by L. E. Flynn
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For my dad—
I’m forever proud to call you my father, hero, and friend
PART I
Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water
HER
THE LIGHTS ARE HARSH, more white than yellow, like nothing found in nature, even though nature harbors so many harsh things. The girl sitting under the lights is still a teenager. Most of the time, she looks older, but today, she looks young and scared, blue eyes blinking like a doll.
The host asked her to tell her side of the story. She told it, with her chin raised. It was the first time she could really be sure people were listening. Now it’s the final question.
The host—the one who secured the interview, the one who wanted it badly enough to be the highest bidder—looks at the girl, serious. Maybe she sees something she didn’t at first. How the girl is a bit rough around the edges, if you look closely. Her skirt a bit too short, her legs bare, no pantyhose. Her lips too red. And those eyes, like the lights. Like nothing found in nature.
“What do you want people around the world to know about you that they don’t already? What’s the one thing you’d like to tell everyone who has followed your story?”
The girl sucks in a breath, holds it there. It’s something she must have thought about so many times, the words rolling in her head, sometimes calm, sometimes a tidal wave. When she answers, her voice is a crescendo, getting louder. She looks straight into the camera. She gets the last word.
“Don’t believe everything you read,” she says. “Don’t believe everything you hear. Make up your own mind about me.”
THE COLDCLIFF TRIBUNE
August 19, 2019
Princeton student dead after hiking accident
By Julie Kerr
The body of Mark Forrester, a 20-year-old Princeton student, was found in Claymore Creek on Saturday morning. Forrester had been hiking the Mayflower Trail with his girlfriend, Tabitha Cousins, 17, late Friday afternoon. Cousins stated that Forrester wanted to hike to the trail’s renowned but dangerous lookout point, popularly known as “the Split,” to see the sunset. But once at the top, he lost his footing and fell, plummeting almost 40 feet down.
“It was terrifying,” Cousins said. “One second he was looking over the edge, then he was just gone.”
Neither Cousins nor Forrester were experienced hikers. The Mayflower Trail, extending eight miles, is marked with signs warning hikers about the dangers of ascending to the lookout point. It is advised that only experienced hikers make the attempt.
Cousins was the first to report the incident in the early hours of Saturday morning, after she found her way out of the woods in the dark. “I kept calling for help,” she said. “But nobody was around to hear me. I was so scared.”
Forrester’s death brings the death toll in Queen Anne’s Woods to seven since the first was recorded in 1916. The Split was referred to as “Suicide Sledge” during the 1960s, when three female cult members jumped as part of a suicide pact. The last death to occur at the Split before now was in October 1989, when teenagers Ernest Malling and Desiree Hind went into the woods for a camping trip. Hind reported Malling missing the next day, after she claimed he went off on his own, but his body wasn’t found until two days later. No foul play could be proven, but Malling’s family maintained that they were certain Hind was involved.
A team of police divers found Forrester’s body. He is survived by his mother and father, longtime Coldcliff residents, and his older brother.
YOU
YOU HEARD THE STORY ON THE NEWS. A girl and a boy went into the woods. The girl carried a picnic basket. The boy wore bright yellow running shoes. They weren’t planning to be out past dark, but the sky was pitch black when the girl found her way back, without the picnic basket and without the boy. The boy was discovered the next morning, floating facedown in Claymore Creek, his yellow running shoes obscured by hazy water.
You heard that it was a tragedy, that the boy had his entire life in front of him. That he was returning to Princeton on a swimming scholarship. Mark the Shark, his pool nickname. Soon enough, you’ll be going to his funeral with everybody else.
You’ve been following her online. Maybe you knew the suspicion was bound to trail her like a cape. After all, there are plenty of holes in her story. But there are holes in everyone else’s version, too.
Maybe you know her—you might have gone to a party with her. She liked those. Or maybe you just stalked her on Instagram and saw all the selfies, her #nofilter face, all lipstick and electric-blue eyes. Maybe she was a bitch to you once. (She probably was a bitch to you once, and maybe you deserved it.)
But now you’re going to learn all sides of this story. You’ll find out what really happened, from the people who know and love her, and from those who know her but wish they didn’t. Here lie the facts. Once you have them, you’ll be equipped to decide for yourself. Guilty or not guilty. If you think she did it, you’ll wonder if she’s going to get away with it.
If you think she didn’t, you’ll wonder why she was in the woods that late at all.
1
ELLE
“ELLE, IT’S ABOUT MARK.”
I barely recognize her voice. This isn’t the first time she has called at 2 a.m.—she’s nocturnal, awake when the rest of us are drooling into our pillowcases. This isn’t the first time she has called and sounded scared. This isn’t the first time she has started with Elle, it’s about Mark. The fights are getting more intense, the days between an argument getting shorter. She never used to call—it was always a text. But lately she needs to hear my voice. Or needs me to hear hers.
“What did he do now?” I snap up in my bed, pushing sweaty hair out of my face. “Where are you?”
“He fell.”
“What? Fell where?”
“In the woods, Elle.”
“On what? Is he okay?” Hopefully, he didn’t break anything. Mark the Shark needs all body parts intact for his illustrious swimming career. Even though that isn’t going so well anymore—You ruined my life, I heard him tell Tabby at my last party. A conversation she denied ever happened when I asked her about it later.
Tabby never lied to me before Mark came along. Even though I didn’t pay her the same courtesy.
“This is serious, Elle.” Her voice trails off. “He’s not okay. He’s…”
I know it before she says it, by the weight of her silence. I know it.
“He’s dead.”
And for a terrible few seconds, or maybe longer, I’m relieved.
2
BRIDGET
SHE SAYS SHE’LL BE HOME LATE, but that maybe we can watch something on Netflix later. “Your choice,” she says, which is rare, because usually it’s the two of us arguing about what to watch for longer than it takes to watch an actual movie.
She’s at her desk before she leaves, looking at the map I drew her. I would have recognized it anywhere.
The Split, tall and menacing.
“I can’t believe he’s taking you there,” I say. “It’s going to take hours. It’s super hilly, you know, and getting to the top is a real struggle. In this heat, it’ll be brutal.”
“That’s why I’m getting prepared,” she says. “I’m taking your map with me, like a good little Girl Scout. That way, if anything happens, I won’t get lost.”
“Okayyyyy.” I drag out the word, pulling it through my mouth like taffy.
“What are you so afraid of?” Tabby swivels around. “That the woods are going to swallow me whole? I’m the big sister. I’m supposed to be the overprotective one.”
I do the math in my head. Even if they manage to hike three miles an hour, they won’t reach the Split until after seven. It makes me feel better, somehow, knowing where she’ll be, when to expect her home.
“I’d text you to let you know I’m okay, but there isn’t cell reception that deep in the woods,” she says. “At least, I bet there isn’t. Just don’t worry about me, okay?”
Later, I watch her jump into Mark’s car, picnic basket swinging from her arm. She has my shoes on, pink Nikes. I can’t describe it, but I feel like I’m being haunted as soon as she’s gone. It’s like I’m sure I’ll never see her again.
She doesn’t come home in time for a movie, and she never messages to let me know where she is. Mom and Dad start getting worried around eleven, when they haven’t heard from her. They’re oblivious. They should have been worried before she even left.
She’s dead, my brain screams. I picture Mark’s big hands, Mark’s cocky grin. We’ll have to identify her body.
“Don’t go out again.” Dad wags his finger at me. “I want you where I can see you.”
I forgot I even went out. I went for a run, my phone in the palm of my hand, my fingers clutching it tightly, like it could be a weapon if I needed it to, something hard enough to crack a skull. But that was hours ago. I forgot to shower. It was like I blacked out.
At midnight, Mom and Dad are pacing, and I’m upstairs with my face pressed against the window, like a little kid waiting for Santa.
They call Elle, but she doesn’t answer. Maybe I’m imagining it, but things seem to have changed a bit between them lately. Tabby doesn’t spend as much time with Elle. I know this because she’s spending that time with me instead.
By twelve thirty, Mom and Dad convince themselves Tabby lost track of the time. They say that she’ll be eighteen soon enough, and they have to loosen the leash before next year anyway, before college.
(What leash? There is no leash. There isn’t even a collar. Tabby belongs to nobody.)
They go to bed. I stay up, my nerves frayed like wires, fidgety with electricity splitting my body. I know something happened. I know it and it must be my sister intuition. Or maybe I don’t even need sister intuition, because anyone could see that it was wrong, Mark wanting to take Tabby to the Split. I imagine her eyes, big and panicked. Her head, smashed against rock, cracking in two like the Split itself.
The door doesn’t open until after one. Me at the kitchen table, on my phone, scrolling through her Instagram, trying to find a clue: Tabby’s syrupy smile, all summer long. Mark’s arm, a permanent fixture around her. A caption underneath one of her photos, the two of them looking slightly away from the camera. A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages.
The door opens so quietly I barely hear it. Almost like she’s trying to sneak in, like she has done a thousand times before. Her face is a mess of the makeup I teased her for putting on before the hike, and her hands are shaking. Actually, her whole body is shaking, its own earthquake.
“What happened?” I say. “Where were you?”
Her hair isn’t straight like it was this morning but curly, bordering on frizzy, the way it gets after she showers and leaves it alone. Then I notice her legs. Dirt-stained, streaks of brown crosshatching every inch of bare space. My Nikes are soaked, more red than pink.
“Bridge,” she says. “Something happened. He—he—he fell.”
Then she collapses on the kitchen floor, and I know Mark is gone.
3
KEEGEN
HOW DO YOU THINK I FEEL? I get a call telling me my best friend is dead. The same guy I just saw in the morning, and now he’s gone.
And right away I know why.
4
BRIDGET
WHAT THEY DON’T TELL YOU is that death doesn’t kill a golden boy. Death will only make him immortal. Maybe I didn’t fully understand that before, but I do now that Mark’s funeral has become this year’s defining event in Coldcliff.
Here’s something to understand about our community. We have something like eight thousand residents, so we’re called “cozy” in tourism brochures. If you haven’t heard of our little pocket of Colorado, you’re not alone. We’re about thirty miles from Boulder and our nearest mountain is Longs Peak, so we get overlooked. We tend to disappear. Sure, people come to hike the trails, but they usually don’t stay. Every town has its thing. Some are famous for a huge ball of twine or the world’s best hot dog. We have the Split. Suicide Sledge. The Giant’s Thumb. Whatever you want to call it. Basically, we have a piece of rock where a bunch of people have died, and for some reason other people want to see it in person.
Especially now.
Now, when I run in the woods, there are memorials for Mark. A bunch of guys from the swim team at our high school, Coldcliff Heights, put swim caps and goggles on the path leading up to the Split. It’s their version of flowers. Today on my run, I stepped on one of the pairs of goggles and enjoyed how the wet ground sucked them up.
Here’s something else to understand about our community. We protect our own. We curl in like a leaf, blocking out intruders. We’re small and sheltered and when one of us gets hurt, everyone rallies together. The owner of Reid’s Ice Cream, Mickey, got in a car accident a couple years back and someone set up a GoFundMe page to pay for his hospital bills, and everyone donated. My parents gave something like five hundred bucks. So of course, someone set one up for Mark’s funeral, and it raised a ridiculous amount of money.
My parents donated.
My parents are at the funeral today. We all are. We’re in a church and it’s way too hot and crowded, and I’m making awkward eye contact with a guy with blond curls who keeps staring at me. Boys usually stare at Tabby, but this one seems almost determined not to notice her.
He’s the only one. Everyone else notices her. I don’t blame them. She’s in black, like the rest of us, but it looks different on her, less dead and more alive. “Your dress is too short,” Mom told her before we left the house.
“Mark liked this dress,” Tabby shot back. “He would have wanted me to wear it.”
Mom didn’t argue with that. That’s another thing about dead golden boys. They always get the last word.
The service is what you’d expect from a funeral, stuffy and smothered with tears. A priest reads from the Bible. Everyone bows their heads. When I glance over at Tabby, her eyes are cast down like the rest of us, but she’s staring at something in her hand. Her phone. Then she knows I’m looking, and she sneaks me a little smile.
People deal with grief in weird ways. But sometimes it’s like my sister isn’t sad at all. And I honestly don’t blame her, because I’m not either.
The blond guy gets up now and stands behind the podium. “Most of you don’t know me. I’m Mark’s older brother, Alexander. I’ve been living in Australia for the past year. I was supposed to protect Mark, but he never needed protection. If you knew Mark, you knew he would give you the shirt off his back. He’d do anything for anyone.”
Then a loud sob from a lady in the front row. Mark’s mom. She had stiffly embraced Tabby on the way in. I know for a fact that it was the first time they’d ever met. It’s like I’m a secret, Tabby once told me. Like I only exist when he wants me to.
Alexander continues. “My parents asked me to say a few words today, and a few words is all I have. I
just want everyone to remember Mark as he was. Smart and strong and good to everybody. He would have gone on to do great things, but let’s not think about what he didn’t get to do. Let’s think about what he accomplished when he was here, and live how he would have liked us to. Bold and honest and grateful.”
He goes on for a bit, shares some memories of his childhood with Mark. Beside me, Tabby yawns. She hasn’t been sleeping well. When we were little, we insisted on sharing the same bedroom, even though we each had our own in the Rochester two-story. We would fall asleep cocooned on the floor under a sleeping bag. Then Tabby grew up, and the two years between us reared its head. Tabby had her own private life, a fabric that was too slippery for me to grip on to. When we moved to Coldcliff, Tabby put caution tape on her door, the kind you see at crime scenes on TV. It was a joke, but it wasn’t. She was guarding her new life, crouching in front of it like a dragon. She still is.
Elle is a few rows behind us with her parents; Elle’s mom is watching the back of Tabby’s head. She loves Tabby, and I know she’s worried about her. My sister is the kind of person you either love or hate. Nobody ever seems to be in the middle about her. Meanwhile, everyone is in the middle about me, stuck in the center of some invisible hammock, making it sag under their collective weight. I don’t have any enemies, but I don’t have anyone professing their love either.
When the service is finally over, we all start to shuffle out of church into the hot pocket of humidity Coldcliff has turned into. I guess they’re going to bury Mark’s body now at the graveyard, but it’s just the family—they’re doing some private interment. No Tabby. I’m grateful to have her to myself. The same way I’m grateful there wasn’t an open casket. I heard rumors about his head being caved in, and no amount of funeral makeup would be able to cover that up.
