Beautiful Lies (6 page)

“Aunt Sharon,” I say, backing away, “you’re scaring me.”

And then I sense it. Something feels wet and cool on the back of my head, near my neck. It doesn’t hurt; it tingles.

Slowly, I turn around to look at the wall.

The paint is a color called silk heaven. The kitchen used to be wallpapered. It was this garish gold-and-purple flower pattern. When we were fourteen, my sister and I spent an entire weekend scraping the paper off. You can’t imagine the mess. When we were finished, my aunt let us help with the painting. Silk heaven. The words roll off the tongue. Aunt Sharon always keeps the kitchen so clean, so white.

The wall behind me is marked with a thick smear of blood, a bright-red stripe running vertically toward the floor. It’s so red, such a vibrant, pretty color, that it almost looks alive. It is caked with hundreds of strands of my hair, shimmering beneath the light, tiny particles of gray scalp visible at their roots. So much blood. So much hair.

I touch the back of my scalp, gently, and feel a gooey mess. It’s still flowing. I pull my hand away. I am holding a fistful of hair and scalp.

My aunt and uncle ease me to the floor. My uncle pulls off his shirt, holds it to the back of my head, and wraps his arms around me.

In her bare feet, her toenails painted a pink so light that it’s almost white, my aunt stumbles on a shard of the ceramic mug, slicing open the edge of her foot. A blossom of red appears at the wound, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
From the cardboard box, there is a chorus of hungry, sweet mewing. The kittens’ cries start out quiet but then quickly become louder, the sound growing shrill, almost intolerable. The room dissolves into inky patches of light and darkness. From somewhere far away, somewhere dark and damp and cruel, I hear my sister calling my name. The pain comes through her and into me. I feel it for both of us. Everything hurts.

“Don’t.” As soon as I realize they’re about to call an ambulance, I stop them. “I’m okay.” I stare at my bloody hand, hair and scalp stuck to my fingers. For a moment, it occurs to me that I am really,
really
not okay. But I can’t go to the hospital. That will only waste my aunt and uncle’s time, when they need to call the police and focus on finding my sister.

My sister.
Where could she possibly have gone? As I gaze at the mess of flesh and blood in my fist, I can only think the worst: that the same thing has happened to her—somebody grabbed her last night or somehow lured her away from the fair. She looked so pretty and self-assured, all the men sneaking glances at her when they thought their wives and girlfriends weren’t looking. Did somebody want her enough to simply
take
her? I shouldn’t have let her run away from the Ferris wheel. I should have protected her.

Charlie stands in the doorway to the kitchen, trembling
as he hands the phone to my uncle. My cousin is still wearing his pajamas. He doesn’t look at me; instead, he stares at the box of kittens. He’s taking deep breaths, visibly trying to calm himself. He’s easily upset, and for years his therapist has coached him to rely on breathing techniques for relaxation whenever he becomes agitated. I hate the fact that I’ve worried him so much. More than that, I hate knowing that things seem like they’re only getting worse. For me. For my sister. For everyone.

My uncle kneels at my side, attempting to peer at my wound as he continues to press his shirt against my scalp. “What did you do?” he asks. “Did you cut yourself somehow?”

I can’t tell them what I think is actually happening. They would never believe me. They would never understand. My sister and I have been connected this way our whole lives—this isn’t the first time something like this has happened to me. There was the incident with the gum when we were much younger, but it’s more than just that; it’s a million other, more subtle oddities that have piled up over the years, to the point where they can’t all be dismissed as coincidence.

“Rachel.” My uncle stares at me, worried. “Answer me. Did you cut yourself?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” I wince, feeling pain at the site of the wound for the first time as my uncle presses his hand against the shirt. “Please call the police,” I say. “We have to help her.”

“Rachel,” my aunt pronounces, “you have a head wound.
You might need stitches. Don’t worry about Alice right now.” She glances at my cousin in the doorway. “Charlie, honey, go to your room for a while. Okay?”

Charlie shakes his head back and forth with worry. “I want to help.”

“Everything will be okay,” my aunt tells him. “Please go to your room.”

I close my eyes as a rush of dizziness overwhelms me. I hear Charlie’s heavy footsteps fading as he walks away. As my wound throbs, I imagine my sister alone somewhere, helpless, probably hoping that I’ll search for her, that maybe somehow I’ll find her. But before I can do that, I have to get out of this house.

“Rachel? Rachel? Sharon, I think she’s about to pass out. Jesus. Sharon, do something!”

My eyelids flutter. For a moment, my vision blurry, I see my aunt standing beside me, holding her phone, just staring at it. My gaze drifts toward the floor, and I notice a ribbon of blood running from the cut in her toe.

“I’m okay,” I repeat. I try to steady myself, then I realize that my bottom half has gone numb; I try to wiggle my toes, to regain sensation in my feet so that I can get up and call the police myself, if that’s what I have to do.

After a few shaky seconds, I’m able to stand. I step away from my uncle, replacing my hand over his in order to hold the shirt against the back of my own head. I blink rapidly, trying to bring the room into focus.

“We should still …” My aunt’s voice trails off.

“Wait, Sharon.” My uncle puts a hand on her arm. He moves toward me. “Let me see how badly you’re bleeding.”

I still feel fuzzy. Even though I can breathe, I feel suffocated by dread, like someone has pulled a plastic bag over my head and the air is slowly running out. And the back of my head is beginning to ache dully, the pain throbbing to the beat of my pulse.

Carefully, my uncle lifts the shirt away. With gentle hands, he pushes aside my hair to better examine the wound.

“Rachel, are you sure nothing happened? Did you fall in the shower?”

“I didn’t take a shower. Not last night or this morning.”

“Maybe you hit your head somehow. You must have done
something.
Because it looks like—come here, Sharon, see for yourself—it looks like the hair has been yanked out. You’ve almost got a bald spot.”

I’ve learned a thing or two from Charlie’s relaxation techniques. I try to calm myself by taking slow, deep breaths. But it’s almost impossible; it’s like my lungs will not fully expand, like their elasticity is gone.

“My goodness,” my aunt murmurs. “Rachel, what the hell did you do to yourself?”

A chorus of tiny mews sounds from the box on the floor. Looking down, I see that all the kittens are free from their sacs and have crowded around their mother’s belly, eyes still closed so soon after their births, bodies wet and weak, tiny
voices crying out for milk as they search blindly in what is, to them, complete darkness.

My uncle pours me a glass of water. After a few more minutes of holding the towel against my head, the bleeding seems to stop.

“I don’t think you need any stitches, but we should definitely wash it off,” my aunt says. “It could get infected.”

I nod. “I’ll go get in the shower. But first, will you call the police?”

My uncle takes a long, deep breath. He looks around the kitchen, at the red streak on the wall, and seems to notice the blood seeping from my aunt’s foot for the first time. “We should clean up the room before we do anything else. Sharon, your toe.”

My aunt doesn’t even glance down. “It’s fine. But poor Charlie’s mug …”

“He can make you another one,” my uncle offers.

My aunt gives him a sad smile. “Sure he can.”

The kitchen goes silent, except for the constant mewing of the kittens. Beyond the walls of the house, outside on the street, somebody is blaring an old Bon Jovi song that I haven’t heard in years.

My uncle cocks his head a little bit. “What’s that? Music?” He makes a face. “It’s Sunday morning.”

“It’s TJ washing his car,” I offer. “You should know. He does it every weekend.”

Our neighbors across the street, the Gardills, have a twenty-two-year-old son, TJ, who still lives at home. He drives
a blue convertible, which he washes by hand every Sunday. When the weather is warm enough—and sometimes even when it’s not—TJ works shirtless, presumably to show off his buff bod. He was pretty scrawny up until a few years ago, when all of a sudden he started to bulk up, going from a dorky-looking boy to a remarkable specimen of a man, seemingly overnight. I can look at him now and recognize on some level that he’s most definitely hot, but it’s like I can’t forget the twerp he once was. My sister and I used to refer to him privately as “Pee-Wee.” Even though the nickname doesn’t fit anymore, we still use it all the time.

The three of us stand there listening as the song ends, followed by a DJ announcing that we’re listening to station KZEP: All classic rock, all the time.

I attempt to smile at my uncle. “Since when is Bon Jovi classic rock?”

He smiles back, but the effort is weak. He doesn’t answer.

“Rachel,” my aunt says. “Go clean up, sweetie. When you’re out of the shower, let me have another look at your head. We need to disinfect it. Okay?” And she kneels down, begins to gather pieces of the broken mug into her open palm. As she works, moving slowly around the kitchen, she leaves bloody half footprints all over the floor.

I don’t move yet. “Who’s going to call the police?”

“I will.” My uncle holds up the phone in his hand. “I’ll do it right now.”

My inclination is to wait, to see for myself that he’s called, but I believe him. Besides, I have other things to do right now.
So I head toward the stairs, walking slowly, bracing myself with every step in case I suddenly become dizzy again.

Once I’m on the landing of the second floor, I stop. I wait for a moment, listening to the sound of my uncle’s voice as he speaks with the 911 dispatcher.

“I think that I, uh, need to report a missing person.” He pauses. “My niece. Her name is Alice Foster. I’m her guardian … that’s right.”

Carefully, quietly, I open the door to my aunt and uncle’s bedroom and step inside.

My uncle’s wallet rests in plain sight on the nightstand. I don’t have to look to know that, if I open his top nightstand drawer, I’ll find the keys to his sports car. It’s a Porsche. He only drives it four months a year, from May to August. The rest of the time, he stores it under a canvas cloth in the garage behind our house.

If I’m hoping to get very far, I’m going to need transportation. I walk to the nightstand on my tiptoes, even though the room is carpeted. I open the top drawer. I stare at the keys for a second. Then I take them.

When I step into the hallway again, Charlie is standing on the landing, staring wide-eyed at me.

“Hey, Charlie.” My hands dangle at my sides. He can definitely see the keys.

“Rachel? Why were you in my parents’ room?”

Oh, Charlie. He is kind at all times, curious and genuine and gentle. I love him dearly.

But I love my sister more.

“Can you do me a favor?” I ask him.

He notices what I’m holding, and I can see the struggle on his face as he attempts to piece together what’s going on.

“What?” he asks, doubtful.

“I need you to stay in your room. Just for ten minutes. Go inside, close the door, and stay there. After ten minutes, you can do whatever you want. Okay?”

“Why do you have those keys?” he blurts.

“Shh. Quiet.” I take a step closer to him. “I can’t explain everything right now, but it’s really important that you listen to me and do what I say. You believe me, right? I wouldn’t lie to you.”

My cousin’s eyes are glassy with worry. His hair is uncombed. Glancing past him through the open door to his bedroom, I see the framed drawing that he keeps above his desk. It’s a pencil sketch of his face, his lips turned upward into a patient smile, eyes staring brightly ahead. In the right-hand corner—so small and far away that I can only make out a hint of them—are the initials A.E.F.

I don’t know exactly why I start to cry—I just do. I can’t stop myself. Maybe it’s because the dread is still all around me, seeping through my clothes and into my body, so thick that it seems to drip from my pores. Maybe because I am deeply certain that my twin sister is suffering somewhere, and I don’t know how to help her.

My lungs crackle as I breathe, still unable to fully fill
my lungs. Charlie’s face becomes a blur through my teary vision.

“Rachel? I’m scared.” He puts a clammy hand on my arm. “Don’t leave. Okay?”

“I’m just going upstairs. Don’t worry about me.” I smile at him. “Promise you’ll wait ten minutes before you come out.”

He doesn’t answer for a long time. Finally, he says, “Okay. I promise.”

I give him a hug. “Thank you.”

I have no time for a shower. I hurry up to my room, quickly change my clothes, and slip on a pair of flip-flops. I pull my hair into a ponytail, my whole head aching now, and try to ignore the discomfort, along with the fact that my hair is covered in blood. I don’t care. I grab my purse and phone. I find my backpack beneath a pile of dirty clothes, and then I kneel down and reach under my bed until I find the last, most important thing that I’m looking for.

I sit cross-legged on the floor beside a large rectangular cardboard box and lift off the lid. As I gaze down at the contents, I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

Inside is all that’s left of the life my sister and I once shared with our parents. There are our report cards from kindergarten through third grade; art projects that our small hands constructed so carefully, eager to impress our mom and dad; old Christmas tree ornaments; two Baby’s First Year scrap-books. There is a thick row of loose photographs arranged in no particular order. A small manila envelope contains some of my mother’s old jewelry, including her engagement ring.
I’ve looked through this stuff a hundred times—my sister and I both have. But I’m not interested in any of it right now. What I want is all the way at the bottom, wrapped in a thin cotton blanket—the same one the nurses used to swaddle me in at the hospital, right after I was born.