Silence, a long one, two cars playing chicken on a dark country road.
“I’m saying this because I actually care about our friendship.” Her tone was gravelly, preternaturally calm. “And you left me no choice.”
“Kristen—”
Now her words tumbled out, one lightning breath: “Be here in twenty minutes or I’m sending the photo. Don’t test me.” And then she hung up.
* * *
—
I flew down I-94, gravity building in my chest as if I were a meteor hurtling toward Earth. The air was steely and cold, with a charged, loamy smell, and the halos around oncoming headlights were obelisk-shaped, blurring my vision.
I began to change lanes and a semi blasted its horn, sending spiky adrenaline through my limbs. I swerved and gripped the wheel, then watched the Mack truck cruise by. The driver honked again, as if to further admonish me, and I cried out, my frustration mingling with the big rig’s basso honk.
I kept seeing the photo in the windshield, the bright headlights reminiscent of that camera flash, the bang of brilliance as Sebastian and I stumbled toward his demise. Sebastian, blond and broad and overexposed. Sebastian, who was still missing, his body food for sea creatures at the bottom of Tonle Kak.
Kristen’s voice, a whisper: Sebastian, whom you kicked until his skull yielded.
No. The exit sneaked up on me and I jolted into the right lane, slamming on the brakes as the ramp deposited me at a red light. My heart beat in time with my turn signal. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.
I passed the darkened peak of King of Kings, and its stained-glass windows caught my headlights as I turned. Inside Nana and Bill’s subdivision, a glint of eyes watched from the curb: another rabbit, its black eyes protruding from the sides of its head. Was it a warning, a portent of doom from the hacked-up animal I’d seen Up North? I never did figure out what kind of predator left axlike gashes in the neck of its prey. The rabbit turned and scurried into a copse of spindly trees.
At Nana and Bill’s, I parked at the end of the driveway and spotted a figure in an upper window, watching me climb toward the front door. A rinse of fear at the sight of her—my best friend, my co-conspirator, my biggest threat. The silhouette turned off the light, dissolving into darkness, and when I steeled myself and reached for the doorbell, Kristen was already there, pale-faced and red-eyed behind the storm door.
“Hi.” I stood hunched, unsure whether she’d go in for a hug. Finally she held the door open for me instead. I hung my thin jacket on a hook inside.
“Can you leave your purse out here too?” She pointed at the foyer’s bench, and I rolled my eyes. Satisfied that the government wouldn’t be listening in on two girls having a heart-to-heart in one of their childhood homes, Kristen led me to her bedroom and closed the door behind us.
Her bed and dresser had been shoved into a corner, and several expensive-looking cardio machines were scattered like sculptures around the rest of the room. A weight bench crouched next to the closet, each dumbbell a gleaming weapon.
She plopped onto her bed, then whisked up a tissue and tossed it into a nearby trash can. The bin was already half full, physical evidence of her grief. Her hurt looked so genuine, so tangible. The appropriate response to learning your best friend has been investigating whether you’re a monster. Doubt prickled anew.
“Should we talk?” I sat on the corner and ran my palm across the smooth duvet.
She curled her knees to her chest. “You only came because I said I’d turn over that photo.”
Yeah, no shit. “I came because I care about you. That made me realize how much you really needed to talk, like, ASAP.” I swallowed. “Because you wouldn’t send that photo and my info to the South African police, right? You know that if someone called me in for questioning, I could name you too.”
She chewed on her lower lip. “But the evidence…it only leads to you.”
“What are you—” But then the truth rocketed through me. In Quiteria, I’d filled out the hotel check-in forms and handled the car rental. The photo from Phnom Penh was of Sebastian…and me. It was my name on all the forms, my face in the photo. It would be her word against mine.
I could claim she’d been involved, sure.
But I couldn’t prove it.
My vision blurred and gravity shifted. I breathed deeply until the room righted itself: Focus, Emily. I tapped her shin. “Tell me what you need—I want to make things right.”
Kristen heaved an unsteady sigh. “It’s such a mess,” she said. “I keep having nightmares that a bunch of guys with guns bust into my bedroom. Or that we’re back in the Elqui Valley with people chasing us around those hairpin turns. And sometimes…” She cried for a few seconds, tears plopping onto her blouse. “Sometimes I dream I’m back in our suite and Paolo is…that I couldn’t stop him. It’s so scary, Emily. I thought I understood what you went through in Cambodia, but I was wrong. It was so much worse.”
I was frozen, every nerve on high alert. Was she referring to the attempted assault? Or…or what came after, when she wrapped her fingers around a bottle of wine?
“What was worse than you thought?” I asked, my voice gossamer-thin.
“The…the trauma, I guess. That moment when he shoved me and my head hit the wall.”
Kristen exhaled with a constricted sigh, ujjayi pranayama in yoga. “I was scared in a way I’ve never been before,” she went on. “It’s like it changed me, irreversibly. You know how someone can drop acid and have a bad trip and then they’re just different from that day onward?”
“And that’s what it was like? An acid trip?” I needed her to clarify: Was she talking about the frightened instant or the one that followed, the one where she swung the bottle like a club?
The thought jabbed at me: If killing Paolo left her this rattled, she couldn’t have been the one to kill Sebastian…could she?
“That moment of fear,” she said, “it’s like it marked me—defined me. And, you know what, it has made me paranoid. All I see are dangers now. Fear of everyone I meet. Fear that…that the people I trust are gonna turn on me.” She smoothed her palms down her thighs. “I thought I was keeping my shit together, keeping my whole world under control. I even went to a therapist. But then”—here her voice wobbled—“then I realized you’d been, like, investigating me behind my back. Like I’m some kind of freak.”
But you threatened me, I wanted to say. You hoarded an old photo and left me breadcrumbs so I’d find it when my own fear bordered on paranoia, after a year of telling me we couldn’t risk keeping any evidence around. But I knew that saying this would buy me another hour on this bed, supplicating at Kristen’s feet. I needed to slap a Band-Aid on her ego and get the hell out of Milwaukee.
“I’m sorry you saw that,” I said gently. “I was spiraling and grasping at straws, you know? The photo you showed me—er, wanted me to find—it threw me.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry you’ve been feeling not like yourself. I went through that last year too. It does get better with time, but…I get that, feeling raw. I want you to be okay.” I patted her knee.