Charlie, Presumed Dead by Anne Heltzel

Author:Anne Heltzel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

15

Lena

To her credit, she looks squashed. Nauseated. It makes me feel almost bad for telling her the way I have. Almost. She needed to hear it. Maybe it wasn’t up to me to have hidden it, but what I said about Charlie’s parents was true. They wanted to keep it quiet. They couldn’t bear the scandal if it got out. I had wanted to respect that.

“Why did you hide it from me?” she repeats, staring at me with a glazed expression. “You never said. Why bother with all of this?” She swings her arm around, indicating the Keralan backwater landscape we’re floating down. I almost laugh. It would be idyllic if it weren’t so twisted. In another world, Aubrey and I would be best friends on some kind of Asian backpacking adventure. But instead we’re in our shitty version of a haunted destination love triangle.

“I didn’t know you yet,” I say, avoiding her eyes. “His parents wanted to keep it hushed up. I also . . . I guess I wanted something for myself. Something you couldn’t know about.” I know I’m not answering the question, but I can’t when I don’t know the answer.

“But he’s gone. I just don’t understand how you can believe otherwise. This whole thing—it’s just . . . it’s so ridiculous.” How much of this has been about a journal and how much has been about something else: proof of his death? And if that’s the case, did she want to confirm his death or his life? Which would have made her happier?

“I’d like to remind you who’s been paying for this ‘ridiculous’ pilgrimage,” I tell her. I know right away it’s the wrong thing to say.

Aubrey laughs once and shakes her head. “It’s fine,” she says. “You can stop paying, because I’m going to go. I’m not here to chase Charlie’s ghost. Fuck the journal. This whole thing is making me crazy. I don’t even care anymore, not enough to keep this up.” She leans her head in her hands, laughs again, and starts muttering “Oh god oh god oh god” under her breath.

“What? Are you okay?” I’m a little concerned that I may have pushed her over the deep end. She lifts her head. Her face is blotchy and worn-looking; she could pass for much older than eighteen. But she’s beautiful. It’s a sneaky kind of beauty that hits you when you’re not looking, and she’s somehow prettier in her devastation. It reminds me of when I first saw her earlier in the week, at the funeral home—how she seemed sort of ghoulish but in a haunting, lovely way, like the doomed heroine in a Poe story.

“I’m not,” she says. “But I just realized, I don’t even necessarily know if what you’re telling me is true. This could be just another lie, another manipulation. Maybe it’s not true? You’re clearly still in love with Charlie even after everything he did to us. Maybe you just realized I’m inconvenient, want me out of the picture, want to find him and claim him.

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