The Girl Next Door

by Lisa Aurello

  Mel’s face looked troubled. “Do you think you’re a suspect?”

  Jane’s head whipped toward Mel. “Am I, do you know?”

  “It just seems… the cops keep coming to ask you questions. I don’t know.”

  “Mel, it would be horrible if I am. I mean, how can I even help myself when I have no memory of any of it?”

  “Don’t get mad but let me just ask you this: have you ever had any violent tendencies?”

  Her eyes flew wide open. “Mel, please tell me you don’t think I could’ve been involved in the murder?”

  “Of course not. I’m just trying to help you feel better. Hey, you know what? We’re going shopping, and we’re going to have fun, damn it. No more talk about worries or memory or murders. We’re here today to make you look even more gorgeous than you already are—and maybe to get a little drunk.”

  Jane tried to smile in response… but it wasn’t a happy smile.

  Six hours later Jane collapsed on the one comfortable chair she had downstairs, exhausted from Mel’s speed shopping. They had to have gone to at least ten shops before they were done. Brunch was the only relaxing time of the day. Mel wanted to get in a quick cocktail before they parted ways, but Jane was too tired. In any case, she wasn’t supposed to drink any alcohol until she was entirely off the pain meds. She’d just about made it home, stumbled through the door, dropping her packages, and heaved herself down on the brown velvet chair, currently the only comfortable chair in the house. She sat frozen in place, not even willing to move to look at her pretty new clothes.

  “Ugh, why can’t I just sit here forever,” she groaned and dragged herself off the chair, summoning the energy to gather up her shopping bags and slog her way upstairs. She opened each one, gently laying out the garment on the bed, until her queen-sized mattress was covered with clothes. Jane smiled.

  “That Mel is a shopping goddess,” she said to the empty room. “She finds the best prices and locates amazing diamonds among rocks on the sale racks. It’s too bad that she’s also insane, making me walk all over the freaking city all freaking day.”

  She dragged off her right shoe and then her left and tossed them toward the open closet while admiring her booty. For a little over nine hundred dollars, Jane now had a decent new wardrobe. She got a suit, a pair of matching navy-blue pumps, two pairs of trousers, three silk shirts, two cotton, a fitted black cardigan, a wool blazer, and a pair of jeans. Mel had checked her closet beforehand and seen an adequate collection of boots, running shoes, sandals, and clogs. Jane’s feet hadn’t changed sizes luckily.

  Mel had then lectured her on the need to get new lingerie and sleepwear but Jane had two drawers full of the former and if the various items were a little big, so what? It’s not as if anyone would see her in them. As for PJs, she liked to sleep in her yoga pants, the more worn, the better, and she told Mel the same.

  “Uh-uh,” Mel had answered, shaking her head vigorously. “Silk for bed.”

  Jane had grimaced at the thought. “Why? I’m alone. No need to dress up.”

  “For now, you might be alone. For the moment. But it’s for you, anyway, to make you feel sexy and good about yourself.” Mel tugged lightly on Jane’s hair. “Speaking of sexy and good, can I borrow those Louboutin shoes in your closet?”

  “Which ones are those?”

  “Which ones are those?” she mimicked. “Surely you jest. They might as well be made of neon the way they flash their utter beauty in your dim closet. I shouldn’t have to tell you this, Jane, but they’re the come-fuck-me black heels with the red soles. I don’t even care that they’re not my size. I want to wear them just once—they’re just so fucking gorgeous. Toes can be mended pretty cheaply, right?”

  Shaking her head, Jane laughed at the memory. It was so Mel. She should just give her the shoes—or better yet, buy her an identical pair in her own size. Jane made a mental note to do just that. Mel deserved that and much more for being such a true blue.

  Refusing to budge off the mattress, Jane spied her journal on the bedside table. She should write a few lines in it. For a while now there was something niggling at the back of her mind. She felt as if it was something big but try as she might, she couldn’t tease it out from her damaged brain. Maybe writing would help her remember?

  Reluctantly she picked it up, feeling trepidation at what the memory might contain. She knew there were some horrible ones yet to come.

  Especially the accident.

  Chapter 20

  Janey’s Journal, November 3rd

  Does Mel think I’m a murderer?

  Today we went shopping—Mel and I—and I bought a new wardrobe. On the way there, Mel was asking me some weird questions. Then when she saw me getting upset, she dropped the subject so fast it made my head spin. Honestly, I can’t even think about it anymore. I’ve been making myself sick over the whole thing.

  I’ve been depressed and God, I am just so grateful to have a friend like Mel. I can’t imagine how bleak my life would be without her. I definitely don’t want her to think I’m a bad person.

  Mel is so great and we had fun today. She’d told me last week that I needed new clothes and she was going to help me get some. First, she went through my closet with me last week and selected the pieces that she deemed acceptable to remain with the rest going into the goodwill box. That was exhausting since I had to fight with her to keep just about anything. Then I tried each one on, and only a few blouses fit me well enough to go into the keep pile. Essentially, we were starting from scratch—except for ultra-casual clothes like my numerous pairs of yoga pants and a pair of jeans that worked with a belt.

  Today we hit three or four clothing boutiques, a shoe store, a jewelry shop—where I got nothing but Mel bought herself a sterling silver bracelet—and two department stores before collapsing at the café table. With less than a thousand dollars, I got quite a lot, so I treated Mel to lunch for lending me her retail expertise. Mostly, I got business attire but I have a drawer full of sweats and Mel said they don’t have to fit well since I’m only allowed to wear them at home. Alone. She promised next shopping trip we’d buy more comfortable clothes, like sexy yoga pants and T-shirts.

  I like shopping and I love spending time with Mel but these pounding headaches are plaguing me, and my memory recovery has all but halted. I keep having dreams about train rides. Slender fragments of memories for which I have no context are more than frustrating, and that’s all I’ve been getting lately. It feels as if my mental recovery has stalled.

  The good news is that my doctor has given me clearance to return to work on a modified schedule. MT has been so incredibly accommodating; I feel really lucky to be working for such a great company. Initially, I’ll be working three days a week, six hours a day, and if I feel up to it I’ll be working from home the other two days for a total of thirty hours.

  First thing, I called Mel.

  “Talk to me. What’s going on?”

  “I got medical clearance to return to work—at least part time. Yay.”

  “Yay? Seriously, you need counseling. Most people would be crying in their beer at the thought of going back to work after a nice, long vacay.”

  “I don’t drink beer generally,” I quipped, laughing. “Great vacay in the hospital—everyone should try it. Personally, I think a Caribbean island is a tad better. So listen, I was going through my checkbook register and there’s a really large check that I’d written out to UNICEF. I’m assuming it must have been a donation, right?”

  “Unless you’re purchasing children on the black market from some corrupt humanitarian, I’d say it’s a good guess. Why?”

  She delayed answering for half a minute. “I don’t know. It’s nice to know that I care about children.”

  “I actually remember your telling me how two days before last New Year’s you sat down and for a few hours, you wrote out a bunch of checks to charities. Not only UNICEF but Greenpeace too. And Doctors Without Borders, I think.

  “I’m
happy that I made charitable donations. It means that I care about others.”

  “Of course, you care about others. Jane, you’re a kind and decent person. I wouldn’t be your friend otherwise.” She stopped and then added, “You know, there are other fun things you can do in bed besides reading and watching a screen.” She cleared her throat exaggeratedly.

  “Uh-huh. I just need to find someone to do them with.”

  “Not necessarily…”

  I laughed but speaking of which… “Mel, did that guy Ed Jensen ever call you back after you left that voicemail for him?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Hmm.” I tried to hide my disappointment. The idea that he might have been a boyfriend was exciting… comforting even. What about men in my life? Were there any?

  I know I’m not a virgin… well, first because I’m twenty-five. But also because I have wisps of memories of being with a man… or maybe different men. I can’t see their faces but there’s some muscle memory. I just don’t know if there’s currently someone or had been recently.

  And then there’s the birth control pills in my medicine cabinet. I can make an appointment with the doctor on the label and get more information from her.

  If there were men in my life currently… well, I would know it by now. It was odd that the guy asked about me the day of my accident. He’d left his number and Mel tried to call him back but no one answered, and the voicemail didn’t go anywhere. Mel was never sure if the woman at the hospital got the number wrong or what. He said his name was Ed Jensen. No relation.

  The name doesn’t ring any bells with me. Besides, if he’d been involved with me, why hasn’t he contacted me since?

  The only obvious conclusion is that I’m single.

  The twinge in my chest tells me how much I wish there were someone.

  And who was Ed anyway?

  I woke up thirsty. Tried to open my eyes wide enough to see the clock on the other side of the bed. Middle of the night. Lately I wake up a lot needing water so I keep a filled carafe on my night table. I was sitting up in bed sipping my water when a memory came roaring back out of nowhere. One minute I was thinking about the coolness of the water, and the next I was immersed in a high school memory. The experience was so intense it left me shaking.

  It was during the summer between sophomore and junior year that I decided to get my shit together. I was never grossly overweight—only about thirty or forty pounds. In late spring, I began to diet and by the time summer rolled around I was in full swing, stubbornly sticking to a strict diet and exercising like a mad person. By August I’d lost forty-six pounds and was down to 122 on my then five-foot-eight frame—since then I’ve grown an inch. I wanted a whole new me, so I cut my hair into a different style and started wearing a little makeup. My mother was so elated I thought she’d stroke out from the joy of it, but when school started in September I was terrified to debut the new me.

  So I didn’t.

  I wore baggy clothes to disguise my weight loss and cut out the makeup, returning to the relative comfort of being invisible. Anyway, there was really no such thing as a new Jane Jensen. Mom gave me the stink-eye when she saw me come down the stairs the first day of school but said nothing. Ever. Could it be that she possibly understood me for once in her life?

  The week before Halloween I started hearing hallway buzz about a party someone was having. Joe Torres lived in a big house with its own small lake and his parents were going away for a week, leaving Joe and his older sister at home alone. What could go wrong? Their parents might as well have sent out invitations themselves to every nearby high school. Though it was close to Halloween, the word was that costumes were optional. Everyone who heard about it was invited.

  I can still remember how nervous I was getting ready that night. I didn’t tell anyone I knew that I was going, not even Sulu, because I planned to go in costume. I was going as the new Jane and half hoping that no one would even recognize me.

  From the back of my dresser drawer I dug out the tight jeans I’d purchased during the summer as my prize for attaining my weight goal, and I shimmied into them. They were a perfect fit. Reaching under the bed, I pulled out a shopping bag from the favorite teen store in the mall. Inside was a Ramones T-shirt, with a low scoop neck, short cap sleeves, and a handkerchief hemline—long in the center and short on the sides. It was tight-fitting and showed off my new waistline.

  Next, I slipped my feet into high-heeled black leather ankle boots.

  I wasn’t used to wearing heels so I sort of stumbled to the bathroom to do my makeup. Once the war paint was on, I knew I had to be able to get out of the house without my parents seeing me. I had to be ready to go.

  Doing the makeup wasn’t easy for me. One time in high school, I worked up the nerve to ask Makenna Carter, a beautiful blond girl who was in my English and French classes, about applying makeup. Her face was made up to China doll perfection and it was seriously hard not to stare at her. When I asked her how she knew how to do it, she looked at me as if I were a bizarre science experiment. Her internal struggle was fun to watch. It was clear that she didn’t want to get caught talking to a girl with no name, such as I was, but the opportunity to talk about herself was irresistible. I had, of course, anticipated that weakness on her part and exploited it for my own entertainment.

  “I watched my mom, for one thing,” she’d finally said. “But usually I follow magazines and online how-to videos.”

  “Oh,” I’d responded.

  She’d turned those eerily black-lined eyes on me. “Doesn’t your mother wear makeup?”

  “Oh, tons of it, but I can’t learn much because she slathers it on with a trowel.” I wasn’t entirely sure that Makenna even knew what a trowel was but she got the general idea.

  “Well then, go online and find a tutorial. It’s easy as long as you have the right kinds of makeup.”

  “OK, thanks.”

  I had one of my mother’s issues of Cosmopolitan propped up on the vanity to give me pointers. I only owned two tubes of lipstick and some mascara that had dried up, so I had to raid my mom’s cosmetic cabinet. I smudged charcoal gray and bronze on my eyelids, then used gray eye pencil to darken around my lashes and piled on the mascara. I smeared on a little foundation but it was too light for my skin so I blotted most of it off as I had seen my mom do countless times and then I applied my dark red lipstick, coating it with petroleum jelly for shine. When I stepped back from the mirror, I couldn’t believe it was me in the reflection. Makeup is some amazing stuff. It had transformed me into an attractive hooker.

  I couldn’t wear my hair in one of my two Jane fashions—long and parted on the side or pulled back in a loose ponytail. So I dabbed some product into and then combed it over to the other side of my face—almost over one eye and pulled it into a messy bun. I figured I’d wear big earrings to draw attention away from it.

  Now I was ready, only needing a jacket from my mother’s closet so no part of me would be recognizable as Jane Jensen. I slipped into the master bedroom and tiptoed to her walk-in closet. Flipping the switch, the closet filled with a bright light, and I quickly found a navy cardigan with silver buttons. My dad had a much cooler military jacket but when I tried it on it was way too big. I stuck to the sweater, wishing I had a leather biker jacket.

  Both my parents were in the living room watching television as I silently sidled by, shuffling my feet so as not to let my heels click on the tiled floor. I’d almost passed the double archway and was thinking I’d gotten away with it when I heard her shrill voice.

  “Jane? Where are you going?”

  Rolling my eyes, I groaned as she got up and walked to the hall. Her eyes nearly popped out of her skull when she took me in, so at least it was good for a laugh. “A party.”

  Such pure joy radiated from her eyes that I almost laughed right in her face. My mother was a popular girl in school so it was to her everlasting disappointment that her only daughter was one of the untouchables.

>   “Wonderful.” She placed her clasped hands against her lips. “You look absolutely beautiful. Go have fun but be home before midnight.”

  I checked the clock. It was barely seven-thirty. Yeah, I doubted I’d be much later than nine but no need to burst her bubble. “Right. I will.”

  It was only about a quarter mile to the Torres house but I made the most of it. The closer I got, the more paralyzed with fear I became and my steps got slower and smaller until I was barely moving. Could I do it?

  Yes. The answer was yes. I could do it and I would do it. Period.

  I remember the music. Nirvana. Cobain was the patron saint of all angsty teenagers. I started hearing it as soon as I got near his property. As I got closer I saw the front door was ajar, and blaring music and voices flowed out with the stench of weed. The two girls who’d been ten steps ahead of me had just walked right in, so I did the same. Scanning the crowded room, I searched for any familiar faces. Here and there I saw people I recognized from high school, but none were in my grade, none were any I knew. They were spilling over from another room and packed into the wide, double-height foyer. I weaved through the coalescing bodies, trying to move farther into the house. When I made it to the living room, there were coolers lining the hardwood floor, filled to the brim with beer and wine coolers. I bent down and grabbed a Corona before I kept going.

  Just up ahead was a knot of people. I sauntered over casually, noticing a tall guy in the center who looked vaguely familiar. When I reached the circle, I looked at them all up close and not a one was from my class.

  But before I could breathe a sigh of relief, I caught a glimpse of the face of the guy in the center as he turned to answer someone: Mason Caldwell.

  Holding court as always.

  When he finished the story, everyone laughed boisterously. I slugged my beer too enthusiastically and some dribbled out of both sides of my mouth. I wiped the back of my hand across my lips, forgetting I was wearing lipstick. A slash of red now decorated my skin but I didn’t really care. I was too transfixed on Mason. When I looked back at him I caught him staring at me.