by Roz Nay
“You’re not a girl, mom. You talk like we’re in this together.”
“For goodness’ sake!” she dabbed at the side of her mouth with a napkin. “Could you be any more hostile? All I’m saying is we’re a superior gene pool, darling, and is doesn’t hurt to remind ourselves of that from time to time. No, don’t be dismissive—I might actually be saying something valuable.” She rapped the curve of her teaspoon hard on the table. “Choose a man worthy of you. Lord knows I didn’t.”
I left the conversation. Everything she said elevated her and berated Dad.
Those seven days until I flew to England, my insides were gripped by an invisible fist. HP and I packed as many lake swims and sunsets into the week as we could, but there was a melancholy to our conversations now. It was as if we’d read the final page of a chapter and could no longer concentrate on any of the words that preceded it.
On my last day in Cove, the phone rang.
“What?” said HP when I picked up.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Sorry, I’m at work, everyone’s shouting. Meet me at Fu Bar at six.” He hung up with a click.
Even the bartenders at Fu Bar looked jaded. The place was set back near the old recycling depot at the far end of town and had the feel of a partially deserted warehouse, freezing cold in winter and always gritty underfoot. The graffiti in the bathroom stalls was so graphic and angry that it was hard to believe it had been written by women. It was a dive bar, the kind teenagers flock to and eventually claim for themselves because the establishment felt rebellious: it wasn’t even trying to be nice. The bar manager served us but rarely spoke. All of the songs on his jukebox were heavy metal and none of them played. We never dared ask for our money back. When I walked in at 6:20 p.m., the entire swim team was in the back room playing ping-pong on scratched tables and drinking pitchers of foamy pale ale. Ezra waved and strolled over.
“Little Miss Oxford,” he said, crooking his arm around my neck so that I stumbled forward. “You were keeping that one quiet.”
“I see you invited the guys. I never knew I was such good friends with them.”
“HP’s over there.” Ezra gestured with his head toward the bar, where HP sat on a tall stool with his back against the counter, facing me. “He’s been drinking since four.”
HP still had his lifeguard whistle around his neck and his red board shorts on. Every so often his flip-flop would slide off the footrest of the stool, pitching him forward. I headed toward him, and he sat up straighter in his seat and put his glass down, but before I could reach him a Jared-Jayden-Caleb-Kayden cut me off and swerved me toward the ping-pong table.
“You can be on my team!” he shouted. I didn’t know his name. “Here, hold the paddle like this.…” He hugged around me to adjust my grip, and I was hit by a waft of Axe deodorant. “Okay, we’re playing first to twenty-one, you’re on backhands.”
I missed the opening serve because I was looking over my shoulder toward HP.
“Little John! Are you, like, one of those hot girls that suck ass at sports?”
“Allow me,” said HP, arriving alongside the table and bumping the other guy off my team.
I looked up at the clean line of HP’s jaw and the way his hair curled at his neck line.
He blinked hard and lifted his paddle into a kung fu stance. “Bring it.”
I’m not sure how he even connected with the serve, but he blasted it back down the line, won the point, and then put his paddle flat on the green of the table.
“Too easy. I need air. Coming?”
He put his arm around me and led us both to the back door of the bar. It felt fun, fluid, like this was the stream I was meant to be in, like I should never leave.
Outside we sat on some empty beer kegs. The brickwork smelled sour and the paving stones beneath our feet were tacky.
HP lifted his shirt and put a flat hand against his stomach. “I need food.”
“You always need food,” I said, chuckling, folding into his side, but he didn’t absorb me. He was steep like a wall.
“Why haven’t you kissed me properly at all this week? Is it because you’re goddamn bullshit leaving? Because that means we should be kissing more, not less.” He stabbed into the air with a determined finger. “Or have you got a fucking thing for Ezra?”
“HP, how drunk are you?”
“Three out of ten. Six, maybe.”
“I couldn’t kiss you properly because I’m sad.”
“That’s lame. You kissed me with your mouth all tight. Like a cat’s ass kissing.” He pointed at his lips, pursed and tense.
“HP!” I shoved him and he stumbled off the keg. “I don’t know how to be.” I smeared my palms on the thighs of my pants. “If I’m excited about going to Oxford, that’s horrible because I’m leaving you. And if I dread Oxford, that’s horrible because I’m going and I should make the most of it. That’s what you always say.”
HP burped and covered his mouth as he sat back down next to me.
“And meanwhile my parents are hovering behind my head, trying to implant every single feeling I have. I’m stuck. Aren’t you? I mean”—I glanced at him carefully—“what do you want? Are we gonna be together while we’re apart?”
“Depends. Are you in love with me?”
I pulled away from him. He held up both hands like a foiled bank robber.
“Hey, it’s worth an ask.”
Of course I was in love with HP, but if I told him now, would it matter? I’d always thought when I arrived at the moment of actually saying the sentence out loud, it would have more ceremony than a slimy beer patio with the guy swaying drunk.
HP let out a frustrated moan, loud and low like a barn animal. “I’m gonna miss you. I’m gonna miss this.”
My mother told me I should never kiss a boy if he’s drunk, but I found myself moving toward HP’s mouth, the taste of our tongues smoky and raw. There was that flicker again as we slid into hunger, his hands tugging into my hair, both of us breathing fast as our hands moved over and under each other’s clothes. I knew the ridges of him so well now, the grooves in his stomach and chest. I straddled his lap and he wrapped his arms all the way around me. Everything surrounding us fell away, irrelevant.
When we finally left the bar, the streets were empty. Our high school looked ghost-lit: one tennis ball sat in a drain out front. The Frostee Delite had closed shop and boarded its windows; NO KASH CEPT OVERNITE read the latest sign.
We drifted to his house and climbed into the back of his truck—we didn’t even need to drive it anywhere. Above us, the stars glinted.
“Sometimes I think,” said HP, bobbling my head on his chest with every word, “that the sky’s just a dark blanket, and behind it is totally bright light. Those stars are just little pinprick holes in the cloth, letting us see what’s behind.” He sniffed. “See? I’m deep, too.”
The crook of his neck smelled fresh, like a swimming pool. “I am in love with you. I just didn’t want to say it with you shitfaced outside a bar.”
He put his arm behind his head for a pillow. “I knew it.”
“When I’m in Oxford, I’m not going to talk to any guys. Just so you know.”
“Good.”
“Are you going to talk to girls?”
He sat up. “I don’t know, LJ, that’s asking a lot. I mean, I can’t make any promises. For instance, I might have to talk to my mom.” We held hands, our fingers moving in and around each other’s. “Listen.” He bunched himself up to sit straighter. “I don’t want you to spend the whole time thinking about me and Cove.”
“I will, though.”
“Well…” He shifted uncomfortably. “I’ll be thinking about you, too, but we shouldn’t be dating while you’re away.”
I stared at him hard.
“Wait. Fuck. I can’t get words so they sound right.” He spread his hands like a concert pianist. “Go to England and see what happens. I’ll be here, not dating anyone. When you come home, we
can see where we’re at. Was that better? I think that went better.”
“Are you in love with me?”
“Yes.”
How was he always so certain of everything?
“Okay,” I murmured. “We’ll play it by ear. Like you’d ever stick to a plan anyway.”
Together we slipped into exhausted sleep. When crows woke me the next morning, the pinprick stars were all gone. Clouds scuffed above me, their edges torn.
* * *
Detective Novak, I know all you want is to tick boxes on your checklist so you can close my file, but the truth of HP and me is more complex than anyone is allowing in here. What HP and I had was complete happiness. This isn’t a love story. Or at the very least it’s not only a love story. It’s also a tale of utter reliance—that’s what you need to understand. First. Before we move on.
You might think that everything I’ve told you just builds more of a motive for me to harm Saskia, but I’m innocent of whatever may or may not have happened to her. What I’m trying to say, Detective, is that HP had a hold on me. I needed him and I don’t mind admitting that. I never felt as safe as when he was around. Of the coatrack versions of me, he always pulled out the best one, and if you’re going to understand anything else I tell you today, you need to fully appreciate how much there was to lose if I lost him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Utter reliance?” Novak inspects his fingernails, polishes one with the soft pad of his thumb. “From what I’ve heard so far, your life is pretty darn swell. What would you have to worry about? Here’s a girl at the top of her graduating class, who’s beautiful—no, don’t squirm—whose parents want nothing but the best for her and send her to a famous university—internationally—to give her the greatest of starts. It doesn’t really read like a sob story.”
“My parents wanted the glory of a well-educated daughter. They wanted me to fly some kind of giant success flag for them. My needs didn’t factor in, never have.”
“You know what? I see a lot of kids come through this building that’ve been dealt rough cards, and believe me, you’re not one of them.”
“Detective Novak, just because I haven’t witnessed the double homicide of my parents or had to eat out of Dumpsters doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s coming for me. We’re all standing on the tracks.”
“You’re saying bad things happen to everyone?”
“Of course.”
“Did something bad happen to Saskia?”
I ignore him. “Listen, my parents moved me around every couple of years, so I never had a real friend before HP. I’m trying to tell you why he was so important. My mom is … a glacier: She’s cold and insidious. Little by little, she’ll freeze you out and take everything you have.”
He nods and begins to write. “What have you learned from your mother, Angela?”
I hesitate. “Honestly? I’ve learned that everything’s a competition. And that everyone has an agenda even if they don’t admit it.”
“What’s hers?”
“To push to the front. Climb to the top.” There’s a beat while Novak’s still looking down at his page. “What’s yours?”
He throws his pen onto the table in front of him. “I think my agenda’s pretty straightforward, Angela.”
“You say that, but everyone’s hiding something.”
“Are you?”
I look up at the crease where the wall joins the ceiling. “What I’ve come to understand about the world is that there are so few people in it who actually say what they mean.” Novak wants to interrupt, but I don’t present a gap. “I’m told it’s because we’re all being careful of one another’s feelings, but that’s not it. People don’t say what they mean because they’re deceptive. They’re fake and they lie.” My head hurts. “Novak, I’m just not good at lying or hiding. I’m honest to a fault, except I don’t think it is a fault.”
“Okay, so what you’re telling me, Angela, is that despite a cushy life, you have an acute, at times paralyzing, fear of humanity’s vulnerability. Without HP, you felt less able to cope with your own perception of a world full of liars. You needed his input to balance you out. Am I getting it?”
Surprisingly, he is.
He stands suddenly. “Wait here, I want to show you something.” He returns carrying a small transparent bag, like the ones used for freezer food. He tosses it onto the table; I can see the tidy print of its label, the numerical code and a name. “Take a look.”
I reach forward and pull the bag toward me. There in the corner of the bag, hugged by the tight crease of plastic, is a delicate silver necklace. Sitting above the folds of silver is a pendant shaped like a tiny elephant, intricately patterned and colored in shades of festival blue. I feel my stomach hollow inward again, and struggle to breathe out.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“So, honestly, do you find the necklace upsetting? Is it Saskia’s?”
I turn the bag over and look at the contents from the underside. There’s a thickness in my throat that rises high before I can swallow it.
“You don’t seem to be that concerned about this woman’s disappearance. This is a missing woman from your town. You’ve talked and talked and talked. About yourself. You know Saskia, know her well, in fact—you’ve already admitted to that—and yet nothing you’ve said so far relates to her. Isn’t that interesting?”
Nothing I say is understood. The man is a fool. I run a fingertip over the outline of the silvery-blue pendant.
He’s watching my finger trace the shape. “There is something sad about that elephant, no?”
I shiver involuntarily and back away from the table. “Where did you find it?”
“Where do you think we found it?”
I shrug. Then he folds his hands neatly in his lap. “Why don’t you tell me what happened at Oxford? Would you like that?”
“I would.”
* * *
Do you know about Freddy Montgomery, Novak? Is he in my file? You must have stumbled across him during your investigation. There’s no telling anything about Saskia unless I first tell you about Freddy. Freddy from Oxford. He knew the city by heart and he handed it over to me like a gift.
In the very center of the city there’s a building called the Radcliffe Camera. It’s pretty famous—you should Google it when you get home tonight. It’s round and domed and inside is a library. On Saturday mornings I liked to go there, open a musty novel, and settle against the curve of the wall while I looked out the window at the cobbled courtyard.
Everything outside that window is made of stone. An old church, silvered by centuries, looms over the entire square, and underfoot are slabs worn smooth by a million journeys. The Radcliffe Camera is set back a street from the commercial zone, but sometimes shoppers carrying bags filled with clothing and Apple products wander into the square as if arriving from the future.
It’s quiet in the Rad Cam courtyard. There are a hundred rusty bikes, most with wicker baskets, parked against the black fence, and nobody steals them. The Bodleian Library, one of the oldest libraries in the world, stands at the north end of the square facing Hertford College and the Bridge of Sighs, a windowed walkway that links two pale buildings in an upward lilt unnoticeable to those drifting across it.
Hertford was my college. I hadn’t expected to feel so at home in a new place, but when I arrived there mid-September and saw the gargoyles and statuesque heads along the top of the Bodleian wall and the numerous old bookshops, the blood in my body started to surge.
I’m sorry to hurt your true-blue Vermonter feelings, Detective Novak, but you must know by now I didn’t feel any affinity with Cove. Oxford, though, oh, we clicked the minute I set foot in the place.
That day was the first time I walked through a door in a door. All the colleges have huge wooden gates that remain permanently closed, but the smaller doorways within them open and close, and can be locked with keys made from medieval iron. I’d never seen a door in a door before: It felt like a kid’s book, where
mice live in the baseboards. I rumbled my suitcase through the flagstone hallway of the porter’s office and onto the hushed lawn of the quad, and there I stopped and sat down on my bag for a minute. Jet-lagged and out on my own, it struck me that I had never before been anywhere so perfect. Even the placards on the two benches bordering the lawn had been polished. Little windows to tutors’ rooms sat just above the hedge line, fringed at the top by ivy, and to my left a winding stone stairwell led up to what I would discover to be the wood-paneled dining rooms of the college.
At first I didn’t notice the young man standing in the archway across from me. It was only when he snapped his copy of Crime and Punishment closed that I looked over. He was leaning against the wall by the arches in studied contemplation, his dress shirt buttoned all the way to the tie that bulged at his neck.
“Hello there, good afternoon,” he said, walking over and offering a moist hand. “I have to deduce that you’re new to the college, judging by the size of your valise.”
He was round and slightly pink.
“Can I help?” He pushed a signet ring around the base of his little finger. “It doesn’t do to struggle up the stairs on one’s own with a case twice the size of you.”
I didn’t consider myself that puny, and was about to reply when he spoke again.
“I’m Freddy. I’m sorry, do you actually speak English?”
“Do you always talk so much?”
“Gosh, no.” He crossed his arms against his shirt, the stripes of which distorted at the midriff. His hair was cropped very close to his head, as if to preempt premature balding. “I rarely talk to newcomers. So you’re American. What a relief. I was starting to think you were Eastern Bloc.”
“I’m only three quarters American. My grandfather was something European.”
“Oh, crossbreeding—well played. Those Americans are everywhere, especially since we ship them in by droves to beat the bloody Cambridge lot in the boat race.” He paused. I stared at him blankly. “The rowing? Gosh, you are a new girl.”