We Were Never Here, page 24
A beat. “Where are you going?” When I didn’t answer, her voice grew more insistent: “Who are you going with? Aaron?”
“I’m going to Phoenix for a few days. With Aaron, yeah. I…I can’t be a good friend right now. And I want to be. Can you understand that? It’s not about running away from you. I just need a change of scenery.”
A wet sniff. “I thought you had my back.”
“I do. And you have mine. But you of all people know how healing travel can be, right? It’s a reset. And then once I’m back, we can start fresh.” Not true—I’d use the time away to distance myself from Kristen, to create boundaries where there were none. I felt the lies buzzing in my sinuses, swelling like Pinocchio’s nose.
Another moist inhalation. “I’m so lonely right now,” she said. “And scared. And you’re the only person on Earth who knows the full extent of why.”
The full extent—what proportion of the truth did I actually see? What had happened in our hotel suite when Paolo was alone with Kristen? Whose foot had connected with Sebastian’s body a year earlier? What really happened to young Jamie? And was the fire that killed Kristen’s parents really a random house fire…or had someone set it, watching a pinprick of light fork and race through the house like white-hot dominos?
“I’m right there with you,” I said, because I didn’t know the answers to any of my questions. Only Kristen did, and my freedom—my life—hinged on her wanting to protect me. “I know it’s tough, but we’ll get through this. As long as we don’t do anything stupid.” Like turning over an anonymous, incriminating photo: I thought it so hard I imagined she could hear it, accomplice ESP. “You’re brave as hell, Kristen. I’ve always been in awe of your courage. And how calm and smart you are in the midst of a crisis. I’m—I’m just trying to channel that. With a couple days of us not talking. I’m trying to be brave like you, okay?”
This did it. Of all the tricks I’d tried, the sticks and carrots and honey-gooey words I’d lobbed her way, this was what convinced her.
“I trust you,” she said. “I don’t get it, but I trust you.” She rolled off the bed. “I want to show you something.”
My heart thudded as she rummaged in a dresser drawer. Please just let me go, I silently begged.
She lifted a cloth sack and pulled out what appeared to be a crumple of newspapers. She peeled back a layer and stared at its center.
“We’re really in this together.” Then she tipped it my way.
At first, I thought it was a big, dark rock, the kind you crack open to find the geode inside.
But then a part of it caught the light. I spotted words on the lumpy surface, a flash of blistered plastic.
I’ll take it, she’d said as the air in our suite eddied with smoke and the acrid smell of burnt plastic. I’ll toss it when I get home.
But she hadn’t. She’d kept it, more collateral. Before me was a fossil: the molten remains of Paolo’s journal, phone, passport, and wallet.
CHAPTER 33
“Oh my God. You said you’d get rid of this.”
“I kept it in my suitcase. It made the flight here with me.”
My eyes bulged. “But why?!”
“It’s…it’s like the photo. I don’t plan to show it to anyone, obviously. But I wanted you to see.”
She’s out of her mind. But I nodded serenely. “I’m sorry I made you doubt me. But we can trust each other. We have to trust each other.”
She stuffed the lump into its bag. “Can we please do more talking as soon as you’re back?”
“Of course,” I lied. I inched toward the door. “I should get going. You’re okay?”
She pulled me into a tight hug and cried into my shoulder. There was muscle memory there, a deep-seated urge to tuck my chin toward her neck, to feel our forearms pulling in tandem. When I let her go, I had the flickering thought that this felt like a goodbye—an ending I’d been seeking for the better part of a month now.
But as I plodded toward the stairs, a pit of shame opened inside me. There was a reason I kept repeating my farewells, aiming for a clean cut but then watching the skin scab and purse together, uglier and uglier, every time. There was a reason I kept going back, a sad-eyed addict begging for another hit.
As I passed by the living room en route to the front door, my gaze fell on the Bible still centered on the coffee table. With a sudden pull in my chest, I got it: the reason people crave religion—the confidence, the superiority, the assurance of what’s right. The yearning for someone to tell us what to eat, think, and do. Simple answers to complex questions and the certitude that there’s nothing to be afraid of, that it’ll all work out in the end. The opposite of fear.
As I scooped up my purse, a creak above me made me freeze, ears pricked, heart staccato. Time to go. I glanced behind me, then heaved the front door open and hurried out into the night.
* * *
—
I made it to my car and sat slumped in the front seat for a long time. Everything was wrong. Kristen had told me to jump, and I’d responded, “How high?” I’d comforted her, patted her shin, wrapped her in a tight embrace. I must be getting something I craved, or else I wouldn’t be here now, gazing into the black tunnel of Nana and Bill’s street when I should be home and packing for Phoenix. Why was it so freaking dark? Why weren’t there any streetlights in the suburbs?
A sudden knock made my entire body jerk—I pressed a hand to my sternum and breathed hard, the horror movie watcher who didn’t see the jump scare coming. Nana’s face floated in the window, her eyes and cheeks gaunt in my dome light’s glow. I rolled down the window and she cracked a nervous smile.
“You forgot this.” She held out a clump of fabric, and it took me a moment to recognize my jacket.
“Oh shoot, thank you.” I dropped it onto the passenger seat.
She lingered. “I thought I’d missed you. But then I saw your car.”
She wanted to tell me something. Days earlier, I would’ve leapt at the chance to ask about her spooky email, about Westmoor, about young Kristen and her dead best friend, poor Jamie in the pineapple house I could just make out next door. But now the strongest impulse, deep in my hips, was to get the hell away from here.
“Is everything okay?” She said it in a rush, like she thought I’d whir the window closed and drive off, tires squealing.
I froze. “You mean with Kristen?”
Something flashed in her eyes. “She’s been acting, er, a little upset. I guess it’s got Bill, you know, on edge. And me as well.” Her eyebrows shot up. “Not that it’s about us! But I’m concerned for her. And you.” Nana glanced behind her and I caught the look again. Fear, bright and glinting, both tiny and vast. Toward Kristen? Or—a new thought sparked, the conclusion I would have jumped to first under any other circumstances—toward Bill?
“Nana, why do you ask? What’s been going on at home?” She stared at me, and hastily, I added my knee-jerk courtesy: “If you don’t mind my asking, that is.”
“It’s been a bit of a zoo, having everyone under the same roof.” She peered up at the house, its windows like unblinking eyes. I just wanted to make sure you’re comfortable, she’d emailed on my birthday. Kristen has been acting a bit strange lately.
“Is there something you want to tell me, Nana? Is something wrong?”
She ran her tongue across her lips. She’d just taken the sharp inbreath of someone about to blurt something out when—
“Nana!”
A hand dropped onto Nana’s shoulder and we turned to see Kristen’s smiling face. How had she gotten here without us seeing? How long had she been standing there?
“Emily forgot her jacket,” Nana announced, too loud.
I gestured toward it with a flourish. “And since I missed Nana inside, I was just saying hi.”
Kristen nodded. “I thought you were in a hurry, so I was surprised to see you out here with someone. Thought I’d investigate.”
“Just your old grandma!” Nana’s voice was a singsong.
“Well, thank you for keeping me safe from all the dangers of Brookfield,” I cracked, and Nana chortled. “Anyway, I should let you go. Kristen, we’ll talk soon, okay?”
“Happy travels,” she replied, her smile shifting into a smirk. “Be safe.”
* * *
—
Kristen has lost her mind. Was Nana safe? Was there something I could do? Would any of my loved ones be in danger while I was out of town…Priya? The thought looped as I drove the tree-lined roads past looming colonials, broad Tudors, neo-classicals with grand white columns in the front. No flashy McMansions here: Kristen’s neighbors were classy and smug, convinced that nothing bad could happen to them, not behind their moats of landscaped gardens and neatly trimmed bushes.
I wasn’t being fair—I was simply jealous, the envy like a stent in my heart, pushing against it from the inside. These people paid their mortgages, cut tuition checks, debated whether the Vitamix was worth the splurge. They weren’t wondering if someone they knew was deeply unhinged. If the police were hot on their trail. If the walls, professionally painted in a pretty shade of eggshell, were closing in on them by the second.
With the exception of one. I flashed to Kristen again, crumpled on the bed, used Kleenex piled like snow in the bin at her feet. No way was that an act. Right?
At a four-way stop, I burst out of the subdivision and onto a main road, and I realized I’d been holding my breath.
The flicker in Nana’s eyes: I’d recognized it with a surge of solidarity. I felt it myself so many times a day, bursts so tiny and sharp and expected and, and normal that I barely registered them: just the usual accompaniment to walking or eating or smiling or not smiling or showing a little skin or wearing a poofy parka or simply existing with a female form.
I merged onto the freeway and accelerated hard. My pulse picked up speed along with the sedan as I flew past the grounds of the Wisconsin State Fair, the baseball stadium, the three glass domes of the botanical garden, latticed like bugs’ eyes. When my exit appeared, no one wanted to let me in and I had to jam on the brakes, then dart in front of an SUV who pretended not to see my blinker.
In the rearview mirror I saw the driver’s angry upturned palm, a what-the-hell gesture. As if it were my fault for taking up three-dimensional space, for having volume and mass and density.
And then I did the thing I never, ever do. I lifted my middle finger and waved it above my shoulder, so that he couldn’t miss it. For a moment I felt powerful, but then at the next light he pulled up next to me and rolled down his window to let out a stream of obscenities.
I stared straight ahead and, as my heart pounded in my rib cage, pretended not to notice.
CHAPTER 34
My stomach tightened when Aaron’s car pulled into my driveway. I waved and rolled my suitcase outside, then turned around to lock up.
I jumped as two hands encircled my waist, then smiled as he nuzzled my neck.
“Hello, you,” he said.
“Hey there.” Our foreheads touched and I closed my eyes. Oh, how I wished I could give in to the feeling, melt into his arms. “You excited?”
“Let me take that.” He grabbed my suitcase and I followed him to the car. He hit a button and the trunk flew open and bobbed at the top. Something in its angle, the gaping maw, brought me back to that moment in Chile, when we were sweaty and sore from digging a shallow grave and ready to face the unthinkable horror of producing a body for it. The rental car’s trunk had bounced in the same way, like it was laughing at us.
He closed it with a thunk and shot me a crooked smile. “I brought us chocolate croissants again. Hope you’re hungry.”
“So sweet! Thank you.” Just like in the airport weeks ago, when I hadn’t known I’d see him. His shape emerging near baggage claim, hitting me like a thunderclap.
We set out under a silvery sky. “It’s supposed to rain here all weekend,” he announced, drumming his fingers to the garage rock he’d put on. “Hopefully it holds off until we’re in the air.”
“Yep.” It took a huge amount of effort to reply. This trip might’ve been a horrible idea. “Thank God we’re going somewhere sunny.”
My phone was ringing again, and I rooted around in my bag. A number I didn’t recognize, one with—oh God—too many digits.
Aaron glanced my way. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, no, sorry, I— Let me check one thing.” I tried to keep my fingers from shaking as I googled the country code of the incoming call: Chile. Shit. Plus two new texts from Priya, a reply to my late-night plea to steer clear of Kristen while I was away; she’d sent back a string of question marks, followed by “WTF? Everything ok?”
Aaron gestured at the dashboard. “Hey, this reminds me: I packed some THC gummies.”
“Huh?” I glanced around, bewildered, then realized he was talking about the stonery song on the radio. “Oh. Great! You’re not…afraid to fly with it?”
“Nah, it’s in my dopp kit.” He waved his hand and I stared at him, my envy so thick I felt it seeping out of my pores: not a care in the world, nothing to worry about. The opposite of fear isn’t safety, Kristen had said. It’s knowing you’ll always be in charge.
The song finished with the unhinged shrawww of an electric guitar, and the peppy morning-show DJs sprang into action:
So, Dave, I’m sure you’ve been hearing about this twenty-four-year-old backpacker whose body was found in Chile.
Oh, everyone’s got a theory. Last week I heard someone say they thought aliens were involved, since that region is famous for its UFO activity.
What I can’t get over is that the parents are—
“You know what’s wild?” Aaron pointed at a speaker. “This dude disappears, probably got himself twisted up in some shady shit. Drugs or whatever. But no one wants to say that—it’s gotta be aliens who are responsible, nothing he could’ve done. ’Cause he’s a dude. Like, remember Natalee Holloway? It was all: Well, why did she leave her friends? And why did they let her go off with a guy she didn’t know that well?”
It was like all my cells were firing at once and I coughed, an ugly bark, then flipped to a different station.
“Sorry,” I said. “It just freaks me out. Thinking about…scary stuff happening to tourists.”
“Naw, that makes sense. I know you just visited there.”
I willed myself to say something, anything else, but I couldn’t. Finally, he sealed off the topic: “Well, nothing to worry about in the mean streets of Phoenix.”
* * *
—
Aaron ate a gummy before boarding and fell asleep shortly after takeoff. I didn’t want to risk growing (even more) paranoid while in a tin tube improbably sailing through the sky, so I didn’t partake. Solo travelers flanked us on either side, a beefy guy in a Packers hat next to me and a businesswoman next to Aaron, tapping away on her laptop.
The Chilean number hadn’t left a voicemail, but it had called again while we were on the tarmac. I pressed my fingers against my lips, as if to keep from screaming. I thought of Sebastian in Cambodia, his calloused palm against my mouth. Adrenaline coursing through my arms, muscle tissue firing as I fought against his grasp. The penny taste of blood when my teeth closed around his flesh. Had a bit of it come out in my mouth? Had I spit it out in a glob of bloody phlegm as he swore and pulled his hand toward his heart, or had I invented that detail now, in hindsight? The brain is an artist, after all—remixing, shape-shifting by the minute. Editing the feed so that I could convince myself that Kristen, not me, had kicked his trunk, forced his head up against the leg of the bed.
We hit some turbulence and the captain turned on the seatbelt sign. Aaron stirred and went back to snoring, but the woman to his right gripped her armrests and gasped when the plane made a belly-flipping dip. Another rustle of concerned murmurs as the plane jerked again, hard enough to make the tray tables jump.
Turbulence had never bothered me. It was just the plane hurtling through pockets of wind. Me, I preferred to obsess over realistic fears.
Aaron nestled his head on my shoulder, and I leaned my cheek on his silky hair. My eyes flicked to the screen next to me, where Baseball Cap was flipping through stations of live TV with an aggressive tap, one surely felt by the woman in front of him. He stopped on CNN and I read the ticker crawling along the bottom, an endless feed of fires and invasions and shootings. Above the scrolling headlines, two literal talking heads, a Barbie-esque woman and a man with a handlebar mustache, were discussing an entirely different topic.
And then I saw it. It sucked me down like an open hatch in deep space.
The headline snaked across the screen, right to left, so quickly I thought maybe I’d read it wrong, transposed the letters, conjured up the string of words I feared the most. I felt cold all over, my shoulders and jaw and hands all tensing, and Aaron sat up in his seat and slumped in the opposite direction.
I whipped out my laptop and jabbed at the On button; the hard drive seemed thick and logy as it booted up, different screens appearing and wheels turning languidly. After what felt like hours, I connected to the inflight Wi-Fi. Another short eternity as I waited for CNN.com to load.
I had to scroll down to find it, my eyes devouring the endless headlines, the blue-tinged photos of politicians and pro athletes and health crises and brutal devastation.
And there it was, eight bolded words on the left-hand side, in code.
Witness Comes Forward in Search for Backpacker’s Killer
CHAPTER 35
