The Safest Lies

by Megan Miranda

  “How much longer until it’s ready?” he whispered.

  “Soon,” I said, testing the tops of the two different containers I’d poured. Almost dry.

  He held up his hand, showing me the black object inside it. “I found your mom’s phone.”

  I ran my hands along it, to make sure I was seeing it right. It was bigger than my cell, and bulkier, and it had a stubby rubber antenna on top and a thick button on the side. I shook my head. “My mom doesn’t have a phone. Where did you find that?”

  “In the back of a desk drawer,” he said.

  “Did you try it?”

  “Yeah, I tried it.” He shook his head. “Nothing. It’s dead.”

  I ran my fingers along the side, where I felt a large button. I pressed it, but nothing happened. I ran my hand along the back and found a lever that opened a compartment.

  My hands tightened around the device. “This isn’t a phone. It’s a walkie-talkie.” I had the other half of the pair somewhere buried in my room, from childhood. Whenever I went outside alone back then I brought it with me. “Batteries,” I said, pulling out the back square. I rummaged through the top kitchen drawer, feeling for the right-sized batteries. I grabbed an assortment and blindly started fitting them into the compartment, searching for the right one. I felt one click into place, and added another of the same size, flipping them around until the polarity lined up and the static faintly crackled.

  I depressed the button on the side, and the device clicked once. I stared at Ryan.

  “Do that again,” he said.

  I found a dial with my thumb and pushed it up, in case it was the volume.

  I pressed the side button again and spoke quietly into the receiver: “Hello?” I released the button, listened to the static crackle back.

  “Is anyone there?” I asked again.

  That crackle again, like static, but, underneath, something more—like there might be voices, straining to be heard.

  I twisted another dial, and the stations switched with each click of the wheel—static, static, static. Higher pitched, lower pitched, the squeal of interference, the whispers underneath. I waited until I hit a station with silence, and tried again. “Please. If anyone’s out there, please answer. I need help.”

  Dead air. Silence. Nothing.

  I changed stations again. “Please. If anyone’s there, my name is Kelsey Thomas, and I live on Blackbird Court in Sterling Cross, and I need help. Please. Call the police. There are men trying to break in, and we’re trapped.”

  Ryan stepped closer. “It’s a long shot,” he said.

  “Everything we’re doing is a long shot,” I whispered.

  There was a sharp whistle from outside, like something cutting through air, and a dull thud behind the curtains in the living room—the impact vibrating in the stillness. “What was that?” Ryan asked.

  “A rock?” I asked, mostly to myself. I pictured a man on the other side, hurling stones at the glass, testing for weaknesses. One of us was going to have to check. One of us was going to have to peel back the curtain….

  And of course it would be Ryan. He was already kneeling at the corner—he kept his head beside the wall and pulled the curtains back, then jerked himself away from the exposed window. He let them drop again, pulled his head away, and sat back on his knees, still staring at the spot.

  “What?” I asked. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Come here.”

  I knelt beside him, and he moved the curtains in a wave again: the dark trees, the bright moon, and tiny fractures in the corner of the window, radiating outward like a spider web, frozen around—

  “Is that a bullet?” I asked.

  His wide eyes met mine. “That’s what it looks like to me, too.” He recoiled from the window. “You have bulletproof glass? Why the hell do you have bulletproof glass?”

  “I don’t know!” I said. “My mom…” She’s paranoid, I wanted to say.

  But I didn’t know anymore. The power was cut. The window was shot. My mother was missing. Someone was attempting to break in. There was nothing paranoid about this house any longer. And there was no place safer.

  “They can’t get in,” he said, his face incredulous. He started to laugh, unexpectedly, like I had when I was hanging in the car, realizing some kid from my math class intended to rescue me with nothing but a harness and some hope. He grabbed my hand, pulled me closer, so I could feel his heart racing against his rib cage. “They can’t,” he said.

  A fortress, Ryan had said, and maybe he was right. Maybe my mom knew exactly what she was doing. Maybe, all those years I felt like I had to hide and protect her, she was waiting, waiting for this, and she knew exactly how to keep me safe. Right now she was doing it.

  I looked at the window again, at the bullet lodged in it. They were shooting at the corner. To break it. And they couldn’t.

  “Really,” he said, and his arms tightened around me. “Nobody’s getting in.”

  —

  I heard someone at the back door, but this time my heart didn’t end up in my throat. The door would hold, as my mother knew it would.

  I felt close to her suddenly—like her fears weren’t so hidden from me anymore. They were shadows, just outside the walls. And they were trying to get in.

  Ryan was silent, and fixed in the middle of the room—away from the walls, away from the windows. But calmer. More confident. Maybe this was how it happened to my mother, too. These walls of concrete, these bulletproof windows, these bars and cameras—until she felt so safe that she became afraid to take a step beyond it.

  “Come on,” I said, making my way back to the kitchen. The packed material was dry, the fuse firmly in place. “It’s ready,” I said. “One at a time—they don’t last that long.”

  Ryan stilled, thinking. “So, what do we do?” he said. “Throw them out a window?”

  “Onto the roof,” I said. “How’s your arm?”

  He smiled. “Good,” he said. “I have a good arm.”

  I pictured the slope of the roof, the places it slanted and lay flat. “My mother’s bedroom,” I said. “Not until I say.”

  —

  I held the backup lighter for the stove to the fuse—it ignited with a whoosh, and bright yellow tendrils of smoke started snaking over the counter, onto the floor.

  “Someone will see this through the trees?” he asked.

  “I hope so,” I said. It would be bright. The moon was out. It would look wrong. It would, hopefully, make someone come. Make someone call. Make someone check.

  He coughed, the smoke filling up the room.

  “Go,” I said.

  And then I pulled open the back curtains, pounded my fist against the glass so they would see. So they would look. I felt both exposed and protected, and my heart was pounding against my ribs. “Now!” I called to Ryan.

  I heard something hit the roof and roll slightly, coming to a stop. And then I saw faint wisps of smoke trailing over the side of the roof, over the windows, into the yard. I hoped some would go up instead. I hoped Annika would look at the sky and see.

  By the time Ryan returned, the sound at the back door had stopped, and I wondered if this was enough. If they would leave.

  I risked a glance out the curtains again. I was scared there’d be a face staring back, but the bulletproof glass made me bold. The smoke in the sky made me even bolder.

  Like this was a game, and I had finally played a hand.

  The phone continued to crackle. Ryan continued looking at me like he was seeing me for the first time. And my heart continued to beat, on and on, terrified and alive.

  The room was still covered in a hazy layer of smoke and the scent of the chemical reaction. Ryan pressed his face between the gap in the curtains, and his face lit up in the glow. He stared at the bright smoke, as if he were making a wish on it.

  I walked closer to the walkie-talkie to listen for a response—but it was all the same.

  I picked it up and s
hifted from station to station, repeating the same message: “We’re trapped in the house on Blackbird Court in Sterling Cross. There are armed intruders. Please send help.”

  The noises at the door had stopped. But something was happening on the roof.

  A bang. A creak. Something rolling again—and the smoke no longer falling from above.

  “Is someone up there?” I whispered.

  “I can’t see….Oh. The wall. Kelsey, someone’s there. Someone’s on the wall.”

  I pulled the curtain farther aside and saw a shadow crouching on the back wall beyond the gate, leaning forward. The faint light from the house beyond lit up the profile—her hair, wild. She turned to the side and raised her hand, and I saw a phone held up to the sky.

  “Annika,” I gasped.

  Go for help, I wanted to yell. But then I realized the reason she was holding her phone to the sky was because she couldn’t get a signal, like us. Go inside, I wanted to shout. Go. Call.

  But then there was a bright beam of light that traveled in a wide arc from the other side of the house, pulling her attention.

  She stood up on top of the wall, arms out like it was a balance beam, and she walked toward the front. The lights stayed put, and I recognized the sound—an engine running.

  I smiled, the hope almost painful in my chest as I gripped both of Ryan’s hands in my own. His were cold, and faintly trembling, and he whispered, “We’re okay.”

  I squeezed back reassuringly. Those were headlights in my driveway.

  That was a car. Maybe the police. Maybe from Annika, or the message we’d sent on the walkie-talkie, or the fact there was a cloud of sparks flying from my rooftop. It didn’t matter why.

  Help was here.

  And with it, relief, spilling out with a laugh, and Ryan smiling back as his hands gently stilled.

  I imagined the men, fleeing.

  I ran to the office so I could see both of them at once—Annika near the back, and the car near the front. It was hard to tell in the headlights, which were pulled all the way to the gate and pointing directly at the front door. The glare on the camera was too bright.

  The lights cut off abruptly, and a shadow exited the driver’s side. Police, I thought.

  Annika was still toward the back, slowly walking forward. On the back camera, Annika was moving her hands, pointing to the roof—and then she froze. She turned. She looked like she was calling into the dark.

  “Where are the men?” I asked. I scanned the screens for their shadows. “Where are they?”

  Annika was frozen on the wall. And the person in front of the metal fence made their way closer to the gate. I couldn’t see the intruders. Were they on the roof, watching? They didn’t appear to be inside the gate anymore.

  The person at the gate moved their hand to their face, shielding their eyes from the smoke—and their face caught the light of the moon.

  Wide-eyed and confused, and familiar.

  Cole.

  Annika was making her way toward him, but kept stopping and looking over her shoulder.

  Cole had one hand wrapped around the bars of the gate, staring up. He held out his phone, as Annika had just done, and pointed it up toward the sky.

  Neither of them saw, as I did, the shadows moving just outside the gate, closing in on them.

  Ryan and I had been watching the video monitors in the office, but now we ran to the front window, peering out a sliver of curtain beside the door. We couldn’t see the shadows this way, but they were nearby.

  “They’re both outside of the gate now,” I whispered, but Ryan didn’t answer. He leaned closer to the window, his hands pressing against the wall.

  Annika approached the front yard from the top of the wall, calling to Cole. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they were both moving their hands, and then Annika froze again, like a deer caught in the headlights.

  She held her phone out to Cole, and he did the same. They both shook their heads.

  Annika hopped down off the wall, closer to Cole.

  A shadow moved to Cole’s left, and they both swiveled their heads in that direction. They saw it. Or it saw them.

  Everyone froze.

  Run, I mouthed.

  A noise escaped Ryan’s throat.

  He stared at me—like the moment in the car before we fell. Like we were still falling.

  It felt exactly like that—like fingers grasping for purchase, hands and nails reaching out for skin and bone. What each of us might do, taking the other with us.

  “What do we do?” he asked.

  There was the simple answer: open a window, tell them to run. Hope they made it to the car, made it out, before anyone else got to them, and close the windows back up, sealing us safely inside.

  There was the simpler answer: nothing.

  I took a deep breath, the air burning a path straight to my lungs. Ryan nodded at me. I nodded back.

  We knew the answer already.

  We knew.

  Because what I was most afraid of in that moment—and what I believed Ryan was most afraid of—was not the men getting in. It was watching them on the camera as they harmed these other people because we were doing nothing.

  I ran to the kitchen, grabbing the second container, and held the fuse to the flame. Tendrils of smoke began trailing behind through the house.

  I hit the code to disarm the alarm, the faintest beep, and Ryan winced.

  I pressed the button beside the front door to open the gate, and I took a deep breath, steeling my nerve.

  And I thought I understood what Ryan meant about not being brave for climbing into my car. How a bravery medal could feel cold and accusing, the jab of the pin over his heart, like a reminder, like the spiders I felt crawling across my skin—

  Because it was not bravery that made me jerk open the front door to the chilled air, the endless possibilities. It was fear.

  Don’t be afraid. You’re okay.

  Ryan stood beside me, both of us still tucked behind the front door, which was now cracked open. The metal gates continued to open, slowly and mechanically. Faster, I thought. Please. The cold night air poured in, and I sucked in a breath. The floor filled up with smoke—yellow and pungent and disorienting, rising up around us like a thick mist.

  I hurled the smoke bomb toward the opening gate, as far as I could. And while it was still flipping through the air, smoke trailing as it flipped end over end, I yelled, “Run!”

  And then I couldn’t see Cole and Annika anymore, everything a fine haze in the dark, and I hoped the intruders had as hard a time picking them out as I did. The last I’d seen, the intruders were both outside the gate. Which meant Cole and Annika were closer. They could get here first.

  My heart pounded against my ribs. Ryan’s hands pulled hard on my shoulders, and I lost my balance, tumbling back into him.

  “Get away from the door!” Ryan yelled, even as the back of my head collided with his mouth. “Someone has a gun!” Both of us were on the floor, buried in smoke, and I scrambled back to my feet, straining to see.

  And then Cole was cutting through the smoke, heading straight for us, confused, but listening. He barreled into the house, where the yellow smoke still lingered around us, and before he had time to say anything, I screamed, “Where’s Annika? The girl out there! Where is she?”

  “Ran the other way,” he said. “What—”

  There was a bang as Cole kicked the door closed, but I was already turning around, racing for the living room windows. I yanked curtains apart at the side of the house, following Annika’s shadow as it darted on top of the wall, racing toward the back of my house. “Dammit, Annika,” I mumbled.

  She was on top of the wall again, sprinting toward the back. And someone out there had a gun. Shit.

  “Get in the basement!” I yelled toward Ryan as I headed for the back door.

  I pressed the button to open the gate out back too—they had already dug another way in, what did it matter?—and pushed open the back d
oor, terrified that the smoke over my house wouldn’t be the call for help, but the thing that got my best friend killed.

  She was a shadow on top of the wall, and I was a shadow hidden inside smoke and darker shadows.

  “Annika!” I called her name as loudly as I dared. “Get off the wall!”

  I took a step into the backyard, my foot crunching the grass and fallen leaves. I reached for her, even though she was across the yard and through a gate. “Annika,” I called again, louder. “Please.”

  She caught sight of something, something not expected from the way she was backpedaling.

  I watched her jump from the wall, and then her shadow disappeared, hidden by the tall weeds and the wall behind her. I took a few tentative steps farther from the wall of my house.

  I kept in the shadows, breathing shallowly, listening for movement. Trying to remember where I’d last seen the others…

  And then I saw her darting through the gate opening, practically swinging from it as her hand gripped the bar, trying to slam it closed behind her. “Run!” I yelled again. She peered over her shoulder as she approached, slowing down. We were surrounded by silence and the night. Her breathing, my breathing, a ribbon that had come uncoiled from her hair, dangling over her shoulder.

  I grabbed her arm and dragged her toward the house. She was stumbling after me. There was a sour taste in the back of my throat, nearly choking me. Something left over from the smoke, maybe. “Faster,” I whispered, my lips turning cold.

  She started moving faster, her breath coming in desperate pulls as we slipped inside the open back door.

  I quickly closed the door and slid the lock, my hands shaking as I did. I leaned back against it, trying to steady my limbs, breathing in the lingering smoke. The house was silent, except for the walkie-talkie crackling with static on the kitchen counter. Annika’s hands went to her face, covering her mouth in delayed shock.

  I pulled her hand down from her face, my fingers linking with hers, and walked through the smoke, ready to arm the system again. But a cold gust of air blew the smoke inward, swirling against the floor.