The Stranger Game

by Cylin Busby

  “Almost there,” I told her. Because she had never been here before.

  More steep steps leveled out into a trail—still upward but not at such an acute angle. I was pushing through now, hearing Sarah’s breath behind me as I went. I didn’t want to get there, but then I did. I had been waiting such a long time. And now it was real.

  This was no dream.

  At the place where the goat trail reconnected with the main trail, it came out under a low oak tree, the branches hiding the way until you were practically on it, blocking the beautiful view of the lake, just below the cliffs. I stood there, leaves touching my face, until Sarah caught up. She said nothing, just stood beside me, breathing hard. I stepped out of the darkness of the goat trail and onto the wider main trail, where sunlight filtered down, the glittering lake off to one side.

  “She came up this way, I knew she would, because she had her bike,” I said. “She was meeting him at the picnic area. I locked my bike down at the rack, took the back way up, the goat trail, so I got here first.”

  Sarah lifted her sunglasses and wiped sweat from her face with the back of her hand.

  “I thought she would be biking. But those boots. They had slippery bottoms, no treads. They weren’t good on the pedals. I had forgotten that. So she was walking up, and pushing her bike along.”

  Sarah looked up and down the trail, as if checking for other hikers, but we were alone here.

  “I didn’t mean to scare her. I just wanted to cut her off.” I almost let out a laugh, remembering her face, the O of her mouth. At first, it was wonderful, the rush of adrenaline, the joy of catching Sarah, of being the one in control, standing above her on the trail. But then her anger.

  Nico, what are you doing here, you stupid bitch!

  “Mom and Dad said she had to take me, or she couldn’t go. But she didn’t. She left me, like I knew she would. She always did whatever she wanted.” I moved my sneaker over the dusty trail, rolling a rock under my sole. I didn’t want to say it out loud, what I knew deep down, about myself.

  That I hated Sarah.

  I hated my own sister. And she hated me.

  Something inside me had snapped that day, when she stood over me with the sweater. I was done. I was tired of always tiptoeing around her. It was always about Sarah, what she wanted. No one ever thought about me.

  “I knew when she got home, she was going to make me lie for her, say she took me along. Or say that she never went. And she would get away with it too, with my help—because she always got away with everything.”

  Sarah stood silently, just watching my face.

  “She always got her way.” I looked out over the lake. “But not this time.”

  Mom said you had to take me. You can’t go without me.

  Nico. She faced me defiantly. Get the fuck out of my way. Move. Now.

  Then it all happened so fast. “She went to go around me but I wouldn’t move. I just stood there.”

  Move your fat ass!

  “She went over to this side.” I stepped to the side of the trail where it dropped off by the lake, not too close. The jutting rocks and steep side below us, with only one length of rusty metal handrail between two posts, unchanged from four years ago.

  She had sighed loudly, trying to push her bike around me. But I wouldn’t move. I stood, arms crossed. I had never stood up to her before. I had never defied her. I could tell she was confused, angry. This wasn’t the Nico that she knew. What did I think was going to happen? That she would say, “Nico, you’re totally right. Come with me. Come hang out with me and my boyfriend. You can watch us make out.”

  Suddenly, she dropped the bike to hit me and I ducked. I stepped back and felt my right foot slide beneath me, over the edge, just a few inches from the end of the handrail. I turned, suddenly scrambling, falling, as the ground seemed to move from under me, rocks and dirt scraping as I slid. I looked up, reached over for the metal post of the railing just as I heard the sound of something hitting metal. It took me a moment to realize that it was the back of my own head. I blinked and saw blackness, heard a rushing in my ears.

  Then silence.

  “Nico!” I heard Sarah scream. It sounded so far away.

  I tried to sit up, realizing too late that my legs were hanging over the side of the trail, over the lake hundreds of feet below. My head had luckily caught the post of the railing and had broken my fall, leaving my upper body still on the trail, but barely. I scooted back, clinging to the railing, my head throbbing. Next to me, I could see Sarah’s bike toppled, the wheel hanging over the edge. I felt the back of my head where the pain was the worst and found my hair was matted and wet. When I looked at my hand, my fingers were covered in blood. I gagged, crouching on my hands and knees. Now Sarah was going to be in trouble, real trouble. Mom and Dad couldn’t ignore this.

  When I tried to stand, everything went in slow motion, and my vision swirled with black spots.

  I held the rail and turned to look for Sarah. I couldn’t see her anywhere. She had left me, gone on to the picnic area to meet Max without me like I knew she would. I was alone. She had left me here, hurt and bleeding.

  But she had also left her bike. That didn’t make sense. Why did she leave her bike?

  My head was hurting so badly, I could barely keep my eyes open. I heard, from below me, over the edge, a sound of tumbling pebbles and sand. I glanced over the side of the trail and saw something light gray dangling from an exposed root about halfway down. Her sweater. A gentle breeze caught it, and it drifted, softly landing in the water far below without a sound. I watched it fall, cashmere, floating, like a soft, gray dove.

  Her bike was on its side, the wheel still spinning round and round, tick-tick-tick. I watched as her sweater slowly darkened with water and then sank beneath the surface.

  SARAH

  WHEN I GOT A chance, I looked up the missing girl, Sarah from Pennsylvania. It didn’t take long to find all kinds of links about her, and the huge sum of money her family was offering for her return.

  She did look like me, but prettier. Her hair was thick and blond where mine was a drab brown. Her eyes were a light hazel and mine had a muddied green-brown shade. Her skin was perfect and glowed, and I had the complexion of someone who ate a lot of fast food—and some days didn’t really eat at all. The shape of our eyes was the same. And the nose. I was a little bit shorter than her and weighed about ten pounds less. But we could have been sisters, or maybe cousins. We were even the same age, give or take six months. I saw why the clerk at the store thought I could be her. Because I could.

  Every now and then, when I had some time and nothing else to do, I would look her up online and see what was going on with her case. I wondered what it was like to be so loved, to have a family that missed you, wanted you back. I scanned through the photos of her beautiful, perfect parents, her sister. The news articles about her boyfriend, so handsome and worried, leaving the police station after questioning. Her best friend, with fingerprints on the bike, pinched face like a sour lemon. But after a while, there was nothing new to report. Just the same old pictures over and over, two years old, then three. It was starting to look like they were never going to find Sarah Morris, dead or alive. Until suddenly, they did.

  CHAPTER 25

  I HAD AN IMPULSE to try and get the sweater, but how? The sides of the cliff were too steep, rocky, dangerous. My sister was going to be so mad, this was my fault. She would make it my fault.

  “What happened then?” Sarah asked. It was the first thing she had said to me since we started up the trail.

  “I just stood there. Maybe it was only for a few seconds. It all happened so fast,” I admitted. “My whole body was shaking, my head.” I reached back, feeling for the tiny scar that only I knew was there. The words caught in my throat.

  I waited for her. I thought she would come back around the corner of the trail. Say: Nico, you giant baby, you should see your face right now! Come on, let’s go. Don’t tell Mom and Dad about this, or
you know what you’ll get. She had played tricks on me before. I waited for her to jump out and scare me. But she didn’t.

  Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Maybe she was okay. The tick-tick-tick sound of her bike tire slowing down pulled my eyes from the lake.

  “Then what?”

  I looked at Sarah, trying to read her face, but her sunglasses hid her eyes from me.

  “I didn’t know what to do, so I picked up her bike and I rode it down, fast. I was looking for someone, to get help. At first. But then . . .” I stopped. This part was so hard to explain.

  When I came out of the darkness of the path and into the light of the park, it was filled with kids and happy families, picnicking and swinging and playing at the fountain. I suddenly realized that if I got someone to help, and we went to get Sarah, how it would look. What my parents would think. What could I say? What had happened? I didn’t really know. I only knew that it looked bad, the way Sarah and I always fought. Maybe she did go on to meet Max without me. Maybe she was fine. I tried to tell myself that, but the image of her sweater, in the dark water . . .

  It had all gone wrong. So wrong. Unless I was never there.

  “I rode her bike all the way down to the gate and I locked it on the rack. I checked the handlebars, to make sure they weren’t stained with my blood. Then I unlocked my bike and took off for home.”

  As soon as I got back, I stripped and threw my clothes into the washing machine. I rinsed my sneakers with the garden hose. The scrapes on my elbows were easily covered with a shirt. I showered and gently washed my hair, the water running red from a small cut that I could feel with my fingertips, just at the back. It formed a lump just beneath the surface that hurt for days, through all the days of the police asking questions, the first days of Sarah being missing. But it healed, after a while, like all wounds do.

  “How did you go?” Sarah asked, pulling me from the memories. “How did you ride home? Did you take the same route we just did to get here?”

  “Uh, yeah.” I tried to remember. “I think so.” I liked how she was being so calm, so exact. Not emotional. Not saying How could you, Nico. What is wrong with you? Did you even look for her? Why didn’t you call someone?

  “So anyone coming to the park that day could have seen you,” she said, looking out over the lake. She held her hand up to shield the glare. “How deep is this lake?” Sarah asked.

  “It’s about thirty feet, some places deeper,” I said, my voice breaking. “It’s part of the park now, so there’s no boats or fishing or anything allowed.”

  “Swimming?” Sarah looked at me and I could see my own face reflected in her sunglasses, a warped shadow image of myself.

  I shook my head. “Part of it is in the Seneca reservation, so nobody is allowed.”

  “They never searched the lake for her?” Sarah asked.

  “They never had a reason to—everyone thought she had disappeared from down in the park, by where her bike was,” I told her.

  She nodded. “Let’s go.” She took my hand, even though it was damp with sweat, and led me down the main trail. When the trail was wide enough to walk side by side, and the lake was no longer in view, she linked arms with me.

  “What does Paula know?” she finally asked.

  I shook my head. “She just said that she saw me.”

  Sarah glanced over at me. “Saw you where—on your bike? Or in the park?”

  I knew what she was asking. Did she see what happened to Sarah. Did she see the fight, the fall.

  “I don’t know, all she said was that she saw me, she wrote it in an email.”

  “What else did she say?” Sarah asked.

  That’s not Sarah.

  “Nothing,” I told her.

  When we reached the bottom of the trail, Sarah led me over to our bikes at the rack. “She probably saw you here,” she said, standing by the rack and looking around. “Or riding back to the house.”

  I nodded. That made sense. I didn’t want to think of what else she might have seen, maybe even more than I had. Did she see Sarah’s body hit the water? Did she watch her die?

  “Why didn’t she just tell the cops then?” she asked.

  “After Sarah went missing, Paula said she was home the whole time. She couldn’t change her story; the cops already suspected her. I guess she just thought it would all go away. And it did, for a while.”

  I tried not to remember what it was like after Sarah first disappeared. The waiting, for someone to find out the truth. To be discovered. After two years, it felt like maybe there was hope. We were all going to be okay. But then, the reporter from the paper called, and all the terrible facts and speculations from that day reemerged. There was no escape from Sarah.

  “There was this newspaper article, like two years ago. It made Paula look really bad, Max too. She started sending me emails after that. I just didn’t know they were from her, until now,” I said. “I guess she was hoping she could push me to confess, to admit something, to clear her name so that she wouldn’t have to say anything.”

  I leaned over to unlock my bike and saw stars floating in front of my eyes when I stood up, blackness creeping in from the corners. Sarah grabbed my arm. “Nico?”

  “I’m okay.” I blinked, and the blackness pulled back, the stars disappeared.

  She held my arm firmly, and leaned in. “This stays here, all of it. Let it go. You understand?” Her face wasn’t mean, but serious. “This stays here,” she said again. When I nodded, she let go of my arm.

  She looked at me thoughtfully and I could tell that she wasn’t worried about herself, about being found out as a fraud, as a fake. Sarah knew exactly what she was doing. She was worried about me. About how to protect me. “You need some lunch, and it’ll buy us more time, come on,” she finally said. “Are you okay to ride?” She motioned to my bike and I nodded. I could do it.

  She climbed on Mom’s bike and rode toward the gates. And just like that, I followed her, leaving the park, leaving the picnic trail and Crystal Lake behind me, as if it had never happened.

  I followed Sarah through the streets to a café near the park, letting the breeze dry the tears on my cheeks.

  SARAH

  MA HAD DECIDED TO take in another foster. She had done this before and it never really worked out. I could remember two kids she tried to take in, but we always ended up giving them back when she got arrested for something or we had to leave one town and set up in another. Why child services would even let her take in a foster kid was beyond me, with her record, but they did—again and again.

  “It’s not going to be like when you were little, Libby,” she said. “I was still using then, I was out of my mind. Not to mention that—well, I won’t even call him a man, because a real man doesn’t put his hands on a little girl. Monster, more like it.”

  That’s how Candice came to live with us. Adorable, about seven, her hair a light brownish-red halo over her freckled face. This kid should have been starring in movies, but she was living with me and Ma in north Florida. She started working her magic right away, when Ma took her to Toys “R” Us with a hot card that almost got rejected. When Candy started to cry, the clerk took one look at her and let Ma out of there with a new dollhouse (that really was for Candy) and a game system worth about six hundred dollars (that was for resale). And they gave Candy a huge swirly lollipop, for free. I sat in the back of the car feeling useless, while Candy played with her new dolls and Ma laughed her ass off.

  “You should have seen her charming them! We’re ordering pizza tonight, Candy—anything you want on top,” Ma said.

  “Can we get soda too?” Candy asked in her sweet little girl voice.

  “All the soda you can drink, sweetheart.”

  CHAPTER 26

  SARAH QUICKLY TEXTED MOM as soon as we were seated at the café, letting her know that we went on a bike ride and were grabbing lunch. I had forgotten to bring my phone—we had raced out so quickly, I’d forgotten everything. My mind went to the black bag under
Sarah’s desk, and now I understood. She was ready. She had prepared for this months ago.

  “Do you have your credit card?” I asked Sarah, looking over the prices on the menu.

  She looked up from her phone. “Don’t worry about it.”

  When the waiter came over, she smiled up at him. “Would you mind if we moved to that two-top in the corner? It’s a little too sunny for us here—is that still your station?”

  The waiter picked up our water glasses and moved us over to the other table. I had noticed that Sarah had this funny way of calling tables in restaurants by the number of seats—a “two-top” or, like when we went to the Italian restaurant with Mom and Dad, making a reservation for a four-top.

  Once we were situated at the new table, tucked away from everyone else, Sarah ordered for both of us. I watched how quickly she reassembled her face into something different: bright, open, pretty, when the waiter came over. It was as if the morning had never happened, no one would know what this girl, ordering so calmly, had been talking about moments before. Just as he was about to turn away, he stopped and spun around. “You look familiar, both of you—have you been here before?”

  Sarah looked down, blushing. “You might have seen me and my sister on the news, a while back—”

  The waiter stopped her. “Get out! You’re her? That girl who was”—he dropped his voice—“kidnapped?”

  Sarah nodded. “I don’t remember much about it, to be honest.”

  “And she doesn’t like to talk about it,” I interjected.

  “Of course.” The waiter nodded, his eyes still wide.

  As soon as he walked away, Sarah leaned in. “We won’t need a credit card now, you’ll see.” I glanced over at our waiter, behind the counter whispering to an older man wearing a name tag. I looked away fast and met Sarah’s eyes across the table.