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The first picture I’d seen had been me in the park. I remembered that day perfectly; it was a balmy seventy-degree day, unseasonably warm for the month it was. A Saturday, and I’d decided to get out of the apartment, take my sketchbook, and go draw somewhere that wasn’t so stifling. I’d spent an hour walking through city blocks to make it to the park, and once I was there, I found a free bench and claimed it, and I’d sat there and drawn all day long without my mom nearby, making snide comments about how I could be filming videos and trying to make a brand for myself.
The picture was of me sitting on that bench, head bent, face filled with concentration as I sketched away, unaware someone had been nearby, taking a picture of me at that same moment. A frontal shot, so whoever it had been couldn’t have been that far away.
Was I really that blind and oblivious?
The paper behind that had my old school records, along with my most recent yearbook photo. The paper had my full name, my height, my eye color, my weight, my most recent grades, and any food and medical allergies I happened to have, which was none. It looked like it was printed right out of the school’s system, not a copy. I didn’t know if that meant someone had hacked in or if someone had given this to Alistair.
The next paper was a photograph of my piece that had been the centerpiece at the gallery the night my mom had originally met Alistair. Seeing my style, seeing my face staring up at me from a photograph taken of a self-portrait was one of the weirdest things. From here, the painting looked fake.
The whole file was on me. Page after page, I saw more pictures of myself. Ones of me walking home from school, walking to school. Ones where I’d taken my lunch outside the school, in the courtyard, so I could draw in peace. Even one of me staring out of the window of our apartment, like whoever it had been was standing outside, staring up at our building from across the street, waiting for me to show my face.
Did Alistair take all of these, or had he hired someone to stalk me for him? He had enough money, I was sure he could get damn near anyone to do anything for him. I didn’t know which possibility bothered me the most, that he’d followed me all that time, or that someone else had, and I’d never noticed, too busy with my nose in my sketchbook to pay attention.
It was true, then. This whole thing, his marriage to my mom… it was never about love. It was about me, about bringing me here, to this house, legally, so he could give me to Gareth as some kind of sick present.
But if I was meant for Gareth, why had he turned into an animal that day in the bathroom? Why had it been so easy for him to let himself go? At the time, I’d been so wound up in him and the way he made my body feel that I didn’t pay much attention to what he’d said, but his words rose up in my mind right then:You’re perfect for us.
Us. Not Gareth. He’d saidus, and that could only mean himandGareth.
I didn’t know if I wanted to see what else this file had on me, but seeing as how I’d come this far, I gathered my inner strength and flipped to the next paper, and what I found wasn’t like any of the others. The final paper had been crinkled and torn, like someone had wanted to trash it.
And that’s because I did. It was from the same day as the first photograph of me, that day in the park. I’d spent hours drawing a hand. My hand, specifically, focusing on the bones I knew lay underneath the skin, and then I’d stopped. I just… I stopped. I’d sat there, staring down at my hand, knowing all the things my mom would say if she saw that drawing.
Then I got pissed. I was so sick of listening to my mom and all of her shit that I tore the page from my sketchbook, crinkled it up in a fist, and got up to throw it out in a nearby trash can. All that work, wasted, because my mom had soured it, even though she wasn’t there. I remembered, as I’d stood there, next to the garbage can, thinking of all the ways I could be free of that woman.
I could kill her.That’s what I’d thought, but just for the quickest of seconds, and the thought was gone just as soon as it had come, and I’d felt bad for the thought having crossed my mind… and now here the page was, having been retrieved from the garbage unbeknownst to me, a reminder of that dark, depraved thought.
It wasn’t the first time I’d imagined getting rid of her. For so long, she’d been the bane of my existence. I’d spent so long wrestling with my inner demons, telling myself that everyone had thoughts like that sometimes. Who didn’t spend the occasional moment thinking about killing someone?
It wasn’t like I’d ever do it. It wasn’t like I’d plan it out, every meticulous step, and go through with it. I wouldn’t.
But staring at this paper brought all those conflicting emotions back to the surface, and I had to close the manila folder and stop looking at it before I threw up. I wasn’t like Gareth. I wasn’t a killer. I couldn’t be.
I shoved the folder back in the skinny drawer, a feeling of dread hanging over me. That feeling wouldn’t go away. No, if anything, it only grew when I found out the other drawers to the desk were locked, and I had no clue where the key was. It wasn’t in the thin drawer.
Maybe it was in his bedroom? I was hesitant to venture in there, because the last time I’d tried looking for a key, it’d been the key to the pool house so I could sneak in and see what Gareth got up to, and we all remember how that turned out.
What other choice did I have, though? I could stop looking, tell Rick the deal was off, but then he’d stop looking into Erin, and I had the worst feeling when it came to what happened to her and her family. So, no, I had to do this. I had to.
I left Alistair’s office the way I found it, tiptoeing to the hall. I went to the bedroom he shared with my mom, going straight to the nightstands. I opened them, finding nothing in either of the tiny drawers. I then tried in between the bed and box spring, running my hands between them from the headboard to the base and doing the same thing to the other side.
Nothing.
My eyes surveyed the room. It had a walk-in closet, but my mom had basically taken it over. A tall wooden dresser sat on the far side of the room, beside the windows, and I walked towards it. Checking the middle drawer, I saw some of Alistair’s pants folded neatly inside.
Ugh. I wasn’t a professional snoop. I didn’t know how to look for stuff like this. I didn’t even know what the hell I was looking for. Trying to find a single key in a house like this was madness.
I worked downward from the middle drawer, haphazardly searching through them, moving the clothes inside all around, trying to find that damned key. Drawer by drawer, I eventually wound up on my knees, hands in the bottommost drawer; the drawer where he kept white undershirts.
As I searched through it, my ears heard something faint in the hall, and I stopped dead. Hands in the drawer, I listened, hearing what sounded like my mom’s laughter floating closer in the air.
Home already? Shit, shit, shit. Had I really spent that long looking? I must’ve lost track of time.
A sense of urgency filled my veins, and I quickly closed the drawer. I looked all around. Running out of the room wouldn’t work if they were right there in the hall—and it definitely sounded like they were close.
Call it a cliched space to hide, but it was the only thing I could think of: the bed. I rushed toward the bed, falling to my knees and scooting under it. My breath caught; it wasn’t but two seconds after I’d gotten under it that I heard footsteps walk into the room.
I could’ve gone to the closet, but my mom would undoubtedly want to change out of whatever hideous outfit she’d worn to the country club, and I didn’t know the closet well enough to know if there were places to hide if she came in. So, under the bed it was, and not a moment too soon.
