Connect the Stars (15 page)

“So you're saying that you terrified yourself into being brave?” Aaron asked.

“Yep,” said Louis. “I was too scared to chicken out.”

“That's not exactly how it happened,” I said. “Because you could have let me go talk to him, but you were afraid he'd go all homicidal maniac on me. He could have done the same to you. You risked your life, Louis.”

Louis's cheeks went red, and he waved a hand in the air dismissively. “No, Jare already despises me so much that if he were going to kill me off, he would have already done it. Since he hasn't, he must have decided that I'm just not worth it. I was safe.”

Because it was clear that we could spend the rest of
the day trying to convince Louis he'd committed an act of courage and get nowhere, I let it drop and said, “So now we wait for Daphne to get back, I guess.”

“I guess so,” said Louis. “Although there's no rule that we can't enjoy her absence in the meantime, right?”

Aaron looked sheepish. “I'd be lying if I said I hadn't been enjoying it this whole time.”

“You'd be lying, and I'd know you were lying,” I said.

“Ain't that the truth,” said Kate, and the four of us looked at each other and grinned.

Lunch came and went, and there was still no sign of Daphne.

Jare had given us all the job of scrubbing out our water bottles and food containers and repacking our bags, the usual busywork. Kate, Aaron, Louis, and I sat in a huddle, scrubbing and talking. Louis was still glowing faintly from his act of heroism, and the others all seemed to accept that Jare hadn't had a hand in Daphne's disappearance. I wasn't so sure. I couldn't stop thinking about that slap, and about Jare's crying—
crying
—in front of all of us.

“You know what's weird about Jare?” I said suddenly.

“He's a psycho?” asked Aaron.

“He's got the biggest feet in the world and still manages to find hiking boots to fit him?” asked Kate.

“He's really, really, really loud?” asked Louis.

“Yes. And also . . . he loves this place,” I said.

They looked at me doubtfully.

“That seems somewhat less weird than the size of his feet,” said Kate. “I mean, he works here, and it's kind of a cool place, right?”

“Plus he's made himself king of it,” said Louis. “It's his personal domain, and he gets to make the rules and push everyone around. He's like an overgrown playground bully, and this is his playground. Bullies love their playgrounds.”

“I know, I know,” I said. “But did you see him yesterday with the old man hoodoo? All that crying? How often do you think a guy like Jare cries
in public
?”

After a moment, Louis said, “You know, he said something about a church. Maybe this place is sacred to Jare.”

Aaron said, “Maybe this place is Jare's white chickens.”

“Right,” I said. “White chickens. But maybe it's even more. He acted like Daphne hadn't just destroyed an ancient and extremely interesting rock formation with wise, grandpalike qualities, which is a rotten thing to do all by itself. He acted like she'd killed a real old man, one Jare loved. Like she'd killed his actual grandpa.”

“This place is his family,” said Kate softly, pressing her hands together and lowering her eyes. “And it's beautiful,
but it's not easy. It stings. It's hard and dry. It's not like a garden or a beach. It's like a family that's hard to love, but you do it anyway. And—” She stopped and looked up and waited for someone to finish.

“The anyway is the whole point,” I said quietly.

We sat and thought about this. Then I said, “People will do anything to defend their families. I hope Daphne is out there, laughing at all of us right now. She probably is, but I just want us to remember that when it comes to what they really love, people will do anything.”

“I really hope that if he did something, he didn't do it on purpose,” said Kate. “Like he might have gotten mad and just shoved her harder than he meant to because he was all worked up. Or something.”

“Either way, we should probably keep an eye on Jare,” said Louis. “Watch what he does next. He has to do something soon, right?”

“Right,” said Aaron. “Even if he—he knows where she is, he'll need to at least
pretend
to try to find her, soon.”

“Look,” said Kate, lifting her head to see something over Louis's shoulder.

Jare strode toward us holding a map, all unfolded, big and white and catching wind like a sail. An image popped into my head of his catcher's-mitt hands wrapped around
Daphne's neck, but I pushed it away.

“Here we go,” I murmured.

Jare told us we'd wasted enough time being patient with Daphne's little stunt. Now, he said, it was time to flush her out. He assigned each group a territory to search and gave us instructions on how to fan out and cover as much ground as possible. We'd divide each group into people who would search the ground for clues and people who would keep their heads up, scanning the horizon, the treetops, hills, and boulders. He gave our group the search area—a big square of dry, stony desert—farthest from what he, very importantly, called the P.L.S., or Point Last Seen.

“We got the worst area,” grumbled Kate. “It'll take an hour just to hike out to it. But on the bright side, at least it's a scorching hot day.”

As we all got busy gathering supplies and putting on sunscreen and doing all the other PHWSS stuff, Jare noticed that Randolph was sitting on his pack, doing nothing. Well, not nothing, exactly, because he was whistling. Randolph was either tone-deaf or just a horrendous whistler. He had his hands clasped behind his head and his eyes closed, like a person taking a nap, except that he was sitting up straight and whistling like a demented sparrow, which, in my experience, people taking naps rarely did.

“Randolph!” bellowed Jare.

Because he'd obviously been waiting for Jare to do exactly that, Randolph didn't jump. He just opened his eyes and glared.

“What?”

“We've already lost precious hiking time because of your pathetic, attention-seeking friend. Get hopping!”

Randolph sneered, but I'd seen his eyes light up when Jare had said “friend.”

“Not going,” said Randolph.

“Oh, for the love of Pete,” murmured Louis, his hands hovering around his ears.

“What did you say?” asked Jare, narrowing his eyes.

“Not going.”

“And why would you consider yourself exempt from this activity?” said Jare, his face beginning its puff-up-turn-purple routine.

“I don't need to search for Daphne,” said Randolph, “because I know where she went.”

Lie.

“Like fun you do!” spat Jare.

“Who says that?” whispered Kate, suddenly at my side. “‘Like fun'?”

“No one,” I whispered back. “But Randolph
is
lying.”

Kate's eyes widened. “Seriously?”

“Oh, but I do,” said Randolph to Jare.

“How?” asked Jare. His tone was as belligerent as ever, but I saw something odd in his face. For the first time since Daphne had gone missing, Jare was nervous.

“Duh,” said Randolph. “She told me.”

The “me” squeaked like a mouse when it sees a cat. Another lie.

“No, she didn't,” I whispered to Kate, but it came out louder than I intended.

Randolph jumped up, wheeled around, and yelled at me, “Yes! She! Did!”

I shook my head. “You're lying. You lie all the time, and you're lying now.”

“Shut up!” shouted Randolph. He took a couple of steps toward me, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kate and then Aaron both take a couple of steps toward him. Randolph's jaw was working as if he were grinding his teeth together, which he probably was, but then he said, “You guys don't know jack,” and turned back to Jare.

“Maybe you don't either,” said Jare.

“I do! Daphne tells me everything!” said Randolph. He crossed his muscle-bound arms over his muscle-bound chest. “But you are out of your stupid mind if you think I'm gonna tell you.”

Jare smiled. He stood there, his eyes locked on Randolph's. Then he waved his arm in the air and said,
“Move out, people! Report back here in four hours on the dot—or before, if you find something!”

We moved out—all but Randolph, who sat back down on his pack, a confused and disappointed expression on his face, as if his bombshell hadn't made quite the splat he'd intended. Either Jare had believed me or he had seen for himself that Randolph was lying—because, unsurprisingly, Randolph wasn't the slickest liar in the world—or he was planning to torture information out of him as soon as the rest of us were out of earshot. As the four of us hiked toward our search area, Kate said dryly, “If Randolph disappears next, we'll know Jare's a homicidal maniac.”

“Are you sure Randolph was lying?” Louis asked me, and then he caught himself. “Never mind. I know you're sure.”

“Positive,” I said. “But what I wonder is—why? Why would he pretend to know where Daphne is? Just to get Jare all riled up?”

“Why? Well, that's obvious, isn't it?” said Kate.

I hiked a few more steps before I got what she meant. “Oh, right,” I said. “Because he's a liar, and liars lie.”

“Uh, no, Audrey,” said Kate. “I mean, maybe some people lie because they're liars, but mostly they lie for a reason.”

“Well, yeah. They lie to get something they couldn't get any other way,” I said. “Lying is like stealing, sort of. But what I don't understand is why Randolph would lie about knowing where Daphne went, when all a lie like that was going to get him was trouble.”

Kate laid a hand on my arm, and I stopped hiking.

“What?”

“I thought you were an expert on lying,” Kate said, puzzled.

“Yeah, so did I,” said Louis.

“Same here,” said Aaron.

“Wait,” I said, pointing at Aaron. “
You
know why Randolph lied?”

“I think so,” said Aaron.

“
Sometimes
people lie because they're liars.
Sometimes
people lie to get something,” said Kate. “But a lot of times, they lie because of how they feel. Randolph lied because he was sad.”

“Sad?” I said. “I'm having trouble picturing Randolph being anything as deep as sad.”

“I'm basically an expert on sad,” said Kate, “and Randolph is sad a lot.”

“But why is he sad now?” I asked. “Because Daphne is gone?”

Kate looked at me like I'd just said one plus one was four.

“Because he
wishes
Daphne had told him where she was going . . . ,” began Kate.

“Because he
wishes
Daphne trusted him . . . ,” continued Louis.

“Because he
wishes
Daphne were his friend. But she's not,” finished Aaron. “So he made up a lie.”

“That doesn't make sense,” I said.

“Yes, it does,” said Kate. “Think about it.”

I started hiking again, turning over and over inside my head the possibility that people lied not only to get something or to get out of something or to get back at someone or just because they were bad people, but because they were something as simple as sad.

“Maybe you're right,” I said finally, my voice coming out smaller than I meant for it to.

I felt flustered, off-kilter. I wasn't used to being the only person in a group who didn't know something. In fact, I was used to being the person in the group who knew things other people didn't, things like when someone was lying
.
Now that I thought about it, though, I realized I hadn't spent much time thinking about
why
people lied. And as I hiked along, with the afternoon sun in my face, sweat starting to
slide down the back of my neck, I suddenly remembered Janie in the doorway of her house, the wild anger in her eyes, when she told me, “You think you're so smart. You think you see right into people! But you know what? You don't see anything!”

Because I didn't want to think about that horrible moment, and because I wanted to feel, once again, like a person who knew things, I said, “Do you notice where we're going?”

“Where?” asked everyone, and I thought,
That's more like it.

“Straight into the heart of the desert, which is the last place Daphne would head,” I said.

“It would be the last place anyone would head,” said Louis, eyeing an especially large lizard skittering into the shadow of a prickly pear with a shudder.

“Unless it was by accident,” said Kate.

Then Aaron said, in a remarkably good imitation of Daphne's voice, “‘Please. This is like my fourth wilderness camp. They're all alike.'”

“Exactly, Aaron,” I said. “Daphne was experienced. She'd head toward water or toward the hills or one of those abandoned buildings we've passed during our hikes. She wouldn't come this way.”

“She didn't even bring a tent,” said Kate.

“Which raises the question of why Jare would send our group—the group that he must know is better at figuring things out than all the others because, technically, we won both of the challenges—to the search area where Daphne is least likely to be,” I said.

“Because he doesn't want her to be found,” said Kate.

“What should we do?” asked Louis, looking at me. “Quit?”

“We're two thirds of the way finished. We may as well get it done, just in case,” I said.

“I bet you're right, though,” said Aaron. “We won't find anything.”

“Because there is nothing to find,” I said, and even though Janie's terrible words and all that stuff about lying and feelings and sadness were still there, in the back of my mind, I felt steady again, capable, more like myself.

But then, twenty minutes later, the doubt came back. Because eagle-eyed Louis, who, along with Aaron, was in charge of searching the ground for clues, found one. In the shade of an unusually large cottonwood tree, caught under a rock, was a black bandanna with tiny skulls all over it. I'd only ever seen that bandanna on one person, who tied it around her head underneath her hat to keep her chopped-off, ketchup-colored hair out of her eyes.