When we got to the hospital, a panel van was parked across four handicap spaces in front of the building. One side of the van looked like it had kissed a guardrail recently, and the scrapes and gouges ran from the front fender to the busted-out taillight. On the back, stickers covered the tinted windows: I counted at least twelve different NPR affiliate stickers, as well as an enormous BBC World Service logo and, covering a cantaloupe-sized dent in the rear bumper, a Mind the Gap sticker.
Emmett groaned, wriggling his hand free of mine and covering his eyes. “Drop me off here. Or better yet, just shoot me.”
“You recognize that van?”
“Of course I recognize it. Do you think you could forget it?”
“I guess it’s pretty memorable.”
“Yeah, well, it’s even more memorable when the lady who drives it is the one who convinced everyone in the state that you killed your girlfriend.”
“What? She’s some kind of reporter?”
“That’s about the best way to put it. I’m serious, stop the truck.”
I eased into an empty patch of asphalt. “I can drop you off at home.”
“No, my mom will kill me if I don’t get her car back this afternoon. Jesus, I can’t believe my fucking luck today. How did she find out about this?” Without waiting for an answer, Emmett added, “Can you get my keys from Austin? I’ve been texting him for ten minutes, but he won’t answer, and I’m not going anywhere near the hospital.”
“Yeah.”
“Vie, if a lady named Mer Stroup-Ogle tries to talk to you, run.”
“That’s her?”
He grimaced. “Please get me those keys.”
I parked the truck and jogged towards the hospital. The building, with its fresh stucco and its splashing fountains and its oiled bronze fixtures, was out of place in Vehpese. It was too new, too fresh, and too stylishly ‘Western.’ The emergency room doors slid open as I approached, and a blast of warm, dry air hit me. The waiting room inside smelled of disinfectant and body odor and musty, cloying smell that made me think of old people and thick, dark scabs. A handful of people waited: a man with a gray beard to his waist, the wispy tip tied with a ribbon, holding a bloody towel around one arm; a mother holding her child tight against her chest as she inspected his ear, fished inside it with the nail of her pinkie finger, and clucked in frustration; and pair of young women, both obviously with Native American heritage, one with road rash along her cheek and arm, the other slumped forward crying into two handfuls of what looked like a hemp skirt. Aside from the Native American girl’s crying, the room was silent.
Two cramped rows of molded plastic chairs took up one side of the room, while on the right, vacant wheelchairs waited for their next occupant. Ahead of me, a plate-glass window with the sign, Registration. Behind the glass sat a thin-faced, thin-lipped man who looked like he bought bronzer by the gallon: every inch of exposed skin was the color of a dried-up carrot. I started towards him, since he looked like the closest thing to someone in authority, but I stopped when a pair of double doors flung open.
The woman who came out was not thin. She was fat, although that wasn’t quite the right word, because she was only fat from the waist up. Her top half had swollen like a balloon ready to pop; even the features of her face—her lips, her eyelids, the lobes of her ears—were distended and puffy. But her legs were sticks that ended in a pair of glitzy white sneakers that couldn’t have been any bigger than a size 5. The whole effect made me dizzy, and I was half-convinced that a good, strong gust of wind would knock this woman on her back and she’d never be able to get up again.
As this bizarre-looking woman came through the door, a familiar voice shouted for security, and for a moment Dr. Fossey appeared in the doorway. With her casual elegance, Dr. Fossey turned towards the man at the registration desk. “Roger,” she shouted. “Get security and get this woman out of here.” Then Dr. Fossey disappeared back through the doors, which glided shut behind her.
I took advantage of the distraction to creep closer to the registration desk. For the moment, everyone’s attention was focused on Dr. Fossey’s dramatic exit. Once I’d moved as close as I dared, I dropped into one of the molded plastic chairs and snatched up a pamphlet, which I pretended to read.
The woman with the puffy lips straightened her hair—a salt-and-pepper bob that curled around her fleshy face—and flashed the carrot-colored man—Roger, I assumed—a conspiratorial glance. This woman, I decided, had to be Mer Stroup-Ogle, and my suspicion was confirmed a moment later when she discreetly tapped her phone and said, in a voice pitched so low that I barely heard, “Got it.”
Roger’s mouth twisted into what might have passed for a grin. “I got something else, if you want it.”
“Roger, darling,” Mer said with an oozing little shriek. “I absolutely want it.”
He waved for her to follow as he left the desk, and Mer swept through the double doors again, back into the space from which she had just been so forcibly ejected.
I counted to twenty, trying to give them something of a head start, but a voice interrupted me.
“Something you need to tell me?” Austin asked. His eyes moved from mine to the pamphlet.
Sexually-transmitted Infections, the pamphlet read in a cheery, cursive font. You Don’t Have to be Alone Anymore.
I groaned. “I wish I could explain—”
“I wish you could too.”
“—but we’ve got to go now.” Grabbing him by the arm, I steered him towards the double doors. We passed deeper into the hospital, and as we did, I caught a glimpse of Mer’s salt-and-pepper hair at the end of an intersecting hallway. Austin trotted alongside me. His expression hadn’t softened; he still looked pissed. No, pissed was putting it mildly. But at least he was coming with me.
Mer and Roger turned the corner ahead of us, and after a whispered discussion, Roger looped back. He was hurrying and had his head tucked almost to his chest, which made him look guilty as sin and which explained why he didn’t notice Austin or me. From around the corner, the sound of the camera on Mer’s phone clicked and clicked and clicked. Then, a door shut, and Mer’s heels clicked towards us.
“Pretend you’re sad,” I said, wrapping Austin in my arms, and burying his head in my shoulder. I turned my face in towards his, hoping that it looked like I was comforting him, maybe speaking softly to him.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mer as she passed us. Her grotesquely swollen features were flushed, and her lips—the color of orange sherbet—had plumped into a ferociously satisfied bow. Wrapped in the glow of being incredibly pleased with herself, she gave us only a casual glance. Then she saw what I had in one hand, threw her head back, and laughed. It was like a thousand blackbirds breaking into the air at once, cawing and rushing and flapping.
“Good luck, darlings,” she called to us in that affected tone, and then she clicked her way down the hall and out the doors.
“Please tell me,” Austin said into my shoulder, “you’re not still holding that pamphlet.”
I tried to let go silently, but the damned paper crinkled and rustled as it fell to the linoleum, and Austin let out a disappointed sigh.
“What are we doing?” he asked, stepping away.
“Trying to figure out what she wanted so bad.” I darted around the corner and yanked on the handle of the closest door, which was marked Storage. It was locked. “Give me a credit card.”
“What?”
“I left my picks at Sara’s. Give me a card.”
Austin dug out his wallet and passed me a Visa. I jimmied it along the crack in the door, and a moment later, the lock pinged open. “Guess they aren’t too worried about security.”
“We didn’t used to have so many petty criminals in town.”
I stepped into the storage closet, and Austin shut the door behind us. He produced his phone, which we used as a flashlight. It only took me half a moment to see what Mer Stroup-Ogle had been so excited about: spaced along one shelf in clear plastic bags were Makayla’s dress and shoes, and on the shelf below, Hailey’s. On the other side of the door, voices were moving towards us, so I grabbed Austin’s hand.
“Take pictures.”
He started snapping, taking the photos from every possible angle, even turning the shoes and dress over to capture their other side. His thoroughness impressed me, but it didn’t surprise me. I’d seen Austin work with animals, I’d seen him play sports, I’d seen him fish this morning, and I knew that when he put his mind to something, he did the best job he could.
As he documented their clothing, I tried to open my third eye. In the past, before I had a better way of describing what I was doing, I had imagined a doorway inside of myself, deep inside me, at the bottom of my mind. And to get to that doorway, I had to squeeze past all of the junk—memories and hopes and fears and worries—that I had cluttered to block the path. Emmett had helped me learn that what I had inside me wasn’t a doorway but an eye, an inner eye, and that had made everything easier. But easier wasn’t the same thing as easy, and I still had trouble sometimes. Trying to open my inner eye, I felt the same pounding pressure, like waves crashing against me, battering me into black-blue depths. Yes, that was right, a part of me realized. It was like waves, and their force as they struck kept me off balance, unable to engage my inner sight. It was the same feeling I’d had in the clearing, when we’d found Makayla, and the same feeling I’d had in the hallway at Vehpese High. With a frustrated breath, I gave up; I wasn’t going to be able to see anything, and Austin had finished taking pictures. A moment later, the voices passed the closet door, and as they faded down the hallway, I moved for the handle.
Austin’s hand on my neck surprised me. His grip was firm without being threatening, and he drove me back against a row of shelving with small, quiet steps. My pulse pounded against the calluses on his palm. His lips grazed mine in the dark: once, twice, and then a fierce, almost painful kiss.
“I thought you were mad at me,” I whispered through bruised lips.
“I am, but this whole thing is kind of a thrill.”
“Thrill or not, I’d prefer not to get arrested.”
“Spoilsport.”
But he released me, and we slipped out of the closet—and that metaphor had never sounded sexy until this moment.
As we were approaching the door that would take us out of the emergency room section proper and into the waiting room, thin-faced, thin-lipped, carrot-colored Roger emerged from a side door. Faster than I would have expected, he latched onto my arm.
“Who are you? What are you doing back here?”
“Get your hand off him,” Austin said, his voice rumbling, his fists suddenly clenched at his sides.
“You’re not supposed to be back here,” Roger said, his voice high-pitched and whining. “You’re trespassing. I’m calling security.” He tried to lug me along, but all he did was come up short when he realized he couldn’t drag my weight. For the first time that day, I thanked Sara for the extra stack of pancakes.
“I said,” Austin rumbled again, “get your hand off him.” He took a step forward.
“Help,” Roger squealed, stumbling back and loosing his grip. “Security! Help!”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Diana Fossey was thin, poised, and had a slight droop to the left side of her face that kept her from being perfect. Her silvery hair swooshed as she came around the corner. “What in the world—” She stopped as she saw us.
Roger huddled against the wall, one arm cradled across his chest as though I had grabbed him, instead of the other way around. “Dr. Fossey, watch out, they’re—”
“My guests,” she interrupted briskly. “Boys, you were supposed to check in with me before leaving the cubicle.”
“Your guests?” Roger said. “They were hostile. This one,” he pointed at Austin, “threatened me.”
“Go back to your desk, Roger.”
Mouth agape, Roger scuttled towards the closest door.
“I think you dropped this,” Austin said, holding out a crumpled pamphlet that looked familiar.
Roger snatched it out of Austin’s hand without looking at it and darted through the doorway. As soon as he was out of sight, Dr. Fossey grabbed each of us by the arm, wheeled us around, and marched us towards the back of the hospital.
“I suppose,” she said, “this is the thanks I get for assuming you two aren’t the normal adolescent deficients that populate this town. Did you break in here on a dare, or—”
“We found her,” I said in a low voice. “We’re the ones who found Makayla.”
Dr. Fossey ushered us into a cubicle and pulled the curtain shut. With her voice pitched so that it barely carried to us, she said, “You should be very careful who you tell that to. And very, very careful of how you tell your story.”
“Why?” Austin asked. “It’s the truth.”
“Because that girl claims she’s been raped, and both of those young women show signs of sexual trauma. I just finished with Makayla. I was on my way to see Hailey when I heard Roger screaming.”
“She was raped?” Austin asked.
“They both were, it seems. Repeatedly.” Dr. Fossey’s cold, patrician features still showed her fury. “Whoever was holding those girls was a monster.”
“Is there any chance they could be lying?”
“What?” Austin said, his eyes sliding to me in shock.
Dr. Fossey fixed me with her ashen eyes. “That’s a legitimate question, Mr. Eliot, but I imagine most people will have trouble seeing it as such. Their story is convincing. There is evidence of sexual assault. Do you have some reason to suspect they’re not telling the truth?”
I did. I had a very good reason: I’d seen Makayla arrive, safe and sound, in an airplane just a few days before. Whatever she was planning, whatever her goal was, she had gone to extreme lengths to make sure her cover story was believable. A dead girl who came back to life, the tragic victim of kidnapping and sexual assault—I fought back a frustrated sigh. Everybody would be on her side. Everybody.
In response to Dr. Fossey’s question, I just shook my head.
“The sheriff will be here any moment,” Dr. Fossey said. “As will Makayla’s and Hailey’s parents. I imagine this will be a difficult time for all of them.”
“And we’ll have to tell our story.”
“That’s right, Mr. Eliot. I suggest you be very clear—and very careful—over the next few days.”
“We’re innocent,” Austin said.
“I have no doubt of that,” Dr. Fossey said. “But people like explanations, and their favorite explanations are neat ones. You were the ones who miraculously found these missing girls. Let’s hope that’s all the explanation these people need.”
With a curt nod for each of us, Dr. Fossey left.
“Emmett,” I groaned.
“Oh,” Austin said, his voice tight. “What about him?”
“He’s been waiting in the truck. He needs his keys.”
“Then you should go give them to him.” Austin fished them out of his pocket and slapped them into my hand.
“Why don’t you come with me?”
“No way. I’d hate to be a third wheel.”
I moved so I could look him in the eyes. “Are you—”
“You’d better not say that fucking word.”
I swallowed. Austin hadn’t ever talked to me like that. At least, not since we’d started dating. “There’s nothing going on between me and Emmett.”
“Then go give him the keys.”
“What’s going on? What did I do?”
“I don’t get you,” Austin said with a shrug. “You told me you didn’t do anything. Now you ask me what you did. Which is it? Did you do something, or didn’t you?”
“Jesus, Austin. Are you serious right now? Will you come with me? Emmett will tell you the same thing: nothing is going on.”
Voices erupted down the hallway, and Austin shouldered past me to peek past the curtain. “No,” he said. “I won’t be going out there. And neither will you.”
“Why?” I asked, but as the clamor of voices—frenzied, almost hysterical voices—grew closer, I thought I knew.
“Because Emmett fucking Bradley just walked in.”