Twenty-Four #2
The sad thing is, it’s not an automatic death by the height alone. It’s maybe two stories down. But with the amount of rocks jutting out of the riverbed, it’s easy to see how Harlow and Opal could hit their heads and pass from the injuries.
It’s easy to see how someone would think throwing some corpses down here would hide what happened to them before.
I exhale slowly, unable to look away. I suddenly wish I knew the exact spot where everyone was found.
This fall might not have killed them, but this is where Harlow and Opal’s bodies lay for hours. It’s impossible to process, yet I can’t help but imagine other lives lost in this exact place. It holds a history to it far heavier than a spot this beautiful has any right to hold.
“You can ask me,” Beck says, startling me.
“Ask what?”
She crosses her arms across her chest, her whole body shaking. “How I felt when I heard she was missing.”
I fidget with my baseball hat for a few moments, unable to look Beck in the eye.
It makes logical sense how she’d fall onto this subject, yet it still feels so random.
I hadn’t prepared any scripts for this and it reminds me of the games Paisley would play with me, telling me to do one thing but meaning for me to do another.
Paisley, Harlow, and Opal always seemed so amused watching me not get social cues.
Do I really just ask the question Beck’s telling me to ask?
I exhale. I guess that’d be the easiest thing to do. Beck hasn’t judged me or made fun of me this whole trip. And I do genuinely want to know the answer.
“How did you feel when you heard she went missing?” I ask as I set my hat back on my head.
Beck shuffles an inch forward toward the edge of the trail. My stomach drops, but I tell myself I don’t need to grab her yet.
“I was asleep,” she says. “Mom came into the room and said she hadn’t heard from Paisley and she wanted me to call her.
I was still so angry about the trophy incident that I told my mom to fuck off and went back to sleep.
The next thing I know, my mom’s in my room screaming, hysterical, saying the police called and Harlow and Opal were dead.
My mom grabbed me and tried dragging me out of bed, but I pushed her away and started screaming back at her, telling her to leave me alone.
I ran out of the house with that news, pissed at her for interrupting my sleep on a Saturday.
Her words didn’t really hit me until I was five, six blocks away from the house and without my phone.
But once I heard Paisley was MIA, all I could think about was waiting for Mom to cool off and seeing if we could go back to how things were before Paisley was born. ”
My breath catches in my throat with each word. The world where I thought this was anything but a raw confession from someone struggling with grief feels light-years away. Even the chittering of the forest seems to have silenced to hear Beck Horne speak.
“I don’t even fucking remember before Paisley was born, but I was standing there feeling hope,” she continues.
“Like we’d eradicated some fucking virus from the house and not my little sister.
My little sister who I loved despite everything she put me through.
” A lump tugs at my own throat; her little sister she loved despite what she put her through, same as the friend I loved despite what she put me through. I get it. I get it so deeply it aches.
Beck’s voice thickens with tears. “And now I’ve got exactly what I want. Both my parents’ attention, hopes, and happiness pinned on me. I’m the golden child again. I hate it, and yet…” A sob racks her body, “I don’t miss her. I still feel so much more hopeful with-without—”
I pull Beck into a hug.
She drops her cheek against mine, locking her arms around me.
My legs wobble and the only thing I can do is lower us to the forest floor.
She goes down like a dead weight, only falling into me more as we kneel in front of each other, breathe with each other.
Her chest hiccups, struggling to match my slow, even breaths.
Hot tears slip down my face, and before I know it, I’m burying my face into hers too, sniffling along with her.
Gradually, Beck’s shaking lets up.
“It’s so much to put on you,” I say. My voice is raspy. “And it’s okay if she was awful to you and it feels better not to have that anymore.”
“What if I just didn’t like her?” Beck says, her voice raspy but even. “What if I still don’t like her, and now she’s dead?”
I don’t know the answer to that. But whatever the answer is, I’m struggling with the same thing.
The foliage by our faces suddenly breaks, revealing a squirrel. My heart jerks, but my brain catches up quickly. It’s a smaller squirrel, nose and hands twitching. It eyes us, a hair long enough for me to see Beck smile before it scurries up a nearby tree.
Beck stands up, pulling me up with her. “How much longer to this ghost town, you think?”
Our answer comes within the next few steps when the trees break away into a meadow dotted in old, weathered wood buildings.
We’ve reached one of the last places where Paisley, Harlow, and Opal were before they died. All we have to do is figure out how they went from here back to that ravine.