Leiden Coming Back Read online

  BETH VARDAMAN-WALLIS

  LEIDEN COMING BACK

  a novel

  “Whatever sin it is, you love me yet.”

  – Arthur Miller, The Crucible

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  PART TWO

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  PART THREE

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  PART FOUR

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  PART FIVE

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Epilogue

  PART ONE

  1

  MACKIE

  SIX YEARS AFTER

  Kesey holds out the longest of any of them, but when he does give into it – late November, the summer I turn sixteen – he chooses fire, just as Veronica did. I help him collect the wood. We walk together through the bird-bone trees out past the fence and pick sticks from the ground, keeping them wrapped in our arms, close to our chests. It’s late in the afternoon, the sun rotting syrupy yellow and heavy in the sky, and after a while, he tells me he is sorry.

  “I know,” I say. None of them have ever explained their pact to me, but I think I mostly understand it, or at least, I understand why they need it.

  We make our way back to the yard, and stack the wood by the chicken wire that runs between his house and mine. I pour the kerosene, he drops the match, and heat fills the air like coffee poured into a paper cup.

  He puts the shirts on the fire one by one. There are twelve of them – different colours, to begin with, but all the same black by the end. They take longer to burn than I would’ve figured; time seems to drag itself by slowly, belly low to the ground, and it’s as if I manage to read the words marked on them over a hundred times before they curl away into flames: I AM NOT LEIDEN. I AM NOT LEIDEN. I AM NOT LEIDEN. I can still remember the four of them sitting at Kesey’s kitchen table, Sharpies in their hands, writing that on everything he owned. I remember him with it scrawled across his chest, his arms, even long after people stopped calling the tip line, long after the police stopped searching.

  Once the last of the shirts is gone, he pulls the photo out of his pocket. Neither of us needs to look at it – we have it memorised by now – but we look anyway. Kesey, Veronica, Lila, Hugo, and Leiden pressed close together, faces bright with the kind of smiles that only ever seem to exist in photographs and never in real life. They ran this picture in the press six years ago, right after it all happened, because it’s one of the few where it’s easy to tell Kesey and Leiden apart: Kesey had trimmed his hair short the week before this was taken, but Leiden’s was still messy blond, long enough to get in his eyes.

  Three weeks after Connor’s funeral, Lila buried her copy of this photo somewhere up in the valley hills, along with a bracelet Leiden gave her and some notes they’d passed. Eleven months later, Veronica dropped hers in a firepit with everything else she kept of his – a jacket she borrowed, CDs, a kickboard. She got drunk and yelled and cried until the smoke made her choke and Kesey pulled her away. Hugo went next, not long after, except he did it quieter. He took his things to the river on the anniversary, and put them in the water all tied together. He stayed to watch them drift apart in the current, and then he went and visited Connor, where they let him rest. I was eleven then, and I lingered on the bank for days afterward, but the photo never washed up again, and only Kesey’s print was left.

  In some clinging, childish way, I was almost sure that we’d never be here. That Kesey would never give up, give in, and we’d always be waiting, just the two of us, just in case. And I want, at once, desperately, to ask him if he can really let Leiden go, if he’s really sure. But I don’t.

  “It’s okay, Mack,” Kesey says, like he’s climbed right inside my head and pulled the thought out on a string.

  “He might still come back,” I tell him, and he nods, even though we both know he doesn’t believe it anymore.

  I take a step back and he sets the photograph on the fire. It burns from the edges inwards, and every one of those kids looks so young and happy as they never were again, right until the ink flares. And then it’s really gone.

  I glance at Kesey. “Do you feel any different?”

  A pause bleeds all the way out between us. “No,” he says, at last, but I think it’s a lie.

  Eventually, the sunset wears itself down and the fire does too, and we’re left in the nearly-dark with a cloud of embers on the dirt in front of us. Kesey wraps an arm around my shoulders and pulls me into his side. For a second, I hug him hard.

  “I know you don’t get it yet,” he whispers, his voice small and slanting with all the things bent to fit inside of it, “but we can know he’s not innocent and still love him.”

  With the smell of the smoke and of the past behind us but stinking around us like so many overripe fruits in the summer, it’s nearly something I could believe. That one day, I might be here too, burning or burying, or making some strange new ritual all of my own.

  Right now, just for a moment, this night feels almost like the beginning of something, although much later – after Jemma Sun and the documentary and everything else that happened in the six weeks before I drowned – I’ll come to realise it was also the end.

  2

  MACKIE

  SIX YEARS AFTER

  When I get to the motel, Ants is sitting on the roof, his legs dangling off the side.

  “I thought you’d gone home,” he calls down, picking up the soda can he’s stashed in the gutter and chugging a mouthful.

  “Came back. I’m sleeping here,” I tell him.

  “Lawrence practicing again?”

  “Yep.” Since the Lancing TAFE went on break two weeks ago, Lawrence has been trying to get world-famous at the drums, so he won’t have to go back next semester and finish his diploma. So far, this plan has had limited success, mostly on account of the fact that Lawrence has no sense of rhythm.

  “Come on up.”

  I climb the ladder that Ants has propped up against the side of the building and settle on the rusty corrugated iron next to him.

  “I’m not sharing my cola with you, by the way,” he says, but I nudge him once in the ribs and he passes it over.

  I take a sip and hand it back, gazing out over the town. From this roof, you can see most of Love, which is kind of depressing. It just looks like a slew of houses crawling about on their hands and knees in a baked-dry valley, searching for a quiet place to die.

  “Whose car is that?” I ask, peering down into the lot around the front of the motel. A small blue van is parked by the skip.

  “We actually got people staying for once. Some dude and a cute girl,” Ants grins. “And they to
ok the only two air-conditioned rooms, so if that’s what you were after, you’re outta luck.”

  “Damn.” I drain the last of Ants’ soda and toss the can into the skip below.

  “Nice shot,” he says, nodding. “But, full disclosure, I haven’t cleaned the other rooms in, like, forever, so do you wanna just sleep up here?”

  “Sure.”

  Neither of us moves for a while, though; we just stay still and quiet. Whatever the opposite of a fear of heights is, that’s what I have. I love the feeling of being far away from everything, where I can watch the world without having to be a part of it. Lawrence says it’s probably weird that I’m not afraid at all, given what happened to Connor, but I think Ants gets the appeal of it.

  In Love, sunsets seem to start at midday and go on for hours, then happen all at once. Everything was buffed with soft orange light when I first got here, but over the next fifteen minutes, the sky shucks the afternoon like a skin, and we’re left in the dark. Eventually, we shuffle away from the edges to lie in the middle of the roof, so we won’t roll off in the night.

  “Kesey burned his photo, yesterday,” I say after a while, once the moon’s shifted and we can’t see each other’s faces anymore.

  “I know,” Ants replies. “Lawrence told me. He thought you might freak.”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  “No, you just haven’t freaked yet,” Ants corrects. He taps his nails on the metal between us, and they make a soft noise like rain. “You know it doesn’t mean anything, right? It was just some dumb deal they made when they were sixteen and totally screwed up.”

  Except it is a big deal, because it means I’m the last one left. The last one who believes Leiden, the last one who doesn’t think he killed Connor. The last one who thinks he’s coming back. “Goodnight,” I say, and roll away from him.

  *

  I wake up with Ants’ foot at my throat, about half an inch from being sleep-kicked in the jaw. He’s sprawled out on his stomach, his shaggy dark hair flopped over his eyes. It’s later than I would’ve thought, maybe seven or so, and it’s already hot. We’re going to get sunburned if we stay up here any longer, so I move a safe distance from Ants’ foot and shake him awake.

  “I’m outta here. I’m hungry,” I tell him, patting him on the head as he scrubs at his face. I clamber back down the ladder and wander over to the footpath, where I ditched my bike yesterday, and haul it upright.

  “I’m hungry too,” he hollers from the rooftop.

  I throw him a mock salute, then get on my bike and pedal away. It’s usually only about a four-minute ride from Ants’ family’s motel to my place, but I take the long way so I can pet the Fosters’ dog over their fence. By the time I get home, the blue van from the lot last night is parked across the street. The driver is a young guy, maybe twenty-five, and he’s sitting behind the steering wheel, a camera in his hands, pointed at the La Cades’ house next to ours.

  I watch him for a moment, then duck through my yard and up my front steps. Lawrence is stretched across the couch when I get inside. He’s tall enough now that his head hangs off one end and his feet off the other. He’s watching TV and eating cocoa pops dry from a bowl sitting on his chest, calling out wildly incorrect answers to the game show rerun on the screen.

  “Did you go to Ants’?” he asks.

  “Yeah.” I walk to the fridge and pour two orange juices, setting one on the coffee table beside him then dropping down to sit on the floor. “We’ve got a creeper out front.”

  “You sure? It’s been a while.” Six years ago, half the town was flooded with news vans, and there were crews all up and down the road. If they ever made it as far as our front yard, Lawrence would moon them through the living room windows to try and ruin their shots. My brother’s blurred-out butt has been aired across the entire country.

  I shake my head. “Nah. Real deal. He’s got a camera and everything.”

  Lawrence sighs, and sets his bowl down, grumbling his way to his feet. “Alright. Let’s go.”

  I follow him into the garage. We toss through the junk there – a couple of old peanut butter jars filled with nails, some bent zip-ties – until we find a spare utility knife. Lawrence cracks the old blade tip off, then grins at me. “Rock and roll, Mack.”

  It’s the same routine we’ve been running since we were kids, when Kesey and his mother couldn’t even leave their house because of the press. I distract the driver, and Lawrence saws through their tyre while they’re not looking. Ideally, they get a flat in the no man’s land between here and the hotels they used to stay at over in Lancing. We managed it enough times back then that our street got a reputation for being haunted.

  It isn’t, of course. Connor might’ve died in the empty lot beside our house, but if he really was a ghost, it’s not where he’d choose to stay.

  I leave Lawrence in the garage, and cross to where the blue van is parked. I tap on the driver’s window, and the guy rolls it down.

  “Can I help you?” I ask.

  He glances down at me. “Did you just come out of that house?”

  “Yeah.” It’s always that which gets them – the idea that I lived next door to the boy who maybe killed his friend, that perhaps I knew him. People crawl to tragedy like ants to sugar, and just like ants, they’re desperate to carry their own shiny piece of it away with them.

  He pops his door and climbs out, holding out his hand for me to shake. I do. I shift slightly so that with him facing me, the guy’s back is to where Lawrence will be, and he’s got a clear run. “Are you Mackie Vallender?”

  I pause. “Why?” He shouldn’t know who I am. “Are you city police, or something?” He’s never lived in Love, that’s for sure; I’d recognise him.

  “No, no, no,” he assures me quickly. “I’m a documentary filmmaker. Uh, freelance. I’m here to shoot a special on the Connor Parker murder. I’ve just done a lot of research – I know every name within spitting distance of this case.”

  “A special?” Behind him, Lawrence darts across the bitumen, crouching by the van’s back tyre. The knife shines in the sun like the flash of a fin in the water of a still lake.

  “Yeah. There’s a lot of public interest in cold cases at the moment. I’m going to try and sell my episode to a network, maybe a streaming service, or something. I figure, maybe I can get people looking for Leiden La Cade again. Get Connor some justice.”

  “Leiden didn’t do it,” I say. “So you’re not going to find justice for Connor there.”

  His eyebrow quirks up. “Uh, excuse me? Kid, Leiden split before Connor’s body was even found. They have him on tape, running away, and you want to tell me he was innocent?”

  “They have him on tape running. That’s not the same thing,” I argue. “And the police didn’t even try to see if it was someone else. They just strung him up and made him out to be somebody he never was.”

  “So why has he never come forward, huh? It’s been half a decade. He’s never so much as sent an anonymous letter defending himself.” He stops, clears this throat. “Um, I’m Freddie, by the way. Are you eighteen, by any chance?”

  Lawrence is at my side in under two seconds, and Freddie takes a quick step back, confused and a little bit afraid. Lawrence is doing that desert lizard thing, where he gets cross and it makes him seem twice as big as he really is. Seeing as he’s already six-foot and broad-shouldered, it’s usually quite effective.

  “Hey, perv, she’ll kick your ass. Don’t—” Lawrence starts. I realise that he’s still gripping the knife, so I quickly move to hide it. We don’t need this guy calling the cops. Sergeant Parker hates us enough as it is.

  “Whoa, whoa, hey,” Freddie says, holding up his hands. “I wasn’t hitting on her, man, I swear. It’s just that the conspiracy theory angle could add some real spice to my movie, but if she’s a minor, I need parental permission to interview her on film.”

  “I’m her legal guardian,” Lawrence lies. “And you’ve got parental permission to get los
t.”

  Freddie eyes him, then turns back to me. “Listen, kid, I’m giving you a once-in-a-lifetime chance to tell your side of this. I’m staying at the Vineyard Motel. Look me up. Freddie Sun.”

  The name softly splits some sealed-over memory in me like the parting of lips, and a dust-covered decade shudders inside my head. I don’t reply.

  He nods once, at the two of us, then climbs back into his car.

  “Come film the La Cade house again and I’ll smash your camera,” Lawrence says flatly.

  Freddie glares, locking his door deliberately and winding up his window before driving away. We watch him until he passes the broken traffic light, and turns left up Hardy Lane.

  “Did you get him?” I ask.

  “Yeah. I give him a couple of miles before the tyre gives out,” Lawrence says. He nudges me in the ribs. “Y’alright, Mack?”

  “You reckon I could?”

  “Could what?”

  “Could tell my side of the story.” I gesture vaguely in the direction Freddie drove away. “He’s gonna make some show about how Leiden’s terrible and Connor’s terrific. Wouldn’t it be better to have at least one person say that wasn’t the way it was?”

  He sighs. In the first few months after Connor died, Lawrence used to yell at people for talking badly about Leiden around me, even though he believes Leiden did it, too. He sides with me on it, because he doesn’t want it to be just me against the rest of Love, but really, he thinks the version of Leiden we remember, the one who was like a brother to us, never really existed. “What would you even say, Mackie? That you loved him? We got no proof Leiden is innocent,” he says. “We’d be better off just scaring that Freddie douche away, so there’s no movie about it at all.” He turns me by the shoulders and steers me back towards the house. “Come on. If he’s staying at the Vineyard, Ants can get us the key to his room. We’ll move all his stuff around while he’s asleep, and he’ll freak out and skip town.”