But he was not fast enough.
The woman walked on. She did not hurry; there would be time. Others would come, certainly, but she did not concern herself with them. They were nothing. They would fade away, as had the ages of the Earth as she waited, and then there would only be her. And the King.
One last time.
Chapter Twelve
The drive back to Red Valley happened in silence. Beto had barely been able to get into the car due to his injuries. They wiped up the blood as best they could. Sadie wanted to say something, to thank him, to apologize to him, anything, but when she looked into the cold expanse of his eyes, her words fled. Graciela was angry—furious—but had no outlet for that fury. Ashleigh was in shock and looked at no one, said nothing. Sadie gripped Mary’s ledger and stared out the window at the town passing them by.
They took Beto back to their house. His girlfriend Teresa met them at the door. Graciela’s mom appeared as well, then her dad. Spanish flowed over shouting and tears but found no purchase in Sadie’s mind. All she could think about was Beto’s face, spotlights shining on black blood as the blows fell. She thought she should explain to all of them why she’d needed Beto’s help, why it had been so important, but she said nothing. It wouldn’t matter. She could have never reached Mary Bell without him, but that didn’t seem to matter much anymore. Not to his family, anyway. She knew how to become the Liar, but that wasn’t going to stitch Beto’s scalp back together, or take the limp out of his step.
After a low, heated exchange, Ashleigh left on her own without a word to Sadie.
“Come on,” Graciela said. “I’ll drive you home.”
They said nothing until Graciela put her car in park outside Sadie’s dark house.
“I’m really, really sorry,” Sadie said. Now that she’d finally gotten it out there, it wasn’t as freeing as she’d hoped. She still felt the weight of what happened pressing down on her shoulders. “I didn’t know that was going to happen.”
“Yeah,” Graciela said.
“You believe me, right? I told you the undersheriff came over to harass me, but I had no idea he was following us.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said.
“Do you think Beto is going to be okay?”
“No idea. They beat him pretty bad.”
“Yeah,” Sadie said and hated how weak it sounded. She didn’t know what else to say, but was going to try something when Graciela spoke first.
“Hey, so I wasn’t going to say anything,” she said. She wasn’t looking at her, just staring at the dashboard. “After your mom, well, I figured you didn’t want to hear it. And then today, we were having fun, driving around town, playing detective. But then that thing with your dad, I don’t know. Just seemed like there wasn’t ever a good time.”
Sadie’s mouth went dry. “What? Tell me.”
“When the summer’s over,” Graciela said, “Ashleigh’s moving to Paso Verde. And I’m going with her.”
“What?” Sadie said, her voice too loud. “You’re leaving?”
“After tonight, can you blame me? I don’t know why anyone would want to live in this shit town, with the King’s Men and the sheriffs and everything else.”
“Of course it’s a shit town,” Sadie said. “It’s always been a shit town. But we’ve been stuck here together.”
Graciela let out a long-held breath. “I don’t want to be stuck somewhere anymore.”
Sadie knew the right words to say: I’m so happy for you. You’re going to love it there. I can’t wait to come visit you. But they just wouldn’t come out. They just curdled in her mouth, sour and hot. Instead, she said, “I can’t believe you’re leaving me.”
“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” Graciela muttered.
Her mom was gone. Her real dad was gone and Brian couldn’t even be bothered to pretend. Her whole world was upside down, and now her best friend—her only friend—was moving away, chasing some dream of a slightly better life in a slightly better town. No. No, she didn’t fucking understand.
“Have a nice life, I guess,” Sadie said as she shouldered the door open.
“Seriously? You’re going to be like that?”
“Like what?” Sadie snapped. “You want me to pretend like we’re going to still see each other? ‘It’s only forty miles, we’ll meet for brunch on Sundays!’ Bullshit. You’re leaving. I get it. I mean, I really do. I hate everything about this place. Well, everything but you. So I guess everything now.”
“You could leave too.”
The thought hit her low and hard. She wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like she’d never considered it. Every kid in Red Valley had. But now, with the idea just out there, it seemed completely ridiculous.
“I’m the Liar.”
“So?” Graciela finally turned to face her. “What does that even mean? You’ve been running around all day, picking fights, stirring shit up. All so you can become the Liar. What if you just… don’t? Will it really matter?”
Sadie’s ears were ringing. The sound made it hard to think, hard to focus. She wanted to scream. Then the ringing shifted and sounded instead like the machines at the hospital, the ones keeping her mom alive, until they stopped.
Sadie’s mom never really had many friends. There had been Brian once, but that hadn’t lasted. There were people who needed something from her, people who owed her favors, and people who were afraid of her, but that was it. No family, no friends, just her ledger and her crappy little house and her ungrateful daughter. That’s why they lived way out here, far from town. Sadie had always thought it was a lonely way to live, but maybe now she understood it a little better.
“That’s all she left me,” Sadie said. There was no fire in her words, no force. She had wanted to scream, but now she was about to cry. “Being the Liar’s all I’ve got. Maybe it seems stupid, but it’s all I’ve got.”
“Chica…”
“I hope you and Ashleigh are happy together,” she said. “See you around.”
Sadie watched Graciela go. Overhead, the night was speckled with stars far more benign than those in Mary Bell’s sky.
Graciela’s revelation almost made her forget about what had happened at the crossroads. Almost. She’d had no choice. She’d had to tell the undersheriff the King’s secret. Even now, alone in the almost cool darkness, she didn’t regret it. But she did not believe for a moment that the King would understand. He’d sent his Man to make it clear he wanted the ledgers—and their secrets—protected, and she hadn’t even lasted a day.
And worse, she knew the whispers had heard it. It wasn’t every day that the new Liar gave away one of the oldest Lies in Red Valley. It would spread, and she had no idea what that meant, for her, for the King, or for Red Valley.
On her doorstep, she found a bag and a note. She took them inside. The note was hand-written, the paper taken from a pad with the St. Elizabeth’s Hospital logo in the header. Here are your mother’s belongings, the note said. I’m sorry I missed you, and so sorry again for your loss. It was signed by Nurse Abagail.
Sadie dumped the bag out onto the kitchen table. Her mom’s clothes were there: a loose, faded purple shirt she often wore around the house, jeans that were frayed from use and not fashion, cheap sandals thin at the heel. A smaller bag contained her earrings and a necklace, simple yellow gold jewelry in need of a cleaning. Her pocket knife was there too. Sade touched it gently, the white handle shining in the kitchen light. She lifted it up for inspection. It was heavier than it looked. Solid. She placed it against the front left pocket of the flat jeans, right in the worn spot where her mom had always kept it.
She also found her mom’s car keys. In all the craziness of the last few days, she hadn’t thought for a moment about her mom’s car. She guessed it was still sitting in the hospital parking lot.
Of her mom’s ledger, however, there was no sign. Maybe it was in her car? Sadie doubted she would have left it somewhere so insecure, but there weren’t many other options. She remembered w
hat Brian had said, that her mom had told a real bad Lie. Her mom had been the Liar for a long time without much trouble, but this felt different. Not because she was dead, but because she had asked Brian for help. Her mom never asked anyone for help. Whatever that Lie had been, it was lost until Sadie could find that ledger. And that might be precisely why it was missing.
Leaving the remnants of her mom’s final day on the table, Sadie went to her bedroom and pulled a box out from under the bed. She used to keep little pieces of her childhood under here: the old toys, the waxy crayons and chewed pencils, the artwork that had never been hung on the fridge. It had all been tossed away over the years, a steady ritualistic purge, but not everything. After a few moments, she found what she was looking for: her diary.
She’d always aspired to be the kind of person who kept notes on their life in witty, breezy prose, but she’d only ever written one entry and that hadn’t taken up even a single page. The cover was midnight blue with a bright orange spine, where she’d written in black marker: Sadie’s.
She took the diary back to the kitchen and found a pen in the junk drawer. She sat at the table, pen in hand, and once again wondered at what her life had become in just a few days. Monotony had given her existence a misleading sense of permanence, but that rug had been pulled out from under her, true enough. And there was no use looking back.
Sadie tore out the first page of the diary and crumpled it up without reading it. Time for a new page. She wrote the date. And then the words.
In this book, I will write only truth.
She stared at what she’d written while the ink dried. What were you thinking when you wrote these words in your ledger, Mom? Were you alone too? Who told you what to write? What Lies to tell, which to refuse; when to run, when to fight. And why didn’t you tell me any of this? What did you hope to save me from? Or were you saving yourself?
Sadie set down the pen and picked up her mom’s pocket knife. She slid the blade out. It came easily and locked firmly in place. She tested the edge with her finger: still very sharp.
“Fuck,” Sadie said when she cut the pad of her thumb on the blade. She hadn’t expected it to hurt this much. She sucked on the wound before she reminded herself that blood was the point. Maybe the pain was the point, too. She let the blood well up, then swiped it across the page next to her words.
Something lit up inside of her. A fire, a light, a surge of power; something. She was glad she was sitting down, because her world began to swim. She thought she might be sick, then she thought she might be blind. Then the visions came.
A weathered man with a crippled leg.
A young woman with a burn scar across her face.
Blighted crops.
Empty pockets.
Vanity. Want. Need. A thousand Lies, ten thousand. Rushing over her, through her. After a moment of panic, her mind sharpened and she tried to focus, tried to see the secrets her mom had hidden away, but there were too many of them. A flood of truth, now known only to her.
And then a final image: something huge and black, waiting in darkness, with eyes like fire.
When the kitchen came back into view, sweat beaded on her upper lip though her skin was like ice. Her diary—her ledger—lay open in front of her. Her blood had seeped into the paper and was starting to dry. The clock over the sink ticked away. She absently ran her index finger over the cut on her thumb. It didn’t hurt quite so much anymore.
And that was that. She was now the Liar of Red Valley. Would the townsfolk start driving up the dirt road to see her now? What secrets would they lay bare in the hope she could hide them away? What trust would they begrudgingly place in her, because they had no other choice? And would she help them?
Sadie had barely ever left Red Valley. She could remember a vacation or two when she was a kid—a trip to Yosemite, a few days at Disneyland—but that was it. She’d imagined a wider world out there, with its own beauty and magic and monsters, but that’s all it was: imagination. This place was all she knew.
But she’d never felt at home here. She’d lived in this house her whole life—her childhood had seeped into every creaking floorboard, every carpet stain—but never felt like she belonged. Even weeds put down deep roots if they grow long enough. So why hadn’t Sadie?
They’d need her now. They’d hate her for it, but they’d come.
If she survived long enough.
She closed her ledger. In the bathroom, she salvaged an old My Little Pony bandage for her thumb. In her bedroom, she found pajamas and an all-too-inviting bed. Her problems would still be waiting for her when she woke up, but now maybe she had something to fight back with, if she could figure out how to use it. She climbed into bed and listened to the house settle and the crickets outside her window until she fell asleep. It didn’t take long.
She woke a few hours later, her heart thudding, terror sharp on her tongue. Though the dream was fading, the afterimage was still bright and vivid, like staring too long into the sun: burning red eyes towering over her in the darkness.
“Oh, fuck it,” she said and swung out of bed.
She found the card the King’s Man had given her. She hesitated a moment, then dialed the number. A click. Silence.
“I want to meet with the King,” Sadie said into the phone.
Static on the line. Then a voice. “He will see you tomorrow.” Then the line went dead.
Chapter Thirteen
After that, Sadie slept just fine.
She woke late morning. Her body ached with the blissful weight of long, deep sleep. Everything looked as she remembered it from countless other mornings. Light filtering in through the dusty aluminum blinds on a room mostly devoid of decoration.
Nothing had changed, and everything had.
She showered, dressed, ate, and waited. They’d been light on the details on the phone, but she knew they’d come for her. Everyone in town knew where the King lived, but you didn’t just show up at his front door and ring the bell. Sometimes kids tried. Sometimes they even came back.
Sure enough, just as the day was getting unbearably hot and just as Sadie was starting to get impatient, a sleek black car with a tan roof came rumbling down the driveway. Not a Cadillac, this time; a 1949 Buick Roadmaster with a shiny grille that made the car look angry. The King’s Man who stepped out was not the same one from the hospital; this one was older, bald, and jowly. He wore a double-breasted navy suit with gold buttons and a yellow necktie. But he had the same mirrored sunglasses and the same dead facial expression.
Sadie met him on the porch. She had on an old backpack with the ledgers—including her own—inside. Her mom’s pocket knife was tucked into her jeans.
“You must be my ride,” she said as the King’s Man approached.
He cocked his head to the side. The sun glinted off his polished scalp. “The King wishes for you to come to his home.”
Don’t talk to the mirroreyes, went the conventional wisdom in Red Valley. Don’t get in their way. And don’t get in their car. But Sadie had left wisdom—conventional or otherwise—behind a few days ago. The King was going to find out she had revealed his secret sooner or later, and when he did, she had no doubt she’d find a King’s Man waiting for her. Better to just rip the My Little Pony Band-Aid right off.
“Good,” Sadie said. “I was worried today might be a normal day.”
The car’s interior was pristine, like she was the first person to ever sit inside. The seats and steering wheel were stitched in red leather. The seatbelt clunked into place with real heft. There was nothing cheap or plastic in this car. It smelled like money, and like dust. The King’s Man slid mechanically into the driver’s seat. The car started, though Sadie didn’t see him turn a key. His hands gripped the wheel firmly at 10 and 2. Sadie briefly considered small talk, then remembered her previous experience with these… men, and thought better of it.
To get to the King’s home, they had to drive through the heart of Red Valley. People were out on the streets, riding bike
s or skateboards or pushing strollers. They all stopped as the King’s Man drove by. Stopped, and stared. Sadie stared back, wondering at the expressions on their faces. What emotions were betrayed were subtle: a quick downcast glance, a tightening grip on the wrist of a child. A hardness around the mouth. There was no love in Red Valley for the driver of this car, and no love for its passenger either.
They kept driving. Cars pulled over, as if they were an ambulance with blazing lights and sirens. Pedestrians didn’t even approach the crosswalk until they had gone. Stop signs did not slow them down. Red lights meant nothing. The King’s Man drove slowly, deliberately, the speed limit the only traffic law he didn’t ignore. He drove safely, all things considered, just not legally.
As they left the town behind, the King’s Man turned off on an unmarked one-lane road that slowly rose into the foothills. Twisted oak trees overgrew the road on both sides, crowning it like a tunnel. Leaves filled the runoff on both sides. Through the tortured branches, Sadie caught a glimpse of their destination.
There was a high hill just outside of town, and on top of that hill, a white house that overlooked everything: the valley, the highway, the town. The hill itself was surrounded by an iron fence topped with spikes. The lands beyond were wild with dead and dying weeds. There was no lawn, no gardens, no real sign of life at all. The car stopped at the gate and the King’s Man got out to swing it open, and did so again to close it behind them. Sadie jumped a little when it clanged shut, the sound rattling around in her head.
The driveway snaked up the hill for half a mile or more, climbing higher with every foot. Sadie looked back the way they had come, but saw only yellow grasses and gray-brown trees. She got her first real close look at the house as the car neared. It was bigger than it appeared from a distance, built in a plantation style, with tall white columns flanking the red double doors. A heavy wrought iron lamp hung suspended by chains over the porch. The porch itself, which wrapped around the front of the building and disappeared into the back, was bigger than Sadie’s whole house. It reminded Sadie of the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland: stately and formal and sinister.
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