Beautiful Lies

by Jessica Warman

  “She’s upset,” Sean says. “Give her a minute. She just woke up. She’s probably still dizzy.”

  I shake my head. “I’m fine. Nobody hurt me, okay?”

  “But your face—” my aunt begins.

  “I know what my face looks like!” I don’t mean to yell at her; that’s just how the words come out. So much is happening so quickly, and I don’t have control over any of it. What I want right now, more than anything, is to find my sister. Regardless of what she might tell me, I know that she’ll have some answers. Even if they aren’t the ones I want to hear.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, trying to calm myself with deep breaths. “I’m just … confused, I guess. I don’t know.” I frown. Tears come to my eyes without warning. “I want you to find Rachel. I want her to come home.”

  “We are,” my uncle says. “We’re going right now.”

  TJ stands up straighter. “I’m coming with you.”

  “No, you’re not. This is a family matter.”

  TJ frowns. He shakes his head, but he doesn’t argue.

  My uncle hesitates. “Alice, I don’t think you should come with us either.”

  “Uncle Jeff, I’m not going to sit here alone and wait for you.”

  “He’s right,” my aunt agrees. “It’s not a good idea, Alice. We’re going to have a talk with Grandma. I don’t think you should be there.” Her lips stiffen into a straight line. “It’s not going to be fun.”

  “Go ahead,” Sean says. “I’ll stay with her.”

  I stare at him. He still smells like damp earth: wet leaves, dirt, like the debris that’s left in the gutter after a heavy rain. You’re a little fucking liar.

  “I want to come with you,” I insist, trying to climb to my feet.

  “Alice, no.” Sean helps me stand. He gives me a worried look. He’s so cute. It occurs to me that it’s an odd observation to make at a time like this, but it’s true; he’s just such a charming, good-looking guy. When Rachel and I were maybe ten or eleven years old, he used to do these cheesy little magic tricks for us. It was simple stuff: making a handkerchief disappear into his fist, or pulling a quarter out from behind our ears. We always looked forward to seeing him. Even as little girls, we were drawn to his charisma. Everyone is.

  “I have to pick up your cousin in fifteen minutes,” he says. He nods at my aunt and uncle. “I’ll take Alice with me to get Charlie, and then we’ll come right back here. I’ll stay with them for as long as it takes you to find Rachel and do whatever else you need to do.” He looks at TJ. “You should go home now.”

  My aunt and uncle glance at each other, communicating with their eyes. I can tell they’re hesitant to leave me alone, even for a little while.

  “We might be gone for a long time,” my uncle says.

  “It’s fine, honestly. I don’t have anything else to do.” Sean pats my uncle’s shoulder. “Really, you should go. I’ll take care of everything here. That’s what neighbors are for, right?”

  My aunt begins to massage her own neck, tilting her head back, sighing as she stares at the ceiling. She must be exhausted. “Jeff? What do you think?”

  My uncle rubs his forehead. “I don’t know …”

  “Go.” Sean is friendly but firm. “We’ll be fine. Maybe I’ll teach Alice how to play poker while you’re gone.” He winks at me. “I bet she’s a great bluffer.”

  Even though I’ve known Sean for years, I’ve only been alone with him a handful of times. Given the events of the past hour or so, I’m more than a little uncomfortable with the still silence that follows once my aunt and uncle head out the door, followed by an obviously reluctant TJ.

  Sean doesn’t say anything at first. Without a word, he leaves me alone and walks into the kitchen, where I hear him rifling around in the cupboard. There is the sound of running water, followed by the low electric hum of the microwave.

  The smell of earth is everywhere, all over the downstairs. I almost feel like I’ll look down to see dirt and leaves strewn across the floor.

  “Are you just going to stand there?” Sean calls from the kitchen. “Come in and talk to me, kiddo.” There is no trace of the sinister undertones in his voice that I detected just a few minutes ago. He is calm, casual, almost like this is any other day.

  I sit at the kitchen table, watching him as he finishes making a cup of tea. He sets it down in front of me and says, “Drink.” But when I take a sip, it’s too hot. The water burns my tongue. Immediately, I feel a blister rise on the roof of my mouth.

  He gets a beer from the fridge and leans against the wall for a minute, trying to twist off the cap, which won’t budge.

  “It’s not a twist-off,” I say.

  “Oh.” He frowns at the bottle, almost like he’s embarrassed. “Well, excuse me.” And he starts digging through the drawers, looking for the opener. With his back to me, he says, “You know, I remember that girl. What’s-her-name, your teacher’s daughter. She’s the same one from the painting you saw at my house, isn’t she?”

  The steam from the tea is dampening my face. “Yes.”

  “It happened right after I moved here. It was a big deal on the local news. They had search parties out looking for her for weeks. She was home from college for the weekend, and she went out running one day and just never came home.” He turns to face me. “You and Rachel would have been about ten. Do you remember when it happened?”

  I can hear the kittens mewing upstairs, the grandfather clock ticking in the hallway. Looking out the window behind Sean, I can see the sun setting. It will be dark in a few minutes. “No. I don’t remember anything about it.”

  He tilts his head back and takes a long swig of beer. He drinks over half the bottle in a few gulps. He takes another sip, then another, watching me the whole time. Once there’s only an inch of beer or so left in the bottle, he pours the remainder into the sink. He gets another one, opens it, and drinks it just as quickly.

  “Then why did you draw her? You drew her over and over again, didn’t you?” His voice is soft, almost gentle.

  I nod. The house feels suddenly smaller, the earthy smell more potent than ever.

  He finishes his second beer. Glancing at the clock on the stove, he says, “Oh, man. We need to go get Charlie. We’re late.”

  I blink at him. “You just drank two beers.”

  He laughs. “Relax. Come on.”

  I leave my tea on the table, where it will go cold by the time we return. I don’t want to go anywhere with him. At the very least, I should insist that he let me drive, I know. But it’s less than a mile to the Yellow Moon, and he’s only had two beers. Maybe he’s right, and I should relax. My intuition is telling me that something isn’t right—not at all—but if there’s one thing I’ve learned by now it’s that my intuition isn’t good for much of anything.

  Just as we’re leaving the house, he stops next to the front door. He smiles at me. “It’s incredible,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief.

  He’s standing too close to me, invading my personal space. I get the feeling he’s doing it on purpose.

  “What is?” I ask.

  “How much you look like your sister. I bet I couldn’t tell the two of you apart right now if my life depended on it.”

  I feel like screaming. I feel like running outside and banging on our neighbors’ front door and insisting that they call the police.

  “Except for my bruises,” I say.

  He pauses. Still grinning, he asks, “What?”

  “You couldn’t tell us apart if it weren’t for the bruises on my face.”

  He doesn’t miss a beat. “Yes. Right.”

  Sean walks out the front door, but I don’t follow him. I wait until he’s on the porch, until he’s looking at me impatiently, before I give him my sweetest smile and say, “Hold on. I have to set the alarm.”

  It’s only 6:03, but it’s dark. “Late, late, late,” he murmurs, more to himself than to me.

  He seems tipsy from the beers, steering his c
ar with one finger as we drive through town. He turns up the radio, which is tuned to the same classic-rock station that TJ is so fond of.

  The Yellow Moon’s parking lot is packed. Sean doesn’t even try to find a space; he just pulls up in front of the double doors and shifts the car into park, letting the engine idle.

  He switches off the radio; silence swells all around us. “You okay waiting here for me?” he asks, climbing out of the car. He wasn’t wearing a seat belt.

  “Sure.” I smile at him again through gritted teeth.

  “Okie-dokie. Be right back.”

  I watch him disappear into the restaurant. Through the glass doors, I can see Holly sitting at a high-top in the corner, eating an enormous pickle. Doug the bartender is mixing a drink, chatting with Matt and Katie Follet, who have taken their usual seats for the evening.

  Everything is fine. Rachel is coming home. It will be all right. Everyone is where they’re supposed to be, doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

  I sigh, bored despite my nerves, looking around the car as I wait. There’s a small book wedged in between my seat and the center console. I tug at the edge, struggling to read the title in the darkness. As my eyes adjust, I can see that it is called Trails of Southwestern Pennsylvania. Of course; he’s a runner. It makes sense that he would have something like this.

  I pick up the book with the intention of paging through it as I wait, but there isn’t enough light. My gaze drifts across the dash. Even in the dimness, I can tell this is a really old car; it still has a cassette player and even a cigarette lighter.

  A glint of moonlight hits my eye as the keys swing gently from the ignition. It seems weird; all the windows are up, and the air conditioner is off, so there’s no breeze in the car.

  There’s a soft drip as something hits Sean’s book of trails, which is resting in my lap. I look down. Drip, drip, drip.

  It’s my nose. It’s bleeding.

  I stare at the keys as they move back and forth somehow, propelled by an invisible force. I count five of them attached to a silver loop.

  Beneath the loop, a tiny object dangles from a chain. I squint, trying to get a better look.

  My gaze snaps into focus like a key turning in a lock.

  I scream, but I don’t make any sound. I want to run, but I cannot move. All I can do is watch as it swings back and forth, back and forth. If I reach out to touch it, I know it will feel damp in the palm of my hand. Drip.

  It’s a peach pit. Carved into the shape of a monkey.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Hey, Rachel! I didn’t know you were here too!” Charlie greets me with his usual enthusiasm as he lumbers into the backseat. He’s been washing dishes all night; I can tell because he smells soapy and clean. As I press my sleeve against my nose, trying to hide the bleeding from my cousin, my instinct is to shout at him to run back inside, to call the police … but what would he tell them? I imagine the conversation in my mind as Sean pulls away from the restaurant:

  “My cousin has a bad feeling about our neighbor.”

  “And?”

  “And that’s it. She gets feelings sometimes. They’re usually wrong, though.”

  Click.

  It’s too short of a drive back to our house; I don’t have enough time to think. Right now, my aunt and uncle are at my grandma’s, looking for Rachel. I want her to be there so badly. I want to come home and find all three of them waiting for us. I want them to yell at us, to ground us and take away our after-school privileges and look at us with disapproval. I don’t care what they do; I just want Rachel to come home and fill in all the blanks that have accumulated over the past few days. Let her go away with TJ and leave me behind after high school. I don’t care. All I want is to know that she’s safe.

  Sean is almost giddy. He turns up the radio, singing along. If he notices that my nose is bleeding, he doesn’t mention it. He hiccups a few times, shifting gears jerkily as he drives uphill toward our end of town. He’s going way too fast, over fifty miles per hour in a thirty-five zone. He speeds through a yellow light and only makes it halfway through another before it turns red, turning onto our street without pausing at the stop sign. I can feel Charlie’s buckled-down weight shifting in the backseat with every reckless maneuver, but he doesn’t seem to notice that anything is amiss. Maybe Sean drives this way all the time.

  He doesn’t even slow down as he approaches our house; instead, he keeps going until he reaches the end of the block. He veers sharply to the right, pulling up in front of his own house, his wheel hitting the curb as he comes to an abrupt stop.

  It’s so dark now. A few of my neighbors’ porch lights glow in the thick dusk, but the street lights won’t come on for another hour or so. The wind carries dead leaves along the sidewalk in a gentle stop-and-start rhythm, a few stragglers catching in the edges of people’s lawns to get chewed into bits by mowers tomorrow or the next day. As I look at Sean, all I can make out are the whites of his big eyes, staring at me. I can feel the warmth from his breath on my face; it smells like decay.

  Rotting leaves. Dirt. Decomposition. Death. I am so afraid of him that I can barely put my thoughts together; they’re all singular ideas like run, scream, fight, protect, but I’m too frantic and uncertain to actually do any of it.

  He smiles at Charlie and me. His teeth are bright white. The word chompers comes to mind.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks, pulling my hand away, staring at the blood on my sleeve.

  “Rachel?” Charlie leans forward to look at me. “Aww.” He makes a face. “You’ve been picking your nose!” he exclaims. “That’s why it’s bleeding! Gross!”

  “We’ll go down to your place in a few minutes,” Sean says, climbing out of the car. “Sheba needs to go out first.”

  “Can I walk her, Mr. Morelli?” Charlie pleads, pressing his palms together as we approach Sean’s house. “I’ll only take her in the yard. You know I won’t go anywhere else. I’ll do a good job, I promise.”

  “Sure, buddy.” As Sean unlocks his front door, I cannot bring myself to look down at the monkey on his keychain again.

  Am I being hysterical? Panicking for no good reason? He could have gone to the fair just as easily as anyone else in our town. He could have bought one of the monkeys from the old man. It might mean nothing at all; it probably does mean nothing at all. I’m not thinking straight. Maybe it’s not even there, like Robin wasn’t really there. Maybe it’s all in my crazy, screwed-up head, and my nosebleed is just a coincidence.

  You’re a little fucking liar. The look in his eyes as he whispered those words to me. He meant something. It was as though, for just an instant, his mask slipped off, and I saw the man behind it.

  The three of us go into his kitchen. Immediately, Sean gets a can of beer from his fridge. He snaps Sheba’s leash onto her collar, hands her off to Charlie, and lets the two of them out the back door before my cousin has a chance to take a good look at me and notice my bruised face. Sean’s backyard is lit by floodlights. Through the window, I can see Charlie as he waits patiently for Sheba, talking to her, smiling, taking enormous pleasure in such a simple act.

  Sean doesn’t offer me a rag for my nose; he just continues to let me use my sleeve. “Come here,” he says, strolling past me. “There’s something I want to show you. It’s back here, in the hallway.”

  I don’t move. I try to think, struggling to figure out what to do next. I need to get away from Sean somehow.

  “Alice?” He cocks his head at me. “What’s the matter, sweetie? You seem spooked.”

  When I don’t answer right away, he leans his head back and laughs. “Come on. It’s fine. There’s no bogeyman, I promise.” He gives me his signature wink. “It’s just you and me.”

  What else am I supposed to do? I follow him through the living room, around the corner, and into the hallway. For a few seconds, we’re surrounded by darkness. Then he switches on a light, and before I know what’s happening he puts his arm around me, pulling
me close, and says, “Well? Do you like it?”

  It’s my painting of Jamie Slater. He’s hung it on the wall outside his bedroom.

  He takes a few gulps of beer. He burps. Then he continues to speak, still holding me close, digging his fingernails into my bare arm until it hurts.

  He sighs. “She was so pretty. I always liked women who were a little odd looking, and that gap between her teeth made her seem really special. We only talked for a few minutes, but she was a sweet girl.” He pauses. “Well, she was nineteen, so I guess she was more of a woman.”

  All I can do is stare into her painted eyes as she gazes back at me. I can’t move; he won’t let me. He wants me to listen.

  “It was so long ago, I’d almost completely forgotten about her. There have been a few, you know. A guy gets bored over the years. Everyone needs a hobby. I was so careful, Alice. Everything would have been fine. But then you came along. Painting her. Drawing her. I’ve seen her in your sketchbooks. Why would you do that to me? How did you even know who she was?”

  As I finally force myself to speak, my voice is hoarse, like I’ve been screaming. “What did you do to her?”

  He seems surprised by the question, as though the answer should be obvious. “I killed her, stupid.”

  We hear the kitchen door open. “Good girl, Sheba,” Charlie says, his heavy footsteps echoing through the downstairs. “You’re a good girl.” I imagine him looking around the kitchen for us. “Hello?” he calls. “Mr. Morelli? Rachel? Where’d you go?”

  Finally, I summon the will to scream. “Charlie, run! Run away and call the police, Charlie!”

  “Shut up,” Sean hisses, his bright teeth gritted, yanking me closer to him. His breath is foul and rancid. “Shut your mouth, Alice.”

  I struggle to get away from him, kicking my legs, trying to wriggle free. It doesn’t work.

  Charlie’s huge frame appears in the hallway. He’s confused and frightened by the sight of us, I can tell. He takes a tentative step backward. Sean pastes on a wry smile, slides a hand over my mouth, and says, “Hey, buddy. Your cousin and I are having a little talk. Everything’s okay. She was only kidding. Weren’t you, dear?”