Page 44
Story: Everyone Is Lying to You
Lizzie
When the lights come on in the hotel hallway they blind all three of us and we recoil against the wall.
It can’t be. This fragile, scared child crying in front of me on the floor cannot be Rebecca’s daughter.
“Kiki,” she moans into Katie’s chest. “I’m sorry.”
“Shhhhhh, shhhhh,” Katie keeps soothing her. “It’s fine. It’s okay. You’re safe.”
“I walked out to the ice machine. Same as we did earlier. It hurt so much. I just needed more ice for my ear. It hurt so bad. I thought I left the door open, but it must have slammed behind me and then everything went dark and I was trapped out here. I didn’t know what to do.
You told me not to leave, so I stayed right here. I did the best I could.”
“You did great. Great, you hear me? You are brave and I never should have left you.”
Only now does Katie look at me.
“Kiki?” I ask her.
She’s resigned to giving me an explanation. I can tell. “Alice couldn’t do a ‘t’ sound for the longest time when she was a baby. Katie became Kiki when she was about two and it stuck with the littlest ones.”
“You’re Bex’s nanny?” I ask. Katie nods.
“You lied to me.” At that she shakes her head furiously.
“I didn’t. Absolutely not. There were some things I didn’t tell you, but I never lied. You made assumptions.”
“Why are you here? Why is Alice here?”
Katie’s eyes dart left and right down the hallway, but we’re still alone. We won’t be for long now that the elevators are up and running. All the other guests will be returning to their rooms. Or hopefully all of them. I can still hear that scream out at the canyon, the woman calling for help.
“Let’s get inside the room. Let’s get Alice to bed.” Katie whispers something in the little girl’s ear that I can’t hear and helps her to her feet, pulls a room key out of her pocket. The door opens easily, as if the blackout had never happened.
“Why is she here?”
“She has an ear infection,” Katie says.
“But why was she here alone?” I know my tone is filled with judgment, but I can’t help it.
Alice chimes in. “I’m twelve. I stay alone all the time. I watch the littles sometimes too.”
“She does,” Katie says. “And it was just going to be a couple of hours. I had no way of knowing the hotel would lose power and I thought I needed to be out there. I wanted to see what Veronica was up to tonight. I don’t trust her.
I still shouldn’t have left Alice.” She turns to the girl.
“I shouldn’t have left you and I won’t do it again. How is the ear?”
Now that I know Alice is listening to us so intently, I don’t want to alarm her.
I table the rest of the questions running through my head for the moment.
Where are Rebecca’s other children? Why is Katie, or Kiki, or whatever her name is, at this conference?
Was her app all a front? Does she know where Rebecca is right now?
Has she been leaving me these cryptic messages?
The keys? And why doesn’t she trust Veronica?
“I want my mom,” Alice wails, cupping her hand over her left ear. “But she’s not answering the phone.”
And one of my questions has been answered. They know exactly where Rebecca is, or at least they’ve been in touch with her.
Katie shoots me a pleading look that seems to say, Just wait. I know you have questions .
A knot of dread settles in my stomach. “Can I get you some ice, sweetie?” I ask Alice. She nods and buries her head in Katie’s lap, then turns and looks at me with one glassy eye. She’s shaking and I don’t know if it’s the pain or if I’m scaring her. “Who are you?” she whispers.
She doesn’t know me, but I feel like I know her so well.
I’ve seen images of her as a tiny baby, as a chubby toddler, on her first day of homeschool, on family vacations.
I’ve watched her grow up, not because I was once close friends with her mother but because her childhood has been broadcast to millions of people.
My fingers twitch for my missing phone as I walk down the hall to the ice machine.
Then I think again about the scream back in the desert, the cry for help.
I take a detour to the lobby to try to get information.
It’s full now, women huddling under damp towels and blankets on every available couch.
Something is different, slightly off. It takes me a beat to realize that it’s because no one is on their phones, no one’s head is bowed, tapping away on a screen.
They’re all staring off into the distance, dazed and a little lost.
I don’t see Veronica anywhere. Instead, I walk up to Cricket and sink onto the couch next to her. Her eyes are red, and her nose is running.
“Did everyone make it back?” It seems like a better question than, Did someone fall to their death over the side of that terrible cliff?
“Betty fell,” she finally says.
“Betty Smith? Veronica’s sister?”
“She slipped. She was so close to the edge.” Her teeth are chattering, but it’s not from the cold.
She’s terrified. “No one could see her. It was so dark. I thought she was gone.” I exhale slightly, because it’s now clear that while this story might not have a happy ending, at least it probably doesn’t have a tragic one.
“Where is she now?”
“They found her. Thank God. But she still hasn’t woken up. An ambulance got here and took her to the hospital.”
“Did Veronica go with her?”
“She came back with us. Said she had to go upstairs to get their insurance information.”
I curse Veronica for taking us all out into the desert and into that thunderstorm.
What was the point? What was she trying to accomplish?
I look around for anyone who might have my phone and then despise myself for being so concerned about the device when someone is fighting for their life in the hospital.
“I’m in room one ten,” I say to Cricket. “I need to run upstairs for a little bit, but stop by if you need me.” She nods without saying a word.
I do stop in my room before returning to Katie’s.
I want to check my email since it’s my lifeline to the outside world, but there are only a couple of messages from Alana, desperate for my next story.
I shoot Peter a quick note to let him know about my phone being gone, and that I’m all right.
Then I compose an email to Bex. Fury flows through my veins as I write.
WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?
Table of Contents
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- Page 44 (Reading here)
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