Big Summer

by Jennifer Weiner

  Nick didn’t seem happy to leave me alone, but, in the end, he pulled away, with Darshi in the passenger’s seat and with plans to meet me at eight. When the taillights had disappeared, I pulled my hair back into a ponytail, set the pedometer on my phone (a habit from my dieting days that I’d never been able to break), and started to walk. I was still wearing the Leef jumpsuit, but I’d swapped the wedges for a pair of flat black sneakers. I held my head high, swinging my arms purposefully, even though I wanted to drag my feet and let my hands and head hang like sacks of rocks. I could see it: Detective McMichaels, with his gray brush cut and his caterpillar mustache, waiting in the hallway. Just a few more questions, he’d say, standing too close to me, staring me down. He’d have printed out Darshi’s text messages, pried out of the cloud, and he’d show them to me: Why were you and your friend discussing murdering Ms. Cavanaugh? Why were you texting pictures of knives? Just confess now, he’d say. I’m sure the prosecutor will make you a deal. Hey, you must have had your reasons! Get out in front of it. Tell us the truth.

  I tried to shut off my mind, tried to think of something else, anything else. My hand went automatically to my phone. I opened up Instagram, opened the comments on the last picture I’d posted, bracing myself for the condolences, the so sorrys and the broken-heart emojis and, inevitably, the people who wanted to share their own stories of loss, to tell me about their friend who’d been murdered, or their sister, their daughter, their mom. I’d have to remember to tell Nick that this was another one of social media’s uses, the way it gave even the small and anonymous a place to tell their stories and find comfort, to be recognized and seen, even if it was only briefly.

  Everyone deserves justice, I thought. Even people who lie. And everyone lies. Especially on social media, where there were lies of commission and lies of omission on everyone’s page, woven into everyone’s public presence. I pretended to be brave, and Darshi pretended to be straight, and Drue pretended to be rich and glamorous and happy when she was, in actuality, only rich and glamorous. Maybe it was different for men. Aditya seemed to be exactly who he said he was, and Nick wasn’t online at all.

  Focus, I told myself, and put the phone away. I remembered the question the detective had asked. Who benefits? Well, who besides me and Nick and Aditya and Emma, I thought, and sighed as I edged around the homeless fellow sprawled in the middle of the sidewalk. Maybe there were positives to getting arrested in your own city, in your own apartment. This way, at least I’d get to pick out a nice outfit for the perp walk. My sponsors would probably be delighted, I thought grimly. You couldn’t pay for that kind of attention.

  And then it hit me. I stopped, so fast that the woman with three Whole Foods grocery bags who’d been walking behind me almost slammed into my back. “Jeez, lady!” she huffed. I couldn’t even draw enough breath to mutter an apology. Thoughts, remembered sentences and phrases, firefly flickers of half-remembered conversations were zipping through my mind like the patterns of a kaleidoscope, forming and re-forming themselves until they aligned in a conclusion that I probably should have seen long ago.

  There’s probably about a million girls she’d hurt who would want her dead. Corina.

  To kill a young woman on her wedding day? That doesn’t feel like business to me. That feels personal. Abigay.

  She told me that the girl had been a scholarship student, and that had been her big chance. Drue wasn’t sure if she’d ever gone to college at all. Aditya.

  And, finally, a familiar voice saying something I should have remembered much sooner: High school was kind of a shit show. You know, the mean girls. It took me a while to pull it together, but I made it out alive.

  “Oh my God,” I said, my voice a squeaky quiver. “Oh my God oh my God oh my God.” I grabbed my phone out of the bag, scrolling through my recent calls until I found one with a 508 prefix. I held my breath until Barbara Vincent picked up, saying, “Hello? Hello, Daphne, is that you?”

  I told her what I needed, talking her through it, step by step. “Just take a picture, then open it up in the Photos app. On the left-hand side, at the bottom of the frame, there’s a little box with an arrow coming out of the top,” I said. “Click on that and type my phone number.”

  Ten seconds later, my phone buzzed. My heart felt like it had stopped beating. My ears were humming, like I was deep underwater. I opened up the text Barbara had sent, clicking on the attachment, which showed a photograph of the Croft School’s graduating class from 2011. Barbara had taken the picture from the yearbook that Emma had purchased, to keep tabs on the half sister who hadn’t even known that she existed, the rich girl who’d gotten everything Emma thought she’d ever wanted, all the prizes and the plums. At Aditya’s apartment, Nick and Darshi and I had gone through the list of names. Now here were the faces: sixteen girls in white dresses, each holding a single white rose; an equal number of boys in blue blazers and khakis. They must have taken the picture before graduation, before they’d learned that Drue had cheated on the SATs, before they’d buried the bad news and kicked out the cheater and sent Drue on to Harvard. My old best friend stood in the very center of the front row. Her hair was long and straight, her smile was bright and confident. She wore the look of a world-beater, a girl who could do anything and be anything she wanted. Beside her was Stuart Lloyd Lowe. His hair was a little longer, and he was a little less muscular than he’d been on TV, but he had that same aura of privilege and a life spent on smoothed paths; the same lucky-penny glow. In the back row, right behind Drue, standing close enough to touch, with bangs that almost covered her eyes, long, dark hair, thick eyebrows, and a shy smile on her round face, was a girl identified as Kamon Charoenthammawat. A girl who, at some point, had changed her name, lost twenty pounds, pierced her nose, dyed her hair in shades of silver and lavender, and transformed herself into the woman I’d known as Leela Thakoon.

  I called Darshi. When she didn’t pick up, I called Nick. When he didn’t answer, I left him a message. I used the editing feature to circle Kamon in red and forwarded the snapshot to both of them with a note: THIS GIRL IS LEELA THAKOON, THE DESIGNER WHO’S BEEN PAYING ME TO WEAR HER CLOTHES. SHE WENT TO CROFT WITH DRUE. I’LL BET SHE’S THE ONE WHO GOT EXPELLED. I THINK SHE’S THE KILLER. There. Now, if I got hit by a bus, or arrested on my way home, there’d be evidence pointing the police in Leela’s direction.

  I texted McMichaels a version of the same message, adding some context about Drue going to Croft and paying someone to take the SATs for her. My phone was giving its death beeps, so I shoved it into my pocket again and walked, faster and faster, thinking through what I’d learned. Already, I was second-guessing myself, wondering if it was all too tenuous, a handful of dots that only the most wishful thinking could connect. And what if I was wrong? What if someone else had gotten in trouble for taking the SATs for Drue? Or what if Leela had been the test-taker, and she had been expelled from Croft, but the killer was someone else entirely? Should I call 911? Not yet, I decided. Not until I had some actual proof. Not unless I was sure.

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket, saw there was only two percent of my battery life remaining, and put it back in. I wanted to silence my brain, to stop thinking about Drue, to stop thinking at all. But the city felt haunted, every inch of every block painted with memories. Here was the Zara where I’d shoplifted a Bump It, at Drue’s direction; there was the bakery where I would treat myself to a pillow-soft cinnamon roll if Drue had been especially awful to me that week.

  I decided that, instead of going straight to my parents’ place, I’d go to my apartment first. I’d charge my phone, walk my dog, then bring Bingo with me. Nick and Darshi, if she was still willing to help, could regroup there and help me figure out what to do next.

  As I walked, I found myself imagining Drue at a tutoring center in some public high school in Boston, a place with worn textbooks and scuffed tile floors. I pictured her bending over some kid’s book, or demonstrating how to diagram a sentence or solve a quadratic equation.
I pictured Drue with Aditya in some hole-in-the-wall restaurant, the kind I’d gone to with my father, eating galbi or tea-leaf salad and pumpkin-pork stew. I saw her peeling ginger root and sweet potatoes or mashing garlic and rinsing rice, shoulder to shoulder with Aditya in his kitchen, with its brown linoleum floor and the chipped Formica counters. I saw them sharing a beer in the cheap seats at Fenway Park or holding hands in the hush of a museum’s gallery on a pay-what-you-can Wednesday. The person she could have been, should have been, a smiling young woman, dressed down in a ponytail and a baseball cap, not the glossy, polished corporate creature in the Cavanaugh Corporation’s brochure. I’d chased after her, and she’d chased after her father, craving his love and attention, never getting what she needed. All that effort, trying to shore up the business and prove her worth and get her father to love her; never knowing that none of his children held his interest for very long. I wondered if she’d ever been tempted to give up, to stay with Aditya, who clearly adored her. They could have moved to Boston, and reclaimed Cape Cod and gone back there every year in the summertime. They could have been happy together.

  I unlocked my front door and jogged up the stairs, my head full of a life that could have been. I was halfway down the hall with my keys in my hand when I heard Bingo’s whimper. I looked up to see that someone was, indeed, waiting for me, just as I’d imagined. But it wasn’t the police.

  “Don’t scream,” said Leela Thakoon as she drew a neat little gun out of her crossbody bag and pointed it at my heart.

  I felt the breath leave my body, felt my knees turn to liquid.

  “Open the door. Get inside, and give me your phone.” I did what she told me, handing her my phone, and stepped inside. From the bathroom, I could hear water running in the tub. When Bingo came charging toward us, snorting and wriggling with delight, Leela gave her a swift, sharp kick that sent her tumbling head over bottom. Bingo yelped, her expression betrayed. She hid behind my legs, cringing.

  “If that animal comes near me again, I’ll shoot it. Put it in the closet.”

  “She won’t stay.” I was shaking all over, my knees and wrists and even my lips, every strand of hair on my head trembling.

  “Do it.”

  I whispered “Be a good girl” into Bingo’s ear, dropped her onto the coat closet floor, and closed the door. Immediately, Bingo started whining and scratching, butting at the door with her head. Leela ignored her.

  “Sit,” she said, waving the gun toward the living room. I practically fell into the armchair in the corner. “Pleasedon’tkillme,” I said, the words coming in a rushed exhalation.

  Leela sighed. “I don’t want to. Really, I don’t.” She had the nerve to give me her twinkling, dimpled smile as she wagged a scolding finger. “But you! You couldn’t let it rest!”

  “I…” I said. I stopped. Swallowed. Licked my dry lips with a tongue that felt like a lump of felted wool, and tried to play it cool. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, c’mon. Let’s not lie. It’s just us chickens!” She flashed her dimples at me again and, with her free hand, pushed her silvery-lilac hair behind her ears, before lifting one finger. “First of all, you posted something from New Haven, where Aditya Acharya lives. And Aditya was friends with Drue. Friends with benefits. At least, that’s according to the people I paid to keep eyes on her.” One of my scheduled posts, I thought. It must have gone up while we were in Connecticut, and I must have forgotten to turn off my geo-tagging, which let the whole world know where I was, and now my partnership with the yoga mat company was going to get me killed. “I told myself that it could have been a coincidence. Maybe you’ve got friends in Connecticut, right?” Another finger went up. “However, I also have my website set up to alert me when I get visitors with IP addresses from the Outer Cape. Which I did, about an hour ago. The cops, I assume.” She tsk-tsked, shaking her head. “Unless someone in the Truro Police Department was looking for the perfect cotton-Lycra jumpsuit.”

  I swallowed hard. “Darshi’s going to be home any minute.”

  “Darshi has office hours,” Leela corrected, her voice still cheery. “She’s going to be on campus until ten o’clock. I called to make sure.”

  “Please,” I whispered. “Please don’t kill me.”

  “I’m not going to kill you,” Leela said. Before hope could take hold, she said, “You’re going to kill yourself. See, you’re distraught. Overcome with grief about murdering your BFF on her wedding day.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a prescription bottle full of white oval-shaped pills. “I got these for myself, in case things went bad.” When she gave the bottle a shake, the pills rattled like bones. “You’ll just write out a note, slip into a warm bath, swallow a bunch of these with some vodka, pull a bag over your head, and goodbye, cruel world.” I was shaking, shuddering all over, my feet bouncing and jittering on the floor. Leela saw, and looked sad. “I’m sorry. I know Drue hurt you, too. But I am not going to jail for that bitch.”

  “You…” I licked my lips. Flatter her, I thought. Keep her talking. “I have to give you credit. It was a brilliant plan. Who gave Drue the poison?”

  “Some guy,” she said, shrugging. “Some guy who needed twenty thousand dollars and could get himself hired by the catering company. All he had to do was pour a vial into Drue’s cocktail. I never met him. I don’t know his name. And, of course, he doesn’t know mine.”

  I’d read enough mysteries to know how I was supposed to feel—my palms sweating and my mouth dry, trembling, or frozen with terror. Even though I was still trembling, terror had left me blessedly cool and clear-eyed. I could see everything, from the pile of vintage children’s books on my craft table to the flick of black liner Leela had applied at the outer corners of her lashes. I recognized the piece of clothing she was wearing: the Anna dress, with its Empire waist and midi-length skirt, in a shade she called Damson Plum. The perfect outfit for a murder.

  “And the poison? Where did you get it?”

  “Stop stalling.” She jerked the gun toward the hall.

  “Just tell me,” I said, and made myself feign interest. “Come on. Think about it. You’re never going to be able to explain it all to anyone else, right? I’ll take your story to the grave.”

  “You will, won’t you?” Leela said, looking pleased at the thought. “I got it from the dark web!” Her voice was smug. “Turns out, there are websites that are basically Amazon for controlled substances. I found the pills, and the poison, and the hit man, all on the same website!” She giggled merrily. “One-stop shopping!”

  Keep her talking, I thought again. Maybe Darshi would come home early. Maybe my across-the-hall neighbor would notice the unlocked door. Maybe my parents would decide to do their first-ever unannounced pop-in. I squeezed my eyes shut, pain piercing me as I realized I’d never see my mom and dad again.

  Leela’s tone was brisk. “Bath time.”

  I made myself stand up. “I just want to understand. Before I die. I want to know what she did to you that was so bad that she and I both have to die for it.”

  Leela rolled her eyes. “You already know what she did.”

  “She got you kicked out of school?”

  “She stole my life,” Leela said, her voice suddenly loud and wild and raw. Her chest rose and fell as she breathed. “You don’t understand what it was like. You can’t imagine. My parents came to this country, not speaking the language, with five hundred dollars between them. They paid my father’s aunt to take care of me so they could work around the clock in a convenience store. They’d take turns sleeping in the storage closet so they wouldn’t have to pay rent.” Her voice was shaking. “They told me every single day that it was all for me, so I could have an American life; so I could go to a good prep school and an Ivy League college, and be a big American success.” She paused, breathing hard. “You don’t know what it’s like to be one of the only Asian kids at a place like Croft. To be different. To never fit in.”

  “I was a s
cholarship kid—” I interrupted, hoping I could get her to see the similarities between us. “I didn’t look like Drue and the rest of her friends.”

  “You think that means we’re the same?” Leela sneered. She gestured toward my midriff, her eyes hard as pebbles, her face twisted with scorn. “You could lose fifty pounds and be just like the rest of them. I never could.”

  “We’re all people,” I whispered.

  Leela shook her head. “You don’t get it. You could never understand. How it felt to work, and work, and study and study, and finally have it all pay off and get into every college you applied at. And then to have everything you worked for just…” She stretched out one open palm, then snapped it shut. “Just taken away.” She caught her breath and licked her lips.

  “I do know,” I said. “I promise. Maybe it’s not exactly the same, but I know what it’s like to be different.”

  It was like she couldn’t hear me, like she couldn’t hear anything but the rage inside her head. “I thought Drue was my friend. My beautiful American friend. I’ll bet you thought that, too.” She smirked. “She told me all about you, you know. How pathetic you were. How you followed her around like—how’d she put it?—a pudgy little puppy dog.”

  Ouch. Even though Drue was dead, even with Leela pointing a gun at me, it seemed there was a part of me that was still available to feel that slap.

  “I thought that what we had was different.” Leela’s voice was musing. “I thought she was telling me about you because she wanted me to know that she respected me. That I wasn’t pathetic, like you were.”

  “And then she burned you,” I said. “The same way she burned everybody else. So you weren’t special at all.”

  Leela made a noise that might have started its life as a laugh, and came out sounding more like a sob. “When I got caught, she denied everything,” she said. “She told the headmaster and the Honor Committee that I was crazy. Obsessed with her. In love with her. She said it was my idea to take the test in her name, that she’d never even known about my plan. She said I’d hacked into her computer and found her Social Security number and registered in her name. And they believed her. Or at least, they decided to believe her.” Leela paused, her face thundery with rage and remembered shame. “She was someone, and I was no one. She mattered, and I didn’t. I was expendable. I’d always known it, deep down, but that was when I really saw it. That was when I saw the way the world really is, and how little I mattered.”