Wherever Nina Lies

  Nina, the police came to my house today to ask me questions about where Jason might have gotten the heroin. I told them that I had no idea. But where would they have gotten the idea that I would?

  Nina,

  I called your house today looking for you. Your mother got angry and told me to stop calling. It’s been almost two entire weeks since Jason went away. I’ve been trying not to sleep, because when I do the screaming starts inside my head and it doesn’t stop. I can’t get you out of my head. I feel like maybe you have an idea what I did. But anything I did, I only did for us. You must know that. Come back to me.

  I flip a few letters ahead.

  It’s been a month now. Where are you? Every night, when I lie down, he’s back and he’s begging me not to do it. But time is all funny and really the decision has already been made. I try and tell him that I had to…for love! But he doesn’t understand and in the dream I don’t understand, either. When I wake up, it makes less sense than it used to. Where are you? Where are you, sweet Nina? We are supposed to be going through this together. If we’re not, THEN WHAT WAS THE POINT?

  I feel sick now, most of the time. It has invaded all my thoughts and everything I do. I can’t get away from it. You are the only person who could make me forget, who could make me remember why this is okay, why I had to do this.

  I go places where I think you’ll be and wait for you to come back. This is all I can do now: Wait. Wait to pass the time and write you these letters, which I’ll show you when I finally find you. WHERE ARE YOU!?!?!?! I want to believe you are lost, and I can help you find your way home. I am trying to have faith, but it is hard to have faith when you’re alone. I am trying.

  WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?? WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY! I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take it. I can’t be without you. WHERE ARE YOU? I am sick every night and every day. I know you love me! I know you love me! I know it I know it. But why can’t I feel it anymore? Something is fading. When the love is gone other things rise to the surface. Things I can’t think about. I will never be able to stop without you.

  My hands are shaking so hard the pages are rustling. I breathe in sharp gasps. There are too many letters here, too many for me to read them all. I flip to the last page in the stack. Five words. Stark black. All alone:

  I DID IT FOR YOU

  I let out a cry and raise my hand to my lips. No no no no no no no no. This is not possible. This can’t be real. This can’t be real. How can this be real?

  I pick up the newspaper clipping about Jason’s death and I look at the date. I can’t believe I missed this before: Jason died the day Nina disappeared.

  I need this not to mean what it seems like it means.

  This must be a joke of some kind. Or a creative writing exercise. Or something. Or anything! I think back to the party at the Mothership. To everything Sean ever said to me there. To his willingness to help me. His insistence. The mask he wore to the party. So no one would recognize him? Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. I think of him gazing into my eyes. Telling me how much I looked like her. Oh God.

  I hear the sound of a car pulling up outside. Sean is back. The letters are all over the floor. I run to the door and lock it with the chain. I grab the letters in handfuls and stuff them all back into the bag and then lock the lock. I can hear the sound of a key in the door. I climb up, lift the bag overhead. The doorknob is turning. I push it in between the blankets, lean back slightly, almost topple off the chair. The door is opening.

  Please someone tell me what to do now.

  “Ellie?” Sean’s voice is calling from outside. I get off the chair and without breathing drag it back to the desk. “Ellie?” Sean’s hand reaches in between the door and the jamb. He shakes the chain. My heart is pounding. “I can’t get in!” Sean calls out. “Are you still in the shower? Ellie?”

  The shower. I tear off my clothes and run into the bathroom. I turn the water on. I can hear Sean outside calling my name. “Ellie! Ellie! Ellie! I’m locked out! I can’t get in!” The water feels like ice. I drench my head, my face. When my whole body is wet, I jump out of the shower. I hit my ankle against the side of the tub. Hard. My eyes tear up. I wrap one of the flimsy towels around myself. I turn the water off. Run back, dripping.

  “Sean? Is that you?”

  “Yeah, Ellie, I’m locked out!”

  What can I do? What can I do? There’s nothing I can do. But he doesn’t know what I’ve seen. So I just need to keep it that way.

  “Sorry!” I yell. “I’m opening it!”

  I take down the chain and pull the door open. Sean is standing there, holding a clear plastic container out in front of him. “Hey, you!” he says. “I come bearing salad!”

  “Hi!” I say. I try to sound normal. I’m shouting. “Were you waiting long?”

  “Not too long, but why’d you lock the chain?”

  “I was scared.” The water is dripping off my body onto the floor, pooling around my feet. My ankle is throbbing. “When you left, I just, I don’t know, I got freaked. Because of Nina, I guess,” I say. “I lost track of time in the shower.” I try and smile. Am I acting normal? I don’t even remember how normal people act.

  “Aw, sweetie,” Sean says. He walks inside, closing the door behind him. He puts down the salad and a pink vitaminwater. “I’m sorry I left you alone for so long. Don’t worry, I won’t do it again.”

  He presses his body against mine, holding me to him. It takes everything in me not to push him away. “You’re shaking,” says Sean. He rubs my arms.

  “I’m cold,” I say.

  I lean back and look at Sean’s face. Everything that was beautiful about him looks different to me now. His intense gray eyes are filled with something dark and sick. His sculptured cheekbones look too sharp. His lips too wet.

  “Do you want to get dressed?” Sean says. His voice is soft and gentle, like he’s talking to a child. And all I can think is, How am I going to get out of this? I will go into the bathroom and put on my clothes. And then what?

  And then what?

  “And then you can come and eat your salad,” Sean says.

  I nod. Just because you’re trapped in a hotel room with a guy who is stalking your sister and killed his own brother, that’s no excuse for not eating your vegetables.

  I gather my clothes, bring them into the bathroom. I watch myself in the mirror as I slip my shirt over my head, pull my pants up. I smile at myself in the mirror. I look terrified.

  When I come back out, Sean is standing by the desk, the salad is laid out and next to it is a plastic fork on top of a paper napkin. The vitaminwater sits next to it. He’s taken the cap off for me.

  “For you, my love,” he says. I walk over.

  His phone starts vibrating. He reaches into his pocket and stops it. I stare at his hands. He grabs the back of the chair, pulls it out from under the desk. I sit. I stare down into the plastic bowl—limp lettuce, bloated red tomatoes, rubbery cucumber slices, corn, covered in a slick of sour-smelling vinegar. I stab the fork into a piece of tomato. A piece of corn is stuck to the side, like a small rotting tooth. I gag.

  “You okay?” Sean says.

  “Yeah,” I say. I put the tomato in my mouth, chew the cold flesh. Flesh. I gag again. I taste bile. Sean is standing over me, staring down. He puts his hand on my shoulder.

  “I understand,” he says. “I couldn’t eat for almost a month after my brother died, but it will really make you feel better.” I nod. My thoughts are zipping around inside my brain, collecting speed as I remember different things he said, things he did that I’m now understanding in a new way.

  “It’s hard,” I say.

  “I know it is, baby.” Sean reaches out and strokes my hair. “I’m just so glad I can be here for you now. I’m just so glad I can be here.” He crouches down so his head is level with mine and he puts his hands on either side of my face, forcing me to face him. “You are in my heart now, Ellie.” He looks me in the eyes. “And that’s forever.” He leans in to
ward me, his lips parted, his breath hot against my face. And then, I can’t help it, I flinch, ever so slightly.

  He leans back. “Oh God,” he says. He raises his hand to his mouth, his lips part. “That look you just gave me.” He stands and stumbles backward. “You know.”

  “What?” I’m shaking my head. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know,” he says.

  His face is changing now, in slow motion, his mouth turning down, opening, closing, and opening. He’s blinking. His eyes are clouding. It’s too late. It’s too late.

  “No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” he says. “Oh God, I’m so stupid. I should have known…you went into the bathroom to shower with all your clothes on, but when I came back, your clothes were all around the room. And you’d locked the door and…”

  He walks slowly over to the closet, reaches up into the blankets and takes the bag down. He stares at the lock, his back to me. “…and these are not the letters I left the lock on.” He stares at me. I look down at the limp lettuce, at the bloated tomatoes. “Do you know how I know?” He waits for me to answer. I am silent. “Because I left the lock turned to Ellie.”

  I can hear Sean’s footsteps, soft on the carpet. Approaching.

  I should get up. I should run. But I am frozen in my seat.

  I feel his hand on my shoulder. My stomach drops.

  It’s too late. He turns me around in the chair, bends down, gathers me into his arms, squeezes me, tighter, tighter, and tighter. He pulls me off the chair until we’re crouched facing each other. It hurts how hard he’s holding me.

  “Oh, Ellie,” he says over my shoulder. He sounds like he’s crying now. I think I can feel his body shaking. He strokes my hair, hard. “Do you love me, Ellie?”

  I swallow. “Of course I do,” I force myself to say. My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it throughout my entire body.

  He mashes our faces together in some sort of approximation of a kiss. His tears run down my cheeks.

  “No, you don’t.” He leans back.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say. “Of course I do.” But it sounds like a lie, even to me.

  “It’s so unfair. So incredibly, terribly, horribly unfair. One mistake! I made one mistake in my entire life, and it ruins everything! I guess that’s the funny thing about a mistake like that, you can’t take it back. Even if you want to. You just can’t ever take it back. And here’s the worst part, it wasn’t even my mistake! Nina made me do it for her. I didn’t want to do it. She set it up so that I’d think I had to! I loved her and she knew it, and I know she loved me. Or at least she could have if she let herself. But then he wasn’t around and she still wouldn’t be with me!” His eyes are filling up again. “She tricked me!”

  He clenches his jaw, a vein throbs near his temple.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I say.

  “No,” Sean says. A tear escapes his left eye and slides down to his chin. “It’s not.” He walks around behind me and grabs my wrists. “I don’t want to do this.” He lets out a choked cry. “Please just know that I really, really don’t want to!”

  He pushes me forward and wrenches both my arms behind my back. I try to pull away. I can’t.

  “What are you doing?” I say.

  I feel something being wrapped around my wrists and tied tight to the back of the chair. His belt I think. “Don’t go anywhere,” Sean says, as though I actually could. And then he is out the door, running through the parking lot. I pull against the belt as hard as I can. “Help!” I shout. “HELP!” But no one comes.

  Sean’s phone starts vibrating again on the desk. I lean over and with my chin, I knock the phone to the floor where it continues to vibrate. I stretch out my leg, pull the phone toward me with my foot, and flip it open with my toe. “HELP!” I shout toward the phone. I look down, pray it’s Unavailable calling again, but there on the screen is a random number I don’t recognize. “Hello?” I hear a faint voice coming through the phone. “Hello?” The voice calls again. My heart explodes in my chest. Is this…Could it really be…

  Sean is back, I kick the open phone under the desk just as he enters the room.

  “Do you want to know something, Ellie? Something I’ve never told anyone before?” He’s not even looking at me. The tears are falling faster now, an unreal amount of them, as though someone has turned on a faucet inside his face. He has one arm behind his back. “He didn’t just go to sleep.” Sean shakes his head and wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “That’s how I thought it would be for him, y’know? Just like going to sleep. But it wasn’t. I went into his room and I held him down. He was a really heavy sleeper and didn’t even wake up when the needle went in. But at the last second, he opened his eyes and looked at me. He had this look of horror on his face, Ellie. His last moment on this earth was spent looking his own brother in the eye and knowing what I did to him.” Sean takes a deep breath and takes his arm from behind his back. There’s something in his hand. Stark black barrel, shining dully under the motel’s fluorescent lights. Cartoonishly menacing. A gun. Sean looks down at it, then back up at me, then down at the gun again. “I got this for myself,” Sean says. “For, y’know.” He raises the gun to his head, jerks his head to the side, and then sticks out his tongue. “It’s supposed to be hard to get a gun, but if you have a lot of money, it’s not really hard to get anything, I guess.”

  And he looks up and smirks, as though he expects me to laugh. “At first I couldn’t take it, the guilt, you know. And Nina was gone and I couldn’t handle it alone. Then, Thanksgiving break, a few months after it happened, I came home from boarding school. Normally we would spend Thanksgiving at our house in Big Sur, which, hey, you’ll think this is funny, that’s actually the house where that band dropped your sister, but anyway, we didn’t go that year because it was like my brother’s favorite place on earth and my dad and stepmom thought it would be too hard to be there without him. So it was just the three of us at my house sitting at that giant table, staring at our plates, at all this food the cook made that we weren’t eating. And I just…I missed him, which was so crazy. I just started thinking about how different dinner would have been if he was there. And how cool he was and how funny he was. It was like that was the first time he really felt like a brother to me and it made me sick, so I excused myself, which no one really minded. And I went up to my room and I got the gun out of this box in my closet. I wasn’t even sure I knew how to load it right. I’d just read this tutorial on the Internet but it’s not like I really had any chances to test out shooting before. So I did what the website had said and then I held the gun up to my face and I was about to squeeze the trigger when suddenly it was like someone was talking to me directly inside my head. I don’t know if it was God or my brother’s ghost, but the voice told me not to do it, not to kill myself, because that wouldn’t make things right. I wasn’t really the one at fault there, see. I wasn’t even the one that killed him, they were my hands, but doing what she wanted. Your sister was the one who did it to him.” Sean looks to the side and presses his lips together. “It was her fault and I was the only person on earth who knew that. Before that I’d been looking for your sister for months. But after that moment I stopped looking and I just waited. I knew if I waited long enough, I’d get a chance to make things right because it was fate that I should. It was hell, all that waiting. But I never lost faith and I never gave up hope and then when I finally saw you at that party that night at the Mothership, I knew my wait was over and that you’d been sent there for me, to lead me to her, to help me make things right. But then I started falling in love with you.” Sean tips his head to the side and smiles like he’s telling a story about something beautiful. “I thought that maybe that was the reason I was at that party, not to find Nina, but to find you! So I thought if I could just let the past go, then it would all be okay. That’s why I told you she died, so we could move on…together.”

  Sean looks up at me then, staring me straigh
t in the eye. “Stop looking at me like that,” he says.

  I don’t move.

  “Do you know what I’ve been through, Ellie? Can you even imagine? You think you have suffered for love? I have suffered for love and so there I was, waiting for the love I’ve earned to come back to me. And then there you were. Dear, sweet, beautiful you who looks so much like her, only you look at me differently than she ever did, and then when you told your friend to leave I knew she had never loved me the way you do. You are the reason I knew it was okay to let her go. Because I had you now. Someone to look at me the way you did. But you are not looking at me like that anymore.” Sean’s nose is practically touching mine. I can see the muscles twitching in his jaw.

  “I’m sorry,” I say quietly.

  “Look at me like that again.” He is begging me. There’s a vein throbbing in the center of his forehead. “Please, Ellie, just look at me like that again, the way you did before.”

  And I try. I try with every fiber of my being to look at his face and see what I saw before I knew the truth.

  But I just can’t do it.

  “You look disgusted,” Sean says. His breath is hot on my face. “I didn’t have a choice, Ellie.” He takes a quivering breath. “Tell me.” His voice is quiet now, barely a growl. “Tell me you understand why I had to do what I had to do. TELL ME!”

  “I understand why you had to do what you had to do,” I say.

  “And tell me you understand why I have to do what I have to do next,” he says. There are tears in his eyes, he’s nodding slowly.

  My whole body goes cold. “What is that?”

  “You already know,” Sean says. “I already told you the story.”

  “The story?”

  “The one about Nina in the parking lot.”

  “But that didn’t actually happen!”

  “That didn’t actually happen…” A tear drips down each cheek. “Yet.”