I am the tie that binds. Not Emmy. Not Bethany. Me.
Me to Davis Cobb. Me to Emmy. My name in Bethany’s apartment, where it looked like she’d been attempting to slowly assume my identity.
Me to Theo. Me to the newspaper delivered to my door. Me to Aaron and Paige.
It’s no wonder the police pulled back to get a better view. It’s no wonder Kyle was skeptical. Look at what I’d left him with. Untraceable email accounts sending me proof that they were watching; a man calling me up at night; a woman with my face; a girl whom I could not prove existed. A dead body that I had identified beforehand. A history of inventing people—as if I were setting up a defense in advance.
I am the perfect mark.
I was back then, and I still am now. Loyal to a fault. Looking for the stories. An ear trained to pick up intrigue. Look at how you’ve channeled your weaknesses into strengths, my mother had said. The way I’m drawn to the morbid, the cop cars gathered on the side of the road, a streak of blood in the grass. How I throw myself into something, one hundred percent, until I achieve the desired outcome. Needing the construct of the story—a beginning, a middle, an end—to make sense of things.
I should’ve known, should’ve understood—that these strengths could be weaknesses instead. Looking for stories. Stepping too close, never putting up walls. An ear trained to pick up intrigue that you could feed me. A play on my emotions, an appeal to something baser inside. I welcomed Emmy into my life, into my head, with no boundaries. I thought we were protecting each other. I assumed we were on the same side from the start.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, AS I walked into school, I saw him in the front office through the glass windows. Davis Cobb, his head down, smiling at the secretary. He had some paperwork in his hand, probably allowing him to officially start working again. I pictured him on the other side of the wall, in another room; on the other side of a screen, his face glowing as his thick fingers typed out a poem about me and a man I’d brought home.
What more did he know?
I waited outside the back entrance of the front office near the classroom wings, waited for him to come out the locked door, so I might catch him off guard, unplanned. The door flew open, and there he was, towering over me, looking somewhere beyond.
“I need to talk to you,” I said, stepping directly into his path.
Davis’s eyes went wide. I had forgotten that they were blue. I had forgotten all the pieces that made him real—a real person, a real threat. He backed away, hands out in defense, as if our roles were reversed. His eyes shifted from side to side down the empty halls. “No,” he said.
I stepped closer. “You’ve seen her. My roommate. You’ve seen her. I just need to know.” I heard myself, felt the urgency, the desperation, could do nothing to stop it. “You’ve been watching.” If nobody could prove she existed, it all circled back to me.
“I don’t watch you,” he said, taking another step back until he was practically pressed up against the front office door. He had his hand on the knob, but it had locked behind him, and he was stuck with me now. “I don’t. I never did. I told them that.”
In my head, I heard his voice dropped low to a whisper, his breath in the phone from somewhere outside. The things he said and knew. “But in the emails . . .”
He shook his head. “I can’t talk to you. My lawyer said.”
The handle turned from the other side, and the door flew open. He spun away, back into the office, just as Kate walked out.
She looked between him and me and gave me a quizzical look as she passed. I shook off the moment, joined her walking down the hall.
“I see you’re in as big a rush as I am today,” she said, pretending she hadn’t noticed what she’d just seen.
“Ugh,” I said.
“Well. To Friday,” she said. “Any chance you’re up for going out again?”
“I want to,” I said, “but I can’t tonight.” There was too much up in the air, too much I couldn’t get a grasp on.
She slowed her steps. “I feel like you’re avoiding me. Is this a friend breakup? Because if it is, I can take it. I’m a big girl. I just don’t want to keep asking you if you don’t want to hang out.”
“I do.” I grabbed her arm, pausing in the hall. “The week has been a disaster,” I said, and then, to appeal to something deeper, “I let the police search my house a few days ago.”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh. How did it go?”
“They haven’t found her yet,” I said.
“I’m sorry, Leah,” she said, a hand on my arm. We parted in the middle of the hall as the warning bell rang and the students started filing down the hall behind us.
* * *
IZZY WAS ALREADY AT her seat, and I felt a sinking sensation, thinking that maybe she had been here waiting for me. Waiting to tell me something, and I had missed it. Molly and Theo came in right after me, and I couldn’t get a moment alone with her.
I tried not to look directly at Izzy, so she wouldn’t feel the weight of being watched. I wished for an empty classroom, a fire drill, a reason to pull her aside and tell her: I’m listening.
But moments did not create themselves; fate did not line itself up at one’s whim. There was no vodka, or dart, or map pinned to the wall. There was only a girl I didn’t know whom I followed to a place I didn’t belong, for reasons I didn’t understand.
At the end of class, I almost asked Izzy to stay, but she took off in the first stream of students. She didn’t make eye contact as she walked out the door.
I looked up her class schedule on our computer system, saw that she had art history during fourth period, my free block. I had to make the effort—had to let her see that I was meeting her halfway. That I’d noticed her sitting here early, waiting for me. That I was listening.
Mitch caught me in the atrium on my way to the history wing after the bell for last period. “Hey,” he called. “You’re not heading out early, are you?” But he was smiling, trying to make a joke of it.
“No, sir,” I said, emphasis on sir, also a joke. “Off to schedule a research day in the media center for my students.” The quickest excuse I could come up with, since we were standing just outside the library doors.
Mitch stepped closer, checked over his shoulder to make sure no one was near. Our voices carried through the empty atrium. “Coach Cobb was here this morning with his paperwork.”
“I know, I saw.”
“He’ll be back any moment now. I was on my way to see you. Didn’t want you to run into him on your own in the hall.” He lowered his voice again. “He’s not going to bother you.”
Mitch’s words felt too thick and cloying, and I wanted to extricate myself. “Thanks, Mitch. I’ll be fine.”