I didn’t make up Ray. He’s real. Maeve is real. So Bo is real, and everything that happened between us is real, including tracking Mila’s footprints and getting almost all the way to Dr Goodnight’s camp. That means I know most of the way to Goodnight’s Camp. I can find Gina, I tell myself, but it’s less comforting than it should be.
Because Bo is real. That means Rob lied to me. He told me I made up a family in the woods, but I didn’t. Why would Rob tell such a huge lie?
Did he even know he was lying, or did he just jump to the conclusion that Bo had to be fabricated because he knows I’m sick? He read my blog for the Cultural Outreach Club. He knows I lied about dozens of people I’d said I met, then befriended, and some I even became intimately involved with, like Ali Bhatti. My fifth best friend who was so real to so many people, but actually wasn’t.
Did Rob think I must have made up Bo because I am, and have always been, a liar?
I turn to Amy. ‘Has anyone ever tried to convince you that you did something you didn’t do?’
She frowns. ‘My big sister used to do something like that, but only when I was really little.’
‘Tell me about it.’
Amy shrugs. ‘I was so young, I can barely remember, but there was this one time she left the refrigerator open and all the food spoiled and she tried to convince me that I did it because she knew my parents wouldn’t punish me as bad. It almost worked, too. She told me how I did it so many times, I actually remembered doing it, even though I knew I hadn’t.’ She screws up her face and shakes her head. ‘Weird.’
‘How did you know you didn’t do it?’
‘I wasn’t tall enough to reach the handle,’ Amy says. ‘There was no way I could have done it. It still messes me up to think about it. Like, how could I remember doing something that I didn’t do?’
I nod my head and look out the window. ‘I know exactly what you mean. Memory is a slippery thing,’ I mumble. I turn back to her. ‘But you couldn’t reach the handle. So you didn’t do it.’
‘No. She did it,’ Amy says bitterly.
I nod. ‘And blamed it on you,’ I say, barely daring to whisper it.
She doesn’t want to talk about her sister any more. Amy shakes herself and adopts a cheerful tone. ‘So, do you want me to drive you home?’
‘Actually,’ I say, ‘can you bring me to Taylor’s work first?’
Her eyes widen. ‘Why? You’re not going to tell him I told you all that stuff, are you?’
‘Hell, no,’ I reply. ‘Taylor has no clue what’s going on. I want to go to the Outdoor Shop because I need to buy something.’
‘What?’
‘A GPS.’ I narrow my eyes at her. ‘You need to drive fast.’
Amy fidgets as she takes me home. I make her nervous. Probably because I keep forcing her to run stop signs and blow through lights.
She tries three times in seven minutes to put on the radio, and every time I shut it off like I’m waving away a fly.
It’s her car, but she’s not the kind of girl to get into an argument with a guest. She’s a sweetie. The easiest kind of girl to get wrapped up in a pile full of other people’s bullshit and go down as collateral damage. I’m angry about that.
When she pulls up to my grandparents’ house, she actually says, ‘Nice,’ she’s so impressed. Looking at the flowers out front, I see her too-skinny face light up and I can see a glimpse of the delightful young woman she really is inside, and I swear to God, I love this girl. I couldn’t love her more if I’d known her for years, and I don’t even know her last name.
I take off my seat belt and face her, still thinking about what I need to say to her.
‘Amy. If you ever, ever, get high again, I am going to find you, beat the shit out of you, and lock you in my bedroom until you either drown yourself in my bathtub or you get clean. We clear?’
She laughs like I’m kidding.
‘This isn’t a joke,’ I say. ‘I’m not your teacher. I’m not your mom. I’m not your friend.’
Her face falls. It’s starting to sink in.
I open my door and get out. ‘I’ll know if you use,’ I say, talking over my shoulder as I jog past Rob’s car parked in my grandparents’ driveway. ‘And I’ll find you.’
Maybe she will get high again, because some people keep getting high no matter how low it brings them, but I doubt it for her. She’s still capable of feeling fear.