by Cj Omololu
On the next corner there’s a yellow neon sign advertising Topsy’s Diner. Despite the fact that it’s open twenty-four hours, I see only a couple of people on stools at the counter. There’s a side door that leads to the parking lot. Most of the customers are in the front of the diner, so I slip in the side door and head straight for the bathroom. The tiles on the sink are cracked, but the water from the tap is warm the minute I turn it on.
I pull the last few drops of soap from the dispenser. The suds are tinged with pink as they float down the drain, and nausea hits me again as I rinse off the last of Eli’s blood. The face that stares back at me in the mirror is pale with a dark red blood smear on the cheek. I’m not sure I recognize myself anymore. The movements of my reflection follow me as I wet another paper towel and scrub my face; then I rinse my mouth to get rid of any traces of the night.
I’m alone in the bathroom, so I lean against the sink and pull out my phone. I have no idea who to call. Home is out, along with Maya, because she’s the first person they’d expect me to ask for help. It’s possible they’ve even put a trace on Dad’s and Maya’s phones already. Ava could be anywhere, and now that I know what she’s done, I can’t let her know where I am. We’re both on our own. I don’t owe her anything anymore. I turn my phone on to dial the only other possible number, quickly before I lose my nerve.
“Hello?” I can hear the caution in his voice.
“Zane?” My voice cracks with just that one word.
“Lexi? What’s going on?”
Suddenly I’m not sure of anything. Not even Zane. He’s been so helpful through all this—maybe a little too helpful. “Where are you?” I ask.
“I’m at home. Why?” His voice is wary.
“What’s your home phone number?” That’s the only way to be sure that he’s not here somewhere, not involved.
“My what? Lex, this is crazy—you’re already on the phone with me.”
“I need to call you on your home number,” I insist.
He sighs with frustration and gives me the number.
“I’ll call you right back,” I say, repeating the numbers under my breath as I hang up and dial again with shaking fingers.
I almost collapse with relief when Zane answers the phone on the first ring. “Now you have to tell me what’s going on,” he demands. “Where are you?”
“I’m at a diner called Topsy’s downtown.” I can feel the tears welling up in my throat as I think about what I have to say next. “Something bad happened. Really bad.”
“I’ll come get you,” he says instantly.
“You don’t understand.” I feel the hot tears falling from my cheeks. “Eli’s dead. I … I saw him. Ava did it. I’m sure of it now.” My voice breaks, and it takes a second of deep breathing to get the rest out. “But they’re going to think it was me.”
“No, they’re not,” he says, his voice calmer than I can imagine. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“They will,” I insist. “People saw me.… I had blood all over.… It’s bad.…” I can feel the panic rising again as I picture Eli lying in the alley.
“Stay there!” he says. “I’m getting into the car.”
Zane could get in so much trouble just being with me. I feel totally alone right now, but I don’t want to drag anyone else down with me. “But what if they catch—”
“I’m leaving now,” he says, his voice full of authority, and I lean on that for a moment. “Can you wait there for me? Are you safe?”
I look down at my dark clothes and bare feet. I look homeless but okay. “I think so. For a little while.”
“Good. Sit down and get a cup of coffee and wait for me. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He pauses. “And, Lex, take the battery out of your phone.”
“I’ll turn it off,” I say.
“The cops can still trace it. You need to get something small—like a nail file or screwdriver—to take the screws off the back and pull the big square battery out. Can you do that?”
“I think so.”
“Okay. I’ll see you soon.”
“Okay.” I hear him hang up and silence take over. “Thanks,” I say into the empty air, and hang up the phone.
I’m conscious of my bare feet as I slip into a booth near the side door, but there’s nothing I can do about that right now, so I just tuck them under the table and hope that nobody will notice. There’s a container full of toothpicks on the table, so I grab one and snap it in half. I take off the cover of the phone and see the screws just like Zane said. It takes a few tries with the toothpick, but eventually I get them off and pull out the big square battery.
“What can I get you, sugar?” a waitress says, slapping a laminated menu onto the table.
I jump back, startled, and lose one of the tiny screws under the table. “Um … coffee. Just coffee.”
She looks me over. “Coffee and a piece of pie,” she says, scribbling on her tiny notepad. “Coming right up.”
“Just coffee,” I say. My stomach is churning. I’m not going to touch it, but I need an excuse to take up this booth until Zane gets here.
“Look, honey,” she says. I can see a piece of pink gum stuck to her back teeth when she talks. “The pie’s on the house. You look like a girl who could use something on the house right about now.”
I stare at my fingers on the table. There’s a trace of dried blood on my cuticle. My eyes fill with tears. “Thanks …” I look at her name tag. “Rose.”
She grins and taps the plastic tag with her pen. “Rose E. Rose. That’s my full name, swear to God. My first name was Rose, and I married a man named Rose. Makes it easy to remember, don’t it?”
I manage a tiny smile. “It does.”
“Coffee and pie coming right up.”
Without my phone, I have nothing to do but watch the other customers and stare out the window until Rose places a cup of coffee in a thick ceramic mug in front of me, along with a piece of apple pie almost obliterated by a scoop of vanilla ice cream. “You’re such a bitty thing, I figured the ice cream can only help.”
“Thanks,” I say, trying to look normal by tearing packets of sugar and dumping them into the coffee. Rose walks up to the customers at the counter with a glass coffeepot, topping off each mug and leaning down to talk for just a second.
I poke at the pie with a fork. Lifting a bite to my mouth is impossible, but there’s something in the smell that’s comforting. Homey. Which is funny, because for all she cooks, Cecilia has never baked a pie in her life.
The ice cream has melted into a puddle and is dripping slowly off the plate by the time Zane slides into the booth across from me. Just the sight of him makes new tears threaten.
“Thanks … thanks for coming,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper.
Zane gets up and moves to the seat next to me, surrounding me in a hug that I allow myself to melt into. I bury my face in his chest and inhale the scent of the sun and the sea, closing my eyes as if I can block everything out. “What happened?” he finally asks, his voice rumbling in my ear.
I pull away and grab a napkin to blot my eyes. “Ava killed Eli. In an alley in back of the club where he was playing.”
His face is full of disbelief. “You saw her?”
“No. Not exactly. But I lost track of her when I was in the bathroom, and when I went outside to find him …” I trail off here, the grief threatening to overwhelm me. If only I could take that minute back. “When I got outside, she’d already gotten to him first.” I lift my eyes to Zane’s. “It had to be her. No one else knew we were going to see him, and she was so insistent about coming. It was one cut to the back of the neck, just like the others.”
“And there’s no way this was something else? An accident, or maybe he got mugged?”
I look straight at him.
“Okay, okay,” he says, giving himself over to what I already know is true. “What did you do then?”
“I ran. Stopped once to get rid of my shirt and then foun
d this place and called you.”
“Your shirt?”
I nod. “It was covered in blood. I tried to help Eli before … before I knew he was dead. I stuffed it into a Dumpster in some alley.”
Zane considers this. “You know the cops will find it.”
“Doesn’t matter. I left a nice big handprint in Eli’s blood on the van when I pulled myself up off the ground. And a couple of guys saw me running away.” I put my elbows on the table and my head in my hands. “I’m totally screwed.”
“What about Ms. Alvarez?” Zane says, his voice full of renewed enthusiasm.
I lift my head. “Her job is to keep me out of jail, not necessarily to believe what I say. At best, she probably thinks Ava and I are in it together.” I pause and take a deep breath. “It looks bad, Zane. Really bad. I just … I just can’t believe this is happening.” It feels surreal. It’s one thing to see photos of dead guys after the fact but something else to feel the warm blood on your hands.
The bell at the front door jingles, and a cop walks in, one hand on the gun at his hip. I stiffen and glance out the side door, but the cop car is sitting there running, with his partner in the front seat.
“You stay here,” I say, my mind in full panic mode. “I don’t want to get you any more involved in this. I’m going to make a run for it.”
I start to rise out of the booth, but Zane pulls me down. “Relax. He’s just getting some coffee,” he says, indicating the cop, who’s now making jokes with Rose. “They have nothing to do with you.”
The panic is rising in my chest until I feel like I can’t breathe. I’m responsible for this mess. “I don’t have time to just sit here—I have to get moving. I can’t let anyone else get hurt.”
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know,” I say, my voice desperate. I feel trapped.
Rose walks up to our table, steam rising from the glass coffeepot in her hand. “A warm-up?” she asks.
“No, thanks, Rose.” I pull a crumpled twenty out of my pocket and shove it toward her. “Keep the change.”
She follows my eyes to the cop I’m trying desperately not to stare at. “You kids need a quiet way out of here?” she asks in a hushed tone.
Zane gives her a grateful smile. “Yes, ma’am.”
She gives a barely perceptible nod backward. “Through the kitchen and out the back door by the walk-in freezer. Follow the alley down toward the streetlights. That’ll put you on the corner of Lincoln and Cleveland.”
“Perfect,” Zane says. “I’m parked on Cleveland.”
“Thanks,” I say, following Zane out of the booth and into the unknown.
“Here,” Zane says, reaching behind his seat. He hands me a pair of black flip-flops.
I hold them up. “They’re miles too big.”
He glances down at my dirty bare feet. “Better than what you have right now.”
“True,” I say, slipping them on. “Thanks.”
I watch the cars speed by in the other direction. I don’t have a clue where we’re going, but I want to put as much distance between me and the club as possible. I catch my reflection in the side mirror and marvel at how much has changed since I put the makeup and pendant on so many hours ago. If only I had it to do over—I never would have brought Ava to the club, never would have led her straight to him. And Eli might still be alive.
Reaching behind my head, I unclasp the diamond necklace, and then hold it in my palm. So many things have come from being Alicia, and not many of them good. Before I have time to think about it, I roll down my window and toss the pendant out, leaving it to be crushed by the cars behind us. It’s way past time.
Zane glances over but doesn’t say anything.
My mouth tastes sour, like a night that’s gone on too long. “Do you have any gum?”
“In the glove compartment.”
I flick it open and root around in the dim light among the parking tickets and expired insurance cards. I spot a bright green package in the corner, and when I lift it, I see something long and black underneath. It’s heavier than I expect as I pull it out, and when I press a tiny silver button on the side, I’m so shocked to see a sharp blade pop out that I almost drop it, nicking my finger in the process. Zane has a knife—a very long, very sharp knife—hidden in his van.
“What the hell?” I demand, holding the blade out toward him.
“What?” Zane says, taking his eyes off the road to glance at me.
“I found a knife in the glove compartment!”
“So? When I surf, I change my clothes in the van, sometimes early in the morning, sometimes in sketchy neighborhoods. Everybody should have a switchblade on them. It’s for protection.”
I stare at the shiny metal blade, sharp on both sides and honed to a fine point. The perfect weapon to kill someone quickly. I feel panicked and sick. I knew Zane was being too nice to me, too helpful. Why after all this time would he want to help unless he’s in on it somehow? It’s not me he wants to help—it’s Ava.
The yellow lines are whizzing by on the asphalt below our tires, but I reach for the door handle anyway. Anywhere is better than sitting here right now.
“Holy shit!” Zane says as the wind rushes in through the open door. He swerves across three lanes of traffic toward the side of the highway. “Shut the door!”
“No!” I say, waiting for him to slow down enough so that I can jump out. “I shouldn’t have called you. You’re in it with her!”
“Now you’re just being crazy,” Zane shouts, easing the van to a stop at the side of the freeway. The jerk as we stop is enough to slam the door shut. “You called my house! I wasn’t anywhere near the club.”
“You can get a house phone forwarded.” If anyone can figure that out, Zane can. I should have known. I unbuckle my seatbelt and lunge for the door in one movement, but Zane grabs my arm and pulls me back into my seat. “Let me go!” I scream. I kick and claw at him, frantic movements that match my thoughts.
“Lexi!” Zane shouts. “Stop! This is crazy!” He grabs both my arms and holds them tight to my sides. We’re both breathing heavily, and the sounds of the cars rushing by inches from the van fills the space around us. “I’m not in on anything! I keep the knife in my van for protection, that’s it.” His brown eyes are panicked as they search my face.
I stare at him, not knowing if I can believe anything he says. It feels like I can’t trust anyone. Ever.
“I’d never hurt you. There’s no way I would do anything to hurt you. All I want to do is help you.” His voice is barely a whisper now as he slowly releases my arms. “You’ve got to believe that.”
“You’re in on it with Ava,” I say, although my conviction is starting to waver. I want to believe him, but it seems like every little thing is stacked against me right now.
This seems to deflate him, and he reaches around me to open the door. “If that’s what you think, then go ahead. Take off. Nothing I can say is going to convince you.”
I look at the darkened ditch that stretches next to the freeway. If I get out here, where am I going to go? I glance up at Zane, but he’s staring out the front window, his jaw sharp in the light of the oncoming cars. I have to trust him—at least for now. “I’m keeping the knife,” I say, slamming the door shut.
“Fine,” Zane says. He grins slightly. “How many serial killers would send their victim straight to the spot where they keep their weapon?”
“Only the stupid ones,” I say, relaxing a little.
Zane glances up at the rearview mirror, the light reflected there illuminating the flecks of gold in his brown eyes. “Lex? I need you to duck down and slowly move toward the back of the van.”
“Why?” I ask, turning to look.
“Don’t turn around! There’s a cop pulling up behind us. The van’s windows are tinted in back, but they’ll still see your shadow with the lights on us. Crawl into the back and get under the pile of old towels behind my board. Then don’t move. I’ll take care of everyth
ing.”
Without thinking, I do as he says, and am getting to the back just as the van is flooded with bright white light. I pile the damp, musty-smelling towels on top of me, doing my best to make sure everything is covered. My chest is heaving and I concentrate on taking tiny, shallow breaths as I hear a voice outside the van.
“Yes, sir,” Zane says, answering some question. “My phone rang, and I pulled over to answer it.” His voice is amazingly steady. “I know it’s illegal to talk and drive.”
There’s a pause and then more deep rumbling from outside. I realize that I’m still clutching the switchblade in my hand. I drop it, knowing that I’m not going to use it here. If we’re caught, it’s all over.
“Sure,” Zane says. I hear the glove compartment open and him rustling around.
There’s another pause that seems eternal. I’m getting so antsy, it feels like I’m going to jump out of my skin, but then I hear the voice again.
“Thanks,” Zane says. Another pause. “Yes. Definitely, I will.” I close my eyes and stop breathing entirely as he starts the van and pulls slowly into traffic. Neither of us says anything for what seems like hours.
“Stay down for a few more minutes,” Zane calls toward the back. “I want to make sure they’re not following.”
I press my cheek into the floor of the van, bouncing along in the empty back until Zane calls that the coast is clear.
“What did they want?” I ask, climbing back into the passenger seat.
“Just to know why I was stopped on the side of the freeway,” he says, his eyes on the road ahead.
“And you didn’t give me up?”
“Jesus, Lex,” Zane says, shaking his head sadly.
We stay quiet, each of us lost in our own thoughts, until I realize we’re turning onto Zane’s street. He and his dad moved here after the divorce, and I haven’t been here for years. “No,” I say firmly. “Not your house.”