My dad runs toward the car, his finger waving in people’s faces. He tries to tell me something, but the cop slams my door closed. Thank God for that.
The cop gets in the driver’s seat, and a man slides in on the passenger side. Other police officers, maybe five of them, get in different cars and pull away. Man, I must be dangerous if it takes this many to bring me in. I wonder if they drew straws at the station to see who would get to cuff me. I like to think when the woman won, she pretended to celebrate but secretly dreaded doing it.
I need to know what the police have on me.
I tap on the plastic that divides me from the cops up front. The guy turns around, and the woman looks in her rearview mirror.
“Where are Detectives Hernandez and Tehrani?” I ask.
The man stares at me for a moment longer and then turns back around.
I grow frustrated. My cops would have answered me. They would tell me what’s going on.
I realize that’s bad—that I’ve developed a sense of camaraderie with police officers who in no way have my best interest at heart.
“Am I going to jail?” I ask.
The word strikes fear through my body. For some strange reason, my terror isn’t from a fear of being caged, but rather the fear of growing smaller. Of not being able to lift, to grow. I’ll shrivel to half my size. I won’t be able to protect myself. I will become a target.
When we get to the station, the female officer grabs my arm and hauls me out. She’s stronger than she looks. I respect that about her. I wonder what she’s like in bed. I wonder what the hell is wrong with me.
The woman leads me to the same office I was questioned inside of a few days ago. I see the girl who led me out the one time. Her mouth turns downward like she’s disappointed to see me here again.
You and me both.
The woman puts me into a chair and re-cuffs my hands so they’re in front of me. The male officer stands close by in case I try something.
Will I try something?
Yeah, I might.
When the two officers leave and Detective Tehrani enters, I breathe a sigh of relief.
“What’s going on?” I ask him.
But he doesn’t respond. There’s a change in his demeanor. His shoulders are tenser. The line between his eyes deeper. There’s the start of a beard where there wasn’t one before.
He sits across from me and looks as if he’s debating confessing something. Something inside him must win, because he says to me, “I have a daughter, you know that? Different school.”
I realize he means we’re about the same age.
I realize he sees me as what could have been a predator to his baby girl.
Detective Tehrani stares me down, and I realize he’s lost something. Last time I saw him, there was hopefulness in his eyes. Now it looks like he knows better.
I lower my eyes to the table and think of Molly. Of what she’d do when I was nervous about something. I imagine her lifting my hand to her mouth and touching her lips to each fingertip. Then she’d wrap her hand around one of my fingers and squeeze. Then she’d do the next one, and the next one—thumb to pinkie, and back again. Over and over, and then…she’d skip one. It drove me crazy when she skipped squeezing one of my fingers. But the anticipation always took my mind off what plagued me. Instead, I’d focus on those steady squeezes. On the reassurance of her skin on mine. On the game.
I look down at my hand and wish, more than I’ve wished for anything in my entire life, that she would squeeze my fingers and that would be enough to make this all go away. I feel alone. I feel so fucking alone.
Detective Hernandez comes into the room, and I try to stand up against the restraints. I don’t know why. I’m desperate for anyone to remind me that I’m not a monster. But Detective Tehrani says, “Sit down,” in a gruff voice I didn’t know he had.
Detective Hernandez takes a seat across from me, and I follow her lead. She hasn’t shown the disgust for me that the other detective has yet, and so I look to her for guidance.
“Cobain,” she says with tiredness in her heavy brown eyes. “We’ve spoken with Jet about the day you met Molly.”
My eyes seal shut, and I force air through my nostrils.
“Sounded pretty violent, which is of course much different than the story you told us.”
I don’t respond. Nothing I say could help at this point.
Detective Hernandez leans back, like what she has up her sleeve next is even worse.
I can’t wait.
“We also talked to your former boss at…” She checks her notepad to ensure she gets it right. “…at Steel. It appears several hundred dollars went missing, and immediately after that, you were let go.”
I’m having trouble getting enough oxygen in this room. I think the walls are moving closer, the lights getting brighter. Am I imagining that? I have to be imagining that.
“You needed that money so you could take Molly.” She nods along to her own story. “Maybe you just planned to keep her somewhere, but something went wrong.”
I start to defend myself, but how can I do that? I have no arguments left.
“Cobain, I’m going to ask you this very simply, and I’d like it if you gave me a simple answer.” Detective Hernandez locks her eyes on me. “Do you know where Molly is?”
I look at her for a long time. She opens her arms wide on the table, shakes her head once or twice. She wants so badly for me to surprise her. I want to surprise her, too.
But I can’t.
“No.”
She breathes forcefully through her nostrils and then waves at someone behind a mirror. I wonder how many people are watching me from behind there. Am I putting on a good performance? Do they believe I’m innocent? Because if they knew the random shit playing on repeat in my head, they’d want to dice my brain up and slide it beneath a microscope. Label it EVIDENCE.
Green trees.
Blue water.
A white dog.
Barking.
The smell of water.
Breathlessness.
Something in my peripheral, flying closer—
A crow.
A person comes in carrying a red bag and a tablet. It’s a young guy with zits around his jawline that bulge red and white. Patriotic. He places both items on the table, then walks back out of the room.
Detective Hernandez asks me one last question. “Cobain, do you have anything at all you’d like to tell us? This is your last chance.”
I look at the bag. The tablet. No matter what you say, they say, we will destroy you.
And so I stay quiet, my mind racing, fear making my fingers and toes go numb.
Detective Hernandez sighs, dejected, and slides the tablet toward her. She enters a password to unlock the thing, clicks a few buttons, and then turns it so I can see.
“I think it’s time we show you this,” she says firmly. “We got it this morning.”
My hands start to shake, and my entire body feels electric. I have no idea what to expect. No idea what to believe. I don’t know how I got here, how this all happened.
How is this happening?
I don’t know anything anymore.
Except that they’re looking at me like I’m a monster.
Let’s see if they’re right.
The video starts to play, and I watch the night of Molly’s disappearance unfold.
THEN
You took me to a party.
I’m not even sure you wanted to. You’d been distant ever since I came to your room, despite what you’d said the next morning. I’d thought a lot about how I’d screwed up that day at your house. I should have just kept my mouth shut. I should have used that mouth to taste every last part of your body.
Despite the crap that happened, I couldn’t keep my eyes off your legs. You wore a sk
irt, and blue tights I wanted to tear off with my teeth. I wanted to trail my lips up the insides of your thighs and spread your legs with my hands and hold them open—wide open—against the ground.
I wanted us to connect again. I wanted you to stop looking at me with this expression that said I was ripping you into pieces. Because you were the one ripping me apart, Molly. It was you.
I reached over and grabbed your hand, and you gave me a smile that stretched from your chin to your hairline…but it skipped your eyes.
You were worried about something, I knew. So I took your fingers in my hand and tried to do the squeeze tactic like you did on me. After a few times, you clenched your hand around mine, shook it playfully, and put your hand back on the steering wheel.
I wanted to turn the wheel and drive us both into a tree to get your attention.
If you knew the kind of stuff I thought, would you have been in the car with me?
Maybe you did know.
Maybe that’s why you ran.
The party was in a field outside an abandoned house. We’d been there before. There was a man who lived an acre away who would sometimes come up the road yelling for us to get out of there. We’d run or drive away as fast as we could. I sometimes wondered who had more fun in those moments—us, or the man who got to feel like a big shot.
As we stood around the fire, you reached over and planted a kiss on my mouth. It was a surface level kiss, like you were kissing my lips, but not me. But then you pulled back, and the smile on your face faded. You looked at me differently then, and I wrapped my arm around your waist.
“Molly,” I said. “What the fuck is going on with us?”
It smelled of campfire smoke, and the taste of beer clung to my lips, and yours, too.
Your eyes lowered.
“I’m going to get us that cash,” I said, not telling you I’d lost my chance.
You looked at me. “You would, wouldn’t you? Just because I asked.”
I grabbed your shoulders. “Because I want to get out of here, too. And yes, because you’re unhappy here. Your dad—”
You held a finger to my lips.
Grabbed my hand.
Led me to the house.
I’d like to say I was surprised by what you were about to do. But I knew. I knew, and I felt myself grow hard before you even walked inside that abandoned house and shut the door behind us.
There was another couple leaning against the wall, hands down pants, hands up shirts. The guy looked over the girl’s shoulder at me, frowned, and returned to the girl.
Molly led me to the back and down a couple of steps into a sunken living room. It was impossibly dark, but I could see the smoke that stained the walls from people lighting fires to keep warm. It was a miracle this house had any stand left in its old bones.
I took your face in my hands and kissed you. You released your weight into my arms, and I held you up. I would never let you go again. Your arms rose to wrap around my shoulders and gripped the muscles there. You trailed your hands down my arms and my back, feeling me. I was so much bigger than you, and it struck me how much you must trust me to allow me access to your body. In the dark. In the quiet. With the closest person several rooms away, distracted.
You stepped back and started to remove your shirt, but I was there to do it for you. I bent and trailed kisses along your stomach as I lifted the fabric and threw it to the side. Then I reached for your skirt, unzipped the side, and suppressed a groan as you shimmied out of it.
I removed my jacket, shirt, and jeans and shivered before you because it was cold as shit, but I planned on keeping you warm. I planned on doing so many unspeakable things to you.
I lifted you off your feet and laid you on top of my jacket. Goose bumps raced across your skin, and I was there with my mouth. With my weight.
I leaned back to remove those tights, and as your leg slipped from each hole, you locked eyes with me.
“Cobain,” you said.
I shook my head, and you quieted. I didn’t need you to say it anymore. I knew how you felt now. You couldn’t have hidden it if you tried. And my God, how you tried. It was all over your face right then—your fear, your love.
I lowered myself between your knees and kissed you again. You wrapped your legs around me, and I wrapped myself around you, and I think the house finally was engulfed in flames, at long last. Taken by the night. Taken to the ground.
You arched your back, and I slipped my hand between your shoulder blades. Your bra came away in my hand.
We pressed our bodies together, and our breath came faster, our fingers dug deeper. You reached down to push off my boxers, but there was no time for that. I had to have you, Molly. And you needed me, too. I knew because you said, I need you, I need you, I need you against my neck.
So I pulled myself out of my boxers and pushed your underwear to the side, and I slipped my fingers between your legs to make sure you were ready. And you were. Your legs parted farther, and you threw your head back, and I sank into you.
The last of you became the best of me inside that house, on that soot-covered floor with the stars burning outside a broken window.
And I loved you, Molly.
I loved you, Molly.
I loved you.
So I held you tight and rocked against you and drank in every bit you offered to me that night. And when it was over, and I collapsed beside you, and you slung a thin, white-as-fog leg over my torso, I thought I might want to die that way. Happy. In your arms. Knowing you loved me back. Certain nothing would ever come close to touching this moment we’d shared.
And then you looked at me with eyes so green that Spanish moss clung to the edges, and you said—
“We can’t be together anymore, Cobain.”
MOLLY
Molly dreamed about that night with Cobain and woke with an ache between her legs. When she remembered where she was, however, the want died.
She hadn’t seen the light outside in three days. A sliver slipped in through the cracks—enough to tell her whether it was day or night—but it wasn’t enough.
She’d lost his trust.
He wasn’t angry that she’d freed the bird, exactly. It was that she’d made a decision that he hadn’t initiated or authorized.
This was about control, she reminded herself.
And if she was to stand a chance, she had to give him a sense of reclaiming it.
And so her mind began to turn in circles like a carousel, wide-toothed horses and griffins spinning round her brain.
She stayed in the shadows for one day and part of another one, and when the idea finally came to her, she smiled. This would go against everything her father had ever taught her, and if she failed, well, he just might kill her.
But at least this thing would come to an end, at long last.
When Blue finally appeared in her doorway carrying a tray, she came to him softly. As softly as a lion. She reached out, claws retracted, and took the food. Shoved it into her mouth and ate furiously, her eyes locked on his. The crusty bread filled her mouth and slid down her throat. She reached for the strawberry preserves next. Ate them with a spoon straight from the dusty mason jar.
When she finished, he lifted the tray and made for the door.
He meant to leave her down here again. But she was done with such games.
“I planned to kill you,” she said, climbing to her feet.
Blue stopped.
“I was going to talk you into killing yourself.”
He turned to look at her.
“My father was a master manipulator.” She nodded to show him it was true. “Once, he even talked an employee of his into blowing his head off. That’s Daddy for you.” She pointed at Blue. “And I was going to do the same to you. I still could. You wouldn’t even know it, and I would be doing it.”
Blue’
s grip on the tray tightened. Molly wondered if he was angry or afraid. Probably a little of both.
“But I don’t want to be like him. And I’ll be honest, I don’t want to be here, either. All I really want to be is out there.”
She motioned toward the boarded window.
“One day,” she said simply, “I’ll escape. And I’ll never know who you are. Not for sure. I’ll tell the police what I know. They’ll find you. And neither of us will be better for the experience. I’ll live every day afraid that it’ll happen again. That someone will rob me of my independence. And you’ll live every day behind bars, wondering why you did all this.”
Molly stepped toward him. “But this could go differently. You could be honest with me for once. I could show you who I really am. And you could show me, too.”
Blue’s hands shook, and the silver utensils on the tray rattled ever so slightly against the dishes.
“I’ll remove my mask,” she said softly. “If you’ll remove yours.”
Blue studied her for a long moment. Then he crossed the room, slowly, and set the tray down on her bed. He looked down at her bed, seemed to think about her lying beneath those blankets. With one uncertain hand, he leaned down to smooth out the wrinkles.
Then he looked at her, removed the voice changing device from his pocket, and brought it to his mouth.
And he said—
“Molly.”
She squeezed her eyes shut against the emotion that rolled inside of her.
He’d never said her name, and she’d never said it, either. He knew her. This person who violated her basic human rights knew her. But of course he did. There was a difference, however, between suspecting something and having it confirmed.
Was this boy who spoke her name the same boy she’d touched in the school hallway? The same one who held her hand at the fair? The same one who held her body in that old, decaying house?
She thought she knew the answer.
“All this time,” she said to him. She fought back the tears and tried again. “All this time I’ve been talking you into leaping over the ledge, but it’s me who’s been waiting for someone to come along and push me.”
We Told Six Lies Page 20