Far From You

by Tess Sharpe

  But when I pull my front door open, Kyle is standing on my porch.

  “What are you doing here?” I want to push past him, get him out of my way, out of my sight.

  What had Rachel found? Why isn’t she calling me back?

  “I want to talk to you,” Kyle says.

  “Now is really not a good time.” I step outside, lock the door behind me, and head down the porch stairs.

  “You ambush me twice, and now you don’t have five minutes?” He follows me down the driveway, so close it makes the back of my neck flush with anger.

  “You lied to the police, sabotaged a murder investigation, and got me locked up in rehab—all because you were jealous. Forgive me if I’m still pissed at you.”

  I open the car door and he slams it shut, making me jump. I look up, and for the first time, I see the circles under his bloodshot eyes.

  I remember what Adam had said about Kyle crying the night before Mina died. How thick Kyle’s voice had gotten when he’d revealed that she’d told him the truth.

  He had loved her. It made me queasy, but I didn’t doubt it. And I understood too well the frustration, the evisceration, of loving and losing her.

  “I have to go. If you want to talk, get in,” I say, against my better judgment. “If not, get out of my way.”

  He glances at my purse. “You’re not gonna spray me in the face with that bear repellent, right?”

  “In or out, Kyle. I don’t care.” I climb in the car, turning the key. He sprints to the other side and opens the door, throwing himself in as I hit the gas. “Put on your seat belt.” It’s an automatic order that’s given to anyone who gets in my car. Trev does it, too, a tic that neither of us can break.

  After a few minutes of silence, Kyle’s leg jiggling up and down, I roll my eyes and switch the radio on. “You choose,” I say.

  He turns the dial as I speed down the street, heading toward Old 99, east of town.

  “So where are we going?” he asks, settling the radio on the new country station and looking out the window.

  “I have to meet someone. You’ll stay in the car.”

  Kyle rolls his eyes.

  “You gonna tell me what you want?” I pass an old lady in a Cadillac crawling twenty miles below the speed limit and press harder on the gas as we turn down Main to get to the on-ramp. We pass the old brick building City Hall’s been in since the town was founded back in the gold rush days. Hanging over the entryway there’s a banner advertising the upcoming Strawberry Festival. Mina used to make me go, play those stupid rigged carnival games, eat way too much shortcake.

  “I really didn’t mean to get you in trouble,” Kyle says.

  “If you’re gonna lie to me, you might not want to do it to my face.”

  “Okay, I did want to get you in trouble,” Kyle admits. “But that was only when I thought you were already in trouble. I wouldn’t have done it if knew you were being set up. I think I screwed up. Because…if it wasn’t about drugs, that means it was something else, right?”

  “Duh.”

  I turn onto the highway. This time of year, Old 99 is a gray line cutting through a sea of yellowed grass and barbed wire fences, speckled with the dark green of scrub oaks. Cows dot the fields, dirt roads branch off the highway, tumbledown barns and ranches are set away from the cars’ searching headlights. It’s peaceful. Time seems to move slower.

  I know how deceptive that can be.

  “And it wasn’t a mugging,” Kyle continues. “I know he took your purses and stuff, but if it was a mugging, why would he shoot just one of you? Why would he shoot anyone, if he got what he wanted? Why wouldn’t he take the car? Why would he leave you alive? Why would he plant drugs?”

  He’s really been thinking about this. I wonder if the circles under his eyes are a result of staying up too late to page through articles about Mina’s death. If he has a copy of the police report, like I do. If he has it memorized yet.

  I have to stop myself from rolling my eyes. “That’s what I’ve been saying for months. But, weirdly, people haven’t been listening to me.”

  “I told you I screwed up,” Kyle says quietly. “I apologized. I explained why.”

  “It’s not that easy,” I say. “You helped derail the entire police investigation. You helped lock me up in rehab, where I got to sit and think about how Mina’s killer was walking around free and clear, with nobody looking for him. An apology can’t change any of that. We’re not in first grade anymore. Admitting you screwed up is not going to fix it or catch the killer. So all I can do now is pick up the pieces and try to put them together myself.”

  “I want to help.”

  A squirrel dashes out onto the road, and I jerk the wheel to avoid it, overcorrecting into the next lane. For a horrible second, I think I’m going to lose control of the car and crash.

  “Shit, Sophie.” Kyle’s hand is on the wheel, and he’s half leaning over me, pulling the car off the road, onto the shoulder as I bring the car to a shaky stop.

  I whimper, bite at the inside of my mouth, trying to get my lips to stop trembling as I twist the key and the engine shuts off. I suck air in through my nose.

  “Hey.” Kyle frowns and pats my shoulder clumsily. Weirdly, it makes me feel better. “We’re okay. It’s fine.”

  I’m gripping the wheel so hard my knuckles are white. My lungs are tight; my heart hammers inside my chest. I’m not getting enough air. I want to sag against the wheel, press my face against the cool glass of the window, but I can’t do that in front of him. I won’t. So I just focus on breathing. In and out. In and out.

  When I’ve finally gotten myself back to normal, Kyle asks quietly, “Should I drive?”

  In and out. In and out. Two more deep breaths, and I release my death grip on the wheel. “I’m fine,” I say.

  I turn the engine back on and push on the gas, kicking up dirt clouds as I turn back onto the road.

  In and out.

  In and out.

  36

  SEVEN MONTHS AGO (SIXTEEN YEARS OLD)

  All week, I look forward to my call to Mina. I’m only allowed to have two nonparental calls a week. It sucks, but I’m following Aunt Macy’s rules. So when Trev’s number appears on my phone instead of Mina’s, I feel a flash of disappointment.

  “Hey,” I say, trying to sound cheery. “Aren’t you busy with school?”

  “I needed a break. And I wanted to see how you are; it’s been a while.”

  Months, in fact. “Things are good,” I say as I pick at the quilt spread across my bed. It has hand-tied squares, and I like to twirl the strands of silky embroidery floss between my fingers.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, you know, therapy, admitting my mistakes, my failings, basically examining all the bad parts of me. It’s been a ball.”

  “Sounds like it. What about the pain? Is it…Are you handling it?”

  “It hurts,” I say. “All the time.”

  I can hear his intake of breath over the phone, ragged and too quick, and I wonder if I’ve been too honest with him. If he still blames himself for all this.

  Of course he does. Trev wouldn’t know what to do if loving me wasn’t wrapped up with some form of guilt.

  He and Mina have that in common.

  “I’ve been worried about you,” he says.

  “I know.” I lie back on my bed, sink into the safety of my pillows as I cradle the phone against my cheek. “I’ll be okay.”

  “Mina misses you.”

  “I miss her.” Can he hear it? The truth in those three little words?

  “Do you know when you’ll be home?”

  “Probably not for another few months. It’s hard, adjusting to no pain meds. I don’t want to…” I stop.

  “What?” Trev asks.


  “I just—I can’t. Not right now.” I know he doesn’t get what I’m talking about. How much it hurts. How hard it’s been. How I’ve been forced to look at the worst parts of myself. The ugliness on the surface is nothing compared to what’s inside me.

  I am not the same. I’ve gone hollow, scooped my insides out. The constant fear that it’s too late, that I’ll mess it up, slip back down into that hole, no way out, gnaws at me. I understand now how weak I am.

  “I’ll get better. I’m getting these cortisone shots in my back that help, and believe it or not, I’m doing yoga, and I actually like it.”

  “Yoga?” he asks. Something eases inside me, hearing the laughter in his voice. “I’d think that’d be a little slow for you.”

  “Things change, I guess.”

  “Guess so.”

  Another pause. I stare up at my ceiling, at the glow-in-the-dark stars Macy stuck up there. “Is Mina there?” I ask. “She was supposed to call.”

  “I know,” Trev says. “She asked me to call and tell you she’ll talk to you on Tuesday. She’s all distracted. Mom and I are officially meeting this new boyfriend of hers.”

  Cold shock spears through me. I sit straight up, so fast that my back flares painfully in protest. “Boyfriend?”

  “Didn’t she tell you? Of course she didn’t. Mina and her secrets.” Trev’s words are full of fondness. “He’s that blond one who follows her around like a puppy. Kyle.”

  “Kyle Miller,” I croak. I think I’m going to be sick. I almost drop the phone, but force myself to keep listening.

  She never said anything. This entire time, all these months, I’d been thinking…

  Oh God. This is Jason Kemp all over again. But it’s so much worse this time.

  “Yeah, that’s it. Is he still a good guy? Or am I gonna have to scare him off?”

  “Um…” What do I say? He’s a man-whore. The biggest asshole in the world. A chronic cheater…any wild lie to get him away from her.

  “Soph?”

  “He…he’s okay, I guess,” I stutter. “Kind of a jock. He’s always had a crush on her. I guess she’s decided to finally give him a chance.”

  Macy knocks on my open door, peering in. She taps her watch, and I nod to show I’m finishing up. “I have to go,” I blurt out. My eyes burn. Any second I’ll start crying, and I’m desperate to hang up before he catches on. “Trev…does she seem happy?”

  “Yeah,” he says, unaware what that one word does to me.

  “Good, that’s—good. Anyway, I should go. Thanks for calling.”

  “I’ll call again,” he says. “And I’ll see you when you get home.”

  “Of course.”

  I never want to go home now. I want to stay here forever. Hide from what’s waiting. I’m so angry and hurt, the memory of her touch still fresh on my skin after all this time. I don’t even know what to do. I put my phone away and sit on my bed.

  I want to use.

  The thought slips through me, tantalizing, kissing across my body. It beckons me. Just one more time. It’d feel so good, it’d make you forget, it’d make it better. And I want to so badly.

  Three months. One week. One day.

  I can’t.

  I won’t.

  But, oh, do I want to.

  37

  NOW (JUNE)

  “Are you really gonna make me stay in the car?” Kyle asks as we drive down the dirt road leading to Rachel’s house. I park behind her mud-spattered Chevy and get out, trying to ignore how my legs are still shaking.

  “No,” I say reluctantly. “Come on.”

  He follows me up the porch steps, and I knock hard on the door. The impatience that I’ve kept at bay leaps to life again.

  What has she found?

  Rachel doesn’t answer, but I hear the rumble of an engine in the distance, so Kyle and I walk around the house to the back field. The dogs are lying on the deck, panting in the heat. Rachel’s riding an ancient mower, cutting swathes of long, summer-bleached grass in the yard. She waves when she spots us, cutting the engine and hopping off, walking toward us.

  “Who’s this?” she asks when she gets close to the porch.

  “Kyle.”

  Rachel raises an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

  “I think he’s on our side now,” I say.

  “That’s right,” Kyle says. “Hi.” He holds his hand out to her, and she takes it, frowning.

  “You’re gonna have to fill me in later, Sophie,” she says.

  “Will do,” I say, trying to conceal my impatience. “Now what did you find out?”

  Rachel wipes her forehead, clearing the sweat beading at her temples. “Come inside. I’ve got it all set up. It’s better if you see it.”

  She leads us into her living room, where she’s got a laptop sitting on the wagon-wheel coffee table. She clicks and taps for a few seconds, then flips the switch of the projector she’s got rigged next to it. On the wall opposite us, her desktop appears.

  “I’ve got to say, your girl? She was thorough.” Rachel clicks on a file labeled TL, and my eyes widen as the first thing I see is: September 28: Jackie Dennings disappears while jogging on Clear Creek Road (approx. 6PM). Mother calls police when she doesn’t return by dinner (approx. 8PM). Police recover pink sweater at the side of Clear Creek Road (approx. 9PM).

  I scan the rest of the page.

  It’s a time line.

  My chest is tight with triumph. I’d been right. Mina chasing after a story got her killed.

  “What is this?” Kyle asks.

  “They’re Mina’s notes,” I say as Rachel clicks on the arrow, revealing another date on Mina’s time line: ­September 30: ­Matthew Clarke (Jackie’s boyfriend) is brought in for questioning. “This is the real reason we were out at Booker’s Point. Rachel, are all the files on the drive about Jackie Dennings?”

  “Yeah.” Rachel minimizes the time line and brings up more files, newspaper articles, their headlines blaring Community Searches for Missing Girl; Six Weeks, No Sign of Local Girl; and Two Years Later, Dennings’ ­Disappearance Still a Mystery.

  “Fuck,” Kyle says.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Last year, Mina asked me to get my brother to give her Amy Dennings’s phone number. Tanner and Amy are friends.”

  “Jackie’s little sister?” I ask.

  Kyle nods. “You remember when Jackie disappeared? We’d just started freshman year. There were all those vigils.”

  “Trev was upset,” I say. “He and Jackie were in the same class.”

  I look at the article Rachel’s projector beams onto the wall. Jackie Dennings’s face smiles at me, her straight blond hair brushing her shoulders, blue eyes full of warmth.

  What had Mina found that made her chase after this so recklessly?

  “What else do the notes say?” I ask Rachel.

  “Jackie Dennings has been missing for almost three years,” Rachel says. “They never found any trace of her. No sightings. She’s just…gone. I don’t mean to sound all dire or anything, but she’s almost definitely dead. And Mina thought so, too.” Rachel taps on the keyboard for a few seconds, and the newspaper articles disappear, replaced with a map of the county. There’s a big circle drawn around the northwest corner, and when I look closer, I see that right at the center of the circle is Clear Creek Road, where Jackie disappeared.

  “Was she looking for places where Jackie’s body might be?” I ask, feeling sick to my stomach.

  “Well, yeah,” Rachel says. “I mean, I don’t know if she was going off in the woods with a shovel, but she mapped it out. Estimated how far whoever took Jackie would be able to get before the police put up roadblocks. Mina’s theory was that Jackie got abducted on Clear Creek Road and then taken to a second locati
on, killed there, and dumped.”

  “West of town, he had half the Trinities to choose from.” I shake my head.

  “And the lake’s only ten miles away,” Rachel says. “The ideal place to dump a body. No one’s gonna be finding it.”

  “So you’re saying that whoever took and probably killed Jackie Dennings three years ago killed Mina, too?” Kyle asks.

  “Well, if she was meeting someone for a story, it was most certainly this story,” Rachel says. “And she was interviewing people connected to the case. There are three audio files of her interviewing Jackie’s family members and the boyfriend. That’s probably why she wanted Amy’s number from you, Kyle. Amy’s interview is on the thumb drive.”

  My breath catches in my throat and something twists inside me, a weird mix of dread and wonder. “There’s…her voice…It’s Mina talking?” I ask.

  Rachel reaches over and squeezes my hand. “Do you want me to play them?”

  A sickening heat floods me, half want, half protest.

  I’m not ready.

  “No,” I say quickly. “No. Please. Don’t.”

  There’s an exhalation of breath behind me, a relieved sigh from Kyle.

  “She had a lot of material,” Rachel says. “I swear she saved every article ever written about Jackie. And her suspect list is so detailed—she was good at this.”

  “Too good,” I say. “She got too close. She was gonna figure it out. And he stopped her so she wouldn’t tell.”

  “There’s one thing,” Rachel says. “I think the killer tried to warn her. Tried to get her to back off.”

  “What?” Kyle and I say at the same time.

  “Seriously, look.” Rachel brings forward Mina’s time line again, paging forward. “The time line’s huge; it spans years. The most recent entry is December, just a few months before Mina was killed. Look at what it says.”

  December 5: Warning note received. Sender’s been tipped off (Accidentally? On purpose?)