All That Remains (Manere Book 1)

by Megan Bushree

  “Rachel, I think they’re going to believe us whether it’s real blood or not. Besides, we only need them to believe us for like a second. We don’t want them going to the police” I tried to reason with her or at least try to understand what she wanted to achieve from all of this. She shrugged and continued moving items around the house. I asked her if her arm hurt but her expression only warned me that what had just happened wasn’t out of the ordinary for her. “There are worse things than a tiny cut.” She responded completely sure of herself and when I questioned what she meant by that; she just spoke under her breath “At least I am the one who did it to myself”. Her words felt powerful, but I didn’t know if that was her intention.

  Rachel would become theatrical to the point of collapse for everyone else. Her moods were unpredictable, but this never bothered me. I almost craved the drama she would inflict on everyone around us. The fact that I needed it said more about me than it did about her, or at least that’s what I thought.

  When she announced she was moving out of town, there was a part of me that was relieved. As much fun as she was, spending time with her was like running a marathon. I felt physically and mentally spent after each conversation, each day that we decided not to do anything but to let the day unravel and tell us what we were to do next.

  My friends were openly joyful about Rachel leaving as they assumed, I would return to my usual self, whatever that meant. Even after she said she was going, we never quite believed her until she just stopped coming around and her phone was disconnected. Rachel was the kind of girl that would make grand proclamations about moving out of town or being fatally ill or anything else that may get the extra attention she was seeking at that moment. When she was finally gone for good, it was abrupt. She never said goodbye, we never saw her pack a box, or even tell our summer schoolteacher. She was just gone. In the years since she walked out of our lives, we never spoke about her and rarely mentioned the final summer we knew her, the season we couldn’t get away from her.

  **

  “Angie, let’s assume our theory or half-baked theory about this town isn’t true. Do you think she just ran away? She told us she moved away, but she ran away, and that’s why her family hasn’t seen her since? Because that just sounds like Rachel if you ask me.” Lucy asked audibly exasperated.

  “I’m not sure. You must admit that when she left, it was sudden. She didn’t even say why her parents were moving,” I reminded them.

  “I think we just assumed that her parents liked to move around a lot. We are just so used to people living in this town, never leaving it, or coming from somewhere different that when it happens, we are shocked,”, Ellie said.

  “She wasn’t from out of town. She just used to go to Eastern,” I reminded them.

  “Eastern? That’s kind of a rough school. I can see why she acted the way she did,” Derek spoke up.

  “Exactly, she didn’t come from out of town because no one ever comes from out of town. You’re born here, and you die here. Unless you mysteriously disappear,” Lucy said with a wink.

  Lucy always sat on the fence about Manere. Sometimes she agreed with me wholeheartedly about the town being ominous, other times she teased me for trying to dig deeper.

  “So, what is the point of this? Are we supposed to form a search party or something? This was like so many years ago. Why wasn’t it on the news? Obviously, her brother is just goofing around,” Derek said.

  Derek may have not cared, but he never cared about anything and forcing the issue in a group would possibly make things worse. It was times like these when I felt a twinge of regret knowing that each of us going our separate ways was the ideal thing. I wanted to close my eyes and hold my breath waiting for the moment when I could jump in my car and leave it all behind. I wondered whether I would regret avoiding them for the remainder of the summer.

  “Aren’t you even a tiny bit interested in this?” I asked hoping that someone would agree.

  “I am. I think it’s super trippy. How is it that she could move away like it was completely normal, and we didn’t even realize it wasn’t normal until like five years later? I’m fascinated,”,

  Lucy piped in which was my fall back. Lucy probably didn’t care that much about any of this, but she was the kind of friend who would make it her duty to care just so I didn’t feel alone. She was also the only one besides Milo who agreed that there was something perverse about Manere. After having Lucy on my side, it only made sense to break the promise I made to myself. After months, I was going to have to end the silence between Milo and me.

  Chapter 11

  There was a time when walking up to Milo’s front door was less of a decision and more of muscle memory. The curvy walkway made up of stone squares and pebbles between landscaped cactus, and red Barberry was, at one time, something I skipped pass, knocking on the front door without a thought in the world. It didn’t matter if I had plans or something to tell him, those were things I could figure out with Milo. This time I couldn’t show up at his front door without reason. I needed to have a carefully selected explanation of why I was bothering him at his home. He probably wouldn’t have minded if I just dropped by to say hello, he didn’t hate me or anything.

  Rationally, I knew this, but it felt like he did and that was all that mattered to me. I made the playful jump from the last square to the front porch slab to relieve myself from the apprehension of talking to Milo for the first time in months. My sweaty palms and accelerated heartbeat would tell a different story, but I refused to let Milo see it.

  Knocking a few times gently was not getting a response, so I followed it up with the doorbell ring and a few more substantial pounds on the door. The pounding got the best of me and endured far longer than I intended and the ring resulted in two subsequent rings. Milo swung the door open abruptly.

  “What? What’s going on?” he asked with a shaky voice. Milo stood slouched with khaki.pants. I always liked him in those khakis. His striped shirt was unbuttoned, allowing me a peek at his stomach and chest. I don’t remember when Milo’s body went from being pasty and puffy to nearly bronze and sinewy, but it was probably when I was too distracted by the friends he despised.

  “Hi, sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you. I didn’t know you were asleep”, I said meekly, knowing the last few conversations were me yelling at him for reasons I cringe thinking about.

  “No, it’s fine. I just drifted off for a while. The heat, you know” he said sleepily.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. Without school or much of anything else to do, I’ve been nodding off quite a bit”, I confirmed. Milo’s eyebrows raised slightly while exhaling. He wanted me to explain myself, I knew me showing up to his door was not typical.

  “Rachel. Remember Rachel?” I asked. Milo scratched the back of his head, causing his strawberry tresses to appear even messier. With a yawn, he replied “From junior high? Sure, I remember her. She was my first kiss, among other things. She’s memorable”.

  I shouldn’t have asked him like that because of his answer, though honest, bothered me. I was technically his first kiss in the first grade but I guess he doesn’t count that. It was only a quick peck on the lips at his mom and stepfather’s wedding. We slow danced awkwardly as we practiced from watching movies and television of much older people romantically dancing with each other. It seemed that after they would dance, they would end up giving each other a kiss. We were too young to know what that meant. It was innocent, but I always considered that my first. I even remembered how his thin dry lips felt against mine.

  “What about her?” Lucy seemed mildly interested but only because it supported our theory about the entire town.

  “This is going to sound unusual, but I ran into her brother. You know how we thought they moved away? It seems they didn’t so much move away as she just never came home, and no one had heard from her since,”.

  “When? You mean like when we were in eighth grade?”

  “That’s pretty much the story. That
’s what he told me,”.

  What sounded like an entire stack of dishes smashing to the ground emanated from Milo’s house. “Are your parents at home? Or is that your sister?” I asked knowing that it was none of my business, but I still enjoyed testing the boundaries of our newly outlined non-friendship.

  “It’s probably just the cat. You know how Gonzo always likes to climb on the counter.”

  “Oh, right. Not very sanitary. Probably why my mom never let me get a cat,” Milo glanced up with a smile that was less comforting and more of a signal to move on with the conversation. I either offended him by saying his house was basically disgusting or he was just waiting for me to leave. Either way, I needed to get to the point before I lost his attention completely.

  “So, anyway. I guess I just thought you may be interested in that bit of gossip,” I explained.

  “The Rachel thing? I don’t know if I would say I’m all that interested. I haven’t really spoken to her in years. I don’t really think about her or anything. It’s super weird that she ran away or whatever though.” The glimmer of intrigue perked me up a bit. “Right? I mean, sure, it has been since like junior high, but it feels like yesterday in so many ways.”

  “Well, I think the last time I really heard from her was a little after that. She sent me a letter before ninth grade started. But yeah, I know what you mean”. The revelation was far too vital to just move on “Wait, what do you mean? You got a letter from her after she left?”

  Milo looked over my head causing me to look in the same place. When there was nothing to see, I wasn’t sure if he was waiting for me to leave or forming a new thought. The silence was unforgiving. “What did it say?”

  “I think I may actually still have it. Maybe. I don’t really throw stuff away”. Though I wanted to say that I knew he kept everything because his room was a pigsty, I decide against it for some reason.

  “I can go grab it. Or I guess, you can just come in and I’ll look for it”. I nodded and followed him to his room. Being in his house again felt uncomfortable but strangely familiar in a good way.

  Milo led me to his room, and I sat on his bed. He reached high in his closet to retrieve a small metal box. He sat next to me and opened the box at an angle where I could see pictures of his friends. A few of which were him and me. I glance up at his bulletin board over his desk to see that the picture of us at Finnegan’s park was no longer hanging up for everyone to see and was most likely in this box he kept hidden deep inside his closet. It made me realize that Milo was not flaunting our friendship, and he chose to ignore it by putting away any memory of me, but that he also, hadn’t given up on me entirely. Then again, he was also still in possession of a letter from some girl he barely knew, so him keeping a picture of us could be more of a sign of his pack-rat tendencies than anything else.

  Milo,

  I am writing you this letter to say goodbye. I don’t really like to write letters to people and really could have just said goodbye to you in person. Maybe that is not true. Maybe it would be too hard to do that. I’m leaving tonight. I’m not coming back or at least I have a feeling that I will never come back. This makes me sad because I really like you and there have been a few people in this town that don't make me want to kill myself. Tell Angela I didn't steal her necklace. I know she thinks I did and now she will always believe that but please just tell her that it wasn't me. I’m not sure what happened to it but I definitely would have never done that. I guess it’s a good thing that I am leaving because almost everybody thinks I would steal from my friend or do something even worse. I think it’s best that I walk away forever and let you all think of me the way you want. I will have to figure out who I am in the next town. Wherever that is. I’m nervous and terrified of going away but I also know that is my only choice and will probably be much better for it. I will miss you, Milo.

  -Always, Rachel (The troublemaker)

  “You got this letter not long after she left?” I asked utterly dumbfounded by what I just read. How could he not have shown me this before? I knew we had been having issues for a while but we were fine after Rachel left. “I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. It’s just your run-of-the-mill, goodbye note.”

  “Milo, are you joking? This is so much more than that. This is her telling you something. This was Rachel telling you she was in trouble or she had to leave,” I explained.

  “Yes, I know Angela. She had to leave because her parents were making her. Why would I think that meant she was in trouble? Besides, you only think that because of what her brother said. If you got this same note, you wouldn’t think anything of it.”

  “I would think it was weird. She sent a letter. That alone is suspicious. I could never imagine her sending me a letter. I really think this meant something. I think this was her trying to tell you something,” I pleaded but I could see that Milo was becoming irritated.

  “Let’s assume that Rachel had intended on giving me a clue about her plans. What was I supposed to do? Stop her? Convince her to stay? Tell her parents before she could leave? She had already left by the time I got the letter,”

  Milo was making sense. I couldn’t figure out what Rachel’s reasoning would have been. It was more than just a melodramatic move on her part. “What if she thought she would be reported missing? What if she couldn’t have imagined that her parents would stay quiet about her disappearance? Think about it. Rachel wanted to run away, but she didn’t want to hurt her parents or upset everyone who knew her. She sends this letter in case everyone freaks out and starts searching for her. Thinking she was abducted or something?” I said.

  “So, you think that she assumed her parents would do what normal parents would do, like call the police when there was no sign of their daughter. The cops would make some sort of announcement. A search team would come in and everyone would be terrified because they think someone abducted this young girl and they should be afraid that their own children aren’t safe? Is that what you’re saying,” Milo asked.

  “I guess?”

  “It sounds a bit like bullshit Angie. I feel like you are doing all of this because you’re bored. It seems to me that you have an entire summer to get through with not much to do. You aren’t studying, you have a dull job, there’s no class, and you may or may not have realized your friends are assholes, so you are finding an excuse to come up with some great mystery to solve,”.

  “That’s a bit harsh. Why do you always have to talk to me like that Milo? I don’t deserve it,”. Milo let out what let out an unamused chortle under his breath. “Are you seriously lecturing me on the way I talk to YOU? Did you completely forget most of our conversations from the last few years? I think the way I speak to you is generous. Then again, this isn’t about how you talk to me, it’s just another way for you to blame me for something,”

  I couldn’t quite remember what Milo meant. At least not in specifics. The last few times we had spoken was mostly mumblings and passive-aggressive nonsense. I couldn’t even remember the last conversation before this one. That’s how long it had been. “I guess when you’re sober and not around your friends, I’m worth talking to though, huh?” He asked.

  Oh, right, I thought while piecing together what to which he was referring. The last time we had spoken was at the dry lakebed. I was stunned to even see Milo there. He always considered it to be the ‘The trashiest display of youth in this town and the perfect example of why this town may actually, be hell’ if I remember it right. All he did was bad-mouth Manere so when he did engage in something everyone else did, it was always off-putting. It also seemed hypocritical but reminding him of that fact wouldn’t exactly help matters, so of course, that was exactly what I did. The moratorium of our friendship had begun a few months prior, but I had had a few of Lindsay Banning’s wine coolers and felt just buzzed enough to call Milo out on his hypocrisy. Telling him that he was there for one of two reasons, either he wanted to judge everyone he judged at school in a different setting, or he was desperate for frie
nds and would change his so-called standards to appease his peers. I blocked out most of the evening.

  “Milo. I have told you I was sorry. What more do you want from me?”

  “You have never told me you were sorry. Even now, you aren’t apologizing. You are throwing a half-assed apology that wouldn’t even count on the loosest definition of an apology because you want me to get over it. Sorry, Angela, that’s not how it works.” He started to close the door on me, but I put my foot in to stop it. He didn’t seem to notice or care and slammed the door and grew more irritated with the pushback of the door caused by my foot.

  “What Angela? What is it that you want me to do right now? Do you want me to accept your apology so you will leave, and you can go off to college feeling better about yourself? If that’s what you need it. You got it. It’s fine Angela Abrams. I accept your apology for becoming an unbelievably inconsiderate person to the person who was your best friend for many years. Even though I did nothing to deserve this attitude”

  I had nothing more to say. An apology would only sound forced and there was no way of moving on from what the unsettling place we sat with our friendship without giving an apology. I dropped my head in frustration and turned around. “You’re right. About everything. I’m sorry. I hope you have a good life” I said as I skulked away. With my back to him, I could practically feel Milo roll his eyes.