I Was Here (20 page)

40

Tricia picks me up at baggage claim just like she promised, and marches me to the
car. As soon as my seat belt is snapped, she orders: “Talk.”

Strangely, it’s not the part with Ben I’m worried about. Telling Tricia I ran off
to Nevada with some guy I tossed my virginity to—that part comes out easy. She doesn’t
look delighted about it, but once she’s certain that we used protection and used it
properly and is suitably reassured that no pregnancy will result, she lets that part
go.

“But why were you in Laughlin?” she asks me.

This is the thing I’m scared to tell her. And not for the reason I’ve been telling
myself, which is that she’ll blab it all over town, though she might.

Tricia went with me to most of Meg’s memorial services. She wore her hotsy black dress
and got dewy-eyed at all the appropriate parts. But we have hardly spoken about Meg
dying. About Meg choosing to die. There was only that one conversation in my bedroom
a few weeks ago. It’s been pretty clear she doesn’t want to talk about it, or hear
about it. For all her talk of Meg and me being different, I think she worries that
we aren’t.

When I finally tell her about Bradford and the Final Solution boards, she doesn’t
seem completely surprised. “Mrs. Banks said something intense was going on with you
and that computer.”

“Mrs. Banks? When did you talk to her?”

“Who do you think helped me book your ticket?”

So Tricia’s already been talking about me in town. But it doesn’t feel bad. Not at
all, actually. It’s like I have allies.

“How was your first flight, by the way?” Tricia asks.

I’d spent the duration of it staring at the parched landscape below, tracing the path
Ben and I took on the drive down, trying not to think about him on his solo return
trip.

“Fine.”

We pull on to I-90, and I start to tell her about Bradford. About making myself bait.
I tell her how persuasive he was, how he started an echo chamber in my head. I tell
her about everything, except the detour to Truckee. I’m not sure why. Maybe I’m trying
to spare her, but I don’t think so. I’ve lost a lot recently, and a father—well, you
can’t lose what you never had.

I keep waiting for her to get furious, but instead, when I tell her some of the things
Bradford wrote to me, she looks terrified. “And you went and confronted him?” she
asks.

I nod.

“I can’t believe I . . .” She trails off. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“Me too.” I say. “I’m sorry. It was stupid.”

“Yeah, I’ll say.” She reaches over to stroke my cheek. “It was also brave.”

I manage a smile. “Maybe.”

She guns the engine and pushes us into the fast lane. Then, after a while, she says,
“You have to tell the Garcias. You know that, right?”

And the gloom and guilt fall as fast as a winter sunset. “It’ll break their hearts.”

“Their hearts are already broken,” Tricia says. “But maybe it’ll help mend yours,
and right now, we’d all settle for that.”

x x x

When we get back in town, Tricia drives past our house, and even though I’m exhausted
and about to dissolve into a million pieces, I let her take me where she’s taking
me.

“I gotta get to work,” she says, pulling into the Garcias’ driveway. “I’ll see you
later.”

“Thank you,” I say. I hug her across the stick shift. Then I grab my file on Meg,
Bradford, and Final Solution, and head toward the front door.

Scottie opens up.

“Hey, Runtmeyer,” I say softly.

“Hi, Cody,” he says, and he seems embarrassed, or maybe he’s pleased, by the return
of this nickname. “It’s Cody,” he calls into the house.

Sue comes out, wiping her hands on an apron. “Cody! You finally came for dinner. Can
I make you a plate?”

“Maybe later. I need to talk to you about something.”

Her expression falters. “Come in,” she says. “Joe,” she calls. “Cody’s here. Scottie,
go play upstairs.”

Scottie gives me a look, and I shrug.

Joe and Sue go into the darkened dining room, which has a fancy wood table that we
used to eat family dinners around. Now it is piled with papers and other signs of
disuse. “What is it, Cody?” Joe asks.

“There’s some things I need to tell you, about Meg. About her death.”

They both nod, reach for each other’s hands.

“I know she killed herself. I’m not saying she didn’t. But you need to know that she
was involved with this group . . .” I begin. “It calls itself a suicide support group,
but it’s the kind of support that encourages people to kill themselves, and I think
that’s why she did it.”

I watch their faces, awaiting their horror, but they are kind, expectant, waiting
for me to continue. And it hits me: this is old news.

“You know?”

“We know,” Sue says quietly. “It was in the police report.”

“It was?”

Sue nods. “They said it explained how she got that poison. It’s common with those
groups.”

“The Final Solution.” Joe practically spits the words. “That’s what the Nazis called
the Holocaust. Meg knew that. I can’t believe she’d fall into a group that used that
as its name.”

“Joe.” Sue puts her hand on his arm.

“So the police found the encrypted files? They know about Bradford?” I’m confused.
Bradford didn’t seem to know anything about Meg’s death.

Now Joe and Sue look confused, too. “What files?”

“On Meg’s computer. In her trash.”

“I don’t know about that,” Sue says. “They just said they found evidence that Meg
was involved with this group from her Internet searches.”

“Who’s Bradford?” Joe asks.

“Bradford Smith,” I say.

They look at me blankly.

“He’s the one, from the boards. Wait, I thought you said the police knew about this.”

“They told us she was involved with these sickos who preyed upon vulnerable people
like Meg, encouraging them to commit suicide,” Joe says.

“But you don’t know about Bradford?” They shake their heads. “Bradford Smith? On the
boards, known as All_BS?” Still no recognition. “He’s the one who helped her, pushed
her. He was like her death mentor. He coaxed her, offered her advice.”

Sue nods. “Right. That’s how these groups work.”

“But it wasn’t the group. It was him.”

“How do you know about this, Cody?” Joe asks.

I back up and explain. The encrypted file, which led me to the Final Solution boards,
which led me to Firefly1021, which led me to All_BS. “I spent weeks on the boards,
trying to smoke him out. It took a while, but I did it, and then I guess I got him
to believe I was like Meg, and I sort of fooled him into calling me. He was careful
about it, calling via Skype on a tablet, but I was able to trace the call and from
there figure out where he worked and then where he lived.”

They’re still staring at me. “You did all that yourself?” Sue asks.

“Not exactly. Harry Kang, Meg’s former roommate, he did all the technical stuff, and
another person drove me to Laughlin to see Bradford—”

“You went to see this man?” Joe interrupts.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I just now got back.”

“Cody!” Sue admonishes in the same tone she’d scold Meg and me for staying out too
late or driving too fast. “That was
very
dangerous.”

Joe and Sue are watching me now with worried parental expressions. And though I’ve
missed this, so much, I don’t want them looking at me like that. I don’t want to be
their child. I want to be their avenging angel!

“Don’t you see? This guy did it! She wouldn’t be dead if it weren’t for him.”

“He told her to kill herself?” Joe asks. “He helped her do it?”

“Yes! And he tried to help me, too! Look.”

I flip open my files to show them the notes, the messages. But as I read what he wrote
to Meg and me, what I see is a bunch of other people’s quotes. Links to other pages.
Everything at arm’s distance. He didn’t tell Meg to use poison. He didn’t buy it for
her. He didn’t offer me any specific advice beyond cold remedies. He never once outright
said to me:
You should kill yourself
.

I told no one anything,
I hear him say. He’d almost taunted me when he asked me what specific advice he’d
given. I remember wanting him to ask me about my chosen method so badly, but he never
did.

But that doesn’t change anything. He’s still responsible. “It was him,” I insist.
“Meg wouldn’t have killed herself if not for him.
He’s
the reason.”

Joe and Sue exchange a glance, and then they look at me. And then Sue tells me exactly
what Tree told me a few weeks ago, only I didn’t hear it. How long have I not been
hearing it?

“Meg suffered from depression, Cody,” Sue tells me. “She had her first clinical episode
in tenth grade. She had another last year.”

Tenth grade, the year in bed. “The mono?”

Sue nods, then shakes her head. “It wasn’t mono.”

“Why?” I ask. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

Sue taps her chest. “I’ve struggled with this for such a long time, not only depression
but the stigma of it in a small town, and I didn’t want her saddled with that at age
fifteen.” She pauses. “If I’m honest, what I really didn’t want was for her to be
saddled with a disease she got from me. So we kept it quiet.”

Joe looks down at the table. “We thought we were doing the best thing at the time.”

“We got her on antidepressants, of course,” Sue says. “And she improved. So much so
that she wanted to go off them after she graduated high school. We tried to talk her
out of it. I know depression, and it’s not something that visits once and disappears.”

Sue’s moods. The house’s smells.
Depression. That’s what it’s like?

“We knew things weren’t right as soon as she got down there,” Joe says. “She was sleeping
all the time, missing classes.”

“We tried to get her help, to get her on track,” Sue says. “We were thinking of making
her take a term off. We talked about it—fought about it, more like—all through winter
break.”

“That’s why we couldn’t invite you to join us,” Joe says.

Winter break.
My family is driving me crazy
.

“We had decided to force the issue if she wouldn’t take steps. To bring her home if
we needed to, even if it meant losing her scholarship. But then in the New Year, she
seemed to get better. Only she wasn’t. She was planning her escape.”

“I didn’t know,” I say.

“None of us did,” Sue says, starting to cry now.

She was my best friend. If I’d been there, for the winter break, or for the school
year, I would’ve known. About her depression, how bad she was feeling. It might be
different. She might be here.

“I didn’t know,”
I repeat, only this time it comes out as a piercing howl. And then my grief bursts
like an aneurysm, the blood everywhere.

Joe and Sue watch me hemorrhage, and as they do, it’s like they finally understand.

Joe reaches out to grab my hand as Sue says the words I’ve been yearning to hear:
“Oh, baby, no, no, no. Not you. It’s not
your
fault.”

“I was going to move to Seattle,” I say between sobs. “We were going to have this
great life together, but . . .” I don’t know how to finish. I didn’t have the money.
I got scared. I got stuck. So she went. And I stayed.

“No!” Joe says. “That’s not it. You were the world to her. You were her rock back
here.”

“But that
is
it. Don’t you see?” I cry. “When she went away, I was mad. At me mostly, but I took
it out on her. I wasn’t there for her. If I had been, she would’ve come to me instead
of him.”

“No, Cody,” Sue says. “She wouldn’t have.”

There’s a devastating finality in Sue’s voice.
She wouldn’t have
. Meg would’ve kept it a secret, as she always did.

Joe clears his throat, his way of holding back tears. “I get why you went after this
guy, Cody. Because if this Bradford did it, then someone else murdered her. Someone
other than her. Then maybe we could grieve her with clean, simple broken hearts.”

I look up at Joe. Oh, God. I miss her so much. But I am so angry with her. And if
I can’t forgive her, how can I forgive myself?

“But if Meg weren’t sick in the first place, she wouldn’t have been in that man’s
crosshairs,” Sue says, looking imploringly at Joe. “He wouldn’t have had any power
over her. Look at Cody. She went on those boards, she tangled with that man. We just
read the messages.” Sue turns to me now. “And you’re still here.”

No! They don’t understand. How he burrows into the mind, plays games, hits all your
weak spots. He could’ve brought me down too.

But then I look around. I’m sitting at the dining room table I’ve eaten so many meals
around over the years. Meg is gone. The last few months have been hell. But Sue’s
right. I’m still here.

The file is open, the pages splayed. Everything I went through to get this—the rabbit
hole I went down with Bradford? I’d thought it was a mark of his strength. But maybe
it was a test of mine.

I’m still here.

I put the pages back in the folder and slide it over to Joe. “I think I need to stop
with this,” I say. “You guys do what you think is best.”

He takes the file from me. “We’ll show it to the police first thing in the morning.”

There’s a moment of silence. Then Sue says, “And, Cody,” but it doesn’t scare me like
before. “Thank you,” she finishes.

Then she and Joe are up, out of their seats, holding me so tight, and we are all crying.
We stay like that for a long time until Sue says, “You’re a bag of bones. Please,
Cody. Let me feed you.”

I lean back in the upholstered chair. I’m not hungry, but I say okay. Sue heads toward
the kitchen. Joe stays with me.

“You should’ve told us,” he says, tapping the file.

“You should’ve told me, too,” I say.

He nods.

“And Scottie. You should tell him. He already knows. I mean, he doesn’t know the specifics,
but he suspects someone helped Meg. He’s the one who clued me in.”