by L. E. Flynn
I’m sick of people and their constant why didn’t you. I’m sick of not having an answer. Maybe I wanted a slice of my life to be private from Tabby. Then she stepped in and shouldered my pain and look what happened. I made the choice not to have a baby. I made Tabby swear not to tell anyone, and she didn’t. Not even Mark, when he asked, If it wasn’t you, who was it? She let the secret fester, the infection sear the skin of their relationship. If I had just told everyone it was me, maybe a lot of things would have been different.
I’ve spent so much time thinking I don’t deserve anything good. I’ve wanted what I couldn’t have. I wanted my best friend’s boyfriend, and when I couldn’t have him, I made sure she couldn’t either. But here, closing the gap between me and Dallas, I just want to be hugged. I just want someone to love me anyway.
His mouth finds my hair. “I’m not going anywhere, unless you want me to.”
And in this moment, I don’t.
33
LOU
I’M AN INDOOR KITTEN—you probably already got that vibe from me? Well, it’s true. I hate being outside. It’s always windy, which messes up my hair, and the bugs are gross, and yet here I am, walking in the woods with some guy I don’t know at all, looking for everything and nothing. And let me tell you, it’s creepy in here. The trees pretty much close in above you, so there’s almost no light, and all I have is the flashlight on my iPhone. It’s totally disconcerting, because I have no clue what time of day it actually is right now.
I’m not sure if I’m surprised or not that Keegan agreed to come with me. It actually seemed like he was expecting me to come back to the store, like it was a relief I asked. Maybe it’s because I told him I needed his help. When you want something from a boy and you bring the word “need” into it, they’re, like, a hundred percent more likely to help you. It’s engrained in their DNA to be heroes.
He is kind of a hero right now, though, because he has a map. I didn’t think of printing one out, but obviously it’s a good idea, because I have no idea how anyone gets around in here, and right now it’s daytime. If I didn’t hate Tabitha so much, I’d almost feel bad for her for being stuck in here after dark.
There’s a group of people who look a bit older than me, probably in college, who pass us coming back the other way. They’re all holding maps, too, and I catch a snippet of their conversation. This is where she must have run after. I heard about this online—the woods are becoming, like, infamous by association. People are running tour groups up to the Split to see the scene of the crime. Outwit the Split. Someone pointed out that it’s good for downtown business, people wanting to see Tabby’s “haunts.” When I was on Insta the other day, I actually saw a Tabby and Beck Halloween costume. I wish I was kidding. And this is why I need to clear his name.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Keegan asks. “Because you know if there was something here, the cops would have found it, right?”
“Maybe not,” I say. “I just think we need to look for ourselves. I mean, you knew Mark better than anyone.” And I know Beck better than anyone.
I’m not sure why I didn’t think of coming here sooner. I mean, it’s so obvious. I know this case has become huge and all, but cops and detectives miss things all the time. Imagine if I could be the one to Outwit the Split, so to speak. Imagine how surprised Beck would be.
Although honestly, this isn’t really about him.
It’s about me, and that need to know. I hate a story without a good ending.
Keegan kind of grunts, and we keep walking. All the other hikers and wannabe case crackers seem to have disappeared, and the deeper in we get, the more I miss the sounds of voices. Every sound—branches clattering, acorns falling—makes me jump.
Seriously, I don’t believe in ghosts. But this is super creepy. And it’s getting more closed in. My legs are getting all scraped through my pants. I saw the photos of Tabby online, when she was first called a “survivor” and “lucky.” Shorts, dirty legs, crosshatched by cuts. They even showed her shoes, which I remember because I have the same pink Nikes. She said they belonged to her sister. I remember they didn’t even look pink, more like a dark red.
Dark red, because they were wet.
Yes, they found a footprint. But did anyone ask why her shoes were wet? Because she said she ran back down from the Split the same way they came up. She had a huge gash running up one arm, which was apparently from trying to climb down the rocks fast. How did I not notice that sooner?
“Her shoes,” I say suddenly to Keegan. “Did you see them? They were wet. This sounds weird, but I have the same ones, and hers looked different in all the photos. Because they were wet.”
“Okay,” Keegan says. “So what?”
“So it wasn’t raining that day, and she said herself that she didn’t go down to the creek, because she couldn’t see in the dark. But they found a footprint, and her shoes were wet.”
She never went down to the creek to see if Mark was okay. She claimed she didn’t know how to get down there and it was getting dark and she was scared. Then later on, she changed her story a bit. She felt like somebody was behind her, chasing her out of the woods. She swore she heard breathing.
“I don’t know,” Keegan says. “Maybe she stepped in a puddle or something.”
But the woods are, like, bone-dry. There are just crunchy leaves under our feet. I think it rained a couple days ago, but there’s no evidence of it here.
“We’re not actually going all the way up, are we?” Keegan asks. “I wore the wrong shoes for that.” He stares at his Converse.
“We’re retracing their steps,” I say. “So yeah, duh. If other people can do it, we can, too.” But seriously, I wonder how long it will be until somebody has an accident around here. One of those khaki-clad tourists with a map who wants to know where the Blue-Eyed Boyfriend Killer did it. Then Tabby will be responsible for even more people dying.
Here’s where it gets steep, and we have to climb more than hike. I can’t believe people do this for fun. My fingernails are, like, destroyed already. Keegan is actually really good at this and keeps reaching for my hand so he can pull me up, which is kind of nice. I’m sure Beck would have been more preoccupied with his cigarettes.
I have no idea how long it takes us to clamber up to the top, but I’m glad Keegan is here, because I don’t know if I could have made it up alone. And now I’m wondering how much Mark helped Tabby. If he pulled her up, like Keegan is pulling me up, and if she knew the whole time that she was going to push him over the edge, or if she did it in the heat of the moment. I guess no matter what Keegan and I find today, we’ll never know. Only two people will ever know, and one of them is dead.
When we’re at the top, it doesn’t seem like there’s enough room for two people. I’m out of breath—apparently I’m not in very good shape—but Keegan is just standing there, looking over the edge.
“Don’t get too close,” I say.
“Why?” he says. “Are you planning on pushing me?”
It dawns on me that he could push me. I mean, we barely know each other, and now we’re at the last place his best friend was ever alive, so he could snap any second, really. Also, it’s terrifying because I feel like this whole slab could give out from under us. It’s just this giant rock jutting out, like it doesn’t belong. I read somewhere that it used to be called the Giant’s Thumb, which somehow morphed into the Split.
It didn’t look this high from the ground, but it sure does from up here. Down below, there are the rocks that must have practically cracked Mark’s head apart. I have no idea how that didn’t kill him. They’re like this row of jagged teeth, biting through the water. And he had that backpack on, so he probably hit the rocks before he even knew what was happening.
The water down there is pretty stagnant. Maybe Tabby hoped Mark would conveniently wash out into a bigger lake and his body would disappear, but it’s not like the current moves very fast. From up here, it kind of looks like a giant slug, right down
to the brownish-green color. Mark must have tried to get out of the water, fought his way out of the backpack. I pretend I’m Tabby, seeing him get up, rushing back down.
Then I take a deep breath like I’m in yoga class, and that’s when I feel Keegan’s hand on my back.
“What the hell?” I snap, backing up so fast I’m afraid I’m going to fall the other way—back down the rocky slope we came up. He puts both hands up, like he’s being arrested.
“Whoa, chill. I just said you shouldn’t get so close to the edge. Did you not hear me? I don’t need another dead body on my conscience.”
I cross my arms, rub them where goose bumps have erupted. “Why is Mark’s body on your conscience? You’re not the one who shoved him.”
He scratches his head. He’s better looking up close, I decide. He has some freckles on his nose that I bet he hated when he was younger. “No, but it’s complicated. I knew Tabby was bad for him, and I had a feeling something was going to happen on that hike, and I didn’t say anything.”
“Well, would it have mattered if you did? People in relationships only hear what they want to hear.” I don’t know why I’m trying to console him, but he’s kind of pathetic, and I guess I know what that feels like, being kind of pathetic.
“Maybe,” he says, but he has this faraway look, like he isn’t really listening.
I stare at the view again. That’s why people come up here—for the view. You can see some mountains in the distance, which I guess is nice, but honestly, I don’t understand the hype. Why put your body through all this just to see everything from high up? I’d much rather spend my life at eye level.
“There’s nothing here,” I say. I seriously have no idea what I expected. A note scrawled into the rock, or some sort of lipstick kiss from Tabby’s victory? But it’s all flat and stark and there’s absolutely nothing here except the ghost of Mark Forrester. I’m not spiritual or anything, but there’s this creepy vibe up here, and I want to get away from it.
“Yeah,” Keegan says. “We should go.”
I can’t decide if he sounds disappointed or relieved.
Getting down is terrifying. I’m sure I’m going to die, and what a huge waste that would be. Tabby would definitely get the last laugh. I manage to scrape up my legs a bunch more times, which I’m sure will look lovely the next time I’m wearing a skirt.
To get to the creek from the trail, you have to cut through this patch of really tall grass, which is slimy and feels like it’s licking my legs. Keegan hangs behind. “I don’t want to get my shoes wet,” he says, but I suspect the real reason, and it’s not like I can blame him. He doesn’t want to have the mental picture of Mark, dead in the creek, become any more vivid than I’m sure it already is in his head.
A snapping sound makes me jump, and when I look up, I immediately crouch back down, swallowing the scream I want to let out. Because Tabby is standing across the creek, on the other side, staring into the water, hood over her head, which is impossible, but here she is. I have no idea if she saw me but I know what she’s capable of doing to someone she supposedly loved, so I don’t want to know what she’s capable of doing to someone she doesn’t like at all.
Did I miss something? Did she escape juvie? Was there a breaking news story since we’ve been in the woods that I didn’t see? I whip out my phone, remembering Tabby’s excuse that hers was out of power, and that’s why she didn’t call for help. I’m getting full reception and my battery is charged, but no Google alerts come up about Tabby’s case.
I watch through the reeds as Tabby’s hood comes down and I realize it isn’t her at all. Duh. There’s no tumble of black hair, the hair she obviously dyed from a box to get that dark. No, this girl isn’t Tabby, but someone wearing her sweatshirt. Someone wearing Mark’s Princeton sweatshirt. It’s Elle Ross.
I put my hand over my mouth when I realize what it means. The girl walking into the clinic with her hood pulled up wasn’t Tabby either. It was Elle. I mean, I should have figured it out sooner. I lend my clothes to my girlfriends all the time, and some of those bitches never give them back. Elle had the sweatshirt. Elle got an abortion. I started a rumor about the wrong girl.
And Tabby let me.
I have no idea what all this means. What it means that Elle is here, across the creek, staring into the water, like she wants something to emerge from it. I mean, how well does she know her way around these woods?
Part of me wants to ask her. I mean, wouldn’t you? But there’s a creek between us, and besides, I know what these woods are capable of hiding, and what the girls who go into them are capable of doing. So I stay hidden. On my hands and knees, I creep back through the tall grass and weeds until not just my shoes are soaked but pretty much everything from the waist up. And when I’m far enough away, I start to run, just like Tabby apparently did that night.
“Hey,” Keegan says. “Hey, slow down. What’s going on? You’re going the wrong way.”
I don’t tell him about Elle. I don’t ask him why he knows his way through the woods, why everyone but me seems to be able to find their way out.
Excerpt from Tabby’s Diary
August 13, 2019
Mark wants to go on a hike. I don’t really know why. For some reason, the thought of being alone in the woods with him is kind of scary. Not that he’d ever do anything to me. I guess I’m just afraid of what he wants to say that he needs to take me that far into the woods to hear.
34
BRIDGET
I TELL MY PARENTS I’m going to Laurel’s, because they have no reason to believe otherwise. They think we’re having a sleepover, that we’ll stay up watching movies and eating popcorn, because they still see me as a little girl.
But tonight, I’m someone else.
I’m dressed in a skirt and low-cut tank top I grabbed from Tabby’s closet. I’m teetering in a pair of her wedge heels. I’m wearing her red lipstick and my eyes are sooty with her makeup, bordered with the eyeliner she rarely went without. It doesn’t look half bad, thanks to the power of YouTube tutorials. I expected to look in the mirror and see someone ridiculous. An imposter. But instead, I see a girl who could seize the world in her clenched fist and mold it into whatever shape she wants.
I changed at Laurel’s. She stares at me with wide eyes and it’s like I’m older than her all of a sudden, older and wiser, and she’s far away, in the safety of my shadow, trembling in the shade. Maybe that’s how Tabby felt around me. Maybe that’s how she felt around everyone.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” she says. “I mean, I should come with you.”
“No.” I shake my head. My newly straightened hair bounces, the ends almost grazing my shoulders. “I need to do this alone.”
I told Laurel I was meeting someone who might have information about my sister, and I am, but it’s not exactly like that. I’m meeting someone who knew Mark better than anyone, and I’m going to wring the truth out of him. Because that’s the secret Tabby wanted me to keep. Her voice in my ear, low and measured. They should be looking at Keegan. He didn’t love Mark as much as everyone thinks.
He works at the Stop & Shop. He has scanned our groceries more than once, me in line with my parents, Mom always forgetting to bring in the reusable bags that live in the trunk of her car. He looks perpetually bored and always shoves too much into every bag so that by the time we get home, cereal box corners poke through and peaches roll onto the counter.
Today, I buy one thing. A card. SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS it reads in loopy cursive. He looks at me as he picks it up off the conveyor belt and maybe he sees the resemblance, maybe not. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Pretty girls all look the same to him.
“Five ninety-six,” he says, pretending he doesn’t know who I am. “Cash, credit, or debit?”
“When’s your break?” I try to make my voice deeper, more breathy. Something changes on his face. I don’t know boys. I don’t know if the change means he’s interested or doesn’t care.
“Uh, I don’t h
ave one. But I’m done with my shift in half an hour. Why, what do you want?”
“I’m Tabby’s sister,” I say. “Bridget.”
“Yeah. I know. So what do you want from me?”
“I want to talk about what my sister did to Mark.”
He gapes at me, openmouthed. I fight the urge to squirm.
“Okay,” he says. “Yeah, I guess so. It’s not very busy. We can just talk now.”
“No,” I say. “This can’t be in public. Can we go back to your place?” It’s a question, but I make it sound like an order.
His eyes dart down the front of my shirt, to where a Victoria’s Secret bra has managed to pinch together my nonexistent cleavage. “Okay, fine. As long as you don’t mind hanging around here until we close.”
I stare at my knees. I’ve always hated them—they’re too big for my legs. But maybe Keegan doesn’t care. Everything my parents ever told me screams in my head. Don’t talk to strangers. Never go on a date that isn’t in a public place. Never go on a date, period.
“That’s fine,” I say.
This is for Tabby. For answers. I don’t care about the rest.
I don’t even have to get into a car with him, because his place is right around the corner. It’s a shitty little walk-up, and I trail him up the stairs and down a skinny hall that smells like takeout and cat piss. I try to picture Tabby making this walk—maybe with Mark, maybe without—and somehow know she never did. Not my sister.
Boy crazy, Mom called her—I heard her say it the other night to Dad. “She got too involved with these boys and lost herself.” Those were her exact words, dramatic and tear-soaked. I know Mom has been reading all of the articles because she leaves her computer open sometimes without closing her internet tabs. Tabby isn’t home and her own mother is replacing her with the girl in those articles. The Blue-Eyed Boyfriend Killer, reduced to body parts.
