The Safest Lies (29 page)

He shrugged, and it almost made me smile. “Okay, so it doesn’t matter then, the stories they tell.
You
know.” As if it really was that simple. And maybe it was. “You want some company down here?”

“No thanks,” I said, actually smiling now. “Hey, Cole?”

He turned at the doorway.

“I was wrong about you,” I said.

He smiled, and it was sad. “Yeah, well, I was wrong about you, too.”

He left me with the heap of papers, and I started cleaning up after myself when I found it—that study on fear.

I read through it once more, wondering: What was truly buried inside of me? A fear so deep, it was the iron gates, and I was the ivy that grew around it. I did not exist without its foundation. It was the place from which I grew.

The scent of harsh chemicals as she lay tied up in a basement, with spiders crawling over her skin. A scream that nobody could hear. A life that, a year later, and before she escaped on her own, was reduced to nothing more than an article buried at the back of a newspaper.

The fear: that we could disappear, and nobody would find us.

And wasn’t that what I was afraid of, too? That nobody knew I lived behind the bars. Nobody saw me. I faded to nothing in the halls. I could be taken, and who would’ve missed me? Who would’ve noticed? I’d have to fight my way back, because nobody else would do it for me.

Nobody else would do this for my mother, either.

—

I lay on the couch, the springs of the thin mattress digging into my back, imagining all the places she could be. Hidden, taken, hurt, buried. Too many possibilities, out in the vastness.

I sent Ryan a text instead of calling, because it was the middle of the night and I didn’t want to wake him:
How many missing people are never found?

My phone rang immediately, and I answered it before anyone else could hear, pulled the sheets up over my head, carving out a piece of the world with just the two of us.

“Want me to come over?” he asked.

“I can’t sneak you in. There’s not even a door to my room.”

“That wasn’t a no, I’m realizing.”

I smiled in the darkness. “Good night, Ryan. Sorry I woke you.”

“Swear to God, I can be there in five minutes flat. Just say the word.”

I laughed under the sheets, the words spilling out. “Oh God, I love you.” And then I choked on my tongue. Figuratively. Metaphorically. Died, either way.

I pushed myself to sitting. “Oh God oh God oh God. I didn’t mean to say that.”

“Oh. Okay, I guess you can take it back, but that would hurt.”

“I mean, I didn’t mean to say it on the phone. Just blurt it out like that.”
Seriously, Kelsey? Seriously?
“This is one of those things, isn’t it? That scares people off? That makes people hang up the phone and pretend it was a bad connection. Oh God, did you already hang up?”

“Kelsey, it’s okay. I hung upside down in your car. I was trapped in your basement. Words aren’t going to scare me off.”

I paused, tried not to die of embarrassment. “Okay.”

“It’s three a.m., these things happen.”

“Misguided declarations of love?”

“Honesty. And honestly, I’d tell you the same, but I’d prefer to do it when you’re not having one of the worst days of your life, and I want to say it to your face, with you standing in my room. Wouldn’t hurt if you were in my clothes again. I’m saving myself.”

The silence stretched between us, filling itself with promises.

“I mean it, then,” I said. “I don’t take it back.”

“I mean it, too.”

“But you didn’t say it.”

“But I will.”

—

“Is that Ryan Baker’s car?” Emma asked as Cole handed me his keys.

I waved from the driveway. Ryan’s arm was hanging out the window, and he waved back. “Morning, Kelsey. Emma.” After a pause, “Cole.”

“Seriously?” Cole asked. “He’s going to escort you to school? This is ridiculous.”

Emma tossed her bag into the backseat. “I’d think it was romantic if he hadn’t ditched my friend for her.”

But it wasn’t romantic. It was terrifying. Because Ryan thought something could possibly happen between here and school. Because he didn’t trust that Eli wasn’t still out there, watching. He didn’t believe the police line, either. He felt the danger everywhere.

We were, all of us, trapped in my mother’s world.

Cole turned to face me. “You’re going to tell me why he’s doing this, right?”

I pulled out my phone, showed him a picture of Eli. “Ever seen him before?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“If you do, you should call the police, okay?”

Cole’s jaw was set, and Emma was watching us closely from the other side of the car, just out of earshot.

“Please, Cole. Just promise me you’ll call.”

“Should we be worried?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

Emma groaned from the other side of the car. “How long will you be staying with us again?”

I didn’t know. We were supposed to talk this weekend. What happened to seventeen-year-olds with missing parents? Who had no other living family? Where the people who housed her did not want her to stay?

Were they the ones ultimately taken, or hidden, or kidnapped? Were they the ones lured away, because there was nothing worth staying for? I shivered in the breeze.

Cole peered over his shoulder. “Your boyfriend doesn’t like me,” he said.

I shrugged.

He got in the car.

—

It was becoming a new sort of typical day, a routine, a cycle that I worried we would never break.

Another day to and from school with Emma and Cole, Ryan following behind.

Another day with no other news of my mother.

Another day of me looking over my shoulder, scared to walk to the bathroom alone, terrified of what lay outside the walls that held me.

I was becoming like her. Like my mother. Step by step, little by little, the fear was chipping away. And I couldn’t break free. None of us could.

This was never going to stop. Did I have to depend on Ryan escorting me to and from school? And keep Jan and Cole and Emma in constant danger?

It was the same thing I felt hanging from the car, and being trapped in my basement. I felt it starting up then, and it had never stopped. I had only been prolonging the inevitable.

I had to be ready. Something was still coming. We were in the middle of it, still. Hanging, slipping, falling in slow motion.

F
riday. Another day, same routine.

“Oh look, it’s your shadow,” Emma said, tossing her bag into the backseat again.

Ryan waiting for me as I drove Cole and Emma to school. The four of us like a battle shield—a protection in numbers, for each of us. Witnesses at school, and safety in the exposure.

“Wait, he fell a car behind,” she said, craning her neck. “The universe is going to collapse.”

I was trying to cut Emma some slack, because I had, effectively, replaced her in the car hierarchy. That used to be me back there, with her up front beside Cole. Now I had usurped Cole, and he was riding shotgun, and she was relegated to the back, out of the loop.

I thought of Emma, and people like Emma, completely unaware of all the dangers surrounding them. I was sucking her in, and she didn’t even realize it. She was in danger just by sitting in this car, with me.

Ryan met us beside the car in the school parking lot, leaning down to brush his lips against mine as Emma mock-gagged behind us. He slid an arm behind my waist, and I decided I loved the new routines we were forming. Or better yet: the surprises. They felt fresh and right and mine, and I wanted them, the things I wasn’t expecting.

Another day when I tried to lose myself in moments like this, before reality came slamming back.

Another day when I looked over my shoulder as we walked inside together, wondering—but seeing nothing.

Another day when I started to fear not the shadows, but their absence instead.

Ryan and I walked to math class together, his arm around my waist, and I wanted this, I wanted this to be my new normal.

But the dangerous truth was that I also did not want the shadows to leave. If they disappeared, she would go with them. When I was safe, she’d be gone for good.

The fears were a familiar comfort. They were a reminder of who we were, and who we had been, and that we existed—and continued to exist. Who was I without them?

“So, I was thinking,” Ryan said.

“What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking about this weekend, and whether I could take you out, except by
take you out
I mean
have you over,
just so we’re clear.”

Because taking me out might not be safe. Because he needed to keep me hidden away, too.

“Don’t you have work?” I responded, feeling like I was watching the conversation play out in front of me, my mind somewhere else.

“They want me to take some time off, after everything. Normally I’d complain, but I’m choosing to see the positive here.”

I nodded, and he smiled, leaning closer. “Yeah?” he said.

Then Mr. Graham poked his head out of the room and said, “Care to join us?” and we followed him in.

—

I got the message in the middle of class, feeling my phone vibrate in my bag. I asked to use the bathroom, and took my bag with me when I left. The message was from Jan. The police had called and had finished their processing at my house.

The house was mine again.

She said she’d come home early and meet us at her place, and then she’d take me over, for anything I still needed.

But I thought of what the police had said: that there was something more that my mother had taken. Where else would she go? The house was her entire world. The house would have all the answers.

And if someone was out there, watching and waiting, it was possible—no, more than possible—that I wouldn’t be the only one looking for it.

I could not be collateral anymore. I would not be used against my mother. There was something in that house that they would eventually be back for, and I had to get it first—before they found it and disappeared for good. I could bring it to the police, as proof. I could convince them my mother had been taken. They could use whatever it was to lure them back. They could find her.

—

I left Ryan after math, kissing him in the hall, even though people were passing and everyone saw. Even though Mr. Graham cleared his throat and told us to move along. “See you at lunch,” Ryan said.

“See you,” I said, and I turned around, biting my cheek so he wouldn’t see the lie.

I hoped he would forgive me for it.

I hoped this was the right choice. That keeping this to myself was the best way. That some secrets were meant to be kept, and some lies were the safest options. Because the more I stripped away from my mother’s lies, the more truly dangerous the world became.

—

I had never been alone in Cole’s car, and it felt too big, too wide, too silent and empty and cold. The day was gray, the sky overcast and the clouds descending, the woods covered in a light fog that turned everything muted and dull. The cool air sharpened my senses.

There were too many cars in the lot, too many possible eyes. I started to drive, and the fears set in. Would someone try to run me off the road? Were they following, right this second? There were too many unknowns, too many possibilities, and I kept my phone in the cup holder, as a comfort.

I caught glimpses of sky and trees in the rearview mirror, the shadow of something following—but when I looked closely, there was nothing there. Just wisps of fog and shadowed curves. I had to believe that the unexpected would work in my favor. That Eli was not watching while I was supposedly in class. That he’d gotten what he needed in the form of a photo, two days before.

I was supposed to be accounted for until three p.m., and this wasn’t even my car. Still, I couldn’t shake the fear that there were eyes following, eyes everywhere.

There was no familiar comfort in pulling into my neighborhood. Nothing that promised
home
and
safe.
Instead, there was only the unknown, a shiver working its way to the surface. I paused at the entrance to our driveway, heard my own heartbeat echoing inside my head. There were no cars—nothing I could see down the road, or in the rearview mirror. But the police were gone. And now it was just me and the house, everything that had happened, and everything that might.

I drove past the entrance, instead parking at the start of Annika’s driveway. Out of sight of both her house and the road. Outside, the breeze was turning stronger, the leaves rustling up above, a few falling to the earth around my feet. I stood outside the car and listened. Nothing but the wind and the leaves echoed back.

Just like that night when I heard Ryan’s Jeep idling in my driveway, I inched down the side of my road, preventing the noise of my feet kicking up gravel. I felt, for once, like the eyes in the woods instead, hidden inside the fog. The things my mother would look for from behind the safety of the tinted windows.

I slipped into the trees, just in sight of the front door, and watched. I listened, but heard nothing. No cars, no voices, no presence. It was just me and the trees, and the emptiness.