Three Truths and a Lie

by Brent Hartinger

  “What?” Liam said.

  Galen turned to us. “Don’t you see? This is what they want us to do. Why they sabotaged our car. They knew we’d walk out along this road.”

  “What are you saying?” Mia said.

  “I’m saying this was a bad idea! Walking to the highway!” Galen was angry, jittery, a bundle of nerves. It was way more than his usual afternoon crankiness.

  “We can’t stay at the cabin,” Mia said.

  “Why not?”

  “You know why not,” she said. It was funny how the sound of the falling rain made everyone speak louder. Not quite shouting, but like we were standing next to a roaring train.

  “Think about it,” Galen said. “If you don’t show up later tonight, your parents are going to call you. When they can’t reach you on your phone, they’re going to call the cops. Then they’ll send someone out to check on us, the sheriff or someone. Your parents know exactly where we are. The only reason you wouldn’t answer your phone is if something had happened. If you couldn’t get back to the road somehow.”

  Mia thought for a second, then said, “You’re right!” She sounded incredibly relieved, like she’d just defused a bomb with three seconds to go. She turned to Liam and me. “He’s right! All we have to do is wait in the cabin and everything will be fine. Fuck, I bet the sheriff’ll be here before midnight!”

  “And if the cops don’t come, your parents will,” Galen said. “It’s only a three-hour drive.”

  I realized I’d somehow stepped off the bulge in the middle of the road and into the mud. As we stood there, I could actually feel myself sinking deeper, like it was quicksand. I knew I should move, but part of me didn’t want to, that I’d discover I was already in too deep.

  “So . . . what?” Liam said. “We go back to the cabin and wait?”

  Galen turned back to the rain forest, the mud squelching under his feet. He didn’t answer, just stared into the black hole in front of us. He twisted the strings on his hoodie again.

  “You really think they could be waiting for us in there?” Mia asked.

  “Do you wanna chance it?” Galen said.

  Mia, Liam, and I all looked at one another. When the options are all bad, it’s hard to decide which one is best.

  “I think Galen’s right,” Mia said. “My parents aren’t going to leave us out here. And we were fine in the cabin all night long.”

  Mia and Galen were in agreement, but were Liam and I? I looked at him, asking him the question with my eyes. This wasn’t like the day before, when I’d really wanted to leave. This time I honestly didn’t know what we should do.

  The rain thrummed down, and Liam shuffled his feet—he looked as uncertain as I felt.

  “That’s it then,” Galen said.

  He turned and started back for the cabin. Mia followed right behind him.

  If you’d asked me before that weekend, I would’ve said that Mia was the leader of our little group, and in a lot of ways, she was. But when push came to shove, it was Galen who was in charge.

  Glumly, Liam and I turned and followed too.

  For a long time, the only sound was our feet sloshing in the mud.

  Finally, Mia said, “Hey! Maybe someone will see us on Google Earth. You can zoom in, right? Maybe our parents are looking down at us right now. They know exactly where we are.” Mia looked up at the sky and started waving her arms. “Help!” she shouted.

  I honestly wasn’t sure if she was serious or not.

  “Google Earth isn’t live,” Liam said.

  She glanced back at him. “It isn’t?”

  He shook his head. “They update it every two weeks. But even then it’s not usually new data, especially not in places like this.”

  She looked back up at the sky and started waving her arms again. “Never mind!”

  We all smiled, relaxing a bit at last.

  As for me, I couldn’t help wondering where we’d be two weeks from now, when the satellite images of us might finally be live. In one sense, we’d still be here on this muddy road, cold and wet, with Mia waving her hands up at the clouds. But where would we be for real?

  I hoped we’d be home and safe, this whole weird weekend long forgotten. But for the first time, I was seriously starting to wonder if we would.

  13

  The one good thing about all the mud was that it meant everyone left footprints, at least until the rain eventually washed them away. When we got back to the cabin, I searched the mud and moss, and saw what looked to be the same footprints we’d left behind: Mia’s Nike slip-ons, Galen’s hipster moccasins, Liam’s Keds. So unless they could levitate, we knew for a fact no one had been there while we were gone.

  We rinsed our shoes and socks in the basin by the pump, but the mud had soaked in deep. They didn’t get very clean. Once inside the cabin, we left our shoes by the door and put the socks up by the fireplace to dry, even though the fire had long since burned out.

  “I have an idea,” Galen announced.

  Of course you do, I thought. I glanced at Liam, and he rolled his eyes.

  “We can set up an early warning system,” Galen said. “Some kind of alarm.”

  “Alarm?” Mia said. “With no electricity and no supplies?”

  “Let me see what I can come up with,” he said. He started going through the drawers and cupboards.

  Liam moved toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” Mia asked.

  “If we’re staying here, we’re going to need more firewood,” he said.

  “I don’t think any of us should be alone right now,” Galen said.

  Without hesitating, I nodded and turned for my shoes. But Liam didn’t wait. He’d left the cabin in his bare feet.

  • • •

  In the end, I followed Liam out into the yard in my bare feet too. The moss was cool and much wetter than I expected, like walking on soggy paper towels. It actually felt good after all the gritty mud rubbing in my shoes and socks.

  The rain had stopped, which sort of figured. The trees still dripped—more than before because of the rain. But for all that water, the world didn’t smell clean. The air smelled sour, like something rotten. All the rain must have stirred up the nearby bog.

  I stared out into the undergrowth beyond the yard. I shivered. It gave me the creeps, knowing there was someone out there, maybe even watching me right now.

  I looked down at the lake and noticed a heron standing motionless in the reeds, waiting for a fish or frog to swim by. A mist rose up from the surface of the lake, like a pot right before the water begins to boil. I glanced back at the heron in the reeds, but now I saw I was wrong: there was no heron, and there never had been. It was just a clump of sticks. I’d seen something out of the corner of my eye and my brain had filled in the details. It was the opposite of that island Mia had showed me the day before. That had been right in front of my face all along and I hadn’t been able to see it. Now here was this heron I thought I’d seen, but it hadn’t really ever been there at all.

  I found Liam squatting down, picking through the scraps of wood in the firewood shed along the side of the cabin. Staying up all night in shifts, we had long since burned the wood we’d brought with us, and it had been years since Mia and her family had been up to the cabin, so whatever scraps of wood had been left in the shed had mostly rotted in the damp rain forest air.

  “You okay?” I said.

  He turned to look up at me. “What?”

  “I know it’s bugging you that Galen took charge.”

  Liam shrugged. “Whatever. I get it. Straight guys need to feel like they’re in control. That’s not what’s bugging me.”

  “Then what?” I asked.

  Liam hesitated. Our voices weren’t echoing off the lake anymore, not the way they had yesterday. Did it have something to do with the mist?

  “Something about this whole thing doesn’t add up,” he said at last. “I mean, take the satellite phone. Someone steals our phone, but we realize it’
s missing, so they put it back. Then they steal it again the next day? How is that even possible? Wouldn’t someone have seen them?”

  I nodded, even as I shivered again. Now it was from the cold. I’d left my jacket inside, and the chill of the water on my feet was making my whole body shake.

  “But that’s what happened,” I said. “Either that, or we really did misplace the phone the night before, and then they stole it for real.”

  “I know, I know,” Liam said. “But that doesn’t feel right. I mean, it sounds preposterous.”

  I didn’t say anything for a second, just scratched my wrist. Then I nodded to the shed and said, “There’s no wood, is there?”

  “Nothing usable. And there’s no point looking out there,” he said, meaning the nearby trees. “Everything is so damn wet. I feel like I’m never going to be dry again.”

  I stared out at the dripping rain forest. If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve sworn it was closer now, that it was inching in on us.

  He stood up and stepped closer to me. I immediately took him in my arms. I know a lot of girls like guys to be bigger than they are so they can feel protected, and a lot of guys like girls to be smaller so they can feel like protectors. But one of the things I loved about being with Liam, about being with a guy, is that we were the same size. It felt more like a relationship between equals, not just emotionally, but physically too. Two halves of one whole.

  “We’re going to get through this,” I said. “Two weeks from now, when Google Earth is finally getting around to showing us hugging next to this firewood shed, you and I are going to be home and content. And dry. Really, really dry.”

  I expected Liam to laugh or at least say something, but he was looking intently down at the ground. He pulled away and bent over, digging for something in the moss.

  “What is it?” I said.

  He picked something up with his left hand and held it out to me. “It’s a match,” he said. It hadn’t been lit.

  “So?”

  He looked over at the barrel where the fire had burned the day before, only five or six feet away.

  “Liam?” I said. “What is it?”

  He ignored me and stepped closer to the barrel. He leaned down to look inside, at the ashes of yesterday’s fire.

  “Liam?”

  He turned around and showed me the match again. “This is how they lit the fire. A match like this. If it was an old match, it’d be rotten.”

  “I guess. So what?”

  “So whoever lit that fire yesterday must’ve dropped it by accident.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Again, so what? Are you planning on dusting it for fingerprints?”

  “No, but look at it.” He held it up to me one more time.

  I still had no idea what he was getting at.

  “It’s blue,” he said. “The head.”

  “So?”

  “So most matches are red.”

  “And?”

  “The matches in the box we brought with us are blue!”

  I remembered the matches we’d been using all weekend. They were still on the mantle by the fireplace. And they were definitely blue. But I didn’t see what Liam was getting at.

  “Don’t you see?” he said. “One of us lit that fire.”

  I tried to understand what he was saying, but it still didn’t make any sense. “Just because it was lit with matches from inside the cabin? But the cabin was unlocked. It’s always unlocked.”

  Liam started pacing back and forth, his bare feet squishing in the soggy moss.

  “It never really made sense.” Liam was thinking out loud. “Not just the satellite phone. All of it. So what if the Brummits are angry with Mia’s parents and grandparents? Mia’s family knows they’re angry. I bet the whole county knows they’re angry. I can’t believe they’d be stupid enough to pick an open fight like this. People out here must sell land to logging companies all the time. So who’s going to take the Brummits’ side on this? And even if they are pissed off enough to risk being arrested, are they really going to lurk around pulling pranks in the rain for forty-eight hours? If they’re that angry, and that crazy, why not light the cabin on fire and be done with it? Why didn’t they set this cabin on fire years ago?”

  “Because it wouldn’t burn in the rain forest, for one thing,” I said.

  “Rob, you’re missing the point.”

  “Besides, I’m not saying it was the adults. I’m saying it was their kids.”

  “Because of something that happened three years ago? Because someone did something to their parents’ cabin’s view? Does that sound like something their kids would care about? No. Let’s face it. The whole thing with the Brummits, we were totally jumping to conclusions.”

  We weren’t totally jumping to conclusions—I was. It had been my theory from the start. But I guess I could see what Liam was getting at.

  “So it isn’t the Brummits,” I said. “So it’s some backwoods loner. Or some kids on mountain bikes.”

  “There weren’t any other tire tracks on the road coming in. And there haven’t been any other footprints around the cabin either, even in all the moss and mud. Just ours. If this is a bunch of kids, they must be part elf.”

  “But someone was here,” I said. “Someone lit that fire. And someone stole our phone and poked holes in the gas tank of the car.”

  “Don’t you get it?” he said, almost angry. “It was one of us. All of it. The fire, the outhouse, the car. As for the phone, who else could have taken it twice, right out from under our noses?”

  “But why would one of us have done all those things? I mean, strand us here without a phone or a car? That goes way beyond any prank.”

  “How well do we know Galen anyway?”

  I laughed, but Liam didn’t.

  “Wait . . . ,” I said. “You’re serious?”

  “Think it through. He was the one who suggested we come to this cabin in the first place. And he was the one who said we should come back to the cabin today, that we shouldn’t try to walk out to the main road. He was also the one who didn’t want to leave yesterday. And what’s with the mood swings? One minute he’s all cool and hipster, the next minute he’s jumpy and irritated. He’s nervous about something.”

  I was pretty sure this was really about the fact that Liam didn’t like Galen.

  “Let’s just slow down,” I said, trying to sound patient.

  Liam shook his head. “No! This is the only thing that makes any sense. Galen also knew exactly how to sabotage the car. No one else knew where to poke the holes. And he was the one who suggested we check to see if it was still running.”

  “He did that for me, because I was upset,” I said. “And he’s not nervous. He just gets moody in the afternoon. You know that. And how does it make sense that he was able to light a fire from miles away? Galen was with the rest of us up on that hill when that fire started burning.”

  “He delayed it somehow,” Liam said. He turned back toward the metal barrel and leaned down inside, rooting around in the ashes themselves. “He set everything up, then used some kind of time-delayed fuse to actually light the fire.” He voice echoed in the barrel. “A slow-burning wood or a stick of incense.” He bolted upright, a small wad of melted wax in his hand. “A candle! He lit a taper in the bin, but it didn’t burn down to reach the paper and the kindling until we were almost up the hill!”

  I hesitated. I’d thought the blue match was just a coincidence, but the melted wax? It did sort of fit what Liam was saying.

  Then I remembered. “Mia said they use that bin to burn garbage. So they once burned something made of wax.” Before Liam could object, I added, “Besides, we still don’t have a why. Why would Galen do all this?”

  “Because he likes jerking people around! Think it through. You saw the way he acted when we were skinny-dipping. What was all that about? And going skinny-dipping was his idea!” Liam twitched he was so angry.

  He had another good point. Galen had definitely known wh
at he was doing that night at the lake. He clearly liked screwing with people, and he also liked being in control. He was mechanically minded, the kind of person who invented watering guns and makeshift alarm systems, exactly the kind of person to rig up something like the candle in the fire bin. And while it had been my idea to go away in the first place, it was Galen who’d come up with the idea of coming to this cabin. What had he said? That he’d seen a photo of it at Mia’s house? I’d been to Mia’s house—only once, but still—and I didn’t remember any photo.

  Then there was our game of Three Truths and Lie. Galen had been the best liar by far, the only one who’d fooled everyone, at least without cheating like Mia.

  I didn’t tell Liam what I was thinking because I didn’t want to encourage him. What if we were wrong? But I was starting to think there was at least a forty percent chance we weren’t.

  “It’s Galen,” Liam was saying. “It’s Occam’s razor.”

  “What?” I said.

  “That’s the principle that says the simplest explanation for something is usually the right one. If you think you hear horses, it’s probably horses, not zebras.”

  “You think the simplest explanation for all this is that the longtime boyfriend of your best friend joined us at a cabin in the rain forest so he could secretly harass us? That Mia just happens to be dating a serial killer?”

  Liam stopped twitching. He stopped moving entirely. “Who said anything about a serial killer?” he said.

  “I didn’t mean he’s a serial killer,” I said quickly. “I just meant that the whole thing is crazy.”

  “Seriously, Rob! Who said anything about a serial killer? You really think we’re in that much danger?” For all his amazing brain power, Liam’s confidence could be squashed like a bug.

  “No,” I said as firmly as I knew how. “Not at all.” I stepped forward and hugged him again, even if he now felt stiff and tense in my arms, even if my bare feet were colder than ever in the wet moss.

  As I held him, he asked in a muffled voice, “So what do we do now?”

  But my own bravado had been all an act. I didn’t have the slightest clue what to do next.

  “Maybe we can get Galen to admit what he’s done,” I said.