This Is How It Ends (9 page)

“Anyone else?” he offered. The girls shook their heads, Tannis even taking a step back. “All right.” Trip sighed, setting the box on the ground. “I guess it's all me.”

He reached for the lid.

“Wait,” I said. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Trip looked up, blue eyes shining silver in the moonlight. After a second he nodded. “Yeah, Ri. I am.”

“What if you see something bad, like what Nat saw?”

“I've thought about that,” Trip answered. “But we need to know. It's gotta be killing Natalie if she really saw it, somehow knew ahead of time—”

“Unless she's the one who did it.”

“You keep saying that,” Trip said. “But, fine. If she is the one, don't you think we should know if these had anything to do with it? Plus,” he added, “the curiosity's killing me.”

“It's like Pandora's box,” Sarah observed.

Trip winked at her. “Is that the porn we watched last night?”

Tannis laughed, and Sarah smiled. It was the first time the mood broke, maybe since we'd heard about Nat's dad. “Were you napping during lit class again, T.?” Sarah asked.

“Wait . . . they show porn in lit class?” he said. “Shit,
now
when am I going to sleep?”

“It's a myth,” I told him.

“I knew it was too good to be true.”

“Not porn in lit,” I said. “Pandora's box. She opened it out of curiosity, releasing evil into the world.”

“Well, that's a brick,” Trip said.

“But there was something left in the box,” Sarah reminded me. “Hope.”

I'd forgotten that part.

“See? It's not so bad, Mr. Doom and Gloom,” Trip said. He unlatched the lock, flipped open the lid, and took out the binoculars. They looked heavy and cold. Sinister and promising. There was a tangy taste in my mouth as Trip rubbed the lenses quickly, then looked.

I held my breath, feeling the thud, thud of my heart. After a minute Trip pulled them away, frowning. He messed with the knobs and looked again.

“What do you see?” Tannis leaned forward.

He didn't answer, but I knew, and was surprised by the wave of deep disappointment that washed over me. He'd seen nothing. My chest felt tight, and there was a single, unexpected thought:
No
.

“There's nothing there,” Trip said, his voice slightly muffled.

“Really?” Tannis sounded hopeful. “Nothing at all? Not my hand?” She waved it in front of the binoculars. “Or my face? Or those weird shapes and colors?”

“Shapes and colors,” he said. “But nothing else.” He held the binoculars toward her. “Here. You try.”

“Nuh-uh,” Tannis said, shuffling back. “I'm not looking.”

“Why?”

“I'm with Riley on Team Chicken.”

“I'll look,” I said, like it was nothing. “Curiosity's been bugging me, too.”

But Tannis stepped between me and Trip before he could hand them over. “Hold it.” She put her hands on my shoulders, turning me to look her in the eye. I shook her off, irritated at being maneuvered like a rag doll. “I thought you weren't going to,” she said accusingly. “You're not trying to win a pissing match with Trip, are you?”

“I can out-piss him any day.”

“Whatever, Riley,” she said, her voice dropping. “You're not doing this to impress us—or any certain one of us?”

“Of course not,” I said levelly, but inside I was a swirling mess of emotion. I
didn't
want to look again, but I'd been caught off guard by the profound letdown when Trip had said there was nothing. I
wanted
there to be something. I'd been going over it again and again this past week, just like Tannis had. Me in a dorm room. At college. With Sarah. My future: As impossible as it seemed and as wrong as it was, I wanted that.

Tannis eyed me for an extra second, then reluctantly stepped aside, letting me take the binoculars from Trip.

I toyed with the dials for a minute, then took a deep breath and lifted them to my eyes.

And saw immediately that Trip was full of shit.

The shapes and colors swirled and blended, blurring the outside world just like the first time. Then the image, figures and objects emerging from the miasma.

It was different.

It was my mom.

I only recognized her because she was in our living room. And I only recognized
it
because of the stairs curving slightly at the bottom and the small window in the wall. Everything else had changed. The carpet, the wallpaper, the pictures. They were all cleaner and newer. Better.

But my mom looked old. Her hair was a steely gray, piled in a bun like my grammy used to wear. She was smiling at me, but it wasn't her usual smile. It was droopy, lopsided, her left eye half-shut. A heart-stabbing bolt of fear shot through me—I knew these symptoms—and then I saw the man next to her, holding her hand.

He was looking at me too, something really familiar about the way he smiled, cocked his head. Probably because I'd just seen him doing it an hour earlier.

Holy shit.
It was
him
.

Trip's dad.

I whipped the binoculars from my eyes, my pulse racing. Had Trip tricked me into looking?

“What?” he asked eagerly. “Did you see something?”

No, he hadn't tricked me. Not unless he was the world's best actor.

There was no way I could tell him. Trip idolized his dad, God knows why. After all the years I'd spent hiding that asshole's secret, I sure as shit wasn't going to have it unravel like this.

It was pure dumb luck—or un-luck—that I knew. It had been the end of eighth grade, seven months after my dad died. I'd been sent home sick from school, and I remember thinking it was weird to see Mrs. Jones's car in the driveway. She didn't really come over anymore then. I walked into the living room expecting to see her, but the room was empty.

Everything seemed normal. Bits of dust floated in the sunlight, chairs were where they should be, lamps off.

Still, hairs prickled on my arms and the back of my neck.

I heard them just before they came down the stairs.

My mom first, giggling. Then
him
. They stopped when they saw me, the three of us frozen like it was a game of statues. First one to move loses. Finally my mom came toward me. “Riley . . .”

Bzzz!
my brain said.
You're out!

My feet were already crossing to the stairs, moving past Trip's dad—
in a bathrobe!
—up two at a time, my head buzzing nonsense and the bits and scraps that had stuck there year after year. Marshmallows. My dad's drinking. I slammed the door and dove for the bed, closing my eyes and jamming in earbuds.

At some point my mom came in. I'm sure she knocked. She'd never just barged in before.
Never been caught with a married man either!

“Can we talk?” Her voice was tiny, a bug's cry, through the music.

I shook my head, volume still full blast. “
No one knows what it's like . . .”

“Riley . . .”

I shut my eyes, blocking out the rest, melting into
Behind Blue Eyes
. I felt her touch my shoulder, and shook it off.

Finally she left.

I sat on that bed, Roger Daltrey screaming at me for another hour, the visual coming back over and over.
What am I supposed to do with this?

We never talked about it. I wouldn't let her. I tried to pretend it never happened, not that the memory faded even the tiniest bit. I certainly never told Trip, and I didn't want him to find out now—after all this time—that his dad wasn't who Trip thought he was, and maybe neither was I.

“No, I didn't see anything,” I said to Trip. “I just . . .” I shook my head, grasping for an answer. “It's so frustrating,” I blurted. “I don't get why they worked before and not now.”

“That's good, isn't it?” Tannis said. “It means what we saw that night was just what you first thought. A hallucination or something. Not the future. There's nothing special or freaky about these.” She waved at the binoculars, still keeping a careful distance.

“Right.” I mustered everything in me to sound convincing. “Of course not.”

“So what does that mean for Nat?” Tannis asked.

“It means these had nothing to do with what happened to her dad,” Trip said. “I mean, are you guys positive that even happened? That you really saw something?”

Tannis looked unsure, but I didn't feel the least bit that way. Of course we'd seen something. Obviously there
was
something in the binoculars. What did
that
mean for Nat? For me?

I glanced at Sarah, who hadn't spoken at all. Our eyes met, and I was struck by the sudden and complete certainty that she could read me like a book.

And knew I was lying about the binoculars.

CHAPTER 11

WE FINALLY SAW NATALIE ON
Wednesday. Her dad's funeral.

Everyone from school and half the town went. My mom had to work. “The nursing home doesn't shut down for a funeral,” she'd said ruefully. That she couldn't afford to take the day off went without saying. I recognized lots of people from the mountain and the ski shop. The grocer was there, and people from the hospital. Plenty from the restaurant, too. Moose was at the edge of the crowd by himself. I nodded to him, and he scowled. Still pissed at me. I felt guilty, then angry about it.
He's the idiot using drugs
, I thought.
Not me
. Bill Winston was conspicuously absent. So was Natalie's mom. At least that was the rumor. I wouldn't have recognized her or any of Mr. Cleary's girlfriends, though I saw plenty of skanky-looking women who might have qualified. I wondered if the police had questioned all of them. Or if they were taking notes as they stood on the fringe of the crowd, a buffer between us and the reporters cordoned off by the roadside, where the police had ordered them to stand. Their numbers had increased tenfold as the story had lingered. The official press release was that it was a murder investigation, daughter left unharmed, persons of interest being questioned.

That Natalie was one of the persons of interest had become common knowledge in the underground whispers, though the police had yet to confirm it.

It was the first time we'd seen her since the day he was killed, and she looked terrible, standing somberly beside her Social Services case worker.

“How's she doing?” John Peters asked quietly as he came over to stand beside us.

“Don't know,” Trip answered. “None of us have been able to talk to her since that night at your house.”

He nodded. “My dad says they were pretty tough on her.” He shook his head angrily. “So unfair.”

Trip looked at him, surprised. “You don't think she did it?”

“Of course not.” Trip nodded approvingly as John went back to his family.

The service sucked. Randall Cleary had given up on church ages ago, but I guess the church never gives up on anyone, even people like him. A priest gamely gave the eulogy, doing his best to gloss over the details of Nat's father's life and give it some sort of meaning. They'd obviously never met.

I watched Natalie throughout, still finding it hard to believe she'd done it. But I could see lots of other people looking at her with plenty of suspicion. It didn't seem like she noticed it. Or much of anything else.

We stood in a line by the coffin to pay our respects, but more because it was the only way to get close to Nat. The four of us formed a protective cluster around her when it was our turn. Sarah was the first to speak.

“I'm so sorry, Nat,” Sarah said, hugging her. “We wanted to see you, but no one would tell us how.”

Tears welled in Natalie's eyes, and then spilled over immediately, and I recognized exactly where she was—that state where you're able to hold it together as long as absolutely no one talks to you or touches you with any amount of sympathy. “They had me there for days. Asking questions, doing tests . . .” She took a ragged breath. “It was horrible.”

“When do you get to come back?” Tannis asked.

“Now,” Nat said. “I'm back.”

“You are?” I asked, surprised. “So the police . . .” I hesitated, not sure if Nat realized she'd been a suspect.

“Yeah,” she said darkly. “They've finally realized I had nothing to do with it.”

“Idiots,” Trip spat.

She looked at him gratefully and almost smiled. “Thanks, Trip. I couldn't agree more.”

“Natalie,” Sarah said. “What happened? That night . . .”

Nat's eyes shifted to her handler, standing discreetly to the side. “I don't know,” she said simply. “That's what I kept telling them. My dad was wasted. Worse than at the mountain. Much worse,” she said quietly. “I went to my room, locked the door, and put on my headphones, the ones Lu gave me?” We all nodded. Lu was her coach, and the headphones were noise-canceling, to help her concentrate before races. Trip had seen them in her bag one day at school, and we'd taken turns wearing them at lunch, trying to read each other's lips. Tannis had made these ridiculous faces at me, mouthing something I couldn't understand. The others had been cracking up, and later I'd found out it was
I want you
.

Nat continued, “I woke up just after three in the morning, my lights and headphones still on. I got up to brush my teeth and was going to get a glass of water from the kitchen.” Nat stopped and took a few quick breaths. I could feel my heart beating hard and fast. “I knew something was wrong right away,” she said. “There was a funny smell, and I had the weirdest déjà vu, walking down that hallway.” My skin was prickling. I saw Sarah's hand slide involuntarily to clutch the other one. “Instead of turning into the kitchen, I kept going. Into the living room. And it was—” Natalie stopped, brought her fingers to her mouth, bit hard like she was holding something in.

“You found him,” Trip finished softly.

Natalie nodded, fingers between her teeth for another second. Then she dropped her hand. “It was exactly what I saw in those binoculars,” she whispered in a rush. Her eyes darted to Trip, then Tannis, then me.
“Exactly.”

My insides felt cold.

“No.” Tannis was shaking her head. “Impossible. We went back and looked. There's nothing there, Nat.”

“Nothing where?”

“In the binoculars,” Trip said. “We went back up to the cave,” he explained quietly, glancing toward Nat's handler. “Monday night. We were worried about you and that you'd . . . you know . . . seen this. We didn't know what it meant. But it's like Tannis said: There's nothing in them. It's just a kaleidoscope. They didn't have anything to do with this.”

“So what happened that night?” Nat demanded. “I'm telling you I saw it. Exactly what happened.”

“Hallucinations,” Tannis said firmly. “If anything.”

I looked at her, the tight set of her jaw and eyes, clearly ready to challenge anyone who disagreed. I was struck by how completely she'd latched on to the idea that the binoculars were nothing more than a fancy toy. There's no way I'd have believed Trip without looking for myself. Maybe I'd have felt differently if I'd seen something I didn't want.

Natalie's handler came over then. “I'm sorry, kids,” she said, actually looking like she meant it, “but I have to ask you to move on.”

The four of us closed in on Nat again, a football huddle with Natalie safe in the center. “We're here for you, Nat,” Sarah whispered, hugging her tight. Natalie hugged back, each of us with an arm around her and Nat holding on like we could somehow whisk her away from everything.

We stood at the edge of the crowd for a little, watching people. I could feel the others studying faces too. Watching how Natalie greeted them, how they mixed and mingled and talked among themselves. I wondered if the same question was on all of our minds:

If Nat hadn't done it, who had?