“Grab a strap!” I screamed. Dust and stones dug into my other arm, my knees.
She groaned and made a swipe for it. “I’m gonna fall,” she cried. Her free hand clawed around the shrub again, and she leaned her face against the hill, breathing hard.
I pressed my own cheek into the ground and hung the bag as low as I could, letting out a groan.
“Lower!” she shrieked, and I felt my arm grow another inch, my whole body one tensed muscle, superhuman, like the mom who lifts a car to free her child.
The cotton loop jerked and I tightened my knuckles in the nick of time. “I’ve got you,” I called, then rolled away from the ledge, away from the drop, away from the danger, feeling Kristen’s weight coming with me. I spun onto my side and her hand appeared, a dramatic thwock, the exhausted but triumphant smack of a reanimated corpse emerging from the grave.
“Help me!” she choked out, and I scrambled back to the edge. I reached for her other hand and she flailed, her nails skinning long lines into my wrists. Then we grabbed each other’s forearms, two death grips. I leaned into the road, gravel tumbling, both of us groaning with the effort. She heaved her knee up with that CrossFit-toned core, and I pulled her onto the trail.
“Kristen.” We both got to our feet, facing each other. It was a marker of trust, I decided in one of those microsecond calculations, that she remained with her back to the hill, confident I wouldn’t push her again. I heard something behind and to the right of me, a low hum under the birdsong and rustling breeze, but I didn’t turn to look; our eyes bored into each other’s.
“Emily.” Blood leaked like tears from a scratch on her cheek. Her sweaty forehead had converted reddish dust to mud, a sheen of ochre. The hum grew louder, closer. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“I—I didn’t mean to,” I said, knee-jerk. Then I realized what that tone in her voice was: admiration. “Er, I don’t know what came over me.”
The hum was almost a roar now, climbing in pitch, and I realized it was a car, racing up the road we’d taken here. I flicked my gaze that way, and Kristen reached out and touched my biceps, gently pulling me away from the car, closer to her. She leaned her face in tenderly and her mouth approached my neck, my jaw, and finally, my ear.
The car tore around the corner and I could just hear her murmur over the engine: “Well, I do.”
She paused exactly long enough for confusion to bang through me—her timing was precise, intentional. She shoved hard, and I stumbled back, directly into the vehicle’s path.
I screamed and flung my arms over my face, but the driver was quick: A squeal of brakes and the crunch of tires, and the SUV lurched to the side, spraying me with gravel and a gust of gas-scented wind. It careened toward Kristen and, behind her, a forty-foot drop and an endless chasm of negative space.
I peeked out between my forearms, and the pieces snapped together all at once, the sudden realization like a gong crash. Thrilling, the dopamine gush of Figuring It Out, of solving a brainteaser or one of Kristen’s riddles or the last clue in a tricky escape room.
Eureka: The SUV was our rental.
The driver was Aaron.
And as I watched, frozen in horror, my best friend, my boyfriend, and the car I’d rented as part of a package Orbitz deal all toppled, headfirst, over the cliff.
CHAPTER 40
AUTOPSY RESULTS REVEAL SLAIN AMERICAN BACKPACKER DIED OF HEAD INJURY
Paolo García, the 24-year-old Spanish-American backpacker whose remains were found in a remote mountain region in Chile, died from blunt-force trauma to his head, according to an autopsy report exclusively obtained by The Gaze.
The forensic autopsy, which was performed in Chile and overseen by American officials, identified fractures in the skull and subarachnoid hemorrhage—ruptured blood vessels in the fluid-filled space around the brain—denoting a fatal head injury.
According to the report, toxicology tests on a sample of García’s vitreous humor—the jelly in the globe of the eye—also revealed the presence of Rohypnol in his system at the time of his death. No other superficial injuries or internal abnormalities were recorded, although decomposition left medical examiners unable to analyze other factors.
While a spokesperson from the Los Angeles Police Department did not respond to a request for comment, García’s father, Rodrigo García, says this leaves more questions than answers.
“For Paolo to be drugged, hit on the head, and buried in the middle of nowhere—it just does not make sense,” he says. “He was the nicest kid. He never hurt a fly.”
CHAPTER 41
The numbness came next, my brain shrinking inside my skull so that my body could take over, moving on autopilot. I sprinted back the way we’d come. Flagged down a car, begged the curly-haired woman inside to call 911. I wanted her to drive me back up, but a dispatcher told her it might block emergency services. So I jogged up the hill, asthma plucking at my lungs, and peered bravely over the side.
There were tire tracks, a half shade darker than the dirt, carved into the steep earth. Flattened shrubs and a mangled cactus, its geometric limbs snapped off at funny angles. A few stories below was the SUV, its hood squashed, its body corkscrewed so that it rested on the passenger’s side. It was so still, like a mural, the Arizona sun glinting off the glass and steel. If Aaron was wearing his seatbelt, he might have survived.
But then I spotted Kristen’s legs. They were all I could see, the rest of her under the SUV’s grill—legs unfolded like the Wicked Witch of the West. Like Paolo’s hairy legs, poking out from his own blood-soaked backpack. They were tawny and toned and hairless, shiny in the light, with gray sneakers still laced up at the end.
And they weren’t moving.
My screams echoed around the canyon and returned to me, as if the land had rejected them. This is your fault, the orange hills seemed to say. Why should we absorb your pain when you brought this on yourself?
Distant sirens blotted out my howls. Fire trucks appeared and I thought crazily of the fire, all those years ago, of Kristen’s kind mom and mean dad and the forking flames that killed them both. So much noise and chaos, the song that doesn’t end—there was a deep, rhythmic thwocking now, too, a drumbeat, no, a helicopter, all of it getting louder and louder, drowning out my thoughts.
A cop sauntered out of a squad car, too casual, and asked me if I was the one who’d called 911. I can’t remember his face, even though I stared right at it, but after a few seconds I said yes, and he said they’d like to take me to the station, just standard procedure, to ask some questions and get my statement. He was kind, his voice calm and reassuring, and so I agreed, because of course I wanted to help.
The police station was generic, like a movie set. He brought me into a room and offered me water, a bag of chips, and weak, tepid coffee. I sipped at the water, my hand shaking like a maraca, as I tried to explain what’d happened. Just on the mountainside, just those critical fifteen seconds there, since I was confused and too distracted （oh my God oh my God are they dead are they okay） to get into the backstory.
I told it backward. Kristen went over the ledge because Aaron swerved the SUV toward her. He swerved because I was in the road. I was in the road because Kristen and I were talking, and I didn’t know a car was coming. We were on a walk together because we needed to talk. As for Aaron…well, I didn’t know why he drove out after us. Truly, I had no idea. The cop kept telling me I was doing a good job, and I kept interrupting to ask how Aaron and Kristen were. He asked for my name, my number, my home address. I was so rattled I had to think hard, suddenly debating if I’d switched the numbers in my own zip code.