The hospital room is sterile and white and it makes me sick. Or maybe that’s the dislocated shoulder, fractured arm, and gash across my temple. Either way, I crave green walls instead of white, and dark earth beneath my hands instead of crisp sheets. I’m on just enough painkillers that I can bear it.
I already tried pushing the little morphine button in my hand until I passed out, but it didn’t work. I’m supposed to answer questions before they’ll let me sleep.
“Leah, if you’re able, I’ve got a few things to ask you,” Sheriff Hanson says apologetically, pulling a chair from the hallway into my room. The other two are occupied by Dad and Matt, situated next to my bed between me and the dark window. Mom is perched on the foot of my bed, and Ben is hovering outside the room, his shadow pacing on the other side of the closed blinds.
“Go ahead, Sheriff,” I mumble, wishing this was already over with. Dad’s eyes flicker my way before drifting down to settle on the bright green cast now decorating my arm. I thought it was appropriate, though the nurse gave me a look when I asked if they had forest green instead.
“Do you remember the crash?” The sheriff pulls out a pad of paper and a pencil from the front pocket of his uniform. He resembles his son, with the same dark eyes, straight nose, and confident air that Ben wears so well. He flips the cover over and taps the eraser three times. His first two fingernails are stained brown underneath, and I stare, waiting for him to tap the eraser again.
He clears his throat, jolting me back to the question. “No. I mean, I remember before. It was wet, the road was slick. A deer came out. I don’t remember hitting the tree or anything after.”
“But you got out of the car? You were able to walk away,” he says expectantly.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t remember if you unbuckled yourself and opened the door?”
Lie. Protect them. “I guess I would have if I made it to the woods.”
Sheriff Hanson stares at me, only glancing away when Dad shifts in his seat. “Where were you when you first realized you weren’t where you were supposed to be?”
I’m about to say Aldridge, the abandoned mill town, but he’s not going to buy that. It’s miles from where we crashed, and I likely wouldn’t have been able to walk there fully healed in the woods, much less hurt the way I am. “I . . . I really don’t . . .” I look at Matt, stalling.
He swoops in for the rescue, as I hoped. “Can’t she rest for a while? She’s been through a lot, and she obviously can’t remember what happened. I mean, look at her head.” He leans forward, elbows on knees, gaze intent on me, face taut with guilt and anguish. I can’t imagine how awful he must be feeling, thinking he’s responsible for all of this.
The sheriff waits for a nod from Dad. “Sure. We can do this later.” He taps the eraser again, then flips the notebook closed and places them both back in his pocket. “Get some rest, Leah. I’ll be back to check on you tomorrow.”
Dad gets to his feet and joins him. “I’ll walk you out, Paul.”
They don’t speak until they close the door to the room. I can hear their voices outside, and Ben is still there, peering in from the hallway. “I’m going to get some coffee,” Matt says, giving me a pointed look before sliding out the door.
“How do you feel?” Mom asks for the gazillionth time, placing a hand on my arm.
“Tired. I wish I could sleep.”
“I’ll get the nurse. I’m sure she can give you something to help.”
I reach out and grab her hand. “How’s Matt? He’s really not hurt?”
“A bump on the head. They released him shortly after they brought him here.” Her smile is sad. “He didn’t really give them a choice.”
“So he could find me?”
“We’ve been terrified, Leah. I can’t . . .” She stands suddenly, as if it’s too much for her to sit here and talk about, and tucks my hand back under the blanket. “I’ll be right back.”
As soon as she closes the door, Matt appears, sans coffee cup. There is a light in his eyes that accelerates my heart. “What is it?”
“I got the details from Ben. He overheard them talking earlier while you were getting stitched up. The door was ripped off the car from the outside, and the seat belt was cut with a knife.”
“Oh God.”
“They know you didn’t get yourself out of the car.”
It’s what he doesn’t say that I need to hear. “And?”
“They found footprints.”
I close my eyes, fighting the urge to rip the catheter out of my arm and demand Matt get me out of here.
“They think someone tried to kidnap you, and that you either don’t remember or you’re covering it up.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? I mean, he did take you from the car, didn’t he? No one’s going to believe he’s harmless, Leah. Or the . . . others. They’re planning to go looking for whoever took you.”
“Did Ben tell anyone about him? Or Ashley?”
“They haven’t said a word, but there’s no way this will stay a secret.”
“Where is Ashley?”
“She went home to tell her mom you were okay, said she’d be by later to check on you.”
“I’m sure Ms. Hutton was upset. Did . . . did you hear what Ashley said?”
At that moment the nurse walks in. I can see Mom standing in the hallway talking to a new group of visitors laden with flowers. My room already smells like a garden. I glance at Matt when the nurse turns to my IV line, syringe in hand. The nurse checks a few more machines, tells me to rest well, and leaves quietly.
“Matt, you’ve got to get me out of here,” I whisper through the haze of painkillers she just dumped into my IV.
Matt’s white knuckles are fisted into my sheets near my waist. The beep of my heart monitor has steadied back into a quiet rhythm, and the tingling warmth of morphine spreads through my body like a wave. I’m afraid I’m going to sleep, and when I wake up, it will be too late to do anything.
“Matt, did you hear me?”
“I heard you.”
“Then help me. What if they go after them with guns? I just need to warn him. They can get away from here, go somewhere safe.”
“Why don’t you want them to bring him in? He’s a human, Leah, not an animal.”
“It’s his choice. If he wanted to come back, he would. It would be cruel to take him away, and imagine what they would do to Bee and the others. She’d never see the light of day again.”
“Bee?”
“Bee. She’s the one who got me out.” The warmth is too comforting now. My eyelids are growing heavy with sleep. “He needs to know they’re coming.”
Matt grabs my hands. “Even if I agree, and I’m not saying I will, because you look like hell, how can I get you out? This is a hospital, and Mom and Dad are here around the clock.”
“Call Ashley. This is her area of expertise.” I glance past him at the window, already wondering how Matt is going to get me out of here. “Good thing we’re on the first floor.”
Matt rolls his eyes and shakes his head when he sees where I’m going with that. “I haven’t had enough coffee for this.”
“Just call Ash . . .”
Honestly, no one is more surprised than me to be lying in the backseat of Ashley’s car when I wake up. The aged Accord is motionless, and I can hear distant voices, muffled from the closed car doors, but nothing else. I’m also completely underneath a blanket. Like someone doesn’t want me seen.
Imagine that.
I slowly pull the blanket down over my eyes and peer out the window. All I can see are tall pine trees towering over the car in the morning light. A car door slams nearby, followed by Ashley’s elevated voice. Whoever she’s talking to is having most of their backside chewed off.
The next thing I know, the door beside my head swings open. “Are you awake?” Ashley says.
“Do I want to be?” I mumble beneath the blanket, tilting my head to see past her. Matt is standing behind her, his face red with rage. Before I can ask what’s wrong, Ashley waves her hand at me to scoot over.
“Shake it off. You’ve got to see this.” She plops down on the seat, barely letting me move my head in time. “Sit up, hurry.”
“Geez, Ashley, have you ever just woken up from morphine? Give me a freaking minute.” I struggle through the dizziness and sit up beside Ashley, leaning against her for support. “Where are we, by the way? And how did you get me out?”
“I pulled the fire alarm in the hallway.”
I suck in a breath and start coughing. “You what?!”
“It was tricky getting your dead-weight ass through the window and over the bushes, but we managed it.”
“You know they have cameras. Someone is going to find out what you did.”
“Trust me, this is worth a little time in juvie.” She slaps a thick file folder in my lap. Written on the outside in thick black marker is “work stuff.” Innocent enough, until I open the cover.
I’m not sure if this was supposed to be the first page or if Ashley put it there on purpose. Either way, the lance of pain that shoots through me makes me glad I’ve still got the painkillers flowing through my blood.
It’s a flyer, one of the first ones made, when everyone thought our brothers were kidnapped. Sam and Reed stare back at me from their individual pictures, the ones made for the school yearbook with the blue backgrounds. Matt and Sam had the same blue striped shirt that year, and both wore them on picture day. I remember Mom laughed when they walked into the kitchen of our old home, twins down to their shoes. The last time I saw that shirt, it was being packed into a box the week before we left that house for good.
Reed looks just as he always has in my mind. A boy of eight, thick brown hair swept across his forehead, still long from the summer. I was there when Ashley’s mom was threatening to cut his hair for the first day of school, and I remember how hard Reed begged her not to.
My eyes burn, but I flip to the next page. Ashley sucks in a breath at the photo of her dad with Sam and Reed in the woods. The next several pages are hard. More photos of the crime scene. I tilt them away, trying to protect Ashley from the sight of her dead father’s body, but I know she’s already seen them. Photo after photo of blood, destroyed camping equipment, and large rocks littering the ground. I’ve seen all this before, but it’s still a shock.
It was late on Sunday afternoon when we knew something was wrong, long after they should have been back.
By five o’ clock, they had found the destroyed campsite with Mr. Hutton’s body, his head bashed in with a rock, and the boys gone. I can still remember with vivid clarity what those words felt like to hear. It was a nasty, violated mix of fear, gut-wrenching pain, and total helplessness that took root and never went away. I remember wanting to run, somewhere so far that I could escape the words I’d heard. The boys are gone.
I didn’t know it could get worse. I didn’t know that “gone” still meant “hope.”
Not until four days later, when I heard the word “dead.”
At that point I realized how much I’d lost. Our inseparable group went from five to three. We were told a man did it. They said they had evidence, but the man got away.
The bodies were unsuitable for open caskets. I didn’t know what that meant at seven years old. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that my older brother and my best friend were lying in cold white boxes at the front of our church and I couldn’t even see them. The last time I’d seen their faces was when they were laughing in Mr. Hutton’s truck as they pulled away. It was closure I couldn’t have. The funeral did nothing for me. I still waited for them to come home. In my heart those were just empty white caskets.
I come to the newspaper clipping, the front-page story of their deaths, with a drawing of a scruffy, bearded man at the bottom, the killer who was never found. There are only a few pages after this, and I suddenly wonder what I was supposed to see. “Why are you showing me this?” It feels like I’ve been staring at these pictures for eternity.
“Keep going,” Ashley whispers, gripping my knee tightly.
I take a deep breath and flip the page over. For a moment, I just stare, trying to understand what I’m seeing. Then I feel the pieces fit together in my mind with a click so visceral I’d swear it was real. “Oh my God.”
Ashley is silent, a tightening on my knee the only sign that she heard me. It’s another flyer for a missing person, but this one has been altered. On the left is Sam’s first-grade picture, and on the right . . . on the right is a computer-generated picture of what he would look like at twelve. And then another one at eighteen. It is so eerily close to what Matt looks like that it could have been his picture, except for the darker hair.
It’s long in the picture, past his shoulders. Sam never wore his hair long. I can feel my brain on the verge of overloading. I slide the paper aside with a trembling hand, needing to finish this before I can’t think anymore.
I know what’s coming next. Somehow, I think I’ve always known. I look at Ashley and understand why. I love her like my own sister. We might as well be, for all we’ve been through since day one. I love her thick brown hair and her stunning green eyes and the way her mouth quirks up when she’s up to no good.
I think the first time I saw the boy tilt his head like Ashley so often does, something deep inside me recognized him.
But to acknowledge the truth would be to accept that all we’ve been told has been a lie, that maybe we suffered more than we had to, or perhaps not enough. Either way, I ignored it for the consequences it would bring. And now they’ve come, regardless, all because I couldn’t stay away from the boy that was once my hero. The boy whose name I used to draw inside red crayon hearts, who gave me tiny white flowers and held my hand at the bus stop.
I move Sam’s page aside and let out a ragged breath at what lies before me. Ashley sniffs, wiping at her eyes, the same ones that stare up at me from the page. The computer-generated picture of Reed is astonishingly close to the real thing. But the picture feels wrong. They’ve got him on a white background, when all I’ve ever seen behind him is green. The Reed in the photo has light skin and more bulk, like an athlete. The boy from the woods is all muscle, and the picture doesn’t show how his tan skin glows when the sunlight hits it through the forest canopy or the way it highlights his sun-streaked hair.
It’s close enough, though. Guilt washes over me. This is one secret that has come back to haunt me tenfold. “Ashley, I’m sorry.”
Her hand slides from my knee. “Did you know?” Her voice is trembling with faint accusation.
I can’t tell her no, because that would be a lie. Some part of me knew, but it was so small I could flip the switch, just like I did for everything else. But to say yes, it doesn’t feel like the truth either. I’ve fallen somewhere in the middle, and it’s not a place that I’m used to being. “I . . . I didn’t want to know, Ash. I wanted something in my life that had nothing to do with . . . this.”
I glance up at Matt to find him pressing the palms of his hands to his eyes. He doesn’t move from that position, and I wonder if he’s mad at me or just in shock. Ashley stares down at the picture of her older brother with tears in her eyes and nods, accepting my flimsy excuse. “But it has everything to do with it, doesn’t it? You found the truth; you just didn’t know it.”
I meet her eyes, seeing the green flames that burn within. “So what do we do now?”
“Ben,” Ashley barks. “Get over here.”
Ben shuffles forward, looking both mutinous and broken.
Ashley glares up at him, meeting him stare for stare. “Tell her, Ben. Tell her the truth.”
He holds my gaze for the longest time. “I knew.”
“Knew what?”
“About this.”
“How long?”
“That night at the party. I stopped off at the house before I met y’all there. Dad left the folder out. He didn’t think I’d come back home so soon.”
“Is this why you suddenly saw me? Because your dad wanted you to spy on me?”
“No, Leah, I swear. It wasn’t like that. He just wanted me to find out if you’d seen anything in the woods.”
“So you thought making me your girlfriend would accomplish that?” Suddenly my guilt for knowing I’ve been leading Ben on vanishes. He’s been doing the same thing.
“It didn’t start out that way. But I realized the only way to find out what you knew was to get to know you. I needed you to trust me. And I just . . .”
“What? Thought you’d kill two birds with one stone?”
Ben glares. “I fell for you, Leah. And that’s the truth, like it or not. And apparently while you were falling for someone else.”
Matt pulls his hands away from his eyes long enough to give me an I told you so look.
“Like you said, it didn’t start out that way.” I press a hand to my head, feeling the pain coming through. “I just . . . didn’t know what to do. I thought you were a good guy who didn’t deserve to get hurt.”
“I still am, Leah. I care about you.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell any of us? You’ve seen what’s in this folder and didn’t think we should know?”
“You found Reed and didn’t think they deserved to know?” Ben points at Ashley and Matt.
“I wasn’t sure! Why would I tell them if I wasn’t sure? That would be horrible.”
“But you suspected. And you kept it to yourself. Isn’t that wrong too?”
I glare, the pounding in my head almost unbearable. “Leave off, Ben. She already feels like shit and you’re making it worse.” Ashley squeezes my hand and takes the folder from me. “If we’re doing this, we need to go.”
Ben sighs, defeated. “We’ll take the RZR. It’s the only way we’ll ever get there ahead of them.”