Has his family noticed he’s missing yet? Has anyone raised the alarm?
* * *
—
That night I dreamed that Kristen and I were back at Northwestern, during the summer before senior year when we stayed in town and sublet a banged-up apartment on Clark. In the dream—as in my memories—we were sitting on the lakefill, gazing out at the black water and growing excited as the sky turned indigo and the stars began to fade. We said nothing, just watched in awe as the sun nudged through the watery horizon. Sunrise over Lake Michigan—we only managed to stay up for it three times during our tenure there, but it was always special, private, ours.
Then I opened my eyes, and the messed-up reality came crashing in.
I reached for my phone—the instinct to talk to Kristen was an itch, looping and loud, like when we lay in our tent in Uganda and felt the throb of dozens of tsetse-fly bites. Paolo consumed my thoughts and I craved a release, the chance to discuss it to death. Do you still think we’re okay? Is there anything we forgot? Can you believe that all happened?? But of course, I couldn’t say any of that—Kristen wouldn’t let us incriminate ourselves over the phone. I felt the secret pushing out of me, blowing up like a bubble and rising in my throat.
Another day of work. Somehow I sat through meetings and replied to emails and listened to gossip in the break room. Aaron and I texted throughout the day, the casual banter of the newly dating, and I clung to the dopamine spurt I got every time his name appeared on my lock screen. I waited in line for overpriced burrito bowls with Priya, taking in her patter of Tinder-date stories. All the while my id threatened to commandeer my throat, scream it aloud: We buried a man soaked in his own blood. It wouldn’t even be the whole truth. Only half, one body of two.
Kristen and I scheduled a call for the evening. Be careful not to mention The Thing, Emily, in case anybody’s listening. My heart pounded as I sat on my couch, earbuds in, waiting.
“Hey, Em!” So cheery. And what was whining in the background?
“Hi. Are you outside?”
“Yeah, I’m walking to work. Is it super loud?” The wind swelled, then quieted; a distant car honked.
“Uh, it’s fine, I can hear you.” There was something too casual about it, her multitasking on our first post-Chile call. “How are you doing?”
“Fine. Work is awful. I’m wishing we were still on vacation together.”
I frowned and sank into the pillows behind me. “I’m so sorry work sucks. But how are you doing?”
“All right. So look, I know you said maybe waiting a year would be better for backpacking, but what if we plan it for my summer? If we start traveling right after the holidays, you’ll escape the hellhole that is Milwaukee in the winter, and we could even kick things off in Sydney—January is perfect surfing weather.”
I was glad we weren’t on a video call, because I couldn’t keep the shock off my face. She was acting so completely fine. I loved Kristen, would give anything to be physically with her right now as we processed our horror. But clearly, something about us together served as a beacon for very bad things. The two of us traveling alone were a magnet for violence. Why would we risk it again? And, hell, how could she consider globetrotting when she’d been attacked just days before?
“That’s…something to think about,” I said carefully. “I miss you so, so hard. But…I need a little time before I’ll feel ready to travel again. Does that make sense?”
“Oh, that’s fine,” she said, too quickly, and changed the subject. We chatted for a few minutes more about anything other than Paolo, and then she arrived at her office. I hung up confused and sad.
And profoundly unsettled.
CHAPTER 12
Aaron and I made plans to meet at a cozy dive bar in his neighborhood. I found parking on a side street and stepped out into the dark, instantly reminded of Milwaukee’s reputation as a patchwork of safe blocks and not-so-safe ones a few yards away. There was a man in a baseball cap leaning on a lamppost and I averted my eyes as I passed. But then I heard footsteps behind me and my heart roared, barbed adrenaline shooting through my limbs. I picked up the pace and darted across the street, then stole a glance over my shoulder.
It was nothing. He’d turned down another road. Just a guy going about his business, unaware that he’d set my nervous system on fire.
I thought back to a soliloquy I’d seen on TV about pain as women’s birthright. It’s not hard to catalog the dazzling torment life puts us through: childbirth and menstrual cramps and the suffocating heat of menopause. We do our best to avoid it, but men run toward it: war and wrestling and football that cracks their skulls, bruises the fragile gray matter underneath. Their bravado is just them manufacturing their own pain, trying to seem strong.
But fear—fear is at least as strong a motivator as pain. Maybe the TV show had it wrong; maybe men aren’t out to experience pain so much as fear, the icy jolt of feeling alive. They crave it because they have no idea how miserable it is to feel that frigid blast a hundred times a day.
I heaved open the bar’s door, grateful for the belch of warm, beery air that enveloped me. I breathed it in for a moment: people chatting and ordering PBR and munching on cheese balls brighter than a highlighter. Studding the wood-paneled walls were neon beer signs and dusty antlers and mounted fish, and I felt I’d slipped through a portal to a safer dimension.
I searched the faces around the bar and then headed for the back room, where a foosball table and old arcade games hulked between scratched wooden tables.
“Emily!” Aaron rose to kiss me hello. I liked how confidently he did it, like that was how we always greeted each other. “What are you having?”
He rushed off to get me a drink and I pulled out my phone. Kristen had sent me a photo from what I assumed was her office: its sweeping view of Sydney, the opera house twinkling in the distance. “Sure I can’t convince you?” she’d texted, with a winky face. Wet concrete tumbled in my belly.
I jumped as a glass plonked onto the table in front of me. “They were out of Spotted Cow, so I got you something called a Booyah.” Aaron touched my shoulder, then slid onto a chair. “The bartender said it’s similar. Hey, what is it?”
“It’s nothing. Sorry.”
“Everything okay?”
“It was Kristen.” I hesitated. “She’s trying to convince me to meet her in Sydney for six months of backpacking.”
“Really.”
“Yup. I know she misses me. Plus, I think she doesn’t like being so far from…well, everyone.”
“And how are you feeling about it?”
I pursed my lips. “I told her it’s not a good time. ’Cause work is going well and, like, socially…” I gestured at the table, our two pint glasses standing tall, then blushed. I didn’t add the third big reason: Kristen and I traveling together kept ending in bloodshed. “But she keeps asking about it.”
“Oh man, I didn’t want to influence you, but dude. I’m so relieved.” He laughed and swiped up his beer, and my stomach flipped.
“I’m glad you’re relieved.” The warm bubbles in my chest rose, cautiously hopeful.