Shade Me

by Jennifer Brown

  “Got to have a willing partner,” I said. “Sometimes hard to come by someone who can keep up on open gym day. But maybe one of the nine-year-olds will go easy on you.”

  He stepped forward, folded his arms across his chest, and looked down at me. “Or maybe I’ll go easy on you.”

  We locked eyes for so long, wordlessly challenging each other, I almost forgot Gunner was standing right there until he cleared his throat. “Nik? You sure you’re up for sparring today?” he asked. “You look like you’ve taken some shots already.”

  I answered him but refused to take my eyes away from Detective Martinez’s. “Would love to spar the detective.”

  Ten minutes later, we stood in the middle of the mat in our sparring gear—padded headgear, gloves, shoes, shin guards.

  “Okay, you two, try to keep it civil,” Gunner said. We bowed to him, and then to each other, and then dropped to our fighting stances, hands up at the ready, as Gunner backed off the mat.

  “Just so you know,” Detective Martinez said, “these marks on your face are not fine, Nikki. I thought we talked about you being safe.”

  I shrugged, tried to make a lame attempt at lightness. “I can’t always promise safe. I can only promise trained.” I threw a high kick—a roundhouse, but he saw it coming and backed off.

  “Who did it? Who hit you?”

  “Which one?” I threw another high roundhouse, faster this time. He got his arm up just in time to block it. I sank back into my fighting stance, hopping on my toes, determined not to let him distract me.

  “Jesus, you are stubborn,” he muttered under his breath. I threw another roundhouse. He ducked, blocked it with his arm, and shot out with a quick left jab, tagging me in the mouth. I felt the sting on my lip. “Does your dad know what’s going on?”

  “Cute,” I said. “And no. He’s in San Diego.”

  “So you’re alone. Don’t you have anyone you can stay with?”

  “I’m fine,” I repeated, only more strongly this time. More believably, or at least I thought so. “I’ve got the house all locked up. Nobody can get in. Plus, I’m here, right? A little fight is nothing.” I chose to ignore the tiny detail about Luna getting in before, drugging me, and hauling my passed-out ass to her house so she could warn me off. Remembering my confrontation with Luna, combined with my stinging lip, irritated me. I swung my back leg high in an inside crescent. He ducked, just as he’d done before, but I was ready for it. I let my toe touch the mat, then, as if on a spring, arced my leg back around the other way. Outside crescent to the jaw. His hand went to his face, surprised, and then we both dropped back to our fighting stances.

  “Not bad,” he said. “But you’re all up top. What happens if someone gets you on the ground?”

  I jabbed at him with my left hand. He blocked it, so I jabbed again. And again. “I seem to do okay,” I said. One more jab, and then I spun around on my left heel—wicked fast—and hook kicked him right in the ribs.

  Air escaped through his teeth with the impact, and for a second I thought I had him. But he was faster than I’d bargained for, and when I advanced on him with another inside crescent, he grabbed my leg and yanked it up against his hip, pulling me in. “What if ‘okay’ isn’t good enough?” he asked, his face inches from mine. He grabbed my lower back, stepped behind me, and leaned forward so that we both tumbled to the mat. He was on hands and knees on top of me, my leg hooked over his arm so that my calf was draped over his shoulder. He had a smug look on his face. “This is what I’m talking about, Nikki. You’re tough, but you’re not invincible.” He got a serious look on his face. “I wasn’t always a cop in Brentwood, you know. I grew up on the east side of South Central. I know what tough is. And I know there’s no such thing as invincible.”

  For a moment, we just breathed, staring into each other’s eyes, the connection between us reminding me of spilled wine. Reminding me of when my mother curled me up tight, rocked me, and sang into my hair, still wet from the bath.

  If crimson scared me, spilled wine terrified me.

  I wriggled under his grasp, at first unsure what to do. He was right about me—I was trained to fight standing up, using my legs, my feet, and distance. This close, I was going to have to rely on gut instinct, or I was going to lose.

  Damn it, I hated to lose.

  I wrapped both of my arms around his neck, pulling his face in close. I could feel his sweat on my skin, but had no time to let it distract me. I wrapped my left leg around his back, pushed hard with my right leg—the one he was holding—and rolled with all my might. It worked—Detective Martinez flipped and suddenly I was the one on top—but I refused to show my surprise that I’d been successful. I held his wrists down on the floor, both of us panting. A drop of sweat fell from my nose onto his chest. We stayed that way for just a beat, and then I got up and held out my hand to help him up.

  When he was standing, I bowed to him and left the floor.

  My arms and legs still felt stiff and unusable this morning. My head still felt unclear. But at the moment I felt like I could conquer anything.

  “I’m as close as you’re going to come to invincible, though,” I said over my shoulder. I tossed a wink at the detective as I sauntered away.

  He shook his head. “You are definitely the hardest-headed woman I’ve ever met.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  TWO HOURS LATER, my muscles were warm and taut from work, and I had a faster roundhouse than ever. Powerful. Aimed just right, I could knock someone out cold with that kick.

  I’d come home to clean up, the exercise and the shower chasing away the last of the drugs and making my head crystal clear. I even wrote the word CRYSTAL in the fog on the bathroom mirror just to see what happened. Almost immediately, it blinked at me like a diamond hit with sunlight. I was back to normal.

  I pulled on a pair of my most comfortable jeans, a worn black T-shirt, and my Chucks—the ones with the scrape on the toe from my fight with Gibson Talley—clothes I could move in. I felt stronger than ever. Let Luna come at me. She would be a challenge I would gladly accept.

  I spent the afternoon Googling everything I could find about Bill and Vanessa Hollis. Vanessa, perhaps not surprisingly, turned up almost nothing. A couple of photos from a celebrity party, Vanessa on the dance floor, a drink in hand. A piece on interior decorating, where Hollis Mansion was featured. A photo accompanying the article showed the office Luna had dragged me into, and I was shocked at how many details I’d missed while I was in there. Pieces of furniture I hadn’t seen, art on the walls. In some ways, it looked like an entirely different room from the one I’d been in the day before.

  But there was still something about it that bugged me. A familiar itch that tugged at the back of my memory.

  On the other hand, there were more articles about Bill Hollis than I could even count. No way could I read them all, so I skimmed a few. For the most part, it seemed like the features about Bill could all be summarized like this: Bill Hollis, the most amazing movie exec to ever grace Hollywood, might actually be the second coming of Christ. He was to be loved—no, revered—and every move he ever made was either (1) groundbreaking, (2) genius, or (3) so astoundingly philanthropic it was a wonder that the Hollises weren’t living in a dirt hut so that others might live in the lap of luxury. And, speaking of the lap of luxury, Bill Hollis actually was the physical lap of luxury. Every suit he wore became the must-wear suit of the century, every cigar he smoked was notable to anyone who knew their ass from a cigar, and every bottle of wine he touched must be hundreds of years old. Maybe thousands. I rolled my eyes as I scrolled through the articles. Photos of him with his arms around Angelina and Scarlett, photos of him shaking hands with Bono and drinking scotch with Seth Rogen. A photo of him leaning against a Lamborghini, the license plate on that one screaming out at me in neon blue, HLYWD.

  I sat back. So he had two cars, their vanity plates reading HLYWD and DREAMS. He was flaunting his dedication to an escort servic
e to the whole world, and everyone was too busy kissing his boots to notice.

  There was not one mention of him having a connection to an escort service. I even plugged in the search terms “Bill Hollis” and “scandal.” Nothing. He appeared untouchable.

  Except for the most recent news entries, of course. The ones about him bailing his son out of jail. But all those articles spun Dru to be the unappreciative son of a devoted father. One headline even dared proclaim, “When Rotten Apples Fall Far from the Tree.”

  Ugh. More like rotten tree.

  The thought of how very untouchable this family was chilled me. Was there a prayer that I could come near someone like Bill Hollis, or would he crush me like a bug? There was something that Peyton knew—Luna had made that clear, and it wasn’t all about her—and look what happened to Peyton. I shuddered at the thought that Bill Hollis might have had something to do with his own daughter’s attack.

  I shut my laptop, rubbing my face with my palms. I’d plugged in Peyton’s phone before falling down the rabbit hole of researching her parents. I was eager to find what clues it might hold.

  I turned it on, unsure what to expect.

  Peyton’s wallpaper was the SOS photo, which told me she’d meant for me to find her phone. She’d left it as a clue. But a quick look inside told me that it was not much of a clue to have. The phone was wiped totally clean.

  There were no contacts in her list. No photos. No videos. Not a single app. Her call history had been deleted, as had her voice mails. Had she deleted everything, or had someone else done it when they cleaned out her apartment? It seemed unlikely that they’d found the phone at all, given that it was buried under all those childhood mementos.

  I closed my eyes and tried to remember the night of her attack, the phone call that I’d gotten, letting the color orange that I’d seen on the numbers lead me back there.

  I remembered thinking it might be Jones calling. Being impatient when I answered. But then I remembered the impatience being whisked away when I heard shallow breathing on the other end. “Hey,” a voice said, childlike, frightened. Peyton. “Listen, I . . .”

  But then there’d been something else. A voice in the background. I hadn’t been able to make out what it was saying.

  “Nikki,” Peyton had said. Definitely calling me. Not just reaching out blindly in fear, but reaching out to me in particular.

  The voice in the background spoke again, and this time I could make it out clearly. “Put the phone down,” it had said.

  It was a man’s voice. The significance didn’t sink in until that moment. It was a man’s voice threatening Peyton, not Luna’s.

  I looked again at the SOS in the background, but I was confused. How was this supposed to lead me to anything? There was nothing left on this phone.

  I switched over to her texts. To my surprise, there was one, sent to a phone number I didn’t recognize.

  I know everything. I need to see you.

  There was no response. A few minutes later, she’d sent another to the same number.

  Call me for time and place.

  Still no response. Ten minutes later, she’d sent a third.

  I wouldn’t chance it if I were you. Call me or I will take you all down.

  Wait a minute. You all? I tapped the phone number at the top, and three other phone numbers dropped down. It was a group text. The numbers all shimmered in their individual colors, settling into disjointed patterns. All except one.

  The one I recognized.

  Dru Hollis’s phone number.

  24

  I JOLTED OUT of my chair, dropping Peyton’s phone on my desk, staring at it as it bounced and fell to the floor, all the while Dru’s number sending a beacon of lies at me. Turquoise, gray. Cheater, liar.

  She was threatening, in those texts, to take them all down. Including Dru. Had asked them to call to set up a place and time to meet.

  Put the phone down.

  A man’s voice. Was it Dru’s? I covered my ears, paced the length of my room and back, hearing the voice over and over in my head, trying to place it, to match it to his. I didn’t know. It could have been Bill Hollis’s voice. For that matter, it could have been anyone else’s. Gibson’s. Arrigo Basile’s. Or one of Luna’s friends.

  I left the phone on my floor.

  I’D SAT THERE so long, researching the Hollises, combing Peyton’s phone, it was evening before I left the house. By the time I reached the hospital, it was full-on dark. I hurried through the parking lot, looking over my shoulder the whole time for Luna, or Vanessa, or both. I was hungry, but afraid to eat anything in my house, afraid to stop anywhere, to walk through a parking lot. Nothing seemed safe to me anymore. Nobody.

  I had plans to see Dru that night, to meet him at his apartment. It was supposed to be an intimate meeting. A good time.

  But how could I have a good time with him now?

  Yet, I wanted to see him, to hear his explanation of why he’d never told me about the text, even after I told him about Luna. I needed to see how much he knew about the family business, about Hollywood Dreams, the Molly, Double Rainbow. But I needed to see him for other things, too. I needed to be reassured by his touch, by the colors that would swamp the room when we touched, that he wasn’t involved in this. That he hadn’t gotten the text. That he’d talked her out of whatever she was planning. That . . . something. Anything. Otherwise it would mean I’d placed my trust—what little of it I had—in the wrong person. Again. It would mean Detective Martinez had been right, and that I’d been stupidly playing with fire all along. It would mean I’d chosen violet lust over myself, over Peyton.

  Surely this made me one of those dumb, mooning girls. Surely this made me the very kind of girl I hated. The kind whose headlines would make me shake my head and goggle at their stupidity.

  I headed straight for Peyton’s room, not even pausing to listen for the footsteps that seemed to follow me everywhere. The closer I got, the more the urge to see her pressed in on me, and I found myself jogging down the hallway by the time I got to her floor. Nurses stopped and stared at me. I rounded the corner into Peyton’s room and skidded to a stop.

  Vee was sitting next to her bedside, tears streaking down her face in long lines of jet-black mascara. Behind her stood the guy I recognized as the drummer from Viral Fanfare but didn’t actually know. On the far end of the room, sitting on the heat register, his arms folded, sat Gibson Talley.

  “Oh,” I said, my hand covering my heart without my even realizing it.

  Gibson Talley stood up, uncrossed his arms. He glared at me.

  “I didn’t expect . . . ,” I said. My throat had gone dry. “Why are you here?”

  “I would ask the same of you,” Vee said. Her top lip was swollen and red from tears. “But we know that you’re all up in Peyton’s business. Never hung out with her once, never came to a single show, yet here you are again. Can’t even let the poor girl die in peace.”

  “Die?” I said, taking three hurried steps into the room.

  “Don’t get your hopes up. She’s not dead yet. You still have time to pin this on any number of people in Brentwood,” the drummer said. He chewed on the inside of his lip piercing, making the skin surrounding it wiggle up and down in a deepening dimple.

  “Listen, I know it wasn’t you,” I said, turning to Gibson.

  “No shit,” he said, his face hard. There were stitches on the side of his head, though the cut that they’d sewn together looked mostly healed. I felt a small pang of guilt.

  “I’m really sorry, but you came after me.”

  “I came to talk to you,” Gibson said.

  “You put me in a choke hold. I had no other choice.” I turned to Vee. “And someone said you’d been asking about a will. Surely you can see how you guys looked guilty.”

  “I just wanted to know what to do with the songs,” she said. “Especially the ones that Gib cowrote. Just in case something terrible happened. The band has a right to them.” She looked down a
t Peyton, and her eyes filled with tears again. “It was bad timing. If I’d known there was a real possibility that she could die, I would never have asked. We can write new songs. All that stuff was stupid. I wish we hadn’t ever fought. I think we all wish it.” She leaned miserably into the drummer. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder as she sniffled.

  It was the softest and most genuine I’d ever seen Vee. I hadn’t known she could do that.

  I sat in the chair on the other side of Peyton’s bed and leaned forward to get right in Vee’s line of vision. “She was in trouble,” I said, a whisper. “She maybe still is. And now I am, too. I can’t figure out why she was reaching out to me before her attack, but I know now for sure that she was.”

  “How do you know?” Vee asked. “Maybe she wasn’t and you’re just butting in.”

  “She left me some clues. And if she left them for me, it must have been because she wanted me to know something. I can’t figure out what the missing link is, and it’s driving me crazy. If I don’t get it soon, the police will take over and that will be it. I’ll never know what Peyton wanted me to know. Please. I’m sorry that I hurt you.” I looked over at Gibson. “But I’m desperate. What do you know?”

  Vee sniffled some more, and I could see her fighting with herself over how much to let me in. Chameleonlike, her shirt slowly shifted to the green of lime sherbet. She clearly didn’t trust me—clearly didn’t like me—but she wanted to do the right thing by Peyton. Deep down, despite the arguments and the threats, she loved her friend.

  She shrugged helplessly and looked at her two bandmates, who seemed to acknowledge something without moving a muscle. The three of them were that close. “All I know is that she started acting really strange. Started talking about not being able to trust people.”

  Immediately, I heard Jones in my head, standing outside my classroom door, telling me about a party he’d been to at Peyton’s house. She kept saying all this weird shit . . . some shit about not being able to trust anyone . . .