Maybe I misread her and maybe she wanted me to at least hold her. Girls can be strange that way, but I’m not very experienced at this stuff. Not like I’ve never done anything with a girl before, but this is different. It’s not just about sex and it’s hard to explain, but it has to do with what I felt coming through her hand in the dark on the trail. It’s like she sees this part of me that I don’t even think exists. She seems to see it the way you see the color of someone’s hair or how tall (or short, in my case) they are, and she sort of respects it or is at least interested in it, and because of that I have to start believing in it too, and learning about it, which is really scary.
The only way out would have been to ignore her and stay away, which would have meant saying no to the ride. Or I could have tried to get her to make out or just acted stupid like I usually do, and spoiled it all, driven her away like I do every other good thing. But I kept my hands to myself and offered her the fleece and the windbreaker, now evidence, and asked if she thought we should build a fire.
It was only ten and she said she could stay a little longer if she checked in with her mom on her cell. It was strange but reassuring to hear her lying to her mom on the phone about how she was meeting some of the ASB (student government, I don’t even know what the letters stand for) kids at Denny’s to talk about a pep assembly. While the fire was heating up, she helped me put up the tent, and then we sat watching the flames and talking.
Actually, now that I think about it, I did most of the talking. And I think about it a lot because, just like the cops, I’m looking for clues, trying to remember if she said anything that night that would help me figure out what happened to her, or if I could have done something different that would have changed the way things are turning out. We talked a little about school. I asked her what it was like to get good grades and have all the teachers like you. She said it was a lot of work and that she had always known it was expected of her, so it didn’t seem like there was any other choice. I asked how she got along with her parents.
“All right,” she said.
“Do you love them?” I realized as I asked it that it was kind of a weird personal question, but we had been talking about my parents and Harold, so it wasn’t completely out of line. Her life seemed so perfect to me, and the lie on the phone surprised me. Going home to people you could tell the truth to and have real conversations with about the stuff that bothered or scared you without them taking it all wrong and going ballistic was one of my fantasies. When my parents were going through the divorce, I used to dream that they would die in a car wreck or a plane crash and I would get adopted by these imaginary people and we would have this happy family. I had imagined her family was like that, and I was starting to sense that maybe it wasn’t.
“I don’t hate them, not like you and Harold,” she said. “We don’t talk much. As long as I get good grades and report in so they don’t have to worry, they’re nice enough. I’ve never done anything to upset them, except go to a party once in a while. If I keep my grades up, do all the right stuff at school, go to church and say what they want to hear, they leave me alone. He’s not my real dad either. In fact he’s my second stepdad, but he’s nice to my mom and gives her the life she wants. I think they want me to have a good life. I can’t wait to go to college and move out. I don’t feel like I really know them.”
I can’t even think about college. It doesn’t seem real to me. I’m already short of credits. I couldn’t focus on school enough to make it to graduation next year, even before being locked up, so talking about college with her made me nervous. I saw a meteorite streak across the sky and got her to look before it faded, then I changed the subject.
“I just want to leave,” I said. “I’d do it now, if I had some money.”
“Where would you go?”
“I don’t know. Camping on some beach in Mexico sounds good. I hear you can live cheap down there, and it’s warm. It would be great except for all the bandit and corrupt-cop stories that make it sound dangerous.”
Then I remembered this story my cousin told me about his dad. I told it to her the way I remembered it. I won’t tell it here except to say that when my uncle was in high school, he and one of his friends ran away to Hawaii. Eventually they got caught and were brought back, which made Kristen ask,
“So what did they do to him?”
“I don’t know the details, only that he became a plumber, which pays pretty well, and married my aunt, and you’d never guess now that he ran away when he was a kid. By the time they caught up with him, they were probably so glad he wasn’t dead that they forgave him, like the parents in Romeo and Juliet would have if the stupid kids hadn’t killed themselves. All his money was gone. If I had that kind of money, I’d find a way to be gone for good, like my sister. No more Harold Hopp, ever.”
She seemed deep in thought, hypnotized by the fire which was dying down, so I threw a little more wood on it and that brought her back. She looked at the time on her phone and said she had to go.
Now this would have been the moment to kiss her, if that was going to happen. Either then, when we were leaving the campsite, or back at her car to say good-bye, but it didn’t happen and what’s weird is that even though something about her had changed while I was blabbing away—she was more distant and hardly said anything at all—the trust was still in her hand as I led her along the trail. I don’t think I was imagining it, but there was also this sadness. Remember, I had seen it before, only this time it wasn’t very well hidden, like if I said the wrong thing she would cry, so I gave her space and didn’t try anything.
At the car, she said she had had fun and thanked me for the hot chocolate made out of boiled river water that she drank while I was telling the story about my uncle. Then she was gone, and I went back and sat by the fire alone for a while before climbing into my sleeping bag.
We didn’t say much to each other at school the week of the fateful night. She was absent one of those days. Then I got suspended. Friday night, when they think she was with me and I raped and killed her and dumped her body somewhere, was pretty uneventful. It was late and I was really tired when I finally got to the river. It had been a long day. Remember, I had mowed the lawn, hung out at the mall, smoked a little weed and gone to a movie before the long walk out to the campsite. I built a fire and sat by it for a while, thinking about her and remembering. Hidden under the log, I also had a bottle of MacNaughton’s that I had boosted from Harold one night when he was too drunk to miss it. There was some left, so I had a few snorts. Actually, it took more than a few to cut the loneliness which was sharper now that she had been there with me, and when I finally got drunk enough to sleep, I crashed. In the morning when I woke up, I was sick and hung over.
Natalie
Okay, so right after the cops were done talking to me that Saturday, the day after Kristen disappeared, I called Brad. I was a little nervous about it. Who wouldn’t be? It was a pretty weird night anyway, without adding Kristen to it. But there was no way around it. Brad was involved and when they grilled him, if his story was different from mine, eventually they would trap him into telling the truth. Except for the fact that I let a strange guy who was drinking pick me up, the truth isn’t that bad, though it would probably end up including his mom’s little indiscretion and would likely start some big Mercer Island high-society scandal. So I thought we could save everyone a lot of trouble and not hurt anything by a little harmless editing to smooth out the wrinkles. Politicians spin the truth all the time. So I called him.
When he answered his cell, he sounded surprised, but seemed glad it was me. It was easy to talk to him. When I told him about Kristen vanishing, he was pretty taken aback, but instead of worrying about how it would affect him, he seemed worried about how I was feeling. Which surprised me. It was nice. I expected him to be mad that he was involved because of me.
We didn’t need much of a lie. It was more like we needed to verify with each other what really happened between us, you know,
what it meant in the end so it would be clear which details were important to tell and which should be left out. The only part that we had to make up was how we met. The most dramatic and memorable part of the night, the part in the car when I thought he was going to rape me, really was all just miscommunication and my imagination running away. In the big picture it was just a detail, part of our getting to know each other. We decided to say that he just needed to talk about some stuff that was happening in his life, school and ex-girlfriend stuff, and we couldn’t decide whether to go down to Everett, which would have been my idea because I wanted to get out of the Valley and I like riding in his car, or go to Denny’s in Mount Vernon which would be easier for him because it wouldn’t be such a drive to get me home and he wouldn’t be out all night.
We figured that the cops who were behind us at the Arlington I-5 exit probably took down his license number, which made it necessary to explain that little side trip. We weren’t parked down that lane very long, so we decided to say that on the way to Everett we realized how late it was and pulled in there to talk for a minute and make up our minds what to do next. It really wasn’t that long between when we left the Shell and when we got to Denny’s since Brad drives fast, and we stayed at Denny’s for a long time. The waitresses there can verify that.
The actual lie part, how and where we met, was a little harder. I told Sterling that Brad had called me earlier and we had arranged for him to meet me at the Shell. The cops can check your phone records and since there was no call, we had to figure something out. The Shell is like halfway between Anacortes and I-5, not exactly where you’d choose to buy gas if you just pulled off the freeway. Brad had told me he was heading home after hanging out in Bellingham with some friends who go to Western, but he hadn’t explained how he ended up at that particular gas station. It turned out he had just dropped off this kid from Anacortes who needed a ride home. He didn’t really know the kid but his Bellingham friends did, and Brad was just being nice. It’s comforting to find out that my creep alarm does work, and the reason I let myself get in the car with him is that he really is nice.
We decided that it would be okay if I changed my story about there being a phone call and admitted that it was a chance meeting, but kept the part about us knowing each other before. If it came up, I would just say that I told it that way to Sterling because he doesn’t approve of me and I thought it would sound better if our meeting-up was planned. It turns out that Brad and I know some of the same people and we both go to Bellingham parties enough that it would be safe to say we had met there and knew each other.
If you remember, I was stuck at the gas station because my phone died and Josh and Alex, who were supposed to show up and take me to a party in Bellingham, had gotten another call. They changed their minds about going north and stayed in the Valley at another little gathering, figuring that since I hadn’t called them, I must have changed my mind too. When I found myself at the Shell with a dead phone and no ride, and there was my friend Brad, it was perfectly natural to head off into the night with him.
So Brad and I got our story all straight and coordinated, and what was funny was that it was so easy. It felt like we were old friends. There were none of those uncomfortable silences where you know the other person is seeing the situation way different from the way you are and it’s hard to decide what to say for fear of being taken all wrong.
What all this means, of course, is that I’m staying in contact with Brad. He didn’t just fade back into the night like a dream. He’s come up here a few times and we’ve hung out and we have a great time together. We even hiked up Sugarloaf Mountain together, which is something I wouldn’t have done if Brad hadn’t been there because Kristen climbed it with that weasel before she went missing. I’m not the granola type. I like being outside and I’m athletic enough and even go running for exercise, but I run on the track at school or beside the road in town, and hiking up some steep, lonely trail in the woods has never been my thing.
Well, after school the day the cops quizzed him—they actually went to his school, which might have been embarrassing for him, but he said he didn’t mind—Brad called me to let me know how it went. He said the session with the cops was pretty easy because none of it felt like a lie and the little bit of clarifying we did was harmless and really no one’s business but ours. Besides, and he even said this, it feels like we have known each other for a long time. I agree, so when he asked if he could come up on Sunday, there was no hesitation on my part. I just had to think of something to do.
So we hiked up Sugarloaf Mountain. It’s not a real mountain, the kind with snow, but Brad says it feels like you could be in the foothills below Mount Baker when you’re on the trail. I’d been to the parking lot before, and to the viewpoint on top of Mount Eerie, which is right next to Sugarloaf but has a road to the top and a lot of towers for cell phones and military communications stuff. The view from Mount Eerie is a little better because it’s higher. On a clear day, you can see Mount Baker and the Cascades. Looking south you can see the Sound all the way to Everett, and to the west the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Olympic Mountains, but since you can drive up Mount Eerie, it can get pretty congested and touristy.
We weren’t going for the view. Kristen, of course, influenced the choice, and it’s true, I thought about her a lot. The trail up is really steep and you don’t do much talking unless you stop because the climb takes away your breath. I kept imagining her and that little turd together on the trail and tried to visualize how it was and what they said to each other.
Of course I wouldn’t have been there without Brad, and I would have gotten lost without him. He is a hiker and has been all over the Cascades. When I suggested we spend our time together on Sugarloaf, I didn’t know he would know what he was doing, and would think to get a trail map from the little kiosk thing by the parking lot, and that we would need it because there are lots of forks in the trail. Even though there were signs with numbers on them nailed to trees, if you weren’t paying close attention, even with the map, you would soon find yourself disoriented. Lost.
It’s kind of dark in there, like a jungle, all green and brown and damp and cool-feeling. That day, the sunlight hit the bushes, the fallen, rotting trees and the needle-covered ground in yellow dapples. It made me feel good inside even though I felt Kristen’s presence. It was a weird feeling because I knew I should be sad for her. And I am, but I wasn’t feeling sad at that moment and couldn’t make myself feel that way.
Brad kept wanting me to walk ahead because he’s a gentleman and it’s supposed to be good manners to let the lady walk in front, so he was being nice. But in this book I read for one of my classes written by this Native woman who grew up in eastern Washington during the time the Natives were having to make huge changes to adapt to all the white people who were moving in, she talked about how the early settlers thought it was rude that Native men walked ahead and had the women and children follow. She said there was a good reason, which was that most of their walking was in the woods or in places that belonged to animals like bear and cougars, and the man walked ahead to protect the women and children from attack by an animal.
This was running through my head because last year there were several cougar sightings near town and dogs and cats were disappearing. The paper said that it was probably young cougars and that when they reached a certain age, like teenagers, they had to go out on their own and find their own territory, and since dogs and cats were easy prey, and because there is less and less forest, they sometimes tried places where people lived. There don’t seem to be any around this year, but I still couldn’t help imagining them lurking in the brush, so I told Brad about the cougar sightings and that I wanted him in front, and that the paper said we should make noise and try to make ourselves seem as big as possible. Of course when he was walking ahead, I couldn’t help thinking about what was behind me, but I pushed it out of my head so as not to spoil the day. A little bit of danger’s not a bad thing. It can draw people
together.
Before you get to the top, there’s this nice viewpoint off to the side of the trail with a natural bench formed by an outcropping of black rock that has lichen and moss growing on it. It looks out over the San Juans and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and is a great place to catch your breath. As usual, Brad was wearing a baseball cap which wasn’t backwards this time. He’s really a pretty good-looking guy, a little too Abercrombie maybe, but I don’t hold that against him. He’s pretty normal actually, except for the earring which bothers me only because the diamond is too big and is real.
He has a good build and is in better shape than me. I got him talking about wrestling, which he likes a lot in spite of what happened between the coach and his mom, and he hardly got out of breath at all on the climb. He did most of the talking for the noise to keep the cougars away, and it turns out that he has a real dilemma. He could qualify for the state championship tournament next year with a good chance of winning, so he doesn’t want to quit, but he can’t imagine working with his coach. It’s hard enough being around his mom, even though it sounds like he doesn’t see her as much as I would have thought.
His mom hasn’t left or anything, but she has an important job and gets home late. They don’t eat meals together like you’d expect people to if they could, and since it’s not wrestling season, he can avoid the coach most of the time at school. He can’t tell how much, if anything, his dad knows. He feels guilty about that. He says his world feels really surreal, like he’s living in a different reality from everyone around him, and he wishes his parents would have a big fight and that it would all be out in the open. He knows he should have it out with his mother, but it’s like she’s dodging him and the more time that passes, the harder it gets and it’s almost easier to pretend he didn’t see anything, but he did, and it’s like the image of what he saw is seared into his brain. So he said he was really glad to see me today because I’m the only one whom he can talk to about any of it.
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