Only She Came Back, page 13
The two of them were interviewing a girl I recognized from school. I couldn’t remember her name, only her strong calves, high ponytail, and eager-to-please smile.
“Hey, that’s Hayley Marquette,” Lore said.
The reporter’s voice rang out: “So, you were on the BHS track team with Kiri Dunsmore?”
“Yeah. Three years.” Faced with the reporter’s polished stage presence, Hayley looked terrified.
“Could you say that again in a complete sentence, Hayley?”
“Um. I was on the track team for three years with Katie Dunsmore.”
I could feel all the impatience the reporter was hiding; she needed a good story, and Hayley was not a good storyteller. “What were your impressions of Kiri—Katie?”
“Vultures on a corpse,” Lore muttered.
“Shh.”
Two more track team members flanked Hayley just off-camera—offering support or trying to get into the shot, it was hard to say which. “Katie was shy, really shy. But nice!” Hayley said. “She was just one of those people who don’t make friends easily.”
“Antisocial.” The sharper voice of another girl—Olivia something. The cameraman swung to get her in frame.
“Did she ever talk to you about her boyfriend?” the reporter asked. “Callum Massey?”
“No way,” Olivia said, taking over. “Not a word. But that last semester, you could tell something was wrong, you know? She stopped going out with us after practice. She got scary-skinny.”
The reporter replaced her fixed smile with a serious expression. “Do you think Kiri Dunsmore was someone who might get involved in an abusive relationship?”
Leading questions are bullshit. I bit down hard on my lip, wishing I could tell Ms. Perfect where to stick her fake concern.
Hayley nodded tentatively. Olivia jumped in again: “Well, she was kind of more of a follower type. And people like that are more likely to—”
A group of cyclists coasted between us and the news team, drowning out the analysis. I grabbed Lore’s arm. “C’mon. If we stick around here, they might try to interview us, too.”
“Why would they?” But Lore left the swing without protest and followed me toward the community boathouse. “We didn’t really know Katie.”
For an instant, I wanted to tell my friend everything—about the midnight meetings, the diary, the night in Kiri’s bed, West, the cabin. I wanted Lore to know I wasn’t anything like the reporter, thirsty for juicy tidbits to squeeze dry. I just wanted the full story, with all its convolutions and contradictions. Maybe I could be one of those podcasters who acknowledged their own doubts and ethical issues, constantly questioning their own narrative until they pummeled it into a deeper, richer one about storytelling itself.
But those podcasters had training and experience. And if Owen doubted what I was doing, Lore would, too.
I gazed at the amethyst curves of the mountains, where the setting sun was disappearing. “I just hate how the media turns people into stereotypes.”
“Good reporters don’t,” Lore said. “CCV has journalism courses, you know.”
“Oh yeah?” Reggie would have said that journalism was a dying field, but I didn’t feel like channeling Reggie anymore. I needed something to do tonight so I wouldn’t be tempted to go over to Kiri’s. It was too soon.
“Can I come over?” I asked. “I want to see how big Puffball’s getting.”
Lore looked a little startled, then happy. “Sure, if you don’t mind mac and cheese from a box.”
Just like old times. We’d play with the cats while we streamed bad CW shows, I would probably end up sleeping in Lore’s old scout camp sleeping bag, and in the morning, their dad would make us both waffles. I wanted nothing more.
“You can tell me about all the best radical journalism profs,” I said as we walked back to the parking lot. “I want to be the twenty-first-century Lois Lane.”
Lore gave me a friendly nudge. “I think you’d look great in a fedora.”
FROM KATIE DUNSMORE’S SENIOR-YEAR DIARY
January 3
139
January 20
133. Carb-free meal plan and extra workouts ftw!
February 1
134. DAMN, so much for willpower. This is way harder than C claimed it would be. He says I look amazing. I think I look okay, I think I’ve always looked okay (for a giraffe), but I’m in it to prove something now. If he could reshape himself, so can I.
February 12
129!!!!!
February 16
Omg!!! I’m in so much trouble!
Whenever I go to Cal’s house, I tell Mom and Dad that I’m staying at Abigail Schafer’s grandma’s cabin in Stowe. But yesterday Mom ran into Abigail’s mom at the Flynn and found out we haven’t seen each other outside school for months! Then Dad remembered that one of his friends had seen me with “a grown man” outside CrossFit, something he originally thought was a misunderstanding, and our family dinner became a giant shit show.
I came clean. I told them all about Cal and asked if I could bring him for dinner so they could meet him. Mom didn’t seem that bothered, especially after she saw how handsome Cal is, but Dad called him a predator, and it took hours to calm him down.
It insults me how he thinks I can’t make choices for myself. I’ll be eighteen in a month and two weeks, and then I can go live with C in the woods and eat nothing but wildcrafted mushrooms if I freaking want to!
February 25
PHEW. Dinner went perfectly. I was a little afraid Cal wouldn’t even accept the invite, but he said if he were my parent, he’d be protective, too. He wore a suit jacket and tie, and he acted like what someone would expect from a boy who went to prep school and Georgetown. He complimented everything in the house, including my dad’s golf trophies and my mom’s cooking. She was practically flirting with him by dessert, and he was flirting back in that sweet, meaningless way he does sometimes. Ha! Cal can charm anybody. He was also being so nice to Dad, calling him “sir” and listening respectfully to his boring stories, that I think Dad warmed up to him.
Over coffee, Mom told C she was about to buy a ticket for me to fly to France in June to visit Great-Aunt Esther.
My face went beet red, because I’d almost forgotten that Mom promised me the France trip for my last birthday. All I could think about was C’s road trip to New Mexico. We’ve been talking about it since X-mas, researching vans online!
I couldn’t look at him. I expected him to accuse me of misleading him, right then and there.
But he didn’t. He started telling Mom and Dad about his own trip plans—how he’d stop in DC and then make his way out West, shooting episodes along the way, until he reached Lost Village National Monument. He didn’t talk about desert survival living, just what a breathtaking site it was and how historically important, with cave paintings made by people who built an advanced civilization there in the 1300s. He told them about the German treasure hunter whose headless body was found in a canyon in the 1920s. Dad got all excited, because he’d heard the creepy story when he was a kid.
“It sounds amazing,” Mom said. “The experience of a lifetime—don’t you think, Katie?”
I said yes, it would be. Dad agreed.
Then C said, “I’m teaching Kiri to shoot video. She’s a natural. I’ll miss her when I’m on my own this summer.” And at last I understood the long game he was playing. I really can be slow to catch on sometimes, just like he says!
Dad just grunted, but Mom said, “Do you really do all that shooting by yourself? It seems like you should have an assistant.”
C pulled a sad face and said, “PAs as good as your daughter are hard to find.”
I wanted to blurt out, Just let me go with him! You can’t stop me anyway! But I’ve learned a thing or two from C. I kept my face neutral, maybe a little sad, as I pointed out that I could see Great-Aunt Esther another summer and they hadn’t even bought the ticket yet.
“But you want to see Europe,” Dad said. “You’ve been bugging us about it since you were twelve.”
“I’m not twelve anymore,” I said. “And air travel has a huge carbon footprint.”
Mom looked at Dad. “It does sound like the adventure of a lifetime,” she said.
I knew then that I’d won, and I’m going to New Mexico. My gaze met C’s across the table, and he looked so proud—of both of us!—that I had to work to keep the wild, gleeful grin off my face.
March 18
For once, I’m excited about my birthday! Most years I don’t even have a party, just dinner out with my parents, but this year will make up for all the others.
Oh, I’ll still go out with Mom and Dad, and she’ll give me Grandma’s ruby earrings that she’s been saving for me, and he’ll get tipsy and tear up when he gives me the standard kiss on one cheek.
But then comes the weekend. I have permission to take a day trip with Cal! We’ll drive over the border to his parents’ cottage in the Laurentians, and he’ll show me the “sights.” That’s the official story, anyway.
But his folks won’t be there. I’ll be the magic age: eighteen. Old enough to be in front of C’s camera, or _______!?!?! I can’t even write the possibilities that are running through my head! Rest assured that I’m prepared for whatever may happen. Eeee!
C says it’s cute that I’m so excited, but it embarrasses me! When I want him to touch me, the craving is so bad it’s like the hollowness I feel when I’m hungry. At school or in bed at night, I see movies in my head: We’re together, and it’s perfect, but then he ghosts me! Or he even goes off with another girl! And then it’s like this monster takes over my body, and I tear him limb from limb and spread pieces of him everywhere.
Only in my nightmares! My therapist says it’s okay to let yourself feel all the bad feelings. You have to breathe through them and welcome them. Just not act on them.
And here’s the annoying part: I’m back up to 128! New rule: No more pretzels late at night; no more snacking, period! I am cool. I am focused. I am ready.
It’s going to be perfect.
14
AUGUST 12, 2:01 PM
Sooner or later, West had to come back. He knew where I lived and where I worked. And he wanted that meeting with Kiri.
Biking to my shift at the Grand Nine beside long lines of lunchtime traffic, I felt a prickle on the backs of my thighs. Every black SUV I spotted made me tense. It seemed unfair that drivers were so hidden behind the midday glare on their windshields, and I was so visible.
If and when West finally did come sauntering back into my life—in the next day, hour, minute—I would tell him Kiri wanted nothing to do with him. He would just have to accept it, and then I would just have to accept it if she never wanted to see me again.
Last night at Lore’s, chasing kittens around the den, I’d felt safe. Now, entering the theater and clocking in, I kept checking over my shoulder.
Then I was on display behind the glass counter, just waiting for the lobby doors to swing open. Before 3:30, no one bought tickets except knots of old people from the various senior centers and stay-at-home parents desperate to entertain their kids.
Sunlight turned the glass front of the theater to molten lava. I squinted to make out the dark blur of each new arrival—a group? Good. Tall person and small person? Good. Walking hesitantly or with a walker? Good.
That meant it wasn’t him.
When I saw a tall outline that read male, with a young person’s springy stride, my throat went dry. But the person was slighter than West, with narrow shoulders. Ugh, Tierney Brenner.
Funny how I’d never noticed before that Dickwad didn’t have broad shoulders. When I met him last year, he seemed like a regular bruiser, but now I was comparing him with West, who actually was a big, scary man.
“Well, hey there, Sammy.” Tierney crossed the carpet with his usual studied swagger, oblivious to how he’d shrunk in my eyes. It was our first face-to-face since that shitty night in January, and I wished wildly that Owen were here instead of up in the projection room.
Tierney planted his elbows on the counter. “Been a while, right?”
“Hey.” I didn’t step backward the way he obviously wanted me to. I had no reason to be afraid of him. “Never seen you wear a suit before.”
A lazy grin spread over Tierney’s face. With his cropped blond curls and blue eyes and crooked nose, he made me think of a porcelain shepherd figurine that had found its way off an old lady’s shelf and into a brawl. “My dad says if I’m going to start doing the rounds for him, I gotta look the part. Like it?”
The suit had a skinny hipster cut that should have flattered him but didn’t. “Not really.”
“Oh, you’re smooth, Samuel.” The grin again. He knew how much I hated it when he called me by full names that weren’t mine, especially boys’ names.
I think I bugged Tierney from the moment we met. He made jokes about how I was a “tomboy” or still waiting for puberty, neither of which was true. I just didn’t toss my hair and flirt when he was around the way Reggie did.
“So you’re doing the rounds now?” I crossed my arms, pretending I hadn’t heard the comment. When Tierney’s dad did the rounds of the theaters, checking on the state of the bathrooms and the fullness of the popcorn bin and whether we’d shown up looking presentable, he was tough but fair. I suspected Tierney wouldn’t be.
“Yeah, Dad thinks it’s time for me to step up as heir apparent.” This time his grin invited me to sneer with him. He thought he was way too cool to be in the multiplex business.
“Great,” I said. “Guess you earned it.”
“Right? You sticking around here in the fall, Sammy, or you off to some Ivy League school?”
“Staying.” To distract myself, I grabbed the dust rag and started using it on a Republic of Tea canister.
“That’s a surprise. Reggie always said you were raring to get the hell out of town, just like her.”
He was bored and trying to get a rise out of me. But he wasn’t West. He was nothing. If I were Reggie, I could have had him under control in a second. She called it “girl magic”—the tilted head, the winsome glances through long lashes. Kiri had some of that magic, too—I’d seen it in her videos with Callum, and sometimes even when we were together. But it had never come naturally to me, and I didn’t feel like faking it. “Yeah, well, apparently I’m just another hometown fuckup.”
“You’re in good company, Sammy girl.” Tierney offered a fist bump. I didn’t take it. “What’s Reggie doing these days, anyway? Heard from her lately?”
Another goad. After that night in January, he couldn’t possibly think Reggie and I were still in touch. “Nah. She went off the grid.”
“What’s up with that? Just between the two of us, Redge was always kind of a flake, right? You don’t just move away and dump people.”
So Reggie had been ghosting him, too. I hadn’t been sure about that, and the confirmation sent a jolt of hot, vengeful pleasure through me. “Reggie was never going to stick around this dump. Not her style.”
“Yeah, but the two of you, you were pretty tight. Kinda surprised you aren’t still.” His gaze flitted over me in a way I didn’t like. “You got a girlfriend yet, Sam I Am?”
I forced my lips to make a polite screw-you smile. “Is that an appropriate workplace question, Boss?”
“Ooh, ‘boss.’ I like the sound of that. No, but seriously.” Tierney rose to his full height, though he couldn’t seem to stop fidgeting from one foot to the other. “I know you think I’m a dick, but I’m actually offering friendly advice. You need to get out of your own way, Sam. Have a spa day or whatever. Stop pining after a bitch who’s not coming back.”
He thought he knew everything about me—poor little abandoned Sam, stuck in her dead-end job. Rage filled me like ice water pouring into a glass—rage at him, at myself. “Fuck off, Tierney.”
“Language, Samuelito!” He shook a finger at me. “What if some nice family came in here and heard you cussing?”
If you’re the boss, I quit. The words were in my head, and then they were on the tip of my tongue.
Before I could say them, Owen traipsed into the lobby, panting under the weight of a box of equipment. “Hey, Tierney!”
Tierney turned to greet him. “How’s it shaking, tiger?”
I drew a breath through lungs that felt hot and swollen. Keep it together, Sam.
“Cool cool.” Owen’s tone was friendly, but he could obviously tell we’d been fighting. He tossed a worried glance at me, then asked Tierney, “What’s going on, dude? Nice suit.”
“Rounds.” Tierney raised his chin. “Dad wants you to give me a tutorial in the projection loft.”
“You’ve come to the right place to learn the troubleshooting of crappy digital projectors, my friend.” Owen ushered Tierney past the velvet rope into the back corridor, shooting me a reassuring wink.
On his way out, Tierney turned to me, this time with wide, innocent eyes. “You didn’t have to lay into me, Salamander. All I’m saying is that if I got over her, so can you.”
My face burned as I realized Owen had heard that. The more Tierney hung around here, the more he’d be making my work life slightly harder in a million ways—death by a thousand unpopped, tooth-cracking kernels.
“Don’t worry about me, Tier,” I said. “You watch yourself.”
Once he was gone, I regretted losing my temper. His advice hadn’t been “friendly” at all, but maybe he had a point—I wasn’t as over Reggie as I wanted to be.
Leaf shadows dappled the sun glare on the plate-glass wall. The air-conditioning cycled on. From the interior corridor came the swing of a door and a snatch of jaunty music from DreamWorks’ latest. Squeaky voices and superheroes—it was all we ever seemed to have at the Grand Nine, except for the occasional art movie that nobody saw.
Three little kids bounced out into the lobby, yelling excitedly about being able to fly. A frazzled-looking woman caught up with them and shooed them out the door.
