It took great effort on Carson's part to hide the shock that he felt, he scratched his head. “That's crazy,” he forced out as casually as he could.
“Indeed.”
Carson set his jaw, he didn't know that about Valie. To him, it meant she was careless and selfish and he felt stupid now for trusting her.
“Yep, ran away with a boyfriend,” the detective continued, “Causing her family to panic...her uncle thought she had been killed. She returned a week later. Is history repeating itself today?”
Carson cleared his throat, he had enough. He had to get out of that room. When he found Valie, he was demanding answers. He would help her find her pendant and send her on her way. He never wanted to see her again after that. To him, she was a liar. “Her name isn't Helena Revels, or Valie Revels, or whatever you said. Her name is Jennifer. We're friends from Ohio. I wasn't evading police. I stopped and spoke with them, I believe you still have my identification. I was running from people who seemed like a threat. I am 18 years old and I would like to be released.” Then, without missing a beat, “Unless of course you're charging me with a crime.”
Carson was released shortly after, given a harsh warning and sent on his way. It could've been so much worse, Carson knew, but he was still reeling from learning that Valie had run away from home. To him, it changed the way he saw her. Up until that point, Valie seemed to be someone who could be trusted, was honest, and quite obviously cared for her family, but he didn't like the picture now drawn up in his mind.
He set out to find her.
Chapter 13
Valie was still walking along the side of the highway. The sun had set and was long gone. Her limp wasn't getting any better and the pain in her knee was lingering. She ignored it the best she could, knowing that thinking about it would only make it worse. Every few minutes or so, she would pinch her arm so she would think about that pain instead.
It wasn't working.
She knew that she could've been spotted by anyone at any time, but there wasn't anything else she could see to do, only push forward. Cars were zooming past her, some honked, probably a warning to get off the highway at nighttime. The noise assisted in distracting her from her own busy mind.
Eventually, the ditch had disappeared, so she was forced to walk along the shoulder. Feeling exposed, with her pronounced limp and her “Chocolate is my Life” hoodie, with a hole in the shoulder where the bullet went through. Her shoulder had only felt sore, it was no longer bleeding. To Valie, it was another small victory.
One thought that provided Valie some comfort was that if the bad people had been back at the train station, that meant that they weren't anywhere near New Jersey, where Maddy and Trent should've been.
Valie had been walking for what seemed like hours when she felt a car pull up behind her. The sound of gravel crunching and headlights that felt like a spotlight right on her gave her goose bumps. She swallowed hard, deciding if she should run or keep casually walking.
“Stay calm,” she whispered to herself.
Valie slowly turned. The lights were so bright that she couldn't see what kind of car it was or who was driving. She turned and continued walking, as if there was nothing wrong with a 17-year-old girl walking alone along a busy highway late at night.
Perfectly normal.
"Hey! You need a ride, darlin'?" A female voice called out. Valie felt quickly relieved at the sound of the voice, but she pretended like she didn't hear it and kept walking.
The car crept next to her.
"Hey, hun? It's not safe for you to be out here like this!"
Valie hesitated, the driver could've been anyone, good, bad, serial killer...but she was tired and still had a long way to walk. She knelt down to look through the passenger side window. The driver was a younger girl with a sympathetic look on her face.
"Come on, get in," she said, reaching across and opening the passenger side door.
Valie looked down the highway, weighing the options.
She got into the car.
"Thank you," Valie said settling into the seat.
"It's no problem. Where are you heading?"
"Helena." It sounded weird to her when she said it.
"That's where I'm going too. Why is someone like you walking out here like that? It's dangerous, you know." She warned, glancing over her shoulder, then pulling back into traffic.
Valie nodded, but didn't answer her and luckily she didn't ask again. As the young girl drove, she tried to make small talk with Valie about the weather and living in Montana, but Valie couldn't even fake like she was interested, she was too worried about everything else. Then it occurred to her that maybe she was nervous about picking up a stranger. She had done Valie a huge favor, so Valie tried her best to appear like a normal teenage girl.
"How old are you?" Valie asked her in her pathetically hoarse voice.
"I just turned 16. You?"
"Almost 18."
"How fun! I can't wait to be 18, actual bonafide adult then, you know?"
“Yeah...” Valie said unsurely. “It's pretty exciting,” she was trying to humor her. There was not a single part of Valie that was excited to turn 18, well, at least, not anymore. It had turned into a dreadful deadline, instead on an exciting right-of-passage into adulthood.
"Have you ever heard of The Wozniak Five?" Valie asked her suddenly.
The girl paused. “Umm...”
Valie could tell right away the question was weird to her. It should've been, it was pretty random, but she wanted to know.
"Yeah, I've heard of them. In school, yeah."
"I was just curious. My friend was writing a paper on them and we were talking about it the other day." This was actually the truth. Valie then wondered what Lewis would think now if he knew that Trent and Valie were a part of that science mystery that he had been so enamored with.
"It's an interesting story...I don't believe it, if that's what you were asking."
Valie looked out of her window, "I believe it."
"Then believe, honey." She said with a shrug of her shoulder and a smile. “Where are you from anyway?”
“Small town in Wisconsin.”
“Never been there. Are you a senior?”
“Yeah.”
“How exciting! I can't wait till my senior year.”
They continued chatting about school. She asked Valie about homecoming and her friends, her dress, and if she had a date. It had been such a normal conversation that Valie appreciated the simplicity of it.
Valie had given the girl the address of her pendant, telling her it was where a friend lived. She entered it into the GPS suctioned to her dashboard and the mechanical voice gave her directions.
As the young girl became more comfortable with Valie in her car, she asked her again what she was doing walking along the side of the road.
“My car broke down and I had walked too far before I realized I left my phone, so I didn't go back.” The lie came too easily and Valie felt guilty.
She accepted that answer and turned up a song that came on the radio, screeching about how much she loved it.
“Do you know it?” she shouted over the music.
Valie nodded and allowed herself to laugh. The young girl had such a happy, carefree energy as she started to wriggle in her seat, throwing her elbows in the air to the music.
Soon after, they came to the entrance of a typical subdivision. Valie almost didn't want to get out of the car, she had enjoyed the break from reality. Valie asked her to drop her off at the beginning of the subdivision rather than the actual house.
"Thank you very much, uh--" Valie realized she didn't know the girl's name.
"Jessy, my name's Jessy."
"Thank you, Jessy. I really do appreciate it."
"No problem. Take care, hun!"
As Valie started to get out of the car, Jessy stopped her. "Oh and hey--if it's worth anything, the only reason I never believed the little Wozniak Story was because when I was nine, I went aroun
d telling everyone I was one of them. I suppose it's just jealousy on my part." She giggled. "Maybe they are real."
Valie looked up at the sky, “Yeah...maybe.”
She thanked Jessy again, closed the door, and watched her drive away.
Valie looked at the small suburban area in front of her. Cute houses all matching almost perfectly.
“This is it.” She took a step onto the sidewalk and began looking at the numbers on the houses. Searching for the home that said 1023.
Passing 1000, then 1002, 1004, she was almost there. Valie could feel her heart pounding, adrenaline pumping.
She came to the end of the street. There was a turnabout and one house that looked different from the rest. It was out of place amongst all of the other, newer homes. This house was much older, like a farmhouse, with a large wrap-around porch, one that you might find in the country. Before Valie could even see the address, she knew it was the house. A force she couldn't explain was pulling her to that house, much like the force that seemed to be pulsating from the cabin the night she came upon it.
She walked to the front of the house. There next to the front door, it said 1023.
Valie could feel her body start to shake, it was the house. She rushed to the side of the house, feeling the excitement building, knowing her life hinged on what was in that yard.
There was no willow tree on the side of the house, so she quickly ran to the backyard.
Nothing.
Valie ran to the other side, but there was no willow tree there either. Not an oak tree, not an elm tree, nothing.
Her heart sank. The address, she thought. Maybe she had gotten it wrong, or maybe the address had changed all these years later.
She ran down the sidewalk, taking time to look carefully at each house, running through their backyards, searching desperately for a willow tree, but there weren't any. Not one, not a single willow tree in that subdivision.
Valie ran back to the 1023 house and to the backyard again, thinking maybe, just maybe she somehow overlooked a willow tree.
But she didn't. The only thing in that backyard was a picnic table, a dilapidated shed, and a swimming pool.
Valie fell to her knees. “There's no tree!” she screamed to the sky. “There's no willow tree, so what now?!” She began crying so hard that she wasn't able to take a steady breath. “What am I supposed to do now?” Valie felt so weak at that point and it scared her even more. Even her vision had seemed to be getting blurry.
Valie crawled to the large in-ground pool in the backyard. She splashed some water onto her face, then rolled up her pant legs, took off her shoes and stuck her feet into the pool. The water was cold, but it felt nice.
There were lights shining from the sides of the pool. She just stared at the bottom. Valie hadn't been in a pool since she was a sophomore in high school. Part of her wanted to jump in, but she didn't. She only sat there and stared, not knowing what else to do.
Her pendant wasn't there. Phaedra told them if they didn't retrieve their pendants by the time they turned 18, they would die. Valie had no other choice but to try and accept the fact that she was going to die.
Then, suddenly, "What are you doing?"
Valie quickly jumped to her feet, splashing water everywhere, startled by the small voice. She spun around and saw a young girl standing behind her. The girl was wearing a white nightgown, her blonde hair was in a messy ponytail. She didn't even look 8 years old.
"Um...I was..." Valie stammered with a sniffle, unsure of what to say.
"It's too cold to go swimming," she said sweetly, with a concerned look on her face.
There was something odd about her demeanor, she was too calm, Valie noticed. The young girl just found a stranger hanging out by her pool late at night, but she didn't scream, or even look like she was afraid.
"I know, I was looking for something. Something that should have been buried here. I'm sorry if I scared you," Valie said and started to walk away quickly, trying to hide part of her face with her hand.
"The glass thing?" she asked and Valie stopped cold.
"What did you say?" Valie asked, turning.
"The glass necklace? It was blue inside. Is that what you were lookin' for?"
Valie couldn't move, couldn't breathe, not even blink.
"Me and my brother found it,” the little girl continued, “we found it last year, but...I broke it by accident." She looked down. "Was it real important?"
Valie closed her eyes and all color had drained from her face. For a moment, she felt hope, and it dissipated just as quickly as it came.
Valie felt her knees begin to give, so she sat back down at the edge of a pool.
The girl sat next to her, “I always had a feeling someone would come looking for it. Was it really important?” she asked again.
“Yes,” Valie admitted. “It was very important.” She knew that she didn't want to cry in front of the young girl, but the tears weren't coming anyway. All she felt was disbelief. Incredible disbelief.
“I'm sorry,” she said sadly, “It was an accident.”
Valie forced a small smile, “It's okay.”
She scooted closer to Valie. “What made it so important? It was awfully pretty.” She fluttered her eyelashes.
“I needed what was inside of it.” Valie couldn't lie to her.
“The blue stuff?”
Valie nodded.
She frowned, “Are you mad?” The little girl was so childlike in the way she was asking questions, it was hard for Valie not to appreciate her innocence.
“No, I'm not mad.”
“Maybe you can make another one,” the little girl offered.
“Maybe,” she whispered. Valie took a shaky breath and stood, “Thank you for your help. I'm sorry I bothered you.”
Valie turned quickly and started back towards the entrance of the subdivision. She wandered into the front yard of the first house in the subdivision and slouched down by a tree. She knew she would have to be gone by the morning. As Valie started to fall asleep against the tree, the thought entered her mind that she might not wake up. She convinced herself that she would still have some time, and that she wasn't that weak, even though it was a lie. But she couldn't stay awake anymore. Her eyes were too heavy.
Chapter 14
Valie woke up to someone gently shaking her. She opened her eyes, forgetting for a moment where she was, then everything came flooding back. Instinctively, she swung her arms in front of her, eyes still blurry, she couldn't see who it was at first.
"Valie, stop! It's me!"
"Carson?" Valie recognized the voice immediately. She blinked rapidly until she could see his face. Once she saw it was him, she pushed herself forward, wrapping her arms around him.
He hesitated, tensing his body at first, but once she started to cry into his shoulder, he put a comforting hand on the back of her head.
"It's gone, my pendant is gone," she whimpered.
"I know.”
Once Carson got to the subdivision, he spotted Valie sleeping against a tree, thinking to himself how stupid she was. At first he walked to her, searching for her pendant, but once he noticed she didn't have it and there was no trace of it, Carson went to look for it on his own.
It wasn't until he was in the backyard of the 1023 house that he knew she didn't have her pendant, not because she didn't look, she didn't have it because it was gone. Standing in the backyard of the house, all the anger fizzled away. It was as if he realized his own pendant was gone.
Now, all of the things he wanted to say to her didn't seem important. As she cried into his shoulder, all he could say to her that it was going to be okay, he promised her that it was going to be okay.
“How is going to be okay? You heard what Phaedra said just like I did!” She sobbed.
Carson went to one of the houses in the subdivision and asked to use the phone, giving a story that his cell phone was dead and his car had broken down. The man who answered the door allowed Carson in and even
offered him breakfast, but he only needed to use the phone to call for a cab.
Valie waited by the tree, sitting with her knees tucked to her chest. Seeing Carson was one of the biggest reliefs of her whole life. As she sat and waited, she tried not to think about what would have happened had he not arrived to help her.
Carson came back, helping Valie to her feet, and the two waited on the corner for the cab. Valie pressed him for details about what had happened after she left the station. He only told her that he was brought in for questioning. He asked Valie if anything important happened after they were separated, she said no. Of course she thought about telling him that she got shot and the act of kindness from the teen girl Jessy, but the energy to tell the story or answer questions just wasn't there.
The next stop for them was Carson City, Nevada. They were going for Carson's pendant. He offered to get Valie a motel room so she could rest, but she said no. As tired as she felt, being alone wasn't an option.
During the cab ride, neither of them spoke. Valie was becoming a shell. She felt almost hollow on the inside. She couldn't bring herself to think about Trent, or even her uncle. No, this silence was all due to her thoughts on how she would say goodbye, thoughts on how she wasn't ready to die. She didn't have the chance to learn a second language, didn't have the chance to get matching tattoos with Emma and Casey, she would never go to Italy, things that she put on her bucket list that would now go unfulfilled. To Valie, the irony was that she was traveling, but not in the way she'd imagined.
They got onto the train without difficulty and once they were settled into their seats, Carson finally spoke.
“Why'd you run away from home, Valie?”
The question surprised her. “What? What do you mean?”
He looked at her, his expression yielded any questions she had on how he found that out and she almost laughed.
“I had to...at the time, I had to,” she held her breath, almost saying more, but decided against it. “I don't have anything else to say now.” She turned away from him and closed her eyes.
The Pendants and the Mystery of the Wozniak Five Part I Page 14