“Still doing the all-natural stuff?” he asks as we make our way into the living room. I sigh in relief; he doesn’t notice that I’m out of breath. One of her books from the box lies open on the coffee table.
“Mostly it’s yoga and herbs. Cortisone shots in my back. Non-opiate pain pills.”
We sit down on the stuck-in-the-seventies couch, a careful amount of space between us. Other than us, the only thing that’s changed in the room is the mantelpiece. All through our childhood, candles and crucifixes had surrounded a large black-and-white picture of Mina’s dad, beaming down at the room. When I was little, spending the night, sometimes I’d watch Mrs. Bishop light the candles. Once I’d seen her kiss her fingers and press them to the corner of his picture, and something sick churned inside my stomach, realizing that we all go away in the end.
Mina’s picture is next to her father’s now. She stares back at me from her mass of dark curls, that sly, secretive smile flirting at the corners of her mouth, her explosive energy just an echo in her eyes.
Some things can’t be contained or captured.
I look away.
“Your mom—” I start.
“She’s in Santa Barbara staying with my aunt,” Trev says. “She needed…Well, it’s better for her. For right now.”
“Of course. Are you going back to Chico State in the fall?”
He nods. “I have to repeat last semester. And I’m gonna commute. When Mom comes back…I need to stay close.”
I nod.
More excruciating silence. “I should go,” I say. “I just wanted to give you the box.”
“Sophie,” he says.
He says it so much like she used to. I know him. Every part of him, probably even more than I ever knew Mina, because Trev’s never bothered to hide from me. He’s never thought he had to. I know what he’s going to ask. What he wants me to do.
“Don’t,” I say.
But he’s determined. “I have to know,” he says, and it comes out so fierce. He looks at me like I’m denying him something necessary. Oxygen. Food. Love. “I’ve spent months with police reports and newspaper articles and rumors. I can’t stand it. I need to know. You’re the only person who can tell me.”
“Trev—”
“You owe me this.”
There is no way I’m getting out of here without answering his questions. Not without running.
Running from Trev used to be easy. Now it’s impossible.
He’s all I have left of her.
I rub at my knee, digging my fingers in the sore muscle between my kneecap and bone. I can feel the bumps of the screws if I press down deep enough. It hurts, doing this, but it’s the good kind of hurt, like a healing bruise. “Go ahead and ask.”
“The doctor who examined her…he said it happened fast. That she probably didn’t hurt at all. But I think he was lying to make me feel better.”
I don’t want to be near him while he does this to me—to both of us. I move to the end of the couch, tilting my body away from him, protecting myself from the onslaught.
“It wasn’t like that, was it?” Trev asks.
I shake my head. It had been the opposite, and he’s known that all along, but when I confirm it, I can see how it breaks him.
“Did she say anything?”
I wish I could lie to him. Wish I could say that she gave a proper good-bye, that she made me promise to watch out for him, that she said she loved him and her mom, that she saw her dad waiting for her on the other side with open arms and a welcoming smile.
I wish it had been like that. Almost as much as I wish it had been over instantly, so she wouldn’t have been so scared. I wish that any part of it could have been peaceful or quiet or brave. Anything but the painful, frantic mess we became in the dirt, all breath and blood and fear.
“She kept saying she was sorry. She…she said it hurt.” My voice breaks. I can’t continue.
Trev covers his mouth with his hands. He’s shaking, and I hate that I agreed to this. He can’t handle it. He shouldn’t have to.
This is mine to bear.
It would be so easy to drown all of this with pills. The urge snakes through me, it’s right below my skin, waiting to lash out and drag me down. I could make myself forget. I could snort so much that nothing would matter anymore.
But I can’t let it take over. Whoever did this has to pay.
Nine months. Three weeks. Five days.
“I tried, Trev. I tried to get her breathing again. But no matter what I did—”
“Just go,” he says tightly. “Please, go.” He stares straight ahead.
There’s a crash that makes me turn around before I can get to the front door. He’s kicked the coffee table over, spilling the contents of the box onto the floor. He meets my eyes, and I throw the words at him to break him, because I want to in that moment. Because he made me talk about it. Because he looks so much like her. Because he’s here and so am I, but she’s not—and that’s so unfair, I can barely breathe through it.
“Still can’t hate me, Trev?”
22
A YEAR AND A HALF AGO (SIXTEEN YEARS OLD)
“What do you think of Kyle Miller?” Mina asks. We’re making the hour-and-a-half drive to Chico, where Trev’s working on his bachelor’s in business. Mina likes to drag me with her on these monthly trips. I never put up much of a fight because it’s usually nice to see Trev. Mina had wanted to leave early, so I haven’t had a chance to take anything extra and it’s making me jittery. I wish I hadn’t said I’d drive, but I hate being the passenger, especially for long distances.
We pass by another roadside fruit stand, a crooked sign marked CLOSED FOR WINTER teetering in the wind. Miles and miles of walnut and olive orchards whiz by us on both sides, the branches stark and black against the pale gray sky. Tractors rust in the empty fields, along with the faded FOR SALE signs on the wire fences that have been hanging there forever.
“Soph?”
“Huh?”
“Stop zoning out. Kyle Miller? What do you think?”
“I’m driving. And why are we talking about Kyle Miller?” I don’t know why I’m playing dumb. When Mina gets bored, she toys with boys.
“I dunno. He’s sweet. He used to bring us brownies when you were in the hospital.”
“I thought his mom made those.”
“No, Kyle did. Adam told me. Kyle bakes. He just doesn’t broadcast it.”
“Okay, the brownies were good. But he’s not smart or anything.” I wonder if that’s the point. That he won’t be smart enough to notice. I’m always worried Trev will.
“Kyle’s not dumb,” she says. “And he’s got those big brown eyes. They’re like chocolate.”
“Oh, come on,” I snap, too on edge to hide my annoyance. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna start dating him just because he looks at you like he wants to be your love slave.”
She shrugs. “I’m bored. I need some excitement. This year has been blah. Trev’s gone, Mom’s got her charities. Not to mention the biggest thing to happen in school all year was homecoming court.”
“The look on Chrissy’s face when Amber hit her over the head with the scepter was worth the week in detention.”
Mina snickers. “You’re the one who broke her crown.”
I don’t bother to hide my grin. “I didn’t mean to step on it! That float was totally unstable. And I was already at a disadvantage.”
“Uh-huh, I believe you, Soph,” Mina says. “Homecoming was fun. Detention, not so much. But I don’t want fun. Or detention. I want something interesting to happen. Like when Jackie Dennings disappeared.”