I turn the page. With every word I read, a ball of bile forms in my stomach and rises into my mouth. What I describe in my childish scribble is pages and pages of neglect and torture. My father burning my elbows on the stovetop because I didn’t keep them off the table during dinner. My mother forcing me to eat rotting, rancid meat in my sandwiches because she said my fancy school cost them so much money. And all of it recorded in my halting, eight-year-old hand, just lists of things that happened, like it’s completely normal for parents toburn your fucking elbows.
I rub my elbows as I read this litany of horrors with a strange detachment. It doesn’t feel real.These things happened to someone else. Not me. Someone else.
Daddy says I’m too soft, he says I need to be tough if I’m to survive in his world as his heir. He says for my own good I’m not allowed to sleep in my bed no more. All that Egyptian cotton and imported silk makes me soft. Last night I slept in my closet, but I didn’t sleep much.
I’m several entries in before I spot Eli’s name again.
Daddy’s away on business, and Mommy went to see her doctor about a new face, so I snuck Eli in through the car lift. I haven’t seen him in so long. We don’t talk at school because it’s too dangerous. If the teachers say something to our parents, we’ll be in so much trouble. But today we hung out, and it was just like it always is. We went for a swim, and I wore my new purple bikini. Eli said I looked pretty. I liked hearing him say that.
Eli knows about the maintenance shed and car door. I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all.
I turn another page. Eli’s name jumps out from every sentence. The two of us sneaking out our windows at night to have ice cream on the boardwalk, getting detentions just so we could sit together and pass notes, creating fake social media accounts to chat with each other and deleting all our messages. Secret friends.Closefriends. And judging from the way I spoke about him, we’d been that way for a long time.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I curl up on my ruined bed and pore over the entries. It’s filled with stories about Eli, years and years of them, starting from when I was eight and finishing the year the Malloys disappeared. I snuck him into Malloy Manor every chance I got, and we once told our parents we were going on a ski trip with the school and snuck out to his father’s cattle ranch for the weekend. I never saywhywe had to hide our friendship (because duh, I obviously knew and eight-year-old me couldn’t possibly predict my current situation), but I can tell from the way I’d pressed down hard on the pen that I was afraid of what would happen if we were caught.
And there’s something else, too. Noah. His name comes up again and again later in the diary, when I’m eleven and twelve years old. He went to the same school as me and Eli, and they’d been friends forever. It doesn’t sound like I hung out with Noah at all, but I talk about him constantly. How hot he is, how smart he is. Some entries are just Noah’s name written over and over again, surrounded by hearts. On my twelfth birthday, I’d written:
It’s my birthday. Eli’s taking me somewhere special to celebrate. I asked him if he can invite Noah along, too. He got all weird about it, said Noah was busy even though I know he’s not because his swim meets are on Thursdays. It sucks – Eli knows how much I like Noah. Why doesn’t he want us to hang out?
I read over the very last entry. It’s tough to make out the words because the page is torn and the ink is smudged from droplets I suspect are tears.
Today was horrible. It’s the worst day of my life. Daddy came home from his trip early and found Eli and me in the pool. He grabbed Eli by the throat and dragged him out of the water. I cried and begged Daddy to stop. He threw Eli into the garden wall, and he just crumpled to the ground and didn’t move. Daddy had his security team drag Eli away, and he made me scrub Eli’s blood out of the stucco. I thought he was dead. I thought Daddy killed him.
Daddy told me never to go near Eli or his family again. He called them criminals. He said he’d ruin them and that would put a stop to my ‘cavorting’.
I hate Daddy so much. I won’t let him get away with this.
Tears roll down my cheeks. I can see I’ve pressed the pen so hard that I tore the paper. I read my anguish in every word.
Eli risked everything to be my friend. He risked his life to go swimming with me and to be there for me when no one else would. All these years of silence, and he’sstillwilling to scale a wall to see me.
And I can’t even remember his face.
16
Eli
The guard leers at me as I drive the Porsche up to the gates. “Greetings, Your Highness.” His friend in the booth behind him laughs like it’s Saturday Night Live.
“You’re hilarious.” I toss my paperwork and ID at him as his buddy walks around my car with a sniffer dog.
“Just you today, Your Highness?”
“Obviously.” I am not in the mood for their shit. I hardly slept last night. I stared at the ceiling and thought about Mackenzie’s face as she hurled those bottles at me. Shelookslike my secret friend, the Mackenzie who never cared about anyone or anything except me, but inside she’s like a different person. What happened to her in the last four years to make her forget me so completely? What’s left her with nothing but broken, violent rage in her eyes? I have to find out. I have to help her.
I want to be at school, where I might be able to talk to her. But I can’t today. Duty calls.
The guard can’t resist one final stunt, giving me a queen wave as he opens the gate and I drive to the visitor parking. At reception, I sign in and subject myself to the usual humiliating patdowns. Comedian Guard takes his time, makes sure to grab my ass as he searches me for contraband. Phone, keys, wallet, they all go in a tray to be collected when I leave – I surrender everything except the small leather pouch hanging off my belt. They all know what’s inside.
I’m led into the booths. It reeks of piss, and I resist the urge to pinch my nose. I did that the first time I came here, back when I was still a kid, and the guards never let me forget it. I settle into the hard plastic chair.
I wait.
A few minutes later, the door on the other side of the glass swings open, and two guards escort my dad inside.
I try to make eye contact with him, but I can’t do it. Even after four years, it hurts too much. I stare at a spot on the wall to the right of his ear. A dark stain, maybe blood? It was tough to tell in the dim light.
