The Devil You Know: A Novel Read Free Page A

thought of calling the police. Everyone figured she was lost. I went to bed not knowing a thing, but later my parents told me her school picture was on the eleven o’clock news.
    Right away, I had a terrible feeling, my mother said. Right here: she pushed a fist into the soft part of her stomach. We were gettingready for lunch when she told me this, so she stood there with her fist in her stomach for ten or twenty seconds, and then went back to setting the table.
    The police called our house at two in the morning. My parents didn’t want to wake me up, but the cop on the other end of the line wouldn’t hang up until he’d asked me some questions. They had a class list and they were going through it alphabetically. I wasn’t special: they were calling everyone. Lianne was my best friend and I wanted to be the first one they called. If anyone knew where Lianne was, it would be me, right? How could they not know that I should be first?
    What they wanted to know was if Lianne was hiding in my closet. Did I know she was going downtown to practice for the track meet? Did I say I would meet her, and then forget?
    This seemed possible, even though I wouldn’t be eleven until November and I wasn’t allowed to take the subway alone. I also wasn’t allowed to take gymnastics, or throw myself out of trees the way Lianne did, hoping to break a bone so that she could have a cast and get everyone to sign it, like Sarah Harper did in the fifth grade. I know that the day before she disappeared, we wanted to help find a lost dog in the park and we’d both run home to ask. I wasn’t allowed to do that, either.
    The cop knew everything about me. He knew I ran relay with Lianne, and hurdles. He knew which corner store we stopped at on the way home from school when it was sunny out and we wanted to buy frozen cherry Lolas. It was like he’d been watching me and Lianne for months.
    Questions the police asked me in the middle of the night:
    Did I say I’d go to Varsity and run track with her, and then leave her there alone?
    Or did she come home with me? Maybe we wanted to have a sleepover and didn’t tell anyone. Were we afraid our parents would say no?
    Was Lianne in my house right now?
    I was standing in my parents’ bedroom in the dark, with the curly phone cord wrapped around my wrist. No one put a light on. There were the red numbers shining out of my father’s digital alarm clock next to the phone and a couple of skinny stripes of moonlight where the vertical blinds didn’t match up. I imagined Lianne sitting in my closet, safe in the back shadows like the plate of bread mold, with her knees drawn up high against her chest and her red sneakers still on.
    No, I told the cop.
    You didn’t see her today?
    No.
    You didn’t play with her?
    No.
    Did you see her at the park?
    I don’t think so.
    Did you go to the park today? Did you see her in your backyard?
    No. I don’t. I don’t know.
    If she’s at your house, you’re not in trouble. We’re trying to find Lianne, we need to know where she is.
    I didn’t see her.
    The way I can picture Lianne sitting in the closet, or standing around on the corner at the track entrance, those things are called confabulations. False memories, probably induced by a combination of guilt and suggestion. If you want to answer a question badly enough, your brain will supply the solution.
    It’s a strange thing to have to think about every spring.
    Outside it’s bright and cheerful and there’ll be fat yellow dandelions in all the yards across the street, turning into white wishing puffs. I like to buy three or four bunches of cut hyacinths at a time from the Portuguese lady on the corner and rollerblade down the block with my hands full of them. Purple and pink and white: the whole room smells sweet and clean and I’m windburned from rushing around on wheels all afternoon. I mean, I have fun. I’m afun girl, I’m good at it. Still, there’s this piece of you, every May, that kind of wants