The Girl in the Headlines

by Hannah Jayne

  “We’ve got to go find Josh,” I said definitively.

  “Not in this car, we don’t.”

  “But—”

  “But you’ll be pulled over in fifteen seconds.”

  The fact that Nate didn’t say “we” struck me, and I immediately scolded myself for thinking a dude I just met and I were going to be some kind of crime-solving duo.

  Nate pulled out and turned around in the enormous blacktop parking lot. He was driving over the white lines of parking spaces, and I closed my eyes—but I could still see them.

  Cracked white lines.

  Not lines, a line. A single white line.

  Hash marks.

  “I remember something,” I said. “I think I remember something!”

  Nate pushed the gas, and we disappeared behind the motel, into a kind of wasteland area with a half-crumbling brick portico and a few dumpsters.

  “What?”

  “Road. Blacktop. We were definitely driving, and I was definitely in the passenger—no.” I closed my eyes again. “I think I was in the back seat.”

  “Okay, well, that’s good, I guess.”

  I pinched the area between my nose where a hammer started to pound. “That’s nothing. Of course I was in the car. What the hell does it matter if I was in the back seat or in the driver’s seat?”

  “But you’re remembering something. Obviously, there’s more in there, right?”

  I wanted to be hopeful, but the more I tried, the more I scrunched my eyes shut and gritted my teeth, the more my mind turned into a black hole of nothingness.

  “It’s no use,” I finally muttered, slumping. I reached over to grab the keys when I noticed a square of bright green in the rearview mirror. Whatever it was was tucked way in the back of the car, and I opened the hatch, shoving aside two PHS booster blankets and a crumpled red, white, and blue pom-pom. There was a handful of fun-sized candy bar wrappers that I knew had come from Josh’s Halloween stash and his purple, white, and green Buzz Lightyear hoodie. My tears made no sound as I pulled the soft fabric up to my face, breathed in the chocolate and little boy scent. The hoodie didn’t have that left-in-the-car smell that my entire outfit had; it smelled almost fresh.

  Had Josh been in the car with me last night?

  Seven

  I climbed in the back and frantically searched for another Josh clue, but there was nothing. Just the wrappers and the sweatshirt, and I had no idea how long either had been there.

  Nate came around when I slid out of the car, still holding the sweatshirt.

  “This is Josh’s,” I said. “I don’t know why it would be back here. He wore it all the time. If it was a hundred degrees, he was wearing shorts and this sweatshirt. He always had it on.” There were more candy wrappers in his pockets, and I couldn’t help but smile. My kid brother was a sugar fiend and would eat chocolate for breakfast if Mom let him.

  Nate and I did one more sweep of the car to see if there was anything else: footprints, crushed leaves, a cell phone, anything that could jog my memory or give any indication of what happened. He kept gesturing to things. “There, that potato chip bag. Do you remember eating those?”

  I shrugged at most things, numb but desperate. “Maybe?”

  He opened the glove box, started poking through the stack of Kleenex and crumpled receipts with the end of a pencil. “Here, take this.” Nate handed me my emergency inhaler, and I pocketed it.

  “There! Those!” I reached for a pair of sunglasses discarded under the dash, dark lenses and brown frames.

  He stopped me, looped them with his trusty pencil, and held them up for me to scrutinize. “Yours?”

  “No.”

  “Dad, mom?”

  “Definitely not. I’ve never seen them before. This is a clue, Nate!” I couldn’t believe the joy I felt. There was lightness, an elation, and I wanted to shout. A clue. Proof that I wasn’t alone. Proof that there was someone else, someone horrid and evil and I wasn’t just blocking out a memory. I smiled. I actually smiled.

  And then I realized they were a pair of discarded grocery-store sunglasses. You could even still see the little oval where the price tag was stuck to the lens, where they are always stuck on the lenses of these stupid, mass-produced sunglasses.

  “This is a useless clue. We already know someone was in the car with me.”

  Nate rattled around some more, refusing to be defeated, and I liked that, somehow, this stranger was unwilling to give up on me when everything pointed to me.

  Maybe I did it.

  Maybe I flew into some sort of weird rage and killed my parents and hid Joshy and bought a pair of ugly stupid sunglasses and a bag of off-brand potato chips and—

  My stomach clenched, deep and hard, and heat broke out like pinpricks all over my body.

  “He bought potato chips.”

  “What?” Nate paused, glanced up at me. “How do you know that?”

  “I don’t know. I think—I think I remember.”

  I clenched my eyes shut against the harsh light in the gas station. I could see the toes of my shoes, and I was shuffling, barely moving, making my way across a tile floor that had recently been mopped but was still dirty. It was hard to move, like I was encased in honey, swimming slowly. It was like I wasn’t in control of myself, of my limbs.

  “I went into the gas station, and I bought these and—”

  “A bag of chips and eight dollars’ worth of gas. Paid in cash.” Nate was holding a crumpled receipt by the very edge. “They might have surveillance cameras. They might be able to tell if you were with ‘Tim Esup’ or…if you were with Josh.”

  I thought of my brother, my little brother, being dragged by the hand by a sunglasses-wearing stranger. Or being dragged into a gas station by me, his sister, who may have done something horrible to our parents and then totally blacked out.

  I kicked open the car door and threw up on the blacktop.

  Eight

  Once I had wiped my mouth with the crumpled napkin Nate handed me and took a swig of water from a bottle in the lobby, I was able to think mostly straight.

  “I know this gas station,” I said. “It’s, like, ten minutes away. We have to go there, Nate. We have to go there right now.”

  Nate didn’t say anything, and I corrected myself. “I need to get there.”

  I thought for a half second about what I would do at the gas station and frowned. Would the clerk even remember me? If he did, would he call the police the second I stepped inside?

  Nate was flipping channel to channel. I couldn’t tell he if was trying to find the news or avoid it. “Is there something on? More information?”

  He shook his head. “It just looks like more of the same.”

  The burning desire to stare at the TV, to flip channels relentlessly for any scrap of information on my parents and Josh, was crashing into the desperate need to crawl into my bed, pull the covers up over my head, and never hear another word or think of this ever again. Once again, it was becoming crystal clear that I was in way, way over my head.

  “Maybe I should just go to the police,” I said finally.

  I expected Nate to protest, but he only shrugged, looking at me expectantly. I licked my lips and rushed on.

  “I could tell them what happened to me. And show them the receipt and the glasses. They’re evidence. You said so yourself.”

  “But they don’t prove anything.”

  “Nothing to us. But the police are experts. I mean, this is what they do. They can get latent prints or whatever off the receipt—”

  “That you and I both touched.”

  “Well, we’ll get fingerprinted so they can rule us out.”

  “And you think they will?”

  I nodded even though I knew Nate didn’t believe me, but I kept talking because I needed him to. I needed someone to be
lieve me, to believe in me, to confirm who I really was: a terrified eighteen-year-old who had never done anything wrong in her life, who had woken up in a nightmare.

  “I just want something to go right, Nate. Maybe the sunglasses—”

  Nate’s voice was soft. “You said yourself that they were plain, mass-produced glasses.”

  “But fingerprints.”

  “I think you should drop it.”

  “What if we just dropped them off at the police station anonymously? Like with a note saying that they belong to this case.”

  “How would we even go about that?”

  “I don’t know. But don’t the police have a drop box or something? Like at the library? But for”—I gestured toward the receipt—“evidence.”

  Nate cocked an eyebrow. “Please tell me you’re just asking and not that you’re really that naïve?”

  I sucked in a breath but didn’t say anything.

  “Let me see.” Nate moved over to the front desk and started clicking on his keyboard.

  “Are you looking up the drop box?”

  “I am not.”

  “I know you think it’s a stupid idea. But think of all the crimes that could be solved if people were able to drop off anonymous evidence!”

  Nate glared at me. “I’m sure not enough evidence drop boxes are the number one reason most crimes don’t get solved.”

  I snorted. “Most crimes get solved.”

  Nate didn’t meet my eyes. “Where did you hear that?”

  “What do you mean? Solving crimes is the police’s job. Like, it’s their number one job.”

  “And they’re not great at it,” Nate said, not taking his eyes off the screen.

  “What are you even talking about?”

  “Most cases are never solved.”

  “Not most—”

  “Close to most. Like, a lot. A lot, a lot.”

  I sat down hard on the lobby chair. It had never occurred to me that my father’s murder could go unsolved—that the person who attacked my mom and left her for dead might walk free. “They’re never solved?” I turned back to the TV as if magically, the case would already be solved, the killer would be in jail stripes splashed on the screen, and I would feel better. But Nate was right: it was more of the same. The same footage of our house, of my car—

  “My car.”

  “What?” Nate glanced up, clicked the volume.

  It wasn’t the same footage of our house. Now there was a giant tow truck blocking our driveway, my ancient blue Honda Civic perched on the flatbed, chains around the tires, and a bunch of guys in reflective vests standing around looking important.

  “Police are taking suspect Andrea McNulty’s car into evidence,” the newscaster was saying.

  “Now I’m a suspect?” I was numb, dumbly watching a police officer carrying my duffel bag with gloved hands as though it would ooze toxic fluid at any second. An officer behind him tossed my hiking boots into a paper bag and followed him.

  “Police aren’t saying exactly what it is they’re looking for or what it is that pushed Andrea McNulty from person of interest to suspect, though speculation is noting the packed duffel bag in the teenager’s car as well as an undisclosed sum of money and some indication that she was planning a trip.”

  “I wasn’t planning a—that’s my pillow.”

  That, too, was carried gingerly by an officer with gloved hands.

  “So you weren’t going somewhere?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I mean yes, but it was old stuff. It was just in there.”

  Nate’s voice had a weird drop to it. I couldn’t tell if he was accusing or just asking. “And the sum of money?”

  I went palms up. “I had my paycheck but—”

  “Police are saying that the timing belt on the car seems to be broken. Perhaps that’s why McNulty allegedly decided to take her parents’ car.”

  My eyes widened. “I decided? I didn’t decide anything! They can’t just say…and speculate like that!”

  “They said ‘allegedly.’”

  I buried my head in my hands. “This isn’t happening, Nate. This can’t be happening.” I snapped bolt upright. “This actually can’t be happening.”

  Nate opened his mouth to say something, but I stopped him. “I drove my car to school on my birthday. I know I did. I have a solid memory of that. And I know I drove it home.”

  “So?”

  “So if my timing belt was going bad, I would have known it.”

  He looked at me blankly.

  “Ticking sound coming from the engine? Engine won’t turn over? Oil leaking from the motor?”

  Nate still looked blank.

  “Don’t you know anything about cars? Don’t you listen to yours?”

  He shrugged. “I like to let the bus company take care of that. You really know a lot about cars.”

  “My car was old, but it was in perfect shape. My dad…” And here my stomach dropped, knowing I would never hear his voice again. “It was kind of me and my dad’s thing. Working on my car. He taught me everything. So I would have known if the timing belt was going.”

  “Do you think someone—do you think someone snapped your timing belt?”

  “Why would someone do that?”

  Nate’s eyes widened. “To make sure you had to take your parents’ car.”

  “To make sure I look guilty.”

  Suddenly, my knees were rubber. Had someone been watching our house? Had they been watching me? Why would someone do this? What did they think I had? I glanced around the lobby, crossing my arms in front of my chest and sinking into my sweatshirt as if there were eyes everywhere. How could I have not known someone was watching me? How could I just go on with my happy little life when someone had obviously slapped an expiration date on it? My stomach dropped to liquid.

  “This wasn’t some random pick,” I whispered.

  “Someone knew what they were doing—and to whom,” Nate said.

  “But why?”

  I tried to think of people who might do this, people who may have hated me or my family or wanted revenge or… A sob lodged in my chest. We didn’t have enemies. We weren’t mobsters or gangsters. I thought about Cal, my one boyfriend, the flash of anger in his eyes. But everything felt too elaborate, too staged to be him. I was an actor in my own stupid play, only I didn’t have a script. But someone else did.

  “I’ve got to figure out who did this.”

  Nate shot me a small smile.

  I jutted my chin toward the desolate parking lot, toward the bustling street beyond. “I’m going out there. I’m going to do this.” I started pacing the lobby, exploding with a bravado I didn’t really feel. But if I kept walking, kept moving, then I wouldn’t fall apart. I wouldn’t shatter, wouldn’t break. I wouldn’t feel the immense ache that sat at the pit of my stomach.

  Nine

  I went to the glass lobby doors, my tread slowing with each step. I was going to go outside, out into the world where someone murdered my father and tried to kill my mom and where I was a suspect. Where I would be exposed and on display and possibly caught by the police and thrown into jail. My heart hammered in my chest, and I prayed that Nate didn’t hear it. I didn’t need to give him another reason to think I was the naïve, spoiled girl that I was. I glanced around, thinking undercover cops were everywhere, blending into the ugly gold walls, talking on earpieces as they conspired to leap out and tackle me.

  This is a huge city, I told myself. The police can’t be everywhere.

  I leaned against the door and turned to Nate. “So I guess I’ll see you around,” I said.

  “Yeah. You’re paid up for the week. Ice maker’s down there, laundry over there.” He thumbed over his shoulder.

  I blinked. “Uh-huh.”

  I’d known this guy for all of
an hour, and suddenly watching him settle back onto his stool—and out of my life—was like losing a limb. I was going to be alone. Truly alone. I was going to have to dodge the cops and maybe outsmart a killer. This wasn’t some cop movie, some stupid heroine-saves-the-day movie. This was real, and it was my life.

  I took a few steps and glanced again, saw Nate pop off his stool, prop a BACK IN 30 MINUTES sign against the computer. He paused then, smiled, and held the door for me. “It’s almost lunchtime,” he said nonchalantly. “Mind if I tag along with you?”

  I hoped that Nate couldn’t see the relief flooding out of me. I tried to be nonchalant back. “I guess that’s cool.”

  I wanted to ask him why though. Why was this total stranger willing to help me, another stranger, who could be involved in a murder? Was there a reward?

  “Let me get you a hat or something. I’m just a little…” Nate started.

  I nodded, tears caught in my throat. He was just a little worried to be seen with a teen fugitive. “Wait!” I dragged him into the lobby and handed him one of the clipboards lying on the table, taking another for myself.

  “What are you doing?”

  I sucked in a breath. “Making us virtually invisible.”

  “Uh…”

  “Tuck in your shirt.” I grabbed his mop of hair—it was softer and fuller than I expected—and brushed it back, using my hair tie to secure a man bun on the top of his head.

  “No,” he said, starting to go for the bun. “I look like—”

  I pointed to the clipboard in his hand. “One of those hipster, sign-my-petition-to-save-the-narwhal douchebags? That’s the point.”

  Nate’s face broke into an appreciative grin. “I go out of my way to avoid those assholes.”

  “Everyone does. Just because I grew up on sugar-free lattes and Whole Foods doesn’t mean I don’t have a few tricks of my own.”

  “Good deal. One more thing though.” Nate went behind the counter and pulled out a cardboard box, rifling through sunglasses, hats, and… “These,” he said finally, holding up a pair of cat’s-eye glasses.

  “For you?”

  He came around and slid them on my nose. “For you.”