Victim Services

“She killed herself?” I hesitated at the entrance of the duplex where the cold air-conditioning met the moist heat of the Texas summer night.

“Right through the heart.” Officer Vic Alvarez stood from his examination of the woman’s chest wound. “Come on in, Keira, we’re pretty much done in here. It’s not too bad.”

Easy for Vic to say. He saw all kinds of horrible spectacles. Even if he was still called a rookie by the other patrols and was only eighteen. In Cedar Heights, the age requirement for police officers was still eighteen, especially for those who could speak Spanish, like Vic. But I was just a community service volunteer, so all I’d been allowed to do was babysit the kids of victims and file reports —until tonight.

“It’s OK for me to be here?” Glass crunched under my feet as I walked toward the body on the floor.

I expected one of the officers milling around to shout, “Hey, you’re in high school—get out of here!” But no one even seemed to notice me. I guess the fact that I was with Vic gave me credibility.

“Sure, Sarge already said suicide.” Vic’s words drew me back.

“What about evidence collection?”

“We did all that already.”

I needed to focus on something other than the blue-tinged body on the floor with eyes staring open, mirroring a scream on the frozen lips. I shifted my sight to the shards of glass that lay underneath the window.

Vic noticed me looking. “Boyfriend kicked it in.” How many dead bodies would I have to see before I adopted his blasé attitude? But his eyes were not quite as heavy-lidded as usual, and he seemed to speak at a higher pitch. “They already talked to him. He passed the powder test.” That meant the boyfriend hadn’t fired the gun.

“Mira.” Vic speckled his speech with Spanish. He pointed to the victim’s chest and the gun. “This is how you tell it’s suicide. The angle of the shot, close range, the powder burns. And there’s a note.” He must have been repeating what the sergeant had said.

“What did she write?”

“The usual—hurts too much, can’t go on.”

Woozy, I made myself focus on the nightstand and the note. I couldn’t read somebody’s last words, so instead my gaze skipped to the signature. Rhian. Only then did I look at her face. “Rhian Sullivan.” cold tremor started inside me. “I knew her.”

“Oh, no.” He put his arms around me and I hid my face in the dark blue of his uniform. Because he wore a bulletproof vest, I felt like I was holding a cardboard box.

I’d wanted to be Rhian’s friend, but moving to Cedar Heights High in the middle of my junior year after all the other moves I’d gone through, I’d lost my ability to make friends and had clutched on to boyfriends instead.

I looked up into Vic’s face. “She shot herself in the chest?” My teeth chattered.

“That’s how a lot of women do it.  Sometimes they don’t even die right away.”

I forced myself to keep asking questions. “Did anyone hear anything?”

“I went over to the other side of the duplex. No one’s living there. Look at this—all diaries.” He went to the trunk at the foot of the bed. When he opened it, spiral notebooks slid  out. He smirked. “Don’t you keep a diary?”

Instead of answering him, I asked, “Is the detective going to read them?”

“Nah, he said the note already established state of mind. He didn’t need to know she’d been depressed since she was fifteen.” Vic brushed his hair back, but the cowlick in front fought him, giving him a barely tamed look.

“Wouldn’t Sergeant Valasia be impressed if you could say you had gone through all her diaries?”

“I don’t think he cares, Keira.”

I turned to see my reflection in a Mexican-tiled mirror hanging on the wall. My eyes were black, as if the pupils were fighting to take it all in. Vic’s gaze met mine in the mirror, his gray-green eyes a shock against his dark skin and hair.

“I want to read the diaries,” I said to him.

“You don’t need to be doing that.” He closed a bureau drawer filled with T-shirts and shorts Rhian would never wear again.

A guy with hectic blue eyes burst into the duplex. “I have to see her!” He had a swimmer’s build and curly hair struggling against a supershort cut. “I’m her boyfriend!”

Vic blocked his entrance. “Sir, hold it right there. This is a crime scene.”

I shot Vic a look. His reaction to someone whose girlfriend had just killed herself seemed harsh.  I turned to the guy and softened my voice, as if talking to a wild animal. “I’m Keira Vaughan, a volunteer with Cedar Heights Police Department.” That made me sound older and more important than I was. “What’s your name?”

“Brandon. I’m her—I was her—”

“Why don’t we go outside and talk?”

Brandon dragged me toward the corpse. His breath smelled yeasty and sweet, and I could tell he’d been drinking. On top of that, he smelled like he had doused himself with cologne.

I’d never seen a guy cry. Josh hadn’t cried when we broke up, and my dad hadn’t when he’d left. I wondered if they all did it, like Brandon, without tears, the choking sounds twisted out of them.

I could feel Vic bristling because Brandon was leaning on me. If a girl was leaning on him like that, I would have felt just as jealous.

 

* * *

 

Outside, I could finally take a deep breath, even though the heat made me feel like I was inhaling cotton wool.

“I tried to make her happy, but I made it even worse,” he said. “She would cry if I even looked at someone else. Would you do that—cry if your boyfriend just happened to look at a girl?”

“I’m more concerned about you right now,” I said, pleased I’d dodged the question. I had obviously picked up something from listening to the counselors at the police department’s Victim Services Unit.

Brandon let go of me. “Sorry, I don’t even know you or anything.” He lifted his T-shirt to wipe his face, exposing a flat, tanned stomach. “I must have known something was going on. I couldn’t call her because she’d changed her phone number. Why did she have to do that? I wasn’t going to call her no more. But if I talked to her tonight, maybe she wouldn’t have done it.”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“I came over here, maybe I knew something was wrong.” Anger seemed to sweep away his grief. “Really, I thought she was with some guy. We weren’t supposed to be with anyone else—we were just taking a break, that’s what we called it—but I knew she would, she’s got those little hot pants.”

“Was she seeing someone else?”

His mouth opened in an anguished gape, as though reminded of her corpse.

“Let’s sit down.” I pointed at the curb, a bit unsteady myself after what I’d seen inside. The black asphalt of the road glittered with mica under the streetlight.

“She was depressed all the time. I couldn’t do anything to help her. I just seemed to be making it worse. She was so sensitive, I couldn’t even tell her to shut up without her throwing things at me.”

“Did she hit you?”

“Only when I deserved it. I would get mad about something dumb, maybe just because my blood sugar was low, and I was always forgetting to carry around breakfast bars with me. I even have to wake up in the middle of the night to eat, I get so hungry. Rhian bought me my favorite granola bars. She did love me, even my mom said that, but not to expect it to last, because I would ruin it, like I ruin everything.”

Through the front window, I saw Vic inside, inspecting the wall behind Rhian’s bed. He glanced around as if he knew I was watching.

I turned my attention back to Brandon, who was saying, “I tried to make her happy. I brought her pencils and her favorite ice cream—cookies and cream.”

He talked about how earlier that night he’d tried to forget Rhian. He’d drunk a six-pack with a buddy but couldn’t get polka dots out of his mind. Rhian had accused him of looking at some girl dressed in a polka-dot mini-dress on Sixth Street one night. The frenetic music at the club had matched the pulse of the strobe light and flashed against the girl’s shiny white boots. He was sick of Rhian’s jealousy and had said, “We’re through,” had taken the lipstick and twenty-dollar bill he’d been carrying for her, slammed them into her hand, and then stomped out.

“Why did I do that?” he asked now. “Why do I do such stupid things? I was thinking about that all tonight even though I wanted to forget Rhian. I wanted to find some girl in a mini-dress, lose myself in all those dots, but I didn’t have the wheels to drive up to Austin.”  He tipped his head back.

I followed his gaze. After all the death and darkness, I was surprised to see the stars.

* * *

When I drove home, I felt as if I’d watched a horror movie, but worse, because that bloody chest and blue face had been real. The bushes outside my house hulked with black menace, as if the color had been leached out of the dark landscape.

In the driveway, once I’d yanked up the parking brake, I struggled out of my seat and ran to the front door, sure I was being chased.

The screen door screeched like it always did. But this time the familiar noise sounded like a cry of pain. I fumbled with my keys. I dared not look back, afraid I would see Rhian’s dead body shuffling toward me.

This was all terribly juvenile, but I couldn’t help myself, especially now that I was alone.

Inside, the house was all straight right angles, with stiff, square sofas and heavy brown wood furniture, so different from the color, chaos, and swirling whimsy of Rhian’s place.

A ghostly figure burst from the hallway, and I gasped. “You scared me, Mom!” Her sleeveless polyester nightgown glowed in the darkness, and her eyes were sunken pits.

Uh-oh, she was mad. “Mom, I saw a dead body.” I smelled charred smoke in the air from the broiled chicken breasts we’d eaten earlier that night, amazed that it could linger in the air that long. Lifetimes seemed to have passed since dinner.

“Vic let you see that?” she hissed.

In the darkness of the living room, my pupils still fought to take in light. I imagined them as black and big as they’d been reflected in the mirror at Rhian’s place. “There was this call—a girl from high school—she was only a year older than me.” My throat closed.

My mom crept closer toward me, her face swallowed by the darkness rather than becoming clearer. “You’re too young for this. You shouldn’t be seeing these things.”

I went along with the hug that was supposed to comfort me. “I didn’t know I was going to know the girl who died.”

“Why did he take you there?”

“I was riding along with him on his shift. I told you I was going to do that tonight. He was the responding officer, so he had to stay. And I wanted to help.”

“Where were the girl’s parents?”

“The detective went to tell them. She wasn’t living with them.”

“She was living on her own?” Her upper lip went up in a sneer.

“Well, she was eighteen, and she’d graduated.  I guess she was going to go to college here.”

My mother pulled away. “But you’re still in high school and living under my roof.  You can’t stay out this late with a boyfriend.”

“I wasn’t even with Vic for the last two hours.”

“Then what were you doing?”

I glanced at the clock, but all I could see was a pale orb hanging on the wall. “I left with that girl’s boyfriend. He said he was going to pass out, so I went with him to breakfast so he could get out of the detective’s way.”

“He wanted to eat after all that?”

“He has a blood sugar problem.”

She folded her arms in front of her. “You started the night out with one guy and end up with another?”

“He was upset. His girlfriend had just killed herself.” I’d said the same thing to Vic. “I was trying to help.”

Vic hadn’t liked it either, but how could he say anything when I was doing the police a favor and as the responding officer, he had to stay there?

Brandon had wanted to go to Denny’s. Why? Cedar Heights had all these funky places to eat for twenty-four hours, pancakes with real raspberries and Tex-Mex eggs. How could Rhian have ended up with someone like him? That’s what I really wanted to know. OK, so he had a nice butt and a cute face, but the flashes of rage were scary.

At the same time, he had been cleared of having anything to do with her death. The powder test showed he hadn’t fired a gun.

My mom heaved an exhausted sigh, hauling me out of my thoughts. “I’ve got to get up in a couple of hours for work, and I couldn’t sleep, worrying about you. I’ve got to do the job of both mother and father now. Your father never was protective of you. I had to always be the one that did it.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. Vic is exposing you to things you should never have seen. He’s too old for you.”

“He’s only a year older.”

“There’s a lot of difference between being in high school and the working world.” She spun, the nightgown swirling. “And all you can do for that poor girl now is to pray for her.”

 

* * *

 

“Why didn’t you call?” I stared at the bare wall behind my bed, lit by the morning light seeping through the window. My dad had never got around to putting up the posters in my room before he left. And I had none of the photos up of friends that teens usually had. I felt too sad seeing my old friends, and I had no new ones to replace them with. The only picture was of Vic as an adorable toddler, full-lipped even then.

“I texted you like a billion times.” Vic’s voice dragged with fatigue.

“Three times.” My voice sounded high in comparison.

“One right after midnight. ‘Still with that pendeho?’”

“Why did you go off with that guy?”

I kicked my heels into the mattress. “I was trying to help. And I found out a lot from Brandon.”

“Like he enjoys spending time with a beautiful girl?”

“I’m not beautiful.” I turned on my side, cradling the phone to my face.

“Yeah, you are. I keep telling you that, but you don’t believe me.”

“He wasn’t thinking like that. He was upset about the gunpowder test.”

Vic snorted. “He needed you to hold his hand after that? I told the pendeho it was to eliminate him as a suspect, not because he was a suspect.”

“Do you really think he was smart enough to figure that out?” Impatience edged my tone. “Then you texted me at one twenty-three, ‘leaving scene.’ What took so long to get out of there?”

“I had to wait until the medical examiner came to pronounce her.”

“Pronounce her.” Strange way to say it. Like “pronouncing man and wife.” Only in this case, death.

“You’re the one who wouldn’t call me back,” he said. “Too busy with that guy.”

“I did call back when you were done, but then you wouldn’t answer.”

Vic had it wrong. The main reason I had talked to Brandon for so long was not out of interest for him. I wanted to hear about Rhian, find out what she was like, why she would kill herself.

“You know what? I’m tired. I need to get some sleep. I stayed late, writing my report.”

I sat up and started talking fast. “Does Sergeant Valasia still think it’s suicide? Because Brandon makes a good suspect.”

“You think I’d have let you talk to him if he was a suspect?”

“He wasn’t even supposed to be calling Rhian, much less coming by. He told me she had her phone number changed, so he couldn’t call. And he broke her window to get in. He said he expected to find her with someone.”

“What a loser.”

“Rhian didn’t have a gun, Brandon said. So whose did she use?”

“We don’t know. The gun at the scene wasn’t registered.”

“Why wouldn’t it be registered?”

“Could be she bought it off somebody illegally, someone could have lent it to her. Maybe to protect herself from that guy, to keep him away. It’s suicide, Keira. The note, the gunpowder burns on her hand, the shot at close range. Maybe that pendeho would have killed her if she hadn’t done it first, but he passed the test.”

“How do you know it was close range?”

“The powder marks on her clothes. And she’d been doing coke—you could see it in her nasal passages.”

“Cocaine? Did you find drugs there?”

“I guess the guy who was with her had the coda.” His tone sounded disgusted.

“So she was with someone last night? See, if Brandon found out…” I imagined the scenario.

“Maybe Rhian killed herself because she couldn’t get rid of him, did you ever think of that? Wouldn’t you kill yourself to get away from a loser like that?”

I didn’t remind Vic that I had tried to get away from him. At the beginning of the summer when I had started the community service job, I had resisted Vic’s attention. As an older guy, he’d made me nervous. Then he’d said, “I’m eighteen, just a year older. That’s not a big deal.”

And at the beginning, I was still so hung up on Josh, now my ex-boyfriend. At the same time, I needed Vic’s attention, even though it was almost too much. But after I had officially become Vic’s girlfriend two weeks ago, he had changed, didn’t call or come by when I worked at Victim Services. I couldn’t understand after he had wanted me so badly.

“You remember Rhian’s diaries?” I asked now.

“Sure, there was a whole trunk of them. How could anyone write that much?”

“Can I read them?”

He groaned. “No way. It’s not good for you.”

“Don’t tell me what’s good for me. You’re not my—” I was going to say dad, but it wasn’t like my dad ever seemed to care whether something was good for me or not.

“Your dad’s not around. You need someone who’ll look out for you.”

“Don’t you want to impress Sergeant Valasia?”

I listened to his pause, and I thought I’d hooked him, but then he said, “Naa, the note established state of mind. I don’t think he’d care.”

“He doesn’t care about a girl dying?”

Rather than answering, he said, “I wish you were here now. I’d like to fall asleep next to you.”

I swallowed and gripped the phone harder. “I can’t.”

“Why not? Your mom’s already left for work, right? What’s to stop me from driving over here?”

“I’m not supposed to be alone with a boy.” My body tensed.

“I’m not a boy. I’m not a kid. I’ve had a lot of other girlfriends before.”

My breathing constricted. After I’d found out Josh had cheated on me with Dee Dee Collins, I was paranoid it was going to happen again. “You can’t come over. I told you from the beginning, I’m going to wait until I’m married.”

“You know a lot of girls say that, but they don’t mean it.”

“I thought you liked that I went to church.”

“Sure, I do, but I didn’t think it was for real.”

I jumped out of bed, agitated at his pressure, and started to pace. “Of course it’s for real.”

“OK, fine.” Irritation tinged his voice. “I’ve got to get some sleep anyway.”

I didn’t want to hang up the phone, cut the thread connecting us. But I had to otherwise I would come off as even more pathetic. And I had found out from being with Josh that when you begged, you were easy to leave.

* * *

That afternoon, I entered Victim Services, a crooked maze of cubicles and cheap furniture. Sylvana, the receptionist behind the front desk, eyed me. “What are you doing here so early?”

She must have picked up on my desperation. I wanted to be here, not at home where I had nothing to do except obsess about Vic and dead bodies. I wondered why such a mean person was assigned to greet crime victims when they walked in. And the black liquid eyeliner Sylvana wore made her look even more evil, although I did admire her steady hand. I couldn’t seem to get the hang of makeup. For me, it was like watercolor. You had an idea in your mind about what it should look like, and then the colors would run into each other, too watery, or would clump together into browns.

Gloria peered out from her cubicle. “Oh, hi, Keira. I’m so glad you’re not a victim.” Gloria was African American and older than my mother, but neither she nor any of the other Victim Services workers were anything like my mother or the teachers at school.

Gloria came out of her cubicle with a bag of corn chips and held it out to me. “So you saw your first dead body? Congratulations!”

Patrice tottered out of another cubicle, teetering on high heels. She was married to a lieutenant. “How do you get the scoop so fast, Gloria?”

Chewing, Gloria said, “I stopped by Homicide on the way in, to see if anything was going on. Did you get any sleep?” she asked me.

“Who died?” Patrice dipped her hand into Gloria’s chip bag.

“Some girl in high school offed herself.”

Patrice shook her head sadly. “Keira, you didn’t know her, did you?”

I nodded. “She went to Cedar Heights High.”

“Oh, honey. That’s not the way it’s supposed to happen.” Patrice tipped forward on her heels and hugged me, her long fingernails and rings like claws against my back.

“How well did you know her?” Gloria asked.

“I saw her around school, just to say hi to in the halls. We weren’t friends.” But I’d wanted to be. I’d admired Rhian because she dressed in her own style and had the confidence to carry it off.

She’d orbited on the fringes of a couple of different groups. She’d seemed above it all, like she wasn’t trapped in the confines of belonging to a clique. But maybe she had spun too far outside the orbit.

Gloria shook her head. “No one should have to see someone they know that way.”

Frowning with importance, Beth Ann stomped out of her cubicle. Younger than both Gloria and Patrice, she seemed years older, although not as old as my mother. She was also much more dressed up than Gloria and Patrice, who wore jeans like me. Beth Ann was in a skirt and heels like she was a businesswoman. “I was on the phone, and I could hear you laughing out here.” Gloria offered her a  chip.

Beth Ann looked at me. “What’s this about you going out on a suicide? That’s not your role here.”

“I was out for a ride-along with a police officer,” I said.

“You’re supposed to be eighteen for those. Who did you go with?”

“Vic Alvarez.” My face grew hot.

“Ooh, she’s turning red.” Gloria chuckled. “Are you dating him?”

“Girl, didn’t we tell you not to be dating any cops?” Patrice asked.

I was puzzled—Patrice was married to one. Then she and Gloria high-fived each other, and I realized she was joking, kind of.

“Who’s Vic Alvarez?” Beth Ann asked.

Gloria placed her hands on her hips. “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice that green-eyed little puppy dog that was always coming in here to visit Keira?”

She used past tense, and my heart clutched. Vic always told me that I was imagining it when I accused him of losing interest now that I was his. But the fact that Gloria had noticed it too made it real, and added a new layer of humiliation.

Sylvana, filing her nails as if bored with the conversation, asked, “Isn’t he seeing someone? I thought I saw him with some little blonde officer.”

My stomach clenched. “They broke up.”

“Uh-huh, isn’t that what they all say?” Gloria chuckled some more.

Even Beth Ann was smiling…at my expense. Then her brow creased. “Keira, you really shouldn’t be dating police officers.”

“Oh, really, Beth Ann, what about you and Sergeant Robbery?” Gloria laughed again.

“You guys, let’s remember she’s only in high school.” Beth Ann pursed her lips.

“I can’t even remember when I was that young,” Patrice said.

Gloria turned to her. “I don’t even think I ever was.”

Beth Ann pressed her lips together again. I thought she was going to launch into me, so I started talking. “You’ve all worked a lot of suicides, right?”

“Too many,” Gloria said.

“Of course,” Beth Ann said.

Patrice nodded, munching on another chip.

I shifted my weight, nervous at being the center of attention. “How often does it happen that a death looks like suicide, and the detective even thinks it is at first, but then he later figures out it was only set up to look like suicide?”

They exchanged looks, and Patrice spoke first. “I can’t think of any case like that. And I hear about all of them, whether I want to or not.”

“Denial,” Beth Ann said.

“That’s what I was thinking.” Gloria still had eye contact with Beth Ann.

Beth Ann folded her arms in front of her. “Keira, you know what denial is?”

I groaned inwardly. Here comes the lecture. “You talk about it with battered women all the time. They say that what they’re going through isn’t that bad, but it is.”

Beth Ann said, “It’s a defense mechanism—”

“Oh, don’t get all graduate school on us,” Gloria said. “It’s a way to deal. Like it’s your way of dealing with your friend’s death. You don’t want to believe it’s suicide, that someone you knew would do something like that to herself. It’s easier to think someone might have hurt her.” She crossed her arms and tilted her head to study my reaction, and I could tell she knew she hadn’t convinced me. “I’ve got a good mind to take you up to Sergeant Valasia, break that denial once and for all, girl.”

“Sergeant Valasia—yum!” Patrice elbowed Gloria, and they smiled at each other in agreement.

Beth Ann ignored their high jinks and grimaced. “Suicide’s difficult to accept. So selfish and manipulative.”

I didn’t mention the pain that people must feel when they don’t think they can go on.

“Somebody in Homicide thought one of us talked to the boyfriend of the girl last night.” Gloria crumpled up the now-empty bag of chips.

Beth Ann frowned. “See, this is the problem, Keira. You can’t do the stuff we do. You’re not trained for it.”

“It sounded like she did OK.” Gloria lobbed the bag toward the plastic garbage can near Sylvana’s desk. She missed.

“You guys, Keira’s only seventeen. She’s just supposed to be babysitting, filing the cases. Maybe she can work up to screening the domestic violence reports and sending letters to victims, and that’s a big ‘maybe.’”

“You mean she can’t help us mop up a crime scene?” Gloria asked. Along with dead bodies, she had always teased me about taking me to clean up after a shooting. So gross. But she’d given me an idea about maybe how I could get back to Rhian’s.

 

* * *

 

In Homicide, Sergeant Valasia leaned against the front desk, flipping through a case file. He lifted his gaze as Gloria and I approached. His eyes were small and reddened. The skin underneath was puffy like a jellyfish and made his eyes seem even tinier. His backswept hair revealed furrows in his brow.

I couldn’t see any older man as good-looking, and I wondered how I would ever be attracted to anyone when I grew up.

After Gloria introduced me, he said, “You were there last night?”

“After you left.” I had waited until then so I didn’t get Vic in trouble and so I wouldn’t be made to leave.

His gaze flickered over me. “I would have remembered you.”

“Al, she’s in high school. Calm down.” Gloria put a restraining hand on his arm.

“How old are you?” he asked me.

Help me. I stared at Gloria as I answered. “Seventeen.”

“So she’s legal?”

“Al, stop it!” Gloria did one of her playful slaps.

“Why was she at a crime scene if she’s in high school?”

“Ask your fellow sergeant. He arranged it.”

“Huh?”

“Hey, do you need any help talking to the girl’s parents?” Gloria said instead of explaining how I’d gotten my community service gig.

“We got it covered.” Sergeant Valasia tapped the edge of the file folder on the counter.

“So it’s definitely suicide?” Gloria asked. “Keira had some questions.”

As he started to answer, the PA system broke in. “Gloria Watkins, please return to Victim Services,” it squawked. I always thought people seemed terribly important when they were paged and hoped one day I would be too.

“You coming?” Gloria asked me.

As I nodded, Sergeant Valasia said, “Let her stay. I’ll explain the facts, make sure she gets back.”

She wagged a finger at him. “You better.”

He splayed his fingers, like, What do you mean?

As she walked off, he shook his head and grinned. “That Gloria, she’s a riot.”

My “yeah” came out a little flat.

“You want to see the evidence? That’ll tell you it’s suicide.” He waved his hand. “Come on back with me.” He wore cowboy boots, which passed for dress shoes in Texas, and beige Wranglers. Wrangler jeans were bad enough, but Wrangler slacks? His boots didn’t make a sound on the stained carpet, and my tennis shoes behind him were even quieter.

When we were inside his cubicle, which he dwarfed by his size, he pulled out a key and unlocked the file drawer above his desk. “Now don’t tell anyone I showed this to you. They’d think you’re too young, but I think you can handle it.” He smiled at me, and his eyes almost disappeared entirely.

I nodded, not knowing what to do with my hands, so I folded my arms in front of my chest.

“Cold?”

I shook my head, but the police station was always over air-conditioned, and the hair on my arms stood up like tentacles. The patrol officers, the ones that were out on the street like Vic, wore polyester uniforms and bulletproof vests, so of course they were always hot, and the detectives often had suit jackets over their Wrangler pants.

Out of the overhead shelf, Sergeant Valasia got out a quart-sized storage bag. Inside were the gun, the note, and bullet casings.

Rhian’s death fit into a quart-sized Baggie.

He also brought out a camera and flipped through the digital readout. “Here.” He moved closer to me, so we could view the picture at the same time. “This one’s not so bad.”

He turned out to be like the teachers or Beth Ann or even my mother for lecturing, even though the subject was different: the angle of the shot, the hand Rhian must have used to fire the gun, and where the gun had fallen afterward.

As he talked, I could smell his breath, which was like the inside of a coffee pot that had been brewing in a service station all day.

I hadn’t been able to do more than glance at Rhian’s body as it lay in the middle of her floor, but now, in the overlit photo, brightened by the fluorescent beams in Homicide, Rhian’s skin gleamed a luminous white. A glassy blue eye peeked through strands of hair that covered her face. Dried blood, black in color, had soaked into the front of her long gray T-shirt. Baggy gray shorts accentuated long, thin legs. Her feet were turned outward like a ballet dancer’s, and her toenails were the same color as the blood on her chest.

“Could I see the note?” I asked.

He looked a little put out, and I realized I had interrupted him. “You’ll have to wear gloves,” he said.

He retrieved, again from the overhead, a box like the kind used to hold nylon booties at shoe departments. I wrestled to stretch the smelly rubber gloves over my skin.

I reached eagerly for the note and read silently.

It hurts too much to go on. I’m sorry.

A noise at the door made me jump. Vic stood there, looking from me to the sergeant and back again. I stared back, disoriented after being so immersed in Rhian.

“What?” Sergeant Valasia barked.

“I was the first officer on the scene of the suicide last night,” Vic said. “Here’s your report. You said you wanted to check, see if it was all right.”

“Put it there.” Sergeant Valasia indicated the desk.

Vic obeyed, still looking at me.

“You can leave now,” Sergeant Valasia said, steel in his voice.

With one last glance at me, Vic walked away. I wanted to run after him, but Sergeant Valasia had resumed his lecture. He didn’t seem to notice my confusion.

Thoughts raced through my head. Part of me was glad Sergeant Valasia had dissed Vic, who hadn’t called, even though he’d obviously been up for at least an hour.

Was Vic going to act like Josh? I still couldn’t understand why Josh hadn’t just broken up with me, put me out of my misery, instead of avoiding me, until I’d finally interrogated him and caught him in a lie. Then he’d admitted seeing Dee Dee Collins.

And, I had asked Vic to get me Rhian’s notebooks. He could have taken them, and no one would have cared, he’d said. So now I’d been forced to find my way to get them.

* * *

“My car’s there.” Sergeant Valasia pointed down the frontage road that ran alongside the police station, where a maroon Town Car bristled with antennae. A siren couldn’t have shrieked “police car” any louder. But I did admire how the car’s wheels lined up only an inch from the curb. Whenever I parallel parked, I was still a foot away and sticking out at an angle.

The sun pressed down on us. Sergeant Valasia’s brow already glistened, and diamond shapes of sweat sparkled on the backs of my hands. During my first summer in Texas, I was having a hard time with the hundred-degree temperatures after Ohio where we’d last lived.

Once inside the car, I could barely breathe with the heat that had built up and soaked into the red leather. Sergeant Valasia turned on the engine, and the air-conditioning whooshed out hot, stale air. As he pulled into traffic on the frontage road, I saw his face turned to me, but I didn’t look back, just stared at the sun blazing into the front window.

“You must work out, huh?” he said.

“I run sometimes, but I have to wait until it’s almost dark.”

“Don’t run at night. It’s dangerous.”

“It’s the only time it cools down.”

“You should work out at the police gym. That’s where I go.”

No thank you, not some hot, humid place where men in shorts and wife beaters grunted and strained under too much weight. “I’m only a volunteer, I don’t think I’d be allowed.”

“I could get you in.”

As we waited at the light on Seventh Street, I jumped at his touch. He was squeezing my biceps, but might have just brushed my chest in the process. I peered at him, trying to decide if it was an accident or not, but his gaze was now fixed on his side mirror. “Not bad. You’ve got some muscle there.”

Was this the price of the diaries? I mentally kicked myself. I should have known better than to go off alone with him. I just wanted them so badly. I still did.

I shifted in my seat toward the passenger-side window. As I tried to scoot away, the seatbelt dug into my shoulder and was also, I realized, cutting my breasts into two, emphasizing their shape. I folded my arms across them.

“We could tailor the weightlifting so you wouldn’t get all beefed up. Maybe just work on the pecs, the glutes, places like that.” Misreading my face, he said, “Hey, not that you don’t look great just the way you are.” The Town Car seemed to struggle up the ramp before the engine clicked over to the next gear and coasted onto the highway. Scuff marks marred the dividers, and I wondered what would happen if he lost control of the wheel.

He was gawking at me. “You’re blushing. Do you know how cute that is?”

I had to shut him down. “You know I have a boyfriend.”

“I figured, cute girl like you.”

“Vic Alvarez.”

He leaned toward me, like he was hard of hearing. “Who?”

“The first officer on the scene last night, the guy who gave you the report?”

He frowned, before recognition dawned. “That guy? Oh, you can do much better. APD got slack on their last round of hires. As long as they could speak Spanish, they were in.”

I did the sullen teen thing then and didn’t talk, giving only one-word answers to his questions so he would get the message to stop being such a creep. My hair hung over my face as a shield as I gazed out the window. My reflection in the window was blank, but I was frantically considering my options. Should I tell him to take me back? He was hitting on me, but wasn’t I young enough to be his daughter? And what reason could I come up with?

“I didn’t sign out,” I blurted, referring to the in/out board at the entrance to Victim Services, where people put where they were or who they were with. I had always wanted to sign out, another way to seem important. Now I had missed my chance.

“Gloria will know you’re with me. Don’t worry.”

I couldn’t come up with another reason for Sergeant Valasia to take me back to the station. And, if we did go back, I might never get another crack at Rhian’s diaries. I had worked so hard to get them, and we were almost there. Hyde Park was only a couple of highway exits up on I-95. A hip, funky neighborhood with all different styles of houses, it was a direct contrast to where I lived in a generic ranch house neighborhood not too far away.

I wondered if Rhian’s studio would be less picturesque in daytime. But the Tudor roof still pointed to the sky and the green door fit snug underneath it. When we pulled into the driveway, I saw the black garbage bag that hung over the window Brandon had shattered.

As Sergeant Valasia fit the key in the lock, I started to quake inside, as I had last night seeing Rhian’s body. Part of it was the air-conditioning Sergeant Valasia had blasted so high in the car. The heat now felt good, like it was thawing me. But Sergeant Valasia was already sweating again.

When he opened the door, I tried not to breathe in. I was afraid of what I might smell, but the dark splotch on the floor was what seized my attention.

“It’s dark in here,” he said and turned on the hand-painted bedside lamp, then the air-conditioning window unit.

“I know where the diaries are,” I said.

He sat on the bed with a heavy sigh. “Man, this mattress is soft. It would kill my back.” That sounded so old, complaining about back pain.

“Can I look around?” I scanned the room for clues. I certainly didn’t want to look at the bed or make eye contact.

“Knock yourself out. I’m just going to take a little rest.” He lay back. “I only got a couple of hours last night.”

I hadn’t slept at all. That had never happened, even at sleepovers or slumber parties in the past when I had friends, even when we’d vowed to stay up all night. Of course, I didn’t tell Sergeant Valasia. He might do something icky like suggest we nap together.

I got as far away from him as possible, which meant the bathroom. I didn’t pause at my reflection in the mirror, just watched it go sideways as I opened the medicine cabinet. I spun the two bottles around to read the labels. Aspirin in one and Cymbalta in the other. I didn’t know what Cymbalta was, but I could look it up on the Internet. The prescribing doctor was Greene. I memorized the number next to the name and wondered why Rhian hadn’t just taken an overdose. Wasn’t that the way girls usually killed themselves?

“Did you find out whose gun she used?” I asked, coming back into the studio.

He covered his eyes as if the light was blinding him. “No, and her parents didn’t have a clue.”

My attention was snagged by a collage hanging on the wall, black-and-white photo cutouts of a woman falling backward, her body exposed but her face covered by dark hair, oblivious to a gremlin-like creature that lurked in a limeade watercolor forest. A giant cupid, threatening in its size, lorded over a diffuse pink background.

Weird and surreal, it was nothing I could ever put together. Had Rhian known that danger would befall her? Uneasy, I continued to prowl. One of those old-fashioned radiators that looked like gray intestines rested against the back wall. Skirting the stain in the middle of the floor, I headed toward the closet, which was too small for all the clothes and hung open, a tangle of skirts, dresses, tops, and scarves. I looked at the upper shelf to see boxes and wondered if I could get away with searching through them. I turned to see if Sergeant Valasia was sleeping.

His figure loomed over me. I yipped with surprise.

“Find anything?” Sergeant Valasia’s big hands gripped each of the closet doors.

My heart pumped. “You scared me!”

He laughed, exposing jumbled bottom teeth. “It’s not like I tried to sneak up on you. You were in your own world.” He chortled again.

I looked past him without meeting his eyes. They did not look sleepy but gleamed bright and eager. Spotting a hole in the wall to the left of the closet, I said, “What’s that? Did you see that last night?” I pointed, remembering Vic examining the wall. Was it that spot?

He turned reluctantly, boots stomping as he walked away. I breathed out in relief. I was freed from the closet, but my heart still pounded.

“Looks like a bullet hole.” He was facing the wall, which muffled his voice.

I was surprised the mark was something significant. I had pointed it out only to distract him. “So what does it mean?” I asked, staying a safe distance away as he ran his fingers over the hole.

“Maybe she tried to shoot herself another time, missed the mark. I’ve seen that before.”

Whoa. His tone was so blasé. “Then why isn’t the bullet in there?”

“A bullet in the wall doesn’t exactly up the rent value. Someone must have pried it out.”

As I looked through the front window, I saw a patrol car roll by. A young officer with black hair, not quite the military cut all the street cops sported, was behind the wheel. By the time I reached the window, the car was at the end of the street, and I couldn’t read its unit number, which would have told me if Vic was behind the wheel. Had he followed me here? Was he wondering what I was doing with Sergeant Valasia? Was he worried about what might happen to me?

“Who owns this place anyway?” I asked.

“The parents.” He gave the wall a last pat and turned. “They said they couldn’t have her under their roof anymore. She was sneaking out, using drugs. They rent out this place to college students, but couldn’t get anyone for this summer, so they charged her to stay here. She was messed up. I know you want to know why, but you just can’t figure these things out sometimes. You’ll go crazy if you try.”

His cell phone rang, and he fumbled to get it. I sensed from his side of the conversation that somebody was waiting for him back at the station. Good. We would have to leave, but not before I got those diaries. I went to the trunk, knelt before it, and started pulling out the notebooks.

Sergeant Valasia closed his phone with a snap. “It’s been real, Keira, but we gotta go.”

“What about the diaries? I can read them for you, tell you if there’s anything important.”

His face went a little blank before he apparently remembered why we had come. “You can’t take all of them, too much to carry. There’s got to be some plastic bags around here.” He started for the kitchen area.

“Can I take them home?” I asked.

His back to me as he checked out a cupboard, he said, “They’re evidence, so you better keep them at the station. Victim Services is fine. With how often I’m in the field, you’d never be able to find me to get to them.” As he turned with a handful of bags, I saw his overdeveloped chest swelling with the sense of his own importance, how busy he was, and how needed.

* * *

At five o’clock, the sun still shone so brightly it seemed to be laughing at me. At my doorway, Vic handed me a sweet cream vanilla ice cream from Amy’s with Oreos and chocolate chip cookie dough mixed in. My parents would never go to Amy’s—too expensive. But Vic used to bring it to me all the time.

He tried to come in, but I blocked his way.

“You’re just going to make me talk to you out here?” The microphone on his shoulder crackled. “You know I can’t even kiss you. I’m in uniform.”

“My mom might be home any minute, and I’m not supposed to be alone with a boy.” I used her phrase.

“I’m not a boy, I’m a man.”

“Even worse,” I said around a mouthful of ice cream. “And she’s already mad at me for coming home late last night.”

“Did you tell her that wasn’t my fault, that you were with another guy?”

I swallowed. “It wasn’t like that. I wanted to find out about Rhian. I didn’t care about him.”

“A two-hour breakfast.” He pulled the navy blue uniform shirt away from his neck. “I’m going to sweat to death standing out here. Do you want to just ride around?”

“I can’t. My mom’s going to be home at five thirty, and I have to put the rice on, and that takes twenty minutes, and the peas take five. She likes dinner to be ready right when she walks in the door.”

He blew out a breath of disgust.

“I thought you were mad at me. You wouldn’t text  back.”

“Why should I be mad at you? For sitting there all cozy with Sergeant Valasia in his office?”

I jabbed my spoon in the ice cream, so it stood up straight. “He’s as old as my father. Gloria took me up there because she said I was in denial about the suicide. Then she had to leave to work a case, and he started lecturing me about gunshot wounds.” Vic

He hitched a stiff shoulder. “What a jerk. Did you see the way he talked to me? If you’re a rookie, you just have to take it. If we talk back, its insubordination, and we get written up.” The dispatch voice blasted out of his microphone, and he adjusted the volume. “But this one I blame on you.”

“Why?” Maybe I should tell him how Sergeant Valasia had insulted him.

“You went behind my back to talk to him about those diaries.”

“It’s his case, not yours.”

“That guy’s a lech, I saw the way he looked at you. Did he know you’re only seventeen?”

“Gloria told him.”

“Did he come on to you?”

I pulled the spoon out of the ice cream and licked it. “I’m not sure.”

“You can’t be that naive.”

“He’s going to let me read the diaries.”

“He just wanted to get into your pants.”

I turned away. “Don’t be crude.”

He grabbed my arms, and the spoon dripped ice cream on the front step. “He doesn’t know you like I do, how sensitive you are. That girl’s pink notebooks might look nice on the outside, but inside they’re filled with darkness. I care about you, Keira. I know you’re not used to that.”

“I don’t know if I can explain this, but I think it’ll make me feel better.” When he looked at me blankly, I went on. “It’s like understanding someone else’s pain takes me out of the way I feel.”

“I thought you were over that guy.” Vic didn’t like to say Josh’s name.

“I am!”

“Then what’s wrong?”

I’d moved too many times. My dad was gone. My mother, left behind, was both angry and dependent, such a bad combination. I had no friends. As I was about to start trying to explain all this, he said, “I’m here now. Let me help you feel better.” He beckoned with his fingers. “Here, give me the diaries.”

I barred his way. “I don’t even have them here. They’re evidence, so they have to stay at the station.” I stared into his eyes, a kaleidoscope of green and black. “Sergeant Valasia said she used drugs, that’s why Rhian’s parents kicked her out of the house.”

He dropped his hands. “Remember the cocaine in her nasal passages?”

“I guess I didn’t realize it was a regular thing.”

“See, don’t be thinking you’re like her because you’re not. You’re straight, and I love you that way.”

Loved me? My mind snagged on those words. Had he said he loved me or loved that part of me or that quality?

“Do you want a bite?” Flustered, I offered him the cup. He opened his mouth. This was one reason I liked dating a boy out of high school—they were so less awkward. A thrill went through me as I dug into the ice cream. Clumsy in my haste, I kind of shoved it in his mouth. Some got caught on the shade of black on his upper lip.

He looked around, as if to see if anyone watched, and then leaned toward me. “Now you’re going to have to lick it off.”

 

* * *

 

I swear, every woman who walked through the door at Victim Services had a two-year-old, and I had to stop that child from disturbing the counselor who was working with the mommy. Although they worked with all kinds of crime victims—of burglary, robbery, sexual assault—the bulk of their clientele was battered women. Try keeping a child in a cubicle with no doors when you only have broken plastic toys and last year’s Newsweek in the so-called waiting room.

After Kimmy, this particular two-year-old, left with her mother, Beth Ann walked out of her cubicle. “Keira, when I’m with a client, can you please keep the kids out of there? What we’re talking about is very sensitive, and they shouldn’t be hearing that kind of stuff.”

Hello, we have cubicles? That meant we could overhear everything that was being said anyway.

“And we couldn’t find you yesterday. We really could have used you, we had a rush in the afternoon. We even had you paged.”

Darn, and I had missed that. “I was with Sergeant Valasia.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.” She peered at me. “He kind of has a reputation. And I’m responsible for you.”

Oh, so she does care, I thought, surprised.

She went on, “If anything should happen… Any controversy would kill our reputation, and the police wouldn’t trust us anymore. We can’t let that happen. We can’t let a high school intern ruining what we’ve worked so hard to achieve.”

I wondered what had happened to not blaming the victim, and all the other values the counselors espoused.

“Remember we accepted you because Sergeant Jenkins uses us so often. He’s a big advocate for us. He said you were very mature, a straight-A student.”

Sergeant Jenkins was Josh’s father, and the reason I was here. “I am.”

“But if there’s any issues…” The counselors loved that word, issues. “…then we won’t be able to have you anymore. I know how competitive it is getting into a good college these days. Even having a four-oh doesn’t guarantee you a spot in the best colleges, and they realize you need to be well-rounded.”

“That’s why I want to be here. Because I’m learning so much.” I didn’t know if I was laying it on too thick, but her mouth seemed to soften, so I continued. “So much beyond being a candy striper at the hospital.”

“True.” She allowed a small smile to cross her lips.

“And I was thinking I could also help you organize the back office and get rid of all those reports.” The stink of poopy diapers wafted over to me. The odor from the waiting room never went away because too many diapers had gone unchanged for too long in that place. While their mothers were in talking with the counselors, two-year-olds pooped in their diapers in fear at being separated. It was inevitable.

“Even reading those reports will give you an education.”

“Oh, I know,” I said, gushing.

After the counselors returned to their cubicles to make phone calls, I went to the back room, the place I’d promised to organize. I wasn’t about to start now though. This was my first chance to retrieve the two plastic grocery bags filled with Rhian’s notebooks. I’d stuffed them in the bottom desk drawer when I’d returned with Sergeant Valasia.

They weren’t there.

Frantically, I pushed aside sacks of donations, peered behind old computer monitors and a dismantled desk to check, and then searched the whole office. The bags were gone! They were no longer where I had tucked them yesterday for safekeeping. In shock, I sat on the worn gray carpet.

Someone must have taken the diaries.

Was it Vic? I hadn’t told him exactly where I’d put them, but he was a police officer. He knew how to conduct a search. How far would he go to try to protect me? Or was it control?

* * *

At Rhian’s duplex, the crime tape sagged lower, reminding me of doing the limbo at parties when I was younger. How low can you go?

POLICE LINE, DO NOT CROSS the yellow tape said in strict black letters. I became fixated on following the lettering on the tape as it ribboned around the doorway. I didn’t realize that I was standing, mesmerized, until a voice called, “Hey!” and I jumped.

In front of a stone cottage four houses down, a small Pekingese mongrel yipped. The dog pranced up and down in front of its owner, apparently eager to be walked. From this distance, the owner was so doughy and shapeless as to be of indeterminate gender.

As they drew closer, I saw the dog’s owner was a man, though he sported breasts and a pear-shaped body. “Young lady, who are you?”

“I’m Keira. I was Rhian’s friend.”

“This is  Sugar.”

She peered up at me with an intelligent gleam in her eye, and my mouth stretched in an unfamiliar way. How long had it been since I’d last smiled?

“Have you heard what happened?” he asked.

“Yes, I…I just had to come and see for myself.”

He touched himself on the chest. “I didn’t want to be the one to have to tell you. I’m sorry for your friend.”

“Did you know her?”

“Not really. College students move in and out of that place, and they don’t have time for an old man like me.” He assumed Rhian had already been in college. Maybe he’d think I was older, too, and tell me more.

“Were you around the night it happened?” I asked. “Did the police come talk to you?”

“I thought they would, but they didn’t. If you don’t mind me asking, what did they say happened to her?” He had pale, bulbous eyes and an unnerving, unblinking stare when he talked.

“Suicide.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“So do I.”

“There was a lot of action at that place that night, guys coming and going. Would she really have killed herself in the middle of that?”

“Who did you see?” My voice was more eager than I would have liked.

He pretended annoyance but I could tell he relished the attention. “The young-looking one, always very friendly, always with a ‘hi,’ but I’ve also seen him out here screaming. He’s kind of mental. They both were. I would hear them screaming and shouting at each other sometimes, and then they’d be out in front kissing all over each other.”

“Brandon?”

“Don’t know the name, but he was over a lot, until lately.”

“Did you ever see any violence?” I asked, squinting. Even though the sun was dropping lower in the sky, it still burned a fiery orange.

“Oh, sure.” He pointed at Rhian’s house. “She’d shove him out the door. He’d push her back. He wasn’t the biggest guy around, but he was bigger than her. She was tiny like you.” Mr. Thomlison’s gaze slid down my body. “I guess he ended up finding her that night.”

“Do you know what time Brandon got here?” Sergeant Valasia had explained, as part of the lecture, that the medical examiner had put Rhian’s death between seven and nine o’clock. Finding little in Rhian’s stomach, the ME hadn’t been able to narrow it any further.

“Late, I guess. He was the one who called the police. The sirens woke me up, I guess about midnight. I thought somebody’s house was burning down, there were so many fire trucks. I’d kind of dozed off watching Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe,” Mr. Thomlison said. “Have you ever heard of that, young lady?”

“We read the play for English and then watched the movie.” The never-ending arguments had given me a headache.

“Isn’t Liz Taylor fabulous?” He gushed.

Tiny red spots danced in front of my vision. The heat of the day still had not softened. “Did you hear the gunshot?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Guess I was sleeping harder than I thought, and I always have the volume turned up. But I think the other boyfriend was here earlier.” Mr. Thomlison turned his toe out in a surprisingly delicate manner for being so large. His shoes were one step short of bedroom slippers.

My heart started beating faster. “Another boyfriend? What did he look like?”

“Drove a Mercedes. Had to be a drug dealer, right? Who at that age has a car that expensive?”

“I’d lost touch with her lately. She’d been hanging around…the wrong crowd.” Lame, but he seemed to buy it.

“He had ‘wrong crowd’ written all over him.”

“So what time did you see him?” The heat and tension from lying made sweat trickle down my chest like little insects crawling in my shirt.

“I didn’t actually see him, but I recognized his car parked out front. Must have been about nine, ten, maybe when I took Sugar out for her last walk of the evening. And how do you think he’d react to finding such a young guy, a boy really, over at her place?”

“Brandon? I thought you said he came later?”

“I’m telling you, there was another one. You seem like a nice girl, but she wasn’t. A young-looking guy. Drove up in one of those ridiculous cars with the tiny wheels, dice hanging from the rearview mirror, bass playing so deep it rattled my chest.”

“So he was old enough to drive?”

“Well, I’m not sure that car was his. Might have stolen it for all I know. Little teddy bears on the rims, of all things.”

“What time was this?” I forced my voice to sound calm.

“Hmm, the sun had gone down, so nine, nine thirty, something like that. After the older guy came, both cars were out there for awhile.”

“You didn’t hear the older guy arriving?” I asked.

“Young lady, you seem to think all I do is stare out the window and keep tabs on my neighbors.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean that. It’s just living so close sometimes you can’t help it.”

He was easily mollified. Maybe too easily. “What do you think she was doing with such a young boy?” he asked.

To hide my discomfort, I looked down at the dog, who had succumbed to the heat, lying on the ground, panting.

“So all those guys…I figured one of them did her in. Jealousy. I mean, suicide?” He shook his head. “She was getting all the fun she wanted. What reason did she have to kill herself?”

A stale odor emanated from Mr. Thomlison. I stepped back onto dry grass that bristled under my feet. Like many streets in Cedar Heights, this one had no sidewalks, a fact I hadn’t noticed the night of Rhian’s death.

“You think she was with so many guys because she was happy?” I asked.

“If I had that kind of attention, I’d sure be happy. Wouldn’t you?”

 

* * *

 

That night, I went to bed as early as my mother—ten o’clock—and I was sure this time I would be all right. But I was all backward. During the day, I was so tired, my head as heavy as if I had metal plates inside my brain. The minute I touched my sheets though, I grew wide-eyed, and thoughts jumped around in my head.

Keira had gone to Dr. Stan Greene.  I wanted an excuse to see him, too.  I had told my mother at dinner that I needed to see a therapist.

“For what?” she asked.

“I think I’m depressed.”

Then she said that I was still adjusting to a new school in the middle of my junior year.  It would just take time.  “What you’re feeling is normal.”

My thoughts turned to Vic as I thrashed around to find a comfortable position.  Why hadn’t Vic returned my calls or texts? When we’d met, we talked several times each day, but ever since we became serious, about two weeks ago, he’d changed. I struggled to figure out why. Perhaps he had taken the diaries and couldn’t face me because of that. Or maybe he hadn’t and couldn’t believe I’d accused him.

I still hadn’t told Sergeant Valasia the diaries were missing from Victim Services. Obviously, he would never let me have more. And I also couldn’t tell him what I’d found out from the neighbor, even though it was important for the case. I couldn’t admit I’d gone skulking around Rhian’s without him.

Brandon might have found her with someone else. He might have been so mad, he’d hurt her. Maybe he hadn’t meant to kill her. That would give him a motive to fake Rhian’s suicide.

How could I find out who these other guys were? And how could I get to the other diaries?

After three hours of this, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I wasn’t exactly sneaking out of the house, because I would tell my mother. Sleep was a necessity. I had to go to the twenty-four-hour drugstore and get some sleeping pills.

She would say, “Why didn’t you wake me up, and we could talk?” but I couldn’t tell her how embarrassingly needy I was with Vic and how I wanted to read Rhian’s diaries and that I had posed as her friend.

Mom would say, “You’re a liar, that’s what you are!” So I would just tell her the truth—I was in desperate need of anything to make me sleep.

* * *

Rhian’s street was quiet and dark. I felt like I was the only person awake, not only on the whole street, but the whole world. As I walked up to her duplex, I noticed that the crime scene tape sagged so low, I couldn’t duck under it anymore. I wondered if Sergeant Valasia would eventually forget about it until it disintegrated in front of the door. I lifted it over my head and slipped through.

Turning on my mini flashlight, I shone it at the garbage bag duct-taped to the window. I could take it off, crawl through, and replace it afterward. Another idea popped into my head. We always kept a spare key in a flowerpot on the side of the house. Had Rhian?

Creeping around the side of the house, I trained the flashlight on the dirt banked against it and a cracked flowerpot on its side.  Almost as if I’d dreamed it, I removed the pot from its tray, and yes, my fingers touched the jagged edge of a key.

After entering the duplex, I closed the door behind me, then hurried past the dark splotch on the floor.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement and whirled. Rhian stood in front of the kitchen cupboard, staring at me grim-faced. I blinked hard and she was gone. Another dark reflection startled me—my own gasping mouth in the Mexican-mosaic mirror.

I breathed in, trying to steady myself, but smelled something like the defrosted hamburger lying in its pool of blood. My stomach roiled.

I kneeled and flipped open the trunk, then started shoving spiral notebooks into the plastic grocery bags I’d brought. A wire ring stuck out of one of the notebooks and scratched my face as I leaned over. Another wire caught on the plastic and tore it open. In my haste, one of the notebooks dropped to the floor, and the pages splayed open. Using the flashlight’s thin beam, I tried to make out Rhian’s script. The college-rule lines were too narrow for Rhian’s writing, a combination of script and print that made translation difficult.         

I sit across from a worn-looking Dr. Greene, who perches above a desk overflowing with papers, and I remember a dream where I kissed him. His tongue was fat, but not unpleasant, although he is old with crinkly, gray hair and the blackheads on his nose could swallow me live.

“I feel like I’m going to die.”

“You feel like you’re going to die or that you’re going to kill yourself? There’s a difference.” Dr. Greene places his glasses on his nose as if he wants a barrier, not to see me more clearly.

“That I’ll have no choice but to kill myself, it hurts so much.”

“And how would you do it?”

I run a hand up my forearm. “It’s like I have to cut the pain into color I can see and give it shape to bleed.”

“Hmm, we’ll have to keep tabs on that. How are you sleeping?”

“I’m not.”

“Still on the cocaine? ’Cause that’ll definitely interfere with your sleep patterns.”

“Not since I broke up with that guy. I’m with someone else now. He said he would smash my face through a table if I ever went down on it for a line.”

“Whatever keeps you away, I guess.” He tries to hide a yawn. “Now the sleep… Do you have a hard time getting to sleep, or do you wake up early?”

“I fall asleep at three. I wake up at five.”

He scribbles on a pad. “I’m giving you a prescription for a new sleeping pill. We should probably get you off that Valium.” He hands me the prescription. “How’s the Wellbutrin working for you?”

“It makes me feel worse. Like it’s too bad I have to extinguish my nice eyes, but the pain in my head, in my heart overrides prettiness and my smooth forearms itch to be cut.”

“You see, dear, you realize you’re too pretty to kill yourself.” He scratches out a few more lines on the pad. “Let’s double the dose.”

“But if it makes me feel bad, why should I take more?”

“Maybe you’re not at the therapeutic dose.”

“I thought you prescribed the therapeutic dose.”

“This isn’t rocket science,” he says, irritable. “We just have to keep trying.”

“Imiprimine, Palomar, Prozac…” I recite all the medications I’ve been on.

“Well, it’s not like I haven’t been in here trying with you,” he says testily.

“My therapist said maybe I should try a woman psychiatrist.”

“If you’d like me to flash a little leg, I can do that.”

I place my hand on my chest. “My heart…maybe it’s this medication…it feels like my valves are being squeezed by an evil hand.”

“I can check that for you.” He fumbles around on his desk. “Where is that thing?” He rummages in his drawers, and pulls out a stethoscope, “Ah.” He is more eager now. “Lift up your shirt.”

 

* * *
A car door slammed, yanking me from my dream and charging my blood. I froze, listening to my pulse pound through my body. Another car door shut. I had fallen asleep on Rhian’s bed reading her diary.

Light trickled in through the windows. I went to peek out, my knees trembling so hard I could barely stand. I was going to be in so much trouble! How could I explain to my mother what I’d been doing?

Peering through a slat of the blind, I saw a woman of about my mother’s age with graying hair and a worn face. She had to be Rhian’s mother. As she walked from her car with a box of cleaning supplies and rags, I ran to the back window and raised it. Clambering out gracelessly, I spilled with my plastic bags onto the dirt.

After walking down the alley to the end of the block, the bags slicing into my hands, I doubled back onto Rhian’s street where I’d parked my car. As I reached the Honda, the woman was in the duplex doorway. Her legs were bare, revealing veins running up from her ankles and down from her knees like a map of an old European city with twisting, winding streets. Our eyes met, and then I quickly looked down, opening my car door. If she noticed the diaries missing, I didn’t want my face known.

“Rhian!” she called.

I stared at her wrinkled, worried face, and my eyes blurred with tears. “No, I’m sorry,” I said and ducked into the front seat. When I sat, something hard stabbed me on the leg. I still had Rhian’s key.

* * *

A patrol car was parked outside my house. I wondered if my mother had noticed me missing and called the police. I was going to be in so much trouble.

When I pulled into the driveway, I saw that Vic getting out of the patrol car. “Where have you been?” he asked, as I opened my car’s door.

“Is my mother here?” I leaped out and cast a worried look at the house.

“She called me at five o’clock this morning when she realized you were gone. She thought you were with me, but I said, ‘No ma’am.’ It took a while to convince her I’d been working all night. Then she was really worried. Before that, she was just mad.”

I took out my cell phone, expecting to see the usual blank and unyielding screen, but there were six missed calls. I must have been completely unconscious at Rhian’s. How could I have slept at her house when I had been unable to do so at mine all summer?

I headed to the front step, but Vic followed and yanked me back. “So where were you?”

“I have to talk to my mom, let her know I’m all right.”

“She went to work.”

“Oh.” I stopped. So she couldn’t have been that worried. Both she and my father had a fanatical work ethic, but this seemed ridiculous. Then again, why was I complaining? At least I didn’t have to face her right away and explain.

“Were you with someone?” he asked.

“Are you kidding? You didn’t call at all yesterday. Were you with someone?”

“I went to South Texas.”

“To see one of your old girlfriends?”

“Can we go inside and talk?”

“I’m not supposed to have anyone here.”

“You’re not supposed to stay out all night either.”

I turned away.

“Come on, Keira, how about if I take you to breakfast? It’s near the end of my shift, and it’s been quiet. You must be hungry.”

Yes, if that nail-like feeling boring through my stomach lining was hunger. “What if my mother comes back? I’m already in enough trouble.”

“Call her. Tell her you’re OK and that you’re going to bed now. If she calls back, you’re sleeping.”

I felt lightheaded as her work number rang, and my heart fluttered. Relief washed over me when her phone went to voice mail. “I’m fine, Mom. I wasn’t with anybody last night. I was alone. I’m home now, and I’m going to sleep. We can talk when you get back tonight.” I paused, then said, “I’m sorry.”

When I got into the front seat of the patrol car, I started in on Vic. “Why were you always around, always calling—I couldn’t get rid of you. Until we decided not to see anyone else. Then suddenly, you don’t call for an entire day!”

“One of my cousins in McAllen was in a car accident. I had to go down and see him. I took a couple of hours off, but that’s all I had coming.”

“And you couldn’t have called during the four hours or whatever it takes to drive down there? Come on!” I clicked on my seatbelt.

He sped off. “How about you? Were you with that Brandon again?”

“Rhian’s ex-boyfriend? No way! I don’t know what she even saw in him.” But I had read her entry of how they got together. He was the boy her father got cheap to mow the lawn and fix up the house. I guess he was hanging around long enough without a shirt on that eventually something was going to happen.

 “Or was it Josh? I know if that guy wanted you back, you’d take him. He only has to crook his finger.”

I stared out the windshield at the expanse of blue sky. How could it already be hot this early?

“So where were you?” He did an obligatory slowdown at the stop sign. After scanning for cars, he accelerated again.

“I wasn’t with a guy. I can promise you that. But you still have to tell me. Why are you different now?”

The robotic voice of the dispatch on his radio announced a burglary in progress, and he cocked his head to listen.

When I saw I had his attention again, I said, “You’ve changed. Once you have me, you don’t have to try, is that it? Or is it the thrill of the chase? Is that what gets you going? And after that, nothing?”

“I should never have taken you there. You’re getting obsessed with that girl who killed herself. She was a messed-up slut, and you’re nothing like her, so don’t think you are. But then you’re always nagging about those diaries, trying to get me to take them for you. Then leaving messages, accusing me of stealing them. I didn’t even know where they were.”

“I told you they were at the station.”

“The station’s a pretty big place, you know.” We flew through a yellow light. I had always wondered whether police cars went fast because they could and not because of an emergency. Now I had my answer. “I figured they were in Sergeant Valasia’s office,” Vic went on. “He’s a perv, you know. And you don’t even know how attractive you are, all sweet and innocent. It drives guys crazy. It drives me crazy.” He turned, and his eyes flamed.

“So why don’t you call?”

“I had somebody with me. One of my cousin’s friends. He’s at the army base in Killeen. He drove down with me, and I dropped him there since he doesn’t have a car. I could have called, you’re right. I just knew if I did, I’d have to tell you about my cousin and how stressed out I was about it.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as though he was fighting back emotion. “I didn’t want to break down. I was with Manny, and I wanted to be strong for my cuz when I saw him.” His eyes glistened.

I wondered if he was tearing up. I’d never seen a guy older than ten cry. I figured they just didn’t after a certain age.

“You’re the only one I have to talk to about that stuff, you know that,” he said.

I felt myself thaw. “Is your cousin OK?”

“He’s still critical. They don’t know yet. This stupid pendeho ran a red light straight into him.”

I winced. “I’m sorry.”

“Now it’s your turn. Tell me, what were you doing?”

I clutched my seat. “Aren’t you going a little fast?”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“I couldn’t sleep, I was so worried about why you hadn’t called.”

“You think too much, you know that? But I’m sorry I put you through that. If it was anything like how I felt when your mother said you were missing.” He shook his head.

“But that was only forty-five minutes at the most. Try days.”

“I wasn’t gone for days. Not even one whole day.” He held up a finger for the number one.

We turned onto First Street.

“Where are we going?”

“Arandas.  You need to eat.”

I stared out the window and the traffic ahead of us. “I went to Rhian’s I found a key hidden outside and used it to get in.” I could still feel it in my pocket, and I liked the way it continued to jab at me. “I was going to take the diaries, but I fell asleep instead.”

“You fell asleep in a place where somebody died?”

“When I first got there, I think I saw her ghost. She was standing there, staring at me, but I knew she was already dead.”

He shuddered. “No way! And you didn’t just run out of there?”

“No, and instead I eventually fell asleep.”

He looked skeptical as we pulled into a parking lot filled with trucks. “You fell asleep at a crime scene? You know that’s illegal?”

We walked inside. A waitress wearing clothes two sizes too small led us to a table and gave us menus laminated in ripped plastic. The table had cup rings and crumbs all over it.

“The next thing I knew, I heard a car outside. It was her mother with cleaning supplies. I guess to clean up the blood and stuff.”

“Did she catch you there?” He seemed to be enjoying my story. Because he was older, male, and a cop, Vic had way more adventures and stories to tell than me, a friendless high school student. But this time, he was riveted.

“I jumped out the window to the alley and circled back down to the street where I’d parked my car.”

“And what about the diaries?”

“I didn’t even get them after all that.” I wasn’t sure exactly why I lied, but last time, only he and Sergeant Valasia had known I had the diaries. This time I’d keep the secret.

After we finished eating, Vic pushed back his plate and closed his eyes. I felt relaxed too, after eating for the first time in what seemed like weeks, since discovering Dee Dee Collins and Josh.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we could just curl up together and sleep?”

I frowned.

He said, “Nothing else. Just sleep.”

“I only have a twin. It’s not big enough for you.”

“That just means we’d have to hold each other real close.”

“Why don’t you invite me to your place then?”

He made a face as he sipped iced tea, and I wondered if he’d hit a clump of sugar. “I told you, I can only afford to sleep on the couch at my cousin’s.”

“Another cousin.” As an only child of only children, I couldn’t keep up with all these cousins. “That’s what I call him. And there’s two other guys there, I’ve told you that. The place is disgusting. I respect you too much to bring you there.”

* * *

Vic wasn’t really in our house. We just stepped past the front door so he could say good-bye out of view of the neighbors. OK, so he pushed me back onto the staircase, but we were still in the front hall, and you couldn’t call it lying down when you were on the stairs, could you? And we kept the front door open the whole time, so we were well within my mother’s rules.

A car door slammed, and it was just like at dawn when Rhian’s mother arrived at the duplex.

I shoved Vic away. Seeing his expression of surprise, I hissed, “My mom’s home.” I hopped up, hastily wiping my mouth where it was wet from kissing. He was behind me as we tried to hurry out the door, but her heels tapped on the cement walkway. She’d beat us there.

“Ma’am, we just got back now. I took her to breakfast. I thought she needed to eat after being up all night.” Vic was actually babbling.

“I thought I told you not to call me ‘ma’am’?”

I flushed, not only at my mother’s tone, but because he’d sounded subservient, like a bus boy. “I was at Rhian’s,” I blurted.

“Who?”

“You know, the dead girl.”

She looked from me to Vic. He put his hand on his chest. “I swear to God I didn’t have anything to do with it, ma’am.” There he went again.

“You’re the one who brought her there to begin with.”

A sheepish expression I hadn’t seen before crossed his face. He didn’t even look handsome with his lip twisted sideways and eyes cast down. “I’ll call you later,” he mumbled as he beat a rapid retreat to his patrol car.

I knew that would be the last I’d hear of him for awhile.  And now I had to convince my mother that I hadn’t been with him all night until just then.  I wouldn’t hear from him the rest of the day.

After I walked into the dark house, my mother shut the door and locked it. Hands on hips, she said, “First, there was Josh and now Vic. You’re not even eighteen yet. By the time you’re twenty-one, you’ll be a whore.”

Her words were like a slap. “Mom!” I tried to duck past her, too ashamed to lift my head, but she blocked me. “I wasn’t with him.” Tears sprang to my eyes.

“Then who were you with?”

“Nobody! Remember, I don’t have any friends either. I went to the scene of Rhian’s death, where she lived.”

“What did you do that for?” She was clearly skeptical.

“I don’t know.”

She rolled her eyes. “You do know. You were with Vic. Is that where you met last night? Do you ever wonder why he doesn’t invite you to his place, cook you a meal there? Do you think he has a girlfriend there, or worse, a wife? Did you ever even consider that?”

“There’s such a thing as trust, you know. I’m not all old and bitter like you.”

I saw her eyes flicker, like she had flinched. Good, I hurt her, too.

But she came back fast. “And why doesn’t Vic take you out on dates, buy you dinner, go to the movies? At least you did that with Josh. But this guy meets up with you at a dead girl’s place? Classy.”

“I told you, he wasn’t with me.” Sweat trickled down my ribs from my armpits, and I felt big cabbage patches of wet underneath my armpits. “I went there alone to read her diaries. She had a whole trunkful.”

“So now you’re not only a whore, you’re a liar?” She spat as she spoke, her saliva jumping onto my face.

Wiping it off, I said, “I haven’t done anything with him.” I backed away and folded my arms around my chest to protect myself from the words clawing at my heart.

“You were doing something with him right here.” She indicated the stairs with a tilt of her head, and I wondered if we’d been able to scramble up in time before she’d seen us.

A wave of heat coursed through me. Of course we had done “some things,” but we hadn’t done “the thing.” And it was so unfair that she was accusing me of this when I also had to argue about having sex with Vic. My upper lip felt moist, and I wondered if it was his saliva, or my mother’s. I wiped my skin and realized I was sweating.

Her wrinkly forefinger came out like a witch’s and wagged at me. “I thought about it a lot this morning when you were missing. I pinpointed exactly when you started acting differently. I should never have allowed you to work at the police department. You’ve been exposed to too many things—seeing things you shouldn’t see, older men. And those counselors have put ideas into your head. They probably even gave you the name of that therapist. None of this is good for you, and I’ve allowed it. As your mother, I need to protect you from things you aren’t ready for.”

“You can’t take that away from me. If I don’t have there to go every day, what will I do?”

She couldn’t say, “Get a job,” because I had tried that. I put in applications at like thirty-seven fast-food restaurants and didn’t get a single call. As a high school student in a college town, I had to compete with college students for the same job. And guess who gets it?

I’d put up a notice for babysitting at our church, but every Sunday when we went to Mass, the little precut slips of paper with my name and phone number on them remained untouched.

“If you want me to go truly insane, just do that.” I imagined myself waking up in a silent house with the whole day yawning before me. My heart clutched with panic. To escape that idea, I pushed past her into the living room. I clicked on one of the lamps. “It’s so dark in here.”

“Turn on the light and insult the sun. That’s what my mother used to say.” Mom snapped it off, and darkness descended again. “Plus, you’re wasting money. I always have to be the bad guy. I’m the one responsible for all the discipline. Your father never helps me with it.”

“Why don’t you talk to him then? Why are you complaining to me?” Rising from my belly, the hot sauce burned in my throat.

“He never listens to me, and you don’t either. No one ever listens to me. You think you have it so bad. When I was growing up, there was nothing. There was nowhere to go for miles around. I didn’t drive. I didn’t have a car. You know how lucky you are?”

“Daddy gave me the Honda only so he could get a new one and leave without feeling guilty.” I was suddenly dizzy from lack of sleep and sat on the couch. The fabric scratched the back of my legs.

“I don’t have to let you drive that car, you know. I can take away the keys, and you can stay here all summer and clean the house.”

I put my head in my hands. I couldn’t face looking at my mother after what she had called me—“whore”—and I couldn’t go through another summer like that. I’d had them before, other times we’d moved, where I’d be friendless and bored all summer. If I had to do it again, I would go out of my mind. I would be like Rhian. Dead.

“Look at me,” she said.

I saw her hand go back but had no time to react. When she hit, my hair whipped around with the force of the slap, and my cheek stung. I jumped to my feet. Before I even considered doing it, I shoved her back.

Her voice was hoarse with tears. “Never ever do that to me. I am your mother.” She punched me on the arm with her fist. It was ineffectual and flailing, nothing like the calculated slap.

“Well, you better not hit me either. I’m seventeen and too old for it now.”

“Then get yourself together and start acting more mature. You’re running around with your own phone and your own car. You think you’re already grown up, but you’re not.”

The air-conditioning was set to its usual seventy-eight degrees, and I felt feverish.

“Never act like that again. I won’t have it. Otherwise, you’ll be out of the house. You’ll see what it’s like to be on your own.”

Rhian had lived alone, so I could too.

My mother would have loved to fight with me all day. Usually, I was on my mother’s side of arguments against my father. He was just such an android, with no human emotion. But she was too much. She wouldn’t stop the berating, and I saw why he eventually wanted to get away from her.

I told her, “I have to sleep, Mom,” just to escape her.

“Then I’m going back to work. I was too worried to concentrate before, but now I’m too mad to stay here.”

Good. I wanted her out of the house.

After she left, I dashed to the car in bare feet. The sunbaked driveway felt like hot coals. Dancing from one foot to the other, I grabbed the plastic bags.

 

* * *

 

When I walked into the shrouded light of the Cedar Heights Police Department the next afternoon, Sylvana started in right away. “Sergeant Valasia came by to see you. He said he wants those diaries back. Are those the ones you lost?”

I stepped closer, wanting to shush her. Nothing was private with cubicles. And sure enough, Beth Ann’s head rose up over hers, like a moon rising over a pasture. “What diaries?”

Sylvana smirked at me as I tried to explain. “Remember I was asking about those plastic bags I put in the back office?”

“I remember you asking about them, but I didn’t realize they were evidence in them. You lost evidence?” Beth Ann’s voice raised and her mouth dropped open, as if a more serious offense had never before been committed in the history of time.

I gulped. “I’ll find them.”

“I thought you checked everywhere already,” Sylvana said.

“I’ll spend the day totally clearing out the back office. They have to be there somewhere. I’ll start right now.”

Beth Ann stomped after me. “We can’t have this. We can’t jeopardize our relationship with Homicide. In the pecking order at the police department, they refer us to our most important and visible cases.”

“I’ll find them,” I said again and set to work.

* * *

Three hours later, I’d returned to the back room at Victim Services after making a trip to the Salvation Army to get rid of all the stuffed animal and clothes donations we didn’t need.

While I was out, I had detoured to my house, so when I returned, I was carrying a backpack. I headed to the back before Beth Ann could see me. While I was taking stuff out of my backpack, I heard a male voice, deep with authority, at the front, and Beth Ann’s simpering reply in a tone she never used with me. I held my breath as the plastic bags rustled, then grabbed them and took them to the front.

“Oh, there you are.” He smiled at me and again I saw the crooked teeth. “I saw you from the second floor.” He wiggled his fingers in a walking fast motion.

“And here they are.” I placed the bags on the counter.

“You found them.” Beth Ann sounded surprised.

“They were in one of the donation bags.”

Vic said you knew someone was lying because when a person wouldn’t look you in the eye. That was certainly true of me. I just kept my gaze fixed on the plastic unfurling with a hiss. “Somebody must have thought they were bags of clothes.”

“No worries,” he said. “At least they’re here now. The girl’s dad has been calling saying that some of them were missing.”

“Her dad was looking for the diaries?” I couldn’t help but blurt out, even though I knew Beth Ann wanted me to disappear now that I had proffered the diaries. I would be so embarrassed if my dad read my diaries.

“Maybe they say bad stuff about him, and he wants to get rid of them,” Sergeant Valasia said. “They seemed like nice people, like they’d been through a lot with her. They said she was sneaking out all the time, meeting up with boys, using drugs. They couldn’t control her. Finally, her dad said, ‘You’re so interested in leaving, then you can leave, find your own way.’ Tough love, they call it.”

In her diary, Rhian hadn’t painted it as tough or love. In her view, her dad had been quick to put her out, the same way my dad had easily dumped us.

* * *

In her cubicle, Beth Ann folded her arms across her chest. I didn’t need a counselor to figure out she wasn’t happy with me.

“Losing evidence is unacceptable.”

“But I found it.” I was forced to sit too close to her the way she’d set up the Day-Glo orange, molded-plastic chairs in her office. I wondered how crime victims felt all jammed up, knees almost touching Beth Ann when they talked to her. Did they find it cozy and intimate, or did they feel confined, like I did?

“You shouldn’t have had it to begin with. Your job isn’t to do investigating. You’re just supposed to help us with babysitting and clerical tasks. You get enough exposure, just doing that.”

“He offered,” I said.

“You’re going to ruin all the good work we’ve done, the relationships we’ve established throughout the years with Homicide. And we’re very close to getting off of grants and having the City of Cedar Heights pick up our salaries. That means we won’t have to slave each year to apply for grants. We’re not going to have you undoing all our hard work now.” Her mouth settled in a moue of disapproval.

“Sergeant Valasia’s not mad.”

She shook her head. “But he… You’re not old enough to handle the situation.”

I studied her. Did she mean he thought he could jump my bones now that he’d done me a favor? “I already have a boyfriend,” I answered as if she had said that.

“And getting involved with a cop… That’s unacceptable.”

“Your boyfriend’s in Robbery,” I said.

“I’m a grown-up, Keira. You seem to forget that. You’re still in high school.”

“Vic’s only a year older than me.” Even in this kind of situation, I couldn’t help but stroke Vic’s name with my voice.

“And he happens to be dating another officer in his platoon. Did you know that?”

I had to swallow, but I knew it would be noticeable if I did. So I tried to hold it back. Spit pooled in my mouth, like I was going to vomit. I had to swallow or hurl. My throat bobbed, as obvious as a basketball. “They broke up,” I muttered.

She shook her head again. “I think it’s best for you, and for everyone involved, if today’s your last day.”

I’m sure my face was blank, but what she’d said… I felt like she had just kicked me in the stomach with a cowboy boot. “But look at all I’ve done.” I flailed my hand out and knocked over some goofy smiling statue on her desk.

She righted it, her face stony.

“I’ve taken care of all those kids, so you guys could talk to the women.” My voice broke. “I’ve shredded all those old cases. I’ve filed. I cleaned the whole back office.” Tears came to my eyes. No, I couldn’t let her see me cry. But that meant I couldn’t talk anymore. Because if I opened my mouth, I would bawl.

I endured the rest of the lecture in silence, my cheeks hot with shame. I stopped listening to the words and just watched Beth Ann’s mouth flapping around. What was I going to do with the rest of my summer?

 

* * *

 

I careened around the Barton Skyway neighborhood, shrieking with irritation as I kept getting trapped in the same merry-go-round of streets. The roads were charming—winding and lined with different types of houses, modern white structures with beveled windows, log-cabin takeoffs, cinder-strip bungalows, and stone cottages. But that Dr. Greene was an idiot! Why couldn’t he have given me good directions, or at least have warned of the perils of these winding streets? I had come this far, and now I wouldn’t be able to find him!

I couldn’t stay home another day that stretched before me like a giant lion’s roar, feeling as though I’d be swallowed up by the endless time. For something to do, I’d tried running in the morning before it got too hot. It reminded me of Rhian’s long, pointless walks.

So I’d gone in search of Dr. Greene. After finding a disconnected office number, I’d finally found the number for his house, which is where he now practiced.

A few minutes later, I parked in front of a dark brown ranch house, possibly the worst-looking one in the neighborhood. I rang a ponderous-sounding bell.

A gremlin of a man opened the door. He had close-set eyes, and a nose colored by rivulets of broken red and purple veins. The stale smell of old dog drifted out of the house. As he ushered me in, I didn’t see any signs of an animal, just outdated furniture, closed blinds, and bleak landscape paintings.

Standing too close to me, he pointed to a room off a stretch of empty hallway. “My office.” There, he sat behind a desk so cluttered by papers that he could barely peer over. “Have I seen you before?” he asked.

Sitting down on a faded armchair, I said, “Did you think I was Rhian?”

“Who?”

“She was a patient of yours. She died a few days ago.”

His voice was peevish. “Of course I knew who she was. I just couldn’t hear you. When I saw you at the door, I thought it was her for a moment, before I remembered.”

Pleased that he’d found me like Rhian, I wanted to smile, but that would have been inappropriate. I quashed the feeling, putting my lips in more suitable lines.

He was fondling his nose now. All the teen mags said, if you have blackheads, never touch them, otherwise you spread the bacteria around and more zits pop up in its place. After years of reading the magazines, I’d realized every one said the same things over and over again about washing your face and not touching your blackheads.

“Where’s your mother?” he asked.

“She wouldn’t come.”

“I don’t know if I can see you without a guardian to sign the informed consent and pay for the session.”

“I’m seventeen.”

He gave a clenched-teeth smile. “But do you have any money?”

“Can you send her a bill?” The fallout from that would be tremendous, but I’d deal with it later.

“How do I know she’ll pay if she doesn’t give her permission?”

I have the insurance information.

Hot tears prickled behind my lids.

He adjusted his glasses. Light reflecting off the lenses obscured his eyes. “Why are you crying?”

“I don’t understand why she had to die.”

“It was the alcohol and drugs.”

“Maybe it was just someone taking advantage of the drugs and alcohol.” I swiped my hand across my face. “Did she ever talk of anyone who wanted her dead? Boyfriends, family?”

Magnified by the lenses, his eyes startled me. “I can’t talk about her. Client confidentiality.”

“But she’s dead. I know she was taking antidepressants.” I’d found out Cymbalta was for depression. “Why didn’t she overdose on those?”

“That’s the nice thing about the new ones. You can’t overdose on them. And if I prescribe you some, how are you going to pay for them? They’re expensive without insurance, and if your mother won’t take you to fill the prescription… If it’s the money that’s a problem, your family can sign up for CHIPS.”

“It’s not that. My father makes plenty of money.”

“Maybe he could take you then. You only need one parent.”

“He lives in Iowa, but he’s worse than my mother. I asked her, and she said no. I couldn’t even ask him.”

He sighed. “Then I don’t know what I can do for you.”

Without being able to stop myself, my tears overflowed and plopped onto my jeans, leaving surprisingly large splotches on the denim.

He stood and scanned his office. Only small surfaces showed beneath the papers and files, including a putty-colored file cabinet, the dark mahogany of the desk, and a windowsill of splintered paint. They were covered with a layer of dust. My mother was not the most fastidious of housekeepers, so I had built up a healthy tolerance for dust. But looking at this made my nose itch.

“Ah!” Finding a tissue box seemed to make him happy, and he pulled out a wad of tissues and handed them to me. I knew he wanted me to clean up, stop crying, but I just balled them up in my fist.

He returned to his seat behind his desk. “I hate to even ask this, but are you thinking of hurting yourself?”

I jerked back, aghast. “Never.”

“Do you see things that are not there?” Behind the desk, his head looked disconnected from his body, floating just above the stacks of papers and files.

I remembered the image of Rhian’s dead body standing in her living room and shook my head. I asked, “Do you know who her therapist was?”

“No, but if you’re depressed, I can give you some samples.”

“Do you have Cymbalta?” I wanted to be just like Rhian, and that’s what she’d taken.

He nodded curtly. “How about if you talk to your school counselor?”

“School’s out for summer.” I wished I were in school, although I knew that was so totally lame. But that was how bored and lonely I felt.

“Oh, right.” He cast around on his desk again. Paper, paper everywhere, but not a scrap to write on. Finally, he opened a file and ripped off a piece from inside it. He scrawled something on it and got up to come around my side of the desk to hand it to me. Leaving the room, I headed toward the front door, which was painted in a shade of brown like everything else. I struggled with the knob.

“Let me.” He turned the lock and then unlatched the dead bolt. The source of the smell was now clear—the odor of old dog was coming off him in powerful waves. I wrenched open the door and hurried out to my car.

* * *

Over the next few days, one of the passages from Rhian’s diary was indelibly printed in my head. I am so restless waiting for his call, I can’t sit down for five minutes, yet I live on day after day.

Driven to a frenzy by Vic’s unavailability, on Friday I texted him. Haven’t hrd frm u, r we broke up?

And he still didn’t contact me, so I called Brandon and asked how he was doing.

“Do you want to come over later?” he asked. “I don’t like talking about this on the phone.”

I hesitated for a moment. Vic would be so mad. But then I realized we must have broken up, and he had no say over what I did. Just to solidify it, after I got off the phone with Brandon, I texted Vic, OK, over.

Then I had to deal with my mother when I said I was going out. When I explained about Brandon, she said, “This is the one you stayed out all hours with? The dead girl’s boyfriend?”

“He’s still having a hard time. He wants to talk.”

“I bet,” she said with a sarcastic nod. “And what about Vic? He’s OK with this?”

“I haven’t heard from him.” My shrug belied my anguished waiting.

“That little—”

I didn’t wait to hear her badmouth him, even though I’d concocted murderous thoughts in my head.

* * *

Brandon lived in a massive apartment complex where the unit numbers made no sense, and the apartment numbers nested within them seemed just as random. But Brandon didn’t comment on how long I’d taken, just led me through the living room past a whale-sized man, his stomach rising out of the recliner. “That’s my mom’s boyfriend,” Brandon said.

My anger toward my mother cooled. At least she wouldn’t take on a boyfriend, especially some lazy, fat man. I shuddered as I stepped past him.

Then I was embarrassed. What did he think Brandon and me would be doing in his bedroom, where we were heading? But, glancing furtively at the boyfriend, I saw that his eyes were glassy from a large can of beer and some inane comedy on TV. The dude didn’t care.

In his room, Brandon closed the door behind us. The room was the usual boyish display. The only chair was swallowed up by clothes. A collection of plastic dinosaurs resting on a chipped dresser seemed to be a leftover from younger days. I still had my stuffed animals and baby dolls too.

“Where’s your mom?” I asked, nervous and awkward. I didn’t carry a purse to hold, and I’d purposely left my phone in the car. With my luck, if Vic finally called, I’d be with another guy. Nor did I want to keep looking at a phone that wouldn’t ring.

“Mom’s a nurse, works the night shift.”

“She doesn’t mind?”

“Mind what?”

“A girl being here.”

“Why would she mind?” With no box spring, the mattress and the floor kind of oozed together, especially with the unmade bed and sheets spilling to the side. Brandon startled me by suddenly jumping onto his bed. He did a few hops like it was a trampoline and then landed on his butt. Looked like something he did a lot.

I chose a spot on the floor against the wall. From there, I could see the obligatory electronic equipment that all guys owned. The sound system was playing heavy metal. To me, it was like banging on garbage lids and shrieking in a devil voice, even when it was on low volume.

“I was surprised you called,” Brandon said.

“Yeah, well, I wanted to make sure you were OK. We’re supposed to follow up.” I was presenting myself as more than what I’d been at the police department, like I was a regular counselor, but no one else had worked with him. Plus, I wanted to put up a barrier. I didn’t want him to think I was interested in him, although I suspected he’d already gone there.

He leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes, as if sinking into the music.

“So how have you been doing? Any nightmares, trouble sleeping, eating, stuff like that?” I knew from the counselors those were the questions to ask.

“Yeah, a couple of nightmares, like Rhian coming after me as a dead body. Kind of like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. ”

His eyes shut, he beat his hand on his knee to the rhythm of the garbage lid banging.

A knock on the door sent my spine rigid teenage girl with over-processed blonde hair sauntered in. The cut was raggedy, like someone had hacked at her in a darkened closet. The tight-fitting shirt exposed her pooched-out stomach and a bellybutton ring.

“Crystal, this is Keira, the girl I told you about,” he said to her. “She was there that night.”

“Bummer about Rhian,” the girl said.

That seemed to be putting it mildly.

She plopped down next to him on the mattress. “Yeah, hi, I mean we’re like really open. Like I tell him when I’m on my period. And like, I have a yeast infection right now, and I’m feeling really bloated.”

Maybe that explained the belly, but then why show it off?

“Rhian didn’t like me seeing Crystal,” Brandon explained.

“Now why would that be?” I’m sorry, I just couldn’t hide the sarcasm.

“She was super-jealous! That’s how I know she cared about me.”

“She wouldn’t even let him talk to me.” Crystal’s eyes and mouth were round with outrage. “Brandon and me, we’re just friends, neighbors.”

“I’ll never have anyone as good as her again,” Brandon said, glum.

“Sure you will. Look, you got this girl right here.” Crystal pointed at me.

Oh, help me. I quickly changed the topic. “How did you and Rhian meet?” I was curious to hear his version of the story after her R-rated version of their kissing session.

“My dad hired me to do some work on their duplex. I had to paint the whole place and fix it up, so I was there a lot.”

“That’s so romantic,” Crystal said.

“I was trying to change for her, trying to get better. I even let my mom take me to counseling for the first time since I was a little kid. I have an anger problem, you see.”

“Oh, you don’t have an anger problem,” Crystal leaned over and rubbed Brandon’s knee. “You’re a big, sweet love slave.”

“Were you violent with Rhian?” I asked.

“Only when she was with me. One time she slammed me in the head with a can of pumpkin pie filling, and I kind of flipped her over. I forgot how light she was. I didn’t hurt her though. I just threw her out of here. Not threw. Pushed her, told her to never come back. But I called the next day, said I was sorry.”

“You shouldn’t have apologized,” Crystal said. “God, a pumpkin pie can?”

“Did you see Rhian the day she died?” I wanted to see if his answers would stay the same as last time.

“Do we have to keep talking about her?” Crystal said.

Why did she think I was here otherwise?

Brandon answered, “Well, yeah. I found her, remember?”

“I mean earlier.”

“Was someone with her earlier?” He sat up straight.

“That’s what the police are trying to find out.”

“Really? Because that detective won’t return my call.”

“I think cops are sexy.”

I didn’t respond to Crystal’s comment and instead said, “You know, Brandon, I thought you and Rhian had broken up.”

“Well, it was more kind of halfway between a breakup and being together, you know what I mean?”

“Not really.” I smiled to take out the sting.

“To tell you the truth, I didn’t get it either.” He shifted on the mattress, crossing his ankles.

“What was the arrangement?”

“Arrangement?” He looked over at Crystal next to him. “She uses big words, like Rhian.”

As Crystal rolled her eyes, I said, “How often did you see each other? Did you Face Time? Could you see other people?”

“She changed her number, so she could call me with star six-seven, but I couldn’t call her. That’s not fair, is it?”

“So you decided to drive over there that night?”

“That’s why we saw each other more than we were supposed to—I was always driving over there. I just had to see her, I missed her so much. Have you ever loved someone like that?”

My gaze strayed to a poster on the wall of a buxom blonde bursting out of a bra, the typical beer ad.

Crystal saved me by saying, “Oh, I have.”

“I want to tell you something I didn’t even tell the detective. I did see Rhian that night.” Brandon could see he had my interest. “Earlier. I had sex with her too. I bet they found evidence, right? That was me.”

“Brandon, you shouldn’t tell her that.” Crystal turned to him. “Remember where she works? She might be a narc or something.”

“I don’t work there anymore, and I was just volunteering anyway,” I said like it wasn’t a big deal.

“Oh, so what?” He shrugged. “They’d have found out sooner or later.”

“That’s true,” I said. For one blessed second, the music stopped, but then a song that sounded identical started.

“Seems like that detective would have called to find out if it was me.”

“I’m sure he’ll be calling you now.” I had to figure out a way to tell Sergeant Valasia.

“Well, you just told me what I want to know. She was with somebody else because I didn’t have sex with her that night.”

I glanced at the other wall, with another outsize poster of another woman with outsize curves touting beer. Had this guy actually tricked me into admitting it? “I didn’t say that,” I said quickly.

“You kind of did. Who was he?”

I waited for Crystal to say something inane to help me out, but she just studied her split ends.

“Just do me a favor when you find him,” Brandon said. “Let me know, so I can kill him.”

In the silence, I could hear canned hilarity from the TV laugh track.

He asked, “Well, wouldn’t you be mad if every girl you’d ever been with eventually cheated on you? That’s why I had to get good at catching them in lies. That’s how I got you. I wasn’t at Rhian’s earlier. But now I know she had sex with someone that night, and I know it wasn’t me.”

“Did Rhian cheat on you?” I asked.

“I don’t have any direct proof, but I’m pretty sure she saw her ex a couple of times. Rubin, this dealer guy.”

Rhian had made a passing reference to a Rubin in her diaries, but I hadn’t known he was a dealer. “Do you know his last name?” I asked eagerly. Rubin jumped to the top of my list. A drug dealer would always trump all other players as a murder suspect.

Brandon screwed up his face, then shook his head. “I have a terrible memory.”

“Have you told the detective Rhian used to be with a dealer?”

Done with the split ends, Crystal tossed her hair behind her shoulder. “So do you have a boyfriend?” she asked me. When Brandon swiveled his head toward her, she said, “I didn’t know when you would get around to asking her, Brandon. She’s cute.”

Brandon said, “You’re dating that cop, aren’t you? The one that was there that night. All I can say is, you could do a lot better.”

I was taken aback that, even through his pain and shock, he’d figured that out. I blurted, “I’m sure everyone thought the same thing about Rhian.”

I thought he’d jump up from the bed, enraged, but he said, “You’re right—they did.” His eyes filled with tears.

“Come on, Brandon.” Crystal shoved him, like that was supposed to help him feel better.

“She kind of looks like Rhian, doesn’t she?” he said. “The same kind of hair. Dark hair, dark eyes.”

Crystal flicked her gaze over me. “Naa.”

Along with the laugh track and the garbage lids competing with each other, I now heard an insistent knocking at the front door.

“Crystal! You in there?” Whale Man had a voice that matched his size. “Your mom’s out here, wants you home!”

“God, what a bitch!” Crystal heaved an aggrieved sigh. When she got off the mattress, she pulled her jeans out of her crotch. Then she jammed her fingers in her front pocket and inched out a joint. “Look what I brought you.”

He looked at me. “What are you doing, Crystal? Her boyfriend is a cop.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re cool, right? Here. It’s on me. Cheer up.” She gave the joint to Brandon.

As she opened the door to leave, TV gunfire blasted into the room. When she’d gone, Brandon said, “Do you want to smoke it?”

“What about…?” I referred to Whale Man,

“He doesn’t care.”

Brandon shrugged. “He’s drinking beer. It’s the same thing.”

“What about your mom?”

“She wouldn’t like it, but she’s not coming home until morning.” He got up to rummage in his dresser drawer.

“I’ve never done it.” I’d had no interest in weed until I started reading Rhian’s diaries. I would never have guessed from seeing her around school that she smoked as much as she did.

When Brandon turned, he held a plastic lighter. “You want to try?” He flicked the lighter, and the flame leaped like a torch.

“Whoa!” I reared back.

“Watch what I do.” Sitting on the edge of the mattress, he took a drag, held it in, and then offered the joint to me.

I scooted across the carpet toward him. Taking it, I held it awkwardly in my fingers. I watched it cross-eyed as I hesitantly touched it to my lips. I breathed in, only a little, ke clutched my throat, and then I coughed so hard I wondered if I would be sick.

He smiled. “I’ll bring you some water.”

“No, don’t go out there. I don’t want your stepfather—”

He made a face. “My mom’s boyfriend, she’s not marrying that dude.”

I exploded in coughs again, and tears ran down my face.

“Cough to get off,” he said, watching and amused, as he took another hit. After a few moments, he said, “You want to try again?”

I thought my esophagus had calmed down, but then it convulsed again. I wiped my streaming eyes.

“Let’s try it another way. This’ll be smoother. I’ll just blow the smoke into your mouth.”

As I backed away, he said, “No, look,” and leaned toward me. He inhaled and then, bringing my chin up to his, exhaled a thin stream that shot straight into my lungs. We were close enough to be kissing, and I hadn’t forgotten that Rhian and Brandon had first gotten together over smoking. And that she had thought he was a good kisser. What would it be like? I wondered.

More pounding sounded on the front door. I pulled away and saw Brandon’s bloodshot eyes. I wondered if mine looked the same. “Who is it?” I hissed.

“Probably Crystal again. I hope Glen locked the door, otherwise she’ll just walk right in.”

I heard the squawking of a radio, and immediately thought, Vic, because all thoughts lead to Vic.

The door whipped open.

I stood, pulse pounding. “Vic, what are you doing here?”

 

 

Brandon jumped up, dropping the joint. “You don’t have any right to be here. Get out!” He whirled toward me. “So you are a narc! Pretending to be so innocent. ‘Oh, I haven’t smoked before.’ Was this just a setup?”

I whipped my head around in a no and felt dizzy. I didn’t know whether I was high or not. That Vic would turn up here was just so weird.

Brandon’s chin tilted up. He and Vic were about the same height. “Well, you can leave now.”

Vic jabbed a finger and sniffed. “You don’t tell me when I can come in, and you don’t tell me when I can leave. You’ve been smoking. You know, I could search this place.” His gaze went to the joint on the carpet.

Brandon fumed. “You guys have done nothing on Rhian’s death.”

“That’s because the investigation’s over.” Vic’s voice dripped with scorn. “It’s suicide.”

“So you aren’t going to find out who Rhian was with earlier?”

Vic glared at me, and I said, “I didn’t tell him. He figured it out.”

Vic stepped closer, invading Brandon’s space. “So who do you think she was with that night? Or was there too many guys to guess?”

“She wasn’t my girlfriend no more.” Brandon’s grammar seemed to be slipping with the stress. “We’d broken up.”

“That’s what you called her, ‘My girlfriend.’ Like you were proud or something.”

Brandon hitched his thumb in my direction. “Like you’re proud of…Isn’t that your girlfriend? She’s pretty, nice, way more smarter than you. But I do kind of wonder why she came over, asking all those questions, like she wants to know a lot about me, you know what I mean?”

I groaned inwardly. I should have known Brandon would have gotten the wrong idea. Had I been encouraging him, just a little? “Brandon—”

“Keira, stay out of this,” Vic snapped without looking at me.

Brandon smirked. “You know what I think? It’s just like Rhian, both of them like to go slumming.”

“I wouldn’t worry about who your girlfriend slept with that night. After all, it couldn’t have been that great—she killed herself.”

Wincing, I said, “Vic!”

Brandon hurled himself at him.

“Vic, don’t!” My voice was high and shrill.

Vic shoved Brandon back. Vic had learned how to fight in the police academy, but Brandon had the anger control problem. They grappled and staggered, locked in their violent embrace.

I fluttered uselessly, gasping, “Oh,” and “Don’t!” They knocked against the shelving holding up the electronic equipment, which came crashing down. They slammed against the St. Pauli Girl print, the only thing enshrined in glass. It slipped off its nail and fell against the planks, glass smashing.

“Vic, do you want me to call the police?” I shouted.

Vic, his voice strangled by clenched teeth, said, “No, I’m going to take the son-of-a-bitch.” He maneuvered Brandon into a chokehold, saying, “I could kill you, you know that?”

Brandon’s eyelids drooped.

I clutched Vic by his shirt and tried to pull him backward. “Stop it, Vic! Stop it! You’re going to kill him.”

As he swatted me off, his grip on Brandon loosened. “I’ll call for backup. Take your car to the entrance of the complex. Look for the patrol car, tell them where I am.” He panted.

I knew what he meant. This was one of those complexes in Cedar Heights that ranged a whole city block with numbers that didn’t make any sense. I’d help a lot by ushering in the responding officer, flag for him where to go. But when I got into the car and started driving, I was so flustered by Vic showing up and then the fight, that I couldn’t find the entrance. I kept turning into dead-end parking lots. On top of that, the humidity was heavy as wet cotton balls.

When I finally located the front entrance, I was afraid I had missed the backup patrol car, and he had passed by as I played ring around the rosy. What if Vic had already killed Brandon before someone could restrain him? That would be my fault. But then a patrol car emerged from the depths of the complex and parked next to me. Vic bounded out the driver’s side, which I hadn’t expected.

I rolled down my window and said, “I didn’t see your backup.”

His expression was hidden in darkness. “I know. I canceled them.”

“Is Brandon all right?”

“He’s lucky I didn’t arrest him.”

“For what?”

“Assaulting a police officer.”

“You goaded him to fight. Why did you hurt him?” My voice warbled. “And why did you just show up? That was downright scary. You go from not calling to stalking?”

He smacked my window. “That’s what I want to know,” he shouted. “What were you doing there?” His mouth closed into a grim line.

“We broke up! You can’t tell me what to do!”

“Are you crazy?”

“When you don’t call for days, and I text, ‘Are we broken up?’ and you don’t even care enough to answer, what am I supposed to think?” I took in a breath after I’d finished speaking and smelled tar.

He took out his cell phone and stared, puzzled, as he scrolled through the messages. “I didn’t get your message, I swear.”

“Please.” I stared at my car’s dashboard.

“Can you just come out here, so we can talk?”

I wished I was strong enough to say, “No, forget you!” and drive off. Instead, I opened my door. The best I could do was sulk. The key was still in the ignition, so the ding, ding, ding sounded into the night. I pulled out the key.

“I went down south to see my cousin again. The phone reception on the way—there can be dead spots.” His eyes were expressionless pools of blackness. “Why are you just staring at me? Aren’t you going to ask how he is?”

I closed the door behind me. “I don’t even know if this cousin exists.”

“That’s cold. I have a family member I grew up with that almost died, and that’s what you say? You’re my girlfriend. You’re supposed to be supportive.”

“Are you sure you don’t have another girlfriend down there?” As his mouth gaped open in surprise, I added, “Both my mother and Beth Ann said that.”

He flapped his hand in dismissal. “Can’t you see? They’re so bitter and jealous. And the first thing you do is run off to another guy?” He fixed his gaze on mine.

“I wasn’t ‘running off.’” I softened my tone. “I wanted to talk to him, find out more about the night Rhian died.”

He started to turn away, disgusted. “Not that again.”

“I have to find out what happened to her. That’ll make it all right for me.”

His hands flew in the air as he spoke. “How can it help? Getting all obsessed with her. Darkness already fills your head.”

“It helps to hear I’m not alone, that somebody shared what I feel. It gives me meaning.”

“Meaning?” He whirled around in place and gazed up at the starless sky. “There is no meaning, but so what?”

“And what about you just showing up? That was scary.”

Vic seemed taller. I didn’t remember ever having to lean my head back that far, and I still couldn’t see his face. Was it the way I felt toward him, or what is it the pot?

“Is it so hard to think I could be worried about you?” He reached out and grasped my arms, which were folded across my chest.

“So worried you don’t even respond when I say we’re breaking up?”

“I told you,” he said through gritted teeth. “I didn’t get the message.”

“Even so, I still didn’t hear from you before that for days.”

He dropped his hands, and I hated myself for missing their warmth. “How did you know where to find me anyway… My mother?” I asked.

“When you didn’t answer your cell, I called you at home, but your mom just said you were out, wouldn’t say anything more.”

All right, Mom! I silently applauded her in my mind.

“I immediately thought of that guy. And I was right.”

I heard the swish of traffic on Parmer Lane. “What if Brandon complains about police brutality?”

“He’s not going to complain. He was smoking weed. What’s he going to say? And you were smoking too? You said you’d never smoked before.”

“I haven’t.”

“The first time, and it’s with that guy?” The white of his teeth flashed in anger.

“I wanted him to talk to me.” I leaned against the car door.

He muttered what had to be swear words in Spanish. Then he said, “If you were so curious, you could have asked me.”

I smiled. “No way, you’re a cop.”

“So? They don’t do random drug testing.”

“Where would we do it? You won’t let me come to your place. That’s why everyone thinks you have another girlfriend you’re hiding there.”

“I just don’t want you to see where I live. It’s embarrassing.” He bowed his head. “I don’t even have my own bedroom. I’m just on the couch. I’m saving up for my own apartment, but rent is so expensive in Cedar Heights. It’s not like down south. Hey.” He softened his voice and moved in closer. I had to open my legs so he could stand nearby. “How about when I get a place you go with me?”

“I can’t do that.” I laughed. “I still have a year of high school.”

“You can still go to school if you were with me.” He leaned over and kissed me on the neck.

I closed my eyes. My scalp tightened, as Rhian had described it with Brandon. “My mom… She would never allow it.”

“You’ll be eighteen soon. She can’t do anything about it.”

I opened my eyes and found him studying me as he drew back, as if watching the effect he had on me. “She won’t pay for my college,” I said.

“I can help you out, and you can always get student loans. I just want to be with you, baby. Don’t talk about breaking up.”

“OK.”

As he started kissing me, I sighed into his mouth. He murmured, “I taste the smoke on you.”

I pulled away. “Is it bad?”

“I like it.” He gripped me closer, and I bumped against him like a helium balloon about to fly off into the sky.

 

* * *

 

Leaning on my car door, Vic and I had ground against each other in the parking lot of Brandon’s complex to the sound of the dispatcher’s voice in his shoulder mic. I’d wondered if we weren’t outside, how far would we have gone? We hadn’t even stopped when the occasional car drove through, although I’d wondered if Brandon’s fat stepfather was in one of them and if he recognized me.

After Vic had finally convinced me he’d turned up at Brandon’s because he cared, he drove off for a suspicious vehicle call and was never seen again. Well, for two days, but each day in itself was like a month. At this rate, July would be bottomless. I wished I had the nerve to send Vic a text that said We’re thru.

But I needed him. Without him I would have no one at all. Yes, the tortured thoughts— where is he? Who is he with? Why doesn’t he call? Why is he different now?—would stop, but I would have nothing to take its place. Just emptiness.

I had started taking Doctor Greene’s sample of antidepressants. They created a knot so big in my throat that I sometimes had to gag. I didn’t feel any better, although he had said, “Expect it to take weeks.”

The last I’d read of Rhian was so like what I was going through with Vic.

My therapist tells me to draw my feelings because obviously talking doesn’t help. The day that he left my bed where we had only slept two hours, yellow and pink balloons streamed to the sky. My stomach soars thinking about the wild ride in the high darkness. Until the next day when I wake from the dream and have to go on living. As the days wear on, the drawings return to red and jagged shapes that climbed the walls.

I waited for two days of these jagged shapes that climbed the walls. On Monday, my mother went back to work, and I returned to Rhian’s. I parked down the street so I wasn’t directly in front of the duplex, but didn’t really care if Mr. Thomlison saw me this time. I had a key. I could say I was sent by the parents.

Was it good I no longer cared about being caught, or did that mean I had nothing left to lose?

Rhian’s duplex looked and smelled no different than when I’d seen it with Sergeant Valasia, and his imprint was still on the bed, even though her mother had been by since then.

I was jamming my backpack full of her notebooks when I couldn’t help but stop and read.

I’ve met somebody new. The Young Guy, younger than anyone yet. I’m feverish and can’t eat, so revved up, can’t sleep. I can’t settle with one thing because I’m listening for the phone. The answering machine is unyielding and stares with a malevolent, nonblinking eye. I can’t even sit down for five minutes, yet I live on day after day.

I prowl around like a cat waiting for his call. My triangle mouth in the mirror like a smug Persian reassures me, and he later says he’s never been with anyone more beautiful. Other guys have said this and have never been heard from again. Some guys have matched my fever and then cooled to indifference, and I wonder about the laws of energy.

I jumped at a loud knocking and realized I should have left as soon as I had the diaries. Vic? Had he come here because only my doing something forbidden would draw him to me?

I peeked outside. A boy of about fifteen, looking insubstantial in baggy jeans, slouched on the doorstep. Behind him on the street was parked a tricked-out Honda. This could only be one of Rhian’s “Young Guys.” This one was beautiful, with blond hair that had not yet turned dark, tanned skin, and blue eyes. He reminded me of a boy I had a mad, unrequited crush on in eighth grade.

“Hi,” the guy said. “I would have called, but I never got your number.” He searched my face with his eyes. “But I must have woken you up, huh, you look different.”

“I’m not Rhian,” I said, my hand still on the doorknob. “What’s your name?”

“Connor. Is she here?”

“You’d better come in.” I steered him away from the stain on the floor. I imagined Rhian’s mother coming soon. She would be on her hands and knees sloshing water from a bucket. It would mix with the blood, activating it as if tubes of every shade of red and brown paint had been squeezed onto the floor.

I led Connor to the little breakfast table tiled on top with a pattern of lilies.

“You must be her sister, right?” he asked. “You kind of look like her.”

I made a quick decision. “Yes, I’m her sister. When did you last see her?”

“Saturday night. Hey, is she sleeping?”

My heart hammering with the subterfuge, I waved at the table. “Why don’t you sit down?”

He folded himself into the distressed wood chair, his spine curved against the back.

I sat across from him and leaned forward, touching the smooth tile of the table with my fingertips. My sweat made it slippery. My thoughts slid around too, like the tiled pattern, cerulean blue melting into midnight. “Didn’t you see the police tape?” I asked him.

“What tape?”

“The yellow tape across the porch.”

“I thought maybe you were having some work done.” He obviously hadn’t read the lettering on it and had confused it with construction tape.

Couldn’t he smell the blood? The stink made my stomach turn over. Or maybe that was just nerves. I cast around for the words to say and saw only the bloodstain.

I brought my eyes back to Connor’s before he saw it. “I hate to tell you this, but she’s dead.”

“Oh, man!” He rocked back on the chair, then banged the legs down. “Was it that dude who killed her?”

“Which ‘dude’?” The word sounded unnatural in my voice.

“Rubin. I was almost running out in my boxers, getting out of there so fast. Guess I could have ended up dead too.”

Ah. “Why would he kill her?” I asked.

“Because she was with me.”

“What happened that night?”

“Hey, do you have something to drink? I’m kind of wired right now.” He breathed a ragged sigh. “To be honest, that was one of the reasons I came by. I mean, I wanted to see her and everything, but I thought she’d have some wine—that’s what we were drinking that night—even though maybe she’d have someone here, that guy Rubin maybe. I was fiending enough to brave it. I couldn’t even call her, didn’t even know her last name to call four one one.”

“You want to drink now? It’s the morning.”

“I’ve been up all night. I took like five Ritalin my friend sold me, and I’m wired.”

“You haven’t gone home? Aren’t you going to be in trouble?”

“I was sleeping over at a friend’s house.” He had a husky voice. Maybe it was from staying up all night, but my eighth grade crush had the same kind of voice.

I jumped up to see what I could find. While I didn’t want to encourage drinking in the morning—everybody knew that was a warning sign—I wanted him to stay and tell me everything he knew.

I opened the cabinet and scanned the shelves. Only a bottle of tequila.

Connor’s chair scraped against the floor, and then he stood beside me, looking so tall as to seem stretched. Sitting down we’d looked the same size. He grabbed the bottle. “I don’t even need no salt or lime. I’ll do it straight.”

I fished in the cupboard for a glass, but all I came up with was a Barton Springs plastic lemonade cup.

“I need something, man. I’m outta my head here, and now you tell me she died. I’m sorry and everything, but I’m kind of tripping.”

My hand shook as I sloshed tequila into the cup. The tequila looked like the virgin olive oil my mom and I cooked with, and my stomach, fragile from the images of blood, seemed to slosh as well.

He gulped some of the tequila, his mouth twisting at the taste. “How did she die?”

“Supposedly she killed herself.”

“Oh, no way.” He sat down, still grimacing. “We had a great time that night. Maybe she wasn’t doing so good when I first showed up, but I

I asked him again, what happened, to tell me everything. I knew Rhian’s perspective so well, I could see from her eyes now…

He drove up, bass throbbing with a hostile rap song. The music cut off abruptly. I waited on the floral-patterned love seat, the only place to sit down other than the bed until the knock at the door. Opening it without a smile, I said, “That was subtle.”

“I’m Connor—Jack’s friend?”

“Got it.” I cleared the notebook off the loveseat.

He pulled a sandwich Baggie from his jeans pocket, and I handed him some bills.

“Are you old enough to drink?” I asked, going to the kitchen counter where I poured wine into a juice glass.

“How old do you think I am?” He accepted the glass.

“Oh, don’t be coy.”

“Fifteen.” He gulped the wine. “Mmm, this is good.”

“You’re so young, I could be your big sister.” I sipped from my glass.

“Yeah, right. How old are you?”

“Guess.” I sat down on the other side of the couch.

“Oh, come on, don’t make me do that.”

“Guess!”

“I’m terrible at guessing. I always say too old, and then everyone gets mad.” He lit the joint and said, “Ladies first,” handing it to me.

I smiled slyly. “Or is it children?” I admired the tight roll of the joint. Somehow, I’d never learned to do that. Mine looked like a snake that had just swallowed a mouse, with its guts falling out both its top and bottom ends. “I’m eighteen.”

He shifted toward me. “All my girlfriends are older.”

I could see he watched as I inhaled as if diving into a pool. The smoke tickled my throat, but I was determined not to cough.

Leaning back on the couch, I said, “I’ve been waiting so long. Your friend said it would be no later than noon. And now here it is, almost twelve hours later.” This was what it was like now that I wasn’t running to Rubin for his stuff. I had to deal with the neighborhood children and their friends. I exhaled a stream of smoke to the ceiling.

“Not twelve hours—eleven.” He pinched the joint with his fingers and returned to the earlier topic. “It’s always been older women. Even when I was eight years old,” he said as if to reassure me that I couldn’t be too old for him.

“That’s not sexual experience, that’s sexual abuse.” I retrieved my glass from the floor.

“My friend and me knew what was going on. She was our babysitter.” He slurped some wine from his juice glass.

“A babysitter?”

“Actually, a cousin. She was fifteen. We were eight. She used to make us watch her go to the bathroom. We told all our friends, they thought it was cool.” He proffered the joint again.

I stared at him. “No wonder you’re doing drugs at fifteen.”

“Twelve was when I lost my virginity. She was seventeen.”

“So I could just be one of a long line of older girls who abused you?”

“I’ve got other places to be,” he said, suddenly coy.

“But you’re so late already.”

“It wasn’t my fault.” His downcast eyelashes were dark for his hair.

“Is that what you tell your mommy too? You’re way off schedule, what does it matter now?”

“Because this is about money. I even have my own wheels.” He waved his hand that I should take a look. We walked to the window where he proudly pointed at the Honda, decked out with teddy-bear rims.

The phone rang in the middle of his explanation of the car’s features. “That your boyfriend?” he asked.

I made no move to answer it. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Why not? You’re so pretty.” The phone stopped ringing, then started again. “Should I be scared?”

“Don’t be scared, little boy.” The phone stopped.

“Heck, I’m not scared. I’ll beat their asses. How big are they?”

“Well, Brandon isn’t that tall, but he gets in these rages. And Rubin’s mad at me too.”

“How could he be mad at you?”

How to explain? How he wouldn’t let me get away, even though he already had a long-term girlfriend. How he would call and tempt me with his goodies, or I would get too depressed and need a jolt to the head that only cocaine could supply.

“You’re pretty,” he said.

“And you are an adorable little boy.” With my finger, I wiped the wine stain from his upper lip.

Sheepish, he lifted his shirt to wipe his mouth. He smiled, catching my look at his exposed stomach. “I’ll show you I’m not a little boy.”

“Great lines already too.”

When a loud knock sounded at the door, he said,

“I thought you weren’t expecting anyone.”

“I’m not.”

Rubin’s voice from outside shouted, “Rhian, open the door!”

 “You’d better go out the window,” I said. “You can sneak back for your car later.”

The knocking segued into insistent kicking. I led him to the back window. He was on the ground before he turned around. “Wait,” he said and kissed me on the mouth.

“He was pretty fast for an old guy,” Connor said to me. The air-conditioning unit whooshed on, and we both jumped. “But he didn’t catch me. After a while, I snuck back, got my car and took off.”

“You didn’t talk to her again?” I sipped tequila from his plastic cup, and it burst into flames in my stomach. How could Vic drink shots of that stuff?

“I’d sort of had enough excitement for one night. And, like I said, I was out of there so fast, I didn’t even have a chance to get her number.”

I nodded. “Did you see anyone else?”

“It was dark. I heard some dogs barking, but that was it.” He pushed the cup toward me. “Can I have some more?”

I dolloped in the tequila, forcing myself to breathe out of my mouth so I wouldn’t have to smell it.

A car door slammed out front, and we shared an instant of shock. He bolted up first. “I know the drill.”

“Take the bottle and the cup!” I whispered, hauling on the backpack.

Grabbing them, he ran to the window, raised it, and left. I clambered out after him, not quite as gracefully.

Connor scampered off to who knows where, maybe to his friend down the street. As for me, I did my usual skirting down the alley, and then back to the street where my car was parked.

When I drove past the duplex, I saw the car, bristling with antennae and screaming “cop car.” I craned my neck to see who had arrived. Through the window, I saw Sergeant Valasia stomping around.

That I hadn’t expected. I was tempted to call him to find out what was going on, but I didn’t want to alert him that I’d been at Rhian’s. I’d told Connor to take the bottle and the cup, but we had left fingerprints and, surely, other signs.

I tried to calm myself. The investigation was over. Sergeant Valasia wouldn’t have come back, unless to return diaries.

I drove on.

* * *

I kept checking the Cedar Heights Statesman website the whole next day, as if anything that happened at the police department would immediately turn up online. Finally, unable to stand it any longer, I called Sergeant Valasia.

His voice was even louder than I remembered, booming into the phone. “Keira, I didn’t know you cared.”

“Um, I j-just…I wanted to know what was happening with the Rhian Sullivan case.”

“Oh, darn, and I thought you were calling because you hadn’t said good-bye.”

I didn’t know how to respond. What I wanted to say was his lusting after young girls was at least partly responsible for my not working at the police department anymore. I was getting in over my head, Beth Ann had said.

Now watch me get in over my head, I thought defiantly. Watch me sneak into Rhian’s repeatedly.

And I had something else planned too.

“Funny you should ask,” Sergeant Valasia said. “It was the damnedest thing. We got this anonymous tip.”

He stopped talking, and in the silence, I realized I was supposed to beg for more. “A tip?”

“This is like out of a book or something. He described a passageway between the two duplexes.”

My breath quickened. “What was in there?”

“This has never happened to me in all my years as an investigator.”

I wasn’t going to tell him that made him sound really old.

“A secret passageway,” he went on. “And guess what was in it?”

“A gun?”

“We have the gun. It was a shirt, used to wipe off the cordite on his hands. A bottle of bleach in there, as well.”

“Whose shirt was it?”

“You remember the boyfriend?”

“Which one?”

He gave a hearty laugh. “Good one, Keira. The guy who discovered her.”

“Brandon?”

“Oh, first names now?”

Luckily, he couldn’t see me flushing. “So he held the shirt around his hand when he fired?”

“Must have. You know after you graduate high school, you should think of joining the academy. I’d give you a reference, and that would mean a lot.”

“Thanks,” I said, but I wanted to get my next thought out. “Why would Brandon leave it there? Wouldn’t he know it would be found eventually?”

“It was actually a pretty good hiding spot. And if the parents discovered it, they would probably think some workman left it in there rather than connecting it to their daughter’s death.”

Brandon had been their workman before he’d become Rhian’s boyfriend. “Did you arrest him?”

“Sure did. We told him, ‘If you confess, we’ll go easier on you. You should have told us that night you caught her with someone else. No one could blame you, boy. Any of us in your position would feel the same, we’d want to pop her, the guy, too.’ But he denied it, stuck to his original story.”

Through Sergeant Valasia’s frustrated tone, I heard the beep of call waiting. Examining the phone’s screen, I thought, Typical. Why does Vic only appear when another guy’s involved?

* * *

The taillights of an SUV glowed in front of us, and Vic hit his brakes. He wasn’t working, and he wasn’t with his cousins or at the gym with his fellow patrol officers. He wasn’t in South Texas. We were having an actual date, but it was no good because he was in such a bad mood.

“Why did you call Sergeant Valasia?” he said, staring at the traffic, not at me.

“I wanted to know what was happening on the case.”

“There was no case.”

“I don’t understand why Sergeant Valasia arrested Brandon.”

“You’re giving Sergeant Valasia the wrong idea,” Vic said. “He’ll think you’re interested in him.”

The air-conditioning was on so high in his truck that my legs had become unattractively mottled, like chicken skin. I adjusted the air a notch lower and angled my vent away. “I’m not! I could be his daughter, he’s so old.”

“But I’m glad he arrested that Brandon. Even if he didn’t do it, he still deserved to be arrested, just for being such a pendeho.”

“But is there enough evidence?”

“You were always reciting it, like a pinche parakeet.”

I shot him a glare. “Well, Brandon broke in that night. He’d been drinking, and maybe he brought the gun. But it’s not like he was the only unstable ex-boyfriend in Rhian’s life. I pulled down the passenger-side visor. The sun did not shine, but I wanted to block out the expanse of gray sky.

“Who was the other one?” He reached over and flipped up my visor. “I can’t see with that thing over there.”

“The drug dealer. Rubin.”

“How do you know he’s unstable?”

“He’s a drug dealer.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s unstable.”

I couldn’t tell him without revealing that I had read more of the diaries. How Rubin had burned his hand once when Rhian tried to break up with him. Someone willing to hurt himself might be desperate enough to kill, especially if he found her with someone else.

“What a slut,” Vic said.

“The drug dealer was the slut. He already had a girlfriend, but he was always luring Rhian back with drugs.”

“So she was a coke whore?”

I grimaced. “Don’t talk like that.”

We were going about five miles an hour. The faces of the drivers, resigned to another Cedar Heights traffic jam, depressed me, as did the heavy clouds in the sky. I remembered what Rhian wrote about the oppressive clouds, the molecules of blackness seeping into the cornices of her brain.

A bloated fly was trapped in the car, and he seemed intent on tormenting me, repeatedly landing on the same spot on my knee. Slapping at that stupid fly again, I said, “What if she turned into a witness against him for his drug dealing? What if she’d gone to the police about him? That would make a good motive.”

“We ran her name once we ID’d her. She wasn’t in the APD database.”

“Maybe she was someone’s confidential informant. Then she wouldn’t be in the database.” I had picked up that much from being around the police department those four weeks.

“Why would someone do that to somebody that loved them?”

“Because she couldn’t get away from him. He gave her coke, and she couldn’t resist it. He had a girlfriend, but he wouldn’t let Rhian go. She worried she’d end up either dead or in prison. And look what happened. She did end up dead.”

We’d stopped near a sign on the side of the highway: 65 MPH. Vic turned his head, and crept his hand closer to my knee.

“You can’t catch him,” I said, but softly.

Vic’s hand snatched. The fly was gone. He must have flown away.

Vic opened his fingers. The fly lay with crushed wings in the middle of his palm.

I stared at Vic. “I didn’t know anyone could do that.”

He didn’t smile, but I could tell he was pleased. “I have extremely quick reflexes.”

“Did you kill it?” I felt like crying for the poor bashed-in body.

He rolled down the window, and the fly flew off. “He’s OK.”

I turned and looked out the rear window, as if I could see the fly. The warm air rushing in was a relief after the frigid air-conditioning.

* * *

That afternoon, when Rubin answered the door, I realized he was totally typecast for the part of drug dealer. His heavy-lidded eyes drooped, and he wore his black, wavy hair all in one length to his shoulders. Facial hair sprouted from his chin in a style I always thought looked devilish. He gave off an air of danger, but also of command.

“Are you Rubin?” I asked.

“Yeah?”

“I’m a friend of Rhian’s.” I was as anxious as if giving a speech in front of the class. Rubin said, “Rhian didn’t have any girlfriends.”

“Why not?”

“They were jealous.” His expression was totally flat. “How did you know where I live?”

“Doesn’t that prove I knew her? She told me.”

“So what do you want?” He pulled the door behind almost all the way shut so I couldn’t see inside.

I licked my lips. “I wanting to know, I guess, why?”

He stared at me with cold, blank eyes. I found it hard to imagine that he cared so much about Rhian that he’d burned his hand during one of their breakups.

I tried to get a look at his hand as I continued. “You were close to Rhian, right?”

His lack of expression was a little chilling. “Yeah, I was acquainted with her. A lot of people were.”

“And you knew she died.” I didn’t try to spare his feelings, as he seemed to have none. “How did you find out?”

He shrugged. “It was in the paper, somebody told me. What do you want, man?” He narrowed his eyes.

I wanted to run down the step and into my car. “I already said. Rhian.”

“No one comes here unless they want something.”

I had no idea how drug dealing worked. Was he asking whether I wanted to buy some of his product? I hadn’t planned on saying this so early in the conversation, but I wanted to goad him into revealing he cared.

“You were seen at Rhian’s the night of her death.” “Who says?”

I shook my hea“I really can’t say.”

Rubin snorted. “Probably that transsexual next door, walking his fairy dog.”

The crude language repulsed me. Was that his intent, to put me off? “If it was him, why would he say you were there the night Rhian died if you hadn’t been?”

“Make himself feel important, I guess. He wished he were doing her…jealousy…I don’t know.” He had become nonchalant, as if Rhian was nothing to him.

“Where were you then if you weren’t with Rhian?”

“What’s your name again?”

“Keira,” I said reluctantly.

“This is starting to sound like an interrogation.”

“If you had seen her that night, I would expect you to feel devastated, that’s all,” I said. “So where were you Sunday night?”

“With my homeboys, like I always am.”

“Not your girlfriend?”

He ran his left hand through his hair, and I saw the scar across his skin. The manipulation had worked, and Rhian had returned to him, although she’d threatened to tell his mother if he did anything like that again. He glanced across the street at the squat, stucco houses, as if bored with my annoying questions. “Look, Rhian killed herself. She had a lot of personal problems, always depressed, talking about killing herself. Finally, I just told her, if you’re going to do it, just do it. I don’t want to hear about it anymore.”

“It’s hard to know how to handle someone like that.”

“Yeah, so finally I said, ‘You don’t care about yourself, man, I won’t care about you.’”

“That must have been hard, especially when you already had a girlfriend.”

“Rhian was a great piece of ass, but she wasn’t worth losing—” He broke off.

I turned to see what he was looking at. An older-model Honda, painted a color red no longer popular, parked in front of his house. A girl jumped out. She wore the obligatory tight jeans and had a cow-like cleavage that she was obviously showing off. She was about fifteen pounds overweight, but that didn’t seem to bother her. As she got closer, I saw lashings of eye makeup, as if her lids were peacock tails. The pretty eyes glowered at me stonily, and I wondered if she thought I was Rhian’s replacement.

“Who’s she?” Her tone was hostile.

“Monica!” His voice chastised her. “The girl was just leaving.”

I turned to do just that when I heard footsteps pelting and a male voice bellowing, “Everyone freeze!” I flung my hands into the air.

Officers streamed out of the alleyway and from across the road. Two patrol cars raced up from opposite ends of the street. “Put your hands in the air!” men kept shouting.

I looked over at Rubin, who gave me such a nasty glare, I glanced quickly away.

Monica screamed, “Don’t touch me! You have no right to be here! I ain’t done nothing!” A red-faced officer dragged her away from the front step, spun her around, and flattened her onto one of the patrol cars that had pulled up. The metal popped from her weight. She raised her head and glared at me through the hair falling in her face. “I’m going to get that bitch, that narc!”

He cuffed her, banged her head on the trunk, and shouted, “Shut up!” When he saw that I watched his violent display, he scowled at me. I dropped my gaze while an officer led me across the road. Heat shimmered in the air, and I wondered if I was having a temperature-induced hallucination. I remembered Dr. Greene’s question, “Are you seeing things?” I felt like I would faint from the brutal heat squashing me to the ground.

“Stand here,” the officer barked. He didn’t meet my gaze as though I was invisible, even though he ran his hands up my bare legs and fiddled in the front pocket of my shorts. I had nothing on me. Yet I was worried what he would find.

Three officers surrounding Rubin at the door patted him down. They yanked something out of his baggy jeans pocket and passed it around among themselves. I strained, but it was too small for me to see what it was.

As if sensing me watching, Rubin looked up and gave me the evil eye. I knew from Vic that in Latino culture the evil eye has great power, and I stepped back. I wanted to mouth to Rubin, “It wasn’t me.” But I knew I wouldn’t convince him. I thought about asking for Sergeant Valasia or even Josh’s dad. As homicide investigators, everyone knew who they were, and they had tons of authority. But neither would appreciate my interest in Rhian’s case.

I said in a small voice, “I’m dating a police officer. Can you call him?”

“How old are you?” The officer minding me had a surprisingly high-pitched voice.

“Seventeen.”

“Aren’t you a little young?”

“Vic Alvarez. He’s new.”

“A rookie?” He was chewing gum.

“Will you call him?”

 

* * *

 

When the doorbell rang later that afternoon, I figured it was Vic, but from years of being on my own after school, I looked out the peephole. It was Monica.

I’d been trying to figure out a way I could talk to her alone, and she’d appeared as if I had conjured her. But, remembering her screaming at me outside Rubin’s, I knew I had to take some precaution. I dialed Vic, but, as usual, the ringing only turned over to voice mail. He’d probably gone to sleep and was still mad anyway that he’d had to vouch for me at Rubin’s. And I was still mad he hadn’t come down there to get me, as the officers had asked him. But he claimed he was “in the middle of something and couldn’t break away.” Later, when we’d argued about it, he’d said, “I told you to stop. I said you were going to get in trouble or get hurt. And look what happened. You needed to be taught a lesson.” As if he was a parent or something!

When I opened the door to Monica, she said, “Come on out and talk to me. You don’t want me inside your nice house.” I hesitated, and she yanked me by the arm before I could resist. Then, her friends swarmed out of the bushes. Like insects.

“You think you’re so much better than us,” Monica said, “because you live on the west side.”

“I don’t think I’m better than you!” I lived in an ordinary neighborhood. The ranch-style houses weren’t so different from the ones in Rubin’s area, though we didn’t have pit bulls in the yards and bars on the windows.

My gaze darted about for an escape as the girls crowded closer. They were variations of each other with long hair and jeans, despite the heat.

“Stay away from Rubin, you got it?” Monica, in a sleeveless hoodie, was so close to me she sprayed spittle in my face.

I didn’t even wipe her spit away, that’s how scared I was. “I’m not interested in Rubin. I have a boyfriend.”

She pushed her body against me. She was soft, but the thrust was aggressive. “Then why did you come see him? No one just shows up on his doorstep.”

I tried to step away, but the other girls blocked me. “I wanted to talk to him about Rhian, that’s all.” I swallowed around the fear in my throat.

I heard a low, threatening “hmm,” among the girls at the mention of Rhian’s name, like a hive had opened and bees were pouring out. I imagined being stung all at once by tens of bees. Would they hurt me as much?

Monica reared back her head and bared her teeth. “You dare say her name?” Her lower teeth were a hodgepodge, and I thought of Sergeant Valasia. If only he’d just turn up now, but that was an impossibility.

I changed tracks. “I have a boyfriend. I don’t want anyone else.”

“Yeah, that’s what they all say.” As Monica’s mouth flapped open, I could see her tongue was spotted like a strawberry.

I backed up into a girl with crinkly, permed hair. She pushed back, and I became a human beach ball they punted to each other.

“My boyfriend’s a cop,” I said into one girl’s face as I careened toward her. “And I called him—”

“Where is he now, huh?” Someone shoved me from behind.

“I’m not interested in Rubin. I just—” I swallowed, hearing my voice warble. Crying would be like blood in the water to these girls.

“You’re just what?” Monica poked me in the chest, and I thought of Rhian’s wound.

Steeling myself for another jab, I stumbled backward. “I’m trying to find out if…Rhian killed herself or was murdered.”

The girls stopped shoving and looked toward Monica for her reaction. “Are you trying to say Rubin killed her?” she said, her eyes wide.

“No!” I shook my head vehemently. “I was just trying to find out what he knew, whether he saw anything that night.”

“So how do you know he was there?”

“A neighbor.”

She flapped her hand. “That ain’t no proof.”

“The best thing that girl ever did was kill herself,” said a girl with super-straight hair that could only come from a flatiron.

Another girl high-fived her, and Monica said, “If she hadn’t killed herself, I would have done it myself, I swear.”

“Oooh.” The girls chewed their gum excitedly, showing their teeth.

“Did you?” I asked.

Shocked silence at my question along with wads of gum in open mouths.

I kept talking. “There was another shot in the wall, from a different gun than the one that killed her. Did you try?”

The girls’ attention went to Monica as they waited for her to answer. During the silence I thought I’d gone deaf. I couldn’t hear any sound at all—not cars in the distance or shouts, nor the jet overhead. The clouds above her were shaped like waves behind the electric wires strung against the sky. The windows of the houses down the street stared out blankly.

“I’m going to do the same to you as I should have done to her.” Monica reached into the pocket of her hoodie and pulled out a gun, evil as a coiled, poisonous snake. I took a sharp intake of breath and held it.

The airplane droned, and I wondered if it was flying to where my dad lived. I hadn’t missed him, so resentful he’d left, but my sudden longing for him was so strong, I felt like Monica had stabbed me instead. I hadn’t seen him since the start of the summer, and I wouldn’t now.

She touched the barrel to my skull, and I froze. “I did see Rhian that night,” she hissed, and I sensed, even through my paralyzing fear, that this was news to her friends as well. “I followed Rubin there. He said he was going to Manny’s, but I knew that was a lie. And guess where he ended up?”

I held her gaze as my eyes filled with tears. Monica knocked the gun on my head. Pain radiated through my brain. I winced, and tears spilled down my cheeks. Hair stood up on my arms as if I was cold, even though the sun beat down cruelly.

If she shot me, would I feel the impact? What if Monica’s aim was off, and just parts of my face were blasted off? Because she was going to shoot. She was about to confess, but wouldn’t if she expected me to live.

She smiled without humor. “And guess what happened?”

The girls were silently enthralled at the drama. Their eyes held not a drop of sympathy for me.

“She was with someone else,” I whispered.

“How did you know?’

“I talked to the guy she was with. He was fifteen.”

“Oh my God.” One of the girls turned away in satisfied disgust. “Cradle robber.”

“Geez, I’m only fifteen,” said another.

Another one said, “Girl, you better be using protection with him putting his thing into that slut.”

I personally thought Monica’s boyfriend was the slut, but I kept that thought to myself.

“I followed Rubin there. He chased the guy out, probably beat his ass, I don’t know. But then he came back.”

“Don’t be telling her this, Monica,” said a girl whose acne looked like purple craters on her skin.

“No!” she shouted. “She be wanting to know. She be putting her nose into other people’s business, I’ll tell her if she’s so interested. It’s not going to go any further. I’ll make sure of that.” More spit landed on my face. “Rubin was yelling, and then he slammed out of there, screeched down the driveway. He didn’t even see me waiting in my car up the street.

“So then I went in.” She looked proudly at her gun. “With this little piece. And I said, ‘You are so sick with all the guys, you slut.’ And she said, ‘I know, and so far the therapy hasn’t been helping.’” Monica put her hand on her hip and kinked it, as if imitating Rhian.

The girls giggled nervously, and one of them said, “Crazy!”

“So I said, ‘Get out one of your suicide notes.’ Rubin told me he didn’t want her any more, that she was sick, always talking about dying, writing dark shit like that down.”

The girls laughed harder, and she egged them on. “Get out one of those ‘poor me’ letters. ‘I’ve got it so bad. Boo-hoo.’ And you know what she said, ‘All this time, I wanted to die, but now that it might actually happen, I don’t want it to.’ I said, ‘Shut up and find a note.’ It didn’t take long for her to find one neither. Then I told her, ‘Sign it.’ And then—can you believe it? She started arguing about it.” Monica’s tone was withering.

“Wasn’t she scared?” the girl with the perm said.

Monica’s eyes flitted back and forth, as though she was remembering. “She didn’t have the guts to kill herself, so I’d take care of her. She wasn’t scared like this one.”

I saw my fear reflected in her pupils.

“You know what she said then? ‘Suicide notes don’t have to be signed. Sometimes you feel too invisible at that point.’”

The girl next to Monica rolled her eyes. Another one did the swirling “cuckoo” motion with her fingers near her head.

“And I said, ‘Well, this one you’ll sign, so there’ll be no questions.’ So she does and then whips the pen at my face.”

“Oooh,” the girls again chorused.

“She jumped on me, tried to get the gun away. So I fired.” Monica nodded at me and pursed her lips. “That must have been the shot in the wall.”

“Rhian’s ex-boyfriend, Brandon…He’s been arrested for killing her,” I choked out. “You don’t have to confess.”

She jumped as if she’d been stung. “My phone.” As she held the gun on me, she took her cell out of her jean pocket. She checked the screen.

“Oh my God!” Her gun hand dropped and the other went to her mouth, which twisted into a grimace.

The girl with the dead-straight hair questioned her in Spanish, grabbing her arm. Monica answered in English. “Rubin was shot. He’s dead!”

* * *

“Why did you bring me here?” I asked.

Vic wiped his forehead. “It’s so hot.” He went to the window unit in Rhian’s duplex and blasted it on high. “You were going to come back here anyway, right? So it might as well be with me.” His voice was light, and I couldn’t read his mood.

“Oka-a-a-y.” As I drew out the word, I tried to see his expression, but his face was shadowed by the evening’s darkness. I tried to match his teasing tone. “I thought you didn’t like this place, the ghosts. Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.” I reached out and touched his arm, expecting heat.

His skin was cold. “That’s OK, I’ve got this.” He pulled his gun out of the waistband of his jeans.

“Ugh, why did you bring that in here? You know I hate guns.”

“Just in case. No way I’m sitting in an abandoned house without something.”

I turned and went to the bed where I sat on the mattress. “So Rubin was shot? What did you find out?”

Vic peered through the blinds. The street in front was as quiet as the alleyway where we’d parked.

“Well?”

I heard the smile in his voice. “You don’t know how good you look.” His shadowy form moved toward me, and then sank onto the mattress beside me.

His teeth flashed in the darkness.

I tried to read his face—this whole situation was so weird—but he looked like someone I didn’t even know. All summer, I had thought of him so often.

Vic’s cell phone rang. Glancing at the screen, he frowned and got up from the bed. “Sorry, I have to take this. It’s my cousin.”

As he talked into his cell, he drifted toward the window. His tennis shoes were soundless on the wood floor, and I remembered the heavy clomping of Sergeant Valasia’s boots. Vic was right. Sergeant Valasia would never make an appearance at this time of night.

Vic’s voice in Spanish lapped up and down, like a wave rather than speech. I regretted that I had elected French in ninth grade, but it was too late to change course. Although I’d heard once you learned one Latin language, another one was easy, French seemed to make me incapable of understanding anything in Spanish.

My mind rewound to earlier that afternoon. I remembered the mountain of clouds that had loomed behind Monica and that gun barrel, the opening of which was black and empty as the summer.

When I called my dad after Monica left, I didn’t tell him what happened, although I was crying. All I said was, “Dad, come back.”

“My job,” was all I heard.

“Please. Mom misses you. I miss you.”

“I’ve already started here.”

“So?”

He’d chuckled then as if I’d said something cute and naive.

Vic’s voice broke through my thoughts. He was talking so long and seriously, I wondered if his cousin had died. But the tone of his voice almost seemed angry, or was that just the Spanish? I had misread before the raised voices and rapid speech patterns of people speaking Spanish.

Focused on his conversation, he didn’t pay me any attention. At first that bothered me. He had brought me here, which had to win the contest for “weirdest place to take a girl.,”

Then I realized I could take advantage of Vic’s lack of attention.

I gripped my sandals with my toes so they wouldn’t slap against my heels as I hurried toward the trunk. If I’d known we’d be coming here, I would have brought all the diaries I’d finished reading and replaced them with more.

I opened the trunk, which squeaked. I glanced at Vic, but he was gesticulating into the air, his back to me. I leaned into the yawning darkness of the trunk and felt around. A wire from one of the spiral notebooks stabbed my finger. I jerked it back, as if something waited in there.

As I sucked my finger and tasted metallic blood, my eyes adjusted to see the stacks inside. I lifted off the top notebook, which was tangled around the next. The spiral wires had come undone and reached out like tentacles.

I flung a last glance at Vic. His profile was shadowed, but backlit from the moon through the window. I unwound the notebook and carried it off, forcing my toes to cling to the now-sweaty surface of my sandals, so I wouldn’t make a noise as I scurried to the bathroom, the only place I could switch on a light where no one could see.

In the mirror, my pupils were huge, scary. I didn’t know if that was from skulking around in the dark, or the drugs. I sat on to the edge of the bathtub to read. It was one of those cool, freestanding tubs with lions’ paws resting on a black-and-white checkered floor.

I read the words, Vic, Rubin’s cop friend, and the face in the mirror was now Rhian’s. I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting to see Rhian’s face as my own. I tried to force my thoughts in a straight line, but they swooped and spiraled.

I placed my hand to my chest. The ribs were a fragile cage for my heart. I jumped at the sudden hammering on the door. The doorknob jiggled, and my heart flew into my throat.

“What are you doing?” he called.

“What do you think?” My voice reassured me. It didn’t match the stricken face in the mirror. I flushed the toilet for its noise and opened the linen closet. Paint made it sticky, and I had to pull hard. At the same time, I took out my phone.

“Who are you calling?” he said, obviously hearing the number pads being pressed, even over the water I ran in the sink. I finished entering 911, and then flushed the toilet. I heard the robotic tone, “What’s your emergency?” from the dispatcher, talked fast, and prayed Vic couldn’t hear it over the water.

I crammed the notebook in the cabinet and slammed the door shut. I opened the medicine cabinet to see aspirin, antidepressants, and a razor…along with a hand mirror with lines of cocaine waddling across them. I reached for it, but it slipped off the shelf and crashed into the sink. The sodden coke went down the drain.

“What’s going on?” he said, his voice raised.

I shoved the razor down the front pocket of my jeans as he pushed at the door. Luckily, it jammed.

When I opened the door, his gaze cast around the room as if another person could be hiding in there. “Keira, what were you doing? Were you trying to sneak the coke? Why didn’t you wait for me?” He ducked into the bathroom and peered in the sink. “Ah, what did you do? That’s fifty dollars right there.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t feel good. I want to go home.” Despite what I said, I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to leave what felt like the safety of the bathroom and be alone with Vic and his gun. Funny, when I had pined for him all summer.

Why hadn’t I listened to my mother, to Beth Ann, to Sergeant Valasia? Everyone said I shouldn’t date Vic. But they hadn’t warned me he was dangerous.

He took my arm and led me out into the studio. My feet slapped noisily against my shoes. My soles oozed sweat, and my palms did too.

“You can’t go home,” he said.

“That’s who I was calling,” I thought to say. “I told her you were here with me.”

“What did you do that for?”

Even though I trembled inside, I shrugged, pretending not to react to his angry tone. “Let’s just go. Can’t we drive around, go someplace?”

He laughed. “Is there anything to drink here?”

“You want a drink?”

“I’m just so freaked out.”

“She’d probably have something.You’re just high. And I’m buzzed too. I can’t drive right now.”

“Can you get me something to drink then?” I wondered if I could distract him, maybe I could run.

“That’s a good idea. It’ll calm you down.” He touched my neck. “I can even see your pulse jumping.”

He could tell how scared I was.

Vic went to the kitchen, and I glanced at the door. Could I outrun him? No, he was faster, and he had police training. He would catch up to me before I could reach Mr. Thomlison’s or any of the neighbors. And he had a gun.

From the cabinet, Vic brought down the bottle of tequila. When he opened it, I could smell the fumes, like gasoline at a pump. He sloshed some tequila in a glass and handed it to me. “Here, this’ll help.”

I gulped at it desperately. What was I going to do? Maybe if I was calmer, I could think of how to get out of this, keep him from suspecting what I knew. The flames of alcohol danced down the inside of my chest.

He took the glass and chugged the rest. He gasped, the back of his hand to his mouth, then said, “You know I saved you from Monica?” He dropped his hand to see my reaction.

“How? I called you when I saw her at the door. You didn’t come.”

“I couldn’t turn up at your house. Monica and her friends know who I am.”

I thought of the words I’d read in the diary. Vic, Rubin’s cop friend. “So are you some drug dealer, like Rubin?”

He reached for my hands, but I jerked away, and he caught my wrists instead. “Yes, he was my friend, and I killed him. I did that for you too.”

He grasped my upper arms, which were raised with goose bumps.

“And you set up Brandon too, then? You made the anonymous call. You stole his shirt from his room and planted the evidence?” I knew police could trace a hang-up phone call to a landline phone, but to a cell? Would they do that?

“You figured it all out, baby. Are you proud of yourself now?”

“How can a police officer be a drug dealer?”

“I was sent here by the boss man. It does help to have someone inside the force, and a place to take the business. And I was tapped to do it.”

“That’s why you were always running back to south Texas. What, to get more drugs to sell up here?”

His teeth gleamed in the darkness. I couldn’t tell if it was a smile or a grimace.

“So your cousin being hit by a car was a lie?”

“He was in the hospital, that was true. But he’d been shot by the Los Zetos cartel.” He traced his finger on my face. In these last several weeks, I had craved this kind of attention, but now I was repulsed. He said, “You’re beautiful, and you don’t even know it yet.”

My eyes filled with tears.

“Why did you have to be so smart, try to figure everything out? Why didn’t you just accept it the way it was?”

“You were everything I wasn’t. Virginal, churchgoing, so innocent. I was never like that, even when I was little. I grew up around the cartel. They adopted me. There was no way I could do anything else.” He pulled out his gun. “I love you, Rhian.”

I swallowed. “Why are you saying that now?”

“Because I do.” Tears shone in his eyes.

“Then why?”

“How else can it play? I’ll be killed if I don’t do this. I already had to justify Rubin to the boss man. I told him Rubin was losing control, blowing his cover, and that’s why he got arrested. Was so hung up on some girl, he would do anything for her.”

A car door slammed outside, and Vic’s head whipped around.

“Probably just a neighbor,” I whispered, but my body suffused with energy.

His body stiffened, as if he felt the charge of hope flow through me. He dragged me to the window like a rag doll with the gun held against my head, just Monica had earlier. “The cops! Did you call them?” he hissed.

“No!” I said. “Maybe someone saw us go in. There’s that nosy neighbor I talked to once, Mr. Thomlison.”

“Why couldn’t you just listen and leave everything alone?” He shook me.

My teeth rattled, but I decided to use the old ploy of keep talking. “They’ll trace it to your gun.”

“This is a throwaway.”

Great. An unregistered gun. Officers found them at scenes and took them as their own.

“And you’re going to commit suicide,” he went on. “They’ll read your diaries, talk to the ladies at Victim Services, your mother. They’ll all say how depressed you were, how disturbed. You took my gun, and used it on yourself.”

Vic was right—all the evidence pointed that way.

As he started to drag me to the mattress, I shoved my hand in my front pocket. Pulling it out, I lashed at him with the razor.

He loosened his grip, his hand clutching the cut on his arm. “You bitch, what did you do?”

I backed away. As he cocked the gun, I lunged again. He fired.

The noise of the gun hurt as much as the burn in my chest, as if I had drank a whole bottle of tequila at once.

All summer, sleep had eluded me. Now I could rest. I could close my eyes and finally lose myself to unconsciousness.

But I didn’t even blink. I didn’t want it to go dark.

“Don’t look at me,” he said, his voice fierce.

I couldn’t smell the blood, but I saw blackness pumping out of me. I thought about my mother on her hands and knees, scrubbing it later, and I loved her then with all the pain in my heart.

A knock sounded on the door, and Vic turned, his hand seeking to comfort the bleeding gash on his arm. A deep male voice shouted, “Open up! Police!”

Vic wrapped the gun in the sheet so that his fingerprints wouldn’t show gunpowder. He was getting ready to fire again. He would explain the cordite on his hands from the first shot, that he’d been trying to wrestle the gun away from me. I knew now exactly how his mind worked. Too late.

The door burst open, and two officers raced through it, guns drawn. Vic dropped the gun near me and raised his hands in the air. “Don’t! It’s my girlfriend, she shot herself.”

I tried to speak but could only gurgle. Everything was starting to go black around the edges, or maybe it was all the navy uniforms milling around.

“Get away from her. Go stand over there,” said one of the officers. The other one called for an ambulance. It seemed safe now to let go. I had to trust that they knew what they were doing. Vic was smooth. He had fooled me. He told lies as well as if they had been the truth. I wasn’t even sure he knew what the truth was. That’s why he was so convincing.

But I had set up the evidence. Surely Sergeant Valasia would see the truth.

And I would live.

 

END

 

Jacqueline Corcoran is a social worker, psychotherapist, college professor, and author.  She lives in the Washington DC area with her family.