Lies You Never Told Me(67)

She looks down again. “All I’ve ever wanted was to make you happy,” she says in a halting whisper. The impression is good—eerily good—but it’s not quite Catherine. There’s something cloying about Sasha’s voice, something almost sickly sweet. Or maybe I’m only hearing it like that because I know that she is poison.

“I know you set that fire,” I say, almost conversationally.

She frowns slightly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Right. So my question is—was that enough for you? Now that Catherine and I are broken up, now that everyone thinks I’m a maniac, now that you’ve driven her out of her house and made her dad take her out of school—are you done?”

Her eyes glisten in the dim light.

“I just want us to be together,” she says.

I close my eyes.

All of this blood and fire and pain, all of this rage and madness—all of it just to keep me on my leash. A tiny voice still speaks up from the back of my mind, telling me this is crazy, telling me I can’t be thinking of doing this. Asking how I think this can possibly end. But I can’t fight anymore. I’ve already lost Catherine. At least this way I might be able to protect her.

“And if we’re together, all of this insanity is done? You won’t . . . you won’t hurt anyone?” I ask. “You’ll leave Catherine alone? And my friends, and my family?”

“Gabe, I . . .” Her eyes are round, as if she’s wounded by the accusation. I shake my head.

“Just answer the question,” I say.

She looks at me for a long moment, her eyes narrowing almost imperceptibly.

“I’d do anything you wanted, to be back with you,” she finally says.

“I’ll take that as a promise.” My whole body feels like lead. I sit down next to her, still not touching her, numb and heavy.

“You mean . . .” She turns toward me, straightening up a little.

“I mean I’m yours,” I say dully. “I’m all yours.”

She gives a breathy little sob and nestles up against my shoulder. “Oh Gabe, I’ve missed you so much.”

The softness of her voice is suddenly intolerable. “One more condition, though,” I say. “Drop the Catherine act. Just be . . . yourself, okay?”

She smiles up at me, the gentle, timid notes gone as suddenly as if a switch has been flipped.

“I’ll be anyone you want me to be,” she says.





THIRTY-EIGHT


    Elyse




I’m lying on the motel bedspread staring blankly at the TV screen when Aiden comes in, looking sour. He locks the dead bolt behind him and throws his jacket on a chair.

“We have to move again,” he says, scowling. “The woman at the front desk is starting to ask questions.”

It’s been almost three weeks since we left Portland. Right now we’re just outside of Pahrump, Nevada, a bleached-looking desert town with a Walmart and a legal brothel and not a lot else. This is the fifth place we’ve stayed; we’ve been here a week. I was hoping we’d be on our way somewhere more interesting by now, somewhere we could go to plays and readings, where we could see art and hear music. But instead we’ve just drifted through ugly little towns and barren landscapes.

I sit up and turn off the TV. “What’d she say?”

He shakes his head. “Just wanted to know why my daughter wasn’t in school. I brushed her off, but she looked suspicious.”

I don’t say anything, but my heart leaps a little. We can’t get out of this shithole fast enough for my taste.

He sits down on the bed and rubs his face with both hands. Since leaving Portland he’s traded his glasses for colored contacts; they make his eyes a deep oaken brown. He’s grown a mustache, too, which I hate; it makes him look geeky, and it tickles when we kiss. But he doesn’t look like himself, which I suppose is the point.

He pulls a battered road atlas out of his bag. It’s old and dog-eared, with notes scrawled in the margins. A few times it’s led us to look for landmarks or roads that just don’t exist anymore. Aiden doesn’t want to use a phone or a GPS; he says the cops will be able to track us that way.

“We could try our luck in Arizona.” He flips through the atlas. “It’ll be warm enough through the winter that we could camp—stay off the beaten path.”

“Arizona?” I make a face. “Can’t we go to a city?”

“Not yet,” he says calmly. “There’s an AMBER Alert out for you, Elyse. Bigger cities mean more people who might recognize us from the news. We can’t have anyone calling the cops.”

I don’t say anything for a minute. I know all about the AMBER Alert; we’ve been monitoring the news when we can. Aiden’s kind of paranoid about searching the Internet, but a few times now we’ve seen something on TV or in a newspaper. They always use my freshman-year school photo, which is stupid, because that picture barely looks like me anyway; I’ve lost weight since then, and my face is much more angular now.

It never seems like a major search is being mounted, though, to be honest. Just a few little line items in the corner of a newspaper. I should feel relieved. It means we might stand a chance of evading them. But honestly, a part of me just feels forgotten. Why isn’t my mom out there hitting the talk show circuit, passing out flyers? Why aren’t my friends making sure my face stays front and center on the news?