Accomplice (5 page)

“Shut up!” But she was laughing, too. “All right, next time, bring some Tae Bo.” Then her face shifted. She looked almost afraid. “I don’t want you to go.”

“I should have been out of here ten minutes ago. It’s going to be okay. I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

“Finn—you don’t know how lonely it is.”

I thought of how I’d been walking around, how hard it had been to talk to anyone because of how impossible it was to look people in the eye.

“I do.”

I left Chloe sitting on the basement carpet. She was trying to open a bag of Circus Peanuts with her teeth. She called out “bye” as forlornly as some little kid who’d just been put on timeout. I didn’t have the heart to remind her to keep her voice down.

Both cars were lined up in the Caffreys’ driveway when I got home. If someone had really taken Chloe, I would have stopped at her house after school. I would have knocked on the kitchen door, but I wouldn’t have listened for someone to say “Come in.” I would’ve just gone inside to sit next to Mrs. Caffrey. In my head, I knew that was what I was supposed to do.

Instead, I walked straight up to our house and let myself in. Called out for my parents. No one. I went out back and checked on the sheep. I unrolled hay and checked on a couple of our ewes. Unwound the hose and dragged it over to fill the water trough. Sat out there for a while and watched the sheep surge toward the new green.

The house felt eerie and empty, so I put on the TV. At first I flipped past the news and then made myself put it back. It was just a fluff piece on celebrity DUIs. Chloe and I used to imagine what it would be like to be famous. Some celebrities didn’t even do anything. They went to parties and they wore dresses. They flashed tabloid
photographers. Chloe and I were working harder than any of them to get this done.

The piece about Chloe made the news wrap-up. That meant people from the whole tristate area were staring up at the sheep picture. I wondered where we’d be if she came home right then. If we toured NYU that very minute, how many people would recognize her? They closed with the images of the police boat in the middle of the lake. The anchorwoman looked somber, saying, “This morning’s events do not appear to have led authorities any closer to the answer of young Chloe Marie Caffrey’s disappearance.”

When the screen door slammed, I hit the remote to turn off the TV. I leaped up from the couch to see my dad standing in the breezeway.

“Hey.” He looked at me from under the brim of his baseball cap. “You’re not next door?”

“I had to take a look at the sheep.”

“Yeah? Everyone doing okay?”

“Seems like it. What do you think?”

“About the sheep or about next door?”

I shrugged and tried to not look scared. I took a breath and asked, “How’s everyone doing next door?” Next door was beginning to sound like its own country.

Dad went to the fridge and opened it up. He started carrying out sandwich stuff and piling it on the counter. “I think today was a rough one.”

“But they have to be happy, right? I mean that no one found—or that Chloe wasn’t—” I couldn’t finish. I couldn’t make my mouth say it all.

“I don’t think anyone’s happy about anything right now. And now exhaustion’s hitting—Mrs. Caffrey can’t stand up. Can you believe that? It’s like she’s just breaking down.”

“What do they think happened?”

“I think we’re all just hoping Chloe made a really big mistake. Because otherwise…”

It was a little sick to have this conversation while Dad was making sandwiches.

“Otherwise what?”

“Otherwise it doesn’t look good, Finn.” Dad pulled out a chair for me and nodded toward it. I sat, obedient as always. “The Caffreys have money, sweetheart. More than most people. It’s pretty well known around here. And even if you weren’t from Colt River—well, by now, the house has been on the news, so people know. But no one’s said anything about ransom. If someone took her, they don’t want money.” Dad watched me as he talked, like he was measuring me for cracks.

“So I’m hoping.” Dad stopped talking and focused on the food in front of him for a minute. He started again. “I have to say that I’m hoping that Chloe just made the stupidest mistake of her life. Maybe she went to meet some guy. Maybe she felt pressured around here. You
know, all we’ve been talking about lately is what a perfect kid Chloe is. We all think of you and Chloe as perfect—you know that. I don’t know.” He slathered mustard on one side of a piece of rye, so I knew that one was for me. “But nobody’s perfect, right? It has to get to be a little much, carrying all that around.”

“So what are you saying?”

“Well, maybe Chloe just felt like setting that down for a while.”

“Chloe didn’t run away.”

“Because she would have told you first.”

“Yeah.”

“But what would you have said?”

“What?”

“Maybe it seemed like a good idea at the time, right? I mean, you couldn’t have known. And then, everything got out of control—”

“Dad.” It was weird to feel so hurt, like his theory landed so far off the radar. But my throat ached and tears rushed to my eyes. I couldn’t have faked it better. “What do you think? I’m some monster?” Part of me kind of wanted him to say yes. It would have all been over if he had said yes.

I stood up and Dad reached up for my hand.

“I’m sorry, kiddo,” he said. “I’m really sorry. It’s just wishful thinking, you know?”

I shook him off. “I’m going up to my room.” Dad
didn’t even call me back. I wished my door locked from the inside. Just to keep people out for a little while. From my bedroom window you could see the huge arched glass of Chloe’s room. When we were small, we used to try blinking Morse code messages to each other with flashlights. It was a hard language to learn.

Chloe’s light was on, so I rushed to shut off my bedside lamp. I didn’t want Mrs. Caffrey to know I was home. Got under the covers without even changing into my pajamas. Chloe and I both used to have glow-in-the-dark stars all over our ceilings. Dad had put them up in my room, and since Chloe loved them, too, Mr. Caffrey and Dad then put them up in her room as a surprise for her birthday. The summer before we went into high school, we took them down. They seemed babyish. Or at least Chloe said so. We sneaked ladders up while our dads were playing squash so it wouldn’t hurt their feelings. It was stupid, but I hadn’t wanted to take mine down. And so I’d left three up, the ones that were supposed to be Orion’s belt. Sometimes when I had trouble sleeping, I stared up at them. That’s what I did that night.

I wished Chloe and I could have both disappeared. We could have both been watching late night
Law & Order
reruns and eating Circus Peanuts. We would have been together. And I wouldn’t have had to wake up in
the morning, slink past the Caffreys’ house, and go to school again.

I missed Chloe. I missed who we were before.

I didn’t close my eyes until the yellow window of Chloe’s bedroom down the hill went dark.

Dad and I rode quietly in the car the next morning. The day felt dim. I wasn’t going over to my grandmother’s house. My mom had spent the night at the Caffreys’ place. I guess because the cops had finished up at the lake, the news vans were back parked along the street at school.

“Jesus.” Dad practically whistled the word. “Everything I pay in taxes, and someone can’t clear these shitheads off school property?”

“It’s fine, Dad.”

“None of this is fine. We’ve talked about you and the press.”

“Yes, Dad.” It sounded like we were arguing about curfew or the necessity of clearing my plate at supper.

But he was more intent than that. “And what did we say?”

“We said,
No press
.”

“That’s right. I’m not about to watch them turn you into a target.”

I didn’t have to turn around to know that he stayed there in the drop-off lane and watched me walk through the gauntlet of reporters to school. No one recognized me, anyway. I wondered how long it would take before they all knew me on sight. I saw Kate standing off by the courtyard, bent toward a women dressed in a tan trench coat. You might think the lady was one of the richer moms, except for the camera hovering above them. Kate kept dabbing at her eyes with her sleeve until the trench coat lady pulled a hunk of Kleenex out of her pocket. It was better than Career Day, really. Before I even made it to the building, I’d already learned being a tabloid journalist means carrying tissues for the hysterical sobs of attention-starved failed gymnasts.

In the hallway, people parted in front of me. The reporter lady might not have known who I was, but inside the school doors, I’d achieved some minor celebrity. Chloe and I had talked about this, too. How nothing ever happened in Colt River. So when something did, everyone would latch on to it and try to make it theirs.

When we were in seventh grade, Chloe and I were in a car accident. Mrs. Caffrey was driving and Cam and Chloe were in the backseat, with me riding up front. Mrs. Caffrey ran a stop sign. It was a dump truck that hit us, so it wasn’t going
fast, but it was big and dirty. I remember that at the same time I realized it wasn’t going to stop, I also noticed how dirty it was. Cam and Chloe were wearing seat belts, but I’d taken mine off so that I could twist around and talk to Chloe behind me. That was a big sticking point in our house, and for a month or two, my dad was considering filing suit. It was really strained whenever either of us was around the other’s parents.

My mom’s point was that you didn’t sue friends. My dad kept saying, “That’s why people have insurance.” In the end, Chloe’s parents paid my medical bills, and after a while everything died down.

They paid for plastic surgery. Because I hit the windshield. With my face. The crash left a crescent-shaped scar on my face. It looks like a quarter moon shining on my cheek. Chloe said that you could hardly tell, and if you did notice it, it actually looked kind of cool.

But every night I put this scar cream on it. Chloe said it was pretty much gone, but she wouldn’t have said that if it had been her face. Nobody would say it if it was her face that got marked up.

When we started imagining the kidnapping scenario, like really considering what the reality of the situation would be, Chloe brought up the car accident. She talked about how weird everyone acted the next morning, when she went to school and I was still in the hospital. She said that it felt like there was some weird competition between all the girls. That all of a sudden everyone claimed I was
their best friend. Everyone was crying in class and by the way the girls in our grade told the story, I’d just barely, miraculously survived.

Chloe kept asking, “Don’t you remember how everyone acted when you first came home after the car accident? What school was like when you first got back?” But when I tried to retrieve those memories, I ended up thinking more about the dump truck. I got stuck remembering how, for a while, my mom and I would change the bandages on my face and measure how bad it was together.

Now, when it was my turn to be the center of attention, I let it happen. When the girls flocked to me, when Kate and the rest fell in line behind, I tried to look grateful. Pressed my hand to my chest over my heart. Just like I’d seen them do. Just like they had seen their mothers do.

The lady in the trench coat showed up during lunch that day, wanting to interview me about Chloe. I’d stopped in at the bathroom near the office, the one that the faculty thought we wouldn’t use because it had L
ADIES
’ R
OOM
and not just G
IRLS
stenciled across the door. I just hadn’t felt like dealing with the lunchroom crush of thirty girls crammed in front of the mirrors.

The reporter lady was just standing there at the sink. She looked done. And when I thought about it, it must
have really sucked to be chasing weepy teenagers around for a story that wasn’t going anywhere. She was pretty in a frozen way—I imagined when she’d been my age she’d pictured herself crossing her legs behind a desk on the evening news or flirting with a morning cohost or something. And instead, she was under the fluorescent lights of the Colt River High ladies’ room. Chloe and I had said that I should dodge the press as much as possible. We figured if it looked like I was seeking out reporters, then it would look really suspicious for me to be the one to find her. But it wasn’t like I’d gone into the bathroom looking for the lady.

So when I bent to wash my hands at the sink next to her, I just asked, “Are you here because of Chloe?”

And she said, “Yes. I am,” in this really weary voice.

“Chloe’s my best friend.” And she didn’t even react to that, so I knew that Kate and Maddie and everyone else auditioning for their cameos on
48 Hours Mystery
had fed her the same line. I tried a new one: “The Caffreys live on my dad’s old farm.”

The reporter’s eyes snapped up to meet mine in the mirror. “Jacobs? Finley Jacobs, right? I’m Kirsten Manahan with Channel Eleven. It’s good to meet you, Finley—How are you? How is your family doing?” It was like her batteries had been replaced. She took my arm and steered me out into the hallway. I saw her look past me and wave her hand. For a split, scary second, I
thought she was signaling a cop. But it was just a camera guy. Kirsten Manahan steered me into a classroom, saying, “We’ve been hoping to speak to you—because you must be looking for a way to help Chloe, right? Maybe we can give you a chance to speak out and do that.”

I thought it was weird that someone had given the newspeople a classroom. And I panicked a little because this was it, my self-orchestrated debut. The normal teacher had hung this enormous periodic table across one of the classroom walls, and I found myself thinking that Kirsten Manahan could be my own experiment. She settled back into one of the classroom chairs and motioned for me to sit back in the teacher’s swiveled armchair.

Really, she wanted to hear about our idyllic childhood on the farm. And she wanted more about the horse. Everyone wanted to hear about Chloe and her horse. I remember concentrating really hard on each shellacked strand of the reporter’s helmet hair and trying to tell the story the way a girl whose best friend had disappeared would tell it. Like I could hardly bear to remember it. As if it hurt that much to tell.

And the more I told, the more it did hurt. Because the things I kept describing—me and Chloe running around catching fireflies in jelly jars, the two of us awake at six, stacking bales of hay, or staying up all night waiting for the new lambs—it sounded so ideal and perfect and innocent. Especially since I knew that we weren’t like
that anymore. Especially since I knew we’d never be able to describe each other that simply again.

That was the only interview I did before the other ones. Dad flipped out when he saw it on the ten o’clock news and told me that next time I’d better tell them to go to hell or at least call him or Mom. He was really dialed up to Level Rage, ranting about calling the networks himself or going to court to get a restraining order against the press. And Mom pointed out quietly, “Really, Bart—whatever coverage we can get, it’s probably good for Chloe.”

I wanted to yell out,
Exactly. That’s the whole point!
By that time, I was counting down the hours. Until then it just meant suffering through it—the way my mom said everything quietly these days, the Caffreys’ press conferences, the search parties, all the kids at school wearing their dumbass Chloe ribbons. Because the more press, the more exposure, the better it would eventually be for Chloe. And, by extension, for me.

I knew that Chloe would be pissed I did the interview, too. It broke one of the rules we’d come up with—I had to keep a low profile until Rescue Day. Otherwise it would look too suspicious, too convenient. By then, though, six days into it, I was feeling like Chloe could suck it. She sat on a pile of blankets all day, watching talk shows and eating Pop-Tarts and seeing her own
picture flash across the news. I was already tired of hearing her memorialized in the hallways at school, sick of seeing her face in makeshift shrines all over town. The afternoon of that first interview, I rode my bike down to the library and then along the towpath by the river. Every time the pedals spun around, I heard them asking,
What have you done? What have you done?
God. It felt like I was drunk on some kind of liquid guilt. Every time I passed another poster of Chloe with that lamb tucked under her arm, I pedaled harder, but that just made the voice in my head louder. So I ended up just walking the bike home, making myself turn away every time I saw the white flag of a
MISSING
flyer stapled to a telephone pole or tree.

Now, if I had the chance to do it, if the whole world was still paying attention to me, I would call my own press conference. And even with all the flashbulbs shuttering in my face, I’d tell them: Chloe was never missing. At least she was never missing to me.