R.I.P. Eliza Hart

by Alyssa Sheinmel

  “My mom remarried, too. She doesn’t even pretend that my half brother, Wes, isn’t her favorite child anymore.” (Not that I can really blame her.)

  “How about your dad? Did he get married again?”

  “I think he thought one failed family was enough.”

  Sam nods. I take a deep breath and roll my window up.

  Traffic is picking up. Sam changes lanes, barely holding the steering wheel, just sort of resting his palms against it. Boys in New York never look this grown-up hailing a cab.

  “Ellie was my mom’s name,” Sam says suddenly.

  “What?”

  “My mom. Her name was Ellie. Short for Elise, not Elizabeth like you. And it’s not like I called her Ellie, I called her Mom. So I don’t know why it’s hard for me—”

  I reach out and put one of my hands over his on the steering wheel. Without taking his eyes off the road, Sam turns his hand so that his fingers are twisted through mine and squeezes.

  At once, Sam drops my hand like it’s hot and curses. He tightens his grip on the wheel. The green truck is changing lanes, cutting across traffic to get to the right side of the road. Cars honk as it forces its way across the highway.

  “They’re getting off at the next exit.” I point.

  Sam curses again, turning his blinker on. I don’t know if we’ll be able to make it over to the right side in time. The truck is already picking up speed on the exit ramp, where there isn’t nearly as much traffic as there is on the highway. Sam leans on the horn.

  “What are you doing?” I shout. “They’ll hear the horn and know we’re following them.”

  Sam glances at me. “It’s either this or risk losing track of them altogether.”

  I shift in my seat, feeling my phone in the pocket of my sweatshirt. It feels like it weighs a thousand pounds.

  The police have some questions for you, as do I.

  “Don’t lose them, Sam. Please don’t lose them.”

  He nods and presses down on the gas pedal.

  According to the signs on the side of the road, we’re driving through a town called Capitola. Most of the cars and trucks here have surfboards sticking out the back. The streets narrow, becoming more residential as we turn away from the ocean.

  If this were a movie, we’d be heading toward a seedy bar, or maybe an enormous warehouse piled high with stolen wood, drugs strewn everywhere, with big dogs snarling from behind a chain-link fence.

  (I’d be okay with a warehouse. At least it would be big.)

  But this isn’t a movie and they’re pulling into the driveway of a small one-story house, the kind of place that my dad would call a bungalow. They get out of the truck and go inside, leaving the wood in the flatbed like it’s no big deal. Sam rolls right past the driveway and pulls over a few houses later. But when he puts the car in park, neither of us makes a move to open our doors. I don’t think either of us can believe that we just followed a couple of criminals (murderers?) for ninety minutes to a town we’ve never heard of.

  “Maybe you should ask for a lawyer,” Sam suggests suddenly. “The police can’t talk to you without one, right?”

  I shrug. “I’m not sure. Do Miranda rights—you know, the whole, you have the right to remain silent stuff—apply when you’re not actually being arrested?”

  “I don’t know.” Sam unties and reties his bandana.

  “My mom already gave the police permission to talk to me anyway.”

  “I’m sure if you called her and explained—”

  I shake my head. My mom isn’t interested in another Ellie crisis. “None of the other students asked for an attorney, right? It’ll just look suspicious if I do.”

  Sam pulls the keys from the ignition and fidgets with his key chain. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m not exactly looking forward to being questioned by the police, either.”

  Apparently, both of us would rather be here, just a few houses away from the men who maybe/probably killed Eliza, than back on campus where the police are waiting to talk to us. I twist in my seat, glancing at the truck in the driveway down the road. “Eliza got herself killed and it’s going to ruin my life,” I mutter.

  Ruin my life.

  I’ve heard someone say those words before. My mom? Maybe I overheard her talking to my stepdad about my phobia. No; it’s not her voice that I hear. This voice is deeper than my mother’s. More even-keeled. When my mom gets upset, she shouts. This person was quiet, almost whispering. Calm even as she spoke about serious things.

  A woman’s voice, low and hoarse: You’re going to ruin my life if you keep this up. All our lives.

  I heard that voice again recently, deep and dry. Eliza’s mother.

  All our lives. She didn’t know I could hear her. We were playing hide-and-seek and Eliza was it. I was under the table in the dining room.

  The memory comes rushing back: They did fight at Eliza’s house. Not like they fought at my house before my parents split—not with raised voices and slamming doors—but in harsh whispers they thought no one could hear. I heard someone start to cry—was it Mrs. Hart?—but then Mrs. Hart was saying, It’s okay. I’m not leaving, in that same dry whisper. I realized it must have been Mr. Hart who was crying. It was the first time I ever saw a man cry, though technically I didn’t really see it, I heard it. He wept. I watched Mrs. Hart’s feet cross the floor so that she was standing next to him. I guessed she was hugging him and rocking him back and forth like my mom did when I cried.

  I curled up into a little ball, scared that they would find me and I’d be punished for eavesdropping, even if it was an accident.

  Ready or not, here I come!

  The two grown-ups broke apart at the sound of Eliza’s voice. I heard the clinking of glass as Mr. Hart poured himself a drink. Mrs. Hart began, You shouldn’t, then stopped. From my hiding place, I watched her suede moccasins walk away, followed by Mr. Hart’s loafers a few seconds later.

  Eliza found me in seconds, just like she always did. I decided I’d have to choose a better place to hide next time.

  Now I rub my hands together, clammy with sweat. “What should we do?”

  Sam pulls his phone out of his pocket and offers it to me.

  “We can’t call the police!” I protest.

  “Why not? Now we don’t only have a name, we have an address, too.”

  “Yeah, but Mack and his friend could deny they ever worked with Eliza Hart. They could say they just found her ID somewhere. They might get arrested for stealing the trees, but how do we tie it to what happened to her?”

  Sam shrugs. “I don’t know.”

  “I wish we could somehow replay what we heard them saying this morning.”

  Sam’s eyes light up like he just thought of something. “Maybe they’re still talking about her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They were talking about her on the trails this morning, right?”

  We’ve already been over this. “We can’t prove it.”

  Sam holds up his phone. “But if they talk about her again, we can.”

  Sam and I crouch beneath an open window.

  “This is crazy,” I whisper. My heart is pounding. Sam holds his finger to his lips, shushing me. He holds his phone up above us, his finger poised above the record button.

  “We should get out of here. I don’t hear anything anyway.” My voice is shaking.

  That’s not entirely true. I hear the sound of the TV—some daytime talk show is on. I hear the sound of a can being popped open and the hum of a car driving past; I turn around and see that it’s a bright shiny Lexus. In the distance, I can hear waves crashing against the beach. We’re not that far from the water.

  I wasn’t expecting a place this nice. (I guess the kind of people in the market for these particular stolen goods—architects, artists, furniture designers—wouldn’t want to go to a creepy warehouse to buy their burls any more than I would.)

  I try to self-soothe just like one of my therapists (number five?
Number six?) used to encourage me to do: I tell myself that Mack and his partner can’t be that bad, not if Eliza was working with them. Eliza was smart. Smart people don’t get involved with dangerous people. Smart people know better than to get in over their heads.

  But then I remember that however smart she might have been, Eliza got herself killed.

  Plus, Sam and I are supposed to be smart—straight A-students at a prestigious school—and here we are, doing what’s probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.

  So much for self-soothing.

  “We should get out of here,” I repeat. My breath is so shallow that I can hardly get the words out.

  Before Sam can answer, I feel a hand on my shoulder, pulling me up to stand.

  The hand snakes around my neck to cover my mouth before I can scream.

  Sam springs to his feet. The hand on my mouth squeezes, pushing me so that I turn around to face the person attached to it. He’s wearing a faded blue baseball cap pulled down over his eyes. His muscles are so big they bulge out of the sleeves of his T-shirt.

  He’s not as tall as Sam, but he’s still taller than I am, just like Eliza was. Julian said the person he saw was about her height. I imagine this man picking up Eliza and tossing her over the cliffs. For a guy who cuts into decades-old trees every day, it was probably easy.

  “Who the hell are you?” I recognize his voice from the woods. This is Mack.

  “Concerned citizens,” Sam practically spits. He gestures to the truck in the driveway. “We know where you got that wood.”

  “What’s going on out there?” the gruff voice shouts from inside the house.

  Mack pulls me closer, wrapping his arm around my neck, his hand pressed so tightly over my mouth that I can’t move my lips.

  “Nothing, Riley,” Mack calls back. “Just a coupla kids who don’t know what they’re talking about.” He says the last words slowly, looking over my head at Sam. “I’ll get rid of them.”

  I feel myself start to shake beneath Mack’s grip.

  The other man—Riley—emerges from the house. Riley isn’t as muscular as Mack, but he looks older. And he’s tall, almost as tall as Sam. He can’t have been the man Eliza was fighting with. I shift my gaze back to Mack.

  “This is a citizen’s arrest!” Sam shouts suddenly. He looks around, like he’s hoping someone will come out of the surrounding houses when they hear the commotion, but the neighborhood stays still. “For illegal …” Sam pauses, struggling to find the right words. “Wood-chopping,” he finishes finally. His shoulders slump. He knows how ridiculous he sounds. Sam’s height looks less like of an asset next to Mack’s muscles.

  Without loosening his grip on me, Mack reaches out with his other arm and grabs Sam’s phone, slipping it into his own pocket. Riley laughs out loud. “Why don’t you invite our guests inside?” He nods at Mack, who pulls me backward. He doesn’t lay a hand on Sam. He seems to know that if he drags me into the house, Sam is going to follow.

  The bandana falls out of Sam’s hair, onto the driveway. His dreadlocks fall across his face, but he keeps his eyes locked with mine.

  I’m not going to leave you, his eyes seem to say. We’re gonna make it out of here.

  Alive.

  Mack pulls me toward the door of the bungalow. Was it this easy for Mack to hold Eliza against her will? Surely she fought back. She probably kicked and screamed and scratched and bit.

  But it wasn’t enough to save her.

  Will it be enough to save me?

  Mack’s arm around my neck feels like it’s made of steel. I reach up and dig my fingers into his flesh, trying to loosen his grip. He barely seems to feel me pulling at him.

  Mack’s hand smells like redwood.

  What’s he going to do with me once he gets me inside? What if Riley tells him to lock me in the closet?

  I hear the front door slam shut behind us. Mack says, “If I let you go, will you keep quiet?” but I can’t answer because I’m starting to choke.

  One of my therapists swore by visualization (picture Mack letting you go), but when I close my eyes, I can only imagine Mack locking me up someplace small and leaving me there forever.

  I try to open my eyes, but they stay shut as stubbornly as they stayed open inside the tree with Sam this morning. Mack loosens his grip, but I’m still choking. Hot tears drip out from under my eyelids and land on Mack’s arm, wedged beneath my chin.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Mack asks. His voice is surprisingly gentle. “She have asthma or something?”

  Mack loosens his grip and the sound of my wheezing fills the room.

  “Shut her up!” Riley shouts.

  “Elizabeth,” Sam says. “Elizabeth, open your eyes and look at me.” I shake my head, eyes still shut tight. “Look at me,” Sam repeats.

  Mack lets go of me and I fall hard onto what feels like an old couch.

  “Open your eyes,” Sam repeats, placing one hand protectively on my knee. Finally, my eyelids open.

  Sam keeps his gaze even with mine and breathes in and out, in and out, in and out, silently instructing me to follow him. I press my feet into the wooden floor, feeling bits of sand on the hardwood beneath my sneakers. The faded orange couch is fuzzy beneath my fingers.

  After a few breaths, I nod. I can breathe again. I ball my hands into fists, trying to stop their shaking.

  Mack plants himself in front of us, looking every bit as solid as the trees he destroys. After ninety minutes staring at the back of his head on the road, I’m surprised to see that he doesn’t look anything like I imagined: no sinister expression, no five o’clock shadow covering his features. He takes off his baseball cap, revealing dirty-blond hair and bright blue eyes. He’s startlingly handsome. He looks like he should be out on the water catching his next wave. He even has those tan lines that surfers get around their eyes from squinting in the sun.

  Like Mack, Riley is wearing cargo pants and work boots and a sweat-stained T-shirt. Neither of them are the skinny, shifty meth-heads/heroin addicts I’d been expecting.

  “So,” Mack begins once I’m breathing relatively normally, “where did you two come from?”

  “Ventana Ranch,” I answer softly. A flicker of something—recognition? disgust? hope?—passes over Mack’s face. Too late, it occurs to me that maybe it would’ve been better if I lied about where we came from. My hands are still trembling, so I slide them beneath my thighs to hide it.

  I look around, trying to imagine Eliza in this house, running deals with these men. She surely held herself with confidence, acted tough, never showed fear. I force myself to sit up straight and answer again, louder this time. “Ventana Ranch,” I repeat. I hate my voice for shaking. “We saw what you did this morning.”

  “I already called the police,” Sam adds. “They’re on their way.”

  I glance at Sam hopefully: Did he really call the police? No, I’ve been with him this whole time. He’s just hoping he can scare them into letting us go.

  Mack hands Sam’s phone to Riley, who looks at the screen and (apparently) checks Sam’s recent calls. “Doesn’t look like you called anybody, Citizen’s Arrest.” He slides the phone into his pocket. Slowly, I reach for my own pocket, but Riley sees me move and shakes his head. “Tsk, tsk, tsk.” I drop my hand back onto the couch, and he nods at Mack. “Take care of ’em.” His eyes dart to the window, as though part of him thinks that despite what he saw on Sam’s phone, the police might really be on their way. “Do it quickly.”

  “I’ve got it,” Mack answers with a shrug. “You’ve got calls to make.”

  He almost makes it sound like Riley is a normal businessman, running late for a meeting. Except for the fact that he just stole Sam’s phone. And that his calls are surely about the black market goods in the back of his truck. Riley walks out the front door, and I hear the sound of a car starting; he’s driving away with our evidence.

  My heart is pounding. What exactly does take care of ’em mean?

  “Are you g
oing to take care of us like you took care of Eliza?” I’m shaking so hard—not just my hands, but my whole body now, like I’m freezing even though it’s warm in here. I barely manage to get the words out.

  Mack narrows his icy eyes. He doesn’t look handsome anymore. “What do you know about Eliza?”

  I open my mouth to answer, but no words come out: My teeth are actually chattering. I’m not sure I know the first thing about Eliza anymore. The girl she grew up to be is nothing like the friend I remember. But the girl I saw painting her nails in the valley didn’t look like the kind of girl who’d be working with men like this, either.

  All I know for sure is that she hated me. And now I’m in danger—real danger—because of her. Because even after she died, the rumors she started swirled around our school like a hurricane.

  Finally, I mutter, “I can’t believe I’m going to die for a mean girl.”

  Mack’s eyes narrow further. He balls his hands into fists. “Eliza wasn’t mean.”

  “What?” I ask dumbly. Sam tightens his grip on my knee, steadying my shaking. I can feel his pulse through my leggings. His heart is beating almost as fast as mine.

  “Eliza wasn’t mean,” Mack repeats, louder this time. “She had her mood swings, I’ll give you that, but …” Mack pauses, his face softening. “You know she used to visit the trees afterward, like visiting a patient in the hospital or something.” He glances at us, then sets his jaw and swallows. The softness in his expression vanishes. “Did she send you here?”

  “Send us here?” I echo. “She’s dead.”

  “I know she’s dead,” Mack answers bitterly. “I just thought—I dunno, maybe she left a message for me or something.”

  “A message?” What does this guy expect, a thank-you note for killing her? “How about you’re not going to get away with what you did?”