Page 48 of Everyone Here Is Lying
Avery asks, “What did the police want, earlier?”
“They’re just asking everybody the same questions over and over again, hoping they might have remembered something.”
Marion couldn’t have said anything. If she had told the police that Avery was hiding in her basement, she wouldn’t still be sitting here, would she?
“Don’t you trust me anymore?” Marion asks.
Avery ignores the question. “What did they ask you?”
“The same things as before. Did I see anything unusual, any strangers or strange cars in the neighborhood around the time you disappeared or in the days preceding.”
“What did you say?” Avery asks. She wants to know everything.
“I told them I was home, in the house. That I didn’t see anything unusual that day.” She adds, “They didn’t get anything out of me.”
Avery slumps down again on the bed. Things are not going her way, not anymore. She’d watched on the small television across from the bed as her father was taken in and out of the police station, looking like he didn’t know what had hit him, looking like he was going to be arrested. It was very satisfying. She wanted him tosuffer. She watched the news on TV and read the newspapers that Marion brought her, holed up in her basement. Avery was a celebrity. She would be even more of a celebrity when she turned up again, having survived a kidnapping, with her unknown kidnapper still out there somewhere.
She’d enjoyed it when she found out that her father had lied about being home that day—liar—and that he now seemed to be living in a hotel. It looked like he was going to be arrested, that he would learn his lesson and she could reappear and go home. But then suddenly they were interested in Ryan Blanchard. She didn’t even know him. Then it was on the news that the police had an anonymous witness who said they’d seen Avery get into his car. It wasn’t true. “I’ll make us something to eat,” Marion says. “I’ll bring it down here and we can watch the seven o’clock news.”
•••
Marion moves aroundthe kitchen, boiling water for pasta and grabbing a jar of sauce out of the cupboard. Soon it will be time to put an end to this. It’s been three days.
Avery had been outraged when she heard on the news last night that someone claimed to have seen her get into Ryan Blanchard’s car.How can that be?Avery had said.I never got in his car. Somebody is lying!
Those detectives believed her, Marion thinks. No one will think Marion Cooke, a respected nurse, is lying about what she saw.
Marion arranges two plates of pasta on a tray, with cutlery and two glasses of milk, and carries it down to the basement. Avery has already turned on the television on the wall in front of them. It’s almost seven o’clock. They wait through the commercials. Are theygoing to say anything about the witness? Marion wonders. Are the police going to release her name? They said they wouldn’t. But they will probably arrest Ryan Blanchard now, and that will make Avery angry. She doesn’t want Avery to know it was her. Not yet. She doesn’t want Avery to know that the pact between them was never real at all.
Marion is tired of having Avery in her house; she wants this to be over. She wishes she hadn’t opened the door today to the officer who recognized her voice.
The newscast begins, and as expected, the lead story is about the girl sitting beside her. “There have been new developments in the Avery Wooler disappearance,” the anchorwoman says, her voice serious. “Police today have taken into custody eighteen-year-old Ryan Blanchard. Police have confirmed that a witness, who claims to have seen Avery getting into Ryan Blanchard’s car on Tuesday afternoon, has now come forward. Blanchard lives on the same street as the missing girl. The nine-year-old girl hasn’t been seen since she disappeared Tuesday afternoon, despite a massive search involving hundreds of volunteers and police officers.”
The screen now shows footage of Ryan Blanchard being taken out of his house in handcuffs and bundled into an unmarked car.
“No,” Avery says. Marion glances over at her; the girl’s face is flushed with anger.
“No, it isn’t true!” She turns to look at Marion. Marion shakes her head, trying to appear sympathetic while still listening to the news for anything about the witness.
“People in the neighborhood expressed both shock and relief...” the anchor continues, but she adds nothing that hasn’t been said before.
Marion glances at Avery. She’s obviously furious. When she’s angry, she’s a bit scary. “Maybe it’s time you went home,” Marion suggests casually. She doesn’t mean it. Avery can’t go home. She’ll never go home now. Marion has her own agenda, one that Avery doesn’t know about.
“No.”
Marion has learned how stubborn the girl is, how petulant.
“I wanted him to be sorry,” Avery complains. “I wanted him to be blamed!”
“I know,” Marion says.
“And now you want me to leave,” Avery says sulkily. “I like it here.”
Marion feels a surge of annoyance. Of course she likes it here, living like a spoiled princess, having food brought to her, watching all the attention her disappearance is getting on television, reading about herself in the papers—it all feeds her enormous narcissism.
But it’s not up to her, Marion thinks. None of this is going to end the way Avery Wooler thinks it is.
Thirty-four
