Nightstands were made for secrets. And Bel had more than most, so many that she’d had to clear a shelf inside her wardrobe for the overspill, hidden behind her balled-up socks. And under the bed.
She opened the nightstand drawer, contents rattling as she did. Lip balms and hand sanitizers, a little saltshaker from Rosa’s Pizza, bookmarks, pens, one AirPod—that one she felt real bad about—nail polish, a glove with the tag still on, a little figurine that might have been a Happy Meal toy, a tiny screwdriver and the black marble queen from the chessboard at Royalty Inn. Bel added one more secret to the pile: the scrunchie she’d taken today off a freshman’s desk in the science lab. The tug of shame as Bel welcomed it home, skin alive with the feeling, itchy and warm. Looking down at her menagerie of stolen things, each one small enough to hide in one hand.
Bel closed the drawer, hiding them away. Hidden but not gone. Things couldn’t get up and leave like that. Unless she was in a Pixar movie, and Bel was pretty sure she wasn’t.
She got into bed, making eye contact with the book waiting for her on top of the nightstand. The plot hadn’t really got going yet—a lot of backstory—but something exciting was going to happen soon. It had to: the title promised it.
She checked her phone—not for any messages, there wouldn’t be any— but to make sure she’d set her alarm for school tomorrow.
Now that she’d stopped rustling, she could hear the faint murmur of voices downstairs. It wasn’t the TV; Dad’s program had finished at ten. Someone must be here. Who was at their house this late?
Bel kicked the comforter off, crossed her room with light, barefoot steps and cracked the door. The voices growing clearer the farther she pushed it, standing half in and half out of her room, eyes on the glowing stairs.
Her dad was speaking now, in the living room below.
“…way too late, I don’t know why you’re saying this now. What happened? Did it not go well today, the interview?”
“No, it was fine.”
It was Uncle Jeff, she recognized his voice, but there was an edge to it that she didn’t often hear, an uneasiness.
“Fine, I think. I answered everything. But I was nervous about accidentally saying something that made you look bad, so I thought about my answers carefully before I gave them, and Ramsey commented that I was taking my time. So maybe it looked like I was trying to hide something, I don’t know.”
“But you aren’t hiding anything,” Charlie said, his voice soothing. “None of us are hiding anything, so you have nothing to worry about. It’s all fine.”
“Maybe. I don’t know, Charlie. I don’t know if this documentary was such a good idea. Things have been normal for a long time. Good, even. You remember what it was like, back when she first disappeared, or after the trial. All that attention, the media, people in town having opinions, the broken windows, that psycho obsessed with the case. You have no idea what kind of spin this documentary might have; they could be trying to make you look guilty. They can do that, you know. Editing. The soundtrack, the perspective. Easy to make someone look like a villain. I don’t know why we’re doing this, why we’re risking bringing all that negative attention back into our lives.”
“We’re doing it because we have to, Jeff,” her dad answered, still nice, still calm, but Bel could hear a rare hint of impatience. “You think I wanted
to do it? You think I wanted the cameras around, intruding in our lives, bringing up these old, painful memories? But we have to and it will all be fine, I promise. They can’t make me look guilty because I’m not guilty, we all know that. They’ll be done in a few weeks and then we can all move on with our lives. Hey, it might even be a positive thing, this documentary. People will finally get to see the real us, our family, how much we all loved Rachel. It might be the thing that finally clears my name for good.”
“But maybe it’s not too late to—”
“Not too late to what?” Charlie cut him off. “I signed a contract; the family’s participation was part of that deal. I sold them my life rights, Jefferson. They paid me forty thousand dollars. It is too late to go back and this discussion is pointless.”
Bel shifted her position, knees cracking in the silence, holding her breath to listen harder.
“I’m just trying to help you,” Jeff said. “I don’t think you’ve thought this all through.”
“I have thought it through hundreds of times,” Charlie said, and now he was angry. Bel never heard him angry. “I don’t see you volunteering to pay for Dad’s care, Jefferson. Do you know how expensive it is to have a full- time caregiver? Have you even given it one thought? No, because it’s my job yet again to take care of everything. We needed the money, Jeff. More money than you or I have. The documentary is paying to take care of Dad. You might not want to do it, I don’t want to do it, but we had no other choice.”
Bel was listening, learning, but Jeff clearly wasn’t. “There must be another way to help Dad and—”
“You’re right, Jeff.” Charlie’s voice grated. “We did have two options to get that kind of money. One was to take part in this documentary. And the other was to finally apply for Rachel’s death certificate so I could cash in on her life insurance policy. That was the bigger payout, for sure. But which of those options makes me look worse, do you think? Which one of those makes me look guilty?”
He was right, of course. Dad was always right. They would fall apart without him, the whole family. He did the worrying and the thinking and the planning, so they didn’t have to. Bel knew he must have had a good reason for finally agreeing to talk to the cameras after all these years.
“I’m sorry,” Jeff said, backing off, giving up the edge in his voice. “I wasn’t thinking…about Dad, about the money. I didn’t realize that’s why you agreed to the documentary. I’m sorry. Thank you for taking care of Dad, for putting him first.”
“I don’t need thanks,” Charlie said, back to normal. “It’s Dad. I’d do anything for him. Do anything for any of you.”
“I know you would,” Jeff said.
Bel hadn’t really heard Dad and Uncle Jeff argue before. Playful ones, sure, brotherly teasing and overreacting, but never something where real sorrys had to change hands like that. Because Dad didn’t argue; he wasn’t built that way. He and Bel had never had a real fight, not raised voices, or heated words they’d regret later. Bel had tried, of course, many, many times, when she needed somewhere to put her anger. But at the first sign, Dad would simply tell her he was going to leave the house, so they could calm down in their own space and time, find kinder words to work it out. Mostly he didn’t actually have to leave at all. It worked every time, unlit whatever fuse there was, untangled whatever misunderstanding. He was good like that; the only one who would never leave her. And Bel found other places to put her anger.
“Sorry,” Jeff was still saying downstairs. “I’ll do the rest of the filming.
Whatever they want me to do. I’ll even try to enjoy it.” Bel promised the same.
—
“Oh, fuck off,” Bel said when she spotted Ramsey and the rest of the crew outside the entrance of Gorham Middle & High School the next morning.
Carter jostled her shoulder as they crossed the street together. “Did you know they were filming here today?” she asked under her breath, hiding it
with a smile.
“No.” Bel tightened her grip on the straps of her backpack, knuckles bursting through the skin like armor. “But it’s nothing to do with us.”
“If it’s nothing to do with us, why is Ash waving at you?”
Ash was wearing black check pants—bottom half almost normal—but he’d paired those with a mustard-color sweater vest over a shirt with a large, ruffled collar, hair tied in a small bun on top of his head. Jesus, he was at an American high school, they were going to eat him alive. People were already pointing and staring, though it might have been the camera they were looking at.
Bel and Carter approached. They had no choice; the crew was blocking the entrance.
The principal was there too, talking eagerly to Ramsey, eyebrows and teeth dancing around his face. Most exciting thing to happen to him all year, probably; hadn’t looked this perky since the game against Pittsburgh High, where Joe Evans puked red Gatorade all over the basketball court. People screamed because it looked like blood. Go Huskies!
“Hello, Bel, Carter!” Ramsey spotted them, using them as an excuse to
maneuver away from Principal Wheeler. Ramsey might be able to read people, but she could read him too.
Bel considered pretending she hadn’t heard him. “Hello,” Carter said cheerfully, ruining the game.
“Carter!” a voice called across the semicircle of grass. Carter’s friends were waiting for her back there, beckoning her over, backpacks knocking together as the girls huddled closer.
Carter glanced at Bel, like she was waiting to be released.
Bel wanted to say no, but what was the point? “See you later,” she said, letting Carter go, because she was going anyway, always would be.
Carter darted off without a second glance back. Her friends rebuilt their huddle around her, chattering excitedly.
“Bel,” Ramsey said, bringing her attention back to him. A crowd was starting to form around them, a bottleneck to reach the doors. “I know we’re
not scheduled to film with you until Saturday, for the reenactment.” His eyes lit up. “Very exciting.”
“Fantastic. Can’t wait.”
“But today we’re filming around the school, seeing the place your mum used to work, what it was like to be a high school English teacher here, her life outside of home. We’ll be interviewing a few of the teachers who worked alongside her: Principal Wheeler, Mrs. Torres and, of course, Mr. Tripp.”
Mr. Tripp—math—but he was Bel’s homeroom teacher, and the man who found her in that car sixteen years ago. Why had his name stung a little when Ramsey said it, though? Bel hadn’t realized that he taught here the same time as Rachel. Maybe that was the reason he was always nice to her. Rachel took everything.
“But now I’ve caught you—” Ramsey said. “Literally—” Bel muttered.
He continued: “—I thought it would be nice to film you, walking the same halls your mum used to teach in. There’s a nice parallel there. And it would be great to talk to some of your friends at lunchtime, if they can sign the release forms.”
Bel took a breath, straightened out her face.
“Yeah, sure. Lunch. I’ll find my friends.” Her tongue too fat around that last word, saying it wrong, another slug in her mouth.
“Perfect.” Ramsey flashed his teeth.
Bel turned to go through the double doors, disappearing into the crowd, passing Ash. He caught her eye and she caught his. A muscle twitch in his mouth, not a smile, sad somehow. Like he knew the thing she hadn’t said and was sorry about it. Well, he would be sorry, if he ever looked at her like that again.
Bel’s sneakers screeched against the polished tile of the hallway. More polished than normal. A group of girls were standing by the lockers— juniors—watching Ash through the doors, giggling and falling into each other.
“And the man-bun!” one of them snorted, setting them all off again.
Bel let the strap of her backpack slip from her shoulder as she passed the group, her heavy bag swinging down and knocking into that girl, hard.
“Hey!” the girl shouted, spoiling for a fight, or spoiling for an apology.
Can’t hear you, Bel mouthed back at her, pointing at the nonexistent wireless earphones either side of her head.
She continued down the corridor, past the English classrooms. Every day she had to walk right by The Rachel Shrine, as she thought of it: a collection of photos and certificates on the wall, old letters and poems written to and about the best English teacher ever. The trick was to not look at it, pretend it wasn’t there. No doubt Ramsey would want to film in front of it today.
“Bel, hey!” A voice caught up to her, a patter of feet. Bel stopped, narrowed her eyes before she turned.
It was Sam Blake; her long black hair pooling like liquid over her shoulder, just as it always did.
“I heard what he said back there, about speaking to your friends. I don’t mind…doing that, I mean.”
A stone dropped into Bel’s gut, growing into that hard knot of tension. She sharpened her tongue.
“I don’t know, Sammie. Do you still think my dad’s a murderer and it makes you uncomfortable when he picks me up from sleepovers?”
“I…I…” Sam’s mouth opened and closed, useless, speechless. Bel shot her a deadly smile, and Sam withered away, gone again.
It was easy to push people away when you knew how. Bel had a clean record; she was very, very good at it. Making people leave her before they chose to go anyway. Same result in the end, because everybody left eventually, but it hurt less. That was what life was, choosing the way that hurt less.
That was what she would do now.
She shoved open the door to her homeroom and it slammed into the wall, startling Mr. Tripp behind his desk.
“God, Bel,” he said, clutching his hand to his chest, hiding what was in
it.
But Bel had seen; he’d been checking out his auburn hair in a small handheld mirror.
Camera ready.
His skin was still sallow, though, those same dark rings under his eyes.
Hadn’t fixed those.
“Mr. Tripp, I just got my period and it’s a bad one, blood everywhere.” He stared at her through his tortoiseshell glasses, eyes darting, open-
mouthed.
“I’m not feeling well either.” Bel coughed a fake, hacking cough, spraying it around the room.
Mr. Tripp stared harder, backing away in his wheeled chair. Bel coughed again. Groaned. Hands pressed to her stomach.
“Don’t feel good at all. Might be Covid. I should probably be sent home.”
