by Tess Sharpe
December 20: Note #2 received. Going to lie low for a while. Just to be safe.
I’m paralyzed for a moment with anger, consumed by it.
Why did she have to be so secretive all the time? She should’ve known better. Should’ve known she wasn’t invulnerable. I hate her for being so reckless. For not bothering to think about all of us, left in her wake.
“That’s what the killer meant,” I whisper. “That night. He said ‘I warned you’ before he shot her.”
“She was getting threatening notes and she didn’t tell us?” Kyle looks bewildered. “She would’ve told the police,” he adds, but he sounds uncertain, because deep down he knows he’s wrong. He’s trying to hide, to forget, what she was really like. How she’d existed half in this world and half in her own, and how when she’d break the rules, it’d be so beautiful to be a part of it that you’d play along, follow her anywhere, just to bask in her glow. “Or Trev?” he suggests, when Rachel and I say nothing. “Maybe she told Trev?”
“If she had told Trev she was being threatened, trust me, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion,” I say. “She’d be alive right now. Because Trev would’ve locked her in her room and called the cops. That’s why she didn’t tell him. That’s why she didn’t tell anyone.”
Kyle looks out the window at nothing as Rachel bites her lip, her gaze flitting back and forth between the two of us.
“She wouldn’t have gone out there that night if she thought she was meeting the person who sent those notes, though,” Kyle says, breaking the uncomfortable lull. This time, there’s no uncertainty in his voice.
“Are you sure about that?” Rachel asks, and she’s looking more at me than Kyle.
I almost shrug, but Kyle beats me to it. “No,” he says firmly. “Not with Sophie there. If she thought it would be dangerous, she would’ve come up with an excuse to leave Sophie at home.”
“She didn’t treat me—”
“You don’t know how much she worried about you relapsing—she always talked to me about it. She wouldn’t have put you in danger.”
Heat crawls along my cheeks, and the silence goes on too long, until Rachel clears her throat.
“So that means it was someone she didn’t suspect,” I say.
“It means more than that,” Kyle says. “It means it was someone she trusted.”
Kyle’s right, of course. It makes me sick that she just walked into it. That the killer gained her trust, manipulated her into meeting him out there, and she’d gone, because she had that hunger to know.
“There aren’t any scans or photos of the warning notes she got?” I ask.
Rachel shakes her head. “No. She would’ve kept them, though, right?”
“Definitely,” I say.
“But the police searched her room,” Kyle says.
“Not very well—I found the thumb drive under the floorboards.”
“We should go through it again, then,” Kyle says.
“I can’t really do that,” I say, taking a breath.
“Why not?” Kyle asks.
“Trev,” Rachel answers, when it becomes apparent that I won’t.
“Oh, yeah,” Kyle says, and he has the grace to look guilty. “He’s really pissed at you. I’ll go talk to him. I’ll explain everything. Tell him I lied, that it wasn’t your fault you guys were at the Point. Don’t worry. Trev’s totally whipped over you—he’ll forgive you.”
I firmly ignore the last thing because I hate thinking about it, and instead I look up at Kyle. “If you tell Trev the truth, he’ll kick your ass.”
“I can take care of myself,” Kyle mutters.
“It’s not a good idea,” I say hastily, more for Trev’s sake than Kyle’s.
“But—”
“Drop it, Kyle,” I say. “Rachel, what else have you got?”
“Not much. I’ll make copies of all this for you both. You guys knew her, the way she worked and thought; you might be able to see something I didn’t.”
“We can meet again in a few days,” Kyle suggests. “Compare notes?”
“Sounds good,” Rachel says, looking at me for my consent.
I nod. “Yeah. Sounds good.”
38
FOUR AND A HALF MONTHS AGO (SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD)
“We’re gonna be late,” Mina says.
I zip up my boots and pull my jeans down over them. “We’ve got twenty minutes. Chill.”
She collapses on my bed, scattering throw pillows everywhere. She’s wearing a hot pink dress that’s so short, her mom would throw a fit if she saw it—which, of course, is why Mina changed into it at my house. There are little beads on the three-quarter-length sleeves, and they keep catching the light, like she’s twinkling.
She props herself up on her elbow, her hair spilling over her shoulder, a dark mass of brown curls against the pink. “Are you sure you want to wear those jeans? You should wear the black skinny ones. Tuck them into your boots.”
“I can barely breathe in the skinny ones.”
“But you look so good in them.”
I size her up, suspicious of her sudden interest in my clothes. “Is there something about tonight you’re not telling me?” I ask. There’s nothing Mina loves more than a surprise. “Why do I need to be dressed up? You’re not planning a welcome-home party, are you? Mina, I hate that sort of thing.”
“Which is why I stopped myself,” Mina says. “It’s just burgers with Kyle and Trev. I already told you.”
I shoot her a look. “Okay, but I think you’re acting weird.”
“And I think you should change.”
“Not going to happen.”
“At least put on some lip gloss.”
“What’s with you?” I ask as I pull my sweater on. “It’s just Trev and your boyfriend.” Every time I call Kyle her boyfriend, it gets easier. I’ve been practicing it in front of the mirror.
“You’re so pretty.” Mina gets up from the bed to paw through my jewelry box. “And you spend half of your life dressing so boring because you think it’ll make people notice you less.”
“Maybe I don’t want people to notice me.”
“That’s my whole point.” Mina holds a pair of silver hoops up to her ears in front of the mirror, turning her head back and forth before discarding them. “You want to hide. It’s unfair to yourself.”
“I’m not the one who wants to hide, Mina,” I say, and she fumbles and drops the necklace she’s picked up.
“I’m going downstairs,” she says flatly. “We should leave soon.”
Trev and Kyle are already sitting in a booth when we get there. Angry Burger is busy, packed with college students home for the weekend, a big group shooting pool in the corner, Corona bottles stuffed with lime wedges clutched in their free hands. They haven’t updated the music on the jukebox in forever; it’s always twangy, old-school country, heavy on the banjo.
Mina slides into the spot next to Kyle while Trev gets up from the chipped oak booth.
I’ve been home from Oregon for a week. This is the first time I’ve seen him, and I’m surprised at how happy I am. Trev is simple. Easy. Exactly what I need tonight, after days of Mina’s doublespeak and guarded glances.
He hugs me, and it’s comforting, like Trev always is.
“Good to see you, Soph,” he says, and I can feel the rumble in his chest where it’s pressed against mine.
“How’s school?” I ask him as we sit down. I’m determined to focus on Trev instead of Kyle and the way he’s got his arm slung across the back of the booth behind Mina like he owns it. Owns her.
“Busy,” Trev says.
“Trev’s been building a boat,” Mina puts in.
“Another one?” I ask.
He’d rebuilt a trashed catbo
at after the accident, and sometimes I’d go to the dock to keep him company. It was the only time, still fresh from the crash, that I could be around him and not feel assaulted by the weight of his guilt. His focus, for once, had been on fixing something other than me.
It took him months, repairing the smashed hull and broken spars. When he’d finally finished, he took us out, just him and me and Mina, for her maiden voyage. I’d watched him brush his fingers over his boat like he was touching a holy thing and I’d understood him in a way I never had before. Realized that he and I were cemented together, almost as much as Mina and I.
“You should see the line of girls at the docks every weekend,” Mina says, snickering. “They loll around frying in the sun and watch him—it’s ridiculous. If he took his shirt off, I think they’d have a collective fit. Disgusting.” She flicks water at Trev, sticking her tongue out.
Trev rolls his eyes while Kyle laughs. “Right on, man.”
“Brat,” Trev says to Mina.
“You should go out there, Soph. Scare ’em off.” Mina nudges me with her foot underneath the table, and all the easy energy, the comforting familiarity of Mina and Trev’s teasing, dissipates in a second.
I can’t stop the way I go white, can’t stop Trev noticing my reaction. I wonder if he sees the way she looks at me, how every shred of her attention is on me, the bitterness in her smile, desperate and so damned scared. Can he even understand what she’s doing to me—to all of us?
And because she’s Mina, she just won’t stop.
“Kyle and I need a couple to double-date with. It’s perfect. Wouldn’t that be fun, baby?”
“Sure,” Kyle says.
I can feel Trev’s eyes on me, but I can’t rip my gaze away from her as I say, “I’ll be right back.”
Not a ripple on her face. She keeps looking at me like that until I’m half-ready to launch myself across the table at her.
“Good idea. We should freshen up.” She slings her purse over her shoulder and throws a smile at Kyle. It’s her Fine, Just Fine smile. Kyle can’t tell she’s bullshitting, but I can—and so can Trev, who frowns as he tries to figure out why I’m so upset, why she’s so triumphant.
She saunters across the restaurant toward the ladies’ room like she doesn’t have a care in the world. Like she didn’t just try to set me up with her brother, like she isn’t screwing with me (and with him) in the worst possible way.
Mina likes to play with fire.
But I’m the one who gets burned.
39
NOW (JUNE)
Kyle and I are silent on the drive back to my house.
When I park in my driveway and reach for the door handle, he doesn’t get out. He stares at the dashboard, hands in his lap. For a long, uncomfortable moment, all I want to do is leave him there. But then he starts talking.
“I told her I loved her,” he says. “A week before she…I told her I loved her and she started crying. I thought she…It was stupid. I’m stupid. I thought I knew her. But I didn’t.” He looks at me, those puppy-dog eyes so miserable, it hurts even though I’m still mad at him. “How does that even work, Sophie? To love someone so fucking much and not even really know her?”
I don’t know how to answer that. I’d loved her. The real her. The half version she’d shown to the world and the scared parts that ran from me as much as they reached for me. Every part, every dimension, every version of her, I knew and loved.
I think about when we were younger. Even back in middle school, Kyle was on the outskirts, watching, entranced as I was with her. Waiting, and finally getting, only to be crushed.
I understand why he hates me. It’s the exact reason I hated him those months before. He took her away from me. And then she got taken away from both of us. Neither of us won in a game he didn’t even know he was playing.
Because of that kinship, I can put aside my anger. I can be kind. She would’ve wanted that.
“Mina trusted you. She told you. That means something. It means everything.”
He stares at me like he’s seeing me for the first time. The misery is still sharp in his eyes, but there’s something else now, too, a kind of searching look that makes me want to run. “You know how everyone has, like, a dream? For their life, I mean?”
I nod.
“Mina was mine.”
I reach out—I can’t help it—and squeeze his shoulder.
“Mine, too.”
After Kyle leaves, I go inside and up to my room to download the files Rachel gave me.
Mina’s time line is a thing of beauty compared to the makeshift one stuck to the underside of my mattress—it’s years long, with a detailed suspect list and precise notes on each person involved.
I don’t think I’d ever talked to Jackie Dennings. My freshman year had been overshadowed by the crash, but even if it hadn’t, our paths probably wouldn’t have crossed. She’d been a junior and class president, and popular, so to me she existed just as a pretty blond girl that I knew of, more an idea than a person. And then one day that pretty blond girl was on a Missing poster, and they were plastered everywhere. The Dennings family had even put up billboards on the highway, but no tips ever led anywhere.
According to Mina’s notes, Jackie was a good student and star athlete, a loving sister and daughter. She’d even been headed to Stanford on a full soccer scholarship. The only ripple in her good-girl image was the boyfriend.
When Jackie disappeared, Matt Clarke had been the number one suspect. A history of drug abuse, a few citations for public intoxication and bar fights, with only a shaky alibi from another known drug user didn’t help him any, but the police search of his truck and house had turned up nothing.
My cursor hovers over the link that’ll open the audio file of Mina’s interview with Matt. I need to click it. I have to listen to it.
But I can’t bring myself to click. Sitting here alone in my room, her voice would be like hot metal against skin, burning through the layers until there’s nothing left to brand.
I’m not strong enough.
Ten months. Two days.
The next day, both my parents are out of the house by eight, off to meetings and appointments. I set out the mat on my bedroom floor and go through my regular asanas, but I can’t focus—or rather, unfocus. Now that I have something to go on, the urge to track down and interrogate everyone who ever knew Jackie is fierce.
But I can’t do that. Jackie had a little sister and parents and people who love her, who miss her. Who might object to someone snooping around.
I’m not Mina. I’m not good at making people comfortable or getting them to talk. Even before the crash, it wasn’t one of my talents.
I’m finishing up my practice, sitting in lotus pose, breathing long and slow, when the doorbell rings.
I check the window before going downstairs. Trev’s F-150 is parked outside my house, and my first instinct is to change. I’m in shorts and a tank top. It’s stupid. It’s not like he hasn’t seen me in less; in nothing at all.
The bell rings again.
I take a deep breath and walk down the stairs.
“I need to talk to you,” he says as soon as I open the door. He brushes past me, not waiting to be invited in.
He turns, trapping me against the door, and stares me down. “Kyle stopped by last night,” he says.
Shit. I should’ve made Kyle promise not to go to Trev.
“He told me the drugs weren’t yours. That he lied about Mina telling him that you two were going to score. That you’ve been telling the truth this whole time. That Mina was investigating Jackie Dennings’s disappearance, and that’s why you were at the Point.”
I cross my arms, planting my bare feet on the Spanish tile. It’s cool, solid, and I tilt my chin up and meet his eyes.
“Is that wh
at Kyle says?”
Anger darkens his face. “No, Sophie, you don’t get to do that. I just spent eight hours tearing my sister’s room apart with Kyle, trying to find some threatening notes he’s claiming she got. Don’t pull that shit with me. Not about Mina. Tell me the truth!”
“I tried,” I spit out. “I wrote you when I was at Seaside. I explained everything. But you sent the letter back unopened. You didn’t seem interested in the truth then.” I can’t hide the resentment in my voice. I don’t want to.
He looks down, disarmed for a moment. “There were drugs at the scene. The pill bottle had your prints on it. Detective James was sure it was a drug deal. What was I supposed to think? You’d lied to us for years. Years, Sophie. Just six months away to get clean, and I’m supposed to forget that?”
“I don’t care that you didn’t believe me,” I say. “Not anymore. Not after everyone else turned on me. I care that you didn’t believe in her. She never would’ve taken me anywhere to get drugs. And you should’ve known that—you should’ve known her!”
My voice rises with each word, until I’m yelling at him, jabbing my hand in the air with each sentence.
“Don’t you…” He steps toward me, then thinks better of it and backs away instead, until he’s right up against the front door.
I hold my ground. It’s been months since he sent the letter back, but my anger feels fresh, pushed down and ignored.
“You let me down,” I say. “And you let her down by believing that she’d allow me to relapse like that—like she’d even help me score. Are you kidding me? She’s the one who ratted me out the first time. What the hell were you thinking?” I’m yelling, my voice rising and rising, like my rage has no limits.
This time, he doesn’t back away. He stands up straight, and sweat trickles down my spine when he glares at me. “I was thinking that I didn’t know who the hell you were anymore,” he says. “You lied to us for years. You pretended to be fine, and we fell for it. I fell for it. And it started to make me wonder what else you were lying about. When you went to Portland, Mina spent the next two months just…wrecked. I’d never seen her like that. Not since Dad…” He rubs a hand over his mouth, his shoulders pressing hard into the door, steeling himself.
