The Girl I Used to Be (17 page)

“Fillings,” Sam repeats. “You did go to the dentist a lot.”

“Exactly,” Benjy nods rapidly, as if someone finally understands him. “That wasn't a coincidence. They wanted me there.”

Audrey steps toward him. “Can I make you up a plate?” Her smile is genuine, but by the way she phrases it, it's clear that she doesn't want him touching the food. And that she wants him to take whatever she gives him and go away.

I'm not sure Benjy's capable of understanding the nuances.

“Can I share some food, break the mood, be so crude?” His expression is oddly flat.

“How about if I get you a little bit of everything?” Audrey says. She's already begun filling a paper plate.

Benjy hasn't noticed me yet, and I don't want him to. Spotting Duncan, I slip behind him.

Duncan turns and whispers, “Don't worry. I see this guy all the time. He's harmless.”

But Benjy catches a glimpse of me. “Naomi's here,” he says.

I freeze, my stomach rising up and pressing against the bottom of my throat. Now everyone will know who I am.

“Naomi's here in spirit,” Carly agrees. “Her and Terry.”

But I'm not off the hook. Benjy's still staring in my direction. “Be careful, Naomi. I said who you gonna call and it's Ghostbusters.” He shakes his head, his mouth twisting. “No, that came out wrong. It's a joke. But who
are
you gonna call?”

Stephen comes around the corner. “Hello, Benjy.”

At the sight of him, the other man freezes.

“I need to go.” Benjy takes a step back. “I'm getting very uncomfortable right now. I think somebody might be trying to shoot me.”

Stephen winces and raises his empty hands. “I'm not a policeman today, Benjy. I'm just a person. You're safe.”

Benjy shakes his head. “In the hills, flies are landing.” He looks from face to face as if imparting some important news. “Amongst all confused the wind speaks.”

He turns and snatches the half-filled plate from Audrey. With a muffled cry of surprise, she lets go. He scurries out of the yard.

“Who was that?” she says. “How did you guys know him?”

“I've seen him around,” Gregg says. “You can't really miss that hair.”

“He was in our year at school.” Sam sighs. “He's schizophrenic. He used to be so smart. He got the highest SAT score of anyone in school. Not just our year. Any year. He got accepted into all these big-name colleges and ended up going to Stanford. But one year he came home for Christmas break and never went back. He was saying everyone was looking at him.”

“The way he was acting, he was right,” Carly says. “Everyone
was
looking at him. He was talking to people who weren't there and claiming that the weather guy on Channel Eight was sending him secret messages through his tie.”

“I met him in the cemetery yesterday when I was walking with Nora.” I step out from behind Duncan. “I heard he sits on Naomi's grave and talks to her. And then he tried to talk to me, but I didn't really understand him.”

“What did he say?” Lauren asks.

“Something about halos and snow, blood and hands. And that he was sorry. It all kind of ran together and didn't make much sense. The only thing I really remember was he said, ‘Orange trucks suffer.'”

Carly puts her hand to her chest. “Oh my God. Terry's truck was orange.”

“Was that the Christmas when he started going crazy?” Sam asks the group.

By the looks on their faces, it was.

Stephen looks thoughtful. “We were both volunteers for search and rescue back then. After Naomi's body was found, we got called out to help search for evidence, but Ben was pretty worthless. He kept wandering around and talking to himself.”

“Oh my God.” Carly's eyes are wide. “He could have gone crazy because he killed them. Because he killed my brother and Naomi.”

“Whoa, Carly, whoa!” Stephen raises his hands. “Of course, we'll bring Ben in for questioning. But just because someone is mentally ill doesn't mean they're violent. Most schizophrenics are only a danger to themselves. We've never had any complaints about Ben being violent. Drinking in public, trespassing—it's all misdemeanors.”

“Come off it.” Carly clenches her fists. “It makes perfect sense. He must have gone with them that day. The only kind of person who would stab Naomi so many times is a crazy person.” Other people nod. Her husband pulls her closer.

“Carly,” Sam says, “this is Ben we're talking about. If he did it, he wasn't capable of keeping it a secret back then. And he sure isn't capable of keeping one now.”

“He could be talking about it all the time, for all we know,” Sam points out. “Who hears what Ben's trying to say? Nobody wants to get too near him. Nobody wants to pay attention. He could have been trying to tell us the truth all along.”

 

CHAPTER 37

HEALED-OVER SCAR

When I reach the turnoff for the forest, I push the button on my car's odometer. Of course, it's not precise, and it was never meant to be, but several old news stories mentioned that my mom's body was found two miles from here.

And that's where I'm going. To the part of the woods where my parents took their final breaths. The place where we were last together as a family.

I know it won't look the same. For one thing, it's summer, not winter. But with all the dreams I've been having, maybe things are coming back, the way Quinn said they would. Being in the woods might spark more memories, or at least more dreams.

Last night, Duncan offered to walk me home from his parents' party, but I said no. I didn't need any distractions, like both of us thinking about that kiss. Before I left, I told Duncan what Jason had said, his paranoid accusations. Did Jason know about my dad's money because he took it? Was his face the last one my parents saw?

Of course, it's still possible Benjy did it. Nora loves him, but I have a feeling Nora loves everyone.

When the odometer clicks to 2.0, I find a wide spot in the road, pull over, and park. My bare thighs stick to the vinyl seat as I slide out. Since I don't own hiking boots, I'm wearing tennis shoes. From the backseat, I grab my pack. Inside are an apple, a bottle of water filled from the tap, printouts of news stories, and some screenshots from both
America's Most Wanted
and the recent stories about my dad's jawbone being found. Anything that shows a photo of the woods.

As I pick my way through the blackberries bordering the road, I pop a berry into my mouth. It's sweet and so ripe it nearly melts on my tongue, leaving behind dozens of seeds. The next is mouth-puckeringly sour.

Under the canopy of the evergreens, it's at least ten degrees cooler, which is a relief. The ground is carpeted with pine needles dried to copper. I'm a city girl. I can recognize a discarded candy wrapper at twenty paces, but I can name only a few of the plants and trees I see around me. From my grandmother, I know the names of some wildflowers, but here it's just a million shades of green, from the bright chartreuse of the ferns to the gray-green needles hanging far overhead. Unseen birds twitter and cheep. In the distance, I hear the babble of water.

Taking a deep breath, I look around. Only a few trees are small enough to be Christmas trees. On the rest, the branches don't begin until far overhead. Most of these trees must have been here long before I was born, or my parents, or even Grandma. They started out as seedlings and then stretched themselves toward the sun, stacked branch on branch into the sky.

About the only time I've spent in the wilderness is the four days in fifth grade when we went to Outdoor School. We looked at bugs and leaves, and at night we slept in cabins crowded with bunk beds. My foster family didn't have a sleeping bag, at least not one they would let me take, so my fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Winters, lent me one.

I thought I would be more freaked out being here, but I'm not. It's just me and the peaceful woods. So far, no ghosts.

And even though it would be nice to just stay here admiring the beauty, I need to make the ghosts come out. I look at photographs, trying to memorize the patterns of branches. The way the limbs cut the sky into triangles, how two trees share the air. Then I look back up at the real trees as I slowly walk forward. I look up and down and back and forth so much I start to feel dizzy. There are hundreds of trees here, tree after tree after tree, stretching back forever.

Every step changes what I see. It's possible I could be standing right in front of one of the trees in the photos, but the angles wouldn't match unless I was on a different side. In fact, I realize that the older photos I so carefully compiled are completely useless. Things would have grown in fourteen years. Not only grown, but branches could have been broken off, or a tree could have been hit by lightning. Nothing stays the same.

And
America's Most Wanted
—were the shows even filmed in the real locations? Or did they go to some back lot, where the same few trees stood in for every forest on every TV program, where cars crashed off the same cliff, show after show? It would certainly be cheaper, and from what I've seen on YouTube, that show never did look very slick.

This whole idea was stupid. My chest aches as if there's a stone inside, a stone so heavy it might pull me over.

No! I promised my parents' memory I would find who murdered them. I can't give up now. I close my eyes and try to remember. Try to pretend that I'm little, bundled up against the cold. Did we stop and have hot chocolate? I'm almost sure of it, can almost taste the creamy sweetness on my tongue.

And I'm rewarded, not with a memory but with a logical deduction. None of the articles said anything about snowshoes or skis, so my family must have gone only as far as I could walk on my short legs. Unless maybe one of my parents carried me. But a kid that age would weigh—what? Thirty pounds? My parents wouldn't have wanted to carry me too far, even if they took turns. And once they cut down a tree, one of them would have had to drag it, green branches sweeping the snow. So they probably stayed close to the road.

The more recent news stories might still hold a clue as to where it happened. I shuffle pages until I come to the ones about my dad's jawbone turning up in a dog's mouth. A screenshot I made from a TV news program shows a tree with a branch cut off at about head height, leaving behind a big, healed-over scar roughly two feet in diameter. The picture is too tightly focused to know what is behind it, whether it's more woods or the road or what.

I move forward, slowly scanning the trees for that scarred place. It's not possible to walk in a straight line. I have to detour around stony outcroppings and clumps of blackberries. Confront fallen branches, some that have come to rest a few feet off the ground. Each presents a puzzle. Over or under?

I imagine this landscape covered with a white blanket of snow. Part of it stained by the blood I remembered seeing at the hypnotist's. Are my parents still part of this place? If you die, do you leave some fragment, like a ghost or a memory, behind? Or, just thinking of it in purely physical terms, are atoms from their flesh and blood and bones in the air I breathe, in the dust my tennis shoes kick up?

Something snags my attention. I turn my head to look again. It's a tree with a cut-off branch. At about head height. The healed cut is almost two feet across. I look back down at the screenshot from the recent news story, and then back up at the tree.

And that's when I find myself falling.

 

CHAPTER 38

SOMETHING IS COMING

The fallen branch six inches off the ground that I just hooked my ankle on gives way with a
crack
. As I fall, my papers fly ahead of me. I barely manage to get my hands in front of my face. Time slows down. My palms skid along the duff. My chest hits the ground, knocking the air out of me, and then my front teeth meet the dirt. They waver but decide to stay put as grit fills my mouth. Finally, I'm still. I lever myself up on my elbows and spit out the dirt, wipe my lips with the back of one hand.

Rolling to my hands and knees, I begin to push myself up onto my right foot. Gingerly, I put weight on my bad left foot. But when I try to take a step, the pain gets a million times worse, and I crumple to the ground. My left ankle feels like it's on fire.

It's sprained, at a minimum. Wincing, I pull off my shoe and sock. I don't see any bones sticking out or obvious bumps where there didn't used to be bumps. And I can wiggle my toes, if that means anything. But the little hollow under my anklebone is already starting to look puffy.

There's an acronym for treating injuries, and after a few seconds I remember it. RICE: rest, ice, compression, elevation.

With a hiss, I prop my bare foot up on what's left of the branch that caused this whole mess. That covers rest and elevation. I don't have any ice. I don't have anything to compress my ankle with. I can only do half of the four things you're supposed to do.

Nothing around me but trees. I can't be that far from the road, but I'm not exactly sure where it is.

What an idiot I am! I dig out my cell phone to call 911. Soon the rescue workers will be standing over me, rolling their eyes.

But my phone says
NO SERVICE.
I hold it at arm's length, try pointing it in different directions. For one second the display wavers, as if it's on the verge of giving me a weak signal, but then it settles back down to
NO SERVICE.

I take stock. No one—not Nora or even Duncan—knows where I am. And I'm not due at Fred Meyer until the day after tomorrow. If I don't show up, my manager and coworkers will probably just shrug, at least for a day or two.

I've got that twelve-ounce bottle of water, but how long will it last? I'm not even sure I filled it to the top. How much liquid is in an apple? How many days can you go without water? Is it three? Is it less if it's hot?