We Are All the Same in the Dark - Julia Heaberlin Page 0,52

drip of a faucet.

I flash my light to the sink. It’s brimming over, water spilling noiselessly onto a thick mat. The floor glistens like a lake in moonlight. And pennies. At least two dozen of them, scattered, a copper glow against the dark linoleum.

There was something cruel about Wyatt’s father and pennies.

I can’t think about that now.

If Rusty’s Kryptonite is light, mine is water.

I can’t slip.

I lurch to the sink and wrench off the faucet. When I plunge in my hand to lift out the stopper, my fingers brush against something soft and spongy lying at the bottom.

Down the hall, Rusty has sprung to life. He’s shoving aside the plastic rings of the shower curtain in the downstairs bathroom.

It is the same shower where, ten years ago, police pulled a drain that held six strands of Trumanell’s hair, some of her blood, a minuscule piece of her skin, and a bit of gold glitter.

Wyatt told me once that it wasn’t a bad place to hide.

30

I wait for the sound of a gunshot.

Three seconds. Five.

“Clear!” I yell at the door of the kitchen, desperate for a response.

“Clear!” Rusty yells back.

No gunshot. No Wyatt.

Rusty and I meet in the middle, where we started. He nods to the staircase. Seven steps lead up to the first landing, before they disappear around the bend.

For the last five years, I’ve made casual, routine sweeps of the first floor of this house plenty of times, but I never pushed Wyatt too hard to let me up the stairs.

I heard sounds above us a couple of times. Wyatt always had explanations. A feral cat he’d taken in. A busted sewer pipe. A radio left on. I’d pushed him aside once. My foot was on the third step when a ragged furry head poked through the upstairs railing.

“Did you walk into a booby trap?” Rusty is tracing his flashlight over my wet boots and dripping arm.

Was it a booby trap? What could happen while standing in a wet floor of pennies?

“Just trying to think like I would if a bunch of rednecks wanted me dead,” Rusty continues. “Wyatt shut off the power. He’s obviously got a plan.”

“We don’t know who shut off the power. If Wyatt has a plan, believe me, you won’t see it coming.” I nod my head back toward the kitchen. “A faucet left on. An overflowing sink. A bunch of pennies on the floor. Honestly, I don’t know what to make of it. What did you find in the tub?”

“A bottle of Suave Juicy Green Apple shampoo. Are we calling backup or not?”

So he’s going to let me make the call about whether to give Wyatt’s haters another light and sound show. We both know they’ll eat up whatever we find in here. Wyatt scared. Wyatt missing. Wyatt crucified. The cattle gate banner will spin across the Internet in an illiterate fury, coloring in all the answer bubbles for a jury pool. Guilty.

Your. A. Murderer.

I’d like to believe that Rusty is handing me control right now because what I decide here at the foot of this staircase matters.

It doesn’t.

The sign-makers are already posting their own pictures. The police report accusing Wyatt of officially stalking two young girls has leaked to the highest bidder. Reporters with cellphone cameras will start alighting again like wasps on Lizzie’s doorstep tomorrow morning. They’ll try even harder this time. They’ll paw through new and old yearbooks and compare Trumanell’s and Lizzie’s cheerleading jump skills—the Spread Eagle, the Herkie, the Hurdler.

The high-tech graphic of Lizzie’s face from The Tru Story will get new life, excerpted and played again and again on Facebook and Twitter. People will watch a magic high-tech wand remove Lizzie’s brown contacts, strip the bleach out of her hair, remove the raccoon of blue eyeliner, and slim off the extra ten pounds she wears on purpose. They’ll see that she and Trumanell share parts of the same puzzle: a nose that’s a little big, eyes that are a little too close, a puffy bottom lip that appears forever stung by something mean. Imperfect pieces that when put together make something beautiful and original.

Lizzie is already permanently stitched into the myth, whether there’s a good reason or not. God help her, she is the new rallying cry. She’s Wyatt’s last stand.

I point my gun up the staircase and nod to Rusty.

“Just us,” I say.

On the first step, I imagine Wyatt dead, strung up to a ceiling fan by a drunken gang of boy-men. On steps two and three,