by Amina Akhtar
We were all back at work when everything erupted. Zhazha hadn’t shown up to the office, obviously. I waited for someone else to discover the post. (I may have sent it out to a few people to get their attention, via a spam email account. It was ridiculous how I had to do everything around here.) Finally, I heard some gasps and a few shrieks. Dalia vomited. Sarah shared it with everyone via text. She wrote, Ding dong the witch is dead!
“It’s real, right? Tell me it’s real!” Sarah said excitedly.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it’s for a shoot?”
“No, look at that. Her head’s totally off her body. Even Zhazha couldn’t do that,” Evie pointed out.
“What about Photoshop?” Dalia asked.
“Ohhhhhh . . .” we all said at once.
“Guys, I think we have to assume it’s real,” Sarah added, “because, like, we’ve seen a lot of bodies lately. And this one looks pretty legit. Anya, can you call your boyfriend and ask him?”
“My boyfriend?”
“You know, the one you had haul me out of here.” She narrowed her eyes as she said it. I was not forgiven.
“The cop? Whatevs, he’s not my boyfriend.” OMG, if only he were.
“I wish he was mine. He’s hot!” Dalia laughed.
If she went after Detective Hopper, I’d have to cut her hands off and feed them to her.
“You can have him.” I shrugged.
“But call him anyways and find out. Because if she’s dead . . .” Sarah said.
“Fine. But why would you care if she’s dead? You hate Zhazha.”
I dialed anyway. I was dying to hear his voice. It had been weeks since we’d spoken. I wanted to ask him if he holidayed somewhere. Foreplay was so much fun.
“Hopper.”
“Is it true?”
“Who is this and is what true?”
“Sorry, it’s Anya. Is it true about Zhazha?”
“Anya, hi. We can’t comment on open investigations.” That meant they’d found her body. Of course her freak fans had called the police.
“Oh my God, it is. Oh my God.”
“Anya, please stay calm.”
“How can I be calm? Everyone around us is getting killed!”
“We’re still investigating.”
“Tell me it was an accident.”
“I . . . can’t.”
“Dammit! I told you someone’s after us!”
“We’re waiting on the ME’s report, but we’ll be coming to interview you guys.”
“So more of the same. When are you guys going to actually catch someone?” My voice was anxious. I glanced at the group around me, to see if they were listening. They were eating up every word. Dalia gasped.
“We’re working on it,” Hopper ground out. He was not happy with me. Was this a fight?
“Okay, in the meantime, we’ll all try not to die.” I hung up and looked at the three sets of eyes waiting for my answer. “It’s her. She’s dead.”
“O-M-G, O-M-G, O-M-G!” Sarah yelled.
“Jesus, why are you yelling? You hated her,” I pointed out again.
“Still. Another one of us dead,” she said.
“She was not one of us,” Evie sniffed.
My head hurt. I needed a nap.
“I need some air,” I said and went for a walk.
Detective Hopper didn’t care about me. That much was clear. All that flirting, the hand touching, the saying my name? And for what? Nothing. He should be on #TeamAnya, rubbing my shoulders (or just offering to) and telling me everything he knew. He should have called me the second they found Z’s body. That’s what a boyfriend-worthy guy would do. Until he showed he cared, we were so totally on a break. I didn’t know what I ever saw in him.
I kept walking—I needed to hit ten thousand steps today or else. Besides, I wasn’t ready to deal with the faux hysterics at La Vie. And once Celia found out, well, heads would really roll.
Eventually, I trudged back to work and my desk.
“Have you heard?”
I looked up. Celia stood over me. Bells, I needed to put bells on everyone.
“About Zhazha?”
She nodded.
“Yeah, I heard.”
“Awful, dreadful news. Thankfully we have that shoot with her. It will have to be her memorial spread. We can’t do anything with the issue, but we can do something online.”
Should I tell her about the death photo? How closely it resembled her spread? It passed through my mind. No. Let her deal with it later. A PR disaster. I loved it. Celia should have promoted me. Then we wouldn’t be in this mess. It was all her fault. All of it. Celia was the reason all of this happened.
“Um, is Sarah going to move back here now that Zhazha’s . . . ?”
“Oh, I guess so. We could always leave Zhazha’s desk empty for a bit. To honor her.”
“That’d be nice.” And surprisingly human.
“Are you going to be okay?” She put her arm around me. I let it stay on my shoulders awkwardly for three seconds before brushing it off.
“Of course. I just need to stay busy.”
“I know Zhazha was your friend.” She tried to pat me on the shoulder, but I moved deftly away, leaving her hand fluttering uselessly in the air. There was only so much I could go along with.
I liked Zhazha—when she wasn’t fucking me over. But she wasn’t Sarah. There was only one Sarah Taft, and try as I might, I couldn’t replace her. Why did Zhazha have to stab me in the back? That fucking Brutus. Everyone fucks you over eventually. Everyone. Don’t believe me? Look around at your friends. Think of everything they’ve done that pissed you off. What kind of friends are they? Shitty ones.
Dr. M has tried to get me to deal with this. But even he will fail me eventually. That’s what people do. They fuck you over and then blame you, lash out at you. It’s exhausting. It makes me want to run off to some deserted island.
“You have to learn to trust someone sometime,” he lectured.
“Why?”
“Because that’s part of growing. And you need to grow.”
Sometimes he asked too much of me. We both knew I couldn’t. That I’d fall in love with someone and then it would end badly. It always did. Zhazha was dead. Meredith was dead. But I still had a chance with Sarah. She could be my person, my meaningful connection. I had to make the effort. If you tried hard enough, you got what you wanted, right?
* * *
Sarah decided a new corpse meant it was time to go shopping. She waited until after lunch to saunter in, whistling to herself, carrying a few shopping bags from Barneys and Bergdorf full of bright colors from ODLR, Gucci, and Valentino. Good-bye, goth Sarah. She glowed, her skin looking luminous.
“You have got to see what I bought!” She dropped her bags at Zhazha’s desk.
“I think Celia is looking for you.”
“Oh, okay, be right back then!” She trotted off to Celia’s office, her hair bouncing like a horse’s mane. In only few hours since the news broke about Zhazha, Sarah’s hair was already blonder, shinier, and if it were possible, sparklier. It was as if with Zhazha’s death, Sarah had somehow grown more powerful and gorgeous, righting the fashion power pyramid. Or she’d just booked a hair appointment. Whatever, she looked damn good.
“This is so unfair!” Sarah yelled, stomping back to my cubicle.
“Problem?”
“I can’t move back here yet. Out of respect for Zhazha.”
“Well, it’s only temporary, right?”
“Who cares! She’s dead! Fuck her, fuck this desk!” People in the cubicles near us started whispering. “It’s not like she cares!” She moved to sit down, but I grabbed her arm.
“Don’t sit, Sarah.”
“Why not? She’s dead, Anya.”
“This is not your desk.” It wasn’t anyone’s desk. But I had to give Zhazha one day of respect even if she was a shitty friend. Fine, and I wanted to remind Sarah that she wasn’t the queen anymore. She belonged with the co
py department.
“You know what? I’ll burn this desk. How would you like that?” She grabbed her bags and continued her tirade down the hall.
“Are you all right, Anya?” Dalia peered around the cubicle wall. She tilted her head to the side, angled in the perfect your-loved-one-is-dead tilt.
“What do you want, Dalia?”
“I-I just wanted to see how you were, that’s all. It was really awesome what you did.”
“Fine. You can leave now. You really need to stop hovering like that. It’s creepy.” I hurt her feelings. But I didn’t need her fake sympathy today.
That night I set the building on fire and killed everyone inside.
Just kidding. I watched three back-to-back episodes of Law & Order. A girl needed a release. It was all work and no play lately.
* * *
That evening, Dr. M watched me from my orange armchair. I hated that thing. I’d bought it on a whim. I was no good with colors. He took off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt.
“I think you’ve been surrounded by death, and this latest one isn’t helping. You need time to process.”
I stared at my nails. What I needed was a manicure. Desperately.
“Anya? What are you thinking about?”
“Jack,” I replied. “I’m trying to figure out where I stand with him. He acts like my friend, but then he texts about me. Not cool, right?”
“No, it’s not cool. So you’re going to ignore what I said?”
I shrugged. “I’ll deal with emotions later.” Emotions were so messy. “Do you think if I asked Jack point blank what his deal was, he’d tell me?” I tuned out Dr. M’s response.
I knew what I was going to do. I was going to find out whether Jack was my friend. I was the queen now, not Sarah. Being the queen bee meant I needed a royal court. Jack had to be mine.
He and Sarah were out together this second. They’d posted on Insta. They were celebrating. How tacky, right? At least pretend to be sad about Zhazha. If I could do it, so could they. But there the two of them were: Jack in one of his capes and Sarah in Valentino. Holding cocktails. I was staring at the photos long after Dr. M left.
A well-placed subtweet can do wonders. It can tell someone you hate them without actually saying the words. Or, in my case, it alerted Jack to my sudden interest in his favorite outerwear: Must go cape shopping soon. Anyone have suggestions? There. That should get his attention. The only thing he loved more than attention was buying clothes that got him seen.
I updated my Sarah and Jack board. I had to focus my chi, get my energy aligned with my goals. I had to split them up for good. I tore up photos of the two of them. I printed out tweets. Every use of my glue stick was like a pin in a voodoo doll. They would break up forever.
* * *
“What about this one?” Jack held up a shapeless swath of fabric. I wrinkled my nose.
“I need something with a bit more detail to it.”
We were at Barneys, my favorite store. Bergdorf was my number two. But Barneys got my color palette. Their fashion buyers were the best in the world. I was dying to hang out with them.
“So, like, how have you been?” Jack asked as we wandered around. “With Zhazha and all, I mean.”
“Honestly? Freaked out. How many more of us are gonna drop dead?”
Jack nodded sympathetically.
“The police don’t even seem to care,” I added.
“It’s so scary right now. I mean, when you think about it, that could have been me,” he said. “I wanted to work with you guys. Ugh, so glad I didn’t.” I patted his shoulder to show that I understood. I felt for him.
“That is scary. Ooh, what about this one?” I held up a wool and leather cape.
“So chic. You need to get it.” He glanced around before leaning in. “So, can I tell you something in private?” His voice was low. “This is going to sound so weird. But like, the killer—or killers—are kind of chic.”
I stared open-mouthed. Jack Archer contained multitudes.
“I mean, like the murder scenes they set up are so very editorial. Better than what any mag is running, right?”
“Yeah, I see what you’re saying.” He liked my styling. He thought my art direction was good. And he thought my work was chic. This was everything. Why couldn’t Sarah say these things to me?
“I’m just saying if you have to die, it’s a very stylish way to go.” He looked in my eyes as he said it. “If I’m next, I want something really extravagant. Like, Chanel couture show extravagant.”
I bit back a smile. “Of course you do. But I wouldn’t tell a lot of people that.” Keep it between us. Our secret.
“Oh, God no!” He laughed. “Can you even imagine?”
“You know, that means that the murderer—or murderers—must have an eye . . . and a grudge against everyone.”
“Yeah. And for a good reason. Like, maybe . . .”
We said it at the same time. “Sarah.”
Jack covered his mouth, then moved his hand indecisively. “I don’t know why I said that.”
“Um, because it’s true?” I wrinkled my nose to show I was serious. “The police have questioned her.”
He shuddered, then glanced around to make sure no one was listening. “Let’s def keep this between us. I won’t lie, I’m scared to be alone with her.”
Eureka.
I reached out and grabbed his hands. “Me, too! And I’ve never been able to tell if she likes me. What if I’m next?” I tried to sound as terrified as I could. I wanted to make this moment perfect.
“Girl, I so get you. She runs super hot and cold. Totes the same way with me.”
“Why put up with it then? Like, Jack, I’d never treat you that way.” I’d never kill you. Not if you were really on #TeamAnya.
“Babe! Samesies. I love you so much. Let’s go get a drink after this! Just us.”
“Amazing. Let me pay for my cape first. Oh, hey, did you tell Zhazha all that weird shit Lisa said about me?” I had to know. “She mentioned it a while back before . . .” I waved my hand to mean before she was brutally killed.
“Oh, God, you know, I think I did.” He grimaced. “I was saying how obsessed Lisa was with you. It was all good stuff, don’t worry. You can trust me.”
I nodded. He was lying; he’d probably said worse. But I found myself numb to it all. Everyone talks shit; it was the fashion way. Jack was my friend now. I could either kill him or forgive him. I took a deep breath and smiled. I chose the latter. Dr. M was going to be thrilled.
“You’re such a good friend, babe,” I said. I meant it. He slung his arm around me. This was what friendship was: hugs, shopping, and some major lies.
Later that night, I posted selfies of us together. I called Jack my true bestie in the caption. He commented, You know it.
When Sarah texted Jack later complaining about me, he screengrabbed it and sent it to me. I was ecstatic. Jack loved me, not Sarah. He was going to be my friend only. He was scared of Sarah, which made it easy to convince him she wasn’t a true friend. Not when she treated everyone like dirt and killed them. Dr. M wasn’t pleased with my tactics but conceded I needed a new friend, one who actually liked me.
I made a mood board of me and Jack. Just the two of us. Looking so cute and happy. And chic. I trimmed Sarah out of some photos. And then I tore up her cutout heads and giggled.
17
Leather leggings are very versatile. You can wear them with just about anything. That’s why they were my unofficial uniform, worn with a black cashmere sweater, black platform boots, and some chunky jewelry. There’s no such thing as too much black.
“Dressed for a funeral, I see.” Sarah smirked. It was Monday morning and too early to deal with anyone.
“Very funny.”
“When is what’s-her-name’s service, anyhow?”
“In a few days. Her family is flying over from Russia.” Some of them, at least. The rest were in Brooklyn.
“So why are you dre
ssed all somber and shit?”
“Because my friend died.”
She shrugged. I wanted to remind her she went all noir for Lisa. But what was the point? Sarah would always be Sarah.
“Jeez, why so sensitive? I was just coming to say hi.”
“Fine, hi.” I was in no mood for her antics today. She eyed the desk and all the flowers that had arrived for Zhazha.
“Wow, why is everyone sending flowers here?”
“Out of respect. Something you know nothing about.”
“But she’s dead. Whatever, maybe I’ll take some—”
“Put those down and leave. Now.” They weren’t for her. Sarah was a taker, just like Dr. M said. She’d take everything from me. She couldn’t even let someone have their death flowers. I wanted to deny her everything.
“Um, you aren’t my boss. I’m yours. And last I recalled, we used to be friends.”
“Were we?”
“Whatever, Morticia.”
Dr. M said my relationship with Sarah was a “sunk cost fallacy” and that I should move on. I had to Google it. But think of all that wasted effort! I couldn’t just let her go.
“You need to decide if you’re going to move on or if this is your life now. And you know what I’d suggest,” he said in our last session. I nodded. Yes, I had to do something. Something that would make Sarah really see that if she continued to reject me or threaten me, there’d be a hefty price to pay.
So I was playing it cool. Sometimes, when you really want to tell someone how you feel, the best thing is to act the opposite. Clam up and shove your feelings and emotions so far down, it will take Dr. M a decade to get to them. Yes, that was living the right way.
I could feel eyes on me the whole day. The entire office knew about my spat with Sarah, and they were all on my side. It was awesome. Be above it, Anya. But they were all still doing that head-tilt thing. The death tilt. It was infuriating. The next person who did it was going to get a pen shoved in her eyes. Between that, all the “How are yous?” in lilting tones, and the white flowers delivered by the truck full, I was going out of my head. Death was so fucking annoying sometimes.