Authors: Tess Sharpe
“Not very well—I found the thumb drive under the
fl oorboards.”
“We should go through it again, then,” Kyle says.
“I can’t really do that,” I say, taking a breath.
“Why not?” Kyle asks.
“Trev,” Rachel answers, when it becomes apparent that
I won’t.
“Oh, yeah,” Kyle says, and he has the grace to look guilty.
“He’s really pissed at you. I’ll go talk to him. I’ll explain
everything. Tell him I lied, that it wasn’t your fault you
guys were at the Point. Don’t worry. Trev’s totally whipped
over you—he’ll forgive you.”
I fi rmly ignore the last thing because I hate thinking
about it, and instead I look up at Kyle. “If you told Trev the
truth, he’d kick your ass.”
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F A R F R O M Y O U
“I can take care of myself,” Kyle mutters.
“It’s not a good idea,” I say hastily, more for Trev’s sake
than Kyle’s.
“But—”
“Drop it, Kyle,” I say. “Rachel, what else have you got?”
“Not much. I’ll make copies of all this for you both.
You guys knew her, the way she worked and thought; you
might be able to see something I didn’t.”
“We can meet again in a few days,” Kyle suggests. “Com-
pare notes?”
“Sounds good,” Rachel says, looking at me for my
consent.
I nod. “Yeah. Sounds good.”
38
FOUR AND A HALF MONTHS AGO (SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD)
“We’re gonna be late,” Mina says.
I zip up my boots and pull my jeans down over them. “We’ve got
twenty minutes. Chill.”
She collapses on my bed, scattering throw pillows everywhere.
She’s wearing a hot pink dress that’s so short, her mom would throw
a fi t if she saw it—which, of course, is why Mina changed into it at my
house. There are little beads on the three-quarter-length sleeves, and
they keep catching the light, like she’s twinkling.
She props herself up on her elbow, her hair spilling over her shoul-
der, a dark mass of brown curls against the pink. “Are you sure you
want to wear those jeans? You should wear the black skinny ones.
Tuck them into your boots.”
“I can barely breathe in the skinny ones.”
“But you look so good in them.”
I size her up, suspicious of her sudden interest in my clothes. “Is
there something about tonight you’re not telling me?” I ask. There’s
nothing Mina loves more than a surprise. “Why do I need to be dressed
up? You’re not planning a welcome-home party, are you? Mina, I hate
that sort of thing.”
“Which is why I stopped myself,” Mina says. “It’s just burgers with
Kyle and Trev. I already told you.”
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F A R F R O M Y O U
I shoot her a look. “Okay, but I think you’re acting weird.”
“And I think you should change.”
“Not going to happen.”
“At least put on some lip gloss.”
“What’s with you?” I ask as I pull my sweater on. “It’s just Trev and
your boyfriend.” Every time I call Kyle her boyfriend, it gets easier. I’ve
been practicing it in front of the mirror.
“You’re so pretty.” Mina gets up from the bed to paw through
my jewelry box. “And you spend half of your life dressing so
boring
because you think it’ll make people notice you less.”
“Maybe I don’t want people to notice me.”
“That’s my whole point.” Mina holds a pair of silver hoops up to
her ear in front of the mirror, turning her head back and forth before
discarding them. “You want to hide. It’s unfair to yourself.”
“I’m not the one who wants to hide, Mina,” I say, and she fumbles
and drops the necklace she’s picked up.
“I’m going downstairs,” she says fl atly. “We should leave soon.”
Trev and Kyle are already sitting in a booth when we get there. Angry
Burger is busy, packed with college students home for the weekend,
a big group shooting pool in the corner, Corona bottles stuff ed with
lime wedges clutched in their free hands. They haven’t updated the
music on the jukebox in forever; it’s always twangy, old-school coun-
try, heavy on the banjo.
Mina slides into the spot next to Kyle while Trev gets up from the
chipped oak booth.
I’ve been home from Oregon for a week. This is the fi rst time I’ve
seen him, and I’m surprised at how happy I am. Trev is simple. Easy.
Exactly what I need tonight, aft er days of Mina’s doublespeak and
guarded glances.
T E S S S H A R P E
179
He hugs me, and it’s comforting, like Trev always is.
“Good to see you, Soph,” he says, and I can feel the rumble in his
chest where it’s pressed against mine.
“How’s school?” I ask him as we sit down. I’m determined to focus
on Trev instead of Kyle and the way he’s got his arm slung across the
back of Mina’s chair like he owns it. Owns her.
“Busy,” Trev says.
“Trev’s been building a boat,” Mina puts in.
“Another one?” I ask.
He’d rebuilt a trashed catboat aft er the accident, and sometimes
I’d go to the dock to keep him company. It was the only time, still
fresh from the crash, that I could be around him and not feel assaulted
by the weight of his guilt. His focus, for once, had been on fi xing some-
thing other than me.
It took him months, repairing the smashed hull and broken spars.
When he’d fi nally fi nished, he took us out, just him and me and Mina
for her maiden voyage. I’d watched him brush his fi ngers over his boat
like he was touching a holy thing and I’d understood him in a way
I never had before. Realized that he and I were cemented together,
almost as much as Mina and I.
“You should see the line of girls at the docks every weekend,” Mina
says, snickering. “They loll around frying in the sun and watch him—
it’s ridiculous. If he took his shirt off , I think they’d have a collective
fi t. Disgusting.” She fl icks water at Trev, sticking her tongue out.
Trev rolls his eyes while Kyle laughs. “Right on, man.”
“Brat,” Trev says to Mina.
“You should go out there, Soph. Scare ’em off .” Mina nudges me
with her foot underneath the table, and all the easy energy, the com-
forting familiarity of Mina and Trev’s teasing, dissipates in a second.
I can’t stop the way I go white, can’t stop Trev noticing my
180
F A R F R O M Y O U
reaction. I wonder if he sees the way she looks at me, how every shred
of her attention is on me, the bitterness in her smile, desperate and so
damned scared. Can he even understand what she’s doing to me—to
all of us?
And because she’s Mina, she just
won’t stop
.
“Kyle and I need a couple to double-date with. It’s perfect. Wouldn’t
that be fun, baby?”
“Sure,” Kyle says.
I can feel Trev’s eyes on me, but I can’t rip my gaze away from her
as I say, “I’ll be right back.”
Not a ripple on her face. She keeps looking at me like that until I’m
half-ready to launch myself across the table at her.
“Good idea. We should freshen up.” She slings her purse over her
shoulder and throws a smile at Kyle. It’s her Fine, Just Fine smile. Kyle
can’t tell she’s bullshitting, but I can—and so can Trev, who frowns as
he tries to fi gure out why I’m so upset, why she’s so triumphant.
She saunters across the restaurant toward the ladies’ room like she
doesn’t have a care in the world. Like she didn’t just try to set me up
with her brother, like she isn’t screwing with me (and with him) in the
worst possible way.
Mina likes to play with fi re.
But I’m the one who gets burned.
39
NOW (JUNE)
Kyle and I are silent on the drive back to my house.
When I park in my driveway and reach for the door han-
dle, he doesn’t get out. He stares at the dashboard, hands in
his lap. For a long, uncomfortable moment, all I want to do
is leave him there. But then he starts talking.
“I told her I loved her,” he says. “A week before she . . . I
told her I loved her and she started crying. I thought she . . .
It was stupid. I’m stupid. I thought I knew her. But I didn’t.”
He looks at me, those puppy-dog eyes so miserable, it hurts
even though I’m still mad at him. “How does that even
work, Sophie? To love someone so fucking much and not
even really know her?”
I don’t know how to answer that. I’d loved her. The real
her. The half-version she’d shown to the world and the
scared parts that ran from me as much as they reached for
me. Every part, every dimension, every version of her, I
knew and loved.
I think about when we were younger. Even back in mid-
dle school, Kyle was on the outskirts, watching, entranced
as I was with her. Waiting, and fi nally getting, only to be
crushed.
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F A R F R O M Y O U
I understand why he hates me. It’s the exact reason I
hated him those months before. He took her away from me.
And then she got taken away from both of us. Neither of us
won in a game he didn’t even know he was playing.
Because of that kinship, I can put aside my anger. I can
be kind. She would’ve wanted that.
“Mina trusted you. She told you. That means something.
It means everything.”
He stares at me like he’s seeing me for the fi rst time. The
misery is still sharp in his eyes, but there’s something else
now, too, a kind of searching look that makes me want to
run. “You know how everyone has, like, a dream? For their
life, I mean?”
I nod.
“Mina was mine.”
I reach out—I can’t help it—and squeeze his shoulder.
“Mine too.”
After Kyle leaves, I go inside and up to my room to down-
load the fi les Rachel gave me.
Mina’s time line is a thing of beauty compared to the
makeshift one stuck to the underside of my mattress—it’s
years long, with a detailed suspect list and precise notes on
each person involved.
I don’t think I’d ever talked to Jackie Dennings. My
freshman year had been overshadowed by the crash, but
even if it hadn’t, our paths probably wouldn’t have crossed.
She’d been a junior and Class President,and popular, so
she existed in this corner of the freshman’s mind, a pretty
T E S S S H A R P E
183
blonde girl that you knew of, more of an idea than a person.
And then one day, that pretty blonde girl’s on a Missing
poster, and they’re plastered everywhere. The Dennings
family had even put up billboards on the highway, but no
tips ever led anywhere.
According to Mina’s notes, Jackie was a good student
and star athlete, a loving sister and daughter. She’d even
been headed to Stanford on a full soccer scholarship. The
only ripple in her good-girl image was the boyfriend.
When Jackie disappeared, Matt Clarke had been the
number one suspect. A history of drug abuse, a few cita-
tions for public intoxication and bar fi ghts, plus a shaky alibi
from another known drug user didn’t help him any, but the
police search of his truck and house had turned up nothing.
My cursor hovers over the link that’ll open the audio fi le
of Mina’s interview with Matt. I need to click it. I have to
listen to it.
But I can’t bring myself to click. Sitting here alone in my
room, her voice would be like hot metal against skin, burn-
ing through the layers until there’s nothing left to brand.