by Lexa Hillyer
Luckily, no one had given Tessa a hard time about running off earlier today. Maybe grief and shock gave you a pass from formalities.
Or maybe, Tessa thought, they had hardly even noticed. Like with Kit gone, Tessa had somehow become invisible too.
In the end, she had easily slipped out of the house that night, saying she needed air, and took the long walk over to the station.
When she pushed open the door, she was overcome with lightheadedness. She wasn’t sure what she’d envisioned, having never been inside this place before. Maybe something like in a seventies crime drama: low ceilings and yellowed walls, fat, old cops drinking strong coffee and referring to case files stored in manila folders. But the station in Devil’s Lake had recently been redone: it was spacious and clean, full of giant windows that looked out on a well-lit parking lot. Everyone seemed professional, friendly, and well dressed. The soft clack of keyboards filled the open space, a calming soundtrack.
Tessa didn’t believe in the afterlife, but if she had, she might’ve thought purgatory would be like this: bright light. Order. Process.
“How can I help you?” The woman at the front desk was slender and pretty, with dark skin and even darker hair swept up smoothly on top of her head.
“I’m, um, I need to talk to someone,” Tessa fumbled. “My um, my sister, was, she was, well—”
The receptionist squinted, then her eyes widened in recognition. “Oh, honey, I know exactly who you are. Wait here just a minute.” Tessa stared at her lips, which didn’t seem to move as she spoke. The woman hustled out of her chair, leaving it spinning, and returned shortly, followed by a tall, young-looking cop with a buzz cut and dimples.
Tessa recognized him—he’d been in their house at least twice since Sunday morning. Officer Raúl García. His smile was so nice and accommodating that for a moment she forgot why she was here.
García ushered her into his office and offered her some water. She held it but put it down without taking a sip. She had the craziest thought that if she swallowed the water, it would rush through her, dissolve her body into nothingness, carry her away like a river.
At birth, 78 percent of the human body is water.
“I wanted to know . . .” She cleared her throat. “To know the details. About my sister. About Katherine. About her . . .” Once again, the word death lodged behind her teeth, refusing to come out.
García sat back in his chair. “What do you want to know?”
“I heard someone—a boy, Patrick Donovan—ran away on the night of . . . the night of.” Say it. “The night it happened. Shouldn’t that make him a suspect?”
García sat back in his chair. He looked at her for a minute, and it felt like he was seeing through her to the other side of the room. Like his mind had gone somewhere else, and his eyes were as blank as the frozen lake.
“I’m just saying, have you looked into whether there’s any connection—”
“Listen.” García sighed. “Sometimes, a case solves itself. Sometimes it really is that easy. It’s nearly always the boyfriend, sweetie. I wish I could tell you otherwise. But facts are facts.”
Boyfriend.
“But Boyd and Kit weren’t—they weren’t dating. It wasn’t like that. He’s our friend. He’s—”
He’s mine, she wanted to say. They were lying on the carpet in her bedroom, talking about bio. Then they were kissing . . .
García gave a weird half smile. “Are you sure about that?” He began clicking on his keyboard. “Fingerprints tell their own story. I’m so sorry, but it’s just the way it is.”
I’m so sorry. The words landed softly over her, like snow. Just the way it is.
She swallowed. “So he just left all the evidence for everyone to find it? The truck, the keys. That makes no sense.”
“Actually, it’s commoner than you might think. Almost like they want to be found—or in the moment, anyway, they just want to be seen. A crime of passion is often like that. Someone felt betrayed, felt invisible, this one act is their big send-off to the world.”
It didn’t sound like Boyd at all.
Her throat hurt. “But what would his motive have been?”
“Jealousy, usually?” García said. “Besides, we found all kinds of suspicious items on him, in the home.”
“Like what?”
García shrugged. “A mashed-up doll that looked like the victim. That sort of thing.” He said it so casually, but the image lurched into Tessa’s stomach, making her feel like she’d been kicked.
“Look. All I can tell you right now is there’s a state-appointed lawyer, and I’m sure she’ll be arguing for involuntary manslaughter. Autopsy says cause of death was the hypothermia and not the injury. So we may not be able to prove intent to murder.”
She practically choked. The words sounded so scary—so real.
“Usually a lighter sentence for that sort of thing. We’re not talking death row. Least as far as I’d guess. Have to see how it all pans out, of course—not for me to say.”
She was having trouble thinking straight.
Now he was hitting a button on his keyboard. Several documents began to rhythmically spit out of the printer next to the desk. Zzzzrt. Zzzzrt. Zzzzrt.
Zzzzrt.
Zzzzrt.
Zzzzrt.
The sound started to remind her of the quiet thrum of a heart monitor in a hospital room. She felt dizzy. Tessa wondered briefly if she was still in bed, dreaming this. Or if she was out in the snow, with Kit, cold beyond comprehension.
Jealousy. Could Boyd have been jealous? Or had it been the other way around?
The last memory Tessa had of Boyd, before that night, was their study session, their kiss.
What did it mean? Had Kit found out? But how could things have gone so badly unless . . . unless what this cop was saying was true.
No. No.
He turned to her and sighed. “You never really know someone, do you?”
He put the papers in a stack on his desk, tucking them into the mouth of a folder. “This is the report and the photos. For the protection of your family and issues of confidentiality, I can’t let you leave the building with these, but feel free to look through, and take your time.” He paused. “It may be difficult to see some of that. But it’s your right to, if you want to know.”
Was it her right? Why was he being so nice?
He vanished, and there the file was, a blank face.
She opened it. She tried to look for something about a ring, but the words blurred before her.
She focused. The first page was just a scanned form with hand-scribbled answers in the blanks, like the cover page of a school test: name, age, date, address, various badge numbers and car numbers. She flipped to the next page. Details of the scene. The truck, with its headlights still on. Footprints in the snow—some large, some small.
The fingerprints. Just like she’d been told: all over the car, the steering wheel. Boyd’s truck, his hat. García was right. The clues weren’t subtle.
And then, found on the ground near one of the truck tires: a small bag of white pills. Prescription sedatives. Tessa stared at this detail for some time but couldn’t make sense of it. No one in her family had any prescriptions. She wasn’t sure about Boyd or his dad, Innis. But the detail was unsettling. Had Kit been drugged that night? Why hadn’t anyone thought to mention this detail?
The heat of anger, and urgency, began to burn her ears.
She kept flipping pages.
What followed was a hospital report. Evidence of minor head trauma in the form of bruising along the right temple toward the hairline and right ear. Minor scratch along the upper left arm, exposed.
No foreign substances found in bloodstream.
She breathed out. So Kit hadn’t taken—or been given—any drugs, it seemed. Perhaps that was why she hadn’t heard about them before now. But how did it all add up? She flipped to another page.
Hypothermia evident in discoloration of lips and hands. Believed to
be cause of death.
Minor swelling on lower abdomen, probably due to newness of the tattoo.
Tessa paused and reread the line over again. Her heart rate picked up again.
Nausea and horror rolled through her as she turned the page and began to examine the photos of the scene. In them, the tarp that sometimes covered the bed of Boyd’s pickup was pulled back to reveal Kit’s body, curled in the fetal position. She was wearing her favorite jeans—a pair of form-fitting dark-wash Levi’s—and her tall black boots. She had no shirt on, just a lacy lavender bra with a tiny silver pendant on it. The bra was dimly recognizable, though Tessa couldn’t pinpoint why—it didn’t seem like the kind of thing Kit would own, but that was not the detail that was bothering Tessa.
There were more photos. Too many. So many she got the sense that it wasn’t just Kit but a series of girls, all strangers, all dead.
Most, she couldn’t look at.
She flipped through the photos to find one at an angle where she could see the abdomen. It was hard to see clearly, but sure enough, as she squinted closely, she could make out a blurry tattoo, a dark blot, a bit larger than a quarter, with two little points along the top, possibly ears, and one pointed to the side. An animal’s face, maybe? Sort of like a dog.
Possibly a wolf.
She stared at the tiny, inky wolf. Willed it to shed some meaning she could understand.
Head trauma. Bruising. Hypothermia.
Tessa slipped out of the station without saying goodbye.
THE RIDE
BY KATHERINE MALLOY
It was after school; I was running home, rideless,
while rain fell hard—streaming through my hair—
sky black as a groom staring down the aisle, brideless,
when your car came through the intersection, where
the crosswalk seemed to gleam, like an arrow or
a sign. You opened a door; I got in to dry off
and slowly the space between us grew narrower.
At first I had the urge to leave—fly off
like a bird at the start of its long journey south.
But you made me want to stay—as we talked and drove,
I couldn’t keep from bending toward your mouth,
feeling cold and wet and alive, while the heavy rain wove
its inevitable path down the window’s side.
Like me, it fell blindly, without any guide.
Chapter Eight
Before
10/8
Dear Diary,
Dar thinks she looks like a sad, boobless puppet. We’re in Mel’s room and she’s trying on Mel’s blue bandage dress, which is definitely at least a size too big. I’m sort of annoyed with both her and Mel. Dar, because she looks great in everything and she’s just being extra sullen lately. Mel because she’s been harassing me literally all during the homecoming game today about why I haven’t made moves on Boyd yet. As if I have all these opportunities for privacy with him. Also, she’s threatening to try to get Patrick to notice her by making out with someone else to make him jealous. It’s like she’s gotten sex-crazed lately, and I can’t figure out what triggered it. Gone is the Mel of seventh grade who had never been kissed, who thought a blow job had something to do with dead leaves in autumn.
Anyway, this is just annoying, backward logic and so typical of Mel. I know she’s going to end up kissing Dusty, who is weird and kind of gross, even for a band guy, though admittedly since we don’t really hang out with his crowd I don’t really know him. It’s just, like, he became Mel’s go-to sometime last year, for when nothing else is working. Her fallback boy. The whole thing is such a giant whatever.
Anyway, the dance is tonight and I need to straighten my hair/possibly set fire to all of Mel’s teddy bears. Be warned, I am armed and dangerous, and it’s Mel’s fault for letting me use her hair iron.
However, Diary: despite my best friends being brats and losers, I do love them. And I am super excited for the dance tonight because, uh, Boyd will be there (!!!!) and so maybe in addition to getting Mel off my back for once, I will also get his solo attention, which would be nice. Maybe he’ll dance with me.
Oh my god, my sisters would lose their minds! YES!!!!!!!!
Anyway, I should go because I’m still not dressed, Dar is sending me death glares that I’m guessing are code for something but I don’t know what, and also, Mel is insisting that she has a “plan.” As we all know, when Mel has a plan . . .
GTG—more later!
“No, seriously. I have a solution to all our problems,” Mel announced as Lilly shoved her diary into her bag. She gestured for Dar and Lilly to gather around her bed, handing Dar the flask they’d been passing around. Then she lifted the mattress and drew out a small velvet change purse. She unclasped it and held it open so the girls could see. In it sat a small, squiggly stack of plastic squares—at first Lilly thought they were individually wrapped candies.
“Ew!” Dar squealed, backing up. “Really, Mel?”
Mel rolled her eyes. “Yes, really. We need to be prepared!”
That was when Lilly realized they were not candies, they were condoms.
“Don’t you think that’s a little premature?” Dar looked like she was about to spit out her last sip of Fireball.
Lilly looked between her two friends. “I thought the plan was to pair off, not . . .”
“What do you think pairing off involves? Let’s face it, sex is on the horizon. It’s probably going to happen for one of us, sooner than we even think. I’m just saying, if we’re prepared in advance, then when the opportunity comes along, we’ll be sure not to miss it.”
A startled feeling settled over the bedroom, like when everyone’s been gossiping before the bell rings and then the teacher enters the classroom and they all go silent at once. Sex hadn’t been part of the promise. At least not explicitly.
Mel’s eyes darted back and forth between Lilly and Dar. If Lilly’s expression looked anything like Dar’s, she was sure her cheeks were on fire. Dar passed her the flask. She took a sip, letting its sweet spiciness sting her throat, heating up her chest.
Mel put her hands on her hips. “I feel like you guys aren’t taking our plan seriously.”
A loud clamor in the hallway shattered their condom-induced trance just as Mel’s bedroom door burst open. Her brother Jared practically flew through the doorway and landed sprawled on the carpet, laughing.
“Dude!” Mel shouted, hastily stuffing the coin purse under her pillow. “Can you guys stop shoving each other around for a single second? Ever heard of knocking?”
Her other brother, John, stood in the doorway. He and Jared were twins and both football players, which sometimes made Lilly’s head swim. It was a lot of muscle and maleness at a time in one space. “You look kinda ho-ish in that,” he said.
Mel pushed him backward into the hall. “It’s brand-new, and it’s from Lupine!” She tugged the hem of her dress down with one hand.
Jared got up off the floor. “Well, good luck leaving the house.”
All three girls rolled their eyes as they succeeded in kicking the boys back out of the room.
“Just wear a cardigan over the cutouts in the back until we get there,” Dar advised.
“You’re so lucky you don’t have to live with brutes,” Mel said to both of them.
Dar shrugged. “Kinda sucks having no one my age around.”
Mel threw her arm around Dar. “Boo-hoo. You have us! Right, Lil?”
“Right.”
The three of them finished up the last touches on their outfits and grabbed their purses, then Mel carefully doled out one condom each. Lilly tucked hers surreptitiously into the inner pocket of her bag like it was a tracking device or an alarm that might start blaring at random, thinking that maybe Mel was right—they weren’t kids anymore.
They managed to bypass the concerned questions of Mel’s parents and then, together with her two best friends, Lilly headed out of the Knoxes’ house, a
nd into the brisk night.
While the former-abbey section of Devil’s Lake High stood regal and gothic against the moonlight, partially enclosing the courtyard, the modern side of the building sat low and squat, half unfinished, surrounded on two sides by parking lots, crawling with tall weeds and a few hunched stoners. Lilly spotted Boyd’s pickup as they approached.
She got in line behind Dar, waiting for Mr. Hasenkamp to let them through the front entrance one by one, and clutched her shoulder bag to her chest, praying silently that the condom would not come unloosed from its spot at the bottom of the inside zipper pocket. Behind him, Mr. Green, the Advanced English teacher, held a stack of flyers about appropriate dance behavior—no touching below the waist (yeah, right) and that sort of thing. He was unsuccessfully trying to get everyone to take a copy on their way in. He would learn eventually. He was one of a handful of the younger teachers on staff, along with yes-that’s-really-her-name Miss Gay, and Mr. Ruckerford.
“Ugh, ugh, ugh,” Mel was saying, shifting from foot to foot. “It’s so freezing out here. Why won’t they let us in already?”
Lilly kept scanning for signs of Boyd, who was usually easy to spot because of his height and his favorite weirdo hunting hat—red and black with floppy ears. He was probably inside already. She didn’t exactly have a plan, other than to make sure he noticed her.
This line was taking forever, though. Ever since Katy Delillio had to get her stomach pumped after downing a bottle of Smirnoff at the prom two years ago, the school administration had gotten stricter about checking everybody’s bags.
Still, they always found ways. Chuck Brody brought a few water balloons full of rum to the spring dance last year, and rumors had been flying that Adelia Naslow had plans to show up tonight with powdered alcohol she’d ordered online. Apparently you just mixed it with soda, and voilà.