You Were Never Here

by Kathleen Peacock

  Before I can even think of how to reply, he rushes on. “That night at the party, when I grabbed your hand, what did you see? What did you see when we kissed? It couldn’t have upset you, whatever it was. You didn’t pull away. Do you really not understand how perfect you are? Riley thought you saw secrets, but the truth is so much better.” He begins to pace, his steps carrying him from one side of the room to the other. “I’ve read everything Riley wrote about you, Cat, and I’ve watched you every day since you came back. You see want and fear.”

  As he paces, I slowly begin to inch toward the door. “Wants are easy,” he says. “Anyone can guess what someone wants. But fear? Knowing what someone is afraid of? That’s unlocking a door and stepping through. Imagine what you could do to someone if you knew their deepest fear. Imagine what we could do, together.”

  He stops suddenly and snaps his fingers. The noise seems impossibly loud. I flinch, and as I do, something scrapes against my back. The hilt of the hunting knife. I fight to keep my face blank.

  “Do you remember what I told you about your father?” he asks.

  I shake my head. I can barely keep up with his madness, let alone guess where he’s going to go next. All I want is for him to move just a little farther from the door. To turn his back or become distracted.

  “I told you that writers get to play God. That they can manipulate reality. That’s what I do. I watched Riley Fraser’s life drain away. For weeks afterward, I watched the whole town search for him. It was like being a god. Standing in that trailer with you, watching as you took it all in—do you have any idea how incredible that felt? You weren’t even supposed to be the one who found it, but then we ended up in the woods, and I realized it was meant to be you all along.”

  “Lucky me.” The words slip out.

  He ignores them. “But do you know what made me start to realize how much power I really have?”

  “Oprah?”

  The corner of his mouth quirks up in an achingly familiar smile. For a second, he looks like the boy who kissed me, the boy who walked me home after a movie night with his friends. But then the moment’s gone. “It was when they searched the grounds, looking for Riley,” he says. “I was in the mill. They came so close. Only one room away. And then Jensen called them back. That’s when I suspected. Later, when you asked me to go with you to the hospital, that was when I knew. Rachel looked right at me and nothing happened and I knew I could do anything.”

  That’s why he had been so nervous. Not because he hates hospitals, but because he was scared Rachel would remember what he had done. A shiver crawls down my spine as I think of Rachel in that giant hospital bed, talking to the boy who had put her there.

  “When you asked me to go with you,” he continues, “it was a test. And I passed. It was proof.”

  “That you’re God?” As scared as I am, I can’t keep the sarcasm from my voice.

  “I said it’s like being a god. Not that I am God. I’m not crazy.”

  Right. None of this is crazy. “But why take Rachel in the first place? It couldn’t have just been because you were bored or because you could or because the idea of messing with Harding was some sort of bonus.”

  “I wanted to get the feeling back. To see how far I could push it. Watching Riley die unlocked a door. I thought killing Rachel would open it completely.”

  “Why?” My voice comes out strangled. I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this. “If it is a door, why would you ever want to go through it? How would you even know it was there in the first place?”

  Aidan crosses the space between us and then brushes the hair back from my forehead. I jerk my head away before his skin can touch mine. “What do you want to hear, Cat? That my parents didn’t hug me enough as a child or that they locked me in a small closet to punish me? How a bad man took me down to a dark basement or how I’ve always been secretly jealous of guys like Riley?”

  “Depends. Did any of that actually happen?”

  The corner of his mouth quirks up again. “I’m sure all of it happened to someone, somewhere.” The smile vanishes as quickly as it appeared. “How about this: I just like it. I liked watching the whole town piss themselves over what happened to Riley. I liked watching Rachel cry and beg. I liked manipulating Skylar.”

  “And that’s what you’ve been doing to me, too, right? Manipulating me? Creating clues and puzzles for me to solve. Getting off on watching me run around.”

  “I didn’t do it to get off.” He considers his words for a moment, then adds, “Well, I didn’t do it just to get off.” He inches forward, pressing into what little personal space I have left, forcing me to back up. “I did it to help you.”

  “Help me?” My shoulder blades hit the wall. “How could anything you’ve done possibly help me?”

  “Skylar told me what you said to her that day in the drugstore: that you wanted to fight monsters. That you didn’t want to be afraid. I knew that if I could give you a monster to fight—that if you could prove to yourself how strong you could be—you’d accept the truth.”

  “And what truth is that?”

  He presses his body against mine and whispers in my ear. “That there are no monsters. There is no right and wrong. There are rules, and there are people who break them. You shatter so many rules just by existing. I’m not scared of that. I understand it. I understand you in ways no one else ever will. I’m the only one who will never be afraid of the things you can do.”

  A small, sad look flashes across his face. “It wasn’t supposed to go quite like this. I wanted you to find Joey. I’ve been keeping him in the mill for days, waiting for the perfect chance to bring you here. I wanted you to think he killed Riley. I wanted to see what you would do—what you would ask me to do. But while I was waiting for you, I saw Skylar go down into the tunnels. I honestly didn’t think she was brave enough to do that.”

  “Why not just steer me away from her? You could have. You didn’t have to let me pick which tunnels we followed.”

  “I thought it was like you finding the trailer. Fate.” He leans closer. His breath is hot against my skin. For a horrible moment, I think he’s going to try to kiss me, but then he pulls back so he can slide his phone from his pocket. “Let me show you something,” he says, unlocking the screen. “Let me show you how much I understand.”

  For a split second, his attention is diverted, and in that second, I reach behind my back. “You don’t understand anything.” And with that, I push my arm up and forward; I push the knife into Aidan.

  Thirty-Seven

  SLIDING A KNIFE INTO A PERSON IS NOT LIKE SLIDING A KNIFE INTO anything else. Even if you catch them by surprise, their body resists.

  Aidan’s eyes go wide as I throw my weight behind the hilt of the blade. I lose my balance, and we both crash to the ground. I grab his phone, still unlocked, and scramble to my feet. I think he says my name, but it’s difficult to hear over the pounding of my pulse.

  Using the phone to light my way, I run. Through the door. Down the tunnel. My lungs burn and my legs shake, but I keep moving. I reach the storeroom where I first found Skylar; it’s empty, recognizable only by the pieces of blue twine on the ground.

  Skylar.

  She has to be okay.

  How long was I out? How far could she have gotten? I shine the light from the phone around the room, looking for the lead pipe. There’s no sign of it. Frantically, I try to call 911, but there’s no service.

  “Cat!”

  Aidan’s voice echoes down the tunnel and propels me forward.

  I don’t know how long I run.

  I try to keep track of the twists and turns, but the tunnels are all too similar. Soon, I have no idea where I am. Mice and rats scatter at my approach, but there’s no sign of Skylar. It gets harder and harder to breathe, like the air is running out.

  Voices ricochet through my head.

  There are no monsters. There is no right and wrong.

  Everyone shows different sides of themse
lves to different people at different times.

  You’re okay.

  He doesn’t mean it—he just doesn’t understand. He can’t.

  You didn’t do it because you had to. You did it because you could.

  You use me every bit as much as I use you. Maybe more.

  The voices overlap and then drown each other out until only two remain.

  If you were a character in a story, what kind of story would you want it to be?

  The kind where the girl slays dragons and fights monsters, I guess.

  Why?

  And suddenly, in that twisting maze of tunnels and dead ends, I find myself.

  When I finally stumble into the cavernous room beneath the mill, Aidan is waiting.

  “I’m disappointed, Cat.” He walks toward me, wincing with each step. The beam from the flashlight in his hand bounces, making the shadows dance around us. I had been aiming for his stomach, but the patch of blood on his shirt is high and too far to the right. I had hurt him; just not enough to stop him.

  I don’t back up. I don’t try to get away. What would be the point? Even bleeding, he’s probably faster—he’d have to be faster to have headed me off—and he knows the tunnels. Besides, I’m tired of running. I ran away from Riley all those years ago. I ran from New York, in a way. I even ran from Noah.

  Surprise fills Aidan’s eyes when I don’t run. Surprise and excitement.

  “You really did all of that?” I ask. “You didn’t make any of it up?”

  “What?”

  “Everything you said. You watched Riley die. You took Rachel. You framed Joey.”

  “I told you I did: I wasn’t lying.”

  I resist the urge to reach for my pocket, to touch the stolen phone tucked inside to make sure it’s still recording. Maybe no one will ever find the phone—maybe no one will ever find me—but at least I tried.

  Slowly, like I’m some kind of animal he’s worried about scaring off, Aidan reaches for me.

  He told me that fear is a doorway. If that’s true, maybe it can go both ways. So many of the things I see lurk under the surface: people aren’t always consciously aware of them. But what if I could make him see what I see? What if, instead of fear pouring through the door into me, I pushed it back into him?

  I know what Aidan wants. He wants me to help him hurt other people. He wants to be a god. But I don’t know what he fears.

  I take his hands in mine, and I have just a second to register the fact that he smiles. That crooked grin I thought I knew. Desire comes roaring toward me, but I somehow push it back. I try to find his most secret fear, the fear he can barely acknowledge to himself. I picture dark black threads and reach for them. Aidan’s palms are tacky with blood. It sticks to me as he squeezes my hands, as I follow the threads to their source.

  I don’t know how I do it, but I weave the strands of his fear together and pull them to the surface. I pull them to the surface, and then I thrust them back in. Aidan’s eyes go wide as he sees what I see: how utterly powerless he is compared to the world around us. How small and forgettable and inconsequential. Not a god, but an insect.

  He drops the flashlight.

  Pain explodes in my head. I lose my grip on Aidan’s hands, and I have just a second to register the sight of him crumpling to the ground before I collapse in on myself.

  The last thing I see as the shadows in the room rise up and close in is Skylar, a lead pipe in her hands, her feet planted wide. A tiny avenging angel in the dark.

  Thirty-Eight

  FOR MONTHS AFTER THE DAY RILEY FRASER DISAPPEARED—A cold Saturday in March that seemed ordinary in every other way—people thought he would come back. More than 900 miles away, I didn’t even know he was missing.

  Now, of course, it’s different.

  People know Riley didn’t get lost in the woods.

  Or run away.

  And while almost everyone in Montgomery Falls has gone back to believing Riley’s life was every bit as charmed as it seemed from the outside, I know the truth is more complicated.

  I park Aunt Jet’s car on the edge of the dirt lane that winds through Hillcrest Cemetery and climb out. You can see everything from up here. The town, the river, the woods. Even the textile mill—a small, dark smudge in the distance like a constant reminder.

  A breeze curls over the hill and lifts the ends of my hair but doesn’t do much to ease the early August heat. I roll my sleeves up as I walk; it doesn’t really help. Thankfully, it doesn’t take long to find the stone. It’s only been a week, after all, and the ground around it is still covered with flowers.

  I pull a small silver disc from my pocket. A Saint Anthony medal. Not the one Riley found all those summers ago—that one is still wrapped in plastic in the basement of the Montgomery Falls Police Department. No, this one is new and unburdened. No initials on the back. No history. No guilt. Just a patron saint of lost things for a boy who was obsessed with lost things and became lost himself.

  “Hey,” I whisper, crouching down. Nothing whispers back. I don’t believe Riley is really listening—if there is an afterlife, I hope he has better things to do than hang around this place—but there’s still something comforting in the idea of talking to him. Even if he’s not really here. Even if the person I imagine seems so different than the one everyone—the minister, his teachers, his teammates—spoke of at the funeral.

  Carefully, I move a few of the flowers aside and then use the edge of the medal to dig a shallow hole. I drop the disc inside and then cover it up. “I’ll come back,” I say as I press the dirt back into place. “I promise.”

  There’s something I never told Noah. Something I haven’t even really let myself think about.

  Last January, a few days after the start of a new year, Riley sent me a text.

  Just two words: You there?

  It had been five years, but I still recognized his number. Seeing it on my screen had made things in my chest tighten while my stomach dropped.

  I didn’t reply.

  Because he had hurt me and I didn’t want to get hurt again. Because I was angry, even after all that time. Because anger was better than guilt, and I felt so, so guilty whenever I let myself think about that day and how he had hit the ground. Because, on some level, I felt like I really was a monster.

  It never occurred to me that Riley might have felt just as guilty about that day.

  Now, I wonder if maybe things would have turned out differently, somehow, if I had tried to talk to him instead of running away. If I had replied to his text when I had the chance.

  I know it’s an impossible question without an answer, but I can’t help thinking about it.

  I haven’t really been able to stop thinking about it since my third or fourth day in the hospital when Dad gave me a new phone. “No rules,” he said.

  That day, when I logged into Instagram, I saw a message from Lacey. Like the text from Riley, it contained only two words. I’m sorry. It had been sent three days after I left for Montgomery Falls.

  I straighten and brush my palms against my jeans. As I turn, I spot a familiar figure cresting the hill.

  “Your aunt said I could find you here,” Noah says as he reaches me. He looks better than he did at the funeral—less tired, less ragged—but there are still shadows under his eyes, and his clothes fit loosely, as though he’s lost weight. “You’re still leaving today?”

  I nod. It’s the first time we’ve spoken in weeks, and it’s a little hard to find my voice. “Yeah. I figured I would come by. See him without all the people around, you know?”

  We stand here, awkwardly, Noah on one side, me on the other. Riley dividing us or bridging us, depending on how you look at it. Noah hasn’t answered a single one of my calls or texts since I got out of the hospital. He must have gotten the messages, though, if he knows I’m leaving today.

  I guess I can’t blame him for not wanting to talk to me sooner.

  What had happened with Riley that day on the porch was something I c
ouldn’t help. It was an accident. But with Noah . . .

  He wasn’t wrong when he said I didn’t have the right to go looking into people’s heads. It’s one of the reasons I want to see Lacey when I get back to New York. She isn’t the only one who’s sorry.

  “How’s your mom?” I ask finally, because one of us has to say something.

  “Better.” He swallows and looks away. “I think the funeral—I think actually knowing—helped.”

  “Good.”

  “You’re not going to tell me I was wrong? All that time I spent convinced she couldn’t handle the truth . . .” He turns his gaze back to mine.

  If Noah is looking for someone to make him feel guilty, he’s come to the wrong person. I know he did the best for his mom that he could. I don’t see how anyone could doubt that. “I think it’s hard to know just what’s going on in someone’s head or what they’ll do.”

  “Except for you.”

  I shake my head. “It’s not that much easier for me.”

  He doesn’t seem to know what to say to that. “Your dad’s already gone?”

  “Yeah. He only stayed a couple of weeks. I wanted to wait until . . . well, you know.” I nudge one of the wreaths with the edge of my sneaker and accidentally send it toppling over.

  Noah bends down to right it. When he straightens, his cheeks are red. “I shouldn’t have pushed you away that night at the hospital. You were right: I was a hypocrite.”

  I feel my own face flush. “Yeah, you were. But you were right, too: I shouldn’t have done what I did.”

  My phone vibrates in my pocket. I pull it out. A text from Aunt Jet reminding me that I have to be at the station in an hour. “I have to go.”

  “Can I walk you to your car?” He sounds uncertain, like I might say no, like he’s not the one who’s been avoiding me for the past month.

  Confused and a little hesitant, I nod.

  I remember only bits and pieces of what happened after Skylar hit Aidan. I remember Skylar wrapping her arm around me as we made our way out of the tunnels. I remember trying to push her away, trying to warn her not to touch my skin as she told me over and over that it was okay. I remember her asking me to forgive her, telling me that she hadn’t wanted to leave me behind, but that she thought maybe she could get help while Aidan was distracted. I remember the feeling of fresh air on my face as we made it to the surface. I remember sirens. Far away and then closer and then red and blue light.