Going Dark, page 23
“Go home, Amelia,” Mignon said.
“I can’t,” Amelia whispered.
She got off the shuttle and walked, her backpack the only possession she had left, filled with nothing but a change of clothes, her laptop, Mignon’s book, and a half-eaten bag of peanuts. She kept her head low, her eyes swiveling from side to side, as she picked the right kind of car to take her to her final destination. In the long-term parking lot at the airport, she found one. No one would miss it for a while.
Mignon was leaning on it, a blue Honda Civic, her arms folded over her chest. “Leave it,” she said.
“No,” Amelia whispered.
She ducked low, keeping an eye on the security camera positioned at the four-spoke streetlights above. If she wasn’t careful, the alarm would go off. She’d never stolen a car before, but she had learned how. What was one more crime?
Push down, latch the end, pull up until resistance, tug up firmly.
She got in the car and searched for the keys. She didn’t want to have to figure out how to hot-wire an engine. The security guards might appear at any second, the parking lot would be monitored, and she had little time left. She searched the glove compartment, the cup holder, the sun visor—the keys fell into her lap.
“I’m not going with you,” Mignon said.
Amelia’s eyes lifted to the rearview mirror. Mignon was sitting in the back, her face turned out the window, looking at the world as if it had not yet started passing her by.
“I can do this on my own,” said Amelia.
“I know.”
Amelia put the car in reverse and backed out of the space. The car had a full tank of gas. Good. She followed Josh’s little blue dot on the map. He was heading to Shasta Lake, wearing his idiotic Nikes with the marathon runner’s chip hidden inside. He was leading her somewhere she could not escape from, a black hole of destiny.
Amelia’s gaze went back to the rearview mirror, looking at Mignon.
The image of her sister didn’t move, didn’t blink. A life, frozen in time, frozen in Amelia’s memory. Amelia wondered if she remembered her right, if she recalled the correct angle of her nose, or the brightness in her eyes, whether her lips actually turned down all the time or if they really turned up. And then Amelia realized that it was her in the mirror, staring back at herself.
Mignon was dead.
Dead and gone.
Amelia was alone. With no one. With nothing.
She was insane. She had gone nuclear. She was a ticking time bomb. Tick, tick, tick, time’s almost up.
“I’ll find you,” Amelia said, searching in the mirror for her sister, waiting for her to reappear.
“This can only end one way.” The disembodied voice floated from the back seat.
“I’ll find you.”
“One way.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
AMELIA
Amelia drove for hours all the way up Route 5, taking breaks only when she needed to, never long enough to breathe in the crisp Northern California air as she got deeper and deeper into the green hills, leaving behind the city smog and asphalt for fresh earth and evergreens.
She’d never been to the Shasta–Trinity National Forest before, and even now she couldn’t enjoy it. There was something about a towering pine that made a person feel small, insignificant, a blip in the great expanse of time it took for the tree to grow from a sapling into the giants looming over her. Amelia took the winding roads, hardly ever seeing another car pass her, coming or going. It stretched on, curving and sloping, Amelia blindly following, chasing the little blue dot of Josh’s tracking device, as she gained on him.
Her breathing was the only sound in the car. She didn’t play music, or talk to herself, or hum to pass the time. All she had was the road, and the trees on either side, and the dotted yellow line guiding her forward.
He was leading her somewhere, whether he knew it or not. He was leading her, and she was following.
The day shifted. From afternoon to night, casting the sky from a husky orange to a murky, bruised purple, bleeding into a black veil the farther she got from the city lights. The air changed too, from chewable to alive, as if the air had come from a different planet.
She had to turn on the headlights to see, and even then, it was only a bit at a time, the light illuminating a part of the road, obscuring the rest. The darkness seemed alive, pressing on her from all sides. The road curved, and turned away from her, and she had to keep up. Like Mignon, it danced out of reach.
She drove through the night, punching herself in the thigh to stay awake, biting her lip and pinching the thin skin behind her ear hard enough to draw blood in her fingernails. All the while, she watched her phone, checked that Josh’s little blue dot was still moving north on the same road. Driving.
Movement ahead, a flash of something to her right, bounding toward her.
Amelia slammed on the brakes, grinding the car to a screeching halt.
A deer stood in the middle of the road, stock-still, staring at her car. Its tail was up, at the ready, and its nose twitched in her direction. Even in the headlights, it blended in with the forest around it, the tawny brown fur on its back like tree bark. A doe.
If she hadn’t braked in time, she would have hit it head-on. She gasped, breathing heavily as she watched, daring the deer to move. She imagined what it would have felt like if she really had hit it, the deer thumping horribly on the hood of the car, the sound like a body going down a slide as blood smeared across the windshield, the squeal as it died. Deer died all the time—this one would have been one of many to suffer at the hands of bad luck. And yet, Amelia had stopped. She didn’t want to hurt it, she never thought she could.
She wanted to get out, scream at it, yell at it to get out of the way, but she didn’t. She sat firmly in the seat. Her lower back ached from the drive, and her bottom felt as if she’d been sitting on hard concrete all day after the long flight. She wanted to shout at the deer to run, that it was too dangerous, but the deer stared her down as if it knew exactly what it was doing.
Again, movement from the side of the road. Another deer darted out, leaping over the ditch on the shoulder. It joined the first one, pausing long enough that both stood looking at her car, before they bounded into the woods together on the other side of the road, vanishing in the solid darkness that surrounded them.
All that remained was Amelia’s ragged breathing and the hum of the car’s engine in idle.
Josh’s little blue dot had stopped just outside of Shasta Lake. It stayed there for a long time, almost like he was waiting for her.
Morning was coming. She couldn’t stop it. The sun would rise and she would meet him there.
She pushed the car onward.
Shasta Lake was a small tourist destination in a quiet corner of suburbia. Even though she’d never been there before, the road, and strip malls, and sprawling blacktop parking lots had a hint of familiarity. She could have sworn she’d walked down these roads before, stopped at that pharmacy, shopped at that grocery store, played in that park, but it was a trick of the mind. Suburbia was safety in familiarity. There were no strangers in suburbia, only people who swore they’d been there before, and maybe they had. How would they ever really know?
Amelia took CA-151 all the way to the end of the road, toward Josh’s little blue dot on the other side of Shasta Dam. The road took her through winding foothills, and she ascended higher and higher as the day grew stronger and stronger. She was nearing the end. Her heart thumped in her chest with every turn, expecting to see Josh waiting for her around every bend, until finally, she could drive no more.
The road had ended at an overlook, a small unpaved shoulder where cars could park to look out across the lake created by the dam. A car was already parked there. The cliffside below was covered in trees and underbrush, tall sugar pine and needly conifers, all green and glowing. The sun rose high enough over the surrounding mountains and made the lake sparkle like freshly cut diamonds on a blue velvet blanket. She got out of her car and admired the view.
They were only a mile away from Josh’s family’s cabin. An easy walk along the shore.
Josh’s blue dot was here. She only had to walk a little farther.
She glanced at her phone, then took a photo.
Remember this place. Remember her.
A dirt path cut through the underbrush, and Amelia followed the trail, followed the little blue dot all the way to the bottom.
She heard him before she saw him.
Josh Reuter, digging, hauling up dirt. His back was to her, his shirt drenched in sweat. He hadn’t heard her coming.
She watched him for a moment, cradling a pressing feeling to her chest. Was it victory? Or anguish? Or vicious rage? She didn’t know. All she knew was the feeling of her chest about to collapse on itself. The flush of her skin despite the cool morning air, the cacophony raging in her head of a thousand things she wanted to say to him, the venom that she wanted to spit.
Josh stopped digging his hole for a moment and rested against his shovel. He must have heard something, perhaps the beating of her feverish heart, because he turned and looked at her. His hair was damp with sweat, the long ends hanging in his eyes; his chin was smeared with dirt, his chest heaved with the exertion.
Standing before him now, she couldn’t move.
Terrible, handsome, grotesque, charming. His expression didn’t change as he took in the sight of her. The girl standing before him now was not the same girl he thought he’d known. She’d put him through hell, but, then again, he’d done the same to her. It was only fair.
“You,” he said.
His voice made something inside her crack. She’d always been a little broken, but now she was missing a chunk, like a porcelain doll dropped on her head. She blinked rapidly, tears stinging her eyes.
“Where is she?” she asked, barely above a whisper.
She couldn’t take her eyes off the shovel. Was he burying something? Or digging something up?
“How did you find me?” he asked.
A hard lump formed in the back of her throat, choking her out. The edges of her vision were starting to darken, just like the night on the road. Breathe in, breathe out.
Josh barely moved. “Were you tracking me? I turned my phone off . . .” A shadow settled on his eyes. He straightened his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter now, I suppose.”
“Where’s my sister?” she asked.
“Whatever you’re doing won’t bring Mignon back.”
Hearing her name come out of his mouth made her feel like she’d gone insane, as if she would start foaming at the mouth. “Don’t. Say. Her. Name.”
“Let’s talk about this,” he said. “We can sort this out—”
“Where is she?” Amelia asked again, stronger now.
Josh’s hand flexed instinctually. His jeans were covered in dirt, his arms filthy up to his elbows. The look in his eyes was dark, uncanny, a far cry from the charming façade he used around everyone else. This was the real Josh. “You were bluffing this whole time?”
At one time, she might have imagined herself being the unhinged, laughing, maniacal mastermind, revealing her ultimate plan while Josh cowered in fear. But now, all she could manage was staying upright. She wasn’t as strong as she thought she was. She wasn’t as strong as she wanted to be.
“Is this where . . . Just tell me. Be honest with me for once in your whole life . . .” Her words trembled as she said them. “Is she here?”
He worked his jaw, inspecting her. What did he have to gain from this? What did he have to lose? His gaze pierced through her and still she stood her ground. She knew the answer. He knew she did. So he stepped aside, like a gentleman, and gestured to the earth at his feet.
Amelia barely registered that she was stepping forward. It was as if her body had become detached from her mind. The hole was shallow, the dirt recently overturned, the smell lingering in the air the closer she got to it.
As she kneeled down in the soft earth, the world melted away. All that ever existed, all that ever mattered was the small copse of trees hidden away in a desolate forest, where secrets had been buried. She scraped her fingers through the dirt, clawing at it slowly, methodically, painfully. Her fingers snagged on something hard and smooth, and then on something thin, a chain. She pulled and brought it into the light.
A silver necklace, a compass.
Mignon.
She was right here.
Amelia didn’t feel like she herself was alive anymore, like she was real, or ever existed. She was a ghost, come back to haunt the world, and no matter what she did, it wouldn’t change that. She breathed, but no air came in. She gasped, but she was suffocating. She cried, but no tears fell. There weren’t any left.
A minute could have passed, maybe an hour, but she kneeled in the shallow grave, staring at the soft brown dirt below her. She couldn’t dig any farther. She knew Mignon was here, she could feel her, the life of her had seeped out into the ground beneath her splayed palms.
Had she tried to fight him? Did she know what was going to happen to her? Had she seen the lake, sparkling like diamonds on a blue velvet blanket, and known where she was going?
Did she know how much Amelia loved her?
Amelia stood, slowly, operating on mechanical hinges and faced Josh.
He kept his distance, standing a few paces away from her, and watched her with a neutral expression. No regret, no remorse, no grief. Absolutely nothing.
There was a flash of silver in his hand and Josh showed her the knife. He’d come prepared. He must have known it would end like this.
“Now that you know . . . ,” he said.
Slowly, she raised her empty hands. Amelia had known it would end like this too, and still she hadn’t brought anything to protect herself. She knew this was how it was supposed to go, where she would always end up. It was the way things always were.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
AMELIA
“Why?” she asked. She was surprised that she was calm enough to speak.
That was the ultimate question. Why, why, why. She didn’t care how. She didn’t care when. She wanted to know why. Make it make sense.
Josh stared at her. “Are the police coming? Are they here to take me away?”
“No,” she said. “No one’s coming. It’s just you and me.”
“Really? All of this, everything you’ve done, and you don’t even bother to see it all through?”
“Believe me or not. It doesn’t matter. All I want to know is why.”
Josh paused, barely breathing. She thought maybe he was listening for the distant sound of sirens headed their way, but instead all that could be heard was the chipper morning songs of birds overhead. No one was coming. She didn’t believe in the police anymore. She didn’t believe they could have helped her at all. Not in ways that meant anything.
She’d left everything behind for this one moment, and she wasn’t going to waste it.
Josh scrubbed his chin with the back of his wrist, smearing more dirt onto his skin. “I loved her. And she didn’t love me back. She wanted to break up with me. She tried to run. I couldn’t let her leave. I grabbed her, and held her down, and she screamed, and she wouldn’t stop screaming, and I had to make her quiet so she would listen. I loved her so much, and she wouldn’t listen.”
Saying it out loud, his chin quivered. Amelia got the distinct impression this was the first and the last time he would ever say those words to another person.
Amelia didn’t have anything to say. Hearing him admit it made everything snap into focus, clear as the lake water. He could be lying, he could be telling the truth. Either way, it didn’t change the fact that Mignon was dead. And it was his fault.
Once Josh had started, it seemed like he couldn’t stop. He waved the knife as he spoke. “It was an accident. It was done. She was so quiet. I didn’t even realize what happened until . . . I couldn’t throw away my entire future because of one mistake. I had a life, and I couldn’t spend it in jail.”
“So did she,” Amelia said, barely able to maintain control of her voice. “She had a life, a future too.”
Josh actually smiled. She saw a flash of the Josh he put on for the world, the Josh who disarmed and charmed.
“I got a chance to start over. Don’t we all deserve that? Don’t we all deserve to be the person we want to be? One mistake, and that’s it?
“I’m sorry about what I did. I truly am,” he said. Liar! Liar liar liar liar. “But it couldn’t ruin my life. I couldn’t let it happen. Is there a chance you’ll forgive me?”
Amelia met his eyes. “No,” she said. “I won’t forgive you.”
Josh’s expression remained unchanged. He operated on a different playing field than the rest of the world. “Well then, that’s a problem. Because I can’t let this get out, so I can’t let you go.” The knife glinted in the morning light.
The Mignon of her imagination had pleaded with her not to go through with this, and she hadn’t listened. She wanted this. Maybe Amelia too had died the second Mignon disappeared and Amelia was only a ghost operating her own meat suit. Dying now wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to her. The worst had already happened.
Before she could react, Josh lunged forward and Amelia put her hands out. They both screamed and slammed into each other, immovable objects, frozen in a vicious embrace.
They stood, facing one another, staring each other down, almost as if they were about to kiss. A bright, white-hot pain bloomed in Amelia’s stomach as she looked deep into Josh’s eyes, somehow more agonizing than the wound in her gut. It felt like she was staring down a bottomless, eternal pit, to the end of the world itself. She felt the closest she’d ever been to Mignon since she’d vanished. The world was not a fair place. It was not made for girls like Amelia before her sister had disappeared. She had needed to become something else, and it only ended here, at this inevitable point.
Josh’s cheek twitched, and his hand shook as he held the knife in her body. How beautiful and horrible it was to look at him. She drowned in the smell of him, of earth and decay, sweat and hot breath.
