Vicarious

by Paula Stokes

  “Jesse,” I say again.

  “They told me later it was the back passenger-side tire that triggered the IED. That’s probably why I lived. I just remember all this heat, my body flying through the air. All I could smell was smoke and blood, burning flesh. I saw my friends, some dead, some screaming. Then I passed out. I woke up in the hospital.” He stares straight ahead at the cabinet underneath the sink. “Everyone else died, Winter, even though it was my fault. And to this day, I still sometimes have to remind myself they’re gone. Sometimes I feel more dead than they do.”

  I turn and brush my mouth against his jawbone. The gesture surprises both of us. He stiffens a little; then he reaches out and pats my hand. I want to tell him what happened wasn’t his fault, but I know those words won’t help. It’s the same way he doesn’t tell me everything is going to be all right. We didn’t grow up in that world, the world where reassurances change things.

  “I’m sorry,” I say finally.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Me too. But enough about me. You need to get out of those wet clothes before you get sick.” He rises to his feet, starts the tap, and tests the water against the back of his hand. He turns back to face me. “Do you need help with … anything else?” It’s an innocent question, but I am embarrassed at the thought of him undressing me like a child.

  “I’ll manage,” I say. “But could you get rid of that stuff?” I point at the counter, at Rose’s collection of powders and potions.

  “Sure.” Scooping the bottles, compacts, and tiny vials into his arms, he unceremoniously dumps them into the cabinet under the sink where they’re at least out of sight if not out of mind. “I’ll be right outside.”

  I shuck off my zip-up hoodie and still-damp jeans and then sink into the hot water, embracing the heat as it wraps around me. Jesse has managed to get the temperature just right, almost hot enough to scald my skin, but not quite. I slouch down so only my face is above the surface.

  My sister is dead. I shouldn’t think about it, but even without her beauty products hoarding the counter, this room is full of Rose: the smudge of her trademark crimson lipstick where she blotted her mouth on our hand towel, the lingering hint of her jasmine perfume, her fingerprints on the mirror above the sink. It’s just like Jesse said. She is the one who lives here. I am the ghost.

  I close my eyes and try to concentrate on the way the warm water unlocks the knots in my muscles, but all I can think of is how Rose used to run herself a bath when I was blow drying my hair or brushing my teeth. She would toss dried lavender under the spigot and it would perfume the whole room.

  A random memory flits in and settles in my mind. I was maybe seven or eight. It was Christmas at the orphanage in Seoul and one of the staff members had bought little gifts for each of us. I received my very first snow globe. It was made of cheap plastic, with a cluster of pine trees and a deer inside of it. I had never seen a real deer before and it felt like the most magical thing ever, like a unicorn. Rose told me that one day we would find the place where snow fell on deer. We could live there if we wanted, like queens of the forest.

  That night, one of the older girls tried to steal the globe from next to my cot. Rose caught her and made her give it back. The next day, that girl fell down the stairs and broke her arm. She came back from the hospital a couple of days later and never bothered me again. I always wondered if Rose had pushed her.

  I don’t know what happened to that snow globe. It’s just one more thing that was lost or stolen from me in Los Angeles.

  The water begins to cool and I know I’ll have to get out soon, but I don’t want to. I want to stay here, submerged. Am I really supposed to keep on living like nothing has changed?

  Everything has changed.

  “You need anything?” Jesse calls through the closed bathroom door.

  “I’m fine. I’m getting out now.” I pull the bathtub stopper out of the drain with my toes. The water makes a long slurping sound as it starts to disappear. I step carefully out onto the bare tile, wrapping a thick, fluffy towel around my entire body.

  Of course I didn’t remember to bring dry clothes in with me. I peek out of the bathroom door and don’t see Jesse. I can hear the television in the living room. Quickly I scoot from the bathroom into my room and shut the door. I pull a pair of dark jeans and a gray long-sleeved T-shirt from my closet and dress quickly. The warm fabric feels comforting against my skin.

  My phone rings. It’s Gideon.

  “Winter,” he says. “Are you all right?” That seems to be the question of the day.

  “Fine.”

  “Is Jesse with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. My plane just landed. I was just checking in.”

  “Have you talked to Sebastian or Detective Ehlers? Is there any news?”

  “The phone record was a dead end. Sebastian said the call was made to me from a disposable phone that’s now inactive. But whoever killed her knew their way around Escape,” he says. “The back office is the only room that was searched.”

  I flinch at the cold and clinical way Gideon says “killed her.” Obviously he’s not holding out hope. It makes sense, though. Gideon has always been a man of science, and if his data says the ViSE is real, then he’d have no reason to think otherwise.

  “If it was the man on the phone, he’s probably someone who has vised with us,” Gideon continues. “Either he was looking for a particular recording or he was after revenge.”

  “Revenge for what?”

  “I don’t know. If Rose was recording people without their permission, maybe she saw something she wasn’t supposed to see, even if it didn’t make it onto a ViSE.”

  “But why would anyone record themselves committing murder?”

  “Clearly they know the cops won’t take ViSEs seriously, but we will.”

  “Is there any way to generate a list of all the customers who played Rose’s ViSEs lately? Maybe this guy went through the stock before attacking her.”

  “We don’t keep records of who buys what,” Gideon says. “For privacy reasons.”

  “Right,” I say. “Well, if you find something out, anything at all, you’ll tell me, won’t you?”

  “Of course I will. Sebastian has promised to keep me updated.” Gideon says good-bye and then disconnects the call.

  I slide my phone into my pocket, finger-comb my hair, and then go out into the living room where Jesse is splayed out on the sofa. He’s on the phone, but whoever is on the other end is doing all the talking. Football highlights are playing on TV. Two mugs of tea sit on the coffee table.

  “Gideon?” I mouth.

  Jesse nods. He gestures toward the mug nearest to me.

  I lift it to my lips and sip it cautiously. I taste hints of lemon, ginger, and honey in the soothing liquid. “You did well.”

  Jesse says, “I understand. I will. Good-bye,” and then hangs up the phone.

  I perch on the arm of the sofa. “He didn’t believe me when I said I was fine?”

  “He didn’t believe you when you said I was here. He figured you sent me home.”

  “So untrusting.” I take another drink of my tea.

  “Well, you did try to send me home,” Jesse points out. He reaches for the TV remote. As he skims through the channels, a news show catches his eye. He pauses long enough to let the anchor talk about a “series of dangerous crimes.”

  “Are you looking for my sister on the news?” My voice wavers slightly. I don’t know what’ll happen if they find her body, if I see it being pulled out of the river. I’m not sure if I want Jesse around at that point.

  “I was looking for us on the news. Remember?”

  Oh. Right. The Phantasm robbery feels like it happened a million years ago. It turns out the anchor was referring to a pair of carjackings in the Green District—the wealthiest part of town.

  The TV cuts to a commercial and Jesse punches the remote again. A familiar face flashes onto the screen. It’s the football player I saw in the
lobby last night—Andy Lynch. Two sportscasters are discussing how he just declared himself NFL draft-eligible for the following season. The picture they post of him is boyishly handsome, his sandy-blond hair flopping forward into his face.

  Jesse changes channels again and we watch a few minutes of another news show. There’s a clip about a shooting in the Bricks, a rough area of town, followed by clips about a broken water main and a school district where two kids were diagnosed with meningitis. Nothing about our break-in.

  “Do you think that’s weird?” I ask. “We didn’t make the news, but a broken water main did?”

  Jesse sets the remote on the coffee table. “Maybe Phantasm handled it privately with their security company. Or maybe they tracked what we downloaded and it’s no big deal, so they don’t really care.”

  He’s probably right. Classified corporate secrets would most likely be harder to access, but it still feels odd to me that no one reported such a high-profile crime.

  It makes me think about what Baz said downstairs, how not involving the police in Rose’s murder would mean we could take matters into our own hands, if we so desired. Maybe Phantasm has plans to come after us.

  Maybe they already did.

  CHAPTER 12

  “You really don’t think they’re involved somehow?” I ask.

  “Phantasm?” Jesse scratches his chin. “They’d have no reason to hurt Rose, would they?”

  “I guess not.” I rub my temples. “I can’t even think straight right now.”

  Jesse punches the mute button on the remote and turns to face me. “Sit down,” he says. “You should rest. Most people in your situation wouldn’t be able to think at all.”

  My situation. My sister, gone forever. None of it feels real. I sit down and stare off into space while Jesse flips aimlessly through the TV channels. I know he said that seeing her body wouldn’t help, but maybe he’s wrong.

  I head into my room and check the local news and police websites to see if anyone has mentioned finding a body in the river. Nothing. I check the most recent news stories in other cities along the Mississippi too, just in case. The fact that no one has reported anything here or in Festus or Ste. Genevieve gives me a surge of hope.

  And then a surge of shame. I’m doing it again, making up my own reality.

  Delusional.

  You have to let go, Winter.

  Easier said than done.

  I grab my tablet and try to distract myself by working on some physics homework, but the words and numbers blur together and I can’t remember any of the equations. I look up my reading assignment for literature class, but it’s even worse. I’m supposed to be starting Antigone, a Greek play about a girl who is punished for wanting to give her brother a proper burial. I can’t read that now. I might not be able to read that ever.

  I power down the tablet and lay my head on my desk. The walls of my room start whispering Rose, Rose, Rose. Maybe Gideon and Jesse are right. Maybe it’s better if I’m not alone.

  I return to the living room, but she’s still everywhere—her sparkly shoes just inside the door, one of her sweaters tossed across the back of the sofa. I head into the kitchen to make some more tea and notice her essential oils all lined up in a row inside of a cabinet. I go to shut the door but then pause. She used to tell me that sniffing the lavender would calm me down. I uncap the little bottle and inhale deeply.

  “Hey.” Jesse’s voice comes from right behind me.

  I whirl around and nearly crash into him. The glass bottle slips from my fingers and shatters on the floor. I swear under my breath and reach for the paper towels.

  He goes for the broom in the corner. “Let me get it so you don’t cut yourself.”

  Normally I would argue, but today I just sink into a chair. “I can’t breathe. I can’t stop thinking about her. I almost wish we’d gone to Krav Maga. At least that might have distracted me for a couple of hours.”

  “We can spar on the roof if you want,” Jesse says.

  I shake my head. I’m not sure it’s a good idea for me to be on the roof right now. “I’m going to go down to the gym,” I say.

  Jesse nods. “Sounds like a plan.”

  I duck back into my room and change into some workout clothes. When I head for the front door of the penthouse, Jesse makes like he’s going to follow me. I lift a hand to his chest. “I know you think you’re taking care of me. But I need to breathe, all right? There are plenty of people at the gym. Nothing bad is going to happen to me there.”

  “Okay. I’ll be here. Call me if you need me.” Jesse bends down to kiss me on the forehead.

  Surprisingly, I don’t flinch from the gesture. It feels comforting, almost familiar. Funny how someone’s lips can feel so different from one day to the next. “Go home, Jesse. You don’t need to sit here and wait for me. I’ll call you when I get back.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  * * *

  The gym on the second floor is the only thing in the building Gideon doesn’t own. He rents the space to one of those big corporate chains. Today it’s fairly busy, all of the New Year’s resolution people sweating it out on the exercise bikes and treadmills. I head into the side room where the dumbbells and free weights are kept. I’m the only girl in here, but the guys don’t seem fazed by my presence.

  Midway through my second set of hammer curls, someone taps me on the shoulder. I’m so surprised that I nearly drop a fifteen-pound dumbbell on my foot. Whirling around, I intend to give the guy a piece of my mind when I see it’s Mr. Football, Andy Lynch, the same guy I just saw on the news.

  “So are you just never going to speak to me again?” His voice is a mix of confusion and pain.

  “What?” I set the weight back on the rack and debate trying to repeat the exercise with the twenties.

  Andy doesn’t answer. He just cocks his head to the side and then looks sheepish. “Sorry. I thought you were someone else.”

  “You might mean my sister,” I say slowly.

  “Rose?”

  My jaw drops slightly. Rose doesn’t tell most of the guys she meets out at the clubs her real name. She gives them the name she uses when recording her ViSEs—Lily. “Yes. Do you know her well?”

  “Not too well. We went out a few times. I thought we were hitting it off,” Andy says. “But we had a disagreement and now she won’t talk to me.”

  My jaw drops even farther. Rose was dating the local football star and never bothered to mention it? Could this have anything to do with her freelancing? Is Andy one of the guys she was recording without permission? I look him up and down—he’s got nice hair and muscles, the kind of guy most women would find attractive. But he’s so wholesome that I’m not convinced ViSE sex with him would be a huge seller.

  And Gideon wouldn’t sell anything explicit without Andy’s permission anyway. Because ViSEs are actual sensory memories, people who appear in them can’t sue for infringement, but Gideon still errs on the side of caution. Famous people are capable of making a lot of noise, and he doesn’t need money bad enough to sacrifice his privacy.

  Maybe Rose planned to record Andy and convert the footage to images she could sell to a tabloid or something.

  “What?” Andy asks. “Why are you staring at me?”

  “No reason,” I say. “But aren’t you going into the NFL this year? Better get used to girls staring at you.”

  He chuckles. “I doubt I’ll ever get used to it. So did she say anything to you about me?”

  He thinks Rose is blowing him off. If only it were something like that. I blink back tears. Focus, Winter. Maybe he knows something helpful. “A little bit,” I lie. “What did you two fight about?”

  “Her … line of work.”

  She wouldn’t have told him she was a recorder. He probably means the switch parties. I can see how that might be problematic for a guy. “When’s the last time you talked to her?” I ask.

  “A few days ago? Why?”

  “I haven�
�t seen her today and she’s not answering her phone.” I try to make it sound like it’s nothing serious. I’m not going to tell a total stranger that she’s dead. For all I know he had something to do with it. I’m not ruling out anyone until I have more information. Also, saying it makes it true.

  I’m not ready for it to be true.

  Andy pulls his phone out and dials. After a few seconds he hangs up. “Straight to voice mail. Looks like we’re both getting blown off,” he says. “I knew it was too good to last.”

  “Look,” I say. “Don’t take it personally. Rose has issues. More than the average girl.”

  “More than you?” Andy touches one of the fresh bruises on the inside of my arm.

  “That’s not what you think. I do a lot of sparring and martial arts. I’m always covered in bruises.” I pull my arm away. “Where’s the last place you saw Rose?”

  “My house. She came to a party. We got into an argument. She left and quit answering my calls.”

  “I see.” I can’t think of anything else to ask that won’t seem strange, so I grab the weights again and start working on another set. My muscle fibers twitch and shake as my arms protest the workload.

  Andy grabs a twenty-pound weight and rests one knee on a nearby bench. He holds his arm at a right angle and kicks the weight back to work his triceps. But he doesn’t seem like he’s ready to quit talking. “Does she have a boyfriend?” he blurts out. “Was she just messing with me?” Despite the hulking muscles and the T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, he looks so sweet, more like a wolf puppy than an actual wolf.

  I decide to throw him a bone. “I never heard her say anything about a boyfriend.”