R.I.P. Eliza Hart

by Alyssa Sheinmel

  the man she chose to marry,

  the man she decided to have a child with,

  the man she could leave that child home alone with without worrying what might happen.

  I used to tiptoe around Normal Dad, too. I can’t remember exactly when I realized it didn’t make a difference.

  You know, it’s true what they say: There’s no place like home.

  But just because there’s no place like it doesn’t mean it’s so great.

  Personally, if I were Dorothy, I would have stayed in Oz instead of trying to get back to Kansas.

  I’m in bed trying to read, but I can’t concentrate on the words on the page because I can’t stop thinking about Eliza’s hair. It fell in a perfect blond waterfall of waves down her back. It even looked pretty when they pulled her up from over the cliffs, blowing in the breeze. A totally irrational, nonscientific part of my brain believes that if I’d grown up in California, my hair would be wavy and blond, too.

  Even though it’s warm under the covers, I shudder. I shouldn’t think things like that. It’s disrespectful. Even though it’s actually a compliment. Just another way she was perfect. Just another reason not to be suicidal.

  Don’t be ridiculous, Ellie. People don’t kill themselves over their hair. Or anyway, they don’t not kill themselves because they have perfect hair.

  I narrow my eyes and hold my book closer to my face, trying to focus on the words swimming across the page in front of me. A person isn’t supposed to need reading glasses till she’s at least twice my age. (Which is sixteen, by the way. Sam already turned seventeen, but my birthday isn’t until the end of April.) Back in the city over the summer, my doctor told me that I was reading too much—it was weakening my eyes.

  I toss my copy of The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway aside, throw my blankets back, and walk to the window. It’s so foggy that I can’t see the stars, but it’s not dark because they’ve set up floodlights around the place where they pulled up her body. Sam said that it was lucky she hit that ledge. If she’d made it down to the open sea they probably never would have found her. We probably wouldn’t even know that she was dead.

  I thought that was a strange thing to call lucky, but I kept it to myself.

  Sam says they’ll do an autopsy to determine the cause of death. He listed the possibilities: Trauma from the fall. Exposure from lying out there for so long. Drowning when the tide rose. I thought it sounded like the options on a multiple-choice test, and then I thought that no one in her right mind would think about the SATs at a time like this.

  It’s cold but I don’t close my window. I always keep it open at least a crack. (Open windows make a room feel bigger.)

  If she didn’t jump, she might have fallen.

  But if she didn’t fall, then the only logical conclusion is that someone pushed her, right?

  The police must think that’s at least a possibility. Why else would they have wrapped the ridge of the cliff with yellow crime-scene tape and lit it up with floodlights?

  I hear music playing. Everyone’s down in the student center in the valley for Wednesday Reading Night. (The administration decided not to cancel the evening’s activities. Wednesday Reading Night is a Ventana Ranch tradition, rain or shine; it says so in the catalog.) Sam invited me to walk down there with him tonight, but it’s two days before spring break, so it’s not like I have a ton of studying left to do. And anyway, I’m not taking half the classes that everyone else takes, so I don’t exactly need a study buddy. (Sometimes I wonder if I actually love reading and writing or if they just became habits because they’re good hobbies for a girl who hasn’t had a real best friend since around the time she started reading chapter books.)

  Judging from the sound of music coming from down the hill, no one is really studying tonight.

  I’m pretty sure the entire dorm is empty. Everyone else is down in the valley. I think maybe no one wanted to be alone.

  And I think maybe they were right. You’d have to be an idiot to choose to be alone at a time like this.

  Right?

  I get dressed fast. It’s cold here at night—the average temperature drops into the forties, but this week it’s even hit the thirties—so I layer a sweatshirt under a wool coat.

  When I get outside, I realize the flaw in my plan. I won’t be alone once I get down to the student center, but I most certainly will be on the walk from here to there. I consider turning back, but in the shadows from the floodlights, the dorm looks smaller than usual, the sort of place that makes you feel trapped.

  So I start walking.

  There are two ways to get down to the valley from the dorms. Turn right, and head toward Hiking Trail D, which weaves through the woods and down the hill until it opens out into the valley. (Nothing like a school gathering that requires hiking.) It’s the fastest way down, but I don’t exactly feel like trekking through the woods tonight, jumping in surprise every time a pine needle so much as snaps beneath my feet.

  So I turn left instead, onto the narrow road that borders the dormitories and leads to the dining hall. Just before the dining hall is a long staircase that leads down to the parking lot. Then I’ll just need to walk through the parking lot to reach another staircase that goes straight down into the valley. No woods, no hiking, no pinecones crunching beneath my feet. The only problem is that directly across from the top of the stairs, right next to the dining hall, is the spot where they pulled Eliza’s body from the cliffs.

  I keep my head down and count my steps. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Left, right, left, right.

  The sound of a car coming up the hill makes me look up. It stops beside one of the floodlights, so that its paint gleams and glitters when the light hits it. Someone gets out of the driver’s seat and holds open the backseat door.

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t get you here sooner, Mrs. Hart, Mr. Hart.”

  “Yes, well. All that traffic in Santa Cruz.”

  I recognize Eliza’s mother’s voice immediately. Not just her voice but the tone, just as no-nonsense as when she asked me for the nearest grocery store.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather come back tomorrow when it’s light? There’s really no need to do this here. I can ask you my questions back at the station.”

  “Here will be fine, thank you.”

  The man who apologized lifts the crime-scene tape so that Eliza’s parents can walk right up to the edge of the cliffs.

  “I’m sorry, but I do have to ask whether Eliza showed any signs of depression?”

  “Your colleagues already asked us that when they came to our home, Detective Roberts.” Detective Roberts doesn’t say anything. His silence must prompt Mrs. Hart into answering, because she quietly adds, “Eliza was a perfectly normal girl.”

  I’m not trying to eavesdrop. But I can’t possibly keep going down this road without bumping into them and if I bumped into them I’d have to think of the right thing to say and I’m the kind of person who can’t think of the right thing to say even under the best circumstances, let alone the worst.

  So I keep still.

  “Of course,” Detective Roberts murmurs, his pencil making scratching sounds as he scribbles something onto his notepad. “And, Mr. Hart.” He turns to the tall man silhouetted behind Eliza’s mother, who takes a step backward, like he’s scared if he gets too close, he’ll go flying over the edge of the cliffs, too. “Did you notice Eliza acting … unusual recently?”

  Eliza’s father doesn’t answer. George, I remember. His first name is George. Not that I ever called him anything but Mr. Hart.

  He was usually still at work when Eliza and I had our after-school playdates. I can’t remember what he did, though. Something businessy, like a lawyer or an accountant. He’s wearing a suit without a tie and a button-down shirt. He squints as the brightness from the floodlights hits his face.

  Mrs. Hart is wearing a camel-colored coat and her blond hair—just a shade darker than Eliza’s, like maybe she didn
’t spend as much time outside in the sun as her daughter did—is twisted into a low bun at the nape of her neck.

  “Mr. Hart?” Detective Roberts prompts.

  “Can’t you see he’s too upset to talk?” Mrs. Hart interjects, but she doesn’t reach out to take his hand or rub his shoulder or pat his back. Her husband turns his head from side to side like he’s looking for something. I duck behind the nearest tree before he can see me. Great idea, Ellie. Hide from the police like the weirdo you are.

  “Of course, Mrs. Hart.” Detective Roberts’s voice is deep and gravelly. I wonder if he sounds like that all the time or only when a seventeen-year-old’s body has been pulled from the sea.

  “Yes. When can we go home?” Mrs. Hart asks as though the detective didn’t already say they didn’t have to do this here tonight. “There’s a lot to arrange. We still haven’t had time to contact the rest of our family and I have to reserve a church for the funeral. I’m not sure our usual church will be large enough.”

  Eliza’s grandfather was the mayor of Menlo Park before we were born. I think he even ran for governor once. Her family knows half the state.

  “Of course. However, I must tell you that it may be some time before we can release Eliza’s body to you.”

  “She’s my daughter.”

  “Of course.” How many times has Detective Roberts said of course tonight? More than he’s said I’m sorry? “But her body is all the evidence we have at the moment. She might be able to tell us—”

  “Detective Roberts, my daughter isn’t about to tell anyone anything anymore.”

  The detective pauses before answering, like maybe he thinks Mrs. Hart is about to start crying. When she remains dry-eyed, he says, “I appreciate how badly you must want to bury your child, but we need time to conduct our investigation. We don’t even know the exact cause of death yet. I assure you my colleagues will take good care of her.”

  At this, Eliza’s father gasps, like until just this second, he forgot that he needed to breathe.

  “George—” Mrs. Hart begins, but before she can say anything more, someone else walks up to them, stepping over the tape. Alan Carson, the dean of students.

  “Here he is,” Dean Carson begins. Another, slighter, person trails behind him. “Julian Alvarez.” Julian stands in front of a floodlight so he’s just a silhouette. He’s a junior, like me, and he lives in Eliza’s dorm, Harlan. When Julian doesn’t say anything, the dean adds, “Tell the detective what you told me.”

  “I saw Eliza.” Julian looks at the ground.

  “When?” Detective Roberts asks.

  Julian shrugs. “About a week ago.”

  I can sense the detective’s disappointment. He thought Julian was talking about the night Eliza fell. (Was pushed? Jumped?)

  “Go on, Julian,” the dean presses.

  “She was fighting with someone.”

  I swear my heart skips a beat.

  The detective stands up a little straighter, his disappointment receding. “What do you mean?”

  “It was the middle of the night and I was working on a paper. I mean, I don’t usually put off papers until the night before they’re due, but I got an idea on relating dolphin behavior to human behavior—” He stops himself, as though he’s just realized that’s not the part of the story anyone here is interested in. “Anyway, around two a.m. I looked out the window and I saw Eliza out after curfew. She was with someone on the path outside our dorm.”

  “Did you recognize that someone?”

  Julian shakes his head. “It was dark and I was looking down on them from the third floor.” There are little footlights lining the path, but they aren’t bright enough to do much more than guide you up and down the path at night, and they dim them after curfew anyway. “And there’s a tree”—he turns around and gestures up the path to his dorm, pointing at a redwood—“blocking most of the view from my window.”

  “Then how did you know it was Eliza?”

  “Her hair,” Julian answers. Eliza’s hair is unmistakable, and light enough that you can see it in the dark.

  No one else at Ventana Ranch has hair like Eliza’s. I’m not sure anyone anywhere has hair like Eliza’s, except maybe celebrities who have a team of stylists whose entire job is to make their clients’ hair look like Eliza’s hair looks naturally.

  “Can you tell me anything about the person she was talking to? Was it a male or female?”

  “I couldn’t tell. He—or she—was pretty well hidden beneath the branches.”

  I look around, like I think I’ll be able to magically see what Julian missed that night a week ago.

  “How can you be sure they were arguing? Did they raise their voices?”

  I already know the answer to the second question: No. Julian’s room faces the path in between Harlan and Beronda, just like mine. Which means that if Julian could see them, Eliza and her companion were somewhere below my window, too. Which means I would’ve heard them, if they were being loud. Open window and all that.

  I wish they’d been loud. I wish they’d woken me up. I wish I’d seen whoever it was so that maybe I could add something to Julian’s story. Maybe I’d have seen something he missed. Something that would help the police find this person now.

  “No, but I could tell that he—or she—grabbed her at some point. Grabbed her arm. She tried to pull away but whoever it was wouldn’t let go.”

  Eliza had strong arms, lean and toned because of her swimming. She always looked so powerful to me. Whoever was holding her against her will would’ve had to be even stronger.

  Strong enough to push her over the cliff? My breaths are shallow, my heartbeat quick. Despite the chill in the air, my palms are sweating. I tell myself that nothing bad can happen to me now, not with the police just a stone’s throw away.

  “Did you do anything? When this person grabbed her?”

  Julian doesn’t answer. Dean Carson says gently, “No one is saying that you did anything wrong,” but even I can tell his heart isn’t in it. He’s thinking what I’m thinking—maybe if Julian had said something then, had shouted out, had run down to help her—things might be different for Eliza now.

  Finally, Julian says, “After a while, she twisted her arm away and stomped back toward the dorm.”

  “And the other person? Did that person go back to the dorms as well?”

  Julian shrugs. “I don’t know.”

  I shake my head in frustration. I wish Julian were a better witness.

  The dean offers, “It must have been a student. Students need to show their IDs to get on and off campus. An outsider wouldn’t have been permitted on campus at that hour.” He sounds desperate to believe this, desperate to think that our security is tight enough to protect his students.

  The detective nods but he doesn’t seem entirely convinced. Dean Carson didn’t mention that it’s only at the front gate that we have to show our IDs to the security guard who sits in the booth all day. There are other entrances along some of the hiking trails, gates that have magnetic locks that grant access to the parks around the school. No one uses them, but apparently our IDs have magnets in them that open the doors.

  The detective tells Julian he can go and turns back to Dean Carson. “I understand that the students are about to go on spring break?”

  “Correct.” Dean Carson rubs his hands together like he’s trying to keep warm. “Friday is their last day. Of course, given the circumstances, we’re considering canceling tomorrow’s classes as well, but—”

  Detective Roberts interrupts, “I’m afraid we have a bit of a problem, Dean. I can’t conduct a thorough investigation if half my witnesses leave to party in Cabo.”

  “I’m sorry?” Dean Carson sounds bewildered.

  “This young man seems to think Eliza might have had a problem with someone on this campus. I need to know who that person is.”

  “Surely you’re not suggesting that one of the students had something to do with Eliza’s accident?” Mrs. Hart interje
cts.

  But if one of the students had something to do with it, it wasn’t an accident. I shiver.

  “I’m afraid I have to consider that, given what we’ve just been told.”

  “Teenagers argue all the time.” Mrs. Hart sounds exasperated. “You can’t just cancel spring break. Tickets have been purchased, hotel rooms booked.”

  If Detective Roberts thinks it’s odd that Mrs. Hart is worrying about reservations at a time like this, he doesn’t say so. (I guess you never know what kind of details people will focus on.) Instead he continues, “I’m afraid I must insist that we try. On such a small campus, everyone is a potential witness.”

  Or suspect, I think.

  “Yes, yes,” Dean Carson answers. “We always keep the dorms open over spring break, keep the cafeteria up and running. For students who need to stay.”

  Students like me. Scholarship students who can’t afford the flight home. And who don’t really want to go home anyway.

  Mrs. Hart opens her mouth but I don’t hear what she says next because someone grabs me from behind, his arms over mine.

  And all I hear is my own heartbeat.

  I twist my neck to see who’s holding me.

  “What the hell, Sam?” I disentangle myself from my roommate angrily, but my skin tingles beneath my clothes where he held me. Inwardly, I beg my lungs to behave themselves. Someone’s arms are not the same as a small room, no matter how tightly they hold you. Anyway, Sam didn’t really grab me—he just kind of squeezed my arms so I would know he was there. So far, my lungs seem to know the difference. Or maybe Sam just didn’t hold me long enough for panic to set in.

  Did Eliza panic, when someone grabbed her arm and wouldn’t let go?

  “I should ask you the same thing.”

  “Huh?”

  “What are you doing hiding behind a tree next to a crime scene?”

  “I wasn’t hiding. I was on my way to Wednesday Reading Night.” How can the truth sound so much like a lie? Trying to make my explanation more convincing, I add, “I didn’t want to be alone,” but it just makes me sound desperate.