Wherever Nina Lies

  “Wherever Nina Lies”

  Her face changes when she thinks you can’t see her.

  Staring out the window, always watching, someone’s chasing her.

  She twists her hands, draws pictures on her wrist, bites her lips.

  Ask a question, she just shakes her head, won’t answer it.

  She cries at night, always cries at night, she thinks you can’t hear it.

  Try and tell her it’s okay, but you know she can’t believe it.

  Ask her why and she only shakes her head no.

  She says one day she’ll go as far as she can go.

  She says one day she’ll go as far as she can go.

  And I feel my lips curving into a smile. I know just what this last line means, even more than whoever wrote it did: When Nina was fifteen, and I was eleven, we got kind of obsessed with the weird local commercials that would come on late, late at night on cable. Sometimes when our mom was working the overnight shift, we’d stay up until one, two, three in the morning just waiting for them to come on. We loved the ad for Hammer Jones’s Hardware featuring “Hammer Jones himself,” and a spot for a local hair salon showing a woman with a bunch of foil on her head whom we recognized as the cashier at the drugstore. But our very favorite was a very silly ten-second ad for Covered Wagon Shipping in which a trucker dressed in colonial clothing said, “Whatever you need shipped, I’ll personally drive it myself from just across the street”—flash to him driving the truck across a street—“to clear across the country. That’s as far as you can go!” Flash to him driving past a piece of poster board onto which someone had written, Welcome to San Francisco in orange marker. Nina and I absolutely loved this commercial and it became a long-running joke for us. For years all one of us had to do was say, “I’m going about as far as you can go!” and the other one would crack up.

  I can just imagine the guys from Monster Hands asking Nina where she was headed and Nina reciting this line. Maybe laughing a little to herself. Maybe thinking of me while she did. I smile, for a second, just for a second before I remember that figuring out the song lyrics is not a triumph now. This is not the next clue. This is not anything.

  I look out over the empty parking lot. All the motel windows are dark. I clutch the song lyrics to my chest. It is so quiet out here. I feel like I am the only person in the world.

  But the silence is interrupted by a buzzing coming from under one of the car seats. I lean over. A tiny red light is blinking between the seats. Sean’s cell phone. I reach down and pick it up. It’s 3:16 a.m. Unavailable is blinking on the screen. It’s probably another one of those wrong numbers.

  I am suddenly filled with such deep anger at whoever is calling, for interrupting me, for being alive when Nina isn’t. I answer the phone.

  “She gave you a fake number,” I say. “Whoever you think you are calling, this is not them. This is SEAN’S PHONE,” I say. “Sean. A boy.” I pause. “You do not know him!” My heart is pounding. No answer. “Hello?” I hear breathing on the other end. And then there’s a voice, very quiet, barely more than a whisper.

  “Get away from him, it’s not safe for you there.”

  My heart starts pounding. This is obviously just a wrong number, some stupid kid playing a prank probably. Or maybe Amanda is somehow involved in this.

  “Who is this?” I say. But they’ve already hung up. I don’t want to be in this parking lot anymore in the dark. I put the phone down on the seat next to me. I don’t want to touch it. I just want to go back inside the motel. I’m scared.

  There’s a tapping on the window. I turn to the right. A hand. Big eyes. A face. There is a face, someone watching me through the window. I open my mouth and scream.

  The door opens and a pair of strong arms wrap around me.

  “Hey, hey, hey, hey, it’s okay, baby.” It’s Sean. “It’s just me. It’s just me.” He rocks me back and forth. “I woke up and you weren’t there.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I say.

  “What are you doing out here?” he says.

  “I wanted to see that Monster Hands record,” I say. “I just had this feeling that I needed to see it that…”

  “Oh, Ellie.” Sean’s sweet face is creased with concern. He shakes his head.

  “But you don’t understand,” I say. I look down at the lyrics in my lap. “I know where she was going. This song is about her. And this part, about going as far as she can go, that’s about going to San Francisco. It’s a joke we had when we were younger. That’s where she wanted to go. That’s where she would be if she hadn’t…” My voice breaks then. I can’t even bring myself to say it.

  “I think it’s time to let go now,” Sean says. “It’s time to let go.”

  Sean’s phone starts vibrating again. He snatches the phone off the seat and hits Ignore. He slips the phone in his pocket. And then he takes both of my hands in his and puts them up against his chest, so I can feel his heart through his shirt. “That part of your life is over now,” he says.

  Back in the room, I drift in and out of a thick heavy sleep that paralyzes my limbs and fills my head with crazy dreams. Fast flashes of brilliant colors interspersed with slow-moving images, almost white, like a video made on a too-sunny day. Real memories and made-up ones mixing themselves together—Nina and I at a birthday party eating cake with our hands. Nina and I trying on dresses at Attic. Sean and Nina playing tag. Sean and I in bed in the hotel. Sean standing on a chair in this very hotel room, pushing something in between the blankets at the top of the closet, looking down to make sure I’m not awake to see him. Nina and I toasting each other in a fancy restaurant. Nina and I running away from home. Nina and I in France. Nina in a car with Sean’s brother, driving away from the house we grew up in, waving, waving, waving good-bye.

  Thirty-six

  I do not have the luxury of forgetting. There is no moment of blank calm, no moment of peace before reality catches up. I wake up as the sun rises, remembering exactly where I am and exactly what has happened. I’m crying before I even open my eyes. This is the first morning I’ve had to know it. Yesterday seems hazy, like a dream, a dream full of paranoia and denial and trying to convince myself that reality was not reality. But this morning I have woken up with a clear mind at the bottom of a well. Now this is real. This is all completely real. And now I have to deal with it.

  It is time to tell my mother.

  I can hear the sound of water coming from the bathroom. The shower is on.

  I get out of bed. There is a beige plastic phone on the bedside table. I pick up the slightly sticky headset and hold it to my ear. How will I find her number? I called her on Sean’s phone, when was it, two days ago?

  Sean is singing in the shower. Loudly and terribly. His phone is blinking on the desk.

  I flip it open and go to the call log. There’s my mother’s number right there. I hold it in my hand as I dial 7-7-3-5-5-5-7-6-4…I am about to dial the last digit when I realize something strange. Something so strange my heart starts pounding before I’m even done processing. The call log. There’s the incoming call from Unavailable that I answered in the car last night. And before that there’s a call to voice mail. And then there’s my call to my mother on Tuesday morning. And before that, there’s a number Sean called on Saturday a few hours after we started driving to Nebraska. The number looks weirdly familiar.

  But there were no other calls made on this phone between my call to my mother and the call I made last night except for the one call to voice mail at around four-thirty yesterday. Which is right around when Sean told me Nina was dead.

  One call to voice mail when Sean said he was calling the investigator’s number.

  So when did Sean talk to the investigator exactly?

  I am sure there is a reasonable explanation for this. I’m sure there is. There has to be.

  My heart is pounding harder now. The phone starts blinking in my hand again. The unavailable number is calling again. And I don’t think. I just pick up.

/>   “Hello?” I whisper. I don’t hear anything for a moment. And then a voice, whispering back.

  “Are you alone?”

  I stare at the bathroom door. I don’t think I hear the rush of the water anymore. I think the shower has been shut off. Sean will be back any second.

  “Are you alone?” the voice says again.

  “Yes,” I whisper. My hands are sweating. “Who is this?”

  “Is this Ellie?”

  My heart stops at the sound of my name. “Who is this?” I ask again.

  “You called me the other day,” the voice says. “You were looking for your sister. My name is Max and I know her…” The bathroom door opens a crack, a trail of steam escaping. It looks like smoke. “…and Sean did, too.”

  “Wh…” I start to say. But before I can get any words out the bathroom door opens.

  I snap the phone shut and toss it onto the bed just as Sean emerges from the bathroom, his hair damp, a white towel wrapped around his waist, another one hanging around his neck.

  “You’re up,” he says. He takes the corner of the towel around his neck and dries his face. It’s flushed with heat.

  “I’m up,” I say. Panic courses through me. But somehow I manage to twist my face into something resembling a smile.

  “Well, you look like you’re feeling a little better this morning,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Maybe a tiny bit.”

  My mind races. Max. The guy I called from Attic, the guy whose phone number was written on the drawing, is the same guy who just called me on Sean’s phone. But how did he get Sean’s number? It was his number I called. I reach out, grab my jeans off the floor, fish the cardboard credit card out of my back pocket. The number on the drawing is the number Sean called on Saturday a few hours after we left my house!

  What the hell does all this mean? It means Sean is hiding some things and probably lying about some things. Does this mean…Sean could have lied about Nina being dead?

  With that simple thought, I can feel something happening inside me. Hope is bubbling up. The guy on the phone said he knows Nina. Not knew her. Knows her. Like she is around to know. I feel my mouth curling into a smile and quickly stop it.

  Sean walks over and stands in front of me, his chest dotted with beads of water.

  “What are you looking at that for?” Sean asks. He’s staring down at the cardboard credit card clutched in my hand.

  “I don’t know,” I say. I look up.

  “I think it’s time to let this go now, Ellie,” he says. Sean snatches the card from my hand. The little sketch Nina drew of me is staring back at me. I look scared.

  Sean walks toward the bathroom.

  “Wait!” I say.

  “I’m doing you a favor,” he calls out

  “WAIT!”

  He closes the door behind him, a second later I hear the toilet flush.

  Sean comes back into the bedroom. “After Jason died there were certain things I held on to, things that reminded me of him, and I couldn’t move on until I let them go.” He smiles at me, reaches out to stroke my face. “I think it will help you not to have that around,” he says. Then he takes the towel from around his neck and starts rubbing his damp head. I stare at him. Who is this person I have spent the last five days with? Who I have shared a bed with? I suddenly feel like I’ve never seen him before in my life.

  His left arm is up behind his head, the skin between his elbow and his armpit covered in those thin white scars. I remember tracing them with my fingers three nights ago when we got drunk in the hotel room. I remember thinking they were somehow beautiful in their chaos. But as I stare at them now, they start to look different. They are not chaos at all, there’s an order to them, a pattern in the jumble.

  Letters. They are letters. Carved in and then covered over with hatch marks, as though he was trying to hide them. But when you know what to look for, they come through. Four letters. Carved into his skin.

  N I N A.

  I can’t breathe.

  I want to be imagining this. But now that I’ve seen it, it’s impossible to un-see it. Her name, there it is. It was there all along.

  My brain is spiraling out of control. I feel my lips parting. I can’t breathe. Sean is staring at my face. I look down.

  “I think I’m going to take a shower,” I manage to say.

  “Okay,” Sean smiles sweetly. He reaches out to put his arms around me. His skin is warm but touching him gives me chills. Over his shoulder, I see the blankets up at the top of the closet. I remember my dream last night, which maybe wasn’t a dream at all…

  “Could you go and get us some food?” I say. “I mean, while I’m in the shower.”

  Sean smiles again. “You’re hungry?”

  “I’m suddenly starving.”

  “What do you want? Name anything and I’ll go and get it.”

  “A salad,” I say. “A really giant salad, with a lot of things in it.”

  “For breakfast?”

  I nod.

  “Okay, whatever you want,” he says quickly. “I’ll have it for you when you get out.” He sounds so pleased then, pleased that I’m asking him for something, pleased that it’s something he’s able to do for me.

  I nod, and force another smile. I manage to keep my knees from buckling until the bathroom door is closed safely behind me. I turn the water on and wait, my ear pressed against the door until I hear the outside door slam shut. And only then do I let myself scream.

  Thirty-seven

  There is no time to think.

  I drag the heavy desk chair over to the closet, climb up, and stick my hands between the scratchy beige blankets on the top shelf. Only a few inches in, my hands hit leather. So I wasn’t dreaming after all. I reach in further, it’s a handle. I grab it and pull out Sean’s leather messenger bag. It feels warm, alive, like whatever’s in here has a pulse of its own.

  I jump off the chair and crouch down on the floor.

  The bag is locked with a five-dial combination lock with letters where you’d normally find numbers. I tug on the lock. There’s no way I’m going to be able to break in and the leather of the bag is definitely too thick to cut through.

  I’m just going to have to try and unlock it with a guess. I rotate the tiny dials as fast as I can:

  N-I-N-A-W

  No.

  J-A-S-O-N

  No.

  A-N-G-R-Y

  No.

  A-B-C-D-E

  No.

  I need to get into this bag.

  S-E-A-N-L

  Damn.

  N-O-S-A-J

  Shit.

  W-A-N-I-N

  Fuck. Now what?!

  I take a deep breath and a thought pops into my head. That bathroom wall back in Nebraska. Nina’s graffiti. Cakey ♥’s J. CAKEY.

  I turn the tiny dials one by one. I am all sweating palms and pounding heart.

  C-A-K-E-Y

  I hold my breath and pull down on the lock.

  It pops right open.

  I breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out again. Once I see what’s in here, there will be no going back.

  I lift open the top of the bag and dump the contents on the floor. The newspaper article about Jason, a pile of envelopes, a drawing, and a photograph. I pick it up. It’s of Nina and someone else…I bring the picture closer to my face so I can get a better look. Oh shit. It’s Sean’s brother, Jason.

  In the picture Nina and Jason are sitting behind a giant wooden dining room table with their arms around each other, smiling these giant glowing smiles. The table in front of them is covered in the remnants of a party: wrapping paper, a big pile of what look like pink Hostess Sno Balls, beer bottles, etc. Also on the table is a snowboard covered in ink drawings of the two of them, with a bow on top. They’re sitting in front of a silver wall with a black rocket ship painted on it.

  I’ve seen this wall, at the Mothership. I flip the picture over. In Nina’s handwriting: I love you J.

  J as
in Jason.

  Oh God.

  I move on to the drawing.

  I smile for the briefest of seconds despite everything that’s going on. This is just so Nina. Only now I’m completely baff led because…Nina drew this for Sean? No wait…no she didn’t.

  He changed it. Sean took a drawing meant for Jason and he changed the name so he could pretend it had been drawn for him. My stomach tightens and I feel like I’m about to puke.

  I let the paper fall from my hand and look down at the letters. There are dozens of them.

  I pick up the one on top. My hands are shaking. The letter is dated June 24, the night Nina disappeared.

  Dearest Nina,

  I understand how hard all of this must be for you, but I hope you know that I truly meant everything I said at Jason’s funeral. I am here for you now, to lean on, to talk to, for whatever you need. I am here for you with all my heart, and I will always be here. No matter what. I don’t actually know where I’m going to send this letter because I don’t know where you are right now. But I’m sure you’ll be back soon so I guess I’ll just keep this for you. I want us to go through this together Nina. We need each other now more than ever.

  With love,

  Sean

  Oh my God. I flip through the stack.

  Nina,

  I went to the Mothership again looking for you today. I don’t understand why you’d leave and not tell me where you went? We need each other now. We are supposed to be going through this together!! No one else can understand you the way I can. No one else can be here for you now the way I can be. Why won’t you let me?

  Nina, I went to the Mothership last night. Some guy said he thought you’d been staying there but that you were gone now. He hadn’t seen you in days. Where are you? Where are you? Where are you? Where are you? I need to find you. Nothing makes any sense anymore. You need me now. YOU NEED ME! Why don’t you understand that?