And then I realized I had no idea what I expected her to do. I was on a plane. I’d quite literally left her blubbering in her grandparents’ palatial home. I slipped my laptop into my bag. Though Chile was the more immediate concern, my thoughts flowed back to Cambodia.
For over a year, I’d been working hard to keep the images out of my head. Like an app running in a phone’s background, some part of my mind was always whirring: Keep it buried, keep it buried, keep it buried. Buried like Paolo’s body under the tawny dirt. Buried like Sebastian’s body in Tonle Kak River.
I’d felt so numb that night—this I remembered clearly, a visceral memory of my senses shutting down. With Sebastian’s wound still oozing blood, Kristen had yanked me into the bathroom and turned on the shower, letting steam bead and drip on the mirror and walls and flimsy shower curtain. I shook and shook, my shoulders like a jackhammer, my teeth chattering so hard they rattled my skull, they addled my brain, aren’t you never supposed to shake a baby because the brain will boing around inside their head? That’s what was happening to me as mist settled on my eyelashes, as vapors floated in translucent curls, as Kristen held my shoulders and pushed her forehead against mine.
I jumped ahead to another scene, also wet and wan. My legs were like jelly and not just from the nerves this time: Together we’d dragged Sebastian up the short but steep hike to a lookout point, a cliff over the foamy waters of Tonle Kak. Thanks to the pollution, the night sky had an eerie yellow tinge to it, like bile. We’d visited this spot two days before, when it was pocked by tourists, young folks like us staging selfies at the cliff’s edge. I’d read aloud from our guidebook, taking on a newscaster voice, all arm flourishes and enthusiasm.
This spot was nicknamed suicide ridge, and we took turns trying to pronounce the many diphthongs and plosive consonants of the Khmer expression. Legend had it that this was where women, married or betrothed but miserable about it, had once loaded their pockets with shale rocks from along the path, then hurled themselves into the water below; though the forty-foot drop would likely do the trick, the heavy stones ensured they’d drown as planned.
We’d thought nothing of it that day, but in our hotel room’s bathroom, mist swirling and our skulls smushed together as if we could co-cogitate through osmosis, Kristen brought it up again. Or had I been the mastermind, the evil genius? Suddenly the boundaries between us were growing threadbare.
A ding and the captain turned off the seatbelt sign. No—I had to stay focused. Kristen was the dangerous one, not me. Even if you removed Sebastian from the equation, Kristen was still the one with a trail of dead bodies in her wake, from the time she was a kid: both parents, Jamie, and now Paolo. One’s an anomaly, two’s an unfortunate coincidence—maybe. But four? Four’s a freaking trend.
Aaron crossed his arms and scooched down in his seat. I steeled myself and then traveled back in time once more, back to that night in Cambodia, the air clogged with bugs and moisture and smoke from distant trash fires. It pressed around us like bad breath as we stumbled up the hill, Sebastian’s feet dragging behind us. We crammed stones into whatever pockets we could find in his clothes: against his belly in his tucked-in shirt, inside the waistband of his shorts.
Touching his skin, cool and clammy even in the body-temperature air, sent waves of revulsion through me…but, if I was honest with myself, there was something oddly satisfying about it, too, the weights violating the man who’d tried to violate me. I’d been so angry when I wrestled free from his grip. I’d almost enjoyed plunging my teeth into his palm, putting him in his place. I’d felt so furious that when I saw him on the ground, his head bumped up against the bed frame…
Sick. All sick and sickening thoughts. Next to me, Aaron scratched his nose, nestled his cheek against his horseshoe-shaped pillow. I love you. We hadn’t said it yet, but thinking it was like a prism of clarity in the murk of my psyche. My affection for him bulged, followed by a ferocious, crackling fear at the thought of losing him. What would Kristen do if she somehow got her hands on him, jealous as an ex-lover? Or, equally threatening: What would happen if he learned about the skeletons in my closet? The literal skeletons in my hands, one stuffed into the trunk of a rental car in Chile, the other dragged up a hill in Cambodia?
Wait—how did we get Sebastian over the cliff? I waited for an image to arise, a fade-in. There: Kristen and me rolling his body toward the ledge, feeling gravity take hold, slowly at first and then with mounting vehemence, like a roller coaster cresting its first giant hill. We’d stepped back and waited for the splash—it felt like an eternity, something was wrong. But then we heard the wet crash, the river gratefully accepting our sacrifice. We’d both leaned way over and peered into the water, but any glimpse of Sebastian was already lost to the foamy rush.
This isn’t helping. None of the relentless remembering was bringing me any closer to answering the critical question: Who killed him, Kristen or me? It was a strange sensation, like worrying about the future, projecting what might go wrong, only I was fretting about the past. Am I dangerous, even now?
No—I was a kind person, a good person, living my little life. I loved animals and nature and yoga and pizza. I set my hand on Aaron’s and he flipped his palm and wove his fingers through mine.
The woman next to him peeled her eyes off her laptop and glanced down at her seatmate, at our interlocked fingers. I thought of how we must look to her: a good-looking, comfortable couple traveling together—not even ruing our middle seats, so in love were we. I’d wanted this for so long. Aaron made every second warmer, safer, happier.
Traveling together—suddenly the magnitude of this endeavor hit me, how we’d be together 24/7 for four entire days. Together when I came out of the shower, nose and cheeks ruddy, hair tangled, face bare. Together when my blood sugar plunged and I got cranky and short. Together when I ate too much bread and felt gassy, my abdomen distending like a balloon. We’d had sleepovers, sure, but this felt different. Momentous.
I’d been so focused on running away, I’d almost missed what I was running to.
I nuzzled my head against his shoulder, then closed my eyes.
No, not to. With.
CHAPTER 36
No one was waiting to arrest me at the jet bridge. No one paid attention to us as we strolled through baggage claim and found the car-rental desk, and I looked around in astonishment: Nobody knows.
Phoenix was orange-brown and sunbaked, with the dry, crumbly quality of cheddar that’s been sitting out on a cheeseboard all day. It was hot, too hot, the sauna air catching in my lungs. Aaron didn’t complain as we loaded our bags into the back of a rental, but his forehead dripped like a glass of iced tea.
No new voicemails, but now I was getting a call from a number with an L.A. area code. L.A., where grieving parents offered a million dollars for intel about their son. L.A., where a dead man’s father probably had the police department wrapped around his wealthy pinkie. Where a family mourned a son who outran cancer but not the wrath of my best friend. I turned on Do Not Disturb and slipped my phone into my bag.
We churned around the airport’s loops, then shot out onto the interstate. We were in a mammoth, tanklike, gas-guzzling black SUV—the only option left with our last-minute booking.