The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die Page 9

  He grabs my wrists. “Stop that,” he hisses, then lets go when he sees an old woman with hair as brown and fake as a doll’s looking at us. “Anything that happens with me you know is true because I was there, too. I was there when the men came to McDonald’s last night. I was there when the men came to my apartment this morning. For some reason, people are looking for you. And they were looking for you before that security guard’s body was even found.”

  “What about all those things I put up on Facebook?” I look at my posts again, each one more crazy than the one before. “I sound like I belong in Sagebrush. I sound like the kind of girl who would do something as messed up as pulling out her own fingernails.”

  But Ty isn’t really listening. Instead he’s clicking back and forth on my profile. His eyes narrow. “Why do you have so much visible?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at anybody else’s profile. Like, let’s find a Katie Scott like I thought your name was.” With a few quick clicks, we’re on the main page for some girl with pink hair and black plugs in her earlobes. Where my page is filled with stuff, hers just says, “Katie only shares some information publicly. If you know Katie, send her a friend request.”

  “See,” Ty says. “With most people, you have to be friends with them to get access to more than a few things.” He clicks the back button to get to my page. “Everything here”—he sweeps his hand past the screen—“anyone can see. There are zero privacy settings.”

  “Maybe I wanted the world to see.” A guy with a bushy black beard looks over at me, and I lower my voice. Right now, the last thing I need to do is attract attention. “Maybe it was like a cry for help.”

  “Or maybe someone else wanted to make sure it got seen.” Ty clicks around. “You don’t have any photo albums. Your profile picture is the same one all those men were using. All the music you like, the TV shows you watch—they’re the most popular. The most common.”

  “Maybe it’s because I’m average.” I sniff back my tears. “Maybe it’s because I’m like everyone else.”

  Ty rolls his eyes. “I may not know you very well, but I’ll tell you one thing: You aren’t like anyone else.”

  For a minute, he is quiet, just clicking on my posts, one after another. There are dozens of comments under each one, plus a lot of “like”s. It’s hard to imagine that anyone would “like” these sad little sentence fragments that sound nearly suicidal.

  It turns out he’s not looking at the words in the comments, just the times they were posted. He taps on the screen. “It’s the same for all of these. See, this one you supposedly wrote two months ago. But the comments—the comments are all from today. From when your name started being out in the news.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying someone went to the trouble to make you look crazy. I’ll bet you have a real, normal Facebook page, but someone deleted it or altered it. Then they put up fake posts that make people think you’ve been having trouble for months. But I think that no matter what date they have on them, they haven’t been there long. They might have been able to manipulate the contents of your page, but not the dates on other people’s comments.” His mouth tightens. “Somebody’s trying to frame you.”

  CHAPTER 25

  DAY 2, 10:51 A.M.

  “Whatever we do, we need wheels,” Ty says. “Once we leave we can’t count on being able to outrun the cops and the bad guys on skateboards.”

  Sitting in this sunlit library, I should feel safe, but instead I feel exposed. Like an animal that wants to crawl into a dark cave. The sad thing is, I can’t think of any place that would feel safe.

  Ty pulls a ring of keys from his pocket and fingers one. “I still think I could just go back and see if the coast is clear. And if it is, I could grab my car and come back here.” He must see the way I’m looking at him. “After making sure I’m not followed, of course.”

  When I think of him leaving me here alone, it’s like there’s not enough air in the room. “It’s too risky, Ty. Even if you don’t see anyone, they still could have put some kind of GPS tracker on your car.”

  But being followed isn’t the thing I’m most afraid of. It’s being on my own again, with no one to talk to, no one to help me think things through, no one to calm me down. Standing in that trashed cabin or driving on those darkened roads—everything was so much worse when it was just me. Under the table, I grab Ty’s wrist, making his keys jangle. “Besides, what if you went back there and they kidnapped you or even killed you? These people won’t stop at anything.”

  What if Ty leaves and I never see him again? I need him so much. I have to look away from his dark eyes before I find the strength to say the right thing. “But I really think you should take off, Ty. It may not be safe to go back to your apartment, but it’s definitely not safe to keep hanging out with me. You should go to a friend’s place and hang out for a day or two.” This guy whom I’ve known less than twenty-four hours might be murdered because of me.

  “Look, Cady.” He touches my chin, turning my face until I’m looking directly into his eyes. “You’re not getting rid of me that easy. So what do you think we should do?”

  I go with my gut. Without memories, that’s about all I have left. “I think I should get back to Portland. That’s where I live. And that’s where my family is, or at least where they were. If I can find them, maybe they’ll know more about what’s going on. And even if I can’t, there’s still the house. My house,” I correct myself, even though I have no memory of it. “There was nothing in that cabin. But maybe at my house we can find some clue.”

  Since Ty’s car is out of the picture, there aren’t a lot of options. He suggests hitchhiking, but I have too many mental images—which I think come from movies or maybe a twist on what happened with Officer Dillow—of being trapped in a car with door handles that don’t work and a crazy killer at the wheel. Or in this case, one of the men hunting me down. If we stand by the side of the road with our thumbs out, we might as well be lambs hitchhiking to the slaughterhouse.

  Which leaves Greyhound. The bus station is two miles away. Ty has us take the road that parallels the main road. It’s not super busy, so we’re not being eyed by every passing motorist. But it’s not empty either, so we don’t stick out—just two kids walking around in the middle of a school day.

  The air is crisp and cold, but we’re walking fast enough that I stay warm in just a hoodie. We’re heading toward a tall, rounded bump that sits in the middle of otherwise flat Bend. It’s not a mountain, but way bigger than a hill. “What is that?” I ask Ty. It’s covered with gray-green juniper and sage, and I would guess it’s about five hundred feet tall. A steady stream of walkers and runners are making their way up and down the trail that spirals around it.

  “An old cinder cone,” Ty says. “From a volcano vent. There’s a viewpoint at the top. You can see for miles.”

  “Sounds cool.” It also sounds vaguely familiar, and I wonder if my parents ever hiked with us up the steep flanks, ever talked about volcanoes.

  “Actually, they don’t think the Newberry volcano that made that cinder cone is dead,” Ty says. “Just sleeping. But someday it might wake up.”

  I imagine all those walkers suddenly finding themselves covered with red cinders and ash, the fiery lava rushing inexorably toward them as they wonder what in the hell just happened.

  I can totally relate.

  CHAPTER 26

  DAY 2, 11:34 A.M.

  It turns out that in order to get to the bus station, we have to walk right past a sign directing drivers to the Bend police department, just a few blocks away. Looking at it, I reconsider. Maybe we could walk in, go up to the counter, and explain that while it’s true I am the girl on the Newberry Ranch tape, I did not actually shoot Officer Dillow.

  But what are the chances they’ll believe me? Even in the best-case scenario I’ll be immediately separated from Ty and locked up, at least for a while. Maybe forever. After all, I do
n’t have any proof that I didn’t kill poor Dillow, except for my own memory. And pretty soon I’d have to reveal just how unreliable that memory is.

  And if I go to the police, how will I be able to figure out what’s going on? If I tell them my story about mysterious men who want to kill me, it seems quite possible I’ll really end up at a place like Sagebrush. So when Ty looks at the sign, and then at me with a raised eyebrow, I just shake my head.

  Greyhound doesn’t have an actual bus station in Bend. Instead you’re supposed to buy your tickets and wait inside a bowling alley called Lava Lanes. The long pinkish building is styled like fake adobe and is set at the back of a parking lot. The parking lot borders a busy street, and on the opposite side of the street there’s a chain-link fence and then a sidewalk. That’s where Ty and I wait, pretending to skateboard while we try to figure out if it’s safe to cross the street and go inside. After all, if we figured out there’s not many ways for us to get out of Bend, the bad guys have figured that out, too. Probably faster than we did.

  Ty does a kick flip, the board spinning in the air. My eyes flick from his board to his face scrunched in concentration to the parking lot. Little kids, each of them carrying a present, are arriving for what must be a birthday party. A mom carries a long pink cake, a man is trailed by a bobbing bouquet of silver foil balloons. It looks peaceful and innocent, all part of a world where girls would never get dragged into the woods.

  And I want to be part of that world so much that it actually hurts when Ty says, “There. That blue Lexus two rows back from the door and on the left. The driver’s been there for at least fifteen minutes.”

  “He could be, like, a divorced dad, waiting to trade custody of his kid,” I say, wishing it were true.

  Ty takes a baseball cap out of his jacket pocket, pulls it low.

  “I’ll go check it out.”

  “No. Don’t leave me.” I clutch his arm, then drop it when I realize that thirteen-year-old skateboarding Nate would never do that. Don’t act. Be. I lost sight of that, and if anyone is watching us, it showed. “It’s not worth taking the risk to be sure. There has to be another way we can get to Portland. Does James have a car we could borrow?”

  “No.” Ty shakes his head. “When he needs a car, he uses mine.”

  Every way out turns into a dead end. I pick up my skateboard. “Come on, let’s get out of here before that guy notices us.” We walk back to the less busy street, but when we get there, we stop. We have no place to go. Standing still, I realize how cold it is.

  “Maybe I should just go to the police,” I say. But my voice breaks in the middle.

  “You still think the answers are in Portland?” Ty asks.

  “Yeah.” My breath shakes. “But what difference does it make if I can’t get there?”

  “I might know a way. It’s a little risky, but what have we got to lose?”

  In Ty’s case, a lot. After he tells me his plan, he won’t listen when I try to argue. He could get in a lot of trouble with the cops, not to mention the bad guys. But at every objection, he just shakes his head. And finally I give in. I’m not sure it will work, and it’s going to mean a bad day for someone else, but I certainly don’t have any better ideas. And after all the crazy things I’ve done in the last two days, his plan almost makes sense.

  At the Dollar Store, Ty buys two ugly pairs of men’s mesh track pants, one for me and one for him. Back at the library, we go into the men’s bathroom—me a little nervously, but it’s empty—wearing jeans and come out wearing track pants. No one looks at us twice. As we walk outside, we stuff our jeans into my backpack, which already holds the framed photo and the gun.

  Our next stop is Bend’s Fast Fitness. The floor-to-ceiling windows facing the street show rows of ellipticals, bikes, and stairclimbers. But there are no windows in the back, which overlooks a nearly full parking lot. After making sure no one is watching, we hide our skateboards and the backpack under a bush. Ty’s worried about losing the skateboards, especially the one that belongs to James. Me? I don’t like letting the framed picture of my family out of my sight. That and Dillow’s gun.

  We go back around the corner and inside, where Ty approaches the front desk. He’s still wearing his baseball cap and I’ve got my hoodie pulled up. I can’t see any cameras, but we don’t want to take any chances.

  “Two day passes, please.” He pays six bucks cash. I know he doesn’t have much left. We decided it was better to have no money than to leave a trail with an ATM card, so he paid cash for our ugly pants, too.

  The workout room has the cardio equipment we saw from outside, plus free weights and a dozen weight machines. A large, wooden honeycomb of open cubbies stands against the far wall. Most of the squares are filled: a jacket in one, a water bottle in another, a sweater and two magazines in the next. From here, it’s hard to tell if any cubby also has a set of keys. But we only need one.

  “Once we get inside,” Ty had told me, “I’ll need you to cause a scene. Something that will get everyone in the gym looking at you for at least thirty seconds.”

  At first, I considered faking a seizure, but someone might have called 9-1-1. So we came up with Plan B. I go over to the free weights, pick up some ten-pounders, and start doing biceps curls. I cut my eyes sideways at Ty, who’s next to the cubbies. He nods.

  I let one of the weights slide from my fingers. The idea was to just miss and fake it, but instead it glances off my little toe.

  I scream. “Ow!” Don’t act. Be. I take all the fear and pain I’ve felt in the last twenty-four hours and channel it until I can’t tell where the past leaves off and the present begins. “Ow!” I stretch it out until it’s practically a yodel. Every eye is on me. Even the people on the treadmills watching TV, and the people climbing to nowhere with white earbuds sunk into their ears—even they have turned to watch. I’m hopping around on one foot, yelling, “I think it’s broken! It hurts so bad!” The tears that run down my face are real. As I’m hopping around, I bump into another man doing biceps curls, throwing him off balance. Swearing, he staggers backward.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ty pushing open the door in the back.

  “I’m a doctor,” a woman in a pink tracksuit says as she hurries up to me. She has a long, horsey face and kind eyes. “Let me see.”

  I hadn’t planned on this. I snap back to me, to the real me who doesn’t have a broken toe. “I think I’m okay.”

  “Just take off your shoe and sock and let me see. You could have a crush injury.”

  Better do it fast and get it over with. I sit down on a weight bench and pull off my sock and shoe. Around me, people are rolling their eyes at each other.

  Her hands are cool on my foot. She presses and prods my little toe, which is tender, but certainly not scream-worthy. “If it’s a fracture, it’s a minor one. We don’t normally cast the metatarsals anyway. You should put ice on it and then rest. If it still hurts tomorrow or if it really swells, ask your parents to take you for an X-ray.” She lifts her head to look at me, at my black hair as short as fur and the faint traces of bruises on my jaw, and her brow creases. “Are you okay?”

  A male attendant bustles over with a plastic bag of ice. “Do you need me to call your parents?”

  What I need is to get out of here.

  I grab the bag of ice. “It’s already feeling better.” As I pull on my sock and shoe, I turn to the doctor, wishing I could tell her everything. Wishing an adult could be in charge. “Thank you.” And then I leave as fast as I can.

  Once I’m outside the building, I hurry around the corner, limping a little. Ty is walking fast between two rows of cars. The backpack is slung over one shoulder and the boards are under his arm. In his right hand, he holds a black plastic triangle, car keys dangling underneath. He’s clicking the buttons on the fob. And then he’s answered by a flash of taillights. It’s a maroon Subaru Outback station wagon.

  “Quick! Get in,” he says as he yanks open the driver’s-side door handle.
“Let’s get out of here before somebody realizes their keys are missing.”

  I open the passenger door and lean in. In the back there’s a dark blue car seat, empty except for a green juice box and a stuffed Paddington Bear wearing a yellow slicker and rain hat. Ty tosses the backpack and skateboards next to the car seat.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t.” We’re really going to screw up someone’s life.

  Ty is already starting the car. “We have to.”

  A man dressed in a suit, a gym bag over his shoulder, rounds the corner. When he sees us, his mouth falls open and he just stands there for a second. Then he breaks into a run.

  I jump inside and Ty throws the car into reverse.

  CHAPTER 27

  DAY 2, 1:14 P.M.

  We accelerate past the Subaru’s owner. His fist bangs on the side of the car, but then he’s gone and Ty is taking a corner so fast I have to brace myself against the dash.

  It’s way too late, but now I definitely wish we had found another way.

  “See if you can squeeze between the seats and get down in the back,” Ty says, never taking his eyes off the road. He accelerates around a red pickup.

  “Why?” But even as I ask the question, I’m already trying to wiggle into the back seat. I turn sideways, but it’s such a tight squeeze between the front seats and then around the car seat that my track pants nearly get left behind. Finally I make it, banging my hip on the car seat in the process. One more bruise to add to the collection. I plop into the space behind the passenger seat.

  “They’re looking for two people, not one. And by ‘they,’ I mean both the bad guys and that guy whose car we just stole.” Ty’s head keeps turning as he scans the road behind and before us, threading between cars. But he’s slowed down so that he’s going close to the speed of traffic, probably worried that someone on a cell phone will call 9-1-1 about a speeding car. “We just got lucky this is a Subaru. Unofficial state car of Oregon. We’ll blend right in.”