Wherever Nina Lies (18 page)

His face is changing now, in slow motion, his mouth turning down, opening, closing, and opening. He’s blinking. His eyes are clouding. It’s too late. It’s too late.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” he says. “Oh God, I’m so stupid. I should have known…you went into the bathroom to shower with all your clothes on, but when I came back, your clothes were all around the room. And you’d locked the door and…”

He walks slowly over to the closet, reaches up into the blankets and takes the bag down. He stares at the lock, his back to me. “…and these are not the letters I left the lock on.” He stares at me. I look down at the limp lettuce, at the bloated tomatoes. “Do you know how I know?” He waits for me to answer. I am silent. “Because I left the lock turned to Ellie.”

I can hear Sean’s footsteps, soft on the carpet. Approaching.

I should get up. I should run. But I am frozen in my seat.

I feel his hand on my shoulder. My stomach drops.

It’s too late.
He turns me around in the chair, bends down, gathers me into his arms, squeezes me, tighter, tighter,
and tighter. He pulls me off the chair until we’re crouched facing each other. It hurts how hard he’s holding me.

“Oh, Ellie,” he says over my shoulder. He sounds like he’s crying now. I think I can feel his body shaking. He strokes my hair, hard. “Do you love me, Ellie?”

I swallow. “Of course I do,” I force myself to say. My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it throughout my entire body.

He mashes our faces together in some sort of approximation of a kiss. His tears run down my cheeks.

“No, you don’t.” He leans back.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say. “Of course I do.” But it sounds like a lie, even to me.

“It’s so unfair. So incredibly, terribly, horribly unfair. One mistake! I made one mistake in my entire life, and it ruins everything! I guess that’s the funny thing about a mistake like that, you can’t take it back. Even if you want to. You just can’t ever take it back. And here’s the worst part, it wasn’t even my mistake! Nina made me do it for her. I didn’t want to do it. She set it up so that I’d think I had to! I loved her and she knew it, and I know she loved me. Or at least she could have if she let herself. But then he wasn’t around and she still wouldn’t be with me!” His eyes are filling up again. “She tricked me!”

He clenches his jaw, a vein throbs near his temple.

“It’s going to be okay,” I say.

“No,” Sean says. A tear escapes his left eye and slides
down to his chin. “It’s not.” He walks around behind me and grabs my wrists. “I don’t want to do this.” He lets out a choked cry. “Please just know that I really, really don’t want to!”

He pushes me forward and wrenches both my arms behind my back. I try to pull away. I can’t.

“What are you doing?” I say.

I feel something being wrapped around my wrists and tied tight to the back of the chair. His belt I think. “Don’t go anywhere,” Sean says, as though I actually could. And then he is out the door, running through the parking lot. I pull against the belt as hard as I can. “Help!” I shout. “HELP!” But no one comes.

Sean’s phone starts vibrating again on the desk. I lean over and with my chin, I knock the phone to the floor where it continues to vibrate. I stretch out my leg, pull the phone toward me with my foot, and flip it open with my toe. “HELP!” I shout toward the phone. I look down, pray it’s Unavailable calling again, but there on the screen is a random number I don’t recognize. “Hello?” I hear a faint voice coming through the phone. “Hello?” The voice calls again. My heart explodes in my chest. Is this…Could it really be…

Sean is back, I kick the open phone under the desk just as he enters the room.

“Do you want to know something, Ellie? Something I’ve never told anyone before?” He’s not even looking at me. The tears are falling faster now, an unreal amount of them,
as though someone has turned on a faucet inside his face. He has one arm behind his back. “He didn’t just go to sleep.” Sean shakes his head and wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “That’s how I thought it would be for him, y’know? Just like going to sleep. But it wasn’t. I went into his room and I held him down. He was a really heavy sleeper and didn’t even wake up when the needle went in. But at the last second, he opened his eyes and looked at me. He had this look of
horror
on his face, Ellie. His last moment on this earth was spent looking his own brother in the eye and
knowing
what I did to him.” Sean takes a deep breath and takes his arm from behind his back. There’s something in his hand. Stark black barrel, shining dully under the motel’s fluorescent lights. Cartoonishly menacing. A gun. Sean looks down at it, then back up at me, then down at the gun again. “I got this for myself,” Sean says. “For, y’know.” He raises the gun to his head, jerks his head to the side, and then sticks out his tongue. “It’s supposed to be hard to get a gun, but if you have a lot of money, it’s not really hard to get anything, I guess.”

And he looks up and smirks, as though he expects me to laugh. “At first I couldn’t take it, the guilt, you know. And Nina was gone and I couldn’t handle it alone. Then, Thanksgiving break, a few months after it happened, I came home from boarding school. Normally we would spend Thanksgiving at our house in Big Sur, which, hey, you’ll think this is funny, that’s actually the house where that band
dropped your sister, but anyway, we didn’t go that year because it was like my brother’s favorite place on earth and my dad and stepmom thought it would be too hard to be there without him. So it was just the three of us at my house sitting at that giant table, staring at our plates, at all this food the cook made that we weren’t eating. And I just…I
missed
him, which was so crazy. I just started thinking about how different dinner would have been if he was there. And how cool he was and how funny he was. It was like that was the first time he really felt like a brother to me and it made me sick, so I excused myself, which no one really minded. And I went up to my room and I got the gun out of this box in my closet. I wasn’t even sure I knew how to load it right. I’d just read this tutorial on the Internet but it’s not like I really had any chances to test out shooting before. So I did what the website had said and then I held the gun up to my face and I was about to squeeze the trigger when suddenly it was like someone was talking to me directly inside my head. I don’t know if it was God or my brother’s ghost, but the voice told me not to do it, not to kill myself, because that wouldn’t make things right. I wasn’t really the one at fault there, see. I wasn’t even the one that killed him, they were my hands, but doing what
she
wanted. Your sister was the one who did it to him.” Sean looks to the side and presses his lips together. “It was her fault and I was the only person on earth who knew that. Before that I’d been looking for your sister for months. But after that moment I stopped looking
and I just waited. I knew if I waited long enough, I’d get a chance to make things right because it was fate that I should. It was hell, all that waiting. But I never lost faith and I never gave up hope and then when I finally saw you at that party that night at the Mothership, I knew my wait was over and that you’d been sent there for me, to lead me to her, to help me make things right. But then I started falling in love with you.” Sean tips his head to the side and smiles like he’s telling a story about something beautiful. “I thought that maybe
that
was the reason I was at that party, not to find Nina, but to find you! So I thought if I could just let the past go, then it would all be okay. That’s why I told you she died, so we could move on…together.”

Sean looks up at me then, staring me straight in the eye. “Stop looking at me like that,” he says.

I don’t move.

“Do you know what I’ve been through, Ellie? Can you even imagine? You think you have suffered for love?
I have suffered for love
and so there I was, waiting for the love I’ve earned to come back to me. And then there you were. Dear, sweet, beautiful you who looks so much like her, only you look at me differently than she ever did, and then when you told your friend to leave I knew she had never loved me the way you do. You are the reason I knew it was okay to let her go. Because I had you now. Someone to look at me the way you did. But
you are not looking at me like that anymore.
”
Sean’s nose is practically touching mine. I can see the muscles twitching in his jaw.

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.

“Look at me like that again.” He is begging me. There’s a vein throbbing in the center of his forehead. “Please, Ellie, just look at me like that again, the way you did before.”

And I try. I try with every fiber of my being to look at his face and see what I saw before I knew the truth.

But I just can’t do it.

“You look disgusted,” Sean says. His breath is hot on my face. “I didn’t have a choice, Ellie.” He takes a quivering breath. “Tell me.” His voice is quiet now, barely a growl. “Tell me you understand why I had to do what I had to do. TELL ME!”

“I understand why you had to do what you had to do,” I say.

“And tell me you understand why I have to do what I have to do next,” he says. There are tears in his eyes, he’s nodding slowly.

My whole body goes cold. “What is that?”

“You already know,” Sean says. “I already told you the story.”

“The story?”

“The one about Nina in the parking lot.”

“But that didn’t actually happen!”

“That didn’t actually happen…” A tear drips down each cheek. “Yet.”

My mouth drops open. I cannot speak.

“I don’t want to do it,” Sean says. He stomps his foot on the ground. “I mean, you know that, right? I’ll do you here first so you don’t have to watch, and then head off to San Francisco on my own after you’re…”

“Are you talking about…” My voice is just a whisper now. “…killing me?”

Sean looks down at the floor. “Well, when you put it that way, it sounds so harsh.” Sean smiles this funny little smile. And then he bursts into tears. He sobs in ragged gasps, his shoulders shaking. And I just watch him. He picks his head back up; he wipes his eyes with the heel of his hand. “This is what I have to do now. I wish I had a choice…”

“But you do!” I say. “You always have other choices!”

“No,” Sean says. He waves the gun back and forth like an extension of his finger. “I could never just let you go.” He’s shaking his head. “You’d tell people and then I’d never be able to make things right.” Sean is pointing the gun straight at me. He stands up and steps back. “And even if you didn’t, you don’t love me anymore and you think I’m some monster. And I just couldn’t live knowing that you think such terrible things about me. I couldn’t stand it.” His arm is shaking. Clear fluid is running out of his eyes, his nose. I strain against the belt, but it’s tied too tightly. I can’t move. I stare at the gun. I cannot believe this is real. I cannot believe this is real.

I cannot believe it ends like this.

“I have to just get this over with.” His voice is calmer now. He’s talking to himself. “I just have to do it and get it over with.” He walks forward, wraps his arms around my shoulders, and squeezes me tight. I can feel his heart pounding. “Just please,” he whispers. “Keep your eyes closed, okay?”

Ten seconds left on earth. He lets go, kisses me on the top of the head, squeezes me again, hard. Five seconds.

“Sean, wait!”

Four seconds.

“I can’t.”

Three seconds.

“WAIT!”

Two seconds.

“I’m really sorry, sweetie.”

Sean takes a deep breath. He cocks the trigger.

One second.

“Close your eyes,” he says.

"
S
EAN, I LOVE YOU!"

Sean freezes, his arm stuck straight out in front of him. He blinks.

“What? ”

My whole body is shaking. “Sean, don’t kill me,” I shout. “I love you! Do whatever you want to Nina. I don’t care! I don’t care, I only care about you.”

Something flickers across his face.

“You’re just saying that,” he says, “to get me to let you go.” But he wants to believe me, I can tell he wants to believe me.

“No,” I say. “I don’t
want
you to let me go!
I want to be with you.
”

“Then why…then why were you acting like that? Why were you looking at me like that before?”

“I was jealous! When I saw those letters, it made me feel sick! Because I was jealous and I wanted you to be able to love
me
that much.”

Sean frowns. “But why did you go into my bag then?”

“Because I love you!” I say. “Isn’t that obvious? I was
feeling insecure.” I pause. “And I was worried that maybe that person who calls you all the time and hangs up really
is
another girl and just the idea of it makes me want to vomit and I just want you all to myself! I wanted to make sure there was no one else!”

And Sean is staring at me, wrestling within himself. I can see it on his face.

I go on. “I don’t care about Nina or your brother or anyone! I understand why you did what you did! It was only because you’re so passionate, because you really know how to love people. Because you really love with all your heart! So I don’t care what you do to Nina because I love you and that means you’re my family now. And I am your family, and we don’t need anyone else.”

Sean leans forward.

“You really love me?” He sounds so desperate.

“More than anyone I’ve ever known.”

He lowers the gun and leans in even closer. Our foreheads are touching.

“I’ll still need to go to San Francisco and take care of Nina, you understand that, right? I don’t think I’ll be able to move on until I do. It’s not fair for her to be alive when he isn’t. And I won’t be able to go on and live a normal life until everything is even. Until I make it even.” He sounds so calm now, like he could be talking about anything.

“Of course,” I say. “She deserves it. Whatever happens to her, she brought it on herself.”

He leans back. “So you’ll come with me? You’ll help me find her?”

I nod. “I’ll go anywhere you want,” I say.

“You think she’ll still be there?”

“Oh yes,” I say, and then in my loudest voice, “She’s definitely still in San Francisco. And I know just where to start looking for her when we get there, too. Right on Haight Street. We’ll find a clue as to where she is, right on Haight Street. So we’ll be there in about twelve hours, I guess. Or maybe thirteen. And we’ll go right there to Haight Street.”

Sean leans back. He’s not crying anymore, his eyes look huge, oddly beautiful, in that way sick things can be.

He stares at me. I stare back.

This is my last and only hope. I slow my breathing. Inside I am screaming, but my face is calm. I just stare into his eyes, trying to radiate love.

Time creeps by. One minute. Two minutes. I don’t even blink.

Finally, Sean lets out a huge sigh and his mouth curls into a strangely sweet smile. For a moment he looks about ten years old. “I love you more than I ever loved her,” Sean says. “You don’t have anything to worry about. That was just a fantasy, but this…” His lips are over mine, his breath is hot, his teeth knocking against me. It takes everything I have in me not to gag. He pulls back and strokes the side of my face with the gun. “…this is real.”