Chapter Forty-One

As I drive home, the road starts to blur. I’m so dizzy with disgust that I have to pull over.

I’m now convinced that Misha knows exactly where Kaycee is. Sheriff Kahn might even be in on it, or at least have been persuaded by Optimal to look the other way.

It all makes terrible sense: Kaycee’s game, and the chance to make some real money. It likely started with a single buyer; one of the head guys at Optimal might have told Mitchell what he was looking for. One buyer became two, and then three, and then more than that. At some point, the demand for photos morphed into a desire for the real thing, and grew into its own kind of culture, into its own economy. Optimal executives could use this special kind of sexual entertainment—deeply forbidden, deeply illegal, and, to a certain kind of person, doubly appealing—to keep the regulatory agencies and government higher-ups happy while they did whatever they wanted.

But however things began, Misha—and her contacts at Optimal—are clearly the ones now running the show. The Optimal Scholarship is bait. It’s how they fish for targets.

What would someone like Misha, the vice principal, the person in charge of doling out scholarship money to at-risk students, be able to convince the girls to do? How easily might they confuse what was happening for friendship, for attention, the way Amy had online?

I can’t imagine. I won’t.

It’s small comfort to think that Kaycee died—must have died—because she refused to keep participating.

I can’t call Joe; he’ll just say that I’m grieving or that I’ve finally lost it. I can’t go to the cops because Sheriff Kahn is in Optimal’s pocket—he must be. Who knows how long he’s been covering for them, or how many others in the sheriff’s department are in the know? I trust Condor, but I don’t know whether he’ll trust me. He freaked out when I suggested Kaycee hadn’t left town, and practically accused me of being a conspiracy theorist—what will he think if I tell him I’ve exposed an actual conspiracy?

Still, I pull up Condor’s number before I can second-guess myself. The phone rings six times and then rolls over to voicemail. I hang up, then wish I hadn’t. I redial, hang up after one ring when I realize he’ll think I want to see him.

I send him a text instead. I decide on the truth, or something close to it.

There are enough lies in this town.

You said I was chasing a conspiracy. I found one. I don’t know who else to talk to. Call me back. I add please, then delete it. Too desperate.

I press Send.

Is it possible that Kaycee pretended to be sick because she was trying to communicate a message about Optimal? Was she not so much pretending as signaling? A way of making Optimal the focus of attention without implicating herself directly?

As soon as I think it, I know it must be true. It fits. Kaycee loved that—secret messages, cryptic ways of communicating. The summer after fifth grade she tried to make up a whole new language that only we would be able to understand, and was so frustrated when I couldn’t learn it fast enough that she threatened to stop being my friend, only relenting when I burst into tears. She was always all tricks and codes and clues. The kind of girl you could only get close to the way you have to creep sideways toward a wild animal, not making eye contact, so it won’t run away.

However screwed up she was, however much to blame for starting the Game in the first place, she regretted it. Maybe for the first time in her life, she was trying to do the right thing.

And she died for it.

My phone rings.

I catch it on the first ring and don’t even have time to glance at the name before I answer.

“Condor?” My voice is still croaky.

There’s a slight pause. “It’s Brent,” Brent says. He doesn’t bother keeping the hurt from his voice. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“Brent. Hi. Sorry.” My chest tightens. Does he know? Could he possibly know? I think of what he told me at the football game: I’m beginning to think you’re right about Optimal…there’s something funny going on in accounting.

“I’ve called every day. I’ve been worried about you.”

“I know. I’ve been…busy.” An obvious lie. By now, Brent must know I’m off the Optimal case. “I’m okay, though.”

“You don’t sound okay,” Brent says matter-of-factly. “You sound like you’ve been crying.”

I hesitate. Brent works for Optimal. He’s friends with Misha. He dated Kaycee for years—and yet, he kissed me.

On the other hand, he’s never blamed or punished me for investigating Optimal, or tried to warn me away. He admitted Misha always had a thing for him. Misha is an expert liar. Why wouldn’t she be lying to Brent?

“Abby?” Brent sounds as if he’s pressing his mouth into the phone, trying to reach his way through it. “Are you still there?”

“I’m here,” I say. Can I trust him? Yes or no. Heads or tails.

I count seven crows on a telephone wire. Seven for a secret, never to be told.

“Talk to me,” he says. Warm. Concerned.

“You’re right. I’m not okay.” Then, before I can regret it: “How much do you know about the Optimal Scholarships?”

“The…?” Now Brent sounds bewildered. This definitely wasn’t what he expected me to say.

“The scholarships,” I repeat. “What do you know about them?”

Brent clears his throat. “Not much, honestly. I know Misha manages the program and our CFO oversees the financing. But why on earth…?”

And I’m sure, now, he isn’t faking his confusion. He can’t be.

“I need to know I can trust you.” My phone is hot in my hand. “I need you to promise.”

“Promise what? What is this about, Abby?”

And finally I can’t bear to hold it in anymore, can’t bear the weight of it alone. “They’re using the girls, Brent.” My voice cracks. “They’re using them as—as collateral. Currency. Bribes. It’s been going on for years. I think—I think Kaycee knew about it. I think she was killed. I think that’s why she was killed.”

There’s a long silence. “What you’re saying,” he says finally, “it doesn’t make any sense. It’s…” He sucks in a breath. “I can’t believe it.”

It’s the first time I’ve ever felt sorry for him. I think again of the time I caught him with Misha in the woods behind the school. What lies was she feeding him then?

“I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s true.”

More silence. When he speaks again, he can hardly manage a whisper.

“I always wanted to believe…” His voice breaks. “I always wanted to think she was okay.” He clears his throat. “Jesus. Can we meet up? Can we talk in person?”

He doesn’t think I’m crazy.

“Okay,” I say, “I’m at my dad’s house.” I guess it’s my house now.

“I’ll come as soon as I can. Don’t—don’t tell anyone else, okay? If you’re right…” His voice cracks again. “We can’t trust anyone.”

That word, we, lights up my insides. I’m not alone anymore. Brent is on my side.

“I won’t,” I tell him, and hang up.

My father’s house is cool and quiet. It smells like Pine-Sol and Windex. I’ve almost cleaned away the past.

I’ve tucked my mother’s jewelry box on the top shelf of my father’s closet, behind the few items of his that I intended, only a few days ago, to keep. Now I see there’s no point. There is no meaning attached to his belt, or his tie, or the two-dollar bill he kept folded in his wallet, just as my mother’s ghost has not imprinted on her jewelry, just as Kaycee cannot be resurrected through her fingerprints on Chestnut’s collar.

I loosen the collar from the tangle of cheap necklaces—junk, all of it. The past is a trick of the mind. It’s a story we misunderstand over and over.

I find a shovel in my dad’s shed and set out for the reservoir with Chestnut’s collar coiled around my wrist. Years ago I set out to bury it; instead, I let Brent kiss me, and from that moment on, without knowing it, I’ve been stuck in place.

I remember burying Chestnut close to the shore—I insisted on it, because he loved the water—and my dad marked the grave with a pile of rocks he pulled from the underbrush. But I can’t find the grave anywhere. The rocks must have been moved—used to line a fire pit, maybe, or as part of another kid’s imagined fairy world.

In the end I just pick a spot that seems nice, a place where the dirt hasn’t quite given out to mud, and I start to dig. A small hole will do it, but I shovel until my arms ache, until my hands blister and I’m suddenly aware of the sun kissing the tree line.

The hole is absurdly large. Grave-sized. I’m not just burying the collar. I’m burying Kaycee.

I drop the collar into the dirt. And then I cover it, tamping down the earth until you would never know it had been disturbed.

I’ve only just returned to the house when I hear the distant sound of tires crunching up the studded dirt road. Brent. I have just enough time to tuck the shovel back in the shed before he comes around the side of the house, looking out of place in his work clothes, his shiny shoes covered with mud and grass.

“Abby. Thank God.” He practically runs to hug me. “I was banging on the front door. You weren’t home. No one answered. I thought—” He doesn’t have to tell me what he thought.

“I’m okay.” I mean it this time. “Just doing something I should have done a long time ago.”

“Your phone call…I can hardly think straight.” He shakes his head.

“Inside,” I tell him. He nods and follows me.

The living room is mostly empty, now stripped of everything but the furniture that was too heavy to move to the Dumpster. Brent waits while I splash water on my face. I’m surprised by my reflection. I look pale and wild, my eyes sunken from too much booze and not enough sleep.

When I return to the living room, Brent has poured two tall glasses of scotch.

“Macallan,” he says, gesturing at the bottle. “I had it in my desk. I was saving it for a special occasion…” He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Well. This is an occasion.”

I don’t feel like drinking, but I take a few sips anyway.

“Tell me,” he says. “Tell me everything.”

So I do. I tell him about Tatum Klauss, and Sophie Nantes, and what I found out from Amy McMann. About the Optimal Stars, and the parties where they were carefully screened, and Misha taking some of the most troubled girls under her wing. I repeat the story she told me about Frank Mitchell, and the so-called hypothetical instance of a man wanting younger girls. By the time I’ve finished half my story, and half my glass, Brent is refilling his for a third time. His eyes are red, and he’s sweating through his shirt.

By the time I get to Kaycee, to how it fits, he can’t take it anymore and stands up.

“I need a minute,” he says, gasping. “Give me a minute.” He hurtles through the screen door. I hear him pacing, spitting out his nausea in the grass. I know exactly how he feels.

The night has come without my noticing; we’ve been sitting in the half dark, and when I stand I can hardly see to fumble on a light. Brent is still outside. No longer on the porch, he is standing motionless by his car, staring out into nothing.

Sudden dizziness forces me to sit again. My mouth is chalk-dry. The scotch doesn’t help. I reach for my bag, and the water bottle inside of it. When was the last time I ate anything? I can’t remember.

I shouldn’t have drank; I need to stay focused. We need to make a plan.

My hand lands on my phone, flashing with new alerts. Three missed calls from Condor. I must have silenced the ringer. He’s sent a text, too, heavy on the punctuation—for some reason it takes me a minute to tack the words down into place, to make them stop blurring together: he wants to know if I’m all right.

Just as I’m about to put the phone down, an e-mail lands. Portland again, forwarding his last message, the one whose subject is Digging. I open it half by accident, squinting at the grid of paragraphs, fighting against a growing blurriness in my brain.

I wanted to be sure you saw this. Could be important.

Below that is his original message. Words leap out at me—Kaycee. Poisoning. Symptoms.

The words circle and I have to pin them down, one by one, staring them hard into place.

I did some more thinking about what you said about Kaycee’s symptoms. You’re right. Her symptoms never corresponded to lead exposure. But they’re identical to the symptoms of mercury poisoning. Check it out.

Tremors.

Confusion.

Aphasia (short-term memory loss).

Balance problems, uncontrolled body movements.

Nausea, vomiting.

Then:

I’m not sure how she could have been exposed, or why she would have been the only one affected. I did some digging and found out that mercury was used decades ago in paint. Didn’t you say she was an artist?

I have to read that line, again and again, before it makes any sense.

Or rather—I have to read it, again and again, hoping it will stop making sense.

All at once Kaycee roars back to life, like I always half expected she would. She is everywhere, urgent and afraid, breathing in my hair, whispering to me, holding tight with sweat-damp hands to my shoulders, willing me to understand, to listen, to see.

Your problem, Abby, isn’t that you can’t draw. It’s that you can’t see.

Look, look, look.

See.

See Kaycee, working alone, thumbing paint across a canvas, dizzied by the smell.

See Kaycee, painted head-to-toe in school colors for graduation.

See Misha and Brent, the way his hand tightened on her knee, the way he spoke to her. Reassuring.

In control.

See Brent coming through the woods, his hair wet, his shirt damp, as if he’d been swimming.

See the way he reached out to kiss you.

See flashes behind your eyelids. Firefly bursts, but brighter.

Flashes. Flashlights. People on the water.

No.

Someone in the water.

We have to make sure…

The scene at the bonfire must have stirred up an old memory, the faint words, a scream, quickly stifled, all of it drifting to me dreamlike on snatches of wind…

We have to make sure she’s not breathing.

See the way you stood in front of the mirror later, tracing the places where he’d touched, trying to figure out if it was real, wondering whether he’d left a mark on you.

Wondering whether you still smelled like his fingers.

Like the beach.

Like paint.