The Last Time I Lied(101)

Five minutes later, I’m out on the lake in a canoe. I row in strong, fast strokes, hoping the helicopter and search boats don’t return until I reach the other side. My phone sits in my lap, set to the compass app. I glance at it every few seconds, keeping myself on track, making sure I’m cutting across the lake in a straight line.

I know I’m near the far shore when I start to hear eerie scraping along the bottom of the canoe. Underwater tree branches, making their presence known. Flicking on the flashlight, I’m greeted by dozens of dead trees rising from the lake. They’re a ghostly gray in the flashlight’s beam. The same color as bones.

I wedge the flashlight between my neck and shoulder, tilting my head to keep it in place. Then I resume rowing, using the oars to push myself away from the submerged trees or, when a collision is unavoidable, blunt the impact. Soon I’m past the trees and close to the other side of the lake. The flashlight’s beam skims the shore, brightening the tall pines there. A pair of deer at the water’s edge freeze in the light before stomping away. Gray specks flutter within the beam itself. Insects, drawn to the light.

I steer the boat to the left and row parallel to the shore, flashlight aimed to the land on my right. The beam catches more trees, more bugs, the flap of an owl’s wings, blurred white. Finally, it illuminates a wooden structure rotted beyond repair.

The gazebo.

I guide the canoe onto shore and hop out while it’s still running aground. I shove my phone back into my pocket and aim the flashlight toward the woods. I breathe deeply, trying to focus, rewinding to that earlier trip and how we got from here to the X marking Vivian’s diary. I can’t remember how deep into the woods we traveled or how, exactly, we found our way there.

I sweep the flashlight’s beam back and forth over the ground, looking for any footprints we might have left behind. All I see is hard dirt, dead leaves, pine needles dried to splinters. But then the beam catches something that glows dull-white. Stepping closer, I see splashes of color—vibrant yellows, blues, and reds.

It’s a page from a comic book. Captain America, in all his patriotic heroism, fighting his way through several panels of action. A small rock rests atop the page, keeping it in place.

The girls were here.

Just recently.

The page’s placement is no accident. It’s their trail of bread crumbs, marking the way back to the lake and their canoe.

I step over the paper, tighten my grip around the flashlight, and, like the girls before me, vanish into the woods.





37


The forest at night isn’t silent. Far from it. It’s alive with noise as I move deeper through the woods. Crickets screech and frogs belch, competing with the calls of night birds rustling the pines. I fear that other sounds are being drowned out. The footfall in the underbrush. The cracking twig signaling someone is near. Although there’s no reason to believe I was followed here, I can’t dismiss the idea. I’ve been watched too much not to be on alert.

My flashlight remains aimed at the ground a few feet ahead of me. I sweep it back and forth, looking for another page ripped from Krystal’s comic book. I spot one where the ground begins to slant upward. It, too, sits beneath a rock. As does another one placed fifty yards ahead.

I pass five more pages as the incline sharpens. Captain America, leading me higher. Another page waits where the land flattens out at the top of the incline. It shows Captain America deflecting bullets with his raised shield. The dialogue bubble by his head reads, I refuse to give up.

I pause long enough to swing the flashlight in a circle, studying my surroundings. The beam brightens the birches around me, making them glow white. To my right are patches of starlight. I’m now atop the ridge, mere yards from the cliff that drops away into the lake. I turn left, approaching the line of boulders that punctuate yet another steep rise.

Captain America is there as well, placed atop several boulders, held in place with small rocks. I scramble among them until I reach the massive rock. The monolith. I aim the flashlight up the hill, angling for a better view of the path ahead.

There’s still no sign of the girls. Not even more Captain America. Just more boulders, more trees, more leaf-strewn earth pitched sharply upward.

The forest around me continues to hum. I close my eyes, trying to tune out the noise and really listen.

That’s when I hear something—a dull thud that sounds once, twice.

“Girls?” I shout out, the echo of my voice booming back at me. “Is that you?”

The forest noise ceases, save for the frightened scatter of some spooked animal fleeing to my left. In that blessed moment of silence, I hear a muted reply.

“Emma?”

Miranda. I’m sure of it. And she sounds close. So wonderfully, tantalizingly close.

“It’s me,” I call back. “Where are you?”

“The hobbit house.”

“We’re trapped,” someone else says. Krystal, I think.

Miranda adds one more desperate word: “Hurry.”

I rush onward, my flashlight gripped in my hand. I leap over tree roots. I dodge boulders. In my haste, I trip over a downed branch and fly forward, landing on my hands and knees. I stay that way and crawl up the incline, my fingers clawing the earth, feet flicking to propel me higher.

I don’t slow down, not even when the crumbling stone foundation comes into view. Instead, I go faster, climbing back to my feet and running toward the root cellar cut into the earth. At the door, someone has pushed the ancient slide bolt into place, locking the girls inside. A knee-high boulder has been rolled in front of it for good measure.