We Told Six Lies

by Victoria Scott

  This was how Molly Bates would die, and only when she realized that did she grasp how deeply she wanted to live. This was supposed to be a murder, not a suicide. She opened her mouth and found her throat still worked. Molly watched, half lucid, as little bubbles raced from her mouth to the surface.

  Her body jerked the way Holt’s had, and Cobain’s face flashed in her mind. She loved him. Maybe she only knew that for certain at that moment. When her life was slipping away. When she had only death’s hand left to hold.

  Her heart—her compass—had been broken when she left. But it wasn’t Cobain who broke it.

  She’d done that to herself.

  Her body jerked a second time, and agony rocked through her. A shot of adrenaline surged from toes to nose—her body’s final stand—and Molly captured it. She maneuvered her feet beneath her, and, feeling as if her spine would snap in two, she shot upward. On her way to the surface, she saw Holt’s body dragging along the ground, rocked gently back and forth like a newborn baby.

  When Molly surfaced, she filled her lungs so mightily that every creature on earth lost their breath for a moment. Then she gasped for a second and third time, and the world was put right again.

  She cried from fear and from the cold and because she wasn’t certain that she could make it to shore. She couldn’t feel her arms as they reached out and tugged at the water, and it may have been her imagination, but she felt much farther away than when they’d dunked themselves under.

  She made it a few feet before she turned back and watched the place from which she came. For one mind-warping moment, she considered going back for Cobain’s brother. Could she really leave him there to slowly decompose beneath the water and slushy ice?

  She turned and swam for shore.

  The jerky movements sent blood coursing through her body, warming her if only enough to reach land. When her feet touched the muddy bottom, she cried out. Hung her head and wept. She’d killed someone. She killed someone, and she’d nearly let herself die along with him.

  Molly collapsed onto the ground and groaned like a dying animal. But she wasn’t dying. She was alive. Just look at the color returning to her ice-kissed skin. Just look at the way her chest heaved for more, more.

  She fumbled onto her back and stared at the sky, thinking only one word over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over—

  Freedom.

  Molly sat up.

  And she saw him.

  Cobain’s brother stood hip-deep in the water, teeth chattering, body shaking. The embodiment of rage.

  Molly’s heart shotgunned in her chest.

  She scrambled backward as he powered toward her, his torso cutting through the pond. It bowed to him—the water and the ice and the entire kingdom of trees that witnessed his furious approach.

  “Together,” he said, his voice holding a dangerous growl. “You…said…together.”

  His words were broken from the cold.

  She was broken from the cold.

  But she found her feet anyway. Rose, stumbled twice, and then began to run.

  He ran, too.

  NOW

  I run faster as I try to remember real Holt versus Holt from my imagination. When I push open the front door, I’m assaulted by the smell of dust. I search the room—the sagging couch, the sofa chair, the record player Holt always loved toying with.

  I find a door to another set of stairs and take them down. I’m so terrified of seeing my brother that I’m afraid I’ll collapse. But there’s anger there, too. Because this guy I no longer know took something important to me. He took the most important thing.

  When I reach the bottom of the stairs, I have to steady myself against the wall. Another memory comes crashing to the forefront of my mind.

  The crack of the stone being thrown through the forest of green, green trees, a white dog chasing after it.

  “What did I say?” My father booms. “A stick and a stone and he’s Joe DiMaggio here.”

  My dad has a can of Coke in his hand and a baseball cap on his head, and he smiles like he’s never had a bad day in his entire life.

  I glance at Holt, who is picking up sticks, too. They are sharper than the dull one I hold. They are thin and narrow and pointed at one end. If a tree had teeth, they would look like that, I decide.

  Holt points at me with one of the sticks.

  He points, and he smiles.

  I run to Dad, who throws his arm around me and asks, “What’s wrong, kiddo?”

  When my eyes fall on Holt, Dad frowns. “Holt,” he hollers. “Stop hiding and get out here. Wanna try and hit one?” He takes the limb I’m holding and shows it to Holt.

  Holt looks at my dad, looks at me, and then sinks deeper into the trees.

  Dad runs a hand through his hair and sighs with frustration. His unbreakable smile has shattered.

  Dad says, “Just ignore him. Let’s keep practicing, huh?”

  I run to find another stone to crack through the whispering trees.

  I step across the filthy floor, steeling myself against the sight of the cords hanging from the ceiling. They’ve been cut, dozens of them, so that they drape down, everywhere. Dresses litter the ground, and my lip curls in fury.

  I turn and race up the stairs. If the van is still parked out front, they’ve got to be here somewhere. I freeze when I get to the landing, and my eyes fall on the kitchen table. I hold my breath and cross the room. My eyes flick across the food, the silverware, the candles. The setting looks more like a ceremony than a dinner.

  I swat away a fly buzzing around the half-eaten food, browning at the edges.

  It’s been sitting here, spoiling, all day. Maybe longer. As panic rockets through me, a sound snaps outside the cabin.

  I turn and race toward it.

  MOLLY

  The branches tore at Molly’s frozen dress as she crashed through the woods.

  He was a bear in pursuit, following every turn she made, nostrils flaring. It was like he could sense her everywhere. On his clothes, on his skin, in his head. She was a part of him now, and he would never let her go.

  Together, she’d said, and he would ensure it stayed that way.

  Molly ran faster, her feet tearing open, leaving scarlet droplets of blood in the snow. No matter how hard she pushed herself, he pushed harder. It came down to who wanted what more.

  Molly wanted freedom.

  But he wanted Molly.

  And love always triumphed in the end.

  Molly saw a cavernous space in the hillside up ahead and ran for it. She was two steps away from the hiding spot when he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her from the ground.

  She screamed.

  He laughed.

  Molly kicked her legs backward, but he only scooped them into his other arm and pinned them against his chest. He carried her like a new bride, but she was no longer playing games. Now he would know she was a fighter.

  She slammed her head sideways and cracked her skull against his.

  With a grunt of pain, he dropped her to the ground.

  He covered his face, his hands full of blood.

  She ran, bypassing the cave.

  In a matter of seconds, he was on her again. As she screamed, he bellowed, “You said together.”

  “I didn’t mean it!”

  “Yes, you did!”

  She broke away and made it three steps before his body collided with hers. She turned and punched him in the side of the head, and he smiled in amusement before pinning her against the tree.

  Her hands were restrained on either side of her, and he pressed his body against hers. He bent at the knees, laid his head on her shoulder, his lips just brushing her neck. “You nearly talked me into killing myself. That isn’t some survivalist bullshit—that’s called being a psychopath.”
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  Molly brought her knee up with monumental force, and he bent at the waist, groaning.

  She ran, her head tipped toward the sky, and when she heard him coming, she slipped behind a tree to catch her breath.

  “I’ll find you, Molly,” he called out. “I’ll always find you.”

  NOW

  I run outside, searching for the source of the sound.

  She’s nearby. I can sense her. Can feel her in the snow and in the dead, twisting trees. I feel something else, too—something I haven’t felt for nine long years.

  “Want to try and catch some supper?” Dad asks.

  I look to the pond. “Out there?”

  Dad laughs, and the sound fills me with happiness. “Yes, out there. Go on, and I’ll catch up with the poles.”

  I run as fast as I can because Dad loves to see me run fast. As my aunt’s dog chases after me, Mom calls out to be careful. I wave at her over my shoulder. She smiles and waves back and guides my aunt into a chair on the porch.

  When I get to the pond, I throw a rock into the blue water. The white dog disappears into the brush, sniffing after some animal. I try to skip the rock like Dad does, but it only sinks to the bottom.

  “You’ve got to throw it sideways,” my brother says, startling me.

  I turn and find him slipping out from between the trees. “I can show you how, but you’ll have to get closer to the water.”

  I look behind him, trying to find my dad, but don’t catch sight of him.

  Holt looks for him, too, and seems pleased when he doesn’t see him coming.

  Mom says to stay away from Holt when he gets funny, but I don’t think I can get past him. I’m faster, but he’s got longer legs, and he’s older by three years.

  Holt comes two steps closer.

  Then he lunges.

  My head snaps up when I spot movement between the trees.

  I put my head down and run, unafraid because I’m not his little brother anymore.

  I made sure of that.

  MOLLY

  Molly shook from the cold and the fear as she hid, her back pressed against the tree.

  “When I saw you and my brother together, it made me sick,” he said as he searched for her. “Here I was on the streets after the shithole my parents stuck me in closed down, and there was my fucking golden-boy brother with his happy little girlfriend. Then I decided, fuck it, you know? I’m just going to take what I should’ve always had.”

  Holt rounded the tree. “I never expected to find my carbon copy, though. And yet here you are.”

  Molly screamed and raced toward the van, but he was on her in an instant. He wrestled her until her back pressed against the cold metal.

  “I am nothing like you,” Molly spat.

  “Yes, you are. You’re as messed up as I am.” But then his eyes flashed, and for a moment, the person she’d spent these last few weeks with came back. His head dropped, and he turned his face away from her. The uncertainty and pain returned to him.

  “You don’t even know my name,” he said.

  “I don’t want to know it.”

  “Holt,” he said, his voice gentle. “Say it.”

  Molly smiled. “Blue.”

  He shook his head. “No, say my real name.”

  “Blue,” she said, her grin widening. “Blue, Blue, Blue. What a stupid fucking name, Blue.”

  He pulled her away from the van and pushed her back against it. It hardly rattled her, but there was no mistaking the warning.

  “You won’t hurt me,” she challenged.

  He searched her face, and what she saw in his eyes shook her confidence.

  “You care about me,” he said, delivering his own challenge. “Admit it.”

  Molly leveled him with a look. “Listen to me when I tell you this. Listen very carefully. Are you listening?”

  He nodded, his desperation broadcast for all the world to hear.

  “I don’t care about you,” she said, her voice unwavering. “I never cared about you. Every time I touched you, I envisioned your death. Every time I sang for you, I imagined watching the life leave your body. You locked me away with no thought of what that would do to me.” Molly leaned closer. “You disgust me.”

  He released her, the surprise in his eyes so profound that it stole Molly’s breath away.

  She took several steps away from him, her heart leaping at the possibility of escape. But then he looked down. Said with sudden clarity, “I thought you were like me. But you’re not. You’re like him.”

  When he looked up again, it wasn’t with intrigue.

  It was with decisiveness.

  He was going to kill her.

  “Holt, wait,” she said.

  Didn’t matter.

  He rushed toward her.

  NOW

  I hear Molly. Hear her screaming.

  I power toward the sound of her.

  “Molly!” I roar.

  Holt’s body slams into mine beside the water. His hands find my throat, and he squeezes.

  “They used to love me,” he tells me.

  He’s crying, and I am, too. Or I would be if I could get enough air.

  I claw at his fingers, at his face, but he only clenches his hands tighter, the pressure on my neck becoming unbearable. Blackness creeps in at the corners of my vision, and I hear Holt saying, “I love you, too, but no one will love me as long as you’re here.”

  I kick and thrash, but he is so much bigger than me. I don’t even fully understand death, but I know I’m crashing toward it. I know, and all I can think of is my mom. I want my mom.

  I realize as I look into my brother’s face, as he cries and pushes down, that he wants my mom, too. That’s why he’s hurting me.

  “I’m sorry,” he says as the world begins to fade away.

  I remember a crow flying across a cloudless sky.

  I remember the sound of a dog barking.

  I remember the blast of my dad firing a gun into the air, and moments later, his hands ripping my brother away.

  He beat him.

  He beat him so badly I thought he was dead.

  He beat him until my mother screamed and my aunt collapsed, and then he kicked his son once more.

  Molly screams louder when she hears me coming. I see a flash of her between the trees. Someone is on top of her.

  I yell her name again and run faster, and then she’s on her feet, and the person on top of her is racing in the opposite direction.

  She barrels toward me, and when our bodies crash together, everything is right again for one moment in time.

  “Cobain!” she screams, tears cutting streaks down her dirtied face. She’s soaking wet and freezing in my arms.

  “I’m here,” I say against her neck even as my entire body throbs with anger. I want to end the person who did this to her.

  “It’s your brother.” Molly turns in my arms, her terrified eyes searching for him. “He’s the one who—”

  When I hear footfalls crunching through the snow, I know it is him.

  I feel that it’s him.

  I release Molly, push her behind me, and turn to face my brother.

  He appears from the trees, his head tilted to one side, and it’s like I’m back beside that pond skipping rocks.

  He looks like me, his face shaped only a touch differently.

  His eyes brown to my blue.

  No wonder even I thought I was seeing myself on the gas station security footage. The resemblance is uncanny.

  As he strides closer, I take in his build, so different than the thin, unintimidating brother I’d created in my mind. The real Holt is big. Big like me. I can imagine him spending his days at the hospital working to grow larger. I can imagine him doing pull-ups and push-ups and crunches and using his body weight to gro
w wider, stronger. I imagine him doing all that so that when this day came, when he faced me again, he’d be ready.

  Well, I’m ready, too.

  He looks at Molly. “Get away from her.”

  I’m shocked that these are the first words from his mouth. It takes me a second to recover.

  “Don’t come any closer,” I warn.

  Holt produces a blade from behind his back. “What are you going to do, little brother? Beat me until I can’t see out of either eye? Kick me so that two of my ribs break? Hide in your room as Dad berates me because I’m not a shining star like his other son?”

  “I’m not scared of you, Holt,” I say.

  Holt takes three barreling steps forward, but Molly steps out from behind me and holds up her hand.

  “Stop,” she says. “Just let us go, Holt. Please.”

  “Molly,” he says. “I’m far from finished with you.”

  It’s the way he says her name, like he really knows her.

  I can’t bear it.

  It reaches into my head and twists my brain into knots, and I have to silence his voice. I have to silence this person who drove me to madness these last nine years.

  I charge him, slamming into him with every fear I’ve held since Molly vanished.

  He flies backward, and his head hits a rock with a sickening crack. When he lifts up, he leaves blood splattered across the stone. He remembers the knife and raises it above his head.

  “Holt, no!” Molly screams, and he hesitates just long enough for me to smash my forehead into his.

  Molly takes off running.

  Holt panics as she leaves and brings the knife down. I grab his wrist a second before he plunges it into my side, and we roll across the ground. He manages to get on top of me and drives the blade closer to my throat.

  But this is not how this is ending.

  I bring my elbow up fast and hard and hit him clean across the face. He rocks to the side, and I hit him a second time so that he gets off of me. I snatch the weapon by the blade, and he rips it backward, tearing open my skin.