by Gregory Ashe
Jesus, Somers thought, wishing his heart weren’t trying to crack his ribs. Just Jesus Christ, I’ve gotta get this under control.
“He’s upset,” Dusty said, still pressing Frank’s head to his chest and stroking the loose, wild hair as the boy sobbed.
“I can tell he’s upset. Why don’t you say something I don’t know?”
“All right,” Somers said, throwing a warning look to Hazard. Then, to Dusty, he said, “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Frank croaked, trying to push himself away from Dusty. When Dusty wouldn’t let go, though, Frank collapsed back against him and settled for giving Somers the finger.
“Hadley,” Dusty said, his voice almost as creaky as Frank’s. “Look, it’s a mess, it’s such a mess. He’s just upset. Frank, hey. Baby.” Brushing aside the long, dark hair, Dusty bent closer to the slender boy. “I’m going to go talk to them. Outside, all right? This was stupid. I was stupid. Can you just say something so I know it’s all right?”
Whatever Frank said, it was muffled by Dusty’s chest and too low for Somers to make out. Dusty skimmed fingers through Frank’s hair and, pitching his voice low and obviously hoping Somers and Hazard wouldn’t hear, he said, “You’re not going to do anything stupid. I’m going to leave the TV on, I’m going to be just down the hall. You’re not going to do anything, get it? I’ll be right back.”
This time, if Frank responded, there was no sign that Somers could discern. Slowly, Dusty disentangled himself from the other boy. He shrugged a hoodie over broad shoulders, tugged on track pants, and shuffled out into the hall. Hazard followed, and when Somers had joined him, Hazard pressed a hand against Somers’s chest, stopping him.
“Something felt off in there.”
Somers fought the urge to roll his eyes. “Really?”
“Yeah. Didn’t you get that? Neither of them seems quite right.”
“You’re like a psychic.”
Hazard’s eyes narrowed.
“No, honest. Like, you could do a TV show. Read the audience, you know, that kind of stuff.”
“Screw you.”
“Ree,” Somers said, snagging at Hazard’s sleeve as the bigger man turned down the hallway. “What about me? What am I feeling?”
“I don’t know,” Hazard whispered, snatching his sleeve free. “Whatever a gaping asshole normally feels.”
Light bloomed ahead of them—a warm, yellow light at odds with the cold and darkness penetrating the rest of the house. Somers and Hazard followed that light and found Dusty in the kitchen. It was a small, cramped room almost as bare as Frank’s bedroom: a kitten-pattern border was the only sign of decoration, and it hung from the wall in tatters. Dusty perched on a stool at the battered table, his big shoulders folded inwards, his hands wrapped between his legs.
Somers sat in one of the rickety chairs, and it groaned under his weight.
“He better not,” Dusty said, nodding at Hazard as the big man pulled out another chair. “I tried, and one of these split apart right under me. Frank’s mom skinned me for that. I’m only allowed to use the stool now.”
Nodding, Hazard stood back, folding his arms over his enormous chest.
Somers suddenly felt precipitously aware of the chair under him, of its every creak and protest, of the flimsy, splintered legs. As he leaned forward, a joint in the chair popped, and Somers froze.
Dusty, with a smile the color of old snow, just nodded.
“This seems like a rough setup,” Somers said.
“Yeah,” Dusty said, and all of the sudden emotion welled up in him, screwing his eyes shut, red flooding into his cheeks as he choked back a cry. He was a kid, Somers realized. He was just a kid, even if he was a lot bigger and ropier than the boy in the bedroom. Just a kid who looked like he’d spent the last twenty-four hours balancing the world on his shoulders. Just a kid who looked like he might drop all that weight right now if he could.
Dusty made a visible effort to take control of himself, and he repeated, “Yeah,” but the word was gelled in his throat. “It’s Frank’s. I mean, it’s his mom’s place, but she’s never here. Well, she was the night I broke that chair.” Dusty paused. He looked like he wanted to say more, and so Somers kept his peace and prayed that Hazard’s newfound intuition would make him hold his tongue. After thirty seconds, Dusty broke into speech again. “I can’t even do anything about it. I told him he could stay at my place. I asked my parents, and they said yes. He could live there. We’re not rich or anything, but I mean, come on.” Dusty shrugged, his hands emerging to make an all-encompassing gesture at the house. “He won’t. He just—he said I was being stupid.” He squeezed his eyes shut again. “It’s not usually like this. I mean, it is. It’s always like this, but usually the heat’s on. Anyway, you want to talk about Hadley.”
Somers nodded, but Hazard spoke first. “We have her phone.”
“Oh. Yeah.” But Dusty said nothing more.
“Can you open it?” Hazard produced the mobile and passed it to the boy.
“That’s not her phone.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s not her phone. She had a different one.”
“Are you sure? It’s not just a different case?”
“Yeah. This is a Samsung. She had an LG.”
Hazar and Somers exchanged a glance. Then Hazard asked, “So you can’t unlock it?”
“What? No. Why would I be able to?”
“Because you were dating. You never saw her punch in a passcode?”
“Uh.” Dusty drew out the sound, and Somers felt like he had aged fifty years. This boy was staring at them like they were from the Stone Age.
“Is that a no?” Hazard asked.
“Yeah. I mean, no. I don’t know her passcode or anything like that.” Hazard held out his hand, but Dusty kept the phone, rotating it, as though studying it for a secret clue.
“She didn’t write it on there,” Hazard finally said.
“What?”
“Never mind. Just give me the phone.”
“Oh, yeah. Right.” But Dusty still didn’t relinquish it. He paused, holding the phone closer, and then rubbed at it with his sleeve. With a shrug, he passed it back to Hazard. “Dirt under the case. That’s definitely not hers. Hadley would never let her phone get dirty. She’d go crazy if she saw that.”
Hazard rotated the case. A slight tightening around his eyes. The flexion in his jaw. Maybe nobody else would see it. Maybe nobody in the world would look that closely. But Somers saw it, and he knew it meant something had shocked his partner.
Wordlessly, Hazard held out the phone for Somers’s inspection. It took him a moment in the kitchen’s yellow glare to find the spot that had drawn Hazard’s interest. There. On the edge of the phone, trapped by the side of the case was a brown smear. Hazard tilted the phone, and light filtered through the case, turning the brown smear rust-colored. It wasn’t dirt. It was blood.
And that was very strange. It must have been Hadley’s blood; Somers was almost sure of it. That part wasn’t strange. The girl had been shot—one bullet, sure, but that had still been enough to kill her. She’d bled a lot. So her blood had covered her clothes, stained her possessions. The phone wasn’t stained, though. It had a single drop of dried blood. And that was strange. And it was strange, too, that Somers didn’t remember seeing her with the phone at the party. When they had found it among her possessions at the ME’s office, Somers had assumed—well, he hadn’t really thought about it. But where had it been? And why was there only a single spot of blood?
“All right,” Hazard said, pocketing the phone. “What about Hadley?”
Dusty thought for a moment, his big shoulders rolling in and out. “She’s—she was so cool. And tough. You’ve been to her house?”
Another nod.
“She’s—she had a lot of money, right? I mean, you saw that place. But she didn’t act like it. She never acted like it. She came over here
. A lot, actually. She never said anything. She never made Frank feel bad.”
In spite of himself, Somers felt surprise on his features.
“Yeah,” Dusty said, catching the look. “I know, Frank’s pissed. But he’s not really mad at her.”
“Who’s he mad at?”
“Me. Hadley. Everyone.” Dusty laughed and ran the sleeve of his hoodie under his nose. “I mean, Frank’s generally pissed at the whole world. It’s kind of his thing. His mom—” Worry tightened his expression.
“We’re not here about Frank’s mom,” Somers said.
“What happens if I tell you something?”
“About his mom?”
A tight, worried nod.
“If she’s hurting him, or if it’s something really bad, we have to do something. If it’s something else, well, we’re not here about her.”
“She is. Hurting him. I mean, she never touches him. She just—she’s gone. He’s got nobody. I mean, he has me, but Frank doesn’t, that doesn’t mean anything to him. She’s a prostitute. I mean, she’s a waitress at Deb’s, but she’s always bringing guys back here. I’ve seen a couple of them. I’ve seen the cash they leave behind. You’re not going to do anything, right? Frank would kill me. You’re not, are you?”
“We’re not here about that,” Somers said, but the lie twisted in his gut because he knew he’d have to say something, because he couldn’t leave a child in a life like this.
Dusty must have sensed the half-truth because worry still furrowed his brow. When he spoke again, the words were halting. “Hadley could make Frank laugh. He never laughs. I mean, he laughs at me. When I do something stupid, he laughs like he’s going to pee his pants. But he doesn’t laugh, not like a belly laugh. But Hadley could do it. And she was nice. She’d invite us over for dinner. She’d pack up leftovers. For both of us, but I knew she was just doing it for Frank because he wouldn’t take any if I didn’t. Sometimes the two of them, they’d come to one of my games, and I’d see them up in the stands, and Frank would look—” Dusty passed. Something close to fear sparked in his eyes. “He would look happy.”
“I don’t understand,” Somers said, gesturing back at the bedroom. “I thought . . .”
“Oh. Yeah. We’re dating. On and off for almost three years. More off than on, to be honest, but that’s just how Frank is.”
“Mrs. Bingham said that you and Hadley were dating.”
“Yeah.”
Somers waited, but Dusty seemed perfectly content with the explanation. It was Hazard’s voice that broke the stillness, the words spoken in his usual calm lack of interest. “You’re bi. And poly.”
“Well, yeah. I thought—isn’t that why you’re here?”
A tremor ran deep down inside Somers. Bi. And poly. It was dangerously close to an echo of something already inside him. He forced the thought away.
“So you were dating Hadley and Frank,” Somers said, hoping nobody—especially Hazard—could hear the raw edge in his voice. “Could you explain how that worked?”
“Well, I mean.” Dusty’s explanation faltered, and his cheeks turned bright red. Those big shoulders rolled even further inwards.
“I’m not trying to pry,” Somers said, “but we need to know.”
“Yeah.” Dusty ran his sleeve over his forehead. The vee of chest exposed by his hoodie was flushed and dimpled with sweat. “Fuck. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. It’s just. It’s kind of—I don’t talk about this kind of stuff.”
“Were you sexually active with both of them?” Somers asked.
Dusty’s face could have started a fire. Several fires. Maybe a few acres of solid inferno. “No. I mean, with Frank, yes. And with Hadley once, but—Jesus, do I really have to—it didn’t go well, ok? That’s all I’m going to say about it.”
“So your relationship with Hadley wasn’t physical?”
“I mean, we kissed. She liked to cuddle with both of us. But she didn’t want it to go any farther than that, and I had Frank, so that was fine with me.”
“Was she jealous that you and Frank were having sex?”
“No.”
“Was Frank jealous that you and Hadley had sex?”
“What? God. God, no.” The look on his face betrayed something deeper, something unsettled that Somers’s question had unearthed. Dusty rambled on, not seeming to know what he was saying. “It was just so awful, so awkward, but he just wouldn’t let up about it, and she wouldn’t say no. If she would have just said no, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“He?”
Dusty seemed to snap out of his reverie.
“Who wouldn’t let up about it?” Somers pressed. “Frank?”
“He—he kept saying it would be hot. He wanted to see me—” Dusty’s face could have reduced a few continents to ash. “He wanted to see me with her. He wanted to be, you know, part of it.”
It took Somers a moment to process what he’d just heard. “And Hadley was ok with that?”
“She wouldn’t say no. She didn’t want to. I mean, I could tell that much. And I didn’t want to. But Frank just wouldn’t let up about it. It was just so fucking awful.”
“Can you tell me what happened? Not in that way,” Somers hurried to add when he saw Dusty’s horrified expression. “But between the three of you after. Did that change your relationship?”
“Yeah. Completely. Hadley didn’t want anything to do with us. She—she went wild.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just crazy.”
“She destroyed your car? She knocked out a window at your house? She trashed your locker at school?” Somers threw out possibilities, trying to conjure up his best guesses of what the highly unstable girl might have done to this oversized puppy. “Did she attack you? Ask someone else to hurt you? Did she go after Frank?”
“No, God. Nothing like that. Hadley wasn’t violent. She never would have hurt anyone.”
This boy, Somers guessed, hadn’t known the real Hadley. He hadn’t known the girl that had slashed the sofa cushions, that had burned down her Chicago home, that had hired a lunatic to assault her ex-boyfriend.
“What did she do? You say she went crazy; how?”
“She cut us off. Wouldn’t pick up the phone, wouldn’t talk to us at school, wouldn’t even look at us. I tried apologizing. I mean, it wasn’t even my fault, but I tried. Frank even tried apologizing. It was like—I don’t know, I’ve never seen that before, not ever. Nothing, though. She just wouldn’t have anything to do with us. And then this guy at school, Huang, he told us he’d seen her at a club. We didn’t believe him. I didn’t believe him, I mean. But Huang had pictures. There she was, dancing up on this old guy. I mean, not like you two.” Somers fought to hide a smile, and he had to fight extra hard when he saw the flash of irritation on Hazard’s face. “This guy was like, ancient.”
“Do you have a picture of him?”
Dusty shook his head, but what came out of his mouth was, “Yeah.” He dragged a phone out of the hoodie, pressed his thumb at the bottom of the screen, and when the screen unlocked, he began swiping through photos. “You just wanna see him?”
“What do you mean?” Somers said.
“Here he is.” Dusty passed over the phone. Blown up on the screen was a photograph of Hadley in a black dress that barely reached the middle of her thighs and left most of her back bare. She was pressed up against an older man—no, Somers thought, beyond old, ancient really was a good word for him—clearly in the middle of grinding against him.
“That made you mad?”
“Yeah. I was furious. I mean, I was embarrassed. But I was worried too. And she still wouldn’t talk to me. Or to Frank, and you know what? That really cut him up. He wouldn’t show it, but I could tell. Walked past us like we were invisible, that’s how she was. Then Frank cornered her, and he got, well, a little heated. He said some stuff he shouldn’t have said. And it got worse. She started calling us the fags.
The faggots, too, sometimes she’d say it that way. And somehow it—it kind of worked.”
“What worked?”
“I don’t know. People started seeing us that way, I guess. Guys I’ve known my whole life, guys who never cared that I played for the other team, they started freaking out that I was in the showers after practice. Nobody said anything to my face, but I heard them talking. And nobody did anything to me, not outright. But if I was walking down a crowded hall, you could bet somebody was going to find a way to crash into me.”
“You said nobody did anything to you. Why did you emphasize that they didn’t do it to you?”
“Frank always runs hot, you know? I’m not saying it’s his fault, but he didn’t make it any easier. He’d talk back. He’d give it right back to them. People really went after him. When I wasn’t around, when I couldn’t do anything, that’s when they’d go. And Frank—” Dusty paused. He voice stayed even, but he dashed a sleeve over his eyes. “Frank just wouldn’t tell me who was doing it.”
“Doing what?”
“Shitting on him. Literally. I mean, throwing bags of shit at the house, that’s how it started. That was a walk in the park, though, by the end. They’d throw it at him. Pelt him. He’d have these bruises all over and he wouldn’t tell me why. I never would have known except one day I got out of practice early, and I got over here. Frank didn’t know I was coming. He hadn’t showered. He was just sitting outside. Dog shit. Dog shit all over him. He wasn’t crying either. I’m the one who cries, the big, stupid jock, you know. But if I hadn’t gotten out of practice early, I wouldn’t have known. Even then, he wouldn’t tell me who’d done it. He just took a shower. Wouldn’t look me in the eyes. That’s what did it. That’s what set me off. I shouldn’t have done what I did next.”
“What’d you do?”
Dusty scrubbed at his hair, yanked up his hood, and generally tried to shrink into his broad shoulders, as though somehow he could make himself smaller, maybe even invisible.
“What’d you do?” Somers pressed.