NOW
Why did I have Kat’s car keys in my pocket?
The doorbell rings again, cutting through the thoughts forming a squall in my brain. I say a silent prayer that whoever is at my front door is selling something and jam the keys into the top drawer of my desk.
When I open the front door a slender black woman and a stocky white man are standing on my porch. Her face is wrinkle-free, while the man’s face is scarred and plagued by rosacea. When he sticks a hand in his pants pocket, his suit jacket moves to reveal a gun.
I’m pretty sure they don’t have Thin Mints with them.
“Claire Keough?” the woman says through lips slick with raisin-colored gloss. Her hair is in a bun and she’s wearing silver hoop earrings.
“That’s me.” My voice cracks guiltily, as if I’m doing something wrong by existing. My thoughts drift to Kat’s car keys; I have to balance a palm against the doorway to steady myself.
“We’re with the FBI’s Long Island office,” the woman says. “Is now an okay time to talk about what happened last weekend?”
I pause, my arm still outstretched, holding the door open. I will the tremor in the crook of my arm to go away. “Can I just, see your badges or something?”
The man shoots the woman an amused look, but he opens his jacket and removes his wallet. She follows suit. I examine each ID card and badge with shaking hands. Her name is Nicole Cummings. His is William Novak.
I step aside to let them in; as I shut the front door behind them, Agent Cummings retrieves an Altoids tin from inside her jacket and pops one as she considers the living room. Agent Novak crosses to the fireplace, enormous Popeye arms folded across his chest.
He’s eye-level with a frame on the mantel, examining the picture in it. Kat and Jamie Liu and me, dressed as the Three Musketeers for the tenth grade Halloween dance.
There are FBI agents in my living room. I don’t know why I didn’t see this coming—Amos had told me they were assisting with the case.
“We’ll be working closely with our counterparts upstate,” Cummings says.
“Okay.” I sit on the chaise portion of our sectional couch, feet planted firmly next to each other on the carpet, hands on my knees.
“How are you feeling?” Agent Cummings asks. “The ER doctor we spoke with said you came in pretty banged up.”
“All right, I guess,” I say. “I’m seeing a neurologist this afternoon.”
I glance over at the mantel, where Agent Novak is holding the framed photo of Jamie Liu, Kat, and me. On the couch, Cummings takes off her jacket, revealing sculpted bronze shoulders.
“I can turn the AC on,” I say.
“Don’t,” Novak says, replacing the photo.
I stare at him; he nods to the living room wall where our Nest is located. “Not worth your dad throwing a fit about someone messing with the thermostat.”
“It’s my mom.” I swallow. “How did you know?”
Novak shrugs. “No AC cranking on a day like today—someone’s a stickler about the bill.”
Cummings raises her eyebrows at her partner as he moves from the mantel and sits on the arm of the love seat adjacent to the couch. “Agent Novak tortures his daughters the same way.”
I try to return her friendly smile, but the whole interaction has frayed what’s left of my nerves. It has everything to do with Kat’s car keys, tucked in my desk drawer. How long will it take Agent Novak to sniff out I’m hiding something?
“Claire.” Agent Cummings’s voice draws me back. There’s a question at the end of my name, as if it’s not the first time she’s said it.
I blink until my vision returns. “Sorry. I still get headaches.”
Novak shifts on the arm of the seat, pulls his ankle up and rests it on his opposite thigh. Cummings fishes the Altoids tin from the balled-up jacket beside her. “We’ll try to make this quick so you can get back to resting.”
I nod, then shake my head when Cummings offers me an Altoid. She pops a mint in her mouth and says, “We know the sheriff in Sunfish Creek already interviewed you—we’ll try not to make you repeat yourself too much. Can we go back a bit further? When did Kat and Jesse tell you they weren’t going to prom?”
“Um, April, I guess? I asked Kat if she wanted to go dress shopping and she told me she didn’t think they were going to go.”
“When did they decide for sure they weren’t going?”
“I don’t know exactly.” A slick of sweat comes to the back of my neck. “Two weeks before prom, when I asked Kat what they were doing after the dance, she said she and Jesse were going up to the lake house instead. She said Ben and I should come too.”
“She waited until two weeks before prom to tell you they weren’t going?” Novak peers at me. “You two didn’t talk dresses, hair and nail appointments or whatever, before that?”
The implication is clear: prom minutiae is something best friends discuss.
I shrug. “I guess she was embarrassed to talk about why they weren’t going. It was too expensive for Jesse—the tux, the ticket, and whatever.”
Novak blinks. “Marian Sullivan-Marcotte’s granddaughter skipped prom because of money?”
I press the heel of my hand to my brow bone; now I really do have a headache. “Jesse would sooner die than let Kat pay for everything.”
I don’t realize what I’ve said until the silence balloons to something tangible. I drop my hand to my lap. “I didn’t mean that literally—I’m just saying he’s sensitive about being broke.”
Cummings pops another Altoid, as if she hadn’t heard me. “Who is Ben, and why didn’t he go to Sunfish Creek with you all as planned?”
I hook an arm around my neck, my skin warming with embarrassment. “My ex-boyfriend.”
Novak’s eyes lift; I am terrified he’s going to make me explain catching Ben about to play oops I dropped my towel with Anna Markey, but he clears his throat. “So, you and Ben were supposed to drive up to Sunfish Creek after prom. Instead, you hitched a ride with Kat and Jesse.”
I see myself in the passenger seat of Kat’s Infiniti, slunk low and dozing off, the enamel pineapple on her key chain swinging like a hypnotist’s pendulum. I nod, swallow to clear my throat. “Um, about Friday night—something happened and I’m not sure it’s important.”
Novak and Cummings stare at me.
“We lost signal on the GPS and had to stop at this place called the Merry Mackerel to get directions,” I say. “Inside, there was a man by the pool table. He was definitely listening to me when I gave the address for the lake house.”
Cummings’s fingers go still around her Altoids tin. “You remember what this man looked like? What he was wearing?”
“He had red hair and a beard. He was wearing a Confederate flag T-shirt.” I lean forward, knot my hands together and rest my forehead on them. “My dad and I saw this man yesterday when we were distributing fliers—I recognized him—”
“Yes, the sheriff brought us up to speed on that,” Novak says. “Now, what about this man you saw at the Merry Mackerel?”
I look up a bit thrown by Novak’s abruptness. “I was getting to that—the guy I saw on Bobcat Mountain has a Confederate flag sticker in his truck window, and he has red hair too.”
“You think the man you saw Friday night in the bar was the same man you saw Saturday on the mountain?” Cummings asks, her expression inscrutable.
I move my palms to my knees. “What if he saw Kat’s car Friday night and thought we had money. He could have been following us the whole weekend.”
Novak tilts his head. Surveys me a bit before saying, “It’s an interesting theory, but the man from the mountain couldn’t have been the same man you saw in the Merry Mackerel Friday evening.”
I swallow. “How do you know?”
“Because he was camping on Bobcat Mountain Friday night,” Novak says. “He couldn’t have been in two places at once.”
I sink back into the couch cushions, the blood draining from my head. It takes me a beat to recover my voice. “What about the other people who might have been hiking or camping? Did anyone else come forward?”
“We don’t believe anyone else was camping on the mountain Saturday night.” Novak props his fist under his chin, studies me for a reaction. I break eye contact, catch a glimpse of the TV over his shoulder. I picture McAuliffe’s face on the screen, that brief sound bite for reporters. We will be focusing on the area below Devil’s Peak.
My breathing goes shallow. “But still—someone else could have been there, right? Besides the man I remember. Someone else could have…”
My voice falters. Agent Cummings slips her Altoids tin inside her jacket pocket, her eyes never leaving mine. “Someone else could have what, Claire?”
Have done this. Someone else besides Jesse could have done this. I glance at Novak, a statue on the edge of that armchair.
“The sheriff was asking me all of this stuff about Jesse,” I say. “Whether he was depressed or jealous—it’s like he thinks Jesse pushed Kat off the ledge.”
I wedge my hands, now trembling, between my knees, and watch Cummings and Novak for a reaction. Anything to indicate that they think Jesse pushed Kat off the ledge.
“You don’t think that’s what happened,” Agent Novak says evenly. “Why?”
Because I know Jesse. It sounds so stupid—it’s exactly what every woman says that I’ve rolled my eyes at while watching Dateline, the deluded sisters, mothers, wives. He’d never hurt anyone—I know him.
But this isn’t a TV show—this is my life. These are my best friends. And they were in love. And not the hormone-fueled, all-consuming type of love that ends with an argument and mangled bodies at the base of a cliff.
No—Kat and Jesse’s was the type of love that was difficult to witness. The type of couple you’d see kissing in public and lose your breath and think, What if I never have that? Jesse was not a jealous boyfriend, depressed that his girlfriend was departing for Boston College and leaving him behind. For Kat, there was no leaving Jesse behind; he’d wait for her or he’d follow.
It makes no sense Jesse would throw that all away—that he would kill the person he loved most in the world, and then himself.
It had to be someone else.
I close my eyes, and I’m back in the Sunfish Creek emergency room. Running a finger over the streak of blood on my arm. Why was there so much blood on my arm when the cut was on my palm?
“Claire?” Cummings’s voice draws me back.
I tug at the neck of the T-shirt I slept in, letting some ventilation in. I can’t help but let my gaze wander to my bedroom door.
“Everything all right?” Novak asks.
I crane my neck toward the living room TV, as if I’d really been trying to catch a glimpse of the time displayed on the cable box. “I—yeah, I just have to get ready to go to the neurologist soon.”
“Of course,” Cummings says. “Just one more thing and we’ll get out of your hair. By any chance, do you know your blood type?”
My stomach turns over. “Not off the top of my head—why?”
“Purely for elimination purposes at this point,” Novak says.
To eliminate my blood from someone else’s blood. Which means they have blood. They found blood and obviously they need to know who it came from. I tamp down the panic flaring in my chest. “I, um, donated blood last spring. I think I have the donor card in my room. Lemme check.”
“That would be great.” Cummings smiles. There is something carefully placating about her tone that wasn’t there before. You’re so helpful. You have nothing to be afraid of.
I duck into my room, yank open the top drawer of my desk with shaking hands. I’m half hoping I’d hallucinated finding Kat’s car keys in my shorts, but there they are, sunlight from the window over my desk glinting off the enamel pineapple key chain.
Why would she give me her keys?
To escape? If not from the redheaded hiker, maybe another stranger. We were three out-of-town kids, parking an expensive car in the lot, camping out in a top-of-the-line tent. A prime robbery target.
Why did I escape and they didn’t?
It doesn’t make any sense. Kat was a star athlete, and I would fake my own death to get out of running the mile in gym. How did I get away from our attacker—whether it was a stranger or Jesse—and she didn’t?
Why would I have her keys?
I push the keys to the back of the drawer and root through the junk inside. A Metro card, some stamps, an oily squeeze-tube of Carmex.
I move aside an expired library card to reveal the blood donor card.
My blood type is A negative.
I collapse into my desk chair, holding the card to my chest. I could just say I couldn’t find it, but then what? If they don’t get the answer from me, they’ll get it from someone else, like the Sunfish Creek hospital.
I stand up, push my chair in, and head back out into the living room.
“A negative,” I say, handing Cummings the card.
She looks it over and hands it back to me. “You’re tougher than me. I can’t give blood. I just pass out.”
Cummings’s eyes flick to her partner. “Well, I think we covered what we needed to, right, Bill?”
“For now.”
Cummings hands me a business card with her contact info. “If you think of anything else and need to reach us.”
“Okay,” I say. It must come out a little too slowly, because Novak pauses in the doorway, jacket tossed over his shoulder.
“Is there anything else?” he asks.
I shake my head, slowly, walk them to the front door.
The second the lock clicks into place behind them, I run to the bathroom and throw up.
I am at my desk, my hand trembling under the Ativan pill I’m tipping into my palm.
Mom told me I should only take them to sleep, but my anxiety level is beyond an emergency right now. It’s at DEFCON 1, can’t-breathe-through-the-crushing-panic anxiety.
My brain pulsates as I pick over the conversation with Cummings and Novak. They hadn’t answered my question, about other people besides the redheaded hiker being on the mountain last Saturday. It was a warm weekend day, a clear night by all accounts—that man and Kat and Jesse and me couldn’t have been the only people who decided to go for a hike. We had to have encountered some other person. The wrong person.
Because if we didn’t, and the redheaded hiker has been ruled out…that only leaves the three of us.
I’m pacing my room; I’m not sure when I made the transition from sitting at my desk to standing. My fingers move to the base of my neck, thinking of Amos’s story about his friend’s car accident.
He said his friend had dropped his car off, gone home, had dinner with his girlfriend, only to wake up in the morning not remembering a single thing.
What if my assumption is wrong—that whether by falling, or being attacked, I’d been knocked unconscious in the place where Sunshine found me, almost two miles from Devil’s Peak? What if I’d gotten hurt at our campsite and tried to hike back to get help, only to wind up lost and disoriented? Maybe I’d given up when it got dark and went to sleep, only to wake up with the memory of the past thirty-six hours gone.
But why would Kat and Jesse let me hike back hurt, alone?
They wouldn’t have. Whatever happened to incapacitate them, to stop them from making it down the mountain, had to have happened before I fled.
I sit at the edge of my bed, cover my face with my hands. The Ativan has started to slow the panic zipping through my veins; I relax my shoulders, reach for my phone.
No new texts; my conversation with Amos is at the top of my inbox. Unease settles over me.
Amos and Ben are the only people who’ve reached out to me this week. I’d dismissed the silence as the hazards of senior year—I’d let my social circle shrink to my two best friends and my boyfriend, and I’d lost all three of them in a manner of days.
But what if there’s another reason no one has contacted me to see how I’m coping with the news about Kat and Jesse?
You should check Facebook.
The thought comes out of nowhere. I know it’s a terrible idea, and clearly the Ativan talking, but I stumble over to my desk, open my laptop. With quaking fingers, I scroll past prom dresses in every shade of pastel, hat-toss photos from graduation. Glimpses of the life I’d be living if I hadn’t gone to Sunfish Creek with Kat and Jesse.
Graduation was last night. While Dad and I were driving home from Sunfish Creek, my classmates congregated on the soccer field to collect their diplomas. Three hundred brains, at once thrumming with their own theories regarding the three people missing.
Even if Ben didn’t tell anyone that I was with Kat and Jesse, there’s no way around my empty chair. People are probably talking.
I want to know what they’re saying.
I halt at a post Anna Markey made last night. Two pictures: One of Anna and Shannon, robed arms wrapped around each other, cheek to cheek and beaming. The other, an empty folding chair covered in flowers.
It takes me a moment to process what I’m looking at. Marcotte, Markey. Kat was supposed to sit next to Anna at graduation. The chair is hers.
This evening two bright souls were missing from the graduation stage, but they were in our hearts and on our minds. Hoping Kat and Jesse will be home soon to celebrate with all of us 
I picture Anna grinding her teeth while typing those words. Anna Markey, who talked shit about Kat behind her back because she’s a better volleyball and lacrosse player than Anna is.
There are over two dozen comments on Anna’s post.
Praying! Written by Samantha Kellog at 10:35 p.m.
Priya Viswanathan at 10:39 p.m.
I scroll through the well-wishes, feeling a stab of fear when I see Shannon DiClemente’s name.
Anyone else wondering where CK was last night?
CK. Claire Keough.
Noah McKenna: looney bin maybe
Noah McKenna: she was with them but she can’t remember anything
Oh, please. She’s setting herself up for an insanity defense
Written by Shannon DiClemente, three hours ago. Five people have liked her comment.
My fingers move to my lips, searching for feeling as the blood drains from them. I keep scrolling through the direct replies to Shannon.
Um, this is a really shitty thing to accuse Claire of?? What she ever do to any of you?
Katy O’Connor, a junior from the newspaper staff, a girl I barely spoke to outside of meetings.
Five minutes later, Anna Markey replied to Katy:
Um, maybe you want to ask Ben Filipoff? She bitch slapped him bc I brought him to my room to get him a clean T-shirt. Girl is psychotic.
Four likes.
Noah McKenna, replying to Shannon, Katy, and Anna all at once:
Keough would never kill Salpietro…she’s in love w him.
Three likes.
My body is numb with the shock of seeing the words. Something I thought was a secret, blasted on Facebook for the past six hours without anyone bringing it to my attention.
Because they all think you did it.
I’ve never even been in a fight. Do they really think I have it in me to push my best friends off a cliff? Or are they being cruel just because they can?
Shannon and Anna…Ben’s friends. People I ate lunch with every day for the past four months. I knew they didn’t like me; they humored me, waited for Ben to get me out of his system.
But still. To accuse me of something like this, where they knew I might see it? I thought I was liked at school. I wasn’t popular by any stretch, but I thought people liked me enough that if they suspected I was involved in something as serious as a potential double murder, they’d whisper about it in private.
I swallow against the tsunami of panic rising in me. When my vision returns, I realize I have been tracing the scabbed-over cut on my right palm.
I picture the blood streaking my arm; the blood I washed away in the emergency room bathroom; the blood that deep down, I know, did not come from me.