfortable stares and loud whispers. I honestly don’t know how school—or anything—will be now that there’s a stone with his name carved on it.
“Right. How could I forget? You don’t cheer anymore. You haven’t picked up your camera in months when last year your dream was to be a photographer and it never left your neck.” He winces, then his face darkens. “You’d better open the concession stand since Honey’s busy taking pictures with y’all’s friends. I don’t want to dock your pay.”
I glance at the phone one last time before sliding my feet into my flops. Daddy was never an angry person ’til this past year. His good nature, Momma’s happiness, and their combined hope for Jim are all bouncing around in that padded, airless death box. That’s where the Old Bea resides, too. The one who used to cheer and take pictures. I wanted to change the way folks saw the everyday world around them with my photographs. It was a lofty dream, and now it’s buried six feet under too.
I wonder what happens to dreams when they become worm food. Do they get mixed in the soil and help flowers bloom brighter? Or do they poison the dirt until nothing can grow?
The morning August sun is bright as I open the wooden door of our house, but there’s a slight breeze peeking from beneath humidity’s antebellum skirts. It’s a short walk, crossing the front yard and parking lot to Lake George and the concession stand where I work with my best friend since preschool. But it’s enough time for two thoughts to jumble inside my head and hitch my breathing:
I don’t want to stop existing like my brother.
I don’t want to be allowed to disappear.
What’s left of my family lives and works at Lake George, at the junction of the Talakhatchee and Chatothatchee Rivers, close to the Alabama/Florida line. A very happening place for a very un-happening sixteen-year-old girl. During the summer, Honey and I run the concession stand, scooping ice cream, popping corn, and grilling hotdogs for the hungry anglers, swimmers, and sunbathers. Her older brother, Lucas, is a lifeguard like my brother Jim is, or was, or… Lucas helped out on so many of the search parties. When even he stopped showing up, stopped responding to my texts, that’s when I knew everyone had given up.
High-pitched laughter drags at my attention. My former cheerleading squad is posing in front of a camera with the lake in the background. The lighting will make their faces look overexposed.
It doesn’t bother me that no one told me about the pictures.
Well, maybe a little that Honey didn’t mention it. Perhaps she thought it would hurt my feelings. But I’m the one who took a break after Jim disappeared. To hang out with shadows instead of real people.
When Honey catches sight of me and waves me over, Sara puts her hand on Honey’s arm. Sara’s hair has gotten lighter over the summer, an almost white that looks brittle and fake next to Honey’s thick, sunshiny waves. She and Beth are best friends, so I expect some sort of fallout from knocking Beth into the grave.
