We Were Never Here(62)
Presents rattled in the back seat: the stone elephant for Priya, nifty beer glasses made from old bottles for Aaron. A nice Merlot blend and a card thanking Nana and Bill for letting me celebrate my birthday at their cabin. I’d sent Nana a polite reply to her email, thanking her for her well wishes and asking what she meant by the line about Kristen acting “a bit strange lately.” She hadn’t replied. It was odd—in her email, she came across as more concerned about me than her own granddaughter.
We soared past open fields with machines creeping across them like giant metal insects. Anxiety mounted as we approached the freeway and then thundered down I-43. Closer to Milwaukee, to civilization, to real life. Here the mystery surrounding Paolo’s death felt even truer—here it was a news point, not just a distant, passing item that blipped over the transom and meandered away like a satellite traversing the northern sky. I pictured Los Angeles cops waiting at my front door, the neighbors watching like dull-eyed cows.
That night, back in my own bed, I dreamed of beestings and bat bites, tiny pricks in my smooth, tender bark, setting off a cascade of pain. I woke up sweating and began unwrapping the elastic encircling my leg. I pictured it as the bandage uncoiled: a bloated white ankle, the skin of a corpse, plus a slash of squid-ink black streaking down one side of my Achilles tendon. But when I peeled off the final inches, the ankle looked the same as always.
CHAPTER 26
“I feel…scared.” My fingers were moving of their own accord again, the thumbnail scraping the skin below each tip. “Like, this intense fear that flares up when I least expect it.”
Adrienne nodded gravely. “What does that fear feel like?”
I raked at a notch in my pinkie nail. She hadn’t asked the question I dreaded most, because I’d need to lie: Scared of what? Of the L.A. police uncovering something we’d left behind. Blood on the hotel floor, a nugget in the pile of ashes we’d abandoned in the fireplace. Fingerprints on shovels. DNA in the trunk.
Or, take your pick—I had plenty of options, plenty of bad memories like bogeymen to keep me awake at night. Like that awful night in Phnom Penh. Kristen’s eyes flashing as she swung the lamp and took Sebastian down. Stop. Stop. Stop.
“I feel it in my chest,” I said, “like the beginning of an asthma attack.”
The clutch in my ribs had plagued me throughout dinner the night before. Aaron and I had had our belated birthday meal; he’d wanted to cook everything for me, but I’d insisted on making it a co-celebration, since he’d just picked up a coveted design project. I told him about the cabin, about roasting marshmallows and watching satellites skate across the sky. I turned the tale of how I’d twisted my ankle and yelled to a silent, unlistening night into a slapstick comedy, dorky and cute.
I omitted a few things: My dreamlike, phoneless showdown across the kitchen table with Kristen. The mutilated rabbit that appeared in the dark. Digging in the basement in the middle of the night, angry scribbles where Jamie’s face should be. Like the news broadcast in an airport—edit the feed to limit hysteria. It was exhausting, keeping a lid on the fear. It threatened to crumple my lungs and give me away.
“What do you think is triggering it?” Adrienne asked.
There it was. A sliver of ivory nail pulled free.
“I’m still…uneasy with Kristen being back here.” I couldn’t tell her why, but deep down I knew the answer: I was beginning to question if I could really trust her. Which felt surprising and strange and wrong—historically, Kristen was synonymous with safety in my mind.
“Why do you think that is?”
I shrugged. “She’s still acting like everything’s fine. Which is one way to deal with something scary, but I worry it’s an act. Like, she’s keeping it all inside where it could go off like a bomb.”
Adrienne nodded. “And what makes you think she’s keeping it in?”
For starters, she refuses to even acknowledge the wealthy developer teaming up with the LAPD to find us. Her behavior when we’d found the CNN article had been so bizarre that a part of me kept whispering, Was that insincere?
“She just seems…off. Normally she’s a joy to be around—she’s intoxicating, you know? But since she came back, things between us seem strained. And Lord knows I wasn’t myself after I was attacked, so I’m not judging her for it. But it’s like she’s aggressively happy or something—fake.”
Adrienne tilted her head. “It’s notable, how much time we spend talking about Kristen’s emotions. Do you think you might be prioritizing them over your own?”
“It’s not that,” I spit out. But then I sighed. “I know she cares about me. And I…it’s not wrong to be worried about my best friend.”
“Of course not,” Adrienne replied, and my defensiveness slackened. She crinkled her brow, gathering her thoughts. “So, Kristen acting ‘aggressively happy’ puts you on edge. It makes you feel more worried about her and focused on how she’s doing.” She waited until I nodded. “And you’ve said she’s super smart. And in tune with your emotions, right?” I nodded again. “So, I wonder if maybe she…she knows she’s having this effect on you. I’m not even saying it’s intentional, but maybe it’s a way to sort of maintain the power balance in the relationship. Remember when we talked about how when a friendship changes, someone usually pushes back?”