by Sarah Lyu
“What are you saying?” I asked. I want him to have just one bad night, that’s what she’d said, but maybe what she wanted was him to have only one more night.
“I’m saying it’s not fair!” she said. “I’m saying that no matter what I do—even if I play the part of the perfect victim—he’ll never get the justice he deserves. That I’ll never get the justice I deserve. And I just can’t accept the things he did to me and forget them. I can’t, Remy, I can’t.”
We were on the highway now, heading south. Elise’s voice wobbled. She wiped away her tears forcefully, like she was angry she was crying in the first place.
“Everyone thinks it’s my fault,” she said.
“What?”
“Even you.”
“That’s not true!” I cried.
“Isn’t it? They asked me at the hospital if this had ever happened before, and I just knew what they were thinking: Why didn’t you ever report it? I know that’s what you think too. Jack, your parents, Christian. Why didn’t I just fucking say something earlier, save everyone the trouble—the doctors, the police, the court?” She was gasping, openly sobbing now, her breaths shallow.
“Elise?” I gently touched her arm and pulled away immediately when she flinched. I stared out at the road. “You can’t drive like this. Pull over.” She didn’t seem to hear me.
“And the truth is, I’m mad too! Why didn’t I say anything sooner? It seems so fucking obvious now. Why didn’t I just fucking say something? What’s wrong with me?” The heel of her palm hit the steering wheel over and over. “It was my fault.”
“No,” I said. “It wasn’t. It wasn’t, it wasn’t.” Tears fell, running down my face. Every awful thing that had been simmering between us was now out in the open. Her anger, my guilt. My anger, her guilt.
“I just keep thinking, if I’d only told someone, if I hadn’t left my room that night, if I’d been faster, stronger, fought him off. If only—”
If only, if only.
Finally she decelerated and pulled over.
“And now I’m going to have to live with it forever. The looks of pity follow me everywhere. Even from you.”
“No,” I tried to interject.
“Every time I talk to Evan, or Jae and Julie, or meet someone new, I always think, Oh God, do you know? Like I can’t be sure if you or Jack told anyone.”
“We haven’t,” I said. “I swear.”
She ignored me. “Sometimes I think people just know. Like they can smell it on me, like they take one look at me and see right through this tough-girl act and see the real me, this weak, useless thing, and I hate it. I can’t stand it. This is what he’s reduced me to, Remy. I’m pathetic.”
“No, you’re not,” I said, pleading with her. “You’re not.”
“I’ll never be anything different. I’ll never be able to forget that night.” She hunched forward, left arm clutching her ribs almost instinctively, like she was being kicked. “I dream about it all the time. I can’t stop thinking about it. I’ll never be free. Never, ever.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, crying harder. The whole world closed in around just the two of us in that car. The highway, the few other cars rushing past us, it all seemed to disappear into the night until it was just Elise and me and the Pink Caddy by the side of a road to nowhere.
“And now I know I’ll never escape it. Now I know I’ll always be that weak, pathetic girl getting the shit beat out of her.” She seemed to deflate, a once-bright star caving in on itself. “I thought”—she shook her head weakly—“I thought coming here would make me feel better. I thought getting back at him, even just a little, would be enough. If I just, I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. He could die and it wouldn’t make a difference.” The tears kept coming, but she no longer bothered to wipe them away.
That last sentence echoed in my mind like reverberations of a thunderclap.
“What do you mean?” I said, each word laced with dread. He could die and it wouldn’t make a difference.
“I just mean, it doesn’t matter whether he’s around—I’m always going to be that girl. Weak, unable to protect myself. He didn’t just steal one night, he stole my entire childhood! All the years and years I spent living in terror. All that fear, it’s saturated every cell in my body. It feels like it’s corrupted my soul. No matter what I do, I’ll never be free of it,” she said, her voice lowering to a whisper at the end.
No matter what I do—the fireworks outside her father’s house, more revenge pranks—I’ll never be free. Her words hit me hard, and her voice as she said them was even more haunting, like she had given up, like she was cornered with no way out.
We spent the rest of the ride in silence. Maybe there was nothing left to say.
I wasn’t capable of admitting it then, but I was terrified. Jack was right: No matter how many pranks we pulled, no matter how many people we helped, none of it would make her feel better.
Elise thought if she acted now—if she drove to Chattanooga, fucked with her father—she could somehow make up for what she perceived as her past weakness. But nothing she did seemed to ease the heaviness of her anger and self-hatred.
I wanted to free her from it, I wanted to save her from drowning, but sitting next to her in the Pink Caddy, the dark night road stretching before us, I didn’t have the strength. I just felt tired.
We believed our wounds made us special. We believed what didn’t kill you made you stronger. We believed our tragedies were romantic.
Only I didn’t feel very special or strong or romantic. I felt helpless and scared and so very exhausted.
“Don’t tell anyone what we did tonight,” she said when we finally got home. “Promise me, Remy. Promise you won’t tell anyone, not even Jack.”
“What if he asks? What am I going to say? What am I supposed to tell him?”
“I don’t know, make something up. Or just tell him you don’t want to talk about it.” I looked away. She took my hands in hers, yanking me back. “Remy, promise me.” I gave her a curt nod, not saying anything.
Maybe I knew I had no intention of keeping that promise, even then.
SUNDAY // AUGUST 27 // DAY 352
57.
We got home a little past five in the morning. We went to bed without washing up, and Elise fell asleep almost immediately. I lay there unable to drift off, thinking about Elise’s words on the drive back. Her anger, her pain.
After an hour, I gave up, slipped out, and drove to Jack’s house, texting him when I got there. He came out in his pajamas, hair mussed, eyes half-open. “Remy?”
I launched myself forward and he caught me. The last few weeks had been hard on us. I basically didn’t see him outside of school, and even then, only at lunch with everyone else. And in front of Elise, I was too self-conscious to so much as hold his hand. We still texted all the time but there was this distance, a strain between us since that horrible night three weeks ago. Sometimes I blamed myself, sometimes I blamed him. Sometimes I wondered if maybe Elise was right, if I should’ve broken up with him over what’d happened.
But now we were reunited, alone, and in his arms, surrounded by his warmth, I felt safe and loved.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, worried.
I just shook my head, rested my chin on his right shoulder, and squeezed him tighter.
“What happened? Where were you last night? You didn’t answer any of my texts or calls and now you just show up here at”—he checked his phone—“six in the morning?”
“Shhh,” I said, glancing in the direction of the house. “I don’t want to wake up your aunt and uncle.” Quietly, we went up to his bedroom, sat on his bed with the door closed. Lola greeted me, then went back into her crate to sleep. Pulling my legs in and tucking my chin between my knees, I balled up, withdrawing into myself.
“Remy, what the hell is going on?” Jack ran a sleepy hand through his hair, expression worried.
“Can you do something for me? Can you check online for a
ny stories about a house fire in Chattanooga?” I asked, too afraid to look it up myself.
“What?” Jack stared at me blankly, then rubbed his eyes. When I didn’t speak, he sighed and pulled his laptop toward him. “Okay.”
While he searched, fear rose up within me like bile and I wanted to throw up.
“I don’t see anything,” he said, catching me staring at him. “Can you tell me what I’m supposed to be looking for? If you gave me a little more info—”
I shook my head and hugged my legs in tighter.
“Nothing on local news sites,” he said. “Okay, tell me what’s going on. I’m starting to freak out. What happened? Why are you asking about house fires?”
“I can’t tell you,” I said.
He sighed in frustration and went back to searching.
“Nothing on Twitter or Facebook. What is it that you’re looking for?” he said, tossing his laptop to the side to comfort me, taking my hands in his.
“What about hospitalizations? Burn victims?” I asked.
“I’m not helping you look until you tell me what’s going on.” It was still dark out but the first whispers of light were filling the sky outside. I’d always liked Jack’s room, the faint scent of peppermint on his pillowcases, the small desk Lola sometimes napped under.
“Remy?”
“Elise wanted to do one last prank,” I said, barely audible. “Just the two of us.”
“What?” he said. “What did you do? Wait, did you drive all the way up to Chattanooga?”
I nodded.
“Why Chattanooga?” he asked, frowning in confusion.
“Elise’s dad lives there,” I said. “They moved from Chattanooga last year when Elise’s grandmother passed away and left her the Pink Mansion. They came down to sell it and deal with legal stuff but then her dad met someone and they stayed.” My voice was dull, lifeless with exhaustion. I’d been awake for almost twenty-four hours.
“I don’t understand,” Jack said. “What did you do once you got there?”
“We were only supposed to set off fireworks outside his house and wake him up. She just wanted him to have one bad night, you know?” Lola came up to me, sat by my feet, and rested her head on my knee. “We’ve done it before. Set up firecrackers outside a bedroom window, set off some fireworks. Nothing went wrong when we did it before,” I said, growing distressed. Everything had gone fine the first time.
“What happened?” he asked with growing horror. “What did she do?”
“There was an accident. I wasn’t there. Elise wanted to do this whole thing by herself. And—and—”
“What?” Jack said, pulling back in shock.
“One of the roman candles or something must’ve gone off wrong.” I couldn’t say it, what I feared.
“Oh my God,” Jack said, eyes wide with realization. “Don’t tell me you guys set the house on fire.”
My silence was answer enough.
He remained quiet for a long time, then scooped Lola up and placed her on the bed with us, rubbing her head absentmindedly. I wanted him to tell me everything would be okay, I wanted him to make everything okay.
“If you weren’t there, how do you know it was an accident?” he finally asked.
“What are you saying? That Elise set her dad’s house on fire on purpose?” I didn’t even want to think of that possibility, but Jack was only voicing my deepest fear.
“I’m not saying anything. I’m asking you what Elise is capable of. Only you can answer that.”
“I don’t know,” I said, exhausted and confused. “She probably just set it up a little too close to the house, or the firecrackers hit some dry wood,” I said, but I wasn’t really trying to convince him, only myself.
“I’m not disputing that,” he said. “What I’m asking is if she did it on purpose. If she knowingly set it up a little too close to the house. If she strung up the firecrackers where they could spark a fire. Or even angled a roman candle right at the house.”
I remembered the sound of shattering glass.
“It would look like an accident, but hasn’t she done this before? Set off fireworks?” he asked, and I nodded. “So she knows how to do it.”
“Oh God,” I said. “But—”
Yes, it was possible that it’d all been an accident. But I knew it wasn’t likely.
“We have to tell someone,” he said. “What she did is arson, and who’s to say she won’t do something like that again?”
“No, we can’t,” I said, panicking. This wasn’t why I was here, why I told him. Getting her in trouble was the last thing I wanted. “We can’t. She promised this was the last one.”
“How do you know she didn’t say that because she thought she’d finish the job tonight?” He was making it sound worse than it was. “How do you know she won’t just try again?”
I shook my head as the tears fell. “I can’t do that to someone I love.”
Jack sighed. “You don’t feel love for Elise, you just feel guilt.” He ran a hand roughly through his hair. “Think back to three weeks ago, before her father assaulted her. You hadn’t been talking much, and you didn’t want to talk to her. It looks like she hasn’t changed much, but you can’t see that. You can’t see beyond your guilt.”
Had I ignored what was right in front of me because I felt awful, like Jack said? I thought of my parents then, the forces that kept them trapped in an unhappy marriage.
In one crystalizing moment, I could see it all so clearly. Maybe they had something once, but the years had taken whatever they had and twisted it into nothing resembling love. I thought about that conversation with Dad again from all those years ago. It’s complicated, he’d said, and I hadn’t believed him. But now, that’s exactly how it felt between me and Elise—complicated. Jack was essentially telling me what I’d told Dad. And like him, I didn’t want to hear it.
Maybe Elise and I had something special once, but whatever we had now was twisted with guilt, anger, jealousy. Maybe I was right when I told Dad it really was that simple.
Maybe it was time to let Elise go.
“Remy?” Jack asked, seeing the devastation on my face.
I only cried harder.
MONDAY // AUGUST 28 // DAY 353
58.
“I want to play you something,” Detective Ward says. I glance at the door and wonder how long it’s been since my last break. Being in here, imprisoned in this room, I’ve lost sense of the passage of time. I have no sense of what an hour feels like anymore. I’m just trying to survive minute to minute. Second to second, one breath to the next. “It will probably be upsetting to hear,” she continues, unaware of how I’m feeling.
“What is it?” Vera asks, her fingers rubbing her temple. She’s exhausted too. I don’t know how much time we’ve been talking but I know it’s been a long day.
“A tape of the 9-1-1 call Remy made.”
Vera and I stare at her in surprise.
“Why?” Vera asks. My grip on my knees tightens, my knuckles bloodless.
“Remy seems to be a little confused about the timeline the night of the murder.” This is the first time she’s used that word—murder. It stops me cold. I feel like I’m unraveling.
“The night of Jack’s death,” Vera clarifies. They’re saying the same thing but there’s a big difference. The way Vera says it, Jack’s death, like it just happened. Detective Ward has used the word killed, but murder is something else entirely. It implies intent. The word is a window into her mind and what she thinks happened.
“Yes. Sunday night,” she says, almost casually.
“And how will forcing her to listen to the traumatic 9-1-1 call she made help?” Vera says, leaning forward on her elbows, her voice sharp and angry.
Detective Ward shrugs. Then she turns to me. “Do you remember making the call?” It was all a blur. My silence gives her all she needs. “Well, don’t you want to remember? Aren’t you at least curious?”
Vera doesn’t wait for me to respon
d. “This is a bad idea, Remy,” she warns me, turning her back to block Ward and give us some privacy. It’s one of the things I like about Vera, her protectiveness.
I hesitate. Detective Ward is referring to those unexplained fourteen minutes, the discrepancy in Jack’s arrival at the Pink Mansion and my 9-1-1 call. It hits me, what she’s been getting at—she thinks Elise and I murdered Jack, then called 9-1-1 only after we’d come up with a plan, a story to tell.
She’s wrong, of course. Though she is right about one thing—I am curious. Hearing my call won’t explain away the mystery of those fourteen minutes. Hearing my anguish won’t bring Jack back, won’t undo what’s already been done. Still, I want to know. I remember crying. I remember my voice and hands shaking. I remember a few words here and there, “Please hurry,” “There’s so much blood,” but not much more.
My eyes meet Vera’s. “I want to hear it.” Vera frowns at me in concern.
“I really don’t think it’s a good idea,” she says softly.
“No,” I say, more determined. “I want to hear it.”
“Are you sure?”
I nod.
She turns back to Detective Ward, says reluctantly, “Fine, but no camera.” Detective Ward acquiesces easily and soon it is just the three of us alone.
My voice, panicked and breathless, fills the small space.
“Hello?”
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”
“Oh God, oh God.” The sound of my short, sharp gasps ring out. “Oh God, Jack.” My tears fall one after the other, splattering against the metal table.
“Ma’am?”
“There’s so much blood.” I am crying, both now and in the recording. My sobs, past and present, collide into one another. The pain in my chest is unbearable and it feels like I’m dying. I am there again on the floor of the Pink Mansion. Jack is in my arms and he is bleeding out.