Lena’s a smart girl. She comes off wild and impulsive and flaky, but she’s got a crazy sixth sense. She’ll know exactly what happened . . . eventually. She’ll find the note you’re about to leave in the top drawer of your bedside table at your parents’ house, the drawer she likes to snoop through when she thinks you’re not looking because she thinks by doing so she finds out more about you. Lena’s always one step behind you, but she’ll catch up. She’s no fool. That’s partly why she’s become so much trouble. She sees the Bazooka Joe wrappers you put there and the set of pogs and the note to the Easter Bunny from when you were (supposedly) five. She assumes you’re hoarding remnants from your past. These things make her feel safe, make her feel like she knows you. But why does she need them? Why did you need to plant them there for her to find in the first place? Because she didn’t feel safe. That’s why. Because she sensed something about you that was off. Something she’d rather ignore.
You need your mom to let go and Aubrey to hang on and Lena to know the truth . . . at some point. You need Lena to be the leader of this charade. And besides, you’ve always loved her. She deserves to know the truth. (Aubrey you could have loved, but she ruined it. She went and cheated with that douchebag from the American School in Bombay. Is there a way to get rid of him too?) So you plant a note, may as well be a note to the Easter Bunny because it’s just as fake as that one was—and you phrase it like maybe you want to kill yourself. It’s almost too easy. Then you put it right on top of that drawer for Lena to find, and you address it to “Mom.” (Your mom knows better than to dig through your drawers.)
Suicide is not what you want. You don’t want to die. Why should you suffer more than you’ve already suffered?
You want someone else to suffer for a change.
Once the note is in place, you drive a knife into your thigh and stanch the wound with your Oxford blazer. You twist the knife deeper, biting down on a rag to quiet your urge to scream. There needs to be plenty of blood.
It’s perfect. Aubrey will think, He’s dead, I’m safe. Your mom will think, I don’t want to accept it but I have to now. Lena will think, Trust Charlie to fake a big, brilliant suicide this way. You don’t use the boning knife from your mother’s kitchen. You buy another one especially for the project, with cash. You blow a fortune on one with a mother-of-pearl handle. It feels better that way, ceremonial. You hate yourself for having to inject Lidocaine first; but then you do and it’s over much more quickly and easily than you expected. You sterilize with peroxide, add three thick layers of gauze, and top it off with bandages. Still, your thigh throbs when you’re finished.
Now you disappear, high in the sky, jumping out of a plane no one knows you knew how to fly, using a parachute no one knows you knew how to use. You have so many secrets. It wouldn’t have worked otherwise.
You watch the plane explode just as it should, right on time. The bomb was the easy part; any fool could have made it. You’re no fool.
Later, you plant the blazer you’ve bloodied and charred.
The note is just in case the bloody jacket isn’t enough. Everyone needs to give up on you. Everyone but Lena. Aubrey will come for what’s hers whether she thinks you’re dead or alive.
24
Aubrey
We don’t stay.
We’ve been through too much to sit around, docile as sheep. This time I’m the one who speaks up. Because Lena, she’s immobilized. Something peculiar passed over her face when Dana was talking, and she’s been silent ever since. Dana’s just left us with strict instructions not to move, not to go anywhere. Her words were chilling. So Charlie is alive, after all. He’s alive and wanted to disappear—and it means he crashed a plane and spilled his own blood in order to do so.
I’m afraid of what this means for me.
In the last weeks, when we talked, Charlie seemed scattered. He got dates and other factual things wrong. But it was all trivial. He thought I liked brussels sprouts, he remembered a pink dress I never owned. After I met Lena, I assumed he was just getting the two of us confused. But if he faked his death, he’s not just a liar, he’s unhinged. With a bunch of evidence that could ruin me. Just like that, all the old fear I felt when he was blackmailing me before his disappearance is back. I almost sob from the weight of it.
“What are you thinking?” I ask Lena. She’s biting on her thumbnail, a habit that seems to have developed in full force just after Kerala, which is about when she started becoming visibly anxious. She shakes her head and remains silent. It’s unlike her to say nothing. Something’s seriously off. All around us, the ladyboys in the room are pulling on slinky dresses, spritzing on perfume, decorating their faces, bedazzling their long nails. Generally, they are paying no attention to us at all as they ready themselves for work. Dana’s pretty much the only one who’s already left, our passports in hand.
“We shouldn’t have given them to her,” I tell Lena, pulling myself to my feet. Suddenly I’m terrified and starving, and I nearly pass out from nerves and low blood sugar.
“What?” Lena asks distractedly, her brow furrowed.
“The passports. That was stupid. After what happened in Kerala . . .”
“She’s not Anand,” Lena points out, getting to her feet. “And she needs them for our flights.”
“Flights she’s getting a ‘special deal’ on,” I say. “We need to get them back, Lena. We barely know her.”