North Fork (6 page)

In one bucket I kept the tent and one of those candle-lantern things you can hang from the ceiling, spare candles, some books, waterproof matches and that quick-start stuff to get a fire going when the wood is damp, some packets of instant hot chocolate, a plastic cup, and one of those cheap, aluminum, camp cooking kits. The tent is pretty compact and would sleep two people crammed together. In the other bucket I keep a sleeping bag, a fleece, a windbreaker, and a yellow and black Abercrombie reversible down vest that I traded a kid at school a couple of CD's for. Sometimes I leave some granola bars and Top Ramen noodle packets there too. The bucket lids have kept the mice out.

She thought it was pretty cool that I had it all planned out like that, and that I could go there alone and not feel afraid. I didn't tell her that some nights sitting by the fire or lying in the tent reading, if I let my mind wander I start hearing noises in
the brush or maybe just imagining them, and it scares the crap out of me, visualizing all the possible dangers. I even think about sasquatches sometimes. But when that happens, and I think about sneaking out of there and heading back to the house in town, I also think about what it feels like to have Harold in my face or even just to lay in bed in his house, and I decide that the tent isn't so bad and whatever is out there in the dark is just a maybe, while Harold or even the feeling of Harold at the house, is a certainty, so I stay.

When I'm gone all night, I say that I spent the night at someone's house. They used to ask who and I got caught lying a few times, but Harold's gone so much and my mom seems so totally focused on my little half-sister, Tristan, that I hardly exist to her anymore. Even though I was really pissed when I found out Harold got my mom pregnant, you can't hate a baby for very long. Tristan is the only good thing to ever come from that prick, but she makes me feel like a failure even though she's the only person in the world I think might actually love me. I feel responsible for protecting her from the misfortune of having Harold for a dad, which ends up being a bad joke because I can't even protect myself.

I think my mom wishes her life before Harold and Tristan didn't happen, and since I'm part of that life, the wish includes me. Anyway, they don't ask many questions, but when it comes up, I still get yelled at for not telling them where I've been. I would get yelled at no matter what, so it doesn't change what I do. It's better when I don't come home, for everyone.

There was a quarter moon and bright stars that made it nice by the river. You could see the current rippling on the water. Kristen had scratched her leg on some blackberry vines on the trail. She was wearing shorts and running shoes. There was a lot of blood from the scratch, even though it wasn't deep, and it had run down onto her sock. She decided to go wading to clean up her leg and took her socks off. She used the socks to wipe the
sand off her feet and then put her shoes back on and left the socks on the ground.

We sat on a log in the dark for a while, watching the river and looking for shooting stars, but we were cold. If I was going to make a move to get her to make out or something, that would have been the time, but I didn't do it. I wanted to. I mean she's beautiful, and there we were in the moonlight, and I could tell she was cold and I wanted to put my arm around her, and, well, you know. . . It makes my head spin, just thinking about it.

Maybe I misread her and maybe she wanted me to at least hold her. Girls can be strange that way, but I'm not very experienced at this stuff. Not like I've never done anything with a girl before, but this is different. It's not just about sex and it's hard to explain, but it has to do with what I felt coming through her hand in the dark on the trail. It's like she sees this part of me that I don't even think exists. She seems to see it the way you see the color of someone's hair or how tall (or short, in my case) they are, and she sort of respects it or is at least interested in it, and because of that I have to start believing in it too, and learning about it, which is really scary.

The only way out would have been to ignore her and stay away, which would have meant saying no to the ride. Or I could have tried to get her to make out or just acted stupid like I usually do, and spoiled it all, driven her away like I do every other good thing. But I kept my hands to myself and offered her the fleece and the windbreaker, now evidence, and asked if she thought we should build a fire.

It was only ten and she said she could stay a little longer if she checked in with her mom on her cell. It was strange but reassuring to hear her lying to her mom on the phone about how she was meeting some of the ASB (student government, I don't even know what the letters stand for) kids at Denny's to talk about a pep assembly. While the fire was heating up, she helped me put
up the tent, and then we sat watching the flames and talking.

Actually, now that I think about it, I did most of the talking. And I think about it a lot because, just like the cops, I'm looking for clues, trying to remember if she said anything that night that would help me figure out what happened to her, or if I could have done something different that would have changed the way things are turning out. We talked a little about school. I asked her what it was like to get good grades and have all the teachers like you. She said it was a lot of work and that she had always known it was expected of her, so it didn't seem like there was any other choice. I asked how she got along with her parents.

“All right,” she said.

“Do you love them?” I realized as I asked it that it was kind of a weird personal question, but we had been talking about my parents and Harold, so it wasn't completely out of line. Her life seemed so perfect to me, and the lie on the phone surprised me. Going home to people you could tell the truth to and have real conversations with about the stuff that bothered or scared you without them taking it all wrong and going ballistic was one of my fantasies. When my parents were going through the divorce, I used to dream that they would die in a car wreck or a plane crash and I would get adopted by these imaginary people and we would have this happy family. I had imagined her family was like that, and I was starting to sense that maybe it wasn't.

“I don't hate them, not like you and Harold,” she said. “We don't talk much. As long as I get good grades and report in so they don't have to worry, they're nice enough. I've never done anything to upset them, except go to a party once in a while. If I keep my grades up, do all the right stuff at school, go to church and say what they want to hear, they leave me alone. He's not my real dad either. In fact he's my second stepdad, but he's nice to my mom and gives her the life she wants. I think they want me to have a good life. I can't wait to go to college and move out. I don't
feel like I really know them.”

I can't even think about college. It doesn't seem real to me. I'm already short of credits. I couldn't focus on school enough to make it to graduation next year, even before being locked up, so talking about college with her made me nervous. I saw a meteorite streak across the sky and got her to look before it faded, then I changed the subject.

“I just want to leave,” I said. “I'd do it now, if I had some money.”

“Where would you go?”

“I don't know. Camping on some beach in Mexico sounds good. I hear you can live cheap down there, and it's warm. It would be great except for all the bandit and corrupt-cop stories that make it sound dangerous.”

Then I remembered this story my cousin told me about his dad. I told it to her the way I remembered it. I won't tell it here except to say that when my uncle was in high school, he and one of his friends ran away to Hawaii. Eventually they got caught and were brought back, which made Kristen ask,

“So what did they do to him?”

“I don't know the details, only that he became a plumber, which pays pretty well, and married my aunt, and you'd never guess now that he ran away when he was a kid. By the time they caught up with him, they were probably so glad he wasn't dead that they forgave him, like the parents in Romeo and Juliet would have if the stupid kids hadn't killed themselves. All his money was gone. If I had that kind of money, I'd find a way to be gone for good, like my sister. No more Harold Hopp, ever.”

She seemed deep in thought, hypnotized by the fire which was dying down, so I threw a little more wood on it and that brought her back. She looked at the time on her phone and said she had to go.

Now this would have been the moment to kiss her, if that
was going to happen. Either then, when we were leaving the campsite, or back at her car to say good-bye, but it didn't happen and what's weird is that even though something about her had changed while I was blabbing away—she was more distant and hardly said anything at all—the trust was still in her hand as I led her along the trail. I don't think I was imagining it, but there was also this sadness. Remember, I had seen it before, only this time it wasn't very well hidden, like if I said the wrong thing she would cry, so I gave her space and didn't try anything.

At the car, she said she had had fun and thanked me for the hot chocolate made out of boiled river water that she drank while I was telling the story about my uncle. Then she was gone, and I went back and sat by the fire alone for a while before climbing into my sleeping bag.

We didn't say much to each other at school the week of the fateful night. She was absent one of those days. Then I got suspended. Friday night, when they think she was with me and I raped and killed her and dumped her body somewhere, was pretty uneventful. It was late and I was really tired when I finally got to the river. It had been a long day. Remember, I had mowed the lawn, hung out at the mall, smoked a little weed and gone to a movie before the long walk out to the campsite. I built a fire and sat by it for a while, thinking about her and remembering. Hidden under the log, I also had a bottle of MacNaughton's that I had boosted from Harold one night when he was too drunk to miss it. There was some left, so I had a few snorts. Actually, it took more than a few to cut the loneliness which was sharper now that she had been there with me, and when I finally got drunk enough to sleep, I crashed. In the morning when I woke up, I was sick and hung over.

Okay, so right after the cops were done talking to me that Saturday, the day after Kristen disappeared, I called Brad. I was a little nervous about it. Who wouldn't be? It was a pretty weird night anyway, without adding Kristen to it. But there was no way around it. Brad was involved and when they grilled him, if his story was different from mine, eventually they would trap him into telling the truth. Except for the fact that I let a strange guy who was drinking pick me up, the truth isn't that bad, though it would probably end up including his mom's little indiscretion and would likely start some big Mercer Island high-society scandal. So I thought we could save everyone a lot of trouble and not hurt anything by a little harmless editing to smooth out the wrinkles. Politicians spin the truth all the time. So I called him.

When he answered his cell, he sounded surprised, but seemed glad it was me. It was easy to talk to him. When I told him about Kristen vanishing, he was pretty taken aback, but instead of worrying about how it would affect him, he seemed worried about how I was feeling. Which surprised me. It was nice. I expected him to be mad that he was involved because of me.

We didn't need much of a lie. It was more like we needed to verify with each other what really happened between us, you know, what it meant in the end so it would be clear which details were important to tell and which should be left out. The only part that we had to make up was how we met. The most dramatic and memorable part of the night, the part in the car when I thought he was going to rape me, really was all just miscommunication
and my imagination running away. In the big picture it was just a detail, part of our getting to know each other. We decided to say that he just needed to talk about some stuff that was happening in his life, school and ex-girlfriend stuff, and we couldn't decide whether to go down to Everett, which would have been my idea because I wanted to get out of the Valley and I like riding in his car, or go to Denny's in Mount Vernon which would be easier for him because it wouldn't be such a drive to get me home and he wouldn't be out all night.

We figured that the cops who were behind us at the Arlington I-5 exit probably took down his license number, which made it necessary to explain that little side trip. We weren't parked down that lane very long, so we decided to say that on the way to Everett we realized how late it was and pulled in there to talk for a minute and make up our minds what to do next. It really wasn't that long between when we left the Shell and when we got to Denny's since Brad drives fast, and we stayed at Denny's for a long time. The waitresses there can verify that.

The actual lie part, how and where we met, was a little harder. I told Sterling that Brad had called me earlier and we had arranged for him to meet me at the Shell. The cops can check your phone records and since there was no call, we had to figure something out. The Shell is like halfway between Anacortes and I-5, not exactly where you'd choose to buy gas if you just pulled off the freeway. Brad had told me he was heading home after hanging out in Bellingham with some friends who go to Western, but he hadn't explained how he ended up at that particular gas station. It turned out he had just dropped off this kid from Anacortes who needed a ride home. He didn't really know the kid but his Bellingham friends did, and Brad was just being nice. It's comforting to find out that my creep alarm does work, and the reason I let myself get in the car with him is that he really is nice.

We decided that it would be okay if I changed my story
about there being a phone call and admitted that it was a chance meeting, but kept the part about us knowing each other before. If it came up, I would just say that I told it that way to Sterling because he doesn't approve of me and I thought it would sound better if our meeting-up was planned. It turns out that Brad and I know some of the same people and we both go to Bellingham parties enough that it would be safe to say we had met there and knew each other.