by Laura Tims
I’m vanishing. She presses her forehead to mine, giggling, and I’m still vanishing.
Then, suddenly: bright, bright lights.
“Oh shit!”
Noises. Everyone getting up. Joy’s yanking at me. “Grace. Graaaace. Come on.” Adam’s running. I watch him, sideways. His guitar bouncing on his back. Write a song about me. Shouting. Flashlight beams. Crackling voices. Joy, panicking. “We gotta run, come on!”
I’m in a cage, Joy. I can run in as many circles as I want. I’m still not going anywhere.
“I can’t believe this,” Mom keeps saying. “I just can’t believe this.”
She drives fast, jerking around each corner. Stanwick shuts down after ten p.m. Everyone else in the world might as well be dead.
Joy’s balled up in her seat, shoeless. It’s been—two hours? Three? Everything’s still furry-edged.
Officer Roseby’s chin jutted out when he spoke to Mom and Dad, like he’d done something honorable for the world by putting us in the back of his police car. It was his daughter who got us high in the first place.
“Teenage girls. I’m telling you,” he said, but he didn’t explain what he was telling us. I’ve never heard someone say teenage girls without disdain. What’s wrong with us, that everyone hates us so much?
Mom and Dad are murderously quiet. Guess what! I’m not perfect after all! I got high! I broke a rule! I snort. Joy shoots me a terrified look.
“You’re both grounded for the rest of the summer,” Mom hisses.
But Adam invited me—
Then she says, “I expected better from you, Grace Morris.”
Joy freezes. I freeze.
“Both of you,” Mom amends quickly. Dad rubs the back of his neck. “I expected better from both of you.”
But it’s already settled into us forever. Joy tucks herself against the window. A tear breaks down her cheek.
Rage fills me, hot and bloody. How dare anyone hurt her?
“You are so lucky Officer Roseby decided not to press charges,” Mom continues. “It would have gone on your record. Your college applications, down the toilet. Your futures . . .”
I’m not listening to her anymore. I don’t belong to her. I belong to my sister and she wants me out of my shell.
So I’m coming out.
NINE
October 13
Joy
THE SENIORS SQUEEZE FIVE TO A COUCH IN the counseling room. Kennedy-Ben-Sarah, a few others. People who were at the birthday party, but nobody talks about that.
“Principal Eastman’s going to trial.”
“That girl, Savannah Somerset, her mom pulled her out for the semester.”
Guilt and nausea are almost the same thing. They both overwhelm me.
“Remember, people,” says Ms. Bell, “we’re here to talk about what happened.”
I stare at the faces around me. Nobody stares back. I thought I’d feel the blackmailer’s presence, like an alarm going off.
Ben’s hollow eyed; Kennedy looks like she hasn’t showered in days; Sarah’s usual eyeliner is gone. They’re like this because they loved their dead friend, not because any of them are blackmailing me.
They should have known Adam better. They should have warned Grace.
“Officer Roseby interviewed me yesterday.” Kennedy hugs her knees. “I guess Mr. Gordon’d wanted him to find out about, like, alcohol.”
So I wasn’t the only one interviewed. Maybe the blackmailer didn’t send Roseby to my house as a threat after all. But finding that note right afterward—it’s too much of a coincidence. He’s threatening me. Telling me he’s not afraid to get the police involved.
“Adam lived next to that quarry his whole life.” Grief has turned Ben hard. “He wouldn’t fall in, drunk or not.”
My head is full of a thick fog. When was the last time I ate? How long I can keep doing this?
“It feels like everyone forgot about Adam.” Sarah’s eyes are blank. “Because of Principal Eastman and Savannah. Nobody cares anymore.”
“Adam’s half brother does,” says Kennedy quickly. “The new kid. He asked me all these things about Adam. I told him about that thing he always did with his car, and how he brought doughnuts to math class twice. . . .”
Levi’s sweatshirt and the baseball cap are in my backpack. I almost threw the cap in the trash.
Sarah starts, “If this thing with Savannah hadn’t—”
The door opens, and Cassius walks in as his sister’s name is dissolving in the air. It’s the first time I’ve seen him all week. His black eye’s mostly faded, but there’re bags under both eyes now. Grief or guilt?
I’m not scared, I’m a fighter—
His steps stutter when he sees me, but he doesn’t leave. He sits on the last free couch. It groans beneath him despite the weight he’s lost. A tree branch would snap.
But if it’s not him . . . it’s somebody else, faceless, scarier, someone capable of murder.
Then November follows him in. What’s she doing here? I tap the spot next to me, but for some reason she sits beside Cassius. All the rubber bands on her wrist are gone.
“Let’s go around the room, share our memories of that night.” Ms. Bell faces November, who’s closest to the door.
“I was only there for a second. So I don’t have much to talk about.” She doesn’t look at me.
A little fire kindles in me. I pull out my phone and text her.
u went to adams birthday party?
She reads my message with her brow furrowed, and starts typing.
It was a bad idea.
That doesn’t explain anything. Then something occurs to me.
did u see me there?
No you must have gone early and left early. I showed up late.
how come u didnt tell me u went?
Are you kidding? Don’t act like you’re entitled to information about my life when you’ve completely shut me out lately.
The fire in my stomach zips out, leaving me cold.
I hesitantly shut my phone off. “My biggest memory of that night is how Cassius punched Adam in the face,” Ben says suddenly.
The silence is acidic.
November stands up. “What are you trying to say?”
“All I’m pointing out,” growls Ben, “is that Cassius assaulted Adam, and that same night he ended up dead.”
“Rumors and accusations are not welcome here,” Ms. Bell says sharply, no trace of her usual lilting tone.
Even Sarah quits wiping her eyes long enough to glower at Cassius. I guess Preston’s not the only one who suspects him. I try to be afraid of Cassius but I can’t. There’s no way he’s capable of murder when he can’t even sit up straight.
“When they arrest you, I hope you resist.” Tears bud in Ben’s eyes. “I hope they have to shoot—”
November launches across the room and slaps him in the face.
“November!” cries Ms. Bell.
Cassius’s expression contorts. He rushes out of the room and Nov follows him out. Ben bark laughs, clasps his cheek. “I mean, come on! After what he said about Adam at the funeral? You’re all thinking it. Mysterious guy, never talks—fits the profile, right?”
Nobody pays attention to me leaving.
The halls are deserted. Everyone’s in class or in the cafeteria for lunch. I don’t realize I’m running until the echo of my footsteps bounces back at me. I slow down near Grace’s old locker, where I used to slip her notes and drawings.
I don’t see November immediately. I hear the splashing first. I stop and look up. She’s scouring the outside of a locker with wads of wet paper towels, her shoulders trembling with effort.
“Nov?” I say.
She jumps, knocks over her water bottle. The word on the locker in black paint is blurry but readable. KILLER.
“Don’t you dare tell me you think it was him, too,” she says fiercely.
“That’s Cassius’s locker?” I whisper. “Where is he?”
“He left
school. Saw this and ran. Not sure where he went.” She squeezes the paper towels. “Help me get this off before the bell rings. I don’t want anyone else to see it.”
We get more soap and water from the bathroom. With our arms moving up and down in silence, the letters vanish fast.
I inhale. “I didn’t mean to shut you out—”
She pauses, then hugs me unexpectedly, a November hug, tight and calm. “Everyone blames him because he called Adam a prick at the funeral. But calling a spade a spade doesn’t make him a murderer. He’s a scapegoat—he only moved here a couple years ago, he stands out. And he’s a big black guy—that doesn’t help,” she adds bitterly. “Meanwhile he’s fucked up over his sister. He doesn’t have anyone else right now.”
“You don’t suspect him at all?”
“I suspect everyone of everything, except for him. All you have to do is look at him.”
“You’re right,” I breathe. “There’s no way.”
“My asshole father thinks it was him. I swear that’s why he’s interviewing people. Investigating alcohol, yeah right. Mr. Gordon knows there was booze. He probably enlisted my dad to hide the fact that he bought it. It’s the first chance my dad’s had in this town to play real cop again and he’s going to find a murderer if he has to make one out of Play-Doh.”
“I thought there wasn’t a formal investigation happening?”
“There isn’t. Everyone else at the police department thinks it was an accident.”
Even if it wasn’t Cassius, it wasn’t an accident. It’s someone else. Someone watching me who knows where I live.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
November’s smart. She could help me.
“Joy?”
The bell shrieks and the classrooms hemorrhage people. The moment’s passed. I gotta stay the girl that she knows, carefree, no darkness. What would the old Joy do?
“I’m always okay.”
It’s quiz day in American History, the scary hush of test taking, pencils on paper. I don’t know a single answer.
“Here,” Levi whispers and slides his test to the side, double-checking that Cat Olsen’s back blocks Mr. Fennis’s view. I copy his answers quickly. I’m not sure why he’s still helping me—he thinks I put those photos in everyone’s lockers.
Adam had failed American History his junior year and they were making him retake it. He sat in the back and burned up the room and that’s why I was failing. There are flowers on top of his old desk, like a shrine. A few of his friends sit around it. Levi stares at it when he thinks nobody’s looking. The longing in his eyes hurts me.
I need to give Levi his sweatshirt and baseball cap, need an excuse for why those photos were in my backpack, need a way to tell him Adam was bad without explaining why.
Mr. Fennis collects the tests, shuffling them like nobody’s died or been arrested recently. Except for the desk and the memorial in the relaxation garden—a photo of Adam, flowers—his death is disappearing. Everyone’s sucking their sadness back inside so they can do their homework.
I have other things to do. I set up a baby monitor by my window, the one that Mom and Dad had when Grace and I were babies. Next time the blackmailer comes, he can smile for the fucking camera.
After the quiz, Mr. Fennis starts lecturing. He calls on me. I shrug, he moves on. Cat murmurs something exasperated to Levi. He glances up, catches me looking. Shit.
He tears off an edge of notebook paper, writes something, tosses it onto my desk. I expect him to ask for his stuff back, but instead it says:
i’d still really like to talk to you about what i saw in your bag.
also i hope you’re doing okay.
I gotta explain or he’ll tell somebody. I write:
ok. we can talk after school.
I grip my pencil hard. I’m sick of being alone with the truth.
and I found your blog, with your letters to adam, maybe we should talk about that, too.
This is so stupid. Adam’s dead, there’s no point, I have the blackmailer to deal with.
I skim it across his desk anyway. He unfolds it and all at once, his sunlight vanishes. He shoves it in his bag without writing anything back, and doesn’t look at me again.
The bell rings. As everyone pushes back their chairs, I reach for his arm, but he bursts out into the hallway fast.
He’s freaked out that I internet stalked him. Of course he is. Why did I write that?
In the hall, there’s only five minutes to get from one class to the next—go to your locker, switch out your books, go to the bathroom, get a drink, sprint to the other side of school to sit down before the bell rings again—and there’s no spare second to find Levi’s spiky-haired head. But Pres’s orange curls bob up. I weave toward him, grab his shoulder.
“It’s not Cassius,” I whisper quickly. “Nov vouched for him.”
“I—”
“I’m not scared of him. I don’t feel it.”
“Let’s—”
“If we keep focusing on him, we’ll never figure out who it is for real—”
“Okay!” he bellows. Two freshman girls snort. He drops his voice again. “Okay. We can think of others. I made a list of everyone I saw at the party. We’ll start there.”
“I think the blackmailer might’ve sent Roseby to my house,” I say quietly. “He showed up there yesterday, and then there was this new note—”
“I thought you said you put up the baby monitor!”
“I put it up right after.”
“Oh, God.” He nearly walks into a locker. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
Before I can think of an excuse, noise interrupts us. There’s a crowd by the plastic art display case. Something crashes and someone yells, “Get off!” I shoulder to the front, Pres behind me, just in time to see a flushed, heaving Ben bang his fist off Levi’s mouth. His lip bursts in a crimson spray.
“Don’t,” Pres hisses, but I leap forward anyway and wrench Ben off.
“None of you give a shit that Adam’s murderer goes to our school!” Ben jerks away and opens the art display case, tearing out Cassius’s paintings, one after another. He rounds on Levi.
“You—you’re supposed to be his half brother. You’re pissed at me for not wanting his murderer’s art on the walls? What the hell?”
Levi stops gathering the paintings.
“Break it up!” It’s our regular security guard, with Officer Roseby. Sometimes Roseby hangs out by the water fountain when there’s been a drug scare or a threat, side-eyeing people who take too long in the bathroom. Most everyone scatters, including Pres. Ben scowls, wincing when it hurts his swollen eye. Levi must have gotten in at least one punch before I showed up.
“You two couldn’t think of a better way to behave, with all that’s going on?” growls Roseby.
“That pathetic loser started it,” Ben growls back.
“A pathetic loser who can kick your ass,” Levi points out politely, cupping his hand under his chin to catch the blood.
“Look in a mirror, asshole.”
“Joy,” Roseby grunts. I tense, but he’s barely looking at me. He gestures at Levi. “Take this boy to the nurse’s office. And you, Stockholm, you look shipshape enough to get to class. In light of the recent tragedy, I’m going to let this slide.”
More like in light of the fact that we don’t have a principal anymore. And our vice principal has no clue what to do. The security guard nods helplessly. Ben glares, but flees. Levi still doesn’t look at me.
Someone stumbles into me. It’s Cassius. He stares at the torn paintings, despair fogging his face, before kneeling and gently gathering the undamaged ones. He clutches them to his chest.
No, he didn’t murder anybody.
“And how are you involved here, Mr. Somerset?” Roseby’s voice gets sharper.
“He wasn’t,” says Levi. “Someone was vandalizing his work.”
Roseby ignores him. “Seems like you’re at the center of everything that goes wrong
at this school lately.”
It’s like Cassius thinks that if he stays hunched, predators won’t see him. When was the last time I heard him speak?
“Because it makes total sense that he’d throw his own paintings on the floor,” Levi says, frowning.
“What are you doing here, Dad?” Nov’s finally found us. Her voice is glacial as she steps between her father and Cassius.
“Stay out of this, Annabella.”
I always forget November’s not her real name.
“Sorry, Jacob, I don’t really want to,” she says. “A police officer’s job is to protect people, yeah? That’s who needs it, right in front of you. He’s being harassed. Yet you still see him as the criminal. I wonder why that is?”
“You’re making a scene.”
“Sometimes scenes need to get made.”
“Go get in the car, young lady,” he grits out, pointing down the hallway toward the doors. “You’re coming home early.”
“You can’t talk to me like some little kid who doesn’t know anything.” She snaps a new rubber band on her wrist, her hand shaking. “I know lots of things.” She pauses, then mumbles, “Like the real reason we moved here from the city.”
Officer Roseby’s face gets ugly. “We will have this discussion at home.” He grabs her arm, hauls her away. She rolls her eyes over her shoulder at me, but it doesn’t make me feel better.
“You’re an incredible artist,” Levi tells Cassius, all friendly.
“Thank you . . .” Cassius takes one step away from me, then another.
“You were Adam’s best friend, right?”
There’s so much hunger in the way he says it. Tell him, Cassius, tell him what he didn’t hear you say at the funeral. But Cassius just collects his paintings and rushes away down the hall.
Levi wipes his mouth, streaking red across his cheek. “My social skills in action,” he says uneasily.
“He was your half brother. You have a right to . . .”
To know.
“I don’t have a right to anything.” He touches his cut lip. “The people here, the ones who knew him, they have a right.”
I find tissues in my bag, press them to his lip. He grimaces, his gaze fixing somewhere on my feet. He hasn’t mentioned my internet stalking yet. I’m aching to shake the truth about Adam into him.