by Kara Thomas
Mrs. Marcotte straightens, her eyes welling with tears. “It’s everywhere.”
“Beth.” Mr. Marcotte’s voice is sharp. “Leave it.”
My father makes a strangled sound that’s half-sigh, half-throat clearing. He sidesteps me and opens the door for the sheriff. The second he crosses the threshold into the kitchen, Kat’s parents snap to attention.
“Sheriff,” Mr. Marcotte says, pink blooming up and down his neck. “Did you call?”
McAuliffe slips his hands into the front pockets of his pants, rocks back on his heels. “No—sorry, folks, I didn’t mean to alarm you. I’m afraid I don’t have any news.”
I allow myself the smallest of exhales. No news means no bodies.
“No apologies necessary.” Mr. Marcotte waves the sheriff, who is still lingering in the doorway, inside. “Come, sit. I’d offer you coffee, but…”
The weak joke seems to recharge Mr. Marcotte. He pulls out a chair at the kitchen table for the sheriff, who glances over at me. “Actually…I’d like to talk to Claire, if she’s feeling up to it.”
I knew this was coming, that I would eventually have to talk to the sheriff again, but I still feel like I’m standing in the middle of the street, staring down a bus barreling toward me.
“Of course.” Mr. Marcotte grips the back of the kitchen chair, gestures a hand to me. “For you.”
McAuliffe takes his hat off, crushes it between his hands. “Actually—is there somewhere I could speak with Claire in private?”
Mr. Marcotte pauses. “Of course. Maybe the patio—”
My heartbeat rises to a steady gallop as Mr. Marcotte moves to the patio door at the rear of the kitchen, sliding it open. The sheriff is the first to step outside, his body pitching slightly to one side.
My feet are rooted to the kitchen floor; Dad nods for me to follow him.
Mr. Marcotte stands by the door like a sentry as we file out. He gives me an encouraging smile as he shuts the door, closing us on the patio. I picture the smile dissolving from his face once he is alone inside with his wife, cut off from whatever is about to go down out here.
McAuliffe deposits himself into one of the chairs at the patio table. Dad and I arrange ourselves so I’m across from the sheriff, the sun-warmed metal chair searing into my bare thighs.
“I hope it’s all right I sit in,” Dad says. His tone is crisp, aimed at McAuliffe.
“I—yes.” McAuliffe lifts his hat from his head, scratches a spot on his brow before replacing it. “That should not be a problem.”
I wedge my trembling hands between my thighs to calm them. McAuliffe is obviously not here with an update, because he would have asked to speak to Kat’s parents; whatever he is here to ask me about can’t be good if he doesn’t want the Marcottes to hear it.
“Well, best get to it. We found this not far from where you were found.” McAuliffe sets my phone on the patio table, a slight tremor in his hand. “I’m sorry we couldn’t return it to you sooner. We needed to determine if it held any information relevant to the search.”
Dad frowns. “Can you do that without her permission?”
“We were only interested in the GPS data,” McAuliffe says.
“How were you able to bypass her security code?” he asks.
“I don’t have one,” I say as a sigh sneaks from my dad’s lips.
“Did you get the GPS data?” I ask, throwing my father a nasty look, cutting off the lecture I know he’s dying to give me about personal security.
“Some,” McAuliffe says, his voice even. “There’s no service on the trails, but there’s a bit in the parking lot and at Devil’s Peak. We were able to determine some things based on when your phone made and lost contact with the cell tower near Bobcat Mountain.”
McAuliffe pauses, as if giving me a moment to remember some things. But my memory of Saturday is as blank as it was when I woke up on Bobcat Mountain.
The air is thick with the impending storm, the gentle breeze through the trees the only thing making sitting under the late-afternoon sun tolerable. There’s sweat pooling under the arms of the sheriff’s white shirt. “The times are all approximate, but it would appear you got to the mountain at one and reached Devil’s Peak around three. Your phone lost contact with the nearby tower around four Saturday afternoon.”
McAuliffe is quiet, his fingers working the troublesome spot on his leg beneath the table, as I process this information. We didn’t get lost on our way up the mountain. We made it to Devil’s Peak.
We made it all the way there just to turn back an hour later?
I glance at Dad; one hand is tucked in his opposite armpit, the other covering his mouth, as he studies McAuliffe.
My voice cracks when I finally speak. “I don’t know why we would have turned around. I don’t even remember being there—”
Dad reaches and covers my hand with his. I blink away tears.
McAuliffe clears his throat. “I think we should take a step back. Focus on what you do remember. Did you three stop anywhere else on the way to the lake house Friday?”
“Anywhere besides the bar where I asked for directions? No.”
McAuliffe’s gaze flicks to my father, then back to me. “You’re sure you came straight to the lake house after the Merry Mackerel?”
“Yeah. Where else would we have gone at eight o’clock at night in a strange town?”
My dad gives me a warning glance while McAuliffe produces a handkerchief from his shirt pocket, mops his head. “Claire, we found an empty bottle of vodka at Devil’s Peak.”
I don’t know what to say. What does he expect me to say? If we were drinking, it’s not like I would even remember.
Were we drinking? That makes no sense. Drinking is not something the three of us ever really did together. I did my fair share of it with Ben and his friends, and sometimes Kat and I managed to get our hands on a bottle of wine from one of the chefs at Stellato’s. But Jesse didn’t drink, and out of fear it would make me get too honest, I didn’t drink around Jesse.
“Are you sure you didn’t perhaps stop at a liquor store at some point?” McAuliffe’s voice is prodding, as if my silence were some sort of admission.
“No,” I say. “None of us even has a fake ID. Kat and Jesse don’t really drink.”
McAuliffe clears his throat. “Claire, there was also an empty bottle of wine in Kat’s trunk.”
“Kat brought that. She and I drank it Friday night.” I avoid my father’s eyes. “We didn’t get drunk or anything—it was practically apple—”
Dad cuts in: “I don’t mean to be rude, but what does the girls having wine Friday night have to do with what happened Saturday? The emergency room doctor said Claire’s blood alcohol content was completely normal when she arrived.”
I can’t help tossing Dad an irritated glare, for knowing something about me that I didn’t even know myself.
McAuliffe looks at me. “It’s not uncommon for teenagers to conceal drinking problems, even from their closest friends.”
“I’m sorry, which one of us are you saying has a secret drinking problem?” As the words leave my mouth, Dad’s body tenses next to mine, his eyelids fluttering shut.
“I understand that alcoholism runs in Jesse’s family,” McAuliffe says.
“His uncle’s side,” I say. “But it’s not his biological uncle.”
McAuliffe shifts in his chair. “Claire—when I spoke with Jesse’s aunt, she seemed concerned that he was depressed.”
Something about McAuliffe’s tone makes my heartbeat stall. I know how other people see Jesse; head always bent over a guitar, average-to-less-than-average grades, no interest in college. On the surface, he’s the opposite of Kat in every single way, but it doesn’t mean he has no ambition of his own. As much as he loves playing music, his dream is to write it.
Jesse’s aunt might look at him and see someone who has withdrawn from life; I know Jesse Salpietro, though, and it’s only because he’s imagining a better one. “He’s not depressed,” I say.
“She said he was sleeping more than usual during the day,” McAuliffe says. “And he was on the phone until very late each night.”
“He naps when he gets home from work because his job is tiring. He has to wake up at four thirty, and he’s on his feet all day.”
McAuliffe frowns. “Are you aware his band broke up last month?”
Jesse was one of my best friends and he hadn’t told me Salt Lyfe broke up? I think of waking up in Jesse’s bed the other morning. How he’d been at his computer, headphones in, dead to the world. Whenever he was around that Fender, it was in his arms, calloused fingers working the strings, but he hadn’t been playing.
“He hadn’t mentioned it,” I say, deflating.
Dad is searching my gaze, his forehead creasing. McAuliffe, on the other hand, looks as if he’s about to tell me he ran over my beloved pet with his pickup truck. “Did Kat ever express concern about Jesse’s behavior? Any issues with jealousy, maybe?”
“No,” I say. “Why are you asking this? Jesse is missing too, but you’re acting like he’s a suspect or something.”
I look over at my dad for some reassurance that I have it wrong—that McAuliffe’s focus on Jesse’s state of mind is totally innocuous—but he’s watching the sheriff, worry in his eyes.
McAuliffe’s voice is gentle when he finally speaks. “Claire, partner violence can happen even among teenagers. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t consider that whatever happened at Devil’s Peak was a domestic incident.”
Domestic incident. Like, a murder-suicide? The thought zaps all the oxygen from my blood. I lean forward, rest my elbows on the patio table, bury my face in my hands.
“Claire?” Dad has me by the shoulders. “Honey, are you with us?”
I blink until Dad’s face comes into focus; the sheriff is on his feet, crossing over to us.
“Yeah,” I mumble through the prickly feeling of my blood returning to my lips. “I’m fine.”
“Is there anything else you need from us, Sheriff?” Dad asks.
“I, well, there’s just one more thing I need to do right away.” McAuliffe looks flustered at the interview being cut short. “It won’t take long.”
McAuliffe reaches in the pocket of his khakis. My insides frost over as I see what he’s holding—a digital camera.
“I’ll need to take photographs of Claire’s injuries,” he says. “It’s protocol.”
Dad blinks at McAuliffe. “Why wasn’t this done in the hospital?”
McAuliffe’s face flushes. “Well, truthfully, when Claire was brought in, the rangers didn’t realize they were dealing with a potential crime.”
The word lands like a kick to my stomach. I think of the girl in the emergency room mirror. It was as if I had woken up in someone else’s body. Covered in scratches, bruises, that cut I had no memory of getting.
McAuliffe turns the camera over in his hands. A troubled hmm leaves his lips. “Er, one moment—”
He doesn’t know how to turn the damn thing on. After some fiddling, the camera chirps to life; McAuliffe uses his free hand to dig out his handkerchief and mop the sweat from his forehead. “Claire, if you wouldn’t mind standing.”
I ignore the steady thump in my chest and move against the side of the house. Obey all of McAuliffe’s directions. Tilt your head, snap. Turn this way, snap.
“If you could turn your hands up, please.”
I close my eyes, feel McAuliffe’s gaze lingering over my cut, now reduced to a thin pink scab. When I force myself to look at him, the sheriff is holding his camera to his chest. His cheeks have gone pink. “If you wouldn’t mind—your legs—could you turn a bit for me?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
I glance down while McAuliffe scans my bare legs. Shut my eyes until he speaks.
“I think I have all I need. Thank you both, for your time.”
I’m not sure how I’m supposed to respond, so I stay silent as Dad puts an arm around my shoulder and moves me aside so McAuliffe can slide open the back door to the kitchen.
In the window overlooking the patio, the curtains rustle. Dad’s arm tenses around me; I know he saw it too. Someone—one of Kat’s parents—watching us, maybe, studying the words forming on our lips.
But when we make our way into the kitchen, it’s empty, silent except for the hum of the fridge. The floor tiles are gleaming white, not a trace of the mess that was there earlier.
* * *
—
Dad shuts me in the bedroom with a command to nap while he picks up my painkillers and Ativan from the pharmacy in town. I close my eyes, listen for the slam of his car door in the driveway outside the window over my bed. Moments ago, Mr. Marcotte left to return to the mountain. I don’t know where Mrs. Marcotte has disappeared to or where Kat’s grandmother is. I haven’t seen Marian at all since she visited me in the hospital.
I curl up on my side, away from the window. My phone is charging on the nightstand beside me. For the past several days, I felt untethered without it. Now, I’m avoiding it like it’s a grenade.
I can’t bring myself to listen to the panicked voice mails my parents must have left when I didn’t check in Saturday night. Or read the texts from people at school, who have no doubt heard by now that something happened to the three of us this weekend. How do I even begin to explain myself?
Yes, I was there. No, I have no idea what happened, because I have post-traumatic amnesia. No, I’m not full of shit, I swear.
I shut my eyes against the ache brewing behind them. Even more than the prescription-strength ibuprofen waiting for me at the pharmacy, I want the Ativan. I want to slip away into numbness, to sleep until this nightmare is over.
My heartbeat picks up, the memory of my Ambien trip sending gooseflesh rippling across my body. The nurse had said Ambien can make people hallucinate.
But what if the hallucination had grown from some seed of truth? Had I actually remembered something while I was unconscious? What—or who—was I running from? I’d thought maybe I got separated from Jesse and Kat after I hit my head; Kat was an experienced hiker. She would have known it was too dangerous for me to hike down with a head injury. Had she and Jesse left to get help, only for something worse to happen to them on the way down?
The only problem with that theory is that neither Kat nor Jesse would leave me alone, hurt and without cell service, on the side of a mountain.
So then, what—had I gotten hurt after we got separated? According to the sheriff, the data on my phone revealed that we made it to Devil’s Peak in the afternoon. We were supposed to camp overnight, and yet, by four, my phone was so far deep in the wood, it stopped pinging the nearby tower completely.
Why would we hike all the way there just to turn around?
For me to turn around. There’s nothing to suggest Kat and Jesse were with me, that they left the campsite at all.
I move my hand up to my neck, let my fingers find the bump at the base of my head. If I was running through the woods, I could have tripped on a rock or one of the gnarled tree roots jutting from the trail. If I was running, terrified and distracted, I could have fallen hard enough to knock myself out.
But why was I running? Why was I so terrified? Because of something I’d seen at Devil’s Peak?
I lie back on my pillow, press the heels of my hands to my eyes.
No. Jesse wouldn’t hurt Kat or me. I’ve never even seen him get angry. Even in freshman year, when he got into a fight in the hallway with some asshole sophomore who’d been teasing him, Jesse was white in the face when a teacher pulled the other kid off him. When Jesse looked down at his hands, drenched in the blood spurting from his nose, he’d
started to tremble, completely unaware of me shoving a maxi pad from my bag at him to stem the flow of blood.
No. Jesse wouldn’t kill his girlfriend. He wouldn’t kill his girlfriend and then kill himself.
But that’s what McAuliffe thinks happened, right? He thinks Jesse was depressed.
I think of my best friends as I last remember them: curled into each other on the couch, asleep. It had been almost unbearable to watch—how happy and in love they were—unbearable because he wasn’t in love with me.
Now, though, I would do anything to have them back.
I wasn’t raised with religion, but I don’t know if I accept that it’s all random, that we’re not accountable to anyone. I make a silent bargain with whoever is listening: Please. I’ll get over him. I’ll accept them, I’ll be a better friend, if only they can come home and be okay.
I use my shoulder to nudge away the tears trickling down my cheek. Inhale, and grab my phone. I skip over everything—missed calls, a handful of texts and voice mails—and find Kat’s number in my contacts.
Kat never set up a voice greeting. An automated voice tells me the user I have reached is not available, to leave a message after the tone.
I end the call and hold my phone to my chest, my heart thumping like a jackrabbit’s. I know what I’ll hear if I call him and I know what it’ll do to me but I can’t help myself. Because if I can hear his voice, it means he’s still here, doesn’t it?
I find Jesse’s number, press call.
Hey, it’s Jesse—you should probably just text me instead of leaving me a long-ass voice mail I probably won’t listen to…
The bedroom door hinge creaks open. I flip my phone upside down to hide the light. Squeeze my eyes shut, my pillow wet under my cheek.
“Claire?” Dad whispers, the crinkle of a paper bag at his side.
I say nothing, letting my chest rise and fall steadily, as if I were asleep.