Accomplice (8 page)

The truth is, I liked the feeling of the branches whipping across my face. And it already felt like I’d fallen into a hole—only I hadn’t hit the bottom yet. I didn’t even know where the bottom was.

I just kept falling.

Because I’m not a moron, I didn’t go right inside and leap into my bed and hide under the covers, the way Chloe and I used to when we thought we’d been caught going to the kitchen for a snack after lightsout.

I sat on our back steps. I had to catch my breath, anyway, and the sky was lightening a little. Everything was damp and a little cold, and the air smelled like wet dog. I wanted to bury my face in it.

I heard exactly when Dad scuffed down the steps. He did it kind of fast, and that made me wonder if he’d checked my room when he woke up. He must have, because I heard him call out my name while he was still on the steps. I wondered if he’d always checked on me first or if this was new. It would make sense if it had been a new thing, if parents around town were nervous. Maybe Chloe and I were responsible for that—people checking on their sleeping kids again. Feeling grateful to see them drooling onto their pillows and twisted in their sheets. That made me feel a little, tiny bit better.

But then I wondered if Dean was sleeping in his bed. What his mother was thinking. And my stomach curdled.

“Finn. What the hell?”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“For how long?”

“Just a little bit. I came down to watch the sun come up.”

“We’ve got a big day—you should have slept.”

What wasn’t a big day anymore? Seriously.

He must have interpreted my grunting for interest.

“Lila Ann Price is coming out.” My stomach turned cartwheels. Lila Ann Price was this lady on truTV. Her daughter disappeared at an amusement park a long time ago, before I was born. She had a show that featured a different missing kid each week. She had a regular show for Margaret Cook, an update show, and then, when she came home, Margaret Cook went on and did an interview. If Lila Ann Price was coming out to Colt River, then we’d hit the big time.

“Am I going to school?” I asked, the news still unspooling in my head.

“They canceled school.”

“What?”

Dad looked at me funny. “You didn’t hear the phone ring?”

Our town has a phone chain for snow delays or school
cancellation. You get one phone call, and you make one phone call, and eventually the whole town gets the message. And because we’re basically a speck on a map, the entire process takes about an hour. It takes sixty minutes for the whole town to hear about a snow day. How fast would it take all of Colt River to know if Chloe and I got caught?

“Nope.” I tried to say it casually and looked out onto the field like I was breathing like a normal person.

“Well, you must have been sleeping pretty heavily at some point.”

“Yep.” I sounded like he did, when he was trying to avoid fighting with my mom.

“But then you couldn’t sleep?”

I was getting good at looking up at people and deliberately meeting their eyes. My new talent was making people believe they were finally, finally getting the truth from me.

“I had a nightmare.” I confessed it. Quietly and not at all defensively. “It woke me up.”

“Oh.” Dad sipped his coffee. It fogged up into his face, in the cold air. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I’m okay.” I said it like you’d say it if you weren’t at all okay. Which was pretty much how I felt, anyway.

“Well, you might want to try to nap before Lila Ann Price comes over.”

“Is that why they canceled school?”

“They said it was a plumbing thing.”

“Really?”

“Yup.”

“Is there a plumbing thing?” I asked. My father shook his head, took a sip, stretched one of his legs so that it reached the metal railing. “So why would they say that?”

“I think they worried that, otherwise, people would think that something happened about Chloe.”

“Like what?” And then I got it. And freaked a little because probably that’s where my mind should have leaped—and it might have, if I hadn’t just left Chloe reading romance novels on a Lay-Z-Boy. “Did they find…” I let my voice trail off, as if I couldn’t bear to pronounce the words. But I sounded all soap opera actressy. If the sun had been fully up, my father would have seen the phoniness shining on my face.

“No. No, nothing. But with Columbus Day on Monday, it just gives you guys a fourday weekend. And today was going to be mayhem, anyway, what with this TV show and the West boy in custody—”

“He’s still in custody?”

“I don’t know. I hope so, for his sake. Folks are starting to get mean about this. A lot of men came out here to look for Chloe, Finn. A lot of men with daughters of their own.”

“Dean came,” I reminded him. But he just shrugged and dragged another gulp of the coffee.

“No one’s forgotten that. But in this day and age…that doesn’t mean a whole lot.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“There are sick people in the world, Finn. There are people who like to cause other people pain and then sit around and watch. They get”—I could see my dad getting uncomfortable—“some kind of satisfaction from that. That’s evil. We’re all God’s children, but that’s just evil working inside a person.”

My dad wasn’t trying to describe me. I kept trying to remind myself that while tears burned in my eyes. It was fine, anyway. He thought I was crying for Chloe.

We didn’t hug very often, my dad and me. Sometimes we kind of chucked each other on the shoulders. He did this thing where he came up behind and wrapped one of his arms around my neck. But that morning, when he saw me start crying, he gathered me up in his arms and I cried until I got tears and snot all over his woolly flannel shirt. He petted my head near my ponytail, and I cried the way you cry when you can’t breathe and you get hiccups and your face stays all hot.

“I’m sorry, kiddo.” That’s what my dad kept saying. Over and over.

So when I finally pulled back and rubbed my face, I asked him, “Why are you sorry?”

“I’m sorry that the world isn’t as good as I’d like it to be for you.”

That is what my father said to me. Whatever seed of evil was in me began to feel like it had taken root. I was growing a tree. I don’t know why I kept pressing it. Part of me imagined what it would feel like to explain to my dad what Chloe and I had done, that she was okay, that I had tried to somehow put the brakes on, but that this whole thing had spun out of control. I could cry and explain to him how sorry I was and beg him to help me fix it. He’d order me right into the pickup and in minutes we’d be in my grandmother’s driveway. Dad would come with me to the Caffreys’ house, to the police station. He’d stand behind me with his arms folded in front of him grimly, like the time he drove me over to Cody Hameier’s house and stood there while I apologized to his whole family for filling their mailbox with old eggs.

I decided it would probably feel like having a lung transplant or heart surgery. I mean—afterward, it would feel like I could finally breathe. Someone else would take charge and they’d freak out and yell and punish, but then it would be over. This was a lot more than a dozen rotten eggs and a can of shaving cream, though. I thought about how there were maybe four or five things that would actually alter the way my parents viewed me as a person. And how this was one of those things.

“Do you really think something’s happened to her?” I asked him like I wanted him to say no.

My father sighed and looked down into the grounds of his coffee cup. He said very carefully, “I think we have to start preparing ourselves for that possibility.”

“But she could have run away—” Maybe that was going to have to be our out after all—Chloe buckled under the pressure. She took her leftover birthday money and bought a bus ticket and this whole time she’d been riding in the back of a dingy Greyhound and buying snacks out of rest-stop vending machines, completely oblivious.

Dad shook his head. It looked like it hurt him to move it back and forth. “It’s just too long, Finn. And she would have seen something on the news and called home or sent an e-mail. After the first press conference…”

The first press conference was bad. From then on, Mr. Caffrey was the only one who spoke to reporters. Most times, Chloe’s mom didn’t even appear. And when the reporters asked, “How is Mrs. Caffrey holding up?” they sounded like they actually cared.

“Yeah, but she could be all the way across the country. Or someplace without a TV. Maybe she just doesn’t know how bad it is. It can’t be on the news all the way in California.”

Dad shot me a look, and I splayed out my hands and
quickly reassured him. “No—we never, ever talked about her going to California.”

“Finn, it’s pretty much a national news story.”

“Are you sure?” When my dad hesitated, I felt a surge of hope glow under my ribs like a live wire. “See? She could be somewhere where no one’s heard of Colt River. I mean, Jesus, people in Bergen County haven’t heard of Colt River. Maybe she just doesn’t know we’re looking for her.” I wanted to sprint right back to Chloe. This was our way out. We could still work out something impressive—an older guy, someone controlling… He threatened her family and she was too scared not to go. I tried to keep the excitement out of my voice, but realized that Dad just thought it was some kind of poignant hope. That was fine. It was safe for him to think that.

Dad looked at me kindly. It was the aren’t-you-such-a-sweet-but-vaguely-pitiful-girl look. I’d seen it before on him. Once at dinner, Chloe announced that she was going to go into neurology so that she could treat Cam. Dad’s face had on the same look that was creased across his face now. “Well then, I guess we’ll have a better idea after tonight.” I looked at him, questioningly. “Maybe the show is actually a good thing,” he explained, easing himself off the step. “
L. A. Price
is a nationally syndicated show, so chances are Chloe would have to come across it.” He looked off in the direction of the woods I’d just crawled through. “Listen, Finn, I’ll check on the
animals. I want you to go upstairs and try for a little more sleep.”

“But shouldn’t I get ready?” I didn’t want to ask out loud if I’d be interviewed, but already I was mentally flipping through the hangers in my closet, trying to pick out the perfect tragic-best-friend ensemble. “I mean—is there anything I should help with?”

“I’ll make sure you don’t sleep too late. But try to rest a little. And don’t wake your mother when you go back upstairs. It would worry her to know you were moving around down here and she hadn’t heard you.”

I crept upstairs, saying a little prayer of thanks to whatever patron saint of evil kids had helped me sneak around undetected. I skipped the third and fifth steps because they always groaned when you walked on them. I eased the doorknob to the left and stopped myself from slamming it closed.

So careful. So cautious. I could keep everything quiet. Even the doubts in my head only spoke in whispers then.

It felt like I only blinked, but when I opened my eyes, the sun had risen to the top corner of my window and a band of light crossed the wooden slats of my floor. I hadn’t even untied my shoes and my feet tingled. I heard kitchen noises—pans clanging, the faucet running, Mom talking.

Since Chloe left, most of my mornings had gone this way: I’d wake up, feeling a little strange and afraid, but at first I wouldn’t remember why. And then all the jagged pieces would fit together—where Chloe was; what we had done. Each morning the pieces fit together more quickly. I wondered what it would be like when that moment of not knowing didn’t happen, when I woke already remembering how awful we were.

When I got down to the kitchen, I found Mom talking to Mrs. Caffrey—it was really like Chloe’s mom was just sitting there and my mom had embarked on a very energetic monologue. Mrs. Caffrey sat hunched over her cup of coffee like she was trying to get warm. She
didn’t even make the noises people make when they’re listening to someone else talking too much.

She looked skinny and yellow. She looked up at me like she didn’t know who I was when I stopped short in the doorway and managed to get out, “Hey, Mrs. Caffrey. How are you?” She just nodded.

My mom was in desperate-housewife mode. She was making bread, and she kept throwing down the dough so that clouds of flour would float up into the air in front of her face. The dough squirmed and showed more expression than Mrs. Caffrey.

“Where’s Cam?” I tried next, because that was a surefire hit. But Chloe’s mom deflected it with a shrug.

“Sheila?” Mom asked sharply. And Mrs. Caffrey just shifted her eyes out the window.

“What?”

“Where’s Cam?” Cam doesn’t usually have a whole lot of unsupervised time. It’s not like he’s retarded. There’s actually a lot of stuff he’s much smarter than most people about, but day-to-day stuff is a little off his radar. If he could, he’d wear the same clothes every day. And he would have trouble figuring out how to wash them. Cam doesn’t handle talking on the phone so well or getting himself food or anything. He wouldn’t necessarily know to look to the stove if the smoke detector went off. Stuff like that.

“Stables.” Mrs. Caffrey issued the one word. My mom’s hand reached for the kitchen curtains. I could see her craning to see the horse stalls out back.

“Sheila, he’s with the horses?” My mom’s voice kept rising, but Mrs. Caffrey didn’t really even blink. I thought about Chloe’s smacktalk about her mom popping pills and wondered just a little. “Sheila?”

Mrs. Caffrey shook her head like that would make the fog clear around her. “No, not those stables—Brian took him to the ones at the racetrack.”

“Oh.” My mom’s voice was as bright as a new quarter. “Well, that’s great. Right, Finn? Cam loves seeing horses, doesn’t he? And at the racetrack—that’s a great idea for a tough day.”

“Tough day?” Mrs. Caffrey said it like maybe my mother had gone crazy.

“Well—with Lila Ann Price coming.” Mom piled the bread dough in a pan and slid it into the oven. “That could be a circus, you know.” I could see her bite her lip, figuring out whether or not to press forward. “How’s Cam going to do with that, you think?”

“Cam?” It was like Mrs. Caffrey hadn’t heard of him. I never knew my mom could be so patient. All of a sudden, Chloe and I had crossed over to the dark side and somehow my mom achieved sainthood. She was like Our Lady of Child Abductions or something.

No, that was Lila Ann Price’s title, and she was on
her way to our farm with her pancake makeup and her camera crew. Like one of the local reporters, but jacked up on steroids. And I understood then what my mother was so worried about. How would Cam, with his steadfast systems and strict schedules, handle the Lila Ann Price invasion? I mean, we couldn’t even get Mrs. Caffrey to snap out of it. She was the Cam wrangler, the one person who came close to translating the world for him.

That wasn’t the first time I thought about Cam and what our brilliant plan was costing him. But it was the first time I thought of how shut down their mom was and how many steps that could set him back. His one link to the rest of us had snapped.

“Cam’s not coming home,” Mrs. Caffrey said. My mother’s eyes flew up. “Today,” Mrs. Caffrey continued. “Brian’s dropping him at the tutor’s on the way home from the racetrack. He’s going to stay there for the night.”

“Really?” My mom asked it, but it’s what I was thinking, too. Cam was nineteen, but as far as I knew, he had never gone on a sleepover. Part of the reason our family always brought Chloe with us on vacation was that the Caffreys couldn’t really take one. Seven years they’d lived next door to us, and I don’t think Cam had ever slept anywhere else.

“Brian doesn’t want to expose him—”

“Of course, it will be a madhouse—”

“To the scrutiny—”

“People can be cruel, and—”

“And if it’s a ransom thing, the police think Cam would be vulnerable.”

“Oh.” My mom hadn’t thought of that. “That makes sense.”

“Does it?”

“Yeah. Doesn’t it?”

“Cam raises bloody hell if someone accidentally touches his toothbrush. Do you think he’d let some stranger haul him into a van?” Mrs. Caffrey said it almost wryly. “It’s Chloe who’s vulnerable that way.” She nodded to herself. “Chloe is…available to people. Right, Finn? Am I right?”

And yeah, she was. Chloe smiled at everyone. Welcomed anyone. If I didn’t know that I was her best friend, I’d think that everyone was her best friend.

It took me a second to realize that Mrs. Caffrey was talking again. “I always felt that she was safe when she was with you, Finn. Brian said that was nonsense, that Chloe was still a city kid at heart and you grew up out here, but I always believed you were more sensible.”

“Finn and Chloe are both sensible, responsible girls.” My mother said it definitively, like she meant to shut down the conversation right then and there.

“I just never worried about Chloe when she was with Finn.” We were all quiet for a moment, the kitchen
filling with the warm smell of my mom’s baking bread. “Why wasn’t she with you, Finn?”

Mrs. Caffrey asked it in a small voice, so small that at first I wasn’t sure if she meant for me to answer. But no one said anything. My mom coughed, and I thought she meant it as a signal.

I said, “I was helping my dad.”

“Yeah, Finn.” Mrs. Caffrey rolled her eyes. “You’re a
great
kid.” It felt like she hit me.

I saw my mom’s shoulders square back even before I heard her say, “Now hold on there, Sheila.”

“No, it’s okay,” I said. Something really sick was happening to me because I just wanted to sink into the chair beside her and let her have at me. I just wanted to hear everything she had to say.

“Go to your room, Finn.”

“No, it’s okay—”

“Upstairs.” I was on the fourth step when I heard Mrs. Caffrey start crying.

“Finn!” she shouted after me. “I’m so sorry.” And more softly, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.” Then the sounds of weeping and my mother hushing her.

I got in the shower and ended up sitting on the bottom of the tub, pounded by the water. When I got out, I checked my cell phone, but there was just a stack of texts from kids wanting to know about Lila Ann Price.
My hair still fizzed with shampoo so I rinsed it in the sink. And then I set out to pick the perfect outfit for my television debut.

I settled on jeans and a deep green T-shirt that I liked to think brought out the color of my eyes. I sat at my desk and tried to etch straight lines above my lashes. I looked pretty decent. Sad, but in a tragically goodlooking way. I looked better without Chloe next to me.

Figured they’d probably have plenty of pictures of her, though. Lila Ann Price did this thing—Chloe and I noticed it during the second special about Margaret Cook. She always found a way to mention her own missing daughter. This was probably cruel to notice—I mean, the woman spent her whole life helping families going through the same personal nightmare that she’d never woken up from. I guess it made sense that the cases reminded her of her own kid. It just seemed a little gross when she did it, a little fake. But I was about to cry on national TV about my missing best friend, and Chloe was probably trying to figure out how to tape it on my grandmother’s ancient VCR. So I wasn’t really in any position to judge.