Wherever Nina Lies (17 page)

I
do not have the luxury of forgetting. There is no moment of blank calm, no moment of peace before reality catches up. I wake up as the sun rises, remembering exactly where I am and exactly what has happened. I’m crying before I even open my eyes. This is the first morning I’ve had to know it. Yesterday seems hazy, like a dream, a dream full of paranoia and denial and trying to convince myself that reality was not reality. But this morning I have woken up with a clear mind at the bottom of a well. Now this is real. This is all completely real. And now I have to deal with it.

It is time to tell my mother.

I can hear the sound of water coming from the bathroom. The shower is on.

I get out of bed. There is a beige plastic phone on the bedside table. I pick up the slightly sticky headset and hold it to my ear. How will I find her number? I called her on Sean’s phone, when was it, two days ago?

Sean is singing in the shower. Loudly and terribly. His phone is blinking on the desk.

I flip it open and go to the call log. There’s my mother’s number right there. I hold it in my hand as I dial 7-7-3-5-5-5-7-6-4…I am about to dial the last digit when I realize something strange. Something so strange my heart starts pounding before I’m even done processing. The call log. There’s the incoming call from Unavailable that I answered in the car last night. And before that there’s a call to voice mail. And then there’s my call to my mother on Tuesday morning. And before that, there’s a number Sean called on Saturday a few hours after we started driving to Nebraska. The number looks weirdly familiar.

But there were no other calls made on this phone between my call to my mother and the call I made last night except for the one call to voice mail at around four-thirty yesterday. Which is right around when Sean told me Nina was dead.

One call to voice mail when Sean said he was calling the investigator’s number.

So when did Sean talk to the investigator exactly?

I am sure there is a reasonable explanation for this. I’m sure there is. There has to be.

My heart is pounding harder now. The phone starts blinking in my hand again. The unavailable number is calling again. And I don’t think. I just pick up.

“Hello?” I whisper. I don’t hear anything for a moment. And then a voice, whispering back.

“Are you alone?”

I stare at the bathroom door. I don’t think I hear the rush of the water anymore. I think the shower has been shut off. Sean will be back any second.

“Are you alone?” the voice says again.

“Yes,” I whisper. My hands are sweating. “Who is this?”

“Is this Ellie?”

My heart stops at the sound of my name. “Who is this?” I ask again.

“You called me the other day,” the voice says. “You were looking for your sister. My name is Max and I know her…” The bathroom door opens a crack, a trail of steam escaping. It looks like smoke. “…and Sean did, too.”

“Wh…” I start to say. But before I can get any words out the bathroom door opens.

I snap the phone shut and toss it onto the bed just as Sean emerges from the bathroom, his hair damp, a white towel wrapped around his waist, another one hanging around his neck.

“You’re up,” he says. He takes the corner of the towel around his neck and dries his face. It’s flushed with heat.

“I’m up,” I say. Panic courses through me. But somehow I manage to twist my face into something resembling a smile.

“Well, you look like you’re feeling a little better this morning,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe a tiny bit.”

My mind races. Max. The guy I called from Attic, the guy whose phone number was written on the drawing, is
the same guy who just called me on Sean’s phone. But how did he get Sean’s number? It was his number I called. I reach out, grab my jeans off the floor, fish the cardboard credit card out of my back pocket. The number on the drawing
is the number Sean called on Saturday a few hours after we left my house!

What the hell does all this mean? It means Sean is hiding some things and probably lying about some things. Does this mean…
Sean could have lied about Nina being dead?

With that simple thought, I can feel something happening inside me. Hope is bubbling up. The guy on the phone said he
knows
Nina. Not
knew
her.
Knows
her. Like she is around to know. I feel my mouth curling into a smile and quickly stop it.

Sean walks over and stands in front of me, his chest dotted with beads of water.

“What are you looking at that for?” Sean asks. He’s staring down at the cardboard credit card clutched in my hand.

“I don’t know,” I say. I look up.

“I think it’s time to let this go now, Ellie,” he says. Sean snatches the card from my hand. The little sketch Nina drew of me is staring back at me. I look scared.

Sean walks toward the bathroom.

“Wait!” I say.

“I’m doing you a favor,” he calls out

“WAIT!”

He closes the door behind him, a second later I hear the toilet flush.

Sean comes back into the bedroom. “After Jason died there were certain things I held on to, things that reminded me of him, and I couldn’t move on until I let them go.” He smiles at me, reaches out to stroke my face. “I think it will help you not to have that around,” he says. Then he takes the towel from around his neck and starts rubbing his damp head. I stare at him. Who
is
this person I have spent the last five days with? Who I have shared a bed with? I suddenly feel like I’ve never seen him before in my life.

His left arm is up behind his head, the skin between his elbow and his armpit covered in those thin white scars. I remember tracing them with my fingers three nights ago when we got drunk in the hotel room. I remember thinking they were somehow beautiful in their chaos. But as I stare at them now, they start to look different. They are not chaos at all, there’s an order to them, a pattern in the jumble.

Letters. They are letters. Carved in and then covered over with hatch marks, as though he was trying to hide them. But when you know what to look for, they come through. Four letters. Carved into his skin.

N I N A.

I can’t breathe.

I want to be imagining this. But now that I’ve seen it, it’s impossible to un-see it. Her name, there it is. It was there all along.

My brain is spiraling out of control. I feel my lips parting. I can’t breathe. Sean is staring at my face. I look down.

“I think I’m going to take a shower,” I manage to say.

“Okay,” Sean smiles sweetly. He reaches out to put his arms around me. His skin is warm but touching him gives me chills. Over his shoulder, I see the blankets up at the top of the closet. I remember my dream last night, which maybe wasn’t a dream at all…

“Could you go and get us some food?” I say. “I mean, while I’m in the shower.”

Sean smiles again. “You’re hungry?”

“I’m suddenly starving.”

“What do you want? Name anything and I’ll go and get it.”

“A salad,” I say. “A really giant salad, with a lot of things in it.”

“For breakfast?”

I nod.

“Okay, whatever you want,” he says quickly. “I’ll have it for you when you get out.” He sounds so pleased then, pleased that I’m asking him for something, pleased that it’s something he’s able to do for me.

I nod, and force another smile. I manage to keep my knees from buckling until the bathroom door is closed safely behind me. I turn the water on and wait, my ear pressed against the door until I hear the outside door slam shut. And only then do I let myself scream.

T
here is no time to think.

I drag the heavy desk chair over to the closet, climb up, and stick my hands between the scratchy beige blankets on the top shelf. Only a few inches in, my hands hit leather.
So I wasn’t dreaming after all.
I reach in further, it’s a handle. I grab it and pull out Sean’s leather messenger bag. It feels warm, alive, like whatever’s in here has a pulse of its own.

I jump off the chair and crouch down on the floor.

The bag is locked with a five-dial combination lock with letters where you’d normally find numbers. I tug on the lock. There’s no way I’m going to be able to break in and the leather of the bag is definitely too thick to cut through.

I’m just going to have to try and unlock it with a guess. I rotate the tiny dials as fast as I can:

N-I-N-A-W

No.

J-A-S-O-N

No.

A-N-G-R-Y

No.

A-B-C-D-E

No.

I need to get into this bag.

S-E-A-N-L

Damn.

N-O-S-A-J

Shit.

W-A-N-I-N

Fuck. Now what?!

I take a deep breath and a thought pops into my head. That bathroom wall back in Nebraska. Nina’s graffiti. Cakey ♥’s J. CAKEY.

I turn the tiny dials one by one. I am all sweating palms and pounding heart.

C-A-K-E-Y

I hold my breath and pull down on the lock.

It pops right open.

I breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out again. Once I see what’s in here, there will be no going back.

I lift open the top of the bag and dump the contents on the floor. The newspaper article about Jason, a pile of envelopes, a drawing, and a photograph. I pick it up. It’s of Nina and someone else…I bring the picture closer to my face so I can get a better look.
Oh shit.
It’s Sean’s brother, Jason.

In the picture Nina and Jason are sitting behind a giant wooden dining room table with their arms around each other,
smiling these giant glowing smiles. The table in front of them is covered in the remnants of a party: wrapping paper, a big pile of what look like pink Hostess Sno Balls, beer bottles, etc. Also on the table is a snowboard covered in ink drawings of the two of them, with a bow on top. They’re sitting in front of a silver wall with a black rocket ship painted on it.

I’ve seen this wall, at the Mothership. I flip the picture over. In Nina’s handwriting:
I love you J.

J as in Jason.

Oh God.

I move on to the drawing.

I smile for the briefest of seconds despite everything that’s going on. This is just so
Nina.
Only now I’m completely baff led because…Nina drew this for
Sean
? No wait…no she didn’t.

He changed it. Sean took a drawing meant for Jason and
he changed the name
so he could pretend it had been drawn for him. My stomach tightens and I feel like I’m about to puke.

I let the paper fall from my hand and look down at the letters. There are dozens of them.

I pick up the one on top. My hands are shaking. The letter is dated June 24, the night Nina disappeared.

Dearest Nina,

I understand how hard all of this must be for you, but I hope you know that I truly meant everything I said at Jason’s funeral. I am here for you now, to lean on, to talk to, for whatever you
need. I am here for you with all my heart, and I will always be here. No matter what. I don’t actually know where I’m going to send this letter because I don’t know where you are right now. But I’m sure you’ll be back soon so I guess I’ll just keep this for you. I want us to go through this together Nina. We need each other now more than ever
.

With love,

Sean

Oh my God. I flip through the stack.

Nina,

I went to the Mothership again looking for you today. I don’t understand why you’d leave and not tell me where you went? We need each other now. We are supposed to be going through this together!! No one else can understand you the way I can. No one else can be here for you now the way I can be. Why won’t you let me?

Nina, I went to the Mothership last night. Some guy said he thought you’d been staying there but that you were gone now. He hadn’t seen you in days. Where are you? Where are you? Where are you? Where are you? I need to find you. Nothing makes any sense anymore. You need me now. YOU NEED ME! Why don’t you understand that?

Nina, the police came to my house today to ask me questions about where Jason might have gotten the heroin. I told them that
I had no idea. But where would they have gotten the idea that I would?

Nina,

I called your house today looking for you. Your mother got angry and told me to stop calling. It’s been almost two entire weeks since Jason went away. I’ve been trying not to sleep, because when I do the screaming starts inside my head and it doesn’t stop. I can’t get you out of my head. I feel like maybe you have an idea what I did. But anything I did, I only did for us. You must know that. Come back to me.

I flip a few letters ahead.

It’s been a month now. Where are you? Every night, when I lie down, he’s back and he’s begging me not to do it. But time is all funny and really the decision has already been made. I try and tell him that I had to…for love! But he doesn’t understand and in the dream I don’t understand, either. When I wake up, it makes less sense than it used to. Where are you? Where are you, sweet Nina? We are supposed to be going through this together. If we’re not, THEN WHAT WAS THE POINT?

I feel sick now, most of the time. It has invaded all my thoughts and everything I do. I can’t get away from it. You are the only person who could make me forget, who could make me remember why this is okay, why I had to do this.

I go places where I think you’ll be and wait for you to come
back. This is all I can do now: Wait. Wait to pass the time and write you these letters, which I’ll show you when I finally find you. WHERE ARE YOU!?!?!?! I want to believe you are lost, and I can help you find your way home. I am trying to have faith, but it is hard to have faith when you’re alone. I am trying.

WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?? WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY! I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take it. I can’t be without you. WHERE ARE YOU? I am sick every night and every day. I know you love me! I know you love me! I know it I know it. But why can’t I feel it anymore? Something is fading. When the love is gone other things rise to the surface. Things I can’t think about. I will never be able to stop without you.

My hands are shaking so hard the pages are rustling. I breathe in sharp gasps. There are too many letters here, too many for me to read them all. I flip to the last page in the stack. Five words. Stark black. All alone:

I DID IT FOR YOU

I let out a cry and raise my hand to my lips. No no no no no no no no. This is not possible. This can’t be real. This can’t be real. How can this be real?

I pick up the newspaper clipping about Jason’s death and I look at the date. I can’t believe I missed this before: Jason died the day Nina disappeared.

I need this not to mean what it seems like it means.

This must be a joke of some kind. Or a creative writing exercise. Or something. Or anything! I think back to the party at the Mothership. To everything Sean ever said to me there. To his willingness to help me. His insistence. The mask he wore to the party. So no one would recognize him? Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. I think of him gazing into my eyes. Telling me how much I looked like her. Oh God.

I hear the sound of a car pulling up outside. Sean is back. The letters are all over the floor. I run to the door and lock it with the chain. I grab the letters in handfuls and stuff them all back into the bag and then lock the lock. I can hear the sound of a key in the door. I climb up, lift the bag overhead. The doorknob is turning. I push it in between the blankets, lean back slightly, almost topple off the chair. The door is opening.

Please someone tell me what to do now.

“Ellie?” Sean’s voice is calling from outside. I get off the chair and without breathing drag it back to the desk. “Ellie?” Sean’s hand reaches in between the door and the jamb. He shakes the chain. My heart is pounding. “I can’t get in!” Sean calls out. “Are you still in the shower? Ellie?”

The shower.
I tear off my clothes and run into the bathroom. I turn the water on. I can hear Sean outside calling my name. “Ellie! Ellie! Ellie! I’m locked out! I can’t get in!” The water feels like ice. I drench my head, my face. When my
whole body is wet, I jump out of the shower. I hit my ankle against the side of the tub. Hard. My eyes tear up. I wrap one of the flimsy towels around myself. I turn the water off. Run back, dripping.

“Sean? Is that you?”

“Yeah, Ellie, I’m locked out!”

What can I do? What can I do? There’s nothing I can do. But he doesn’t know what I’ve seen. So I just need to keep it that way.

“Sorry!” I yell. “I’m opening it!”

I take down the chain and pull the door open. Sean is standing there, holding a clear plastic container out in front of him. “Hey, you!” he says. “I come bearing salad!”

“Hi!” I say. I try to sound normal. I’m shouting. “Were you waiting long?”

“Not too long, but why’d you lock the chain?”

“I was scared.” The water is dripping off my body onto the floor, pooling around my feet. My ankle is throbbing. “When you left, I just, I don’t know, I got freaked. Because of Nina, I guess,” I say. “I lost track of time in the shower.” I try and smile. Am I acting normal? I don’t even remember how normal people act.

“Aw, sweetie,” Sean says. He walks inside, closing the door behind him. He puts down the salad and a pink vitaminwater. “I’m sorry I left you alone for so long. Don’t worry, I won’t do it again.”

He presses his body against mine, holding me to him. It takes everything in me not to push him away. “You’re shaking,” says Sean. He rubs my arms.

“I’m cold,” I say.

I lean back and look at Sean’s face. Everything that was beautiful about him looks different to me now. His intense gray eyes are filled with something dark and sick. His sculptured cheekbones look too sharp. His lips too wet.

“Do you want to get dressed?” Sean says. His voice is soft and gentle, like he’s talking to a child. And all I can think is,
How am I going to get out of this?
I will go into the bathroom and put on my clothes. And then what?

And then what?

“And then you can come and eat your salad,” Sean says.

I nod. Just because you’re trapped in a hotel room with a guy who is stalking your sister and killed his own brother, that’s no excuse for not eating your vegetables.

I gather my clothes, bring them into the bathroom. I watch myself in the mirror as I slip my shirt over my head, pull my pants up. I smile at myself in the mirror. I look terrified.

When I come back out, Sean is standing by the desk, the salad is laid out and next to it is a plastic fork on top of a paper napkin. The vitaminwater sits next to it. He’s taken the cap off for me.

“For you, my love,” he says. I walk over.

His phone starts vibrating. He reaches into his pocket and stops it. I stare at his hands. He grabs the back of the chair, pulls it out from under the desk. I sit. I stare down into the plastic bowl—limp lettuce, bloated red tomatoes, rubbery cucumber slices, corn, covered in a slick of sour-smelling vinegar. I stab the fork into a piece of tomato. A piece of corn is stuck to the side, like a small rotting tooth. I gag.

“You okay?” Sean says.

“Yeah,” I say. I put the tomato in my mouth, chew the cold flesh. Flesh. I gag again. I taste bile. Sean is standing over me, staring down. He puts his hand on my shoulder.

“I understand,” he says. “I couldn’t eat for almost a month after my brother died, but it will really make you feel better.” I nod. My thoughts are zipping around inside my brain, collecting speed as I remember different things he said, things he did that I’m now understanding in a new way.

“It’s hard,” I say.

“I know it is, baby.” Sean reaches out and strokes my hair. “I’m just so glad I can be here for you now. I’m just so glad I can be here.” He crouches down so his head is level with mine and he puts his hands on either side of my face, forcing me to face him. “You are in my heart now, Ellie.” He looks me in the eyes. “And that’s forever.” He leans in toward me, his lips parted, his breath hot against my face. And then, I can’t help it, I flinch, ever so slightly.

He leans back. “Oh God,” he says. He raises his hand to
his mouth, his lips part. “That look you just gave me.” He stands and stumbles backward. “You know.”

“What?” I’m shaking my head. “What are you talking about?”

“You
know
,” he says.