Megan MIRANDA - The Perfect Stranger

The third theory, of course, was this: that Emmy Grey did not exist. Not just in name but the girl herself.

And that she never did.

It was after midnight, and I was finally sure I was alone. The crowd outside had dispersed at dusk, slipping away in their cars or fading into the woods – going back to wherever it was they came from. The house was a mess, in disarray, and my hands shook as I put everything back in its place.

The utensils had all been handled, jumbled, replaced. I dumped them into the sink to clean again, imagining dirt and germs everywhere. They’d reached their hands underneath our mattresses, and our sheets were disheveled and twisted. Underneath the bathroom sink, they’d seen my box of tampons, the bottles of lotions, bars of soap. The tweezers and the toothpaste tube, which was mostly empty and crusted around the opening. They knew the brand of deodorant I used, had seen the razor hanging on the shower wall, had found the opened box of condoms in my bedside table.

They may have taken only the knives and slips of paper, but they’d come away with far more. An insight into the intimate workings of our lives.

I wondered if Kyle had gone through here himself. If he’d opened that box in my bedside table. If he’d counted.

I sat on my heels in the corner of the bathroom, feeling exposed and dirty and angry, and I heard my own breath, like that of an animal in a cage. I stood, splashed water on my face, leaned against the counter, and stared at myself in the mirror. Pull it together, Leah. My eyes looked wild, red-rimmed, and my face gaunt – and in the dim light, I could almost see her here. Hunched over, tracing her fingers over her own cheekbones, surprised by the person she discovered.

My God, Emmy, what did you do?

I tore down the hallway and turned all the lights off so no one could see in. Then I slid open the door and listened to the night. I closed my eyes, made my breathing slow and even, counting off all the things I knew: the crickets; things moving in the woods, far away; the whisper of the night wind.

I kept my eyes closed, moved with my hand on the railing, so I would not imagine things in the darkness that I couldn’t see.

I reached the dirt at the base of the steps and walked by heart to the dark shape in the driveway. I felt the unknown calling me – pulling me closer. Until I was at the car, and the beep of the key, the flash of the brake lights, cut through the night. I eased the trunk open as silently as I could before lifting out the box, which was mostly empty and nearly weightless.

I didn’t turn the lights back on until I was firmly inside my house, in Emmy’s room, with the door closed behind me and the curtains pulled shut. It wasn’t safe to bring the box out to the surface. It was too dangerous to keep it up here when they’d just gone through my house. To leave a photo around that could only tie Emmy to the Davis Cobb case. I opened the top and pulled out each item, careful to hold them with my sleeve, leaving my prints off them, taking pictures with my phone.

She had left this box in Boston, and I imagined everything had come from there, from eight years earlier. She was living in an apartment. Other people saw her, saw us, and I could prove it.

I stared at that photo again, the girl who was almost me, twisting it back and forth until the glare from the bedside table light reflecting off the glossy surface burned my eyes, and all I could see in the dark, as I walked the box back to the trunk of my car, were the spots where the light once was.

I GOT READY FORschool early, waiting to make the call until I knew he’d be up. And then, in the time I usually took my shower, I turned off the lights and watched out the window – looking toward the woods. Waiting to see who might emerge. If there was someone who watched, as I had believed. Someone who came during the time they knew I wouldn’t be focused or paying attention.

But by the time I was usually cleaning up after breakfast, nobody had made an appearance. Maybe I was mistaken. Maybe I was imagining things. I searched my mind once more for the footsteps, tried to hear them again. Tried to be sure.

I checked the clock one last time, knew he’d be up, probably on his way out the door – and placed the call.

“Whitman,” he answered.

“Hi, Noah,” I said. “I need a favor.”

There was a pause, and his voice dropped lower, felt closer. “Gee, Leah, nice to hear from you. A favor, huh? I think that ship has sailed.”

I cringed. We used to throw idioms around like this as a joke. Somehow ironic, or so I’d thought. But maybe I’d only imagined that, thinking him more clever than he actually was.

“You owe me one, Noah. You know you do.”

“You’ve lost it,” he said.

“I know what you did. I know the deal you took, because you sure as hell didn’t earn that promotion. You think I won’t bring the whole thing tumbling down? Think your name won’t come into play? What do you think will happen to your career when people find out that you knew what happened and helped cover it up?”

“Jesus Christ, Leah,” he said, and I knew I had him. “I don’t know what’s in that Pennsylvania air, what type of shit they put out into the atmosphere, but it has seriously twisted your perspective.”

I felt a little flip of my stomach, the discovery that he knew where I was. I wondered if he’d looked me up, whether he wondered, whether he thought of me. And what that meant.

It had been my biggest mistake, confiding in Noah. Six months together, and a friendship before, and in the end, he traded it all in without remorse – I was a scoop he gave our boss, a step he used for leverage. His motivations weren’t pure, despite what he claimed.

Maybe he’d been that person at one time, maybe he thought he still was. Maybe he told himself it was the right thing to do – that the ends justified the means. But the fact remained that he had benefited where others had fallen.

The paper had to watch its back. That, too, was a business first. Even after Noah told our boss, Logan couldn’t turn on me completely. He just had to buy them some distance and hope it stayed buried.

Quit, he said, and I did.

They kept no loose ends. Even Noah, they sucked into the mess. His silence for a promotion. And by accepting, he had become complicit.

But maybe we were all complicit, with the company we chose to keep.

And maybe that was reflected in living with two other people in a four-hundred-square-foot apartment eight years ago. I slid into their lives, too comfortable, never putting up walls. I had followed Emmy here, this woman I truly knew so little about.

“They won’t believe you, Leah.” Noah had gotten a grip, and I heard his voice more pronounced now, his lines prepared and delivered with more clarity. “You’re a known liar.”

But I had his attention. We lived and died on reputation. Whether it was true or not, he had to wonder what it would do to him. “Everyone goes down, Noah. Everyone.”

“Listen,” he said. And there was something different about his voice, something knowing. “Are you listening? Do you ever listen? Because right now would be a great time to start, Leah. So turn off those gears and pay attention. There’s not even an inkling of a civil suit, okay? Not a peep. Let sleeping dogs lie.”

How had I fallen for someone who used the basest and most primitive of idioms? Everything about him grated on me.

“One thing, Noah. It’s just a name. You owe me. You know you owe me.”

There was silence, and I seized it.

“Bethany Jarvitz. I need everything on Bethany Jarvitz. J-A-R-V–I-T-Z. History, next of kin, known associates, everything. Date of birth, places of employment, current and past residence–”