Far From You

39

NOW (JUNE)

Kyle and I are silent on the drive back to my house.

When I park in my driveway and reach for the door handle, he doesn’t get out. He stares at the dashboard, hands in his lap. For a long, uncomfortable moment, all I want to do is leave him there. But then he starts talking.

“I told her I loved her,” he says. “A week before she…I told her I loved her and she started crying. I thought she…It was stupid. I’m stupid. I thought I knew her. But I didn’t.” He looks at me, those puppy-dog eyes so miserable, it hurts even though I’m still mad at him. “How does that even work, Sophie? To love someone so fucking much and not even really know her?”

I don’t know how to answer that. I’d loved her. The real her. The half version she’d shown to the world and the scared parts that ran from me as much as they reached for me. Every part, every dimension, every version of her, I knew and loved.

I think about when we were younger. Even back in middle school, Kyle was on the outskirts, watching, entranced as I was with her. Waiting, and finally getting, only to be crushed.

I understand why he hates me. It’s the exact reason I hated him those months before. He took her away from me. And then she got taken away from both of us. Neither of us won in a game he didn’t even know he was playing.

Because of that kinship, I can put aside my anger. I can be kind. She would’ve wanted that.

“Mina trusted you. She told you. That means something. It means everything.”

He stares at me like he’s seeing me for the first time. The misery is still sharp in his eyes, but there’s something else now, too, a kind of searching look that makes me want to run. “You know how everyone has, like, a dream? For their life, I mean?”

I nod.

“Mina was mine.”

I reach out—I can’t help it—and squeeze his shoulder.

“Mine, too.”

After Kyle leaves, I go inside and up to my room to download the files Rachel gave me.

Mina’s time line is a thing of beauty compared to the makeshift one stuck to the underside of my mattress—it’s years long, with a detailed suspect list and precise notes on each person involved.

I don’t think I’d ever talked to Jackie Dennings. My freshman year had been overshadowed by the crash, but even if it hadn’t, our paths probably wouldn’t have crossed. She’d been a junior and class president, and popular, so to me she existed just as a pretty blond girl that I knew of, more an idea than a person. And then one day that pretty blond girl was on a Missing poster, and they were plastered everywhere. The Dennings family had even put up billboards on the highway, but no tips ever led anywhere.

According to Mina’s notes, Jackie was a good student and star athlete, a loving sister and daughter. She’d even been headed to Stanford on a full soccer scholarship. The only ripple in her good-girl image was the boyfriend.

When Jackie disappeared, Matt Clarke had been the number one suspect. A history of drug abuse, a few citations for public intoxication and bar fights, with only a shaky alibi from another known drug user didn’t help him any, but the police search of his truck and house had turned up nothing.

My cursor hovers over the link that’ll open the audio file of Mina’s interview with Matt. I need to click it. I have to listen to it.

But I can’t bring myself to click. Sitting here alone in my room, her voice would be like hot metal against skin, burning through the layers until there’s nothing left to brand.

I’m not strong enough.

Ten months. Two days.

The next day, both my parents are out of the house by eight, off to meetings and appointments. I set out the mat on my bedroom floor and go through my regular asanas, but I can’t focus—or rather, unfocus. Now that I have something to go on, the urge to track down and interrogate everyone who ever knew Jackie is fierce.

But I can’t do that. Jackie had a little sister and parents and people who love her, who miss her. Who might object to someone snooping around.

I’m not Mina. I’m not good at making people comfortable or getting them to talk. Even before the crash, it wasn’t one of my talents.

I’m finishing up my practice, sitting in lotus pose, breathing long and slow, when the doorbell rings.

I check the window before going downstairs. Trev’s F-150 is parked outside my house, and my first instinct is to change. I’m in shorts and a tank top. It’s stupid. It’s not like he hasn’t seen me in less; in nothing at all.

The bell rings again.

I take a deep breath and walk down the stairs.

“I need to talk to you,” he says as soon as I open the door. He brushes past me, not waiting to be invited in.

He turns, trapping me against the door, and stares me down. “Kyle stopped by last night,” he says.

Shit. I should’ve made Kyle promise not to go to Trev.

“He told me the drugs weren’t yours. That he lied about Mina telling him that you two were going to score. That you’ve been telling the truth this whole time. That Mina was investigating Jackie Dennings’s disappearance, and that’s why you were at the Point.”

I cross my arms, planting my bare feet on the Spanish tile. It’s cool, solid, and I tilt my chin up and meet his eyes.

“Is that what Kyle says?”

Anger darkens his face. “No, Sophie, you don’t get to do that. I just spent eight hours tearing my sister’s room apart with Kyle, trying to find some threatening notes he’s claiming she got. Don’t pull that shit with me. Not about Mina. Tell me the truth!”

“I tried,” I spit out. “I wrote you when I was at ­Seaside. I explained everything. But you sent the letter back unopened. You didn’t seem interested in the truth then.” I can’t hide the resentment in my voice. I don’t want to.

He looks down, disarmed for a moment. “There were drugs at the scene. The pill bottle had your prints on it. Detective James was sure it was a drug deal. What was I supposed to think? You’d lied to us for years. Years, Sophie. Just six months away to get clean, and I’m supposed to forget that?”

“I don’t care that you didn’t believe me,” I say. “Not anymore. Not after everyone else turned on me. I care that you didn’t believe in her. She never would’ve taken me anywhere to get drugs. And you should’ve known that—you should’ve known her!”

My voice rises with each word, until I’m yelling at him, jabbing my hand in the air with each sentence.

“Don’t you…” He steps toward me, then thinks better of it and backs away instead, until he’s right up against the front door.

I hold my ground. It’s been months since he sent the letter back, but my anger feels fresh, pushed down and ignored.

“You let me down,” I say. “And you let her down by believing that she’d allow me to relapse like that—like she’d even help me score. Are you kidding me? She’s the one who ratted me out the first time. What the hell were you thinking?” I’m yelling, my voice rising and rising, like my rage has no limits.

This time, he doesn’t back away. He stands up straight, and sweat trickles down my spine when he glares at me. “I was thinking that I didn’t know who the hell you were anymore,” he says. “You lied to us for years. You pretended to be fine, and we fell for it. I fell for it. And it started to make me wonder what else you were lying about. When you went to Portland, Mina spent the next two months just…wrecked. I’d never seen her like that. Not since Dad…” He rubs a hand over his mouth, his shoulders pressing hard into the door, steeling himself.

“I tried to tell myself she was worried, she missed you. You two were always your own little dastardly duo. Like sisters. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? You and Mina. You weren’t sisters. And you weren’t just friends, were you?” He’s searching my face, looking for a hint of the truth.

He knows.

Ohgodohgodohgod, too late, too late, too late.

“Were you in love with Mina?” he demands, and I can hear it, the dread in his voice. “Was she in love with you?”

I don’t know how to answer that last question. I wish I did.

“Kyle told you.”

“Jesus Christ,” Trev breathes, and I realize that Kyle hadn’t said anything—instead I’ve just confirmed it, this long-ignored fear, the deeply buried what-if in Trev’s mind.

He’s gone pale beneath his deep summer tan. He leans against the front door like he needs it to hold himself up. I wish we’d done this in the living room so he could sit down—so I could sit down. My legs are trembling, and my palms are slick with sweat.

“Jesus Christ,” he says again, shaking his head, staring into space like I’m not even there. “This entire time…” He looks back at me. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“It was none of your business.”

“None of my…” He lets out an incredulous half laugh. “You know I love you. Don’t you think you should’ve mentioned that you don’t like guys? This whole time, I’ve been telling myself you just needed…” He trails off. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Not anymore.” He shakes his head once and turns away, going for the door.

“Hey.” I catch his arm.

It’s a mistake to touch him. I know it instantly. There’s no excuse. No fresh shock of Mina’s death. No drunken night and flimsy shirt.

It’s just him and me. The two left standing. He is the only other person who misses her the way I do, who shares half my memories of her, who’s loved me the exact opposite way she did: steadfastly and openly.

He doesn’t pull away. He can’t, so I have to. For both of us.

“You didn’t make it up,” I say firmly. “You and me. There’s chemistry. Or whatever you want to call it. There’ve been times, moments with you… You didn’t make it up, Trev. I promise you.”

“But you’re into girls.”

“I’m not gay; I’m bisexual. There’s a difference.”

“And Mina?”

My silence answers for me, and then he does, too.

“It was Mina this whole time, wasn’t it?”

I give him the only thing I can: the cold, hard truth. The one that’ll rewrite every memory he has—of him and me, her and me, the two of them, all three of us: “It’ll always be Mina.”