The Collective(75)

I TEXT WENDY two percent signs—code for “emergency.” But I don’t hear from her. I check the time. It’s close to eight a.m., the time she’s supposed to call me anyway, to arrange a meeting place with Sheila. That’s just about ten minutes from now. I try not to watch the clock.

But eight a.m. comes and goes, and the burner doesn’t ring. She doesn’t send a text, either. She probably just got held up somewhere, I figure. But then it’s 8:30, 8:45. I text her two more percent signs and wait five minutes. Ten. Fifteen minutes.

“Okay,” I tell myself. “It will be okay.” But soon a million horrible scenarios flood my mind, the anxiety overriding the medication I’ve taken, and I’m drowning in a tidal wave, a geyser of blood. . . .

I stare at the burner phone, my heart racing, hands trembling. Come on, phone. Ring.

Eight more minutes pass. Nine. “Fuck it.” I grab the phone and call Wendy’s burner number. But there’s no answer—just a mechanical sound where the voicemail announcement should be, like an angel’s harp. Then we’re disconnected. Neither of these phones has voicemail.

“Wendy, Wendy . . .” I say her name like an incantation. “Please call me. Please . . .”

I remember the search I did on her back at Analog, and I do it again, my fingers shaking so horribly, it’s hard to hit the keys. Easy, easy . . . I find her home phone number and address right away and call the number, my eyes on the burner the whole time, that silent, dead burner.

It rings once, twice, three times before the voicemail picks up—a husky young voice that makes my heart drop. “Hi, this is Tyler. We’re not here right now, but if you wanna leave a message . . . you know what to do!”

I sit on the line, debating whether or not to say anything, before finally, I do, my eyes shut tight, tears seeping out the corners, trying to keep my voice calm. “Hi, Wendy, this is Camille. Too bad about Alayah and Pilot Pete, right? Anyway, I think I may have left something in your car when I . . . um . . . when I gave you a ride home last week. Can you call me, please? Thanks.”

Five minutes pass, then ten. And then I can’t wait any longer. I copy Wendy’s Jefferville address onto a pad of paper, then throw on a pair of jeans, a clean sweatshirt, and my heavy coat and boots and run out to my car, burner phone in hand, cell phone in my bag. Oh crap. It’s probably chipped. . . .

I open all the doors to search for the new chip. My plan is, if I don’t find it right away, I’ll hike to the bottom of the mountain and call an Uber from there. Ubers are very slow to show up in my town—half an hour at a minimum—but at least it beats getting followed.

After about ten minutes of searching the front of the car, I move to the rear. No luck. I slide under the chassis with my phone flashlight on, and find it at the center. It occurs to me that it might not be a new chip, that it could have been there all along—a backup for the more obvious one in the rear wheel well. And if that’s true, there could be still more tracking chips on my car. But I don’t want to think too hard about that. According to my phone, it’s an hour and twenty minutes to Jefferville. I don’t have enough time to think too hard about anything.


JEFFERVILLE IS ACROSS the river from where I live and close to fifty miles north. I make it there in just an hour and without getting pulled over, which is a small miracle, considering all the winding roads with twenty-something speed limits there are on the route.

In a way it’s good, having to focus on driving as closely as I do. I need to be alert, and so my mind can’t wander, and I’m unable to let this bubbling terror swell big enough to overtake me. As I hit the straightaway that leads into town, though, I glance at the clock and see that it’s eleven already—three hours after Wendy said she’d call, and I haven’t heard a word from her. Not even a texted ampersand.

I turn the radio on, then off, longing for a relaxation tape, an extra bottle of pills, those Belgian cigarettes I used to smoke in college, Corps Diplomatique, they were called, in their classy white package with the gold embossed print. How it used to soothe me, packing the box against the palm of my hand and taking a drag . . .

I see a sign that reads WELCOME TO JEFFERVILLE, and my heart smashes into my ribs, a small part of me wanting to turn around and drive home. I’m getting the worst type of déjà vu—that same swirling dread I felt while waiting up for Emily the night of her death, that tiny crystalline part of my brain working overtime, the part that knows everything. . . .

She’s gone.

You beg and you plead and you bargain. Please let her live. I’ll be a better person, I promise. . . . And that’s what I feel myself doing now. I’ll give to charity. I’ll never think bad thoughts. I’ll move far away from here and devote myself to prayer; I will never want revenge on anyone, ever, if you let Wendy live.

Downtown Jefferville consists of one street. I pass a CVS and a mom-and-pop hardware store, a diner-type place called the Kit-n-Caboodle, the post office, and the town hall, overlooking a village green with a flag waving in the wind and two teenage girls huddling on a stone bench, smoking a joint. I pass the junior high, which looks too big and industrial for this little town, and the high school, which is even bigger, electric scoreboards towering over a serious-looking football field, a red-and-white sign touting the Jefferville Wolverines. After the high school is an office complex with a big parking lot. I imagine that’s where Wendy’s accounting firm is, and I’m remembering her talking to me from there just yesterday, her hushed tones in the parking lot as I told her about Violet, and we went over our plan. Before hanging up, Wendy had said, “I guess nobody’s perfect.”