Creeping Beautiful

by JA Huss

  Like when he used to cook my dinners. He always made something I didn’t like, but he didn’t make me eat it. He just asked me to try it.

  “Just give it a try, Indie. One bite. And if you hate it, spit it out and I’ll never serve it again.”

  Most of the time I did spit it out. But not always. I really thought I hated sweet potatoes. I refused to eat them for three Thanksgivings. But then one year I took a bite and they were good.

  I liked mangoes too. I put up a big fight over mangoes. Which was stupid. But I liked them in the end.

  That’s the best thing about McKay. He never wanted more from me than I was willing to give. He was patient. He was just… there. Every time.

  And maybe he didn’t save my life the way Adam did. And maybe he didn’t save my mind the way Donovan did.

  But he saved my soul.

  Which is ironic, since Adam was the one who made me go to church.

  McKay saved my soul.

  I’m not sure why I feel that way. I just know it to be true.

  I flop back on my bed. I can hear them arguing down the hallway. Not all of it. But Adam is yelling, as usual. And Donovan is being self-righteous, as usual. McKay doesn’t say much, but when I do hear his voice, it’s low and calm. That’s just his way.

  I reach over to grab one of the quilted pillows to put under my head, but my hand bumps into something hard.

  I sit up and look at the tape player. “What the fuck is this?”

  I hold it in my hands, wondering where it came from. Who put it here? Then I pop the button to open it, take out the cassette tape, and read the writing on the label.

  INTERVIEW WITH INDIE

  AGE 20.0

  SESSION #190

  I think I die when the meaning of those handwritten words sinks in. I think my heart stops and I float out of my body like a ghost.

  This was the very bad day.

  This was the day I lost it.

  This was the day I…

  I put it back in the machine and press play.

  Donovan’s voice fills the room. Then mine.

  He is panicked.

  And I am crying.

  CHAPTER THIRTY - DONOVAN

  PRESENT DAY

  I throw open the door, cross the room, and rip the tape player out of her hands.

  I press a button and my voice stops talking.

  Indie just looks up at me like…

  “I know I put it there.” I’m desperate to explain as Adam and McKay come in behind me. “But…”

  Indie holds out her hand, palm up, and says, calm as can be, “I want to hear it, Donovan. Give it back.”

  I turn around and look at Adam. He’s glowering at me. But his words come out slow, and smooth, and mean. “What the actual fuck, Donovan? You gave her that tape?”

  “I was… I thought…”

  “It’s my mind, Donovan. And now it’s time for you to give it back.”

  I turn to McKay. “McKay…”

  “Give it to her. She needs to know the truth.”

  And that just pisses me off. Because I have been wanting to tell her the truth about who and what she is for years. And now I look like the one who was keeping those secrets. “Fuck it.” I throw the player onto the bed. “Fuck it then. Listen to it.”

  I walk out of the room, go back into my room, grab the bag filled with tapes I brought with me, and then take it back to Indie’s room and toss it onto the bed. “Listen to them all, Indie. Be my guest. I have nothing to hide anymore.”

  I walk over to the bath tub and take a seat on the edge. Lean over to put my head in my hands. “I did my best. I swear to God, I did.”

  But I don’t even think they hear me. Because Indie has already resumed the tape.

  OK. OK. OK. OK. OK. Listen to me, Indie. Listen to me.

  Oh, my God. What did I do? What just happened? Where is Maggie?

  I’m gonna put you under—

  Holy fuck! Holy! Fuck!

  I’m gonna count backwards from—

  Where is she? Where is she?

  Ten. You’re… everything’s… great. Ten.

  Maggie!

  Nine. You’re calm. You’re breathing easy!

  Oh, my fucking God! What did I do?

  Eight… fuck this shit.

  What are you doing?

  Hold still.

  What are you doing? Donovan!

  Hold still!

  Ow! What the fuck!

  Just calm down, OK? Just calm down.

  You just stuck me in the neck with a needle!

  It’s for your own good. It will calm you down. I can’t put you under if—

  I don’t need to go under! I want to see my daughter! Where the fuck is my daughter?

  Adam’s taking her to the hospital.

  Hospital! Oh, my God. Oh, my God! I killed her. Did I kill her?

  Listen to me. You need to calm down, OK? You didn’t kill her. She…

  What? What did she…

  …

  …

  Indie? Can you hear me?

  Mmmm.

  Good.

  …

  Good. OK. Let me think for a moment. There’s a lot to unpack here and I need to think. So just… don’t move.

  …

  All right. I think I know where to start. When you woke up this morning, Indie, what did you do?

  I got Maggie from her bed.

  OK. Then you made breakfast. But you were serving mimosas this morning. Do you remember that?

  Mmm.

  What did you put in the drinks, Indie?

  Orange juice.

  What else?

  Champagne. That’s how you make a mimosa.

  What else, Indie?

  Nothing else.

  That’s not true and you fucking know it! You drugged us! I know this because I just gave everyone a fucking dose of Narcan and suddenly we could all think again. What did you put in the drinks!?

  I… nothing. I didn’t do it.

  There was something else in there. I can tell. I still feel weird. Something that wasn’t an opioid. What was it?

  …

  Fuck. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

  Where’s Nathan? Wasn’t Nathan here?

  Oh, my God. Indie… I need you to remember, sweetie. I really do. I need you to remember what just happened because I can’t. I really can’t. I don’t want to do this anymore. This is way above my paygrade. I’m not equipped. Someone else needs to—

  He saw us.

  Yes! Yes. OK. He saw us, Indie. We were… Fucking A, man. Why me? Let’s just—

  The tape stops and I look up to see Adam holding the player in his hands. “What?”

  “Above your fucking paygrade?”

  “What do you want me to say? I didn’t know what to do! I was twenty-fucking-five years old. I was still drugged! I didn’t finish my PSYOPS training. You know this. I kept telling you she needed someone else!”

  “Just…” We all look at Indie. “Keep going. Press play, Adam. I need to hear the rest.”

  —go back to that moment when Nathan appeared.

  He was mad.

  He was so fuckin’ mad.

  He was yelling at us. Screaming at us. I got up and… I couldn’t see Maggie. I was looking for her. And then I saw her in the garden.

  Yeah. She was in the garden.

  But she wasn’t in her playground. She was by the shrubs near the big fountain. I started to go over there, but Nathan pulled me back and… I fell down.

  Yeah. I was… we were all naked, you know. And I was trying to figure out what happened. So I was going towards the house when Nathan took a swing at me.

  Yeah, he hit you hard. And then… then he and Adam were fighting. And then McKay was trying to pull them apart. But he was falling down.

  You drugged us, Indie! Why did you drug us?

  And then I heard Maggie crying. God. She was crying so hard, Donovan. Remember? Did you hear it?

  I heard.

  I ran over the
re. I tried to run over there. But Nathan caught me. He was shaking me and yelling at me. But Adam was there. He was fighting with him again. And I got to Maggie and I saw… Oh, God. She ate the berries! She ate the fucking berries! Why are there berries on that fucking bush? It’s only May!

  I don’t know. I don’t fucking know.

  She was screaming! Her mouth was all red. It’s my fault! It’s my fault! I picked those berries that morning and put them in the cupcake frosting. I told her they were delicious! I told her that, Donovan! Why the fuck did I put those poisonous berries in the goddamned frosting?!

  Adam has her at hospital. He’s taking care of it, Indie. It’s gonna be… It’s gonna be OK.

  Then Nathan was there. Screaming at me. He said… he said… “This is all your fault, Indie. You planted those bushes and I told you! I fuckin’ told you they were poisonous!” And it is! It’s my fault!

  It’s not your fault, Indie.

  It is! It is, it is, it is! And then…

  What? What happened next?

  No.

  Tell me, Indie. I need you to tell me.

  I… I hit him. I hit Nathan in the head with my foot. It was a spinning kick. I didn’t mean to… I heard something crack. Oh, my God. Where is Nathan? I broke his neck! I broke his neck! I saw him fall and his head tilted to the side and—

  Don’t worry about Nathan. McKay is taking care of it, OK? It’s gonna be fine. Don’t worry about Nathan. This is all his fault.

  I killed him! Oh, my God. I killed Nathan. And Maggie is dead! Ow!

  I need you to sleep now, Indie. I just gave you more sedative. But I’m gonna tell you something right now, OK? I’m gonna say something very important and I want you to listen to me very carefully. Can you do that?

  Mmm.

  OK. Good. … OK. Listen to me. You’re not going to remember this. At all. You’re going to forget everything and—

  The tape stops. Adam is still holding the player in his hands.

  “What the actual motherfucking fuck, Donovan!”

  I look up at Adam. But there is nothing left to say. They heard her. They know what I did. And they have to know why I did it. Both Nathan and Maggie died that day and… “Adam. She lost…”

  But I can’t even say it out loud. Maybe I didn’t like Nathan. Hell. OK. Whatever. I can admit the truth now. There’s no point in denying it anymore. We all hated his fucking guts.

  We were gonna… I dunno. Bribe him to just disappear, maybe?

  Some threats if that didn’t work?

  But no one was really gonna kill him.

  “I’m sorry, man. But she was not going to come back from that. It was the only way I could—”

  “Fuck you, Donovan.” We all turn to Indie. Her face is covered in tears. “Fuck you. You’re not in charge of what I get to know. You’re not allowed to erase me like that! You erased my daughter! You erased my boy next door!” She stands up and crosses the room to the window. Then she spins around. “Where the fuck is his house?” She looks at Adam. Then McKay. And then me. Because of course. I always knew she would blame me. I was the one in charge of her mind. “You erased his house?”

  I look at McKay, willing him to take over. But he has his back turned to us, one hand pressed up against the wall near the door, leaning into it like he’s about to collapse.

  “I think you need to leave, Donovan.”

  “No. I’m not—”

  “Leave! Donovan! Now!”

  “Indie, listen to me—”

  “Donovan. Get the fuck out.”

  I turn to Adam, shaking my head. “No.”

  “Just… Donovan. Don’t make this hard, dude. You need to go. Right now. We’ll figure this out and—”

  “You need to go too, Adam.”

  “What?”

  Well… I didn’t see that coming.

  “Both of you. Just… go. I need to be alone.”

  McKay finally turns back around to face us. He’s scrubbing both his hands down his face. I wait for him to talk sense into her. To make her change her mind. To… fix this!

  But he simply nods. “OK, Indie. We’ll go.”

  “Not you, McKay. Jesus. You’re the only one who tells me the truth. You’re the only one I can trust. Just… them.”

  McKay—who ten minutes ago I would have bet a million dollars would be gloating over this new development—shakes his head and frowns. “No.” He looks at me, then Adam. “We all go. Or we all stay. That’s how this works. You don’t get to pick and choose which of us is allowed to love you, Indie. We do things for you that maybe feel wrong. But we do them because they feel right to us in the moment. We’re just… doing our best. So if they go, then I go too. If you want to end this today, then that’s how this ends.”

  There are many long moments of total silence. Then Indie sniffs loudly and drags the back of her hand across her face, wiping away the tears that are already dry.

  Is she sad? I can’t tell.

  Like… that is so fucked up. She is so fucked up.

  And we did that to her.

  “Fuck this.” Adam turns away and walks out, his boots stomping all the way down the stairs, the front door slamming behind him. A few moments later we hear his truck. Then the fading sound of tires on gravel as he leaves.

  McKay huffs and shakes his head, then looks at Indie. “That’s great. That’s just goddamned great. You know we’re on your side. And if you don’t, Indie, then… you know what? Fuck you.”

  Her face is stoic again. Just blank.

  I stand up and turn to McKay. Shrug with my hands. “I gave her that tape because I wanted the truth to come out. So… there you go, dude. She’s all yours. I’ll be downstairs if you need me. Because I’m not walking out.”

  I couldn’t even if I wanted to.

  Because after all these years. After all that poking and prodding inside her mind. After all the desperate hope, and all the disappointing dead ends, and all the ways in which I failed her, and Adam, and McKay, and myself, and yeah, Carter too.

  Just when I finally admit that he’s gone and move on—today, of all days, she gives me the gift of a clue.

  And that clue might as well be a little piece of paper that says, Carter was here.

  There is no way I’m walking out now.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE - McKAY

  PRESENT DAY

  Donovan slams the bedroom door behind him when he leaves, his feet stomping on the stairs on his way down just like Adam’s did.

  He’s angry. I don’t blame him. None of this is really his fault. Hell, none of this is really anyone’s fault.

  It’s just… fuck if I know what it is.

  Indie is standing in the middle of the room staring at the bedroom door.

  “I want to hear the tapes, McKay. All of them. Right now. I need to know why this is happening to me. I need it to all make sense.”

  “OK.” I scrub my face with my hands. Feeling very alone, and tired, and sad all of a sudden. “OK. We can do that. Which one do you want to listen to first?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I don’t know, Indie. I really don’t know. I never listened to them. Not after the first few. It always bothered me.”

  She turns to me. “Why?”

  “Because… you’re always someone different with Donovan. And Adam, too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  What do I mean? How can I explain it? “You were just… defiant with them. And you were complaint with me.”

  Her shoulders relax a little but her frown deepens. “Because I loved you best.”

  “You didn’t. You didn’t, Indie. You just…”

  “I just loved you best, McKay.”

  There are equal parts of me that both want to believe that and reject it in the same breath. “Indie. I need you to hear something right now.”

  “The tapes?”

  “No. Yes. No. We’re gonna listen to them. But I need you to know this before we start. You don’t belong to me. You don�
��t belong to anyone. But if you stay with me, you stay with Adam and Donovan too.”

  Her shoulders go tense again.

  “I thought that was what you wanted? That’s what you told us on your twentieth birthday. That’s what you wrote in that journal. If I had to choose just one of them, I would die. Remember that?”

  She nods.

  “So we are gonna listen to those tapes but you are not going to judge them. You hear me? Donovan’s right. We did the best we could.”

  We lock eyes and stare at each other. And maybe, for the first time ever, I see the girl who really lives inside that head of hers.

  The scared little girl. The one that knows she’s not whole. I want to tell her that it’s OK. That’s she’s other things. She’s brave, for one. And smart. And beautiful, and funny, and if she could just face the monster we’ve kept locked inside her head for the past fourteen years, there will be something good on the other side.

  But I don’t say it. Because I’m not sure I believe it myself.

  Indie rallies and takes a deep breath. “OK.”

  “Where do you want to start.

  “From the beginning, I guess.”