PREPARATION FOR AN INTERROGATION
IN the morning Cam is still quiet, and there are dark circles under her eyes, as if she hasn’t slept.
“Are you okay?” Blair asks in the car.
“Bad dreams,” Cam says curtly.
“Are you not talking to me?” Blair asks.
“I’m talking to you now,” Cam says. “Why wouldn’t I be talking to you?”
“It’s not a big deal,” Blair says. “Nothing bad is going to happen.”
“I’m not not talking to you. But can we talk about something else?”
Blair turns on her windshield wipers. “I keep forgetting to replace these things. That was really nice, what you said to Mattie last night.”
“About the security camera?”
“About how it doesn’t matter who they like. Or if they don’t like someone. At least, I think that’s what you said.”
“Oh, that,” Cam says. “It was clearer in my head.” She fiddles with Blair’s armrest. “Oreville’s not the easiest place to be gay. If they’re gay. Nonbinary. Queer.” Cam looks slightly panicked. “Whatever. I wanted them to know it’s cool.”
“Yeah,” Blair says carefully. “I can’t really talk about that, so I’m glad they have you.”
Now Cam is actively alarmed. “You can’t?”
“Of course we can talk about it,” Blair says. “But it’s not my experience. I can try to support them if they need it, but I think it’s better for them to have someone else who’s…”
“If you say ‘unique’ our friendship ends now,” Cam says.
“I was going to say ‘special,’” Blair says with a straight face. Cam socks her in the arm, but gently enough that Blair knows she got the joke.
Blair turns into the high school parking lot, finds a spot.
“How are things with Sophie?” Blair asks, switching off the ignition but not getting out of the car.
“I don’t know,” Cam says miserably. “I guess when she comes back for break I have to talk about it. But I don’t want to talk about it. I want everything to be better.”
“How?” Blair asks.
“I don’t know. Better,” Cam says.
Blair considers and discards several possible approaches before she decides to go straight for the jugular.
“If you have a problem with someone, and you want to fix it, you have to decide first what you want to happen,” Blair says. “Then you know what to ask for. You have to be specific. Like, do you want her to text you every night at a certain time?”
“That would be a strange thing to ask,” Cam says. “Don’t you think?”
“Then something else. You want to FaceTime twice a week? You want her to try to visit more?”
“Sophie doesn’t have any money either,” Cam says. “How’s she supposed to visit more?”
“Cam,” Blair says patiently, “I’m trying to give you examples of things you could ask for. You’re the one who has to figure out what you want.”
“Oh,” says Cam. She thinks about this. “I want everything to be better,” she says.
“You are impossible, Cameron P. Muñoz,” Blair says. “And I say that with great love.”
“I know,” Cam says meekly. “Thank you for trying. If Luke doesn’t turn out to be a serial killer, are you going to bone him tonight?”
“CAMERON,” Blair says.
“Don’t forget, you still have a curfew,” Cam says. “You’ll have to bone him fast. Come on, we’re going to be late for first period.”
Mattie is waiting for them at Blair’s locker. Their face is paler than usual.
“Hi,” Blair says. “You okay?”
Mattie shakes their head. “This was on my bed last night,” they say. They pull a book out of their backpack and hand it to Blair. Cam looks over her shoulder as she examines it.
It’s a hardcover copy of a Raymond Chandler book called The Big Sleep—an old edition, from the looks of it. The paper is heavy, the print elegant. But nearly every page is marked with ugly words in bloody-red marker.
Leave it alone.
Stop asking questions.
If you don’t drop this, you’ll regret it.
“What the hell is this?” Cam asks, taking the book from Blair. She turns it over, as if the back of the book will reveal some secret.
“It’s mine,” Mattie says. “Lola bought it for me.” They’re trying, Blair can tell, not to cry. “It’s my—it was one of my—it meant a lot to me. She did this.”
“Lo—the girl?” Blair asks, confused. “Did you see her?”
“I told you, somebody left it on my bed. I found it after you left yesterday.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” Blair asks. “Us?”
Mattie shrugs. “It’s not like she was standing next to it with a knife or anything. I’ll be fine.”
“Mattie, this is a threat,” Blair says. “This is serious.”
“It’s proof,” Mattie says. “It’s proof that she’s not my sister.”
“You don’t know it was her, though,” Cam points out. “It could’ve been anyone.”
“Who?” Mattie asks. “Who else could’ve done it?”
“Your brother, for one,” Cam says. “Ruth.”
“My brother? Are you serious? Why would he do something like this?”
“I’m just saying,” Cam says. “We don’t know it was her. It could’ve been anyone.”
“Not anyone,” Blair says. “Right? Only someone who could’ve gotten into your house.”
“It’s not like we leave the front door open,” Mattie says dryly.
“Do you have an alarm?” Cam asks.
“Yeah, but half the time nobody bothers to turn it on. Not during the day, anyway.”
Cam turns the book over in her hands again, thinking. “Why would she do this?” she wonders aloud.
“She doesn’t want me asking questions, because she’s a fraud,” Mattie retorts, impatient. “We’re getting closer. She’s getting scared.”
“But this is so obvious,” Cam says. “She would know she’d be the first person you’d think of. That you’d assume it was her.”
“Of course,” Mattie says.
“I don’t know,” Cam says. “That’s pretty bold. I thought you said she’s been kissing up to you.”
Mattie snatches the book from her hands, clutches it to their chest protectively. “What are you saying? Do you think I’m lying? Do you think I did this, to make it look like it was her?”
“No,” Cam says, although the thought has just occurred to her. “I don’t think you’d do that, Mattie. I just don’t think we should assume it was her.”
“It wasn’t my brother,” Mattie says again. “I know him. Anyway, why would he do something like this? He thinks that girl is Lola.”
“I don’t know,” Cam says.
“Mattie,” Blair says. “I think maybe it’s time to tell someone else about this. This is … this is scary.”
Mattie shrugs again. “Who?” they ask. “Who am I going to tell? Who’s going to help me, besides you?”
“At least tell Luke,” Blair says.
“Absolutely do not tell Luke!” Cam protests.
“Everybody thinks I’m crazy,” Mattie says. “He’s just going to think I’m crazier than he already does.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t think that,” Blair says.
“You don’t know what my brother thinks,” Mattie says. “I don’t want to tell him. I didn’t want to tell you, except that it’s evidence. Please.”
“But—” Blair tries.
“If anything else like this happens,” Cam says, “you have to tell us. Promise.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Please,” Cam says. “Promise.”
Mattie scuffs at the floor with the toe of their Oxford shoe. “I promise,” they say dully. “But she left it. And now I know you don’t believe me either.”
“Mattie—” Cam begins.
But Mattie turns away from Cam and Blair, the book still held to their chest, and trudges away from them down the hall.
BLAIR’S BOOK PROPOSAL: ADVENTURES IN AFTER-SCHOOL BOATING
Dear Meredith Payne-Whiteley,
Luke’s boat is called the Rorqual. Thanks to Spying on Whales, I know this is a general word for any member of the baleen whale family, which I said, and which definitely impressed him. It’s small, with a tiny cabin and kitchen and a tinier toilet inside and a hollowed-out place behind the cabin where you can sit outside and steer and put the sails up and down.
These are not the technical boat terms you’re supposed to use. So maybe I should do some more research before we send this to any editors. Do editors know about boats? That’s your area of expertise, not mine.
Anyway.
Luke told me the kitchen is called a “galley” and the hollowed-out place is called the “cockpit,” like on a plane, and he also told me the names of the sails and all the ropes, but I forgot them immediately.
Oh, and the toilet is called the “head,” and you have to flush it with a kind of crank. Luke blushed when he showed me how to use it, which was cute.
“This whole boat is yours?” I asked.
“It was Dad’s,” he said. “It’s mine now. Well, and Mattie’s. But I don’t think they want it.” He looked the same way he had when he’d showed me his model ship. The expression of a small boy: defiant, sad, almost ashamed. I wondered, not for the first time, what it feels like to have your father walk out on you forever. I don’t imagine it feels very good.
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. Luke loosened lines, turned on the motor. I asked if I could help, and he gave me that smile that turns me right into a sucker.
“Later,” he said. “Later” is a big word, Meredith. It could mean five minutes from now.
It could mean five years.
I feel easy around Luke in a way I never felt with my ex-boyfriend. Luke doesn’t seem to care what I’m wearing or how I did my makeup. When I talk, he listens. When I’m quiet, he doesn’t mind. When I write it down like that, I sound pathetic. What basic things to find extraordinary in another person. That’s what Cam would say. Maybe that’s true. But for me, those things are new.
Once we were out of the harbor, Luke put up one of the sails. I did help, then. He said again that I didn’t have to, but I wanted to know what it felt like to pull on the lines as the fabric unfurled. It’s harder than it looks, I can tell you that much, and I’m in good shape. But there’s something so satisfying in tangible action. Pull a rope, the sail goes up, the wind fills the sail, the boat goes forward.
“Too bad we didn’t come out earlier,” Luke said. “It’ll be dark soon.”
“Next time, I’ll skip school,” I said.
He turned and smiled at me again. “Sounds like a plan.”
It was freezing, and the wind was picking up, and the sky was threatening rain. I could’ve stayed out there forever anyway, the two of us on the rising waves, a tiny white dot in all that gray-blue water. An easy place to pretend the rest of the world was a universe away.
But I hadn’t forgotten what I was supposed to be there for.
I waited until Luke took the sail down, turned on the engine again, pointed us back toward home.
“Does your sister like sailing?” I asked.
He shook his head. “She used to, when we were kids. But then she started getting seasick.” A beat. “She hates Dad,” he said. “After he left, that’s when she started saying being on the water made her want to puke. I think she doesn’t like anything that reminds her of him.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Mattie says you and Lola were close.”
His face was turned away from me. I would’ve had to move to see him as he spoke.
“We were,” he said. “Not so much anymore.”
“Do you remember the night she—” I didn’t know the right word. I don’t know what Luke believes. If she ran away, or if she was kidnapped. Which option would be worse for him.
“Not really,” he said. “I said good night to her. She was still out on the back patio when I went to bed. I had this dream that someone was walking through the house. Someone I recognized in the dream, but when I woke up, I didn’t know who I’d seen. And she was gone. Just like that.”
“Like your dad,” I said.
“Pretty much,” Luke said. “Except my dad never called me back after he moved to Hawaii. And Lola couldn’t not call me back, because I had no way of calling her.”
“Were you angry at her?”
“I don’t know what I was,” Luke said.
“What about Becca?”
Finally, he looked directly at me. I don’t know what reaction I expected to see, but his face was impossible to read. “What about her?”
“You guys were, like, a thing, right?” As soon as the question was out of my mouth, I regretted it.
You guys were, like, a thing, right? A baby question, phrased like a baby. Holy shit, I thought. I’m jealous.
“We were kids,” he said.
“But you stopped talking to her after—afterward.”
He stared at me. “Did you talk to her?”
“Cam and I did, yeah.”
“Why would you do something like that?”
I clearly hadn’t thought this one through at all. “We, um … We thought it might help Mattie. I don’t know. They’re so—you know.”
Some of the alarm faded from his face. “Yeah,” he said. “I know. Look, I didn’t do a very good job of handling things after my sister disappeared. I’m trying to make it up to Mats now, but Becca…” He sighed. “She must hate me,” he said simply. “I don’t blame her.”
“I don’t think I would’ve done much better in your shoes,” I said. “Not when I was fifteen. Probably not now, for that matter.”
He shook his head and looked away from me again. “I’m sorry, but can we talk about something else?”
“Of course,” I said. I could hear Cam in my head: You idiot! Don’t drop it now!
But I couldn’t do it to him. Couldn’t keep pushing him. The whole thing was such a black hole of pain: for Mattie, for Luke, for Becca.
For Lola and Darren? Who knows.
There was one thing I was sure of, though: Whoever had left that book for Mattie, it hadn’t been Luke. Which left only three people.
Ruth? Unlikely.
Mattie was right. The obvious choice was Lola. I couldn’t imagine why she’d done it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t her.
And the third option was, of course, Mattie. Desperate to make us believe. Could they do it? Sure. But would they? I tried to put myself in their shoes. With their impossible story. Their need to believe their sister would never have left them.
I should tell Luke, I thought. He should know. But Mattie hadn’t, and I couldn’t break their trust any more than I already had. Not until I knew for sure who’d left the book.
Luke and I were both quiet for a while. We’d only been out on the water for an hour, but already the world of mysteries and school and homework and my future—even you, Meredith—seemed like a distant country I had visited once but could barely remember. Nothing was real except the cold wind coming off the water and soaking into my bones, the slap of the waves against the boat’s hull, the harsh cries of gulls carrying across the sharp air.
“Why didn’t you go to college?” I asked him suddenly. I don’t know where the question came from. So much for moving the conversation to light topics. But he didn’t seem to mind.
“Partly because of Mattie,” he said. “I didn’t want to leave them alone with Ruth. But that’s not the whole reason.” He shifted his hands on the wheel, moving us toward the stone jetty that marked the entrance to the harbor. “I was good at school, but it was like … It didn’t mean anything, you know? Just some boxes I was checking off. And I couldn’t imagine doing that for another four years, and then going to work in an office somewhere and just … checking boxes for the rest of my life. When Mattie graduates, I’m going to sail to Mexico, and then we’ll see. I have enough money saved from the restaurant to last me for a while.”
“Ruth didn’t care?”
“She cared,” he said. “She’s not happy about it. But she wants a perfect family, and we haven’t been that for a long time. We never were, but when my dad was around and me and Lola were little, she at least had pictures of one to show her friends.” He laughed, but the laughter was forced. “Now, she can’t even do that. My dad’s gone, I didn’t turn out to be what she wanted, Mattie didn’t turn out to be what she wanted, Lola—” He cut himself off. “Me not going to college—we had some fights about it when I graduated, but now it’s just one more thing on the list of what Ruth chooses not to see.”
“Do you regret it?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes. Not really. My life here is so small, but I know this isn’t forever.”
“Four more years,” I said. “That’s a long time.”
He’s frozen, I thought. He and Mattie are frozen, stuck forever in the place they were when Lola disappeared. Like flies trapped in amber. I wondered if he’d ever really sail away, or if that was just something he told himself to pass the time. I thought of what Mattie had said about Luke: Girls always like my brother. They think they can fix him.
But maybe he just needed to get out of Oreville.
Maybe the person he needed to get him out was me.
“I don’t think I’m going to go to college either,” I said. I hadn’t been sure of it until that moment, the first time I’d said it out loud. But out there, on the water, just me and Luke—it was so obvious.
“Why not?” Luke asked. There was no judgment in the question, just curiosity.
“Because that’s not the kind of thing I need to learn,” I said. “Not right now. I want to take—a year. At least. Maybe more. I want to see something bigger than Oreville.”
“You can see something bigger than Oreville pretty much anywhere you go,” Luke said, smiling. “Definitely at college. Well, maybe not at Wazzu.” Washington State University is an infamously rural college in eastern Washington. The kind of place you could go to watch football games and tip cows, if that’s your thing, and not much else.
“I know,” I said. “But you know what I mean.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know exactly what you mean.”
“My parents are going to kill me,” I said. Their ambitions for me might not be high, but that doesn’t mean they don’t assume I’ll do what’s expected of me.
“The best thing I ever learned from my sister,” Luke said, “is that adults can’t actually stop you from doing what you want.”
“I don’t have any money,” I said.
Luke shrugged. “Sailing is cheap,” he said. “And so is Mexico.”
I stared at him. “Is that … are you inviting me?”
“Sure,” he said, smiling down at me where I sat in the cockpit with my legs tucked up underneath me, my heart thumping in—what? Elation? Terror? Hope? His eyes were warm, intent. He was looking at me as if he saw something he liked very much.
“You look like you’re freezing,” he said. “Want a blanket?”
After that, we stopped talking about anything serious. We stopped talking about much of anything at all. Luke was quiet as he moored the boat. Quiet as he held out a hand and helped me onto the dock. I didn’t need it, and I think he knew it. I think it was an excuse to touch me. At least, I hope it was. But he didn’t say anything as we walked back toward our cars.
“I’m sorry,” I said finally, when we reached mine.
“Sorry for what?”
“Sorry I keep asking you questions about your sister,” I said.
“It’s okay,” he said. He was facing me, his hands shoved in his pockets. “But I don’t think it’s going to help.”
“Help?” I didn’t know what he meant.
“Mattie,” he said. “Whatever it is they’re going through, they’re going to have to work through it on their own.”
“I know,” I said. “I want to help them.”
“You’re a good person,” he said. “I like that about you.”
I’d done nothing but lie to him since the moment we met. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to run to Mattie then and there. Insist they drop this whole thing with their sister. Let it go, I would’ve said.
Let her back into her life.
Let her tell you where she’s been when she’s ready.
Let me have this.
Let Luke go.
Please.
“Thank you,” I said instead.
And then Luke kissed me. Light and easy, the way you’d kiss a child.
Except he kissed me on the lips.
“I should go,” he said.
“See you soon?” I asked.
But he was already walking away.
If he heard me, he didn’t answer.
Meredith, please help me. Now what do I do?
Sincerely,
Blair Johnson