April Henry - The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die

Sitting in this sunlit library, I should feel safe, but instead I feel exposed. Like an animal that wants to crawl into a dark cave. The sad thing is, I can’t think of any place that would feel safe.

Ty pulls a ring of keys from his pocket and fingers one. “I still think I could just go back and see if the coast is clear. And if it is, I could grab my car and come back here.” He must see the way I’m looking at him. “After making sure I’m not followed, of course.”

When I think of him leaving me here alone, it’s like there’s not enough air in the room. “It’s too risky, Ty. Even if you don’t see anyone, they still could have put some kind of GPS tracker on your car.”

But being followed isn’t the thing I’m most afraid of. It’s being on my own again, with no one to talk to, no one to help me think things through, no one to calm me down. Standing in that trashed cabin or driving on those darkened roads—everything was so much worse when it was just me. Under the table, I grab Ty’s wrist, making his keys jangle. “Besides, what if you went back there and they kidnapped you or even killed you? These people won’t stop at anything.”

What if Ty leaves and I never see him again? I need him so much. I have to look away from his dark eyes before I find the strength to say the right thing. “But I really think you should take off, Ty. It may not be safe to go back to your apartment, but it’s definitely not safe to keep hanging out with me. You should go to a friend’s place and hang out for a day or two.” This guy whom I’ve known less than twenty-four hours might be murdered because of me.

“Look, Cady.” He touches my chin, turning my face until I’m looking directly into his eyes. “You’re not getting rid of me that easy. So what do you think we should do?”

I go with my gut. Without memories, that’s about all I have left. “I think I should get back to Portland. That’s where I live. And that’s where my family is, or at least where they were. If I can find them, maybe they’ll know more about what’s going on. And even if I can’t, there’s still the house. My house,” I correct myself, even though I have no memory of it. “There was nothing in that cabin. But maybe at my house we can find some clue.”

Since Ty’s car is out of the picture, there aren’t a lot of options. He suggests hitchhiking, but I have too many mental images—which I think come from movies or maybe a twist on what happened with Officer Dillow—of being trapped in a car with door handles that don’t work and a crazy killer at the wheel. Or in this case, one of the men hunting me down. If we stand by the side of the road with our thumbs out, we might as well be lambs hitchhiking to the slaughterhouse.

Which leaves Greyhound. The bus station is two miles away. Ty has us take the road that parallels the main road. It’s not super busy, so we’re not being eyed by every passing motorist. But it’s not empty either, so we don’t stick out—just two kids walking around in the middle of a school day.

The air is crisp and cold, but we’re walking fast enough that I stay warm in just a hoodie. We’re heading toward a tall, rounded bump that sits in the middle of otherwise flat Bend. It’s not a mountain, but way bigger than a hill. “What is that?” I ask Ty. It’s covered with gray-green juniper and sage, and I would guess it’s about five hundred feet tall. A steady stream of walkers and runners are making their way up and down the trail that spirals around it.

“An old cinder cone,” Ty says. “From a volcano vent. There’s a viewpoint at the top. You can see for miles.”

“Sounds cool.” It also sounds vaguely familiar, and I wonder if my parents ever hiked with us up the steep flanks, ever talked about volcanoes.

“Actually, they don’t think the Newberry volcano that made that cinder cone is dead,” Ty says. “Just sleeping. But someday it might wake up.”

I imagine all those walkers suddenly finding themselves covered with red cinders and ash, the fiery lava rushing inexorably toward them as they wonder what in the hell just happened.

I can totally relate.

It turns out that in order to get to the bus station, we have to walk right past a sign directing drivers to the Bend police department, just a few blocks away. Looking at it, I reconsider. Maybe we could walk in, go up to the counter, and explain that while it’s true I am the girl on the Newberry Ranch tape, I did not actually shoot Officer Dillow.

But what are the chances they’ll believe me? Even in the best-case scenario I’ll be immediately separated from Ty and locked up, at least for a while. Maybe forever. After all, I don’t have any proof that I didn’t kill poor Dillow, except for my own memory. And pretty soon I’d have to reveal just how unreliable that memory is.

And if I go to the police, how will I be able to figure out what’s going on? If I tell them my story about mysterious men who want to kill me, it seems quite possible I’ll really end up at a place like Sagebrush. So when Ty looks at the sign, and then at me with a raised eyebrow, I just shake my head.

Greyhound doesn’t have an actual bus station in Bend. Instead you’re supposed to buy your tickets and wait inside a bowling alley called Lava Lanes. The long pinkish building is styled like fake adobe and is set at the back of a parking lot. The parking lot borders a busy street, and on the opposite side of the street there’s a chain-link fence and then a sidewalk. That’s where Ty and I wait, pretending to skateboard while we try to figure out if it’s safe to cross the street and go inside. After all, if we figured out there’s not many ways for us to get out of Bend, the bad guys have figured that out, too. Probably faster than we did.

Ty does a kick flip, the board spinning in the air. My eyes flick from his board to his face scrunched in concentration to the parking lot. Little kids, each of them carrying a present, are arriving for what must be a birthday party. A mom carries a long pink cake, a man is trailed by a bobbing bouquet of silver foil balloons. It looks peaceful and innocent, all part of a world where girls would never get dragged into the woods.

And I want to be part of that world so much that it actually hurts when Ty says, “There. That blue Lexus two rows back from the door and on the left. The driver’s been there for at least fifteen minutes.”

“He could be, like, a divorced dad, waiting to trade custody of his kid,” I say, wishing it were true.

Ty takes a baseball cap out of his jacket pocket, pulls it low.

“I’ll go check it out.”

“No. Don’t leave me.” I clutch his arm, then drop it when I realize that thirteen-year-old skateboarding Nate would never do that. Don’t act. Be. I lost sight of that, and if anyone is watching us, it showed. “It’s not worth taking the risk to be sure. There has to be another way we can get to Portland. Does James have a car we could borrow?”

“No.” Ty shakes his head. “When he needs a car, he uses mine.”

Every way out turns into a dead end. I pick up my skateboard. “Come on, let’s get out of here before that guy notices us.” We walk back to the less busy street, but when we get there, we stop. We have no place to go. Standing still, I realize how cold it is.

“Maybe I should just go to the police,” I say. But my voice breaks in the middle.

“You still think the answers are in Portland?” Ty asks.

“Yeah.” My breath shakes. “But what difference does it make if I can’t get there?”

“I might know a way. It’s a little risky, but what have we got to lose?”

In Ty’s case, a lot. After he tells me his plan, he won’t listen when I try to argue. He could get in a lot of trouble with the cops, not to mention the bad guys. But at every objection, he just shakes his head. And finally I give in. I’m not sure it will work, and it’s going to mean a bad day for someone else, but I certainly don’t have any better ideas. And after all the crazy things I’ve done in the last two days, his plan almost makes sense.