Where the Truth Lies

by Anna Bailey

  “Hey,” someone says, and Emma jerks up, almost hitting Abigail’s chin. The boy standing by the car looks like a model from a 1940s German propaganda poster, fair-haired, jaw like a brick. For a moment she’s afraid he might be one of Dalton’s friends, but as he moves closer, she recognizes him and she can smell the joint he’s been smoking. Beside her, she feels Abigail stiffen.

  “You looking for something, Hunter?”

  He shrugs. “Saw you guys running out. You okay?” This he directs at Abigail, who, in the greasy light of the parking lot, looks like she’s the one about to throw up.

  Emma sniffs, squeezing her friend’s hand. “We’re fine, aren’t we, Abi?”

  “Let’s go,” Abigail says suddenly. “Come on, Em, let’s get out of here.” Then, almost as an afterthought, she adds: “Jeez, Hunter, we don’t want to buy any weed.”

  * * *

  They drive out to the Tall Bones. The night is coming down faster now, and in the deep shadows of those towering rocks, the two girls slip off their shoes and dig their toes into the cool grass. Abigail plays Fleetwood Mac through the whispery speakers in her phone, and they dance in and out of the stones like a pair of witches, stretching their necks toward the sky as they each try to yell “FUCK” the loudest.

  “We really don’t know anything about them,” Emma says, when they’re lying side by side in the middle of the Tall Bones.

  There are six in total: a circle of white rocks, about twelve feet tall, etched with generations of teenage graffiti, ice damage, and grooves where moose have rubbed the velvet off their antlers. Nobody knows who put them there. As far as Emma’s aware, nobody’s ever thought to find out. She often wonders how far down they go, how much of them is sitting there buried under the earth. Later she will think, in that respect, that the Tall Bones remind her a little of Abigail.

  Abi spreads her arms out in the grass, like she’s being made love to. “Maybe the old families know. The ones who’ve been here forever.”

  “Like the Lewises, or the Maddoxes.” Emma rolls onto her side and grins. “You should ask your friend Hunter.”

  “He’s not my friend.” Abigail starts scratching her arm. “You’re my friend. You’re the only good person, Em.”

  “What are you talking about? I wish I was like you—turning boys down, throwing drinks in their faces. You’re living.”

  Abigail scratches harder. “You don’t want to be like me, Em. Trust me.”

  Easy for you to say, Emma thinks. Nobody called Abigail names at her junior prom. Nobody told her to leave town. Abigail gets to wear makeup that suits her skin tone. Abigail gets boys walking all the way across the parking lot to ask if she’s okay. Her father is the town drunk and she still gets more respect than the daughter of a doctor. Don’t tell me I don’t want that, Emma thinks. I bet you’d still rather be you than me.

  * * *

  When Abigail gets in, she finds Noah slumped on the couch, half lying, half sitting, and the angle of his body is so odd that for a moment she imagines something terrible has happened, that their father has done this to him. But then he looks up from his book, eyeing her streaky makeup, and says, “Halloween’s not till October,” and she lets herself breathe again.

  “Oh, good, you’re here. I brought something back for you.” She pulls her hand out of her clutch bag, middle finger extended.

  Noah blinks at her.

  “Whole thing was kind of bleak, actually,” she admits, not quite ready for their interaction to be over.

  “Shocking.”

  “Saw your old girlfriend, though.” When his face doesn’t change, she adds, “Sabrina McArthur? She was chaperoning.”

  “Ah,” he says, as if just now remembering the only girl he’s ever dated. “How the mighty have fallen.”

  Abigail nods. “Are Mom and Dad still up?”

  “Dad went to bed early, said he had a headache. Mom’s out back having a smoke.”

  “You’re reading in here by yourself, then, huh?”

  “I guess.”

  “Leaves of Grass,” she says, tilting her head so she can see the cover. “Is that good?”

  “Sure. It’s okay.”

  Abigail nods again. “Well, goodnight.”

  “ ’Night.”

  She pauses in the doorway, glancing back over her shoulder. It’s the first time he’s said goodnight to her in four years. She lingers in the living room for a moment, hoping he’ll look up again and she’ll see forgiveness in his face, not just the broken shape of his nose. Eventually, on her way to the stairs, she averts her eyes from the gemstone cross on the wall.

  In her room she doesn’t bother to turn on the light, preferring the privacy of the dark, how it keeps her from seeing her reflection in the mirror as she undresses. She hasn’t looked in the mirror for some time. Not since it happened.

  Peeling off her prom dress, she wrinkles her nose at the stale smell of herself, but she is too tired to shower now, too tired to do anything except burrow into her bed. Her eyes are still ringed with black liner that will smudge during the night and make her look bruised come morning. She yawns and stretches herself out; there’s something different about the motion, these days, as if her bones don’t quite fill out her skin the way they used to.

  “Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I’m a sinner, and I ask for your forgiveness,” she recites dully in the dark.

  At Sunday school they used to say you should pray for provision, pardon and protection, and to end all your prayers focusing on God’s glory. Abigail won’t admit this to anyone else—perhaps because it appeases her parents to think otherwise, perhaps because she is ashamed to have got it all so wrong—but she’s not sure she really believes in God’s glory anymore. He can’t be that glorious if he just sat back and watched what happened to her. She doesn’t know what to say to God now. There’s no point in asking for provision, pardon, or protection. It’s all too little too late.

  With a sigh, she gives up on prayer and rolls over to check her phone: a text from Emma saying Love you, goodnight, and one from her mom saying she hopes she’s having fun at the prom. It occurs to her then, squinting in the brightness of her phone screen, that there is someone whose pardon she could ask for.

  Hey. Weird night.

  Her fingers are sluggish as her body yearns for sleep, and she can only just about keep her eyes focused, but eventually she manages to type roughly what she wants.

  Seriously, Hunter, I’m sorry for running off like that. I just don’t think we should be seen together right now. My parents would kill me.

  7

  NOW

  On the west side of town, where the concrete is crumbling and the strange shapes of empty shopping carts lie strewn about with their legs in the air, there’s an old truck stop bar. To the summer tourists, it’s the Riverside Roadhouse, not that any tourists ever go there: the river was diverted long ago. Now even the building looks dried-up, its flesh-colored paint cracking around greasy tinted windows. There’s a notice board outside, plastered with flyers that rustle like dead leaves, advertising concerts and open-mic nights that took place a decade ago. For two weeks now Abigail’s face has fluttered among them, under the words Have You Seen Me?

  Noah thinks this place feels like the inside of someone’s mouth. It seems to be made up entirely of dark corners, where men wearing flannel and too much denim cuss as they spill their drinks, and leathery women roll cigarettes with bright press-on nails. Shot glasses clink and Merle Haggard strums through the overhead speakers in his lonesome way. Noah moves carefully, aware that he is out of place here, afraid of leaving some imprint of himself as he makes his way to the booth in the back.

  “Why did you pick literally the worst place in town?”

  He drops into a seat that reeks with a history of cigarette smoke. Across the table, Rat Lăcustă fingers his wolf fang earring and grins.

  “Your text said incognito—which I had to look up, by the way, so thank you for that.” The dim lighting catches
the amber in one of his rings as he gestures idly at the bar. “I don’t know any of these people, and I assume none of them go to your Bible class.” He shrugs. “Incognito. You want something to drink?”

  “No…”

  “You sure? I might get a daiquiri.”

  Noah doesn’t think this is the sort of place that serves daiquiris.

  “Are you going to tell me what this is about, Blake?” Rat watches him from under the dark fan of his eyelashes, tapping a finger against his mouth, like he wishes he had something to smoke. “Don’t get me wrong, I love our chats, but I have a friend waiting on me.” The dim light picks out his high cheekbones when he smiles, and Noah feels like he’s secretly laughing at him.

  “Just shut up and listen, will you?” He stuffs his hands into his pockets and tries to focus on the faux-wood grain of the seatback. “The police were just at my house. They said they found a shell casing up at the Tall Bones. From a gun.”

  “Yeah, I know what a shell casing is, Blake.”

  “You’re not listening.”

  Rat rests his elbows on the table and steeples his fingers together. “I am listening, Blake. I just don’t think you need to lose your head over this. There were a lot of people up by the Tall Bones that night.”

  Noah can see the delicate blue veins in the exposed skin of Rat’s wrists. He clenches his fists in his pockets.

  “But I wasn’t supposed to be there. I wasn’t invited to Hunter Maddox’s dumb party. If the police find out I was up there, they’re going to come back with more questions, and if my parents find out I was there—”

  “Then make something up. You’re a good liar.”

  “Jesus, you know what? Do whatever the hell you want. I was just giving you a heads-up, but I’m done with this now, okay? I’m done.”

  Rat laughs faintly. “You know your problem, Blake? You’re repressed.”

  Noah feels a twinge of heat across his shoulders. The image of the gemstone cross in the hallway comes back to him without warning, and behind it, the hole in the crumbling plaster that could just as easily have been a hole in his head.

  “I’m not repressed,” he says.

  “It’s not your fault. All Americans are.”

  Noah can feel the grit in the seams of his pockets getting up under his fingernails. He shifts in his seat so that he’s not facing Rat directly. “Look, the police are obviously combing the woods,” he says, addressing Rat’s shoulder. “Aren’t you afraid what else they might find?”

  * * *

  That afternoon is the gray kind, where the clouds are so low it feels as if the sun has disappeared forever. After school, Emma joins Rat on the roof of his RV, shooting cheap bourbon and listening to the pines creaking in the wind. It’s peaceful in the way it reminds her a bit of Abigail, that time they stole her father’s whiskey and spent the afternoon in Emma’s backyard daring each other to drink just a little more. Abi could shoot it better than her then, like maybe she’d had more practice, and perhaps she had, being Samuel Blake’s daughter, although Emma figures she could give her a run for her money now. That had only been back in the spring, but already it feels like it happened to another person.

  What had they talked about, wrinkling their noses and laughing at the bitterness in their mouths? Something normal—parents, brothers, crushes, all things that Abigail seemed to have in abundance compared to Emma, and back then she’d been happy to share the details. Emma hasn’t had a conversation like that since, not even with Abi.

  As if she had voiced that last thought aloud, Rat asks: “Do you like boys, Miss Alvarez?”

  Emma nods slowly. “Sure.” He’s looking at her with his eyes half closed, his mouth just a little open, like everything he does has to scream Fuck me, and Emma begins to sway slightly, unsure if she’s getting drunk on the liquor or the boy. She gets the feeling he might be making fun of her, so she laughs and adds, “Do you?”

  Rat gulps back another mouthful of Wild Turkey. “Who am I going to like? People round here are all too busy getting their rocks off to Jesus. Or they’re strung out on legal highs like it’s going out of fashion.”

  Emma snorts. “You mean like Hunter Maddox?”

  “You know he collects my rent in person?” Rat shakes his head and hands her the bottle. “Like him and his daddy can’t trust me to pay it myself? Bulangiu.”

  She remembers what Rat said yesterday about asking questions, so she says nothing about how he gets his money. But she knows there’s an old cookie tin in the same cupboard where he keeps their drinks, and more than once she’s seen him take out a handful of bills, crumpled soft and smelling sweetly of methadone, like the boys from the basketball team.

  The wind makes furrows in the grass, the sound like something solid pressing around them. Emma pulls her denim jacket tighter and rests her drowsy weight on Rat’s shoulder. “I never liked him anyway,” she says. “Hunter, I mean.”

  “No?”

  “No.” She mutters it around the mouth of the bottle, and the word echoes like it’s trapped inside—the same word Abigail snapped at her before heading into the trees that night.

  “He used to deal weed when we were juniors. Got hold of it from dispensaries somehow and sold it on at school at a profit. I mean, I don’t care, but then he’d have all these parties in the woods, and people said…” Emma squints into the trees that border the trailer park, then suddenly she sits up straight.

  “It was his party, at the Tall Bones. That’s what everyone said: it was Hunter’s party.”

  “So?”

  “So, I never saw him.”

  Rat is staring off into the trees as well, toying with the rings on his fingers, his pretty mouth turned down at the corners. “Didn’t you say your friend went into the woods with some guy?”

  It was dark, and the boy’s face had been hidden by the branches. It could have been anyone, she thinks, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been Hunter.

  “We should go back up there.”

  “And do what, Scooby Doo? Look for clues?” Rat laughs sharply.

  He doesn’t understand. It’s not as if she wanted to leave Abigail behind—and Emma almost hates her, hates her a little bit for not getting in the car that night, for leaving her like this—but that doesn’t make Abi any less missing. It’s still my fault, even if it isn’t, she thinks, reaching for the bottle again. She never inherited her father’s Catholicism, so she’s never been one to ask for absolution, but she imagines it now: finding some clue among the pines—strands of his hair, the end of a discarded joint—and walking into the sheriff’s station, head held high, to say, Hunter Maddox knows what happened to her. It was his fault, and that sure feels better than God or bourbon.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe.”

  But Rat isn’t laughing anymore. He reaches over and swipes the bottle from her, leaning back to tip the dregs into his mouth. Perhaps it’s the suggestion of strength in his hands, or the alcohol simmering in her bloodstream, or the rakish angle of his throat, but Emma feels something like desire uncurl in the pit of her stomach. Even when he tosses the bottle over his shoulder and she hears it shatter on the ground below, she just sits there and lets him lean in, his breath warm against her cheek, as he says, “Stay out of the woods, drăgută.”

  8

  THEN

  It is April, before the disappearance, and the snow is finally retreating up the mountainsides, revealing banks of crisp blue columbines and rough patches of colorless grass. The days are balmy, but there’s a tang in the air come evening, drifting in from the depths of the forest like a warning. The pine pollen will be heavy this year, everyone says. They stockpile anti-allergens and decongestives as if they’re prepping for biological warfare.

  Hunter Maddox, walking into town from basketball practice, rounds the corner and sees two girls up ahead of him, dappled in green spring light. Abigail Blake brushes her fingers through the low-hanging leaves of a mountain ash, scattering blossoms that fall like
a fresh layer of snow on Emma Alvarez’s bare brown arms. Hunter watches them nudging against one another, laughing quietly. Sometimes they walk so close together it looks as though they’re holding hands.

  He follows the girls all the way to Hickory Lane without wondering why. They keep walking, and so does he, as if they’re pulling him along on some invisible thread. From the top of the lane he can’t see the Blakes’ house, only the scrubby, empty land bought up by a property developer, curving gently away with the slope of the mountain. In the months to come, Abigail will tell him how she hates that house; how, sometimes, she feels like her family are the only people in the world.

  The girls hug goodbye as they part ways: Emma heading toward the cluster of modern housing on the northwest side of town, and Abigail traipsing slowly along the track toward her lonely home. Hunter stands at the top of the lane, concealed by the row of hackberry trees that borders the road, and watches her getting smaller as she puts more distance between them. With a sigh, he turns to leave, but her sudden movement catches his eye. She has left the track now and is bending down in the grass, the shape of her like some strange, pale letter written on the dark landscape. He watches her take off her shoes and make an arc in the air with each leg, one at a time, as if exploring the space she is allowed to take up. Hunter takes a deep, slow breath, because he never thought something so simple—so unintended to arouse—could make him feel like this.

  Then, without warning, Abigail takes off, sprinting over the uneven ground, her long hair trailing behind her like the tail of some portentous comet. Come fall, come the absence of her, Hunter will stand at the top of Hickory Lane again, and wonder if she had not been planning to run all along.