The One I Left Behind (16 page)

“So what, you’re hoping to crack the case by rereading the book and listening to my mom’s morphine-addled paranoid fantasies?”

Tara shrugged.

“Just don’t let Lorraine catch you with that,” Reggie said, nodding at the book. “She’ll fire you on the spot.”

Tara nodded, looking around the room. She walked over to the bookcase full of heavy bound classics and tucked
Neptune’s Hands
behind
Gulliver’s Travels
and
War and Peace
.

“Our secret,” Tara said, and just then, she pulled up the sleeve of her sweatshirt, exposing just the faintest edge of the pale skin of her forearm, and Reggie made herself look away, not wanting to see.

“I’m going to go do some unpacking myself,” Reggie said, turning to go.

“Reg,” Tara called. Reggie stopped and turned back to face her. “It looks like you’re bleeding.”

Reggie looked down at her arm and saw her cut had reopened and blood was seeping through her sloppy Band-Aid work.

“Let me see,” Tara said, reaching for Reggie’s arm. Tara’s touch gave Reggie a little electric jolt. “Do you remember?” Tara asked quietly, peeling back the Band-Aid to inspect the cut.

“I had a little accident with window glass,” Reggie said, cutting Tara off before she could go any further. Tara let it go, turned away, grabbed a kit from her backpack, and pulled out gauze and tape. She cleaned the area with an antiseptic towelette, then put a fresh pad of gauze over it.

“Reg, I’m sorry,” she said as she ripped off medical tape. “About everything.”

And Reggie nodded, though she wasn’t sure if Tara was talking about Vera, or about all that had transpired years ago between the two of them.

Tara’s next words answered her question. “It wasn’t your fault, you know. I’m the one who made him do it. And it was my idea to run away after.” She kept her eyes on the work she was doing, carefully applying tape around the edges of the gauze.

Reggie breathed out a long, slow breath. “There’s this thing. It’s called free will.”

Reggie had never told a soul what had happened that night. Lorraine had asked her after, why it was that Tara and Charlie didn’t come around anymore. Reggie would look away, make up some story about new friends, people changing, moving on. Lorraine imagined that it had something to do with what had happened to Vera: that it was all just too much for Tara and Charlie somehow.

There were times, over the years, when Reggie ached to tell someone the truth. To confess.

Me and my friends, we did this terrible thing.

Tara finished with the tape. She smiled, shook her head, and looked at Reggie, then away. “Sometimes we’re at the mercy of other people. We don’t even understand the power they have over us until it’s too late.”

“But Charlie—”

“I’m not just talking about me and Charlie. I’m talking about me and you.”

Chapter 14

June 15, 1985

Brighton Falls, Connecticut

“H
O-LY SHIT!”
T
ARA SAID
, smacking the latest edition of the
Hartford Examiner
with her open palm. They were in the garage, and Tara was sprawled across the old, patched leather couch in the corner while Reggie searched her aunt’s workbench. The garage was dark and airless; the only light came from a small, dusty window and a metal lamp clamped onto the wall over Lorraine’s workbench. So far, all Reggie had found was fly-fishing junk—vises, clamps, scissors, wire cutters along with endless quantities of hooks, feathers, beads, and fake fur.

“Candace Jacques had eaten lobster, too!” Tara squealed. “He cut off her hand, kept her alive for four freaking days, fed her boiled lobster, and strangled her—just like Andrea McFerlin! And listen to this—the son of a bitch has a name now!

“ ‘An anonymous source at the Brighton Falls Police Department reports that after Candace Jacques’s stomach contents were discovered, the detectives working the case nicknamed the killer Neptune.’ ” Tara looked up from the paper, eyes glittering. “That must have been Charlie’s dad. How cool is that? His dad gets to name a serial killer! God, this reporter is awesome. What’s her name . . . Martha! Whose name is really Martha? Anyways, sounds like she’s got some secret inside source. She’s getting stuff the TV news people don’t have a clue about.” Reggie could practically feel the electric hum of excitement pulsing off Tara’s body.

Tara went back to the paper and read aloud, “ ‘The official statement from chief of police Vern Samson is that they are following leads and actively looking for a connection between these two women.’ ” Tara scowled. “No shit!” she yelped. “I wonder how much they really know. Maybe Charlie’s heard something. His dad can’t be totally secretive about every little detail.”

Charlie and Tara hadn’t spoken in a week, since the day of the eighth-grade dance, and work on the tree house was at a standstill.

“Maybe you should call Charlie and ask?” Reggie said quietly.

Tara shrugged. “So tell me again what we’re doing in Lorraine’s lair?” she asked, tossing the paper aside and getting up off the beat-up couch.

“Looking.”

“For what?” Tara asked.

“I’m not sure. Anything that doesn’t have to do with fishing, I guess. All my mom said was ‘I know what goes on in that garage.’ ”

“Ooh, I love the idea that Lorraine’s got some kind of dark secret,” Tara said, looking around. She pulled a pair of green rubber waders off a hook on the wall. “Maybe Lorraine puts these on, rubs fish guts all over herself, and struts around naked.”

“Eew!”

“Hey, I almost forgot to tell you,” Tara said, hanging the waders back up. “I’m a sister.”

“Huh?”

Tara kept her back to Reggie, rubbing her thumb over the rusty nail that the green waders hung from. “Remember how I told you about how my dad has this young girlfriend and she was pregnant? Well, we got a card in the mail yesterday. She had the baby a couple weeks ago. A girl.”

“Oh,” Reggie said. “That’s cool, I guess.”

Tara turned back to face Reggie. “My mom’s freaking. She actually kind of slapped me last night.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Tara snorted. “Can you believe it? She was all like, ‘Maybe if you hadn’t been such a freak then he wouldn’t have wanted another kid.’ Like it’s my fault he knocked up this chick?”

Reggie let out a shaky breath. “That really sucks,” she said lamely.

“Yeah, whatever. She’ll get over it. Drink enough brandy and she’ll forget damn near anything. Which reminds me, okay if I crash at your place tonight?”

“Of course, yeah.”

“Cool,” Tara said, coming over. She dropped down to her knees to examine the boxes stacked beside Lorraine’s workbench.

Reggie turned back to the bench. She’d been through it and found nothing out of the ordinary—no secret stash of booze, horse-racing forms, or pornography. Lorraine’s fishing rods, some nets, and a metal chain stringer hung on a wall. Pushed to the back of the garage were tires, boxes of old Christmas decorations, some scrap lumber, and a trash can full of sand they used on the driveway in the winter.

“Oh my God, are those eyeballs?” Tara shrieked, pulling out a cardboard box from the pile and peering in, disgusted, but clearly captivated.

Reggie looked in and saw tiny glass eyes with wires on the back, a filleting knife, scalpel, box of Borax, spool of black thread, and needles. There was also a plastic bottle of formaldehyde solution and a paper bag full of sawdust.

“Lorraine’s taxidermy stuff.”

“No shit? She actually stuffs dead things?”

“She’s just done a couple of fish. One was a total wreck and had to be thrown away, but she kept the second.” Reggie went over to the mounted fish nailed to the back wall of the garage. Its color was all wrong, the scales were falling off, and it had weird bulges in the middle, like a snake that had eaten a sledgehammer. The whole thing was strangely shiny, like it had been dipped in lacquer. The worst part was the visible stitching, done in thick black thread, along the fish’s belly.

“Oh my God,” Tara said. “It’s Franken-fish!”

“She actually had it hanging in the living room for a while, but my mom kept throwing it away. Lorraine finally got the hint and put it up out here.”

“Your aunt is one strange lady.”

“No shit,” Reggie said, turning from the grotesque trout.

“But then again, we’ve all got our weird stuff. Our little secrets we don’t tell anyone.” Tara reached for her bag, pulling out cigarettes. She held the pack out to Reggie, who shook her head.

Tara sat back down on the couch and smoked in silence for a minute, watching Reggie, maybe even waiting for her to confess secrets of her own.

Reggie’s head was starting to ache. The garage felt dark and airless and she was sure she could smell a trace of formaldehyde in the air mixed with the fishy scent that seemed to follow Lorraine wherever she went.

“I have something show to you,” Tara said. “A secret thing just between me and you,” she promised. “Come closer.”

Reggie crossed the garage and perched on the edge of the couch next to Tara.

Tara put out her cigarette on the stained cement floor, then reached into her black tattered bag. She pulled out a small silver box the size of a Zippo lighter and opened it, revealing a rectangular piece of black fabric. Tara unfolded it slowly as Reggie watched. Inside was a razor blade. Tara picked it up carefully, studied it a moment, a grin on her face.

Reggie’s heart started to pound. “Is it for cocaine?” she asked, wondering if maybe Tara was a secret drug addict. She’d heard of kids in high school doing it at parties, but she’d never seen any in real life, only on TV.

“No, dummy. It’s something way better than that. Watch,” she said. Tara pulled up the leggings on her left calf and brought the blade to her skin. Slowly, carefully, she drew the blade across, her eyes wide. A little sigh escaped her mouth. Reggie could see that the calf was covered in thin scars, like delicate etchings on glass. She was making her own spiderweb across her leg.

“Now you try,” Tara said, holding out the blade, still wet with her own blood.

“What?” Reggie gasped. Her eye went back to the trout with its row of sloppy black stitches.

“It’s easy. Just one little cut.”

“I can’t,” Reggie said, panic rising.

“Sure you can.”

Reggie shook her head. “I’m not like you.”

Tara smiled, leaned closer to Reggie, so close that when she spoke, Reggie felt the vibrations of Tara’s words sinking into the skin of her face, down through the bones of her skull, reverberating in her addled brain.

“Yes, you are,” Tara said. “You’re just like me. I’ve known it all along.”

Reggie took the blade, pulled up the leg of her jeans. Her hand trembled as she let it hover above her skin. What was she doing even considering this? Trying to impress Tara? To do this sick little bonding ritual just so that Tara would consider her an equal?

No, Reggie decided. This wasn’t about Tara. This was about Reggie being scared of something and wanting to prove to herself that she could do it anyway. And shit, if she could survive a dog ripping her ear off, this would be a piece of cake.

“You know you want to,” Tara said. “One cut. That’s all. It’ll make everything else go away. I promise.” Tara kept her eyes focused on the blade in Reggie’s hand. “Trust me.”

Reggie made the cut quickly, pushing the blade down just a little, feeling the bright flash of pain as it bit into her skin, the amazing rush that came with it.

“That’s it,” said Tara, eyes huge. “Not too deep.”

Reggie pulled the blade away, watched the blood seep from the cut, hers and Tara’s mixed. At first it was like she was watching a film of some other girl with a razor blade in her hand. But the pain brought her back inside herself and she felt connected to her body in this whole new way. She was Reggie Dufrane, a thirteen-year-old girl. And for the first time she could remember, she was in control of something big, something dangerous.

“Didn’t that feel good?” Tara asked.

“Mmm,” Reggie said, closing her eyes, concentrating on the pain, melting into it.

Tara was right: for those few precious seconds, everything else faded away.

C
HARLIE WAS ON HIS
knees on the front lawn, tinkering with the string trimmer.

“Hey, stranger,” Tara said, practically skipping right up to him. After putting the razor blade away, Tara and Reggie had left the garage with this weird high—the world was suddenly brighter, and anything seemed possible. As they walked to Charlie’s, they’d kept catching each other’s eye and smiling these huge we’ve-got-a-secret smiles.

Charlie grunted a quick hello, barely giving Tara a glance before focusing back on the trimmer, which he was loading with new bright red nylon string.

“Hot day, huh?” Tara said.

Charlie kept winding string. His white T-shirt was soaked with sweat and grass stained. He smelled like gasoline.

“You got any Coke or anything inside?”

Charlie finished his job, reattached the spool, and stood up, wiping his hands on his grimy work shorts. “Come on in,” he said. They followed him toward his house.

“Crap,” he said, trying the door and finding it locked. “My dad must have locked it on his way out. He does things on autopilot these days.” Charlie grabbed the carved wooden house number, 17, that hung to the right of the door and rotated it counterclockwise. Charlie retrieved a key from the little niche hidden there and unlocked the door.

The little ranch house was cramped and dark, the dusty shades drawn. Reggie was sure she could still smell Mrs. Berr’s cigarette smoke. She half expected her to come around the corner from the kitchen, her latest Jell-O creation in hand.

Tara picked up and examined knickknacks and pictures arranged on dusty shelves while Charlie went to get them all Cokes.

“So is your dad at work?” Tara called out, wiping her hands on her jeans.

“It was supposed to be his day off, but he got called in.” Charlie passed them each a cold can of Coke and sat heavily on the Naugahyde couch. “Did you guys hear? Another hand was left.”