Tess Sharpe - Far From You

“Did he and Mina fight a lot?” Rachel asks.

“No,” I say. “That’s why I don’t get this. They got along. Kyle’s kind of a Neanderthal, but he’s sweet. He treated her like she walked on water. But even if he didn’t have anything to do with her murder, he’s hindering an entire police investigation. You don’t just randomly lie to the police. Especially Kyle. His dad’s all about the rules. If Mr. Miller found out Kyle was lying to a bunch of cops? Big trouble. His restaurant does the annual fish fry for the force every year. He’s friends with a lot of them.”

Rachel sighs. “I don’t think you can get someone who doesn’t mind lying to the police to just tell you the truth. So what’s the contingency plan?”

I look down into my cup of coffee. “It might seem kind of weird, but I did have one idea.”

“What is it?”

“I want to go back,” I say. “To where you found me that night.”

Rachel’s eyes widen. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“It’s probably a horrible idea,” I concede. “But I need someone to walk me through it. Maybe it’ll spur something. And you’re kind of the only person who can.”

Rachel presses her lips together tight, and it makes her freckles stand out even more. “Sophie…”

“Please.” I look her straight in the eye, trying to seem confident. But I’m afraid of going. Just the idea of being there again makes my knees shake.

She sighs. “Okay.” She gets up and grabs her keys from the hook on the wall. “Let’s go.”

Rachel’s quiet as she pulls her old Chevy out onto the road, reluctance practically vibrating off her.

“I’m not gonna freak,” I tell her.

“I’m not worried about that,” Rachel says, and we drive in silence for a while. But twenty minutes out, she’s pulling off the highway onto Burnt Oak Road and I feel like freaking a little, even though I just promised her I wouldn’t.

We’re not even close yet, at least a mile and a half from the Point, but suddenly everything outside the truck—the trees, the hills, even the cows in the fields—seems terrifying. Potentially fatal. My heart flutters in my chest, and I press my fingers against my scar, trace the ridges of it through my shirt, trying to calm down.

Nine months. Three weeks. Eight hours.

I don’t realize I’ve closed my eyes until I feel the truck stop. I open them slowly.

We’re here. I avoid looking at the road. I don’t want to go there. I have to go there.

“I’m going to ask you one more time,” Rachel says. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

I’m positive this is the last thing I want to do.

I nod anyway.

Rachel’s side-eye is epic, but she shuts the engine off.

I get out of the Chevy slowly, and she follows, shading her eyes against the sun. This time of day, this far out of town, the roads are empty, no cars in sight for miles. Just long sweeps of yellowing brush, barbed wire fences, and clusters of scrub oaks and digger pines.

“You ready?”

I nod again.

Rachel locks the truck and steps out onto the empty road, looking from side to side. Her pigtails sway every time she rocks back on her heels, and I focus on them instead of where she’s standing—where she’d found me that night.

“It was a little past nine,” she says. “I’d just called my mom to let her know I was almost back from my dad’s. I looked away to toss my phone into my purse, and when I glanced back at the road, you were right in front of me, standing in the middle, right about…here.”

She takes a few steps and scuffs her boot across the cracked asphalt, toeing the yellow line. I look at it…can’t stop looking at it. Was it right there? I remember the frozen feeling. I remember wanting the truck to run me over.

“I thought I was going to hit you. I’ve never slammed on the brakes so hard in my life. And you just stood there. You didn’t move; you didn’t flinch. It was almost like you…” She hesitates. “You were in shock,” she finishes.

I begin to walk, nervous energy filling me. I need to move, get away.

My body knows where I’m going. It’s always trying to find traces of her.

Rachel follows me as the road gets steeper. Chicory and foxtails, knee-high, swish against my jeans. The red clay sticks to the soles of my shoes. I’d washed it off my feet the day after, watched it swirl down the drain with the blood and tears.

“When I got out of the car I saw you were covered in blood. So I called 911. You were bleeding pretty bad from your forehead. I tried to put pressure on it, but you kept pushing my hands away. I wanted to get you in the car or to say something, even just your name, but…” She hesitates again. “Do you remember any of this?”

“I remember the ambulance. I remember grabbing your hand.” I keep walking. I know where I’m going now—brain, body, and heart finally in harmony. It’s only a mile. The scrub oaks are sparser now as the pines take over. In just a few minutes, we’ll round the curve, and there we’ll be.

“When the EMTs came, you wouldn’t let go. So they let me ride in the ambulance with you.”

“I remember the hospital,” I say. And I leave it at that.

I concentrate on my feet.

We’re on the wrong side of the road, and when we reach the place where it veers off to Booker’s Point, I stop and look.

The other side of the road is thickly wooded, clusters of pines jammed close together. Did the killer deliberately choose this spot? How long did he hide in the pines, waiting for us?

“You sure this is a good idea?” Rachel asks.

I take a deep breath. It’s cooler up here, shaded from the glare of the sun. It’d been cold that night. I could almost see my breath in the air.

“Bad ideas are sometimes necessary.” It sounds so much like an excuse, it’s such an addict thing to say, that my skin crawls.

Trying to leave the feeling behind, I walk across the road until pavement cuts off to dirt flattened by years of truck tires. I follow the crude road, disappearing into the thicket of tall pines, ignoring the way my footing falters as the ground slants up into a hill.

It’s quiet, just like that night. There’s a pleasant coolness under the trees. It washes over me, and I shiver.

All I can think about is how cold her skin had been.

The scar tissue around my knee aches as the trail gets steeper.

Then I turn the last bend of road, and there I am, at the top of the Point.

Just a few feet away.

Booker’s Point isn’t big, just a clear piece of land that fits a few cars. When I was younger, I’d hear stories about girls losing their virginity up here, of the wild parties and drug deals that went on after dark out in the boonies. But until that night, I’d never ventured out here.

Rachel hangs back, but I keep walking, across the flat stretch of road, past the straggly California poppies that grow in clumps in the dirt, until I’m standing right where it happened.

I thought it’d take my breath away. That somehow, being there again where she ended, where I’d sworn to her she’d be okay, would change something in me.

But I guess I’ve already been changed enough.

I move past the spot until I’m at the very tip of the Point, where the ground falls off, an endless drop. My toes skirt the edge, a little cascade of dirt and stones tumbling down beneath the pressure of my feet.

“Sophie,” Rachel warns.

I barely hear her.

I’m transfixed by the air between me and the ground so far below, by the little spots of green that are bushes and trees, the tiny pebbles that are flat, gray boulders, bigger than me, scattered below.

“Sophie!” A hand grabs the back of my shirt, yanking me off balance, away from the edge. I fall backward, knocking into Rachel. “Hey.” She frowns at me, all cheer erased from her face. “Not cool.”