Far From You

3

NOW (JUNE)

My parents still haven’t shown up. Dr. Charles keeps checking her watch and tapping her pen against her knee.

“I can wait by myself.”

Frown lines mar her smooth forehead. This is not the way things are done. My parents should have been tearfully embracing my new and improved, squeaky-clean self at least twenty minutes ago.

“Let me make a phone call,” she says.

I lean my head against the wall and close my eyes. I sit and wait, wondering if she’ll even let me call a cab if she can’t get hold of my parents.

About ten minutes tick by before someone taps my knee. I open my eyes, expecting to see Dr. Charles. But instead, for the first time in months, I feel a real smile stretch across my face.

“Aunt Macy!” I throw myself into her arms, almost knocking her over. My chin hooks over her shoulder as I hug her. Macy’s a few inches shorter than me, but there’s something about the way she carries herself that makes her seem taller. She smells like jasmine and gunpowder, and she’s the best thing I’ve seen in what feels like forever.

“Hey, kid.” She grins and hugs me back, her callused palms warm against my shoulders. Her hair, blond like mine, is down her back in a long braid. Her tanned skin makes her eyes look shockingly blue. “Your mom got held up on a case. Sent me instead.”

I haven’t heard from Macy the entire time I’ve been at Seaside, even though after the first two weeks, I was allowed letters from people other than my parents. But now she’s here, and I have to bite my lip against the relief that rocks inside me.

She came. She still cares. She doesn’t hate me. Even if she does believe everyone else, she came.

“Can we please get out of here?” I ask thickly, fighting tears.

“Yeah.” She cups the back of my head, her fingers tangling in my long hair. “Let’s get you checked out.”

Five minutes spent signing a stack of papers, and I’m free.

I feel like running the moment I step outside. I’m half-convinced that any second, Dr. Charles will come slamming through the doors, suddenly seeing through all my lies. I want to sprint to Aunt Macy’s ancient Volvo, lock myself in.

But running isn’t an option. It hasn’t been for almost four years, since my right leg and back got messed up in the car crash. Instead, I walk as fast as my limp allows.

“Your mom wanted me to tell you how sorry she is that she couldn’t come,” Aunt Macy says as she starts the car.

“And Dad’s excuse?”

“Out of town. Dental convention.”

“Figures.”

Macy raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything as we pull out of the parking lot and onto the highway. I roll the window down, trailing my fingers in the hot summer air. I keep my eyes fixed on the buildings blurring past me, away from her questioning glances.

I’m afraid to speak. I don’t know what she’s been told. The only visitors I was allowed were my parents, and they came only when they had to.

So I stay quiet.

Nine months. Two weeks. Six days. Thirteen hours.

My mantra. I whisper the days under my breath, pressing the words against my lips, barely letting them out into the world.

I have to keep adding to it. I have to stay clean, stay focused.

Mina’s killer is out there, walking around, free and clear. Every time I think about whoever he is getting away with it, I want to bury myself with a handful of pills, but I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.

Nine months. Two weeks. Six days. Thirteen hours.

Aunt Macy tunes the radio to an oldies station and changes lanes. We leave the coast behind, the scenery giving way to redwoods, then pines as we head into the Trinities. I let the air flow through my fingers, enjoying the feeling like a little kid.

We drive in silence for almost an hour. I’m grateful for it, for the chance to absorb the freedom singing in my veins. No more group. No more Dr. Charles. No more white walls and fluorescent lighting.

Right now, I can forget what’s waiting for me eighty miles past those foothills up ahead. I can trick myself into thinking that it’s this easy: the wind in my hair and between my fingers, the radio on, and miles of freedom ahead.

“You hungry?” Aunt Macy points at a billboard advertising a diner off exit 34.

“I could eat.”

The diner is noisy, with customers chatting and dishes clanging. I trace whorls of faded glitter embedded in the Formica tabletop as the big-haired waitress takes our orders.

After she hurries away, silence overtakes us. It’s like Macy doesn’t know where to start after all this time, and I can’t bear to be the person to speak first. So I excuse myself and head to the bathroom.

I look like crap: pale and too skinny, my jeans hanging off hip bones that used to be a mere suggestion. I splash water on my face, letting it drip down my chin. Dr. Charles would say I was avoiding, delaying the inevitable. It’s stupid, but I can’t help it.

I run my fingers through my straggly blond hair. I haven’t worn makeup for months, and the dark smudges underneath my eyes stand out. I press my dry lips together, wishing I had some lip balm.

Everything about me is tired and cracked and hungry. In more ways than one. In all ways that are bad.

Nine months. Two weeks. Six days. Fourteen hours.

I dry my face and force myself to walk out of the bathroom, back to the table.

“Fries are good” is all Macy says, dipping one in ketchup.

I wolf down half of my burger, loving it simply because it’s not rehab food and doesn’t come on a tray. “How’s Pete?”

“He’s Pete,” she says, and I smile, because that pretty much sums it up. Her boyfriend has tranquil down to an art form. “I’ve got some yoga flows he put together for you.” She eats another fry. “Did you keep up with your practice?”

I nod. “Dr. Charles let me bring my mat and blocks. But I couldn’t have the strap. I guess she was afraid I’d hang myself or something.” It’s a lame attempt at a joke that leaves a gaping hole of awkward silence between us.

Macy sips her iced tea, looking at me over the glass. I tear a fry in half and squish it between my fingers just for something to do.

“Anything else for you girls?” the waitress asks as she refills my water glass.

“Just the check,” Macy says. She doesn’t even look at the waitress, keeping her eyes on me. She waits until the ­woman’s behind the counter. “Okay, Sophie. No more bad jokes. No more small talk. Time to tell me the truth.”

I feel queasy, and for a second I’m so full of dread, I’m afraid I’ll be sick.

She’s the only person left who hasn’t heard my truth. I’m so afraid she’ll do what they all did: Blame me. Refuse to believe me. It takes every shred of strength I’ve got left to force out: “What do you want to know?”

“Let’s start with why you supposedly relapsed two weeks after getting home from Oregon.”

When I say nothing, she taps her fork against the edge of her plate. “When your mom called and said they found drugs in your jacket, I was surprised. I thought we’d worked through all that. I could have understood your relapsing if it had been after Mina’s murder. But this…not so much.”

“The pills were in my jacket at the crime scene, so they had to be mine, right? Mina didn’t do drugs. I’m the one with the history. I’m the one who’d barely been clean six months when it happened. I’m the reason we were out there in the first place. That’s what everyone says.” I can’t hide the bitterness in my voice.

Macy sits back in the booth, lifts her chin, and peers at me, a sad sort of knowing in her face. “I’m more interested in what you have to say.”

“I— You—” The words stick in my throat, and then it’s like she’s pulled a plug inside me. A garbled sound wrenches from my mouth, tight and incoherent with relief. “You’re going to listen to me?”

“You’ve earned that from me,” Macy says.

“But you didn’t visit. You never wrote. I thought that you—”

“Your mom.” Macy’s mouth flattens. She has that look in her eye that she always gets before she goes off on a job. A coiled tension that’s dying to leap out. “This has been hard on her,” she continues. “She trusted me to get you clean, and she feels like I’ve failed. Plus, when I found out she’d sent you to Seaside, I may have said some things.”

“What things?”

“I bitched her out,” Macy explains. “And I shouldn’t have, but I was angry and worried. I asked her if I could go see you or at least write, but she didn’t want me involved. I love you, babe, but you’re her kid, not mine. I had to respect her wishes—she is my sister.”

“So you stayed away.”

“I stayed away from you,” Macy says. “But I didn’t stay away from the case.”

I sit up straighter. “What’s that mean?”

Macy opens her mouth, but closes it when the waitress stops by our table, setting the bill down. “You girls take your time,” she says. “Let me know if you need any boxes.”

Macy nods her thanks and waits until the waitress is off taking another order before turning back to me. “Your mom had made her mind up about what happened to you. But I was the one who got you clean. I spent more time with you last year than she did. And I couldn’t do anything for you while you were at Seaside, but I knew how much Mina meant to you. And I knew that if you had any information about her killer, you would have come forward, even if it got you into trouble. I couldn’t shake that feeling, so I put some calls in to a few old friends from the force, asked around, got my hands on the reports, and the head detective’s take on things didn’t click. Even if you and Mina had been out there to score, why would a dealer leave the drugs? That’s evidence.

“The killer shot Mina. He could’ve easily shot you, too, getting rid of both witnesses, but he chose to knock you out. That tells me it wasn’t random; it was targeted. And if he planted the pills on you, that means it was planned.”

Something close to relief starts to uncurl inside me. Everything that she’s saying is everything that I’ve thought, over and over, while I’ve been locked away. Why did he leave me alive? Why did he plant the pills? How did he know enough about me to plant the right pills?

“I didn’t know the pills were in my pocket,” I say. “I swear. He must have put them there while I was unconscious—he was gone when I came to. And Mina was…” I have to blink hard and swallow before I’m able to continue. “I had to stop the blood. I used my jacket, but it wasn’t…I left it there, after she…after. It wasn’t until Detective James came to the house that anyone even mentioned drugs. Then it didn’t matter to Mom or Dad that my tests from the ER came back clean—they wouldn’t listen to me. No one would.”

“I’m listening,” Macy says. “Tell me what happened. Why were you girls out at Booker’s Point in the first place?”

“We were going to our friend Amber’s party,” I say. “But halfway there, Mina said we had to take a detour to the Point. That she had to meet someone for a story she was working on. She was doing an internship at the Harper ­Beacon. When she wouldn’t give me any specifics, I just figured it was an errand for her supervisor, or maybe an interview someone had to reschedule. I didn’t want to make the trip—it was way out in the boonies, and Amber lives on the other side of town. But Mina was…” I can’t say it, that I couldn’t ever deny her anything.

My hands shake, rattling the ice cubes in my glass. I put it down carefully, knotting my fingers together and studying the table like the answer to everything is hidden between the glitter in the Formica.

I haven’t talked about this honestly since the police first questioned me. Dr. Charles tried her hardest, through broken furniture and weeks of silence, but I’d twisted the truth to suit the person she thought I was.

With Macy, I’m finally safe. She’d yanked me back from rock bottom once, and I know she’d do it again. But I’m not at the bottom anymore. I’ve found my footing in that precarious middle place, the gray area where you trade addiction for something almost as dangerous: obsession.

“I saw him before Mina did,” I say. “I saw the gun in his hand. I saw he was wearing a mask. I knew…I knew what he was going to do. I knew there was no way I could outrun him. But Mina might have. I should’ve yelled at her to run. She could’ve gotten away. She would’ve at least had a chance.”

“There’s no way to outrun a bullet,” Macy says. “He wanted to kill Mina. That was why he was there. You couldn’t have stopped him. Nothing could’ve.”

“He said something to her. After he hit me, I fell, and as I was blacking out, I heard him. He said, ‘I warned you.’ And then I heard the shots and I…I couldn’t hold on anymore. When I woke up, it was just us. He was gone.”

My hands are shaking again. I tuck them underneath my thighs, pressing them hard against the red vinyl booth.

“I told Detective James all of this. I told him to talk to the Beacon staff. To ask her supervisor what she’d been working on. Did he check her computer? Or her desk? She wrote notes on everything—they have to be somewhere.”

Macy shakes her head. “He talked to everyone, Sophie. Mina’s supervisor, her fellow interns, even the cleaning lady who worked the night shift. He dragged in every known dealer in three counties for questioning, along with most of the kids in your grade, but didn’t find anything to warrant further investigation. Along with a witness testimony that was—well, shaky.” She fiddles with her fork, looking up at me. “Without any fresh evidence or a miraculous confession, it’ll be dismissed as an unsolved drug-related murder, and that’ll be it.”

I feel sick inside and grit my teeth. “I can’t let that happen.”

Macy’s eyes soften. “You might have to, babe.”

I don’t say anything. I keep quiet.

We get up, she pays the bill and tips the waitress before we leave the diner. I’m still silent, the idea of never knowing who took Mina away from me burning in my chest. But somehow, as always, Aunt Macy hears the words I can’t say. When we’re in the car, Macy reaches over and takes my hand.

She keeps it in hers the entire drive home.

It feels like a safety net.

Macy is always poised for my inevitable fall.