“You need help, Lizzy. Listen to yourself, will you? You’re starting to sound, I don’t know, delusional or something.”
I hung up on him, fuming.
How dare he?
I took a big gulp of my beer, spun the lighter on the table.
I shouldn’t have told him. Should have known he wouldn’t believe me, wouldn’t understand.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I muttered.
He called me back, and I let it go to voice mail.
Then he texted: I’m sorry. Really. Call me back, OK? I’m worried about you.
I turned off my phone.
* * *
I WAS STILL sitting at the picnic table in front of my van, working on my second beer, when Skink walked up, a hangdog look on his face. I slipped the lighter, note, and stone into my pocket as I watched him approach.
“Hey,” he said.
I was surprised he’d shown up at all.
“Your father is a cop? And you didn’t think to mention this little fact to me?”
He shrugged, looked down at the ground. “Constable,” he mumbled.
“Huh?”
“He’s the town constable. He’s not like… like a real cop. I mean, he has a day job running fishing charters. The only real constable duties he has are serving papers on people, delivering notices to people who haven’t paid their taxes, and cruising around breaking up keg parties and stuff.”
“He sounded enough like a real cop,” I told him. “He asked me to stop looking into what happened to Lauren, to stop talking about it to people.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it too much. It’s not like he has any real power or anything. He doesn’t even have a gun or handcuffs. If he finds any actual trouble, he calls the state police. He couldn’t even arrest you or anything.”
“Oh, well, that’s comforting! All he’ll do is call the state police, is that right?” I shook my head. “And I can’t believe you told him about the monster-hunting stuff.”
“Well, yeah, I kinda had to, didn’t I?”
“You made him watch Monsters Among Us?”
Skink shrugged. “Just a couple clips. You know, just to show that you were the real deal.”
I shook my head.
“I can’t believe Zoey caved and spilled everything,” Skink said. “My dad is pretty pissed at me. I’m supposed to stay away from that whole group, and from you too.”
Me and Constable Pete agreed on one thing, at least.
“So? What are you doing here then?” I asked irritably.
“I came to see if you went out to Loon Cove. That’s where you were going, right? Did you find anything?”
I shook my head. “No. I went but didn’t find anything. Just some old beer cans and cigarette butts.”
There was no way I’d mention the lighter.
I found this lighter from my childhood. I think my sister, who I haven’t seen since I was thirteen, is actually the real monster I’m searching for, the one who took Lauren.
“Did you check the hiding spot in the tree? Maybe Lauren left a note or something? Some kind of clue.”
“I found the tree, but there was nothing. No note, no cigarettes, no weed. If she was keeping stuff there, she grabbed it and took it with her.”
Maybe my brief acting career was paying off—I sounded convincing, even to myself.