NOW
Dr. Peter Wen is supposed to be the best neurologist in Suffolk County, but he looks like he graduated from high school yesterday. I can tell Dad thinks so too by the way his eyebrows shot to the rim of his glasses when Dr. Wen walked into the room.
“So,” he’s saying. “Your scans show significant reduction in the size of the hematoma.”
“That’s great news,” he adds when I don’t react.
My mind is not in this room; I left it at home, with my laptop, with Kat’s car keys. The second Ativan I snuck before Dad picked me up was the only reason I could stay still throughout the MRI administered upon my arrival here.
I’ve heard and processed maybe about twenty percent of what Dr. Wen has said since we sat down in his office, a leather-and-mahogany prison.
How could they be saying that shit about me? How much worse would it be if they heard Dr. Wen say I’m fine?
“So it’s just going away on its own?” I ask.
“That’s usually the case with young and healthy patients.” Dr. Wen twirls a pen between his fingers. “We’ll do another scan in six weeks, but you aced the cognitive and short-term-memory tests. Do you have any questions?”
I grip the armrest. “Dad, I want to talk to Dr. Wen alone for a second.”
Dad gapes at me. “I—all right. I’ll go make your follow-up appointment.”
When Dad is gone, Dr. Wen cocks his head. “Everything all right, Claire?”
“Anything I say to you stays between us, right? Doctor-patient confidentiality or whatever?”
The pen Dr. Wen is twirling between his fingers slips and clatters to the desk. “Well, yes, unless you tell me you’re thinking of hurting yourself or someone else.”
I inhale, exhale. “Is there a way to tell from my scan if someone hit me in the head?”
Dr. Wen’s lips purse. I can make out the ghost of a mustache he’s probably been trying to grow since medical school.
“Physical force or an assault could result in a hematoma, yes.” Dr. Wen looks uncomfortable. “Do you feel unsafe at home, Claire?”
I swallow down the knob forming in my throat. “No, it’s nothing like that—I just need to know if someone hit me. Or if I was running and tripped and fell.”
“Unless your memory returns, there’s no definitive way—”
“Could it come back?” I ask. “Could I remember everything?”
“There’s no way to know—every head injury is different,” Dr. Wen says carefully. “You have to keep in mind the brain is incredibly complicated.”
I inhale around the quaking in my chest. “How complicated? If I hit my head—is it possible the head injury could have made me do something I wouldn’t normally have done?”
Dr. Wen blinks. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
I need to know. Did I hurt them? Why would I hurt them?
Dr. Wen is still blinking rapid-fire at me as I stand, so forcefully the chair legs snag on the carpet, nearly sending the chair toppling.
Dad is standing by the exit door in the waiting room, but he doesn’t say anything to me until we get to the car.
“Want to tell me what that was about?”
My heart is still speed-bagging in my chest. I’m afraid if I open my mouth all the fears I’ve been holding in will fly out like projectile vomit.
What if I hurt them?
There’s no turning back from telling my father about the car keys in my pocket, the amount of blood on my hand in the emergency room. He will tell Mom and they’ll argue about whether we should tell the FBI and it’ll just be out there that I destroyed possible evidence, even if there was a totally innocent reason for my hand to be covered in blood.
Maybe Kat or Jesse got hurt. One would have stayed with the other one while I ran to get help. The blood got on me because I was trying to help.
There’s no other option.
I love them both.
Hurting people—that’s not me.
But I wasn’t myself, was I? Whatever memories I have of Saturday don’t belong to me. They belong to some other girl, wandering a trail, bloodied and confused.
That girl wasn’t me. And I don’t know what she was capable of.
“Claire,” Dad says, an edge to his voice that cuts me off at the knees. “I think you need to talk to someone about all of this. Maybe someone at Mom’s office.”
I tilt my head against the window, the glass cool on my temple. “That’s probably a good idea,” I admit.
Dad says nothing; obviously he’d been preparing for a fight, but I don’t have it in me. I just need to survive this car ride, the walk from the driveway to the house, from my front door to my bedroom. I’m counting the steps until I can disappear under my covers.
When Dad turns onto our street, it becomes clear I’m not sneaking anywhere.
There’s a car parked in front of our house. The back door on the driver’s side is dented.
Dad pulls into our driveway and cuts the engine. “Go right inside, Claire.”
His voice says he’s thinking the same thing I am—whoever is in that car is probably someone I want to see even less than another cop or FBI agent.
Dad slams his door and strides over to the man getting out of the car. I trail behind; I have no intention of heading inside the house as Dad directed.
The guy extends a hand to my father. “Oliver Fucillo. I’m a reporter with the Long Island Register.”
Oliver Fucillo is in too-tight jeans and a dress shirt rolled up to his elbows. His hair is gelled to the side, and his glasses make him look like a serial killer.
Dad accepts his handshake and promptly folds his arms across his chest. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m covering the Marcotte-Salpietro case for the Register,” Oliver says. “Does Claire have a moment to chat?”
“Surely you could have called first?” Dad says.
“I did—no one answered.” Oliver Fucillo’s jaw is dotted with acne. He’s probably a fresh-out-of-college hire desperate for a big story that will bring him one step closer to his dream of being an NPR host.
“Claire, why don’t you go inside?” Dad says over his shoulder, eyes not leaving Oliver.
My feet are rooted to the driveway.
Oliver waves at me. “I was hoping for a comment on the potential person of interest in the case?”
My heartbeat goes still; Dad’s mouth hangs open. “We weren’t aware there was a person of interest. Off the record, of course.”
“Paul Santangelo,” Oliver says. “The man Claire accused of being involved in Kat and Jesse’s disappearance.”
The redheaded man. He has a name. I stare at Oliver. “I didn’t accuse anyone of anything.”
“Claire. Don’t say anything else.” Dad takes a step toward Oliver. “Please leave before I call the police.”
Oliver pales. His eyes flick to me. “Maybe I could give Claire my card—”
The look Dad gives him nearly gives me organ failure. I’ve never seen him this angry—I turn and hurry into the house without looking back.
Dad isn’t far behind me. He pulls the front door shut behind him, his face suddenly scarily serene.
“What did you say to him?” I ask.
“I told him I’m calling the Register and letting his boss know about his inappropriate conduct.” Dad massages his temple with his thumb and his forefinger. He freezes as we both hear it—the phone ringing in the kitchen.
I dart ahead to get it, but Dad is faster. He snatches the phone out of the cradle, lips forming a line at the voice on the other end.
“No,” Dad says tartly. “She’s not home. Please don’t call again.”
“What is happening?” I whisper.
“I don’t know.” Dad replaces the phone in the cradle as it begins to ring again.
With Dad occupied by the phone blitzkrieg, I slip into my room and sit at my desk.
I pull up Google, commanding myself to breathe. That reporter, Oliver or whatever, had said I’d accused the hiker of killing Kat and Jesse. He has a name: Paul Santangelo.
And apparently, he’s trending, thanks to a story in the Daily News.
FRIEND OF MISSING TEENAGERS IDENTIFIES POSSIBLE SUSPECT
“Oh, shit.” I cover my mouth and check the time stamp on the story. It went up about two hours ago, when I was in Dr. Wen’s office.
They didn’t name me.
But the reporter from the Register and whoever the hell else is calling our house know I was on the mountain.
Everyone knows. How?
Do not Google yourself.
I have to Google myself.
WHO IS CLAIRE KEOUGH? 5 FACTS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MISSING TEEN KAT MARCOTTE’S BEST FRIEND
I press a fist into the sharp pain in my abdomen as I click through to the article. I am not sure I could even come up with five facts about myself, but whoever operates Heavy.com did.
I don’t get to the last two facts about me because I’m too distracted by the pictures, obviously ripped from my Facebook page.
My page is private and my name is listed as Claire Margaret, but they found it anyway. They found someone with loose privacy settings who posted these pictures—why, oh God, would someone post these—
“Oh God,” I whisper.
Jamie Liu and I knocking back shots. My eyes are glazed, my head tilted back. Jamie is laughing at me and the photo is positioned in a way that suggests the actual subject of the picture was cropped out. Lucky shot.
I barely recognize the girl in the picture. She looks like the sloppy chick at the party you never talk to, who hangs on your neck like a spider monkey, crooning into your ear that she’s soooo wasted.
That girl looks like she’s totally lost control.
People are going to see this. The thought lands like a thumb mashed into the panic center of my brain.
My parents. My future professors at Geneseo. Anyone who Googles me in the next fifty years. All of them are going to see the worst version of me.
My panic quickly morphs into anger and my anger turns into a heat-seeking missile. I need someone to blame for my conversation with the sheriff about the hiker being leaked to the press.
Someone in the sheriff’s department? No, the building was a ghost town when we arrived, and McAuliffe’s office door was closed when we spoke. Sheriff Sanctimonious would never leak sensitive information to the press himself.
So who else knew? My dad, obviously, but he looked like he wanted to drop-kick Oliver Fucillo into oncoming traffic. He’d never do anything to bring reporters to our doorstep, which leaves one person—
“You fucking asshole,” I whisper. I say it over and over under my breath as I find my phone and fire off a text to Amos Fornier.
His response is instantaneous.
My phone vibrates in my hand; Amos is calling me.
I accept the call, lift my phone to my ear. Amos speaks before I have the chance to open my mouth.
“Sorry, I actually hate texting.” Amos’s voice is low, quiet. “I didn’t speak to the Daily News. Or any news, for that matter.”
“Then you told someone what we talked about,” I hiss. “McAuliffe’s office wouldn’t have leaked that conversation—”
“I did tell someone,” Amos says, cutting me off. “I’m sorry. I had to.”
I sink into my desk chair, heart hammering. “Who?”
“There are no secrets in my family, Claire. When my grandma got back to the lake house this morning, she wanted to know everything you and I talked about,” Amos says. “You remembering seeing that man is huge. She would have pried it out of me even if I wasn’t willing to tell her.”
I don’t say anything; beyond my door, the house phone rings again, setting my skin crawling.
“Claire,” Amos says. “We all just want to find Kat.”
“Then why would she leak sensitive information?” I ask. “The sheriff said it could hurt the investigation.”
“We don’t know it was my grandma who talked to the Daily News,” Amos says. “She may have trusted the wrong person and they leaked the story—hell, it wouldn’t be the first time a reporter hacked the phone of a missing girl’s family.”
“My name is all over the internet,” I whisper. “Who would name me to the press?”
“Claire,” Amos says softly. “Did anyone outside of my family and yours know that you went with Kat and Jesse last weekend?”
My insides go cold. Noah had blasted it all over Facebook: I was with Kat and Jesse last weekend. But there’s only one way Noah would have known that I’d gone with Kat and Jesse on the trip after all, even though Ben and I had broken up—
“Claire?” Amos asks. “Are you okay?”
“I’ve got to go,” I say. I need to murder my ex-boyfriend.
The only thing that stops me from texting Ben, tearing him a new asshole for blabbing to his friends about my being on Bobcat Mountain and having memory loss, is the thought of my messages being blasted all over Heavy.com or some other trash site.
I don’t know how to deal with a violation like this. Even if the public shaming hasn’t really begun, I can’t escape my own shame. At those pictures of me, wasted, being on the internet. At those ugly things Ben’s friends said about me, my feelings for Jesse.
I need to do damage control.
No, damage control is what you attempt if you’re caught making fun of your gym teacher in the locker room; not if pictures of you wasted are being blasted over the internet and your classmates are low-key accusing you of murder.
What I have to do is the equivalent of trying to scoop shit back into an overflowing toilet.
I massage my eyelids, haunted by those pictures. Who was in the kitchen with Jamie and me? There were a handful of the younger Markey siblings’ serfs hanging around, iPhones out. It’s not my fault one of them snapped those pictures and put them online, but guilt surges through me at the thought of Jamie’s parents seeing them.
I pick my phone back up and start composing a text to Jamie.
Something stops me from pressing send. Why hasn’t Jamie sent a single message checking in with me? She and I have always had the type of friendship where we could go weeks without talking or hanging out and it’s not weird, but her silence now is definitely weird.
I think of the picture of Jamie and Kat and me on the fireplace mantel, the one Agent Novak had seemed so interested in. When Kat moved home from Italy at the end of freshman year, she, Jamie, and I were basically inseparable. Then, around the end of junior year, things started to get awkward between Jamie and Kat. They were both circling valedictorian, even applying to some of the same colleges. Eventually Jamie stopped accepting our invitations to hang out, citing that she had to work at her parents’ restaurant, or study.
At the end of last August, Jamie said she couldn’t come to the beach for Kat’s birthday because she was taking an SAT prep course. When we stopped to grab sandwiches from the deli, I spotted Jamie leaving the village CVS with Shannon DiClemente and Anna Markey.
Kat never confronted Jamie, swearing that she didn’t care what Jamie did or who she hung out with. But by February break, the two of them were barely speaking at all.
Maybe Jamie hasn’t texted me because she’s busy working through her own shit. Kat going missing has to be bringing up some complicated feelings for her, maybe even guilt at how they left things off.
You are deluding yourself. You know why she hasn’t texted you.
I swallow the anger building in my throat, send off the message.
Outside my room, a war is raging.
Mom’s voice is slightly raised; I only catch her say don’t call again before I find her alone, at the kitchen table, cradling a glass of seltzer that I’d wager has vodka in it.
“Who were you just talking to?” I ask.
“No one important.”
A chill climbs my spine. “Mom. Who was it?”
Mom sets her glass down. “It was a producer from Brenda Dean’s show.”
I have to sit down. Brenda Dean is quite possibly higher than the FBI on the list of people I don’t want up my ass right now.
Twenty years ago, Brenda Dean’s younger sister was abducted off her bike and murdered, the killer never caught. Brenda dedicated her life to justice—first as a lawyer, then with her own cable show—lambasting suspects in high-profile murders. The cases always involve children—the younger the better—or pretty women abducted while jogging.
Lately she’s been obsessed with this man, Lawrence Cowen, who left his two-year-old in the car on a hot summer day. Mom and I are both guilty of flipping to Brenda’s rage-fueled coverage of the trial on weeknights when nothing else is on.
“She wants to interview me,” I guess.
“It’s absolutely out of the question.” Mom lifts her glass to her lips, cutting herself off.
Years ago, Brenda Dean interviewed the mother of a missing toddler on air. She accused the mom of knowing more than she was saying about what happened to the baby; the woman left the set a sobbing mess, and went home to slit her wrists in the bathtub.
I stare at my mother. “You weren’t even going to ask my opinion?”
“Your opinion is irrelevant. It’s not happening.”
I shoot up from the table, nearly startling the glass out of Mom’s hand. When I turn away, she says my name sharply. “You don’t want that vulture pegging you with questions you can’t answer.”
I feel all my chill slipping away from me. I want her to tell me I don’t have to be afraid of Brenda Dean because only guilty people should be afraid of Brenda Dean.
I want her to tell me I’m not guilty, even if I don’t know it myself, because she’s my mother and it’s her job to make things better.
My heart sinks to my feet. “Do you think I did something to them?”
“Of course not,” she says. “But I can’t control what everyone else thinks.”
“Then maybe you should let me defend myself,” I snap.
Mom buries her face in her hands. After a long pause, she looks up, eyes red, cheeks blooming to match. When she speaks again, her voice is barely a whisper. “I found a lawyer—I want you to meet with her. She can get us in tomorrow morning.”
“What? When did you call a lawyer?”
The shame on her face, the way she avoids looking at me, makes it clear this was not a reaction to the reporters or to the Brenda Dean producer calling.
She’s had the appointment for longer than that. Maybe since yesterday, when my dad called and told her about what happened in Sheriff McAuliffe’s office, how he refused to tell me what the man on the mountain saw or what we said to each other. Maybe she’s had the lawyer on call since she set foot in that hospital and realized my friends weren’t coming back and I was the only one who had answers.
“No.” I stand up violently. Cross to my room, blocking out her shouting Claire, and slam my door so hard it rattles every bone in my body.