We didn’t speak another word until Dex pulled into my dad’s driveway forty minutes later. The single-level house stood just as I remembered it. Its brown wood paneling looked faded by years in the sun, and its lawn was just slightly overgrown, as if it hadn’t been mowed in a couple of weeks. Beyond the house, I could see the dark outline of the woods, and next door was Dex and Cindy’s place. In comparison to my dad’s dark house, it looked bright and warm, its porch light reaching out into the dawning twilight.
Dad’s driveway was empty. Dex shot me a meaningful look as he let the car idle.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” I said, suddenly feeling tired. The day of travel was starting to catch up with me. “He could have taken the truck anywhere.”
Dex shook his head slightly, his eyes on my house. “I’m still going to drive around and see if I can find him. I’m worried.”
I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Just as I reached for the door handle, he spoke again, his voice soft. “You really have changed, Penny.”
I pursed my lips, wanting nothing more in that moment than to be home, in my bedroom in Chicago, lying down on my familiar sheets and reading the news on my iPad. Not here, in front of this house filled with so many memories I wanted to forget.
“You’re right,” I said. “I have.”
Dex looked at me with disappointment, maybe even a little sadness, but I didn’t feel any loss over the girl I used to be. To believe blindly is to get burned, and I was smarter than that now. I knew better.
“Have fun chasing aliens, Dex,” I said, turning my back on him and heading toward the house. “I have work to do.”
Three
I LET MYSELF into the house and dragged my suitcases in behind me. The living room was exactly the same as the last time I was home—same orange, seventies shag carpeting, same fifteen-year-old TV set sitting in a wooden cabinet. The windows looked out over the yard and the trees beyond, but it was too dark out to see anything through them.
I walked through the house, flipping on lights as I went, and finally reached my room. It had been mostly untouched since I was twelve years old, and every summer that I came back to it, I was further from the version of myself that used to live in it full-time. This room had the same floral wallpaper that was put up when I was five, while my room in Chicago had recently been painted a dark blue gray. Here, the back of the door was papered with posters of Zac Efron and the cast of High School Musical; there, my room was covered with two large corkboards that held my calendars, assignment information, and articles I liked. Here, the small secondhand desk had been painted all white and was still covered in bits of glue and glitter; there, my sleek IKEA desk usually held only my laptop, some pens, and a stack of female war-correspondent biographies that my mom had given to me for Christmas.
I quickly peeked into Dad’s room—just in case—but there was no one there. His bed was unmade and his curtains were pulled shut. His office was a mess, but that wasn’t anything new. The desk was covered in papers, the walls lined with corkboards chock-full of ideas for stories. I skimmed them—prehistoric lizard spotted in Daytona. Crop triangles = the new crop circles?—and shook my head.
Framed against one wall was the very first article Dad had ever written for Strange World. Published when I was only a year old, it was about the supposed alien landing in Bone Lake. The beginning of Dad’s obsession with the Visitors. That year, a meteorite had landed in the woods outside of town. It was slightly larger than most meteorites, so it drew some attention from the local and state news, and even brought some scientists to town to check it out. But it was just your garden-variety—or rather space-variety—hunk of rock, and the story quickly faded away.
For everyone except my dad, that is, who claimed he’d noticed some “strange occurrences” in town that year and thought they might be connected to the meteorite crash. So he drafted up a story about the alien “Visitors” who’d come down with the space rock and who were now living in the woods outside of his hometown, and he sold it on spec to the fledgling Strange World. The piece hit big, putting the paper on the map and ensuring Dad would have an income forever—or at least as long as there was a section of the tabloid-reading public that cared more about batboy sightings than Bachelorette proposals.
As a kid, I thought my dad’s article on the Visitors was a brave piece of genius; everyone in town rolled their eyes and huffed about the added attention Dad had brought to Bone Lake (this time from wild-eyed tabloid junkies rather than scientists), but I knew the truth—the Visitors were real and lived in the woods just beyond my house, and everyone except for my dad and me was too dumb to see it. That, or they’d been brainwashed by the aliens.
Later, of course, I realized the only real draw my dad had felt toward the meteorite was the pull of potential cash. He learned how to spin a story for a quick buck, and from there he never looked back. To this day, he wouldn’t admit he’d made the Visitors up to anyone—not even me.
Turning away from Dad’s framed article, I switched off the light in his office and wandered to the small kitchen to look for food. My dad’s entire diet consisted of what my mom used to jokingly call “summer barbecue staples.” He would rather eat grilled meat morning, noon, and night than even think about buying a vegetable. Which was one of the few things we had in common anymore.
“Thank God,” I murmured as I popped open a fresh bag of ridged potato chips and popped one in my mouth, savoring the taste of salt. Mom typically ordered in healthy dinners for the two of us, but she’d been on a particularly intense kale-and-proteins kick this past spring. I think she felt guilty for leaving me to go on a sabbatical to Barcelona. Her trip was the reason I was stuck in Bone Lake for the entire summer, rather than the usual three weeks. On the bright side, at least I wouldn’t have to eat a single leafy green while I was here. Plus, I’d have more time to work on my article.
Back in the living room, I sat down with my chips, opened up my file labeled Bone Lake story on my laptop, and started to read through my notes.
In the 1980s, Bone Lake was a midsize town for northern Michigan—not huge, not even Traverse City big—but respectable. Most of that was due to the plastics plant outside of town, the one that employed a large chunk of Bone Lake’s high school graduates. They became line workers, technicians, managers, secretaries, security guards, janitors. The plant, Tevis Manufacturing, molded parts for the insides of large and utility vehicles, though its biggest contract was with the military. A lot of the interior pieces of military Jeeps—pretty much anything that was plastic, anyway—were made right in Bone Lake. But in 2005, all that changed.
A local worker named Hal Jameson—a security guard—died while on night duty. There was an investigation, but the death was ruled completely accidental, apparently a human error on Jameson’s part. But it didn’t matter. The incident made state news and put a spotlight on the government’s contract with the plant. Someone at some point had cut some corners, and now fingers were pointing blame. The state news soon became national news, and the plant accident was sliding into scandal. Rather than stick around and see the mess through, the government pulled their contract entirely. After that, the plant’s other clients fell like dominoes. Its doors closed for good by 2006.
Half the people in town lost their jobs. And it wasn’t like there was another plant just around the corner—with the auto industry sending its manufacturing overseas, shuttered plants were a dime-a-dozen experience in Michigan. Bone Lake became another statistic.
That was the summary of what I had so far. But I knew there was more to the story than just the numbers and dates in my research folder. Finding and adding in a more human element would be just the thing to get me into Northwestern. I started typing up a list of anyone I could interview during my summer at Dad’s. The first name to flash through my mind was Micah Jameson, Hal Jameson’s son (and my first crush). Even though I hadn’t seen him in a couple of years, just the thought of him sent a familiar ripple thr
ough my stomach. I used to get that same feeling whenever I heard Micah laughing in class, or whenever I saw him throwing around a football after school, his hair turning golden under the late-afternoon sun. Maybe first crush feelings just stay with you like that, like the residue of past emotions that fade but never evaporate entirely.
Even though I’d been friendly with Micah in middle school, I’d never asked him about his dad or the accident before—it had happened when we were so young. I hesitatingly typed his name onto my list, following it up with other people who stayed in town after the plant closed. Many—like Dex’s dad—had moved away to try to find new work.
After working on my list of who to talk to and what to ask them for a while, I shut my laptop and looked around for the TV remote. I couldn’t find it in its usual spot on the coffee table. In its place instead was a shiny, new-looking digital camera. Dex’s words from the car flashed through my mind—about how my dad had taken a strange picture as part of some new “story.” Before I could think through what I was doing, I picked up the camera, clicking it on with my thumb.
A photo popped up in the camera’s preview screen. It was a simple shot of a group of trees in the woods. It looked like it had been taken a few months earlier—the trees were just starting to grow buds, and their dark, spindly limbs stood out starkly against traces of snow on the ground.
I flipped to the next picture. It was the same grouping of trees, but this time they were shrouded in darkness. In the next picture, they were lit up with dazzling morning sun, and the bark looked almost orange in the light. I kept clicking over to see more pictures, but they were all of the same stand of trees at various times of day. Sometimes the picture would feature a bird or a squirrel in the frame, but mostly it was just the trees. Picture after picture after picture.
“What the hell, Dad?” I murmured.
And then I came to a photo that was different from the others. It had clearly been taken in the same place, but half the image was blurred out by white, as if the flash had failed, or as if someone had shone a bright flashlight right into the lens. I peered closer. Right in the middle of the picture, where the whiteness met the black outlines of the tree trunks, was a thin, dark shape. It stood out starkly from the white glare, a black line perpendicular to the ground that bent in the middle, angling off in a different direction and ending in a few shorter, stubby lines that splayed out from one another. If I squinted, it could almost pass for a long, spindly arm, bent at the elbow, its fingers reaching out as if grasping for something. . . .
I shook my head and pulled away from the image. Certainly, I could imagine Dad spinning it so the dark shape seemed ominous—this was the man who’d once passed off a bird as a flying saucer, after all. But no matter how many lies he told or how many people believed him, it wouldn’t change the truth—that thing caught in the light was nothing more than a tree branch, likely broken by the winter snow.
I sighed and thrust the camera into the coffee table drawer. A few minutes later, I found the remote control under the couch cushions. Pushing the bag of chips aside, I lay back on the couch and flipped on the TV, turning the channel to a nineties sitcom, an episode I’d already seen at least three times. It was the perfect thing to turn my brain off.
After a few minutes, I felt my eyelids begin to droop. I had the fleeting, selfish thought that when Dad came home, the first thing he’d see was me on the couch, surrounded by chip crumbs, a living, breathing reminder of what he’d forgotten to do today. I almost wanted to be conscious for that moment.
Instead, I was asleep before the first commercial break. I dreamt I was walking in the woods, lost and surrounded by black and broken trees, their branches ice-covered and catching at my clothes as if trying to keep me from going any farther.
Four
DAD DIDN’T COME home during the night. His room was still empty when I looked in the next morning, his bed unmade in the exact same way it had been the day before. When I looked into the driveway and saw his truck was still gone, my stomach felt uneasy. But I brushed the feeling aside—no matter what Dex had said, I knew Dad would walk through the front door any moment. He wouldn’t apologize for forgetting to pick me up, but I could guess what he would say instead—I was really on to something, Pen—you know how it is. Or, It all worked out, didn’t it? You made it here! Now stop pouting and let’s get some breakfast. And then he’d grin that sheepish grin that made it impossible for anyone to stay truly angry with him. I knew that grin like I knew my own reflection.
But just because I knew how the conversation would go down didn’t mean I had to sit here and wait around for it to happen. If Dad wasn’t worrying about me, I wasn’t going to worry about him.
I showered and got dressed, then made my way to the garage. Sitting in a corner near a pile of cardboard boxes and some scattered tools was my ten-speed bike. I quickly pumped some air into the deflated tires, wiped a layer of dust off the seat, and hopped on.
I biked slowly down the driveway and then across the street, and I could feel the tension in my shoulders easing. The breeze lifted up my still-damp hair as I pedaled harder. I didn’t have a bike in Chicago, and it was this feeling—this sense of weightless movement through the fresh, pine-smelling air—that reminded me of my childhood summers more than anything else. It was my dad who taught me how to ride a bike, long ago. I could still remember how he’d reacted when I made it down the driveway without falling off—he’d thrown his hands up in the air and ran up and down the driveway, yelling at the top of his lungs like I’d just won an Olympic gold medal instead of simply managing to keep my butt on a plastic purple bike seat. His excitement was contagious. I’d felt so proud of myself I thought I’d burst.
I biked the two miles into town, passing more and more houses as I got closer to the main shop-lined street, most of them tucked away from the road, closer to the woods. Many were old, and some were falling into disrepair. Seeing Bone Lake only once a year like I did gave me a fast-forward view of its decline, one that moved doggedly forward in normal time for everyone else. Every year, when I came back, there were one or two more closed businesses, five or six more foreclosed houses, seven or eight more dilapidated lots.
A few of the remaining businesses popped up as I neared the main part of town—a post office, an antiques shop, a breakfast place that had been run by the same woman for forty years. There were more cars on this section of the street, but not many. Bone Lake had exactly five stoplights.
I finally pedaled up to a white clapboard store, with a pink-and-white striped awning, that was nestled in between a Goodwill and a barber shop. Most of the front of the store was taken up by a giant plate of glass, which was painted in gold letters that read SWEET STREET.
After leaning my bike up against the side of the shop, I pushed open the front door and walked inside, where the scents of chocolate and caramel immediately overwhelmed me. The smell—and look—of the store was exactly like I remembered. I’d spent a lot of time there as a kid, and sometimes Cindy had even let me “help out” behind the counter. I was hoping Cindy might let me help out for real this summer. After all, writing a story to get me into Northwestern wouldn’t exactly help pay for Northwestern. Scooping ice cream for a couple of months might help me cover at least five weeks of a meal plan, which, hey, was something.
“Hey, Cindy.”
Cindy’s head popped up, and she smiled wide. The sunlight shining through the main window highlighted the warm brown color of her eyes. They were the same shade as Dex’s.
“You’re here!”
Instead of moving around the counter to greet me, Cindy leaned over it, giving me a tight hug that lifted me a bit off my feet and smashed my ribs into the counter. This close, I could smell the Cindy-ness of her—the sugar that dusted her hair and the cinnamon lingering on the faded Pearl Jam T-shirt she often wore instead of an apron.
Cindy shook her head as she released me, then looked me up and down. “Would you get a look at yourself? Dex didn’t ment
ion how much you’ve grown . . . and you’ve gotten so pretty.”
I didn’t know how to respond, and instead just gave an awkward shrug-squirm combo move.
“I mean, you were always a pretty girl,” Cindy continued, “but every time you come home, you look more and more like your mom.”
I laughed, not commenting on the “home” remark. Bone Lake hadn’t been my home in years. “That’s funny. She says I’m starting to look more like Dad.”
Cindy straightened, and the smile slipped from her face. “Speaking of, I noticed Ike’s truck was still gone this morning. Dex is real worried about him.”
I waved my hand. “I’m sure he’ll turn up any second. Probably just went camping or hunting or chasing a story—you know how he is.”
Cindy nodded, but I could see the worry in her eyes. “Still, if he’s not back by tonight, and you need a place to stay, you’re welcome with us. I don’t like the thought of you in that house all alone.”
“Thanks, Cin. But I’ll be fine. You know what I could use? A job.”
Cindy blinked, looking surprised.
“If you need the help, I mean,” I continued. “I know summer’s your busiest season, and this time I’ll be home till August—”
“Of course!” Cindy interrupted. “I could definitely use a summer hand, especially now that Dex spends so much time with his X-Files club—”
“His . . . what?”
Cindy laughed and waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, he started this club at school, they’re supposed to look into proof of extraterrestrial life and that sort of thing. Mostly they just eat pizza and watch X-Files reruns.”
“Oh, that’s . . . huh,” I said. At least that explained why Dex was suddenly Ike Hardjoy’s number one fan.
“Anyway, I’d love to have some extra help here. Maybe afternoons and weekends? That’s when we’re busiest.”
I grinned. “When can I start?”
The Truth Lies Here Page 3