White Rabbit

by Caleb Roehrig

  “You okay?” He asks gently, and the compassion in his voice is almost more than I can bear.

  “I’m fine.” I look past him to the kitchen, where Fox’s head is just visible behind the island, a dark mass in a spoiling pool of scarlet-black blood. Weirdly enough, it helps me get a hold of myself, like a sudden cold-water bath. “I’m all right.” Stiffly, but not without real gratitude, I mutter, “Thanks.”

  “Did you find anything outside?”

  “Not really. No bloody footprints or whatever, and pretty much every room in the cottage has a door that opens onto the porch. This place is at the ass-end of nowhere, though. No one came in off the street and did this. Either it was April, or…”

  Only I don’t have an or. At the moment, there’s no better explanation. It’s pretty obvious that April and Fox weren’t alone in the house all night; in addition to the massive supply of drugs and alcohol on the dining table, grocery bags heaped atop the kitchen island disgorge a sick-making bounty of junk food. Brightly colored packages of chips and candy have been ripped open, many of them half-empty, and crumbs litter the counter. There were people here—but who and when and how many, we won’t know until April comes out of the bedroom.

  I turn to say something and catch Sebastian flicking his eyes away. “What?”

  “Huh?” He glances back, trying and failing to effect an innocently blank expression—his who-me? face. He used it all the time when we were together, and he was terrible at it.

  “You were looking at me. What?”

  “Nothing, it’s just…” Sebastian shrugs, and his eyes do that down-up thing over my torso again. “Have you been working out or something?”

  My face heats up again, this time with embarrassment, and I cross my arms self-consciously over my bare chest. I wanted him to notice, of course; this is basically the moment I’ve been imagining, repeatedly, for the past six weeks: Sebastian seeing the hot new Rufus Holt, wishing he could have me back and hating himself for letting me go. Only the situation is all wrong, Fox’s grisly death crowding the moment, and my ex-boyfriend’s puzzled eyes seem to track the changes to my body with only clinical interest.

  And, just like that, I feel humiliated all over again. Even standing in the middle of an actual crime scene I can’t escape how much I’ve let him get inside my head. How much I want Sebastian Williams to still want me, and how much it hurts that he doesn’t.

  To my utter relief, the door to the master suite pops open at just that moment, and April sidles meekly into the room. She’s wearing jean shorts and a loose-fitting shirt, her auburn hair falling to her shoulders in damp, tousled ropes. Her face is still drawn and colorless, but her eyes look way more alert.

  “How are you feeling?” I ask neutrally, moving toward her through the wreckage of the family room.

  She stares, her expression flat. “Better, I guess. Um … thanks.” Her gaze drifts toward the kitchen and fixes in place, like a missile system locking onto target. There’s no way she can see Fox from the little vestibule, but the presence of his body commands attention nevertheless. “Is, um … is he still…?”

  “You want to go into the bedroom to talk?”

  April gives a minute and almost frightened nod, and then the three of us retreat through the door, shutting it again for good measure. My little sister sinks down on the edge of the bed, letting her hair fall into her face, while I straddle a shabby-chic chair placed in front of a shabby-chic vanity. Sebastian stays close, breathing more easily now that a physical barrier stands between Fox and him.

  “What happened tonight, April?” I prompt.

  She sniffles, picking at the dark polish on the nails of her right hand, and says, to my left kneecap, “I’m not sure. I mean, I don’t really remember.”

  “Try to think,” I suggest through my teeth, already thin on patience, just like that. “You called me for help, right? I can’t help if you don’t tell me anything.”

  “But I don’t know anything, Rufus.” Her voice shakes, her big blue eyes meeting mine, filled with tears. “We were having a party, and I got tired so I came in here to lie down, and then … when I woke up, I was in the kitchen, and … and Fox, he, he…”

  She starts to cry, dropping her head forward as her shoulders quake and loud, mucusy snorts sound from behind the curtain of her hair. April wipes her face with her hands over and over, until Sebastian leans past me to swipe some tissues and hand them to her. She accepts them wordlessly and, after a few moments, lifts her chin again.

  I’m not sure what it says about me as a person, but I spend a good, long moment studying her expression for possible evidence of bullshit before I speak again. “What were you on when we got here?”

  “Nothing,” she declares, impossibly.

  My jaw goes tight. “Don’t lie.”

  “I’m not!”

  “April, when we found you in the kitchen, you were so fucked up, you couldn’t even walk,” I remind her, heat slowly turning my brain into a tropical greenhouse. “There’s an avalanche of coke and pills in the dining room that you could slide down with a toboggan, and you want us to believe you were sober?”

  “I didn’t take anything!” She practically screeches it this time, and I almost think she’s telling me the truth. “I never use that stuff! Fox … I mean, okay, he got me try some things once or twice—but I hated the way they made me feel!”

  “Even white rabbits?”

  “Especially that shit.” She shudders. “I took some once and I thought plants were growing under my skin. I almost cut my arm open trying to let them out.”

  Sebastian and I exchange a perplexed glance, and I turn back to my sister. She looks me in the eye, her expression level and grim. If she’s lying, she’s gotten a lot better at it than the last time we faced off—but if she’s telling the truth, it makes no sense. “Look, just … let’s start from the beginning. Who was here tonight, and what happened?”

  April takes a breath. “We were having a Fourth of July party, you know? Fox’s parents went to New York, so he knew the cottage would be empty, and he told everybody to come over.”

  “And by everybody you mean Race and Peyton?” I venture, naming Fox’s and April’s respective best friends—who also happen to be a couple.

  She nods. “And Arlo Rossi, and … some other people.”

  Her eyes dart to Sebastian when she says this, but just as quickly drop back to my kneecap. I’m intrigued, but decide not to press her on it. At least, not yet. “Okay, so Peyton and Race and Arlo came out here, and you guys had a party, and then what?”

  “And then I don’t know,” she says helplessly, her voice small and shaky again. “Honestly, Rufus, I didn’t take anything—all I had was a couple drinks, but maybe they were stronger than I thought, because, like … there’s just this big blank! Last thing I remember, everybody was over here, and then … then I wake up in the kitchen, and Fox is on the floor next to me and, and…” She trails off, hiccupping, and slaps a hand to her mouth. For a moment, I’m afraid she’s about to barf, but then she asks, “Is he really dead?”

  I shift in the stupid little chair. “Yeah, April, he is.”

  She shakes her head in disbelief, auburn tresses swinging, and squeezes her eyes shut. A couple of tears roll silently down her colorless cheeks. “I didn’t kill him. You have to believe me.”

  With some difficulty, I ignore her grasp for my heartstrings, determined to stay clearheaded—to not let my creeping sentimentality for April Covington get in the way of my judgment. I’m rattled enough as it is, with pink shadows of Fox’s blood still dappling my wet shorts, and I can’t afford to be softhearted right now. I try to remember all my reasons not to trust her, but our past keeps intruding on my perception.

  In the eighth grade, when the stage-whispered rumors of my sexuality were publicly confirmed, April stunned me by being the second person—after Lucy—to voice her support. The day I learned that my secret and I were both officially out was horrific, and after the fin
al bell rang, I fled our school for the privacy of a wooded rise behind the soccer field. All I wanted was to finally get a chance to cry without an audience of jeering, scornful thirteen-year-olds, but my half sister somehow managed to track me down.

  * * *

  “I don’t care,” she blurted in a quiet rush the second I noticed her, copper sunlight gilding her face as she looked up at me. “I don’t care that you’re gay, I mean. It doesn’t make any difference to me. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, and I think Cody and Eric are shitheads for making fun of you and stuff.”

  “Thanks,” I answered awkwardly, befuddled by her sympathy and lacking for anything more meaningful to say. Cody Barnes was one of Hayden’s many acolytes, willing to hurt me in any number of trivial ways if it would catch his hero’s attention, but Eric Shetland had—until that very morning—been one of my closest friends. I was so stung by his betrayal that no one’s actions seemed to make sense to me anymore.

  “Hayden’s a shithead, too.” April’s cheeks flushed with the guilty pleasure of saying it out loud. “He’s so mean. All the time. I mean, you’re lucky you don’t have to live with him.” She glanced over her shoulder instinctively, as if afraid saying his name might actually conjure his presence, and then went on in a fervent undertone, “Honestly, Rufus? Sometimes I wish he was dead. Sometimes I wish you were my real brother and Hayden didn’t even exist!”

  Without warning, April suddenly threw her arms around me—our first actual embrace—and then, while I was still reeling from the unexpected show of affection, she turned and dashed away toward the school.

  * * *

  Willfully blanking the memory, I ask April, “Where was your phone?” The question seems to confuse her, so I back up. “You woke up next to Fox, and then you called me. Where was your phone?”

  She makes a bewildered face. “I guess I had it with me. I don’t really know.”

  “You didn’t have to go looking for it?”

  “I don’t think so. I mean, if I had, I wouldn’t have still been sitting next to Fox when you got here.” She shivers a little.

  “So why did you call me?” I finally ask, after tallying up everything she’s said. I’m pretty sure I have the reason figured out, though, and am anticipating her answer with a growing sense of prickly unease.

  “Don’t you get it?” She fixes me with a haunted look. “All my friends were here. The last thing I remember, we were all having a big party; and then all of a sudden, I’m waking up, my boyfriend is dead, and I’m here all by myself? They left me, Rufus.” With both hands, she drags her hair back from her face, and whispers, “I didn’t do it. I know I didn’t. But that means … it means—”

  “One of them is the killer,” Sebastian concludes, rubbing his eyes. “Fuck.” I can tell he’s regretting whatever impulse compelled him to seek me out tonight, whatever guilt or curiosity made him so eager to drive me to South Hero Island so he could stumble over the dead body of one of his friends.

  “I didn’t do it,” April repeats insistently, searching my face with the piteous desperation of an orphaned beggar. “You know me, Rufus, I could never have done something like this!” The point is, frankly, equivocal, but before I can address it, she’s already moving on to the true purpose of her summons. “You have to get me out of here, okay? I’ve already bagged up my bikini—we can throw it in the lake, and—”

  “April—”

  “They left me here to take the blame for something I didn’t do!” My half sister’s pitch begins to rise, her cheeks becoming blotchy. “This isn’t like getting caught drinking with your loser friends, Rufus,” she fires at me stingingly, a weapon tailored to fit my dubious record. “I could go to fucking jail! Actual fucking jail!”

  “And if I do what you’re asking me to, I could go to fucking jail,” I shoot back, my vision starting to shimmer as my anger soars above and beyond the call of duty. “Even if you throw out your bathing suit—even if we wipe your prints off the knife and every other damn thing in this place—Fox’s parents are still going to find him dead in the kitchen, the cops are still going to find a metric shit-ton of drugs in the dining room, and all your friends are still going to say that the last time they saw your boyfriend alive, he was alone in the house with you.” I guzzle air into my lungs, having ranted all that in a single breath. “Don’t you get it, April? You can’t cover this up, and if you try, it’s only going to look worse!”

  She goes quiet again, her lips clamping into a narrow line, and we glower at each other for a long moment. I know her better than she thinks; I can see the wheels turning behind her lucid, blue eyes. Most of the people in her life are susceptible to her manipulations because they want to please her, but her tears and tantrums won’t work on me. She’s actively calculating my weaknesses, looking for another access point.

  “Okay, you’re right,” she finally says. “I guess I wasn’t thinking. But you can’t just call the cops, Rufus. Dad—our dad—will kill me. You know he will.”

  This is also debatable. Peter’s rages are infamous—and I would know, having both suffered and inherited them—but he and Isabel treat April with the care and handling of a holy relic. The man would lose his shit if his daughter became implicated in a murder, but it’s hard to picture him actually taking it out on her. However, the fact of the matter is that I really have no idea what goes on behind closed doors in the Covington household.

  “So what exactly are you suggesting?” I ask warily.

  “I know about your mom’s phone call today,” she reveals, having found her access point at last, and I feel a metaphorical trapdoor swing open under my feet. “I know you guys need money, and I’m willing to pay you—”

  “I’m not taking money to help you cover up a murder,” I declare hotly, thrown off-center by how humiliatingly accurate her read on me is.

  “Not for that,” she insists, leaning forward, the tendons in her hands standing out in high relief as she grips the coverlet. “You’re smart, Rufus—everybody knows it. Remember when we were in that summer reading group thing, and you solved all those little mysteries or whatever? Maybe you can figure out what happened tonight!”

  “April, I was eleven,” I splutter, appalled, “and they were just a bunch of dumb riddles with the answers already built in!” The “summer reading group thing” was an activity sponsored by the public library, a way for parents to ditch their kids for a couple hours a day and feel good about it. A condescendingly perky volunteer read us a bunch of two-page mystery stories—tales of theft and people being bonked over the head—where finding the solution was as easy as identifying simple inconsistencies woven into the narrative. A man claims he was getting the mail when his neighbor was robbed, for instance, only this supposedly happened on a Sunday, when there is no mail delivery. It was kid stuff, and I only succeeded where the others failed because the others didn’t try. “This is real life—this is a real fucking murder—and I wouldn’t even know where to start! Even if I could figure it out, we’d have to go to the police anyway.”

  “I know,” she whispers defenselessly, her chin wobbling. “But just … please, Rufus. Please. I don’t mean you need to catch whoever did it, but I need help. Really, really bad.” Tears splash down her cheeks, and I suddenly realize how authentic her fear is. “All I want you to do is talk to the people who were at the party and see what they say. Maybe you’ll be able to tell if one of them is lying, you know? Maybe somebody will, like, give themselves away? And then we can go to the police and tell them what we know. Everything. That’s all I’m asking.”

  I sigh, a headache beginning to beat at my temples like a blacksmith pounding out a horseshoe. “April—”

  “I’ve got two thousand dollars, in cash, and I’ll pay you all of it if you help me figure out who really killed Fox.” She cuts me off decisively, and my jaw lands in my lap. “Two grand, Rufus—no questions asked—if you agree to go talk to everyone. Just talk. And then, no matter what, we go to the police. Ok
ay?”

  I can see in her eyes that going to the police scares her beyond measure; I can also see that she’s dead serious about that two grand. I know it would be lunacy to agree—and my permanent record doesn’t really have the cushion to absorb a lot of cataclysmically bad life choices—but she’s nailed my Achilles’ heel on her first try. Even as I tell myself I need to say no, I’m mentally reviewing the reasons to justify saying yes.

  My eyes fall to the clock on the Whitneys’ bedside table, bright red digits reminding me of our limited time. “When are Fox’s parents due back from New York?”

  “Not for a few days,” April answers, studying my face with quiet intensity.

  I nod. No danger there. I won’t be interfering with a police investigation because, as yet, there is no investigation; I won’t be removing or destroying any evidence; and we’ll ultimately go to the police and report the crime ourselves anyway. More to the point: April will report the crime—and any theoretical damage done by her leaving the crime scene was already done by my dragging her into the shower in order to wake her up, anyway. There’s no way to undo that, but we can still mitigate how guilty it looks by calling the police before they even know there’s been a murder in the first place.

  But all that is incidental. The only thing that truly matters is that my mom owes the bank eight thousand dollars, and doesn’t know where to get it. She has a little less than two thousand at hand; I have a little more than two in my savings—which I’ll make her accept, no matter what she says; add April’s two and, even though it won’t hit the target, it’ll still bring us to within a respectable margin. Maybe even close enough to buy a temporary extension on the remainder.

  Even if it doesn’t pan out that way, though, it’s worth the gamble. It’s all worth the gamble. Even if I’m ultimately expelled for getting involved in whatever psychotic drama has unfurled at Fox’s cottage, it’s still better than being homeless—and if we get evicted anyway, my transcript will be the least of my concerns.