I need to find your best friend and your list. I need to go to Happy Camp, to talk to the police, to quiz the locals. And I need to get inside your yellow house. I don’t believe what your mother said. You told me not to trust anyone. Stories are contagious out here, and I can’t let myself be infected with anything but the truth.
I fall asleep listening to you. In my dream I am running through the woods. They twist and re-form like a kaleidoscope in front of me, like a shifting maze. And then I see my own street up ahead, the street I grew up on, narrow, pedestrian, and I run faster. I run home. And when I am close—so close I start up the drive, so close my hand reaches out toward the doorknob—my body loses gravity. It lifts, a weightless thing untethered, and I float up into the sky. I hover there in a basin of stars.
Then I feel you behind me. Your fingers slide over the crook of my elbow. I hesitate, then slip my hand over yours. Your chin hovers over my shoulder as you lean forward and whisper in my ear, “Take this man or any man you can get your hands on.”
It’s like no dream I’ve ever had before. It feels so real. And I think we have crossed into another realm together, and I think, just as fast, that it’s my own hand. I am touching my own hand and believing it’s yours. And then you disappear.
I fight my way awake, through the various chasms of sleep, through paralysis, into one world where I wake up, sit up in bed only to realize I am still asleep, then dive back into a dream, then fight back, until finally I awaken and search for my phone to write down your words before I forget, only to find that I am still asleep.
* * *
—
I think of your words as soon as I wake up the next morning. And it’s clear in the cold light of day that they are the same gibberish as any other dream directive. Dreams have a way of marrying intense emotion to absolute nonsense. Are you telling me your killer was a man? Are you telling me to get married? Sleep with any man I can find? Out here, that may be difficult.
I want to write the words down, even if they are nonsense, but I forgot to charge my phone. I think of the journal, and I slip my hand under the mattress. My chest hurts, like I’ve swallowed something whole.
I get out of bed. I lift up the mattress. My knees shake. My head feels light. The book is gone. I check the floor. I run my hand along the bottom of the mattress. I must have moved it, must have forgotten, must have taken it, half asleep, and hidden it somewhere else, but where? Why?
And then I think of your mother, of what all those people said, how she is always watching. Maybe she came to my cabin before she found me; maybe that’s how she knew I was gone. Maybe she discovered the book. Of course she would want to get rid of it.
But it still bothers me. Why was she in my room? Why was she looking under my mattress in the first place? But then, it’s not my room; it’s not my mattress. Everything on this ranch is hers. I work for her. Even I belong to her, in a way.
My breath feels trapped in my throat, like I need permission to breathe. I have never felt so WATCHED.
What am I doing here? Your mother thinks you’re dead. And there is no one around to contradict her. I should leave, try to put the pieces of my life back together. That is what the old me would do. Go back. Start over. End up in the same place.
But you wouldn’t leave. You wouldn’t give up. You would know this is only the beginning. The first clue. You wouldn’t let one witness write the narrative. You would keep searching, putting all the pieces together, until you had a whole mosaic of truth.
My ears prick at the sound of an engine. There are trucks that pass on the highway, more often than I would expect, and because there are no other sounds, I can hear every one with startling clarity, but this one seems to roar right into my bedroom. I hop out of bed and walk outside. The horse fields are dewy in the half-light; the barn still holds deep shadows.
A black SUV has pulled up outside your mother’s house. The dogs bark and circle as a man climbs out, with black hair and a curled body that hops as if walking over coals. He opens the back and starts to unload boxes from the car. Your mother appears at the door, rushes down to meet him. She doesn’t greet him but moves straight to the boxes. Their voices bounce back and forth. This must be your father.
I don’t meet him right away. Your mother wants me to take over feeding the horses, so I head over to the barn first.
The job is harder without her. I am supposed to slot two bales of alfalfa into the tractor loader, and I can’t make them fit. I try to force them down. I try different angles, but no matter what I do, the flakes balance precariously, so if I move the tractor at all, they will fall off. I am wearing gloves, but the air is cold and biting and little stalks of alfalfa collect inside my jacket, down my shirt and in my shoes, poking me. The dust makes me sneeze.
Eventually I settle for the best I can do and climb into the driver’s seat. I turn the engine twice, so the motor revs and crackles. I press the reverse pedal. The tractor doesn’t move. I push harder. The engine crackles again, and I realize I have left the parking brake on. I release it and reverse. I come to a stop. The flakes sway but don’t fall. I adjust the speed and press the forward pedal. Six flakes fall to the ground. I run them over.
I am near tears. I know it’s silly, but I feel like an idiot. I am not the best employee; I tend to crack under pressure, lasting two weeks at one job, six at another. I have never felt so watched, even though your mother and father are inside the house. I am sure that I will be fired. That I will lose my place at the ranch and my connection to you. I will never find you. I will fail, like I always do. And you and I will disappear.
I give up on stacking the loader, and I carry a pile of alfalfa flakes by hand to the first pasture. I throw them too close together, and the horses fight, rearing up, snapping their teeth, tearing skin from withers and leaving bright patches of pink. Panicked that your mother will see, I crawl under the fence to separate the flakes. The alpha horse, a blood bay Arabian with nostrils flared, charges me. I wave my hands in the air to scare him, but he tosses his head and runs faster. I dive back under the fence. He skids to a stop behind it, then rears up again.
I lean against the tractor, heart pounding in my ears, adrenaline coursing through my veins. My head spins, like I can feel the highway twisting all around me.
These horses are not like the tame, stabled horses I grew up with. They are herd bound, with room to run and fight and ignite their instincts. And I can’t do this, and I don’t know why I thought I could. I have never worked at a barn, and I am afraid of horses, I suddenly remember. That was why I stopped riding. Because one day I woke up terrified of dying, and every time I got on a horse, horrific accidents would run through my mind, in Anxiety Technicolor. I would see myself flip over the horse’s head and land on my shoulder—crack—and snap my collarbone. Or I would slip off the side with my foot still trapped in the stirrup and get dragged beneath the horse’s pounding hooves. Or the horse would rear up and fall sideways on top of me, crushing all the bones in my legs to powder.