In Your Head

twenty-two

October 1999...

The church parking lot lies empty, quiet, like usual. Mandy's headlights flash into the small patch of woods near the boarded up church, the lamp posts brightening the remainder of the dreary parking lot. The heat blasts against our faces, too hot for me now, but I don't feel like turning it down or asking her too. The radio is still only a hum in the air, but it's forgotten, white noise as our heads remain glued to the forest in front of us.

Did we get away with it? Is it over? Will it never be brought up again? Can we move on?

"How....how did you know Austin was the witness?" I frown at my own words, unaware I was going to say this for some reason as I cut the silence, the first words either of us have said since we pulled away from the station.

Mandy shifts in her seat, tilting her head but doesn't look my way.

"I just.....I kinda freaked when they brought you to the station, tried to think of something to do quick. Then I thought if the witness recanted what they said, you could be off the hook," she pauses, her mouth twitching. "So, before I planted the photos at the cabin, I tried to think of who could have turned on you like that, who would want to make you look bad if it really was someone you knew. Then....I remembered you telling me about the fight you had with Austin that day after you quit your job, and I realized it was that night that the witness came forward. I went to him about it, and the second I called him up and mentioned it, he just......caved. I think he felt really bad about the situation, which is exactly what we needed."

I nod, biting the inside of my cheek as my eyes revert back to the woods in front of us. But her answer doesn't settle the uncertainty, the unknown abyss that's eating and eating and eating away inside me. But maybe this is just me, maybe this feeling will never go away.

"Do you think they'll figure out those Polaroids were taken just a few weeks ago?"

"No, I don't think so. I don't think there's a way to determine when they were taken. We're just lucky you haven't changed much since you were sixteen. Using makeup for those bruised photos was a great idea. And besides, they have dates on them, why would they suspect they weren't taken on those days?" Mandy asks, my worries vanishing for a few moments as my heart slows pace, although that's not to last.

She's right. Why would they question me further now? Everything's going to be fine. They'll have that press conference tomorrow, the detectives will explain they found evidence to back up my story, and everyone will go back to believing me. Maybe Austin will come forward as well explaining that wasn't me he saw that night, that's the least he can do. Everything's going to be okay.

But is it?

For the first time since we've parked in the lot, Mandy turns towards me. Her curiosity gets the better of her as I keep quiet, not answering for a few moments. But now it's my turn to not look her way, because I don't want to, I can't. Something's coming, I can feel it laced into the hot air between us. A question brews in her mind. Taking over everything inside her until it's answered, until it's put to rest.

And I squirm in my seat.

"That....that really was you that night, on the 23rd of July, wasn't it?" she finally asks the question I dread, the question I close my eyes at. The question I can't answer at first, my stomach tying into one thousand knots as my heart flutters away. And the hot memories of that day and night flash in my head all over again.

**

July 1997...

A year has passed.

One. Whole. Year.