The Safest Lies (21 page)

“No, Kelsey,” she said. “No.”

And why was Ryan on my side?
Just doing what I’m trained to do.
It’s an oath. A responsibility. It’s his
job.
He can’t choose to give me up. He literally can’t. But deep down, I wondered if he wanted to. That’s human nature. Self-preservation.

I handed Cole the device, because he was the only one who would do it. Then I turned around, hoping no one would notice the tears starting to come in the dark.
Enough, enough.

I wondered if this was what falling felt like. Giving over. The fear in the lead-up, and then a long calm. Your finger muscles failing, the cut too sharp, the will giving out, your whole body saying
Enough.
And letting go.

“Don’t,” Ryan said, but I heard the beep of the walkie-talkie as Cole prepared to relay the message, sending me to my fate.

“Okay, so how do we do that?” Cole asked the people on the other end. “Hypothetically. How do we know you’ll let the rest of us go?”

The static filled the room.

“Put down the device,” Ryan said.

“No,” Cole said.

“I thought this wasn’t a dictatorship,” Ryan said.

“No, I just don’t care about the opinion of the guy trying to get in her pants at the moment.”

“That’s not what I’m—”

“No? Tell me, Baker, what
were
you doing here this evening? Nobody’s allowed in here, isn’t that right, Kelsey? Nobody sets foot inside the House of Horrors, and yet here you are.”

What are you doing here?
The same question I’d asked Cole.

“I came to talk to her,” Ryan said. It made sense, and it sounded nice, and
he had.
He did come here to talk to me. Except. Except there was something in the slant of his face, the cut of his eyes away from me, which made me second-guess him. Or maybe that was just this room, twisting us all around.

Like my mother, seeing the danger in everything first, instead of all the ways we could be safe. It was all in the perspective.

Cole started laughing. “Of course you did. Talk your way right into the house, did you?”

“He was leaving,” I said. “And then I noticed something was wrong, and he stayed.”

“To be the hero, I bet,” Cole said. “And why do you think that is, Kelsey?”

I thought everything was straightforward. Ryan followed me home because he wanted to ask me out. My mother acted the way she did because she was afraid for no reason.

But nothing was that simple anymore. Not even this.

“It’s not like that, Kelsey,” Ryan said, his voice low—but I didn’t know what to believe anymore.
I want to talk to you,
he’d said.

The walkie-talkie crackled. “Send her out. You have our word.”

“No,” Ryan said to Cole.

“You don’t get to decide my fate,” Cole said.

“And yet you can decide ours?”

“You want us all to
die
alongside her?”

Annika moaned again, hands over her face, and my fingers started shaking, my spine tingling, as Cole’s words echoed through the room, through all of us.

Die.
They thought we were going to die in this house.

We were trapped in a room, and there were men outside, and they were trying to get in. How many ways could this possibly end?

I should do something. I
should.
But all I felt was the dread in my stomach, and all I could hear were my mother’s fearful words, and all I wanted was the safety of walls and stillness.

This was the danger. Right here. In
this
room.

Everyone turns on you.

This was the truth that could paralyze you, devastate you.

This was why we needed the house. The four walls, the gate, the locks, keeping us safe. This was why nobody should be allowed inside. They push you out.

Out there, anything can happen.

But in here, they could rip your heart out clean.

A
nnika grabbed my hand, as if she wanted me to be sure.
Not her.

“No,” Annika said. “If you open that door, we are
all
dead.”

Then she started moving boxes again, slamming them around. “Come
on,
” she said to the others. And then, throwing her hands up in exasperation, she asked, “How are there no weapons?
Seriously.
If this place was meant to keep you safe, shouldn’t there be some sort of weapon? Is there no
gun
?”

I winced. “No guns,” I said, repeating what I’d told Ryan.

“Why?” she asked. “If this is supposed to protect you, then why?”

“Don’t ask why,” Cole said. “Nothing makes sense. Really, Kelsey shouldn’t even be allowed to live here. Did you know that? That’s what I used to hear over dinner, night after night. But my mom can’t bring herself to take her away. To, quote, ‘be responsible for taking a child from a mother who obviously loves her so much, despite her faults.’ ” He shifted positions and winced. “I read through my mom’s notes years ago, Kelsey. You know what it is?
Nonsense.
All those sessions, year after year, they don’t make any sense. Your mother is lying,” he said.

Cole had access to our secrets, and suddenly I was frightened of him. Of what he knew, and what he was saying…

I couldn’t stop my limbs from shaking, but I didn’t think it was from the fear. “Really, Cole? Really? She’s scared
for no reason
? Then please, explain to me
this.
” I pointed to the door, but my finger wasn’t steady. “She just doesn’t
remember.
”

He shook his head, contorted his face into something between a grimace and a grin. “There’s nothing wrong with her memory. Haven’t you figured that out by now? When I said it’s
nonsense,
I meant just that. She makes shit up. She
pretends.
My mom realized that, you know. It’s the one thing she’s sure of.”

I had started shaking my head as soon as he began speaking, and I didn’t stop. “You can’t fake what happened to her. You can’t fake this house.”

“I didn’t say she wasn’t afraid,” Cole said. “I just said it’s obvious she knows exactly what she’s afraid of. She just chooses not to tell. And now
look what happened.
”

He was lying. This was a lie, and so he was a liar. “Shut up,” I said.

Her, but not her.

Me, but not me.

This other version of us, just underneath my feet. Pull the carpet aside, lift the square, unzip the pouch, and meet someone new.

Ryan touched my shoulder, grounding me. “Nothing in this house calls out for help,” he said. “It’s only for safety on the inside.”

Even Ryan, now. Even him.

See it, Kelsey.

She didn’t want anyone else to come. She didn’t want anyone else to know she was here.

She didn’t want the police here.

The passports with the wrong names, and her fear of our names in the paper. The birth date from school not matching up with the one on the police report, the date I’d given them myself.

The nightmares with the spiders.
She remembered.

We were hiding. And she knew exactly what we were hiding from.

Cole looked at me as I slid to the floor across the room.
I know. I know who you are.

Who was I? The truth was, I wasn’t sure anymore. A girl who sprang from the earth with no understanding of her mother. With no father. Raised on fear and lies and stories that came tumbling down when you pushed too hard. Names and faces that didn’t match, dates that didn’t line up.

This was not the Kelsey Thomas I thought existed.

This was something dangerous—like something in the corner of my eye, taking shape. The edges of a shadow, sharpening and turning solid.

“The papers,” I said. “They found us again from the papers.”

“Who? Who found you again?” Annika asked.

“Whoever took my mother. She was kidnapped, when she was our age. And now they’re back for us.”

Annika’s mouth formed a perfect circle, and I thought,
I should’ve told her.
This was my best friend, and I should’ve told her years ago about who my mother was, why we lived this way. But I had been taught not to. I had been raised inside the secret. Inside the lies.

“They found you from the papers?” Ryan asked, turning pale.

“We have to do it,” I said, ignoring him. “If they’ve waited this long, they’re not going to just leave. They might have my mother. I have to go with them.” Out there was danger. But out there were
answers.
Out there, somewhere, was my mother. Through that door was the only way to find her.

“I’m not letting that happen, either way,” Ryan said. He looked at Cole, at Annika. “She saved my life, did you know that? Held us up with nothing but her fingers. Nobody hands her over.”

Can you do one thing that defines who you are? Ryan placed too much emphasis on that moment—the one where we were falling. The one where I held us up with the joint of my fingers, as if there had been any other option.

But there was, I realized. To let go. To find out what waited on the other side. But to do that, Ryan would have to let
me
go, too.

“I’m not the girl who held us up,” I said. “You can’t base everything you think you know about me on that one thing. You can’t
like
me because of that. It wasn’t me. The girl in the car, that was somebody else.”

“It was the Lodge,” he said, voice low, attempting to have a private conversation in a public place. “Not the car.”

“What?”

He stepped closer, talked closer. “Why I liked you. Why I
like
you. It’s not because of the car. It was from before, back at the Lodge. I thought you were fearless.”

I started to laugh. “You’re insane. And wrong.” The Lodge had two functions: as a food and hang-out place for people with year-round passes, and as a hotel that, in the summer, remained half-empty. We rotated between checking people in, answering questions at the information station, and cleaning tables during the busy hours. The strangers, the uncertainty, the way things changed every day—all of it made me nervous. Ryan was the constant that kept me grounded.

He stepped closer, hands held between us, like he wasn’t sure what to do with them. “You always did whatever you wanted. Ignored the assholes. Didn’t fake it, or smile when you didn’t mean it. Smiled, and laughed, whenever you
did
mean it. And when you smiled at
me
—” He dipped his head, like he was remembering. “You’re not afraid to just stand there, be yourself. And then I finally got up the nerve to ask you out, and you kind of said yes, but then changed your mind, so I was confused. I figured you were just trying to be nice, but didn’t
really
want to.”

“No, I acted that way because I was terrified,” I said. “It was all so overwhelming, I couldn’t even think about how I was
supposed
to act. Fearless is the exact opposite of what I was. I’m scared all the time,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

I opened my mouth to respond, but I wasn’t sure anymore. Maybe the feeling I had was not exactly fear—maybe I’d spent too long looking at it from a single perspective. Maybe I couldn’t tell the two apart: the will for something to change, the fear of the unknown. Possibly it was both.

The walkie-talkie crackled on the floor beside Cole.

“Well, this is sweet,” Cole mumbled. “And possibly not the best time, you think?”

But Ryan ignored him. “Kelsey, I’m not who you think. I’m not some hero.”

Why are you here?
Cole had asked him. And suddenly, I didn’t want to know the truth. I could see on his face—he was about to become someone else. I could feel him shifting, his face cracking and rearranging even as he spoke, and I didn’t want him to. Like the picture of my mother on the passport. Like my own. Another side, another possibility, something meant to stay hidden that would become overexposed in the light.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said.

“I did it,” he said, before I could stop him. But his words made no sense.
Did what?

He cringed, ran a hand down his face. “It was me.
My
car. I was on my way to the station, and I was late, and I took the turn too fast—and I was on the wrong side, just for a moment.”

My heart stopped, my mind shifted.

The headlights. I took the shattered memory, filled in the gaps: A green Jeep. A boy in the seat, a shock of light brown hair, eyes wide in terror—

“I got back over in time, but it was too late. The lights must’ve scared you and you cut the wheel and—”

And I fell.

How had I not seen it? His need to come after me, to save me, to keep on saving me, to make sure I was okay…motivated by his own guilt. Not because of me.

“Oh my God,” Annika said.

My mouth must have been open, my face twisted and unsure, because Ryan winced, letting out a long exhale. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I thought.”

His fault, and yet. “And then you came after me,” I said. “You made a mistake, and you were scared, and you took the risk to come after me.”