Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [67]
Whatever happened to Tess, it couldn’t have been good or she would’ve eventually called me or her parents or someone else in town. But no one ever saw her again. And thirteen-year-old girls just don’t disappear into the night and start new lives. When thirteen-year-old girls disappear forever, something bad happened. Something sick and twisted and fucked up. You find yourself lying in bed at night, praying to God that whoever killed her did it quick and didn’t make her suffer. Think about that. You go from praying that she’ll just come home to praying that maybe she was smothered in her sleep or shot in the back of the head when she wasn’t looking or something else quick and painless. This is the kind of stuff that occupies my mind. I used to try to think of all the best ways to be murdered. The least painful ways. The ways where you don’t know it’s coming. I’d make a list in my head and then pray to God that whoever killed Tess used one of them instead of cutting her throat or throwing her into the bottom of a well to drown or starve to death. And I still find myself wondering if Mrs. Bryson thought the same thing in her bed at night. If she still does.
And just like with Mira, it was my fault. Maybe if I had told the police the truth that day in the music room, they might’ve found her somewhere in Connecticut or New Jersey. Hell, I could’ve shown them her exact route. The places we planned for her to stop and pitch her tent, the parks, the campgrounds, the rest areas. I knew everything about her trip and didn’t say a goddamn word. I can say that I was keeping a promise, but honestly, I was just a scared little girl who didn’t have the courage to help her friend. I didn’t put Tess on that road, and I didn’t give her the idea to run away, but I sat in the back of that classroom and planned the whole damn thing with her, excited about being a part of something so big. And when the time came to speak up and make a difference, I decided to save my own skin and leave Tess on her own.
God help me. I let her die somewhere on the road, alone and probably scared out of her wits.
That’s two on me now. First Tess and now Mira.
Freckles was finally crying, the final words coming forth between sniffles and sobs before the tape ended, and in the dim light of the Civic, Milo found himself crying too, not for Tess Bryson, but for Freckles and the secret that she had kept inside for so long. As much as she wished that she could change her past, alter her decisions from so long ago, she could not, and as a result, the disappearance of Tess Bryson had become a part of her. A secret part that she could never remove.
In listening to her story, Milo realized that he too understood what it was like to feel this way, to live every day of your life in constant fear that someone might discover your secret life. He knew what it was like to live with never-ending tension and worry. Though there were moments in the day when Milo’s secrets might fade into the landscape of work and daily routines, they were never far off, and they never, ever faded away for long. Always pushing forward, demanding action, requiring vigilance, and occupying most of his mental processes, his secrets were inescapable, and as such, they required constant attention. In the dim light of his car, sitting outside the house that no longer seemed like his own, Milo realized that these inexplicable demands were his single most defining characteristic, the part of him that consumed the most time and energy and the part that had insinuated itself into every aspect of his life, yet he had never shared this enormous chunk of his soul with another human being.
Milo suddenly felt lonelier than he had ever felt before. The loneliness was almost palpable, a leaden weight bearing down on his shoulders. He realized that even worse than this fear of discovery was the isolation that came with not being able to share the most important parts of