The Murmurings (6 page)

I get in and gingerly pull the seat belt across me, sucking in my stomach as the hot metal clasp finds its other end. I can’t even count how many times I’ve burned myself on those damn metal buckles. Evan slides into the driver’s seat and leans across me to point the air vent in my direction.

“Better?” he asks, just inches from my face.

“Perfect,” I breathe more than say. How does he still smell so good even in this heat?

“It’ll cool down in just a second,” he says apologetically. “My car may not look like much, but this baby’s AC still works like a champ.”

“So, how soon do you have to be home?” he asks, and I want to say never. Aunt Becca said she’d drag Mom out this evening, to a meeting or a class or something. Some sort of effort to get her out of the house on a Saturday night. I have to go home at some point, but not as early as I might have to otherwise.

“I don’t know. I can stay out a while,” I say, hoping that was the right answer.

“Okay,” he says. “Good. Then my plan’s not shot.”

I breathe a nervous sigh that does nothing to settle the fluttering in my stomach.

In minutes, we’re climbing the ramp to Interstate 17 heading north. Evan’s fiddling with the radio, and an old U2
song rattles the speakers between us. His hand rests on the gearshift, mine in my lap, cooling under the icy air (he was right, the AC works just fine). We don’t talk at all, and I let myself close my eyes and think what it would be like if this was all normal, if this was like any other day.

“Hey, you okay?” Evan’s voice drifts into my thoughts, and I open my eyes. We’re not driving anymore, and the music has lowered to a faint, tinny babble. We’re pulled over at a rest stop that looks only vaguely familiar, somewhere off the Interstate amid honest-to-God tumbleweeds.

“Oh!” is all I can say, embarrassed beyond belief. I’m not sure I’ve ever been that lost in a daydream. I must seem like the biggest freak of nature.

He laughs. “I can take a hint. You’re bored.”

“No!” I say fast, grabbing his hand without even thinking about it, then immediately let go like it burns my skin. This just makes him smile that incredible smile, and my heart melts to a little puddle inside of me.

“You need a restroom break?”

I shake my head. What I really need is a break from my thoughts.

“Well, since we’re here, I’ll be right back. I just have to grab something really quick,” he says, and slides out of the driver’s seat before I can ask what he’s doing.

Evan disappears around the corner opposite the men’s room, his hand fishing for something in the pocket of his jeans. He returns with a handful of yellow packages, but dumps them in the trunk before I can get a better view.

“Sorry, we’re good to go now,” he says, starting the car up. “You ready?”

“I have no idea,” I say.

He smiles again and peels back onto the interstate, continuing north.

I’m in a state of perpetual anticipation: what he’ll say, if he might brush his hand against mine. I worry he’ll ask me to pick the music, and then I’d be forced to admit I have zero idea of what’s considered cool. All Mom and Aunt Becca ever listen to is music from the 1960s, and Nell and I grew up thinking it was totally normal to be more familiar with the Rolling Stones than anyone contemporary. So I busy myself with the view out the window, grateful that Evan’s already picked a classic rock station.

I have seen this same stretch of road too many times to count. Soon, this dusty path will turn from cacti and Joshua trees to pines and agave shrubs. Growing up, Mom and Aunt Becca would pile Nell and me into the back of Mom’s car, and we’d take a day trip to the strange, exotic forests of Prescott or Flagstaff that would suffice as summer vacation.
It all seemed lush and special. We didn’t know we were taking a day trip because Mom could never have afforded to treat all of us to an amusement park or a hotel. We had fun running wild in the woods anyway—smelling pine cones as if we were the first people on earth to discover them; collecting honeysuckle plants and swearing we’d keep them alive long enough to replant them at home and protect them from the scorching Phoenix sun.

I drove this stretch of road less than a year ago in Mom’s car. Only that time I was alone. I traveled I-17 for nearly two hours—up the switchbacks to the top of a hill called Cleopatra, and straight to the edge of a town that should have burned down three different times but didn’t. I headed for the state park with its museum dedicated to the mining industry, and on to the stamp mill where they used to crush the ore they’d dug from the mountains. That’s where the Yavapai County sheriff found Nell hanging from a tree by her big toe. Three weeks later, the old sheriff decided to hang up his gun and retire, leaving her case unsolved.

I stare at the dotted lines separating the traffic lanes until they start to look like chalk outlines of her body. When I look at the clock on the dash, I’m stunned to find that we’ve been driving for nearly an hour.

“So . . . where did you say you were taking me?”

“I didn’t,” Evan says, smiling slyly.

“Well, can I at least have a hint? Should I have packed an overnight bag or something?” As soon as the question is out of my mouth, I realize the implication and immediately envision any scenario in which Evan and I would be spending the night together. Now I want to hide in the trunk along with those mystery packets that Evan threw back there at the rest stop. I’m guessing Evan is imagining the same thing because he gets super quiet, then starts messing with the radio, complaining about the static even though there’s no static I can hear.

“It’s, well, I wanted it to be a surprise. We’re still about an hour away—I didn’t quite realize how far it was. It’s just that you said you’re into scary movies, and I thought you might like this as a . . . well, a field trip . . . like a date or something.”

My face is so hot, I am sure it’s going to catch fire despite the arctic chill of his freakishly cool AC.

“I didn’t mean to ruin the surprise,” I say, not worried about the surprise at all. Did he just say “date”?

“I thought it would be fun. It’s supposed to be, like, the most haunted place in the West.”

My stomach falls.

“What?”

“It’s this town I read about. They say it’s the . . . what’s the
word they used? The most something place in the West.”

My palms are sweating. I can’t feel my fingers.

“Wickedest?”

“Yeah! How’d you know that? Oh man, I guess I’m not that original,” Evan frowns a little. He looks embarrassed. If I look as horrified as I feel, I can pretty much guarantee that this is the last time Evan Gold will take me anywhere.

“Evan, you’ve got to pull over,” I say, not really knowing why until I say it. All of a sudden, I think I might pass out.

“Damn, that lame, huh?” he tries to kid, but I can’t focus on anything except trying not to keel over in his car.

“Seriously, Evan. You need to pull over.”

“Okay,” he obliges. He sounds really worried. We’re conveniently approaching an off-ramp, the first in a series of exits leading to Black Canyon City. Evan’s driving faster than he was on the freeway, and my stomach is lurching trying to fight the momentum of the car.

He makes a quick right, then another immediate right into a parking lot with several motorcycles lined up next to a restaurant advertising “Fresh Homemade Pies Daily!”

Sliding into an open space in the dirt lot, Evan throws the car into park and unhinges his seat belt in one fluid motion, reaching for my shoulder with so much concern that all I can do is put my head between my knees.

After a few minutes of staring at the pores on my legs, I bring myself back to an upright position, wondering how long I can avoid Evan’s worried gaze. From what I can see out of the corner of my eye, it’s pretty intense.

“So, do you want to start or should I?” he asks.

“Start what?” I ask, still avoiding eye contact.

“With the awkward conversation. I mean, somebody has to take the first step and talk about what just happened.”

I laugh a little, and he looks slightly more at ease. Well, he doesn’t know I’m crazy. I suppose it’s just a matter of time.

“Maybe we should get a little food in you first, huh?” he suggests. Just before he pulls his key from the ignition, I see it’s already noon. Since I skipped breakfast, lunch sounds fantastic.

“Come on,” he says, squeezing my clammy hand. I swing my door open to rewelcome the baking sun, and I follow him to his trunk, where he removes a blue-and-white camping cooler. The yellow packages from the rest stop are peeking out from underneath the lid. Peanut M&M’s.

“What’s this?” I ask, genuinely surprised.

“Just a little something I put together. Follow me.”

We hike past the motorcycles around to the side of the restaurant, through some overgrown desert scrub to a clearing with two moldy-looking wooden picnic tables with attached
benches. There’s an overflowing garbage can in the corner of the clearing with fat flies circling its contents.

“Not exactly what I had in mind for the ideal setting, but whatever,” Evan says.

I force a smile, feeling guilty for ruining his plan now that the initial shock of where we were headed has finally subsided.

Evan brushes some dirt and crumbs from the bench and starts pulling out a seemingly endless quantity of food from the cooler: two sandwiches wrapped in plastic, grapes, six granola bars, a box of crackers, a long orange block of cheddar cheese, and of course, Gatorade.

“Oh my God, is the football team meeting us here too?” I blurt out.

He laughs easily, his jaw flexing.

“I wasn’t really sure what you would like, so I kind of brought it all. Peanut butter with strawberry jam,” he says, offering me the least dented of two sandwiches, the grapes having squished them both in the cooler.

“Strawberry’s the best,” I say. “Why does everyone go for the grape stuff?”

“I know, right? Only the best for you,” he adds, and my face heats up.

“Glacier Freeze or Riptide Rush?” he asks, holding up both sweating bottles of Gatorade.

I grab for the Glacier Freeze. My mouth is so dry, I feel like downing the entire bottle on the spot. How is it Evan can look so relaxed, even after my epic freak-out just minutes ago? Because he’s perfect, that’s why.

We eat in silence, and I take a look around at the clearing and the back of the little shed that serves pies. With all those motorcyclists, I guess I would have expected loud music and some brawling over a pool table, like I might have seen in a movie somewhere. But the clearing is so quiet, I can actually hear both of us chewing. I’m sure Nell would have something more poetic to say than that.

“What’re you thinking about?”

“Oh, it’s uh . . . nothing. Nothing really,” I stumble.

“You’re a bad liar,” he says through a mouthful of peanut butter—which for anyone else might be gross, but on him, it’s totally adorable. “Like, the worst liar ever,” he keeps going. “You stutter when you try.”

“When have I ever . . . ?”

But before I can finish the sentence, I hear myself on the phone with him, trying to come up with some excuse for why he couldn’t come over—then for why he couldn’t come with me inside Oakside. In fact, it seems like nearly every sentence I’ve uttered to him has been some sort of half truth.

“It’s okay,” he says, then ducks his head a little. “It’s kinda cute.”

I’m suddenly fascinated by my peanut butter sandwich—afraid to look at anything but the strawberry jelly squishing out the sides where I’ve nibbled the crust.

“What happened back there?” he asks, nodding toward his car in the parking lot.

Here it goes. The fantasy couldn’t last forever. What was I thinking, assuming I could have a normal life?

“I’m sorry,” I say, putting down my sandwich in defeat. “I know I totally lost it.”

“Hey, I’m not blaming you or anything. A bad idea is a bad idea,” he says shrugging, but I can feel his foot wiggling really fast under the table. I guess this is what self-conscious is like on him.

“No! It’s not that at all.”

He smiles a little, just so the corner of his lips crease. “So, what was it then?”

I take a deep breath and go for it.

“I know you’re kind of new here, so you’re probably the only person in a hundred-mile radius who hasn’t heard, but my sister . . . my sister, almost a year ago . . . she . . . ”

“I know,” he says, rescuing me. “I know about her.”

I nod. Of course he knows.

“So then you know where they found her,” I say, starting to get a little angry. If he knew, then what was he trying to accomplish by bringing me—?

Oh my God. It’s a joke. This is all just a joke to him. One of his football buddies put him up to it. He’s messing with me.

But Evan just looks at me, puzzled. “Where they found her?”

“Yeah, you know, the police. Where they found her. Her body.”

He shakes his head slowly, never pulling his gaze from mine, and we allow the words to hang in the air for a moment before I come out with it.

“She was in Jerome. You know, the wickedest city in the West? That’s where they found her.” I say that as evenly as possible. I want to see how he reacts.

Evan casts his sandwich aside and drops his head to the table, groaning.

“Shit, I’m such an idiot,” he says, shaking his head slowly. Then he looks up at me, his eyes wide.

“I had no idea. Jesus, Sophie, I swear I had no idea. I just thought it’d be fun to go somewhere with this, you know, eerie reputation. I swear to you, I didn’t know.”

And I believe him.

“It’s okay—”

“No, it’s not,” he interrupts me. “See, there’s more to it than that.”

The reassurance I’d felt a second ago quavers under the weight of doubt. I knew he was too good to be true.

“I had another reason for wanting to go there with you.”

“Yeah, and what was that?”

He pokes at his sandwich, then sighs. He starts to open his mouth, but reaches for my Gatorade instead of his own and takes a long swig. For the first time, he actually looks nervous around me. But it’s not the kind of nervous I feel around him. This is familiar.