Page 97 of The Holiday Fakers
“Have you lost your goddamn mind?” Ethan shouts. “This isn’t a fucking movie. This is real life, and a little boy’s life is on the line.”
“You think I don’t know that? I’m trying to help!”
“Well, you’re not. You’re just wasting time. If you want to do something useful, you can help Mom keep people calm. You can distract them by signing autographs and taking selfies.”
“Shut up, Ethan!” I yell.
He turns to me, looking surprised I’m even here. “Piper, go back?—”
“No. Why don’t you listen to what Brody’s saying instead of dismissing him?”
“Because he’s an actor, Piper. His life is a game of let’s pretend. It’s not real. And he doesn’t know these woods like I do. Hell, he hasn’t evenbeenhere for the past twelve years!”
“And why the fuck do you think that is, huh? When the one person he loved like a brother told him he’d never measure up? That he wasn’t worthy? That he didn’t deserve happiness?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Piper …” Brody begins.
“You told him I was off-limits. So, being the best friend he was, he did what you said. Ofcoursehe did. He had no one apart from his mom, and then not even her by the time you graduated. And what did you have?Everything. A large, stable family with a dad who’s the fucking mayor. How dare you make decisions about our life? What about whatIwanted, huh?”
“You were only sixteen.”
“So? You’d been sleeping with Olivia since you were sixteen yourself. What makes you so special compared to us?”
His face darkens at the mention of Olivia, and my heart stutters inside my chest. But he’s not going to use her death as a get-out-of-jail-free card for the rest of his life.
“Do you know how lonely I’ve been?” I cry. “You stole twelve years of happiness from me, Ethan. From Brody. What do you think Brody’s life would have looked like if you hadn’t stuck your sanctimonious nose into our lives?”
My heart is hammering so fast I think I might faint, but I’m not done yet.
“You’re making Brody out to be the bad guy for never coming back, but you need to take a good, hard look at how you were part of the reason. You called yourself his best friend, but then told him he wasn’t good enough for me. What message do you think he took from that about his worth as a person?”
“It wasn’t like that?—”
“Yes, it was.”
“Ethan—”
Ethan cuts Brody off.
“Screw this. I’ve got better things to do than stand around arguing when a child is missing. You two do whatever the fuck you like, but I’m heading somewhere useful.”
Brody’s shoulders slump as Ethan runs off. I throw my arms around him as we watch my brother disappear through the trees.
We stand for a moment as the snow falls silently around us, then I pull back. “Okay, tell me why you think Billy went this way.”
He straightens, and the fire returns to his eyes.
“From the top of Seller Hill, you can see a cave partway up this side of the mountain. When we were kids, we made up stories about ghosts, or bears, or bandits that lived up there. What if Billy and his friends do that too? And he told me he wanted to hunt a yeti.”
“Okay, let’s climb up and see if there are any tracks.”
We hoist ourselves up through the roots and reach the trunk of the tree. It’s wide enough to walk along, but I can’t see any sign that Billy came this way.
Dropping to his knees, Brody brings his face almost level with the snow and carefully brushes some of it away.
“Piper! Look!”
