“Where’d you go?”
I looked away from the staircase, surprised to find Beck, his sideburns short, instead of a ten-years-gone coach hovering, concerned. “This is where we stayed,” I said. He had never been on the bus. “For state.”
“I waited in the stands all day for that race,” he said, and I might have felt a little sorry that no one had tried to reach him the way they had my parents, except at that moment I caught someone watching us from a doorway on the mezzanine. She turned and fled but I’d already seen her.
Lu—in a Luxe housekeeper’s uniform.
“Excuse me for a second,” I said, and all the ghosts—former best friend, more recent former best friend—led me up the stairs.
CHAPTER THIRTY
From the mezzanine, I stopped and pondered the lobby below. The Luxe was such a gorgeous hotel, so little of it reminded me of the Mid-Night. But that was where my mind went, looking out over the open expanse, as Maddy had done. I had never been afraid of heights, but now I shivered and pulled back from the railing. Then Shelly was racing across the lobby below toward Beck, and to avoid her I dropped farther back and down the dim hall after Lu.
Lu would be easy to find. The hallways were wide and clear, except for the hulking cleaner’s cart parked outside a room down at the end of the hall. I trailed my fingers along the wallpaper. Even the walls at the Luxe felt lush to the touch.
At the cart, I took a quick assessment. Shinez-All, of course, in its big yellow can. There was a talkie unit hanging unobtrusively on one side. Inside, Lu, her back to me, wrestled a pillow into its case. She wore another radio at her waist. I reached over and pressed the button on the radio in the cart. “Come in, Lu,” I said. “Over.”
She turned, the pillow pressed to her chest by her chin. “Roger,” she said. “They don’t use all the over-and-outs here.” The pillow wouldn’t be contained by the case. She let it drop from her chin and held it helplessly. “I miss it.”
I crossed the threshold, slow, as though I were easing up on a wild animal. I took the pillow from her—down-filled, only the best at the Luxe—and rammed it into the case one corner at a time, then tossed it in the air to fluff it, caught it, and held it out to Lu. She placed it into the array of pillows waiting on the bed and chopped it, karate-style, with the side of her hand.
“Nice,” I said. “You’re picking up some luxury skills here. How do they deal with the fleur de whatever up in the railings? That’s gotta be a bitch.”
“Feather duster,” Lu said, sneering. “That’s what I had to do my first day, all day, all over the whole building. I think to make sure I wouldn’t quit so easy. But they give health insurance, Juliet, and the uniform fits. We had to buy another car for me to get here, but—” She shrugged, trying not to look as happy as she sounded. “I didn’t think the Mid-Night would ever reopen.”
“It wouldn’t be the same, if it did,” I said.
“What are you going to do? I could talk to someone here, if you want.”
I didn’t want to say what I thought of that idea. “Yeah, maybe,” I said.
She knew what I meant. “So … you haven’t been getting into trouble, right? With the … killing? Carlos thinks—”
“What?”
She sighed. “He thinks that girl who got beat up there is a liar—”
“She is,” I said.
“He also thinks if they can’t pin your friend’s death on that black man, they’ll never pin it on anyone.”
Vincent. I tried not to think about the feel of Vincent’s lips against my neck. Just more theft. “I think it might have been a white guy, actually,” I said.
“You know who? But how—”
“I don’t know anything,” I said. I didn’t know. And I didn’t have any way of knowing. Carlos was probably right, in a way. No one in Midway cared enough to solve it. Vincent would go back to the city and grieve. And no one else in the world loved Maddy enough to push for a solution. Except me. I did. And it wasn’t just Maddy I loved. I loved Midway. I didn’t want this sort of thing to happen in my town, and for everyone to look away. “I should get downstairs. Shelly Anderson has probably put out a missing-person’s alert on me already.”
“That one is so bossy,” Lu said. “She made the catering manager cry.”
“Just the one time?”
We smiled at each other, Lu raising her hand to hide her crooked teeth.
“Lu,” I said, and then realized I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. Clearly I wasn’t one for speeches. “I hope—uh, I just hope this all works out for you. You shouldn’t have it this hard.”
She slapped at my arm with light fingers. “You’re getting so mushy and grown-up.”
“Well, you at least deserve a workplace where the hangings can be kept to a minimum,” I said.
She crossed her fingers and held them up, grinning.
The walkie-talkie at her waist hissed and crackled. “Luisa,” said a curt male voice. “Tonight’s event liaison is looking for an errant guest. Seen anyone up there in the rooms who shouldn’t be?”
The word liaison sounded like a swear. We looked at each other, trying not to laugh. Lu shooed me to the door and brought the radio to her mouth. “Roger that,” she said. “Sending her down now.”
I was out the door before I heard the voice answer. “Did you just call me roger? Do we work for NASA, Luisa? Are we in ’Nam?” Lu’s laugh followed me down the hall.
My descent of the mezzanine stairs felt dramatic. I took each slick marble step slowly, clutching the railing and gazing out at the lobby for anyone I knew.
Shelly waited for me at the front desk, red-cheeked and furious. The proper young man over her shoulder shot me a sympathetic look. “Where have you been?” she said, looking me up and down. She sneered at the blood on my leg but didn’t ask. “The service is starting any minute, and the setup for the reunion is in a shambles. Where are the nametags?”
But by the look she gave me, I didn’t need to answer.
“Two responsibilities, Juliet,” she said.
I couldn’t remember the second one, and must have looked stricken.
“Being on time,” she said, rolling her eyes. “That was the other thing you couldn’t manage. Let’s get this over with.”
She grabbed my elbow and directed me through the lobby to a side room with its door propped open. From the noise, Maddy’s service had rustled up a crowd, after all. It sounded like the Mid-Night, the bar, inside.
Once I’d been thrust through the doorway, I realized that was precisely what it was: Yvonne, Gretchen, a few of the regulars who’d been around the night she’d come by, like Mack, his slicked-back hair strange without his red hat. And then a few of the regulars who’d come in the night after, onlookers and gossip hounds, hoping to see something worth the drive and the trouble of putting on their best clothes. I spotted some of the teachers from Midway High, but not the coaches. Courtney nodded at me from across the room. She was clutching a squat glass of brown liquid and talking to a few people I should have recognized but didn’t, classmates from Midway who had come early to pay a few respects or have first shot at the open bar.
Shelly still had my arm. She grasped tighter and propelled me through the room, past a set of folding chairs, all of them filled, past everyone, including someone who reached out and missed making a gesture of support or empathy. I couldn’t be sure, moving as fast as we were, who it had been.
And then we stood in the front of the room, facing the group.
Shelly pushed me into position and retreated back through the chairs, and the room turned to me, hushing to silence. I spotted Beck in the back of the room, then Fitz. His large frame nearly surrounded a small-boned woman in a necklace of big, plastic pearls.
I was stuck. Not just for the words to begin, but for a single thought beyond the fact that Fitz had brought a date to a memorial service. Was she the real reason why he’d been missing all week, calling in, not doing his regular duty for Coach and the
team? It was all the first blush of love?
I searched the room, seeing Coach, finally. He was wearing his Coach of the Year medal on its bright-blue ribbon around his neck.
I imagined what he’d told himself before he’d donned it today: that it was for Maddy, that it honored her memory. He’d probably considered a grand gesture, like placing it in the casket. Or upon her beautiful corpse.
Maddy’s silver skin came back to me, and I shuddered. The crowd murmured.
“Maddy was—” I began.
But now I was preoccupied with the Coach of the Year medallion. I remembered Maddy galloping the Coach of the Year trophy up the bus aisle, all of us cheering, the silver runner sprinting toward its new owner. “Why isn’t it a girl on the trophy?” rose one of the girls’ voices from memory. “That’s who’s doing all the running.”
His Olympic bronze medal was kept in the school case, and yet his award for high-school coaching was too precious to make it there. And now here he was in the matching medallion, a show of honor because Maddy had earned it for him. Not me.
The weight of the purse strap on my shoulder grew heavy.
The trophy Maddy had earned for him, then broken into his office to deface.
The faces in the crowd had gone still and concerned.
I looked around. On a small table, a beautiful silver urn sat amidst a festoon of flowers. I might have made a noise of surprise.
There would be no beautiful corpse. This was Maddy. Maddy’s ashes, packaged in a way that she could never be in real life. Contained, at last, and unable to say the things she’d so desperately wanted to say.
And they’d put her in a trophy.
My hands shook as I unzipped my purse, drew out the silver running man from Maddy’s room, and placed him against the urn. A few gasps in the room cut the silence.
When I gazed out again, the crowd had broken into two camps: those who were worried about me, and those who were worried what I would say.
Courtney stared past me to the runner on the table, then pulled out her phone and began thumbing at it. It wouldn’t take her any time to remind herself what might have been missing from Maddy’s old room.
But maybe she would let me finish my speech before the handcuffs came out.
“Maddy Bell was my best friend,” I said. The room went silent again, so that even those in the back of the room must have heard my voice waver. I took a deep breath to calm myself. “She was my best friend a long time ago, though, at a time that I can barely remember. But she will always mean everything to me, because she was real, she was whole. She was beautiful, and not just on the outside. And she was all these things in the face of a reality that she kept to herself, a reality that most of us couldn’t begin to understand, let alone survive.” I met eyes with Fitz, then Coach, then Beck. Beck’s mouth hung open; he looked nervous. Then Gretchen, who had started to cry. Her eyes darted around, confused. I found Vincent, at last, at the side of the room, watching the crowd. Now I really understood why he’d agreed to this freak-show memorial. He wanted a chance to take a long, hard look at all of us.
“She didn’t want us to know what she was going through, or she would have told someone,” I said. “She wanted to fix it for herself, once and for all. No—that’s not entirely true. She wanted to fix it for everyone. She wanted to—to save them all.” I thought of all the girls at Midway High, how insecure, how preyed-upon—not just by men, but by people like Mrs. Haggerty, people who liked to tell other people what was proper. And by each other. That was the worst part. It would take them so many wasted years to know how to be on a team. People in the front rows started to shift in their seats and glance at one another.
“The girls,” said a voice in the back.
I raised my head. The woman in the protective curve of Fitz’s arm raised her small hand and pulled at her necklace as though she were being strangled.
Teeny. Teeny, all cleaned up and wearing a choker of pretend pearls. “The girls,” I said, not quite believing my own eyes. And Teeny, how normal, how young. “I—” Everyone who had turned to see who had spoken up spun back to see what I had to add. What was Teeny doing here, and with Fitz? I looked between them, and then across the room for anyone who might leap in and help me. “Maybe … someone?”
They all stared, though some had begun awful signals to each other with their eyes, looking at their watches, shaking the ice in their empty drinks. “Would anyone else like to say a few words?” I pleaded.
The silence dragged.
Finally Gretchen stood and sniffed. “Well, I don’t think she’d want me to say much,” she said, lifting her chin. “But I loved that awful girl.” She put a fist to her mouth, and then talked around it, her voice husky. “I just loved her.”
“I did, too,” Vincent said, coming forward a step. “It’s the only thing I think is true anymore. It’s the only thing I know.”
Courtney’s eyes shifted from one to the other, then to Beck, who had cleared his throat. “I’m with Juliet. It was a long time ago,” he said, blushing. “And maybe—we were just kids. But she was important to me.”
A few people in the room who hadn’t known her had the decency to look embarrassed to be there.
From the corner, Coach stepped forward. “Maddy was a very special person. This has been very difficult to understand … I’ll just—” He came up the aisle, easing past crossed legs, to stand next to me. He raised the Coach of the Year medal off his chest. In the overhead light, it winked gold to a bright white, sunlit glare.
I cringed away—hot, suddenly, and heavy with memory.
In the split second the medal turned in the light and blinded me, I was no longer standing in front of the silver cup of ashes but standing under a wide, white sky, the sun low over our heads and wicked. A heavy trophy with a ponytailed girl runner at its zenith lay in my arms, burning and sliding against my sweaty skin. Maddy cradled hers. But she was not celebrating. She was shaking and sick, and not sick but mad, and she wouldn’t say what was wrong. Fitz put his hand on her shoulder—steady now—while the blue ribbon was placed over Coach’s bowed head like a priest receiving communion. When he looked up, the coach’s medal glinted gold to white into my eyes. And Maddy was crying, but not because the girl from Southtown had called her a slut under her breath, and not because of anything I’d done, I hoped. Maddy cradled the trophy in her arms like a baby and cried with fury, and then shook Fitz’s hand off—
I looked out to find Fitz, but he’d gone, along with Teeny.
“—special runner, special girl,” Coach was saying. “Every coach hopes to find a talented athlete in their lineup, and I’ve had more luck than most.” He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. Just as he had with Maddy, as he had with his star for as long as I could remember. His stars, and he was finally including me in that list, but I couldn’t shake that wonderful, awful day, Fitz’s hand on and then flying away from Maddy’s shoulder, or the look of pure, rotten hatred in Maddy’s eyes as she flung us all off.
But I understood it now, because Coach’s hand was leaden, too warm, too much.
“—just want to say what an honor it was to work with such a talent.” I took a step backward, forcing Coach’s grip loose. “What is it, Jules?”
There was a commotion at the door. “Help,” a man’s breathless voice said. Fitz bolted into the room, frantic. “Please, someone. Help her.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Courtney hurried out after Fitz, most of the room at her heels. I was a step toward the door when Coach grabbed my arm. “Are you doing OK, Jules?” he said. “Are you talking to anyone about this? It’s a lot to handle.”
“Talking … ? You mean, like a shrink?” I slid my arm away from him, but then missed the strange warmth of his touch. I probably needed to talk to someone years ago. “No, I—well, no.” I didn’t want to say that I couldn’t afford it. “Shouldn’t we—”
“Just take care of yourself, OK?” The hand was back on my shoulder, squeezing.
It hurt.
I stumbled away from him and through the chairs, now scattered and empty.
In the lobby, everyone’s head had tilted up in the same direction. High above, Teeny clung to the outside of the rail, the pointy, unnatural shoes discarded, and her toes pointing out over the edge of the stairs. Courtney had ascended the first few stairs behind her, slipping up another riser when she thought Teeny wouldn’t notice.
Teeny noticed, jerking away and letting one foot slip off the stairs. A collective gasp went up in the crowd. At the same time, the choker at Teeny’s throat popped off. It dropped the thirty feet to the marble floor and exploded. The plastic baubles pinged fantastically in all directions against the floor, the wall, the stairs.
A pearl bounced and rolled against my foot. Above, Teeny recovered her purchase, holding a hand out to warn Courtney back.
“Kristina,” Fitz said, moving into place below her. “Please let us help you down.”
I staggered between classmates to the foot of the stairs and let the cold steel newel post catch me. Kristina.
I’d never thought of Teeny as a person with a past, a person with an age, or with a life she might have imagined for herself. I’d never thought of her as a person before.
She wasn’t Fitz’s date. She was Maddy’s friend, somehow, and far from dead. I looked around for Yvonne and then Vincent. Or are you Kristina? I was, though, wasn’t I? We were the same. Teeny and I had stayed, and nothing we ever stole was enough to make up for what we’d had taken from us. But what did Maddy and Teeny have in common? How had they known each other?
For a moment I wondered if Teeny could have hurt Maddy. But she couldn’t have done it, physically. Maddy would have overpowered the smaller woman. Even strangled, she could only have been dragged into place and hanged by someone strong.
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