Burning Blue

by Paul Griffin

  Username: GBAM

  A password request came up on UniversalStorageTime.com. Maybe twenty minutes later I jumped the password wall. I started clicking wildly, opening multiple files at the same time.

  An audio file, DBphonegrabOct21.aiff, from the same day I met Nicole in Schmidt’s office:

  DAVE: You knew what you were getting into.

  ANGELA: You were with me for three months before her, though.

  (Eagles screeched in the background. There was a preserve at Ramapo.)

  DAVE: I was up front with you from the beginning. I told you this had to be under the radar.

  ANGELA: Under the radar. Right. You let me suck your dick no problem, but you’re embarrassed to be seen in public with me.

  DAVE: Do you know what my father would do if-

  ANGELA: Yeah, I know exactly what he’d do. He’d tell you I was a low-class whore, way beneath a Bendix’s station. Then, if you had any balls, you’d tell him to go to hell.

  DAVE: Look, I’m sorry, okay? You want me to screw up my life? That’ll make you happy? It was a mistake, Angela.

  ANGELA: A mistake? You have got to be kidding me.

  DAVE: Why can’t you just be cool about this?

  ANGELA: You’re part of it now, Dave.

  DAVE: Part of what?

  ANGELA: You waited too long. You had your chance to come clean when Barrone interviewed you the day of the attack.

  DAVE: I didn’t know you were the one who did it until now.

  ANGELA (laughing): Liar.

  DAVE: I didn’t see you.

  ANGELA: You didn’t want to see me.

  DAVE: My head was down. I was drinking water-

  ANGELA: You were looking right at me, Dave. We locked eyes. You know we did. And then that night, in the precinct, you panicked. You knew your father would kill you if he found out about us. You get implicated in burning Nicole? The story plays everywhere, with your name out there, as the one who jilted the sideline slut who burned the beauty queen? You held back. You had all that time after the interview too. If you’d come forward within twenty-four hours of the attack, you would have been okay. Maybe even forty-eight, with a generous DA. But we’re six weeks later now, dude. Six weeks you’re holding back info that could’ve nabbed the Recluse. You go forward now, you are screwed. You’re an accessory now. An accomplice. You obstructed justice. You’ll get as much time as I will for burning Nicole-if you turn me in. And even if you don’t do time, good luck getting into the Big H with a felony tacked to the bottom of your application. Maybe that’s what your essay could be about: How I learned about obstruction of justice by obstructing it. You good at keeping secrets, Dave? You better be, because this is one you’re going to have to keep for the rest of your life.

  DAVE: You really think you can play me like this?

  ANGELA: This isn’t playing. This is a promise: I’ll throw you to them.

  DAVE: You have no proof I so much as held as your hand. And as for the attack? Yeah, I saw you burn her, you sick bitch. But you can’t prove that either.

  ANGELA: I’m recording this, Dave.

  DAVE: Are you serious? Turn it off, Angela.

  ANGELA: If you don’t take your hand out of my pocket, I’ll stab it!

  DAVE: Turn it off!

  ANGELA: I’m relaying it real time to my cloud account anyway!

  Untitled.aiff, from the day Angela was arrested:

  ANGELA: I’m being followed.

  DAVE: Shit.

  ANGELA: I’m not going to make it. The plane doesn’t leave for another half hour.

  DAVE: Are you recording this?

  ANGELA: No, I swear.

  DAVE: Just keep quiet. Do the sentence. It’ll probably be like three years max. After, I’ll move you up to Cambridge. Stick to the plan, Angela, and we’ll be able to be together. We’ll wait a few years and then we’ll-

  ANGELA: I have to nuke this phone. They’re like a couple hundred yards away. I love you. . Say it back, Dave.

  DAVE: I love you.

  ANGELA: So convincing. You have three years to make yourself mean that. You better be there when I get out.

  Barrone had told my father that Dave was under house arrest. The DA initially threatened an attempted murder charge for what went down in the SUV with Kerns and me, but Dave’s lawyers were too good to let that stick. They were negotiating final terms for a plea to assault. Dave probably wouldn’t do more than eighteen months home confinement with probation after. Same with Rick Kerns. But Harvard wasn’t about to let either one of them trash its rep, and Kerns would never wrestle again, not with that shattered shoulder. Angela would pay the biggest price: No way Dave would be there for her when she got out. Not that I thought he’d have been there anyway.

  I clicked BurningBlue.doc, desperate for anything that would point to the person who hired Angela to do the hit. It began with a journal entry: What day is it? What night? I’m burning, burning, burning blue. -NC, 10/28

  That was when I knew for sure. Just to be even more certain, I wormed a line into GBAM’s profile on Cutter’s Way. The registration tracked back not to Angela’s email but to Nicole’s.

  The supposed cat scratch on her arm. The long-sleeved hoodies. Nicole really was mutilating herself after all. Could Chrissie Vratos have been right? Did Nicole hire Angela to burn her? Whether she in effect burned herself or not, Nicole Castro was definitely cutting. She needed help. Her therapists needed to know. Did they?

  I scanned BurningBlue.doc. Angela had compiled a series of Nicole’s journal entries with lines highlighted here and there. If you could, would you read the diary of the person you were in love with? Or do you love them enough to trust them?

  I couldn’t find anything in the document that suggested anybody but Nicole and her Cutter’s Way friends knew about her cutting. Angela had hacked audio files too, of Nicole’s sessions with Dr. Julian Nye. I had to listen to them. I had to.

  Nicole and Nye Oct19.aiff:

  NYE: I’d like to offer you as a case study at my next Princeton lecture.

  NICOLE: “Offer me”? No thanks, really.

  NYE: You’re doing remarkably well, considering the circumstances. My students would have many questions for you. You could help them a great deal-help them help others.

  NICOLE: You’re saying you want me live? As in you want me to be online with them?

  NYE: I want you to come to the lecture.

  NICOLE: Are you insane?

  NYE: I don’t think so. You would be in shadow. They would know who you are, of course, but they wouldn’t see your face, if that would make you feel more comfortable.”

  NICOLE: Comfortable? Seriously, Julian? I can’t be up in front of people, even in shadow. Let me have that much at least.

  NYE: Have what?

  NICOLE: The dark. Total dark.

  Nothing. They didn’t know-Nye, Schmidt, Mrs. Castro. I had to get Nicole help. Before I did that, I had to confront her about it. She would never forgive me if I went behind her back and ratted her out to her mother. She might never forgive me anyway. She’d wonder for all of two seconds how I’d found out about the cutting, and then she’d think I was hacking her. I’d promised her I never would. Technically I wasn’t. Technically I was merely checking out Angela’s hack. Technically Nicole wouldn’t give a damn how I’d gotten the information. Either way, I was invading her privacy. She would never speak to me again. But I had to out her, even if that meant losing her.

  I called her, inviting myself over for dinner. “Mom’s making dumplings,” she said. She sounded better. Actually, she sounded good, maybe even great. I’d spent a lot of time with her the last three weeks, and this was the happiest I’d ever heard her. She sounded playful. “Get on over here, boy.” I could only think she was on a new prescription, and that made me even sadder. I grabbed my backpack and board and tapped my father’s foot.

  “Uh?” he said, his eyes still closed.

  “Heading over to Nicole’s for dinner.”

&n
bsp; No response.

  “Dad?”

  He snored. I taped a note to the TV. I was about to go when the blank spot on the living room wall caught my eye. The place where the painting used to hang, the one my father hocked for my bail. My memory of it sharpened. It was almost the exact picture I found when I broke into Angela’s house, the half-photo/half-sketch of Nicole sitting in front of a mirror, half her face covered with red ink. The one Angela had noted with sparkly glow pen in the corner of the sketch with that GBAM matrix or chat room name or whatever it was.

  My father had a lot of artist’s prints, limited edition copies approved and signed by the artist of the masterwork they emulated. Which meant the original was likely hanging in a museum someplace. I had seen the original painting, the inspiration for my father’s print and Angela’s sketch, and I was pretty sure I’d seen it recently-very recently-but I couldn’t remember where. Somehow that painting connected Angela, Nicole and my father.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Sylvia got the door. She was in her pajamas.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Mr. Castro’s here,” she said. “I’m just kidding.”

  “Why do you hate me?”

  “I don’t. I just don’t like you. Go. They’re in the kitchen.”

  The kitchen smelled great. Mrs. Castro had the dumplings going. She was massaging Nicole’s shoulders. They were in their pajamas too. “It’s a pajama party,” Mrs. Castro said.

  “I’m betting he sees that, Mom.”

  “Go downstairs and get him some of your father’s PJs from storage.”

  “Nah, I’m okay,” I said.

  “He doesn’t want to wear Daddy’s clothes, Mom. Daddy terrifies him.”

  “He terrifies everybody,” Mrs. Castro said. “Go. No pajamas, no dumplings.”

  Nicole took my hand and led me downstairs. The basement was immaculate, and that made it creepier for some reason. Lots of storage racks. Nicole led me to the back. She sat on a wicker chest and patted the spot next to her for me to sit. I had the feeling she was going to kiss me. If she did, I wouldn’t be able to say what I had to say. So I just said it. “I know about it. The chat room.”

  “The chat room?” Her eyes ticked right.

  “Cutter’s Way.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t do this, Nicole. Please don’t.”

  “Do what, Jay? What exactly am I doing?”

  “We need to get you help. We’re going to. I promise.”

  “You promise? Really? Oh, that makes me feel so much better. He promises. You know what you promised, Jay? You promised you would never hack me.”

  “I had to.”

  “No, you really didn’t. Nobody asked you to. Nobody wanted you to, either.” She pulled up her sleeves to reveal the bandages. “This is mine, okay? This is the one thing I can own. Just me. This has nothing to do with you.”

  “It has everything to do with me. You’re my friend.”

  “Then honor our friendship. Honor your word. Please don’t tell my mom. Please.”

  “I’m not judging you, okay?”

  “Judge me or don’t, it doesn’t matter. Shit, you broke it. How do I trust you after this? I can’t. God, I feel your fingers under my skin. You know what? Go.”

  “The username,” I said. “GBAM.”

  “Get out of my house. Now.”

  “Just tell me how you came up with the chat handle, and I’ll leave.”

  “It’s an acronym for a painting, my mother’s favorite, my destiny.” She pushed past me, upstairs.

  I followed. “The Picasso? Guernica?” I stopped cold in the main vestibule where I’d left my backpack. I heard the bathroom door shut, the one just ahead of the kitchen. I fished in my backpack for the book I’d had my father sign for Mrs. Castro. The one I had been dragging around with me for how many days now, forever forgetting to give it to her. I flipped to the page Mrs. Castro had flagged “his best.” But she hadn’t been referring to Picasso’s Guernica. She’d meant the picture on the opposing page, another Picasso, a vision of a woman standing in front of a mirror. This was the original, the basis for the artist’s print that used to be on my living room wall. I checked the caption and the title: Girl Before a Mirror.

  GBAM.

  Mrs. Castro’s favorite painting.

  The inspiration for the sketch I’d found in Angela’s bedroom. The one where Nicole reaches out to her reflection, exactly as the girl does in Picasso’s original. In the mirror, half of her face is perfect beauty, and the other half is horrific, rearranged, red.

  My eyes ticked to the corner of the vestibule, the wall space next to the grandfather clock, above the umbrella stand. There it was again, the same image, locked in a small frame. I hadn’t given it but a half a glance the other day when I dropped Nicole’s umbrella into the stand, a black-and-white sketch copy of Girl Before a Mirror. I studied the sketch, the artist’s initials: E.C.

  Elaine Castro and Angela Sammick were in love with the same work of art. Obsessed by it.

  I had taken my anti-seizure meds that day, and they generally softened things, but at that moment I felt as if an intense and rough-edged heat was trying to squeeze between the hemispheres of my brain. I had to slump into the chair next to the grandfather clock to take it in. How the two women had come together was a mystery, but this much was definite: Mrs. Castro had hired Angela to burn Nicole. Angela had come up with the Arachnomorph ID that inspired the news sites to the spider-themed nickname, but Elaine Castro was the real Recluse.

  It made no sense and perfect sense. Nicole told me that her mother wanted her to find the good in the burn, the fact that Nicole and Mrs. Castro could spend more time together now that Nicole didn’t have to run off to this match or that meeting, off to college, marriage, a life away from her mother, one that would leave Mrs. Castro even more isolated than she was after her husband left. Burned, Nicole would never leave her, would need her mother forever, would give the woman purpose. Elaine Castro had no one and nothing else. Her dreams of living life as an artist had been ripped from her that night of her debut when the doubt stared her in the face: Was she truly meant to paint? She wanted to, yes, but maybe she didn’t have that thing that makes it all worthwhile, whether you hit it big like Picasso or not: the need to.

  I needed to get Nicole. Book in hand I rounded the corner to the bathroom off the kitchen. I tried the knob, locked. “Nicole, we have to get you out of here. Now.”

  The bathroom door swung open. Mrs. Castro was drying her hands on a bright blue towel. She looked as I’d never seen her before, ugly somehow, her brows arched. She eyed the book in my hand, my fingers tucked into it at the page she’d flagged. “What’s wrong, Jay?” she said.

  “I thought you were Nicole.”

  “I gathered that. What’s the rush?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said, ‘We have to get you out of here.’”

  “My father texted he got us tickets to the St. John’s game. It’s at the Garden, courtside. We have to get out of here now if we want to make the opening jump-”

  “No, Jay, you said, ‘We have to get you out of here.’ Meaning Nicole.”

  Nicole’s sobbing echoed from down the hallway.

  I was terrified. Not of Mrs. Castro. At that moment she seemed smaller to me. Shrinking. I was terrified of myself. Of what I might do to this trembling, cornered thief in front of me. I felt she was a guest in my home, an uninvited guest who’d charmed her way into my heart and then pocketed my treasure, my trust, while my eyes were turned. I glared at Elaine Castro. “How could you?” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Why?”

  Her eyes reddened. “Let’s just sit down for a second and talk about this. We, I have no idea what’s going on here, except that you’re upset. You need to calm down.”

  I pushed past her, nearly knocking her over when she tried to block me.

  “Jay, wait,” she begged.

 
I strode through the kitchen, into the studio. Nicole was on the couch with Sylvia, crying on Sylvia’s shoulder. Sylvia held her, rubbing her back. A tabloid magazine played quietly through the TV. Sylvia glared at me. Over her shoulder, in the backyard, a pair of deer looked in on us. They scattered into the dusk. Sylvia’s eyes widened on something behind me. “No, Elaine,” Sylvia said.

  Nicole looked up and followed Sylvia’s eyes. “Mom?” she said.

  I turned around slowly. Mrs. Castro was standing right in front of me, holding the pot of dumplings. The oil smoked. “You’ve ruined it,” she said to me. “You ruined us. I warned you, Jay. I warned you to let the police do their job.”

  “Mom, what are you talking about?” Nicole said.

  “Nicole?” Mrs. Castro said. “My baby, I’m so sorry.”

  I tried to grab the pot from her, but she was too quick. She poured the oil onto herself.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Five weeks later, Thursday, December 16, Nicole, her father, and I were in a joint therapy session in Dr. Schmidt’s office. Nicole had just come back from a month’s stay at an in-treatment center for teens coping with self-injury impulses. The particular program she was in required her to stay off the phone and offline, but she was encouraged to write, and we’d exchanged a dozen or so letters. But now we sat facing each other, staring at each other as Mr. Castro said, “I can’t do that. How do you not see that it’s my fault?”

  “What does holding on to your fault, Elaine’s fault, anybody’s fault do for Nicole?” Schmidt said.

  “But you don’t just let it go, Doctor. It won’t. It can’t. It’s its own thing, and it lives in you until it dies, if it ever does decide to die. If you try to cut it out too soon, you risk all this collateral damage.”

  “Like what?” Schmidt said.

  Mr. Castro closed his eyes tightly and dug his fingertips into his temples. He still wore his wedding ring. “Nicole, I can’t do this, honey. I’m sorry.” He stood up.

  “Dad?” Nicole said.