by Jen Nadol
“Why don’t you?”
“It’s not my secret to tell, Riley,” Sarah said. None of them were, it seemed. She’d rather just let me flounder around like an idiot with half the story.
We stood there for a minute, me trying to calm down and Sarah watching me, her tears subsiding.
“They weren’t in your drawer,” she said finally.
“No,” I agreed. “I moved them.”
She nodded, not surprised. “Can I have them back?”
I wondered what she’d do if I gave them to her. Wondered what the right answer was. Finally I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
“Riley?” Tannis’s voice was faint, calling from somewhere in my backyard. “You okay?”
Sarah and I looked at each other.
“Yeah,” I yelled back to Tannis, my eyes on Sarah the whole time. “I’m okay. I’ll be down in a minute.” I waited, wondering how we would go on from here. What would happen next.
“Don’t tell her, Riley,” she said. “Please.”
“Sarah—”
“Think about it,” she pressed. “What did you say way back about Tannis? About how she’d feel if she knew it really was her future? Tell her they’re gone, disappeared. Tell her you destroyed them. But don’t tell her the truth.”
“What about Nat?”
She shook her head.
“So . . . we’re just going to keep this all a secret?”
“We’ve had a lot of practice, haven’t we?” Sarah said sadly. She leaned forward then and kissed me softly. I could smell the faint flowery scent of her perfume, the shampoo she used, could feel the warmth of her cheek as she pressed it against mine. “Be careful with them,” Sarah said. She turned away then, climbing deftly over the bramble of branches and moving along the trail, until even the red of her jacket faded away into the dark woods.
CHAPTER 34
I FIGURED WE’D TALK ABOUT it after I had time to think through everything she’d said, that I’d be able to ask all the questions that ran through my brain even as I walked through the woods back toward my house. I told Tannis I’d fallen and the person had outrun me. We searched my room—her and I—and I made like they’d stolen some money I’d had lying on the desk, a watch, and the binoculars.
“You need to file a report,” she insisted.
“Don’t you think the cops have enough going on?”
Tannis considered it. “Maybe,” she said. “Whoever stole them will get what’s coming to them with those binoculars anyway.”
I was relieved when Sarah wasn’t at school the next day. I still didn’t know what to say to her. Or how I felt. I was furious at first. And confused. Denying, then believing. Resentful. I knew that if it was true, I should blame her mom, and intellectually I did. But it was hard to feel much for someone I’d never met, so my anger was mostly directed at Sarah.
After two days I started to worry.
I never expected she would be gone.
Tannis and I went to Sarah’s house the third day she was absent, after her cell phone just rang and rang. We pounded on the door, peeked in the windows. It looked like it always had, boxes stacked everywhere. But all the plants were missing. Maybe she’d taken them with her or given them away. But that’s how I knew she’d gone, because she wouldn’t have left the plants in there to die without her to tend them.
Her note came a day later. I recognized her handwriting, spiky and cramped, on the envelope, and my heart sped up. It was postmarked somewhere in Delaware. I tore it open and pulled out the single page.
Riley,
I’m sorry to leave without saying good-bye in person. I wasn’t sure what was best. I never, ever meant for things to happen like they did. I didn’t know what we were getting into—what I was getting us into. I am so, so sorry. Please believe that.
I’m sure you’re angry. I am too, though I have no right to be.
I told my dad everything, and we’re going to find her. I deserve answers. We all do. I’ll see you in Cambridge, if not before. I hope by then we can both forgive me.
Love,
Sarah
I read it twice, then a third time, forcing myself to stop after that. I felt like I had when my dad died, a sudden hole ripped in my world. I couldn’t believe she’d just left like that.
“What the fuck?” Tannis said when I told her Sarah had written. “Where’d she go?”
“Some kind of family emergency,” I said vaguely. I was watching Nat, the way her eyes looked shaded. More than just sad. Secretive.
“Is she coming back?” Nat asked.
“I don’t know.”
“And then there were three,” Tannis said.
But there really weren’t.
I noticed it over the next week when I tried to find a time to talk to Nat. She was with the skiers now. And John Peters, always John Peters. And when she saw me, she sometimes looked away.
So finally one day I biked to Lu’s, my tires slipping now and then in the slush from our first snowfall, which had been quickly plowed into dirty gray heaps. The mountain was covered, mostly man-made with a topping of the “real deal,” as the owners called it. It looked a lot different from how it had at the Dash, the hopeful start to our season. So different now and yet so the same as it always was, always would be.
I couldn’t wait to leave Buford.
Lu’s walk was neatly cleared, the sheer edges of the snow marked with a blower’s lines. I rang the bell, hoping I’d timed it right, that Nat hadn’t gone for some runs, just for fun.
She opened the door, surprised and not happy to see me. It took her a minute to recover.
“Hi, Nat.”
“Riley,” she said. “Hi. Sorry.” She smiled a little. “I didn’t expect you. Is everything okay?”
I nodded. “Can I come in?”
Nat hesitated, then stepped aside.
“Is Lu here?” I asked as she led me to the living room.
Nat paled. I didn’t mean to freak her out, but she’d never tell me anything unless she was alone. “No.” She turned to face me. “What’s going on, Riley?”
I didn’t want to just come out with it, but I could see Nat wasn’t going to budge until I did. “Sarah told me some things before she left,” I said. “I know you were awake that night.”
She blanched and swallowed once. “So?” Natalie folded her arms defensively.
“So,” I said. “That means you know who was there. And what happened.”
She stayed rigid for a second, and I thought she was going to tell me to leave. Then her whole body sagged. Natalie sighed tiredly. “Yeah,” she said. “I know.”
Suddenly I didn’t want to hear it. I had a flashback to Sarah and me standing in the woods behind my house. I’d hardly slept these past nights, all the things she’d said bouncing around. Once you heard things like that, things you weren’t meant to or didn’t want to, you couldn’t take it back. But Nat was already talking.
“You know who was there that night too. The whole town does,” she said. “Just like they always do. Do you have any idea what it’s like to listen to your dad whooping it up with your classmates? Snorting coke with Galen Riddock? Selling dope and lighting up with your lab partner or the girl who sits behind you in chem? Do you know what it feels like when they look at you after that?” Her voice rose. “After they see how you live?”
“No.” But I could imagine. And it was mortifying.
“No,” she agreed. “You don’t. I wasn’t wearing my headphones and I wasn’t sleeping, because I was worried about him. It was like living with a little kid that you have to constantly watch to be sure he doesn’t hurt himself. Except with my dad, it wasn’t just himself he’d hurt.” Nat paused and took a breath. “I wanted to keep an ear out, make sure he was okay.”
“And?” I prompted gently.
&nbs
p; “And I heard Galen come and go, and then your buddy.”
“Moose?”
She nodded. “He bought, and my dad badgered him to stay, even though Moose never does. But this time he did. They sat out there for a while doing whatever, and then he left.”
I was relieved. It wasn’t Moose, after all.
“I was about to go out to talk to my dad, see if I could get him to go to bed. I could hear him stumbling around out there, he was so wasted.” Nat paused, struggling not to cry. “I’d had a bad feeling all night. Nervous, but I couldn’t figure out why.”
Suddenly I was nervous too.
Nat took a deep breath. “And then I heard the door open again.”
“Moose came back?”
She shook her head. “I thought it was him too, but then I heard my dad say, ‘Who the fuck ’er you?’
“And the person said, ‘You killed my sister.’”
It felt like my heart stopped. “Richie?”
She nodded. “He started going off about how Jessica was always careful, would never have taken too much, that my dad must have cut the drugs with something else.” Natalie looked sick. “I just sat there in my room, listening to all of it. All this horrible, horrible stuff. And my dad shouting back at him. I mean, who has to deal with this, right?” Her voice was rising again. I would have told her no one did and no one should, but I was afraid to interrupt.
“My dad went after him. Things were banging around, drawers or doors slamming. I heard someone get hit.” Nat winced. “And then my dad said, ‘Oh, you got a gun? Well, me too.’” Nat look a sharp breath. “The last thing he said was, ‘Hey, that’s mine.’” Natalie buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking.
“Nat . . .” I reached over to touch her, already piecing together the rest and feeling awful about making her go through this. “It’s okay—”
“It’s not okay,” she exploded, her head whipping up. “Don’t say that! I knew what was coming, Riley.” Tears were dripping from her eyes, down her cheeks, but she didn’t seem to notice. “I knew from the second I heard Richie’s voice. It was like being at the eye doctor and they’re showing you all the letters and flipping through the different lenses, and then, suddenly, everything is totally clear.” Words were spilling frantically from Natalie’s mouth, like they had to come fast or not at all. “It’s what I saw that night,” she said. “All of it. I knew they were going to fight and Richie would have my dad’s gun and . . . and that he’d shoot him.” The tears were wetting her shirt, and Natalie wiped at her nose, saying quietly, “I knew it was coming, and I didn’t stop it.”
“Nat,” I said slowly, “how could you? Richie had a gun and—”
“I could have gone out there and interrupted before they got to that point. Or called the cops. I could have done lots of stuff, Riley,” she said, her voice dropping low. “You know the worst thing about what I saw in the binoculars?”
I shook my head, transfixed by the loathing on her face. “The way I felt,” she said hoarsely. “Yeah, I was scared and horrified. But there was another part of me that felt free. Like someone had taken this huge responsibility I could never escape, and poof! it was gone. I felt so relieved.” She drew in a ragged breath, her voice shaky. “That’s what I remembered when I stood there, listening. When I let my dad die and did nothing.”
It was silent in the town house. Nat’s face was wet with tears, and I thought about the way I felt about the money Mr. Jones had given me. Freedom at an unthinkable price.
“Why didn’t you tell?” I asked finally.
“Who?” she said. “The cops? And explain that I’d stood in my room and let it happen?”
“There was a gun out there, Nat. They’d have understood.”
She continued like I hadn’t spoken, “And fry Richie Milosevich? Ruin his life? Have his parents lose another kid because of my dad and the awful things he’d already done to them? To other people in town? To me?” She whispered the last part.
“But . . .” I hesitated, but I had to ask it. “Aren’t you worried, Nat? I mean, the cops might figure it out someday . . . ” I trailed off, seeing the look on her face. “What?”
“They’re not as stupid as you think, Ri,” she said. “Richie’s alibi was that he was out of town with his parents. So either they’re covering for him or the cops are covering for all of them.” Nat shrugged. “Even if the police don’t know, I imagine they’re not looking real hard for answers. That’s the thing about having a dad no one likes. I’m the only one that’ll miss him.” She wiped her eyes finally. “He was a mess. But he was still my dad.”
“What about justice?” I asked.
“This is Vermont justice,” Nat said. “Live and let live. Or whatever.”
If I hadn’t lived there my whole life, I might not have believed it.
“How did Sarah figure it out?” I asked. And when?
“She didn’t,” Nat said. “I told her. After Trip. She was so wrecked. I could tell she was blaming herself. She said she and Trip had a fight . . .” Nat looked at me searchingly, but I wasn’t going to talk about it. Not with her or anyone else. Ever. “I thought it would help her,” Natalie said. “She really seemed like she was losing it.” She shook her head. “If I’d known she was going to go blabbing it around, I wouldn’t have.”
“I’m not going to tell anyone.”
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s what Sarah said too.”
“Really, Nat. I promise.”
She nodded dismissively. “Nothing I can do about it,” she said. “Once I leave this place next year, I’m never coming back.”
I nodded. It was what we were all feeling, all planning, I guessed.
Except for Tannis, who, if the binoculars were right, was never leaving.
CHAPTER 35
I GAVE THE LIGHTER BACK to Moose the next week. Just laid it on the counter where he was rolling silverware. He and I didn’t talk much anymore. Not that we’d ever been buddies.
He ignored me at first, barely flicking his eyes to what I’d put there. Then he realized what it was. Moose put down the utensils and turned to me, his eyes wary and defiant.
“You left it at the Miloseviches’, didn’t you?” I asked.
He didn’t say anything, but the answer was in his eyes. I pushed it toward him.
“Take it,” I said. “I’m not going to tell.”
He eyed me, unsure, like it might be a trick, then quickly took it. The lighter disappeared into his pocket. “I didn’t do it,” Moose said quietly.
“I know.”
“He . . . I didn’t even—”
I held up a hand. “Don’t tell me.” I didn’t want the details about whether Moose and Richie had plotted the whole thing, watching outside the trailer as Galen had gone in and come out, or whether Moose had stolen Mr. Cleary’s gun, maybe as a prank like the vase, or had just told Richie where to find it. I already knew more things than I should, and none of it seemed to be doing me any good.
“But—” I could see him dying to spill the whole story.
“Moose,” I warned. “Don’t.”
He shut his mouth, eyeing me suspiciously. “You’re not going to say anything?” he said. “To the cops? Or anyone?”
“No. Live and let live,” I told him. “Or whatever.”
***
It was weird being around him afterward. And around Nat. And Tannis. I knew all their secrets and more. I knew Tannis and Matt would wind up keeping the baby. And that she’d have two more and that even if there were moments of regret, there’d be happy ones too.
None of them knew my secrets, of course. The only person who did was gone.
A month has passed now, and Sarah still hasn’t come back. I thought she might write again or call. She hasn’t done either.
Rather than going to the cafeteria, where I’d have
to avoid my friends and the table where the five of us used to sit, I started leaving school at lunch. They let us do that—open lunch. Sometimes I’d just walk and walk until I couldn’t really feel my toes anymore. Most days I’d go to the town library, do my homework long before I needed to or noodle around on the Internet, looking up theories about the brain and hypnosis and energy. Hoping for something that’d prove Sarah wrong, show that the things she’d told me were impossible. I didn’t find it.
One day, early on, I looked up Cambridge, too. Sarah had mentioned it in her letter, and I couldn’t put my finger on whether it was something we’d talked about or a joke I couldn’t remember.
A cityscape popped up on the computer—red brick buildings, a river spanned by arching bridges. And a building that was eerily familiar. I looked at it for a long, long time. Vast and oddly shaped, like it had been built with kids’ blocks, chunks left out by accident. And row after row of little square windows stacked on top of one another. I’d never seen anything like it.
Except in my vision that very first night at the cave. The building out the window of my dorm room, against the cloudless blue sky.
Simmons Hall, it was called. A dorm at MIT.
I’d always hoped I’d leave Buford, but I’d never allowed myself to dream that big. MIT. Would I really wind up there someday? I’d taken the SATs and sent in my applications, but not there. Still, I’d seen it.
And so, it seemed, had Sarah.
What did it mean?
I didn’t want to believe her story. It seemed impossible that the binoculars did what she’d said, or that her mom made them or left them with Sarah or asked her to give them to me. But I only had to look at Trip and Tannis and Nat’s dad to believe the first, and Nat, and even myself were proof of the impossible situations parents give their kids sometimes.
So, was that my future—me and Sarah at MIT? Or had I misinterpreted or misremembered something, the way we can with memories? Was it a future I’d create, now that the idea had been planted, the way the binoculars had pushed me toward the SATs and Sarah and all the things that had come after? If they had. The chicken or the egg, decision or destiny?
