He Started It

by Samantha Downing

  This is the first time I’ve been alone at night since the trip began. I can hear everything: the TV next door, some people standing outside talking in the parking lot, even my own breathing. It’s distracting.

  I take out Nikki’s journal and flip to a page about Dr Lang.

  He was my doctor, actually. I didn’t even see him until after Nikki was gone. She never knew him.

  I remove the family saga book cover from the journal, running my hand across the front.

  Thoughtful Questions for Thoughtful Girls

  It’s a ridiculous title. Absurd, even.

  I thought that when I bought it. It was in a dollar store, sitting on a shelf with a bunch of others. I was there to buy a notebook. Instead, I happened across this journal. The second I looked at the cover, I knew Nikki would hate it. She would hate the questions, she would hate the format, she would make fun of all of it. I also knew exactly how she would answer the questions and it made me laugh.

  It was about a month after I saw my mother in prison, a month after she told me to find Nikki. I think that’s what made me buy the journal nine years ago, on the anniversary of the day Nikki ran away. It’s why I’ve answered all the questions exactly how Nikki would have answered.

  Though I did take a little creative license, like with Dr Lang. And also about Calvin Bingham following us in his maroon Honda. Maybe Nikki noticed him and maybe she didn’t; it’s impossible to know, but I like to think she did. I like to think she noticed and she protected me by not saying anything.

  Maybe I should have told you about this earlier. I probably should have, but I was afraid you would take it the wrong way. Think of me the wrong way. Like I was one of those loony women pretending to be sane, which I’m not.

  You know that because you know me. You get me.

  When I read through this journal, I can hear Nikki saying these words. It keeps her here, with me, right where she should be. Always.

  After tomorrow, I won’t need it anymore.

  The Pine Cone Motel used to have a bank of pay phones in the parking lot. I go out to check if they’re still here and – surprise surprise – they are, though in varying degrees of usability. Of the four, two have been removed, one has no receiver, and the fourth looks to be the only one in working condition. I wipe the whole thing down with an antibacterial wet wipe before testing it. The habit is left over from Felix, though I might keep it for myself.

  We used one of these same phones last time, when we called Mom and Dad. No one knew it was our last call to them. To us, it was just our nightly duty. The thing that kept them from calling the police or the FBI or the National Guard.

  Now that Grandpa was back in control, he dialed the number. ‘Don’t mention Calvin Bingham. Don’t mention Nikki,’ he said to me. Only to me. ‘Or else I’ll tie you up the way I tied up your sister.’

  Calvin, for the record, was staying at our motel. He followed us all the way from that gas station. If I could have found a way to get to him, I would’ve told him everything. Maybe even about Nikki being pregnant.

  I just couldn’t get away.

  ‘Yes, yes, everything’s fine,’ Grandpa said into the phone. He said that every night. ‘The kids are really enjoying this. They’re seeing things they didn’t know existed … Yes … Yes, yes, they’re eating well.’ He looked at Eddie and winked. By the time Grandpa handed him the phone, Eddie was smiling and had his boyish chest all puffed out.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Yes, everything’s fine. We’re fine. We’ll be back soon … real soon … Of course we’re having fun, why wouldn’t we be? … Yes, we’re eating pretty good … I promise … Okay, here she is.’

  Eddie glared at me as he handed over the phone. A threat, I knew. He had been threatening me with looks and words ever since Calvin started following us.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  ‘Baby,’ Mom said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine, I keep telling you that.’

  ‘You know I have to ask that, I’m your mother,’ she said, her voice hard. ‘I just miss you so much.’

  ‘I miss you. Dad, you there?’

  ‘I’m here.’

  That’s how our calls went every night, both of them on the phone, each on different extensions. Sometimes both talked at once.

  ‘Are you getting enough sleep?’ Dad said.

  ‘Plenty. We sleep in the car all the time.’

  ‘And your sister? How’s Nikki doing, all cooped up like that?’

  ‘Nikki?’ I said, looking at Grandpa. He glared at me. ‘Oh, you know how she is. Half the time she can’t stop moving and the other half she’s asleep. A bomb wouldn’t wake her up.’

  ‘Is she awake now?’ Mom said.

  ‘No, she’s been asleep since we ate dinner.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll be awake tomorrow when we call,’ I said.

  ‘I hope so.’

  I wanted to blurt out everything, to tell them what had happened. To tell them about Nikki being pregnant. And I almost did, except Grandpa grabbed the phone out of my hand. ‘You know how teenagers are – they sleep like the dead. Portia really wants to talk to you, though.’ He held the phone against Portia’s ear, always ready to grab it away.

  ‘Mommy!’ Portia yelled. She did this every night.

  Grandpa continued to glare at me, and it was a lot scarier now that Nikki was gone. More like a monster than a man.

  My fault, my fault, my fault.

  Every time I found myself getting mad at Nikki for running away, I remembered it was me who helped her. I also couldn’t blame her. If someone were keeping me tied up, I’d run, too.

  ‘Everything’s fun,’ Portia said into the phone, just as she was coached to do. Grandpa took the phone as she yelled, ‘Bye-bye!’

  Grandpa took the phone from me. ‘See, everyone’s fine. The kids are safe and sound and having the time of their lives … Well, of course not. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt these kids. You know how much I love my grandchildren … Have some faith in your old dad, for goodness’ sake … All right, yes, I will call tomorrow. As always.’

  He hung up the phone gently, like he was handling a kitten. He gave me one final glare before walking back across the parking lot to our room.

  ‘Go,’ Eddie said, pushing me in the same direction. He had become Grandpa’s little guard.

  No one is pushing me around now, though.

  I’m out here by myself, standing by this old bank of phones, and they’re covered in so much graffiti I can’t see the original paint. The phones make me want to call someone, but I have no idea who. There’s no one left.

  Last Day

  Everyone is alive in the morning, including me, and we still have Grandpa’s ashes. An auspicious start to our final day. On the downside, Portia overslept and looks hung over.

  Breakfast is at Starbucks, which really does exist everywhere. As we sit down at a table in the corner, Eddie brings up today like he’s not afraid to jinx it.

  ‘You think Grandpa planned something for the end?’ he says.

  Portia adds a single raw sugar to her almond milk latte and turns up her nose at Eddie’s artificial sweetener, which is funny, given how much soda she drank on this trip. Portia doesn’t look at Eddie when she speaks, even though she’s sort of answering his question. ‘There better be a good reason we had to do this all over again. Because all other things aside, who wants their ashes scattered in the desert? And why couldn’t we just fly them out here?’

  I take a bite of my chocolate croissant, because who starts a day like this with bran? ‘Nikki,’ I say.

  ‘Nikki?’ Eddie says. ‘You really think Nikki is waiting for us in the desert?’

  Absolutely.

  ‘Nikki would never be that subtle,’ Portia says. ‘It’s not her.’

  ‘I agree,’ Eddie says.

  I say nothing.

  ‘Maybe the lawyer will be there with stacks of cash,’ Portia says.

  I try to imagine th
is. I’ve never met Morton J. Barrie, but I see him as a short man with thick glasses and a bow tie. A younger, dumber-looking version of the Monopoly man. He’s surrounded by stacks of cash, bound together and all shiny and new, looking so clean against all the sand and dirt.

  Behind the lawyer is a large hill of dirt no one would look at twice. We made sure of that before we left.

  ‘Final guesses?’ Eddie says. He crumples up the wax paper from his breakfast sandwich and tosses it into the garbage. ‘Before we head out, make your prediction.’

  ‘We end up rich and happy,’ Portia says. ‘Or at least rich.’

  I don’t disagree. They’ll see soon enough. ‘Sounds good,’ I say.

  ‘All right, then. Let’s go get some money,’ Eddie says.

  Portia and I walk out behind him. She rolls her eyes at his back.

  Three hours. That’s the approximate length of this final drive. Who knows how long it would have been if Calvin hadn’t followed us. He didn’t even try to hide it.

  Eddie sat in the middle seat with me, keeping watch to make sure I didn’t do anything wrong. He had become my permanent guard, and an annoying one. No sister wanted that much attention from her older brother.

  Portia was in the way back, either sleeping or playing by herself, and that left Grandpa alone in the front with an empty passenger’s seat. He kept talking, though it was mostly mumbling and mostly to himself.

  ‘Is that asshole still following us? He is, isn’t he? … Yes, yes … There he is … I’m going to slow down and see what he does, then I’ll know for sure … I’ll just ease off the gas and bring my speed down by … Oh look, there it is. He’s slowing down, too.’

  Every once in a while, Grandpa would turn and speak to us. ‘You see that? He’s still following us.’

  He always glared at me as he said it, like it was my fault, but I didn’t even know who the man was. Grandpa just blamed me because I had sided with Nikki, because everything was about Nikki. As it should be.

  Grandpa looked back to the road and started mumbling to himself again. This went on for an hour, then another, and we were deep into hour three when Grandpa saw the sign.

  Alamo

  No, not the Alamo in Texas. The tiny town of Alamo in Nevada, right off I-93 South.

  ‘We’ll end all this right here,’ Grandpa said, taking the exit. I didn’t appreciate his flair for the dramatic until I became an adult.

  ‘End what?’ I said. He didn’t hear me, he just kept talking.

  ‘This asshole,’ he said. ‘The private investigator.’

  ‘What?’ I said. Louder this time.

  ‘Private investigator. Haven’t you been paying attention?’

  I shook my head, partly out of confusion, and partly to answer him. No, I obviously hadn’t been paying attention because no one told me Calvin was a private investigator.

  ‘Why do you think he’s following us?’ Grandpa said. ‘And looking for Nikki?’

  ‘Yeah, why?’ Eddie said.

  I was still shaking my head, trying to put the pieces together. ‘But who hired –’

  ‘Your parents, obviously,’ Grandpa said. ‘I bet he’s been following us the whole damn trip.’

  Relief swept over me like it had been dumped on my head. I should’ve known our parents were looking out for us. They had been the whole time.

  And I bet Eddie was just as relieved. He looked as surprised as I was to learn Calvin was a private investigator, but that didn’t stop him from throwing a jab at me.

  ‘Duh,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t see him.’

  Grandpa didn’t stop for another thirty minutes or so – long enough for us to get far away from any interstate, business, or even another human being. Calvin was right behind us, not even trying to hide that he was following us. By the time Grandpa pulled over, it felt like we were at the end of the earth.

  I don’t remember who got out first; I just remember Grandpa and Calvin facing each other between the cars. Eddie and Portia and I were pressed up against the back window. The van had those windows with a latch and they pushed out a few inches. Eddie opened one a little so we could hear.

  ‘Are you just going to keep following us?’ Grandpa said.

  Calvin smiled. His teeth looked so white beneath that big moustache. ‘No. I’m going to call the police if you don’t tell me where Nikki is.’

  Grandpa held out his hands, palms facing forward. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m just on a road trip with my grandkids.’

  ‘Sure you are.’

  ‘It’s the truth,’ Grandpa said.

  ‘That’s not what their mother said.’

  Mom. I wanted to talk to her so badly right then, and I wouldn’t have lied, either. I leaned forward to look in the driver’s seat, trying to find Grandpa’s cell phone.

  ‘No,’ Eddie said, pulling me back to my seat. ‘Don’t even think about it.’

  Outside, the conversation continued. Grandpa laughed.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ he said. ‘You got me. Nikki ran off to meet up with a friend of hers. That’s the truth. She runs off a lot and you’re welcome to ask my daughter about it. Ask her how many times Nikki has run away.’

  Calvin says nothing.

  ‘We’re going to pick Nikki up right now. That’s why we’re in this godforsaken place.’ Grandpa looked around, his nose scrunched up like it smelled bad. ‘Go ahead and follow us. You’ll see Nikki is just fine.’

  I should’ve jumped out of the car right that second and told Calvin that Grandpa was lying. Nikki hadn’t run off to meet a friend; she had run off because Grandpa and Eddie had tied her up.

  I was about to do it – I swear I was – when Portia yelled, ‘Nikki! We’re going to see Nikki!’

  Grandpa heard her and smiled. ‘That’s right. We’re going to see Nikki.’

  Calvin got back into his car, ready to follow us.

  The road to Alamo looks the same, which means there’s still a whole lot of nothing. Side note about driving across the country; it’s impossible to understand how big it is unless you see how much nothing there is.

  Halfway into the drive, Portia texts me from the front seat.

  I’m a little nervous.

  Is she really nervous or is she just pretending? At this point, anything is possible. The endgame is when all the secrets come out.

  Not a question, I say:

  You think something bad is going to happen.

  Bad? Given. Tragic and horrifying is what I’m afraid of.

  I say:

  Like last time.

  Yeah, I’d say that was pretty tragic and horrifying.

  ‘Hey,’ Eddie says. ‘Are you guys seriously texting each other while I’m sitting right here?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  ‘I was talking about last time we were out here,’ Portia says.

  Eddie’s jaw tightens. ‘What about it?’

  ‘Ummm …’ Portia says. ‘It sucked? A lot?’

  Yes. Yes, it did.

  ‘Oh,’ Eddie says. ‘That.’

  It’s hard to know how much Portia understood during the trip, or if she knew why she was the center of everything in the desert. Later, she did get it.

  When we finally got back home, Grandpa went into seclusion, and he stayed that way for the rest of his life. Our parents went into overdrive looking for Nikki, and we all told them the truth. Mostly. Nikki ran away in the middle of the night and no one had seen her since.

  True.

  Next came the lie.

  We said we had never seen Calvin Bingham, never spoke to him. Didn’t even know there was a private investigator following us. Grandpa said it, Eddie said it, and so did I. Even Portia lied. Grandpa said we had to or we’d all go to jail. Forever and ever, he said.

  For all our parents knew, Calvin walked off the job and went to Vegas instead. The last report they received had come from somewhere in the desert, when he was still following us in the van. The only person who asked
questions about him was his secretary.

  She could still be looking for him, even now, twenty years later. Oh, along with his ex-wife. Calvin Bingham had an ex-wife who called the police about six months after the trip ended. She hadn’t received her alimony.

  None of that mattered to our parents. They didn’t care about Calvin Bingham. The only one they cared about was Nikki, and they looked for her until my father suggested they stop. You already know how much my mother hated that idea.

  For years, the family closed in on itself, grieving over the still-missing Nikki – not to mention dealing with everything our parents didn’t know. No one told our parents how Nikki took control, how she gave Grandpa the pills, or how she blackmailed him with that camera. Not even Eddie.

  We also didn’t tell them that Nikki had been tied up right before she ran.

  And you know I didn’t say a word about her condition.

  I could tell you how upset my parents were, how many times they called the police, how their lives revolved around finding her, how often I heard my mom screaming and yelling at someone for nothing. That period of time was horrible, and I don’t have a single good memory of it. Not one.

  You get the idea.

  But no one can stay like that forever. Either you die or you move on, because life does. Eddie finished high school and went off to Duke, while I went to the University of Miami to be close to Cooper. Portia was still at home and starting her teenage years. When I came home for the summer after my freshman year, she looked like a different person.

  Portia had gone full goth, from the steel-toed boots to the black lipstick. The first time I saw her, I didn’t know what to say. She looked awful.

  ‘That’s dramatic,’ I finally said.

  She walked away.

  Her music was horrible: rock bands with drawn-out voices and guitar riffs, the kind made for wallowing teenagers. She carried a notebook everywhere. It had a black cover and she drew on the cover with a silver pen. Anarchy signs, skulls and crossbones, that sort of thing.