Don't Trust Her

by Elizabeth Boles

  “Was this her surprise?” Blanche asks, her voice hoarse. “Was this the surprise she had for us?”

  I press the heels of my hands to my eyes, fighting back a sob.

  I know Blanche feels worse than any of us. The last words she said to Paige had been hateful, and Paige had still been kind to her.

  I wrap Faith in a hug. She falls on me, breaking apart, the sounds of her sobs seeping into my skin. Blanche joins us, and we’re together, holding each other up and at the same time letting each other fall.

  I don’t know how long we remain like this. It feels like an hour. By the time we’re done, my voice is raw and my legs ache. A headache blooms on top of my head.

  “What happened to her?” Faith asks. “What was it?”

  Blanche nods to the bottle. “Those.”

  Faith picks up the bottle and studies it. “Xanax?”

  I nod. “For sleep.”

  “I know what they are, but Paige didn’t—”

  “They’re right there, Faith,” Blanche says with bite. Just as quickly, her face contorts in apology and she softens. “The bottle has her name on it.”

  Faith brushes away fat tears that slip down her cheeks. “I just didn’t think…never mind.”

  Clouds cover her eyes as she stares at the vial. I wonder what she was going to say about Paige and Xanax. But Faith hikes a shoulder to her ear as if it doesn’t matter now. The plastic clinks against the wood as she places the vial down.

  An awkward silence settles in the room. That’s the thing about death. There isn’t a handbook for it. Grief can make it impossible to think. So sometimes thoughts must be catapulted out into the world.

  “We have to tell someone,” I say quietly.

  “How?” Blanche lifts her phone. “We can’t get through.”

  I grit my teeth. “We leave. The storm’s stopped—at least for now.”

  The skin on her forehead ripples in unease. She’s not convinced.

  “We can’t wait around for two days,” I tell her. “That’s how long they’re forecasting that we’ll be in this shitty weather. Can you imagine what will happen to her in two days?”

  Oh God, I don’t even want to think about it. But it’s the truth. Paige is already turning purple where her blood is pooling. I don’t know how long it takes for a body to begin to smell, but it’s less than two days, I could promise them that.

  Blanche’s gaze darts from me to her phone and back.

  Faith’s breathing is a jagged, staccato sound. “I can’t stay here. Not with Paige like this. What are we supposed to do? Sit downstairs and roast marshmallows until we can get through to the police?” Faith rubs her eyes, streaking day-old eyeliner to her cheeks. “I can’t handle being here one minute more knowing that she’s like this.”

  Her fingers curl, and I squeeze her hand. “Breathe. We’ll figure something out. It’s going to be okay.”

  “It’s not going to be okay,” she shrieks. “Paige is dead and it’s her birthday!”

  She starts to cry again, and I hug her, shooting Blanche a look. “We’ll get you out.”

  “I’m telling y’all,” she says between sniffles, “I won’t be able to handle it here. This is her house. We can’t live in this alone. I can’t live in this alone. We have to tell someone. People need to know. Derek has to know. We’ve got to reach him.”

  “Blanche?” I plead.

  She points outside. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in the middle of a State of Emergency. Power is out across half the state, and everything is covered in ice.”

  “I’m with Faith. I can’t stay here, either.”

  Blanche taps her phone against her thigh. “This is asking for trouble. We’re talking about ice, not snow.”

  I shake my head. There’s no other choice.

  “It could be dangerous,” she says to Faith. “Are you willing to risk it?”

  Faith plucks a tissue from a box and blows her nose. “You have four-wheel drive, right, Court?”

  My answer is formed from what I can and can’t endure. I can’t endure remaining in this house. I can’t endure waiting God knows how long before the phone service is restored. I can’t endure smelling a dead body rot.

  I can’t endure.

  I can’t endure.

  But I must.

  Which means that I have to leave.

  “I have four-wheel drive,” I tell them.

  I’ve never used it. But I’ve got it. They don’t need to know that part. Plus, I know for a fact neither of them has a clue how to use four-wheel drive either. Blanche doesn’t in her BMW, and neither does Faith in her van.

  “We can make it out,” I say with confidence.

  And I know we can. Go slow enough, engage the four-wheel drive, and we’ll be fine. I feel it.

  Blanche shifts her weight again, thinking. She’s on the edge, still not convinced this is a good idea. “Are you sure your SUV can handle it?”

  I lift my chin. “There’s not one doubt in my mind. We’ll be fine. We just go slow. We only have to make it as far as the main road. We should get a cell signal there.”

  Faith pulls her hair over one shoulder. “Then we should get dressed and pack our things.”

  “Leave the things,” Blanche says. “We’ll have to return with the authorities.”

  Faith rubs her arms uneasily. “Okay.”

  “Get on your coats,” I say. “Let’s head out.”

  Chapter 18

  Charlotte

  Late October 2000

  It starts with slut. I find ten slips of paper inside my locker. Each one has the same word scrawled on it.

  They were all slipped through the slits and sit like confetti on my books.

  Like Sam had asked, I tried to call Brittany after she saw us. Her mother said she wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t come to the phone.

  It was a bad sign. Stupid me ignored it, choosing to come to school the next day.

  I crumple the papers into my fist, glancing around to see who might’ve left them. Kids careen past. Someone mumbles under their breath, “Slut.”

  “Go home, slut.”

  “Whore.”

  My breakfast tumbles in my belly. It crawls up my throat. I run to the bathroom and vomit up eggs and toast. When I exit the stall, the girl at the sink glares at me.

  “Whore,” she whispers as she leaves.

  My fingers shake as I bring palms of water to my mouth. I want to go home. I want to run screaming and get away as fast as I can.

  As I head to homeroom, someone grabs my ass. I whirl around.

  “Hey!”

  A band of jocks laughs as they go by. One of them winks at me.

  “Maybe we can party later.”

  I don’t even know who he is.

  I see Sam down the hall. His face is tucked into his chin. I make a move toward him, and his head jerks up. Our gazes lock. He slams his locker door shut and walks away.

  I’m alone in this.

  At first I’m angry. Fury gurgles and spews in my gut. But then it morphs into fear.

  All day—and I don’t know if it’s real or if my ears are hearing things that don’t exist—but everywhere I go, I hear “slut,” “whore.” I hear those words with every step I take.

  The words come the loudest in the cafeteria, when I see Court and her friends. I don’t see Brittany. She’s not here. But she told them all.

  Of course she did. How else would they have known?

  I can’t be angry at her. This is my own doing. I knew that when I got into it.

  Sam sits at a table with jocks, their letter jackets looking ridiculous in the October heat.

  Court sees me. I look away before she can mouth that I’m a slut, that I’m a whore. I turn and speed from the room, heading outside to sit by myself and stuff my face.

  This feeling is awful. So much of me doesn’t care about so many things, but this…this has never happened. I’ve never been hated by so many, called names, had my ass grabbed.
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  There is no one to blame but me.

  That means I have to face it. I have to put my chin up and be called names because that’s what I am.

  I am a slut.

  I am a whore.

  But I wasn’t the only person in those woods. Sam was, too.

  He’s not a slut or a whore. He lost his girlfriend and is being invited to sit with the jocks. Probably they want to pass me around now. They each want a taste.

  I vomit up my peanut butter sandwich, right on the grass. People laugh.

  Someone mutters that I’m probably pregnant.

  I’m not. In that I was careful.

  I only wished I’d been more careful about other things.

  The next day my locker is worse. It’s covered in white stringy stuff that looks like marshmallow cream. I grab paper towels from the bathroom and wipe it off. Kids snicker while I do.

  When I pop open my locker, I see condoms, white ooze dripping from them, draped over books and papers. A picture that I had taped to the inside of the locker—one of Brittany and me—is damp, a line of dried white crust clinging down the middle of it. A dollop of creamy white ooze sits atop my makeup bag.

  I shrink back, not wanting to touch the cum that covers my stuff.

  Then the smell hits me—mayonnaise.

  I whirl around. Kids slide by. Their gazes accuse, but their mouths are shut tight.

  “Do you think this is funny?” I yell at the watching eyes. “You think this is a joke?”

  A boy coughs. “Slut.”

  Then they all walk on as if I never said anything to begin with.

  Guys leer at me. Girls hit my books off my desk. On accident, they say. I’m hated. Everywhere I go, there are no friends. Brittany is back at school, but she won’t talk to me. She won’t look at me. She asked for a new chemistry partner.

  Now I’m even more alone.

  It’s Thursday, and all I can think of is how Sam and I would meet in the forest. I want to rewind time, return to a week ago, before any of this happened.

  But there’s no time machine in my back pocket. Still the forest soothes me. So I go there. I stand on the edge of the precipice and look down at the stone blanket below. I wonder what it would be like to fall. I wonder how much it would hurt when I landed.

  Would the fall even knock me out? Kill me? Maybe I’d only break an arm and would live, unlike the kid that Sam told me about.

  A twig snaps, and I hear them coming. They don’t try to be quiet as their feet trample branches and rocks, leaves and vines. I think about hiding like I did that day when Brittany and Tal kissed, but I don’t.

  I don’t care if they see me.

  Their voices float down over the brambles and ropes of poison ivy to me.

  “What are you doing here?” Court says.

  That’s when I turn and see them—Court, Blanche, and Faith. Their eyes are holes of anger, and I am the focus of all six of them.

  Suddenly I’m furious, tired of being hurt and feeling like everything is my fault. They don’t scare me. There are three of them. What can they do? They can’t hurt me more than what’s already been done.

  I step forward. My feet feel like they could crunch rocks into powder. “Come to see where we used to do it?” I ask, referring to Sam. “Tired of just putting condoms in my locker and whispering that I’m a slut?”

  Court shakes her head. “I didn’t do any of that.”

  “Then who did?” I yell.

  Court ignores my comment. “You screwed my boyfriend.”

  “News flash!” I throw out my arms. “Your boyfriend wanted to be screwed. He wanted it—over and over—and we would’ve kept doing it, too.”

  She slowly walks up until we are only inches away. Her breath smells like Red Hots, all heat and cinnamon. “You are a slut.”

  Then she pushes me.

  Chapter 19

  We are never going to make it.

  I have to stop myself from thinking that. All we have to do is drive far enough where we can get cell service. That’s all. We will make it.

  But I stand in the blistering air on Paige’s front porch, staring at the slab of frozen glacier that was once the driveway. A clot of worry builds in my throat.

  “Are we sure about this?” Faith asks, her voice a small thing.

  “Yes.” It comes out forced, false confidence backing up the word. Maybe they won’t notice my worry. If I pretend hard enough to be self-assured, surely the feeling will filter into my bones and resonate within me. “We will make it,” I reassure her as much as I try to reassure myself.

  But you’ve never engaged the four-wheel drive. They’ll know that you have no clue what you’re doing.

  My confidence will erode.

  Stop it. Stop thinking negative thoughts.

  We’ve got to focus on contacting someone who can help us—someone who can remove Paige’s body and get us out of the cabin.

  Faith picks at a worry line that has wormed its way between her eyes. “If you think we can do it, I trust you.”

  That makes me feel worse.

  “I still say it’s a bad idea.” Blanche exhales a plume of cigarette smoke that the air snatches away. “We should stay here.”

  Faith shifts her weight back and forth. Her curls swirl like clouds around her face. She is hesitating, reconsidering. We must move forward.

  I have to keep moving forward.

  “We have a window. The storm has subsided. We’ve got to take this chance,” I press them.

  They don’t need to know how fragile this situation is to me. I imagine the scent of death beginning to filter from the bedroom upstairs, sinking into the rest of the house. If I stay here long enough, I’ll begin to shrivel, my insides withering.

  Maybe it’s unreasonable to take them with me and leave. But even though Blanche isn’t saying it, she doesn’t want to stay.

  Of course she’s worried about the ice.

  Hell, I’m worried about the ice, too. But I’m more worried about what will happen to us as we sit in a house that death has touched. And what will happen if we pick apart Paige’s death?

  It’s what I did when my sister died. I tore the moment to shreds, found ways, real, actual ways, to blame myself.

  Blanche and Faith will begin to blame themselves, too, until that shame eats at their insides and they fall into depression, each one trying to figure out how they could have saved Paige.

  But no one could have saved Paige.

  “Let’s go,” I say.

  The SUV sits at least twenty yards away. A thick crust of ice layers the top of it like icing. It drips from the roof and hood. Only a small amount is caked up on the doors. Hopefully it’s thin enough to penetrate, to tug the door open.

  “I’ll just be waiting here,” Blanche says, “for you to pick me up.”

  “What?” I say, jaw dropping.

  She tosses her cigarette onto the ice. The red tip hisses before turning black. “Joking. Come on. But nobody break a leg.”

  We move at a crawl. I slip, throwing my arms up. My back snaps backward, and pain slices down my spine. I inhale deeply through the ache.

  My sneakers aren’t meant for this weather and neither is my jacket. It isn’t thick enough to keep me warm. It’s good for thirty- or forty-degree weather, but it must be in the teens. The cold spears my bones.

  Both women pant behind me, taking their time to maneuver over the slick surface.

  I reach the door and tug several times before it throws open. My feet slide from under me, and I grip the handle hard, my fingers curling into the ice that has claws and teeth.

  My chest slams into the door, and my chin jabs my arm. With a groan, I pull one leg up, then the other, getting my footing.

  A few minutes later we’re all sitting inside the frigid SUV. I crank the engine and hit the heat. Cold air douses us.

  From the back seat, Faith makes a shivering sound. Blanche reeks of smoke, and I watch the ice on the windshield, patiently waiting for it to mel
t.

  Damp cold creeps into my socks. I wiggle the ends of my toes to warm them, but ice has melted on the tops of my sneakers and the moisture has fallen through the cracks, snaking its way to my pedicure.

  Poor shoe choice, Court.

  First thing I’ll do when we return is change my socks.

  It’s funny the things you think about when you don’t want to focus on what’s actually happening. I think of my socks to stop myself from remembering what Paige looked like. The ice that slowly melts on my windshield has suddenly become a fascinating study in dripping water.

  “Where is the police station?” Faith asks.

  “All we need is to find a cell signal,” I reply.

  “The towers might have been affected.”

  Blanche has a good point. I didn’t think of that. I press my forehead to the steering wheel and pray that just once, something goes right in this day.

  It does. The ice melts enough for me to see. The windshield wipers sluice away the slushy mixture, streaking the water until the blur lessens.

  Blanche eyes the controls. “Do you have to engage the four-wheel drive?”

  I stare at a gray button that switches in two directions—4H and 4L. The H stands for high and the L for low.

  “All I have to do is flip this to 4 High,” I tell them.

  “Shouldn’t it be 4 Low?” Blanche asks.

  “Should it?”

  “No,” Faith says from the back seat. “You want to be in high four-wheel drive so that you get good traction. Low means you won’t have good traction.”

  Is that right?

  “Maybe we should read the manual.” Blanche moves to open the glove box.

  “I’ve got this,” I say. “We’ll do 4 High. We can always switch it if we need to.”

  “Okay,” she says doubtfully.

  If I drive slowly enough, we will make it down the mountain. I just have to go slow.

  “You sure you don’t want me to drive?” Blanche asks.

  My gaze trips on hers. Dark strands of hair cover one side of her face, but I can see enough to discern the concern in her eyes. She thinks I’m going to freak out, that this situation reminds me of another.