“I didn’t help my own case,” he says. “I was a little bitch about it. Used to go home crying. Which then got me my ass kicked, because Steve didn’t like crybabies. But yeah. It stayed with me a while. Obviously.”
I feel nauseated. I sit down on my bottom in front of him, my legs crossed.
“So anyway. I tried to avoid her when she started coming around the shelter. But I’d dropped out of school and I was stuck with all these . . . these sad, sad people. And there was so much I’d never been able to say out loud, to anyone, about . . . all the stuff we’d been through. Me and my family, I mean. And Zahra just . . . she knew how to listen. I don’t know how to explain it. I just . . . talking to her was so easy, and that kinda stuff’s never easy for me.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I get it.” It’s starting to become a familiar story, as much as it hurts to realize. All these people, with all their pain, drawn to her, stunned by how easy it is to talk to her. Prickly Tabitha with her absent parents, and Ben, with the loss of his father. Me, on the heels of my own parents’ divorce, and all the rage I’d been keeping inside for so long. Did we find her, or did she find us?
“She got you that bracelet?” I ask.
He touches his wrist. “Yeah. Yeah, we talked a lot about . . . you know, trying to move on, after something bad’s happened. About the stuff my stepdad used to do and the way it just kept coming back again and again to fuck up my life, even after it was over.”
“Trauma,” I say simply.
“I guess.” He rubs the back of his neck, like he’s embarrassed by the word. “We were just friends,” he says, more urgently. “She told me early on she had a boyfriend and it was serious. I knew. I knew it wasn’t going to happen.”
“But?” I say gently.
“But I’m a moron,” he says. “And I fucked up. I kissed her. It was such a stupid thing to do, but we were up at Point Woronzof, and the sun was going down, and the way it lit her up . . .” He doesn’t trail off so much as clamp his mouth shut, swallow the words back.
“How’d she react?” I ask.
“She . . . she kissed back for a minute. And I thought maybe . . .” The look on his face is suddenly so young it’s startling. All the rough edges collapse for just a second and he looks naïve. “But it was stupid. She pulled away and she freaked out. She blamed herself for it, which . . . killed me. She kept saying it was her fault. I told her it wasn’t, I told her I’d never do it again. But that was the last time I spent any real time with her. She wouldn’t talk to me after that. Wouldn’t answer my texts, and if she saw me in the halls she’d dodge me, which really, really sucked. She was the one that talked me into coming back and finishing school. But then we started school and she wouldn’t even . . . she wouldn’t even talk to me.”
“When was this?” I ask.
“It was right before school started. Like, mid-August.”
I blink. “Wait . . . so you guys haven’t been talking for . . .”
“A month,” he says grimly. “She said she couldn’t risk it. She said she liked me but her boyfriend was too important to her. And she couldn’t trust herself, and she couldn’t trust me, to be cool about it.”
I frown. “Everyone made it sound like Ben thought she was cheating because of some guy who kept texting her,” I say. Though now that I think of it I’m not sure who “everyone” is—if it’s just the impression I got, or if it’s something someone actually said.
He shrugs. “I texted her for maybe a week after it happened. In August. But I stopped. I figured if she was done, I had to just . . . let it go.”
The sound of the warning bell echoes through the stairwell. He grimaces.
“Can I go now, officer?” he asks. “I’ve got a quiz in algebra I’ve got to get to.”
“Just one more thing,” I ask. “What were you doing the night she disappeared?”
He stands up, his long and spindly legs unfolding, and slings his backpack over his shoulder.
“Working,” he says. “I do the night shift at Bauer’s Donuts on the weekends.”
He takes a step toward the door.
“Hey, wait a second,” I say.
He pauses and sighs. “What now?”
“I . . .” I bite my lip. His back is still to me. That makes it easier. “I’m sorry,” I say, in a sudden rush. “About being so shitty to you back then. I’m really sorry.”
He gives a little shrug. I don’t expect him to say anything else, and I’m half turned away when he finally speaks, one foot on the stairs.
“The really fucked-up thing is that I was trying to make friends with you,” he says. His voice still has an acrid tang to it, like he’s speaking around something bitter. “Not Zahra.”
“What?” I stare at the back of his head, stunned. It makes no sense. Zahra was the one who was likable, who was magnetic, even. She was the one with the laugh that drew people in. “Why?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe just because you were so pissed off.”
I laugh a little. “I wasn’t pissed off! Why would you say that?”
“Just a feeling, I guess.” He turns his head to look back at me from the side of his eye. “Some kids, you can just tell they’ve been through some shit. And I knew you guys had left your dad, so I thought . . . maybe hers is like mine. I thought maybe you would get it.” He gives another little shrug. “But it was Zahra who seemed to get it, in the end.”
He pushes through the door without another word.
And I’m left, once again, wondering what Zahra had been through that I couldn’t seem to fathom.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“THIS IS THE MOST disgusting thing I’ve ever read in my entire life,” Ingrid says, thumbing through her battered copy of Kafka’s Metamorphosis.
It’s early evening, and Ingrid and I are sprawled in the rec room doing our homework. I stare down at my biology textbook, my gaze skating over the surface of the words without really taking anything in. There’s a circular flow chart on one page showing the citric acid cycle step by step—compounds consumed and regenerated in an endless loop of energy—but it’s hard to concentrate. My mind, too, keeps moving in loops. Around and around and around.
Talking with Seb left me with more questions than answers—and it’s not the questions about Zahra that are disturbing. I’ve always known that it’s hard for me to make friends—always. But in my memories, I’m the one that gets bullied. I’m the one that’s teased, or left out, or ignored. I’m not the one that goes on the attack.
Finding out that I may be oversimplifying the story is strangely jarring.
But I remember Mom telling me not to be such a snob, such a know-it-all. I remember when we moved to Walker Court and she acted like I was being a spoiled brat. The kids in the trailer park scared me a little—they were tough and independent, and they moved around in big brash groups that I didn’t know how to deal with. So I’d withdrawn. Gone into my own world, at least until I made friends with Zahra. And maybe in the process, I’d been less than careful with the people around me.
Maybe in the process, I’d hurt some of them.
Ingrid heaves a sigh, sits up, and throws the book across the room. It lands in the corner behind the cable box. “That’s it. I’m not reading this thing. It doesn’t even make any sense.”
“I think it’s supposed to be absurd,” I say vaguely. She shakes her head.
“Who wants more absurdity in their lives?” Ingrid asks. She grabs a pillow off the end of the couch and hugs it across her lap. “What’s going on with you, anyway? You’ve been quiet all night.”
I put down my pencil. She’s right—there’s not much point in studying right now. “Just thinking about Zahra, I guess. Wondering if Seb was honest about everything.”
I’ve already told her about the confrontation with Seb—about his claim that he’d been working the night sh
e vanished, and about the fact that he said he hadn’t spoken with Zahra in a few weeks.
“Did he ever . . . like, say anything, do anything, that creeped you out?” I ask. “At the shelter?”
She shrugs. “Have you ever been to a domestic abuse shelter? Everyone there’s shell-shocked.”
I try again. “Yeah, but did he ever cross a line?”
“I’m not really even supposed to be talking about this,” she says, shifting her weight. “I signed a confidentiality agreement.” Then, under my pleading stare, she sighs. “But no, he didn’t. He was quiet and he kept to himself. He helped in the kitchen every single day and he was really, really sweet with the little kids.”
“Hm,” I say. “I wish there were some way to verify his alibi. Just so I know for sure.”
Ingrid looks at me for a moment, then picks up her phone and dials.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
She holds up a finger. A moment passes. Then I hear someone pick up on the other line.
“Yes, hi.” She pitches her voice down a little. “I’m Susie Jacobson with Merrill High’s work program. Yes, I need to verify some work dates for one of our students so he can get school credit. Mm-hm. Yes, thank you, I’ll hold.” I watch as she bobs her head to the hold music. It’d almost be funny if it weren’t so impressive. “They’re playing Ariana’s new song,” she says to me over the receiver. Then she speaks into the phone again. “Oh, hi, yes. Yeah, I need all the shifts from the first pay period in September.” She snaps her fingers at me; it takes me a second to realize she wants my pencil. When I hand it to her she starts jotting things down in the margin of my biology book. “Mm-hm. Yes. Yes. Okay, great, that’s what he’s reported. I just needed to get it verified. Thank you so much!”
She circles one of the dates she’s scrawled down. “That Saturday he worked ten p.m. to ten a.m. He covered through the morning for a coworker who called in sick.”
“It’s as good an alibi as anyone has, I guess,” I say. Since we don’t know what happened to Zahra, we can’t make a time line—which means no one’s technically off the hook. He could have met up with her after getting off work—but anyone could have. In the end, it’s just another scrap of useless information.
“This is so hopeless,” I mutter.
Ingrid hesitates for a moment.
“I know you’re . . . not into it,” she says carefully. “But there’s a Bible verse that always gives me comfort. When things are really messed up.” She closes her eyes as she recites; with her round pink cheeks and her unfurrowed brow she looks for all the world like something that should be stuck at the top of a Christmas tree. “‘Fear not,’” she says softly, “‘for I have redeemed thee. I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.’”
Her eyes flutter open, and she looks a little shy. And maybe it’s just because she’s trying so hard to cheer me up, or maybe something about the verse itself, with its epic-sounding trials—a character walking through water and fire, protected by his god—but for some reason, it does kind of make me feel better.
“That’s pretty,” I say.
“Yeah. The poetic parts of the Bible . . . those are my favorites,” Ingrid says. “The parts that are about . . . being protected, and putting down your burdens. And being loved.”
There’s no self-pity in her voice, but it makes me remember what Brandy told me, about the painful years of Ingrid’s childhood. About how, somehow, religion had helped them find a ballast in their tumultuous lives. And I can’t help it—I have to ask.
“I get that,” I say. “I do. Finding something that makes you feel like you can survive the worst . . . I do the same thing, even if I’m not religious. When I read, when I write, that’s what I’m doing, too. But there’s something I don’t get.”
She cocks her head.
“Why Victory Evangelical?” I hold my hands up in question. “I mean . . . Ingrid, you’re not a hateful person. I know you’re not a hateful person. But Dale Worthen’s spent his whole career telling people they’re going to hell. He’s a controlling, misogynistic, backward person. Why not find a church that’s less . . . judgmental?”
She obviously doesn’t like the question. She shifts her weight on the cushion. “You can’t cherry-pick your beliefs. You can’t decide not to follow the rules because they’re uncomfortable.”
“So you think women are supposed to do whatever their husbands say?” I ask.
“I think women should choose husbands who are righteous,” she says defensively. But she’s avoiding my eyes. “Then it won’t be a big deal to do what they say.”
“And you think people who have sex outside of marriage are evil? Or gay people? Or . . .”
“Look, Ruthie, my faith isn’t a fairy tale,” she says. There’s a flush across the bridge of her nose; it’s the first time I’ve seen a hint of anger from her. “I’m not some little kid who’s been blindly believing all her life. I came to this and I tested it and I chose it, and it has helped me get through a lot. I don’t expect you to get it.”
“But, Ingrid, I . . .” I trail off as my phone starts to ring. I frown. “Who actually calls anyone anymore?” I say, looking down.
It’s Tabitha.
My heart gives an anxious skip. If she’s calling, it must mean there’s news.
“Hello?” I lock eyes with Ingrid as I put the phone to my ear. She mouths what? and I shrug.
“Ruthless?” Her voice is oddly muffled; I hear something clatter against the phone, and then when she speaks again the sound is clearer. “Meant to call . . . Ben.” Her words slur so badly it’s hard to understand. I hold my breath, trying to make out what she’s saying. “’S’okay. I’m okay.”
“Tabitha? What’s going on?” I shift the phone to my other ear. “Are you okay?”
“It’s all so fucked up,” she whispers.
“What is, Tabitha?”
I hear a raspy breath.
“Tabitha?” I ask again.
Silence. A distant sob. And more silence.
* * *
—
TABITHA’S FRONT DOOR IS unlocked when I get there. The lights are all still on—I doubt she’s turned them off all week. The place is a wreck; the fresh flowers in the hall are wilted, the water brackish. Piles of dirty clothes lie scattered all over—I smell cat pee on one—and in the kitchen there’s a tower of dirty dishes on the countertop. I look around the ground floor, then go upstairs to her room.
She’s on the floor of her bathroom, slumped against the toilet. She’s in sweatpants and a vomit-crusted T-shirt that says SCORPIO ENERGY. I kneel down next to her, reach out to see if she’s conscious. Her skin is clammy; she starts when I touch her, opening her eyes to peer blearily at me.
“Sorry,” she mumbles. “I shouldn’t have called.”
“Are you okay?” I look around for a clean washcloth, a towel, something to give her to wipe her mouth. She rests her head against the toilet seat.
“Better. I vomited,” she croaks. “Worst of it is out of me now.”
“Was it just alcohol, or did you take something?” I run some cold water into a glass and hand it to her. She just holds it, as if she can’t quite figure out how to drink it but can’t put it down either.
“Alcohol. No drugs.” She closes her eyes and rests her head on the toilet seat.
“You’ve got to stop this, Tabitha,” I say quietly.
I expect her to snap at me, to accuse me of being judgmental. But she just nods.
“I know,” she says. Her tone is so utterly miserable, I don’t have the heart to say anything else.
The bathroom has a slanted ceiling, just like her bedroom. In here
it feels more claustrophobic than cozy. I feel like I should duck my head, even though I’m not close to hitting it.
“My mom’s coming home Wednesday,” she says suddenly. She looks around the room—at the mildewy towel, the empty whiskey bottle on its side—and gives a strangled laugh. “I can’t wait,” she says. “I can’t wait for her to see the house. She’s going to go nuclear.”
“I bet.” I pick up the liquor bottle. “Is this all just to punish her? Because she deserves it, but you won’t be able to enjoy it if you’re already dead.”
She shudders and covers her face.
“You don’t get it. I can’t stop thinking. I just want to stop thinking for a little while.”
“Yeah, but Tabitha, that won’t help anything,” I say. “Zahra will still be missing. Even if you manage to forget that for a few minutes, it’s still true. We have to stay calm and keep looking.”
But she lets out a long, low moan, tugging at her hair.
“There’s no point. She’s dead.”
Something about the way she says it—so certain, so shattered—brings me up short.
“Why do you say that?” I ask slowly.
She doesn’t answer me. She looks half mad, her hair wild, her long, lean body curled onto the floor. I think about everything she’s told me this last week—how sure she’s seemed that Zahra left of her own volition. My blood goes cold.
“Tabitha, do you know something?” I say.
“I didn’t think she meant it,” she whispers, so softly I have to lean down to hear. “She’s always talking like that. ‘I deserve to die. I just want to be done with all this. I just don’t want to feel this way anymore.’ I always try to be patient, always. I always try to ask what she’s talking about and sit with her until she feels better, but . . .” Her gaze goes fixed for a minute. She stares at something only she can see, projected on the wall beside her.
“Tabitha?” I ask softly.
She shakes her head, like she’s trying to clear her vision.
“This time she really meant it,” she says simply.
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