This hostel is cheap and rundown, but I don’t want to spend too much of what little money I have. I try to imagine the Gulf of Mexico glistening in the sun through the window. The thought causes tears to run down my face. This is my own fault, I remind myself. I used to imagine what Paris would be like. This version never occurred to me—cold, rainy, depressing, and under these circumstances.
The rain bleeds under the door and chills the room causing me to shiver again. My hair is still wet. I stare at the empty bottle of hair dye by the sink, which is now stained the same dark brown as my new hair. Walking from the train station, I saw a group of young people wearing smiley face stickers. Part of me wanted to turn around and tell them the truth. Instead, I ran the other way.
A knock at the door sends my heart racing. A large backpack drops outside with a watery thud just before a key scrapes the lock. I can’t move. A tall, thin girl pushes open the door and drags her enormous backpack inside. “Sorry,” she whispers to me. “I didn’t know there was anyone in here. Were you asleep?”
“No,” I say.
“Oh good. I’m Freedom. And, yes, it’s my real name.” I’m not sure if she sees my face, or just continues out of habit. “Hippie parents. Lots of drugs.” She unzips her backpack and pulls out some dry clothes.
I don’t say anything.
“Are you sick?” she asks.
I look away and nod, trying not to cry.
She picks up the empty hair dye container by the sink. “Oh shit. Been there. Done that,” she says sympathetically. “I went with red. And it was not pretty—literally or metaphorically.”
I pull the blanket up over my shoulders.
“Listen, I’ll be out of your way in a few minutes,” she says as she adjusts a blue bandanna over her long straight hair that’s so blond it’s almost white. She reminds me of an edgier version of my stepsister, but I can’t stop staring at the bandanna. My thoughts jump back to the trust games we had in Italy.
“Where’d you get your bandanna?” I ask, trying not to panic.
“From Colorado. It’s my Axl Rose look.” She laughs, mocking his “Sweet Child o’ Mine” swaying dance.
I begin to relax. No one in the Kingdom would ever do that. Except Kara. Then the tears rush back.
She eyes me with concern. “Hey. Are you sure you’re really okay?”
“No,” I say. “I’m really not.”
* * *
Freedom leaves and returns with some aspirin and McDonald’s. The moment I smell the French fries, I realize I’m starving.
“I really hate eating this shit when I’m in freaking Paris, but it’s cheap and around the corner, so c’est la vie.” She holds up her soda to toast mine. The more she talks and acts like a normal college student, the more I relax.
“So. What’s your story?” she asks. “Have you been to Balmer’s yet? Oh God. It’s amazing.”
“Not yet,” I say. I smile, only because I’m terrified that she’ll figure out my real story if I don’t.
“I’m going to Italy next. Trying to hit every country before August.”
I try to keep my expression neutral as I take a sip of my Coke.
Freedom stands abruptly as she wads up her McDonald’s sack. “Okay. Here’s the deal. This room is a real shithole. You’re obviously a little bit better. The rain has stopped, and the sun is out. We’re in Paris, for Christ’s sake. Let’s go do something.”
Desperate to avoid giving myself away, I agree.
The sun feels almost unnatural as we walk down impossibly chic Parisian streets. The crowds thicken as we approach the Eiffel Tower. A mime wearing a black-and-white striped shirt and a black beret is pushing against an invisible wall with his white-gloved hands. His face is covered in chalky makeup, his furrowed painted-on eyebrows showing exaggerated frustration. Tourists lining the rows of stone steps clap and cheer in awe. He pounds against the air as if trying to get out. The Eiffel Tower looms behind him as if we somehow stumbled into the pretend Paris—the stock footage that signals where we must be. Sometimes what’s really happening is too surreal to believe.
People are moving all around me, and they begin to seem too close. I’m getting dizzy again.
Freedom grabs my arm. “Come on.”
I look up at the tower. “Um. I don’t do heights,” I lie, hoping to have a chance to figure out a plan while waiting for Freedom to return.
“Okay, fine, but will you take my picture?” She hands me her camera and stands in the foreground with her arms out in a ta-da pose. I take it and give back the camera, and she disappears underneath the metal arches on her way up.
A young American couple asks me to take their photo. I count to “three” and they kiss as I snap the button. The wife thanks me when I hand back their camera. Her diamond necklace glitters in the sun. A sudden realization catches in my throat as my hand touches my bare neck. My necklace.
By the time Freedom gets back, I’m sick with panic.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“I have to get back to the hostel.” Nausea overtakes me again.
When we finally get back, I tear through every item in my bag. I open Kara’s Tampax box where she hid things she didn’t want the others to find. My heart sinks when I see it’s only full of her mix tapes. I check the front zippers. Nothing. The growing sense of regret takes over like a sudden virus. I try to remember when I took it off. Everything in Italy seems jumbled and blurred. I can’t even remember the last time I saw it.
“What in the world are you looking for?” Freedom asks.
“I lost something. I mean I think I left something in Italy.”
“That sucks,” Freedom says. “Do you remember exactly where? Maybe it’s still there. Most of the hostels have a lost and found.”
“I wasn’t in a hostel.”
“I’m meeting up with some friends in Florence in a few days. Why don’t you come with us?”
The idea of returning to Florence is way too risky. I don’t even know if anyone is still there. Or if anyone there is looking for me. Maybe I was out of my mind when I found Kara. Maybe I imagined everything—no. I know what I saw. My mind flashes to Josh, how he protected me from Shannon and the others that night. But why did he lie about Kara? My memories of what happened are splintered. Josh is the only one who would have helped me get away. How else was I able to get out of that room and run? Until Ben caught up. … I shudder and rub my temples. “I can’t go back to Florence,” I blurt out, and immediately realize how weird that must sound.
Freedom waits for my explanation while loudly crunching an apple she pulled out of her backpack.
“I mean …” I level my voice, glancing at the stack of travel maps on her bed. “I already made other travel plans.”
Freedom stares at me in supportive contemplation. She’s been problem-solving her way across Europe for months on her own. Of course she’d try to help me. “Hmm. Who were you traveling with when you were there? Maybe they found it and held on to it for you,” she says.
Her words make sense, even under my disturbing circumstances. A glimmer of an idea sparks hope. Someone like Freedom could get a message to Josh if I tell her exactly where to go and what to say. I could meet him at a neutral train station. I look at Freedom, who is so confident and carefree. If anyone could pull this off, it’s her.
“I need you to do me the biggest favor I’ve ever asked of anyone.”
I Am (Not) Her
I wait in the Milan train station with as much optimism as I can conjure.
Freedom promised to hand Josh my note after I told her where they recruit in Florence. The note stated this specific date and time based on the train schedule to Milan, which seemed like neutral ground and only two hours from Florence. All of the unknown variables heighten my anxiety. He would have to be alone. He would have to keep it a secret. He would have to find the necklace and somehow get his train pass. He would have to lie convincingly enough to get away from the group for a few hours. Just pl
ease come to Milan with my mother’s necklace, I wrote. I have money.
I hoped after everything we’d been through that he’d want to help me, but I’m just not sure. If there was even a 1-percent chance, though, then I had to try. My mother’s necklace is the most important tangible thing I have from her, and I refuse to leave without trying to get it back. I think about the last time I was alone with him, how I would have done anything to get him to leave with me. And I’m almost certain he pushed Shannon out of my way when I ran. His voice is the last one that echoes in my head from that horrible night—the last thing I heard before getting out of that locked room.
The station is packed with travelers: backpackers and locals and tourists rolling bags in every direction. I find a spot with a clear view of his track just before the arrival time. When I see him walk across the platform, my legs go numb. I’m relieved he’s here in person, yet I can’t believe he showed up. I move behind a column where he can’t see me. I didn’t have a plan for this. What was I thinking? Josh looks around. I’m not sure how to read his expression. His hands are holding the straps to his backpack and fidgeting with the adjustable clip. I scan the train station for anyone else from the Kingdom but see no one. I rush toward him.
He looks shocked to see me. Then a deep sadness clouds over his features. The photo I found of Kara and Josh flashes through my thoughts. I touch my darker hair and wonder if for a split second he thought I was Kara. My heart sinks as I realize why he looks so disappointed. I am not her.
Announcements blare in Italian over the loudspeakers as the train schedule spins its endless changes—new times, different cities—in rapid clicks and swooshes. It feels like years since I last saw Josh. His eyes are red and swollen. I’ve never seen him this out of sorts.
My own eyes well with tears. “Is she really gone?” I ask.
He looks around, still fidgeting with the straps on his backpack. He puts his arm around my shoulder and leads me farther down the platform, away from the main area full of people. His hand is trembling. He touches my hair as if confused by its new color. He doesn’t say anything, but it’s clear enough by the pain in his eyes he doesn’t want to answer my question.
An intense pain explodes inside my chest, that same ache tearing through me all over again. “You know, I didn’t— I was just so scared….” We stop by the column where I was hiding before.
“No one blames you, Emily. It was an accident.” He won’t look at me when he says it. I follow his stare down to an orange Fanta can on the ground. Anything to avoid talking about what happened at the villa.
But the image always reappears, ignoring my wishes. New details emerge in my memory every time. Kara’s body. Her wet hair. Her swollen arm. Just left there alone. By me. Shame and regret overwhelm me.
“I just don’t understand,” I say, pressing my palms into my eyes.
“She drowned. It was an accident. She was drunk.” He says it like he’s reciting lines he memorized. It reminds me way too much of Lily’s weird behavior that day with Shannon.
I desperately want to believe him, but I know what I saw. Kara was beside the pool, not in it. And no one else was around. Or at least I didn’t see— Chills spread across my arms as a train squeals into the track beside us. As people flow down the steps with their luggage, I have to fight the sudden urge to take off with them. To follow someone else on a carefully planned journey through Italy’s landmarks and museums. I would do anything to get out of this nightmare.
He tries to take me in his arms, but I pull away. “No, Josh. I saw her. That’s not what happened. Someone is lying to you.”
Josh gives me a look I don’t recognize. There’s something else behind his hollow eyes—something like rage. He looks around the train station one last time, pensive.
“Do you have your Eurail pass?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he says.
I’m surprised by his surety. “Don’t you have to go back?”
“I think we both know there’s no going back now.”
He glances at my bag, confused. “You just have one?”
“Yeah.” I don’t tell him I left Kara’s backpack in a Paris trash can, that I consolidated her stuff and packed it into my own bag to lighten my load.
But none of this matters because we’re finally leaving.
“How does Germany sound?” he says nonchalantly as he studies the train signs. Under normal circumstances, I would laugh. Maybe even question him, or at least want to talk through a plan. But circumstances aren’t normal, so I silently follow him onto a train and into an empty compartment. Josh shuts the door, locks it, and sets his backpack on the floor.
I stare at his backpack with a jolt of hope. “Did you find my necklace?” Seeing him in person had yanked Kara’s death to the forefront, overshadowing everything else. I was counting on him to save the one thing I have left of my mother. By his sad expression, I already know what he’s going to tell me.
“I couldn’t find it.” Josh hangs his head and stares at the floor. “I’m so sorry, Em. I looked all over your room. All the drawers were empty.”
A dull pain radiates in my chest. I know it’s just an object, but right now it feels like I’ve lost everything. I picture the room, racking my brain over where I could have left it. Then that horrible night creeps back into my mind all over again. “Josh, what happened to us? I mean, that night. What did Ben do to me? I woke up in a vineyard, and that’s when I found … her.” My voice is so shaky I barely make sense.
Josh unzips his backpack. He pulls out a fifth of bourbon, unscrews the lid, and tilts back the bottle, which is already half gone. People bustle through the hallway still searching for a place to settle, even after the train pulls away. The conductor pounds on our door until I unlock it. He inspects our Eurail passes and passports and shuts it again, but not before shooting us a disapproving glare. I’ve seen this look before when I shared a compartment with a group of rowdy backpackers on the way to Italy. Conductors must see this a thousand times, every day: American kids getting drunk on a train, as if being in another country full of sounds they can’t interpret makes them invisible to everyone around them. It doesn’t stop Josh from taking another long swig.
“Josh. Please tell me what happened.” The memory of the needle beside Kara’s body flashes through my mind. “Do you think Kara was on drugs?”
“Drugs?” He looks at me like I’m crazy. “No way. Not Kara.”
I can’t help but visualize them together in the photograph where he clearly knew her very well. Stop. Focus on what happened to Kara. The needle just doesn’t make sense. Kara never once seemed high or strung out like Sadie or Christina always did. “Are you sure? I saw—”
“I really don’t want to talk about Kara anymore,” Josh says, lifting his hand in a definitive gesture. “It was an accident. She drowned. The Americans checked out the day before. Case closed.” He takes another deep swig but doesn’t flinch. His eyes are more and more hollow, darkened out. He talks in random gusts, as if the entire story is replaying a loop in his mind and he’s just waiting for the parts he’s willing to reveal out loud. “Here’s what matters. I knew I had to leave. They all said you’d abandoned the church and God, and that you’d fallen away. They said you have sin in your life and couldn’t handle God’s plan for Kara. That you would never be in the Kingdom and that we could never have any contact with you again. When that girl gave me your message, I took it as a sign.”
My breath gets ragged listening to him talk. God’s plan.
“We need to get out of this place—get back home. To our real families. Screw the consequences. I couldn’t take those people for another day. They made me feel like I was crazy.” His voice quivers a little, tripping over the last A sound.
Our uneven breaths fill the space between us. I break the silence with a near whisper: “What did Ben give me that night?”
“Venom. And other stuff.”
“V
enom? From what?”
“A snake.”
Chills run up and down my entire body as I think about the snake left in my and Kara’s room. “What? Why would—?”
“To ‘eradicate the sin,’ so they say.” Bitter sarcasm laces his slurred words. “I’d done it before, so I knew to throw up right after. Weakens the effects.”
“You’d—what? Where? In Boston?” I pause. “Or Africa? Or maybe even Florida?”
Josh looks stunned. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy catching him off guard.
“Kara told me all about it,” I lie. “I’ve known since we got here.”
He looks so lost, his eyes brimming with sadness. I take the bottle out of his hand and swallow a mouthful of bourbon. It sears my throat and burns deep into my stomach, but I keep drinking. After the third tilt, an invisible cocoon radiates warmth all around me, and for the first time since I got to Italy—maybe even before then—I feel in control.
“Did you love her?” I ask.
“No.” He says it too quickly.
“I don’t believe you.”
Josh moans, running his hands down his face. “We were on a mission together, Emily. Things got really crazy. Out of control. We were in the middle of nowhere. She’s the only person in the world who understands what all I’ve been through.”
“Under-stood. Past tense. She’s gone.” My fear and sadness shift to a focused bitterness. Then the first tear drops. When Josh starts crying, my own emotions waver as he sobs into my shoulder. I stroke his hair with my hand. But this isn’t over. I have to get him to tell me what happened.
“Josh,” I say gently, continuing to stroke his hair. “I need to understand what happened. Why would Ben give us venom?” I cringe at the memory of his finger pushing around in my mouth. I squeeze my eyes shut to block it out. “Has this been going on all along? Was Heather doing this too? The whole Kingdom?”
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