What We Knew (20 page)

I brought the flashlight down upon his head, shutting his one good eye forever.

twenty-three

Hunched over the computer, I listened for my mother, the cursor on the minimize box in case she came barging in again. I’d been trying to contact Scott for the last hour—the longest hour of my life. He’d know what to do. Maybe. Maybe not. I typed anyway, ignoring the acid eating away my stomach, the panicky surges rising in my chest. Keeping my fingers moving helped.

I feel like I left something behind. I need to find it and put myself back together.

But there was no going back. Not to the woods, where a body lay cooling quickly, the blood in its limbs turning to jelly. Not to the corner, where only hours ago Lisa talked about making that trip to the city. Not to open mic and Lisa’s shining moment and a thousand reasons for being happy and hopeful. Things we took for granted. It felt like the sun would never rise again. Like I’d never close my eyes again. Every time I did, his face was there, alive and frightened, begging, pleading. It was the worst kind of nightmare. The kind you couldn’t wake up from.

Maybe I could come stay with you. No one would find me.

A police siren screamed in the distance and I froze, my heart beating wildly. That sound had always signaled some abstract tragedy, some faceless offender’s shame and ruin. Now it triggered visions of my own life crashing down. Nearer and nearer, the siren wailed. My legs started shaking. My insides throbbed with a strange prickling. I wanted to hide, curl up into myself, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even call for my mother. All I could do was sit there, my finger hovering above the escape key, paralyzed by the loneliest fear in the world—the fear of getting caught. As the siren passed our street, my lungs released a shuddering breath. Our neighbor’s dog barked. My phone chirped a text alert. Lisa.

Come over. Now. Use back door.

I deleted the e-mail to my brother. I should’ve hidden the flashlight, too, but I didn’t bother. What did it matter? My life would be over in a few short hours. At most, a few days. As soon as someone went into the woods searching for a lost dog. As soon as someone saw the halo of vultures above the trees. I imagined my parents’ reaction: denial at first, until the evidence proved otherwise, and then a slow bitter acceptance that their daughter was a monster. What Lisa and I believed wouldn’t matter. We’d killed a man, not some oily-eyed demon with claws and teeth. We’d crept into a homeless man’s home and beaten him to death in his sleep.

I wanted the walk to Lisa’s to last forever, so I took the long way, touring the bleak, forgotten streets I normally avoided. But I shut my heart to the ugliness and focused on the beauty: a cluster of tiny white flowers struggling at the base of a hydrant; on the sidewalk, a chalk drawing of a horse with wings flying through broken glass. Everything seemed so sharp, so clear, the moon and the stars, the chill in the air. Summer would be over soon. My eyes flooded with the sadness of endings as I circled back and headed toward Lisa’s. I hesitated at the corner, afraid to find blue-and-red lights slicing the front of the house, a couple of officers leading Lisa out in cuffs. But I only found Larry’s lawn with its almost unnatural glow. The street was silent, deserted. I crept down the driveway, keeping to the shadows, past Lisa’s window and then Katie’s, the same path he’d taken earlier. Which window had he used? What if it wasn’t him but someone else? It could’ve been anyone.

What if we’d killed the wrong—?

The screen door creaked as I slipped into the darkness of the Grants’ kitchen. There was just enough light for me to recognize Lisa’s shape at the table, but not enough to identify the black slab in her hand. As she flung whatever it was at me, I flinched, expecting something denser, but it was light and flexible. Her missing flip-flop. A new wave of sickness washed over me as I imagined Lisa going back into the woods, rooting through the dark, alone with the stiffening body.

“He’s not dead,” she said.

The flip-flop tumbled from my grip. I’d spent the last hour at the bottom of something dark and brackish, fighting for air. Those three words were all it took to shed the weight pulling me down. I breathed again, deeply, as I broke through the dread.

“Oh my God, thank God,” I breathed, my shoulders sagging with relief. “Are you sure?”

“I heard him groaning,” she said flatly. “He’s hurt, but he’s alive.”

I rushed Lisa and wrapped my arms around her, but she just sat there stiffly. Something in her eyes silenced the shrieking joy in my heart.

“We have to go back,” she whispered. “You have to go with me.”

I jerked upright. “No! Why?”

“Shh!” She glared. “My necklace. I have to get my necklace.”

I started shaking my head, slowly at first and then faster, as Lisa glided to the counter and opened a drawer. The moonlight through the window glinted off something metal. The bluish tinge of steel. My brain danced and sparked.

“No, Lisa, no.” I grabbed her wrist. “Don’t be stupid.”

“We can’t go unarmed,” she said with a steely coolness I found frightening. “He’ll be ready. He’ll put up a fight.”

A soft click flooded the kitchen with light.

“Who’ll put up a fight?” It was Larry, in his boxers, sluggish and squinting. “Tracy? What are you doing here? What are you two doing?”

I stood there, rooted, blinking at Larry. Lisa’s leg jounced nervously. I had no business being in their kitchen in the middle of the night, but I rummaged for an excuse anyway: “I was just … I…”

Larry shot me a look—not his normal frown, but something harsher—and then fixed his red-faced gaze on Lisa. “What are you doing with a knife?”

Lisa turned toward the drawer. I expected her to drop it and then face Larry, empty hands raised—
What knife? I don’t see any knife—
but Larry bolted across the kitchen, bare feet slapping, and gripped her elbow, his voice booming, “Answer me, Goddammit!”

Legs quaking, I counted the steps to the door, readying myself to slip quietly out. In a way, I was glad Larry had found us. Now there would be no danger of Lisa returning to the woods tonight. In the morning, everything would look clearer and Lisa would be thankful, too.

At least that’s what I imagined.

But Lisa whirled on Larry, the knife still clutched in her first.

Larry jumped back.

I raised my hands.

Lisa advanced, the knife raised. “Don’t you ever touch me again,” she snarled.

“Put that down,” Larry said calmly but firmly.

I inched toward the door, frightened and unsure. Larry was frightened, too. His hand shook as he reached for the phone. Lisa let out a barking laugh. “What are you going to do?” she asked. “Call my mother? The police?” Larry’s red face deepened a shade. “I’m not scared,” Lisa said, her voice starting to break. “I’m not anything. There’s nothing left, Larry.
You took it all.”

My brain cartwheeled, afraid to land on the dark truth. I tried to speak, but Lisa’s rage was a vacuum, sucking all the air from the room. I wanted that moment to last forever because there was no good way for it to end. Not with Lisa bent on making Larry pay for something I was only beginning to understand. It was the woods all over again, with Lisa possessed by something terrifying.

“Stop it, Lisa. Please,” a small voice whispered from the hall, breaking the spell.

Lisa flinched. A pained look crashed her face. She lowered the knife and then lowered her head.

“Go back to bed, Katie,” Larry said sternly, trying to mask his fear with authority.

Katie stepped forward, into the light. Her eyes looked scalded. She took another step and then another, carefully placing one foot in front of the other like a tightrope walker.

“Katie, get in bed,” Larry pleaded. “I’ll be there
—
”

“No!” Lisa hollered. Katie and I jumped. “Go near her, and I’ll kill you!”

Clutching her ears, Katie ran through the kitchen and out the back door. I followed, calling for her to wait. Gripped by a dizzying sickness, I ran until Katie suddenly stopped short. She’d stepped on something sharp. Clutching her foot, she toppled sideways onto a shaggy front lawn. When I caught up, I fell beside her, my legs buckling with the weight of what I should’ve known. Kneeling beside Katie, I cradled her head to my chest.

“The stuff in your diary,” I whispered into her hair. “It was about Larry?”

Katie wrestled from my arms. She brought her foot into the light and examined the sole. Whatever she’d stepped on hadn’t pierced the skin—the wound was invisible—but she winced when I touched it. “There is no Banana Man,” I said. “That part’s made up.”

Driving her head into my ribs, Katie mumbled, “I did that stuff with the eyes, too. I found them. With Ryan. When we went in the woods. I wanted Lisa to think Banana Man had been in our house, so she wouldn’t leave me alone at night. I wrote it in my diary in case…”

“You could’ve told her it was Larry,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell her?”

Katie’s eyes met mine, only this time it wasn’t pain that I saw but my own helpless rage reflected back at me. “I didn’t think anyone would believe me,” she said. I closed my eyes and rocked Katie gently, listening to the night sounds and her muffled sobs, waiting again for the sound of sirens, the police responding to a 911:
I think my stepfather’s dead.

But Larry’s truck peeled out at the corner, breaking me from my thoughts, and drove right by us, still hugging on a stranger’s lawn. We stayed like that, frozen, until the red taillights disappeared.

“What if Larry…” Katie sputtered, struggling upright. “You don’t think…” She took off running. But before I could catch her, Lisa came around the corner, her body hunched over like she was carrying a load of bricks. She didn’t say what happened in the kitchen. It was evident from the mark on her cheek.

“C’mon, Katie,” she said weakly. “Let’s go.”

“You can’t go back,” I said.

A porch light came on behind us. The face at the window warned us to start moving. Lisa glared angrily and grabbed Katie’s hand. “Where are we supposed to stay?”

“My house,” I said.

“What about tomorrow night?” Lisa asked, her voice high and tight. “And the night after that? Where are we supposed to sleep then?”

She was right. It wasn’t a solution. There was only one solution. She had to tell her mom.

Lisa huffed like I’d told an old, unfunny joke and started marching. “You think it’s that easy?” she said. “I’ve been trying to tell her for years. I can’t. I don’t know how.” At the corner, she stopped, gesturing wildly. “Listen, I’m not trying to be mean, but you don’t understand. I know you’re just trying to help, but there’s nothing you can do. Just go home. Please? Go home.”

As they disappeared into the shadows, I looked up at the stars. Where was the sun? Our darkest fears have a way of shrinking under daylight. Was this our punishment for what we’d done in the woods? To be suspended forever in night?

twenty-four

Life has a way of forcing you to keep moving.

The morning after I realized I had it in me to hurt another person, after I learned Larry belonged in a cage, I wanted to stay in bed. Forever. But my head and hands cried out for aspirin and my stomach rumbled. In the kitchen, my mother was dancing to the radio. I shuffled to the freezer for a toaster strudel but the box was empty.

“We’re out of bread, too,” my mother said when I reached for the basket on top of the fridge. “I’ve got some shopping to do when I get the car back.”

It was almost lunch so I made myself a sad sandwich of peanut butter and jelly on a hot dog roll. My knuckles—stiff and swollen—made it hard to hold the knife. My mother shimmied to the counter and cleaned up my mess.

“How was open mic?” she asked cheerily.

Open mic. I snorted.

“Not good?”

“No, Lisa was awesome. It’s just…”

It just seems unimportant. Now at least.

“Did you guys have a fight?”

I bit into my roll and shook my head. I wanted to tell her about Larry, but I didn’t know how.

My mother shrugged and went on. “You’ll never guess who called this morning.”

Scott? No. Why would Scott call? I’d only left him a thousand messages. What if I really needed him? I
did
really need him.

When I didn’t respond, my mother smiled slyly. “Jim.”

“Jim who?”

An impatient eye roll accompanied by that annoyingly high voice she gets when she thinks I’m being deliberately stupid. “Jim from yesterday. The guy who helped push the car? He wanted to know how I’d made out at the garage.” My mother waited a beat before batting her eyelashes and delivering her news—the real reason Jim had called: “He wanted to know if I have any plans for tonight!”

Any other day I would’ve danced around the kitchen with her, but instead I just forced a smile. “You’re a real joy today.” She frowned, chucking the sponge in the sink. “What’s wrong?”

A gnawing sickness turned my stomach. As I tossed my half-eaten sandwich in the trash, the phone rang.

“She’s not here,” my mom said cryptically after answering, and then, “Yes. Hold on.”

I was surprised when she handed me the receiver. Nobody calls me on the house phone.

“You don’t know where Lisa is, do you?” It was Mrs. Grant. “Larry said they had a fight last night and she took off with Katie. I thought maybe they were with you.”

My mother planted herself in front of me, making those concerned eyebrows. I turned away.

“No,” I said, twisting the phone cord. “Have you tried Gabe?”

“He hasn’t heard from her,” Mrs. Grant said. “She’s got her phone, but she’s not answering. If she calls you, please tell her to call me.”

I’d barely hung up when my mother started with the interrogation.

“What’s going on? Is Lisa in trouble?”

I sighed.

“Something’s going on. Why were you all jumpy last night? Who were you e-mailing at one in the morning?”

Grabbing my cell, I ran from the house. The back door slammed behind me.

“Tracy Louise!” my mother shouted through the screen. “If I find out…”

Find out what, Mom? You never find out anything.