No Such Person

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Lander has gone with Jason Firenza.

  A stab of fear slices Miranda. What if he is a murderer?

  But the victim—if indeed Derry Romaine is a victim of anything but his own stupidity—is not dead. There has not been a murder.

  Her parents are talking with various neighbors. Geoffrey, Jack and Stu are no longer around. Henry and Hayden have lost interest now that the ambulance is gone and are working on their tree house, a long-term activity involving many failures. Miranda does not want to think about the accident, Jason Firenza or Derry Romaine. She especially does not want to think about Lander, intentionally motoring away with a man who chooses to endanger the lives of his friends.

  She goes over to see the latest tree house development.

  Henry, the seven-year-old, rushes over. He is the most affectionate little guy. She adores him. If Henry were fifteen, he would be her future. But the fifteen-year-old around here is Geoffrey, who in mind and body is as thick as a post.

  “I went on board that powerboat,” Henry tells her. “After they took up the stretcher and nobody was on the dock. It’s called Paid at Last.” Henry is very proud of his reading skills. He has been slow to catch on, but now, summer after second grade, he’s nailed it. “You know what?” says Henry. “The boat name isn’t painted on. It’s a magnetic sign you peel off.”

  How peculiar, thinks Miranda.

  “The registration number isn’t real either. It’s a slap-on sign, too.”

  “Did you peel them off?” asks Miranda. “What was underneath?”

  “I didn’t have time. Daddy made me come in. I’m in big trouble because I could have drowned and the lesson is that the river is very dangerous and little boys should not tell lies.”

  Miranda is familiar with those lessons.

  Henry says, “I bet the real name of the boat is embarrassing.” Henry giggles. The family across the road from his house has a boat called Butter and Sugar. These are not ingredients of a good dessert, but the names of their Siamese cats.

  “I bet you’re right,” says Miranda, but she doesn’t bet that at all. Jason and his friend Derry are probably drug runners. They probably hide their boat by the simple technique of renaming it whenever they’re out being criminals.

  Miranda starts laughing. Lander is so right. Miranda’s need to romanticize a story—so that even a huge story like the near drowning of a water skier under an oil barge has to be bigger, and involve murder, and drug running—is juvenile.

  I am hereby an adult, Miranda tells herself. Exaggeration is in my past.

  She is sitting on a metal chair in a small windowless room, facing a small table with nothing on it. An empty chair sits on the other side. Another empty chair is in the corner. The room was once painted pale green but grime creeps across it like mold. The floor is gray and she cannot tell what it is made of. Concrete? Linoleum? It doesn’t feel like America in here. It feels like some grim third-world country; some building that should have been demolished but is still used.

  She cannot stop shivering. She is a quivering blob. She is Jell-O.

  She does not approve of Jell-O. It has artificial coloring and too much sugar. There is no nutritional point to Jell-O. A person should consume only those foods that come directly from the earth.

  It is easier to think about food than about her situation.

  Every now and then the police come in, occupy the chairs and talk to her again.

  She knows they are talking to her but she cannot go there. The questions are so terrible.

  She has a plan. She will stand up and walk out and end this.

  But although there is a door in the room, there is no way out.

  They keep telling her that the way out is to talk to them but her own terrible answers bang around her skull. I am a good person, she tells herself. My goal is to help humanity. That is my reason for living. They’re making up the part about the dead body. There was no one there! I did not kill anybody!

  The police try a tough approach, a friendly approach and the silent treatment.

  If she can stay firm against them, they have to give up. They can keep her here only a certain number of hours, right? And then they have to charge her. But she has done nothing, absolutely nothing, so there is no charge they can bring, and she will leave, and it will be over.

  An image of herself shooting that gun comes back into her mind. She smells the marsh, hears the birds, feels the damp hot wind. The gun is heavier in her hand than she expects. He is standing next to her, coaxing, guiding. They are both laughing. She can hear their laughter. She is in love with his laugh.

  She is in love with everything. He fills her soul as if she were just clothing before; just fabric on a hanger. She is richer because he is here; because he wants her company.

  They are standing in the woods and she has that gun in her hand. “Go on, do it,” he breathes. “It’s fun. You’re going to love the power of it.”

  So she shoots. And it is fun.

  He puts the gun away. He gives her an air kiss and says he’ll be back in a minute. Just checking on something.

  She does not ask him what there can be to check on in a little woods off a little creek by a little marsh. She is completely happy to stand and wait, because she will have the joy of watching him return.

  But he does not return.

  Somehow the state police are there instead. Somehow she is sitting in a jail.

  Her teeth are chattering. I have done nothing but go out on a date, she tells herself. And on this date, have I murdered somebody?

  If it is true, her life is over.

  She tries to worry about the dead person, whose life really is over.

  They suggest that she make a phone call.

  But to whom?

  She knows kids in law school. But no real lawyers. She could call her parents. But she is hoping that this will end before her parents even realize there is a beginning.

  She is weeping again. She does not approve of tears. Tears are for some other generation. Women need to be in control. She cannot dissolve, especially not now.

  They set a box of tissues in front of her. Cheap stuff. No double layers. No aloe, no scent.

  They set her cell phone in front of her.

  She knows it’s hers because of the frosted mint-green bumper. She yearns to hold its slim rectangular comfort in the palm of her hand. She can tap her father’s cell phone number. Turn this all over to him.

  And then his life will be over, his brilliant daughter now the source of shame and horror.

  SATURDAY AFTERNOON

  Hours have passed since the ambulance and the state troopers left, and the neighbors have all gone home.

  Miranda is on the riding mower. The lawn is a great green square entirely wrapped by trees. She cannot see through the trees because their trunks are deep in azalea, mountain laurel and rhododendron. A driver on the narrow country lane cannot see through the trees either, and would never know there is a house or a river right here.

  She loves mowing; she loves the scent of cut grass. It’s work without actually working, because the mower does everything but steer. This afternoon her mind is too free. She cannot think of anything but the half-dead skier and her half-sure murder theory.

  The Allerdons’ driveway cuts through the trees and slopes down the hill to the house. Miranda is startled to see Lander walking down the drive. Where has Lander come from?

  Jason, so he tells the trooper, keeps his boat at Two Willows Marina. Two Willows is on the west bank and downstream a few miles. The Allerdon cottage is on the east bank. So after they leave the Paid at Last at Two Willows, Jason must bring Lander home in his car—no short drive, because few bridges cross the Connecticut. But why drop her on the road? Why not bring her to the house? What have the two of them been doing all this time? Have they been at the hospital with Derry Romaine? Is Derry Romaine going to survive?

  Lander is walking slowly, and this too is odd, because Lander does not amble through life. She wav
es to Miranda, and walks on.

  Miranda has quite a bit more grass to cut. She wants to go inside and hear everything, but Lander discusses big things like politics, art class and European travel. She does not discuss her life. If Miranda weren’t a Facebook friend, she’d know approximately nothing about her big sister. And given Lander’s disgust—horror, even—over Miranda’s tow rope description, Lander will not be chatty about Jason Firenza and Derry Romaine.

  Geoffrey also comes down the lane.

  “What’s up?” yells Miranda over the engine racket. “No bushes for you today?”

  Geoffrey grins, and she is so surprised by facial action on a person she thinks of as blank that she grins back. “I heard the mower,” shouts Geoffrey. “I was hoping for an update.”

  Courtesy requires her to turn off the mower. But the mower is hard to start and she doesn’t want to struggle with it a second time. “I don’t have one,” she yells. “You know Lanny. She just walked right by without telling me anything. I’ll go inside and interrogate her after a while.” Miranda gazes at the remaining stretch of grass and Geoffrey gets the hint. He walks down the grass and around the cottage to the river’s edge.

  It’s such a waste. Miranda is so ready to have a boy in her life and here’s Geoffrey—same age, same grade although different school system—walking at least twice a day through her yard, and she can’t work up a molecule of interest in him.

  It’s another half hour before Miranda drives the big mower into the shed and padlocks the door. There is little crime here, and half the time they forget to lock the house, but somehow the shed seems vulnerable and they usually remember to lock that.

  Her parents and Lander are on the screened porch, where Miranda gratefully accepts a tall glass of sparkling water from her mother. She is parched. She starts in on Lander. “So did you go with him to the police? What did they say? Is everything all right? Will they charge him with anything? How is Derry Romaine? Has he regained consciousness? What hospital is he in?”

  She knows from their posture that her parents have none of these answers. But Lander’s usual sharp exclusionary retort does not come. Lander smiles. It’s a slow, warm-honey smile. Rigid, disciplined, careful Lander has stars in her eyes.

  Miranda’s sister has a crush on a frustrated murderer?

  Miranda doesn’t think Lander has ever really been in love. In high school Lander traveled in a smart, exciting crowd and yet she had nothing resembling a date that Miranda ever knew of. Well, proms. Big dances. But they went in a group. In college, as far as Lander’s Twitter and Facebook represent it, her social life was similar. Groups, crowds, bunches, buddies. Nobody special.

  What is special about Jason Firenza? Is it that thing called chemistry, as if love is nothing but the mixing of molecules?

  “Two Willows is a charming marina,” says Lander. “I’ve never been there before. It has this darling little park, with picnic tables and some of those pastel-painted wooden lounge chairs. They’ve strung a big striped sunshade between two maple trees and you hang out there and have a wonderful view of the river.”

  Lander does not use words like “darling” or “charming.” And nobody could have a more wonderful view than the Allerdons have already.

  Did you peel away the magnetic strip that covers the real name of that boat? Miranda wants to ask. And is Jason a drug runner?

  But her sister’s happiness is as visible as if Lander has dyed her hair maroon or put on hip boots.

  Miranda loves lots of people. She has not been blessed with love for a boy. She’s had crushes on classmates and celebrities. Once a boy had a crush on Miranda and it was exciting but awful, because she felt nothing toward him. What’s the matter with her? Is she going to have such high standards that she’ll never even find a boy?

  On the other hand, standards can fall. Perfect Lander is now mad about very imperfect Jason.

  Miranda tells herself that her eyes deceived her when that tow rope went slack. “What are you and Jason Firenza doing tomorrow?” she asks brightly, because a sister dizzy with love has plans for tomorrow.

  Miranda knows she has not set aside the idea of Jason Firenza as homicidal or she wouldn’t need to tack on his last name. The name Jason is warm, friendly, ordinary. It’s a popular name. In fact, J is a popular name-starter. The boys in Miranda’s school are named Jack and Jaxon, Jaden and Joshua and Jett.

  Lander’s sharp eyes are unfocused. Her lips are smiling. “Right now he’s checking on Derry, and then he and I are going out for dinner.”

  Lander has her cell phone in her hand. They all do. Miranda’s father is undoubtedly checking emails from work. Her mother is probably looking at Pinterest, because although she is not crafty, she adores the idea of craft. Just as she has never cooked anything from those TV shows that demonstrate cooking, but happily watches them on the Food Network.

  Lander is texting. Probably Jason. Or else her best friend, Willow, updating her on the joys of Jason.

  For no particular reason, Miranda people-searches Jason Firenza. In the entire United States there are only fourteen people with that last name and also a J first name. None of these is Jason.

  She narrows the search to Connecticut. No Firenza at all.

  Their parents have not heard Miranda’s claim that Jason Firenza intentionally dropped his friend in harm’s way, but they certainly know the man is careless, has no judgment and is not to be trusted on the water. Yet their beloved daughter spends half a day with him and now the evening? Their father says, “Lanny, I’m not happy with this. He may be a fine person, but he’s not fine on the river.”

  Lander is still beaming. “I’ll teach him. Don’t worry, Dad.”

  Miranda shivers. Jason Firenza almost killed somebody a few hours ago. Shouldn’t Jason be camped at Derry’s bedside? Or picking Derry’s parents up at the airport? Talking with doctors? What’s up with all the happy smiling?

  Out loud, Miranda says, “What restaurant?”

  Lander is not that fond of restaurants. She accuses them of slow service, which Lander feels should be a crime. Lander says that when she is a successful surgeon, she will employ a cook. She will eat extremely well at home, and be known for her dinner parties.

  Lander turns to Miranda, her smile wide and joyful, and the smile showers Miranda with sisterly love, even though that’s not what it is. It’s love for Jason Firenza, spilling over. But to have Lander beam at her like that—to have Lander share anything, even a smile!—Miranda softens.

  “He’ll meet me at the dock,” says Lander. “We’re going to canoe in the moonlight.”

  The Allerdons are often on the river in the evening. No matter how dark the night, the river reflects the slightest sparkle of star and moon. It will be romantic.

  “What will you wear?” Miranda asks.

  Lander always looks terrific, but she doesn’t care much about clothing. She’s so tall and slim and elegant that anything looks good. She sticks with classic styles, to cut down on the amount of shopping she has to do.

  Miranda almost drops her water glass when Lander asks, sounding needy, “Do you think maybe the yellow cutoffs? And could I borrow that white shirt of yours, the one with the lace sides?”

  They can’t trade clothing; their heights are too different. But that particular shirt is a medium, and Miranda uses it as a light summer jacket. It will probably fit her sister perfectly. In fact, she is willing to bet that Lander has tried it on previously, or even taken it previously, and already knows that it will be perfect.

  “Sure,” says Miranda. “Let’s go see what scarf would look right.”

  Their bedrooms are small identical cubes on the south side of the cottage. They share a very tight bathroom, which is also the powder room for guests. It has no countertop at all, and the shower has no shelf, so the sisters have little—or in Miranda’s case, large—wire totes in which they bring all products and necessities in and out of the bathroom. They even have to hang their towels and washcloths in their
rooms, because the bathroom has space for exactly one hand towel, and that is for guests.

  In Miranda’s room the two of them take up all floor space. Miranda removes the white shirt from the hanger, gives it to her sister and sits cross-legged on the bed to give Lander room to change.

  Lander has a beautiful body. Miranda, so much shorter, yearns for height. The shirt is so much better on Lander than on Miranda that she wards off a stab of jealousy.

  She pictures Jason in a canoe and is vaguely puzzled. Is this canoe also at Two Willows? Is Jason Firenza going to paddle two miles upstream before the date even begins? He has a nice muscular body, but he seems more like a powerboat kind of guy. Canoes are work.

  “Lanny,” she says softly.

  “Rimmie, you know I don’t like that nickname any more than you like your nickname.”

  “I’m sorry,” she corrects herself. “Lander.” Lander will be gone for good in a month. What if Miranda’s next statement drives them apart, and they never come together, and they are never close, and she might as well not even have a sister? Miranda braces herself. “Lander, it’s frightening. What happened on the river. Maybe he was just careless, but it looked so much worse. And Henry says that—”

  Lander neither looks at Miranda nor speaks. She simply drifts out of the room, goes into her own and shuts the door.

  The police have moved her into a cell.

  The walls are cement block, heavily painted so that the pitted surface is not so rough.

  There are bars.

  Her eyes flicker open for a moment, and then she squeezes them shut.

  The jail is noisy. Prisoners curse, moan, mutter and sob. She cannot see the men and women making these sounds. She is horrified by the word “prisoner.” How can she be one?

  The air conditioning is intense. She shivers.

  She is sitting on a metal shelf. A few inches away, the toilet stinks.

  Her shorts are knee length. When she sits, the shorts ride up, and the backs of her legs are naked against this metal bench. What bacteria are crawling around, seeping into her? What roaches and insects will she spot if she opens her eyes?