“I’m not planning on dying, Micah.”
Micah looked like he wanted to say something, but then stopped. He pursed his lips together instead and looked down at our hands, still entwined. He ran one of his thumbs over the tops of my knuckles. For a second, I let myself enjoy how that movement sent a shiver from the base of my neck down my spine.
“Okay, but, please . . . just don’t do anything stupid,” Micah said. “I know you think your dad’s not involved, but, I mean, you’re his daughter. Don’t you think that could make you just a bit biased—”
I pulled my hand back quickly. “No. I don’t think I’m biased. I know how to examine facts, Micah. No matter what they are.” My voice wobbled a bit.
“I didn’t mean . . . I just . . . I don’t want you to go chasing after a murderer and getting hurt. Is that so bad?”
I shook my head and stood up, suddenly tired. “My dad is not a murderer. And yes, there’s a killer out there, but like I told you before, I’m pretty good at taking care of myself. You can trust my judgment or not, but you can’t ask me to just leave my dad to the wolves. Or worse.”
Micah blinked once, twice. Eventually, he nodded. “Okay. I get it. And I do trust you.”
“Good,” I said.
I felt a twinge of guilt. Was it such a crime for him to be worried? And to suspect my dad? I couldn’t blame Micah for not trusting in Ike Hardjoy as blindly as Dex did. As blindly as I once had.
When I was still full of so much doubt as to who my dad really was, I couldn’t really hold Micah at fault for his suspicions.
But still.
I wondered if it would be possible to recapture where we’d been just a few moments before. I could sit back down, reach out, move forward. But exhaustion was settling over my shoulders, and my feet were moving toward the door instead of toward Micah.
He stood up and smiled, as if he was looking for a way to smooth things over, too. “I’m glad you came over, Penny. I wish things weren’t so screwed up right now.”
“Me too.”
“I can’t imagine a first date going worse than ours did.” Micah laughed, but there was a hollow sound to his words.
“It was pretty epically bad,” I agreed. “I don’t think a first date’s supposed to give you PTSD.”
“Probably not. And I broke out the homemade pie and everything,” Micah said with a smile. “I think we still have leftovers, actually. Do you want some?”
“Thanks, but . . . I should get back home, actually. I’m staying with Cindy, and I don’t want her to worry.”
“That’s nice that she looks out for you like that.” Micah walked me to the door. “I’ll see you soon, I hope,” he said.
“Yeah, me too.”
Micah smiled one more time and shut the door behind me gently, and I walked out into the warm air of an early summer evening. The humidity was just starting to pick up, and I saw a swarm of mosquitos hovering near a streetlight at the end of Micah’s driveway.
As I crossed the grass to my bike, I felt the strangest sensation shoot down my back—like I was being watched. I looked back at Micah’s house without breaking step, half expecting to see his form at the window, checking to make sure I made it on my way okay. But he wasn’t there. I turned back around and picked up the pace, ignoring the goose bumps that rose over my neck and arms. I was halfway to my bike when I heard it—a soft rustling sound. Like someone moving slowly through a pile of leaves.
My limbs froze as I looked over to the source of the noise. The tree line at the side of Micah’s house was thick, with large and small trunks alike packed together densely. The leaves of the trees were still full, blocking any sight of what might be hiding underneath them. I peered in the direction of the noise, trying to train my eyes to see through the impenetrable darkness. I barely realized that I was holding my breath.
I heard the noise again, the soft rustling, a shh-shh sound. It was at the edge of the tree line, and it was moving toward me. Something darker than the shadows was stirring, pushing through the blackness, coming closer.
Years and years of my dad’s stories flowed through my head, one after another. I knew, I knew that they were all lies. The Bigfoot in the woods; the lake monster under the waves; the long-fingered, long-toothed sprites that prowled the trees, hunting for bad children. But all that knowledge meant nothing. It was like the last seven years hadn’t happened, like I was ten years old again, terrified to go out in the dark in case the monsters got me.
Something was out there. And it was coming.
I heard a sharp cracking noise, like a twig snapping, and it pulled me back into myself. I forced my arms and legs into motion, twirling to run—to sprint—to my bike. But the second I turned, I nearly crashed into a figure standing in my path.
I screamed.
The figure didn’t even flinch, and barely seemed to register I was there. It was a woman, standing eerily still in the middle of the grass, blocking the way to the street. She was about my height, with long, dark hair that fell down from her head in tangles. She wore a loose white shirt and white pants over bone-thin bare feet, and her arms hung limp at her sides. She lifted her head slowly, jerkily, and her eyes were a bright, unnatural blue. They looked empty, and for a second I was struck by the thought that there was nothing inside this woman at all.
Then her eyes locked on mine, and suddenly they were no longer empty. They began to fill with anger.
“Who are you?” the woman asked, taking one quick step in my direction. I stumbled back, a second scream building up in my throat.
“What are you doing here? Who sent you?”
The woman came even closer, driving me back toward the house. I opened my mouth to speak, but my voice wasn’t there. She didn’t give me time to answer, anyway.
“What do you want? What do you want? What do you want?”
“Mom!”
I turned around to see Micah racing out of his front door and across the yard, a look of panic on his face. He rushed right past me, up to the woman in white, and put one large hand on her shoulder.
“What are you doing out here, Mom?”
The woman blinked once, then again. Hearing Micah’s voice seemed to wake her up in a way, and I watched as the anger faded from her eyes. She tilted her head a bit, leaning into Micah’s shoulder the way a toddler might lean into a parent.
“They won’t leave us alone,” she moaned, putting one hand over her face. “Why don’t they leave us alone?”
“Shh, it’s okay,” Micah said, slowly patting her back. “Let’s go back inside.”
As he started to gently lead her away, I noticed that Mrs. Jameson’s fingernails were lined with dirt, as though she’d been digging in the ground. I also saw that her clothes, which had appeared spooky and ghostly only moments before, were really a tattered T-shirt and sweatpants.
Micah looked up at me as he led his mom away. “I’m sorry, Penny. I—I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?”
I nodded, unable to think of anything else to say.
As soon as Micah and his mom were safely inside the house, I ran to my bike and jumped on so hard I knew I’d have a bruise on my thigh the next day. I pedaled fast through the darkness, not stopping once—not even to look behind me—until I was in sight of Dex’s front door.
Twenty
THAT NIGHT, I didn’t get to sleep until pale blue light filtered in through the curtains in Cindy’s living room (I’d insisted on taking the couch this time). I startled at every creak and groan in the house and silently debated with myself on whether I should get up and ask Cindy if she had a night-light. I eventually decided against it, but only barely.
I woke up when I heard Cindy start moving around in the kitchen, and I crept up off the couch and made my way to Dex’s room. I knocked on his door lightly before opening it. He shot straight up in bed. His dark hair stuck out from his face in about twenty different directions.
“P-Penny? What are you—”
“I have an idea, and
I need your help. But first I need to see the papers you took from my dad’s office.”
Dex yawned, then swung his legs over the bed. “’Kay, come in.”
I shut the door quietly behind me as Dex pulled a packet of papers out from under his bed.
“It was smart of you to take these when the agents showed up,” I said, sitting down on the edge of his bed.
Dex shrugged, but I could tell he was pleased. He scooted a bit away from me, and I realized he was wearing just a T-shirt and boxers. I looked away and kept talking. “See this article about the plant closing? It has the more recent business card clipped to it, the one where Dad scribbled X10-88. The note’s written in the same color ink as this. . . .”
I flipped through the papers until I found the article about the meteorite site, where Dad had circled a whole paragraph—also in red pen.
“You think it’s important?” Dex asked.
“I think you were right—my dad was going through old research for this new story. And if he circled this paragraph recently, maybe that gives us a place to start retracing his steps.”
Dex put his finger on the name inside the red circle—Tommy Cray.
“Tommy Cray found the meteorite site. Maybe Dad went to interview him. Maybe Tommy has some clue as to where Dad might have gone next.”
Dex looked unsure.
“It’s kind of a long shot, I know,” I said. “But our only other lead is X10-88—and I have no idea what that means or how to find out. Just that it’s connected to the plant, somehow. We can go there, too. . . .”
“We should probably start with Tommy,” Dex said quickly. I was relieved. The thought of walking through the abandoned plant gave me the creeps. If the Tommy clue panned out, maybe we wouldn’t have to go there at all.
“Awesome. Let’s go.”
“What, like—now?”
“No, next Tuesday. Of course now.”
I thought about what Micah said, about how I could get hurt if I went looking for my dad when there was a killer out there somewhere. But Dex didn’t even hesitate.
“Right, of course,” he said, standing up. “But I should probably put on some pants first.”
I’d never heard of Tommy Cray before, and neither had Dex. We looked him up in Cindy’s phone book, and it turned out he lived on the west edge of Bone Lake, a couple of miles from the Pineview trailer park. We drove out past Main Street, stopping at the last red light in town. On our right was the Quik Stop, its parking lot half-full of people standing around cars and bikes, drinking twenty-ounce bottles of pop and smoking cigarettes.
Reese and Emily were perched on the hood of a green car, their faces turned toward the sun, pretending to ignore the group of guys in the truck parked across the lot. But then Reese looked over at us, her eyes skimming over Dex’s car and landing on me. Her expression hardened, and she stared me down until the light turned green and Dex pulled away.
“She still hates you, huh?” Dex asked.
“More and more every day, it seems.”
“What ever happened between you guys, anyway?”
“It’s kind of a long story,” I said, not wanting to get into the personal Dad-and-Julie details.
Dex didn’t press. Instead, he asked me a question I didn’t expect.
“Remember when she used to be cool?”
“I’m pretty sure she still thinks of herself as cool.”
“No, like . . . cool to be around.” Dex’s voice lowered. “Remember third grade? Ms. Amie’s class?”
I did remember.
In third grade, Dex was my closest friend, and Reese was just a girl who sat at our table in class. One day our teacher, Ms. Amie, passed us out copies of Little House on the Prairie for us to read to one another in groups. I don’t remember much about the book except for one line, one that jumped up off the page and burned into my eight-year-old brain: “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” When we got to that line, Dex was reading. He stumbled over the words, then stopped. His face turned red and his lips pressed together; he made the face he usually made when we were playing a rough game of Red Rover and he was trying not to cry.
Seeing his face, I wanted to cry, too. I thought of Cindy, and I thought of her parents who came to visit a few times a year and always brought candy and homemade toys for the neighborhood kids. I thought of Dex. The only good Indian is a dead Indian.
Ms. Amie came over to see why we’d stopped reading. Dex pointed out the line and told her, in a halting voice, that it was wrong. She looked a little panicked at first, and then she tried to explain to us that it was just a story, and the author wrote it a long time ago. Neither of those explanations made sense to me. They must not have made sense to Dex, either, because his whole expression transformed—from pained to something else, something I’d never seen on him before. His shoulders straightened and his lips pressed together in a firm, determined line as he stood up with his copy of the book, walked slowly to the front of the classroom, and dropped it in the trash.
The whole class went silent. I had no idea what to do. But Reese did. She got up with her book, marched to the front of the room, and dropped it into the trash on top of Dex’s copy. Then I did the same. When I got to the front of the classroom, Dex looked nervous.
“Maybe I’m making too big a deal. . . .” he whispered.
Reese’s chin jutted out, and her eyes were hard and glittering. “No, you’re not.”
And she was right. I only wished I’d been as brave as Dex, to get up first. Or even as brave as Reese, who was the first to follow him. Later that night, Dex told Cindy the whole story. She was even angrier than we were, and she petitioned the school board to remove the book from the curriculum (and won).
After that day, Reese, Dex, and I were a trio. For a little while, anyway, before we hit middle school and splintered apart.
“That was a long time ago,” I said. A lot had changed since then, it was true. Reese still had that same righteous anger, but now it was directed pretty much solely at me.
“Yeah,” Dex said, and his voice sounded sad.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t a good friend to you,” I said. “In middle school, when . . .” I was about to say when your dad left but stopped. “When you needed me.”
“It’s okay.” Dex shrugged, keeping his eyes on the road. “It’s nice to have you back,” he added, his voice only barely loud enough to hear over the sound of the car driving over the rough pavement. I felt a warmth spreading through my chest but didn’t know how to respond.
Before long, we were turning down the dirt road that led to Tommy Cray’s house. He lived in a one-story ranch set back near the woods. His front lot was covered in junk: two old cars up on cinder blocks, a stack of tires, piles of wood and bundles covered in tarps, a rusted weather vane that blew in the wind.
The man who answered the front door was older, with a grizzled white beard and thick glasses that magnified his eyes.
“Tommy Cray?” I ventured.
“Who wants to know?”
“I’m Penny Hardjoy, and this is—”
“Hardjoy? You Ike’s kid, then?”
“Yeah,” I said, encouraged. “And this is my friend Dex. We’re looking for my dad.”
“Well, you should try his house,” Tommy said, and I couldn’t tell whether or not he was being sarcastic.
“Um . . . we looked there. But my dad’s been gone a few days, and I think he might have come to talk to you recently?”
Tommy Cray leaned against his doorjamb, where the painted surface was peeling off in curling chips. “He came by.”
“Really?” Dex asked, his voice rising in excitement. “Did he say where he might have gone?”
“Nope,” Tommy Cray answered, blinking slowly behind his giant lenses. “But I imagine he headed out to the woods. To the crash site.”
My heart beat faster. “What makes you say that?”
“’Cause your dad’s an idiot, and that’s the kind of thing an idiot would do.”
Again, Dex and I looked at each other, at a loss. “Did he mention the crash site specifically . . . ?” I finally managed to ask.
“Course. That’s what he always talks about when he comes out here. Always asks me the same question, and I always give him the same answer. He wants to know what I remember about finding that meteor. And I tell him: nothing.”
Dex looked confused, his eyebrows drawing together. “Nothing?”
“Nothing,” Tommy Cray said louder, as if Dex was hard of hearing.
“But . . . you did find the meteorite, right? That’s what the paper said.”
“Yeah, that’s what the paper said,” Tommy Cray replied. “That’s what they tell me, too. But I got no memory of it. I remember seeing the flash as something fell through the sky. I remember heading out to find it. Then I remember waking up in my bed, watching the sun rise. That’s it. Ike keeps coming back here, hoping I’ll remember more, but I don’t. I told him not to go out there, not to mess with that godforsaken place. But he wouldn’t listen. ’Cause he’s an idiot.”
Dex’s eyes went wide, and I guessed he was already spinning alien-related theories in his head. But I looked past Tommy Cray into his darkened living room, where newspapers and grocery bags were strewn about old furniture. Empty bottles, some dark, some clear, were scattered over the rug or lined up against the walls next to dying houseplants.
“Do you . . . forget things a lot?” I asked.
Tommy Cray looked affronted. “The hell are you implying?”
“Nothing,” Dex said quickly. “She’s not implying anything.”
“I think you should go.”
“We will,” I said. “Thank you for your time.”
Tommy Cray nodded slowly. “If you find your dad, remind him he owes me thirty bucks,” he said before closing the door on us.
Dex turned to me, color high on his cheeks. I put up a hand to stop him from speaking. “Don’t jump to conclusions.”
“But the guy who found the meteorite doesn’t remember finding it! Don’t you think that’s something worth investigating?”
The Truth Lies Here Page 16