five #2
Then I grab the keys and head out. It’s bitter cold outside, and the sun is sharp as knives, the light more silver than gold this time of year.
I almost hit a car going around one of the turns on the way up the hill and realize I’m doing about forty over the speed limit, way over the line.
I wrestle the car under control, then keep going.
The other guy ends up in the ditch, but they didn’t hit anything, so they’ll be fine, and I really don’t want to be cussed at.
I go slower now, watching the speedometer, since I can’t really tell how fast I’m going when I’m fucked up.
I park at the lookout, then cross the road.
I figure I’ll be able to see Baron’s tracks and follow them to where he was last night.
He’ll remember where he left the body. That’s not something Baron would forget, and since I wasn’t there when he killed her, I’m not sure exactly where she ended up after I gave her the light and the gun and told her to run.
I picture her huddled against a tree, waiting for me.
Baron took the gun, so she can’t hurt me.
She won’t want to, anyway. She’ll be so happy to see me, so grateful, she’ll forget that I didn’t save her before.
I’ll be her savior now. I’ll bring her home, and when Olive sees her, she’ll forgive me for bashing her head in.
She’ll show Blue all the sloth stuff I got her, and Blue will see how much I love her sister, and she’ll fall in love with me.
Baron won’t even care. He has Mabel, and when he sees how happy they make me, he’ll let me have Blue, and we’ll raise Olive together as our daughter.
No kid on earth will ever be more spoiled than we spoil her.
She deserves it, after everything she’s had to go through already.
Of course that’s not possible, though.
It’s just a drug-dream, a wisp of Wonderland clinging to me even now that I’m back up the rabbit hole, on solid ground.
In reality, she’d probably file a restraining order and tell me never to come near her little sister again.
In reality, it’s been six months, and she’s not going to be waiting like it’s the next day after I left her.
And it turns out that it’s a lot harder to track someone than I thought.
I can’t find any footprints at all in the leaves and pine needles.
Finally, I find a partial one in the sand, and I head down the hill.
I have the shakes, and my stomach feels fucked up, but I’m hyper focused.
I need to find her. For Olive, I’ll find her.
Even if I can never see her again, never tell her I’m sorry, it would be my way of making amends.
But I don’t see another footprint, and for all I know, I could be ten yards, a hundred yards, from where Baron went.
Maybe I already passed it. I can’t seem to keep track of time.
I wander around in the woods until I’m pretty sure I’m lost. I hear a twig snap and spin around, but there’s nothing.
I keep seeing flashes in the corners of my eyes.
Whatever animal ate Blue, maybe it’s out here. Stalking me.
Maybe it’s the Black Widow, ready to claim one more victim.
Maybe Blue has been living out here in the woods, surviving on acorns, waiting for me to return to the scene of the crime, the betrayal, so she can jump out of the trees like a superhero and blow my brains out.
If Baron spared her, she could have spared him in return.
He might have bargained for his life by telling her he’d send me instead.
It would be such a tidy way to be rid of me, so he could have Mabel to himself.
I hear a car and consider running out and hitchhiking.
Even if it’s the wrong road, it’ll lead me somewhere.
I think about walking along the road like she did the night Baron picked her up, on his way out of Faulkner.
But look what happened to her when she hitchhiked.
If that’s not a cautionary tale, I don’t know what is.
I’d probably get someone even more psycho than Baron.
At least he loves the people he loves. Some psychos don’t love anyone. If karma’s real, I’d get one of those.
It was winter then too, just about one year ago, but it feels like a lifetime has come and gone since then, and I don’t think it’s just the drugs fucking with my sense of time. I think about what I was doing that night—not being a hero. Not saving my father.
Is that his ghost between the trees, watching? I walk towards it, not daring to blink. He’s standing there, a dark shadow, a frown of disapproval on his face. But when I’m close, he melts away, and it’s nothing but the shadow of a tree trunk.
Dad isn’t here to save me from myself. That’s all he wanted to do.
I think about him burning to death. Screaming for help.
I was sitting on Lo’s car, smoking a cigarette with Colt while he died.
Maybe, if I hadn’t been itching for that closeness, to prove something to him—that I was good enough for his sister, cool enough for him—I would have gone back in.
I might have saved Dad.
I step into a low spot and pitch forward, almost falling before I stumble back upright, catching myself on the trunk of a pine.
The big sections of bark are smooth, their edges rough against my fingertips.
I stare for a second, sure if I lift my hand, I’ll see blood.
That it will bubble from the cracks, running down the trunk in thick, sticky rivulets.
I yank my hand back and stare at my clean palm.
Then I turn back to the ditch I tripped on. My heart is beating all crazy and fucked up, and I’m not sure if the shakes are still from coming down. I’m suddenly so empty, so ravenous, and so fucking tired I don’t think I can stumble back to the car.
That’s when I notice the disturbance in the surface of the ground at my feet.
All the pine needles and sticks and leaves have been swept back, leaving a stretch of bare dirt.
It’s an indentation, about five or six feet long, too deep for an animal path, too short and shallow for a natural gulley or even a dry streambed.
The way it’s been cleared tells me all I need to know.
I fall to my knees, forgetting the weakness in my limbs, and dig.
The ground is hard packed and unforgiving, and I feel my nails peeling back, breaking and tearing, but I don’t stop.
It seems impossible it could have been packed down this hard in six months, but that’s all I can think. It has to be her grave.
I have to stop after a while. I sit back, my head swimming, my stomach churning.
I step away to get sick, only then noticing my fingers are black with dirt and blood, my nailbeds caked with it.
I stumble back to the ditch, now about twice as deep as it was, which is only maybe a foot deep.
There’s no way Baron dug into this. He didn’t even have a shovel.
If this is her grave, she’s not in it anymore.
I sink slowly down, down, onto my knees, my hands, and then onto my side. The scent of dirt and pine invades my nostrils, stings until my eyes burn and blur, until hot tears trickle from the cold corner and drip into the dirt.
I wish I’d found her, even if it meant she was dead.
I wish I’d saved her, even if it meant Baron hated me for it.
I wish I could take her place, even if it meant I’d be the one who never made it home.
I didn’t do it then, but maybe I can now.
Maybe I can finally make everyone happy.
That’s what I’m always trying to do, but it’s impossible when everyone wants something different, so I always fail.
I’m tired of failing, tired of being a loser, tired of being wrong and not realizing it until it’s too late to make it right.
This time, I can make it right. No one can blame me anymore if I’m not there to blame. No one can hate me if I don’t exist.
Not Harper and Royal, who might forgive me but never forget.
Not Mabel and Colt, who can’t forgive me or escape me.
Not Olive and Blue, from whom I could never ask forgiveness.
Most important of all, I couldn’t hate myself anymore.