We Told Six Lies Read online

  “Well, she wasn’t running from me. Christ, Holt, you’re my brother.”

  “Yeah, I know. I know. I’m sorry. I was just thinking how you used to get really stressed about things. Sometimes that was… It was hard to be around.” When I open my mouth to defend myself again, Holt raises his hands in surrender. “I’m just wondering why she would take off, that’s all. Is there anything that might have spooked her?”

  That question presses on me.

  And presses.

  Until I can’t stand it for a moment longer. Until I can’t stand a moment longer.

  Holt gets to his feet and throws his arms around me. Claps me on the back. “It’s all right, man. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

  I hug him back so hard I’m afraid I’ll crack his ribs. Because I’m afraid if I lessen my hold by even a fraction, he’ll desert me the way Molly did.

  Molly.

  My Molly.

  Where did you go?

  It doesn’t matter, I suppose.

  Because I’ll find you.

  I will.

  PART II

  about a girl

  MOLLY

  The callous could say Molly Bates made herself a victim the night she stopped for peanut M&Ms.

  She parked in the farthest spot from the convenience store doors. The only spot the camera didn’t quite reach. She blocked herself in on one side by pulling in next to the dumpster and didn’t pay any mind when an unmarked white van parked on her opposite side. And then…well, then she walked right by the driver, failing to notice how he slouched in his seat. How he wore sunglasses and a baseball hat pulled low on his head, despite it being dark outside.

  Molly was in her own head—thinking about her classes and the hole in her rainbow-colored tights and whether, just for kicks, she shouldn’t get a Sprite to complement the candy. Most importantly, she was thinking about who should have been there with her at that very moment.

  She was a thinker, her brain constantly puzzling through problems long before a solution was due. And that evening, she was lost to the delirium of love. And so, when she returned to her Toyota Camry, that first green M&M already popped into her mouth, she didn’t notice him stepping out of his van.

  Her key was already in the door when he wrapped an arm around her chest and yanked her against him. A rag went over her mouth, and her heart shotgunned in her chest, and her mind sizzled and cracked with fear. But try as she might, Molly couldn’t focus. Couldn’t think past anything but the sound of the van door opening and the feel of being lifted into the air. Her mind went fuzzy even as her body raged with terror. The last thing she remembered before lying down in that field of poppies was her bag of M&Ms. He had that yellow package in his hand. Tipped his head back and filled his mouth, stealing both her candy and her body with the same amount of consideration.

  THEN

  You demanded to see my house.

  I had seen yours, you reasoned, and it was only fair you see mine, too. And so I strategized. Waited until I knew my dad would be working and my mom would be off helping children that weren’t her own.

  When you arrived, you walked straight down the hallway like you’d been there before and found my room. My eyes flicked to my bed, and I thought of how many times I’d lain there thinking of you, my hand slipping beneath the covers. And now you were here, the real Molly Bates.

  You seemed to know what I was thinking and sat down on my bed, patted a spot next to you.

  “I like your posters,” you said.

  I glanced at each one in turn.

  An illustration of a beheaded Mickey Mouse.

  An illustration of a young girl holding a balloon string made of her own intestines.

  An illustration of a crowd of people, their eyes hollowed out, their hands open to a silver sky.

  I’d found them at a flea market. The artist was so pleased that I liked them that he gave me the beheaded Mickey Mouse for free. They were signed and numbered, and I felt like an art collector every time I looked at them.

  Sometimes, when I allowed myself to be so stupid as to dream, I imagined opening a shop of my own one day. Discovering macabre artists and hanging their work for sale on my walls. I’d have shows for the artists, and instead of champagne and tiny inedible foods, we’d encourage people to wear costumes like it was Halloween. I’d smoke meats on a grill and tap a keg and people would get wildly drunk on beer and wonderfully disturbing art. There is something weightless and freeing in accepting death. That’s what I’d tell them as they shopped. If I believed in dreaming, that is.

  Then again, I’d dreamed of you being here, in my bed. And here you were. So who knows?

  “Are your parents here?” you asked.

  I shook my head. “My mom’s doing some volunteer stuff.”

  “And your dad?”

  “Working.”

  You frowned. “It’s Saturday.”

  “Lots of people work on the weekends,” I said.

  You glanced around my room and out into the hallway. “Your house is nice.”

  I laughed. “We live in a shoebox. An old shoebox.”

  “Yeah, but it’s…clean. And cozy.” You nodded toward a bookshelf that used to be in my brother’s room. “What are those?”

  “Pictures,” I said, as heat flooded my face.

  You looked at me conspiratorially. “I’m gonna have to see this.”

  “No way.”

  You lunged for them, but I was quicker. I grabbed you around the middle, and we crashed to the carpeted floor. You army-crawled toward the shelves as I grappled for your legs.

  “All. Most. There,” you said, reaching, fingers brushing the album.

  You made it another few inches before I grabbed your ankle and stopped you from going any farther. I clasped your hips and turned you over, pushing my weight on top of you so you couldn’t move.

  “You’ve been caught,” I said, feeling my body react to having you so close.

  “I could get away if I wanted,” you said, your voice low, eyes roaming across my face.

  “Try and move, then,” I challenged, lowering my face to your neck.

  You tried to break away from my hold, but I was too heavy, too intent on keeping you beneath me. Besides, you didn’t want to escape.

  I bit down on your neck, and you wrapped your legs around my waist as if to prove my point. A soft moan escaped your mouth. I pushed my hips toward you, and you were there to meet my movements. If I didn’t get off of you right then, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from tearing away your clothes.

  Would you have wanted me to stop?

  “Is that your brother?” you asked.

  I swung my head around and realized you had the photo album open. You were staring up at it from the ground, a victorious smile on your face.

  “You used your womanly ways to distract me,” I said.

  “Yep.”

  “So, you don’t want me to kiss you right now?”

  “Nope.”

  “Not even a little?”

  “I despise kissing.”

  I brought my mouth to yours, and you dropped the album. Looped your arms beneath mine and grasped my back. I slipped a hand beneath your rear and gently squeezed as I traced your lips with my tongue, my teeth. As I trailed kisses down your neck then back to your mouth. You tasted like chocolate, and I smiled against your mouth, knowing I’d find the top of an M&Ms bag in your pocket if I looked.

  How many times had we kissed like this? A hundred? A thousand? With your arms around me and my lips on your skin, we were alive as two people could be.

  I slid my hand into your hair, and though it unnerved me to do it, I pulled on it. Just a little. Just to see what you might do.

  You pulled me closer. You rocked against me harder.

  Your hands slipped beneath
my shirt, and you dug your fingers into my shoulders.

  You gave another intoxicating moan and let your head fall back. Excitement rolled through me, wondering what else I could try that’d cause you to make that sound.

  “We should stop,” you said.

  I rolled off of you but kept my arm beneath your head. I didn’t want you to move too far away. I still needed your warmth.

  You flipped onto your stomach, and I moved my arm so it draped across your back.

  “You’re not going to leave it alone, are you?” I said.

  You grinned and pulled the album toward you. “I’m curious.”

  “Curiosity skinned the cat.”

  “Killed the cat. Not skinned. You are so disturbing.”

  “Whatever.”

  You opened the album, and the first picture I saw was one of Holt and me. We were in our soccer uniforms, standing on the field. I had grass stains on my shirt, and he had dirt smudged on his cheek. Holt had an orange Popsicle in his hand, its tip pointed toward the ground as he smiled for the camera.

  I was looking at Holt.

  Smiling at him.

  “You idolized him,” you said.

  I tried to hide my smile, but I couldn’t help it.

  “When do I get to meet him?”

  “He usually comes home on the weekends,” I said. “But he’s got finals coming up. Maybe during winter break?”

  You nodded and looked back at the album, flipped through page after page of me sitting on my dad’s lap. Of me making cookies with my mom. Of Holt and I opening Christmas presents. Of Holt and I waving from bunk beds.

  You flipped to blank pages. “What? That’s it?”

  I got up and moved to my bed. Sat on the edge and avoided your gaze. “Mom stopped taking pictures after a while.”

  You sat up, crossed your legs. “Why?”

  I shrugged.

  I didn’t think you’d understand, so I didn’t want to tell you. Not yet. But I felt the words boiling inside my chest anyway, working their way up my throat, sizzling on my tongue with the need to be exorcised.

  “Cobain,” you ventured. “Your home is nice enough. You don’t have any major problems with your family. So something else had to have happened to you. Something made you…the way you are.”

  I looked directly into your too-green eyes. “How am I?”

  “Quiet,” you offered. “You block people out. You dress in head-to-toe black. You have that giant tattoo on your forearm. The music you listen to, the art you like…” You motioned to my wall. “It’s pretty dark.”

  I lowered my gaze, but you were there to grab my chin. To lift my eyes back to yours. “I like it,” you said with a nod of your head and a fiendish grin. “But I also want to know why.”

  I pulled away. Blurted it out. “I got sick.”

  Your forehead furrowed. “Sick how?”

  I shook my head, and you must have seen it then—the shadow of something more. You could sniff out the darkness, find people’s weaknesses. You didn’t use that knowledge against them, exactly, but you would use it to get what you needed. It sounds the same, but it’s not.

  You pushed yourself up from the floor and moved toward me like a predator. You wanted what was in my head. Wanted to clasp it between your hands and inspect it up close.

  “What happened, Cobain?” you whispered. You put your hand on my knee. Laid your head on my shoulder. Said, “Tell me.”

  I laid my head on yours and closed my eyes. “When I was nine, my parents said I got messed up in my head,” I told you. “I just remember having panic attacks and night terrors.” My jaw clenched. My breath caught in my throat. “They said I was ‘confused’ and needed to take a break from everything, so they pulled me out of school and sent me to a psychiatrist for a while. Less than a year.”

  “Must have been hard when you went back,” you said softly.

  I shrugged. “The other kids didn’t know what happened, but they had fun making up stories. Shitheads.”

  I felt my eyes burn, but goddamn it, I would not cry over that shit. That was a long time ago. Over eight years now. I wouldn’t think about how, back then, my parents never asked me about my therapy sessions. How they never asked me how I was feeling at all.

  How they only smiled.

  Smiled and pretended everything was fine.

  I won’t think about how when Dad dropped me off at school and I asked him, “Will my friends know what happened?” he only hugged me and said he was so proud of me. So, so proud.

  I won’t think about how my mom—who, before, always had time to read me a stack of library books, or sit beside me and play Super Mario, or take me to the pool at the apartment complex at the end of our block—suddenly felt a calling to help people less fortunate.

  All I would think about was that I moved past that episode. I was better now.

  I was.

  “I think you need me,” you said quietly.

  I didn’t speak. I’m not sure I could have.

  “But you know what? I think I need you more.” You threw one leg over mine and wrapped your arms around my middle. “Now, there’s a surprise.”

  MOLLY

  Her head swam with thorns and roses.

  She could feel the flowers inside her, taking root within her stomach, stretching up her throat, pushing against the backs of her eyes. She could smell them, too.

  Wait. She could smell them.

  Molly opened her eyes.

  She didn’t dare move, only stared at the cement ceiling, allowing her mind to catch up. Where was she? What happened?

  Her head throbbed.

  She went to lift a hand to her forehead but stopped midway.

  Her wrist was encircled by a zip tie, which was attached to a rope.

  No.

  She bolted upright and found both her hands bound, the ropes extending to hooks in the ceiling. Below her was a metal floor drain, above her were a hundred hooks driven deep into a concrete slab like tiny glittering insects.

  Her heart pounded in her chest, and she grew dizzy.

  “Help me,” she whispered.

  Her throat burned, her words struggling to find their way out.

  She tried to push herself up, but her knees gave out, and her palms hit the concrete floor. Her hands stilled when she realized what she was touching.

  Stains.

  Red stains.

  She jerked her hands away and shoved them between her knees. Rocked back and forth and searched the room in a panic. She saw a twin bed with a white sheet, white pillow, and patchwork quilt. There were two doors. She rushed toward the first one, grabbed the handle, and twisted.

  Locked.

  She ran to the other.

  This one opened easily, and Molly’s heart leaped with hope. Inside the small room was a toilet and sink. And a window.

  A window!

  She threw herself toward it but was jerked backward by the ropes that held her.

  She threw herself forward again. Stretched against the ropes. Bit down against a scream she wouldn’t release. Whoever took her could be nearby. And if she started screaming, if she let herself succumb to the fear that itched to explode inside her, she’d never stop.

  After scrambling to the center of the room, her eyes flicked back to the window. No bars. There were no bars, only blue, blue sky and red, red trees and impossible amounts of freedom she’d always taken for granted.

  She inspected her wrists. Tugged on the zip ties. Tugged on the ropes attached to them. They were circled, over and over again, by some sort of wire. She pulled at the material until it cut into her flesh. Until she spilled blood onto the floor, those forgotten stains revived, the drain stretching its tongue toward the salty red droplets for a taste.

  “Oww,” she moaned.

  She sounded
like a child.

  She felt like a child.

  Molly wanted her mom. Her mom couldn’t get enough of her. Couldn’t breathe without her. She pressed her lips to Molly’s and sucked the air straight from her lungs. Right now, if Molly could just be with her, she’d give her anything she wanted. Sleep in her bed. Stay by her side. Do anything, anything.

  She wanted her daddy, too.

  No.

  She wouldn’t think of him.

  She couldn’t.

  So she tugged on the ropes one last time and then collapsed to the floor.

  “Think,” she said to herself. “Think first.”

  Those were her father’s words. She shouldn’t use them. But desperate times called for monstrous resurrections.

  She put her head between her knees and thought.

  What did she remember?

  A man. No, a boy. Somewhere in between?

  A van.

  A hand over her mouth.

  The yellow bag. He took her candy. He ate it.

  What did he say to her? Something. Nothing. Everything.

  He wore a baseball cap. She saw his face!

  No. She saw the sun shining behind him.

  Was he big? Small?

  She couldn’t remember.

  So what did she know?

  A man took her from a gas station parking lot.

  He wore a hat.

  He spoke to her.

  She was in a room with a bed. She was bound, but not so tightly that she couldn’t move around. There was a bathroom with a window.

  What else, Molly?

  WHAT ELSE?!

  Her eyes shot across the room, and when she saw it, her gaze narrowed. She put one hand on the bed. Then the other. Pushed herself up and crawled across the squeaking mattress until the entire night table came into view.

  There was a vase.

  There were flowers.

  Roses.

  Molly grabbed the vase and threw it across the room. Jumped toward the pieces and gripped a shard in her hand. She started sawing at the ropes. Her eyes flicked, over and over again, to the window.