The Truth About Keeping Secrets(65)

Dead. Maybe I was better off dead. Maybe it would be better if none of this had ever happened at all.

Breathe. Breathe.

June.

You don’t have to think about dying if you’re dead.

June.

June keeping secrets. June not telling me anything. Who even was she? Who was this June, and who was the June I imagined her to be? June. June decomposing in the driver’s seat. There never was a driver’s seat at all. The driver’s seat had fallen into the Styx with the rest of it. Everything. I imagined a giant sinkhole opening up beneath me, dragging me down, and I didn’t think I’d even try to keep myself above the ground. Sure, survival instincts would kick in eventually, but that wouldn’t be me. That’d be my body. It’s designed to survive. I couldn’t fight that. But me? Sydney? She wouldn’t do a damn thing.

And then, ten o’clock at night, I got a text.

Them: surprise

If all of this was to do with everything else, then this was actually wonderful news – if June wouldn’t tell me anything, then maybe this person might. This was the catalyst that could bring her back.

But … ‘surprise’? Did they know I’d discovered the folder was missing? Or that June and I had fought?

And then they sent a link.

A link which led, of all places, to the ToD.

The video had been uploaded that morning. Security camera footage. The timestamp on the bottom counted up steadily; it was forty past two in the afternoon.

Car crash. Pretty standard. Pretty boring, actually. It looked like the person had swerved to miss something just out of frame, drove across the lane of oncoming traffic and hit a pole head on. The car crumpled, easily as balling a napkin in your fist, like crushing sand, and there was zero movement afterwards. From anywhere. You couldn’t see anything inside the car, but based on how it folded, you probably wouldn’t want to.

The realization came in pieces.

First was the thought that the car looked familiar.

Second was the thought that the street did too.

Third was the date next to the timestamp. September the fourteenth.

And then I played it back slowly. Read the licence plate.

The world spun. Somewhere outside the galaxy a black hole devoured a supernova, and somewhere else a new star was born, and somewhere else, Sydney Whitaker watched her dad die over and over and over.





Chapter 16


I wasn’t myself. Not then.

I was elsewhere. My body remained where it had been, but the me had left. My nerves melted away and my eyeballs plucked themselves from their stems and my brain cut its own cord and eventually all that was left was the meat known as Sydney Whitaker.

And Sydney Whitaker convulses. Sydney Whitaker pinches the loose skin on the inside of her arm until it bleeds. Sydney Whitaker screams, implodes. Sydney Whitaker watches, over, and over, and over, until she convinces herself she was there herself, until she convinces herself it’s someone else, until she convinces herself it’s her in the car, gasping for more time while her lungs deflate.

While I watched this happen, all I could think of was how happy I was to reject the corporeal. How happy I was to float.

I watched while Sydney Whitaker flinched at Mom stomping up the stairs, watched as she pointed when Mom came in. Just pointed.

Mom didn’t understand. She studied the me-that-wasn’t-me for long enough to know it was bad, said You’re not supposed to be on this; I told you.

But then she realized what she was watching.

Mom went to leave, moving kind of unnaturally, like she was lagging, like the frame rate wasn’t quite right, jerking like some Japanese horror monster.

It’s Dad, Sydney and I say at the same time.

Mom already knew. She already knew.

In a blink I was back. I looked up at Mom from the bed with my own damn eyes, my own ringing ears and my own mangled insides. Everything ached with an intensity I wasn’t actually sure I’d experienced before, like this whole time I’d just been pretending to grieve and pretending to hurt. But now it was here and pounding in my skull and I didn’t even think I could be free from the pain ever again.

Mom asked how I found the video.

I told her someone sent it to me.

She asked who.

I said the person. The same person it’d always been. That I should have known. That it was only a matter of time.

That did it for her, apparently. Mom left the room and called the police. I could hear most of the conversation, even from upstairs – Mom’s half, anyway. She was saying things like ‘that’s not good enough’ and ‘why can’t you just find the IP?’ I heard her slam the phone down. Rustle of purse, jangle of keys.

I barrelled down the stairs. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To the police station,’ she said, eyes glazed, movements too erratic, too fast. ‘I’m sorry, baby. I just need to talk to them in person. I won’t be long. Well, actually, I might – it’s entirely possible I might be long, but either way …’

I moved closer and wrapped her in a hug. Braced my body against her heaving chest, the fabric of her sweater, took one long uninterrupted breath in. This was the funeral. This was the body in the casket. I could practically feel her longing, her body coursing, raging, veins like tiny red rivers; we both knew in that moment that the two of us wanted him back more than anything, more than anything, and watching the accident made it all seem so futile, so indiscriminate in the worst possible way. Maybe if we stared long enough, we could reach in and pull him out. There was no reason for it. Not for any of it.