“You didn’t do anything wrong. I promise. Let it go.”
I nodded, let him wrap an arm over my shoulder. And I let myself believe him.
* * *
I HAVE TO TELL it this way, in pieces. I have to work my way up to it. Work my way back to it. I have to show you the beautiful things before I get to the ugly.
You have to understand that she was messed up.
First, I have to promise you that I loved her.
Corinne stood on the side of the road, her thumb sticking out. I didn’t slow down.
“You’re not gonna stop?” Tyler said.
“No,” I said.
My eyes went to hers; her thumb was down, and she was staring right back. I pressed the gas harder—Screw you, Corinne—and I blinked. Just once. Once, and she was already stepping into the road, right in front of the truck.
Tyler’s hands went out in front of him just as I slammed on the brakes—I cut the wheel hard and squeezed my eyes shut as the tires screamed for traction. The seat belt felt like it was cutting me in half, and I couldn’t breathe as we spun, the window cracking, then the thud of metal as we came to rest.
I struggled for my bearings as the adrenaline sharpened everything into focus at once, and then there was too much to process. We were facing the wrong way, pressed up against a guardrail, hovering too close to the edge. A branch jutted through the window in front of me, the edge slicing my shoulder, where it would leave a scar. Tyler’s voice, not making any sense, not coming all the way in. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t feel.
Until I could—everything all at once.
I felt a wave of nausea and a pain that began in my stomach and worked its way up my back. My hands were desperate and ineffective at the seat belt button. Tyler had to do it for me. We were too close to the edge, near a drop-off, so Tyler pulled me out his side.
There was a ringing in my ears, and the earth kept spinning on me, or I was spinning, looking for Corinne. I put my hand on the hood of the truck and realized it was running, hot to the touch. Everything tingled.
“Where is she?” I whispered.
Tyler had his hands on the hood of the truck, too, his arms shaking like he was about to fly apart.
“Corinne!” I screamed. “Answer me! What the fuck is wrong with you!”
In a panic, Tyler checked under the truck, and my stomach ended up in my throat. The road was dark and empty, the woods even darker, our headlights pointing back toward the caverns.
“Corinne!” I yelled again, bent over as I screamed her name.
Tyler peered over the edge of the drop-off, jogged down the road a bit before coming back. “I don’t see her,” he said.
“Did I hit her? Did I hit her? No, no, no,” I said, frantically making my way down the rocks. I tripped, my knees catching the sharp edges, my palms gripping the cold stone. The drop-off was dark and steep, and I couldn’t make out any shapes in the shadows.
“Stop, Nic. Stop.” Tyler was following me down the rocks. I couldn’t see her.
“Why would she do that? She jumped in front of me!”
“I know, I saw.” He grabbed my arms to keep me from going any farther. “Your shoulder,” he said, pressing his hand to it. But the pain was in my abdomen, radiating across my back.
My hands were shaking. “She stepped in front of me. They’ll believe me, right?”
His grip on my arms loosened for a moment as something twisted in his face.
“Call 911,” I said, because I couldn’t find her and she wasn’t answering.
He took his phone out with his uninjured hand and looked deep into my eyes as I felt another wave of pain roll through me. “I was driving,” he said.
“What? No. I was driving. Look at your hand. You shouldn’t be driving!”
“You were drinking. You can’t.”
“I didn’t swallow any, I swear.”
“You reek of it. No, it was me.”
“How can you even be talking about this right now? I was driving.” I was yelling now. “Not you. I won’t let you say it. People saw me driving when we left. Remember?”
He shook his head again. Slid his phone back in his pocket. I heard movement in the trees, and I whipped my head in that direction.
“Corinne?” I called. No response. No movement.
Tyler narrowed his eyes at the trees. “Just the wind,” he said.
“Where is she, Tyler?”
He looked into my eyes, but the world was still spinning. “You didn’t hit her,” he said. “This is all one of her fucked-up games.”
“Where is she, then?”
“Hiding. Fucking with us. Laughing right this second. Because she’s fucked up.”
I closed my eyes, picturing it. I could see it so easily. It was so her. Of course she would do that. Of course she would try to ruin every good thing in my life.
“I can fix the truck,” he said almost silently.
I sucked in a breath from another wave of pain, and I nodded.
And in that moment, we made a decision, a pact. We nudged a domino, and it set something off.
“Stay here,” he said. He handed me the key to the caverns. “Go wait for me there. I’ll get my dad’s car. I’ll come back for you.”
“I can make it from here,” I said. “I know the way.”
But I wasn’t going to make it home in time. As another wave of pain rolled through me, I knew I was losing everything tonight.
He looked over his shoulder, his body on edge. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
I waited until I heard him in the truck, and then I ran. I headed for the caverns, because it was the way I knew how to get home. But I pictured her calling Come find us, and racing into the depths, like she always did, like we used to do together. I unlocked the chain—would she lock it? If she was fucking with me—Yes, I thought, yes, she’d do this. Then I slipped inside, called her name as I gripped the rope. I yelled her name into the dark again and again. “Joke’s over, Corinne!” I left the rope, used my phone to illuminate the space in front of me, searching for her in the darkness, so sure I could hear her breathing but seeing nothing. No one.
One more wave of pain, and the fear gave way to anger. She was ruining me without even flinching.
I gripped the rope as I pulled myself back out.
It wasn’t until much later that night, when I was all alone, that I realized I had lost Tyler’s ring.
* * *
SHE HAD TO HAVE jumped out of the way. She had to have hidden. She had to have been killed in some other way—another car, another accident, throwing herself from the ledge to the rocks below. It cannot be that my dad heard us and knew it had been me. It cannot be that he found her after we left. Not that he took the body and moved it so I wouldn’t be found out, so my life wouldn’t be ruined.
Tyler promised I had done nothing wrong. And so it must be something else.
Otherwise, it’s too brutal in its simplicity.
Ten years later, and the past is still here. A picture shifting into focus. A memory gaining clarity. Something whispering to me in the dark: Look, Nic, do you see?
It was time to open my eyes.
The Day Before
DAY 1— Night
I was tired from the long drive and the visit with Dad, and dirty from an afternoon of housecleaning, but there was still so much to do. Be the responsible one, I thought. But I already was—I just wished Daniel could see that. I’d made promises, and trades, and decisions that Daniel could only begin to understand.
The sink faucet and the drain had turned brown with rust. I rummaged through Daniel’s box of supplies, poured the rust remover down the drain, listened to the crackle of the chemical reaction.