“Hey, that didn’t come out right,” Enzo said. “I didn’t mean you.”
“No, I’m probably being invasive. Let me know if you need anything else.”
The next thing he said startled me. “What’s your name, kid?”
“Hawthorn Creely.”
“Hawthorne like the writer?”
I usually said yes when people asked that question, though it was a lie. It would have been nice to be named after a writer.
“Hawthorn like the tree,” I said, making a face.
“Your parents named you after a tree?”
“They sure did.”
Enzo smiled. “There’s got to be a story behind that.”
“There is, and it’s one of my least favorite stories ever.”
“Now you have to tell me.”
I sighed. “Apparently, I was conceived under a hawthorn tree.”
Enzo laughed, and I smiled, though I didn’t think there was anything remotely funny about it. I was still angry at my mom for sharing that information with me in the first place.
When Enzo stopped laughing, he looked me in the eye, which made me sort of uncomfortable. I didn’t know if I should stay or go.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” he asked.
My surprise must have shown on my face.
“Most people are treating me like a criminal.”
“I’m not like most people,” I said.
“I can tell.”
He didn’t sound put off by it. It was possible he even thought it was a good thing.
“And I know you’re not a criminal,” I said.
“How?” Enzo asked. “You don’t know me. And if I’d killed Lizzie, I’d hardly go around broadcasting it.”
“Are you trying to convince me you are a murderer then?”
Enzo smiled. That was the third time. When he smiled or laughed, it felt like a victory.
“I guess I’m being nice to you because I know how it feels,” I said.
“How what feels?”
“Being an outsider.”
As soon as I spoke, I wished I could take it back. I waited for him to say, “Now that you mention it, you are kind of a loser.” Or maybe, “Please don’t compare me to you.”
Enzo looked at me for a long time. I held his gaze, even though it made me feel completely exposed, even though I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole.
And then he said, “You want to get out of here?”
It took me a second to process what he was saying, because it was so close to something I would have imagined that I almost thought I was experiencing an auditory hallucination.
“I have an hour before the diner closes.”
“The cook will cover for you. He did it for Lizzie all the time.”
I hesitated.
“I’m not going to kill you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“No. I wasn’t thinking that.” I paused a moment longer, which was just long enough for me to make up my mind. “I’ll get my things.”
• • •
Enzo didn’t have a car.
“I can barely afford a bus pass,” he said.
I shrugged, and we climbed into my Rabbit.
“Where do you want to go?” I asked.
“Anywhere. Just away from people.”
Mostly, we didn’t talk. I drove around aimlessly, sneaking glances at him from the corner of my eye. Only maybe it wasn’t that aimless, because we ended up near Wolf Creek Road.
“Are you driving to where Lizzie disappeared?” Enzo asked, right about the same time I realized where we were.
“Not on purpose. I swear. I’ll turn around.”
“No, it’s OK. Go there.”
That’s how, not even a month after Lizzie Lovett disappeared, I ended up at her campsite with her boyfriend.
“I haven’t been here since that night,” Enzo told me as we walked around a small clearing. “I haven’t gone out with the search parties.”
“Why not?”
“I guess I kept thinking, what if I was the one who found her? Her body, I mean. I couldn’t deal with seeing her that way.”
I wanted to tell him there wasn’t a body to find. Instead, I made myself busy looking around the campsite.
The tent was long gone, but the ring of stones where they’d built their fire was still there. What had it been like that night? Did they laugh and talk while roasting marshmallows? What were they talking about right before they went to sleep and Lizzie disappeared?
I wanted to ask Enzo a million questions. But he seemed skittish. If I said too much, he might dart off into the woods and become as lost to me as Lizzie was. So instead, I just watched him and hoped he would share some clues.
He pulled something out of his pocket, and for a moment, I thought it would be a gun or knife. Then, right before he murdered me, I’d have time to reflect on how dumb it was to go off with him, and Emily would tell people, “I told her not to trust Lorenzo Calvetti.”
But a second later, Enzo was rolling a cigarette, which I guess was still dangerous but not a weapon. He walked around the clearing, his shoulders hunched and the tip of the cigarette glowing. I thought maybe, probably, I’d never seen someone look so broken.
“This place seems haunted now,” Enzo said.
“The woods always seem haunted to me.”
He took a long drag on his cigarette and blew smoke at the sky. “Have you heard about that suicide forest in Japan?”