I don’t answer, and she nods like she didn’t really expect it. I am very obviously not okay.
“Wait here, please. I’ll be back in a few minutes to talk to you.” Richmond turns and joins the other cops at the mouth of the alleyway. Two patrol officers and Richmond’s partner, Detective Roy Clemens. I know him, too. They disappear out of sight, and I’m alone again.
Ava is dead.
My clothes dry stiff and itchy in the freezing air. My space blanket crinkles every time I move. A car alarm goes off a few blocks away. It keeps going and going, ignored, until it gives up out of neglect.
Ava is dead.
The slushy gurgle as she tried to force out her last words. But they were pointless. Meaningless. No final good-byes or messages for her mom.
I tilt my head up to the sky and take a deep breath of icy air. The light pollution in Whitley has turned the sky to a sickly bruise, and the lack of stars makes me claustrophobic.
Ava is dead.
Richmond returns. “Okay, Flora, I’m going to need you to tell me what happened here tonight.”
I don’t know what to say. Yesterday, Ava was a girl from my school. I passed her in the halls. I thought about kissing her sometimes. A lot. We talked for the first time in ages. Now Ava is dead.
I open my mouth, but still nothing comes out.
Richmond’s radio crackles at her hip. “Two-two-one, this is Dispatch.”
Richmond speaks into the radio. “Go ahead.”
“Two-two-one, be advised victim died.”
Ava is dead.
I knew. But now it’s real.
I blink once. Twice. I turn and throw up on the pavement, less than two feet from Richmond’s shoes.
In the corner of my vision, she shuffles her feet. Embarrassed for me. I keep my eyes trained on the dark orange splatter of my vomit. What did I even eat for dinner tonight? Sweat breaks out all over my body. I’m freezing. The shaking starts up again, and I rattle so hard my tender, adrenaline-soaked joints ache.
Distantly, I hear Richmond respond to Dispatch. Her eyes averted, she takes her time silencing her radio and returning it to her belt.
I don’t want to be here anymore.
“Have you called my grandfather?” I ask.
“He’s on his way. Flora, I’m very sorry for what you’ve been through.” Her voice is full of an awful, careful gentleness, like she’s reading from a training script. “I know this must be traumatic, but I need you to tell me what happened tonight.”
My words won’t come. I found my first dead body at age fourteen, and I was never the same again. Lucy MacDonald. Another girl like Ava. Like me. I found Lucy broken, bloody, discarded. The person who did that to her walked away untouched and unpunished.
I learned something then that most people don’t know: no one is safe. We all think we are, but at any moment someone can erase you without a second thought. The world will go on, unchanged, like you were never there at all.
Yesterday, Ava was alive. She had a normal day, just like mine. Math homework. Texting her friends. Dinner. Her eyeliner was never exactly the same on both eyes.
Today, Ava is dead.
But why? Who would kill her? What was she so scared of when she called me?
Richmond watches me through my long silence. “If you need to take a minute before you feel ready, that’s okay. I do need to search your backpack, though.”
The bag is next to me on the curb. I pull it closer. “Why?”
Richmond clenches her jaw. A crack in her mask of professional sympathy. “Calhoun, you were standing over a dead body when the EMTs got here, covered in blood, and the murder weapon is missing. You know what probable cause is. Hand me the backpack.”
I give it to her.
“Thank you.” Richmond sets the bag on the hood of the patrol car behind her. I watch wordlessly as she opens it and pulls out item after item. The Taser. My tactical pen, which writes in three colors and can shatter an eye socket. Lockpicks. Leather gloves.
“What the hell is this?” She holds up a vial of fine grayish powder.
“Dust.” I read about it in a book about the FBI. They use it when they want to break in somewhere and make it look like they haven’t touched anything. I don’t tell her that part.
Richmond looks at me a long time, then places the vial on the hood along with everything else. When the bag is empty, she pulls out her phone and takes a picture of everything laid out on the car hood.
“Now”—Richmond turns back to me—“do you feel ready to tell me what happened?”
No, but I nod anyway.
“I’m going to record you,” she warns, pulling out a digital recorder from a pouch on her belt and setting it on the hood of her car. I know I could kick up a fuss about a lawyer right now, but I don’t have the energy.
I take a long breath. “Ava asked me to meet her here.”
Richmond crosses her arms over her chest and stares at the ground, her brow furrowed in concentration as I tell the story. The phone call, the gunshots, the alley. Wes Grays, or whatever Ava tried to say. Each horrifying image flashes through my mind again, but I don’t let myself really see any of them. My voice is flat and even.
When I finish, Richmond stops recording. She busies herself shoving all of my stuff back into my bag.
“Thank you for your statement,” she says, holding my backpack out to me. “I am very sorry about your friend.”
That unbearable practiced sympathy is back. Part of me wants to lose it. Scream and sob. See how she reacts to that, how well she could stick to her script.
I swallow. “Do you guys have anything yet?” The question is more a reflex than anything. The familiar urge is there to get up, look around, ask questions, but the feeling is distant, like an echo from the depths of a dark pit. I’m trying to climb out of it, but I’m weak, and my arms hurt, and Ava is dead.
“That’s none of your concern.” Richmond won’t meet my eyes. She’s trying to treat me like any other bystander, following protocol to the letter.
I sit up straight, some of the numb fog gone. “It is my concern. I found her.”
She snaps, “Flora, do you realize what’s happening right now? You were found at the scene of the murder. The killer has mysteriously vanished. This is the second time you’ve conveniently been the first one to find a dead body, and you knew both girls personally. You get how that looks, right?”
“You know I didn’t do this. You know who killed Lucy.” Tears prick at my eyes again, but I grit my teeth against them. Guilt flashes across Richmond’s face, and it only makes me feel smaller, more childish. I hate her for it.
She tries to regain her professional demeanor. “This is a sad thing that happened, Flora. I’m sorry that you have to go through it again, but I need you to understand that I’m not going to tolerate any interference this time around.”
I know what Richmond thinks of me. I’m just some privileged, unbalanced kid without enough discipline in her life, inserting herself into places she doesn’t belong.
I look away. My eyes land on the puddle of vomit again.
Richmond isn’t done. “You have an arrest record. Now, your grandfather might be powerful enough to have that expunged when you turn eighteen, but get in my way this time and not even he’ll be able to help you. Do you understand me?”
I nod. I can make out a kernel of corn in the puddle. Tacos. We had tacos for dinner tonight.
Richmond inhales, collecting herself. She takes a long, pitying look at me huddled on the sidewalk, space blanket still clutched around my shoulders.
“By the way.” She hesitates, as if deciding whether or not she wants to say it. “Patrol officers picked up Greg Garcy a few hours ago. He’s going to jail.”
Garcy. The tip I called in earlier. The flyer. Ava running a finger along its edge. Already that feels like years ago. I open my mouth to respond, but nothing comes out.
Richmond shrugs awkwardly. “Thought you’d want to know. Your grandfa
ther will be here soon.” She departs.
The patrol officers walk back toward their car. They’re not needed anymore. They don’t bother trying to keep their voices down as they load back up.
“The Calhoun girl found her? Gotta be the unluckiest kid in the world.”
I swallow. My tongue is still sour with vomit.
“I don’t know, man. Have you met that girl? I could see her going all psycho killer, easy.”
“Maybe. Or maybe she’s just cursed.”
The doors of the patrol car slam behind them.
I am cursed, only not like they think. First Lucy, now Ava. Twice I’ve seen up close what the world is capable of. What it can do to people. Trouble is, no one else has seen the same thing. I get to walk around knowing it all by myself.
A car pulls up. My car. My grandfather gets out. His eyes find mine, and the fear and then relief in his expression are so powerful that shame slices through me. He woke up to a call from the police, and I wasn’t in my bed. Again.
Two and a half years ago, I was arrested in the middle of the night. When they led me out of the holding cell, he was the one waiting for me. I was surprised. I had thought Mom would come. That was the last time I was ever surprised when she didn’t show up.
But Gramps always comes for me.
He talks to Richmond at the mouth of the alley, and she looks increasingly pissed. Their conversation ends, and he approaches. Red and blue lights play across his face. He’s wearing a suit, even though it’s the middle of the night. No one but me would notice that the knot in his tie is slightly looser than normal.
“Flora, I thought—” His voice shakes. I blink and look away. He places a hand on my cheek, like he’s checking to make sure I’m really here. His palm is warm and dry.
His arm falls to his side. “You’re free to leave. They will follow up with more questions if necessary.”
“Thank you.” I suck the tears back in. “For coming. For…” I lose my words.
My grandfather nods with grave understanding. “Let’s go home.”
I leave a streak of blood on the car door when I close it behind me. So much blood all over me. Under my fingernails. These clothes will have to be thrown out—there’s no saving them. I feel a smear of it drying on my cheek, left over from when I tried to wipe away the tears.
Inside the car, the sounds, feelings, and smells of the outside world are deadened. The smooth, chiming click of the turn signal is surreal after the horror and violence of the alleyway.
The silence between us stretches on. We say nothing as we retrieve my bike from where I left it a few blocks over. We’re quiet as the streetlights and buildings give way to the dark, wooded streets of Hartsdale.
We’re nearly home before he speaks. “I know that on occasion you leave the house without my knowledge.”
I pick at the dried blood under my nails.
When I was three, my heroin addict dad left my mom. She was pregnant with Olive, and so depressed that she could barely get out of bed for months. Then she was busy with the new baby.
My grandfather raised me. He fed me and tucked me in and took me to the park on weekends to people watch. He taught me how to look at a person and read all their secrets. Olive was always Mom’s kid. I belonged to Gramps.
She applied for an artist residency in Berlin the same week I was arrested. The same week she didn’t come to the police station in the middle of the night.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” I tell my window. “I didn’t think—”
“I know,” he stops me. “I know. You do not need—” He pauses to collect himself. Finally: “All I ask is that next time you leave a note.”
I look at him now. His eyes leave the road and find my face.
He’s the one who stayed. Who chose me.
“I will,” I say. “I’ll do better.”
His eyes are back on the road. “I believe you.”
Silence fills the car again. Gramps and I have never needed to say much to understand each other. But sometimes, I wonder if it’s really that we just don’t know what to say.
He doesn’t speak again until we’re pulling onto our street. “I called Cassidy on my way to meet you. She should be here shortly.”
Is it even possible to love someone this much?
Olive is waiting for us in the front hall. She takes in the blood that’s drenched my clothes, my skin, even my hair. She’s fresh and clean in her fluffy robe.
I shift my weight on my feet, but my soles stick to the wooden floors. I’ll have to scrub the bloody footprints away tomorrow. I’m always tracking filth and tragedy into my family’s clean, normal existence.
An old image comes back to me. My mom, standing at the kitchen sink. The line of her shoulders tight as she scrubs Lucy MacDonald’s blood off my running shoes.
Gramps walks past us into the kitchen. Water pings against the bottom of the kettle as he makes tea.
Olive is still watching me. I start pulling off my shoes.
“The phone woke me up,” Olive says finally. “When the police called.”
I nod. Ava’s blood has wicked up my laces, gluing the knot together.
Mom never said a word about those shoes with Lucy’s blood on them. Later, I found them lined up neatly in the front hall, mostly clean except for a few ambiguous brown stains. I never wore them again. Mom left three months later.
“Do you want help?” Olive asks. I shake my head. She steps closer, like she might touch me, and I tense. She stops.
“I’ll just… be upstairs if you need me, then.” Seconds pass. Olive turns and walks up the stairs. I continue picking at my laces.
The front door slams open. Cass is here. She’s wearing sneakers and a sweatshirt over her pajamas. She throws her arms around me, all elbows and bleached hair.
For a second, I sag against her with relief. Cass holds me together. Her hair is in my face, and the smell of her shampoo is so unbearably ordinary.
I push at her shoulder. “Get off, I’m disgusting.”
She squeezes me until it hurts.
“All right.” She pulls back. “Time for a shower, and then I’m putting you to bed.”
Cass doesn’t let go of my hand as she leads me upstairs. She hustles me into the bathroom and helps peel off my sticky, crusty clothes. Her nose is red, and the corners of her eyes are damp, but she’s quiet except for soft commands to raise my arms or move my hair.
I stand in my underwear and look at my stained skin in the mirror.
Cass leaves. I lose track of time standing in the hot blast of the shower with my hands braced against the wall. The water swirls around the drain, at first a rusty pink, then finally clear, but I still don’t move.
Today, I saw a dead body for the second time in my life. It wasn’t any less horrifying. I saw the exact moment Ava went from alive to dead. The first girl I ever kissed. The girl who put on that purple lipstick yesterday morning. Gone.
This life I’ve reconstructed for myself over the last two and a half years is a lie. Other people might be able to fool themselves, but I know: none of us are ever safe. No amount of hot water can burn that knowledge out of me.
I emerge from the shower flushed and tender, as frail as one of those blind, hairless baby mice.
When I enter my room, Cass turns her face away and sniffs. She was crying. Her sweatshirt is draped over my desk chair. It’s stained with Ava’s blood from when she hugged me.
I focus on getting dressed. I don’t know what I’d say that could possibly make it better.
My pajamas are so normal against my skin. Another reminder that the world has stayed exactly the same, even as a seismic shift has occurred inside me.
We get in bed and turn off the lights. Under the covers, Cass grabs my hand. We used to sleep this way all the time when we were kids. Cass’s parents travel a lot for work, and she’s spent at least a couple nights a week at my place since elementary school. Back then, it was always my job to cheer Cass up, distract her,
anything to make her less sad that her parents had left without her again. It had been years at that point since my dad left, and I already knew how to pretend until it didn’t hurt anymore. Later, when Mom disappeared, too, I was prepared. Cass and I both learned how to not need them, how to be each other’s family.
It’s been a long time since I’ve taken care of her like that, though.
She whispers, “I can’t believe Ava’s just gone.” Through our clasped hands, I can feel her shake and shake as the sobs break free. I squeeze her hand tighter, putting all of my own pain into that fierce grip. I want to cry, want to let it all out, but I swallowed my tears one too many times earlier, and now they refuse to come.
After a long time, her shivering eases. “You went without me.”
“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
More seconds pass before Cass says, “I’m scared.”
My grandfather wouldn’t say it in the car, but it’s what he was thinking. Scared it’s all starting again.
I am, too. But my throat is too tight to speak. I squeeze her hand again and hope she knows what it means.
She trembles against the pillow as fresh tears start. “We’ll be okay. We’re going to do this together.” She doesn’t say it like a question, but I hear it anyway.
“Always,” I answer. “You and me.”
My last murder investigation ended with my mom leaving. That hurt, but it was a hurt I was ready for. Who am I going to lose this time?
“Promise you won’t go without me again?” she asks.
“Promise.”
A sick part of me wishes that she had been there. Saw what I saw. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so alone. But then Cass would be just as broken as me, and I can’t stand the thought of that.
Eventually, Cass’s breathing slows. She sleeps. I try to do the same, but every time I close my eyes, the haunting rattle of Ava’s last breath jolts me awake.
“I heard she found the body,” someone says.
I clutch my notebooks closer to my chest. Ignore it. Ignore it.
“Yeah, over in Whitley. Middle of the night.”
The whispering gauntlet of the school hallway stretches in front of me. It’s Monday. The first day back in school since Ava… since the alleyway.
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