We Were Never Here(25)

“I brought you a croissant from the shop,” he said, sliding into his seat. “Should be by your feet. And there’s water in the door.”

“Wow. Thank you, Aaron.” I tried to lower myself in carefully, but my quads gave out and I dropped to the seat in a freefall. I plucked a hunk from the pastry and shoved it into my mouth, but my tongue still felt as dry as the dirt we’d carved up with our shovels.

    Ben had behaved like this when we’d first begun dating; we were high schoolers then, raised on Midwestern politeness, and he stood out from the hooting masses by holding the door for me and paying for brimming waffle cones at a fancy ice-cream shop. I absolutely owed it to Aaron to be grateful, polite, charming. Instead I wanted to curl up in a ball and sleep for three to five days, at minimum.

He threw the car into reverse. “So Chile totally wiped you out? You had fun with, ah…Kristen?”

“Good memory!” I swallowed. I pictured her in the air right now, locked inside her own sore body. “Yeah, just lots of…running around.” The sides of my mouth felt like they had boulders pulling them down, but I lifted them. “I don’t want you to think I’m not happy to see you.”

“But you’ll be happier to see your bed. Let’s do this.” He stabbed a button on the dashboard and the speakers leaked classical music. “Google Maps says it’s twenty-five minutes to the Fifth Ward. I’ll wake you when we’re close. Deal?”

“You’re too good to me,” I murmured, and I meant it. I thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep, but within minutes, I was out.



* * *



—

In my driveway I thanked Aaron and gave him a peck goodbye, then staggered toward the front door like a castaway approaching shore. I could’ve dropped to my knees, kissed the welcome mat. Instead I fumbled in my purse and backpack, unsure where I’d stashed my keys.

Inside, I lowered the blinds against the afternoon light and was about to flick off my lamp when my phone rattled on the nightstand.

Kristen. Her name made my heart tick up—was she okay? Did she need my help? I squinted at her text: “Landed! You made it?”

“Just got home! Passing out now,” I wrote back. I pressed my lips together, then added, “How are you doing???”

When her text came through, I almost dropped my phone:

“Great! Amazing trip. Miss you already. xoxo”

    What trip had she been on? But then, as the goosebumps were still making their sweep up my sore neck and shoulders, it hit me: She was establishing a paper trail, maintaining normalcy. Making it clear to anyone listening in that all was well in the Journeys of Kristen and Emily. Ensuring we looked innocent. The text was a clever move, but it left me unable to nap.

Instead I stared at the ceiling and cataloged the details that would do us in. Each one hit me like a blast of cold, bright as a lemon, a strobe light’s sudden burst: the crowded patio bar, the black-haired British women with their huge backpacks and wide smiles, the blood on the suite floor, the lit-up window near the storage shed, the torrential rain on our pathetic mound…there were too many gambles, too many loose threads to trust that the Fates would bless us a second time.

A second time. What the hell?

I’d done this after Phnom Penh, too, replaying our coverup operation in my mind and tensing every time my phone rang, every time I refreshed the news. Now I silently thumbed through those damning bits of evidence. The flash as Sebastian and I left the bar—someone would see the photo, know I had something to do with his disappearance. Or the body would break free from the stones and bob up to Tonle Kak’s burbling surface.

Last year I also reckoned with the trauma of seeing blood gush from Sebastian’s head: Stop. Stop. Stop. And the surreal gruesomeness of ditching Sebastian’s body—in my milky memories, horror blipped out of the numbness like a voice through radio static. My hands had detached from my body, reduced a young man to an inconvenient bundle. That really happened. I knew it was him or me, that we were choosing the best worst option to keep ourselves alive and safe and free, but that primal horror stayed stamped on my psyche.

And above it all, like a drone whirring over a crowd, louder than a swarm of bees: After Cambodia, I couldn’t stop replaying the terror of the attack. Even back in Wisconsin, I felt Sebastian’s rough palm smashed against my face. I saw his clear eyes, blue and furious. The whole point of Kristen’s plan was to preserve our freedom, but I felt caged and bruised, like he’d stolen my joy. After Phnom Penh, I was a shell of a human, waiting, begging for an hour when I felt like my old self again.

    Kristen had taken me on as an unpaid full-time job—listening to me sob, distracting me with meandering stories. Finally, mercifully, a moment of relief had come five or six weeks later, when the two of us were several seasons deep into a shared rewatch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When the show triggered a funny high-school memory, I’d caught myself midsentence with a jolt: Just now, you weren’t thinking about The Thing. It was fleeting but hopeful—if we could somehow evade notice and those periods between panic could lengthen like shadows in the afternoon, maybe someday I’d be okay.

And now I had to start that whole awful process again, from square one?

With shaking hands, I texted her back: “Miss you too.”