A Million Times Goodnight

by Kristina McBride

  CINCINNATI, OHIO – 11:53 PM TRIP ODOMETER – 47 MILES

  JOSH EASED the car through the city streets, buildings shooting straight up to the sky, their windows glittering in the bright city lights. The Reds’ stadium loomed up ahead, and I wondered if there had been a game earlier.

  Josh hadn’t spoken since we left the ice-cream shop. I wasn’t sure what to do. I had never felt so alone in my life. And with the awkward silence and our history pressing in from all sides, I wondered what might happen—what might be revealed—now that we were alone again after so much time. Suddenly, facing all of that history seemed a million times scarier than facing Ben.

  Josh turned his head slightly, meeting my eyes with what felt like a black-hole void. A void I recognized from his first days in the hospital just after Penny’s death and from passing him in the halls at school last fall when I was stupid enough to think we still might have a chance.

  I looked out the window, catching my reflection in the passenger door’s rearview mirror. My vision blurred, and the reflection seemed to fracture into a million different versions of me, rippling from this world into the next and back again. I felt dizzy, trapped, my heart racing in my chest. And then a car turned behind us, its lights flashing into my eyes.

  Green interstate signs up ahead indicated routes north and south. The traffic light flipped from green to yellow to red, and Josh eased the car to a stop. Then he looked over at me, raising his eyebrows.

  The decision was mine.

  “You up for a ride?” I asked.

  He shrugged, but his eyes betrayed him.

  “South.” My voice was steady. Sure.

  Josh’s lips twitched as he tried not to smile. He reached forward and hit the power button on the GPS. “Don’t want your boyfriend following us, now, do we?”

  “Good thinking.” I tipped my head back against the leather seat.

  When the light turned green, I half-expected Josh to go north, to head back home so he could get out of the car and as far away from me as possible. But without hesitation, we veered south, picking up speed as we entered the highway.

  Minutes later, as the car settled into a steady pace, perfectly centered in the middle lane, my phone rang. Feeling a renewed sense of hope, a burst of confidence, I reached into my pocket, yanking it free. Ben’s face beamed into the space of the car, lighting it up like a tiny sun.

  “Is that him?” Josh asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, noticing the glow of highway lights passing across Josh’s face.

  “Don’t answer it.”

  I looked down at the phone again, knowing it was about to flip over to voice mail. I’m not sure why I did it—anger or sudden readiness to confront Ben—but I slid my finger across the screen, accepting the call.

  “Nice pictures,” Ben said. And then he raised his voice: “You drove my car all the way to Cincinnati?”

  I wondered what he’d say if he knew his car was on a bridge, suspended over the Ohio River, making its way to Kentucky. Or worse, what he’d do if he knew Josh Lane was driving.

  “I told you not to answer that,” Josh whispered. “Don’t say anything. Hang up.”

  I shook my head and held a hand up in the air to quiet him. Ready. Suddenly ready to deal with Ben.

  “You are going to get in my car and drive it back to Oak Grove, you hear me?” Ben’s voice was shaking with anger. His anger gave me power. It meant I was winning. “Jesus, Hadley, I know you’re there. Say something!”

  “You only have yourself to blame. That picture you posted was way worse than me taking your car. For the record, I drove to Circle K. I even bought you a pack of smokes. I was heading back to the party, but that thing with the picture kinda threw me off course. Bottom line: I’m not coming home tonight.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I need some space. You pull my picture off Facebook, and I’ll have your car back to you tomorrow.”

  I meant it, too. If Ben would just apologize and take down the picture, I’d ask Josh to turn around so I could end this thing for good. All-the-way end it, because no matter how great things had been between us, Ben and I were officially over.

  “You think I’m going to take the picture down now? After you stole my car and left town?”

  “If you want your car back, you don’t have any other choice.”

  “I have lots of choices.” Ben laughed. “Calling the police is just one of many options.”

  “The cops, Ben?” I tried to sound bored, but his threat scared me. At least he wouldn’t know to alert the Kentucky State Police.

  Josh stared at the road, his hands gripping the steering wheel tightly.

  “Nah. Not quite yet.” Ben chuckled. “I think it’d be way more fun if I found you myself.”

  “Cincinnati is a pretty big town….”

  “I have my ways. You should know that by now.”

  “Well, good luck,” I said, my voice dripping with false cheer.

  Ben sucked in a deep breath, then blew it out in a long stream. He started to speak softly, like he was sharing a secret. “Hadley, this is bigger than you can possibly understand. I don’t want to fight. But you better get that car back here or else—”

  “Or else, what? You don’t have anything on me anymore. You’re all out of moves.”

  “Hadley, I swear to God, you’re going to regret this.”

  I looked at Josh and flashed him a nervous smile.

  “Maybe,” I said into the phone. “But you’ll have to catch me first.” And then I hung up.

  “I told you not to answer,” Josh said again, without looking away from the road, the corner of his mouth creased tight.

  “You’re not in charge of me any more than he is.”

  “Well, that’s rich. But you don’t have all the facts.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Josh shrugged. “Exactly what I said.”

  “What am I missing?”

  “Reach under your seat and find out for yourself.”

  “Way to be mysterious.” I leaned forward, tiptoeing my fingers across the carpeted floorboard. “I don’t get it. There’s nothing here.”

  “Keep feeling around,” he said as my fingers tripped across the paper ball. That’s all I could envision in the first moment my skin made contact. A large, wadded-up paper ball. I stretched my fingers around the item and pulled it out of its hiding space.

  “Ben’s not just after his car.”

  “What is this?” I asked, feeling the weight in my hands and realizing it was more than a wad of paper.

  “Check it out.”

  I fumbled with the ball until I found a section of the paper that had been doubled over and realized the ball was actually a brown paper lunch bag. Unfolding the top half, I found the opening and eased my hand inside, feeling a smooth layer of plastic. Pulling the contents out, I saw that it was a large Ziploc bag.

  “Pills?” I asked. “I don’t understand what this is.”

  “I checked them out back in the bar district.”

  “Wait. How did you even know this was here?”

  “When I spilled the Skittles back at the Witches’ Tower, I reached under the seat to make sure I’d gotten them all. I felt the bag then and was curious, so—”

  “So you let me drive all the way to Cincinnati with drugs in the car? Seriously, Josh?”

  “First off, I didn’t know it was a bag of drugs until after you left me standing outside that bar. It’s not like I had anything better to do, so when I had the keys, I figured I’d kill some time snooping.”

  “What’s in here, anyway?” In the flash of highway lights, I could see that there were several different sizes and shapes of pills wrapped up separately within the Ziploc.

  “One’s Vicodin. I think there’s some OxyContin, too.”

  I turned to face him. “How do you know all that?”

  Josh was silent for so long I thought he wasn’t going to answer. “The accident,” he finally said. “I wa
s pretty messed up. The doctors made me take some stuff. Tried to make me take some other stuff. I learned a thing or two from the experience.”

  “Oh.” I looked back at the road, at the broken white lines leading us farther into the night. I thought of Josh, his broken legs lying beneath the crisp white sheet of a hospital bed. But that made me think of Penny, broken beyond repair, lying against the ruched satin lining of her coffin.

  “Now you know what he’s really after.” Josh’s words bounced around us, sizzling in the flashes of light from passing cars and overhead lampposts.

  “Right.” I shook my head and ran my fingers back and forth across the tiny little pills. “Now I know lots of things.”

  “Like how you sure chose yourself a real winner?”

  I thought about the night I decided to forget about Josh Lane for good. He’d told me to. And it had been time to move on.

  I was at a New Year’s Eve party, eight months after Penny’s death, standing back from the crowd. I’d pressed myself up against the foosball table in the corner of the basement, lying to myself about how Josh meant nothing to me, how I didn’t care that he’d gone MIA two weeks before winter break, or where he was as the world rang in the new year. He certainly didn’t care about me anymore. And in the spirit of resolutions, I promised myself that I would learn to stop thinking about him.

  Then, like a wish being granted, Ben walked up to me and started talking, making me feel seen for the first time since Josh had turned me away.

  More importantly, Ben made me laugh. When he touched me—his fingertips grazing my hand and my back—it was electric. As the ball dropped and people chanted down from ten to five to one, Ben twisted me toward him, pulling me close, and pressed his lips to mine. Standing there as one year turned into the next, with Ben’s arms wrapped around my waist and his lips pressing against my own, I forgot all about Josh Lane.

  Ben brought me back to life.

  He gave me something to hope for.

  So I chose him.

  What other choice did I have?

  15

  THE WOODS – 11:03 PM

  MY HEART was still racing ten minutes after Mia and I escaped the house and flew from the golf course into the safety of the trees. I looked over my shoulder to make sure we hadn’t been followed.

  “Where are we going?” Mia’s words were a shaky whisper.

  “I’m trying to figure out where we are.” I hoped we’d turned the right way. Up the hill, toward the trails where Josh and I had once spent so many hours together.

  Rotting leaves sighed under our feet, and I shivered. I reached to my side, feeling for my purse, and realized I didn’t have it. When I remembered it lying on the floor of the bedroom, I wanted to cry. All I had with me was the phone I’d stolen from Ben and the clear understanding that I had to keep moving or I’d be caught in an even bigger trap.

  I took a right, Mia on my heels, and started up a steeper part of the trail, noticing a few familiar-looking trees. I was starting to feel better. Calmer. Like I could actually handle the situation I’d been thrust into. Then Ben’s phone rang.

  “Holy shit,” Mia said, grabbing my arm and squeezing so tightly her fingernails dug into my skin. “That about gave me a heart attack. I thought you didn’t have your phone.”

  “I don’t.” I yanked Ben’s cell from the pocket of my jacket and checked the caller ID. Private—no name, no photo, no number. Absolutely nothing.

  That’s when the suspicion crept in. It was Ben. Or the guy who had been after me back at the party. Had to be. I swiped a shaky finger across the touch screen, declining the call.

  “Whose phone is that?” Mia asked as I shoved it back into my pocket.

  “Ben’s.”

  “Any chance that’s going to cause issues before we get through tonight?”

  “I’m guessing there’s a pretty good chance,” I said, trying to keep the anxiety out of my voice.

  “Perfect.” Mia ran a hand through her hair, looking around as if she expected something to jump out and grab her. “That’s just perfect.”

  “There’s also a chance that it might give us an advantage.”

  I looked around, centering myself, remembering exactly where I was and why I was there. When I saw the gnarled sister trees that had been braided together for a century or more, I almost cried with relief.

  I rounded the last curve in the trail, Mia right by my side, and stepped from the wood’s deepest shadows into a puddle of the moon’s light. The tower rose before me, beckoning with the promise of solitude—what I needed if I was going to figure anything out.

  “Whoa.” Mia grabbed my arm again, tugging me back. “How did we get here?”

  “I brought us here. It’s safe.”

  “Didn’t we already establish that this place is, like, overflowing with bad mojo?”

  “That’s in your head. The tower will give us exactly what we need. Cover. Neither of us can go home—our parents would know something’s up. Besides, I’m assuming Ben and the guy he’s with will check our houses eventually. Brooklyn’s, too. Ben knows her parents are out of town and I’m spending the weekend there.”

  “Okay. I see your point. But here? Do we really have to stop here, Hadley?”

  “Yes. I have Ben’s phone, remember? He might have deleted that picture from Facebook, but I need to wipe it out of existence. Before we do anything else.”

  “You might want to consider turning off Ben’s location services before you worry about the pictures. Unless, of course, you want him to figure out you stole his phone when he comes looking for it.”

  “Oh my God, you’re brilliant!” I swiped through the settings and made sure they were switched to off. “One more thing,” I said, back stepping toward the tower and its yawning doorway.

  “No, Hadley. No way.”

  “We have to. What if they followed us? That guy back there—Ben’s afraid of him. Ben said to hide somewhere that he won’t think to look. He’d never in a million years picture me at the top of this tower.”

  I didn’t wait for her reply. She’d try to stop me. Racing up the spiral staircase, I shoved my way back into the night air. I stood at the top, breathing in and out. Trying to gain control.

  I counted to ten and then did what I dreaded most. I wrapped my fingers around Ben’s phone and pulled it out of my pocket, waking it up. The bright light flashing into the night hurt my eyes, making me squint. I kept going, intent on facing the truth, no matter how horrible it might be. Ever since the night we’d celebrated Ben’s birthday, there’d been a gaping void in my memory.

  There were flashes—Ben’s smile, the freckles on his hand as he ran his fingers across my skin, how his curtains billowed in the breeze. There were facts—I’d had too much to drink, I’d felt like taking a risk, I’d loved feeling the sweep of my arm as I pulled off my bra. There were the few memories kicked loose by the awful picture. But that was it.

  Biting my lip, I pressed the icon and scrolled through the gallery until my folder was there, staring up at me. I sucked in a deep breath, then pressed a shaking fingertip to my name. And waited.

  I heard the staircase creak and shudder, and Mia popped through the open doorway, her eyes wild with fear. “Don’t you ever do that again,” she said, shaking her finger at me. “I was scared to death.”

  “You wouldn’t have come up any other way. If I’d waited until you were ready, we’d still be down there.”

  “Which is a problem because … ?”

  I ignored her, focusing on the phone. She walked to my side and sucked in a breath as she saw what was on display.

  The first picture was me twirling, topless, barefoot, but wearing a pair of skinny jeans. In the next few, I was pulling my jeans down as though I was trying to act sexy but couldn’t, wobbling after all the alcohol I’d been stupid enough to drink. Then there were shots where I was posing, leaning on the edge of Ben’s bed, one bent knee raised, with my head tipped back, baring it all. And then there were m
ore. Much worse than the rest.

  As I scrolled through the images, I realized that my eyes were hazy and confused, and I wasn’t looking directly at the camera but behind it, like I couldn’t focus, no matter how hard I tried. Just like Penny. My lips were parted, too, as if I was trying to say something but couldn’t get it out.

  Was I trying to protest?

  Had I asked Ben to stop?

  “You don’t remember anything?” Mia asked.

  I shook my head, wanting to melt into the ground. To disappear. Facing the truth was worse than I’d expected.

  Mia looked at me, her eyes sad. “How much did you have to drink that night?”

  “From the look of it, a lot. But I can’t remember.”

  I swiveled away from Mia, closing my folder, and stared up at the night sky. The stars flickered above, appearing to hide an even deeper secret. I had to know all of it before I moved another inch. I backtracked to the main menu, selected Sydney’s folder, and saw more of the same types of shots—starring a gorgeous face and disgustingly perfect body.

  “It’s not just me,” I whispered.

  “What do you mean it’s not just—”

  I showed Mia the phone, the most revealing shot of Sydney. Mia put a hand to her mouth, her eyes crinkling with confusion, which quickly turned to anger.

  I went back again, pressing my finger to Treen’s name, wanting to finish what I’d started.

  “What’s Ben doing with these, Hadley? This is seriously—”

  The sound of tires racing on the winding road and the blast of music pulsing through the night cut her off.

  I saw headlights and expected the beams to sail by, the car itself a blur, leaving nothing behind but a trickling dance of windswept leaves.

  But the car slowed as the driver pulled around the bend.

  “Duck!” I reached for Mia’s arm, pulling her down with me as I crouched behind the stone wall.

  “We have to get out of here.” Mia jerked away from me. “Get to the trails and leave.”

  “No.” I tugged her back, pulling her against me. “No one ever comes up here. Just be quiet and we’ll be fine.”

  Mia’s body was shaking. She was terrified. I couldn’t let her down.