The Truth Lies Here Read online

  I paid the surly cashier for my water and rolled my baggage away from the counter. On my way out of the store, a shelf of fresh newspapers caught my eye. I scanned the headlines, taking in the familiar, important-looking fonts of each major publication. Then a flash of bright yellow stopped me in my tracks.

  The font on this cheap newsprint was an even more familiar—if a less welcome—sight than the others. It had bold blue lettering against a neon yellow banner that read STRANGE WORLD in all caps, like it was shouting at me. Down at the bottom of the page was smaller type, featuring the headline Tips for Believers, the popular column by Ike Hardjoy.

  Of course this airport would carry Strange World, the only print publication still in circulation that catered to the nation’s most hard-core conspiracy nuts and UFO seekers, as well as the only one that would still print my dad’s column. I could just barely make out the type under my father’s name—“Everything the government doesn’t want you to know about alien sightings in North America.”

  I shook my head and walked quickly away from the store, setting my stuff up next to the wall-length picture windows in the baggage area and settling in to wait. I pulled up the Notes app on my phone and looked through everything I had written down on my own latest story idea—it wasn’t as flashy as “alien sightings in North America,” but at least it wasn’t a lie. I still had a few months before I had to apply to Northwestern’s undergraduate journalism program, and I wasn’t going to waste them. I wanted a story that would grab the attention of the college admissions office. Something important and true.

  My story notes were all on economic difficulties in the Midwest following the closure of plants in the auto and plastics industries. They contained statistics, reports, and previously written articles. Lots of research, but all of it dry. My journalism teacher said I still had to find the human element from inside one of those towns that had suffered greatly after a plant closure.

  Bone Lake, Michigan, population 2,300, fit the bill exactly. And it just so happened to be the place where I was born.

  I looked out the giant window of the airport’s baggage area. Past the parking lot, I could see the basic signs of northern Michigan in early summer. Blue-gray sky, dense trees, two-way blacktop. That pretty much covered it. About an hour down that road was Bone Lake, where Ike Hardjoy still lived, wrote the occasional completely fabricated article for cash, and parented a few weeks a year. Though this time he was getting me for a whole summer.

  I glanced back down at my phone, this time checking for missed calls or texts. Nothing.

  Dad was a half hour late.

  I dialed his number as I looked down to where my luggage sat in a pool of fading sunlight. His phone rang five times and then cut off with a beep.

  “Dad. Me again. I’m at the airport, waiting for you. I’d ask if there’s traffic, but”—I looked out over the completely empty roadway leading from the parking lot—“well, you know. Please call me. Or better yet, please be on the way?”

  I hung up and rested my forehead against the cool window. Strands of thick black hair escaped from my ponytail and landed softly against the glass. My reflection stood out against the blankness of the airport behind me. The dark hair and eyes were all from Mom, but the freckles were a gift from Dad. Or really, from Dad’s own mom, who was also born and raised in Bone Lake. My family tree on both sides had roots that ran to the very foundation of the town.

  That’s partially why it made me uncomfortable to come back here, where so many people knew not just my story, but my parents’ and grandparents’ stories as well. It could be suffocating, having all those eyes on you. And after years of living in Chicago with my mom, I wasn’t used to it anymore. Which is why I usually spent my mandatory summer weeks in Bone Lake holed up in my dad’s house, watching TV and avoiding going into town. But this year I’d have to change up that strategy if I wanted to get good quotes for my story. I’d have to suck it up and venture into the fishbowl again. Getting into Northwestern depended on it.

  Of course, before I could go interview the residents of Bone Lake, Dad had to actually show up and get me there.

  “Come on, Dad,” I whispered. “Come on.” But all the hoping in the world didn’t matter.

  He wasn’t coming.

  Two

  THE PHONE RANG only once before she picked up.

  “Hello?”

  I smiled at the warm, familiar voice, which, as usual, sounded a tiny bit like it was shouting into the phone.

  “Hey, Cindy. It’s Penny.”

  “Penny! My gosh, girl. I forgot you were coming in today.”

  “Yeah, well, you weren’t the only one.”

  A pause as Cindy breathed out loudly. “Your dad flaked, huh?”

  “I don’t really know why I’m surprised.”

  “Go easy on him. The old man’s had a lot on his plate lately. But I know he’s really excited to see you.”

  I didn’t have a good response to that. Or at least, not a polite one. “Yeah . . . well, do you think you could maybe check next door real quick, see if his truck’s in the driveway? Maybe he just forgot to set his alarm or something.”

  As a freelancer, my dad kept his own hours. Which was just a nice way of saying that he often slept through the day and stayed up late pounding on his laptop keyboard.

  “I can’t, sweetie. I’m at the shop right now, swamped with this cupcake order. . . .”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “But I’ll send Dex over to the airport to come get you. You flew into Traverse City, right?”

  “Yeah, but really, Cindy, you don’t have to—”

  “Oh, it’s no trouble.”

  “I don’t want Dex to go out of his way—”

  “Penny, stop. You’re practically family.” Cindy’s voice grew distant and then was overtaken by a rustling of what sounded like fabric. “Dex! Grab the keys. Got a job for ya.”

  A voice in the background yelled, “What?” I imagined Cindy’s skinny son, Dex, standing in his too-big apron behind the ice-cream shop’s counter, maybe mopping the floor or refilling the Moose Tracks tub.

  “He’s on his way, Penny. Hold tight.”

  “Thanks, Cindy. I really appreciate it.”

  “Like I said, it’s nothing. And Penny . . . go easy on your dad tonight. He’s gonna feel really bad when he realizes he, you know . . .”

  “Forgot me?”

  “Yeah.”

  I smiled, though she couldn’t see me, said goodbye, and hung up. I knew it would take Dex an hour to get to the airport from Bone Lake, but I didn’t feel like waiting in the air-conditioned chill of the baggage area anymore. I grabbed my luggage—yanking it a little harder than I maybe had to—and headed outside.

  The sidewalk was empty, so I sat down cross-legged on the cement and tilted my head upward to soak up the remaining sunlight. I started to lean up against a cylindrical cigarette butt receptacle, when a piece of paper stuck to the metal caught my eye. It was a flyer. My mouth parted slightly as I read the headline: MISSING.

  Two black-and-white pictures were printed underneath the main header. One was of a smiling, blond teenage girl. The other was of a teenage boy kneeling on the grass in his blue-and-gold football jersey, squinting, as though he was facing directly into the sun. Both of them looked familiar.

  The flyer identified them as Cassidy Jones and Bryan Ryder, missing since May 25. Last seen driving west on M-66. $$$ reward for any information.

  My heart beat faster as I read over their names again. I did know them—another side effect of growing up in a fishbowl town. Cassidy was a year younger than me, so I didn’t know her especially well. But Bryan had been in my grade before I moved. He used to play peewee football on the field behind the elementary school every summer. Sometimes my best friend, Reese Harper, and I would pack up a bag full of juice boxes and Pixy Stix and go watch the boys scrimmage. Reese always thought Bryan was cute, and I had a crush on his best friend, Micah. It took us months to work up the nerve
to go talk to them for the first time.

  Of course, that was before Reese stopped talking to me.

  I had no idea what Bryan Ryder had been up to in the last few years. But if he and Cassidy were both missing, maybe they’d decided to run away together. That wouldn’t be a first for Bone Lake.

  I turned back to the parking lot and the road beyond, looking for Cindy’s familiar red Beetle and Dex behind the wheel. It would be strange to see him driving; I’d known Dex for as long as I could remember, and he’d always seemed both shorter and younger than our age. We’d lived next door to each other since we were born, which practically guarantees best-friend status when you’re a kid. But we drifted apart once we got to middle school, and I’d seen him only a handful of times over the past few years, usually holed up in the tree house behind our houses, reading old sci-fi paperbacks.

  After about an hour, a white Geo Metro jerked its way into the airport parking lot and pulled into the nearest empty spot. After a moment, the front door creaked open and I watched as a pair of long, skinny legs climbed out of the car. They were connected to a lanky frame in a T-shirt that read Skynet is already here. The boy looked at me and squinted, then gave a half wave.

  “Hey, Penny.”

  I peered at Dex, trying to reconcile this lean-faced teenager with the boy I once knew. Unlike me, Dex had always taken after just one parent—his mom, Cindy. He had her exact light brown skin and dark hair, though she was 100 percent Chippewa and he was also half Irish on his dad’s side. Dex had also always shared Cindy’s same wide smile and thoughtful eyes. But the Dex standing before me had definitely changed over the past year. For one thing, there was . . . more of him. He’d finally gotten some of his dad’s height. And the lines of his face were harder, more definite. The old chubbiness around his cheeks was almost completely gone.

  I got up from the sidewalk and brushed off my jeans with my hands. As soon as I stood up straight, I saw Dex’s eyes widen.

  “Whoa,” he said, in his newly deep voice, “you got . . . bigger.”

  I cleared my throat and crossed my arms in front of my chest (which, to be fair, had grown about two sizes since the past summer).

  “Excuse me?”

  Dex’s eyes snapped back up to my face, and his cheeks reddened. In that moment, I saw the old awkward Dex peeking out from behind his newly sharpened features. “No, I didn’t mean . . . I just meant that you grew. Um, up. Not . . . out.”

  Yep. Same old Dex.

  “I grew up? You’re practically a giant.”

  Dex relaxed. “Last-minute growth spurt. I blame the genetically modified corn.”

  “Right. And you got a new ride, I see.”

  Dex leaned down on the hood of the Geo Metro, which creaked under his weight. “I bought it off Mrs. Morrison. You don’t even want to know how much ice cream I had to scoop to afford it.”

  “It’s . . . nice.”

  Dex jumped away from the car, moved around me, and reached for the handle of my suitcase. He jerked it toward him, rolling it over the sidewalk. “So Ike got caught up, huh?”

  “Who knows? I can’t even reach him.”

  Dex froze, and the suitcase slammed into his legs. He didn’t seem to notice. “Wait. What?”

  “I mean he’s a no-show and he’s not answering his phone. Probably forgot I was coming.”

  “No, he didn’t. He talked to me about it yesterday. He was really excited. . . .” Dex’s eyes narrowed. “This is bad. This is potentially, probably, really bad.”

  Dex took out his cell phone and dialed a number quickly.

  “What’s bad? And who are you calling? My dad’s not answering.”

  Dex hung up the phone and stared down at it in his palm. When he looked up at me, his expression was instantly serious.

  “Oh man, this is bad. Really, really bad.”

  “Would you stop saying that? What are you talking about?”

  “Your dad. Something must have happened to him.”

  My heart thudded in my chest. “Wh-what do you mean?”

  “He was looking into something really big,” Dex rushed on. “Like, world-changing big. And I know he wouldn’t have just left you here without calling.”

  All at once, the rush of momentary fear I’d felt in my stomach swooped out of me, leaving a hard ball of irritation in its place. “Wait, that’s your reasoning? You know he wouldn’t leave me here? How do you know what my dad would or wouldn’t do?”

  Dex shifted uncomfortably, and his eyes slid away from me.

  “Are you telling me you know my dad better than I do?”

  Dex opened his mouth to respond, but then caught the look on my face and closed it again.

  “Because you might be buddy-buddy with Ike, but I’ve known the man my whole life,” I continued, “and let me tell you, this is exactly the kind of thing he would do.”

  Dex chewed on his bottom lip. “Look, how about we get in the car and I’ll explain on the way?”

  Dex looked relieved when I reached down to pick up the rest of my bags and hauled them toward the car. By the time everything was loaded and we got on the road, the sun was sinking on the horizon. The inside of Dex’s car smelled like gym socks and cinnamon gum, and I moved my feet gingerly away from the crumpled food wrappers and pop cans on his floor.

  “Look, I didn’t mean to make you mad,” Dex said. He spoke in a measured voice, as if he were carefully picking his words. “I just . . . I’m kind of worried something might have happened to Ike.”

  “Okay,” I said, forcing a journalist’s neutrality into my voice. “I’m listening.”

  Dex ran a hand through his hair, which only made it stick out farther from his head. I turned my eyes back to the gray, cracked asphalt of the road as we sped over it.

  “We’ve been investigating . . . well, actually, your dad’s been investigating and I’ve been helping . . . but anyway, your dad thinks he knows something about these kids that went missing in town—”

  “You mean Cassidy and Bryan?”

  Dex’s eyes shot over to me. “You heard about that?”

  “There was a MISSING flyer at the airport.”

  “Oh. Well, yeah. Your dad thinks their disappearance is connected to this story he’s been chasing.”

  “Of course he does,” I muttered.

  “He has all this evidence. Mysterious findings, lights in the woods—”

  “Oh my God,” I interrupted. “Is this the alien thing again?”

  Dex kept his eyes on the road. “Ike calls them the Visitors.”

  “I know what he calls them.”

  “So you don’t believe him?”

  “Not since I was ten.”

  Dex pursed his lips together.

  “And trust me, Dex, my dad doesn’t really believe in any of that stuff, either. I mean, I hate to break this to you, since it sounds like you’ve become, like, his apprentice or something, but Ike is a fake. He wants people to think he believes, but it’s all a hoax, and he knows it. So even if he is out chasing some ‘story,’” I said, making air quotes with my fingers, “I assure you, he’s perfectly safe.”

  Dex shook his head. “I know Ike has to . . . stretch the truth sometimes to make a living. But it’s different this time. It’s been different since he found that body of a missing hiker in the woods.”

  “Wait,” I said, putting up a hand. “When did this happen?”

  “February.”

  I slumped down in my seat. I’d spoken to Dad maybe five times on the phone since then. He’d never mentioned it.

  “That’s horrible. But I don’t see—”

  “It all connects! That’s what Ike’s been looking into. He thought he had a solid lead on the Visitors, finally. He has proof they killed that hiker.”

  “Proof?”

  “Well,” Dex said sheepishly, “he has this picture. And yeah, it’s kind of blurry—”

  “Blurry pictures are my dad’s specialty. That’s not proof of anything.”

&
nbsp; “You haven’t even seen it! He has a picture of something not human. He took it in the woods near where the hiker died. And it might be connected to Cassidy and Bryan’s disappearance, too.”

  I rubbed my fingers over my eyes. “Oh my God. Dex.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  The question settled around me. I had once believed in everything so effortlessly. The Visitors in the woods were ingrained into my childhood, one of my first bedtime stories. I’d even written a report about them in second grade. I’d gotten an F, and in bold red letters on top of my report my teacher had written, ASSIGNMENT MEANT TO BE ON MICHIGAN WILDLIFE. PLEASE REDO.

  “Ike is really on to something, Penny,” Dex said.

  The strain in his voice sounded achingly familiar. It sounded like the way I used to talk about my dad, before I knew the truth. Proud. Defensive. In on a secret that the rest of the world was too blind to see.

  And it was all crap.

  “Look, Dex, I’m sorry you think something’s happened to my dad. But I promise you, he’s fine. Maybe he’s out in the woods ‘hunting aliens.’ Maybe he brought a case of Bud with him and passed out somewhere.”

  “That’s a little harsh.”

  My nostrils flared in frustration, but I forced myself to bite back my first response—what would you know about it? What do you know about my dad at all? “Whatever. He’ll probably show up tonight or tomorrow morning. It’s not like he hasn’t disappeared for a story before.”

  “But it’s never been this serious before. I mean, what about Cassidy and Bryan? They’re gone.”

  I looked out the window, watching the dark woods flick past. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation. There always is. Maybe Cassidy and Bryan took a trip to Myrtle Beach. Or went to Windsor to gamble or get drunk or get married.”

  Dex scoffed. “That’s dumb.”

  “It’s not dumber than they were kidnapped by aliens.”

  “I never said they were kidnapped. I just said it’s connected. That’s what Ike thought.”

  I sighed. “Can we just . . . not talk about it anymore? Please?”

  Dex’s jaw clenched.