R.I.P. Eliza Hart

by Alyssa Sheinmel

  I concentrate on my breathing: In, out. In, out.

  Instead of a mountaintop, I imagine that I’m back in my room, safe and sound. I try to picture my pillows and my dresser drawer, but instead all I can see is Eliza’s body suspended over the cliffs with a string, someone flying her just like a kite.

  I open my eyes. Visualization never works.

  “Let’s get to work,” the first man says.

  The buzz saw starts up again. The noise the saw emits shifts from a buzz into a hum as they start cutting into a tree. (Thankfully, not the one we’re hiding in.)

  Sam loosens his grip on me. Cold air rushes to fill all the places he’d been squeezing tight.

  Over the sound of the saw, one of the men—Mack, I think—shouts, “It’s gonna be a bitch lugging this back down to the truck.”

  “That’s what I have you for,” the other man answers. “You’re the muscle; I’m the brains of the operation.”

  “I know, I know,” Mack answers, like he’s heard these words dozens of times before. His breaths come fast, like he’s working hard. “Course, I don’t think my muscles will make much difference if I break my back dragging a hundred pounds of wood down a mountain.”

  The gruff man laughs. “You’re nineteen. Pretty sure your body can take it.”

  Mack breathes heavily in response. “Next time we’re picking a tree closer to the truck.”

  “We had to pick one of the paths she said would be empty this time of day. We had more options last time.” Last time. He must mean the tree they cut up on Hiking Trail C. They must have done it in the middle of the night. “At least now we don’t have to split the profits with that girl, right?” He says that girl the same way Arden said it about me at Eliza’s memorial service. Like he chewed up the words and now he’s spitting them out rather than swallow them. “It’s not like she needed the money.” Mack must shrug or something because the other man explains, “Dude, it was on the news. She’s Edward Hart’s niece. Her grandfather used to be the mayor of Menlo Park.”

  I swallow a gasp. They’re definitely talking about Eliza.

  The gruff voice continues, “She ever tell you why she bothered with us when her family was so rich?” Abruptly, the saw switches off.

  “Doesn’t matter now, does it?” Mack answers. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to be here so soon after …” Another pause. “This place might be crawling with police.”

  “We’ve got an order to fill,” the other man answers. “And clearly the police aren’t crawling around here. This is as far from where they found her as you can get, right?”

  I don’t hear Mack’s answer, but he must agree because the saw roars back to life. In my mind’s eye, the tree explodes with blood when the buzz saw makes contact. “Sam …” I beg.

  “I know.” He doesn’t have to whisper anymore. Even with his mouth next to my ear, I can barely hear him over the sound of the buzz saw.

  Sam unwraps himself from around me, but laces his fingers through mine. He peers out of the cave, then looks back at me and nods; the men must not be looking in our direction. Slowly, Sam leads the way up the hill and away from the voices below us. He’s careful to keep off the path, hidden by the trees. I’m so relieved to be out of the cave that I almost start to cry. The buzz saw is so loud that we don’t have to worry about keeping quiet.

  My breath comes a little easier now that we’re out in the open. Still, my heart is beating fast—I’m not sure if it’s the effort of hiking, or the fear that one of those men will turn around and see us. Once more, I keep my gaze trained to the forest floor, trying to put my feet exactly where Sam puts his. It’s harder now because I’m shaking so hard.

  Sam leads the way off the path and into the woods, even though there are signs everywhere warning students not to do just that. (Rattlesnakes! Mountain lions! Poison Oak! Ticks!) The forest is so dense that it muffles the sound of the saw. By the time we make our way back to Hiking Trail D, I can’t hear it at all.

  Sam drops my hand and turns around. “You okay?” He puts his hands on my shoulders, slouching so that we’re face-to-face. They give drowning victims CPR after they pull them from the water. It never occurred to anyone to give me mouth-to-mouth after pulling me from a small space. Now Sam looks like he might actually try it.

  I keep my eyes focused on his chest rising and falling at a steady pace. After a few moments, we’re breathing in unison, like I’ve fallen into step beside him.

  Finally, I manage to say, “Do you think that guy—Mack—is the one Julian saw fighting with Eliza?”

  Sam nods. “Sounds like it might’ve been.”

  “Do you think those men killed Eliza?”

  “I don’t know. But they just rocketed to the top of my suspect list.”

  I can still hear the gruff voice saying She shoulda listened to you, huh, Mack? Maybe she’d still be alive.

  And I can still hear Mack’s answer.

  Maybe.

  Maybe what?

  Maybe Eliza refused to hand over her ID. Maybe they wanted it so they could get on and off the campus whenever they wanted to, ripping into the redwoods without having to split the profits with her, like that man said.

  But then, why was she working with them in the first place? It’s not like she needed the money. She was Eliza Hart. Her parents gave her everything she wanted.

  Didn’t they?

  “We have to go to the police.” Sam drops his hands from my shoulders and starts pacing. “I didn’t see them, but one of them was called Mack, did you hear that?”

  In the pocket of my sweatshirt, my phone buzzes with a message. I pull it out to take a look, expecting a text from my mom, maybe a picture of Wes’s latest slam dunk. Sam reaches for it—he thinks I want to call the police, too.

  But when I see the message on the screen, I step backward, out of the reach of his long arms. My ponytail is falling out of its elastic, and strands of hair stick to my forehead.

  I hug the phone to my chest and shake my head. “We can’t go to the police. Like you said, we don’t even know what those guys looked like.”

  “So? We heard them. We have a name. Mack. I mean, maybe it’s just a nickname, but c’mon, it’s something, right?”

  Sam takes a step closer to me, and I back away again, tripping over a root on the ground and falling hard onto my bottom. Tears spring to my eyes.

  Sam crouches down beside me, but I crab-crawl away from him frantically.

  “Elizabeth, you’re freaking out.”

  “Of course I’m freaking out!”

  “I know.” Sam keeps his voice low, like I’m a wild animal he doesn’t want to startle. “I was scared, too. But we got away from those men. They’re not going to hurt us now.” He holds his arm out for my phone. “We have to call the police.”

  Without loosening my grip, I hold up my phone so Sam can see the message I just got from Dean Carson: Ellie, can you please come to Professor Clifton’s office at 4 o’clock this afternoon? The police have some questions for you, as do I.

  As do I. I imagine Dean Carson typing up that message, taking the time to type those last three words.

  Dean Carson is my academic advisor. I spent hours in his office at the beginning of the semester figuring out my independent study program. He joked about the fact that no one else had accepted the school’s liberal arts scholarship. Now I wonder if he was just pointing out that no one else had been as desperate as I was.

  As do I. He didn’t have to add those words. He wanted me to know he’s suspicious, too.

  “Even the dean thinks I did it.” I can’t bring myself to say the word killed. I put my phone back in my pocket like I’m trying to hide it from myself. “Everyone thinks I did it.” I brush the tears from my eyes, smearing dirt all over my face.

  Sam shakes his head. “You just have to explain—”

  “What? That from the day I showed up here Eliza hated me for reasons I never understood? That Eliza was the liar, not me? It’ll be my word
against a dead girl’s. And not just any dead girl. Eliza Hart.” Even the tree thieves were impressed by her. The niece of a congressman. Granddaughter of a mayor. Princess of Menlo Park. Queen of the campus.

  Sam’s voice remains calm. “But now you can help them. You’ll tell them what we saw, what we heard about Eliza working with those guys. They’re definitely going to be more suspicious of two men sneaking onto campus than they will be of you.”

  “They won’t believe me! Who would believe that Eliza was involved in something like that?” Those men sounded like they could barely believe it and they were the ones working with her.

  “You have a witness.” Sam sets his jaw and swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Me.”

  I push my hair off my forehead and yank at the collar of my sweatshirt, hotter than I’ve been all winter. “The entire campus practically attacked you just for bringing me to the memorial service. They already think I got you on my side somehow.”

  “This isn’t about sides. We’ll just show them the tree those guys cut into—”

  “The wood was getting stolen before Eliza died. It’d look like I was trying to connect two completely different crimes.” Just the fact that I was hiking on the most difficult trail will be enough to make them suspicious. It’s not like I’m known for being athletic around here.

  Sam lowers himself onto the ground. His legs are so long that when he folds them up it reminds me of a daddy longlegs spider. “So what do you want to do?”

  I close my eyes, squeezing out what’s left of my tears. I want to go back to our suite and lock the door behind me. I want to close the shades and climb into bed and pull the covers up over my head to block the world outside.

  But I would never do that because it’s too much like being in a small space.

  I take a deep breath in, sigh it out heavily.

  I want to go back to a few days ago, when Eliza Hart was the living and breathing mean girl who made my life so miserable, when I didn’t know that trees could be butchered, their parts stolen and sold.

  I want to go back to last spring, when I could’ve chosen to stay at my old school instead of coming here. My claustrophobia may have kept me from making friends, but no one hated me. No one spread lies about me. And no one suspected me of murder.

  At least in a couple years, I’ll go to college. Another chance at a fresh start.

  I wonder just how many fresh starts a person like me gets to have. It feels like I’m already running out.

  I open my eyes and stand, brushing the dirt and pine needles from my pants. Sam’s right about one thing: It will help if I can offer the police another suspect (or suspects). But telling the police I heard these scary guys in the woods talking about Eliza isn’t nearly enough. I need to know what they look like. I need to know how they got into business with Eliza—or how she got into business with them. I need to offer the police names and descriptions and cold hard facts that point away from me.

  It’s the closest thing to a fresh start I can think of right now.

  “Elizabeth?” Sam prompts. “What do you want to do?”

  I roll my shoulders down my back, trying to make myself taller just like Eliza did on our first day here. I have until four o’clock.

  “I guess I want to find some burl-poachers.”

  This is what I know:

  It hurt when I crashed onto the ledge.

  My wrist folded beneath me.

  I heard something in my leg pop.

  After that, the only thing I was aware of was the pain.

  So cold that it hurt.

  So wet that it hurt.

  It still hurts. Maybe it always will.

  Did I try to get up? I always got up. Even on mornings after yet another restless night when the last thing I wanted was to get out of bed, to go to school—I still found the will to get up. It would’ve made my father sadder if he knew I wanted to stay in bed all day every day, not sleeping but not actually functioning, either. It would’ve led to another one of my epic fights with my mother.

  He’s the sick one, how can he be expected to take his meds on time? Why don’t you manage him better?

  It’s not my job to be his caretaker—

  Of course it is. No one made you marry him.

  I didn’t know—

  Spiky and sharp, I never let her finish a sentence.

  Now I wonder what exactly she didn’t know. What she might have said if I hadn’t stopped her.

  Did he really manage to hide his illness from her before they got married?

  Or did she just not understand how bad it would be?

  I didn’t have the patience to listen, and now I’ll never know. Maybe in some families confiding in your parents makes things better, but in mine it just made things harder, and harder was the last thing I wanted.

  I must’ve bled when I hit the ledge. A gash above my eye? Maybe I was bleeding internally. Would I have known if I was bleeding internally? Can you feel it?

  How strange that I don’t know exactly what killed me.

  I guess it doesn’t matter. Dead is dead, however you ended up that way.

  I miss Mack. I never really missed him when I was alive. He was always just there when I wanted him: He would come get me or I would sneak off to meet him. He was so available that I never had to miss him.

  Until that night.

  He was so angry.

  He said he never wanted to see me again.

  He said this was getting dangerous.

  I didn’t expect to be so awake. Isn’t that what they tell little kids when they ask about death, that dying is like going to sleep? Or maybe you’re not supposed to tell them that anymore. It would probably give them nightmares.

  I’m so awake I’m practically buzzing.

  I wish there were a book to explain all of this. They could give it to you seconds before you die, just enough time to skim it, just long enough to fill in the blanks. They could call it What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting Anything at All.

  If Mack were here, he’d be quick to point out the holes in that particular plan.

  He’d say that if there were a book that told you what to expect when you died then you wouldn’t be expecting nothing; you’d be expecting all the things the book told you about.

  Mack wasn’t like Erin and Arden and the rest of the kids at Ventana Ranch. They took what I said as the gospel truth, even when it was a blatant lie. Like the things I said about Ellie Sokoloff.

  I always thought they believed me because they liked me.

  But now I think they might have been worried I’d start rumors about them next.

  Mack never had any problems standing up to me.

  Mack wasn’t scared of fighting with me.

  He wasn’t scared of me at all.

  In the end, I was scared of him.

  Eliza was right, that very first day: Without a license or a car, I’m trapped on this campus.

  When Sam offers to drive, I have no choice but to say yes.

  We pass the makeshift memorial beside Eliza’s dorm on our way to the parking lot. Someone has taped the signs from the service (R.I.P. Eliza Hart; We’ll Miss You; Gone But Never Forgotten) to the brick wall. They’ve switched from real candles to the battery-operated kind. Now that the grief and shock isn’t so fresh, my classmates are back to worrying about forest fires like they used to.

  Sam lets me into his car—an old Toyota Camry he says used to be his mom’s—and drives toward the gate. I hold my breath: I imagine the cops guarding the main gate have been given pictures of me, just like in the movies, with words like High Alert and Wanted: Dead or Alive emblazoned across the top. They’ve been instructed not to let me leave, to drag me in for questioning kicking and screaming if they have to.

  There’s a line of cars ahead of us, and a policeman standing with a clipboard at the front gate.

  “We have to sign out,” Sam explains, as if I don’t already know. I mentally count the cars ahead of us. Four.
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br />   “How long do you think this will take?” What if Mack and his partner finish while we’re waiting in line? They could drive away and disappear, and we’d never find them.

  Sam shrugs. “I think we have enough time,” he says, as though reading my thoughts. “I don’t think dismantling a redwood tree is quick work.”

  Two more cars pull up behind us. They have beach chairs and towels in the backseat. They can’t make it to Cabo this week, but at least they can go to the beach in Monterey. They probably don’t have to be back by 4:00 p.m. to talk to the police.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Sam asks. “We can just go to the dean with what we know.”

  The car at the front of the line gets waved through, and we move up. The driver of the following car passes the cop his ID. We wait.

  Highway 1 is just on the other side of the front gate, a straight line going north and south. Beyond those gates are total strangers who’ve never heard of me or even of Eliza. Strangers who don’t think I killed or stalked anyone.

  “I’m sure,” I answer finally, even though the only thing I’m sure of right now is that I want off this campus.

  “Did you write back to the dean?” Sam asks.

  I shake my head. “I don’t know what to say.”

  Another car gets waved through, and Sam eases off the brake. We roll forward.

  I glance at my phone. The dean’s message stares back at me. The police have some questions for you, as do I.

  “Maybe they’re looking for me.” I picture the police pounding on the door to our suite. Bringing in a battering ram to knock it down.

  I shake my head. The administration probably has an extra key. If they wanted in, they wouldn’t have to knock the door down. And my appointment isn’t for hours. If they wanted to find me now, the dean would’ve asked me to go to Professor Clifton’s office right away.

  “Why do you think Eliza was working with those guys?” I ask. Sam said that meth-heads steal redwood burls to make a quick buck. “Do you think she was using the money to buy drugs?”

  Sam shrugs. “Didn’t the girls on the swim team get tested for that kind of thing?”