Eleven
As it turns out, the difficult part isn’t getting past our parents; it’s getting out of Los Angeles on a Friday.
Beck’s excuse to our parents was actually pretty simple: We’re officially going to the Hornes’ vacation home in coastal California to unwind.
It’s a house known for having terrible service, so us not communicating and not having our location shared is already accounted for and explained.
So long as we’re back by Monday afternoon, no one will be any the wiser.
So, the week rushed by in a flurry of messages between Beck and me about our plans, from consolidating camping supplies to Beck finding the best portable chargers and sharing links for proper wilderness etiquette specific to Kingston National Park.
Nothing about the ghosts or legends, which I wondered about but didn’t question aloud.
My phone was going off almost as much as when Paisley, Harlow, and Opal were alive.
But as quickly as the week had passed, time has slowed now that Beck and I sit in the same car together, knowing we won’t be leaving each other’s presence for a whole weekend.
Or, well, I’m aware of it. Beck in the driver’s seat is singularly focused on escaping LA.
Her eyes dart to every sign advertising Big Bear Lake while an oldies rock playlist, which feels more at home in my dad’s collection than hers, plays over her car’s very nice speakers.
The mystery texter confirmed plans when I said we were arriving late Friday and wanted to meet the next morning but has otherwise been silent.
“I forgot how annoying this stretch is,” Beck says as she takes a pull from her Dr Pepper she bought at a drive-thru. “Bottlenecking at its finest. At least we have Sonic.”
We’ve been in near-constant communication about the logistics of this trip, but it hits me just how much we didn’t say to each other.
The gaps of silence in conversation scream at me from the tight space of the car.
She and I aren’t going on some trip with the volleyball team.
We’re going into the woods where my friends’ bodies were found.
Yes, we packed pepper spray and a Taser and a few knives, but neither of us have ever used them in a life-or-death situation.
For all the planning that went into this, it feels like we’re approaching it in denial.
No amount of freeze-dried snacks or a good waterproof tent is going to matter if our theories are right and someone killed Paisley, Harlow, and Opal.
It won’t get my voice note back before Beck and the world can find out where I really was that night.
I snort. “Is that really that exciting for you?”
She shakes her head. “Clearly you’ve never had a parent who got an eating disorder from Hollywood.”
I think she’s making a dark joke, but it lands a little too heavily. But then Beck picks it up as flawlessly as she plays volleyball.
“Basically, my mom never even makes us dinner unless we want her juice cleanses, and volleyball constantly has me on a chicken and broccoli diet. If I bring anything that isn’t exclusively made of white meat or vegetables or fruit into the house, my family literally has me throw it away outside.”
“Jesus,” I say. “Paisley ate normal food.”
Beck rolls her eyes. “Paisley ate however would make her seem most normal and ‘good’ to whoever she was with. You know how people do that with their personalities, right? She’s been doing that since she was, like, ten.
She does the switching so much, I honestly don’t know what food she actually likes. ”
My eyes widen. “Are you serious?”
“Trust me, with how seriously she took those auditions, my mother discovering Paisley had candy hidden away would’ve been as scandalous as her finding Paisley with a vibrator or a weird porn collection. No greater shame.”
“Is your mom that strict with you?”
“Nah. I have a different reputation in the family.” I wait for her to elaborate, but she changes the subject instead. “Do you take this stretch often?”
A twinge of disappointment hits my chest as I realize Beck is taking us back to small talk. As horrifying as her family dynamic is, it was nice to get to know her deeper.
“We do a couple trips around California and the nearby states every year,” I answer. “Joshua Tree, Yosemite, Las Vegas, Phoenix. My parents love to hike and the rest of us got okay at it through trial by fire.”
Beck snorts. “Thank god one of us understands the woods.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I don’t think Paisley, Harlow, and Opal…had that.”
It wasn’t supposed to come out as a joke, but my chest hitches as I sense my own weird tone. I look over to Beck but can’t read her expression. She scratches her arm like she has a mosquito bite and doesn’t answer.
“I just mean—even before they—I’m surprised they didn’t get lost. They never seemed like tent camping people to me. Truthfully, I don’t even know why they went on that trip.”
Beck sighs. “I know why, but I hate telling you.”
I swallow the lump threatening to stick to my throat. “I figured.”
“Do you want to know?”
“They think I’m annoying?”
Even having heard this from people nearly all my life, in that moment, all I want is for Beck to say something else.
I made the trip too expensive, I have a bad fashion sense and they don’t want me in their social media pictures, I have bad breath.
If annoying is how people perceive me when all I’ve ever been able to be is myself, where else is there to go?
Every second Beck doesn’t answer only makes the pinch of embarrassment worse.
“They…well, Paisley mentioned to Harlow that it was a long trip to have you on.”
Beck’s spoken, but the pain in my chest doesn’t dissipate.
The kinder, more insidious way to say Emma’s annoying.
So, yeah.
I look away from Beck, fingers finding the door handle. I can’t open it, but I wish I could escape.
“You still with me?” Beck says. “I’m sorry. I never want anyone to feel that way. My sister, Harlow, and Opal suck. Sucked.”
I inhale and exhale slowly, keeping the tears at bay.
That’s what this whole team-up between me and Beck is about, isn’t it?
She feels sorry for me. There are only two places for people with brains like mine: You’re either the ghost on the edge of a friend group, never quite in on the inside jokes, the affection shared between members, the ease with which they listen and speak and exist with one another.
The only one without all the passwords. Or you’re their jester, their free entertainment to make themselves feel better about their own social skills and insecurities.
The people who can see outside the group dynamic feel bad for someone like me but not enough to adopt us and give us the friendship we clearly need.
Because deep down, everyone who isn’t like me thinks I’m too much. Too weird. Too annoying.
Whatever we find, Beck will disappear the moment we get back from this trip. Regardless of whether she ever found out what I did.
“Emma?” Beck says.
There’s nothing more to say. No one will ever openly admit that you’re a pity friend, no matter how direct they are.
I turn the music up and close my eyes.
We break out of Los Angeles then, anyway. Beck goes from a crawl to speeding along. Before I know it, we’ll be somewhere silly teenage girl social dynamics won’t matter. Who would bother feeling sorry for a lonely girl when three girls are dead, anyway?
I need the heat off me for a bit if I’m going to survive this car ride without getting too overwhelmed.
“You stopped talking about your family,” I say, opening my eyes back up. “Did you mean to stop?”
“Oh,” Beck says. “No, I can keep going. Basically, Paisley decided at some point that I was the…nasty one in the family, I guess.”
I wrinkle my nose. “What does that mean?”
She sighs. “Well, it starts with my mom. She and my dad were in their forties when they had us, so, y’know, they’re…
outdated in a lot of ways. My mom’s one of those moms who’s very concerned about the ‘girls are seen and not heard’ thing.
Not as badly as I’m sure some people are, but she was all about us being fashionable and charming and demure and, like, the kinds of kids that adults wouldn’t mind sticking around for dinner parties.
And I played along, but when my dad was around, he wasn’t like that.
He’s a busy guy, but he loved playing sports with me in the park until we were both muddy.
Just let me be the tomboy I was. Pais and I were different when we were kids, but we were cool with each other.
There were a few movies we both loved at the same time, some games we liked playing together.
Hell, sometimes we’d even talk about how much we hated Mom’s weird expectations.
We were actually close for most of our childhoods. ”
“What changed?”
“When I started middle school, my mom gave up on trying to mold me. At the same time, Paisley fully conformed to what Mom wanted. She became her shopping buddy and the one who she gossiped with about boys and whatever else. And then out of the blue Paisley…continued what Mom had started. She would tell me if she thought a jacket or shoes or earrings I bought were ugly. She’d tell me how unsanitary dogs are if I let Gizmo lick my mouth.
She’d tell me when I ate too fast or got too much food or anything like that.
Hell, I couldn’t burp in front of her without it being a whole deal about my lack of femininity and manners and whatever. ”
Oh my god.
I have brothers. I know what it feels like to be barraged by another human being’s bodily functions as a joke, for them to destroy my toys and smell bad because they didn’t care about deodorant.
But I can’t imagine ever telling them to stop being so gross and equating it to their worth as people.
What Beck is saying counted as transgressions aren’t even gross; they’re just normal things people do.
And then, to be that constantly vicious about someone’s taste is awful.
“Are your siblings like that? Critical?” she asks.
A lump forms in my throat at her tone. Like she’s genuinely convinced that I’m going to mirror her experience.
“No,” I say. “My brothers are more…Neanderthal than that. They don’t really fight with their words.”
Beck bites her lip. “Ah. Yeah, brothers.” She pauses. “Your mom?”
“I think every mom makes you self-conscious about some feature of your face or body, but I guess I wouldn’t say it’s constant.
” Where did this conversation start? What was Beck talking about to get us to here?
I look to her Dr Pepper, potential things Paisley has said to her about that running through my head.
“How often was she…doing that to you? Criticizing you?”
Of all the words I’d use to describe Paisley, I wouldn’t say judgmental was one of them.
At least, she never outright said she hated anything any of us did.
We teased one another, but it wasn’t that often.
Paisley would often offer to do my makeup or let me borrow dresses for cast parties.
She never commented on my T-shirts or what food I ordered or anything like she did to Beck.
In fact, Paisley was the first person I’d text while I was learning a bunch about any actress I was hyperfixated on, and she’d genuinely geek out with me about old movies and acting techniques, no matter how incessant I got.
“I mean, I don’t think I could go a day without it,” Beck says. “But it’s whatever. You get used to it, tune it out. I mean, she’s my shit little sister. What does she know?”
We aren’t using the right tense. I don’t even care. All I can think of is Beck. The criticism, what she was being criticized for. It’s so cruel.
“That’s awful,” is all I can think to say.
She takes a deep draw on her soda. “I have to say, despite everything that’s happened, I don’t mind the silence.”
For every complaint I ever had about Paisley Horne, nothing compares to what Beck’s got going on inside her.
I wonder what else she’ll reveal as we enter the belly of the beast.