Page 89 of The Last Time I Lied

“Their names are Sasha, Krystal, and Miranda.”

PART TWO

AND ALIE

27

The detective writes their names in his notebook, thus making the situation official. My heart completes another sorrowful flip-flop in my chest.

“Let’s go back to the beginning,” he says. “Back to the moment you realized the girls were missing from the cabin.”

An awkward moment passes in which I’m not sure who he’s talking about.Which ones?I almost say.

I can’t help but feel like that thirteen-year-old cowering in the presence of a different detective asking me about a different set of missing girls. Everything is so similar. The empty mess hall and the slightly impatient lawman and my simmering panic. Other than my age and the new cast of missing persons, the only major difference is the mug of coffee sitting on the table in front of me. The first time around it was orange juice.

This isn’t happening.

That’s what I tell myself as I sit rigid in my plastic cafeteria chair, waiting for the mess hall walls and floor to melt away. Like a dream. A painting splashed with turpentine. And when it all slides away, I’ll be somewhere else. Back in my loft, maybe. Awakening in front of an empty canvas.

But the walls and floor remain. As does the detective, whose name suddenly comes to me. Flynn. Detective Nathan Flynn.

This isn’t happening. Not again.

Three girls go missing from the very same cabin at the very same camp where three other girls disappeared fifteen years earlier? The odds of that happening are astronomical. I’m sure Sasha, that tiny well of knowledge, would have a percentage at the ready.

Still, I can’t believe it. Even as the floor and walls stubbornly refuse to evaporate and Detective Flynn keeps sitting there and I examine my hands to make sure they’re the hands of a woman and not a thirteen-year-old girl.

This isn’t happening.

I’m not going crazy.

“Miss Davis, I need you to focus, okay?” Flynn’s voice slices through my thoughts. “I understand your shock. I really do. But every minute you spend not answering these questions means another minute goes by that those girls are still out there.”

It’s enough to shake off my lingering disbelief. At least for the moment. I look at him, fighting back tears, and say, “What was the question again?”

“When did you realize the girls were missing?”

“When I woke up.”

“What time was this?”

I think back to the moment I awoke in the cabin. It was only hours ago yet feels like a lifetime.

“A little past five.”

“You always such an early riser?”

“Not usually,” I say. “But I am here.”

Flynn makes a note of this. I’m not sure why.

“So you woke up and saw they were gone,” he says. “Then what?”

“I went to look for them.”

“Where?”

“All over the camp.” I take a sip of the coffee. It’s lukewarm, slightly bitter. “Latrine. Mess hall. Arts and crafts building. Even other cabins.”

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