The Telling (37 page)

“Sure,” I say. “We know that this is where the stories came from.”

“We know this is who Ben and Diane were running from. They left two small kids behind,” Carolynn adds.

“Or maybe they didn't leave anyone behind?” Josh says. I watch his profile. “Those pictures end when Ben looks about five-ish, right?” The boys pored over the photos before we left Josh's for Calm Coast in his Jeep a little less than a half hour ago. “Ben didn't show up in public school records until the second grade, according to what Sweeny told you. That's two years unaccounted for.”

“Josh is sort of onto something, although he lacks the balls to say it,” Carolynn says. I twist under my seat belt to face her. “Things were bad for years. It's obvious that those kids were traumatized. It's possible that Diane finally left with Ben because something happened to the other two kids. Running with one kid is a lot easier than running with three.”

“You think they're dead?” I say. I keep lingering over the girl's solemn, frightened eyes. Did Ben have a
real
sister before me?

“Dead or they were cousins and Diane couldn't take them with her too,” Carolynn says.

“We're sure we don't just want to wait to hear from the cops, Lana? You want to confront your stepmom without them?” Josh asks. I feel the momentum of the car slow.

“Even with that fire, I'm not convinced that the police will listen to us and investigate, not when they found Skitzy-Fitzy with evidence on him. Diane might refuse to see them. Maybe they can get a court order or something, but how long will that take?” My head falls back to the headrest, and I close my eyes a beat. “There's a better chance that Diane will talk to me. When Sweeny calls us back, we'll have a name for her.” I feign confidence and turn to stare out the window.

For the first half of our drive, after we've crossed over the sound
to the mainland, it's mostly gently rolling pastureland. Fields are dappled with reddish-brown cows and orchards of apple trees, their branches bowing with green fruit like shrunken heads. Carolynn dozes, fitfully murmuring Becca's name off and on. My eyelids are heavy, but as soon as I close them, I see the pictures of children fleeing through the hedge maze.

I drum my hands nervously on my thighs. I left Willa without telling her that I believe it isn't Skitzy-Fitzy. Perhaps she has enough of the pieces to figure as much, but the police finding bird beaks on Fitzgerald is compelling. I also don't want to alarm her so much that she spills everything to her mom. We don't need P.O. sending the police to herd us back to Gant. If I thought that Diane was more likely to talk with the cops, then I would call Dad and ask him to march down to the police station and demand they send an officer. Diane owes
me
the truth, and I owe her something as well. She is a mother, the fiercest beast in nature, and I just didn't see it.
She rescued Ben.

I text Willa.

Long story. Stay with your mom until you hear from me. Be careful.

“I can't get over Diane,” Carolynn pipes up. She's been stretching and doing a modified yoga pose in the backseat. “Her kid dies and she books it to a cushy ‘treatment' spa?” Carolynn makes quotations with her fingers at
treatment
. “Calm Coast is where Tina Spivey went freshman year when her parents were convinced she was depressed because she painted her nails black three days in a row. She got massages and facials daily.”

“Carolynn,” Josh says, a frown in his voice.

She slaps his upper arm with a sarcastic little chortle. “Sign me up is all I'm saying.”

Then to me, Josh says, “You don't have to talk about it.”

Carolynn's bright eyes are on me, and I find that I do want to share with her. “I always thought of Ben as mysterious. Not Diane. She's alien, quiet, remote. We aren't close. I never cared, because she wasn't really any closer to Ben. They didn't really speak. When he was sick or got hurt, he never asked for her. It was weird because I'd hear her talking with my dad in the next room, laughing like a normal person, and then we'd walk in and she'd just shut down.”

“I swear, having a stepmother is the only thing worse than having a mother.” Carolynn laughs humorlessly. “And I have both.”

“I don't really have either,” I say. Her smirk loses its bite. “Although now I get why Diane's been so diluted and distant.”

“It's called medicated,” Carolynn says. She touches her temples and frowns. “I guess we shouldn't judge her. We might all be medicated if we'd escaped her old life.”

“I have two moms and they're great,” Josh says, eyeing where Carolynn is all elbows on the center divider. “They're my best friends,” he adds, all pink cheeks and seriousness.

Carolynn jabs him in the ribs with a finger. “Why don't we canonize you, Saint Josh?”

I laugh.

“Is your seat belt even secure like that?” Josh asks her.

She huffs and slides back. “You don't remember your mom?” she asks.

Surprised, I face her. “Not very much. I was only four when she died.”

“Those little sayings our moms had, you remember them.”

“She had a chest full of old journals. I'm not sure how much I would remember if I hadn't found and read them,” I admit.

“Grin, grin, grin until you feel the smile take root in your belly,” Carolynn says in a singsongy voice.

“Perception is nine-tenths of everything, even the truth,” I respond.

“If you're a bore, lie and say you're interesting. You can never be too skinny. There's nothing worse than being ugly,” Carolynn rattles them off drily. “
God
, no wonder I'm such a bitch.” I stare at her. “It's okay, I am. I have been. It's a lot of pressure, hair spray, nail polish fumes, and effort to be my mother's daughter. Sometimes I think you're lucky.”

Josh's hand shoots out to cover mine on the console. “Carolynn,” he blurts.

“Josh Parker, just stop sticking your nose into other people's business for one freaking second, okay?” Then to me she adds, “You know what I mean, right? Not that you're lucky that your mom died or that I wish my mom had. Only that you didn't have to grow up with all those little sayings directed at you. Her telling you to
seem
happy and
look
pretty rather than to be happy and be smart.”

“You are smart,” I say. “And pretty.”

“And usually happy,” she adds, with a flutter of her fingers.

Josh is grunting with disapproval. She smiles as she continues, “He always has to be so bloody nice.” She jerks her thumb at him. “He makes the rest of us look like assholes, so what's the point of trying?”

Josh flips his mirror up (probably so he can't see her reflection anymore),
peers over the dash, and says, “The point of being nice is just that:
I am nice
.”

“Oh my God, you have become so boring,” she half laughs, half sighs.

He snorts and then winks at me. “I'm definitely nooo Duncan.”

“Shut up,” she groans, and bats his head. “I mean it, Josh.”

He smiles mischievously at me. “Did you know that Carolynn wants to jump Duncan's bones, and she thinks that I'm too slow or too nice to notice?”

She throws herself back and kicks his seat. “I am going to punch you in the balls when this car stops.”

“I actually did know that,” I say. “And I bet Duncan knows what to do with his hands.”

Josh gives me a sideways look. I start to feel that familiar heat rising in my chest.

“Okay, confession,” Carolynn says. She's animated, shifting forward. This is probably how she turned to tell her secrets to Becca. “You are both sworn to absolute secrecy. Yes, I like Duncan. This is not such an epic confession, since I all but spilled to you the night of Josh's birthday.” She yanks on a piece of my hair. “I have liked him since sophomore year.” Her shoulders rise and fall. “It came out of nowhere. We were at Josh's—insane night—and we were playing spin the bottle.” She flicks her wrist dismissively. “I know what you're thinking, but it was sophomore year and we were hammered, so it was loads of fun.” I was thinking just that:
It sounds like tons of fun
.

“I spun the bottle and got Duncan.” Her fingers brush her chin. “We crawled to the center of the circle and I swear to God, Lana, everything stopped.” She bites her bottom lip, and there's this glow seeping from her pores that makes me wistful and eager all at once.
“We kissed for a second. Super quick, but it felt different, like no one had ever felt what I was.” She smiles self-consciously. “Trust me. I know that sounds like Valentine's Day bullshit. But we each came up with bogus excuses to stop playing and met outside—not that we planned it. It just . . .
it just happened
. We were there on the porch and there weren't any lurkers, so we started going at it.” She laughs nervously and gathers her hair over one shoulder.

Carolynn's words bring on sadness like a blanket of lightlessness. I will never kiss Ben. I will never experience what Carolynn is describing. I press my hand to my chest. I imagine that kissing Ben would have been like hearing a song for the first time and the lyrics skewering you. You've never been so alone and so un-alone. It's you they're singing about and expressing what you feel in a way that you were too dumb to be able to. Your chest swells and you know that you'll never be the same, your atoms have been rearranged, and you are the first and last who will ever decode the secret meaning of the music written only for you.

“It kind of ruined all other kisses for me,” Carolynn continues a bit sadly. “And that attraction supersized the part of me that remembers what a sweet little boy he used to be and how I know he's so much better than he pretends he is. I told you it's his dad always demanding that he ‘Be a man' and ‘Boys don't cry' and ‘Don't settle for one girl when you can have two.' ” She mimics Duncan's dad's deep, condescending tone. “It's impossible for Duncan to please him unless he acts like an ass.”

“Does he know you like him?” I ask.

“How could he?” Josh says. “She calls him Dumb-can like she used to in the third grade.”

“I know. It's juvenile to tease him like that.” Carolynn sighs. “I don't usually have trouble asking for what I want.”

“Why don't you tell him?” I say.

“Really?” She rolls her eyes to meet mine. “You're asking me that? You?” Her nail pokes the hand I have placed over my heart.

Josh cranes for a momentary look at Carolynn. Before anything else can be said, he turns the music on full blast. He hangs his arm out of his window and taps the rearview mirror with the beat. I settle into my seat and watch the green forest, packed with trees like the bristles of a brush, streak by.

Carolynn doesn't realize that I confessed my obvious crush to Josh. Josh, I told. It's Ben I never admitted my feelings to. I'm queasy letting both boys exist side by side in my thoughts. Josh was already under my skin when Ben arrived. Josh was the boy I could giggle about with Willa; I could doodle his name on my binder in the fifth grade. Ben was different. There wasn't a centimeter that wasn't all marked up by him.

Willa texts back with a million questions, all boiling down to demanding I explain my cryptic text from earlier. I don't answer. She read it. This is enough.

A bend in the road like a bobby pin has Carolynn hanging her head out the window as she moans, “I'm going to hurl if you . . .” The wind snatches away the rest.

At two o'clock, after a little over two hours of driving, we're about three-quarters of the way there. Josh taps his gas gauge and says, “Gotta stop to fill 'er up.” Twisty miles later, he pulls into the only gas station we've passed in an hour. The pumps are rusted, the square of asphalt has deep fissures in it, and we're surrounded by hundred-foot
trees on three sides and the road on the fourth. The trunks reach into the sky and make everything appear stunted and short.

Carolynn hops out of the car, swings open my door, and yanks me after her. She makes a beeline for the gas station's tiny storefront, with windows so filthy only a jaundiced glow escapes. Under the awning there are vast colonies of spiderwebs, black sparkles among the garlands.

“I'm starving,” Carolynn says.

“I don't want to eat anything from in there,” I whisper.

“Candy is candy,” she says, hitting the glass door with her butt to send it swinging inward. “Most of it doesn't even have an expiration date, so don't be a snob.” There's a bell that chimes like the tinkling of laughter at Carolynn calling
me
a snob. I take one last look at Josh wiping his forehead on the hem of his T-shirt, revealing his tan stomach, before I step inside. It's muggier in here than outside, and a yellowed fog has collected in the space. There's an old-fashioned register and a woman with a bent spine on the stool behind it. She's wearing massive square-framed glasses. I smile hello. She scowls.

Carolynn already has two handfuls of crinkly neon-colored packages. “Are you a gummies or chocolate girl?”

“Neither,” I say, inspecting the packaging of a granola bar. Carolynn slaps it out of my hand, and it slides across the linoleum. I look to where the bar landed in a pile of scraggly hair, dried-up leaf bits, and crimped insect legs.

Carolynn cradles her armload of candy. “Don't tell me that you're one of those freaks who don't do sugar. I hate people who don't like candy.”

I stoop for the bar, closing one eye as I reach into what has to be a rat's
nest made from the human hair of the sacrificed. I peer at the counter, but the woman isn't behind the register anymore. “You hate me anyway,” I mutter, dusting the bar off on my jeans.

Carolynn seizes my shoulders and whirls me around. The packages she was holding drop at our feet. “I don't hate you,” she says fiercely.