“I told the detective about Mack,” I blurt quickly. Alexander McAdams.
Sam nods. “Thought you would.”
“He already knew about him. He wouldn’t tell me if they think he did it.”
If this were a movie, they’d have arrested Mack by now. Put him under hot lights and sweated a confession out of him.
If he did it. My itchy doubt feeling is back again.
Sam gives my hand a tiny squeeze as he walks past me, then takes my place on the couch.
“You can leave now, Ellie,” the detective says. “If I have more questions, I’ll be in touch.”
I nod, heading into my own room. I sit on the edge of the bed and look at the hand Sam just squeezed. At first I thought he was squeezing it to reassure me—a silent sort of everything’s going to be okay—but now I’m not so sure. Because his palm—always so warm and dry—was sweaty.
Maybe my roommate is even more nervous about getting questioned by the police than I was.
“I’m sorry,” I say as soon as Detective Roberts and Dean Carson leave.
“What for?”
“I was so caught up in how scared I was about getting questioned that I forgot you were nervous about it, too.”
Sam shrugs. “Let’s just say it wasn’t my favorite part of the day.” He reaches up and undoes the elastic holding his dreads, then leans back on the couch.
I nod. “I’m still sorry. I’m new to this whole …” I pause, searching for the right word. Then I worry that Sam thinks I’m pausing because of our kiss last night, like I think it means something more than it did and I’m about to call him my boyfriend, so I rush and say, “To this whole friend thing. I haven’t really had any in a while.”
Sam nods. “I know what you mean.”
All this time, I thought Sam was effortlessly friends with everyone. I mean, he’s the kind of person that people are drawn to: cool, nonchalant, smart. But he doesn’t seem to consider any of our classmates real friends.
“Do you have a lot of friends back home? In Oakland, I mean, not Mill Valley.”
“I didn’t really stay in touch after Mom died.” Sam shrugs. “Or maybe they didn’t want to stay in touch with me once I left.”
“Do you miss them, though? Your old friends?”
“Sometimes. It was easier with them. They knew me my whole life, you know what I mean?”
I shake my head. “Not really. It wasn’t easier for me with the kids from my old school, and they’d known me almost my whole life. It’s easier with you,” I add shyly.
Sam doesn’t say anything. I decide to change the subject. “How do you think the detective knew about Mack?”
Sam shrugs again. “The police could’ve found his name in her phone.”
“Oh, right.”
“Or maybe he went to them himself after he heard Eliza died.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s less suspicious than waiting for the police to track him down themselves, right?”
“I guess.” Should I have been more forthcoming with Detective Roberts? Maybe I should’ve opened by telling him that Eliza and I hadn’t gotten along here at Ventana Ranch. “Do you think they arrested him?”
Sam shakes his head. “I think if they’d made any actual arrests, it would be on the news. I don’t think they can keep that kind of thing secret.”
“But he should’ve at least been arrested for the tree stuff.” I’m so frustrated I want to stomp my foot.
“I know. I don’t get it, either.”
“What do they know that we don’t?”
“I guess a lot. I mean, he is a detective.” Sam grins.
And I’m obviously not. My first try at detective work—following Mack and Riley to Capitola—and I didn’t even have anything worthwhile to share with the police. “All that for nothing.”
“Not nothing,” Sam counters. “We learned something from Mack.”
“Nothing useful.”
Sam shakes his head. “He said Eliza was scared of you.”
I take a step back. I assumed Sam thought—like I did—that Mack was lying. What reason could Eliza possibly have had to be scared of me?
Or does Sam think talking to Mack was useful because Mack has some secret ammunition against me, proof that I am all the things Eliza said I was? Maybe I had it backward: Maybe Mack told the police about me.
Man, was she scared of you.
Detective Roberts certainly seemed more interested in learning about my relationship with Eliza than about Mack’s.
Sam continues, “Mack said you were there when something happened. When what happened?”
Maybe Sam told the police he suspected me, too. Maybe he’s been pretending to be my friend this whole time, strategically gaining my trust so that I’d confess.
“Mack said whatever it was had to do with Eliza’s father, right?”
Maybe he promised the police he’d get something out of me. Maybe they told him what to say. I shake my head.
“What do you mean, no?” Sam asks. “That’s what Mack said.”
“I mean, I can’t believe that after everything that’s happened, you actually think I hurt Eliza!”
Sam knits his eyebrows together. “What are you talking about?”
“I hate to disappoint you, but I have no idea why she’d be scared of me. I don’t remember anything that happened with her dad.” I mean, I remember some things. Finger-painting in the playroom. The fight he had with his wife while I hid beneath the dining room table. “I was just a little kid, Sam. What do you expect me to remember?”
Sam crosses the room and takes my hands in his. His skin is warm, like he’s been lying out in the sunshine, not hanging out in our dorm room.
“It’s easier for me, too,” he says finally.
“Huh?” I ask dumbly.
“It’s easy for me. With you.”
“Oh.” I exhale.
Quietly, he explains, “I know you were only five years old when you met Eliza. It’s not your fault you don’t remember.” He pulls me to sit beside him on the couch so that we’re facing each other. “But I do think there’s something Eliza remembered, something you saw that she didn’t want you to see.”
I swallow the lump rising in my throat. “But I don’t remember—”
“I know,” Sam agrees. “But she didn’t know that. The way I see it,” he continues, “Eliza must have spread those rumors to try to keep you quiet—right? I mean, why say you’re a pathological liar unless there was something she thought you might say that she didn’t want everyone to believe?”
Oh my God, could that be why she started the rumors?
“But if she’d just told me—” I can’t finish the sentence, not out loud; the lump in my throat is too big and the end of the sentence is too sad. If she’d just told me, I would have kept her secret. I could’ve been her friend. Maybe I could have helped her. I drop my head and press the heels of my hands into my eyes.
I have to stop trying to befriend her. She’s gone.
Sam says, “We need to find out what she thought you knew.”
I raise my head. My vision is blurry. “But I told you I don’t remember.”
“I know,” Sam concedes. “But somebody else does.”
“No way,” I say after Sam shares his idea with me. “That’s nuts.”
Sam shakes his head. “I’ll admit it’s desperate, but it’s not crazy.”
“They don’t want us at the funeral.”
“They can’t stop us. They invited the whole school to attend.” The administration sent the student body an email with all the details.
The police released her body to her parents after they determined her cause of death. The funeral is scheduled for three days from now, at a Catholic church in San Francisco, the only place big enough to hold the enormous crowd the Harts are expecting. In the email with all the information about the service, the administration said they were even providing buses to take students and faculty to and from
the church.
There’s a wake, too, between now and then, but the school isn’t providing transportation to that. I had to Google what a wake was: It’s a vigil held by friends and family the night before a Catholic funeral.
“They may have invited the whole school, but that doesn’t mean they want me at the funeral.” I shudder, remembering what happened at the memorial service. “And Detective Roberts said we shouldn’t do any more investigating on our own. We could get into trouble.”
“I’m not talking about going all Batman and Robin. You’re just going to ask the man a few questions.”
“Erin and Arden won’t even let me in the door, let alone close enough to her father to ask him about something that happened over a decade ago. Besides, I’m really not okay with ambushing a grieving father at his daughter’s funeral.”
I’ve only been to one funeral before, when my grandfather died. I was fourteen and Mom didn’t think a funeral was a place for children, but Wes insisted on going, which meant I had to go, too.
I gasped when I saw the plain pine casket at the front of the sanctuary. My grandfather hadn’t been a big man—only five foot six inches tall, and he’d probably shrunk a little as he got older and his bones compressed under the weight of gravity—but the box seemed so small. Too small.
I froze halfway down the aisle, even though everyone was looking at me. I tugged at the collar of my black dress, at least half a size too tight. My lungs felt wet. Was it possible to have a claustrophobia attack by proxy?
“Pull it together, El,” my little brother admonished. “You’re the only person in the world who goes to a funeral and makes it all about her.” He was nine years old at the time.
Now Sam gets up and starts pacing. I have a sudden urge to touch him, to reach out and grab his hand, interlace our fingers while we work this out. I roll my shoulders down, and slide my hands beneath my legs.
It was a pity kiss, Ellie. And anyway, that’s not what you should be thinking about right now!
My mouth still feels dry. I clear my throat.
“I have an idea,” I announce finally. Sam stops pacing. “There’s a sort of reception after the service, right?”
Sam reaches for my phone—he still has to replace the one Riley stole—and pulls up the email from the dean with the details. “It says mourners are welcome at the Hart house in Menlo Park to pay their respects to the family.”
“What if we just showed up a little bit early? Like, we couldn’t make it all the way into the city for the service, but we didn’t want to miss our chance to share our condolences.”
“But what for?” Sam asks. “If Eliza’s dad’s still at the funeral—”
“Mack said I saw something. Whatever it was, I probably saw it there, at the Harts’ house, right? Maybe being there will help me remember.”
After ten years and eight therapists, I know all about going back to the scene of an event to try to bring back blocked memories. My first therapist (Dr. Shapiro) took me to the building on West Seventy-Eighth Street where I had my first attack. She had me close my eyes and take in the smells—the sense of smell is the sense most related to memory, she said—and try to remember why I panicked, exactly what had scared me. But when I opened my eyes and saw that she’d led me into the elevator, I ran for my life and refused to talk for the rest of the day.
Sam tucks his dreads behind his ears, a gesture I’ve come to recognize: He’s thinking. “Who will let us in, if everyone’s at the funeral?”
“There will probably be someone there—a friend, a housekeeper, a caterer—setting up for all the guests they’re expecting.” The Harts wouldn’t invite all those people over without offering food and drink, even at a time like this. “But other than that, we’d have the place to ourselves.”
I wonder if the carpet in Eliza’s room is that same champagne color. She had a full-size double bed, not a narrow twin like mine. Her sheets and blankets were cream—no little flowers or teddy bears dancing along the edges. It was all so grown-up. I climbed under that bed when we were playing hide-and-seek once. Of course, Eliza found me almost as soon as she shouted, Ready or not, here I come! Eliza always got to be It when we played and so I never won; it was her house, after all. She knew every nook and cranny better than I ever would.
How can I remember that and not remember whatever it was Eliza claims I saw? Did my ridiculous brain—the brain that thinks closets are dangerous—block it out for some reason, bury it under all the things I do remember? It feels like it’s my mind I’m playing hide-and-seek with.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Sam concedes finally.
I just hope it works.
I’m staring into my closet (standing safely outside of it) when the phone rings. “Mom, I’m kind of in a hurry.” Sam and I are leaving in ten minutes, and I still haven’t figured out what to wear.
“Oh, are you going to the funeral?”
I nod, even though obviously she can’t see me. Sam and I thought it would be best if we left at the same time as everyone else. That way, if they see us at the Hart house later, we can just say we stood in the back of the church during the service because we didn’t want to be in the way. It won’t even look weird that we’re taking Sam’s car. Plenty of kids are driving their own cars instead of taking the buses.
Yesterday, a tow truck came onto the campus and picked up Eliza’s car from the student parking lot. Maybe it’ll be sitting in the Harts’ driveway when we get there.
“Ellie?” Mom prompts.
“Yeah, Mom. I’m going to the funeral.”
“Well, please pass my condolences along to the Harts.”
“I will, Mom.”
It’s a lie. Of course I won’t. And I wouldn’t, even if I was going to the funeral for real. My mom knows that I’m not the kind of kid who feels comfortable doing things like passing along condolences. Not like Wes. Once, a teacher at my old school was out for a week when her father died, and Wes left a card on her desk saying how sorry he was for her loss. Later, she stopped me in the hallway to tell me how lucky I was to have such a considerate little brother.
Mom says, “I hope it won’t be too hard for you, seeing your friend like that.”
In our last conversation, she was quick to point out that Eliza wasn’t my friend, but I don’t remind her now. “I won’t have to see her, not really.”
“She was Catholic, wasn’t she? Sometimes Catholics have an open casket.”
Mom doesn’t know, of course, that I’m not going to the church. I lean against my open closet door, looking at my clothes hanging neatly (messes make spaces look even smaller than they are).
I look down at my toes; the polish I painted on last week is chipped. I rub my forehead. Maybe I am a stalker, just like she said. I painted my nails a different color every week because that’s what she did, too.
I wonder what color her nails are now.
“You’ve never seen a dead body before,” Mom continues. “It might be tough on you.”
My mom doesn’t know that I saw Eliza’s body when they pulled her up over the cliffs. In a casket, someone will have dressed her and done her makeup, brushed her hair and tried to make it look like she was just sleeping.
But no one could’ve mistaken the body on the cliffs for anything but a dead body.
Sam calls my name.
I reach into the closet and grab the first black thing I find. “Mom, I gotta go.”
“Of course, honey, you don’t want to be late.”
“No,” I agree. I close my eyes and imagine Eliza lying in a casket at the end of a long aisle, in between row after row of church pews. It looks like she’s waiting for me. “I don’t want to be late.”
I’m wearing a black sleeveless dress that I picked out last summer, imagining I might wear it to a school dance one day—but that was back when I thought that California would cure me, when I still believed I might be popular here. I even thought there would be a boy who’d want to dance with me. That was before I
remembered that it gets cold here and a summer dress won’t last you all year round. Before I found out that no one at Ventana Ranch dresses up for school parties and before I knew that no one here would invite me anyway. The dress is at least an inch shorter on me than it was when I bought it last summer.
Eliza’s clothes always fit perfectly. She probably cleaned out her closet every time she grew a centimeter. Sitting in the front seat of Sam’s car, I tug the dress down past my pale knees. I’m so cold that I’m covered in goose bumps.
I glance sideways. Sam is wearing black pants and a light gray button-down shirt with a charcoal-gray tie. He seems just as at ease in these clothes as he does in the jeans and sweatshirts he usually wears. I wonder if his dad bought him a black suit for his mom’s funeral. Maybe he wore this same tie.
“Can I ask you something?” Sam keeps his eyes on the road.
“Of course.”
“Why do you give yourself claustrophobia?”
That’s not the question I was expecting. But maybe he doesn’t want to think about funerals. Maybe he’s trying not to think about the last funeral he went to.
“I didn’t give it to myself. It just happened to me.”
“No, I mean—why do you induce your attacks sometimes?”
Oh, right. The thin walls between our bedrooms.
“One of my therapists practiced immersion therapy. I guess I think that if I make myself stand in the closet long enough, I’ll just get used to it.”
“Why would you want to get used to feeling that way?”
“Oh, I don’t know, so that I can live a normal life?” Despite the cold, I roll down the window and feel the breeze off the Pacific fill the car. Driving north, we’re on the inside of Highway 1, closer to the mountains than to the ocean. “I want to be able to ride on the subway and drive through tunnels and take elevators to high floors and kiss”—I blush wildly but keep talking, hoping he won’t notice—“without worrying about feeling smothered.”
“Did I make you feel smothered?” Sam sounds genuinely concerned. “I didn’t mean to.”
“No,” I answer quickly.
“You could’ve told me if I did.”
R.I.P. Eliza Hart Page 15