Don't Trust

I was the last person Lily Harper spoke to before she disappeared. Her voice was something I could never get out of my head.

“Emma, I can’t stay here! I’m coming to you. I found out what— did! I need to show you some—ng,” she said through her tears, the call cutting out. Her voice was shaky as she ran. “If something happens to me—don’t trust him. Don’t trust—”

The police have questioned me three times now. The whispers were quiet. The accusations behind them weren't. I couldn’t tell anyone anything new. All I wanted was for her to be found. I had known Lily since the third grade, and I had never heard her speak so panicked. She was running to my house. I was the one that called the police when the call got cut. People kept saying she ran away. The police thought that too, but I knew her. She wouldn't leave without telling me; she wouldn't leave without a goodbye.

The only person who seemed to understand at all was her brother, Noah. He’s the only other person who was close to Lily that I could speak to. And he would defend me when people were too cruel.

Brittney Lusane blocked my route in the hallway. “Look who it is. Emma with her new boyfriend. Her dead best friend’s brother. Didn’t she call you for help? Are you sure you didn’t kill her just to get closer to him?”

Her laughter rang in my ears and stung my chest. I sighed frustratedly. Suddenly, a deeper voice cut through.

“HEY. Who the hell do you think you are? The only person acting disgusting right now is you.” Noah gestured to me with his head. “Come on. Ignore her.”

This was in the beginning, when Lily had been gone for just a week. He was there for me from day one, and I never forgot that.

It was a month after she went missing. All of the people around me were quiet, until they thought I wasn't listening. It became routine for us to sit at the library during lunch. We’d discuss Lily and anywhere else we could investigate. Like every day then, I sat at the round table with a book I'd pretend to be reading. Noah was sitting beside me. He’d changed from the sweet, popular guy everyone used to know. He had hollow eyes. His hair had become unkempt and his clothes rarely matched anymore. He was always jittery now and didn’t keep up much conversation. It seemed we only spoke to each other, trapped in our own grief. Not like I’ve been much better.

"They'll find her," he said quietly.

I held the book in the same place, frozen. "I don't think they will."

He didn’t respond. For another moment, neither of us spoke. Then, I said, “She called me that night.”

He turned his head quickly. “She called you?”

I swallowed. I noticed his jaw was clenched. “What did she say?”

“She was crying… and… she was going to show me something.”

“Show you what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Didn’t she tell you?”

“She was vague… and the call cut off.”

His expression remained stiff. He rubbed his face. “Then, we’ll figure it out.” He then turned to me. “Together.”

This was the most comforting thing I had heard since Lily vanished.

Over the next week, Noah and I continued to search through Lily’s social media. We talked to her friends and some close classmates. We went to places we knew she liked to go. Everything seemed to go on like she was still here. Every clue led to nothing. But her house seemed frozen in time. Family photos and unopened mail. The dust gathered on her bed and the corners of her room. Her face on posters on the sidewalks began to suffocate under other flyers. Her face on the boards in the school hallways began to become crowded with events coming soon—events it seemed she would never be able to attend. I couldn't imagine a world where Lily wasn't found. Where she simply vanished. Where there was no answer.

I couldn’t shake the feeling she had been hiding something from me. She would flinch when her phone buzzed. She would look tired and distracted. Her positive energy certainly was dimming. “I couldn’t sleep last night,” she would say over and over again. At first, I believed her. She looked the part. But then I started to notice she would leave hangouts earlier than usual or stay longer than expected. She started to ask me if we could do a last-minute sleepover, even if she didn’t have her things. I was becoming very worried, but all I could do was be her friend. And I ended up being the last person she ever called.

One day, after sixth hour, I noticed a note in my locker. Stop looking. Only two words, and they split me like a knife. I immediately told Noah and told him to meet me after school. As I waited at my locker, a girl I knew was a friend of Lily’s came rushing towards me. As she got closer, I noticed her hands fidgeting with the strap of her bag.

“Hey… Emma?” she said.

“Oh, hey, Samantha.”

She looked over my shoulder, then turned to her side. “I wanted to talk to you about something. It’s about—” She cut herself off. “I— never mind,” she said quickly.

“No, wait— what is it?” I stepped closer.

She shook her head sharply. “No, it’s fine. I saw something by mistake.”

“That doesn’t make sense. You came over here—”

Her grip on her bag strap tightened. Her eyes flicked around. “I’ll see you around, Emma.” She turned and walked away swiftly.

Shortly after, Noah stood behind me. “Hey, where’s the note?”

My hands searched into my locker, and I showed him the paper.

“Who gave this to you?”

“I have no idea! I never saw anyone.”

He grabbed the paper from my hand and crumpled it. “Somebody’s messing with you,” he said as he looked around the hallway.

“Or warning me.”

His eyes met mine. “Then they’re scared.”

If someone wanted me to stop searching, maybe I was getting close. This brought me hope. But the look in his eyes made me feel like the note bothered him more than it bothered me.

The breakthrough came two days later. I went up to a group of classmates and asked them my usual questions. All of them shook their heads and walked away. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Samantha. When I made eye contact with her, her face perked up and she rushed away. At that moment, I felt maybe it was my paranoia getting to me. Maybe the fact that I was itching for any clue or any sign of Lily made me hyperaware of anything suspicious. My desperation outweighed my doubt. I rushed to her.

“Samantha!” I cried out. Her head immediately spun back to face me. “Hey… do you know anything about Lily?” I asked carefully.

Samantha’s eyes went down to my feet and she bit her lip. She closed her eyes and exhaled. Then, she began speaking.

“Well… it’s not about Lily per se…”

My eyes lit up. “It’s fine! Anything counts. Really.”

Her eyes darted back to me, and she grabbed my wrist, pulling me closer to the wall. She lowered her head to speak and whispered softly. “It’s about what I wanted to tell you a few days ago. It’s about Noah…”

My breath caught.

“Three months ago… he started to… stalk me.”

What? “He was into me, I guess. I wasn’t interested. I just wanted to be alone. I didn’t want his attention; I never responded to his attempts. But then one day… I see him… in his car… outside my house. Staring through the windows. I saw him and he saw me. He didn’t drive away! He just stared at me. He smiled and waved—as if it was all normal… and then he drove off. He started talking to me more in person, less shy. This was two months ago. All of a sudden… I’m getting knocks at my door and I’m getting notes. I just got scared of him. I tried to tell someone who could do something about it. But someone who wouldn’t do something severe!”

“Who did you tell?” I asked.

“I told Lily. I know that was a bad idea. I didn’t know who else to go to who was in such close proximity! I was kind of friends with her. I thought she could help. She tried, I think. I don’t know. I sent her a picture of him outside my house.” Samantha started to shake her head, and through an exhale, she said, “I’m sorry, I hope this was useful. I should go now. I just think you should rethink keeping Noah around. He’s not the star child everyone thinks he is.”

I stood there, perhaps looking like a fool. My eyes stung. If all of this was true, I couldn’t keep him around. I needed to confront him. I couldn’t scrape the words I’d been told off my mind. "He’s not the star child everyone thinks he is." "If something happens to me—don’t trust him. Don’t trust—"

When I got to the library, Noah was waiting there for me like always. He looked up at me as I approached the table.

“You’re late,” he said.

I froze for a second. It felt like a threat, but I couldn’t expose what I knew yet. “I was talking to someone,” I said as I sat down across from him.

He glanced at me casually. “About Lily?”

I nodded.

“What did they say?” The question came darting at me.

I hesitated to answer. I just said it. “Something about you.”

His posture straightened and his head cocked back. His eyes widened at me. He was silent for a second. Then, he began to laugh, shaking his head. “What?! I knew people would talk, but not like this.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “What do you mean?”

“People talk,” he said, putting his hands up as his shoulders shrugged.

“That’s not an answer.”

“People always suspect the brother.”

I swallowed. I wanted so badly to bring up Samantha. Her story. His car. Something stopped me.

I didn’t go home right away. I walked around for a bit, hoping any sign of Lily would make itself glow now that I had new information. But… that would have to mean that this was Noah’s doing. All of these thoughts wouldn’t leave me alone as I walked back home. Don’t trust him. I couldn’t sleep that night either. I felt a stain on my heart, a cloud over my mind. I kept hearing Lily’s voice. Don’t trust him. Just hours ago, I thought she meant a stranger. Someone that was outside of our group. Now… I didn’t know anymore.

Samantha said she told Lily three months ago. Two months before Lily went missing. Lily was acting strange then. That’s something I couldn’t wrap my head around before. She was looking over her shoulder sometimes when we walked home. She would flinch every time her phone buzzed. I remember asking her several times what was wrong. “Nothing,” she’d said.

I scanned my dark room. The moonlight caught the corners of my posters. My eyes drifted toward the picture frame on my desk. The faces looked back at me in the dark. The grins appeared grim now. A picture of Lily and me glared at me. I used to wonder what our next adventure would be. Now this picture served as a reminder of the last one.

The photo was from two months ago. Suddenly, a memory resurfaced. This was a day we felt as though our childhood was slipping away. So, we stopped at a park and we went on the swings. I remember the air was cool that day. Our laughs mixed together in the echo as we swung up into the sky. I remember I took this opportunity to ask her if she was okay. Her gaze was no longer hopeful at this point. She seemed distracted… worried. I asked her what’s wrong.

She hesitated before saying, "If you found out someone you loved was doing something awful, what would you do?"

I remember I let out an exasperated laugh, but her expression remained serious. I thought it was about some online drama. Now her question didn't sound hypothetical anymore. She wasn’t talking about some drama… She was talking about Noah.

Suddenly her voice rang in my head. I found out what— did. It started to make sense. She confronted Noah. And what scared me most wasn't that Noah might be guilty. It was that he had been sitting beside me every day pretending to help me investigate. He was watching me. He was waiting for me. Making sure I never figured it out.

I didn’t want to go to school the next day, but I decided to avoid all of my regular routes even if I was late to classes. I could see he was texting me, but I muted his notifications. I felt sick every time the chain of thoughts circled back into my mind. I couldn’t be anywhere near him.

I walked back home, thinking about how I’d confront him. I dragged my feet and my eyes followed them. As I got to my fence, I glanced up and saw Noah sitting on my porch.

For weeks, I’ve looked at Noah’s exhausted eyes and seen grief. Now, seeing him crouched over on my porch, I wasn’t so sure. The eyes shadowed by his unkempt hair that hung over them made him look guilty. His leg bounced uncontrollably. He had the tips of his fingers curled on the rim of his teeth. The exhaustion I'd mistaken for mourning suddenly looked like guilt.

I froze in place and stared at him. My heart rate trembled through the rest of my body. I wasn’t ready, but I had to do this for Lily. I walked towards him.

“Emma,” he started softly. “You’ve been quite distant.”

I stared at him, holding my breath. “I talked to someone,” I said.

He immediately opened his arms. “Emma, we talked about this! It’s just some people making up rumors about me. Of course they would, I’m the missing girl’s brother. They always suspect me. They’ve even suspected you! I’d think you’d understa—”

“Samantha told me you were stalking her.”

His eyes widened. I could see him freeze in real time.

“That’s not true,” he said quickly, shaking his head.

I laid out everything I knew. “Lily had started acting weird the exact time Samantha said. Lily said there was something you had done.”

His fearful expression didn’t shift. “Emma, you’ve been tired, under stress—”

“Don’t,” I snapped. The word surprised even me. “What did you do, Noah?”

His gaze fell down and he fidgeted with his fingers. “I—”

“What did you do?!”

He looked up at me and rubbed his face hard, as if he could erase my question. Something flickered behind his eyes. Fear. Guilt. Memory. He dragged a hand through his tangled hair.

“I didn’t mean to do anything,” he winced. “I told her I’d stop, but I didn’t. She found out and was furious. We were arguing. It was getting heated. I wasn’t going to hurt her, but she thought I was. She said she was going to tell people and she ran out of the house.” He shut his eyes and covered his face. “I went after her.”

The words felt like they didn’t belong in the air.

“I drove over to find her. I found her running.” The world slowed. “I shouted at her to stop. I just needed to talk to her. I couldn’t let her tell anyone!”

“What did you do…” Tears started to swell in my eyes. He became a dirty dent in my vision. I wanted to run, but I had to stay for Lily and for my peace of mind.

He spoke again, but his voice was nearly inaudible. “I didn’t mean to… hit her.”

The words didn’t land right away. They hung in the air, staring at me blankly. The words slowly fell on me, breaking off bits of me. Everything stopped. Even the wind.

“What?”

“I swerved,” he said. “She stepped out too fast! I couldn’t stop in time!”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not!”

“You’re lying,” I wailed as I paced around.

His voice cracked for the first time. “I didn’t kill her on purpose.”

Those words shouldn’t have to be said at all. Lily did nothing to deserve this. The difference didn’t matter. Intent wasn’t going to bring her back. And suddenly, everything clicked into place. The note said Stop looking. The questions. The way he always guided me just slightly away from certain ideas. He wasn’t helping me find Lily. He was keeping me from finding her.

I took a step back. “Did you bury her too!?”

Noah didn’t answer. But his silence was louder than anything he could have said. He began to sob.

“I'm sorry!”

Those words didn’t deserve to be said. And for the first time, I understood exactly what Lily had meant in her last breath. Not just fear. Not just a warning. But certainty.

Don’t trust him. And I had trusted him completely.