To her credit, she looks squashed. Nauseated. It makes me feel almost bad for telling her the way I have. Almost. She needed to hear it. Maybe it wasn’t up to me to have hidden it, but what I said about Charlie’s parents was true. They wanted to keep it quiet. They couldn’t bear the scandal if it got out. I had wanted to respect that.
“Why did you hide it from me?” she repeats, staring at me with a glazed expression. “You never said. Why bother with all of this?” She swings her arm around, indicating the Keralan backwater landscape we’re floating down. I almost laugh. It would be idyllic if it weren’t so twisted. In another world, Aubrey and I would be best friends on some kind of Asian backpacking adventure. But instead we’re in our shitty version of a haunted destination love triangle.
“I didn’t know you yet,” I say, avoiding her eyes. “His parents wanted to keep it hushed up. I also . . . I guess I wanted something for myself. Something you couldn’t know about.” I know I’m not answering the question, but I can’t when I don’t know the answer.
“But he’s gone. I just don’t understand how you can believe otherwise. This whole thing—it’s just . . . it’s so ridiculous.” How much of this has been about a journal and how much has been about something else: proof of his death? And if that’s the case, did she want to confirm his death or his life? Which would have made her happier?
“I’d like to remind you who’s been paying for this ‘ridiculous’ pilgrimage,” I tell her. I know right away it’s the wrong thing to say.
Aubrey laughs once and shakes her head. “It’s fine,” she says. “You can stop paying, because I’m going to go. I’m not here to chase Charlie’s ghost. Fuck the journal. This whole thing is making me crazy. I don’t even care anymore, not enough to keep this up.” She leans her head in her hands, laughs again, and starts muttering “Oh god oh god oh god” under her breath.
“What? Are you okay?” I’m a little concerned that I may have pushed her over the deep end. She lifts her head. Her face is blotchy and worn-looking; she could pass for much older than eighteen. But she’s beautiful. It’s a sneaky kind of beauty that hits you when you’re not looking, and she’s somehow prettier in her devastation. It reminds me of when I first saw her earlier in the week, at the funeral home—how she seemed sort of ghoulish but in a haunting, lovely way, like the doomed heroine in a Poe story.
“I’m not,” she says. “But I just realized, I don’t even necessarily know if what you’re telling me is true. This could be just another lie, another manipulation. Maybe it’s not true? You’re clearly still in love with Charlie even after everything he did to us. Maybe you just realized I’m inconvenient, want me out of the picture, want to find him and claim him.” I gape at her, my mouth open. What she’s saying is crazy.
“Aubrey, if I were to find him again I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. I just think I deserve the truth of what my life has been for the last few years. If he’s alive, I want to force him to answer some questions. Plus I want to expose him, see him pay for this.”
“I don’t know,” she says. “This is an awful lot of trouble to go to for that. Sure there’s not something else?” No. I can’t claim to be sure. But I nod anyway. She laces her hands under her chin and frowns.
“Wait a second.” I break in on her puzzlement. “For me this was about finding Charlie, getting some answers, eviscerating him. I needed that. But you’re supposedly here looking for some stupid journal. I always figured there was more to it, that you were kind of in denial about looking for him, too. So what are you hiding? You’ve never told me what the deal is with the journal.”
Her head jerks up. “It’s personal,” is all she says. Aubrey is handling the revelation of the suicide note oddly. She’s crying, but she’s laughing, and I’m about to ask her exactly what she is feeling when Anand shouts up the stairs, pulling me back into our present predicament: we’re stuck on a boat with a potential felon.
“Food’s ready,” he calls out in this pleasant voice that, to my ears, rings insincere. I’m not thrilled with Adam at the moment; I feel like maybe he should have put Anand into context, told us he was more than just an innocent weed hookup, that kind of thing. And, like, why would he throw Aubrey into this situation if he supposedly likes her? I file that question in the back of my mind.
“Guess we’ve gotta play nicey-nicey with the chef,” I say, making a mental note to come back to this journal of hers, which suddenly seems like a very odd reason for her to come along on this trip, if it’s her real reason. I pull myself together as Aubrey struggles to mop her own face with the back of her hand. “How long till we can skip out of this place? It’s almost nine, so I guess that gives us, like, twelve hours? Keep your wits about you, kid.” I nudge Aubrey with my elbow, and to her credit, she cracks a grin. Part of me regrets having told her about Charlie’s note, and part of me feels this huge sense of relief. It’s sucked, carrying around that kind of secret.