A half hour later, she and Dex had loaded up the van with cupcakes and were on their way to a fiftieth anniversary party in Kalkaska. Manning the shop on my own turned out to be a lot easier—and more boring—than I had anticipated. Bone Lake wasn’t the most bustling of towns in the best of circumstances. But in the wake of finding Bryan’s and Cassidy’s bodies, it seemed few people were in the mood to go out and get a cone full of crunchy caramel swirl.
Which left me plenty of alone time to stew over what Dex and I had found. For the third time, I went over to my purse and took out the camera Dad had placed in the woods, searching for more odd pictures like those of the sheriff. But there weren’t any. The only other photograph that had anyone in it was the very first one, which was a close-up of my dad’s face. It must have snapped as he was strapping the camera into the tree. I got the disconcerting feeling that he was looking out of the camera screen and at me, as if he knew I would be the one to find this image.
I clicked the camera off and slid it back into my purse. By the time I looked up, someone was pulling open the door of Sweet Street and sauntering inside.
Reese.
She was wearing a black sundress with tiny white dots on it, and her hair was coiled up in braids around the top of her head, like a milkmaid. She walked right toward me, purposeful, her arms crossed loosely over her chest.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“It’s really rich, you working here,” she said. Her voice was calm, her words deliberate.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, then instantly regretted it. Reese’s lips curved up in a slight, sharp smile, and I knew I was playing right into whatever script she’d written for this moment.
“Don’t you? You say you came back here to visit your dad and work for Cindy, but that’s not the real reason, is it?”
“What?” I asked, genuinely confused.
“I had a nice chat with Hector. You know Hector, at the hardware store?”
I felt a quick thump of anxiety in my stomach, but forced my face to stay still. “Yeah, Reese. I know Hector.”
“He was at church this morning. Everyone was there, preparing for the memorial service. Well, everyone who actually cares about Bryan and Cassidy. So I’m talking to Hector and he brings up this interesting story. About why you’re really in Bone Lake this summer. Doing a little investigating, huh?”
I took a deep breath. “I’m just writing an article for college admissions. It’s not a big deal.”
“Making Bone Lake look bad isn’t a big deal? Using us just so you can get into some snotty school?”
“I’m not using anyone. And Bone Lake isn’t just your town. It’s mine, too.”
“Please,” Reese said, rolling her eyes. “You might come slum it here a couple of weeks a year, but you don’t belong here. You’ve always thought you were better than us.”
“That’s not true,” I said.
“There you go, lying again,” Reese trilled. She took a step closer to the counter, so close I could smell the red candy scent on her lips. But if she expected me to take a step back, she was mistaken. I held my ground.
“I’m not a liar,” I said, meeting her glare with my own.
“Really,” Reese said, smirking. “Then why doesn’t everyone know about your little story? Micah, for one, seemed really surprised to hear about it.”
And there it was: the bomb Reese had come all the way here to drop in person. The anxiety that had been building up inside me ballooned into panic.
“Right after I talked to Hector, I called Micah. I knew he was just being nice by hanging out with you, but I figured he had a right to know why you were hanging out with him. He seemed pretty shocked to learn the truth.”
“Why would you do that?” I shook my head, genuinely taken aback, though a part of my brain was screaming at me that I should have been honest with Micah from the start.
Reese’s eyes were like tiny blue stones, hard and cold. “Like I just said, he had the right to know. He said you made it seem like you liked him, got him to open up to you . . . and it was all for some horrible article about his dad. It’s sick, honestly. I knew what you were capable of, but Micah’s never hurt anyone in his life. How could you just use him like that?”
“That’s not . . . I didn’t . . .” I sputtered.
“Typical Penny. Telling lies and doing whatever you want. Not caring who gets hurt in the process,” Reese said. Her mouth pursed, and she spit out her next words like they tasted bad. “Just like your dad.”
For just the briefest of moments, my heart felt like it stopped.
But Reese didn’t notice. She just kept looking at me like I was something she’d scraped off the bottom of her shoe. Which was just about what I felt like.
Reese flipped open her purse and pulled out a dollar bill, which she dropped on the counter. Then she plunged her hand into one of the candy bins sitting on a shelf next to the counter, taking out a fistful of individually wrapped Ring Pops. Without giving me a second look, she spun on her heel and walked out the door.
I felt frozen in place until the glass door closed behind Reese and she disappeared from sight. I pulled out my phone and texted Micah—
Did you talk to Reese? I can explain everything, I promise.
But would that matter? If I explained? I waited another minute, then added—
I’m so sorry.
I was jittery for the rest of my shift, but thankfully, no one came in. I closed up the shop early and hopped on my bike. But instead of riding home, to Cindy’s, I went in the opposite direction. To Micah’s.
But what would I say once I got there? If he really believed what Reese said, that I’d only shown interest in him for the article, that I’d purposefully tricked him into opening up and being vulnerable . . . I remembered the night he told me about his mom, and how he said he never talked about it to anyone. Shame burned through me. I wanted to explain that I hadn’t used him. Not intentionally. That Reese had it all wrong. Because she did. She did.
Right?
I rode hard past the rest of the buildings on Main Street, the lone gas station on the corner, the last stoplight in town. The wooden houses on either side of the street got more and more spaced out as I pedaled, until eventually I hit the two-lane county roads. Reese had said that Bone Lake wasn’t my town anymore, but very single inch of this town was still familiar to me. I could probably find my way to Micah’s street with my eyes closed. It was true that I’d wanted to get out of Bone Lake after the divorce—and after I’d lost Reese as a friend—but that didn’t mean I thought I was better than my hometown.
Did it?
I tried to parse out the facts, look at things in black and white. I didn’t like coming back to Bone Lake in the summers, it was true. Partly because I was angry at Dad, and partly because I had no friends here. But it wasn’t just that, was it? Mom’s words came back to me suddenly, the way she’d described feeling stuck in her hometown and believing there was something out there for her, something more. I’d believed it for myself, too. But did claiming Chicago and a future at Northwestern mean giving up my claim to Bone Lake? Maybe Reese was right, and I didn’t belong here anymore. Maybe Bone Lake’s story was no longer mine to tell.
My head began to ache as I rode harder and harder, moving through the humid summer air. I hadn’t meant to hurt Micah, but maybe what I’d meant to do didn’t matter.
Telling lies and doing whatever you want. Not caring who gets hurt in the process.
Just like your dad.
I was out of breath as I neared Micah’s driveway. I steeled myself, urging my heart to stop racing.
I walked slowly up to the front door, took a deep breath, and knocked.
No one answered.
I waited one minute, then three, then five, before I turned around and walked back to my bike. The energy that had been building up in me during the ride over was still all pent-up in my limbs; I could feel it scratching to get out. When I got
back on the bike, I didn’t turn toward home. I kept going, past Micah’s house and toward the woods.
Just like your dad.
But I wasn’t like Dad, was I? He falsely represented the truth, twisting it and bending it to make it into something different. Turning bears into monsters, scaring people for profit. He’d exploited Bone Lake after the meteorite crash, not to get to the bottom of things or to expose any great secret, but to make money. I might have misled Micah, sure, but it wasn’t in service of a lie. I wanted to get to the truth.
I nodded along as these thoughts raced through my mind. But no matter how hard I fought against Reese’s words, I couldn’t shake the feeling that she had a point. Because “misleading” Micah was the same as lying to him, and I was doing it all for my own gain, my own end goal—Northwestern. Was my reason any better than Dad’s?
I didn’t slow my bike until I reached the main driveway of the abandoned plant. Its driveway was cracked, and green weeds pushed up through the asphalt. There was a thin trench in the ground where a large sign bearing the plant’s name used to be. Beyond that, the long, gray building hunched low to the ground, some parts of it hard to see beyond the green saplings that had sprung up around it in the past decade.
The crumbling parking lot was empty, as it had been for years. There was no proof that Dad had come here recently, or even at all. The only reason I had to be here was the single article found in his safe. But it was the only clue I had. And I couldn’t turn back around, pedal back to Dex’s, and wait.
I had to know. I had to. Not just what was going on in Bone Lake, not just what happened to Bryan and Cassidy and that hiker, not just why the FBI were in town and why the sheriff was acting so strange. I had to know why Dad was looking into this story. Why he’d been obsessed with the Visitors in the first place. Why he did the things he did at all.
If we were, at our core, the same.
I had to know.
I texted Dex to tell him I was checking out the plant on my own. I couldn’t wait until tomorrow. This whole thing might lead to nothing, but I walked toward the gray building with purpose, as if I were sure of what I was doing. As if I knew my dad—and all the answers I wanted—were somewhere inside.
Twenty-Three
AFTER SEARCHING EVERY other entrance to the plant, I found a small side door that wasn’t padlocked. I reached for the handle and prepared to pull with all my might but was surprised to find the door swung open easily.
The door led right onto the factory floor, a cavernous space that stretched into shadowy corners too dark for me to see. The vast emptiness of the room threw me off for a moment, though of course the plant’s owners would have sold off any valuable equipment before closing the doors on this place. As I walked slowly across the dusty cement floor, I saw only a few shapes strewn about: some rusted tracks that might have once held a machine in place, corrugated bars of metal lying haphazardly under a window, a rusted beam that looked like it had fallen from the ceiling.
I walked quickly across the large space, moving toward the darkened offices on the other side of the room. Large interior windows opened up into these smaller office areas. I imagined that managers and supervisors used to stand behind those windows, overseeing the giant metal machinery at work on the other side.
I passed through the entrance to a hallway, which had doors on either side providing access to the small offices. I pushed open one door and walked directly into a huge spiderweb, filaments sticking against my cheeks and hair. Shuddering, I backed away.
I only took two more steps down the hallway before I heard it: a small scratching noise, coming from somewhere in front of me. I stood still and held my breath, waiting to hear the noise again. I took out my phone and turned on my flashlight app, swinging it up and around the walls of the hallway, but I couldn’t see anything that might have made any sort of noise. I knew I hadn’t imagined it, though.
After another moment, I heard the scratching noise again. It was definitely coming from the end of the hall. I slowly made my way farther into the darkness, keeping my right shoulder close to the wall and continually looking behind to make sure nothing could sneak up on me.
It’s nothing, I thought.
A small voice in my head responded, or it’s something. The voice sounded something like Dex’s.
Knock it off.
I imagined Dex’s response—Anyone could be hiding in this building. . . . It’s abandoned, the perfect place for someone—or something—to hide.
My heart pounded as I neared the end of the hall, which turned left into another smaller corridor. I swung my phone in that direction in time to see a dark shape shoot across the floor.
I jumped and let out a little yelp, and my phone slipped from my hand, hitting the ground before I could catch it. I quickly snatched it up, holding it out toward the second corridor, where the light flashed a glare into a pair of yellow eyes that were fixed in my direction. I almost screamed again before the eyes blinked, then darted quickly away. I saw a brown-and-black striped tail swish twice and then scurry into darkness.
A raccoon.
“See, I was right,” I said, letting out a relieved sigh. Then I remembered that I hadn’t actually been talking to anyone, and I felt stupid. It was irritating, hearing Dex’s voice in my head. Knowing what he’d say if he were here. But at the same time I suddenly and annoyingly wished for him to be by my side. Arguing with him in real life was much better than arguing with the Dex in my head.
And it would take my mind off my fear.
I walked quickly down the second corridor, flashing my light up all around me. A paper poster was still fixed to the cinder-block walls. On it, stick-figure men carried out proper safety procedures. Those who did it wrong were covered in large red Xs. Eventually, the corridor dead-ended in a metal door. It had no window, just simple blocked words that hadn’t faded even after all this time: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
The lock on the door was broken, and it was slightly ajar.
A familiar feeling rose up in me then—the rush of adrenaline that told me I might be on to something good, a break in the story. Maybe all these open doors were a sign that my dad had already been here. The door opened up onto a metal stairway that was basement-level dark, the kind that prevented you from seeing your own hand in front of your face. Even with my flashlight app, I could only see ten feet in front of me as I moved quickly down the stairs, each step creaking heavily under my feet.
The stairs opened up into another hallway. This one was entirely different from the cinder-block hall upstairs. It didn’t look like it belonged in a plant at all, but maybe in some kind of hospital or sterile facility. The walls of the hallway were smooth and white, and painted black doors were set in them every twenty feet or so. The first door had writing on it—X01. The next door was labeled X02. Without even stopping to look in these rooms, I continued walking until I reached a door on my left—X10.
X10-88. The first part of the number that had been scrawled on Dad’s business card matched the number on this door. That couldn’t be a coincidence. But what did it mean? Had my dad’s notes been referring to this specific room?
I heard a light thumping noise, then, and I turned around, aiming my flashlight at the opposite door, the one labeled X09. The door was closed, and though I waited several seconds, I didn’t hear the noise again. Probably another animal.
Instead, I reached out and pushed open the door of room X10. I put my hand with the flashlight inside first, scanning it around the room, heart tripping in my chest. First one corner, then another, then another—
Nothing.
Or not nothing, but certainly nothing earth-shattering. The windowless room was almost completely empty, except for a small metal table set up against one wall. The wall had blackened scorch marks in places, as if pieces of it had been set on fire. The table pushed against it was about six feet long, and it reminded me almost of the type of examination table you’d see at a doctor’s office . . .
. . . or a morgue.
But that couldn’t be right. . . . What would an examination table be doing at a plastics plant?
I took one step farther into the room, and that’s when I felt it—a rush of air, not quite a breeze, but a movement. Like someone was coming up fast behind me—
And then my phone fell, its light blinking out, and then—
Then—
Then . . .
Twenty-Four
SUNLIGHT BEAMED THROUGH the slits of my half-opened eyes. I blinked, then blinked again. Above me I saw green leaves, an interconnected web of them moving toward and then away from one another in the breeze. I was lying on something hard and cold, and from the dull pain in my neck and shoulders I knew I’d been there for a while. I sat up quickly.
I was on my back porch.
My brain struggled to piece this together. How had I gotten onto the porch? How was it morning already? I searched my mind for the last thing I could remember—going into the plant, finding the door labeled X10, seeing the scorched wall, hearing a noise, and then . . . nothing. Not even any dreams. Just an absence, as if I’d closed my eyes one moment and the next been transported to another place and time entirely. I could still feel the chill of the factory basement on my skin, the remnants of spiderwebs in my hair.
I reached for my phone and saw I had five voice mails and sixteen texts. The texts were all from Dex and Cindy, asking where I was and if I was okay. They got increasingly panicky-sounding as they went on. Three of the voice mails were from Dex, too. One was from my mom. But the last one . . .
The last one was from my dad’s cell.
For a full ten seconds, I just stared at his name on my screen. He’d called just an hour earlier and left a fifteen-second message. With shaking fingers, I held my phone gingerly up to my ear.
“Penelope, it’s Dad.”
My heart thumped so hard it hurt. That was him. It was definitely him. That was his gruff, deep, slightly rushed voice. That was the way he always greeted me when I answered the phone. Penelope, it’s Dad, he always said, as if I wouldn’t have seen his name come up on my screen, as if I wouldn’t know his voice by heart.
The Truth Lies Here Page 18
