Only She Came Back, page 12
Reggie made me feel untouchable. Callum made Kiri feel strong and beautiful. I remembered her saying, When someone comes along and turns you into a better person… how can it just be over?
And both of them were cruel to us, too, when they chose to be, building us up only to tear us down. So maybe it wasn’t really love at all. Maybe Kiri and I both just desperately wanted to be more.
“Look!” Owen called.
A bird shrieked in the distance like a warning. Through the clinging needles, I finally glimpsed the wall of a building.
In her diary, Kiri said she couldn’t see the cabin until she was practically inside it. Maybe she’d exaggerated the cabin’s wildness the way she exaggerated Callum’s hotness, or maybe the state police had done a number on the place.
Or someone had. As the breeze blew branches into a new configuration, sunlight shone on the rough-hewn wall. It was covered with spray-painted tags, so wild and stylized they were barely readable.
“Shit.” Owen stepped past me into the clearing. “Who’d come all the way up here to tag the place? Kids?”
We walked slowly around the cabin, swatting mosquitoes and pushing away prickers and wild grapevines. It was tiny, maybe three hundred square feet, but you could tell it had been built with care. The walls and the pitched roof looked solid. It was easy to imagine smoke unfurling from the stainless steel chimney while Kiri and Callum sat cozily inside by the fire.
But the windows were broken, the tall grass still peppered with their shards. The weathered boards had been notched and hacked all over as if some furious person had taken a hatchet to them. And the walls were covered with unhinged red and black scrawl. I managed to decipher the words PARASITE and DIE and COLLAPSE and EXTINCTION and, oddly enough, RESPECT.
Respect for the future. That was what Callum told Kiri he had. It was why he wouldn’t bring a child into the world or go to a supermarket or even boil water for coffee, though he seemed to have no problem adding to atmospheric CO2 with a giant gas-guzzling van for a social-media-driven road trip.
“Kids didn’t do this.” A cold feeling was settling in my gut.
“Then who would?”
On the cabin’s far side, we found a big pile of charred stuff, as if the vandals had heaped everything there and set it ablaze. Boards, posts, cordwood, the half-burnt jacket of a book on “primeval cooking,” blackened stretches of chicken wire.
Chicken feathers, too. Once I noticed them, I saw them everywhere, pounded into the dirt or floating free like cottonwood fluff, catching the light. Bile rose in my throat as I made a circuit of the tiny yard, expecting any second to stumble over the dried-out corpses of—what were their names? Moira? Miriam? Miranda?
No. Callum had killed Miranda, the old hen Kiri liked to hold and pet, and cooked her in a stew, only telling Kiri after her friend was in her stomach. And she’d come home from that dinner still half convinced he was Prince Charming.
Why hadn’t she seen the giant, flashing warning signs? When we talked about the Waffle House incident, she seemed to understand what was wrong with Callum’s behavior, yet she still missed him enough to cry about him in my arms.
Maybe she couldn’t help it. Maybe it wasn’t love so much as a kind of addiction.
From the woods behind the cabin came a crunch, then a sharp crack. I stepped closer to Owen before I could stop myself, my heart jolting. “What’s that?”
“Huh?”
“Up there! Didn’t you hear?”
Owen looked where I was pointing, then shook his head. “You’re not used to the woods, Sam. Probably a squirrel.”
How could he be so calm? Despite myself, though, I felt reassured by his big, unflappable boy-presence. That must have been how Kiri felt about Callum.
Why was she so damn insecure? Why couldn’t she look beyond her fantasies of a rugged nature boy who paid her attention and recognize the opportunistic asshole who wanted to control her?
It was so easy for me to see, but I could also see that she hadn’t needed Callum to make her a better person. Her feelings about Miranda, for instance—what one person calls weak, another calls caring.
And now, partly thanks to Aliza, hundreds of thousands of strangers online thought Kiri was the manipulative mastermind.
It wasn’t fair, but so little is. “C’mon,” I said to Owen, giving the cabin’s door a hard shove.
It opened easily. Smells of rotting vegetation wafted out. “Gross,” I said, raising my phone to peer into the darkness within.
Kiri had described minimalist neatness and order in the cabin. Now it was pure chaos. I saw chopped pieces of what must be furniture, more spray-painted messages of hate, and bright green mold creeping up the walls like veins full of radioactive fluid.
That much mold doesn’t grow in a few weeks. Mushrooms had sprouted under the woodstove, and tall grass was poking up through a gap where the floorboards had been hacked open.
This wasn’t recent vandalism by true-crime buffs or curious locals. The cabin had stood this way through a whole humid summer of growth and decay.
Callum could have done this himself. Judging by Kiri’s reaction to my question about the cabin, she knew about it, though she’d pretended she didn’t.
On top of a junk pile, an intact wedge of paper caught my eye. I bent and tugged out the torn half of a heavy card.
It was expensive paper, thick and cream-colored and covered with elaborate calligraphy that had clearly been done by hand. Because the sheet had been torn lengthwise, each line had only a few words: Next month we could maybe. Would be a shame if. Don’t want you to have to (“want” was underlined three times). So so looking forward. At the top, a date: last December. And at the bottom: Love you to infinity.
Kiri hadn’t mentioned sending letters to Callum, and the sign-off felt too gushy for her. To me, it looked as if another girl had been writing love notes to Callum Massey, well into his relationship with Kiri. Making plans with him.
Who?
I’d almost forgotten Owen was there when he said, “Check this out, Sam.”
He was holding his phone close to a stretch of wall that had escaped the spray paint, only to be scribbled all over with a black Sharpie. The handwriting was all caps, so elongated and ethereal that it was tough to make out words.
But I didn’t need to. This was writing I recognized.
“What the…?” Owen said, peering closer. He read aloud: “Die, Callum Massey. May worms chew on your guts as you return to the earth you love so much. Traitor, chicken killer, hypocrite, weakling. This is some twisted shit, Sam. Did this dude ever piss off, like, the Mafia or something?”
“No,” I said. “The Mafia didn’t do this.”
I felt so tired suddenly, there in the hot, fetid cabin, that I could have lain down on the mold-ridden floorboards and gone to sleep. Outside, the bird screamed again. Branches rustled, but I knew it was only a skunk or squirrel.
In junior English, Kiri had hand-lettered an ornate label for the portfolio that we handed in together. The letters looked just like these.
12
AUGUST 11, 2:01 PM
Hey, Sam. Hey,” Owen said, peering at me from under his fluffy red brows. We were stopped at a light on our way to the interstate. “Are we even gonna talk about what we saw back there?”
“What about it?”
“Just… all of it.”
A love note to Callum. A hate note from Kiri, right there on the wall where everyone could see it. They had to be connected.
Would the diary explain how? She’d seemed so earnest when she gave it to me, gazing at me with those big brown eyes. But she’d lied about the cabin, saying she didn’t know if Callum would return there, and I was starting to think the diary wouldn’t tell me what I needed to know, either.
I said, “Let’s not post any pics, okay?”
Owen hit the gas as the light changed. “Thing is, other people will. It’s just a matter of time before they figure out where he lived and that it’s not guarded.”
“Maybe Callum’s on his way back. We can’t be sure.” But everything about the cabin said no. The memory of feathers trampled on the ground made me shiver in the afternoon heat. If the chickens were dead, Kiri wasn’t responsible—I could be sure of that much.
“You could revive your podcast,” Owen said. “Do a new season on this—it’s got a local angle and everything.”
I wished he hadn’t hit so close to the truth, because my plans seemed absurd after last night. “I was joking before. You know perfectly well the first season tanked.”
“I thought it was actually pretty good.”
That made me melt a little inside, and I didn’t know what to say. Owen flipped his blinker and steered us into the tight curve of the on-ramp. “Sam, have you seen Katie Dunsmore again?”
For an instant, the granite rock face seemed to rocket straight toward us, and I braced myself and closed my eyes.
“Kiri.” It slipped out. Had he been waiting to ask me this question the whole trip? “A couple times.” It didn’t seem worth it to lie. Kiri had asked me to leave, and I couldn’t be sure she would ever want to see me again.
Owen gunned the engine. We zoomed onto the straightaway, the sky big and blue in every direction over the blasted granite cliffs. “Why’s she want to hang out with you?” he asked.
I’d been waiting for a different question: Do you think she did it? “Ooh, burn,” I said, trying to turn it into a joke—but it did burn, and the deep-down ache in my chest wasn’t just about my pride or my dreams of being a real podcaster. She’d liked me. She’d trusted me.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Owen said. “It’s just, the two of you weren’t friends till now.”
“I don’t think she’s ever had many friends. And…” I reached for something else, something better. “I think I get her situation in a way her old friends wouldn’t.” Whether she recognizes it or not.
“Get what? Being the main character of all the news feeds? Being a possible murder suspect? I guess I just can’t help worrying, knowing you’re spending time with her.”
That was so Owen, and I couldn’t resent him for caring. “You don’t have to worry.”
He raked a hand through his hair, standing it on end like a cartoon character’s. “But also, I’m kind of wondering if she’s… I don’t know, maybe using you?”
“To do what?” His words hurt, and I laid the sarcasm on a little too thick. “To hide the murder weapon for her? To help her escape?”
To carry a message. To set up a meeting. But the meeting was the first thing Kiri had actually demanded from me. Without me, she would never have known West was here at all.
“I never said I thought she was guilty!” Owen hit the button to seal the windows; we’d reached Bolton Flats and were soaring at eighty. “I just meant she might be using you for news. You said her parents keep her offline, right?”
“Right.” I had misinterpreted him and overreacted. “I guess I have told her a few things.”
Everything. But she had a right to know, didn’t she?
Owen didn’t seem to notice my discomfort. “You know what I heard this morning? Some biker dudes were camping close to Katie and Callum—badasses with criminal records. Other campers said they were making noise, throwing beer cans. One woman saw Callum shooting the shit over at the bikers’ site.”
Those must be Kiri’s “scary bikers.” A shiver of disgust pricked up goose bumps on my arms as I imagined long-haired, aviator-shades-wearing, pot-bellied guys ogling her in her shorts and tank top while Callum watched.
“So maybe the bikers offed Callum.” I tried to sound breezy. “And then they rode their bikes all the way to Vermont and trashed his house before anyone missed him—is that what you’re thinking? That Hells Angels could’ve been lurking out there with us?”
We were out of the flats; Owen lowered the windows again so that warm wind gusted over us. “I’m just saying,” he shouted over the roar, “the whole thing is sketchville. Maybe you should let the cops take things from here.”
“Nothing I’m doing is getting in their way.” Guilt closed my throat for a second. “Anyway, why so pro-cop all of a sudden? You’re the one with ACAB in all your profiles.”
“I’m not pro-cop. I’m just pro you not getting sucked into something dangerous.” He spoke as if each word were an effort. “I mean, it’s one thing to do a podcast about a famous criminal and another thing to do a podcast about a murder suspect who’s a friend of yours.”
“A few minutes ago, you were saying I should do one!” A long valley plunged to our right, the houses and trees at its bottom like toys. Life looked so peaceful down there.
He didn’t know a thing, and though I’d had the same thoughts, now I found myself arguing the other side: “Would it necessarily be so bad? I mean, yes, there are ethical issues. Kiri needs a friend right now, not someone who’s going to splash her secrets all over. But if I just frame it as telling her story the way she sees it…”
Maybe, deep down, I was just as needy as Kiri was. Maybe that was what drew us together.
“So you know her secrets?” Though Owen spoke softly, I couldn’t miss the words.
“I didn’t say that!”
“You kind of did.”
I didn’t answer.
FROM KATIE DUNSMORE’S SENIOR-YEAR DIARY
December 26—the best Boxing Day EVER!
Or actually Boxing Night—ha! I’m just home from Cal’s, and he actually told me to leave because it was getting so hot and heavy too fast. He said if we went any further, he wouldn’t be able to control himself, and I guess I felt the same!
I told him I’m 100 percent ready and I can get a prescription for the pill any time I want—it’s one of the few things Mom and Dad are cool about—but he’s old-fashioned about these things. He wants me to be eighteen before we go all the way AND before I go on camera with him. I can help him with setup and editing before then, but that’s it. People might find out I’m underage and think he’s a perv, he said, even though the age of consent in Vermont is sixteen.
Well, tonight I’m the perv, and I blame Cal. He made the vibe in the cabin so perfect, with candles and festive pine and holly hanging everywhere. We were so cozy on the couch, I felt like I was living in a steamy romance novel!
The only bad part was when he pinched my middle again and saw I’d gained a little weight, like I always do in the winter. I told him I’m in the so-called healthy BMI range, and then he asked if I’ve ever been 125. Which, for my height, would be a waif! Not healthy at all!
But I get it. He equates weight loss with self-control.
I didn’t want to burst his bubble, so I told him I’d give it a try, just for fun, and see if I can make myself look like a supermodel. It’s just a matter of willpower, right?
13
AUGUST 11, 5:38 PM
Sam? Did you hear me? You could study video with Zephyra Taub. She had this amazing anti-colonialist multimedia show at the Firehouse last year.”
“Wow.” I tried to muster some enthusiasm for community college, digging my toes into the dirt so that the giant porch swing rocked gently in its steel frame.
Lore and I were sitting in one of the coveted swings along the boardwalk. It was a perfect afternoon on the downtown waterfront, the lake sparkling blue and gold all the way to the Adirondacks. Everywhere you looked were laughing girls in halter tops and little kids with dripping creemees and cyclists and in-line skaters and bright-eyed dogs. The wrecked cabin in the mosquito-ridden woods felt like another world.
“I don’t know about art classes,” I said. “If I’m going to study video, it should be web promo, branding, stuff like that.”
“Do you want to study branding?” Lore’s pale brows drew together. They were getting way too excited about planning my academic future, knees drawn to their chest as they consulted the CCV curriculum on their phone.
At least Lore wasn’t asking me about Kiri, which meant Owen hadn’t tattled. But all this talk about the future drove me up the wall. “Do you want to pick up goat shit? Every career has unglamorous parts.”
“Farming is my dream.” Lore slid their feet back to the ground, rearranging the skirt of their pretty yellow-and-black-print dress. “If you don’t do something you love at least a little bit, you’ll wither up, Sam. I know you.”
I gazed at the horizon, where the mountains were growing purpler as the sun dropped toward them. Oh, I’d had a dream all right—a breakout podcast, a story all my own. I’d even mulled over some possible titles: The Desert Changes a Girl. She Came Back Alone. Only She Came Back.
It seemed so naive now, as if Kiri were a character I’d invented. But she wasn’t, and the desert had changed her, and Owen might be right that she was using me. She’d been so angry when I refused to set up the meeting.
“Maybe I don’t need college,” I said. “I could take virtual classes and work freelance. I could go anywhere.” Reggie had dropped out of college, and so had Callum. “Institutions are failing, Lore. These days, college is basically a fancy summer camp for people with inherited wealth.”
“I got need-based aid!” Lore protested.
“I don’t mean you. You worked your ass off in school. But me—I fucked up, Lore. I gotta be practical.”
“You don’t sound like you right now.”
“Maybe this is me,” I said.
“Reggie’s gone, okay? You don’t have to act all cool and cynical for me. I like you the way you are.”
I swallowed hard, trying to think of a comeback. But Lore had scooted forward to examine some new action on the boardwalk: a young guy shouldering a camera with the WPTZ logo and clutching a windscreened mic in the other hand.
I sat up. Beside the guy stood a perfectly made-up young woman with brown hair and a floppy-bowed blouse—the reporter who’d chased Kiri into the woods on the fateful day we met.
