Ten
True to my word, I send the Investigative Services Branch (ISB) of the National Forest Service the video as soon as I get home.
The house is empty, my family still presumably at Paisley’s burial.
I already feel like I’m living in another reality with Beck Horne, and my family’s absence as I send that tip only makes it more pronounced.
I savor that disconnect before the inevitable questions come about how I’m physically feeling and how Beck’s doing, showering off my funeral makeup, tears, and guilt and locking myself in my bedroom.
My desk beckons to me, my art supplies almost down to their nubs.
The irony of my forced separation from my friend group is that I spent most of junior year purposely sequestering myself from my peers.
Lunches with Paisley, Harlow, and Opal were replaced by lunches holed up in the art room churning out piece after piece.
My Winona Ryder movies and interviews and this art have become lifelines in a much more violent storm, but they’ve worked.
It’s also the last piece I was working on before I found out about Harlow and Opal.
I haven’t touched it in eight months, but the inspiration flies through my fingertips tonight.
Dad’s heavy footsteps sound from the living room, bringing along with them the aroma of fresh pizza, so I don’t know how long my parents will let me be before insisting I deal with my base physical needs.
Even as my stomach rumbles, I stay put. Pop music pumps out of my headphones, comforting and familiar.
“Emma?” someone calls from behind my door. I ignore them, deep in the zone.
As I fill in the brown of Winona’s eyes, I catch my mom saying Beck’s name. They’ll be in here before I finish Winona’s face.
Special interests always oscillate between two extremes for me: feeling shameful about them and hiding what I love or feeling the desire to mention them to coworkers and customers on the off chance they want to chat with me about them.
Every day I inch closer to seeing if illustration is a real career path, one rabbit hole at a time.
I know I could potentially illustrate in the context of graphic design and even get lucky and illustrate book covers.
But deep down, I yearn for the ’60s solely because of the illustrated movie posters.
It’s one piece of the film industry I don’t see coming back enough for me to snag a job.
So for now, I mostly draw for myself, hum in agreement when folks say I could expand the online storefront Paisley set up, and construct memorials to all the posters I drew during all my previous hyperfixations.
Paisley, Harlow, and Opal kind of knew I drew, but never to what extent, I guess.
I gave Paisley a realistic rendering of a lovely candid Harlow took of her during a beach trip, and she loved it.
From there, Harlow and Opal would ask me to give them sketches of themselves in lieu of gifts.
I don’t think I properly thanked Paisley for helping with the commissions. And now I never will.
“Emma?” Dad calls from the hall, louder this time.
“Yeah?”
“Come out for dinner, hon.”
I wince. I’m not ready. “Let me finish shadowing. Ten minutes?”
There’s a long pause. A sigh. “We’ll be counting the time.”
I wasn’t even working on shadowing, but I do a bit around Winona’s cheekbone.
It’s strange to think that if there is an afterlife, Paisley, Harlow, and Opal will find out all this information about me through osmosis.
Trapped in Slumberland, able to spy on any mortal on Earth.
If they’d even deem me worthy to spy on.
The idea is actually pretty funny. A laugh escapes my lips, ringing and brief as reality settles back down over me.
They’re dead.
But there’s a new piece of information that still hangs in the back of my mind.
Their deaths might not have been accidents.
What will the ISB say about the messages we received?
What does that anonymous person know? There’s something wrong with this town.
I know it’s so dangerous to agree to Beck’s deal.
She’s grief-stricken, not thinking straight.
Hell, the person who sent us that message could be some creep using the tragedy to lure us to town. They might not know anything at all.
But I can’t stop myself from spiraling. Would it have made a difference if I had been there that night? If it was a hiking accident, would I have been able to keep them from that edge they fell off? I do tend to be the cautious one of the group.
If it…was something else, would four people have made the difference? Could I have slipped away and called for help? I don’t really think watching horror movies makes anyone smarter in the face of real-life danger, but what if it does?
Would they still be alive if I hadn’t popped Paisley’s tire that night?
“Emma Marie Tedesco, get out here now!” Mom exclaims.
I can’t get my thoughts to stop spiraling alone; I need the distraction.
I drop my stylus and finally surrender to the noise.
* * *
After a painfully awkward family dinner where we all attempted to extend the funeral and talk about memories with Paisley, I’m back in my safe place.
Mom and Dad have long since gone to bed by the time the clock turns from 12:59 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. My fingers and wrist ache, I have a new poster done, and my brain is fried from how much I’ve ruminated on what happened to my friends.
Now I can’t stop looking at that burner number. We’ve heard nothing from the national forest cops. I know it hasn’t been long enough to dismiss the cops, but Beck’s deal is seeming increasingly more likely.
If I’m really going to consider it, we’re going to need a foolproof plan.
We’ll need to fully research the town, learn every inch of the forest, stock defensive weapons, and write out scripts to best get information out of what will likely be hostile townsfolk.
And more than anything, I need to understand what this anonymous source’s deal is.
I select the keyboard in my conversation with the stranger.
Heart slamming in my throat, I type out a message.
ME: Why should I believe you want to help me?
A typing bubble pops up right away.
UNKNOWN: The rangers already ruled it an accident.
ME: I just sent them the video you sent me.
UNKNOWN: It won’t matter. That video doesn’t prove anything out of the ordinary unless you want to understand the correct narrative.
If you come here, I’ll talk to you in person.
There’s a motel by the campgrounds. We can meet in daylight, in public.
I really, really just want to help. The cops would listen to you if you did their job for them and found evidence.
I find myself staring at the message, my fingers drumming violently against my sheets. These are the kinds of messages that get teenage girls killed. My friends truly might’ve just died in a hiking accident, yet following this person could get me actually murdered.
But everything they’re saying makes sense.
ME: Why haven’t you found the evidence yourself then?
UNKNOWN: They know me too well here.
My fingers remain restless, my brain stuck on my friends. I’m starting to forget what everyone was wearing the last night I saw them. I grab my phone and head to my photos. We always take pictures, even during the most mundane outings. Paisley made sure of it.
I find our usual selfie outside of Bob’s, before Paisley ran to the bathroom and started acting so strange.
One group shot, then one with all of our wrists together, showing off our matching bracelets.
I toggle over to social media, where Paisley’s photo of us in the restaurant shows off the gleam of the charms too, our smiles all together for what we’d never know was the last time.
My heart aches for those bracelets, for another moment to wear them all together again.
The backs of my throat and eyes burn as the tears gather.
I move to Paisley’s and my text conversation.
Her eerie message remains unsent. God, what I wouldn’t give for some hidden communication from her that I missed.
But as I stare at our conversation, I suddenly see a message I didn’t notice all this time gazing at this thread.
My head swims. Was it always there and I missed it?
It feels impossible, but I brush away my tears, and it’s still there.
Right below Paisley’s unsent message are the words: Paisley kept an audio message from you.
From that night eight months ago.
From the time I was in the parking lot. It’s expired on my end, but I know how to get it back.
I search through my iCloud archive and click the only message from October of last year. Heart slamming in my chest, I bring the phone to my ear.
“Hey Paisley, why don’t you come out here and face me?”
The voice note recorded everything I said that night. Including everything about them not surviving without me. My phone must’ve recorded that on its own when I was saying her name.
I slap my hand over my mouth to stifle a sound I barely recognize, something between a gasp and a sob.
I just sent a tip over to the FBI of national forests.
I just told them this case might be a murder case and there’s a voice note on Paisley’s phone where I act like I’m going to hurt them.
And I wrecked her fucking tire on top of that!
Owen saw me leave that night, destroying any alibi I could have.
Even if the message and crowbar are circumstantial evidence, courts can weave together convictions with far less.
I’ve listened to enough true crime podcasts with my dad to know that “stranger danger” isn’t the typical solve on murder cases.
It’s people who know the victims. People with concrete motivations and means.
As soon as that can of worms is opened up, they have to start working in categories.
The number of people who know all three girls well enough to kill them is pretty limited to begin with: classmates, teachers, maybe, and that’s about it. Motivation will be hard to find.
And then there’s me. The person who wasn’t invited to a social event for the first time in our friendship history.
The friend who works at a horror museum and has an easy-to-find online legacy of loving dark media.
The friend who doesn’t have a concrete alibi for that night.
The friend who drove out that night and punctured a tire with a crowbar, a blunt object that could also mimic injuries one sustains by falling down a ravine.
And just like that, my phone lights up once more.
UNKNOWN: You were there that night, weren’t you, Emma? I can help you too.
A bolt of pain hits me straight in the lungs, so intense I taste bile in the back of my throat.
Someone saw me that night.
Beck just told me they never recovered Paisley’s phone, and that it was last pinged in Kingston. The texter must have her phone, or else how would they have gotten that video? How would they know I was there that night?
I try to breathe, but I can’t.
The texter isn’t requesting anything from me—they’re blackmailing me.
All those lucky Emma people will turn to Emma was always a freak. Emma was always going to kill someone. Loser Emma kills her friends like a modern Carrie.
I punctured their tire, but I didn’t kill them.
I didn’t die, either, though.
I put my fingertips to my throat and chest. My pulse is raging, panic coursing through me, clouding my senses. I force a slow breath to try to break out of it and think.
This is no longer just about justice for my friends. That voice note is a live grenade waiting to destroy my whole life. I can’t waste another second knowing it’s out there.
Plus, it’d be so simple. Beck and I drive out there, I meet with the texter, get the phone, delete the voice note, and then we can leave the investigation to the cops. I could get it done in a few minutes.
I grab my phone again, search for Beck’s profile, and DM her.
ME: the texter sent me a place to meet them in kingston. let’s go as soon as we can. theres no time to wait for the cops
I regret reaching out via social media the second I click send. She’s going to think I’m so weird for DMing her when I have her phone number.
But she replies immediately.
BECK: let’s leave friday