We Were Never Here(22)
With a jolt, I heaved open the car door and dashed to the edge of the cliff. Nothing but tawny mountains, reddish in the morning light, as far as the eye could see. A wail poured out of me, mournful and low but powerful, too, until I squeezed the air from the bottom of my lungs and sputtered to a stop. Kristen appeared next to me and puffed her chest, and together we roared, our screams somehow in harmony, with the same uncanny intensity as a group om in yoga class. We listened to the echo and I pictured the sound waves rattling the cells of armadillos and vicu?as and Patagonian pumas miles from this place.
As if we’d triggered it, the sky bruised over and spat at us, at first a drizzle and then a steady tap.
Kristen smiled for the first time since last night.
“It’ll wash away any sign that we were ever on the mountain,” she said.
Or maybe it’ll wash away the dirt we used to cover him. I lifted my face to the rain, then got back in the car. She gave my shoulder a squeeze before turning on the ignition and pulling back onto the road. Outside, the drops tickled rows of bushy vegetables and moss-colored shrubs. I watched rainwater spill together, a brownish vein working its way downhill.
I breathed deeply. I chose to believe her.
Maybe we were never here.
CHAPTER 10
At the airport, Kristen and I were almost silent, moving like automatons as we returned the rental car. There wasn’t an inspection; we just had to push the keys through a slot. I checked again for any dirt in the back seat or ruby-colored speckles in the trunk. I searched and searched and searched, feeling the anxiety like an itch in the corner of my mind. Will they catch us?
In a long, twisty security line, Kristen stared off into space and I took her in, still beautiful despite the sleep deprivation, her tawny hair piled in a messy top bun, her contacts swapped with wire-framed glasses over her high cheekbones, somehow looking like a Hot Girl in Glasses and not a bespectacled woman. A key distinction I could never put my finger on.
“Oh my God.” Just above her jawline was a dried speck of blood. Paolo’s blood. I licked my thumb and swiped at it, and she batted me away.
“It’s a mole, Emily,” she snapped, covering her cheek. “What is wrong with you?”
Everything. Everything felt wrong. The soreness was stepping in to take the acute pain’s place, and even reaching for Kristen’s face had left my arm twinging. “I…I thought it was…never mind.” We’d both taken quick showers before breakfast, scrubbing at the dirt and sweat. Of course there wasn’t still blood on Kristen’s face.
This will destroy her. My heart dropped and I turned away, blinking back tears. She didn’t know it yet—she was still acting tough, keeping it together—but the attack would poison her psyche, as Sebastian’s attack had mine. My emotions swirled, fear and dismay and deep, bone-aching exhaustion, but this thought pierced through, a bolt of lightning in the storm: My strong and beautiful best friend was about to be broken. Cornered and battered and newly aware of her vulnerability, her fearlessness popped like a balloon. I narrowed my eyes. Screw you, Paolo.
Because he hadn’t just hurt Kristen. He’d stolen something else—swept in right when I felt like myself again. When things between Kristen and me felt warm and safe and right. After the hideousness of Cambodia, this trip was deepening our friendship, making it like that night with Sebastian had never happened.
But now…well, how could I ever look at her without seeing the widening grave, the passport flopping in the fire like a living thing, Paolo’s blood freckling her throat? How could either of us carry on under the crush of waiting to be caught?
Kristen, who’d risk her life for her friends. Kristen, who’d cooked lemon-chicken soup and let me sleep in her bed in college when I was newly single and alone in the world. Kristen, who put me back together like a puzzle, who racked up hours and hours on the phone with me after Cambodia until I could finally unzip my sleeping bag of terror and tiptoe back into the world, had had the unthinkable happen to her. I’d been through it before—with Sebastian, with Ben—but now she knew how it felt to be punished for seeing the world as safe and kind and yours.
We collected our bags and entered another line for passport control. Here my heart rate spiked—they’d see it on our faces; they’d know.
“What was the purpose of your visit?” asked the handsome Chilean border-control officer, though I’d already marked the form.
I choked on the word: “Pleasure.”
He flipped past several blank pages to stamp my passport toward the back. “Have a safe flight.”
A quiet moment in a bad coffee shop, and then it was time to part. Kristen hugged me tight, then held me out, hands still on my shoulders, looking deep into my eyes. I wondered if this would be our last trip—no Morocco or Georgia or Turkey. If the night before had bulldozed our wanderlust indefinitely.
“I love you,” she said, lowering her chin. “Let me know when you get home, okay?”
“Love you too,” I murmured, and she shuddered a bit as she nodded. Then she let me go, turned on her heel, and walked off without looking back. I was relieved, then intensely sad we were parting on that note, on my eagerness to let this nightmare end. I wished I could crawl back into last night, before anything went wrong, when we were pointing at stars and crunching on corn nuts and feeling the world was our playground.