For a split second, I see someone else. Another girl lying dead in the dirt. The girl Riley and Noah and I found up by the textile mill.
Pushing the image aside, I step around Skylar and edge forward. Chase grabs the back of my shirt. “Wait. We can’t touch her.”
He hands Skylar his phone. She can’t seem to stop crying, but she shines the light over the girl, over soaked clothes and tangled hair. There’s no telling how long the girl—the body—has been here or how long she was in the water before washing up on the riverbank. There are dark splotches on her face—bruises or dirt, maybe—but it’s her arms that make me gasp. Her skin is covered in thin, precise cuts. Dozens of lines that form either crosses or Xs, depending on the angle.
Chase grabs a stick of driftwood and approaches the body. He prods it gently, and it lets out a small, gasping noise and moves ever so slightly.
Cursing, Chase jumps back.
It takes me a few seconds to comprehend what’s happening, to realize that the girl—Rachel—is still alive.
Skylar grabs my arm.
“Shitshitshitshit.” Chase repeats the word over and over as he drops the driftwood and pulls Rachel out of the water. Too late, it occurs to me that maybe we shouldn’t move her, that she might have internal injuries.
“Rachel?” Chase crouches in the mud. “Can you hear me?”
She doesn’t answer.
Skylar pulls in great gulps of air like she’s on the edge of hysterics as she grips my arm. I take Chase’s phone from her and dial 911 as Chase presses two fingers against Rachel’s neck, checking for a pulse. When he finds one, his whole body seems to sag in relief.
I try to tell the 911 operator what happened. She’s skeptical—even more so when I can’t tell her where we are. After a minute, I give up and hand the phone to Chase.
He stands and starts pacing. “We’re on the north side of the river. Near the old bridge. Through the trees just before Miller Field, if you’re on the highway. We found Rachel Larsen. She’s a student at Riverview. She’s in really bad shape. She was in the water. She’s barely breathing.” He’s quiet for a minute, listening to something the operator is saying. “Just a second.”
He hits mute on the phone. “She wants one of us to stay on the line and walk to the highway so the police can find us. It’s not far. Maybe ten minutes through the trees. Longer in the dark. But someone should stay here. With her.”
Skylar is still crying. Chase whirls on her. “Jesus, Sky—would you stop it for five seconds?”
She cries harder.
“Don’t yell at her,” I snap, my own voice practically a shout.
Instantly, I regret it. Chase looks like he’s on the verge of tears, too. “I’m sorry.” He turns to Skylar and folds her into a hug. “I’m sorry, Sky. I didn’t mean it.”
He looks at me imploringly over her shoulder. “Someone needs to go to the road. Someone needs to stay here.” From the tone in his voice, I know he doesn’t want to be the one to decide. I know he’s asking me to make the choice.
I swallow. The last thing I want is to be left here on my own, but Chase at least has an idea of how to get to the highway. And Skylar can’t stay here. Not like this.
“I’ll stay,” I say, wishing my voice didn’t shake. “You and Skylar go to the highway. I’ll stay here.”
Relief and guilt flash across Chase’s face as he pulls away from Skylar. “You have your phone, right? So you can call us if anything happens. What’s the number?”
I shake my head. “I don’t have a phone.”
His voice gets loud again. “How can you not have a phone?”
I shrug, thinking that if I die out here, my dad will at least spend the rest of his life second-guessing his choice to cut my technology privileges. Oddly, the thought isn’t all that satisfying.
“Sky, where’s your phone?”
“Shit . . . ,” I say, briefly glancing back the way we came. “I dropped it when I fell.” Not that it would do much good with the battery dead. “It’s okay, Chase. I’ll be all right.”
“None of this is okay. We can’t just leave you here.”
“You have to. I’ll be fine.” At the look on his face, I add, “Okay, not fine fine, but fine enough.”
He lets out a frustrated string of curses, shakes his head, and then turns toward the trees. As he walks away, he unmutes his phone and tells the operator that he’s heading to the road.
Skylar hesitates. Before I can guess what she’s about to do, she throws her arms around me. For someone so tiny, she has the brute strength of a tank. Thankfully, the closest she comes to touching skin is the tickle of her hair against my neck.
“Be careful,” she says. She squeezes me a little tighter, almost like she’s trying to keep me from falling. “You’re okay,” she says just before she lets me go.
You’re okay. Not you will be okay. The phrasing tugs at some memory, some half-forgotten thing, but I can’t catch it.
She turns and heads after Chase.
I watch the glow from his phone for a minute, and then, not knowing what else to do, I lower myself to the ground next to Rachel Larsen.
I don’t know if she can hear me, but I talk to her anyway. I tell her that Chase and Skylar are getting help, that she just has to hang on a little longer. And then I lie. I tell her that she’s all right and that she’s safe, even as every noise around us makes me jump.
Rachel makes a small sound. So small that I’m not sure if it’s real or if I imagined it. I lean closer just as her eyes flutter open. She reaches toward me. There’s a long leather cord twisted around her fingers. I don’t want to touch her, but I force myself to take her hand.
I don’t see anything. It’s like that time I accidentally touched Lacey one night when she fell asleep during a movie: there’s just nothing.
Something cool and smooth presses against my palm. I turn her hand over, revealing a small, silver circle. The glow from the moon is just enough for me to make out the design etched on the front.
Saint Anthony. The patron saint of lost things.
My breath catches in my throat.
I turn it over. Three letters are engraved on the back: NMK.
Nora Michelle Knight.
The last time I saw that medal was the day Riley Fraser began to hate me. The last time I saw that medal was the day Riley Fraser realized I’m a monster.
Twelve
EACH TIME I CLOSE MY EYES, I SEE RACHEL LARSEN. I SEE HER hair billowing in the water and the cuts on her arms. I see her flinch as the paramedics touch her. I almost never dream, but I’m scared of what I’ll see if I sleep.
Most of all, though, when I close my eyes, I see the Saint Anthony medal clasped in her hand.
So I stop closing my eyes. I lie awake, every lamp in the room lit, one arm around Pengy, my own hand wrapped around the blue plastic toy from the kids’ meal.
Skylar had given it back to me as we sat wedged in a patrol car with Chase, the three of us wrapped in orange blankets as blue and red lights swept the night outside. I wasn’t cold, but I couldn’t stop shaking. She slipped the bear into my hand. “For bravery,” she said, voice low and solemn, like the bear was some sort of prize for a job well done.
I hadn’t been brave. All I had done was stay behind. But I took the bear. It’s stupid to think that something so small could make me feel better in the face of something so big, but it had—sort of. With my hand wrapped around that silly lump of plastic, it was a little harder to remember how clammy Rachel’s skin had been or how that small silver disc had felt in my hand.
I ended up holding the bear on the ride home and while a police officer explained to Aunt Jet what had happened. Later, I had brought the bear into the bathroom, setting it on the edge of the vanity so that I could see it while I took a shower and tried to scrub the smell of the riverbank off of my skin.
I hold on to it now as I slip out of bed and creep down the hall. All of the other bedroom doors are closed, and the house is qui
et save for the soft sound of the television in Sam’s room. He sleeps with it on all night; he says that he’s still not used to sleeping alone and that the noise helps.
Sidestepping loose floorboards, the ones that groan and squeak and always ratted me out on nights I snuck out to see Riley, I make my way downstairs, then slip on my flip-flops and head outside.
The sky is still dark, but there’s a tiny hint of mauve on the horizon. In another hour, the birds will sing themselves hoarse and the sun will rise like it’s any other day.
I make my way to the hedge and then push through to the Frasers’ yard.
A light is burning up in Noah’s room. Feeling like the boy in some old teen movie, I grab a handful of pebbles from the nearest flower bed and begin tossing them at his window. Unlike the boy in a teen movie, my aim sucks. I must throw ten rocks before one finally hits its target.
Noah pushes open his bedroom window and leans out. He stares down at me for a second and then disappears.
A minute later, I hear the screen door creak open. I head back through the hedge, trusting Noah to follow as I make my way to Aunt Jet’s porch. It’s not until I lower myself to the old swing that I think about the fact that I’m still in my pajamas.
Noah doesn’t seem to notice. I’m probably not a girl to him—not like that, not really. Just some old friend of his kid brother.
There’s plenty of room on the swing, but he doesn’t sit. Instead, he leans against the porch railing. He shoots a glance at my little plastic bear, still tightly gripped in my hand. “New friend?”
Two nights ago, I’d been embarrassed at the thought of Noah catching me with a stuffed animal. Now, I don’t care. The bear is the one thing I’m not even going to try to explain.
“Something happened.” I struggle to figure out where to begin. “I was on the train bridge with some people from Riley’s school. We found a girl on the riverbank. She was barely breathing.”
“Who was it?”
“Rachel Larsen. Do you know her?”
Noah shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
Montgomery Falls is small, but he’s older than Skylar and Chase. Even if his path had crossed Rachel’s, he might not know her by name. His eyes narrow as a second question occurs to him. “Was it an accident?”
I pull in a deep breath. “I don’t think so. It looked like someone had tried to hurt her . . . and . . .” I falter. I don’t know how to say it, so I just blurt it out. “She had something of Riley’s.”
Noah pushes himself away from the railing, the gesture so hard and sudden that the old wood makes a sharp, cracking sound at the force of it. “What do you mean?” He takes a step toward me, then stops. His whole body practically radiates tension.
The look on his face is so raw, so intense, that it’s hard to find my voice; somehow, I do. “That day up by the mill, when we went to see the chimney swifts, Riley found this medal on the ground. A saint’s medal like the ones they sell in the Catholic bookstore. After everything was over, after they identified her, we realized it was hers. Nora Knight’s. Her initials were engraved on the back.”
There’s a beetle on the porch floor. Small and black with a tan stripe across its back. It makes its way toward my foot, each tiny step slow and deliberate.
“I remember,” says Noah. “The police asked if we had noticed anything that might help identify her. Riley told them about the medal, told them about the initials on the back, but said he had lost it.”
“He didn’t lose it. He lied. To them. To you. To me. You know how he was always keeping a record of lost things? The maps and notes. How obsessed he got. I think maybe that’s why he kept it. I looked it up online once: Saint Anthony was the patron saint of lost things. I think Riley thought the medal was meant for him.” The beetle hits the edge of my flip-flop and veers right. “I found out about it. We argued. I told him it was wrong to keep it and that he’d get in trouble. He got defensive. Upset. I don’t know: maybe he thought I was going to tell on him. I wouldn’t have, but maybe he didn’t know that.” I can’t look at Noah. I just keep staring at the beetle as it makes its way back across the porch. There’s no reason to tell him what, exactly, Riley had said to me or what I had done in return.
“I knew something happened between the two of you, but he wouldn’t tell me what.” Noah finally crosses the porch and sits next to me on the swing. It feels like a long time before he speaks again. “He was different after that summer. After we found her and you left. He stopped going into the woods for a while. Stopped keeping those lists and journals. At first, my parents thought that meant he was getting better. They thought it meant that the doctors were wrong and that he didn’t have OCD after all. That it was something he just grew out of.”
“Was it something he grew out of?”
Noah lets out a small, derisive sound—one that I’m pretty sure isn’t directed at me or Riley. “No. He just got better at managing it. Last year, he went on medication. That seemed to help, too, but it’s not just something he grew out of.” He leans back and pinches the bridge of his nose. Just for a second. “When I asked him why he didn’t talk to you anymore, he told me there was something bad inside of him and that you had seen it. He wouldn’t tell me anything else.”
A cold, tight sensation starts in my chest and radiates outward. Is that what he really thought? That I saw something bad inside of him? If that’s true . . . I shake my head. “All I saw was that stupid medal. That’s all I ever saw. I never thought he was bad. Ever.”
“What do you mean, that’s all you ever saw?”
I stare at the porch floor as my eyes start to burn. How can I tell him? How can I tell anyone after what happened with Riley? With Lacey?
“Cat . . .” Noah slides off the swing to crouch in front of me, forcing me to meet his gaze. “Whatever happened between you and my brother—I don’t think it was your fault. The maps . . . the lists . . . the fear that you saw something bad inside of him . . . He latched on to things. Ideas. Stuff would get lodged in his head and he couldn’t get it out. He got better at hiding it, and he got better at figuring out which thoughts made sense and which ones didn’t, but if you were around him enough and you knew him well enough, you could still tell that something was going on.”
Part of me wants to believe Noah. So, so badly. I want to believe that there’s another explanation for what happened that day, for the way Riley looked at me and the things he said. An explanation that doesn’t boil down to him believing I was dangerous. But if that’s true, what does that mean for all of those walls I’ve built ever since to keep people at a distance? Have they all been for nothing?
It’s a disturbing thought—but then I remember Lacey.
The one exception I’d made—mostly because Lacey had decided we were going to be friends and she’s always been relentless when she wants something—had ended disastrously. If I had been better at keeping those walls up, the past few months never would have happened.
“What do you mean, that’s all you ever saw?” Noah asks again.
The smart thing to do would be to go back inside. Keep the walls up. Keep myself safe.
But I’m not sure I can do that. Not when I keep seeing Rachel when I close my eyes. Not when I’m here, in Montgomery Falls, where memories of Riley seem to lurk around every corner.
“Cat . . .”
I’m teetering on the edge. The soft, pleading note in Noah’s voice pushes me over. “I lied to you when you asked me for help. Sort of, anyway. I’m not psychic—I’m really not—but I do see things.” It takes every bit of willpower I possess to keep meeting his gaze.
“That’s how you knew Riley kept the medal?”
I nod. “What do you think it means, that girl having it?”
“You said it looked like someone had tried to hurt her?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I think whoever killed my brother is linked to that girl.” Noah’s eyes flash as he pushes himself to his feet. He looks hard and a littl
e bit dangerous.
I think about that tiny sound Rachel had made and the feeling of her hand in mine. I had lied. I told her she was safe and all right, but she hadn’t been all right and she hadn’t been safe, and whoever hurt her is still out there.
Noah is certain that his brother is dead. I don’t want to believe that, but either way, I have to know. I have to know what happened to Riley, and if there’s any way I can help stop what happened to Rachel from happening to anyone else, I have to try.
I pull in a deep breath and then let it out in a rush. “I changed my mind. I’ll help. I’ll help you find out what happened to Riley.”
Thirteen
I SLIP BACK INTO MONTGOMERY HOUSE JUST AFTER SUNRISE. I don’t want to; I want to stay out on the porch with Noah, but I figure I’ve scared Aunt Jet enough for one night without her waking up and finding my bed empty.
Thankfully, the house is quiet and all of the other bedroom doors are still closed as I make my way to my room.
I set Skylar’s plastic bear on the nightstand, then grab my iPod and slide in my earbuds before stretching out on my bed. When I close my eyes, I see Noah’s face. Hard. Dangerous. Determined.
He’s so sure I can help.
I want to, but it’s not like I’ve ever been able to do anything useful with the things I see. I’ve certainly never been able to use them to help anyone—myself included.
At some point, he’s going to realize that I was right the first time. He’s going to realize that there’s nothing I can do.
I’m going to let him down . . . There isn’t anything I can really do . . . I told Rachel she was safe . . .
It’s warm in the room, but I tug the sheet up, wrapping it around me. I’m still scared to go to sleep, but I’m so, so tired.
Weight on my chest and shoulders, pinning me down.
I can’t move. I can’t see. I can’t cry out. Rough, whispered words fall around me—“perfect, so perfect”—and then shatter as something bites into my skin over and over.
I try to lash out, but I’m not strong enough. I . . .
You Were Never Here Page 10
