Page 25 of Poor Little Rich Girl

I know.

I know why Eli seems familiar to me, even though there’s no way I’d remember him from before.

The realization punches me in the gut, and I stagger back under the shock of it.

He’s one of the faces I’ve seen peering through the gate, staring up at the windows of my old bedroom. He’s been here several times over the years. I thought he was another thrill-seeking ghost-hunter. But he’s not. He’s been looking for me.

“Mackenzie?” Eli pleads. “I promise, I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you want. But can’t you just tell me if you’re okay? Are you in danger? Is it your dad? Is that why you won’t talk to me?”

I want to tell him everything. And it’s that wanting that gives me pause. Because I don’t know this guy, but he feels so familiar to me, so safe. I want to trust Eli, and that’s dangerous.

“Go away.” I slam the window shut, palming the bottle as I head back downstairs. I am going to need it.

Mackenzie

I watch from the ballroom window as Eli pushes lawn furniture against the wall and clambers up. His shoulder muscles heave with the effort of pulling himself over, and he’s not the only one hot and bothered by the end of it. I contemplate going out there and offering him a drink just as he disappears over the other side.

Instead, I chug the entire bottle of New Zealand’s finest vintage while I tear my old room apart. I rip the heads off all the creepy dolls and poke around inside their stuffing. I stab at the wooden cupboards with the knife Antony gave me for my tenth birthday, looking for hidden compartments. Finally, I take the knife to the expensive mattress, tearing away strips of foam and sending springs flying in all directions.

Finally, I find it.

I’d hidden it well, shoved into the bunting on my headboard through a cut I hid behind a fold of fabric. No wonder I missed it during my last search. I wrap my hands around the tiny notebook and tug it free, holding it under the light as I inspect the cover.

It’s pretty nondescript as far as notebooks go – the cover decorated with watercolor flowers, a dent across the corner, and several pages crinkled from being constantly handled. I grasp it in shaking hands, knowing without knowing that I’m holding the key to unlocking the secrets of my life before, of memories that don’t feel like they belong to me.

I crack the front page and begin to read:

Happy eighth birthday to me! Eli got me this diary. He slipped it into my bookbag when no one else was looking. His note says I should use it to tell the truth, because I never get to tell the truth any other time. I think it’s dumb because no one will ever read this. I have to keep it secret or Daddy will be upset with me. But maybe Eli will read it. Maybe I’ll say nice things about him here, just in case.

Mommy and Daddy gave me a new doll for my birthday. She has a porcelain face and beautiful long fingers and a dress with pink ribbons. They took me out to a fancy dinner at an Italian place on the boardwalk. I accidentally knocked over my glass, so Daddy refused to let me order a meal. I watched him and Mommy eat and drink and enjoy slices of pink birthday cake all to themselves.

The next entry starts with:

Some workers came to empty the pool and repair the tiles today. Mommy caught me talking to one of them. He was just asking me about my dolls, but Mommy made me sit on the bottom of the pool while she sprayed me with the hose. She made me stay down there until it was dark. My fingers are so cold I keep dropping the pen.

Fuck. That’s dark.

I turn the page. With every word I read, a ball of bile forms in my stomach and rises into my mouth. What I describe in my childish scribble is pages and pages of neglect and torture. My father burning my elbows on the stovetop because I didn’t keep them off the table during dinner. My mother forcing me to eat rotting, rancid meat in my sandwiches because she said my fancy school cost them so much money. And all of it recorded in my halting, eight-year-old hand, just lists of things that happened, like it’s completely normal for parents to burn your fucking elbows.

I rub my elbows as I read this litany of horrors with a strange detachment. It doesn’t feel real. These things happened to someone else. Not me. Someone else.

Daddy says I’m too soft, he says I need to be tough if I’m to survive in his world as his heir. He says for my own good I’m not allowed to sleep in my bed no more. All that Egyptian cotton and imported silk makes me soft. Last night I slept in my closet, but I didn’t sleep much.

I’m several entries in before I spot Eli’s name again.

Daddy’s away on business, and Mommy went to see her doctor about a new face, so I snuck Eli in through the car lift. I haven’t seen him in so long. We don’t talk at school because it’s too dangerous. If the teachers say something to our parents, we’ll be in so much trouble. But today we hung out, and it was just like it always is. We went for a swim, and I wore my new purple bikini. Eli said I looked pretty. I liked hearing him say that.

Eli knows about the maintenance shed and car door. I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all.

I turn another page. Eli’s name jumps out from every sentence. The two of us sneaking out our windows at night to have ice cream on the boardwalk, getting detentions just so we could sit together and pass notes, creating fake social media accounts to chat with each other and deleting all our messages. Secret friends. Close friends. And judging from the way I spoke about him, we’d been that way for a long time.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I curl up on my ruined bed and pore over the entries. It’s filled with stories about Eli, years and years of them, starting from when I was eight and finishing the year the Malloys disappeared. I snuck him into Malloy Manor every chance I got, and we once told our parents we were going on a ski trip with the school and snuck out to his father’s cattle ranch for the weekend. I never say why we had to hide our friendship (because duh, I obviously knew and eight-year-old me couldn’t possibly predict my current situation), but I can tell from the way I’d pressed down hard on the pen that I was afraid of what would happen if we were caught.

And there’s something else, too. Noah. His name comes up again and again later in the diary, when I’m eleven and twelve years old. He went to the same school as me and Eli, and they’d been friends forever. It doesn’t sound like I hung out with Noah at all, but I talk about him constantly. How hot he is, how smart he is. Some entries are just Noah’s name written over and over again, surrounded by hearts. On my twelfth birthday, I’d written:

It’s my birthday. Eli’s taking me somewhere special to celebrate. I asked him if he can invite Noah along, too. He got all weird about it, said Noah was busy even though I know he’s not because his swim meets are on Thursdays. It sucks – Eli knows how much I like Noah. Why doesn’t he want us to hang out?

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