Only She Came Back, page 19
Outside, the last pink strips had faded from the sky behind the theater. For Kiri and me, though, it was still early. I would stop at home to finish the diary, maybe even catch a little sleep.
Unless—what if she planned to leave for Canada tonight? She had her own car, but would they let her cross the border?
The thought made me pedal furiously. The traffic was thin, the city buses garaged for the night. Smells of oil and humid vegetation mingled in the cooling air as the usual signs flashed past: Nissan, Northland Credit Union, Burger King, Lowe’s, Dattilio’s Guns & Tackle.
Stay here, Kiri, I thought, taking the swooping left across four empty lanes onto my street, hearing the edgy guitar licks of a surfer band from Molly B’s. Just a little longer.
In her diary, she’d said she loved Callum’s weaknesses because they were part of the whole package of him as a person. I could love her anxiety, her strange whims, her awkwardness, her unpredictability. But could I love her as a murderer?
In our kitchen, Mom was doing her usual pre-night-shift routine, brewing a pot of coffee that she would pour into two giant thermoses. “Hey,” she said, “you’re home late.”
“It was such a nice night that Owen and I decided to go for creemees.”
A strange look flitted over Mom’s face. Maybe she could tell I was lying, or maybe she’d started shipping Owen and me again the way she used to, half-jokingly, when we were thirteen.
Then she said, “Your friend’s here. I think she thought you’d be back earlier.”
Reggie, here? Suddenly I was wide awake, sinuses throbbing and warmth flooding my cheeks as if I’d just drunk the whole pot of coffee by myself. Why would she come to my house—unless she suspected I’d been lying to her about Kiri?
“I said she could wait in your room if she wanted. I hope that’s okay.” The furrow between Mom’s brows deepened, and I knew that in her usual empathic way she’d registered my alarm. “I don’t know her, but we had a lovely conversation, and—”
“No, that’s fine. You did the right thing.” I’d never introduced Mom and Reggie, because I wanted my cool older friend to be all mine. Reggie must have turned on the charm. I grabbed two kombuchas from the fridge and kissed Mom on the cheek, reminding myself I wasn’t afraid of Reggie or her judgments anymore. “Have a good shift, okay?”
She pretended to be shocked. “Who’s this sweet girl, and what have you done with my Sam?”
I rolled my eyes, but I was remembering Kiri writing about never wanting to go home to her own mother. “I appreciate you. What’s wrong with showing it occasionally?”
Mom raised her thermos as if to toast. “I like this mood you’re in.”
At the top of the stairs, the door of my room hung ajar. I braced myself and pushed it all the way open. “Hey, Redge, I’m so sorry I—”
I stopped. It wasn’t Reggie sitting at my childhood desk, painted white with pink rosebuds. It was Kiri, with her long legs draped over my dinky chair and her bare toes resting less than a foot from a pile of my discarded sweatpants.
She wore an eggplant-colored hoodie with her shorts, her hair tucked up under it. And as she swiveled restlessly in the chair, her hand fiddled with something that I suddenly, disastrously, recognized.
It was one of the postcards I’d printed up to advertise my failed podcast, The Girl Who Killed, with a mug shot front and center. I’d placed the crosshairs of a target over Drea Flint’s face, and the font practically screamed, Step right up to the true-crime freak show! Such an edgy design, I’d thought at the time.
“Hey, Sam,” Kiri said. “I guess you’re kind of into killers, right?”
23
AUGUST 13, 10:20 PM
I think Kiri was trying to sound sarcastic. Cool, above it all, like I’d tried to be with Reggie today—I can make jokes about murder! But on the word killers, her voice broke. She looked away from me, and I knew she wasn’t happy with what she’d found.
I couldn’t blame her, but I wasn’t happy with what I’d been learning about her, either. I sat down on the bed. “That’s from years ago. It didn’t work out. How did you get here?”
Kiri put the card down. “Went through the park. Didn’t use the street.” A little twist of her lips, almost a smile, to remind me that she could leave her house any time she really wanted to. “I remembered where you live from the time I drove you home.”
“Even the apartment number?”
Kiri nodded. “I told you, I noticed you in school. You stood out. Have you read the rest of the diary?”
“I’m almost done.”
When she met my gaze, I saw a difference in her. She was still beautiful, in her awkward way. But her eyes were darker, as if the pupils had swelled to swallow the irises. They reflected me, those flat dark eyes, while shutting me out.
She’d decided something. A pit opened in my gut.
“Your mom gave me a free palm reading,” Kiri said. “She happened to mention she does them. I offered to pay, but she said no.”
Had Mom recognized Kiri from the Waffle House video? She was always better with names than faces. “That’s nice,” I said. “What did she say?”
Kiri raised her right palm and studied it. “She said, ‘You have a long way to go. And by the time you reach your destination, you’ll have learned to be alone.’”
“A long way to go where?” Canada?
“I guess I’ll find out.” Kiri rose and went over to the bookcase. She ran a finger along the spines on the top shelf—fat paperbacks with black covers accented in lurid red and purple. Words glittered silver: kill, death, blood, guilt, dark, secret.
“It makes a good story, doesn’t it?” she said. “That I killed him? Everybody likes wondering how somebody like me could do something like that.”
I shook my head. The words Of course you didn’t wouldn’t come.
“Is this girl Drea Flint like me?” She picked up the card from the desk again. “I never heard of her. What did she do?”
“Lots of things. She killed men who paid to have sex with her. Her stepfather. Men who hurt her—some of them did, anyway. Not all.” I swallowed hard. “Look, it’s not like that. I mean, maybe it started out that way, just a little, but I can’t think of you like that now. You’re my friend. You’re you.”
Kiri didn’t seem to hear. “Your mom didn’t recognize me,” she said, sitting down again. “I guess she doesn’t follow the news. Anyway, I said I was your friend Katie from school, and we talked about you, and she asked if I was a true-crime fan, too. She said you were up on every case.” She wound a stray strand of hair around her finger. “You knew all about mine before we met that first day in the park, didn’t you?”
Guilt strangled me. I tried to tell myself that if I’d been using her, she’d been using me, too, but none of that canceled out what I’d done. “I never told you I didn’t know,” I said. “I never lied to you.”
“But you left out so much.” She picked up the card again and brandished it at me: Exhibit A. “It’s been going around and around in my head, Sam. You didn’t just run into me that day in the park, did you? You were waiting for me, just like the reporters were. Stalking me.”
I wanted to crumple and confess and say I was sorry, the way Reggie had with me this afternoon, but I couldn’t seem to do it. “Kiri,” I said, “I know Callum taught you to be paranoid. But not everybody’s after you. And this stuff”—I gestured at the bookshelves—“was just a phase for me. I haven’t been into it for a while.”
Every word felt like a nail hammered into my own coffin, but it was better than admitting the truth. Anything was better than being the girl whose life was so pathetic that she had to force her way into someone else’s.
Kiri held my glare with those new, sharkish eyes of hers. “You never liked me at school,” she said. “I wasn’t cool enough for you. I didn’t dare text you or anything, even though I wanted to. You would have rejected me.”
“That’s not true.” Was it?
“But now that I’m famous for possibly being a cold-blooded murderer, suddenly I’m the most interesting person you know. Believe me, I’m aware I just happen to be the main character today. Tomorrow I’ll be nobody again, or worse. But right now, if you told those influencers all about me, if you showed them my diary, then you could be the center of attention. Couldn’t you?”
“That’s not something I would do!” If only she could have seen me with Reggie, lying like a pro. Tears of shame stung my eyes as I unzipped my backpack, grabbed the diary pages that I’d painstakingly gathered from the theater floor, and held them out to her. Take them back, then. “I don’t just want attention. I never wanted that. This whole time, all I’ve ever wanted is to know your side of the story.”
Kiri just gazed at me. No tears in her eyes. “So you can be the one who tells it?”
“How? I’m nobody.” When I blinked, the tears wet my cheeks and spilled off my chin. Were there any words strong enough to convince her that everything that had happened between us was real to me, especially last night by the lake? Realer than my true-crime obsession, realer than the rest of my life?
“Being a nobody never stopped anybody from posting stuff online,” Kiri said.
She sounded so cynical all of a sudden. But there was something she didn’t know yet—I was a criminal myself. I straightened the pages with shaking hands. “Last night, before I came to your house, I went to West’s motel room.”
“You talked to West? But last night you said you didn’t!”
“No! He wasn’t there. I—well, I broke in. The window was open. All I found was this.”
The See ya note was still in my backpack. I handed it to her.
Kiri stared at the two words, her mouth tightening, as I told her what had happened to Tierney last night while I was busy in the motel room. Now my words came more easily, because she needed to know West was dangerous. “And there’s another note—a third note, I guess, if you count the one he left for you. This was pinned to Tierney’s jacket.”
I handed that one over with shaking hands. Tell Sam to do everything her old friend asks her to. Only way she’ll ever know the truth.
Reading it, Kiri winced as if an insect had stung her. But her face didn’t change.
“West could have just come and told me that, but he carjacked Tierney as a warning to us both.” Now that I didn’t have to hold back anything, I was babbling. “Or maybe he wanted Tierney’s Range Rover, so his own license plate wouldn’t be recorded crossing the border. He wants to meet you tomorrow in Canada, doesn’t he? That’s where the echoing caves are.”
Kiri pinched West’s note between her fingers and tore it neatly in half. She lined up the halves and tore them in half again. “How did you know?”
“You talked about it in your sunset video. But why would West want to meet in Canada? It’s not like you can…”
“Cross the border? Because the FBI is watching me and I’m about to be arrested?”
I didn’t like the flippancy of her tone, as if she’d decided she just didn’t give a damn. “You don’t know that,” I pointed out. Or if you do…“Look, I hope you understand how dangerous it would be for you to leave the country right now. And to meet West? After what he did to Tierney just to get his car, I don’t see how you can possibly trust him.”
Unless you’re desperate. Because both of you know there’s blood on your hands.
Kiri stared straight ahead into the shadows in the corner of the room. “Would you?” she asked after a moment.
“Would I what?”
She picked up what was left of the note and began tearing it into even smaller pieces. “The ‘old friend’ is me, I suppose. So would you do anything I ask you to? Would you do anything to know the truth?”
Foreboding settled in my gut. “It depends on what you’re asking.”
“That’s not what the note said. It said everything.”
The bed creaked, and I looked up to see Kiri settling beside me. Again I felt that sensation from last night in the park: prickling on my skin, as if she emitted an electric charge, and an answering flush of heat inside me. When she made up her mind to do something, she was powerful.
“No,” I said. “I mean, I don’t know. What are you talking about? Are you seriously thinking of going to Canada tomorrow?”
Kiri tugged off her hood. Her hair came loose and streamed over her shoulders like a cloak, some of the golden strands catching static electricity and wafting upward. I wanted to snag them and brush them back behind her ear. I wanted to touch the down on her cheek where it caught the light. I sat very still.
“I have a plan,” she said. “I want to surprise West. Throw him off-kilter a little.”
“Surprise him?” I didn’t see how that would help. “Why?”
She gazed into midair. “He won’t be sleeping in the echoing caves. He’ll be using the cottage as a home base—Callum’s parents’ cottage in Saint-Aubin-Les-Pins. We were there, too, on my birthday.”
Where she’d lost her virginity. “How would West get in there?”
“He’ll know where they keep the spare key. He’s been their guest.” A wave of her hand. “Let’s go there, Sam. Now, tonight—it’s not far. We could get there in the morning, before he’s expecting us.”
“So we surprise him, and then what?” That foreboding inside me was growing, cold and heavy. “Anyway, remember what you said before? The FBI might have you on a watch list.”
“Maybe.” Her voice was low and husky—tense, but not scared anymore. “That’s why I need you to drive me, Sam. You have one of those enhanced licenses, don’t you? Or a passport?”
“Sure, but—”
“I could ride in the trunk when we cross the border.” Her eyes locked on mine, and they weren’t dead anymore. They gleamed.
“Yeah, and if the border patrol searches the car and finds you, it’ll look like you were trying to sneak into Canada to…”
Then I remembered how she’d run straight off the cliff last night. How her body had arced over the void. “Kiri,” I asked, “is that what you want from West? Do you want him to help you… disappear?”
The word hung in the air between us. I wished I could unsay it, but it was too late. If she said yes, it was as good as a confession.
The light faded from Kiri’s face, replaced by the flat, dead look again. “If you won’t help, I’ll find a way to do it alone. I’ll take my Prius and see what happens.”
“You’ll look like a fugitive.” I edged closer, though I knew that by saying it, I was already becoming her accomplice. “You can’t cut and run. You need to trust the process.”
“That’s what my lawyer keeps saying.” Her voice was tight. “Look, do you even have a car?”
“Mom just took it to work.” But Owen probably felt bad about blabbing to Reggie, which meant he might lend me the Legacy if I asked very nicely and didn’t let him know what I needed it for.
Once West set up that meeting with Kiri, he must have known exactly what she would ask me to do. If I did it, I would be breaking the law—aiding and abetting a fugitive.
My pulse throbbed in my temples, frantic and resolute at once, as I checked my phone. It was less than an hour to the border and two more hours to Saint-Aubin-Les-Pins, north of Montreal in the green and blue middle of nowhere.
“Sam.” A light, quaking hand on my shoulder. “I don’t want to hide in my parents’ house again tomorrow. I want to do something.”
“If you didn’t do anything wrong, then you don’t need to do anything.” Too late, I realized my voice had cut like a knife. “You know what I mean, Kiri. If I do this, and it turns out… well, it would make me your accomplice.”
“I know.” She hadn’t moved her hand. Her breath was a ghost of warmth against my cheek. “But you like stories, don’t you, Sam? You like finding out which version of the story is true?”
Her tone was half-serious, half-teasing; it made me itch down to the base of my spine. I said, “Sometimes it’s not worth it to know.”
Those newly unreadable eyes gazed into mine. “Are you sure?”
I knew what she was really saying, what she didn’t need to say out loud. She didn’t believe the truth would exonerate her, which meant she probably wasn’t innocent, and that alone should make me walk away.
But she was also right. If I didn’t go with her to Saint-Aubin-Les-Pins, I might never know how the story ended. Not just the story of what had happened in the desert, but our story, hers and mine.
It might be even worse than I imagined. But I’d come too far to turn back now.
“I think I can get a car,” I said.
VIDEO POSTED TO CALLUM MASSEY’S CHANNEL ON JULY 26 AT 8:18 AM
We see the clear imprint of a shoe or boot in the red dirt. Big—a man’s, probably—with an unusual pattern over the instep. It makes me think of the symbol for Aries, the ram’s head, with watery swooshes above and below.
“Hey, followers!” That’s Kiri off-screen, sounding chipper.
But when she swings the camera up to her face, we see that her hair is a matted, stringy mess. The sun is behind her, which may or may not be why her eyes look lifeless.
“I don’t think this was here before Cal disappeared.” She points at the ground—the footprint. “I mean, maybe I’m wrong? Sometimes I just don’t notice things—that’s what he’s always saying, anyway. And maybe I’m not at my most stable right now.”
She giggles, a sound that grates on the ear, and then she seems to choke on it, tears welling up in her eyes.
This is the clip that people like to meme, over and over, usually as the second half of “how it started, how it’s going.”
“I’m a little confused about what’s real, but I have a plan now,” she says, looking straight at the camera. “I should just hike back, call nine-one-one, and explain everything. I’ll walk into the ranger station and there you’ll be, Cal, because I made a silly mistake. We both made a silly mistake, coming out here in the first place. We need to go back to normal.” Another giggle, but this one ends quickly.
