Don't Trust Her

by Elizabeth Boles

  She doesn’t have to worry. I am keeping everything separate—as separate as I can.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  I flip the switch to 4 High and pull the gear shift back into drive, my foot on the brake. Very slowly I ease off, expecting the 4Runner to rumble forward like it always does.

  But it doesn’t move.

  “The tires are stuck in the ice,” Blanche murmurs.

  A steel knot forms in my gut, and my fingers tighten on the wheel, my knuckles becoming pale hills.

  I lightly press on the accelerator. The engine revs. The tires give some, but not enough.

  “More,” Blanche says.

  Straight in front of us lies a row of tall, willowy pines. The driveway cuts left and then down the hill. Currently we are pointed toward the trees instead of the gravel road.

  I lick my lips and exhale.

  “You can do it, Court,” Faith says. “I know you can.”

  The heat works too well. Warmth crawls over my skin, sinking into my armpits, making them damp. I wipe moisture from my forehead, take the wheel, and press down on the gas.

  The tires give more. We lurch a little, and we’re almost out, I can feel it.

  I put the vehicle in reverse and slowly press the gas. We rock back a few inches.

  “Good,” Faith tells me.

  “One more time,” Blanche encourages. “Put it in drive and we’ll be out.”

  I wish that Tal were here, doing this. For some reason men always seem to have a natural affinity for slipping out of tight spots. At least, Tal does.

  What would he do? I wonder. He would mash the gas to get out of the spot, and then he’d be ready to ease off and steer us down the hill. He’d press on the brake and let the vehicle creep along.

  Yes, that’s what I’ll do.

  I hit the gas. The SUV rockets, breaking out of the ice. I press the brake and turn the wheel, aiming us downhill. For a split second I see that the way is clear. It’s covered in ice, but if we go slow enough, we’ll make it down.

  Then the tires slip.

  The SUV fishtails, sending us into a tailspin. The sky above us becomes a swirl of gray cotton candy. Faith screams. Blanche shouts something. I think she wants me to let off the brake. I ease off, but the back of the SUV continues to spin until all I can see are pines.

  The trees at the forest line rush forward, and I stomp on the brake and cut the wheel to the left.

  But the pines keep coming closer and closer until they fill the entire windshield.

  And then the screaming stops.

  Chapter 20

  Charlotte

  Late October 2000

  I stumble back and fall on my ass. Rocks scrape my palms, biting into my flesh. I glare at Court.

  She glares back while Blanche and Faith watch.

  “Stop it!”

  Brittany appears from the woods. Her blue backpack flops as she strides up, the fuzzy dice she attached to the top handle swing over her shoulder, making it look like the white and black are part of her hair, like she’s a miniature Cruella de Vil.

  “Just stop it, Court. You wanted to see where I found them. You’ve seen it. Leave her alone.”

  “She screwed my boyfriend,” Court says, her eyes brimming with tears.

  And then something inside me breaks and cracks, opening wide. All the anger spills out and seeps away.

  I want to tell Court what I saw at the movie theater. She should know how much Sam loves her. He never tried anything physical with her. Doesn’t she understand that he respected her?

  No one respects me. The weight of it crushes my heart.

  I say, “I’m sorry.”

  And I am. I’m sorry for hurting her, for yanking Sam into my life, for simply being a bad person.

  Court’s lower lip quakes. She opens her mouth, and a string of saliva swings from the top lip to the bottom. “You’re only sorry because you were caught. That’s all.”

  She strides toward me and glances from the rim of the bluff to me. It doesn’t take a fucking brainiac to know she wants to push me off. Court wants to watch me fall. She doesn’t even know that just a minute ago I wanted that, too.

  But now things are different. I am different. At least I want to be. There isn’t happiness in trying to steal someone else’s joy. All that shit brings is misery. I’m sorry that I ever hurt Court. Truly, I am.

  I scramble to my feet, hands clenched. “You have to believe me when I say I’m sorry.”

  Her mouth twists. “I should push you.”

  Then Brittany pulls Court away. “Stop it. Leave her alone. This has gone far enough. Don’t you see?”

  Faith speaks. “She’s a bitch for doing what she did. I never liked you,” she says to me. “I never trusted you.”

  Blanche rolls her eyes. “It’s over. We need to go.”

  “Brittany needs to stop taking up for her,” Faith says crisply. “Just because they used to be friends, she thinks this slut is a saint.”

  “Cool it, Faith,” Blanche snaps.

  But fire burns in Court’s eyes. She sees that her world is gone and I’m the cause of it. “She deserves to pay.”

  “She has paid,” Brittany says. “People do things to her locker. They call her names. She is paying.” Then her gaze cuts over Court’s shoulder to me. She jerks her head. “Get out of here.”

  I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. Should I go? Should I stay? Should I beg and plead with Court to believe me?

  Brittany stamps her foot. “Go!”

  The look of rage on Court’s face convinces me to leave.

  Then I am running faster than I can imagine. Branches slice over my cheeks and scrape my jeans, snagging at the knees and covering me in burrs and dirt.

  I am just at the broken fence when a scream lashes the air. My knees quiver as it slices the silence. I intuitively know what has happened.

  Someone fell from the bluff.

  Chapter 21

  My body convulses as a cough irritates my lungs. A white deflated mushroom sags from my steering wheel. Must be the airbag. Dust particles fill the cabin, and I tap the button to roll down the window, but it doesn’t budge.

  My gaze bobs to the windshield. A branch landed on the hood and hit the glass, cracking it like a spiderweb. The hood is buckled, and smoke wafts up from under the steel.

  A groan escapes me. Great. Now the SUV is wrecked. Insurance may or may not pay for it, at least according to the newscaster.

  Tal’s going to be so ticked.

  God, my head throbs. After a gentle probing, I discover a knot forming at the hairline. I draw my hand away with a wince.

  Blanche moans beside me. She rubs her eyes, and I see a dark bruise blooming on her brow.

  Faith coughs. “Are y’all okay?”

  I nod and feel an ache racing up the back of my neck. “I am.”

  “Me too,” Blanche says. “The car’s not.”

  I don’t disagree.

  “Why’d the airbags deploy?” I ask. “We weren’t going that fast.”

  “Sometimes they do at low speeds,” Faith murmurs.

  I try to start the car, but the engine doesn’t turn over.

  Blanche shifts in her seat, grunting as she unbuckles her belt and lurches forward. “It’s wrecked. It won’t start if the bags deploy. They have to reset the vehicle at the dealership.”

  I did this. I brought us out here and destroyed my vehicle. My actions could have killed my best friends.

  I close my eyes and exhale. It hurts to press on my lungs too much. “Y’all, I’m so sorry.”

  “You tried,” Faith says kindly. “That’s more than I did.”

  Blanche keeps her lips shut. I know her well enough to decipher that she’s thinking, I told you so. She did tell me so, and I didn’t listen.

  “Oh, Court,” Faith says with a sad sigh. “I didn’t even think about you. Are you okay? This is too much, isn’t it?”

  I swallow down the unease that’s balled up in my t
hroat. “I’ll be okay,” I croak. “This is my own fault. We shouldn’t have risked it. We should have listened to Blanche.”

  “Well,” Blanche says with a grimace as she cracks open her door, “sitting here won’t change anything.”

  “What are we going to do?” A hint of hysteria fills Faith’s voice. “What should we do?”

  “We’re going back to the house.”

  Faith’s breath hitches. “I can’t.”

  “You have to.” Blanche stands on the ice, the lip of the door in her hand. “We can’t walk into town. Not with our crap shoes and thin coats. We’ll be frozen before we find our way to the road.”

  Faith replies in a deflated voice, “Since it’s our only choice.”

  “We can do it.” I say it like a cheerleader, but my stomach knots. “We’ll be together. We can face anything together.”

  Faith doesn’t look at me as she nods. She pushes open the door and slips out, gnashing her teeth the whole way.

  My arm screams as I unbuckle the seat belt. The metal snaps back, slapping against the doorframe. I shove open the door and slowly move, every muscle sore and tender.

  We start back toward the cabin, doing our best to keep purchase. The gray sky is like a shield, a great woolen one that has cut us off from the rest of the world. We have no phone and no way to access our families or Derek, Paige’s husband.

  And that’s when I remember.

  The power. “Let’s go through the garage. Anyone know the code to get in?”

  “Her birthday,” Faith says quietly. “The first four digits of it.”

  I flip the cover on the keypad and type in today’s date. The door groans open, and inside sits a shining two-seater Mercedes. It’s sleek and silver with rounded edges. It’s exactly like Paige was.

  “Talk about a death trap,” Blanche says.

  Faith shoots her a dark look. “Can we please not talk about death?”

  “I just meant attempting to drive in this ice with that car.” Blanche punches her hands into her pockets. “I’m not trying to bring up Paige.”

  Faith’s head snaps to me. “Why are we here?”

  “Shhh. Listen.”

  We stand in a room large enough to house three cars, but all that’s inside the cream walls and spiderweb-filled corners are one car and a lawn mower. It’s orange, one of the fast kind that men gush at because they can turn on a dime.

  Whoopee.

  From behind a wall comes a faint hum. My gaze scans the wall until I see a padlocked door.

  “Do you hear that?” I ask.

  Faith wrinkles her nose. “Hear what?”

  Blanche exhales a little sigh of realization. “The generator.”

  I run a hand over the cool Sheetrock that separates us from the adjoining chamber. “I knew there was something strange when the news said so many people were without power but we weren’t. This”—I gesture outside—“is an ice storm, and we’re in the mountains. We should be the first to lose power. But we didn’t. And the landline isn’t working, which means the outside line is down. I knew there was something wrong with that.”

  Faith stares at the wall as if it has leprosy. “What are you talking about?”

  I find my voice rising, the knowledge that I know something that she doesn’t charging me forward. “Do y’all remember when we were little and there would be a snowstorm?”

  “Unfortunately,” Blanche said.

  Her parents weren’t exactly the nice types. We were never allowed over to spend the night. They lived in a trailer park alongside the drug addicts and folks who had moved into town to work at the chicken processing plants.

  Sometimes Blanche wore long sleeves to school. Once her shirt cuff slipped up from her wrist, and I saw a dark welt.

  I asked about it, but she said it was nothing.

  Later I discovered it was something. But back then Blanche kept her secrets and managed to hide them pretty well from the school administration and even my own family.

  But my mom, I’m pretty sure, suspected something. She hired Blanche at the pharmacy. It worked out for a while until Blanche couldn’t get a ride to come in. So my dad and me would pick her up, take her to work. But then she started getting sick, saying she didn’t feel like working.

  Blanche quit and never said exactly what had happened, but I knew it was because her parents didn’t like her having money of her own. Or a life of her own.

  My mom tried to get her to come back. She even went to the trailer. Blanche’s dad told her never to show her face around there again.

  So no, Blanche would not have had a good memory of snowstorms that left her stuck, alone, with her parents. She would’ve hated that.

  “I remember,” Faith tells me.

  “Well,” I go on, “do you recall how we’d lose power but never the phone?”

  It takes a moment but finally both of them nod. “Yeah,” Faith answered.

  “I remember that, too. I think it’s some sort of law that phone lines have to be buried. In case of an emergency, you can still reach the police or an ambulance.”

  “Okay?” Blanche says slowly, not getting it.

  I gesture to the house. “Well here, we’re so far out, so far in the woods that the phone law either doesn’t apply, or cell phones have made it obsolete. The ice snapped the phone line. That’s why it’s dead. So if the phone cable was taken down, why wasn’t the power?”

  “Oh.” Faith studies the padlocked door. “But it was and now we’re running on the generator.”

  “Exactly. Behind that door is a gas generator that is chugging away, keeping the house warm and at the same time, using up every bit of fuel that it has.”

  Blanche brings her hand to her head. She touches her darkening brow and grimaces. “And the storm and ice are supposed to last two days—at least.”

  “Right. And we’ve got enough fuel to last two days. That’s it. Two days. But we could be stuck out here longer than that. The newscaster said the low temperatures would last three days. We don’t want to be stuck up here without power.”

  We stare at each other, our minds churning. We’re each thinking about being shut in the cabin for three days with Paige and no way to communicate with the outside world.

  I shudder.

  It’s Faith who breaks the silence. “We have to turn off anything that isn’t essential.”

  “The heater,” Blanche murmurs.

  I nod. “We convene in the living room and light the fire, use that as our primary heat source. If we need to cook, that’s okay. We keep it simple, try not to use up too much gas. Quick showers so we’re not forcing the hot water heater to work too hard.”

  Blanch twists her hair over one shoulder. “If we do that, the gas might last longer than two days. I mean, it’s not like any of us are going to starve in the next day and half.”

  Her gaze flickers to Faith, whose spine stiffens. “Right. It’s not like any of us will starve, especially not me.”

  Blanche looks surprised. “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  She holds out a hand to Faith. “I’m sorry that you took it that way. Like I said, I didn’t mean it. God, everyone is so touchy.”

  “I’m not touchy, but you were looking at me and saying how none of us would starve,” Faith bites back. “It’s not hard to put two and two together.”

  “Let’s all calm down.” I pat the air with both hands. “I’m sure Blanche didn’t mean it that way, Faith.” I let my words settle in before continuing. “If we’re going to keep it together for the next couple of days, we have to be kind to each other, gentle. We can’t start taking swipes at one another.” I give Faith a firm look. “And we can’t go picking fights. Got it?”

  Faith swipes a hand under her running nose. “I’m fine. Y’all won’t get any trouble out of me.”

  “Blanche?”

  “Me?” She tosses her slick hair over one shoulder. “Y’all know me. I’m an open book.”

 
; Faith shoots me a look that says, And what about the fourth card?

  I discreetly wave at Faith, silently telling her to forget about it. We head up the stairs toward the back door.

  But still, even though I gestured to Faith about Blanche, I can’t help but think to myself, No, Blanche, you aren’t an open book.

  You aren’t an open book at all.

  Just as the thought filters into my head, the clouds part and the ice storm starts again.

  Chapter 22

  We do exactly as we plan. While Blanche searches for the thermostat, I direct my attention to the fire, sifting through the house for supplies.

  “Found it,” Blanche calls from the hallway. I hear the click of a button, and then the billowing curtains stop their dance as the heat is turned off.

  “I’ll go upstairs,” she says next, “see if there’s a separate unit up there.”

  “Good thinking.”

  She pauses at the staircase, and a pained look crosses her face. My heart crunches to dust. We should be hugging one another, not trying to make sure that we have enough electricity to keep us for two days.

  But after a moment she climbs the stairs. Her body shuffles from side to side with exhaustion. I notice the bruise on her face is large enough to be a small continent. There’s no Internet for me to check the signs and symptoms of a concussion. So I don’t know if she’s suffering from one.

  There are only so many problems that I can deal with right now. To-do’s have to be taken one at a time.

  When Blanche is out of sight, I locate matches and kindling. The wood can’t be missed. A huge pile sits to the side of the fireplace, at the ready to be burned.

  It takes a few minutes to get the smoke going, but doing my best to emulate Tal’s fire-building abilities pays off. Thick whitish-gray smoke curls up from the bed I’ve created. It’s the only thing that I have to be proud of on this day.

  The smoke thickens, curling upward in a dance. It reminds me of Tal. He’s at home now, probably sitting in front of our own hearth with the kids, sending me pictures and messages that I can’t receive. I drag my phone from my pocket and tap it. There’s still no service.