by Kara Thomas
There are stitches on her lower lip. A bruise blooming on her chin. Her ankle is bound and propped up on the bed. Dizziness washes through me.
“What are you doing here?” Katie demands, yanking her shirt down the rest of the way. She winces. Mrs. Kouchinsky clutches the curtain.
“We wanted to see if you were okay,” Callie says. “What happened?”
“I fell down the stairs.” Katie averts her eyes to the ID bracelet on her wrist. “I’m sorry, but can you please leave?”
Katie looks at her mother to back her up; Ruth Kouchinsky says nothing, her beady eyes brimming with tears.
Callie turns to her. “There are people who can help you both.” Her own voice is choked with tears. Mrs. Kouchinsky looks away. I feel sick.
The nurse from the desk pushes the curtain aside and hands Mrs. Kouchinsky a clipboard with paperwork. While she’s hunched over, signing it, Callie leans in to Katie.
“If you know something—something that he doesn’t want you telling people, this is going to get a lot worse.” Callie nods to Katie’s ankle. “You owe it to your little brother and sister to speak up. You owe it to Ari—”
“Stop,” Katie says, loudly enough that her mother and the nurse look up. “You don’t know anything, Callie, and you never cared about Ari before, so just stop.”
Callie flinches in surprise, and I suck in a breath; I’ve never seen Katie like this before, and I can tell Callie hasn’t either.
“You two need to leave.” The nurse points at Callie and me.
Callie gestures to Katie, her hands shaking. “You’re not going to do something about this?”
“Come on.” The nurse steps behind us, herding us away from Katie. Callie stops and looks back at the curtain.
“I’ll get security if I have to,” the nurse says, holding up a hand.
“Callie,” I whisper. “We have to go.”
“She—her dad did that to her,” Callie says, angry tears in her eyes. “You guys have to call the cops.”
“Honey, we can’t call anyone if they don’t want us to.”
“She’s seventeen, and she—could be in danger,” I cut in, suddenly annoyed by the nurse’s apathy. “Isn’t there a law that says you have to call?”
The nurse’s face softens. “It’s a sprained ankle and a cut lip. That girl very well could’ve fallen down the stairs,” she says. “She doesn’t want to press charges. We see this every day, and she’s right that you’re gonna make it worse for her if you try to get involved.”
Callie’s mouth hangs open. The nurse escorts us through the doors and deposits us at the curb. A woman rolls a little boy in a wheelchair, his arm in a sling, down the ramp past us.
Callie and I stand to the side of the doors, neither of us moving to head back to the car. A siren sounds somewhere behind us.
“That nurse had a point,” I say. “If you’re right about Mr. Kouchinsky, that he killed Ari and he feels like everything is closing in on him, who knows what he’ll do.”
There was a huge story a few years ago in Florida. It happened in a town not far from Gram’s. An ex-stockbroker was about to go to jail for embezzlement, so he shot his wife and three kids before setting fire to the house and killing himself. A shudder ripples through me.
“If I’m right about him—” Callie stops midsentence. “Tess, we could have helped stop him from killing again. If we’d said we didn’t see the man’s face, they would have kept looking for the Monster.”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” I tell her. “There’s no evidence that Ari’s dad is the Monster.”
“Does it matter who the Monster is?” Callie starts, the words sticking in her throat. “He could be out there—Lori’s killer is still out there—because of us.”
I can’t tell her to stop blaming herself for Ariel’s death. People do this all the time, I’ve learned, when they’re feeling guilty. They think that maybe if they’d done one thing differently, they could have stopped a chain reaction from starting.
I used to believe that it was a useless way to think. I thought that if you refused to play the role the universe has planned for you, someone else would just step up and take it. I convinced myself that if Callie and I hadn’t testified against Stokes, the district attorney’s office would have found someone else.
I convinced myself that Stokes would have gone to jail for the other murders even if Lori Cawley had never been killed that night. Being cast in the role of the Monster was simply the plan the universe had laid out for Wyatt Stokes.
I don’t know if I believe that anymore. I don’t know if I ever truly believed it at all, or if it’s just the armor I invented to protect myself from my own guilt.
I never thought Callie would be the one to chip away at the armor. She was always the one who was so sure Stokes had killed Lori, the one who wouldn’t even listen to anyone who suggested otherwise.
I don’t feel comforted by this. I feel like I’m drifting away from a harbor at night, like someone has snapped the chain of the anchor beneath me.
I suck in a breath, and look over at Callie. “You’ve got to stay away from the Kouchinskys,” I say. “At least for now.”
“Okay,” Callie says, a little too distractedly. “Can I have the keys?” she asks as we make our way back to the car. “I’m fine to drive now.”
I hand them over without a fight; I’m tired, and I don’t feel like navigating the dark highway again. Once I’m settled into the passenger seat, I stick my hand into my pocket and cover my phone, waiting for it to ring.
I keep it there the whole ride home.
I keep it there at dinner, eating with one hand as Callie lies to Maggie and says Katie is just a little scratched up.
When it’s time for bed, I put my phone on the pillow next to me and fall asleep still waiting for my mother to call.
•••
Vibrating. My phone is ringing, and I’m so disoriented that I knock it onto the floor.
I lean over to fish it out of the crevice between the nightstand and bed, where it’s fallen. I frown when I see the number on the display.
Callie is calling me. Why is she calling me from her room? I look up at the cuckoo clock, which says it’s one in the morning.
“Hello?” My voice is gravelly. I swallow twice.
“Uh, hey, Tessa?” It’s a male voice. “It’s Ryan.”
“Where’s Callie?” I sit up, suddenly awake.
“She’s with me. There’s kind of an issue.”
“What are you talking about?” I whisper-hiss.
“Uh…she’s in no shape to drive, but she won’t leave without her car—and now she’s yelling at me.”
Indeed, Callie is yelling in the background. Another voice—a male’s—interjects, trying to calm her down, I guess.
“Where are you?” I ask, panicked, running through the million different ways in which this could turn into a disaster.
Ryan sighs. “A motel off 80. What’s it called?” he says, away from the mouthpiece of his phone.
“Doyle Motor Inn,” a muffled male voice says in the background. I know who it belongs to.
“Callie is drunk in a hotel with Nick Snyder?” I hiss.
“I’ll explain in person,” Ryan says. “If I come get you, will you help drive her car back? I’ve got work at five and I can’t leave my truck here.”
I look at the clock. “Fine. But you better tell me everything that happened. Everything.”
•••
Ryan idles a few houses down from the Greenwoods’, since his truck is loud. I jog down the street as soon as he texts me that he’s here. I’m still in my sleep shorts, which are little more than glorified men’s boxers, and I didn’t bother to put on a bra.
Ryan pulls away from the curb before I even have the chance to close the passenger door.
“What the hell happened?” I ask.
Ryan rubs his chin, looking irritated. “We were hanging out around ten, me and Callie. I knew she m
ust’ve known where Nick was all along; I’m not dumb.” Ryan sighs, grips the steering wheel. “So I made up this story about how my uncle knew where Nick was hiding and the cops were gonna arrest him in the morning.”
“She went to warn him, didn’t she?” I ask. Callie is so damn predictable. It’s going to get us into trouble.
Ryan rolls his window up as he merges, so he doesn’t have to shout over the sound of the highway. “She led me right to his motel.”
“It’s not the first time,” I say. “We were there the other night.”
Ryan’s jaw hardens, and I feel like a real dumbass for not seeing it sooner. I mean, I saw the signs—Callie calling Ari a whore, Callie dropping everything to help Nick in the middle of the night—but I hadn’t actually put it together until now.
Nick was the guy Callie liked but who hooked up with Ari. Nick was the reason they weren’t friends anymore.
“Sorry,” I say. “I wasn’t thinking. I forgot that you and Callie—”
I come to a full stop right there. I don’t have a word for what Callie and Ryan are.
“It’s cool,” Ryan says. “We’re not…She can do what she wants.”
There’s an edge to his voice, though. Before I can probe, Ryan turns on the radio. A classic rock station, WFCN, my father’s favorite. His car radio, the boom box he left on the porch—both were tuned to WFCN. I knew all the words to “Stairway to Heaven” before I could read.
When I was really little, like three or four, I would bungle the lyrics to AC/DC’s “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” a song the station played at least twice a day. I thought the singer was saying dry your nuts instead of drive you nuts, which my father found hysterical. When his friends would come over, he’d shout, “Sing ‘Dirty Deeds,’ Tessy!” and they’d all laugh when I got to enough to dry your nuts. Everyone hooted, clutching their stomachs, except my mother, and I could never understand why she was so mad at me when I was making everyone laugh.
A nineties grunge song pulls me back to the present. Clearly, the definition of classic rock has shifted since I was a kid. Just this once, I wish something had stayed the same.
•••
Nick lets us into the motel room. He reeks of weed, and his eyes are bloodshot.
“Come on, man,” Ryan says, exasperated. “You’re asking to get caught.”
“I don’t care anymore.” Nick is an angry drunk. I can tell, because I’ve known a lot of angry drunks.
Callie sits on one of the twin beds, her back against the headboard. Her eyes are closed.
“Let’s go.” I shake her knee. “Before your parents wake up.”
Callie groans. I resist the urge to slap her. She’s risking my getting sent home over a boy. A stupid boy who makes poor decisions and isn’t even that good-looking.
I use both hands to shake Callie now. “UP.”
Eyes still closed, she swings one leg over the side of the bed. That’s when I notice the empty bottle of Bacardi on the floor. So does Ryan.
“You let her finish it?” he practically yells at Nick.
“I don’t tell her what to do,” Nick says. There is the slightest emphasis on I, which Ryan obviously catches. He looks pissed.
“Come on,” he mumbles. We both have to help hold Callie up, even though she slurs that she can walk on her own.
“Shut up,” I hiss into her ear. “You’ve done enough, okay?”
“Yo, ease up on her,” Nick says. “She’s the only one who’s still on my side.”
I’m about to tell him to shut up too, but Ryan interrupts. “So I’m not on your side, because I think you should go home? Nice.” His face is flooded with color.
“You want me to go to jail for something I didn’t do?” Nick demands from where he’s sitting on the bed. Ryan shakes his head, but he’s not looking at Nick.
Nick stands up from the bed, and a chill crawls up my back.
“You think I did do it?” he says, getting in Ryan’s face. “Is that what you think?”
Callie whimpers. I pull her away from Ryan as he returns Nick’s scowl.
“I don’t know what I think anymore, man,” Ryan mutters. “You’re sure acting like a criminal.”
Nick looks like he’s going to throw a punch, so I push Callie and Ryan out the door. Nick grabs the knob to stop me from closing it. My heart stops.
“You believe I didn’t do it.” Nick looks me right in the eye. His lids are drooping, his words a little slurred, but his voice is insistent. “I can tell. You’ve got to go on Connect. Find the guy.”
“There was a man who didn’t want sex,” I say, my thoughts a rapid-fire stream in my head. “Did she talk about him?”
Nick looks more alert. “Captain. That was his username. Captain something.”
“Are you sure?” I ask him.
“Yeah, she liked Captain. Said he was older and his wife just died,” Nick says. “I told the cops about him, but they acted like I just made it up.”
“Tessa, we’ve got to go,” Ryan says. I look over at them and see that Callie has vomited all over the concrete.
“We have to find out who Captain is,” Nick says to me. “Just get on Connect, okay?”
Before I can respond, Nick has shut the door in my face.
My stomach is unsettled as Ryan and I load Callie into the minivan. I don’t realize until I’m behind the wheel that Nick said we have to find Captain.
I don’t know when we happened, but I don’t like it.
•••
Callie is passed out for the entire ride home. I lean over occasionally, to make sure she’s breathing. It’s a good thing I paid attention to the route Ryan took to the motel, because Callie’s in no shape to help me figure out how to get home.
I nudge her awake as I pull into the driveway. She stirs and whines.
“Get it together,” I hiss. “You screwed up big-time.”
“Why?” she slurs.
“If we get caught, your mom will send me away,” I say.
“Isn’t that what you want?” she blubbers. “To go back to your nice life in Florida and forget I ever existed again?”
I’m dumbstruck. Is that really what she thinks, or is the Bacardi talking? She’s the one who pretended I didn’t exist anymore; she’s the one who carried on with her life and her friends while I thought of Wyatt Stokes every single day for the past ten years. While Callie was numbing herself with booze and high school parties, I’m the one who went straight home every day and visited the forums, a ritual that became a prison. School, Gram’s house, work, Gram’s house. And not a single meaningful relationship in between.
My life became a self-imposed prison, because a prison was what I deserved. Callie has just been avoiding her sentence until now.
I can’t push words out around the lump in my throat. I just want to be done with her, done with this place. I’ll go back to my prison in Florida if I have to, because anything is better than this.
And of course, because I’ve decided that I can’t possibly feel worse right now, a light goes on in the living room. Maggie is staring out the window, right at us.
Maggie doesn’t look at me or speak. We silently help Callie up the stairs and into her bed. Maggie mutters something unintelligible at her, but Callie doesn’t respond, her head lolling to the side.
She’s blacked out.
Finally, Maggie looks up at me. “What happened?”
A lie sticks on my tongue, that we went to the STI and things got a little out of hand. But even I wouldn’t go to a bar in what I’m wearing. Maggie won’t buy it.
If I say I had to pick Callie up from the bar, Maggie is the type of person who will report them for serving Callie alcohol.
“I had to pick her up,” I say slowly. “From a friend’s.”
“Which friend?” Maggie’s voice is sharp. The whole scene—her angry face, Callie’s practically lifeless body, the twirling trophies surrounding us—feels like it’s falling away around me.
I can�
�t throw Ryan under the bus for this. And it’ll be even worse if I tell the truth. “She asked me not to say.”
“Goddamn it, Tessa.” Maggie covers her face, probably wondering when my allegiance shifted from her to Callie. “That’s the thing I’d expect to hear from my daughter.”
My heart squeezes. Her daughter, which I am clearly not. “I’m sorry.”
“We’ll talk in the morning. I don’t want to wake Rick up.” She leaves without a glance back at me.
•••
We don’t talk in the morning. When I wake up, Maggie and Rick are gone. There’s a note on the kitchen counter.
Went to Nana’s. Back in the afternoon. Cold cuts in the fridge for lunch.
No mention of the deep shit Callie and I are in. But in my gut, I know that without a doubt, when Maggie gets home, we’re going to have a talk about how long I plan on staying in Fayette.
I’m running out of time. And all I have are random pieces that I’m not even sure fit the same puzzle.
I’ve seen Unmasking the Monster so many times, I practically have the transcript memorized, but there’s always one line that sticks in my head. Something that a private investigator who took on the case pro bono after Stokes was in jail said.
I’ve always said that one person could blow this case apart—one person who saw something or knows something and isn’t coming forward.
I pour myself a glass of orange juice and look at the clock over the sink. It’s a little after ten. I head upstairs and knock on Callie’s door. When she doesn’t answer, I open it.
She’s asleep facing the doorway, her mouth open slightly. Snoring. It’s stifling in here; no one ever turned on the AC unit in her room last night. I turn it on and shut the door behind me.
I haven’t had any calls since leaving my number for my mother. I sit my phone next to me on the bed and reach behind the headboard, where I left my father’s stuff.
What would I have said to him, had I made it in time? What would he have said to me?
I’m sorry, baby. That’s the last thing he said to me before he went away. He cried in the courtroom, the papers said. He looked right at Manuel Gonzalo and told him how sorry he was that he would never walk again. My father played the part of the repentant convict and begged for leniency, but it didn’t matter. He still got a life sentence.