Far From You

35

NOW (JUNE)

I can’t get hold of Rachel. After a half hour of pacing my bedroom, I toss the phone (six unanswered calls, five texts, three messages) in my purse and head downstairs. She must be at her house. I’ll go there.

But when I pull my front door open, Kyle is standing on my porch.

“What are you doing here?” I want to push past him, get him out of my way, out of my sight.

What had Rachel found? Why isn’t she calling me back?

“I want to talk to you,” Kyle says.

“Now is really not a good time.” I step outside, lock the door behind me, and head down the porch stairs.

“You ambush me twice, and now you don’t have five minutes?” He follows me down the driveway, so close it makes the back of my neck flush with anger.

“You lied to the police, sabotaged a murder investigation, and got me locked up in rehab—all because you were jealous. Forgive me if I’m still pissed at you.”

I open the car door and he slams it shut, making me jump. I look up, and for the first time, I see the circles under his bloodshot eyes.

I remember what Adam had said about Kyle crying the night before Mina died. How thick Kyle’s voice had gotten when he’d revealed that she’d told him the truth.

He had loved her. It made me queasy, but I didn’t doubt it. And I understood too well the frustration, the evisceration, of loving and losing her.

“I have to go. If you want to talk, get in,” I say, against my better judgment. “If not, get out of my way.”

He glances at my purse. “You’re not gonna spray me in the face with that bear repellent, right?”

“In or out, Kyle. I don’t care.” I climb in the car, turning the key. He sprints to the other side and opens the door, throwing himself in as I hit the gas. “Put on your seat belt.” It’s an automatic order that’s given to anyone who gets in my car. Trev does it, too, a tic that neither of us can break.

After a few minutes of silence, Kyle’s leg jiggling up and down, I roll my eyes and switch the radio on. “You choose,” I say.

He turns the dial as I speed down the street, heading toward Old 99, east of town.

“So where are we going?” he asks, settling the radio on the new country station and looking out the window.

“I have to meet someone. You’ll stay in the car.”

Kyle rolls his eyes.

“You gonna tell me what you want?” I pass an old lady in a Cadillac crawling twenty miles below the speed limit and press harder on the gas as we turn down Main to get to the on-ramp. We pass the old brick building City Hall’s been in since the town was founded back in the gold rush days. Hanging over the entryway there’s a banner advertising the upcoming Strawberry Festival. Mina used to make me go, play those stupid rigged carnival games, eat way too much shortcake.

“I really didn’t mean to get you in trouble,” Kyle says.

“If you’re gonna lie to me, you might not want to do it to my face.”

“Okay, I did want to get you in trouble,” Kyle admits. “But that was only when I thought you were already in trouble. I wouldn’t have done it if knew you were being set up. I think I screwed up. Because…if it wasn’t about drugs, that means it was something else, right?”

“Duh.”

I turn onto the highway. This time of year, Old 99 is a gray line cutting through a sea of yellowed grass and barbed wire fences, speckled with the dark green of scrub oaks. Cows dot the fields, dirt roads branch off the highway, tumbledown barns and ranches are set away from the cars’ searching headlights. It’s peaceful. Time seems to move slower.

I know how deceptive that can be.

“And it wasn’t a mugging,” Kyle continues. “I know he took your purses and stuff, but if it was a mugging, why would he shoot just one of you? Why would he shoot anyone, if he got what he wanted? Why wouldn’t he take the car? Why would he leave you alive? Why would he plant drugs?”

He’s really been thinking about this. I wonder if the circles under his eyes are a result of staying up too late to page through articles about Mina’s death. If he has a copy of the police report, like I do. If he has it memorized yet.

I have to stop myself from rolling my eyes. “That’s what I’ve been saying for months. But, weirdly, people haven’t been listening to me.”

“I told you I screwed up,” Kyle says quietly. “I apologized. I explained why.”

“It’s not that easy,” I say. “You helped derail the entire police investigation. You helped lock me up in rehab, where I got to sit and think about how Mina’s killer was walking around free and clear, with nobody looking for him. An apology can’t change any of that. We’re not in first grade anymore. Admitting you screwed up is not going to fix it or catch the killer. So all I can do now is pick up the pieces and try to put them together myself.”

“I want to help.”

A squirrel dashes out onto the road, and I jerk the wheel to avoid it, overcorrecting into the next lane. For a horrible second, I think I’m going to lose control of the car and crash.

“Shit, Sophie.” Kyle’s hand is on the wheel, and he’s half leaning over me, pulling the car off the road, onto the shoulder as I bring the car to a shaky stop.

I whimper, bite at the inside of my mouth, trying to get my lips to stop trembling as I twist the key and the engine shuts off. I suck air in through my nose.

“Hey.” Kyle frowns and pats my shoulder clumsily. Weirdly, it makes me feel better. “We’re okay. It’s fine.”

I’m gripping the wheel so hard my knuckles are white. My lungs are tight; my heart hammers inside my chest. I’m not getting enough air. I want to sag against the wheel, press my face against the cool glass of the window, but I can’t do that in front of him. I won’t. So I just focus on breathing. In and out. In and out.

When I’ve finally gotten myself back to normal, Kyle asks quietly, “Should I drive?”

In and out. In and out. Two more deep breaths, and I release my death grip on the wheel. “I’m fine,” I say.

I turn the engine back on and push on the gas, kicking up dirt clouds as I turn back onto the road.

In and out.

In and out.