I was noodling on this idea when my phone buzzed with an incoming text. It was from Jeff Byron.
Please pick up, it read. And then the phone rang.
I considered letting it go to voicemail, but instead I picked up.
“Thank you,” Jeff said as soon as he heard the din of city noise.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“I thought you would want to know that Delilah told her parents what happened,” he said. “They’re going down to the police station today to talk.”
I was shocked.
“Are you serious?” I asked. “She told the truth?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “So don’t be shocked if you see squad cars next door tonight.”
“At Jacinta’s house? Why?”
“Why? Because she murdered someone with her car and kept driving, is why. She even hid the car in the woods near Delilah’s house and made Delilah promise not to tell anybody. She said she’d be sorry if she did. Can you believe that psycho?”
“But that’s not true,” I said with a trace of indignation that surprised even me. “That’s not true. Delilah was driving. She and Jacinta switched places on the way home.”
“Who told you that?”
“Jacinta!”
Jeff gave a dry, bitter little laugh. “Jesus, Naomi, she really got to you, didn’t she? You’re going to believe some crazy grifter over Delilah? You saw them leave. We all did. Jacinta was driving.”
For a moment my head spun. Could Jeff be right? Maybe Jacinta had made up this story, too. It would make sense—she was already a liar about big and small things alike. Why wouldn’t she lie about something this huge, something that could put her in prison for decades or even the rest of her life?
And then I thought about that morning, about the childlike hope in her eyes when she said that Delilah would probably want to spend the day at her house, and I knew she’d told me the truth. Maybe she’d lied about where she was from, where she went to school, and even her own name, but Jacinta Trimalchio had been honest about what happened last night. And that meant Delilah Fairweather was a liar—and a criminal.
I realized then that Jeff was still talking.
“I have to go,” I said hurriedly, and hung up on him. Then I dialed Jacinta. She picked up on the first ring.
“Hello, love,” she said, as if everything were perfectly normal.
“Listen to me,” I said in a low voice. “Jeff just called and told me Delilah is going to the police with her parents. She’s going to tell them you drove the car last night.”
Jacinta was silent.
“I know you must be upset,” I said. “I know this is hard. But you have to get a lawyer, and you have to go to the police yourself. You have to show them you’re not guilty.”
Jacinta’s voice, when it came, was faint and exhausted.
“I can’t afford a lawyer, Naomi.”
“Sure you can,” I said, even though I realized I didn’t know what I was talking about. “You’ve got your trust fund, right?”
“It’s done. Gone. I spent it all this year.”
“You spent all of it?”
“My nose job in April. The house June through August. The parties. The car. The Birkins. Everything. It’s gone.”
I racked my brain desperately for an answer. “Well, they’ll get you a public defender, then. If they even charge you! Which they might not, if you go to them before Delilah does. Tell your side of the story. Tell the truth. Show them you’re not afraid.”
Jacinta was silent again. I plunged onward.
“You can’t give up!” I whispered, turning away from the older woman who had just sat down beside me on the bench. “You can’t! I know you’re sad. I know you’re scared. I know you lied about a lot of stuff. You can’t let her lie about this. They could put you away for life!”
“I know,” Jacinta said, her voice so quiet I could barely make it out. “I know they could. I have to go now. Thank you for everything.”
“No, just listen—” I pleaded, but she hung up.
Then it was my turn to call with no answer and text with no response.
I felt the dread and fear pool in the pit of my stomach. This was bad. This was very, very bad. Maybe I should go back to my mother’s apartment and apologize—even if I didn’t mean it—and try to get her to charter me a helicopter back to East Hampton so I could sit with Jacinta. She needed a friend right now. Well, she needed a lawyer, but if that wasn’t possible, maybe a friend could help. Or maybe I could get her a lawyer! My mother’s lawyer was undoubtedly still at the house—he might know somebody who would take Jacinta’s case for free, or let her work out a payment plan or something. Anything. I just knew I needed to get to her as soon as I could, and the Jitney would take at least three hours if the traffic were all right.
Then the Jitney arrived, and I had to get on it. At this point, there was no way to tell if my mother would help me get back to the Hamptons. I couldn’t risk not getting back there that day. If a slow bus was what I had to take, a slow bus was what I would take. So I got on the Jitney, and I found a seat by the window by myself, and I watched the sights and sounds of Manhattan blend into the sights and sounds of Queens, and then Long Island. I had my iPod on me, and I listened to a bunch of episodes of my favorite podcast, “Stuff You Missed in History Class.” The hosts’ voices provided the background noise I needed to keep some part of my brain busy.
By the time we reached East Hampton proper, I was utterly nauseous. At first I blamed it on the bus ride, but I knew that the bus wasn’t the problem. Because it wasn’t just nausea that had me in its grip; it was fear.
I’ve spent a lot of my life, at least since I was about eleven or twelve, trying as hard as I could to be nothing like my mother. But when the Jitney dropped us off and I called a cab to pick me up, I felt a kind of panic I’d never experienced before. My heart was beating very fast, and I was sweating buckets. My teeth were chattering, but I wasn’t cold. I actually felt as if I were overheating. It was the most uncomfortable feeling in the world, and all I could think was, I have to get to Jacinta’s house. I have to get to Jacinta’s house. Everything will be fine if I just get to Jacinta’s house.
I did what my mother’s expensive, superstar private yoga teacher taught her to do: deep breathing. You breathe in for four, hold for seven, and then out for eight. You’ve got to get the breath down into your belly for it to work—at least, that’s what the yoga teacher said. So I did it, and it helped. But it didn’t stop the panic—it just made it more bearable.
When the cab driver arrived, he looked at me with concern.
“You okay?” he asked. I must’ve been as pale as Jacinta was on a normal day.
“I’m fine,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Just a little tired.”
When we drove down the street, I expected to see police cars parked in the driveway and Jacinta being led off in handcuffs, but that wasn’t the case. In the late-afternoon sun, everything looked perfect. Not a blade of grass out of place. And the street was utterly quiet—no sound of lawn mowers buzzing or hedge clippers swishing, no groan of the weed whacker, no little kids out playing. Nothing. Perfect and complete quiet. And yet, I still couldn’t fully relax. I rang Jacinta’s bell several times, but I couldn’t detect any movement inside the house. Maybe the police had already taken her in?
I walked into my house and kicked off my sandals. Upstairs, I ripped off my Marc Jacobs dress and threw it on the floor. I changed back into the outfit I’d worn on my trip from Chicago: the Cure T-shirt with a belt, the old Docs. It felt like slipping back into my real skin instead of the plastic facsimile I’d been wearing all summer long. I yanked my two suitcases out of the closet and started throwing clothes in as fast as I could. I left the Marc Jacobs dresses hanging in the closet, except for the one I’d tossed on the floor. All the while, my nerves jittered.
Immediately after I finished packing, I began to feel a little dizzy. I realized I hadn’t eaten anything since
Kix with Jacinta hours ago. It was five o’clock now. I went downstairs and made myself a BLT. I walked out onto the back deck to eat it, and that’s when I saw something floating along the gentle current in Jacinta’s river pool.
I couldn’t have said what it was from where I stood, just that it was something that wasn’t a raft or a pool toy. I could’ve just let it be, but my gut told me to investigate. I was about thirty yards from the pool when I dropped my sandwich and began to run.
And then I was there at the poolside, staring down at Jacinta’s naked body floating facedown in the water like a waterlogged angel.
I knew she was dead. I knew it the way I’d known I shouldn’t leave her that morning. But I had to do something. Anything. I had to act.
And so I pulled her out of the water, her long, lean body topped by a soaking mess of white-blond hair. She was cold and limp, and even as I lay her down to begin CPR—something I’d learned in health class the previous year—I knew it wasn’t going to work. There’s the kind of dead from which you can bring someone back, when a heart stops for a brief collection of moments because of trauma or sickness, and you can shock it or pound it back to life. And then there’s the kind of dead that’s just final, from which there is no return, when the spirit or soul or whatever you want to call it has completely left the body. When you’re alone with the body, you can feel the absence of something, some intangible presence that indicates personhood. I was alone with Jacinta’s body, breathing into her mouth, pumping her chest, but Jacinta wasn’t there with me. Jacinta was gone.
And then I did something that still doesn’t make sense to me.
I sat down next to her, cross-legged, and put her head in my lap. I stroked her hair and rocked back and forth gently, and I said, “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.” I didn’t weep. I didn’t scream. Over and over again, I told myself and the shell of my friend that it was okay. It was okay. It was okay.
That’s when I saw the pink envelope lying in the grass.
It was addressed to me.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
CHAPTER TWELE
They ask a lot of questions, police officers. Sometimes they ask questions that make sense, like how well did you know the deceased. And sometimes they ask questions that seem completely random, like what kind of sandwich were you eating, and where did you get it. I guess some of it is just them trying to make small talk, and some of it is them trying to figure out if you’re telling the truth.
They showed up pretty quickly after I called them—three squad cars and an ambulance. The emergency workers ran over to Jacinta and tried to revive her, even though I’d said she was dead when I called 911. Maybe they were just following protocol. It seemed a little silly to me. But they didn’t keep at it long. Pretty soon they stopped and got out a body bag, started doing paperwork. You could tell they’d seen this sort of thing before.
I didn’t cry, not then. I was numb. The thought crossed my mind that I ought to tell them about Delilah Fairweather, that she was the girl driving the car last night, not Jacinta. But I didn’t say it. I don’t know why.
I told them what they wanted to hear. I did not tell them about the pink envelope. I’d hidden that in my boot even before I called 911. It was for me, anyway, not for them. If Jacinta had wanted to say anything to them before she killed herself, she would have called them. But she hadn’t, of course, and instead waited for Delilah to do the right thing.
The cops said I could go home, and that’s when Jeff Byron pulled up. He got out of the car and ran toward me, and he tried to say something to me, but I wouldn’t listen. I felt nothing but revulsion when he grabbed my arm. I shook his hand off like it was burning hot. I think he was going to follow me across the lawn, but one of the cops said something to him quietly, and Jeff just stood there and watched me go. I could feel his eyes boring into my back as I opened the sliding glass door to the kitchen and shut it behind me. It was nearly dark outside now.
I stood in the front room, looking through the window and watching as the ambulance pulled away, Jacinta’s body stowed in the back. The cops followed. Jeff stood by his car for a long moment, staring at the house, before getting in and driving off. That’s when my cell phone rang.
It was my mother.
I picked up. I picked up because I’d forgotten I wasn’t talking to her, and because it seemed like the normal and proper response to one’s phone ringing. It rings, you answer. That’s how it works. I went through the motions as if I were a machine set to automatic mode.
“Hello?” I said. It sounded to me as if my voice were coming from very far away.
“Darling!” my mother chirped. Her voice betrayed not a hint of sadness or remorse.
“Mom?”
“Yes, it’s Mom, sweetie. You have been so tough to reach today!”
“Oh,” I said. I had the feeling that if I were up to having normal emotions, I’d be confused. Instead I just listened.
“You know, about earlier today—I don’t want you to worry one bit. It’s not going to affect anything. We’ve already got my lawyer working on it, and today I met with the most amazing PR man who is going to fix this mess. I may have to sue a few parties in the process, but that’s all right. What’s important to me is that you know I’m fine.” She was jabbering away at a mile a minute.
“I’m going home, Mom.” My voice sounded faint in my own ears.
She missed a beat then.
“You’re w-what?” she asked.
“I’m going home. To Chicago. Tomorrow. I’m going to buy a ticket online. I’ll have a shuttle service bring me to the airport.” I said it all mechanically.
“But darling, you’re still here for another two weeks!” she said. “Surely you want to spend more time with your little friends.”
I was silent for so long that she finally said, “Well—I’m not coming back tonight, so I won’t get to say goodbye to you. I want to say goodbye. Don’t you?”
“Goodbye, Mom,” I said, and hung up.
She didn’t call or text back.
I called my dad, even though I knew he was probably at a game with his summer league team. He didn’t pick up his cell, but the sound of his voice on his outgoing message made me tear up. I still didn’t feel anything, exactly, but my eyes got wet all the same.
“I’m coming home, Daddy,” I said hoarsely, after the beep. “Tomorrow. I’ll see you soon.” And that was it.
I ran a bath and poured some bubbles in. I stripped off all my clothes and stepped into it. It felt like a womb, warm and safe. My shoulders dropped a little, and I let out a ragged sigh, and opened Jacinta’s envelope.
The note had a URL and a password. It also contained other things—passwords and certain instructions—but she’d drawn big arrows pointing to the URL and password, so I figured that was the most important part. I got out of the bath just as soon as I’d gotten in, wrapped my wet body in a towel, and went to my laptop. The URL led to a website, Vimeo, with a password-protected video. My fingers shaking, I typed in the password and hit enter.
The video was nothing fancy. Jacinta had clearly shot it on her web cam earlier that day. She’d put on one of her fabulously weird outfits, pinned her hair up at odd angles, and done her makeup to perfection. She looked, as always, like a stunning alien visitor to Earth. And she told her story, straight to the camera.
“I want you to know that while I’ve lied about plenty of things in the past couple of months, everything I’m about to tell you is a hundred percent true.
“I’m Jacinta Trimalchio, but my real name is Adriana DeStefano. I was born on Staten Island. My father was a weapons contractor; my mother was a housewife. When I was little, my father got a big contract to provide body armor to the US government. We made a lot of money. We moved to the Upper East Side, and they enrolled me in Little Trumbo, Trumbo Academy’s elementary sch
ool. That’s where I met Delilah Fairweather.
“We loved each other right away. We were best friends, but we were always something more, something bigger than friendship. When I couldn’t see her for a day, I cried. When she couldn’t see me, she threw tantrums so bad her mother would call my mother in desperation and ask when our next playdate could be. We were a part of each other, Delilah and me. We were intertwined. She was a year younger, but we used to tell people we were twins. We said we were going to marry brothers and live in the same house.
“When I was eleven and Delilah was ten, my father was indicted on federal charges. The court found that he had knowingly and deliberately sold faulty body armor to the government, and that it had been used in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and had resulted in injuries and deaths. My father had blood on his hands, the papers said. The news cameras camped outside our building all day and all night. They followed my mother when she brought me to school. We couldn’t go anywhere. We couldn’t do anything. And nobody would talk to us. In school, Delilah would look at me with these big, sad blue eyes, but she wouldn’t speak. I knew it wasn’t her fault. I knew her mother had told her not to talk to me. But it cut my heart.
“They took everything—the apartment in the city, the cars, the beach house in East Hampton, and all the money, everything but my trust fund. They sent my father to prison for a long, long time. He killed himself there, right away—hung himself with his bed sheets. We had nothing left. His family came to the funeral, but none of my mother’s family, none of my friends. Nobody even called.
“We moved to Florida. It was supposed to be temporary. My grandparents gave my mom some starter money, and she rented a one-bedroom apartment. I slept on the couch. She got a job as a cocktail waitress. She met a guy there. Soon he was my stepdad. He hit me when he was drunk. I told her, and she hit me, too. She said I was trying to ruin the only good thing in her life. She sent me to live with my grandparents in their retirement village. About a year later, her husband was arrested and put in prison for assaulting a man at a bar. My mother didn’t apologize, but she asked me to come back home. I went.
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