Last Girl Lied To

by L. E. Flynn

  I wondered who the liar was. Maybe Skylar stole them. But then I remembered the week before, when Trixie lugged two garbage bags of her clothes to Goodwill and gave me a bunch of old picture frames with nothing in them.

  She called it “decluttering.”

  But now I call it disappearing.

  56

  I WAIT UNTIL Jasper finds me at the fountain, until my butt is numb from sitting on the granite.

  “What did he say?” Jasper puts his hands on my shoulders, digs his thumbs in. “Did he know anything?”

  I wipe a tear off my cheek. I’m mad at myself for even caring. “No. Just what I already knew. That I was right. She paid him to say what she wanted him to say, and he didn’t ask questions.”

  Jasper sits down wordlessly, wraps his arm around me, tucks my head under his chin, like we’re boyfriend and girlfriend and this is just another Friday night.

  “She might have gotten a fake ID from someone named the Preacher,” I say. “Maybe even a passport. She could have left the country, Jasper. Maybe she’s across the world. The only way to know is to find this Preacher guy.”

  “Let’s talk about it later,” he says, planting a tiny kiss on top of my head. “We at least know she’s out there somewhere. That’s something.”

  But he doesn’t sound so sure that it’s something, and I’m not either. Now that I know, now that what I suspected is the truth, I need to know more. I need to know everything.

  I call Mom from the car and tell her I’m fine, that I’m already in my pajamas, about to go to bed. I know she’ll never notice the long-distance charge because our cell phone bills are paid automatically from her credit card each month. “I love you,” Mom says, and even though she says it casually, like it’s an afterthought, it makes me want to cry all over again.

  “I love you too,” I say, fighting the urge to tell her everything.

  I start to fade on the drive and pinch my knees to stay awake. It feels too hot in the car, almost suffocating. The traffic is heavy and I want to get out of here, but I also don’t want to go home and just give up if she could still be here.

  “Let’s stay here,” Jasper suddenly says. “We can look again tomorrow. We barely looked anywhere tonight. We’ll stop somewhere and get a room for the night and look around again in the morning. I really feel like she’s here.”

  I don’t, I want to say, but I’m too tired to argue so I just nod instead. When we see the neon lights for a shitty motel glowing in the distance, I pull into the parking lot, my eyes burning. My whole body aches and my heart is a deadweight, like it has been wrapped in a wet blanket and is sucking up all the energy I ever had.

  We scrounge together enough money in small bills from our collective wallets to pay for the room, but the stern-looking motel owner says he needs to see ID because he doesn’t believe we’re eighteen. Which we’re not, but I didn’t think it would matter here, in a city people come to when they want to disappear into somebody else. Then I reach into my purse and dig around at the bottom, where crumbs and change have fallen, and pluck out what I’m looking for, what I tossed in just in case I ever needed it.

  “Here you go.”

  The motel owner raises a bushy white eyebrow and looks from Beth Winchester’s face to mine and back again. Finally, he pushes a room key across the desk.

  “Enjoy your stay, Miss Winchester,” he mumbles, like he can tell something is off but doesn’t have the energy to call me on it.

  “Miss Winchester?” Jasper whispers when we’re walking to the room.

  “It’s the ID Trixie got for me. I just thought it might come in handy sometime.”

  I’m relieved when there are two double beds, both with ugly floral covers and pink pillowcases. I kick off my shoes and the carpet under my feet is rough and prickly. I collapse on one of the beds, wanting this day to go away, wanting to sleep forever and wake up when it’s over, when this is all a bad dream. I bury my face in one of the musty pillows.

  “I’ll go get us some food,” Jasper says.

  I must drift off, because suddenly he’s prodding my shoulder and I don’t know what day it is or what time it is or what I’m even doing here. I flip onto my back and Jasper pushes the hair off my forehead with a featherlight touch. “I got us dinner,” he says. “You have your choice of Sno Balls, Cheez-Its, or Doritos. We can wash it down with delicious tap water.”

  He’s trying to be funny, but all I want to do is cry because it sounds exactly like something Trixie would say. I couldn’t decide, so I got us hot dogs, fries, and one of those giant onion ring things you like so much. Oh, and I never forget your chocolate.

  I bring my arms up to my face to cover my blotchy skin. I’m embarrassed that I’m this close to crying again, ashamed that I can’t seem to hold it together anymore. But Jasper stretches out beside me, presses the length of his body to mine, takes my hand in his.

  “It’s okay to be upset,” he says. “I think we were both hoping we’d find her. But we’re trying.”

  “I just don’t understand why she did it,” I say, my voice coming out scratchy and weak. “Why she needed so badly to get out of her life.” Why she needed so badly to have Beau. Why she needed so badly to ruin everything I used to like about myself. There’s more I could say. More about Toby, about his role in all this. But Beau trusted me with that, and as angry as I am at him, I won’t betray him by telling Jasper everything he told me the day my world bottomed out in his kitchen.

  Jasper runs his finger down my arm, making little circles. “The way I see it,” he whispers in my ear, “if life were that easy, everyone would be in it.”

  I stiffen because it’s either the most bizarre thing I have ever heard, or else the most accurate. Maybe people are right about Jasper. He’s strange, it’s true. But he’s more than that to me, and right now we’re sharing something nobody else can possibly be feeling, something that’s only ours. I roll over to face him and trace the outline of his jaw, the shell-like shape of his ear, the soft-dry texture of his hair between my fingers. He responds by pressing his thumb into the middle of my bottom lip and kissing me there as gently as the beat of a butterfly wing. He hovers there, not going any further, until I part my lips and let him kiss me harder and his tongue is in my mouth and his hand cups the side of my face.

  I keep my eyes shut as he presses me onto my back, as the hand that’s not on my face travels to my heart and a finger trails down my stomach, to the fly of my jeans. I feel him hard against me and think how he isn’t faking that, how he wants me and he’s completely sober and completely here, in this moment. I let him wiggle my jeans down even though the denim burns my skin like sandpaper. It would be so easy to reach over and flip off the lamp and be alone in the dark together. So easy for the layers of clothing between us to come off, for us to come together and get rid of our aching loneliness, just for one night, just for one minute.

  “Turn off the light,” I choke out. He does it without asking why, and I’m not about to tell him. Because the dark makes it all go away.

  Jasper’s fingers move into my jeans and press against the outside of my underwear, rubbing against the cotton, and I try to hold off my fear long enough for it to feel good. But I can’t let it go, not when it’s clenched up in every single part of me, trapped like a wild animal in a cage. I pull away abruptly.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, breathing heavily. “I can’t do this.”

  Jasper presses his forehead against mine and his skin feels hot, charged.

  “It’s okay,” he whispers. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

  “I’m just not ready,” I say, lying down on my side, a new wave of guilt bubbling up like a rash because if he thinks that’s the truth, he might understand. I wait for him to get up and want space, but instead, he curls up around me and doesn’t recoil or pull back when I don’t fit neatly in his arms.

  When he starts snoring lightly, I know he has drifted off. The sound of his snoring comforts me, for some reason, and then
I wonder if Trixie ever heard it, if she ever spent a night actually sleeping with Jasper, if she ever got to know that about him. I wonder how she managed to have sex with him when she was so in love with Toby and knew he was still out there somewhere.

  That’s when I sit up in bed so fast that my head spins.

  Trixie started changing right after graduation. I can pinpoint the day she dyed her hair brown. That was when everything became different. And Jasper said he didn’t see her all summer. That she blew him off without any real excuse.

  That must have been when Toby came back to life, or back to her life.

  And when she decided her life as she knew it had to be over.

  57

  AT FIRST, YOU and I didn’t talk much about the future. I held on to each memory of you like somebody hanging off a cliff and gripping a rope tightly, not letting myself slip down any lower for fear there wouldn’t be anything left to cling on to. But the more time we spent together, the more we became a pair.

  “We can share a dorm room,” Trixie had said, licking ketchup off her fingers. “You’ll major in something to do with fashion and I’ll figure out what to do with my life and we’ll have our own minibar.”

  I pictured myself in New York, where nobody would know anything about me. A fresh start, where I wouldn’t have to see Jenny and Beau in the halls or hear Mom’s unsolicited opinions about my choice of friends. I lusted for freedom just thinking about it.

  We talked about New York a lot after that. The plan was that Trixie would do a year of community college first. She would keep working at Cabana Del Shit and make some extra money. That way, we could be freshmen together. We even talked about opening our own boutique eventually. I’d buy and remake clothes and she would balance the books.

  “In New York, we’ll paint one wall yellow and the other bright blue,” she said. “We’ll have a whole closet full of black clothes. And a beret. I want to wear a beret.”

  It became almost like a game. In New York, we’ll do this. In New York, this will happen.

  “In New York, I’ll fall in love in Central Park,” I said a week after her graduation, when we were sprawled on my bed watching Lost on my laptop.

  It was her turn to say something, but she didn’t. She just rolled onto her back and closed her eyes.

  I tried again later, when we ordered dinner and she wouldn’t stop staring at her phone. She never used to care about her phone when we were together, so it pissed me off that all of a sudden she was glued to it, just like Jenny always was, like I wasn’t worth her time.

  “In New York, I can intern at a fashion magazine, like in The Hills,” I said loudly. “And you can start working on a novel or something. We’ll meet for long lunches and drink too much wine.”

  That time, she blew her bangs out of her face. The bangs were new, and I could tell she hated them because she was always pulling them off her forehead with bobby pins.

  “Can we talk about something else?” she said. “I mean, who knows what will happen, right?”

  It stung like she had slapped me, but I just nodded and finished the last piece of pizza. When I was done with that, I ate the crusts she left.

  That was the last time we ever talked about New York. If I had known it would be the last time, I probably would have said what I wanted to say:

  What do you think will happen instead?

  58

  WE SPEND THE next day searching different parts of Tijuana. The Playas de Tijuana beach community and all the way to Plaza Carrousel. We share the streets with millions of people, thousands of possible Trixies. My eyes hurt from darting in every direction, hoping I’ll lock eyes with her. My brain hurts from conjuring up what I would possibly say to her. How could you do that to me? You ruined everything. You were never my sister.

  By the end of the afternoon, I’m red from the sun and more frustrated than I ever thought possible. It’s like this whole trip made finding Trixie an even more distant prospect than it was before we left. It’s a reminder of how huge everything is and how small she would be in it.

  Jasper’s hand is on my leg the entire car ride home. It’s like after last night, he has decided he’s moving on and I’m the one he’ll be moving on with. That it’s only a matter of time before we fall in love with each other. Terror spikes in my chest at the idea that he’s already in love with me, that he has replaced Trixie with me. There’s no way I can fill that void. Trixie left an imprint, an empty space with a jagged outline that only her sharp edges could fill.

  When I drop him off at his house, he presses his thumb into my lip again, and I try to corner the thought out of my head that he ever did the same thing to Trixie.

  “Sorry we didn’t find her,” he says. “But at least we can say we tried. We did everything we could.” He doesn’t mention trying to find the Preacher, so I don’t either.

  I have the house to myself for another day and I spend most of it in my bed, tossing and turning, spinning out of bad dreams. I open my bottom drawer and shovel a chocolate bar in my mouth, chewing without tasting it, because I know I don’t deserve to enjoy it. Then I sit down at my desk and open a file that I had almost forgotten about. My NYU application, which I completed months ago. Now I wish I could answer those long-answer questions differently. Describe an experience that has impacted who you are as a person. What is special, unique, distinctive, or impressive about you or your life story?

  It’s hard to separate anything from Trixie. Her friendship altered me, made me change shape in more ways than I ever knew was possible. Her voice is in my head. She’s under my skin, a tattoo nobody else can see.

  I wonder if I left a mark on her, or if I was like an article of clothing that got too big and became easy to step out of.

  Tell us why you think you’re a good candidate for New York University.

  Because it’s not here I want to write over my actual canned bullshit. Because it’s a promise, and I keep my promises. Except the promise I made to myself halfway through the summer: I promise I’ll be skinny when school starts. I had thrown away all of my chocolate and pulled out my patchwork jeans, picturing how I’d look in them when school started. I’d make clothes again. I’d dress up even if I wasn’t leaving the house. I thought I felt good enough to try the jeans on. I only had them around my ankles when I glimpsed myself in the mirror, red-faced and sweaty, and knew I couldn’t handle pulling them up any farther. I threw the pants in the garbage and grabbed my keys.

  With the car idling in the driveway, I went back up to my room and picked up my sewing machine. Mom had bought it for me for my fifteenth birthday, and I used to love it. But that day, it was a symbol of my failure, a reminder that I’d never be the same again.

  I left the sewing machine at Goodwill, drove to the convenience store, and bought chocolate everything.

  I’ll try again tomorrow, I told myself that night.

  It was a promise I still don’t know how to keep.

  59

  I GO AND talk to Dr. Rosenthal two more times, at Mom’s insistence. I don’t actually dread seeing him as much as I thought I would. It’s kind of like looking at myself in a fun-house mirror, except, instead of the reflection being distorted, it doesn’t look as bad as I thought it would.

  During our last session—two weeks after Jasper and I get back from Tijuana—he says something that sticks. “You might need to get closure from what happened with your friend Trixie before you can mentally move on.”

  He’s only partially right. Of course, he thinks he’s talking about how I need to move on from my friend’s suicide. He doesn’t have any idea that the same friend faked her own death and also had sex with the boy she knew I loved.

  I need to move on mentally, but also in other ways. Physically, I’ve started doing little things to distance myself from who I was with Trixie, like blow-drying my hair instead of letting it air dry how she liked, and wearing generic clothes from the mall, not ones I made that she thought were “totally awesome.” I’m in a non-
relationship with her not-really-ex, which started as my warped way of getting back at her but might be turning into something else. Changing my mind is the hardest part. In my mind, I still want to find her. Maybe that’s the only way I’ll find Dr. Rosenthal’s hallowed “closure.”

  The problem is, I have no trail, only a frayed end in the form of the Preacher. But when I tell Jasper I think we should try to find him, he just lets out the world’s longest breath.

  “We’ve already been to the beach,” he says. “I don’t really feel like going back there and asking a bunch of probable drug dealers if they know someone named the Preacher.”

  He has a point. Maybe it’s dangerous and stupid, but it’s the one lead we have. He got Trixie her fake ID, her passport. He might remember what name she used, when she left, what she said.

  “I know this might sound crazy, but I think it all ties in to Toby Hunter somehow,” I say. “What if he came back?”

  Jasper doesn’t even blink, and that’s how I know he’ll probably never believe me about Toby. I should drop it because I’m dangerously close to spilling the details Beau trusted me with, but instead I try harder to convince him.

  “Just hear me out, okay? He came back. She was writing to someone on her phone, and if it wasn’t you, it must have been him. What if he was giving her some sort of directions? Telling her where he was? What if he never actually came back in person?”

  Jasper stares at his knuckles. “That’s reaching. Trixie was a really visual person. She only believed in something if it was right in front of her face. Once, I told her it was impossible to sneeze without closing your eyes. She made me do it in front of her before she agreed.”

  “I was thinking it might be a good idea to check her computer. See if she saved anything on there.”

  Jasper crosses his arms. “We’ve already established that she got rid of everything. You told me she dumped all her things at Goodwill, and she deleted her Facebook account ages ago. So I’d be surprised if she left a convenient trail of emails for us.”