Don't Trust Her

by Elizabeth Boles

  Under the sheet, Paige’s body is a ghostly outline. I stare at her form for a moment and think of all the Vincent Price movies that I watched as a kid. It wouldn’t surprise me if she suddenly lifted up, arms outstretched to strangle me as she demanded justice.

  It would be straight out of an Edgar Allen Poe story, just like this weekend has been. It’s a study in revenge and death.

  It is colder this morning than last night. The chill has taken the edge off the scent that creeps about the room like a possum skirting for food.

  It takes a moment to remember why I am here, what I’m supposed to do. The body has that effect on me. I’m drawn to Paige like a bee to a bright flower, or a fly to decay.

  The drawers are the most likely place to check. So I search them all. Paige wouldn’t have wanted us to easily find the cable. She would have wanted it to be difficult. The most logical place for us to look would be downstairs. But Paige would keep something like that with her—so the drawers it is.

  They are full—but only with clothes. The bathroom is much the same way—overflowing with cosmetics, toiletries, and towels, but nothing else.

  I sweep past the bed to the closet. My fingers brush over sweaters piled in cubicles, silk blouses draped over hangers and boots and sneakers stacked on racks.

  But there still is no sign of the cable.

  If I were Paige, where would I have hidden it?

  It hits me—under the bed. It’s the most obvious and stupid place to have put it. My stomach tightens as I kneel in front of the frame. The sheet bulges at the edge of the mattress. Fingers stretch against the fabric as if to point at me in accusation.

  You ruined me. All of y’all ruined me.

  I shudder and pull up the bed skirt. The area is clear. Nothing lies beneath the bed.

  There aren’t any more hiding spots. Her luggage was even empty. The surfaces are wiped clean, the decorations generically mountain themed. Anyone could have lived here. Anyone could have died here.

  My gaze bounces around the room, looking for a spot that I might have missed. It lands on the nightstand. The lamp resting atop is made of antlers. Hard to tell if they’re real. The spot next to it is empty.

  Empty.

  That’s not right. When we left the room yesterday, that spot was taken by the bottle of Xanax.

  Faith.

  A voice sounds from downstairs. “Court!”

  It’s her.

  She doesn’t wait for a response. “I need you to come down. There’s something I have to show you.”

  My gaze sweeps to the missing bottle, and a feeling of dread pings in the pit of my gut. Whatever Faith has to show me, it’s not going to be good.

  Chapter 36

  Brittany

  October 2000

  I stand on the bluff, looking out. Charlotte is gone. She needed to go because Court couldn’t be trusted. The anger in her eyes is something new, something foreign to me. If I hadn’t arrived, I don’t know what she would have done.

  Court fumes at me, her face a world of fury. Words ping from her mouth as she accuses me of helping that slut, of befriending her.

  My sister doesn’t know what she’s saying. She’s not thinking. I try to tell her that, explain that she doesn’t want to do something that she’ll regret. I tell her to leave Charlotte be. What’s done is done, though I know it hurts.

  She breaks into tears. I put my arms around her and inhale the strawberry Herbal Essences shampoo she used that morning. Red splotches hide the freckles that dot her face, and I wipe her tears away.

  It’ll be okay, I tell her. We’ll get through this together, as sisters, like we always do.

  She wipes her nose and nods. Blanche and Faith linger on the bluff. Faith is angry. She wants to protect Court and make anyone who’s hurt her pay.

  It’s strange the level of protection she has for my sister. It’s almost as if Faith wishes that she was my sister’s sibling instead of me.

  She likes control, that one. Last thing that is, is a surprise. Faith likes to be the smartest in the room. That’s why she reads mysteries. Being clever is more important than wearing a wrist corsage to a dance.

  But sometimes the most important thing is compassion.

  After a few minutes Court calms. I stand at the edge of the bluff, looking over the precipice at the forest below. Vines wind around trees and birds chirp. The view is beautiful. I want to absorb every ounce of it because we can’t return and risk getting caught. Just one second longer, that’s all I’ll be; then I’ll truck back home and do my homework, maybe make a grilled cheese for a snack, and try to forget all this crap happened.

  But then suddenly I’m falling. The rock is no longer beneath my feet, and my hands scrape the air. I feel my voice leave my throat. The wind screams at me, and all I can see is darkness.

  When I awake, my mother is beside me, crying. She has my hand. My throat burns it’s so dry, and my body growls with pain. I’m not at home. I’m not even in the forest anymore.

  Equipment beeps and a cuff tightens around my arm, cutting off the circulation. It releases. More beeping.

  It smells funny here, like the place has been sterilized to cover the scent of bad things—like death and urine.

  Daddy is here, too, sitting on a beige chair with black cushions. He kisses my cheek and then leaves. A nurse comes back with him. Mama rubs my face and touches a tender spot. I wince. She says she’s sorry. I figure it’s because she hurt me, but the way she said it makes me think that she’s sorry for more.

  Then I find out why.

  They tell me that I fell from the bluff and was badly injured. I had surgery. They ask how I feel, and I tell them, hungry.

  Mama tells me how happy she is that I’m okay. They hover around me like chickens pecking for worms, and Mama insists on feeding me, which is okay because my arm is hurt—broken, I’m told.

  I eat some and then sleep. When I wake up, a man and woman are with my parents. They say that they’re police officers. They ask about what happened at the bluff.

  I tell them that I don’t know. My memory is fuzzy. I remember standing and then falling, but I don’t know what happened in between. They give each other a look as if they don’t believe me.

  The woman asks about Charlotte. Had she been there? I tell her yes, but that she had left.

  They exchange another look.

  The man tells me that he knows this is hard, that it must be very difficult for me, but I’m a strong girl to survive that fall with only a broken pelvis and arm. He asks if Charlotte pushed me.

  No, I tell him. She wasn’t on the bluff then. She was gone.

  He gives me a knowing look, as if he believes that I’m lying but can’t force a different story from me.

  I say it again, that Charlotte wasn’t there. He can ask my sister. She’ll tell him.

  He already has, he says. She’s the one who said it was Charlotte who pushed me.

  My stomach shrivels and suddenly the food sitting in my gut wants to come up, but I swallow it down.

  That can’t be, I tell the officers. But they just look at me as if I’m dumb. Like when I fell, I hit my head, too.

  My mind is on a Tilt-A-Whirl. Court couldn’t have told them that. She knew the truth, same as me. Charlotte was gone when I fell.

  Mama comes to my side. It’s okay to tell them what happened, she prods. I don’t have to protect anyone, she says. The police are only trying to help.

  My head hurts. Why would Court lie? Why would she tell them such a thing when she knew it wasn’t true?

  My words grind to dust when I tell them that I am being truthful. The machine beside me beeps a lot, and the nurse comes in and asks people to let me rest.

  The police and my parents go outside. When they come back in, my dad slips a card of paper into his wallet.

  Mama gives me a bright smile. I know it’s hard for you to remember, she says while touching my face, but you have to try.

  I do remember. Why don’t they belie
ve me?

  Court comes a day later. Mama leaves us alone to get supper. As soon as she’s gone, I ask Court why she told the police that Charlotte pushed me.

  She shrugs and says because she didn’t want to get in trouble.

  That is not a good reason, and I tell her so. But what happened?

  Her gaze is Velcroed to my bed. I don’t think it lifts one time when she tells me that she turned and her backpack hit me, sending me over the cliff.

  It doesn’t matter now, she says. The police are dropping the investigation. Since I wouldn’t corroborate the story, they decided to let Charlotte off. They’re not charging anybody with a crime, and the fence will be fixed.

  But what about Charlotte, I ask her. What about her? She didn’t do it.

  Court just shrugs. She doesn’t have an answer because there isn’t a good one that she can give.

  Late 2000

  Several weeks later, Charlotte moves away. I try to talk to her but never get the chance.

  Months after, we move, too. Mama keeps saying that she can’t stand to live in our town anymore. That she can’t stay in a place where kids could hurt each other so badly.

  So we go.

  It takes a while for me to heal, but I manage. The docs keep telling me that it’s a good thing this happened while I’m young, because when you get older it’s harder to heal from such a high fall.

  I do physical therapy and move as much as I can even though my back screams at me most of the time. It helps to take things slow. It’s usually easy to ignore, but some days are harder than others.

  I press Court over and over to tell me what really happened on that bluff, but she always gives me the same answer.

  There are days when I suggest that we track down Charlotte to apologize, but Court always changes the topic.

  I feel bad about Charlotte. It’s hard. I don’t want to tell Mama that Court and Blanche and Faith lied, but knowing that they could’ve sent Charlotte to juvenile detention eats away at my insides like a cancer.

  Court tells me that all I need is time. That it’ll make the sharp edge of the betrayal fade, like a memory. It will help the pain to lessen.

  And things do fade. The edges of my memory become fuzzy. Even though there is still a dull ache in me emotionally, my ties to our old friends weaken. When fall arrives and we begin a new school year, Blanche and Faith, even Charlotte dissolve from memory like sugar in water.

  Even that day on the bluff eventually fades.

  August 2001

  Mama sells off her old pharmacy and opens one in our new town. With the sale goes the memory of Blanche when she worked with us, as well as memories of Court and me stocking shelves.

  Things seem to get back to normal—at least they do for Court. She gets a new boyfriend. I try to stay in touch with Tal, but the distance is too much. We’re about an hour from each other and neither of us has a car yet, so we don’t see one another and so, like Blanche and Faith, he slips away.

  I want to let all of it go, what happened to me and the blame that was cast onto Charlotte, but I know that Court isn’t telling me the whole truth.

  There’s a secret that she’s keeping about what happened up there. She won’t say it, though, no matter how much I ask.

  I feel the burden of guilt, too. If only I’d had a chance to talk to Charlotte and apologize. If only I’d been able to do that, then I’d feel better. I’d right a wrong, even if it wasn’t my wrong to right.

  The low throb in my back tugs at me some days. I know where Mama keeps the good pain meds—they’re on the shelf with the other stuff. They call to me like a siren in the sea.

  One day when my back is screaming, I unscrew the cap off a thousand-count bottle and take a Lortab.

  It takes about half an hour, but by then I’m buzzing and the pain is suddenly gone. It feels good—really good.

  Too good.

  2003

  It doesn’t start all at once, my addiction. It takes time to root and then sprout and grow. But by the time I’m eighteen, I’m popping pills, and Mama starts to notice that some of them are missing.

  I learn to be discreet, and that discretion keeps me from going over the edge. At least it does for a long time. But eventually I stop being so careful, and I start popping too many pills.

  Then I flunk out of college.

  I go to rehab and get better for a while. I learn ways to deal with my pain and to do stretches and yoga. It helps. But every once in a while, I slip up and sneak a med that Mama thought she had locked up.

  One pill leads to another, which leads to another.

  I take college classes. I change my major three times: first English, then History, then finally Communications. I don’t know what kind of job this will get me, but I know that I can make extra money selling pills on the side.

  All the kids want them—they all want to get high, same as me.

  2007

  Mama and Daddy are putting their foot down. Again. I should have graduated college by now, but I only take enough classes so that it won’t interfere with me getting high.

  I tell them to look at Court—at least I’m not pregnant with some bastard kid.

  Mama starts to cry. She asks where she went wrong. I don’t have an answer for her. It’s all wrong, I say.

  All she wanted was for one of us to grow up and take her place as a pharmacist, to run the store. She would give us the business. It would stay in the family. We would see how it would all work out.

  I feel bad and change my major to pre-pharmacy. I mean it. I really do. I can change this time. I know it.

  2008

  This is my last stint in rehab. It has to be. I can’t keep doing this, keep letting my family down. This has to work, for all of us. It can. I know it can.

  In rehab we talk in groups. There’s a lot of sharing and a lot of smoking cigarettes—for everyone but me. We discuss what brought us here. I talk about my feelings so much that I want to barf. I work harder on the yoga, and it helps more this time. Maybe because I’m determined to make it work.

  Court has a little boy. His name is Jonas and he’s beautiful. She sends lots of pictures. It’s for my family that I’m doing this. I’m getting it under control. I know now that I don’t need the drugs. I have my life in my own hands.

  It’s my last day. My family is coming to pick me up. The nurses say that a storm’s moving in. Hopefully my family arrives early.

  My bags are packed, and I’m waiting near the front door. The residents slide by, congratulating me on two months well done. But when they walk away, I see them give each other the side-eye.

  They think that I’ll be back, that I won’t make it. We all want to make it, don’t we? It’s why we’re here, so that we can get up and move on, go forward.

  But when they give each other that look, it makes my heart beat ice into my veins.

  Before I can think too long on them, my parents pull up. I see Mama and Daddy, Court and baby Jonas. There are hugs, and I press Jonas’s soft head to my cheek. I inhale the sweet baby scent of him.

  It’s been two months since he’s seen me. He’s six months now. At first he’s not sure what to think of his aunt, but after a few minutes he warms up.

  I say my last goodbyes and we leave.

  The sky becomes black fast. Great rolling clouds rumble ahead. Lightning cracks in the distance. Daddy wants to get home, to beat the storm. Mama asks him to slow down as rain falls in thick sheets onto the glass.

  Jonas’s pacifier drops from his mouth. He cries and a seat belt clicks. Hands stretch to reach the rubbery nipple with a lamb attached to one end.

  But the paci hides under the bucket seat. Fingers just about reach it, elongating when an explosion sounds above. The SUV tips up for a split second. The earth falls away. It’s like I’m suspended in air, an astronaut. I am up. Gravity is gone. My fingertips float on the ceiling of the SUV as we leave the ground below.

  Then the vehicle crashes back down to earth. Glass shatters and the
world explodes.

  Chapter 37

  The last summer she was alive, Paige hosted a party at her house. I remember it because it was one of the few times that all of us were together—husbands included.

  Tal had wound his arm around my waist, pulling me through the house to show me something that couldn’t wait.

  I figured it must’ve been an Auburn football signed by Coach Pat Dye or Tommy Tuberville—his favorite coaches and team—but that wasn’t what had caught his eye at all.

  It was an antique typewriter, the sort with a black ribbon that slithered from one end to the other and letters on bony steel fingers.

  I hooked a brow. “Fascinating.”

  “I knew you’d never appreciate it,” he told me.

  I smirked. “I appreciate it. It’s a typewriter. It’s old. It reminds you of the one your grandpa had—the one he used in World War II as a reporter.”

  A silky male voice sounded from behind us. “Like the old Royal Victory?”

  We turned to see Derek Varnell slinking up.

  Tal placed a hand to his heart. “I’m a sucker for an antique typewriter.”

  Derek patted the machine lovingly. “This one’s been in the family for eighty years.”

  “I have one like that,” Tal said proudly. “It’s my pride and joy.”

  I squeezed Tal’s shoulder and glanced up at him, a wry smile tugging my face. “It is his pride and joy. Sometimes I think he cares about it more than me.”

  Derek made a little sound of appreciation as he brought a glass of whisky to his mouth. “It in good shape?”

  “Pretty good for serving through a war,” Tal boasted.

  I rolled my eyes. “If only we could say the same about the way we’re holding up.”