Deadly Little Lessons

by Laurie Faria Stolarz

  His girlfriend answered the door, but only opened it a few inches. It was weird looking at her up close. I mean, I’ve seen her plenty from afar (through the window of their house as I peeked in from the outside, and getting in and out of her boyfriend’s pickup truck), but there’s nothing quite like seeing what you pictured in your mind—what you pictured as a result of touching someone, that is—standing right in front of you.

  “Do you have a few moments?” I asked her, not even giving her the opportunity to answer. I started rambling on about global warming, regurgitating what’d I’d read in one of the pamphlets.

  The girl, probably around nineteen or twenty, shook her head and started to close the door, but I held it open with my foot. Startled, she released her grip on the door, enabling me to nudge it open and peek inside the house.

  But it was her neck that I couldn’t quite get past. A pretty girl with long blond hair and big brown eyes, but with a massive scar. What I’d thought might be a tattoo of a religious cross (from the vision I had when I’d bumped into her boyfriend at the park) is actually a scar, with bubbled skin that’s crusted over.

  “Please, just give me a second,” I told her. “Would you at least sign my petition?” I held out my clipboard, noticing the fear in her eyes. “Is there anyone at home who might like to show their support?” I peered past her, getting a good view of the house’s interior: broken floor tiles and junk piled everywhere on the countertops. “Is your husband at home?” I asked, hoping she might say his name.

  She shook her head. Her hands were trembling. All the color had drained from her face. It felt uncomfortable being there, pushing her, keeping the door open when I was obviously freaking her out.

  “Would you like to add both of your names to support the cause?” I continued, despite how shitty it felt. “After that, I promise to leave you alone.” I tried to hand her the clipboard and a pen, but she refused to take either, and so I had to resort to something drastic.

  I pretended to trip and tumbled forward so that she’d have to break my fall. And so that I could touch her. For just a second, my hand caught her forearm and I closed my eyes, trying to sense as much from her as I could. I saw a key ring, loaded with at least twenty different keys, but before I could sense anything else, she pulled away from me.

  I wanted to grab her arm back, but her entire body began to quiver and twitch. “Sorry,” I said, all out of breath. “I can be a real klutz sometimes.”

  Keeping her head down and her gaze toward the floor, she placed her hand on the door once more. Finally I allowed her to close it, feeling like crap for having scared her in the first place.

  Honestly, the longer I’m here, the more desperate I feel and the lonelier I get. I’m still not sleeping much at night, and when I do sleep, I dream of being someplace else, instead of following around some guy that I don’t even know, and terrifying his girlfriend.

  By the time I get to the last line, my pulse is absolutely racing because of the way his words hit home—and how much I’m able to relate to his feeling of desperation and the lack of sleep that goes along with it.

  Luckily for me, I have support, but I also know what it’s like to feel alone. My aunt knew it all too well. And, from the sound of things, so does Neal Moche.

  I start to reread the entry, wanting more than ever to contact him, but a knock on the door interrupts me. I get up from the bed, assuming it’s Wes. But instead, when I open the door, a man and a woman flash their badges at me.

  “Camelia Hammond?” the woman asks.

  “Yes,” I say, looking closer at her badge. Detective Susan Tanner.

  Dressed in a plain black suit, she looks beyond me, into my room. “Can we talk to you for a few moments?”

  I open the door wider to let them in, suddenly noticing the campus security officer standing just behind them. “What is this about?” I ask, though I’m pretty sure I know the answer.

  Detective Tanner closes the door on the security guard, while her male colleague—twentysomething, with slick black hair and super-tanned skin—moves to stand at the back of my room, as if eager to take everything in.

  “You paid a recent visit to Tracey Beckerman,” Tanner says in a tone that tells me this isn’t up for debate. She snags a notepad and pencil from inside her jacket. “Can you tell me about that?”

  “What is it you’d like to know?” I ask, tugging nervously at my hair.

  “How about why you went there, for starters?”

  I swallow hard, noticing a sudden dryness in my mouth. I grab the day-old cup of water by my bed. There’s a layer of dust on top, but I drink it anyway.

  “Mrs. Beckerman mentioned that you knew Sasha’s real name,” Tanner continues when I don’t answer quickly enough.

  “Right,” I say, proceeding to tell her about my interest in the case and how I stumbled upon Mrs. Beckerman’s Web site while researching summer programs.

  Detective Tanner scratches behind her ear with the pencil; her hair is the color of the graphite. “Yes, but why did the case interest you so much? Because it seems you put in a lot of effort to get here.”

  “I just found out that I was adopted, too.” I glance at the other detective, who’s standing between my closet and minifridge. His face is completely expressionless.

  “So, if the fact that both you and Sasha were adopted is initially what got you interested in Sasha’s case, what’s keeping you interested now?” Detective Tanner stares at me, pencil to paper, ready to jot the answer down.

  “I’ve been sensing things about Sasha,” I say, feeling my heart hammer.

  Her beady brown eyes narrow. “Sensing things?”

  I nod and then tell her about my power of psychometry, how it comes to me when I’m doing my pottery, and how this isn’t the first time I’ve experienced it. “I’ve used my power in the past,” I continue, “to help save my boyfriend’s life. And then to save the sister of a girl I went to school with.”

  “Really?” she asks; a tiny smirk crosses her chalky lips.

  “I’m not joking.” My tone sharpens.

  “Then what are you doing?” She raises an eyebrow.

  “Getting frustrated,” I snap, “that a detective who’s been working on a missing-girl case for over two months isn’t more open to the possibility that certain people may be able to see and know more than she does.”

  The male detective accidentally knocks a box of crackers off my fridge.

  “I’m aware of people who claim to have psychic abilities,” Tanner snaps back. “We’ve even consulted with psychics to get help with various cases.”

  “And so why not consult with me?” I ask. “Ask me about the daisy I sensed or the letter t that I sculpted. Maybe then I’ll tell you about the girl who called me.”

  “What girl?” Tanner takes a step forward, clearly interested.

  “She wouldn’t give me her name, but she sent my friend and me on a wild-goose chase.” I open my night table drawer and pull out the plastic bag with the money clip inside. I explain how Wes and I went to the Blue Raven Pub and found out that the initial t on the clip stands for Tommy. “And yet he supposedly has a W marked on his hand; it’s either a scar or a burn.”

  Exactly like what I sculpted.

  Detective Tanner writes everything down and then snatches the money clip without so much as a thank-you.

  “The thing is,” I tell her, “I have no idea how the mystery girl who called me even knew about my interest in Sasha’s case, never mind how she got my phone number.”

  “Did you tell anyone you were looking for Sasha? Anyone at all?”

  “Just my friend Wes Mayer.”

  Tanner writes Wes’s name in her notepad, then asks a slew of questions about him—where he’s from, how old he is, if he knows Sasha, and why he followed me to Sumner.

  “It wasn’t Wes,” I say.

  “Well, it was someone,” she says, closing her notepad. “And you can bet we’ll find out who. But, rest assured, you’ve alr
eady been a great deal of help, even if this turns out to all be a hoax.”

  “Hoax?”

  “You have heard of false leads, haven’t you?” she asks. “What if the mystery girl who called you and the bartender at the Blue Raven Pub are actually working in cahoots? What if that’s why the bartender didn’t want you to question anyone else who works there?”

  “So you believe me about my powers?” I ask.

  “I make it a rule not to believe or disbelieve too much of anything—until all reasonable doubt is dissolved, that is. I wouldn’t be a very good detective if I did otherwise.” Surprisingly, she doesn’t ask me anything more. Instead, she hands me her business card, shoots her mute partner an urgent look, and then leads him out the door.

  The tape recorder positioned in front of me, I finish writing my monologue in the dirt floor, using my finger as a pen. And then I close my eyes and channel Kathryn Merteuil from Cruel Intentions, one of my favorite manipulative characters.

  I start my recording over at least a dozen times before I finally get the tone right. “I’m so glad he allowed me to tag along that night,” I say into the microphone. “I know I must’ve been such a nag, asking him all kinds of questions about stupid stuff, like what kind of sports he liked to play and if he’d seen any good movies lately, trying to keep him talking. I figured the longer he talked, the longer I’d get to be with him. He was so sweet to me, too, even though I was a pest. Maybe it was his sweet side that caved and let me leave with him.

  “I just didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to face my parents. I hated them for lying to me about being adopted. That’s why I’d packed my suitcase. I’d planned to run away anyway, but this new friend gave me a quicker way out. He was older, so I figured he could take care of me, and he has taken care of me. It’s been so great here, having this time away to think and to fully appreciate how lucky I’ve been. I have him to thank for that. He’s been my teacher as well as my friend.”

  I press STOP and then lean back against the wall, hoping I’ve played the role convincingly. I slide the tape recorder and microphone through the hole, wondering if Misery’s been questioned by the police yet.

  I wash my wound and change the bandage for a third time, unable not to wonder if the burn mark might actually be the letter t, if it might stand for Tommy, the guy she’d wanted me to meet.

  The guy who I think took me.

  I’M ALONE IN MY ROOM, and the salty beach air filters in through the window, making me feel both restless and cold. I crawl into bed and pull the covers over me, suddenly realizing that I’m famished. I almost wish that my dad were here so that we could sneak out for chips and chalupas. I roll over, facing the window, thinking how adamant he was about defending his and Mom’s decision to keep the truth about my birth a secret.

  And as much as I hate to admit it, I can’t help wondering what difference it would’ve made if he and Mom had told me the truth years earlier, when I was Sasha’s age, perhaps.

  Would I have ended up just like her?

  The question haunts me, spinning around inside my head, colliding with all my other questions—like a video game gone awry. After at least an hour of trying to come up with answers, my thoughts start to dull and blur, and I begin to nod off.

  A knock on the door startles me awake. I open my eyes and sit up in bed. It’s a little after seven a.m. I get up, assuming it’s Wes, that he wants me to join him for breakfast. I open the door, my eyes widening, unable to grasp who it is that’s standing there, just inches from me.

  I pinch my skin, noticing I have goose bumps. This isn’t a dream. I’m not asleep. There’s no way this is part of a hallucination.

  “Ben.” His name is like candy inside my mouth.

  Without even thinking, I slide my arms around his waist and rest my head against his chest. He smells like bike fumes. “What are you doing here?” I ask, able to feel his heart beat fast beneath my cheek. “And how did you get in?”

  “I came here,” he says, wrapping his arms around me as well, “because this is where you said you were.”

  I get dizzy just holding him like this, just breathing him in.

  Ben moves to take my hand. “Come on,” he says, closing the door and leading me back inside my room. He sits me down on the bed. His skin is extra tan, most likely from riding around on his motorcycle and roaming the streets playing tourist all day. “I’ve missed you,” he says, making my insides ignite.

  Part of me wants to tell him how much I’ve missed him, too. But I don’t, because I don’t want to get hurt. And I don’t because of Adam. Instead, I squeeze his hand harder, hoping he can feel how much I’ve ached.

  “I got your message,” he says, pulling his hand away. Maybe the sensation is too intense. “So, tell me what’s going on.” His dark gray eyes never stray from my face.

  I break down and tell him about my parents, how for years they kept a secret from me: “My dad isn’t my real dad,” I say. “And Aunt Alexia is actually my mother.”

  Ben’s face doesn’t show a speck of surprise, but then again it never really does. Maybe it’s because of everything he’s been through, everything he’s already seen and heard. Or maybe it’s because he doesn’t want to show surprise and inflict his feelings on me.

  “So, who is your real dad, then?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say, proceeding to tell him about the intern at the halfway house where Alexia once stayed, how he was kicked out of his college program as a result of violating the facility’s code of ethics, and how he has his own life now.

  “But he still might want you in it,” Ben says. “Do you think you might want that, too?”

  I shrug, unable to fathom the idea of a father who isn’t the dad I know.

  Ben asks me a few more questions—basically about whether my aunt’s aware that I know the truth and how my parents are feeling as a result of my finding out. I answer everything, still uncertain about how to feel. But what’s nice is that Ben doesn’t tell me how to feel either. He doesn’t try to fix things or provide any anecdotes. Instead, he simply cradles me against his chest and asks me to tell him more.

  Lying face to face on my bed now, we spend the next two hours talking things out, only our hands touching. Ben slides his fingers up and down the length of mine. The motion itself seems innocent enough, but I couldn’t feel more yearning.

  “Can you tell what I’m thinking?” I ask, clasping his hand in mine. The warmth of his skin is intoxicating.

  Ben blinks hard, as if he does indeed know, but his face remains completely serious. “Do you want to talk about what you’ve been sculpting?”

  A stream of sunlight shines in through the window, illuminating his face, which glistens with perspiration. I gaze at his mouth, remembering having mentioned my mysterious (and disastrous) sculptures during my phone message to him.

  “Are you searching for a girl?” he asks, gazing at my mouth now, too.

  My cell phone rings before I can answer him. At first, I ignore it. But after four rings, Ben rolls onto his back and insists that I get it.

  I reluctantly lean over him to answer the phone, pausing when I see Adam’s name flash across the screen.

  “Hi, Adam,” I say, realizing that my voice sounds less than enthusiastic.

  “Hey,” he says, seemingly oblivious of my halfhearted tone. “Do you have a second? We need to talk.”

  “I agree. But I’m a little tied up at the moment. Can I call you back?”

  “I’m actually in your lobby.”

  “What?”

  “Would you mind calling down here to tell them that I’m safe?”

  What is it? Ben mouths.

  I hang up without thinking. “Adam’s here,” I say. “Downstairs. He’s on his way up to my room.”

  “I should go,” Ben says, getting up from the bed. “You two should have some time on your own.”

  “No,” I say, getting up, too. “Don’t go. Please. It’s not like we have anything to hide h
ere.”

  Standing right in front of me now, his eyes go slightly squinty, as if maybe my words have hurt him, and then he goes out the door.

  AFTER BEN LEAVES, I call down to the lobby to tell the person working at the front desk that it’s okay if Adam comes up. When he arrives at my door, I invite him inside, but he wants to take a walk instead.

  “Why?” I ask, though I can see from the look on his face—his swollen eyes and the tenseness of his mouth—that something is definitely wrong. “I mean, what’s going on? What are you doing here?”

  “Let’s go for a walk,” he insists, as if he’s planned it all out and being outdoors will somehow make what he has to say easier.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” I say, my mind racing as I try to guess the reason for this impromptu visit.

  He shuffles his feet and looks at the ground. “I really care about you,” he says, stuffing the tips of his fingers into the pockets of his jeans. “But, I don’t know. I feel like things were a lot easier before. I mean, I understand there’s a lot going on with you right now, but I almost feel like what’s going on is pulling us apart.”

  “It is.” I close the door behind him and then sit down on my bed. “But only because you don’t want to hear about my problems. You just want things to go back to normal.”

  “And why can’t they?” he asks. “Why can’t you deal with the news and move on? Why are you letting it dictate your life?”

  “I have a right to feel what I’m feeling, Adam.”

  “Okay, but at what cost?” He comes and sits down beside me. “We had something really good, Camelia.”

  “Had or have?”

  “That depends,” he says, taking my hands. “I’m willing to talk about what’s bothering you, but you have to be willing to help yourself.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” I say. “I wanted to get away, remember?”

  “Yes, but being away means putting distance between us, too. I mean, if you were away and I felt secure about us, that would be one thing. But you keep sending me mixed messages, so I never know where we stand.”