Sliver Of Truth

They did this for a reason, I knew, left you sitting in an unwelcoming room with only your thoughts, no clock on the wall, nothing to distract you. They want you to think. Think about why you’re there, about what you know or what you have done. They want you to wonder about what they might know. They want you to work yourself into a state of worry and anxiety so that by the time they return to you, you’re looking for a confessor.

But of course, this works only if you’re guilty or hiding something. I honestly had no idea why they wanted to talk to me, so I just became progressively more bored and annoyed. And exhausted. This encounter, and maybe my life in general, was exhausting me. I got off the chair and walked a restless circle around the room. Finally I placed my back against the wall and slid into a sitting position on the floor.

These days I tried not to think about Max, though sometimes it seemed as if the more I tried to be rid of his memory, the more he haunted me. I pulled up my knees and folded my arms over them, rested my head in the crook of my elbow to escape the harsh white light of the room. I used to do this when I was a kid when I was upset or tired, retreat into this cocoon of myself. When that didn’t work, I’d hide.

I’m not sure how it all started, the hiding thing. But I remember liking to crawl into dark places and lie quietly, listening to the chaos of everyone trying to find me. My parents didn’t think it amusing but I found it positively thrilling, the excitement of them running around, looking under beds and in closets. It was a game I always won, just by virtue of the reaction I created. It didn’t occur to me that I might be angering or frightening anyone. I was too young to care about things like that. I just got better and better at finding places to hide. Eventually I had to reveal myself or never be found. There was something great about that, too.

At some point I got the idea that there was nowhere else in the house to hide. All my secret places had been discovered by my parents, or by my brother, Ace-or by my uncle Max. He was the big gun, called in when no one else could find me. He’d say, “Check inside that wardrobe in the guest room.” Or “Try that crawl space to the attic in her closet.” Somehow he’d always know where to find me. Once my parents realized that Max had this gift for finding me, the game started to get too easy, their reactions were not as much fun and the whole thing lost its charge. I had to raise the stakes.

I don’t know how old I was, seven, maybe six-too young to go into the woods behind my house without Ace. I knew that much. It was just a shallow swath of trees about two miles long, that edged our neighbors’ properties and separated our acreage from the yard behind us. A little creek ran beneath a stone bridge. The space was narrow enough that neighborhood parents felt safe letting us play back there without too much supervision. If you went too far, you just wound up in someone’s backyard. But I wasn’t supposed to go back there by myself. So naturally it was the perfect place to hide.

It was a hot summer afternoon when I left through the backdoor of my house and entered the woods. We’d built a small fort back in the thick and I climbed inside the rickety thing. It was dim and warm. I felt pleased with myself. After a while of lying there, looking out the crooked window at the leaves sighing in the light wind, I fell asleep. When I woke up later, the sky was a deep purple. It was close to dark. It was the first time in my life I was truly frightened. I looked out the fort “window,” and the woods I usually loved seemed full of monsters and witches, the trees smirked with their malice. I started to cry, curled up in a tight ball.

I don’t think I was like that for long before I heard someone moving through the overgrowth.

“Ridley? Are you out here, honey?”

I was old enough to hear the worry in his voice. But my heart flooded with relief; I cried even harder until I saw Max’s face in the makeshift doorway. He was too big to get inside.

“Ridley, there you are,” he said, sitting down heavily on the ground. I could see that he was sweating, maybe from the humidity, maybe from fear. Maybe both. He put his head in his hands. “Kid,” he said through his fingers, “you have got to stop doing this. You are going to give your uncle Max a heart attack. Your mom and dad are about to call the police.”

He lifted his head to the night and yelled, “I found her!”

I crawled out of the fort and into his lap, let him enfold me in his big arms against his soft belly. He was damp with perspiration but I didn’t care. Through the trees, I could see the glow from the lights of my own house, could hear my parents’ voices drawing closer.

“How did you find me?” I asked him.