Chapter 42

It's been one year, and the house has the nerve not to change one bit. One full year of missing days. Stark and unforgiving, endless mileposts. But this is. This will be. The longest night.

I took extra care in the car to paint on my face exactly the way it should be. The way I have every day for a year. The day since Ryan disappeared. No note. No funeral. No closure.

I paint strength for my mother, humming along with the radio in the front seat. I still sit in the back, the passenger seat a placeholder, like Ryan is suddenly going to appear at the side of the road and hitch back into our lives.

Wouldn't that be just like him?

I paint a layer of quiet suffering for my friends, and determined resilience over that, a dab of mad genius under my eyes, a twist of mischief on my lips, so they know it's me underneath. I dust a shimmer of wonder over it all. I'm still here. I'm still me. I haven't faded under all of it. Nothing is going to break me.

They have nothing to worry about.

Not me.

We pull up in the driveway and the house rises above us like a demon waiting to swallow up our remains. The remains of my family. My father is already gone. His body is still here. But what use is a body? He doesn't speak. He doesn't hear. He just wanders through the rooms, looking. Looking at pictures. Examining artifacts. Staring at us. At my mother, accusing her for letting us run wild with Kennedy and Chase. He never liked them. He held their families in contempt. Entitled rich folks.

Maybe it had nothing to do with the fact that Chase's family had more than we did. But I doubt it.

Maybe he didn't think Kennedy would turn me into a lesbian.

But my dad isn't a good person.

None of us, any of us, are good people.

We don't deserve a happy ending.

Ryan isn't going to come back.

Chase isn't going to fall in love with me.

Chelsea isn't going to get over her nightmare.

Kennedy isn't going to have her fairy tale.

None are pardoned; all are punished.

I step out of the car and lug my suitcases behind me. Usually Ryan does this part for me. I don't pack light. I never have. I strain my face into a smile as Kennedy rushes down the stairs and gathers me into an embrace. Chelsea watches from the porch, leaning against the railing, her hands hanging loosely at her sides. I haven't seen her for almost a month. Not since the incident.

The other incident. When Chelsea hit a point break.

I'm getting sick of incidents.

"How are you?" Kennedy holds me at arm's length and examines me, like it's been months since we last saw each other, instead of a few days. This is how people treat me now. Is it sick that part of me enjoys the attention? I don't think so. I think it's warranted. I think it's the least they can do. After all, I've lost my twin. A twin is more than a brother. It's a part of you. I'm half missing. It's difficult to reconcile.

I allow Kennedy to struggle under the weight of my suitcases as I turn and wave my mother off, trying not to look too dismissive or impatient for her to go. If my father has faded into a ghost in the past year, my mother has become the opposite. Too tangible, an unsculpted lump of clay. Always parked in the same spot in front of the TV in the living room, equidistant between the landline in the kitchen and the front door in case the phone rings with good news or the police show up with bad news. How it must feel to be suspended in that awful state of flux.

I don't know exactly where Ryan is or what happened to him, but I do know one thing.

My friends know more than they're telling me.

I turn as Chase pulls up in his SUV and my throat tightens. He grins and waves as he bounds toward us and throws Kennedy over his shoulder. Which one of them was the last to see Ryan that night? It's so hard to tell. Their stories are so vague. Night swimming off the boat. After Kennedy shot me down when I had suggested we do the exact same thing. All of them exhausted from searching for him. But Mila returned to shore bone-dry. And she doesn't swim. Neither does Chelsea, for that matter, and she was wet. None of it adds up.

But Chase. He looks down at me with that look he's been giving me since last summer. The mix of sadness, regret, and something I can't put my finger on. Something that edges beyond the way everyone else looks at me now. Something that makes it okay for me to slip into the empty locker room with him, shut his mouth with mine to prevent a confession from falling out.

He slips a casual arm around my shoulder now, and I lean into him and smile, giving nothing away. I was angry when he left. The days melting into weeks blurred by police reports, interviews, silent moments waiting, my father turning to stone, my mother flickering like a candle, Chelsea quarantined supposedly with mono, Kennedy studying nonstop. I needed Chase. I've always needed Chase. This was his chance to finally be there for me. And he failed.

Until suddenly it was September. And he was mine, in secret, all mine. No one knows. No one can. It's a delicate balance, a tightrope walk. Guilt and suspicion and desire and loathing.

I loathe myself. This was never the way it was supposed to be.

It was never supposed to be a secret.

I was never supposed to be an obligation. Atonement. I look up at Chase, the sounds of Kennedy's voice blending in with the birds. He's smiling, but it's his new smile. Thin. Elastic. Ready to snap. My head floats down and I look at Chelsea. She's lost weight over the past year. After the note incident, she stopped eating lunch with the rest of us. She just disappears at lunchtime and reappears for English. Maybe she's in guidance, or maybe she's crying in the bathroom. I don't really care. I blame her most of all. She could have stopped whatever happened, whether he really did run away, or got himself into worse trouble. She always had some strange power over Ryan. I hated her for it, a little.

Just a little.

"Shall we?" Kennedy nods toward the door, and Chase takes my suitcases from her.

"Are your parents here?" I don't see their fancy-ass BMW in the driveway.

"I came up with Chelsea." Kennedy smiles over her shoulder. "We're on our own. But I have our entire weekend planned. No need to worry about a thing. We stopped at the cutest farm stand."

I tune her out as I step inside the house. The smell makes me shudder, dry and hot and wooden, like the inside of a coffin. Everything about this house is a rotten piece of history that should be buried. Kennedy and Chelsea head into the kitchen, and Chase begins to carry my bags upstairs, but I stop him.

"Leave the green one down here. I have some of my art things in it."

He places it down carefully and leans against the wall. "How are you doing?" He darts an eye out the window and quickly looks away.

"Okay. I mean, I think it'll be good to be here. For all of us. To get closure or something." Answers. To get answers.

Chase nods, a stiff jerk of his head. "Right, but he's out there somewhere. He'll turn up when we least expect it. You know Ry." He grins, a lightning flash that illuminates those irresistible eyes. Dark and beautiful and so naive. Every day is summer, Chase.

I lean toward him and he bends down and pulls me close, pressing his lips against mine. He tastes like sweat, sweetness, salt. I want to drink him down and drown in him. I want to erase every second of the past year except these moments where we're together and the world is obliterated. But he pulls away the second Kennedy calls his name.

"I'm gonna get the rest of the bags, 'kay?" He runs his hand along my collarbone and I tug him toward me, but he drifts away.

"Later?"

"For sure." He smiles and taps my nose with his forefinger. It leaves me feeling cold and hollow.

I gaze out the window at the lake, the grave formed by some shifting rocks or pounded out by a falling star millions of years ago, filled by endless years of rain. I pull the glass down and bolt it shut tightly, then fix my eyes on the placid water.

Ryan.

Can you hear me?

I hope so.

I've been so lonely this past year.

Kennedy makes tuna sandwiches for lunch, and we eat them out by the lake. I literally hate her for how good they are. The bread is crusty and she uses olive oil, freshly ground pepper, lemon juice, and some other shit I can't identify instead of mayo and celery like any normal person. Who does she think she is? This isn't Top Chef. It's life. My brother's body could be decomposing in the lake.

I feel like I'm desecrating him by continuing to eat, but it's good and I'm starving. So I hate Kennedy for making me.

"So." As if she can hear me thinking her name, Kennedy brushes her shining hair out of her eyes and smiles at me. A soft, tentative smile. Sorry Ryan's gone, but let's make the best of it. That's the implication embedded in the slight downturn at the left corner of her lips. "What's the plan after lunch?"

I chew on the crusty bread, even more annoyed. It's delicious, but it takes forever to shred into pieces small enough to swallow. I take an enormous gulp of icy lemonade. "Whatever. You're the hostess. Do your thing."

Kennedy chews the side of her mouth. "I thought maybe you had something specific in mind when you wanted to come back up here." She looks at Chelsea, but Chelsea is off in wonderland, gazing distractedly at the lake, one leg swung over the stone bench, as if being beckoned to it by sirens the rest of us can't hear. Maybe that's what happened to Ryan.

"You said you had the whole weekend planned out," I say, putting my sandwich down.

"I meant food," Kennedy says. "I thought that was implied." She drums her fingers on the table rapidly. "We can just hang out. It's fine. I didn't know if there was some special spiritual thing you wanted to say or do to honor Ryan, or something?" She trails off, an eyebrow raised.

I can feel my face go from white to red in an instant. "I'm not my mom." I grab my glass and head for the kitchen, heart pounding in my ears. My eyes burn and my body buzzes with adrenaline. I want to turn right around and smack the condescension off her face. Instead I slam the door behind me, drain half of my glass, and fill the rest with gin. My mother never spoke to the Hartfords before Ryan went missing. It wasn't the same as with my dad. It was a pride thing. She thought they looked down on her. Maybe they did. I don't know. They were always nice to me. But they may have felt sorry for the poor kid whose mother was a mall psychic and whose father worked at the country club where they played their charity tennis matches and lounged by pristine infinity pools.

She spoke to them after Ryan disappeared, though. Constantly. She called them nonstop. First with questions. What did they know? Did they remember anything else? Did a detective thoroughly examine the property? Then with requests. Could she have a private investigator speak to Kennedy? Could she speak to Kennedy alone? And finally, the kicker—could she have a medium, a ghost whisperer, walk through the house with her?

They got a restraining order.

The back door swings open, and I hide the gin bottle guiltily. It's not like we don't drink sometimes, especially up here. But it's early, and without permission, and I grabbed a lot.

Chelsea wanders up to me and pulls a blood orange–flavored soda from the refrigerator. "Kennedy didn't mean anything by it." She pops the top of the can and gives me a reproachful look. Like I'm the unreasonable one here.

"It sounded like she meant something very specific." I pick a sprig of mint off a potted plant and stick it in my mouth. Hopefully that will mask the smell a little.

"She didn't. And no one thinks anything bad about your mom, either."

I nod, but I feel the rage beginning to spread throughout my body again. Chelsea has no idea. She has no clue what it was like to have Ryan go missing, to know all of my friends were with him when he disappeared and have them insist to my face that they knew nothing. To know that I could have been there if I hadn't been so stubborn that night. I could have been there. I can't get over that. I never will. She'll never know what it was like to have my family collapse around the black hole my brother's absence gave birth to, to see my father fade like a ghost, to have my mother in hysterics and not be able to offer her closure, and then to have her treated like there was something wrong with her. Quite the inconvenience, that tasteless woman. Get her out of our sight.

"I should have stopped by." Chelsea takes a sip of her drink, and the tattered hospital band slides out from her wispy linen shirt. This is what Chelsea has become. This is how I know she knows something. The note. The bracelet. All of the little clues.

What do they imply?

Guilt.

"You had your own shit to deal with," I say, trying on a sympathetic smile.

She nods. "It was a rough year for all of us."

But Chelsea didn't die or disappear. She's right here, in the flesh, heart pumping buckets of blood through her veins, just two feet from the knife drawer. I blink the thought away.

"I'll be right out."

She gives me an awkward, clinging hug, then wanders back out the door, and I exhale shakily.

It's odd, being back together like this.

Horrible and odd and revolting.

They shouldn't be here. It's a sacred site. To ignore that is a special kind of violence.

They should know better.

I have waited, checked my phone a thousand times, watched the door with my mother, knowing that hope is a coward's drug. Because I know there is a better way. Someone knows where Ryan is. Someone is lying to my face. Four someones. And they've had a whole year to come clean. It may just be time for a little nudge.

I head back outside and smile brightly. "You're absolutely right, Kennedy. I think we should try to communicate with Ryan's spirit."