NOW
We get caught up in the summer traffic funneling through New York City. I spend the trip on my phone, waiting for an update about how today’s search of Bobcat Mountain went. The Sunfish Creek sheriff’s department is holding a press conference, but I can’t get a strong enough connection to stream it.
I refresh CNN’s live blog of the search coverage, now updated with bullet points from McAuliffe’s press conference.
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No sign of missing teenaged couple as search stretches into fourth day
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Forensic examination of Kat Marcotte’s car underway
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Former US Representative Marian Sullivan-Marcotte announces $100,000 reward for information regarding granddaughter’s disappearance
Eventually, the sight of the words on my screen make me so carsick I have to put it away and recline my seat.
I wake to the Civic rolling to a stop, and blink until our house comes into focus, my mother standing behind the glass door. The sky is swirling blue and gray; the time on my dad’s dash reads 7:17.
P.M., I remind myself. It doesn’t feel possible I was in Sunfish Creek earlier today. Sitting in the sheriff’s office, out on the lake with Amos. There is a heaviness in my limbs, my eyelids, as if I’d lived a hundred days since waking up this morning.
I weakly return my mother’s hug and slip into the bathroom. Scroll through my phone while I pee, eyes still bleary from my car snooze.
Seeing Ben Filipoff’s name in my text inbox nearly makes me fall off the toilet.
I glance at the time on my phone. The graduation ceremony began over an hour ago. A shudder moves through me, to the tips of my toes. With no school this week, no one would have noticed that I’ve been MIA since Kat and Jesse went missing. But tonight—my empty chair at graduation—of course, Ben wants to know why.
I think about what I want to say. I am not okay at all. Everything is so fucked up and I’m not supposed to talk about it.
I swallow, type, send:
Ben starts typing, stops. Just when I think the conversation is going to end there, he replies.
A knock at the bathroom door, followed by my mother’s voice. “Claire? You okay?”
“Yeah.” I flush, turn on the tap in the bathroom sink with trembling hands. Sometimes I think there is a third testicle where Ben’s brain should be, but he’s not stupid. It’s only a matter of time before the gossip starts and he figures out I wasn’t here last weekend because I was in Sunfish Creek.
Maybe Ben’s already figured it out. He knew about the trip, because he was supposed to come with us. For all he knows, I went anyway, despite our breakup.
I inhale, type out a response.
I slip across the hall, into my room, shutting out the sounds of my parents murmuring in the kitchen. I kick off my shoes, plop down on my bed as Ben replies to my message.
I burrow under my covers, I swallow the anxiety knotting up in my throat. I think of the reporters packing the parking lot at the sheriff’s office when Dad and I got there…the gossip that must have been flowing through Stellato’s when I didn’t show up for work….Brookport is a small town, and there are no secrets.
Soon everyone will know I was with them on the mountain. They’ll want the answer to the question I can’t answer, the only question that matters now.
Why did I make it back, and they didn’t?
A knock on my door yanks me to consciousness.
My curtains. My bed. The comfort that it brings me dissolves immediately.
I’m home. I came home from Sunfish Creek without Kat and Jesse.
Another knock before my mother steps into my room, struggling with the clasp on her bracelet. “How did you sleep?”
If Mom is getting ready to leave for work, it must be around eight in the morning, which means I slept for thirteen straight hours. I sit up and crack my neck. “Have you heard anything?” I ask.
Mom shakes her head; the bracelet slips off her wrist. She bends to peel it from my carpet and sighs. “I don’t think you should be alone today. Are you sure you don’t want Dad to stay home from work?”
“Dad’s already missed enough work for me.”
I didn’t mean it like that, but Mom looks hurt.
“Well, try to keep busy,” she says. “Maybe clean up this disaster of a room. Dad will be home a little early to take you to Dr. Wen’s.”
She closes the door and I roll over, away from the sunlight streaming in my window. The thought of having the same conversation with my father before he leaves for work is so exhausting that I pretend to be asleep when his knock at my door comes half an hour later.
When I hear the purr of his engine leaving the driveway, I grab my phone and head into the kitchen.
Dad left out a mug of coffee for me; I nuke it in the microwave before making my way to the living room. I dump my phone and mug onto the coffee table, kneel before the couch in order to excavate the television remote from between the cushions.
I flip through the channels, the caffeine hitting my bloodstream only making the edge to my mood worse. All week, I wanted nothing more than to be alone—away from prodding doctors and nurses, to sleep without my father hovering over me, able to read the news without Kat’s parents lurking nearby—but now that I’m by myself, I feel ready to jump out of my skin at every noise around me.
A doorbell in a commercial. The rumble of the garbage truck outside.
I hold one hand over my rapidly beating heart, lower the volume on the TV with the other. My mother watches everything with the sound blasting; I picture her in this exact spot, alone each night while Dad and I were in Sunfish Creek, with a nudge of guilt.
My heartbeat goes still when the news program returns from the commercial break.
It’s them.
Of course, it’s them—this is the local news, and nothing fucking happens around here. The granddaughter of our former congresswoman going missing definitely ranks higher than a drunken crash on the LIE or an upcoming pet adoption drive.
There they are—a photo of Kat and Jesse, hovering next to the face of Deanna Demarco, our local news anchor. I have to turn the volume back up in order to hear over the thrum of adrenaline in my ears.
“In Sunfish Creek, the search for two teens from Brookport is entering its fifth day—”
Deanna Demarco and the News 12 studio give way to a video montage. A chopper view of Bobcat Mountain, emergency vehicles blocking off a parking lot. The camera pans to a man standing in the lot, arms crossed over his chest.
Mr. Marcotte.
“Earlier this morning, News Twelve spoke with the father of missing teen Katherine Marcotte, who has been on the ground with searchers every day since his daughter and her boyfriend, Jesse Salpietro, did not return from a camping trip at Devil’s Peak.”
A male voice offscreen says, “Mr. Marcotte, what can you tell us about the search?” The chyron at the bottom of the screen reads: johnathan marcotte—missing teen’s father and son of congresswoman marian sullivan-marcotte.
Mr. Marcotte leans into the News 12 microphone jammed in his face, wipes sweat off his brow. “There’s still a lot of ground to cover. A lot of it is unsearchable by foot. But I’m not giving up hope.”
“But what about the time that has passed—do you think, if Kat is hurt and lost somewhere, the odds just simply aren’t in her favor?”
Mr. Marcotte lifts his eyes to the camera. He blinks back tears, swallows. “If anyone can beat impossible odds, it’s my daughter.”
The screen cuts to the scene in the parking lot of Bobcat Mountain. Emergency vehicles, lights flashing: Sheriff McAuliffe is standing outside one, hands on his hips, defiantly staring down the camera crew crowding him. In the distance, the sun is rising into a pink-and-orange sky over the mountain.
Deanna Demarco’s voice-over informs us: “This morning, the Sunfish Creek sheriff addressed reporters prior to the search.”
McAuliffe clears his throat. “I’ve been asked to provide an update—all I can reveal about today’s agenda is that we will be focusing on the area below Devil’s Peak.”
My head goes hollow. Below Devil’s Peak—he means the bottom of the ledge.
I was right. He thinks Kat and Jesse went tumbling over it.
On the coffee table, my phone rattles. I lunge for it, open the text with trembling fingers.
The sender isn’t in my contacts, and I don’t recognize their number.
Another message sprouts under it:
My heart knocks around in my chest as I absorb this. Amos Fornier, casually texting me hey. I let my thumb hover over the keys for a moment before I type back hey, hit send. I drum my fingertips against my lips, waiting for Amos’s response.
On the TV, Deanna Demarco has moved onto something other than Kat and Jesse. Her chattering in my head is too much; I turn the TV off as Amos texts me back.
I pull my feet up onto the couch, tuck them under my body.
I want to ask how he got my number, or if he’s heard anything. But the ellipsis appears, signaling that Amos is typing. My fingers go still; I watch the screen, letting him steer the conversation.
I type back, probably too quickly.
I’m anxious to move the conversation away from my busted-up head. Before Amos can begin responding, I fire off another text:
The conversation window goes static; Amos has read the message but isn’t responding. Finally, he replies:
I swallow.
Amos is typing. The ellipsis disappears, then reappears. When he finally sends the message through, I’m surprised it’s so short.
I squeeze my eyes shut against the threat of tears. Amos is talking about Kat like she’s still alive. It doesn’t mean anything—Amos having hope doesn’t change the odds they’re not alive—but it’s enough to propel me off the couch. Maybe, it’ll even be enough to get me through the day.
I scrape my hair into a bun, survey the wreckage of my room. My gaze lands on the clear plastic bag resting beside my basket of unwashed laundry.
The sight of it immobilizes me. I’d assumed the sheriff took the clothes I was wearing on the mountain as potential evidence, but Mom must have brought them home with her. My heart batters my rib cage as I loosen the string on the bag.
I pull out the ribbed gray tank top first and turn it over, realizing I’m looking for blood.
I toss the tank into my laundry basket and move on to my shorts. The thighs and butt are smeared with dirt. I close my eyes, attempt to quiet my mind long enough to picture the area off the trail where I woke up.
I chuck the shorts. The jangling sound they make when they hit the pile of dirty clothes roots me to where I’m sitting.
There’s something in the pocket.
I stick my hand inside. Produce a set of keys, a silver Infiniti logo imprinted on the fob. I swallow my heartbeat, close my eyes, fingers closing around the shape of an enamel pineapple.
Outside my room, the doorbell rings.