Shade Me

by Jennifer Brown

  “What are you doing here?” I asked Detective Martinez. I gestured to his suit jacket. “You’re dressed like a cop this time, so I guess you’re not here to spar.”

  “I came to see how Peyton was doing.” He squinted at the streaks that the dried tears had left on my cheeks. “Are you okay? Did something happen up there?” he asked.

  “She didn’t die,” I said. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

  “It wasn’t.” A flash of yellow from his badge area. Whatever. Who cared anymore? “I meant did something happen to you?”

  “Is it not okay for me to mourn the loss of a classmate?” I snarled.

  “Yes, of course it is. But I thought you weren’t friends.”

  “Oh, if only you knew,” I said. The doors started to close, so I stuck my arm out to make them jump back, and then piled out of the elevator, which meant I had to slide way too close to Detective Martinez once again. This guy had serious personal space issues.

  He reached out and took hold of my wrist. “I would love to know,” he said. “I’ve been begging to know. You could tell me.”

  “What’s the point, anyway?” I asked. “You’ve got all the answers. Why even bother to follow another lead?” I started to walk away.

  “You mean like Vanessa Hollis’s little Molly enterprise?” he asked at my back. I stopped and came back to him. “Like Bill Hollis’s ties to some very popular escorts? I’m not as in the dark as you think, Nikki. I haven’t been able to pinpoint anything, but I’m getting close, aren’t I? I can tell by the look on your face that I’m a lot closer than you thought I’d get.”

  I licked my lips. The yellow was reminding me of lemonade and making me thirsty. It was emanating from his badge and dissipating into the air like gas. What should I tell him? Everything? Just open up and spill my guts, which would lead to discussions about my synesthesia, my link to Peyton, my mom? And what about Dru? In all of what Detective Martinez said, he was the only one whose name hadn’t come up. And the one who Detective Martinez was so eager to pin this on. “You can’t even begin to imagine the mess this is,” I said. “You’re so not close, you’re not even in the same stratosphere. I’ll tell you again. I know nothing. Stay out of my life.”

  This time when I walked away, I vowed to keep moving no matter what he said at my back. But it turned out he said nothing, so I was free to go.

  I walked across the parking lot, unsure what I was going to do next. There was something Vee had said that had perked my ears. Something about if Peyton’s sister ever looked in the bushes she would be shocked at what she’d find there. Had Peyton hidden something in the bushes beneath my bedroom window on the night she was attacked? Was it really that straightforward?

  But I didn’t care. I didn’t want to do this anymore. I wanted to walk away. If I looked in the bushes . . . if I found something there, I would only be enmeshed in this thing even further.

  I kept walking, and when I turned the corner into the shadows of the parking lot, I noticed the light of my phone in my hand. Idly, I looked at the screen, at the Hollis family photo, taken on a pier. What had always stood out to me in this photo was Dru. He was so gorgeous, so at ease, so set apart from the rest of the family.

  This time I noticed something else. Vanessa Hollis. Something about the way she leaned slightly backward over the railing sparked a memory. I’d seen a blonde in that pose in another photo.

  A blonde, leaning back over a desk in a shadowy office, deep in a kiss with a man. A young man.

  I stopped in my tracks, using my thumbs to enlarge the photo. How had I never seen this before? How had I overlooked it all this time?

  The easy way Vanessa scooped her arm around Dru’s back in the pier photo. The way Dru was pulled away from her just slightly, his right arm held up in what looked like a defensive posture. Dru. Baby. Have you eaten?

  I enlarged the pier photo even more, and moved the photo around so that I was getting a close-up of that arm.

  Dru wore a sapphire ring on his finger.

  And a Figaro chain bracelet around his tanned wrist.

  26

  I DROVE HOME in a dream. When I pulled into my driveway, I honestly didn’t even remember how I’d gotten there. Had I taken the highway? I couldn’t recall.

  The entire way home, all I could think about was Dru. That bracelet. My brain tried to come up with reasonable excuses for what I’d seen. Maybe it was a different bracelet. There were probably thousands of them sold every year. Maybe millions. Could one bracelet be the evidence to damn him?

  But then again, I’d never seen him wear a bracelet. If he still had his, wouldn’t I have seen it at some point by now? Maybe not. People’s fashion tastes changed all the time.

  Of course, there was the most perplexing evidence of all. Even if Dru’s bracelet had not been the broken bracelet I found in Peyton’s car, it had definitely been the same bracelet that I’d seen on the arm of the man in the photo. Kissing Vanessa Hollis. Peyton’s supposed mother. Which would, in a normal family, make her his mother, by extension. But this family was anything but normal. And the thought was so revolting, I could only assume that somehow Dru was in this mess, too, and that Vanessa wasn’t his mother at all. The birth certificates. The whited-out names.

  There were a lot of messed-up things about my family. My mother, murdered. My dad, broken, too much of a friend to be much of a father. Synesthesia. Academic probation. Not to mention the fact that I couldn’t trust anyone long enough to let them anywhere near my heart.

  But my mom was my mom. My dad was my dad. And the chances that either of them would ever be in a photo like that—in a position like that in first place—were absolutely zero.

  I parked my car and went into the house, making a beeline for my bedroom, where the photos I’d taken from Peyton’s suitcase still sat. I knew it was dangerous for me to just barge in here, lights out and house empty, but I wasn’t thinking about safety at the moment. Gunner would have a shit fit if he knew, but I was too distracted to worry about whether crazy Luna had gotten in while I was gone. Plus, I had a feeling Luna was not one to retry a failed attempt. She was craftier than that. She would be lying in wait for me somewhere else. Somewhere I didn’t expect.

  I paused before shutting my bedroom door, but I didn’t hear anything other than the regular sighing and breathing of a house at night. I closed myself in and went for my desk, rifling through the photos before I’d even sat down fully.

  There it was, third one, the now unmistakable image of Dru and Vanessa leaning against what I now recognized as the desk that I had been lying near in the Hollis Mansion the day before. His hair was longer, brushing the top of his collar, and darker in the photo. They were almost sprawling backward over the desk, or at least that’s where it looked like this kiss was heading. Dru’s hand searching Vanessa’s waist, low; Vanessa’s hand tangled in the hair at the base of Dru’s neck.

  God, how could I not have seen it? I was sleeping with the guy. I’d gotten as up close and personal as you could possibly get, yet I’d been wondering about the wearer of that bracelet all this time. I felt like such an idiot.

  Surely I was wrong. Surely it was a mistake. But the longer I stared at the photo, the more convinced I became of what I was seeing. This was Dru, without a doubt.

  As if on cue, my phone buzzed. A text from Dru.

  We still on for tonight? My place in 30?

  I studied the words, even the 30—purple, black—to try to pick up on something. Anything. An innocence or a message or something that would tell me that what I’d seen in the photo was easily explained. But nothing came to me. I couldn’t feel emotions behind a text. It was just impossible. If I could just somehow see that everything was fine, I could go over there, I bargained with myself. Or my colors were a fucked-up system of making decisions. Something akin to using tea leaves. Which was way more likely. Purple and black, two colors with no meaning whatsoever. It was what it always was, and what it always would be.

 
“Ah, God,” I said, letting the hand holding my phone flop onto my thigh. “What have I been thinking?” You haven’t been thinking, I told myself. You’ve been coming perilously close to love, Nikki. Admit it. You’ve almost committed the L sin. See where that gets you? In the middle of a sketchy family drama.

  I pushed the phone back into my pocket without answering his text. I didn’t know if I could do it. If I could face Dru after knowing what I knew. There were so many lies, so much stuff covered up. He had to at least have known about some of them. He had to know that his affair with Vanessa would be something I’d be interested in hearing about. How could he keep these things from me? And, more importantly, why?

  Out of habit, I pulled open my window. I still had half a pack of cigarettes left. I dug them out of the top desk drawer and lit one up, inhaling deeply as I made my way to the windowsill. I needed to think. I needed to be in my space.

  The air was crisp again, just the way I liked it, and I could almost detect the sound of traffic on the highway in the distance. The wings and whines of a few bugs and frogs wrapped around me, and if it had been any other night, I might have felt like I was in the middle of perfection. In fact, other than the chem quiz that had been dogging me the night Peyton was attacked, I had felt like my life was just fine. I took another drag off the cigarette and blew out the smoke, frustrated that my life had taken this turn when all I’d been doing was minding my own business.

  Wasn’t that the way it always went? You were eating Tootsie Rolls, having the greatest day, and bam, your mom dies. You were smoking a cigarette and thinking about how much you love the nighttime in the fall, and kaboom, you’re in the middle of a disaster, people out there wanting to actually kill you.

  They say tragedy strikes when you least expect it. And they were totally right. Because when you expect it, you’re watching. You’re vigilant. It was when you started to take the good parts of your life for granted that you let your guard down. It was when you started to trust someone that you left yourself open for that unexpected life changer.

  I should have stuck with Jones. No matter how magenta he got on me, I would never have fallen in love with him. I could resist him. I couldn’t be blinded by him. Jones deserved better than me, but I deserved happiness, and happiness could have come through him. The occasional booty call. The good-looking trophy on my arm. The knowledge that the poor puppy would have done anything for me, and all I would have to do was every now and then play catch with him, and everything would be good.

  I’d let my guard down. I wasn’t being vigilant. I didn’t watch what could be coming for me, and pow, tragedy.

  I was so sick of my life being about tragedy.

  I took one last inhale and flicked the butt to the rocks below. It shot up a tiny bloom of sparks, snuffed by the thick bushes that had been in the What Lies Beneath photo. I chuckled, and then threw my head back and laughed out loud at how obvious it had all been. Peyton had taken a photo of me sitting in my favorite spot at my own house. Had posted it online. Had led me to it. And still I hadn’t seen it.

  Said her sister always chucked the butts into the bushes, and if anyone ever looked inside those bushes, they would be shocked.

  At this point, I didn’t think I would be.

  I thought about my dad in San Diego. Normally, I would be hoping he was meeting someone who could make him happy. Someone who could make him laugh the way Mom used to. I thought about the last time he and I went to the beach together, how self-conscious he was, how he seemed to constantly be looking over his shoulder for something that would never come. But now, I just wanted him to come home so I could ask him about Peyton. Dad had to know what was going on. He had to have answers, and this time I wouldn’t let him shut me down with a knee pat and a comment about how special I was.

  I smoked another cigarette, this time working very hard to clear my mind of all things Hollis. I even recited a few chem formulas out loud, watching their colors drift up in my mind as I said them.

  I felt totally relaxed by the time I went back downstairs, my keys in hand.

  But instead of going to my car, I walked around the side of the house.

  It was funny how different my house looked from the outside. Generic, angular. Nothing bespeaking the comfort you find inside a home.

  My bedroom window appeared to be higher from down here than it did when I was sitting in it. I supposed I’d just gotten used to the height, had enjoyed the feeling of being on top of Brentwood. But from down here it looked like a speck of a square, somewhere that no one in their right mind should ever sit. I wondered if I looked startling to passersby. I wondered if the neighbors held their breath and waited for me to fall.

  It didn’t take me long to identify the bush directly below my window. It was surrounded by old butts, including the two I’d just thrown. The others had been weathered by sun and rain, and I wondered if the gardener had given up on cleaning up after me. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he had.

  “What lies beneath, Peyton?” I asked out loud, the sound of my own voice giving me a chill. “Besides the bushes, I mean.”

  I bent and began pulling the branches apart with my hands, searching the bush for something obvious. I didn’t find anything. Perhaps the gardener had already been here, and while he didn’t want to clean up my ashtray, he’d thought nothing of taking something hidden inside a bush. Did it matter if whatever she left here had been intercepted by a hired hand? No, probably not. In the end, she would still die, the crimson would win, and I would still be in the dark.

  Perhaps I’d misread the clue entirely. It was just a lie that Peyton told her bandmates, maybe to make her sound even more important than she already was.

  But then my hand landed on something. Hard, plastic, small. Resting against a larger branch in the center of the bush. I pulled it out and held it up for the streetlamp to illuminate.

  It was a digital voice recorder. A tiny, skinny one, like the kind people use when they want to record something without anyone knowing about it. I turned it over, flipped the power switch, and it came to life. This. This was what Peyton wanted me to find.

  I started to feel really exposed in the massive side yard between our house and the neighbors’. They looked to be home, but no lights were burning on this side of the house. Would they hear a scream? Probably not.

  I took the recorder to my car and locked myself in, after checking both the front and back seats.

  Once inside the car, I could really get a look at the recorder. It appeared to be new—unscratched, black, cheap. So this was it. This was what all those clues Peyton had left behind led to. This small bit of electronic machinery designed to explain everything. This smoking gun that would lead me, or police, or whoever to the person was who’d attacked Peyton.

  But for the first time, it really dawned on me that for Peyton, this wasn’t about finding her attacker. She knew something was coming for her. She suspected that she might not be able to speak for herself. But that hadn’t been why she’d been reaching out to me.

  She’d done that because I was her sister. And because she thought knowing that was something important to my life.

  I wasn’t a detective out to solve her crime. I was her witness. I was the one with the story now.

  I pressed play. At first there was just a muffled sound like the recorder being jogged around inside clothes. But then there was a voice. A voice I recognized instantly.

  “What is this about?” Dru’s voice. Unmistakable. My stomach tightened. “Mom and Dad are freaking out, Peyton. You disappear, then you send a text like that. What is going on with you?”

  A door closing.

  “Good to see you, too, big brother,” Peyton’s voice said, much closer.

  “Well, you can’t really expect me to be happy about this. We need to meet? Call for a date and time? What is that?”

  “I said to call me, not bust in on me at my new place. How did you know I was here?”

  “I followed you from school. It�
��s not that hard.”

  “Do not tell anyone where I live, Dru. I mean it. Nobody. I left because I didn’t want to be found. And I’m not staying here. I have bigger plans.”

  There was a hesitation. “I won’t. I promise.”

  Well, you would be happy to know that he didn’t, Peyton, I thought bitterly, remembering how shocked he seemed to be about finding Peyton’s apartment. He’d had me completely conned. I’d never have guessed he’d been there before. Just days before, in fact.

  I felt like such a fool. He’d lied to me, and I’d totally bought it.

  And I felt even more foolish because a part of me thought that Dru’s lying to me about Peyton’s apartment somehow proved he was trustworthy. He was a guy who kept his word. He’d promised her, and he’d kept his promise.

  There were footsteps, the clink of ice cubes hitting the sides of a glass, the sound of a couch cushion sighing.

  “So what is this all about, then? What is it that you think you know?”

  “First of all, I don’t think I know anything. I know. And I’ve got evidence.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of all of it.”

  “That tells me nothing.”

  “Dru. I saw you. You and Vanessa. I saw it. I know it happened.”

  For a long moment of silence, I thought I could almost hear Peyton’s heart beating. Had she carried this recorder in a shirt pocket? In her bra? My own heart sped up to beat in time with hers. I sat forward, hunched over the speaker, as interested in hearing Dru’s response to this as Peyton was.

  Finally, he spoke. “It wasn’t supposed to happen. I was drunk. I was . . . I don’t know, pissed off at Dad. He won’t leave me alone. He’s always pressuring me to ‘be a Hollis.’ He won’t accept that I am who I am and will never be him. And she was all over me, telling me all this shit about Dad’s affairs and his power trips and how he’d ruined the lives of her escorts just because he could. She wanted revenge on him, and . . . I guess part of me did, too. She was begging me, and it doesn’t make sense now, but it did at the time. It was like both of us were against him, together. Like I said, it was stupid and it shouldn’t have happened.”