A car horn blared as I landed hard again, my skateboard careening out from under me and into the road, escaping certain doom beneath the wheels of a speeding SUV by mere inches. The driver flipped me off, shouting something hateful and indistinct through his closed window, and I jumped back to my feet with just enough time to return the favor as he raced away. My knees were both scraped raw from my collision with the sidewalk, and I was almost certain that I was bleeding under my clothes; I ignored the pain as I started across the street to retrieve my board, too consumed by my dark meditations on the subject of January’s disappearance to care.
Who else was left? Tammy? She certainly wasn’t January’s rapist, and with Jonathan all but excused from that particular role as well, I was now even further from a convincing motive for her than ever. Protecting the security of Mr. Walker’s campaign? Not likely. Having a pregnant, unmarried, teenage daughter was no longer political kryptonite, as Sarah Palin had so adeptly proved, and—after all—news of the pregnancy had come out anyway. I’d invoked Munchausen syndrome as a joke on Tuesday, but I couldn’t quite see it as a real possibility; Tammy’s grief might have arrived with an unappealing side order of why is this happening to me?—but as the wife of a promising senatorial candidate, she was already getting plenty of attention even before her daughter went missing.
After six more miserable attempts at the ollie, each one a slightly more embarrassing failure than the last, I finally acknowledged that my head and feet were not going to work together and gave up. In a black mood, I sat down on the edge of a low brick wall and watched some kids play soccer while I struggled to think.
More than ever, I wanted to believe that January was still out there somewhere—that her body hadn’t been found yet for the very simple reason that there was no body. Maybe her rapist had been some Dumas dipshit, a random, low-life asshole whose name I’d never even heard. Maybe, caught in the tailspin of trauma and weighed down by her dismal home existence, January had simply decided to cash in her chips and leave town; she could have faked her death so no one would search for her, and fled to someplace where she believed she could start over again.
Only that tempting fantasy had more holes in it than a silhouette at a gun range. The blood that drenched her hoodie, confirmed to have been hers beyond question, was no mere “trace evidence.” To shed so much of it, she’d have had to injure herself seriously; she’d have been weak and dizzy, dehydrated and possibly confused, by the time she’d lost enough blood to stage the scene we’d stumbled across in the meadow—and then she’d have had to stop the bleeding and close the wound before it was too late, and then rest for hours to recoup the strength she’d need to proceed to step two. She was too smart to hazard such extreme risks just for a little set dressing.
And then there was Reiko, who absolutely had not faked being “stabbed and mutilated” after considering going public with January’s secret. Any daydreams about my ex-girlfriend’s survival hit a hard brick wall as I tried to mentally navigate them around the gruesome killing of her only friend and confidant at Dumas. I couldn’t pretend, even to myself, that the pink-haired girl’s death did not comprise the most obvious and likely blueprint for what had become of January.
After hours of thinking, I was still left empty-handed, confused, and utterly depressed. It wasn’t like I’d developed some kind of hero complex, determined to solve the mystery myself, but with everything in my life seeming to collapse all at once, having the answer to January’s disappearance fall apart as well was too much to accept. I had poked at my ex-girlfriend’s life for over a week, and found myself with nothing but a bouquet of loose ends to show for it; maybe it was time to start over.
* * *
Micah was still avoiding me on Monday—and now Tiana was, too, presumably because she felt awkward about being in the middle—and I felt the silent, painful erosion of my spirit as I began to accept that things might never again be the way they had been. With some effort, I decided to redouble my investigative endeavors, hoping that might distract me from my melancholy.
My plan involved cadging another ride out to Dumas after school, but a monkey wrench was introduced to the machinery in the form of Ashley Sobol, a popular-clique girl who unexpectedly sat down next to me in fourth-period study hall and gave me a ravenously inquiring look. “Flynn, is it true that you’re gay?”
“Yes,” I said tersely. I was getting tired of answering this question, especially when it came from people who had barely acknowledged my existence before.
“I knew it!” she squealed happily, as if my inclination toward kissing boys was somehow a personal accomplishment of her own. “Listen, just between us? You can do way better than Mason Collier.”
I cocked my head to the side. “Excuse me?”
“Well”—she drew the word out for a good five seconds—“he happened to mention how you tried to hit on him the other day, and how he had to shut you down? He’s being kind of a dick about it, actually. I know he’s pretty, but, Flynn? The boy is both straight and undateable.” She tossed her flame-red hair over her shoulder and leaned in, her manner both gossipy and familiar. “Here’s what, though: Like, three different guys have told me they think you’re cute, and all of them are A-double-pluses. If you’re not too hung up on Mason, just say the word, ’kay?”
I spent the rest of fourth period burning with embarrassment until I was certain my chair would melt underneath me. As flattered as I was that Ashley wished to play matchmaker for me—and that there were three mysterious guys out there who maybe actually wanted to kiss me—the whole situation felt weird. I wasn’t used to this kind of attention, and I hated being the subject of gossip.
One thing was clear, however: I needed to stop asking Mason for favors that he could misconstrue. That meant that there was only one person I knew who both had a car and would probably be willing to enable my errand, and again it was the last person I wanted to call.
Kaz was waiting for me after the final bell, though, leaning against the Lexus in the looping drive on the side of the school that faced the river; I’d tried to give him an out when I’d asked if he was free, but he’d assured me he had no afternoon classes and was more than happy to be of assistance. Surrounded by minivans, soccer-mom SUVs, and thirdhand lemons, he stood out like a tuxedo at a hootenanny, and about a hundred curious eyes followed me as I headed his way. I was starting to get used to being tracked in the hallways like some kind of exotic migratory bird, and I wondered what Ashley and her friends would do with this piece of news.
I made a beeline for the passenger seat, hoping we could just get out of there, but Kaz intercepted me en route, drawing me into a “friendly”—and utterly clueless—hug. “Hey! So this is where you go to school, huh?”
“Uh, yeah,” I confirmed, writhing from his grasp and darting around the front of the vehicle.
“It’s pretty big.” He took his time looking the building over while a bunch of idle students took their time looking us over, and I tugged futilely at the door handle. It was locked. “Makes me realize how much I miss my old high school. Which is to say, not at all.”
“Great story. Can we go?”
He blipped the locks open, and just as I was about to get in, I caught sight of a familiar face staring back at me from a group on the sidewalk. Micah. He was frowning, and when I raised my hand to wave, he pointedly turned his back to me and pretended to engage in conversation with Tessa Horton, a girl I happened to know for a fact he couldn’t stand. With a heavy sigh, I climbed into the posh, climate-controlled environment of Kaz’s luxury auto, feeling another small piece of my spirit slip back away with the tide.
“Buckle up,” Kaz advised cheerfully, putting the car in drive, “because it’s gonna be a long ride!”
“You said it.”
The ride was actually just long enough for me to explain my plan to Kaz—which amounted to: find some of Reiko’s friends and ask them if they knew anything—and for him to try, unsuccessfully, to talk me out o
f it. I didn’t flatter myself with the notion that I could figure out something the cops couldn’t, but I had my own inquisitive nature to appease, and who knew? Maybe I would detect something significant that they had missed. I knew the players better, and I believed that Reiko’s death and January’s disappearance were related, so I might have something of an advantage after all.
I left Kaz in the theater lobby, where a new poster exhorted students to attend an assembly there the next day after school to remember their two departed classmates, and made my way along the side corridors leading to the backstage door. I didn’t want to go in through the audience and risk being intentionally embarrassed for interrupting rehearsal again, and I figured I might find some people hanging out on the dingy sofa where I’d first seen Reiko.
As it turned out, I didn’t even have to go that far; rounding a corner, I nearly tumbled over a trio of girls who were sitting on the floor, speaking in hushed voices. Two of them were the ones I’d seen Reiko with on my initial visit to Dumas, and although I didn’t know the third, it was immediately apparent that all three of them had been close to the dead girl: Each one sported a bright pink streak in her hair—presumably as a tribute to their friend’s memory.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” I began timidly, “but you guys were friends with Reiko, right?”
The question got one of the girls sobbing, her cries almost absurdly loud and expressive, while a second girl—with feather earrings the same pink as the streak in her hair—huddled next to her, stroking her back. The third girl stood up and looked me over. She was tall and thin, with black hair that contrasted against a starkly pale face, her blue eyes dry but red-rimmed. “We are. Wait, I know you … you were here last week, yeah?”
Her voice was still shaded by grief, but she nevertheless sounded like she was doing such a preposterously bad impersonation of Hermione Granger that I had to struggle not to laugh. Clearly, I’d just encountered the girl January had dubbed FBA—Fake British Accent. “Uh, yeah. I had dropped by to see Reiko.”
“Right. And she was bloody well brassed off when you left,” FBA replied imperiously. “What did you say to her, anyway?”
“I asked her some questions about January McConville,” I revealed, and the sobbing died out almost immediately as both girls on the floor turned their attention my way. I looked from one wary face to the next. “You guys knew her, too, right?”
“Yeah,” FBA answered suspiciously. “We weren’t friends with her, though.”
“Why not?”
The girl who had been crying answered with a congested snort, “Because she was a bitch.”
“Melanie!” her comforting friend admonished. Then, quietly, but still deliberately audible, “What if this guy is, like, her brother?”
“I don’t care,” Melanie snapped. “If he is, then he probably already knows she was a stuck-up bitch—I’m not ruining the surprise.”
“You guys thought January was stuck-up,” I stated, beginning to feel angry on my ex-girlfriend’s behalf. I’d had it from Reiko’s own mouth that January had been ostracized at Dumas, and her commitment to despising Jonathan Walker’s wealth made Melanie’s claim ludicrous, to say the least.
“Well, yeah,” FBA said defensively, crossing her arms. “She acted like she was better than us or something, just because she came from a public school.” She said public school as if it might be some kind of cult. “Like it made her more authentic than us. We all tried to be nice to her at first, but she was really rude. She made fun of the way we dress for school, the things we like to do, and just … the whole way that we live! It was insulting and, honestly, nobody wanted to put up with it.”
I looked at what FBA was wearing—a little black dress, four-inch heels, and diamond teardrop earrings—and I could hear January’s voice in my head: Who wears diamonds to school? Does she think she’s fucking Beyoncé? My ex-girlfriend might not have been a snob in the way that these girls were snobs, but that didn’t mean she never felt or acted superior to others.
What I said was, “Reiko seemed to like her just fine. She told me that she and January were best friends.”
“Well, that whole situation was bizarre,” Melanie put in disdainfully from the floor, sniffling and wiping her nose with the heel of her hand.
“How do you mean?” I asked. “Why was it bizarre?”
“Before we answer any more questions about Reiko,” Feather Earrings interjected shrewdly, “maybe you better tell us who you are?”
Obligingly, I introduced myself. “I just want to know what happened—to January and to Reiko.”
FBA’s mouth shifted. “Well, look, I’m sure she was the dog’s bollocks back at Riverfront or wherever, but January … she didn’t belong here. She didn’t want to belong here, and she let everybody know it.”
“It was impossible not to make fun of her,” Melanie cut in bluntly. “She wanted it that way. She’d arrive at school in a Mercedes or a Porsche or a Rolls or a Lambo—a different car every single day—and she’d get out wearing a ratty sweatshirt and some beat-up old hobo shoes! If you tried to be polite to her, she’d just glare at you until you shut up and went away.” With a pert smile, she added, “We all talked shit about her. Including Reiko.”
“And then one day, out of the blue, the two of them come into rehearsal together, all arm in arm like long-lost sisters or something.” FBA picked up the thread with a tone of wonderment. “We all thought it was some kind of a joke or whatever at first, but…”
“But when we asked about it, Reiko Hulked out on us,” Melanie concluded. “She said that January was ‘actually really cool,’ and that we ‘just didn’t understand where she was coming from.’ Whatever the hell that meant.”
It meant that January and Reiko had something terrible in common, but if these girls didn’t know the details, I wasn’t going to share them. Trying to sound neutral, I asked, “What about guys? Were there any guys here who were into January? Anyone that, like, Reiko maybe didn’t like in particular, for some reason?”
Melanie gave a sour laugh. “Not unless you’re talking about—”
“He isn’t talking about that,” Feather Earrings interrupted under her breath.
“About what?” I jumped on it. “Who?”
The eagerness in my tone made them abruptly cautious, and the silence in the hallway rose to a deafening crescendo as they seemed to be considering whether to respond. The three of them were trying desperately to communicate in thought waves, their eyes flicking back and forth as they struggled to keep their faces blank, until at last Melanie gave a loud huff. “OMG, gimme a break, you guys! This is the same shit we’ve been talking about all over school for the last two months, and all of a sudden you’re acting like we’re guarding the CIA kill list or something!”
“Melanie…” Feather Earrings warned, but her friend was not to be deterred.
“The only ‘guy’ at Dumas who was into January was Cedric,” Melanie blurted with a malicious giggle.
“Melanie.”
“Oh, whatever.” Melanie rolled her eyes. “I’m not saying they were secret lovers or anything, but he paid way too much attention to her. Like, he basically told her that if she agreed to audition for the play, he would just give her the part of Angelique! It was such bullshit. Sylvie is a senior and she deserved that part, and then just because Cedric got a boner for some sophomore who wasn’t even an actress, he offered it to her on a silver platter! Total bullshit.”
“Cedric?” I repeated stupidly.
“He talked about her all the time.” Melanie was really warming to the topic. “‘Perhaps we can style Angelique’s hair like January’s,’ and ‘January had a brilliant idea the other day,’ and ‘Sylvie, try to smile like January’! I mean … gross.”
“Cedric?”
“He was always trying to talk to her during breaks, telling her what kind of clothes she should wear, offering her rides home from school … I mean, Cedric’s always been kind of Uncle Bad-Touch, but she
really brought it out of him.”
“‘Rides home from school,’” I repeated, barely feeling my lips. Just the other night I had challenged Kaz to explain how January’s clothes could have gotten from Dumas to the mansion, and his response had been misdirection. Had he been right? It finally occurred to me that Cedric had been the one who’d found January’s things in the meadow. I could still picture the first time I met him, on the front porch of the Walker mansion. She was a very lovely girl. I hope you appreciated her, son. Was I remembering correctly? Had he really used the past tense before anyone else thought she was dead? “Do you really think Cedric was … that he wanted to … with January?”
“Considering the way he left his old school, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised,” Melanie replied with malevolent sweetness.
“That’s not fair, Mel,” Feather Earrings said with a troubled frown.
My head was spinning. “Why? What happened at his old school?”
“Nobody knows, that’s the point.” Feather Earrings was clearly unnerved, glancing around like she feared we were being spied on. “People just make stuff up.”
“Whatever it was, it was bad enough that he’s not allowed to be a teacher anymore,” Melanie revealed triumphantly. “That’s the point.” To me, she elaborated, “My sister’s friend’s cousin went to Hazelton, and apparently Cedric taught English there; then, all of a sudden, he left and moved here. He had an actual job at one of the most prestigious private schools in the state, and now he coaches a drama club for a living? Either he had a total nervous breakdown, or he did something awful.”
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