He Started It(66)

I pulled back her sleeping bag the way Mom would’ve done.

Nikki wasn’t there. She had replaced herself with a pillow, a bunched-up blanket, and some of her dirty clothes. They were tied together with the rope that had been around her hands.

I screamed.

My fault, my fault, my fault.

After everyone woke up and saw the same thing I did, Eddie ran toward the road to try and find her. I started to run after him but immediately got dizzy and had to sit down.

“She couldn’t have gone far,” Grandpa said.

I stared at him, wondering how he could still underestimate her. If Nikki wanted to sail across the world, she would already be on a boat. She’d find a way.

“I don’t remember,” I said.

“Remember what?”

I put my hands on my head, which still didn’t feel right. “I don’t remember what happened last night. I just remember the cocoa.”

He furrowed his brow, then looked up at the sky. Shook his head. “I don’t, either.”

“Don’t what?”

“Remember. It’s all just . . . a blur.” He grabbed his bag and dumped everything out on the ground. He picked up his toiletries bag and went through the bottles. “Gone,” he said.

“Your medicine?”

“My pain pills. Or what was left of them.” He shook his head. “Jesus Christ. She drugged us.”

“Nikki?” I said. Of course he was talking about Nikki. “But she was tied up.”

“Not while we were eating.”

“But we ate out of cans. It couldn’t have been—”

“The cocoa,” he said. “I bet it was in the cocoa.”

Possible. Maybe. “Wouldn’t she have been drugged, too?” I said. She had her own cup. Grandpa had retied her hands in the front so she could hold it by herself.

“Seems like it.” Grandpa walked back over to the where the campfire was. We’d sat on rocks around it the night before, and he knelt down near where Nikki had been sitting. “There’s melted marshmallows here,” he said.

My brain was slow and heavy, so it took me a minute to understand. “She poured it out?”

“Yeah. She did.”

“It was me.”

The tiny voice came from behind us.

Portia.

She was sitting on her sleeping bag, holding her stomach like it hurt.

“What was you?” I said.

“It was sugar. That’s what Nikki said it was. She had a pouch of it in her bag, she told me to get it out and sprinkle it on the cocoa.”

Now I remembered. Portia had put the marshmallows on top of our cocoa. And the pills. Nikki had them all crushed and ready to go, like she had been waiting for the right moment.

“She said it was powdered sugar,” Portia said, her bottom lip trembling. “She told me it would make the cocoa even better.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

She cried anyway.

So Nikki had really done it. She had managed to drug everyone—even me—and just like that, our story became stereotypical. Again.

There’s always one of these nights, sometimes more than one. Happens every time. Someone is drunk or drugged or so sleep deprived they can’t remember what happened. You know how that story goes because it’s become a standard, a law, written in stone. Just like the missing girl.

That’s how it went with us. We were all swept away by a good cup of hot cocoa, and no one could remember a thing. Nikki drugged us and ran.

No. She escaped.

I can say that now. She was a teenager who had been tied up by her grandfather and brother, so of course she escaped. At the time, it felt like she had abandoned me. I couldn’t believe she didn’t wake me up to go with her.

After I stayed by her side, even going along with her lies about Grandpa touching Portia, she left me behind.

Eddie burst through the trees, all out of breath. “I ran all the way to the car. Nothing.” He bent over at the waist and put his hands on his knees. His face was pale. Sickly.

“She drugged us,” I said.

He shook his head, looking like he was about to puke. “She’s a bitch. She’s always been a bitch.” Eddie stood up and ran back into the woods.

Portia lay down and closed her eyes. “Sick,” she said.

“I know,” Grandpa said. “I’ll get you some bread.”

Nikki had done a lot to Portia on the trip. She had used her as a pawn, a weapon, an ally—whatever suited her needs at the time. But Grandpa had tied her up, for Christ’s sake. Nikki had to do what she did.

Grandpa was the asshole. Everything Nikki did was a reaction to that.

I grabbed my bag to see if she had taken her stuff. She had given me some of her makeup because I had helped her put it on while her hands were tied, and it was still in the bag.

I also had the camera—the first one, the one we used to take pictures of ourselves. Eddie still had the second; it never left his pocket.

One thing had been added to my bag: Nikki’s rainbow shirt. The one I always wanted was now mine, yet I wasn’t happy about it. I didn’t want it like that.

Nikki had also taken something. What I didn’t have were my ashtrays, the two I had stolen from the motels, the two I had kept when Grandpa took the others. Both were gone, along with the shirt I had wrapped around them.