I pick out a pink tube of gloss and mindlessly rub a smear of it over my dry lips. “Lee here yet?” I need him. Am ready to repent, beg, make amends.
“Don’t know.”
I’ll be who he needs—I swear it, pledge it, promise.
“Gimme that.”
I pass the gloss back. I’m so guilty and sorry I can’t see straight. My eyes go all bad and blurry, and before I can blink back tears, I’m bawling.
“Hey, Knox . . .”
“I’m sorry.”
“Knox, hey, come’ere.” Kate’s hand is on my head. We’re hugging. “It’s okay . . .”
“It’s not.”
“It is, it’s okay.” She pulls back.
“I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
“I’m just—I’m ready for things to go back to how they were. I can be myself again. I can get better grades and be a better friend and I can make stuff right. With Lee.”
“Oh, Knox . . .” Her face changes—it’s a subtle shift, but I see it.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“No, it’s just—” She looks sideways, quickly. “Have you talked to him?”
“Why?”
“You should talk to Lee, Knox.”
Cue Lee, stage left, coming through the side door with no-boobs Alice Reed. They’re backlit. It’s a movie moment. Plot point two for Lee Dixon—where he dumps his crazy-whore girlfriend and takes up with the sunshiney schoolgirl who’s been eyeing him since tenth grade.
“So, what, they’re, like, legit?” I ask Kate, the pit in my gut expanding.
“I don’t know.”
Lee passes by, doesn’t stop, won’t look over.
“It’s fine,” I say, righting myself, pulling my bag strap over my head. “I know it’s my fault,” I say, and smile while wiping my wet cheeks.
• • •
I spend lunch alone in an empty bio lab, eating a sleeve of saltines. White, salty cardboard—the least challenging thing I can think to eat.
Dingaling.
My fucking PHONE. That thing only rings with bad business. I grab for it. “Hello?” I sound overeager and shrill.
Nothing. No hi back. Just that stupid, old-hat silence. I check the ID screen—blocked, of course. “Who is this?”
There’s actual breathing this time. My head goes berserk. My heart does something speedy and rough. It’s her. I know it’s her. “Dakota?” I whisper, disbelieving, believing, fully freaked out.
“I—” There’s a girlish sigh on the other end of the line, followed by, “I’m so sorry.”
I’m weeping, instantly. Hopeful, panicked: “Dakota?” I try again. “I—”
“Adrienne,” she says, sounding mousy and wrong. “This isn’t—this is Alice. Reed.” Oh shit. “I’m sorry, I—” Oh shit, oh shit. “I shouldn’t have called.” The line dies.
44.
Last period, lit. Julian’s MIA. I’m zoned out all through Murphy’s lecture, still reeling from Alice’s call. Obsessing over Dakota and Lee and i’m sorrys and naked boys.
Then later:
“You.”
“Me.” It’s after class and I’m at Murphy’s desk, waving impishly and tearing through my bag for my Jane essay.
“Adrienne . . .” He rubs his head.
“I know, I know . . .” Found it. I pep up, dropping the crumpled packet onto his laptop.
“What’s this?”
“It’s late, it’s super late, and I know there’s a chance I won’t get credit, just—please read it. I worked really hard.”
“Adrienne.” His brow is arched. “We had a deal.”
“We did. I know we did.”
“I can’t.” He passes the paper back. “It’s too late.”
Stonewalled. I try again: “Please.”
“Adrienne.” He gets up. “You have to learn.”
“I am.”
“No, about consequence.” He picks up the computer and slides it into his canvas tote. “I gave you two extensions.”
“I know you did.”
“Two.” His face is red and veiny. “I believed in you. I was—I am—invested in you succeeding.”
“So how is this”—I gesture back and forth between us—“me succeeding?” I’m pissed now—ready to repent but getting shut down.
“You can still bring your grade up. It’s not too late, okay? You take an incomplete on Jane Eyre and you work like crazy the rest of the quarter.”
I exhale. My eyes blur. “Shit.” I swipe at them—trying to rub away my tears.
“Adrienne . . .” His voice is soft.
“God, fuck.” I look at him through glassy eyes. “I fucked it up. Everything is so, so fucked up.”
“Adrienne . . .”
“You say my name a lot.”
“Come on, come outside, okay?” He throws a hand forward, stepping sideways. His knee cracks. “Come on, walk me out.”
Outside it’s LA’s version of icy weather: low fifties and dull skies. I hold my sweater close to my body and shuffle alongside Murphy. I’ve stopped crying.
“You sure you’re okay?”
I start up again. Ugly blubbering. I miss Lee. Murphy pulls me into a loose embrace and I sob against his jersey polo. He pats my head and I feel momentarily, inexplicably turned on. I jerk back.
“Hey . . .”
“Sorry. Sorry, sorry!” I rub my face, feeling gross and weird and out of my fucking groin, mind, whatever.
“What’s up with you?”
I shake my head till I’m sick with dizziness. “Don’t know. Maybe I’m having some sort of psychological break.” I laugh, but mean it. What if I’m crazy? “My boyfriend—we broke up.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I mean, I think. I think we broke up.” We walk across the grassy quad, through to the faculty lot. “Did you know . . . ?” I trail off.
“What?” His expression is warm. “Did I know what?” He smells faintly of spicy men’s deodorant. I like it. “Did you know Dakota Webb?” I ask quietly. “I mean, did she have you for lit?”
His smile dies. “Last year.”
“She was my friend,” I say quickly. “A long time ago.” He doesn’t reply. He doesn’t try to coddle or comfort me. “I hated her,” I hear myself say. “For a long time I really hated her. I didn’t miss her, or wish nice things for her, I just—I wanted her to feel unloved and miserable.” I stop, checking Murphy for signs of horror and shock. But he’s facing forward still, stone-faced. “Then she died,” I add, and that’s when he looks at me. He’s white like snow. “She just died,” I say, knowing it, believing it, finally. “Now it’s different, you know? I don’t hate her anymore.”
We’ve stopped walking. We’re facing each other. Murphy pulls a set of keys from his computer bag. “I didn’t know you two . . .” He doesn’t finish. “I’m really sorry, Adrienne. You must be . . .” He shakes his head. “I’m bad with things like this. Gwen bitches about how hopeless I am with emotional stuff.” He smiles past his pastiness.
I point at his shirt. “Sorry,” I say. There’s a wet spot where I cried.
He tugs on his jersey, looking down. “No sweat.” And, “You need a lift somewhere?” He gestures left, to his car.
“Oh, I—”
His car. His fucking car. We’ve been standing three inches from—holy crap—from a yellow VW Bug. I’m sick. I’ve been drop-kicked. “That yours?” I manage.
He walks to the driver’s door and undoes the lock. “Gwen’s dad’s. We keep it in the spare garage. I don’t drive it much, but the Honda has a busted carburetor.” He runs a hand over the oval roof. “Ugly, right? It’s a tin can. Pete—my father-in-law—he’s sentimental.” He smiles, sheepish. Nevada plates. Massive dent by the back left wheel. Yellow and dented and old.
I can’t speak or breathe, barely—and I must be pale as paper, because Murphy’s eyes are forming question marks. “Adrienne, you okay?”
“I . . .” What the fuck. What the h
ell is happening? No way this is some nutty coincidence. What business does he have driving Dakota places? Or me, for that matter? “I have to go,” I stutter, backing up.
“Adrienne?”
45.
I sprint, tear, down a residential street off Melrose—just four blocks to cover between bus stop and ranch home.
Murphy.
Murphy all along.
My high school lit teacher. The guy who grades my papers and threatens me with Griffin in Guidance, the guy with the wife and newborn.
I stop, breathe hard, check the house number with the address I have scrawled on my wrist in black Sharpie. It’s a match. I knock. The door swings open. There’s Julian, looking boyish. Maybe it’s the bare feet, or his mussed hair and Zeppelin T-shirt—but whatever it is, he looks human and sweet.
“Hi, come in,” he says, yanking me forward. “Come upstairs,” he says, taking my hand.
His place is so regular. Fuzzy carpet and taupe walls and the soft murmur of a distant television. We go to his room. It’s ferociously neat. Laundry, folded. Bed, made. I wonder if he did a quick clean-job when he got my frantic call.
“Sit.”
I sit on the floor. So does he. He looks tight and uncomfortable.
“What do you know about Nick Murphy?” I ask.
Julian, confused and a touch hostile, says, “What do you mean, what do I know about Nick Murphy? Is that a trick question?”
“No, I mean, do you know if—” I’m suddenly sweating. “I mean—do you know if . . . if Murphy and Dakota were involved?”
Julian laughs, his lips cracking into a huge, ridiculous grin. Then: “Holy shit, you’re serious?” He sobers up. “No. I mean, I don’t know.”
“He drives a yellow Bug.”
“Murphy?”
“Yeah.”
“He drives a Bug,” he says to himself. Then, “What the fuck, he drives a Bug?”
We watch each other, disbelieving.
“What the hell does that even mean?”
“I don’t know,” I say. Because, truly, I don’t.
• • •
We’re in Julian’s Datsun. Then we’re not.
“We’re really doing this again?”
We’re at Dakota’s back door, knocking, not getting any response and breaking in with the spare key/fake rock.
“What now?”
We’re upstairs.
“No effing idea,” I say. “What the hell are we looking for this time?”
“I dunno.” Julian’s already digging through Dakota’s desk drawers. “Proof, a clue—anything that links her to Murphy.”
“Hey.”
“Hmm?”
I stand still, watching him spin out. “Stop for a sec?”
“Why?” He checks his wristwatch. “We need to be quick, don’t we? Emmett?”
“Just—for a second. Stop, please?” I bend for my bag, pulling Julian’s binder notes from the front pocket. “I have something of yours.”
“What?”
I pass the ball of crushed loose-leaf. He unravels it. His face fades to a tinny blue. “Why do you have this?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Did you go through my shit?”
“I thought maybe—I just got freaked out. You left your binder at my place and we’d just . . . I shouldn’t have looked, I know, but I saw the letter, the apology . . .” He’s blinking at me. Bat, bat. “You wrote that to yourself, right?” I’m babbling now. My ears are hot. “I thought maybe you’d done something . . .”
“Like what?”
“. . . but now I know you didn’t.”
He sits down on Dakota’s bed. “You thought I hurt her?”
“I—” I sit next to him. “I didn’t know.”
He takes a breath. Exhales. Takes another one. “You went through my shit.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“I would never hurt her.”
I’m a jerk. A thief.
“I would never hurt you,” he insists.
I let my fingers creep close to his thigh. Julian looks at me briefly, then gets up and starts searching again.
I get on my knees, check under the bed, pulling out and riffling through the same storage boxes I looked at last week. Thoughts of Dakota straddling Murphy flick through my brain, all of it in pornographic detail: after-school BJs, car sex, supply-closet hand jobs. What the hell happened between them? What did he do to her? Did they fight? Did she fuck up and threaten Gwen? Did he hit her too hard with something heavy and blunt, then toss her body off the sunshiney Santa Monica Pier?
“Christ.”
Murphy? My preppy public-school god?
“Crap.”
“What?” I whip back to life.
Julian is heaving, hunched over a teensy tower of textbooks. “This is pointless.”
“Should we tell someone? The cops?”
“Tell them what? That our lit teacher drives a Volkswagen?” He tumbles back against the bed, breathlessly lighting his smoke.
“The cigarette . . . ?” I fan the air. “Emmett?”
“Dakota certainly won’t mind.” He inhales deep, exhales, shuts both eyes. “I just . . . I don’t get it.” I creep across the floor on hand and knee. He passes me his cigarette. “Why you?” he says.
“Me?” I ask, confused, dragging lightly on the squishy filter.
“Yeah,” he says, rolling onto one hip, leaning sideways. “Why’d she call you and not me?”
“I—” I cough out some smoke and scrape my fingers through my hair. “I don’t know,” I say, suddenly guilty. “Wish I knew,” I finish. I pass back the cigarette.
46.
Saturday.
Sam and I go to the river, which is less like a river and more like an empty cement ravine coiling through the city, valley to beach. We’re walking. It’s sunny. We pass people on horses. Written on a rock in red spray paint: Raper.
“Shouldn’t it be Rapist?” I say to Sam.
He looks at the rock, at me; he smiles. “Your lit teacher called the house last night.”
I freeze. Fear curls around my waist, binding me. “Why? Why the hell would he call you?”
“He says you’ve been pretty emotional. That you aren’t turning in your work.”
“I did—I have—that’s complete horseshit. He has my Jane essay. He’s refusing to read it—”
“Whoa, kid, it’s okay. No one’s reprimanding you. He said you got a little weepy at school yesterday and he recommended”—he pulls a slip of paper from his wallet—“you make an appointment with this woman.” He reads, “Griffith?”
“Griffin.”
“Right, her. He said to call her.” He passes me the paper with Griffin written in messy cursive.
“I’ve already seen her. She didn’t help.”
“Adrienne, hey, just—do what the guy wants. Screw your head on straight. Get your grade up. It doesn’t take much—”
“It’s been a shit month.”
“I know. I explained. I told him about Dakota.”
“You did what?” Rising panic. “What did you tell him?”
“No, nothing. I said you knew her. That you were friends. That this—that this has been hard on you.” He’s watching me. “What’s with you? Why is that bad?”
“Did you tell him about the car? About the Bug?”
His chin wrinkles. “Why would I tell him that?”
I relax. I say, “Sorry,” and soften.
He blinks, eyeing me still. Kicks a wet rock. “Am I missing something?”
You’re missing something, yes, only, “No,” I say, instead. Surprising myself. “No, no—I’m being crazy.”
I want to tell him everything, but am feeling stupidly superstitious. We’re on the verge of something, me and Julian. Saying this stuff out loud might, I don’t know, cast some sort of jinx. Foil our dinky investigation.
“You’re sure?” Sam asks, inspecting my face.
“I’m pissed about the paper,” I t
ell him. “Murphy’s been pressuring me and I—” I shake off a chill. “I cried about my paper.”
47.
I’m on Lee’s deluxe doorstep.
I used to love this place.
I loved how Lee lived like a Hollywood prince is his parents’ opulent art deco home. I liked lying on silky couches and hiding behind heavy curtains, and I loved the way Lee legitimately valued his life. He wasn’t one of those shitty kids who rolled around in piles of money, smoking French cigarettes and eating cocaine. He adored his parents and loved their home and he really, really appreciated life. Lee loved me. For a minute, I loved him. And then shit happened and I fucked it all up.
Ding, the bell. The door cracks. “Hi,” I say. Lee lets me in.
We sit on the den sofa. I wonder if this is the last time I’ll sit here watching the walls shimmer—all that shiny gold-leaf paper. “We’re breaking up, right?”
“I kissed Alice Reed,” he says.
“What, once?”
“Not just once.”
I don’t tell him about the things I did with Julian, because what would that matter now? “I figured,” I say. “She called me. She’s called me a bunch, actually.”
“She’s scared of you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“She likes you.”
“She likes me?”
“Sure.”
I grimace. “She likes you better.”
Lee smiles. I smile. Acting happy hurts. “I’m sorry for treating you like shit,” I say.
Lee bobs his head. “Thanks.”
I slide across the couch cushions and wind my arms around his neck. “I don’t deserve you,” I whisper, and Lee starts to vibrate. He’s shaking like crazy and crying. “Hey, hey . . .” I coo.
“I don’t need to be with her. I can be with you, still.”
“I don’t think you can,” I say, and we cling to each other. Lee pulls his head back and kisses me.
48.
I’m awake.
It takes me fifteen seconds to realize that that chirpy bird melody is my phone. I switch on the bedside lamp and grab my cell off the nightstand. No freakin’ number. Four a.m. Fuck, Alice. Seriously? I pick up.
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