“Got it.”
Mac hung up without saying goodbye. The dial tone sounded like a horn, piercing its way into my skull. I quickly put the phone back on its cradle. It wasn’t weird for my dad to flake out on me for work. But for him to flake out on work, too? That was odd. A shiver of worry ran down my spine. What if Dad had been out chasing a story, and he’d gotten into some kind of accident? I remembered the scenarios I’d pictured the night before about Bryan and Cassidy. I saw them again, but this time with Dad’s mangled truck in place of Bryan’s. Dad lost in the woods . . .
Stop it, I thought to myself, shaking my head. No good would come from imagining the grisliest, worst-case scenario. Jumping to the most sensational conclusion was straight out of Dad’s playbook, not mine. In almost every situation, a bear was just a bear, nothing more. And in this case, the most likely scenario was still that Dad got caught up chasing some story and forgot to charge his phone—or forgot to call at all.
I checked my cell again—still no word from Dad. But there was a text.
Hey Penny. Nice talking to you last night. Except for the whole deer thing, haha. Hang soon?
Micah had asked for my number after driving me (and my bike) home from the party the night before, pretty much right after we found the deer. I composed three texts and deleted them before sending a simple smiley face and a yeah, ok. Then I brushed my teeth, swallowed two aspirin, and took a shower, which helped to make me feel a little bit more alive.
I had a quick breakfast of stale potato chips, then threw my shoes on and rode my bike over to Sweet Street. Dex was already inside, opening up the shop. As soon as I opened the main door, his head snapped up out of the ice-cream case, and the metal scooper he was holding dropped to the ground with a clatter.
“Hey. What are you doing here?”
“Your mom asked me to help out today.”
“Oh. Right.”
I walked around the edge of the ice-cream counter and into the back room to get an apron. Dex followed, his face pulled into an expression of concern.
“So, are you okay?”
I pulled the apron over my head and tied it behind my back. “Got a pretty bad headache, but other than that . . .”
“I heard what happened. With the deer.”
“You heard it? Where?”
Dex waved his hand impatiently. “Heard it, saw it on Snapchat, whatever.”
“Someone posted it?” I asked, incredulous.
Dex just shrugged. I moved past him, looking under the sink to see if the fresh napkins were in the same place they used to be when I was a kid. They were. I pulled out the napkins and headed to the counter again. Dex followed.
“It was the big news of the night. Well, aside from Emily puking in Jen B’s car. That was posted, too.”
“Gross.” I sighed and started refilling the dented silver napkin dispenser that sat on top of the ice-cream counter.
“But you actually saw the deer? In person?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Oh man. Oh man, oh man.” Dex ran one hand through his hair, once again making it stick straight up from his head.
“What now?”
“I have to show you something.”
With that, Dex spun on his heel and raced into the back room.
“Wait!” I called after him. “Aren’t you going to help me open the store?”
I heard the back door slam shut. At the same moment, the front door opened and a woman shuffled in. She was barely clearing five feet, even in her sturdy heels. She wore a blue housedress over sweatpants and was carrying a large purple quilted purse.
“Hi, Mrs. Anderson,” I called out, pitching my voice higher. Mrs. Anderson had been forgetting to turn on her hearing aids since I was a kid.
“Penny!” She screamed across the room. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“It’s summer, Mrs. Anderson.”
She turned and looked out the window, widening her eyes in mock surprise. “Well, look at that. You’re right.” She grinned as she came up to the counter.
“How have you been?”
“Oh, lovely, lovely.” Mrs. Anderson reached across the counter and patted my hand lightly with her own. She was one of the oldest living people in Bone Lake—my dad claimed that she’d babysat his mom once upon a time.
“One scoop of Superman ice cream, please,” she said.
“You got it.”
I took a small Styrofoam bowl from under the counter and began scooping the blue, pink, and yellow ice cream into it. As I placed the bowl into Mrs. Anderson’s small hands, an idea occurred to me. Mrs. Anderson hadn’t been on my list of potential interview subjects because she had no direct connection to the plastics plant or its closing, but she had lived in this town longer than almost anyone else.
“Can I ask you something, Mrs. Anderson?”
“Sure,” she responded brightly, handing me a folded, slightly torn five-dollar bill.
“I’m writing a news story . . . for school . . . and it’s all about Bone Lake—”
“Well, how nice! Just like your dad?”
My jaw tightened as I rang up the ice cream and handed Mrs. Anderson her change. “Not exactly.”
Mrs. Anderson didn’t say anything, but I thought I noticed the corners of her mouth pull up slightly in a smile. She took a large bite of the ice cream, not even bothering to wipe off the blue streaks it left at the edges of her mouth.
I didn’t have a notebook with me, but I pulled a napkin from the dispenser and a pen from a cup next to the cash register. “I’m writing my story on the plastics plant, and the effects its closing have had on Bone—on our town. Do you remember anything about the plant closing? About the accident?”
Mrs. Anderson looked off to the side, her cup of ice cream dropping a few inches. “I remember the accident. Tragic. How sad that was. Human error, they said.”
“Who said?”
“Who said what?”
“Um . . . maybe let’s try getting a bit more specific. Do you remember what you were doing when you found out about the accident? Or what happened that day?”
Mrs. Anderson looked off to the side again, as if trying to remember. Her eyes unfocused a bit. “It was very sad, I remember that. But it’s best not to think too much about it.”
My hand jerked, tearing a small hole into the napkin.
“What was that?” I whispered, my heart thudding in my chest.
“Dear, are you okay?” Mrs. Anderson leaned in, so close I could smell the ice cream sweetness of her breath.
I nodded, straightening. I moved my hand away from the napkin hole and continued writing Mrs. Anderson’s words—it’s best not to think too much about it. The exact same thing Cindy and Hector had both said. Two people were a coincidence. But three?
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Um, yeah,” I said, struggling to regain composure. “So . . . what else can you remember about that time in general?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level. “Were people angry that the plant closed?”
“Angry is a pretty harsh word, I think.”
“Uh, okay. Do you think the town has changed much since it happened?”
“Well, we lost all that business,” Mrs. Anderson said. “But we carry on, you know. And now here we are.”
I sighed and then forced myself to smile.
“Thanks, Mrs. Anderson,” I said, tucking the napkin into my pocket. “That’s . . . really helpful.”
Mrs. Anderson smiled, dropped a quarter into the tip jar, and winked at me. As she took another bite of the ice cream, she closed her eyes, savoring it as she headed out the front door.
I ran my finger over the edge of the napkin in my pocket. It’s best not to think too much about it. Had the whole town gotten together and decided to collectively suppress one of its biggest tragedies? That seemed ridiculous, a conspiracy on par with something Dad would make up. But that line—it wasn’t just similar, it was verbatim.
It’s best not
to think too much about it.
But why?
Before I could sort through any plausible theories, I heard a light shuffling noise coming from the kitchen. I headed that way and saw Dex pacing by the open back door. He held a piece of paper in one hand, and he was mouthing something too low for me to hear.
“Are you talking to someone?” I asked.
Dex jumped. “Oh, uh . . . just you. Sort of.”
“What?”
“I mean, I wasn’t talking to you. More the you in my head.” Dex ran one hand through his hair and scrunched up his face in discomfort. “I was trying to run through ways to say this without you getting mad.”
I leaned against the kitchen doorjamb, torn between being annoyed and wanting to laugh. “Did you find one?”
“No.”
Dex loped over to me, then thrust the piece of paper into my hands. It was thick and folded into quarters. “Look at this.”
I looked closer at the paper, which had March 2018 scribbled onto the top corner in my dad’s handwriting. I straightened.
“Where did you get this?”
“Your dad’s office.”
I fixed a glare on Dex. “And how, exactly, did you get into his office?”
Dex bit his lip. “Uh . . . okay, so here’s the part where you might get mad.”
“I’m listening.”
“Yesterday, when we were playing video games, you got up to go to the bathroom, and I kinda . . . stepped into Ike’s office. Just to look around—”
“And steal his stuff?”
“I just wanted to see if there was a clue, or something. This was lying right on top of his safe. I heard you coming back before I could look at it, so I just . . . stuffed it in my pocket.”
My hands tightened around the edge of the paper. “If you wanted to see my dad’s office, you could have asked. You didn’t have to skulk around.”
“I figured if I asked you’d say no.”
“Dex,” I started, my voice rising again, “You can’t just come over and take what you want from our house.” A small, unpleasant thought wiggled up through my brain. “Wait, is that the whole reason you came over yesterday?”
“No! I also wanted to hang out. Trust me.”
I held up the folded paper. “Trust you?”
“I’m sorry! I really am. Just . . . just look at it. Please, that’s all I’m asking.”
In that moment, I didn’t want to give Dex a single thing he wanted. But with every second, my curiosity about the paper grew stronger. I already knew I wanted to see what it was. I gritted my teeth and unfolded it.
On the other side of the paper was a blown-up color photo. It took a moment for my brain to process the image, but when it did, I sucked in a breath. I was staring down, once again, at charred remains. A body was lying on the ground, only instead of lying on fresh leaves and dirt, it was surrounded by melting snow. And in place of missing deer legs, it had two legs, two arms, and a head. A human head.
I thrust the image back at Dex.
“What the hell is this?”
“It’s a picture of the body your dad found. The hiker in the woods.”
I took a step back from Dex and the piece of paper. But I could still see it, upside-down and charred black. A human man. I could even make out his fingers. . . .
“It looks exactly like—”
“The deer? I know. That’s what worries me.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
Dex gently folded the paper up again and set it down on the counter. He took an eager half step toward me. “This is what set your dad off on his new story. He found this body in the woods and took a photo. The cops ruled it an accidental death, but your dad thought they were wrong, or they were covering something up. Like I told you the other day.”
“I remember. It sounded like my dad was trying to make a story out of nothing. Again. Or did he have an actual reason this time?”
“There was a reason.” Dex bit his lip and looked back at the folded piece of paper. It seemed as though he wanted to open it up again, but another glance at my face convinced him not to. “Did you notice anything unusual? In the picture?”
“Aside from the dead body?”
“The body was burned, and burned completely. Thoroughly. If the hiker had accidentally started a fire that got out of control, then where was the fire? Why were no trees around him burned? Your dad said he looked all around where the body was found and couldn’t find a trace of anything else that had been burned.”
I put my hand up to my forehead. The pounding was coming back with a vengeance. I couldn’t get the image from the photo out of my head.
“The deer . . .” I finally managed. “There was no trace of a fire around it, either. I mean, it was dark, but I didn’t see anything else that was burned.”
Dex nodded vigorously, as if this proved his point. “I know. When you said you saw the deer last night, I knew I had to show this to you. Even if it meant you’d get mad at me for taking it. It’s just too big a coincidence to ignore.”
“I don’t know, Dex. Two fires in the woods? It’s not that big a coincidence.”
Dex shook his head. “You’re not listening. There was no fire. At least not where the bodies were found. If something killed that hiker, it placed the body there. Maybe the deer, too.”
“Something?” I leaned heavily against the ice-cream case and shook my head. “You still think it’s aliens.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. That’s what your dad thought.”
But the way he said it, I could tell that’s what Dex thought, too.
“There was another picture,” Dex said, talking quickly as if trying to spit all his words out before I could shoot them down. “The one I mentioned to you when I picked you up from the airport? That’s the photo I was looking for in Ike’s office, but I couldn’t find it. He showed it to me once, though. It was of this . . . okay, I won’t say alien. But this creature, glowing in the woods—”
“I saw it.”
“You did?” Dex’s expression turned eager.
“Yeah, but it’s not a picture of an alien, Dex. It’s a tree branch, caught in a flash of light. An overexposed photo, or a flashlight glare.” I sighed, trying to make my voice gentle. “Whatever’s going on here, it’s not aliens. I don’t know what happened to this hiker or the deer, but I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. Have you ever heard of Occam’s razor? The simplest explanation—”
“Is often the truest one,” Dex said, rolling his eyes. “Of course I’ve heard it. Do you know how many times I’ve watched X-Files?”
“Um, no. But I do believe in the simplest explanation. When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.”
Or when you hear growling in the woods, think bear, not Bigfoot, I thought, but didn’t say.
“Okay, but sometimes it is zebras. Or a recording of hoofbeats. Or something else weird. The simplest answer isn’t always the true one.”
I groaned, rubbing the palms of my hands against my temples. Talking with Dex was more frustrating than trying to argue with a wall. A wall that believes in aliens.
“Okay,” Dex said, putting his hands up in submission. “Okay, let’s take a step back. Forget about aliens for a second. Let’s say someone did this. Someone killed this hiker. Burned him and left him in the woods. And your dad went out looking for clues to find that someone. And now he’s missing.”
Suddenly, I found it a bit hard to breathe. I couldn’t stop picturing the charred deer with its glassy black eyes. The dead hiker’s burned body. Those were very real things—not just hypothetical visions of Dad’s truck wrapped around a tree, but real dangers he’d likely been out chasing. And he was still out there, somewhere.
Black dots swam at the corners of my vision.
“Penny? You okay?” Dex’s voice sounded faraway.
“I need air.”
I rushed past Dex and out the front of the store. Once I got outside, I took large lu
ngfuls of breath, urging those images out of my brain.
Dex came outside and stood by me. He pressed his lips together but didn’t say anything.
“Okay, so . . . let’s say you’re right, Dex. Maybe Dad is out looking into this whole thing right now. Maybe . . . maybe something’s even happened to him,” I finally said. “Not aliens, obviously. But . . . something potentially bad.”
“Potentially really, really bad. Like I said.”
“Still, I don’t want to start going down that road until I rule out every other possibility first. You don’t get to the truth by making wild assumptions and then trying to prove they’re true. You start by asking the right people the right questions.”
Dex let out a relieved sigh. “Okay. So, how do we do that?”
I took a deep breath. “If my dad did take off, to chase this story or for another reason, there’s one other person in town he might have told.”
“Who?”
I looked across the street, to Vinny’s Bar. Its front door was closed, its OPEN sign still dark. But I knew there was already someone inside. Someone who might know exactly where my dad had gone. Even if I really didn’t want to ask her.
“Julie Harper.”
Nine
THE HEAVY WOODEN doors at the front of Vinny’s Bar were decades old and covered from top to bottom in scratches and dents. I knew what I had to do, but I struggled to reach out and grab the door handle. Instead, I bounced up and down on the balls of my feet and looked around the mostly empty street. I was stalling. Three soft thudding sounds pulled my attention back across the street. Dex was standing on the other side of Sweet Street’s big front window, knocking on the glass. He made go on hand gestures and gave me an encouraging smile.
Go on. Right.
After all, wasn’t this just another interview, really? I’d asked people hard questions before for the school newspaper. Julie Harper was just another person. I straightened my shoulders and pulled open the door of the bar quickly, before I could change my mind.
Inside, it was dark and quiet. Very little light came in through the main windows, and the single-room bar area was lit by a handful of overhead lamps. A few worn booths and tables were scattered on the right side of the room, along with some pool tables and a jukebox. The wood-paneled walls were hung with Red Wings posters. A long wooden bar and stools took up the left side.
The Truth Lies Here Page 7