Last Girl Lied To

by L. E. Flynn

  Maybe Beau was right. It’s pointless, all of this searching, because somebody who wants to stay hidden that badly won’t ever be found. I should just get on with my life. That’s what Jasper wants to do, and he wants to do it with me. That’s what Dr. Rosenthal thinks I should do, what Mom thinks I’m already doing.

  When I get home, Jasper is sitting at the kitchen table with Mom, teaching her a card game. I never invited him but there he is, like he had a place at the table the whole time. He wants to make a good impression on my mom because that’s what boyfriends do, which should be sweet, but it just feels wrong. I try to make the painful feeling go away, but it won’t lie down on command like I want it to.

  And maybe it never will.

  73

  YOU WANTED TO plant a garden after you graduated. “I’ll become a hippie,” you said, which made me laugh, because you really were more like your dad than you realized. “We’ll always have fresh flowers and vegetables.”

  It was a hopeless plan. Trixie never ate a single vegetable the whole time we had known each other. The only green things she liked were money and the occasional joint, which she would roll over her bony knee as we sat in the sand on the beach. And she liked my green eyes. She said she wanted eyes that color too, and eventually, she had them, thanks to colored contacts.

  I asked her about the garden once, sometime during the summer. I had forgotten all about it. We were sitting in my backyard on a broken lounge chair, flipping through magazines. I looked around and saw our crappy excuse for a garden, the mud and weeds that had taken over.

  “What happened to becoming a hippie?” I asked.

  She pushed her mouse-brown hair off her face with a plastic headband. “I can’t keep anything alive. It was a stupid idea.”

  It was a flippant comment, no different from so many others. She probably changed the subject, moved on to something else, and stretched out on her back to tan her flat stomach. But I should have thought about the peace lily on her bedroom windowsill, how lovingly she tended to it. How it had been there for as long as I had known her and probably even longer than that. It always had enough water and sunlight, unlike Mom’s plants, which shriveled up and died.

  A week before she disappeared, I noticed the peace lily wasn’t on her windowsill anymore. When I peeked out her window, I saw a clump of dirt and green leaves on top of the compost heap in her backyard.

  “What happened to it?” I asked, pressing my fingertips to the window. It made me unbearably sad, seeing it down there on top of eggshells and other things that had been discarded.

  She ran a brush through my hair, yanking my head back, forcing me to look the other way.

  “It was dying. I had to get rid of it.”

  She sounded casual, upbeat, like it was nothing to her. That should have tipped me off. She loved that plant, treated it like a pet. Getting rid of it must have crushed her.

  Now I know the real reason why she dumped her peace lily in the compost heap. Because she had to. Because she wasn’t going to be there to take care of it. She knew that if she left it on her windowsill, her dad would kill it by mistake. He had good intentions, but he was scatterbrained, forgetful. It would dry up until it was nothing but parched dirt and brittle brown leaves that crumbled at the touch.

  She couldn’t bear that, so she put it out of its misery.

  She killed Trixie Heller too, put her out of her misery.

  The question is, who is she now?

  74

  WHEN I GET home from school the next day, Mom is waiting at the table for me with a stern look on her face. Fear unfurls in my stomach because she must know something she shouldn’t. Something about Trixie or the party or Sarah Brown or even what Jasper and I have been doing in my bedroom. But when I ask her what’s wrong, her face breaks into a huge smile and she hands me a big manila envelope.

  “This looks an awful lot like an acceptance letter.” She clasps her hands together. “I have the camera ready. I think you should open it right now.”

  My hands tremble as I look at the return address stamp. NYU. I tear the letter open and pull out the package inside, staring at the sheet of paper on top.

  Dear Ms. Fiona Fontaine,

  Hello and greetings from NYU Undergraduate Admissions! First and foremost—congratulations on your acceptance to NYU for the fall 2019 semester! We are thrilled to congratulate you on this achievement.

  I skim the rest of the letter as Mom takes pictures of the whole thing and starts to cry. This is probably a bigger moment for her than it is for me. This is an experience she never had, another chapter of life that she’s living through me. And even though I should be happy, I feel guilty because I should have given her a better high school experience. I shouldn’t have deviated from the course I was on. I’d be ripping open a different acceptance letter, probably a UCLA one, and calling Jenny to jump up and down with her.

  “This is a huge deal,” Mom says. “We should celebrate. Where do you want to go for dinner? We’ll get dressed up and go right now.”

  I hold the envelope gingerly in my hand, like it could disappear. I don’t want to celebrate anything yet, not when I don’t even know if this is what I want. Did I ever want New York, or would I have followed Trixie anywhere? There’s a new school opening up on Mars, I imagine her chirping in my ear. Want to apply there with me? I know what my answer would have been.

  “Let’s wait until I hear back from the other schools,” I say. “Then we can celebrate.”

  “Of course, sweetie,” she says, but I can see the disappointment in her eyes. She opens her arms and wraps me in a hug, and after everything, it’s the hug that makes me want to cry. Because I remember the way Mom’s hugs used to feel. I used to fit perfectly in her embrace, and I just don’t anymore.

  “Where’s Sarah going?” she asks, stroking my hair like she did when I was a little kid. “Did you guys apply at any of the same places?”

  I suddenly feel exhausted at the idea of carrying on the charade. I don’t tell the truth, but I don’t keep lying either. “Sarah and I aren’t friends anymore, Mom. It got complicated, and I don’t really want to talk about it.”

  And to my surprise, she doesn’t make me.

  Over the next two weeks, more big manila envelopes come in the mail. Every school I applied to. Florida State. Princeton. The University of Arizona. The University of Texas. Last of all, UCLA.

  I tell Jasper about NYU and all the other schools, but I don’t tell him about UCLA. Because he’d want to know why. It’s not like I could ever tell him that I applied because that’s where Beau is going. Because even though we went nearly a year without saying a word to each other, I can’t imagine being separated by several states.

  “What are we going to do?” Jasper says when we’re eating lunch outside one day.

  “You’ll go wherever you want to go and I’ll go to NYU,” I say, hoping I sound more sure than I feel. “We’ll see each other on breaks. And we can Skype all the time.”

  Jasper puts his apple down and grabs my face, presses his lips to mine. He has been doing this more and more lately. Kissing me in public, like he has to stake his claim. Like anyone else would even want me. I’m sure people are staring and the thought embarrasses me. They’re probably thinking, Two freaks in love. How perfect.

  Not perfect. Not even close.

  75

  WHEN MOM LEAVES for a last-minute conference in San Francisco, I get in my car and start driving and end up at Cabana Del Shit. Normally, when Mom is gone, I stay home and text Jasper and tell him to come over, but tonight I don’t want to. Lately, sex with Jasper has been making me feel the guiltiest of all, like we’re both cheating on people we never had in the first place.

  You can be happy with him, a voice in my head says. Trixie didn’t want him. Beau never wanted you.

  It’s the truth, at least on paper. But the paper truth isn’t always the one that makes sense.

  At Cabana Del Shit, I order a Diet Coke even though I want a
chocolate milkshake, and I sit in a booth by the window. I can see the beach from here, the pier Toby jumped from. I picture him secretly swimming back to shore, fighting the undertow and white-capped waves, but even from here, it looks impossible. The pier is too far out, the undertow too strong, the waves too big. He never could have made it.

  “You again,” Skylar says when she comes by with a menu. “You’re alone. Did you break up with that guy? Is he stalking you now?”

  “He’s not stalking anyone. I just want a cheeseburger to go.”

  She rolls her eyes and starts walking away. Before I can stop myself, I call out after her. I owe it to Jasper to defend him, since he’s the only person who really cares enough to know who I am anymore.

  “He wasn’t obsessed with her, you know. It wasn’t like that.”

  Skylar turns around, hand on her hip. “I wouldn’t be so sure. Seriously, don’t make excuses for him. I saw what I saw. Trixie told him she wasn’t interested, but he kept showing up here anyway. Like, waiting for her. He tried to say he was her boyfriend, but she said he wasn’t. At first I thought it was some kinky game they were playing.” She glances down, sticks her hands in the pockets of her server belt. “But it wasn’t a game. He was totally stalking her.”

  The Diet Coke I swallowed churns in my gut. I clutch the glass tightly. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, what do you call it when someone keeps showing up where they weren’t invited? A couple times, we had to get Max to ask him to leave. Sometimes we’d see him outside this window, like, staring into the ocean. And then she ended up dying in it.” Skylar takes a deep breath, rubs her upper arms. She’s not wearing Trixie’s rings anymore, but a bunch of tacky gold jewelry instead.

  I nod. “Thanks.” I just want to drink my Diet Coke and get out of here and never come back. But Skylar lingers at the table, places a hand on the edge, near the napkin holder.

  “If you’re, like, still with him, I’d think twice. Because he’ll probably get the same way about you like he did with her. I know from experience, men like that. They never change. They always need somebody to be the center of their world.”

  I don’t want to believe her. Jasper is the one good thing that has happened to me this year, the one person I’m attached to who wants to be attached to me. But I have the sickening sense that maybe some of what she’s saying is right. He shows up at my house when I’m not there and waits for me at my locker and makes sure everyone knows I’m his. Maybe I was right in the first place, when I thought he was just replacing her with me. Maybe there’s a reason I never came back here to ask Skylar to elaborate about Jasper’s obsession. Maybe I didn’t want to know, and I still don’t.

  I stare out the window, at the water. It’s nearly black, dark waves licking the graham-cracker shore like tongues. Trixie, I say silently, closing my eyes, where are you?

  When I open my eyes, there’s someone outside the window, sauntering down to the beach, hands jammed in hoodie pockets. A familiar lumbering gait, a baseball cap, hunched shoulders.

  I slam down a ten-dollar bill on the table, dart out of my booth, and run for the door.

  76

  I HIDE IN the hole in the wall, sticking my head out to see what’s happening. He’s standing in the middle of them, pulling his cap off, smoking a cigarette. The ends of his hair stick straight up, almost white in the moonlight. He pulls something out of the back pocket of his jeans and hands it to one of the guys, who gives him something in return. They make the exchange too fast for me to see what it is.

  I flatten myself against the wall as he starts to turn around. I can feel my heartbeat in the concrete and I have to know, so I peek back through the opening. I see him, and he sees me. My shock is reflected on his face.

  I see who he is. Not Toby Hunter, but Beau.

  “Preach,” one of the guys calls out behind him. “I’ll get you the rest next week.”

  I cup my hand over my mouth. Preach. The Preacher. The person I have been looking for since Tijuana has been right here the entire time, and I don’t know if I should be grateful or mad or sad, so I’m a messy smear of everything.

  He turns away and waves at the group, then starts running in the sand toward me. Now I see that he’s drunk. His gait is erratic and he’s taking bigger steps than he needs to, his arms churning at his sides. It doesn’t matter, because I’m not going anywhere.

  “How much did you see?” he shouts, slipping through the hole.

  “Enough,” I say, my throat dry. “You’re the Preacher. I thought—I thought it was Toby.” I think back to the picture of Toby I showed that guy on the beach and wonder how I didn’t figure it out sooner. To him, the Hunter boys were interchangeable.

  He puts a finger to my lips, lightly at first, then presses it in deeper. “You know, there are things you remember even though you don’t want to. Like, I remember how Toby’s running shoes used to stink up the laundry room. And the random places he hid. And this one quote he loved: ‘Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean—roll!’ Yeah, my brother read Lord Byron too. I do everything he does.” I put my hands on his wrists and I’m afraid he’s going to push me away, but he just collapses into me, pushing my back into the wall.

  I have a million questions for him. What did you trade? And why are you down here? But his hands are tangled up in my hair, grabbing fistfuls just hard enough to hurt. His chest is pressed against mine and then he’s kissing me, and I’m too surprised that it’s happening to even open my mouth. His lips cover mine urgently and a moan escapes his throat. He sucks on my lips, holds them in his teeth. His hands move forward until his fingers are on my cheeks. My face feels small in his hands, like he could crush it between his palms. He pushes me harder against the wall and I finally kiss back, letting my lips encircle his. He tastes like alcohol. He tastes like the night Trixie disappeared.

  But as soon as it starts, it’s over and he’s facing away from me, his hands suddenly stashed behind his back. “Toby used to spout this bullshit,” he says. “About how the person you loved was never the one you should love, and that was something you couldn’t work hard enough to fix. I never knew what he was talking about, because your whole life you get told that if you put your mind to it, anything is possible. They should just tell kids that’s not fucking true.”

  I bring my fingertips to my cheeks. They’re still tingling from where his hands were. Did he just tell me he loves me? I don’t ask because maybe it didn’t happen at all. The words evaporated into the air, got sucked into the humidity.

  “What do they pay you for?” I ask as he walks in circles in front of me. “Is it drugs?”

  He starts to laugh, or howl—a terrible, tortured sound. “Fuck, I wish. This is a lot more complicated, but it’s the only thing I’m good at.”

  My legs start to feel weak so I crouch down, my shoes digging into the sandy dirt. “Tell me. You have to tell me.”

  He shakes his head and makes that noise again, then grabs a wad of money out of his jeans pocket and hurls it at the wall. “That’s what I get for doing what I do. I get shit for people. Things they can’t get themselves. Fake IDs. Fake passports. Fake high school diplomas. I make it possible for people to become someone else.”

  The reality of what he’s saying sinks into me, soaks into my skin until I’m anchored to the ground, a soggy mass. “You’re the one who got Trixie her fake ID. What else did you get her?”

  He’s on the ground beside me, pulling his hood over his head, suddenly still. “I got her a passport. Months ago. Way before she left. I knew it was because she was going to try and find him, and I told her she was an idiot. That Toby didn’t want to see any of us again, so he never would.”

  My eyes well up with tears and threaten to spill over. I hate Beau all over again for what he had with Trixie, these boulder-sized secrets they somehow kept under their skin. “And you never thought to tell me?”

  He presses his fingers into his forehead. “I knew you’d ask questions. Where she went. Why s
he left. And I don’t know the answers, because I stopped asking. Know why I stopped asking? Because she wouldn’t have told me anyway. I knew I’d never see her again.”

  “So you knew she was going to disappear,” I say slowly. “And you didn’t bother to warn me about it.”

  He throws up his hands. “I didn’t know anything. Nobody could predict what that girl would do. What was I supposed to do, call you up and tell you to watch Trixie like a hawk in case she disappears? We hadn’t talked in months. You would have thought I was crazy.” His hand grabs mine, and it’s hot and sweaty, alive. “I know you think you can find her. But she must have known it was pointless to go after Toby. Maybe she really did end up in the water. You might as well give up and live your own life.”

  I shake his hand off, white-hot anger surging through me. “What, just like you have? You’ve done such a great job of moving on. Doing everything you hate just to make other people happy. Drinking yourself into”—I swat at the air—“into this person. You’re not moving on at all. You’re ruining your own goddamn life to step into his.”

  I want to take the words back as soon as I say them. I want to open my mouth and suck them back in, chew and digest them and think about the consequences. I shrink in on myself, expecting Beau to explode in rage, to punch his fist against the wall. But when I look over, he’s crying. Softly at first, then loudly, like someone in physical pain.

  “It’s not like that,” he says. “You don’t know my dad. It’s just easier for me to go along with things. Play football and be with Jenny and go to UCLA. Which is why he’s going to freak the hell out when I don’t.”

  My stomach erupts, like a fist is squeezing my organs. I smooth my sweatshirt down over my legs, pull the frayed ends as far as they will go without ripping. “What do you mean?”