Last Girl Lied To

by L. E. Flynn

  My lips twitch into a smile and I let him keep his hand there, resting on my thigh. I push out the fear, the nagging worry that he needs a girl to fixate on and now that’s me, because I’m here and she’s not.

  We park at the sprawling Plaza Río shopping center, because it seems like a good place to start. But as soon as we get out of the vehicle and walk into the open-air mall, I start to think this might have been a really dumb idea. There are about a million people wandering everywhere. Actually, nearly one million, seven hundred thousand—that’s what I read online. That’s how many people live in this city. And we thought we could drive here and just pluck her out of the crowd. I’m dizzy from the heat, from my own stupidity, from the smells, from so many bodies crowded into a small space.

  “She had brown hair,” I say, trying to remember exactly how she looked the night she disappeared. “Light brown, I think. Or maybe it was dark.”

  “But she could have changed that,” Jasper says, brushing his fingers through his own hair. “She could have changed everything.”

  My jaw trembles and I fight back tears. Usually I feel too big to fit in, but here I’m too small, just a speck among throngs of people. Which, ironically, is what I’ve always wanted. I guess when people say be careful what you wish for, they mean it.

  “She mentioned this place for a reason.” He grabs my hand. “So let’s walk around and see what we find.”

  We walk through the mall and Jasper doesn’t let go of my hand, even when ours both become hot and sweaty. We go into every store and then to the bustling food court. We pass each kiosk, checking to see who is working behind the counter. They’re mostly kids our age, pimply-faced and gangly, wearing ugly hats.

  Every time I see a skinny girl with shoulder-length brown hair, I hold my breath. Which is every two seconds, because that’s how common skinny white girls with shoulder-length brown hair are. About as common as the name Sarah Brown. A dime a dozen. And I know she must have done that on purpose.

  We walk laps around the mall until my feet hurt and I’m exhausted. Then we walk all the way down Avenida Revolución, where there are even more people. I try to stare at each face, but there are too many and they’re going by so fast, too fast. Within the first five minutes, we could have passed a hundred Trixies without even knowing it. There are lots of little restaurants along here, places exactly like Cabana Del Shit. Maybe we should have made up posters with her face on them. HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? Maybe I would have, if I had any photos of her left.

  I start to laugh. Not because it’s funny, but because it’s pathetic. The air is getting cold and I wrap my cardigan around my stomach.

  “What?” Jasper says.

  “We should just go home,” I say, shaking my head. “We’re not going to find her here. Not tonight. Maybe not ever. It would take weeks, months, even years, and we still might never find her.” She probably mentioned Tijuana to Jasper to throw him off. Just like she told me she was going to community college and was still seeing Jasper all summer. Just like she told me she thought Beau was a loser. She doesn’t deserve to have people looking for her.

  But Jasper stops moving and stares ahead. I swear, my heart comes to a complete stop and the color drains out of my face and the blood rushes down to my feet, even though I have no idea what he’s looking at, or who.

  “Jasper,” I say, my voice shaking. “Jasper, what’s going on?”

  He holds out his hand slowly, like moving will scare away whatever he’s looking at. There’s a cluster of girls and my eyes dart from face to face to the backs of heads. Blondes and brunettes and one redhead, and they’re all squealing and hovering over something. One of those monkeys on a leash jumps on one girl’s skinny tanned shoulder. I can’t see her face. My breath hitches in my throat as I let myself think this could be Trixie.

  Then the girl turns around, almost like she knows someone is watching her. She looks straight at me and I deflate. She’s not Trixie. The face is all wrong, wide cheeks and thick eyebrows and a dimpled chin.

  I grab Jasper’s wrist. “Not her,” I say, except he’s still staring, not saying a word.

  Finally, I see that he wasn’t looking at the girl at all. He was looking at the guy with the monkey. A shock of blond hair and a lime-green vest, the kind dirt rubs off.

  Byron St. James. The man who saw Trixie die.

  53

  YOU MIGHT ALREADY know this, but Beau was right. Toby did like to hide.

  There was a big football after-party once, when we won against the Hutchings Hailstorms. We didn’t beat them so much as annihilate them, and it was all because of Toby. King Toby, who scored three touchdowns. One of the guys on the football team invited everyone back to his parents’ mansion after. The house looked like a layer cake, people on every tier. People drinking, dancing, swimming in the backyard pool, making out in the hot tub. Everyone was there except the king himself. Jenny, Alison, and I were huddled on a wooden swing, legs sticking together with sweat. As everyone else buzzed about where Toby was, I looked for a different blond head. Beau’s. But he wasn’t there, and unlike his brother, his absence went unnoticed by everyone but me.

  “He said he’d be here,” Gabby whined from her perch on a lounger in front of us. I could tell she was annoyed, and maybe embarrassed, because he wasn’t where he said he would be. She kept pulling out her phone and shoving it back in her purse.

  “What could have happened to him?” Jenny said in a hushed whisper. She wanted a story to tell the next day. “What if he got in a car accident or something? Or had a brain aneurysm? Those can happen to anyone.”

  Alison crossed her arms. “I’m sure he’s fine. Maybe he decided to stay home and sleep. Who knows?”

  An hour or so later, a familiar song started playing on the loudspeakers. “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” which for some reason, Toby considered his own personal anthem. I figured somebody must need a pretty big ego to have their own personal anthem.

  “Toby’s missing his song,” Braden Baker yelled. “Where the hell is that dude?”

  Then the doors to the pool shed burst open and out came Toby, shirtless, with his football number painted in gold on his chest. With his arms up, he proceeded to run the length of the diving board and execute a pretty impressive flip before submerging himself underwater for an extremely long time. We all gathered around the pool, waiting for him to come up. When he did, it was with both fists in the air, like Superman.

  “You should have seen your faces,” he said later, when he was surrounded by people, a towel over his shoulders. “I was here the whole fucking time.”

  Nobody knew why he thought it would be funny to pull that kind of prank. But maybe he didn’t think it was funny at all.

  54

  WE WAIT UNTIL the girls clear away. There’s noise everywhere, but everything has faded, except the sound of my own heartbeat in my ears and Jasper’s breathing, heavy and measured, beside me.

  “I actually don’t believe this,” he mutters, and he sounds scared. Scared of what we’re going to find out. Or what we won’t.

  After the last girl fishes a crumpled bill out of the pocket of her jean shorts and passes it to the guy with the monkey, I step forward. I pull on Jasper’s hand but he doesn’t budge.

  “I don’t think we should talk to him,” he says. “He could be dangerous.”

  “Jasper, he has a monkey on his shoulder. Do you honestly think he’s going to do something to us?”

  “I don’t know. I just have a bad feeling.”

  “I’m not going home without talking to him. Do you have any money? Mom gave me a hundred before she left this weekend, but we might need more. I feel like he’s not going to talk to me unless there’s something in it for him.”

  Jasper is silent, and for a minute I think he’s going to turn around and leave me here. Then he reaches in his coat pocket and retrieves his wallet. “I have a hundred bucks. You can take it. But I think I’ll hang back. I mean, look at me. I’m not exactly approachable.
You look a lot nicer.”

  He has a point. And as terrifying as it is to confront this guy by myself, I need to find out everything I can, even though I have a feeling it will make me hate Trixie more than I already do, that it’ll chip away at any of the good memories I still have left of her.

  Jasper pulls his hood over his head. “I’ll be right here. I won’t let you out of my sight.”

  I take a shaky breath and start following Byron St. James down the sidewalk. He’s facing away from me, walking the other way. I notice he has a swagger, like he’s the most popular guy at school, like he’s strutting down the hallway after football practice, not walking down the street with crumpled bills in his pocket and a sad-looking monkey perched on his shoulder.

  “Excuse me,” I say, but he doesn’t turn around, so I pick up the pace until I’m close enough to realize how badly he smells. Like cigarettes and body odor. Like he hasn’t showered in weeks.

  He spins around, a lopsided smile crossing his face. His teeth are straight but yellowing and I see, up close, that he’s not that much older than me, maybe only a few years. His hair is blond but looks dirty and greasy.

  “You want your picture with the monkey, kid?” he says, and he has a dimple, just like Toby Hunter did. Does.

  “S-sure,” I stammer, and it’s already climbing onto my shoulder, the pads of its feet cool on my skin. I paste on a smile as the guy raises a Polaroid camera and snaps a picture.

  “Good one,” he says. “That’ll be ten bucks.”

  “I recognize you,” I say slowly, handing him a ten-dollar bill. “You’re from Morrison Beach.”

  The smile disappears from his face and his eyes dart around. The monkey jumps back onto his shoulder.

  “Nah. I’ve been here forever. Just ask this little guy.”

  I glance at the monkey, who stares at me with black eyes shiny like marbles.

  “Nice meeting you,” he says, turning to walk the other way, flipping me a casual wave. “Have a nice life, kid.”

  Have a nice life. I wonder if that’s what he said to Trixie, or if she said it to him.

  “How much did she pay you?” I say, following him down the sidewalk. “How much did she pay you to tell people she drowned herself?”

  He stops so fast that the monkey nearly topples off his shoulder. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You were all over the news. Telling everyone what happened. But something just didn’t add up.”

  “Look, kid, you have me mixed up with someone else.” He turns away, pulling his vest closer to his body.

  “A hundred dollars says I don’t,” I yell after him. “Your name is Byron St. James. Just tell me what you know. All I want to do is find her.”

  He hesitates but keeps walking, and I trail him, hoping Jasper is right behind me like he promised he would be.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” I shout. “Whatever you say stays between you and me.”

  “Two hundred,” he says, stopping but still facing away. “Two hundred and I’ll tell you what I know.”

  “Fine. Two hundred. Just—please, I need to know everything.”

  He whips around so fast that I nearly crash into him. “What’s it to you? Why do you want to know so badly? I could just take your money and say whatever I feel like. Did you ever think about that?”

  “But you won’t,” I say, surprised at the steadiness in my voice. “You did what she asked. For some reason, she trusted you. And she barely trusted anyone.”

  He bobs up and down on his heels, then gestures to the other side of the road, where there’s a giant fountain surrounded by people. “Follow me. I’ll need to see the money before I say a word. But I think it’s a waste of two hundred bucks.”

  When we’re seated side by side on the edge of the fountain, I grab the bills from Jasper’s wallet and the one from mine and pass them to the guy. Even though it’s not very warm out anymore, sweat soaks my upper back. This is stupid, a terrible idea. What if a cop sees us? It looks like I’m paying this guy for drugs, something a lot less valuable than what I’m actually paying for.

  “So listen closely,” Byron says, dropping his voice. “I seen this girl come over one night, all skinny and kind of desperate and I figured she was strung out. So when she grabbed me and asked if I wanted to walk down the beach, I thought she wanted to do a deal.”

  The things Trixie did. The ways she used boys and men.

  “Relax,” he says. “We didn’t do nothing. She just told me she needed a favor. I told her favors don’t come cheap. But she had the cash to back it up.”

  Her Cabana Del Shit money. She said she was saving it for school. She was saving it for something else.

  “She told me what to say, so I said it. Went over it with me a million times. Don’t think she trusted that I’d remember.”

  * * *

  I hear what he’s saying but it doesn’t sink in, just sits on the surface of my skin while emotions clash inside me. Anger, sadness, and relief that I was right, that I at least knew her well enough to know she’s not dead. I’m not crazy. I’m not chasing a ghost, longing for a memory. It actually happened. She paid this guy to tell anyone who would listen that she walked into the water and drowned. I was right.

  “Did she tell you why? And where did she go?” My words come out in a tumble, clamoring over each other.

  His eyes crinkle up in the corners. I wonder if this is why Trixie picked him, because when he smiles, he looks a bit like Toby.

  “She didn’t tell me any of that. And no way in hell was I gonna ask. We did a trade. That’s all it was.”

  Of course not, I think. That would be leaving a trail. And Trixie wiped the path clean of crumbs.

  “So she paid you to tell people she drowned herself,” I say. “And she paid you to disappear afterward.”

  “That last part was my idea. It was time to move on. I seen enough shit down by that beach.” He raises a thick eyebrow, making his forehead descend into skinny wrinkles. “Pretty young girl disappears, people care. Nobody gives a shit when I do.”

  “She told you to cut the pay phone cord,” I choke out. “So you couldn’t call for help.”

  He narrows his eyes, looks up. The monkey jumps from his shoulder to his lap. “I didn’t cut no pay phone cord. She did that herself.” He stands up and glances around, like we’re being watched. “Look, we about done here? I’ve told you all there is.”

  I touch my face and realize I’m crying. I didn’t even feel the tears come out of me but here they are, hot and wet on my cheeks. I don’t know what I expected. That he’d magically tell me where she is, that he’d say she left a message for her best friend Fiona, who she knew would come looking for her.

  “Hey,” the guy says, turning back to face me. “She got a fake ID. Maybe even a passport. From the Preacher. Maybe he knows something.” He pauses. “But I doubt it.”

  “The Preacher,” I echo. “I’ve never even heard of him.”

  “He wants it that way,” he says. “That guy knows how to hide in plain sight.”

  I close my eyes and clench the cold stone of the fountain with my hands. I count backward from ten. From last summer. From that hot September day.

  By the time I open my eyes, he’s gone.

  55

  I DIDN’T FIND out that you quit working at Cabana Del Shit because you told me. I probably never would have known the truth if I hadn’t shown up one day to surprise you.

  It was pretty dead inside, which was both surprising and not. Every time I went there to meet Trixie, I was one of the only customers. But when I wasn’t around, Trixie would text me to complain about how busy it was and how badly she needed a break. That day, there were only two other customers, a couple of guys in their twenties who glanced at me and quickly looked away.

  I walked up to the bar. Skylar was perched on a barstool, poring over a magazine. She didn’t even bat an eye when I sat down a few stools away. Finally, I asked her if she knew where Trixie w
as.

  She flipped to another page in her magazine before looking up. She rolled her eyes, like she was sick of answering that question. Maybe she had a right to be.

  “Trixie?” She started laughing, a slow chuckle, the same kind of sound Mom made when she was exasperated with me. No wonder Trixie hated her.

  “Yeah, Trixie,” I said, annoyed. “She’s a dishwasher. Can you get her for me?”

  Skylar rolled her eyes again and stretched her fingers out on the bar. I noticed the rings right away. She had one on each finger, chunky silver with designs and little turquoise stones. Those rings looked too familiar.

  “I know who she is,” she snapped. “But no, I can’t get her for you. Because she doesn’t work here anymore.”

  I fingered the fabric of my skirt and leaned against the bar. My upper arm stuck to its surface.

  “What do you mean, she doesn’t work here anymore? She was working the lunch shift today. She texted me from here an hour ago.”

  Skylar shook her head and her bangs fell into her eyes. Her lips twisted into a smile and I could tell she was enjoying this, whatever this was.

  “I hate to say it, but your friend must have lied to you. Because she quit a month ago. Gave her two weeks’ notice and when her last shift was done, she left without saying goodbye. Just took her last paycheck and walked out. I haven’t seen her since.”

  I didn’t say anything else. We sat there, with only the sounds of Skylar flipping magazine pages and the hum of the air conditioner and the low voices of the two guys sitting in a booth.

  When I stood up to leave, Skylar stood up too and slunk behind the bar, where she started pouring a beer. That was when I realized why her rings looked familiar.

  Because they were Trixie’s.

  “Did you take those rings?” I almost yelled. “They’re exactly like the ones she wears.”

  Skylar stared at me with that stupid arched eyebrow. “I didn’t take them. Trixie gave them to me. She knew I liked them, and on her last day, there they were in my cubby. I guess she didn’t want them anymore.”