“What’s that?” Ro points to my coat. The lingering pills in my system make me slow to react. I look down for a whole beat before I realize that she can see the top of the lighter.
I drop it and send it into the bottom of the pocket. “Nothing.”
Ro’s face goes serious. “You can tell me your secret. It’s okay. I already know.”
The whole world stops. I slowly remove my hand from my pocket. What should I do? Confess? Let someone else carry part of this burden? Ro won’t go to the police.
My mouth opens, but no sound comes out.
Ro looks annoyed again. She flops back down on the bed. “Fine. Don’t tell me that you started again.”
“Started what?” My heart hummingbirds in my chest.
“You told me that you were trying to quit when we first met, remember? Then I found that lighter in your drawer. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out you started smoking again.”
I can’t contain the gasp that’s released from my mouth, but I quickly roll my lips under and nod. I look down like I’m ashamed.
Shouldn’t I feel ashamed after all I’ve done?
What does it say about me that I don’t?
“Are you at least going to tell me what happened last night? Did you find Kara and Ben?”
It’s a blur. I remember seeing Kara leave. I remember stumbling home. I remember taking the sleeping pills.
Ro is staring at me, awaiting an answer.
“I got scared.”
“Whatever,” Ro says. She rolls onto her side and pulls the duvet over her head.
* * *
—
“Late night?” Monica asks. I glance at my reflection in the microwave. She probably thinks that I’m hungover or stoned or both. I lift the coffeepot and see that I’m still wearing my neon wristband.
It’s too late to try to hide it, and my slow brain can’t come up with an excuse. I look back at Monica. She holds up her hands. “I’m not your mother.”
She peels the color comics section out of the fat paper on the table. “Why are they working on a Sunday?” I point outside, and the wristband floats in front of my face. Come on, brain. Wake up.
“There are some protestors threating to get an injunction to stop the project,” Monica says as I dig through the drawers, looking for scissors.
“Can they do that?” I ask.
Monica stands up, walks to the last drawer, pulls out a pair of scissors, takes my arm, and cuts the band off. She holds it in front of my face. “Put it in the bottom of the trash can.” She drops it into my palm. “The protestors don’t have a real case. The paperwork was filed correctly. But if they’re obnoxious enough, they can get a judge to halt the project while it’s all reviewed. Or they can go straight to the city and try to get our permits pulled.”
She must read the alarm on my face. “Don’t worry. No one in the city wants to go up against Mike. But the sooner the motel is done, the sooner all this foolishness is over with.”
Cam opens the door. When he sees me, he jumps. Then he glares. Glares like he’s trying to strangle me with his eyes.
“Good morning,” I say.
“It’s two o’clock in the afternoon.”
“I guess I better go do my homework, then.” I push past him before he has a chance to say anything else. Something tells me that after my disappearing act at the club, I’m going to be riding the bus home from school all week.
Ro’s in the shower when I get back to my room. I open a bottom drawer of the dresser and shove Ben’s lighter way in the back.
My crumpled heap of a dress smells like that horrible club. I scoop it up and open the wardrobe to toss it into the laundry.
Ro comes out of the bathroom drying her hair with a towel. She points to my hands. “I love that dress.”
I look down at it. After last night, I never want to see it again.
Ro takes it from me and shakes it out. She holds it up against her and stands in front of the mirror. “Where’s the belt?”
I search through my still-drugged brain. I don’t remember taking it off last night.
I shrug. “I must have lost it at the club.”
Ro’s playing a game on my phone, while I try to concentrate on my homework. I still feel underwater. I’m never taking two sleeping pills again.
The construction crew has left for the day. The wind whips sand and construction dust into swirls that glow in the orangey light of the setting sun.
The curtains are open, so I see Dad approach. He has his phone in his hand. He stops in front of the door and takes a breath. He knocks. “Come in,” I call.
Dad pops the door open. He glances over at Ro. “I need to talk to Jenny.”
Ro looks back and forth between the bathroom and the door, unsure of how to exit. She decides on the door.
“What’s going on?” The look on Dad’s face is unreadable. Did Monica rat me out about the club? Or did Cam? I bet it was Cam.
“Sit down,” he says, and points to the chair. He sits on the bed across from me. I steel myself for whatever kind of discipline Dad is going to hand out. We’ve never crossed this bridge before. Ro is leaning against the window, hands cupped around her face to see through the reflection. I give her a little shrug.
“Last night—” Dad says, and then stops to take another breath. Next time Cam is asleep in his truck, I am personally escorting Mike Vargas over to catch him.
He starts over again. “Your teacher Teresa called….I don’t know how to do this.” He rakes his hand over his face.
“Your friend Kara died last night.”
“What?”
I couldn’t have heard him right.
“Your teacher Teresa called. She said that last night Kara died.”
I jump to my feet. “How? Was it in a fire?” I knew that smoke wasn’t dry ice. There was a fire somewhere in the club.
Dad stands up too. He reaches out like he’s going to hug me, but isn’t sure how to grab my panicked figure.
“No. It wasn’t a fire.” He gulps. “She was murdered.”
“What?” I ask again. It has to be the pills. None of this is real. It’s my brain having a reaction to the stupid sleeping pills. In a second, I’m going to realize that Dad came in to ask if I want pizza for dinner.
“They found her body this morning behind a club. That’s all I know.”
I collapse back into the chair. Behind a club. The club I was at last night. The club I ran away from.
Everything in my body goes still. For a moment, I feel absolutely nothing. But then the pain starts to flow from the bottom of my feet up through my legs and my stomach and my heart.
I scream like a rabid animal. Dad backs away. Ro charges in and runs over. She puts her arms around me and looks daggers at Dad.
“I’m sorry. I’ll let you two be alone,” he whispers, and leaves.
The pain reaches my eyes, and they start to spill tears down my face.
“Kara died, Ro,” I say in between sobbing gasps. “She was murdered. If I hadn’t been so mad at her, I could have…I could have been there with her. This wouldn’t have happened.”
Ro’s arms tighten around me. I don’t feel comforted. My lungs are being squeezed of all their air. I want her to release me.
“We should watch the news.” I jump up so quickly that Ro is knocked over. “We have to find out what happened.”
I don’t have control anymore. My hands shake. My knees wobble. I stab at the remote and stab at it and stab at it, but the TV stays black.
“We have to know what happened.” My knees give out, and I hit the floor. I can’t breathe. The tears are coming too fast. My stomach is sick. I clap my hand over my mouth.
Ro takes the remote away from me and turns on the TV. It plays a commercial for some wonder drug with side effect
s that are worse than what it’s trying to cure. My tears slow. I start to feel nothing. Nothing but cold and dried out. A frozen husk of a person.
The commercial switches to a breaking-news graphic, and the anchor puts on his serious expression. “We are getting reports that the body of a teenage girl has been found outside the Legit Night Club in Las Piedras. Let’s go live to the scene.”
The screen flashes to the same reporter who’s been covering the Los Ranchitos. “Police aren’t releasing much information, but we know that the body of a seventeen-year-old girl was found here in the early hours of the morning. Police don’t have a motive, but we know that her ID, bank card, and cash were still in her possession.”
The screen jumps back to the anchor. His stiff hair glows under the lights. His eyes are wider than before. He tries not to betray what he’s thinking. But it’s the same thing we’re all thinking: Drunk girl found behind a club. Wasn’t robbed. He knows exactly what happened to her.
So do I, and I could have stopped it. But my brain was spinning. I couldn’t tell what was real. I thought there was a fire. I remember looking for Kara and Ben, but the rest is blurry.
And someone was leaving those strange pictures for Kara. I could have made her tell me what was going on. Who was doing it. Is that another thing I could have done to prevent this?
My body is not dried out. I continue crying with a ferocity I haven’t felt since I listened to my friends die in that fire. I crawl onto the bed and curl up into a ball. I slap my hand over my screaming scar and pull the fluffy duvet over my head so that nothing else bad can reach me.
School’s been canceled today. Instead, an army of counselors fills the halls of Riverline Prep for anyone who wants to talk. Dad showed up at my door and offered to take me there and sit with me. I declined.
Mom calls three times. Three times I hit ignore. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to share my feelings. They are too big, too many. If I let them out, they might not go back in again.
I pass the office door without going inside. I can’t stand sitting across from Monica and seeing the awkward sympathy on her face.
I walk out the front gate and down to the cottonwoods. Even though Kara’s dead, the construction workers keep doing their thing. The sun keeps shining. The wind keeps blowing.
Ro left sometime in the night. She didn’t come back this morning. She must be at school by now, so I’m by myself for the whole day.
I wander through the trees, away from the colony, and pass the site of my last fire. I look away. I’m not in the mood. I’ve found a feeling worse than the itch in my scar.
I sit on a tree stump in plain view of the access road. And I wait.
The sun is moving toward the horizon, and my stomach is growling by the time he comes.
“Hello, Jenny,” Allen calls with a huge smile on his face. As he approaches me and sees my face, his smile fades.
“Do you need help?” He reaches for his radio. I put a hand out to stop him.
“No. I’m okay.” I scooch over on the tree stump so he can sit. “The girl”—I suck in a lungful of dusty air—“the girl who was killed, she was my friend.”
“Oh,” he says. “I’m sorry.” Awkward.
“I wish I knew what happened to her.” I glance up ever so slightly to make sure that he’s watching me. “I keep thinking over and over again that maybe I missed something. Something that could have saved her.” I rub my eyes with the back of my hand.
I know it’s wrong to take advantage of his liking me—even worse to encourage it—but I have to know what happened to Kara.
“It’s not your fault,” he says, and hesitantly puts a comforting arm around my shoulders. “Is there anything I can do?”
He means it as an empty nicety, but I do need something from him. If Allen wants to play cop, here’s his chance.
“Can you find out how she died? Like from the police reports?” I have to know what happened. Was it a random attack, or was it more than that? Planned by a killer she knew? The guilt of what I could have maybe prevented surges through me again. I wish I could remember more of what happened after I saw the smoke.
Allen drags his foot through the dirt. He rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “I’m not supposed to access those kinds of reports.”
I look away and exaggerate the disappointment in my voice. “It’s okay. I understand.”
He stands up. I look up at him through my lashes, like I’m a damsel in distress. I know he’ll go for it. He’s wanted to impress me from the first time we met.
“Give me your number. I’ll see what I can do.”
* * *
—
Ro is in Henderson’s parking lot. She runs over when she sees me coming up the sidewalk. “What are you doing here?” I ask.
Ro scrunches up her eyebrows like I’ve hurt her. “I came to check on you, but you weren’t home.”
I jut a thumb over my shoulder. “I was walking.” I step into the street to get around her, since she’s planted herself in the middle of the sidewalk.
“Where are you going?”
I point at Henderson’s. “I was all out of tampons this morning.” I turn and look at her. “Which is funny since I still had half a box left last month.” I don’t know why I’m being mean to Ro. I couldn’t care less about tampons. But I’m feeling angry now. Angry at her. Angry at Kara for being at the club in the first place. Angry at me.
“Do you want to come?” I try to soften my voice as an apology.
Ro trudges along behind me. When the doors of Henderson’s whoosh open, she stops. “I’ll wait outside.” She crosses her arms indignantly.
“Fine.” My irritation with her increases.
I march straight to the tampons and pick out what I need. Then I decide that I’m going to make Ro wait awhile, so I browse the other aisles and dump random impulse buys into my basket.
The familiar clerk is at the register. She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her puffy eyes. I’ve never seen her wear a name tag before, but today, she’s pinned one on that says “Ruby.” Hovering over it is a silver necklace with a turquoise pendant. It sparks something in my memory.
“That’s a beautiful necklace,” I say.
She grabs it and holds it between two fingers. “It’s been in my family for generations.”
“Oh.” I remember where I saw one like it. In the photo of Kara, before the club. My stomach sinks. Kara. The club.
I try to shake it out of my head. This is the Southwest. I bet every woman within a five-hundred-mile radius has a turquoise necklace like that in her jewelry box. Ruby probably wears it every day and I never noticed before.
I punch in my PIN and ask for ten dollars cash back. Ruby gives me my receipt and money. I’m too distracted by the necklace to stuff them into my pocket. They’re clutched in my hand when I get to the door. Ro is waiting outside, arms still crossed.
I sigh and look down at the money. It’s a twenty. I look back up at Ro, and then turn on my heels and walk back to Ruby.
She’s surprised to see me come back. I hold up the twenty. “I think you gave me too much.” I hold up the receipt. “I only asked for ten.”
I expect Ruby to be flustered, to be apologetic, to maybe even be mad. What I don’t expect is for her to burst into tears.
I glance behind me. There are no other customers. “It’s okay. I just don’t want you to get in trouble.”
She wipes her eyes on the green smock she wears over her clothes. “I’m sorry. I’m having a bad day. That girl who was killed? I knew her when she was little. All I can think about are her poor parents losing another child. And like that…” She tears up again.
I remember Kara’s trip to visit Joey at Henderson’s when she was buying alcohol. No wonder she looked so scared when Ruby recognized her. She probably thought Ruby was going
to call her parents.
Ruby takes the twenty from my outstretched hand and sniffles.
“Is everything all right here?” a voice asks. I turn around. A man—if you can call him that; he can’t be more than a few years older than me—in a green vest embroidered with “Manager” stands behind me. He crosses his arms and looks at Ruby sternly.
She wipes her face with her smock again.
I smile. “Everything is fine. Thanks.” He doesn’t believe me. “I just needed some change.” Ruby hands me the ten.
I look at Ruby. “I hope your allergies get better. I keep sneezing too.” I glance over at the manager. He doesn’t seem convinced, but since I’m not going to complain, I’m not worth his time. He gives Ruby one more glare and wanders back to whatever hole he crawled out of.
“I’m sorry about that.” Ruby has regained her composure and motions to the bill in my hand. “And thank you.”
I fold up the money and shove it into my pocket. I give Ruby a half wave and leave.
“Ro?” I call out. The sidewalk is empty. I walk down into the parking lot. “Ro?” She’s gone.
I feel superdrained—like I could crawl into bed and sleep for a week. I shuffle back to the Los Ranchitos. When I open my door, I expect Ro to be on the bed, snapping at me for taking so long, but she’s not here, either.
I go into the bathroom and check the window. It’s unlocked, as usual. I guess Ro is mad at me.
I kick off my shoes and crawl into bed. She’ll come back. She always does.
* * *
—
I’m startled awake by my phone ringing. My room is in shadows. It must be dinnertime. Ro still hasn’t shown up.
I don’t recognize the number, but it’s a local area code.
“Hello?”
“I have to do this fast,” the voice on the other end says. “My supervisor is in the bathroom.”
“Allen?”
“I have the autopsy report.”
Adrenaline shoots through me. Do I want to know what the investigators found when they put my friend on the table and cut her into pieces? My stomach flips over. If it weren’t so empty, its contents would be on the floor.
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