The Truth Lies Here

by Lindsey Klingele

  I turned to the sheriff again. “I think I’ll give him just another day or two to come home. If he hasn’t shown up by then, I’ll come down to the station and file a report.”

  The sheriff’s features hardened just a bit, as if he was displeased with my answer. But he hid it quickly and reached out to squeeze my shoulder.

  “Of course,” he said. “And if you need a place to stay in the meantime . . .”

  “Oh, no,” I said quickly. “I’ll be okay, and Cindy’s right next door if I need anything.”

  “Well, all right, then.”

  I slid off my stool. “Thanks for your help,” I said, as I walked toward the door. “I’ll let you know if . . . well, I’ll let you know.”

  “Take care, Penny,” Julie said, right before I opened the door and stepped back into the sunshine. Before leaving, I looked back once more, and I could swear I saw sadness on her face as she watched me go.

  Later that evening, I walked through the front door to find the house still empty. I went to the basement stairs and flicked the light on before running down, taking the stairs two at a time. When I was a kid, my dad had convinced me that ghosts lived under the stairs, and they could reach through the slats and grab your feet to make you trip and fall. I no longer believed in stair ghosts, obviously, but running down the basement stairs became such an ingrained habit that I still did it without thinking.

  The basement was half-finished, with plywood walls and a concrete floor. Over on the far side of the room was a metal shelving unit that usually housed my dad’s camping supplies. His camouflage sleeping bag was missing, as were his orange hunting vest and emergency kit. So part of the sheriff’s story checked out. Dad had at least planned to be out in the woods overnight. But it was still nagging at me that he’d be gone for this many days without checking in. Every time I tried to brush it off, the picture of the burned hiker pushed its way to the front of my mind.

  I bit my lip, frustrated at this dead end. If only there was some way to know where, specifically, my dad was chasing his story in the woods . . .

  And then I realized there was.

  I ran back upstairs and into the living room. Dad’s camera was right where I had last seen it, in the coffee table drawer. I grabbed it and clicked through the photos of the woods again. But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t tell where those specific trees were. Aside from the weird armlike branch, there was nothing distinct about the trees, nothing that could tell me what part of the woods they were in. I checked Dad’s office next, but his desk had nothing in it related to the hiker in the woods or his “camping” plans, and the safe he kept against one wall was shut up tight with a combination lock.

  I quickly texted Dex. Hey, it’s Penny. Are you sure you didn’t take anything else from my dad’s office? Any other pictures from the woods?

  After a moment, I added, I won’t get mad, promise.

  I only had to wait a few seconds for his reply. No other pics. I looked for them but couldn’t find. Want me to come over and help you look?

  I considered for a moment. On the one hand, it would be nice to talk all this out with someone. On the other hand, that someone was Dex. If I told him Dad’s camping gear was missing, he’d probably say that it was part of a conspiracy, or that they’d been stolen by wood gnomes or something. I needed to focus on logic tonight, not fantasy.

  No thanks.

  If the sheriff and Dex were right about my dad setting up lots of cameras in the woods, that meant he might have more than one lying around at home. As a last resort, I checked the cabinet under the TV, where I knew my dad kept his printed pictures in an old shoe box. The box had a thick layer of dust on top when I pulled it out. It didn’t look like Dad had so much as glanced at it lately. But I lifted the lid off anyway, then sat cross-legged on the living room carpet and started going through them.

  The photos weren’t organized in any particular way. A picture of me covered in blue icing at my first birthday party was stacked in between a picture of me on my first bike and one of my parents on one of their first dates. In that photo, both of my parents looked impossibly young, just a few years older than me. They were standing side by side on a pontoon boat in North Lake. My dad’s blond hair was shoulder-length, and he was wearing a flannel shirt and ripped jeans. Next to him, Mom was wearing a sundress covered in little flowers, her hair just a little longer than Dad’s. They were beautiful and grinning, holding on to cans of beer and on to each other. I set the picture aside.

  The photos soon absorbed all of my attention, and I started to sort them by date. By my left knee was a pile of photos from when I was seven, including a couple of me and Dex roasting marshmallows over a campfire and smiling down from the tree house, and one of Mom and Dad with Cindy and Mark playing euchre at a picnic table. By my right toe was a pile from the years before I was born. It had pictures of my dad standing next to his brand-new truck, my mom grinning at her high school graduation. My parents had both gone to Bone Lake High, but were a couple of years apart. They didn’t meet until the summer Mom graduated. She was working at a Denny’s one town over to save money for college, and Dad used to go there to work on his horror novels. A few deep talks over waffles eventually led to a few dates, which eventually led to me. I used to hear the story of how they met all the time, though it had been years since either of them had recounted it to me. Probably they never would again.

  In the right-toe pictures, my parents looked young—familiar and yet like strangers at the same time. They looked happy. But in the pile of photos that was growing to the left of me, things were noticeably different. In them, I was eleven and awkward, with thick, unruly hair. In half of the pictures, I was scowling at the frame, whether I was sitting on the dock with my dad or glaring up from the couch. That year, my parents made fewer and fewer appearances in front of the lens. But I could see them in the backgrounds of photos—my mom frowning into the camera (or at my dad) as I struggled to set up a tent on one of our last family camping trips, my dad staring out over the lake as in the foreground Reese and I mugged for the camera. Through the piles of years laid out before me, I could trace the disintegration of their happiness. They weren’t just thin-lipped and angry in that last bad year, but for years before. I was surprised to see they both looked stressed out in a picture of my fifth birthday party, a party I only remember because Dad started a water balloon fight with my friends. How could I have missed the tense lines in their faces, the forced smiles? The pictures told a story I didn’t fully remember living.

  I turned over another picture, one of me at age eight, perched on Dad’s shoulders and smiling wide. He was standing in front of a giant bridge, a bushy mustache on his face. On the back of the photo was printed Penelope at Mackinac Island. My mom must have taken the picture, though I didn’t have a clear memory of the moment. It was certainly my dad’s handwriting on the back—he always called me by my full name, Penelope (or Pen for short) but never, ever used Penny the way my mom and everyone else did. Dad said that Penelope was a strong, historic name, while Penny was the name of a girl who would have to be rescued by superheroes in a comic book. My parents used to argue about my name in a half-joking way. Or at least, I thought it was half-joking at the time.

  I looked back at the younger photos of my parents, when they were smiling and in love. When had things started to go wrong? I’d always thought it happened around the time of the Julie Harper mess, but what if there were signs before then, things I’d missed? I suddenly felt further away from the people in those pictures than I ever had before.

  A knock at the door caused me to jump, nearly knocking over a stack of photos at my feet. I carefully stood up, edged my way around the pictures and went to answer the door. Micah was standing there, his perfect, square jaw partially lit up by the cool glow of the porch light.

  “Hey.” He smiled, revealing a few deep-set dimples.

  My stomach jumped, and I felt embarrassed by how glad I was to see him just show up at my front door.
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br />   “Um, hi.”

  “Sorry to just come over, but I wanted to make sure you were okay in person, after that weirdness last night,” he said.

  “That’s . . . really nice of you.” I remembered what Reese had said the night before, about Micah being nice to everyone. But surely coming over to my house out of the blue was more than just being nice?

  “I’m doing fine,” I added. “Just, you know, staying away from venison.”

  Micah smiled and cleared his throat. “Can I come in?”

  “Oh! Yeah,” I said, and jumped back from the door to let Micah inside. I forgot all about my sad family album scattered around the living room carpet until Micah stepped fully into the room and raised his eyebrows.

  “I was just looking through some pictures,” I said. “Nothing on cable.” A half-assed explanation.

  But if Micah thought that was weird, he didn’t remark on it. Instead, he gave a small exclamation and jumped toward the pictures, picking one off the stack next to the leg of the coffee table.

  I edged closer to see, stopping just a few inches from Micah. His jacket still smelled like smoke from the campfire the night before. The picture he held was of me, Reese, and Emily getting our faces painted outside the church carnival in fifth grade.

  “I remember this day,” he said, excitement in his voice.

  “You do?”

  “Of course. I got my face painted like a cheetah. I wanted to leave it on forever. I remember being so pissed when my mom made me wash it off.”

  “Oh, I remember you being a cheetah,” I said with a small laugh. And suddenly I could picture it—fifth grader Micah running around with orange and yellow spots on his cheeks, growling to make all the girls squeal.

  I remembered being one of the squealers. I remembered that feeling when cheetah Micah turned his attention on me—like I was chosen, special.

  Micah chuckled and took a seat on the couch. I sat down next to him, careful to leave a few inches between us.

  “Good times,” Micah said quietly, setting the picture down. “So . . . is your dad around?” He looked behind him, as if he expected my dad to come around the corner from the kitchen at any second. And did he seem . . . nervous?

  “No, he’s not here. He’s . . .”

  My words died in my throat. As soon as I’d said the word no, Micah grinned and scooted nearer, closing the gap of inches between us. He gave a crooked grin. “Sorry, what were you saying?”

  “Uh,” I responded, my head swimming. “My dad’s . . . gone, actually. Kind of MIA at the moment.”

  “MIA?”

  “He was supposed to be here when I got in from Chicago, but . . . he’s not. Camping trip or something.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “He didn’t exactly leave a note. But his camping stuff is gone, so . . .”

  I wondered for a second if I should tell Micah about the dead hiker in the woods, my dad’s weird photos . . . but no. Already he was looking at me differently. A few moments before, I’d been a girl on the couch he was trying to get close to. Now I was a girl with an absentee dad. I didn’t need or want his pity.

  “It’s okay, though,” I added, shrugging like I really didn’t mind. “I’m used to taking care of myself.”

  “Yeah,” Micah said, and I was surprised by the sudden sadness in his voice. His gaze drifted away from me, over to the piles of photos on the floor. “But I know how much that sucks sometimes. Having to take care of everything yourself.”

  And I realized it probably wasn’t just pity on Micah’s face.

  I’d never known much about Micah’s home life. When we were younger, his mom rarely came out to community events, and no one ever went over to Micah’s house. Everyone assumed Mrs. Jameson was still grieving her husband’s death. I didn’t know how to ask if that had changed or not in the past five years.

  “It does suck a little,” I admitted, not sure what else to say.

  Micah smiled and gave his head a little shake then, as if pushing the bad feelings away. “Makes us tougher, right?”

  “Definitely,” I said, feeling like it was true the moment the word came out of my mouth. I was tough. I was used to handling things.

  And I wasn’t just going to sit around and wait for Dad to show up when he felt like it.

  “And I have a plan,” I said impulsively. It wasn’t totally true, but as soon as I spoke the words aloud I realized it could be.

  Micah turned toward me, interested. “Really?”

  “Yeah. I’m going to go into the woods and track my dad down. Find him and ask him why the hell he didn’t think to call or leave a note, and what possible reason he could have for making me worry like this.”

  “How are you going to do that?” Micah asked, and I thought he might have sounded a bit impressed. Those dark blue eyes were focused on me, alert.

  “Well, I don’t know for sure where he went. But I do know some of his favorite camping spots. I’ll go check them out tomorrow, see if he’s there or if he left anything behind.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I felt better than I had all day. I had a plan.

  Micah smiled and nodded, and now I knew I wasn’t reading into things—he looked impressed. “Taking things into your own hands. I like it.”

  “Yeah,” I said, taking a deep breath. Speaking of taking things into your own hands . . . “Want to come with?”

  I spoke the words quickly, so I could get them out without losing my nerve. But then there were a few beats of silence, ringing loudly in my ears, and I realized how dumb the proposition must have sounded. “I mean, I get if you already have plans or something—”

  “Just football practice,” Micah said. “But maybe after?”

  “You . . . really want to come?”

  “Yeah,” Micah said, and his grin spread wide, his teeth glowing white even in the low light of the room. “Could be kinda fun. Like a mission.”

  “A mission on bikes.”

  “I could borrow Kevin’s truck if you want. Cover more ground.”

  “That’d be great. If it’s no trouble.”

  “None at all. Dude owes me. And I could bring some food for us, too.”

  “Food?”

  “Well, going from spot to spot in the woods, we might get hungry.” Micah smiled again, and my stomach flip-flopped. “Might need to take a break.” Flip. “Or two.” Flop.

  “That’s . . . very practical,” I said, grinning back at Micah. Tomorrow, I was going to actually take action and look for dad. With Micah. And food.

  “Tomorrow, then,” Micah said.

  “Yeah, tomorrow.”

  He waited a beat, still so close, before giving a gentle laugh—more an exhalation, really—and standing up from the couch.

  “I hate to leave, but I should get going if I want to get up on time for practice,” he said. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “Thanks for coming by and checking on me. That was really cool of you.”

  “Not that cool. It was really just my excuse to come over and work my way up to asking you out.” He grinned. “But you beat me to it.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that other than smiling like an idiot.

  “See you tomorrow,” Micah said, still grinning.

  My heart was pounding as I walked him to the door and waved goodbye from the porch. As I turned to go back inside, I saw that the living room light was on at Cindy and Dex’s place. A figure moved away from the window, retreating back into the brightened room before I could see who it was.

  I walked back inside and, even though I gave an honest try, I couldn’t stop smiling for five whole minutes. It occurred to me that this summer might have more possibilities than I’d ever realized. It might even be nonterrible.

  As soon as I found Dad.

  Eleven

  “YOU’VE BEEN WASHING that ice-cream scoop for ten minutes.”

  Dex’s voice interrupted my haze of daydreaming, and I blinked before looking down into the store’s kitc
hen sink. My fingertips were starting to prune where they had dipped the metal scoop into the sudsy water over and over.

  “Worried about your dad?” Dex’s tone was gentle as he moved closer to me.

  I felt a jolt of guilt as I pulled the scoop up and dried it on a dish towel in two quick moves. I hadn’t been thinking of my dad—not exactly, anyway. I’d been thinking about my upcoming mission/plan/date(!) with Micah. And before that, I’d been thinking of my morning trip to the tiny Bone Lake Public Library, where part-time librarian/nursery school teacher/real estate agent Ms. Ledden had shown me the library’s collection of newspaper articles on the plant closing. My latest theory on the weird sound bite that Cindy, Hector, and Mrs. Anderson had parroted was that they’d all read the same line in an op-ed or something, and it’d just stuck around in their minds. But I couldn’t find any editorial telling Bone Lake residents that it was “best not to think about” the plant accident. Maybe they’d seen in an on-air news report instead.

  Either way, my summer research project was turning up zilch so far. I was 0 for 3 in interviews, and honestly, I probably should have been more worried. The more time that passed without getting a strong “human perspective” on my article from someone else in town, the more imperative it became to get Micah’s story. And that was a problem, too. Because every time I was around Micah, needing to ask him important journalistic (and probably painful) questions about his dad, I was too distracted by . . . well . . . his eyes. And his smile. And just his whole face region in general.

  “Penny?”

  “Um, yeah,” I responded to Dex, trying to reorient my thoughts to Dad.

  Dex leaned up against the wall, crossing his arms. “I’ve been thinking. Even if your dad did take his camping gear—”

  “He did.”

  “Right, right. But anyway,” Dex said, not skipping a beat, “he still probably took it with him to go look into his story. And I just keep thinking that there must be a way to figure out where he was planning to go.”