If I Die Tonight

by Alison Gaylin

Without a word, Jackie put her arms around Wade. Through his sweatshirt, she could feel his ribs, his spine. His chin was heavy on her shoulder and he smelled of cigarette smoke and all she wanted to do was protect him, hold him, keep him safe from the world.

  “I love you, Mom,” he said.

  “Me too, honey,” Jackie said as a car pulled up next to the shrine. “I love you too.”

  They stayed like that for a while, Jackie holding her son in her arms with her gaze fixed on that car, on the woman getting out of it and walking to the shrine and dropping to her knees.

  “Who is that?” Jackie whispered after they pulled apart, both she and Wade staring at this woman, who looked even sadder and stranger than Wade ever did, rocking on her knees, clutching her stomach, her tangled, rainbow hair glowing in the streetlight as she sobbed.

  Thirteen

  From a comment thread on the TMZ story: “Aimee En: Hit-and-Run Horror! 80s Pop Star’s Jag Implicated in Death of NY Teen . . . She Claims It Was a Carjacking!” (Posted 10/21 at 8:00 PM.)

  Babablooney

  Crackhead does too much crack and runs over some poor kid. Then makes up a story to cover her tracks. Nothing to see here, folks.

  Space Oddity

  I agree. The whole story is ridiculous, down to the fact that the supposed purse stealer/carjacker left the purse behind with all her money in it. I call bullshit. This bitch (whoever she is, I’ve never heard of her) is a murderer.

  rc2486

  You don’t know what happened. Innocent until proven guilty. She could have been carjacked. We weren’t there. There is only one truth to this story and that’s that Aimee En is FUGLY LOL!!!

  Mickey Moose

  Excuse me . . . Aimee WHO? This is supposed to be a **celebrity** gossip website. Hello?

  Call Me Stupid

  What’s going on with her hair? Looks like a unicorn threw up on her head.

  Gracie

  I saw Aimee En at a club back in the 90s. She was so wasted she could barely stand up, she smelled like death, AND she totally threw herself at my boyfriend. Beauty and fame may be fleeting. But hot mess lasts forever.

  Fourteen

  You worked the CVS robbery, didn’t you?” Pearl said to Udel as they drove to Havenkill High for the special assembly. She’d woken up with a rip-roaring hangover this morning, yet still she’d managed to come up with that tidbit in the shower while scrubbing the smell of Club Halifax out of her pores. Lazy Bobby Udel had been on duty the night of the robbery. Pearl hadn’t been, but she remembered him bragging about it in the break room two days later—as though being sentient and in uniform the night an alarm got tricked was something to brag about.

  “Yeah,” he said now, eyes aimed out the window in a way that was the opposite of bragging. “We blew that one, didn’t we?”

  “Hear any theories about who might have done it?”

  “Well,” he said. “I always thought gangbangers. Or . . . you know. Professionals.”

  “Seriously?”

  His face flushed a little. “Not from here,” he said. “Obviously.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “The way they got into and out of the place so fast,” he said. “I mean, I was on patrol that night. I was no more than five minutes away from the CVS when I got the call and by the time I showed up . . .”

  “So you’re saying they knew what they wanted and went for it.”

  “Right. In and out. They took just pills and the money out of the pharmacy cash register. Didn’t bother with any of the other cash registers, ignored the regular merchandise. Didn’t really mess things up that much, other than breaking the lock on the back door.”

  Pearl watched him as he drove. She started to say more, then stopped, then started again, daring herself to speak. Could she trust him with her idea? Was it even worth it? “Bobby?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You think maybe it could have been a kid from around here?” she said. “Or a few kids. Looking for trouble.”

  He shook his head vigorously. “Come on.”

  “Think about it. It’s possible.”

  “Do you know any kids from around here who are looking for that kind of trouble? Because I’ve lived here my whole life and I sure don’t.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

  “Who?”

  “The one who took Amy Nathanson’s car.”

  He let out a long, harrumphing sigh. “Everybody’s saying she lied about that kid. They’re saying she ran Liam down herself and freaked out and made up a story.”

  “Who’s everyone?”

  “Give me a break, Pearl. Jeez. It’s even on TMZ.”

  “I’m not saying it.”

  “Well, I am,” he said. “I was there that night too, you know. I saw her come in just like you did.” He actually sounded a little angry with her.

  It was Pearl’s turn to sigh. This was why Udel would never be a great cop. He made up his mind too quickly and he did it based on feelings, not facts. He’d rather be “right” and done than spend a moment uncertain, because uncertainty meant taking the time and energy to learn the truth. He didn’t ask questions and backed away from answers, even if they were handed to him. It made her mad, that utter lack of curiosity, that laziness. “What happened to those feelings you were telling me about?” she said. “Don’t you even care anymore about your poor cousin who lost his best friend? You said you were like family, the three of you. Is that no longer true?”

  He stared out the window, his jaw tight. “Of course I care.”

  “Then why wouldn’t you want to know who might have run Liam down?”

  “I do want to know.” He turned the corner, pulled into the Havenkill High parking lot, past the line of fire-bright maple trees. “Hell, I do know,” he said. “It was her and she’s gonna pay.”

  “Amy Nathanson says that the kid who took her purse had lots of prescription drugs that he showed her. Do you see how that might connect, Bobby?”

  Udel slid into a space near the school’s entrance and shifted into park, staring at Pearl the whole time.

  “A big Baggie full of them,” Pearl said. “Like a pharmacy. That’s how she described it. She used those words. Like a pharmacy.”

  “She still could have been lying.”

  “Hell of a coincidence if she is. And the bartender at Club Halifax—”

  “Where?”

  “The place where Amy Nathanson played that night. She said there was a teenage boy in there with a fake ID—a jumpy kid in a black hoodie who kept going to the parking lot, where Amy had parked her Jag.”

  He stared at her. “The bartender said that?”

  “More or less.”

  “She said he was wearing a black hoodie?”

  “Yes. And she even remembered his name. Wade.” Pearl took a breath. Udel’s seat belt was off. She was about to stop him from getting out of the car, but she realized he hadn’t made a move to open the door. He wasn’t going anywhere. “Look,” she said. “It is possible that there really was a boy, and that he was from around here. He had a big stash of pills that could easily have been taken from CVS. And he knew enough about the Kill to dump the car in it. Amy doesn’t know anything about this town. Plus, she was such a basket case that night, she never would have been able to—”

  “Wade,” he said. “That’s what the bartender told you. The kid’s name was Wade? You’re sure?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “There’s a kid in my cousin’s class with that name.”

  “Well . . . Okay. That’s interesting, Bobby. There’s more than one Wade in the world, though.”

  “This Wade just posted some nasty shit on Liam’s girlfriend’s Instagram. On a post about Liam’s memorial.”

  “He did?”

  “Ryan showed me. I guess Tamara deleted the whole exchange, but he took a screen grab of the comment.”

  Udel dug his phone out of his pocket, called it up, and handed it to her. Pearl looked at the screen
, feeling his gaze on the side of her face:

  RG1999 Stay strong, Tam.

  Wade.Reed She’s not strong. None of you has ever been strong. You spoiled brats. You wear grief like it’s the latest fashion. You don’t care deeply enough about anything or anyone to really feel the pain of loss. You’re liars. Can’t wait for the next of you to die.

  Udel said, “RG1999 is my cousin. Ryan Grant.”

  Pearl nodded. “He’ll be here today for this assembly. Right?”

  “Ryan? I think he stayed home.”

  “No. Wade Reed.”

  “He should be,” Udel said. “He’s a senior, just like Ryan.”

  Pearl said, “We should probably call the sergeant, right? And the state detectives.”

  And for once Udel didn’t just sit there breathing through his mouth. He took his phone back and jabbed the station’s number into the screen. “I’ll call them,” he said. “I’ll tell them.”

  PARENTS WERE ASKED to attend the special morning assembly at the high school, and so Jackie did. She took the seat Helen had saved for her, her gaze drifting around the packed auditorium as Helen huddled and whispered with her poor, teary daughter. Jackie had been to this auditorium before. The eighth graders had held their graduation here, but it had felt like a completely different place then—full of brightness and noise and anticipation, the kids talking too loud and whooping at each other, continuously needing to be shushed. There had been a big sign on the back wall, hand-painted by the kids in big swirling red letters covered in glitter: WELCOME TO OUR FUTURE it had read. Wade had helped paint it. Jackie was pretty sure Liam had too.

  It was so different in here now. The kids were different—sniffling, heads bowed, speaking in hushed voices. Every so often, she’d hear a sob.

  Jackie recognized a few faces: boys from the hospital, girls she’d seen palling around with Stacy in pictures on Helen’s Facebook feed and, moving toward the front of the auditorium amid a cluster of boys, Rafe Burgess. All of them tear-stained, all of them shell-shocked. She scanned Rafe’s group for Wade, then the whole audience for him, until she finally caught sight of her son toward the back of the kids’ block of seats, slumped over, head down, folding into himself. From this angle, he looked like a pile of old clothes. But Jackie still recognized him. She’d know her son anywhere.

  Wade was at the far end of a row, one seat away from a group of girls who were huddled over a box of Kleenex, plucking tissues and holding them softly to their crumpled faces in a way that felt almost like a ritual, a sacrament.

  Wade wasn’t a part of their conversation. He wasn’t part of any conversation, and while this wasn’t entirely unexpected, it still made Jackie sad. They’d had another nice evening together, Connor, Wade, and Jackie, even if Connor had been more quiet than usual. Wade had been so sweet and polite. He’d asked Jackie about her day, studiously avoiding her trip to Red Hook and the argument after. He’d brought his dishes up to the sink again and he’d gone to bed early. Sleep, Jackie had thought last night as she drifted off herself, the Xanax tightening its velvety grip and the images on Wade’s phone growing more benign in her mind, more easily explained. That’s all he needs. A good night’s sleep.

  Wade must have felt Jackie’s gaze on him because he straightened up. He turned and looked directly at her, though for a moment it seemed as though he didn’t see her. Even from this distance, she could read the expression on his face, which was strange—a sorrow that didn’t seem to fit with the grief of the others. Haunted. Jackie raised a hand, waved at him.

  His face changed. He gave her a quick wave, then turned around fast. Maybe it wasn’t me he turned to look at. Jackie glanced at Stacy, who stood with her hands on her hips, glaring down at her mother, oblivious to her and Wade both. She remembered Stacy’s coldness at the hospital, the unpleasant way she’d said Wade’s name. “My mom showed him out,” she had said, indifferent about how that might sound to Wade’s own mother.

  “Dad would understand,” Stacy was saying. “You don’t get it at all, but Dad does. If Dad were here—”

  “Well, Dad isn’t here, is he?”

  First time she’d heard Helen snap at her daughter like that, ever.

  “You can’t take the rest of the day off,” Helen said. “You can’t go out with your friends. I know you’re grieving. I know you’re sad. But life goes on.”

  “Ryan got to stay home.”

  “I’m not Ryan’s mother.”

  Stacy looked at Jackie as though she was noticing her for the first time. “Wade stays home from school all the time, right, Mrs. Reed?”

  Jackie frowned. “What do you mean?” she said.

  But Stacy was back to Helen again. “You have no heart.”

  “You can insult me all you want,” she said, “but it is fall quarter senior year, and you can’t just take the afternoon off.”

  “There are other things in life besides school and work and being freakin’ responsible.”

  Helen shushed her again.

  “Mom, this isn’t fair.”

  “You’d better go sit with your friends,” she said. “The assembly is starting.”

  Stacy left in a swirl of indignation with Helen staring after her, her skin a livid pink. She gave Jackie a weak smile. “Kids,” she said.

  “Stacy didn’t mean that, did she? About Wade ditching school?”

  Helen shook her head. “She has no idea what she’s talking about,” she said softly.

  Jackie put a hand on hers. Maybe you should let her take the afternoon off, she wanted to say. How often does a kid her age lose one of her closest friends? Obviously, she’s hurting. But she didn’t. Close as she was to Helen, Jackie didn’t know Stacy at all. Couples here socialized with other couples and so, despite their long history together, Jackie was Helen’s “work friend” now, their time together limited to that one space, to celebratory lunches after one of them made a sale or maybe the odd girls’ night out. As kind as Helen was to her boys, Jackie couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to Helen’s house, and it had been ages since she’d laid eyes on Helen’s husband, Garrett—probably not since the office Christmas party, nearly a year ago. “Stacy’s wrong,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Nobody has more heart than you do.”

  She sighed. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  Two police officers took the stage, a man and a woman. Both were quite young. The male officer’s face still bore traces of acne, and when he started to speak, Jackie half expected his voice to crack like Connor’s. He thanked everyone for coming, explaining why they were all there, as though that needed explaining. “For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Officer Udel,” he said. “And . . . I went to this school.” He took a breath. “I’m sure you all know what happened to Liam Miller, but with a tragedy like this, rumors get spread. And the truth . . .” He stopped for a moment and dragged an arm across his face. Jackie was worried he might get emotional, which was the last thing these kids needed. The last thing she needed, for that matter. A crying cop. The female officer gave him a quick, sharp look, but when he continued, his voice was calm. “From what we know, Liam Miller died a hero.” He said nothing more—just let the word hang there in the overheated air of the auditorium. Hero. The room went dead quiet, save for a few sniffles, and a soft sob that, Jackie realized now, had come from Stacy.

  Jackie looked at Wade, motionless in his chair, and felt desperately uncomfortable. “What’s going on with that cop?” she whispered to Helen. “Do you think he’s okay?”

  She didn’t reply. Jackie longed for someone, anyone, to speak. Finally, the female officer obliged. “I’m Officer Maze,” she said. Her voice was reassuringly no-nonsense, her posture straight. She said words like “ongoing investigation” and “working together with state police,” and Jackie was able to breathe again.

  Officer Maze urged everyone to call with any relevant information that might help police “determine what happened in the early-morning hours o
f October twentieth,” and, for a moment, the picture on Wade’s phone flashed in Jackie’s mind again—raindrops on a windshield. But that didn’t mean anything, she told herself. It only meant he was in a car during those hours—probably his own car, parked outside their house at night.

  As Officer Maze gave the number for the tip line, Jackie pushed the image out of her thoughts. Not relevant. It couldn’t be. She never should have seen it, never should have picked up Wade’s phone. “. . . so please put this number in your phones or write it down,” Officer Maze said. “If you lose the number, it is posted on the Web site for the Havenkill Police Department, as well as the Facebook page . . .”

  Jackie glanced at Officer Udel looking on. He made her so nervous. She leaned over to Helen again, so as not to look at him anymore. “Have you spoken to Liam’s parents?”

  “I was at their home yesterday,” she said, eyes trained on the stage. “He was an only child, just like Stacy. I can’t even imagine.”

  Jackie closed her eyes for a second, that image intruding again, and when she opened them, two more people had joined the young officers onstage—a man and a woman, both in their forties or fifties. The man introduced himself as Mr. Penny, the guidance counselor, and Jackie winced, remembering that she’d called him over the weekend. How selfish of her, at a time like this. How thoughtless to take up space on his voice mail like that, asking if they could meet about her son, her living son . . .

  “I’d like to introduce Dr. Klein, a psychotherapist who specializes in grief counseling and has a private practice in Rhinebeck,” Mr. Penny said as the woman stepped forward to take the mic, a round, squat woman with wavy, carefully set blond hair and a soft, pleasant face. Penny was in many ways her physical opposite—angular and balding and slightly angry-looking. He seemed to tower over both Dr. Klein and the two police officers, and as the therapist started to speak and he peered out at the audience, Mr. Penny’s glance landed on Jackie. For a few seconds they locked eyes. It felt as though the temperature in the room had suddenly dropped, so cold and appraising was his stare, his eyes such a piercing blue that Jackie could feel the chill of them, even from the back of the auditorium.