Chapter 3
Evening Fires and Shitty Liars
ANNA
Tomorrow would be my twentieth birthday.
I was determined to try to have a good day, which meant not thinking about my drive home or any other bullshit that was just my head messing with me.
I wanted to pretend I was normal. To think I’d have a boyfriend.
To go to college. Get a job. I wanted a day when nothing would remind me of what happened that night, and that no one was ever caught.
That my memory was still gone. How I’d never fit in here, and not just because of the spectacle of my past, but because I just didn’t quite click with anyone else.
When I went downstairs, I found Susan in the kitchen. She was my best friend’s mom and the person who’d taken me in after I was found.
“Hey,” I said.
She was sitting on a barstool at the island, sipping from a steaming mug.
“How was your session yesterday?” she asked. A soft smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, her short brown hair neatly tucked behind her ears.
I gave her a wry look. She knew I hated them.
“Fine,” I said. “She gave me the all clear.”
Susan shot me a dubious look. “Really?”
I shrugged, mustering a pretense of innocence.
Susan raised an eyebrow.
“Seriously, I’m fine,” I said.
I wasn’t going to convince her tonight, but I’d try anyway. She was the last human on the planet I wanted worrying for another second. Susan had been the only stability in my life since everything happened. I owed her a little white lie.
Noticing a photo on the island, I glanced at it. It was a much younger Susan, my mom, and another woman who looked a lot like Susan.
“What’s that?” I asked, surprised to see a photo of my mom. She rarely let anyone take pictures of her.
Susan glanced at it, “Oh, I was going through some old albums. I thought you might want it.”
I picked it up, shocked to see my mom in a photo with Susan.
“You knew my mom back then?” I asked.
Susan nodded.
“That’s my sister, Annabelle,” Susan said.
A bang sounded at the front door, followed by a thud that was no doubt the door hitting the wall violently.
Susan slipped the photo into her pocket and gave me a look that said, we’ll talk later.
My mom was very private, but I guess it made sense that she knew some people.
That must’ve been why she was okay with Katie hanging out with us back then.
Katie was one of my best friends. She stood in the doorway, juggling an armful of books and a backpack slung over one shoulder that had to weigh more than she did.
She was a tall, thin, athletic type, with sandy blonde hair that hung down her back. She sauntered into the kitchen, dropped her backpack on the floor, and groaned.
“Do I have to go to college? Because it sucks. Like, it really sucks. It’s like a prison, and I don’t want to go back.”
I rolled my eyes, laughing at her antics.
“It’s only your first year, Katie,” Susan mused, her eyebrows raised in amusement.
“Ughh,” Katie growled. “Don’t remind me.”
I sniggered, and she shot me a glare. “What? Just wait until you start classes. We’ll see who’s laughing then.”
“I’ll be taking online classes, so none of this,” I said, waving my hand at her mess of books.
Susan shook her head in amusement. “Are you girls still going camping tonight?”
“Oh yeah, let me make sure Hunter got the campground,” Katie said, texting on her phone.
She scowled as she looked at the screen, texted again, this time with more force. Susan and I watched her, waiting for the bad news.
“Uggghh,” she said, slapping her phone on the counter.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I told Hunter to get the campground by the trails, but he waited too long. They were all booked, so he booked the one by the lake,” she said.
Susan leaned back, her lips tight. I shrugged.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’ll be fine.”
Katie looked at me like I was a child who needed a Band-Aid. “Are you sure, Anna? I’ll stay here with you, and we can make our s’mores in the backyard.”
Shaking my head, I said, “No, that’s ridiculous. We’ve been planning this for weeks. I’ll be okay.”
Katie crossed her arms. “Okay. But we can leave anytime.”
I smiled as she started texting again.
There was nothing out there. At least, not anymore. I should know. I’d checked. Multiple times after the incident. My old house was on that lake.
It would be fine.
The fire was blazing. Music blared amid the sound of laughter as people sat on tailgates, and others set up tents and chairs. Apprehension crept in like an old friend.
“Anna! What up, girlfriend?” called a familiar voice in a mock, high-pitched voice.
I glanced up and saw Eiryn arriving in his typical rolled to the three-quarter-length position sleeved polo. Relief washed over me as he hugged me.
“Hey,” I said. “I wasn’t sure you were going to make it.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” he said, his expression serious as he matched his inflections with his hand movements.
“You’re almost twenty! It’s basically a major holiday!
I mean, you can already vote and buy cigarettes, and you only have one more year until you can legally drink, but who cares! Twenty is gonna be your year, Anna.”
I shook my head, my mouth twitching into a smirk. I was already feeling the effects of whatever was in the drink I’d finished earlier. Eiryn was always fun to be around, but he was even more fun when I was intoxicated. Not that it occurred often or anything.
“I hope so,” I said. “I could use one of those.”
A new song started playing on the speaker, and Eiryn dramatically put both hands up.
“I. Love. This. Song.”
He grabbed me, pulling me up. There were lots of people here now, and other parties at nearby campsites were blaring in the distance.
The energy was surrounding me, vibing down to my bones.
It was the right thing to do. Eiryn always made it feel like this.
He had a knack for making me forget about anything unpleasant.
Or maybe it was the alcohol. It didn’t matter, did it?
After the sun fully descended beyond the horizon, the charge in the air began to sober me quickly.
Eiryn had entangled his face with a guy he’d been eyeing the whole night.
Their unashamed PDA both amused and bothered me.
I couldn’t imagine what it was like to be that free, and seeing it was a reminder of how isolated I was, even here in the middle of so much life.
“Anna,” Katie said, nudging me, breaking the tension building in my limbs. “Look.”
I immediately saw who she was looking at. It was Justin. The guy I had a crush on. If it even was a crush, anyway. After hours of relentlessly needling my brain, I’d produced his name as a guy I found attractive, which provided relief from Katie’s interrogation on my lack of a dating life.
I hadn’t thought about what that relief would cost.
Now, watching him talking to his friends around their trucks, I realized how much of a mistake that utterance had been.
“Come on,” she said, tugging my hand.
My heart was in my throat as I willed myself to resist her, but my body followed along automatically over to the group of guys.
“Hey!” Katie said, halting their conversation.
“Katie! How’s it going?” Justin asked, leaning in for a small hug.
Justin was tall and lean, with a soft, handsome face shrouded by short, wavy hair.
We knew each other from high school, from before everything that happened with my mom and the missing year, but I hadn’t seen him since.
Of all the guys Katie mentioned trying to hook me up with, he was the only one I hadn’t completely resisted.
“Katie!” shouted one of Hunter’s friends as he waved his hand with his drink in, sloshing it down his Carhartt.
“Hey, Jaaaay!” she said with a playful twang.
He jumped down, sloshing his beer again, and wrapped her in a bear hug. He turned to me next, and my body tensed as I realized I was about to be suffocated.
“Annaaaaaa!” he called, lifting me in an endearing hug.
I grinned, “Hey, Jay.”
“Happy birthday,” he said, grinning ear to ear as he put me down.
“Not yet, we have a few hours still,” I said.
“It’s your birthday tomorrow?” Justin asked, looking at me.
My chest tightened, but I managed a nod. I wasn’t used to talking to guys, so it didn’t matter if I found him attractive or not; I was going to make a fool of myself anyway. Finally, I managed, “Twenty. Can’t wait. One year closer to needing to have a plan I haven’t started on yet.”
He softened. “Hey, don’t be too hard on yourself. I think you deserve two gap years if you need them.”
“More like a gap lifetime,” I muttered.
Katie cleared her throat and said, “Come on, let’s go make s’mores!”
She pulled me along toward the bonfire, Justin laughing at her antics and following along. We made small talk, burned a few marshmallows, and he told me about how college was going.
I nodded along, listening to him tell me about his classes, my stomach flipping. I wanted this. To be normal. It was going well; my muscles were relaxing. Yeah, this was good. Maybe Katie was right.
Until he asked me a question.
I stiffened.
I didn’t want to talk about me. He was watching me curiously, and I closed my eyes.
Breathe, Anna. Just fucking say something.
“Yeah, I got my GED,” I managed, even though my throat was drier than a desert.
“That’s great,” he said. “It was, uh, pretty scary, that year you disappeared. Everyone looked everywhere for you. There were camera crews and reporters all over the place.”
Here it was—all the landmines I’d avoided were all going off at once. I pulled my marshmallow out, inspecting it, buying time as anxiety tightened my throat.
It was strange to hear his perspective on that time, and now that I was already uncomfortable, I wanted to hear more.
While I remembered bits and pieces, it was all a blur.
It took weeks for me to understand that an entire year had passed, and longer for them to convince me my mother was dead and it hadn’t been a terrible nightmare.