NOW
It’s Sunday. The idea is so incomprehensible, so out there, that my mother may as well have told me that my CT scan showed an alien tracking device implanted in my brain.
It’s Sunday, and the last thing I remember is Friday night. Between that awful, humiliating conversation with Jesse on the dock and waking up on Bobcat Mountain, there are thirty-six missing hours during which everything went wrong.
Did I get hurt, and did they leave me to find help? Why wouldn’t they have made it down the mountain? I shut my eyes, reach back in my memory for an answer to McAuliffe’s question. No matter which direction I stretch, I keep landing on the dock.
The sheriff moves to questions I’m able to answer. What time did we get to the lake house? What did we do? When did we go to bed? I respond dutifully, even though the look on his face says the answers aren’t helpful.
All that matters is what happened on that mountain. The only important information is what I can’t remember.
When the sheriff leaves, an aide immediately ducks into the room in his wake, squeaking about needing to change the bathroom trash can. When she’s out of earshot, Mom looks at me and says, “You don’t remember anything that happened yesterday?”
“I actually remember everything,” I snap. “This is all just an elaborate ploy for attention.”
Mom makes a face like she’s sucking her teeth, which means I’m in for it once the aide finishes cleaning the bathroom. I don’t care that I’m being a little bitch—Kat and Jesse are missing, which my parents have known all day. Not only did they not fucking tell me, they kept me from talking to the sheriff right away.
“You should have let me talk to him,” I say. “If they’d known to look for Kat and Jesse at Devil’s Peak hours ago—”
“Your doctors said that being interviewed would stress you out and interfere with your test results.” Mom sets a bag of clothes down on the chair. “And I agreed with them. You obviously have post-traumatic amnesia.”
“Can you let the real doctors diagnose me, please?” The words slip out. The look on Mom’s face makes me want to stuff them back in my mouth until I choke.
This isn’t me. I argue with my mom, sure. But it’s always about stupid shit like a wet towel left on my bedroom carpet. I am never nasty for no reason.
I want to bury my face in her shoulder and cry. What is happening to me?
“Teenie,” Dad says. “Why don’t you grab dinner?”
“I’m fine,” Mom snarls.
Dad puts a hand on her arm. “Please. Grab something from the cafeteria for yourself, and bring something back for me, okay?”
I shut my eyes so I don’t have to see her leave. I want her here, but I don’t, because it’s her fault the rangers have been searching the wrong part of the mountain for Kat and Jesse. I can’t even begin to think about what that might mean or how I’ll ever forgive my parents if those wasted hours wind up mattering.
When I open my eyes, Dad and I are alone. He looks at me, rubbing the stubble cropping up on his chin. “That was a low blow, Claire.”
“I know,” I murmur.
“You have no idea how terrifying it was to get the phone call we got. How terrified Kat’s parents and Jesse’s aunt were when we called them”
“I know,” I say, bringing my voice to its full volume.
It doesn’t feel worth pointing out that no one regrets this stupid trip more than I do right now, that no one wishes I hadn’t lied and come to Sunfish Creek this weekend more than I do.
“They could still be lost somewhere, right? There’s no way they searched the whole mountain today.” My voice quavers. I know what I’m really asking is for him to lie to me, even though that’s the most important rule in this family. Don’t lie.
The sad look on Dad’s face says he won’t, or can’t. Maybe because I’ve already lied enough this week for all of us.
A nurse knocks at the door to take my vitals around eleven. He’s beefy with gym-addict arms, and the badge on the lanyard around his neck says scott milligan, rn.
“Well,” he says, coming at me with a blood pressure cuff. “Aren’t we all smiles in here?”
Mom looks at him as if she wants to punt his balls into his throat. “My daughter has a serious injury.”
“Yeah, but everything’s gonna be all right,” Scott says, pumping air into my blood pressure cuff. “That’s what they say in Jamaica. I was just there; that’s why I’m so tan.”
I turn until my father’s face comes into focus. “You guys should really go back to the lake house. It’s late.”
“We’re staying here with you,” my mom snipes.
Scott records my blood pressure. “Visiting hours actually ended at eight.”
Scott takes a step back so my parents can give me a proper goodbye. Dad brushes his lips against my forehead. My mother collects my bag of dirty clothes from the chair, her back to me. Her shoulders rise for a beat before she turns to me. “We’ll see you in the morning. I’ll bring a change of clothes.”
When they’re gone, Scott says, “Hope you don’t mind. You seemed like you could use a reprieve from them.”
“Thank you.”
“Try to get some sleep. Rest is the key to recovery.”
In the hall, a machine beeps like a gong. I shift in my cot. “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep here at all.”
“Too loud?”
I think of Kat, curled into the couch Friday night, feet tucked under her. The thought of not being able to call her a thousand times to see if she’s okay makes pressure mount in my head. I shake my head, knocking a tear loose.
Scott looks at me. “Oh, sweetie. Do you want me to see if the doctor will prescribe you something to help?”
“Yes please,” I whisper.
He nods.
When he returns with a pitcher of water and pill in a paper cup, I knock it back, folding the thought of Jesse and Kat like an origami triangle in my brain, letting it shrink until it’s small enough to tuck away for tonight.
Scott flicks off the light on his way out of the room. I turn on my side and close my eyes. The hospital blanket is scratchy on my bare legs, and it’s too warm in here.
Friday night, at the lake house. I couldn’t sleep. I can feel the quilt on my bare legs, my feet carrying me outside, following the light of the moon to the dock—
A scream splits the quiet. I’m running, my chest about to burst with panic.
The scream came from me.
I stumble, lurch forward, elbows and knees hitting the floor. Warmth trickles down my hand. A flash of the drain in the emergency room, the water swirling pink, my hands furiously scrubbing.
“Whoa! What is going on?”
Hands, grabbing me. Cold tile beneath my palms. A chorus of machines beeping. I’m not in the Marcotte lake house, or the emergency room bathroom—I’m in a hospital hallway.
I stumble and blink until my forearm, streaked with blood, comes into focus.
The woman holding me shouts: “Someone get me a towel. She ripped her damn IV out.”
My heart is hammering. Nurse Scott’s face is in mine. “Claire, I need you to breathe.”
“I heard screaming,” I say.
“No, honey, you were screaming.” Scott presses a towel to my bleeding arm. “Very loudly, while people are trying to sleep.”
A small crowd of nurses have gathered to gawk. Muttering: head injury. Scott extends an arm like we’re going to cotillion and walks me back to my room.
Once I’m in bed, Scott holds my arm down, wiping away the blood with an alcohol pad. “Oh dear,” he clucks. “Look what you did.”
I close my eyes as he tears a fresh needle from its packaging and guides it under my skin.
Look what you did.
Someone is rustling me awake. The clock overhead says it’s 7:45 a.m. Scott is hovering over me, holding a blood pressure cuff.
“Good morning, Starshine.” He hooks the blood pressure cuff around my arm. “Nurse Scott says hello. You’re not going to run off on me again, are you?”
Last night wasn’t a fever dream; I really did tear my IV out of my arm and take off running down the hall, screaming. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t know what happened.”
He sticks the tip of a thermometer in my ear. “Ambien happened.”
Scott enters my temperature into the laptop on his cart. I wriggle so I’m sitting up slightly. “Ambien makes people freak out like that?”
“Does a bear crap in the woods? Hold still,” Scott says, hitting a button that makes the blood pressure cuff tighten around my arm. The machine displays numbers that mean nothing to me. While he’s putting the numbers into the computer, I sit back. “Are my parents here?”
“You were sleeping when they got here, so I sent them on a coffee run so they wouldn’t wake you,” Scott says. “They’re very loud.”
“I know.”
He unwraps the blood pressure cuff from my arm. “There’s a lady outside who wants to see you, though.”
“Who?”
“I think your grandma? She’s short and dressed real fancy,” Scott says. “Wasn’t happy I told her she’d have to wait outside until I checked if you wanted to see her.”
My nana has been dead for three years. Her fanciest clothes came from Chico’s and she sometimes left the house with parakeet crap on her shoulder. There’s only one person who could be waiting outside the room, and I cringe at the thought of Scott telling Marian Sullivan-Marcotte she had to wait.
“You can send her in.” I shift in my cot so I’m sitting up as straight as possible.
Scott leaves, dragging the cart behind him. Some murmuring outside the door, and Kat’s grandmother steps into the room, holding a Louis Vuitton bag in front of her chest.
“Claire.” Marian sets her bag down on the chair by my bedside and clasps her hands around mine. She smells like Chanel No. 5; I only know what it is because Marian is the only woman I’ve ever known who wears Chanel No. 5. The smell makes my stomach clench because whenever Marian is around, Kat is close by.
Kat’s grandmother is here and Kat isn’t and this is all so wrong.
I swallow. “Hi.”
Marian sits in the chair and crosses her legs, as if sitting down for an interview. She looks prepped for one: Her blond bob looks like it was styled in a salon, and her arms are toned and tan beneath a sleeveless white silk blouse. She must be nearing seventy now, but there’s barely a line detectable on her face.
It occurs to me that maybe she is prepping for an interview. Marian was always on CNN or something when we were kids, ripping apart some bill or sparring with her opponents. If her granddaughter is missing, Marian Sullivan-Marcotte will burn the world down to get her back. The look in her eyes reminds me of Kat, furiously focused during an exam, as if her life depends on it.
“I haven’t seen your parents yet,” Marian says. “They’d already left the lake house when I arrived this morning.”
My stomach does an accordion fold at the mention of the lake house. “I’m so sorry we used the house without permission.”
“Oh, Claire, that is the last thing on my mind.” Marian’s forehead knits with concern as she takes me in. “I hear they’re considering operating on your brain?”
I nod. “If the swelling doesn’t go down they have to drain it somehow.”
“My God. Do they know how a procedure like that would affect your memory?”
My throat tightens. I hadn’t even considered that. “I don’t know. I—I’m trying so hard to remember what happened.”
“Claire. That’s not why I’m here. I know how badly you want to help.” Marian averts her eyes. “My son and daughter-in-law wanted to come with me. They feel terrible they haven’t been here yet—Johnathan went straight to the mountain this morning to help with the search.”
“How long do they think it’ll take to search Devil’s Peak?”
“Some parts of the terrain are too dangerous to search,” she says. “Most of the volunteers aren’t experienced hikers.” Marian’s eyes lock with mine; something shifts in her expression, as if she were seeing me for the first time, remembering who I am. Deciding that I deserve more than a politician’s non-answer. “It could take weeks to search the whole mountain, I’m afraid, and that’s if the sheriff gets FAA approval to use a drone in the search.”
I don’t know what to say; I can’t wrap my head around the chaos we’ve caused with one simple decision. Blow off prom. Spend the night in the woods.
Marian moves her hand toward mine. “I don’t want you to blame yourself, Claire. I know my granddaughter, and as responsible as she is, she thinks she can evade the rules.”
Unease creeps over me. Did I say I blamed myself? And why hasn’t she mentioned Jesse? Her granddaughter isn’t the only one who’s missing.
“Is Jesse’s aunt in town?” I ask.
Marian’s gaze drops to my bed. She smooths a hand over the blanket, careful to avoid the tubing sending fluids to my IV. “I only saw her briefly at the sheriff’s station. She’s staying at the Motel Six across the street.”
“From the hospital?” I ask. The lake house is almost forty minutes away from Sunfish Creek Hospital; when Dad mentioned how long they had to drive to see me every day I added it to the list of things to feel guilty about for the rest of my life. The thought of Jesse’s aunt only being able to afford a budget motel forty minutes away from Bobcat Mountain makes me incredibly sad.
“I offered her to stay at the lake house, but I think she felt like it would be too crowded,” Marian says.
I’m about to say that I hope my own parents aren’t imposing by staying at the lake house when my IV makes its gong sound, signaling that my bag of fluids is empty.
“Claire,” she says, a sudden urgency to her voice. She touches her fingertips to mine. “You are so important to my granddaughter.”
I don’t know what to say. What can I say that won’t sound insincere? There are no words to describe what Kat is to me. She showed me how to use a tampon. She made me laugh so hard once I pissed myself in her pool because I couldn’t get out in time. She’s allergic to bananas and she would die for her dog.
I can’t think about what will happen if she doesn’t come home.
Marian takes my hand again. “I know you and Katherine trust each other with everything, and well—it’s important to me that you feel as if you can trust me as much as you trust her.”
I nod, too startled to process, unable to think around the bong-bong of my IV machine.
She gives my hand a quick squeeze before whisking out of the room, calling out, “Excuse me? This machine has been going off for several minutes and no one has come to check.”
Time moves slowly in the hospital. There’s no TV in my room, and as far as I know, the searchers haven’t found my phone. My only link to the outside world is my parents, who try to keep me occupied with mindless reading material. Only magazines filled with overpriced designer dresses and celebrity gossip, never newspapers. They say too much stimulation can put stress on my brain and slow my recovery, but I have to wonder if they’re trying to shield me from whatever the news is reporting about Kat and Jesse.
I wake in a tangle of IV tubing, sensing someone in the room with me. A brown hand is by mine, the ring finger occupied by a thin gold band with a small ruby in the center.
My gaze travels up to the owner’s face. It takes me a beat to recognize her: Dr. Ashraf, from the ER.
“Hi, honey,” she says. “How are you feeling?”
I blink the sleep from my eyes, unsure if it’s day or night. The clock over the sink in my room reads 6:10. The whiteboard on the adjacent wall reads today is tuesday.
“Tired,” I say as Dr. Ashraf’s face comes into focus. “They wake me up for my vitals every half-hour.”
“I know. It sucks.” Dr. Ashraf rifles through the file in her hands. “I’ve got your most recent scans. Your swelling has gone down significantly.”
“So no surgery, then?”
“No surgery. The neurologist agrees that you’re healing nicely. You’re not experiencing dizziness, confusion, loss of consciousness?”
I swallow, thinking of the Ambien incident Sunday night. “Not recently.”
Dr. Ashraf sits me up. “How’s the pain?”
“Not bad.”
“As long as you’re feeling all right, I think you can probably go home soon.”
My pulse quickens at the thought of busting out of this hellhole—taking a shower, getting a real night’s sleep, and finally, being able to get cable news. “How soon?”
Dr. Ashraf looks at the clock. “How does by lunch sound?”
She gives my knee a squeeze. Instead of running out of the room, like all the doctors do as soon as they have nothing left to say to me, Dr. Ashraf sits at the edge of my bed and folds her hands over her knee. “How are you doing mentally?”
I shrug, pressure mounting behind my eyes. I’m missing the most crucial thirty-six hours of my life, and I’ve been lying in a hospital bed for the past two days while a search party combs Bobcat Mountain for my friends’ bodies.
Dr. Ashraf cocks her head, so I say, “I’m having some anxiety.”
“I can prescribe you something called Ativan,” she says. “You can take it as needed, especially if you can’t sleep.”
“Thank you.”
Dr. Ashraf sits at the edge of my bed, crosses her legs at the ankle of her black leather boots. “How about your memory?”
“I still can’t remember anything that happened Saturday.”
Dr. Ashraf’s forehead knits up. “Nothing at all about how you got hurt?”
I shake my head. “Is it weird I still can’t remember?”
“No. Even when people heal completely from an injury like yours, sometimes they can’t remember the accident. It’s your brain’s way of protecting you from the trauma.” Dr. Ashraf forces her mouth into a smile. “I didn’t mean to worry you, Claire.”
She stands, adjusts the lapel of her lab coat. “I’ll go get that discharge paperwork started.”
On the way out, she glances down at the scan of my brain, the smile completely wiped from her face, but I don’t let it worry me. Because I’m going home.
As it turns out, I am not going home.
Mom is; she is already on a bus to Long Island by the time I’m officially discharged. She has two patients in crisis and even though not everything is always about me, I wonder if maybe it’s about me. I still haven’t apologized for being such a bitch to her the other day, but she still won’t apologize for not letting me speak to the sheriff until Sunday night.
Sheriff McAuliffe is the reason I am not going home, even if Dad won’t come out and say it. Despite Dr. Ashraf’s promise to have me discharged by lunch, it’s almost four thirty by the time we arrive at the lake house.
The sight of Kat’s parents’ Ford Escape nestled in the curve of the driveway sucks the air out of my body. What am I supposed to say? Sorry I made it back and she didn’t?
“It’ll only be a few days,” Dad says. “In case your memory comes back, it’ll be better if we’re close by. It’s the right thing to do, Claire.”
I command myself to unbuckle my seat belt, follow Dad up the driveway to the house, even though I’m debating shutting my head in the car door just to get sent back to the safety of the hospital.
I can’t do this. I’m afraid of people I’ve known almost my whole life. Mrs. Marcotte, who has clipped and saved interesting New York Times articles for me since the seventh grade, when I announced I wanted to be a journalist. Mr. Marcotte, who dutifully sat beside his wife and watched the plays Kat and I put on as children, even though there were probably a thousand other things he’d have rather been doing with his precious time at home on leave from the air force.
Dad waits for me by the front door. He holds a hand out to me, unsmiling. I grab it as the door swings open.
Elizabeth Marcotte stands in the foyer, cell phone propped between her ear and shoulder. She gestures for us to come inside, says into the phone: “Tell him it doesn’t matter how late it is—listen, can I call you back?”
Mrs. Marcotte lowers her phone with one hand, clasps a hand over her mouth with the other. “Oh. Sweetheart.”
Dad clears his throat. “We didn’t mean to interrupt your call—do you need us to give you some privacy?”
Kat’s mother’s fingers move to the chain on her necklace—a delicate diamond infinity loop she’s worn since we were kids. She shakes her head. “Oh no, that was just my sister-in-law. I can call her back—come on in, Johnathan is in the kitchen.”
Dad still has me by the hand; he tugs me into the kitchen, my pulse in my ears.
“Can I get you guys coffee?” Mrs. Marcotte is saying. “I just made a pot—”
A man’s voice cuts through Kat’s mother’s chattering.
“Claire Bear?”
Mr. Marcotte is in jeans and a white T-shirt, a fleck of shaving cream on his tanned jaw. Like Kat, he’s tall, his skin golden in the summer months, nose dotted with freckles.
Mr. Marcotte retired from the air force last summer and took a job with United Airlines. The last time I saw him was months ago, sneaking through the door in his pilot’s uniform.
He stands from the table and pulls me into a hug. “How are you, sweetheart?”
My throat seals up. Over his shoulder, I catch a glimpse of his wife, watching me, her fingers working the chain on her necklace. Last year, when my nana died, Kat and her mom were on our doorstep with a card and a homemade meal within a few hours. How am I so bad at this? How do I still have no clue what to say to Kat’s parents when I’ve had days to think it over?
“I’m sorry,” I choke out.
Mr. Marcotte plants his hands on my shoulders. His eyes—steel gray, like Kat’s—meet mine. “What are you apologizing for?”
I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, almost scratching myself with the hospital ID bracelet I’d forgotten was there. “I still can’t remember what happened.”
Mrs. Marcotte’s composed expression collapses. She turns to the coffee maker, hands trembling, as it gurgles and spits into the pot.
Kat’s father steps back from me as Dad considers him, almost as if he’s surprised to see him here. “Are you headed back to the mountain?”
“They called off the search for the day. Thunderstorms expected for tonight.” Mr. Marcotte sighs, runs a hand through his curls, the same shade of dark blond as Kat’s. The skin under his eyes is a sickly shade of gray.
Fear pulls at me. A few months ago, I’d mentioned around Mr. Marcotte that I was terrified of flying; he winked and said he gave every nervous flier the same advice: Look at the flight’s crew, how calm they always are. You don’t need to be scared until they look scared.
For the first time I can remember, Kat’s father looks scared.
A low rumble outside. Not thunder—tires crunching gravel, the slam of a car door shutting. From the way Mr. Marcotte’s expression darkens, it’s obvious they hadn’t been expecting anyone.
My gaze moves from Mrs. Marcotte, her hand trembling around the handle of the coffeepot, to my father, still standing in the kitchen archway, arms crossed in front of his chest, to the back door, where Sheriff McAuliffe appears behind the pane of glass.
Mrs. Marcotte yelps, jumping back to avoid a tidal wave of scalding coffee. The pot hits the tile and shatters.
“I’m so sorry,” Kat’s mother blurts. McAuliffe stands, watching from the other side of the door, his hand frozen mid-knock.
My dad is at my side, murmuring into my ear: “Claire, let’s give them some privacy.”
I stare at McAuliffe, still on the other side of the door. Mr. Marcotte doesn’t seem to register his presence; he watches as his wife scrambles for the glass shards with trembling fingers. His eyes dart back and forth until he can’t take it anymore, snaps: “Beth. Let me take care of that.”
Mrs. Marcotte straightens, her eyes welling with tears. “It’s everywhere.”
“Beth.” Mr. Marcotte’s voice is sharp. “Leave it.”
My father makes a strangled sound that’s half-sigh, half-throat clearing. He sidesteps me and opens the door for the sheriff. The second he crosses the threshold into the kitchen, Kat’s parents snap to attention.
“Sheriff,” Mr. Marcotte says, pink blooming up and down his neck. “Did you call?”
McAuliffe slips his hands into the front pockets of his pants, rocks back on his heels. “No—sorry, folks, I didn’t mean to alarm you. I’m afraid I don’t have any news.”
I allow myself the smallest of exhales. No news means no bodies.
“No apologies necessary.” Mr. Marcotte waves the sheriff, who is still lingering in the doorway, inside. “Come, sit. I’d offer you coffee, but…”
The weak joke seems to recharge Mr. Marcotte. He pulls out a chair at the kitchen table for the sheriff, who glances over at me. “Actually…I’d like to talk to Claire, if she’s feeling up to it.”
I knew this was coming, that I would eventually have to talk to the sheriff again, but I still feel like I’m standing in the middle of the street, staring down a bus barreling toward me.
“Of course.” Mr. Marcotte grips the back of the kitchen chair, gestures a hand to me. “For you.”
McAuliffe takes his hat off, crushes it between his hands. “Actually—is there somewhere I could speak with Claire in private?”
Mr. Marcotte pauses. “Of course. Maybe the patio—”
My heartbeat rises to a steady gallop as Mr. Marcotte moves to the patio door at the rear of the kitchen, sliding it open. The sheriff is the first to step outside, his body pitching slightly to one side.
My feet are rooted to the kitchen floor; Dad nods for me to follow him.
Mr. Marcotte stands by the door like a sentry as we file out. He gives me an encouraging smile as he shuts the door, closing us on the patio. I picture the smile dissolving from his face once he is alone inside with his wife, cut off from whatever is about to go down out here.
McAuliffe deposits himself into one of the chairs at the patio table. Dad and I arrange ourselves so I’m across from the sheriff, the sun-warmed metal chair searing into my bare thighs.
“I hope it’s all right I sit in,” Dad says. His tone is crisp, aimed at McAuliffe.
“I—yes.” McAuliffe lifts his hat from his head, scratches a spot on his brow before replacing it. “That should not be a problem.”
I wedge my trembling hands between my thighs to calm them. McAuliffe is obviously not here with an update, because he would have asked to speak to Kat’s parents; whatever he is here to ask me about can’t be good if he doesn’t want the Marcottes to hear it.
“Well, best get to it. We found this not far from where you were found.” McAuliffe sets my phone on the patio table, a slight tremor in his hand. “I’m sorry we couldn’t return it to you sooner. We needed to determine if it held any information relevant to the search.”
Dad frowns. “Can you do that without her permission?”
“We were only interested in the GPS data,” McAuliffe says.
“How were you able to bypass her security code?” he asks.
“I don’t have one,” I say as a sigh sneaks from my dad’s lips.
“Did you get the GPS data?” I ask, throwing my father a nasty look, cutting off the lecture I know he’s dying to give me about personal security.
“Some,” McAuliffe says, his voice even. “There’s no service on the trails, but there’s a bit in the parking lot and at Devil’s Peak. We were able to determine some things based on when your phone made and lost contact with the cell tower near Bobcat Mountain.”
McAuliffe pauses, as if giving me a moment to remember some things. But my memory of Saturday is as blank as it was when I woke up on Bobcat Mountain.
The air is thick with the impending storm, the gentle breeze through the trees the only thing making sitting under the late-afternoon sun tolerable. There’s sweat pooling under the arms of the sheriff’s white shirt. “The times are all approximate, but it would appear you got to the mountain at one and reached Devil’s Peak around three. Your phone lost contact with the nearby tower around four Saturday afternoon.”
McAuliffe is quiet, his fingers working the troublesome spot on his leg beneath the table, as I process this information. We didn’t get lost on our way up the mountain. We made it to Devil’s Peak.
We made it all the way there just to turn back an hour later?
I glance at Dad; one hand is tucked in his opposite armpit, the other covering his mouth, as he studies McAuliffe.
My voice cracks when I finally speak. “I don’t know why we would have turned around. I don’t even remember being there—”
Dad reaches and covers my hand with his. I blink away tears.
McAuliffe clears his throat. “I think we should take a step back. Focus on what you do remember. Did you three stop anywhere else on the way to the lake house Friday?”
“Anywhere besides the bar where I asked for directions? No.”
McAuliffe’s gaze flicks to my father, then back to me. “You’re sure you came straight to the lake house after the Merry Mackerel?”
“Yeah. Where else would we have gone at eight o’clock at night in a strange town?”
My dad gives me a warning glance while McAuliffe produces a handkerchief from his shirt pocket, mops his head. “Claire, we found an empty bottle of vodka at Devil’s Peak.”
I don’t know what to say. What does he expect me to say? If we were drinking, it’s not like I would even remember.
Were we drinking? That makes no sense. Drinking is not something the three of us ever really did together. I did my fair share of it with Ben and his friends, and sometimes Kat and I managed to get our hands on a bottle of wine from one of the chefs at Stellato’s. But Jesse didn’t drink, and out of fear it would make me get too honest, I didn’t drink around Jesse.
“Are you sure you didn’t perhaps stop at a liquor store at some point?” McAuliffe’s voice is prodding, as if my silence were some sort of admission.
“No,” I say. “None of us even has a fake ID. Kat and Jesse don’t really drink.”
McAuliffe clears his throat. “Claire, there was also an empty bottle of wine in Kat’s trunk.”
“Kat brought that. She and I drank it Friday night.” I avoid my father’s eyes. “We didn’t get drunk or anything—it was practically apple—”
Dad cuts in: “I don’t mean to be rude, but what does the girls having wine Friday night have to do with what happened Saturday? The emergency room doctor said Claire’s blood alcohol content was completely normal when she arrived.”
I can’t help tossing Dad an irritated glare, for knowing something about me that I didn’t even know myself.
McAuliffe looks at me. “It’s not uncommon for teenagers to conceal drinking problems, even from their closest friends.”
“I’m sorry, which one of us are you saying has a secret drinking problem?” As the words leave my mouth, Dad’s body tenses next to mine, his eyelids fluttering shut.
“I understand that alcoholism runs in Jesse’s family,” McAuliffe says.
“His uncle’s side,” I say. “But it’s not his biological uncle.”
McAuliffe shifts in his chair. “Claire—when I spoke with Jesse’s aunt, she seemed concerned that he was depressed.”
Something about McAuliffe’s tone makes my heartbeat stall. I know how other people see Jesse; head always bent over a guitar, average-to-less-than-average grades, no interest in college. On the surface, he’s the opposite of Kat in every single way, but it doesn’t mean he has no ambition of his own. As much as he loves playing music, his dream is to write it.
Jesse’s aunt might look at him and see someone who has withdrawn from life; I know Jesse Salpietro, though, and it’s only because he’s imagining a better one. “He’s not depressed,” I say.
“She said he was sleeping more than usual during the day,” McAuliffe says. “And he was on the phone until very late each night.”
“He naps when he gets home from work because his job is tiring. He has to wake up at four thirty, and he’s on his feet all day.”
McAuliffe frowns. “Are you aware his band broke up last month?”
Jesse was one of my best friends and he hadn’t told me Salt Lyfe broke up? I think of waking up in Jesse’s bed the other morning. How he’d been at his computer, headphones in, dead to the world. Whenever he was around that Fender, it was in his arms, calloused fingers working the strings, but he hadn’t been playing.
“He hadn’t mentioned it,” I say, deflating.
Dad is searching my gaze, his forehead creasing. McAuliffe, on the other hand, looks as if he’s about to tell me he ran over my beloved pet with his pickup truck. “Did Kat ever express concern about Jesse’s behavior? Any issues with jealousy, maybe?”
“No,” I say. “Why are you asking this? Jesse is missing too, but you’re acting like he’s a suspect or something.”
I look over at my dad for some reassurance that I have it wrong—that McAuliffe’s focus on Jesse’s state of mind is totally innocuous—but he’s watching the sheriff, worry in his eyes.
McAuliffe’s voice is gentle when he finally speaks. “Claire, partner violence can happen even among teenagers. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t consider that whatever happened at Devil’s Peak was a domestic incident.”
Domestic incident. Like, a murder-suicide? The thought zaps all the oxygen from my blood. I lean forward, rest my elbows on the patio table, bury my face in my hands.
“Claire?” Dad has me by the shoulders. “Honey, are you with us?”
I blink until Dad’s face comes into focus; the sheriff is on his feet, crossing over to us.
“Yeah,” I mumble through the prickly feeling of my blood returning to my lips. “I’m fine.”
“Is there anything else you need from us, Sheriff?” Dad asks.
“I, well, there’s just one more thing I need to do right away.” McAuliffe looks flustered at the interview being cut short. “It won’t take long.”
McAuliffe reaches in the pocket of his khakis. My insides frost over as I see what he’s holding—a digital camera.
“I’ll need to take photographs of Claire’s injuries,” he says. “It’s protocol.”
Dad blinks at McAuliffe. “Why wasn’t this done in the hospital?”
McAuliffe’s face flushes. “Well, truthfully, when Claire was brought in, the rangers didn’t realize they were dealing with a potential crime.”
The word lands like a kick to my stomach. I think of the girl in the emergency room mirror. It was as if I had woken up in someone else’s body. Covered in scratches, bruises, that cut I had no memory of getting.
McAuliffe turns the camera over in his hands. A troubled hmm leaves his lips. “Er, one moment—”
He doesn’t know how to turn the damn thing on. After some fiddling, the camera chirps to life; McAuliffe uses his free hand to dig out his handkerchief and mop the sweat from his forehead. “Claire, if you wouldn’t mind standing.”
I ignore the steady thump in my chest and move against the side of the house. Obey all of McAuliffe’s directions. Tilt your head, snap. Turn this way, snap.
“If you could turn your hands up, please.”
I close my eyes, feel McAuliffe’s gaze lingering over my cut, now reduced to a thin pink scab. When I force myself to look at him, the sheriff is holding his camera to his chest. His cheeks have gone pink. “If you wouldn’t mind—your legs—could you turn a bit for me?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
I glance down while McAuliffe scans my bare legs. Shut my eyes until he speaks.
“I think I have all I need. Thank you both, for your time.”
I’m not sure how I’m supposed to respond, so I stay silent as Dad puts an arm around my shoulder and moves me aside so McAuliffe can slide open the back door to the kitchen.
In the window overlooking the patio, the curtains rustle. Dad’s arm tenses around me; I know he saw it too. Someone—one of Kat’s parents—watching us, maybe, studying the words forming on our lips.
But when we make our way into the kitchen, it’s empty, silent except for the hum of the fridge. The floor tiles are gleaming white, not a trace of the mess that was there earlier.
Dad shuts me in the bedroom with a command to nap while he picks up my painkillers and Ativan from the pharmacy in town. I close my eyes, listen for the slam of his car door in the driveway outside the window over my bed. Moments ago, Mr. Marcotte left to return to the mountain. I don’t know where Mrs. Marcotte has disappeared to or where Kat’s grandmother is. I haven’t seen Marian at all since she visited me in the hospital.
I curl up on my side, away from the window. My phone is charging on the nightstand beside me. For the past several days, I felt untethered without it. Now, I’m avoiding it like it’s a grenade.
I can’t bring myself to listen to the panicked voice mails my parents must have left when I didn’t check in Saturday night. Or read the texts from people at school, who have no doubt heard by now that something happened to the three of us this weekend. How do I even begin to explain myself?
Yes, I was there. No, I have no idea what happened, because I have post-traumatic amnesia. No, I’m not full of shit, I swear.
I shut my eyes against the ache brewing behind them. Even more than the prescription-strength ibuprofen waiting for me at the pharmacy, I want the Ativan. I want to slip away into numbness, to sleep until this nightmare is over.
My heartbeat picks up, the memory of my Ambien trip sending gooseflesh rippling across my body. The nurse had said Ambien can make people hallucinate.
But what if the hallucination had grown from some seed of truth? Had I actually remembered something while I was unconscious? What—or who—was I running from? I’d thought maybe I got separated from Jesse and Kat after I hit my head; Kat was an experienced hiker. She would have known it was too dangerous for me to hike down with a head injury. Had she and Jesse left to get help, only for something worse to happen to them on the way down?
The only problem with that theory is that neither Kat nor Jesse would leave me alone, hurt and without cell service, on the side of a mountain.
So then, what—had I gotten hurt after we got separated? According to the sheriff, the data on my phone revealed that we made it to Devil’s Peak in the afternoon. We were supposed to camp overnight, and yet, by four, my phone was so far deep in the wood, it stopped pinging the nearby tower completely.
Why would we hike all the way there just to turn around?
For me to turn around. There’s nothing to suggest Kat and Jesse were with me, that they left the campsite at all.
I move my hand up to my neck, let my fingers find the bump at the base of my head. If I was running through the woods, I could have tripped on a rock or one of the gnarled tree roots jutting from the trail. If I was running, terrified and distracted, I could have fallen hard enough to knock myself out.
But why was I running? Why was I so terrified? Because of something I’d seen at Devil’s Peak?
I lie back on my pillow, press the heels of my hands to my eyes.
No. Jesse wouldn’t hurt Kat or me. I’ve never even seen him get angry. Even in freshman year, when he got into a fight in the hallway with some asshole sophomore who’d been teasing him, Jesse was white in the face when a teacher pulled the other kid off him. When Jesse looked down at his hands, drenched in the blood spurting from his nose, he’d started to tremble, completely unaware of me shoving a maxi pad from my bag at him to stem the flow of blood.
No. Jesse wouldn’t kill his girlfriend. He wouldn’t kill his girlfriend and then kill himself.
But that’s what McAuliffe thinks happened, right? He thinks Jesse was depressed.
I think of my best friends as I last remember them: curled into each other on the couch, asleep. It had been almost unbearable to watch—how happy and in love they were—unbearable because he wasn’t in love with me.
Now, though, I would do anything to have them back.
I wasn’t raised with religion, but I don’t know if I accept that it’s all random, that we’re not accountable to anyone. I make a silent bargain with whoever is listening: Please. I’ll get over him. I’ll accept them, I’ll be a better friend, if only they can come home and be okay.
I use my shoulder to nudge away the tears trickling down my cheek. Inhale, and grab my phone. I skip over everything—missed calls, a handful of texts and voice mails—and find Kat’s number in my contacts.
Kat never set up a voice greeting. An automated voice tells me the user I have reached is not available, to leave a message after the tone.
I end the call and hold my phone to my chest, my heart thumping like a jackrabbit’s. I know what I’ll hear if I call him and I know what it’ll do to me but I can’t help myself. Because if I can hear his voice, it means he’s still here, doesn’t it?
I find Jesse’s number, press call.
Hey, it’s Jesse—you should probably just text me instead of leaving me a long-ass voice mail I probably won’t listen to…
The bedroom door hinge creaks open. I flip my phone upside down to hide the light. Squeeze my eyes shut, my pillow wet under my cheek.
“Claire?” Dad whispers, the crinkle of a paper bag at his side.
I say nothing, letting my chest rise and fall steadily, as if I were asleep.