by Kara Thomas
Stay in the tent. Do what I say.
Last night, Claire and I were best friends. Today, it felt like she couldn’t stand breathing the same air as me.
What the hell had happened?
I tried to breathe around the crowding in my lungs as the elevation on the trail increased. The trees on each side thickened, blotting out the afternoon sun.
Last night.
I woke to Jesse climbing into bed; he said he’d gone to pee and apologized for waking me. But I could have sworn I saw the motion light in the backyard glow for a second before I turned over and went back to sleep.
There’s no way Jesse said something to her last night. He knew what was at stake for me—for both of us.
But maybe he’d changed his mind since Wednesday night. He’d said it was fucked up to leave Claire, alone in her tent, without Ben.
I’d convinced him we needed her. He didn’t know my grandmother—the depth of her cruelty—how far she’d go to protect what was hers. Her money, her blood.
She would not hand over that money unless she thought there was a good chance she’d get me back in return.
I resisted the urge to turn and look at Jesse; I gripped the straps on my pack and continued on, the sound of Jesse’s and Claire’s footsteps on the trail behind me.
* * *
—
By the time we reached Devil’s Peak and finished setting up the campsite, the sun was bending toward the horizon, the air cooling around us.
Claire collapsed into the foldable chair by the firepit and drained half a bottle of water. “I thought you said there was an amazing view.”
I bit back my irritation. “It’s a few minutes from here. I didn’t want us to drag all of our equipment there.”
Once Jesse returned from the clearing of trees with a pile of branches for the fire, I said, “Let’s go to the peak.”
Behind me, Claire sighed. We hiked through the clearing, up a steep staircase of stones, and emerged at the peak.
“Wow,” Jesse said, climbing up the boulder nestled into the rock ledge. His mouth hung open a bit, admiring the view.
Claire sank down until she was sitting butterfly-style, staring out at a point beyond the view, her mind elsewhere.
I dropped down next to her as Jesse pulled out his phone and began snapping pictures.
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” I asked. “I feel like you’re mad at me.”
“Nothing is wrong,” she said, and took a sip from her water bottle. “For someone who calls me insecure, you seem pretty obsessed with what I think about you.”
I bit down on the inside of my cheek, hard. “It’s weird that you’re my best friend and I want to know if we’re okay?” I asked.
Her stare—angry, aimed away from me, but purposefully avoiding Jesse as well—did nothing to squash the paranoia swelling in me. I let my own gaze travel over to Jesse.
Did he say something to her? There’s no way, with everything that’s at stake—
“Claire,” I said. “Are we okay?”
“I honestly don’t know.” Claire nudged a tear away with the back of her hand. And that’s how I knew, Jesse hadn’t told her about our escape.
He had done something—said something—to break her heart.
I let the silence balloon between us. I didn’t know what to say, and it was becoming difficult to form words around the pounding in my chest.
Claire straightened. “Do you remember that party we went to at Amos’s house?”
I swallowed. We never really talked about that party, so why was she bringing it up now? Why was she bringing Amos up now?
Claire had begged me to go to his house, and even though I couldn’t stand the thought of being around a bunch of St. Genevieve’s kids, watching them puke into my aunt’s crystal vases, I relented. I wound up getting drunk for the first time in my life. In the morning I could barely get out of Claire’s bed and had to lie to her mother that I had a migraine even though she definitely knew we were both hungover.
“Did you say anything to Jesse?” Claire asked. “About what may have happened at that party with Amos and me?”
My heartbeat went still. “No. I mean, I don’t think so? It was so long ago.”
“Okay.” Claire stood, tugged at the hem of her shorts. “I’m gonna go back to the campsite.”
“Wait,” I said.
Claire went still, a twig cracking under her sneaker. She crossed her arms over her chest as if she were cold. “Yeah?”
“I think Jesse asked how it was, and I said something like, the party was stupid but I think Claire and Amos had fun.”
She nodded, her jaw set. “You didn’t tell him I had sex with Amos?”
“Why would I say that?” I’d asked Claire what happened when she disappeared with Amos into his bedroom, and she said they just kissed.
Claire stared me down. “I can think of a reason.”
Before I could fumble out a response, she was gone.
* * *
—
After his photo shoot was over, Jesse plopped down next to me, his head heavy on my shoulder. “Where’d Claire go?”
“She left her phone at the campsite,” I lied, already scrambling to my feet. “I should make sure she got back there okay—the trail isn’t marked clearly—”
Jesse tugged at my hand. “Want me to come with?”
“No. Stay. Enjoy the view.” I planted a kiss on his cheek. “We’ll be back in a couple minutes.”
Jesse gripped my hand as I stood; I gripped back, slowly pulling away until only our fingertips were left touching, then let go.
* * *
—
At the campsite, I found Claire bent over my sister’s sky-blue hiking pack. Cheeks red, sweat pooling at her brow.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I think I should go back to the house.”
“What? Why?”
She straightened, one hand moving to her hip. “Why did you even ask me to come?”
“Because I wanted you to come?”
Claire snorted, crouched back down to her pack. “Why did you want Jesse to think I hooked up with your cousin?”
“What are you talking about?”
“That party we went to at Amos’s house. You told Jesse that Amos and I hooked up. Why?”
“Because I thought you did hook up with him.” I blinked at her. “Sorry I was a gossip over three years ago?”
“You don’t gossip. Except when you get something out of it.” Claire stared at me. “So what did you get? Jesse to think I was a slut with a thing for private-school guys?”
“Claire, this is insane.” Something in me snapped. The words fell out: “I know it must be hard to see us together.”
Claire’s stare went cold. “How do you mean?”
I swallowed. “Because you and Ben broke up, and you’re here alone—”
“No.” She shook her head, her mouth twitching with a ghastly little laugh. “That’s not what you meant. Just admit it. You already won, so there’s no point in lying.”
The comment leveled me; I lowered myself onto the log beside the firepit. Is that how she saw my entire relationship with Jesse? A prize she lost out on?
“We’re adults now,” I said, my voice trembling. “If you want to be pissed at me for something stupid that happened when we were fifteen, fine.”
“It wasn’t fucking stupid, Kat. Jesse changed toward me after that.”
“He changed toward you after his mom died. You said it yourself, he was weird with you—”
“It wasn’t that.” She shook her head. “It was you. I hope it was worth it.”
My heart rocketed into my throat as she grabbed the hiking pack. “Claire. You can’t leave.”
“What
’s the code to get inside the house?” she asked.
“This is ridiculous,” I snapped.
“Fine, don’t tell me. I’ll sleep in one of the chairs on the dock.”
“I’m sorry, okay? Will you stay now?”
Claire yanked the zipper on her pack closed. “What’s the code, Kat?”
I glanced around the campsite. “You’re just going to leave me and Jesse to hike back with all of this stuff—”
“Jesse had both our tents in his pack. I just had the food and water in mine. Whatever’s left won’t add more to your packs than what you carried up.”
“What am I supposed to tell him?”
“I don’t know—say I got my period or something.”
“Please,” I said. “Tell me what you need me to do to make you stay.”
“Time.” She gnawed her bottom lip. “I just need time to get over it.”
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. I had completely lost control of her. She sighed at my silence and moved over to my hiking pack. “Which pocket are your car keys in?”
“Right one.”
Claire fished them out, hooked her finger around the ring of my key chain. “Call when you want me to come get you guys tomorrow morning.”
* * *
—
When Jesse came back to the campsite, probably wondering what was taking us so long, he found me alone by the firepit, fanning the smoking pile of kindling to coax out a flame.
He stopped in his tracks, surveyed the campsite.
“Where’s Claire?”
I snapped a branch over my knee, arranged the pieces around the growing tent-shaped structure in the firepit. “She went back to the house.”
“What? Why?”
The wind lifted, sending smoke into my face, toppling my meticulously crafted kindling structure. For some reason, that’s what finally made me fall apart.
“Kat, what happened?” Jesse took a step toward me. Stopped himself.
“We had a fight.” I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “She wanted to go back.”
Jesse gaped at me. “And you just let her go?”
“What was I supposed to do? Tie her to a tree?”
Jesse sank to the ground next to me. “Why didn’t you come get me? I could have talked to her—”
“It’s done,” I said. “She’s already on her way down.”
“It’ll take her an hour and a half to hike back. We have to go after her—”
“And what, tell her she has to come back?” I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Yeah, that won’t seem suspicious at all a few hours before you and I are kidnapped at gunpoint.”
“How can you say that when it was your idea to—” Jesse wiped a hand down his face, cutting himself short, but it was too late, it was out there.
It was my idea to involve Claire.
Neither of us said anything for a long beat, staring at my failed attempt at a campfire. Finally, Jesse put an arm around me, pulling me closer to him. An olive branch, for subtly accusing me of screwing everything up by fighting with Claire.
He was right, though—it was my idea to invite Claire, to have her be a witness. Now, if no one believed we were kidnapped, it would be my fault. If Marian didn’t think the ransom call was credible, if she didn’t come up with the money, it would be my fault.
“Maybe it’s better this way.” Jesse took his arm back from me. He folded his hands together, leaned forward and rested his forehead on his interlocked thumbs. “She gets to spend the night in a warm bed. If she doesn’t realize something’s wrong until we don’t call to get picked up tomorrow, we’ll have more of a head start.”
I did not want the extra few hours to escape; I wanted my grandmother to have to fork over a hundred thousand in exchange for her precious granddaughter.
I wanted to see her face when she realized she’d lost the money and me.
* * *
—
We lay in the tent, Jesse’s body curved behind mine, our hands folded together over my belly. The temperature on the mountain had cooled as the sky darkened, but it was still too hot to climb inside our sleeping bags.
It was quiet enough in the tent to hear our heartbeats; outside, the only sound was the occasional snap of a branch, the footsteps of a chipmunk foraging for the bits of trail mix I’d left out for him.
Jesse rolled over, checked the time on his phone. 11:12. One minute too late to make a wish, I thought.
“Shouldn’t they be here by now?” Jesse said.
“My cousin’s never been on time for anything in his life,” I answered.
And Mike…I didn’t know if Mike, last name unknown, was a punctual person. All I knew about Mike the Mechanic was that Amos trusted him.
Now, with the minutes ticking past, doubt closed in on me. What if they weren’t coming? I knew Amos would sell out most of his friends to Satan for a corn chip, but I was his family. He was one of the only other people who knew the truth about my father, and he’d promised to help me.
Would he really screw me over for three thousand dollars?
Jesse sat up straight. I followed, and that’s when I heard it: arguing.
I yanked open the zipper to the tent at the same moment Amos yelled: “What the fuck happened?”
My brain went into overdrive: Amos wasn’t supposed to speak, what if Claire recognized his voice—
He must know she’s not here.
“What’s going on?” I said, holding up the lantern, casting a yellow glow over Amos’s face.
The look in his eyes was so wild that I wondered if he was on drugs. I tried to imagine my cousin doing something more serious than slipping a Xanax or smoking a joint. Mike stood to his side.
“What was she doing camping out in the middle of the damn woods?” Amos barked.
“What?” The blood drained from my head.
Some rustling in the tent behind me. Jesse stumbled out, eyes locked on Amos. “What are you talking about? Claire went back to the lake house.”
“She was supposed to be here,” Mike said.
His voice—a throaty growl—sent a chill to the tips of my toes. He grunted as he wriggled out of his backpack. With the hand not holding his gun, he rooted around inside the backpack, emerged with a bottle of vodka.
Mike winced as he lifted the sleeve of his T-shirt, prompting a gasp from me. Blood poured from an angry slash on his shoulder. He used his mouth to twist the cap off the vodka, then proceeded to pour the contents of the bottle onto his wound.
“How did that happen?” I asked.
Mike’s gaze landed on me. “Your friend fuckin’ stabbed me.”
Amos stepped back into the glow of the lantern, holding a utility knife by the handle; my father kept one hooked to the side of all our hiking packs.
“Oh my God.” I sank to the ground. “Oh my God—”
“Where is she now?” Jesse took a step toward Amos, his voice quaking.
“The real question is, why the hell are we still standing here having a coffee klatch?” Amos said. “We need to go now.”
“What the fuck did you do to her?” Jesse reached for the collar of Amos’s shirt—a yelp escaped me as Mike snapped, “Easy.”
A clicking sound. The safety being released on Mike’s gun, the barrel lifting so it was level with Jesse’s chest. Jesse let go of Amos and took a step back, face ashen.
“She’s alive,” Mike finally said, with a resentful glance at Amos.
“I think she heard us talking on the trail,” Amos says. “There’s a chance she’ll recognize that it was my voice when she wakes up and remembers.”
I finally allowed myself to look Amos in the eyes. The anger simmering in them scared me more than the sight of Mike’s gun, still trained on Jesse.
“Why did you let
her leave?” Amos said, staring back at me.
I felt all their eyes on me, demanding answers I didn’t have.
Finally, Amos broke my gaze. “You really fucked up, Kat.”
* * *
—
Silent, all of us, on the trek down the mountain. Amos leading the way, lifting the lantern in search of the red trail markers that would lead us to the parking lot where the Craigslist Camry was waiting.
Mike, at our rear, gun trained on Jesse and me, was panting. “Hold up.”
I paused, turned to see Mike crouched, examining the wound on his shoulder in the scant light of the moon through the trees. My bandana, a makeshift tourniquet, did little to stem the flow of the blood from the stab wound. I pictured Claire driving the blade of the utility knife through his skin, his veins, all that biological evidence.
We’d need to make the knife disappear. Mike had agreed to play the role of kidnapper under two conditions: a ten-thousand dollar cut of the ransom money and zero evidence that could be traced back to him.
“Kat”—Jesse’s fingers were on my shoulder, his voice a whisper by my ear—“we can’t just leave her.”
My blood flowed to a halt, my panic threatening to level me. Not only because if we gave up now we’d never get away—not from my father, not from what we’d done—but because while Jesse was concerned about Claire, alone and hurt in the woods, I could only think of what had happened to her with a clinical detachment. Her injuries, evidence that threatened to ruin everything.
There was something seriously wrong with me. Even now, when my best friend’s life depended on it, all I could think about was my escape. Our escape.
I turned to Jesse, forced myself to speak through the tightening in my throat. “We’ll go to jail.”
“If she’s hurt bad and we leave her, she could die—” Jesse hissed.
“Hey.” Amos whipped around, training the lantern on Jesse and me. “Care to share with the rest of the class?”
“We’re not allowed to talk to each other?” Jesse said, blinking against the light streaming in our eyes.