by Kelley York
Autumn rocks forward onto her tiptoes, head bowing, long hair spilling forward over the rail and dangling a foot or so above my head. I could reach up and touch it if I wanted. “So I’ve been thinking. We should go down that list and start talking to people.”
I blink up at her, squinting against the sunlight peering through the trees and glinting off the metal of the jungle gym. “And say what? Hi, I’m Vic and they think I raped Callie Wheeler, but was it actually you?”
She lets out a short laugh. “I was thinking more like asking them if they saw anything. Maybe the police haven’t talked to them all. Or maybe there are details they didn’t want to go to the cops with because they were worried about getting in trouble. Callie told me some of the people there wouldn’t admit to having gone at all because they didn’t want to get busted by their parents for being at a party with alcohol; there’s no way the cops have the complete list of everyone who was there.”
I guess I hadn’t thought about that. “Y-you think they’ll talk to me, being the prime suspect?”
Her mouth purses together. “Do you want to help or not?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then it’s worth a try, isn’t it? Nothing is going to get accomplished sitting on our asses, and we need to start somewhere.”
She has a point. Maybe I’m just scared of the idea of being judged more than I already am. At least when people are whispering behind my back, I can turn away and try to block it out…but facing it head-on like when Aaron and his pack cornered me in the bathroom, or when Marco hit me, that’s a little different. Harder to handle.
“Okay,” I relent. “M-Monday, then?”
“Monday,” she agrees with a grin. “It’s a date.”
It’s five in the evening before I talk to Brett. He’s been texting me all day with questions, confused by the one lone message I sent him. While Autumn is inside cooking us dinner, I step out onto the back porch to call him. He dislikes talking on the phone, but he answers on the second ring anyway.
“Are you dead?”
I roll my eyes. “N-no, I’m not dead.”
“Good, because I was beginning to wonder if she locked you in her trunk and drove her car into the lake.”
“Alive and kicking.”
“Okay. So what’s going on?”
I didn’t plan out what I was going to tell him, but the question sparks a silly grin to plaster itself to my face. “Um, I’ve been hanging out with Autumn.”
Brett pauses. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
Another pause. I can tell he’s trying to gauge what he’s supposed to say, what this means. “Okay. Why?”
“We were j-just hanging out. We’re friends, that’s what friends do, isn’t it?” This time, Brett is sighing and I get the feeling it’s one of those sighs that suggests he wants to say something I won’t like. “What?”
“I don’t know, Vic. I mean, it just seems like…” He hesitates. “Are you sure she’s not like…playing you?”
“Why would she?”
“Because just the other week, she thought you raped her best friend and now she’s wanting to hang out with you? Sounds suspicious to me.”
I try not to let the comment sting or take away the slight cloud I’ve been floating on all day. No one is going to ruin this for me or make me question it. He sounds genuinely worried, and that only bothers me more. “She’s not like that.”
“Considering she put you flat on your back and treated you like shit the first few times she met you, how do you know?”
“B-because that was different. She thought—”
“And what makes her positive that you didn’t do it?”
The question rubs me in all the wrong ways. As my best friend, I thought Brett would laugh and congratulate me. Never did I think he’d act like he can’t believe I’d have someone to spend time with other than him.
“Y-you know what, I have to go. She’s making us dinner.”
“Vic—”
I hang up without saying good-bye. There’s never been a moment when I haven’t supported Brett and encouraged him. He’s had a total of three actual girlfriends in the last few years—not counting casual hookups—and every time he’s been with them, I got nudged to the background while he was busy taking them out on dates and buying them lavish gifts. I went along quietly with it because he was happy, because he still tried to include me even though I always felt left out, and he still found time for me if I needed him.
So maybe I expected more support than this. Maybe he really is concerned given how Autumn and I met, I don’t know. But I refuse to dwell on it. Especially when I turn around and see Autumn standing at the stove, balanced on one foot while she scratches her calf with the other foot. She’s intently studying the recipe in one of her mother’s cookbooks. This last twenty-four hours has been a godsend. I didn’t realize how much I needed it. How much I needed her. Yet I still can’t help but feel like I don’t deserve it.
Autumn twists around to glance over her shoulder and smile at me through the sliding glass door. I pocket my phone and slip back inside, wandering up behind her to peer over her shoulder.
“Rice noodles and chicken stir-fry,” she explains. “I hope it tastes all right.”
“Smells good.” I’m so close to her and the temptation to just lean down and rest my cheek against her shoulder is obnoxiously strong. Do friends do that? Pretty sure that would be crossing a line I’m not sure I’m invited to cross yet.
We eat dinner—which is pretty tasty; better than anything I could conjure up—and relocate to the couch to watch a movie, which feels very date night-ish considering Autumn curls up at my side and I put my arm around her shoulders and play with her hair the entire time.
When it comes time to either decide to go to bed or take me home, she turns off the TV, debates for a moment, then turns to me.
“If you know how to be a gentleman, you can sleep upstairs with me.”
I blink once, not quite comprehending. Is there a guest room? I don’t remember seeing one. I just remember a bathroom, her room, and one other door that I assumed to be her parents’ room. So that means—
Oh.
“Okay,” I say dumbly, because I’m not sure I would know how not to be a gentleman. But I’ll admit the thought of curling up with her in bed is appealing to me in more ways than one. I do have hormones. I’m attracted to her. I can’t help that much. All I can help is that I’d never do anything to Autumn she didn’t ask me to do.
She locks up downstairs and takes my hand to lead me to her room. I was only here that one time and hadn’t looked around much, too distracted by Callie’s presence, but now I take in the details of her black lace curtains and the Japanese cherry blossom tree paintings on her walls. She vanishes long enough to get changed in the bathroom, and when she returns it’s in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.
“These are pretty,” I comment, nodding to the paintings.
Autumn actually looks down shyly, smiling to herself. “You think so?”
“Well…y-yeah. Did you paint them?”
“Yep, last summer. I’ve always liked to paint, but last year I really got into the whole sumi-e style.”
“You’ll have to add that word to my vocabulary.”
She laughs, gesturing to her desk in the corner where some odd stones, bottles of various colors, and some brushes are neatly organized. “Let’s see… Sumi-e, the Japanese term for ink on paper. I guess. Something like that. Basically, painting with ink and water.”
I commit that to memory. Probably not a definition I’ll find in my dictionary. I’m trying to imagine painting with something like ink and thinking I’d probably make a mess everywhere. These paintings are intricate and beautiful. “Is th-this what you want to do after high school?” I find myself asking. “Art?”
She comes to stand right beside me, looking up at one of the canvases on her wall. “I don’t know. I’ve thought about it, but the term ‘starving artist’
exists for a reason. I’d like to get into a field I can at least support myself on while doing art on the side, you know?”
At least she has that much figured out. My after-high-school goals include trying to survive. It’s a time period I haven’t put much thought into because Brett will be leaving the state to attend Harvard, Yale, whatever those big schools are that he’s been busting his ass to get into the last several years. That’ll leave me here alone.
“What about you?” Autumn asks. “You’re not actually aspiring to flip burgers, I’m sure.”
Looking at Autumn’s paintings, I really wish there were something I was good at other than remembering words out of a dictionary. I’ve never been much of an artist, singer, actor, anything. Nothing in the creative arts. “I wish I knew. I d-don’t know what I’m good at.”
“Well, what interests do you have? Music, sports, books, movies?”
“I like music,” I admit. “Brett had a guitar a few years ago I liked to mess around on.”
“Were you any good?”
“I c-could play a mean ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb.’”
Autumn laughs. “Okay, well…we’ll figure it out. Everyone has something they’re interested in.” She gestures to the bed. “Sorry, I looked through my dad’s stuff but he’s short and kind of chunky, so I don’t think any of his sweats would fit you. Besides, who knows if he wears underwear with them and that’d be kind of gross.”
A smile ticks at the corners of my mouth. “That’s okay.”
“Just sleep in your boxers if you want.” She flicks off the overhead light and crawls into bed. There’s just enough light coming in through the curtains that I don’t fall all over the place while stripping out of my clothes and, crawling beneath the covers beside her, I almost feel more exposed than I did this morning getting changed in the same room as her.
There’s a three-inch gap between our bodies, an invisible barrier that I’m afraid to breach. After a minute of lying silently in the dark, Autumn does it for me. She nudges me into position so that she can fit her body up against me, one of her legs between my thighs, arms around each other, and her face tucked against my throat so her lips are resting on my pulse point. This is where things get tricky, because I’m closing my eyes and willing my body not to react to the feel of so much of her skin against my skin.
It’s almost funny, though, how as Autumn falls asleep in my arms, the sensation of feeling turned on fades to utter calm and peace. Her breathing evens out, her fingers curled against my back slowly going slack, and when I whisper her name, she doesn’t respond. I almost want to pull away to stare at her while she sleeps, but moving would probably wake her.
I marvel at this. All of this. At her. At the fact that someone as sharp-tongued, fierce, loyal, and beautiful as Autumn Dixon would ever have been lonely like me, would ever have any interest in someone as under-the-radar as I am, and how something so horrific could possibly bring something so incredible into my life.
Chapter Fourteen
Autumn shoos me out early in the morning so she can get the house clean for her parents’ return. I text Brett to see if I can come over, feeling slightly sheepish given that I hung up on him last night. He responds simply Sure, so I ask Autumn to drive me to his place. I get out and watch her drive away before trotting up to Brett’s door and letting myself in with the key Mrs. Mason gave me my second night here.
Brett is sprawled on the couch filling out college applications on his laptop, a bowl of cereal in his hands. He glances over as I come in and begin trying to make a spot for myself amid the papers on the other side of the couch. He doesn’t say hello, simply fixes his gaze back onto the television playing a marathon of The Walking Dead. When a few minutes pass and he more or less ignores my existence, I say, “Good morning?”
He frowns a little, chews the cereal in his mouth, swallows. “Does Dad know you were hanging out with her?”
I cast him a sidelong glance. “No. P-probably not. Don’t see why it matters.”
After setting his bowl on the table, Brett slowly turns to stare at me. “Because she’s the best friend of the girl who’s accusing you of raping her. That’s sort of a big deal.”
“She isn’t accusing me anymore.”
“Even if Callie isn’t pushing it, her parents could be.”
The panic bubbling up in my chest is promptly shoved back down. “They’re looking for someone else now. Callie’s c-coming back to school tomorrow.”
That sufficiently distracts him and he straightens up, blinking. “Seriously? Autumn said that?”
I scratch a nervous hand through my hair. “No…Callie did.”
“You saw Callie.”
“B-briefly.”
He runs a hand over his face and sinks back against the couch with a heavy sigh. “You sure know how to put yourself in the line of fire. If you say anything that could incriminate yourself…”
“How can I incriminate m-myself when I’m innocent?”
Brett takes a long, deep breath, and his voice is gentler this time. “Dad and I are just trying to look out for you, Vic. If you get too wrapped up in a pretty girl, you’re going to end up arrested, and that’s not a problem I can fix for you.”
Guilt envelops me like a cold blanket. It’s true that Brett has had to step in a lot during my life. To help salvage my grades, to protect me from teasing and beatings, and when I desperately needed to get away from home. He and his parents are the ones responsible for teaching me independence and caring, what it is to be a normal family.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
Brett sighs again. “Don’t apologize. As long as you’re careful. Did you sleep with her?”
I contemplate crawling between the cushions to disappear. “No.”
“Then what did you guys do for two days?”
More like thirty-six hours, but whatever. “S-stuff. We talked. Ate. Went shopping, watched some movies…”
“That’s a long date.” He smiles a little, trying to turn the topic into something lighter. “I’m happy for you.”
That was all I’d wanted to hear to begin with, but even if it’s belated, it takes some of the tension off my shoulders. “Th-thanks. What’s all this stuff?”
He begins picking up his assortment of forms and organizing them. “Applications and instructions for essays I need to write. Whoever said senior year is a breeze obviously has never tried to get into a decent college at the last minute.”
I’m both envious and pitying of him. I wouldn’t know what to do with all this stuff, let alone the pressure, but at the same time…it’d be nice to be smart enough to get into any of the colleges he has a chance of getting into. Originally I thought Brett would’ve been content skipping the big-name schools—he applied for local colleges ages ago, until Mr. Mason insisted he was too smart to waste his time at someplace mediocre. I think it hurt his chances, since he got a late start at applying for the Ivy League. “You’ll do fine,” I offer. “You got this far. This should be cake.”
“Hopefully.” He stacks papers into neat piles on the coffee table. “So Callie’s coming back but they still have no idea who their next suspect is?”
“N-not that I know of. I mean, I doubt she could tell me even if they had a lead.” I consider telling him about the list Autumn and I made and decide now really isn’t the time to drag him into my issues when he obviously has enough on his plate.
Papers organized, he slouches forward, elbows on his knees and fingers steepled before him. “Is it bad I feel like Aaron knows more than he’s letting on?”
I frown. “What makes you think that?”
“I don’t know, man. Just…his reaction to everything. You know how he and I met, right? Because we shared a class with Callie last year. That was how they met and started dating.”
My full attention snaps to him. “Th-they dated?”
“They kept it quiet,” Brett admits. “Only a handful of people knew because her family doesn’t believe in dating until you�
��re eighteen. Didn’t Autumn tell you this? She had to have known.”
Saying she didn’t tell me feels like admitting defeat. “Sh-she probably thought I already knew.” I look down at my hands.
Brett doesn’t push it. “Well, yeah. Anyway. She dumped him after two months, so it’s not like they were this forever thing, but…”
“But makes it look kind of suspicious on his part that she comes to his party and ends up attacked.”
“Exactly.”
Does Callie suspect him, I wonder? “D-did you tell the police this?”
He snorts. “Of course I did. I’m not going to get in trouble for withholding information.”
No wonder Aaron was so pissed off at me. I don’t know whether he had anything to do with it or not, but even if he didn’t, it’s probably that he still cares about Callie and the idea that someone hurt her… “I don’t think he did it. Why come after me if he’s guilty?”
“Don’t know. To throw people off? To put more pressure on you?” He shrugs. “Besides, I didn’t say he did it. I said I think he knows more than he’s saying. Maybe he’s covering up for one of his or his brother’s friends.”
That seems more likely. “So w-what do we do about it? Ask him?”
“He’s not going to admit to anything. We’d have to find proof.”
We both sit back and stare straight ahead, frowning at the television while we think. Brett’s mind is undoubtedly racing while mine is more like a hamster scrambling along on a rusty wheel, but I’m trying my best. What evidence would there be that the police wouldn’t have found? I think of the names on Autumn’s list, of the friends of Aaron’s who were present, of Patrick, who was on the stairs right next to me…
Brett says, “What about the cameras?”
“The what?”
“The cameras. Didn’t you see them? Aaron had disposable cameras lying around that everyone was using to take pictures at the party.”
I remember them. Or rather, I remember seeing people posing for pictures, but hadn’t realized it was with actual cameras rather than digital ones. “I’m s-sure the police confiscated all of those.”