Here Lies Daniel Tate

by Cristin Terrill

  When that was done, I went to a window and looked out over the backyard, the pool glittering in the sun, the hazy red mountains in the distance. The longer I stood there, the more my vision seemed to darken around the edges, like the walls were closing in, the doors starting to swing shut, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

  • • •

  Lex took me to school the next morning. Nicholas had gone in early on some flimsy pretext, because he didn’t want to see me. Maybe he was angrier than I thought. I waved good-bye to Lex and walked toward the front doors of the building. There was a black car parked at the curb, and as I got close, the driver’s door opened and Agent Morales got out.

  My stomach plummeted. Nicholas had turned me in.

  “Hi, Danny,” she said, like it was the most natural thing in the world for her to be there. “Can I have a word?”

  “I’m sorry, Agent,” I said, unable to believe how calm I sounded, “but I think school is about to start.”

  She took a couple of steps toward me, until we were face-to-face. “Here’s the thing, Mr. Tate. I’ve got some questions, and you’ve got the answers. You can either come with me now, or we can wait here together while I call your brother-lawyer and get him to join us. Either way, you’re talking to me today, and something tells me you might rather do it without a chaperone.”

  She was smiling, and the expression chilled me to the core. I tried to think of a way out of this, a way to run, because I was sure that once I left with her, I was never coming back. But my mind was numb. There was nothing I could do. I nodded mutely and climbed into the back seat of the car.

  • • •

  Morales took me to the L.A. field office, where Agent Lynch met us in a familiar interrogation room. Morales offered me a glass of water.

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  Morales smiled and opened the file folder in front of her. “Here’s the thing—”

  “Is it legal for you to be questioning me without my guardian present?” I asked.

  “It’s perfectly legal since you’re not under arrest,” Morales said, “plus, those rules only apply to minors.”

  “I’m sixteen,” I said.

  “Sure you are,” she said, and the hollow ball of fear inside of me grew. “Here’s the deal, kid. I know you’re not Danny Tate. Lynch there knows it. I’ll wager most of the people you’ve come into contact with since you got here know it.”

  She hadn’t said Nicholas knew it. If he’d talked, it would have been the first thing she’d have flung in my face, that my supposed brother had ratted me out. Nicholas hadn’t turned me in, and even in this moment, that fact gave me back a little bit of strength.

  “You’re wrong,” I said.

  “What was your third-grade teacher’s name?” she asked. “Who was the first girl you kissed?”

  “I have incomplete memories of the years before my abduction. The trauma—”

  “What was your favorite book? What color are the walls in your grandparents’ living room? Where did you have your ninth birthday party?” Morales continued. “You can’t answer any of these questions because you’re not Daniel Tate. I bet you didn’t have a clue who Daniel Tate was until you decided to start impersonating him, or you would have done a better job of it.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Want to see something?” she said. She pulled a sheet of paper from her folder and placed it in front of me. There was the name of a laboratory at the top and a long string of numbers I couldn’t make sense of. Morales pointed to a section at the bottom.

  Probability of relation: <.0067%

  “This is a DNA test we ran on samples from you and Nicholas Tate,” she said.

  The ball in my stomach contracted painfully, becoming tighter and hotter, and a bitter taste flooded my mouth.

  “We didn’t give you any samples,” I said.

  “No, but you did both have bottles of water with your lunch the day I came to see you at school,” she said with that calm, terrible smile. She was enjoying this.

  “You can’t do that—”

  “You abandoned the DNA,” she said. “It’s perfectly legal.”

  “You must have gotten the wrong bottles from the trash.”

  “It’s possible,” she conceded. “This could all be some horrible mistake. Lynch and I could be dead wrong about you, and you could be exactly the miracle you seem to be. We don’t really have any solid evidence.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “So I think I’ll be leaving.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay?”

  “Sure, just as soon as you tell me”—she reached again for a sheet in her folder—“who this is?”

  She slid a photocopy across the table to me. The image was small, taking up just a corner of the sheet. On it was a boy with a gap-toothed smile holding a T-ball bat, his name printed in block letters at the bottom.

  • • •

  It was over.

  • • •

  Morales, unaware that the world had just ended, was still talking.

  “This was found in your locker when the school coincidentally conducted a random drug spot search on the day we happened to be visiting,” she said. Just hours before I’d taken the picture home, because her presence at the school had spooked me and I was worried the picture wasn’t safe there anymore. “Now, this is a pretty common name, and it’ll take me a while to track down every boy in Canada who has it, but what do you want to bet that I’ll do it and that eventually I’ll find him?”

  I could barely keep my head up, and my voice was faint even in my own ears when I spoke.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  She smiled. “To put you in prison.”

  “You’ve got nothing,” I said. “Some picture and a water bottle you can’t even prove was mine.”

  “That’s true,” she said. “I don’t have anything now. But in about ten minutes I’ll have a court order for an official DNA test.”

  She could be bluffing, but I doubted it. As soon as they got my DNA, the game was over.

  I had only one chip left to play. If I could do it.

  Morales didn’t want me, some two-bit con artist. She wanted a win in this case, the one that had been hanging over her head for six years. She’d let me go if I offered her the bigger fish she was really after wanted: Danny’s murderer. Patrick. I couldn’t give her bulletproof evidence that Patrick had killed Danny, but I could set her on the right path. The only reason she hadn’t cracked this case already was that she’d been looking into the events of the wrong day all of these years. As soon as she knew that Danny had died on Friday afternoon and not Saturday evening, she’d find some evidence—cell phone logs, surveillance at the Hidden Hills gates, something—that would show what had truly happened.

  All I had to do was tell her the truth.

  I tried to tell myself it was the right thing to do. That Danny deserved to have his fate known and his killer brought to justice.

  But I knew, if I did it, it wasn’t because I gave a damn about Daniel Tate. It was because I wanted to save my own skin. If I told Morales, I was no better than I’d ever been taught to believe.

  “You don’t want to expose me,” I said, hating myself with every word. “You want to know what I know.”

  Morales cocked her head at me. “And what is that?”

  “You give me unqualified immunity and let me leave,” I said, “and I’ll give you Danny’s killer.”

  “How?” she said. “Have you got proof?”

  “Ironclad, no,” I said. “But I know things. Where you should look, who you should talk to. You’ll finally be able to nail Patrick.”

  “You’re going to have to be more specific than that,” she said.

  I clenched my jaw shut hard, until it hurt. But it didn’t stop me speaking. “I have an audio recording. Someone explaining how Patrick had them create him a false alibi for the time Danny went missing. It’s on my computer at home.”

>   “You bring me that,” she said, “and then you’ll get your immunity.”

  • • •

  Lynch drove me home to collect the evidence, while Morales stayed behind to get started on the paperwork. He stopped his car down the street from the Tate house, close enough that he could see the front gate at the end of the driveway, but not so close that anyone could see him. He didn’t want to accidentally tip Patrick off that the net was closing in around him.

  “You’ve got ten minutes,” he told me.

  “It might take longer than that,” I said, “especially if my mother or sister is home.”

  Lynch’s lip curled in disgust, and it took me a moment to realize why. I’d called them my mother and sister, and I hadn’t thought twice about it.

  “Just don’t fuck around,” he said. “I’ll be here watching, so you’ve got nowhere to go.”

  “Believe me,” I said. “I just want to get my immunity and get the hell out of here. I’m not going to do anything to screw that up.”

  He checked his mirrors to make sure no one was coming and then motioned for me to get out of the car. I walked back to the house slowly, casually, my head down and my hands in my pockets. I reached the gate and entered the code that would open it. As soon as the gate was closed behind me and I was out of the sight of Lynch’s car, I began to run.

  • • •

  “Hey, lover,” Ren said when she picked up the phone. “Where are you?”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Are you running?” she asked. “Your breathing is weird.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Will you run away with me?”

  “What?”

  “Ren, listen to me.” I tried to keep my voice calm. “I have to leave Hidden Hills, the States, everything. Today. Now. But I don’t want to leave you. For the first time in my life there’s something I don’t want to lose and it’s you, so I’m asking you to come with me.”

  “What’s going on, Danny?” She sounded alarmed.

  “Just say you’ll come with me,” I said. “Even if it’s only for a little while. I’ll tell you everything.”

  She was silent a moment and then whispered, “Okay.”

  I stopped. “What?”

  “Okay, I’ll go,” she said. “The school year’s practically over, and I was supposed to go to Dubai to visit my parents, but they asked me to delay my trip, so why not? I’ll go with you.”

  “Really?”

  “When can we leave?”

  I laughed, out of breath. “Can you meet me at the movies where we met? I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

  “I’m on my way,” she said.

  “You’re the best.”

  “Damn right I am.”

  • • •

  I wouldn’t turn anyone in. Maybe it was wrong, but I couldn’t do it to Patrick and Lex and Jessica. I would just run away, like I always did. But this time I wouldn’t be running alone, and that made all the difference.

  The house was empty, and I was glad. I didn’t want to have to look any of them in the face, knowing it was the last time I would see them, and lie. I dug out the packed bag I had shoved in the back of Danny’s closet so many weeks ago and slung it over my shoulders. I grabbed my laptop and found the baseball card with the smiling boy. It was in the dictionary on the bookshelf where I’d hidden it after I’d decided—too late, it turned out—that my school locker wasn’t safe.

  I took one last look around the navy blue bedroom. It had never been mine, but I would miss it all the same.

  “Bye, Danny,” I said, and closed the door. I hoped he would forgive me.

  I went to Nicholas’s room and placed my laptop on his desk. The audio recording of Kai was on there for him to find. Nicholas was smart; he’d put the pieces together the same way I had. I couldn’t turn in the Tates, but if he wanted to, it was his right.

  I grabbed a piece of paper from his printer and wrote a short note at the bottom. I’m sorry. Thank you. It was screamingly inadequate, but I didn’t have the words for what I wanted to say. I folded the paper and placed it under the laptop.

  I passed Mia’s bedroom without looking at it. I couldn’t think about her, couldn’t try to leave her some kind of good-bye. It was too hard.

  Instead, I went to Lex’s bedroom. Lex had lied to me, used me, but I didn’t care. I’d done the same thing to her, and, underneath it all, I think she really cared about me. Probably better than anyone else in my life ever had. For better or worse, Lex was my family, and I wanted her to know who I was. I took one last look at my baseball card—that little piece of my soul, the only proof that I’d ever actually been happy—and I placed it on her pillow, in the dent where her head had been when she last slept. I hoped she would understand what I meant by it.

  I went downstairs, backpack on my shoulders, and checked my watch. Ren was going to meet me in twenty minutes. All I needed to do was get out of Hidden Hills. I went into the backyard, dragged a lounge chair to the high wall that separated us from the neighbors, and climbed over.

  After hopping a couple more fences, I emerged onto the street. I was well behind Lynch’s car now. As long as he kept watching the gate, he’d never see me. I turned and started to run.

  Twenty-five minutes later and pouring with sweat, I collapsed into Ren’s car, my chest heaving. She laughed and kissed me, and I held her close, breathing her in, trying to make sure this memory would burn brighter than any of the false ones I’d created inside of myself.

  “What now?” she said when we were on the highway, headed toward the mountains I’d looked at through windows for the last few months, the air getting sharper and crisper with each mile, my chest feeling lighter with each layer of deceit that dropped away as we fled Hidden Hills.

  “Now,” I said, “I tell you who I am.”

  She smiled and took my hand, and together we headed toward a new life and a new truth all our own.

  • • •

  Yeah.

  • • •

  Or maybe not. But it makes a nice ending to the story, doesn’t it? I think it does.

  But maybe instead of calling Ren and asking her to run away with me, I only imagined doing it and wished I were the kind of person who could make that call. Wished I were the kind of person she could have said yes to.

  The house was empty when I got home, and I was relieved. Good-byes had never been my thing, and I couldn’t stand to look any of the Tates in the face and pretend everything was okay when I was about to bring their whole world down around them. I’d turn over my evidence against Patrick to save my own ass, because that’s the kind of person I was. The kind I’d always been and always would be, no matter how much I hated myself for it.

  I went to Danny’s room, grabbed my laptop, and stuck it into my backpack along with a change of clothes and my stash of cash. I found the baseball card in the dictionary and spent a long moment staring at that boy’s face.

  He’d already gotten a raw deal from life, but he was still hopeful. Could still smile and get excited about T-ball practice and appreciate the perfect blue of a cloudless sky over his head.

  Maybe I could learn to be that boy again. Beaten down, maybe, but not beaten. I’d had moments of that here, glimpses of what a happy, honest life could be like. Playing Marco Polo with Mia, helping Lex chop vegetables for dinner, laughing with Patrick as I took a turn too sharply in an abandoned parking lot during a driving lesson. Talking to Ren. Almost any moment with Ren, really.

  Maybe it was time to try being myself for once.

  I said good-bye to Danny’s bedroom and Danny’s ghost as I closed the door, and then I laid my hand on the doors of Nicholas’s and Mia’s bedrooms as I passed them, saying good-bye to them, too. I went into Lex’s bedroom and left her the baseball card. No matter what else might have happened, I loved Lex, and I think part of her loved me, too. I trusted her to take care of that little boy with the gap-toothed smile.

  I walked downstairs slowly. I wanted to take the t
ime to remember all of this. This life I had led, this house, this family, the best and the worst of my life. I couldn’t think ahead—the world after this was over was nothing but a big, black blank looming in front of me—so I thought about the past. This house and the people in it were already the past to me.

  I went and stood in the kitchen, where the family always congregated. It felt cold now. I’d almost forgotten how cold this entire house felt to me when I first came here. Somewhere along the way I’d gotten comfortable, but now I spread my hands against the marble countertop and felt the cold seep back into my veins and my blood.

  It was time. I’d get in the car with Lynch, hand over my evidence to Morales, and then I’d disappear, leaving this house and this family for good.

  Behind me, I heard the front door open and footsteps in the foyer.

  “Danny?” Patrick called.

  I froze.

  “Danny?” Patrick said again. His fancy leather shoes against the marble made it easy to hear him walking through the foyer toward the stairs, and his voice moved up toward the second floor. “Are you here?”

  It was now or never. I moved as quickly and quietly as I could toward the front door, hoping to get out of the house before Patrick realized I wasn’t in my room.

  I had a hand on the front door handle when Patrick appeared at the top of the stairs.

  “Danny,” he said. “There you are. Didn’t you hear me calling for you?”

  I turned to face him and managed a little shrug. “No. Sorry. What’s up?”

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “Back to school. I forgot my homework.” It was a terrible, utterly transparent lie. I didn’t do homework. Even if I did, how was I going to get back to school? There was no one waiting in a car in the driveway to take me there. Patrick’s eyes landed on my backpack, the dirty and battered Jansport I’d carried with me from city to city for years as I ran my petty scams, not the new leather messenger bag I took to school as Danny.

  “That’s strange, since I heard Morales brought you in earlier,” he said, and his voice was suddenly different. Harder. He wasn’t talking to his kid brother anymore; he was talking to me. “I have a friend in the field office who keeps me in the loop about these things. Where are you really going?”