Identity

by Shawna Seed

  Brian lived in a drab concrete-block fourplex then, an apartment so small the bedroom barely had room for a twin bed. It was messy, and the bathroom was downright gross. But he was true to his word – he didn’t even try to hug her.

  She worked nights then and Brian worked days, so they didn’t see each other much. One morning, though, he got up at 4 because he had a long drive to his job site. Sharlah was still awake, reading a book, unwinding from her shift.

  She talked to him while he packed his lunch: two sandwiches, a banana, a bag of chips and a two-pack of Hostess Cupcakes. They joked about how the cupcakes were the perfect food to stockpile in case the Russians started a nuclear war.

  Brian stopped on his way out of the kitchen, and for a minute Sharlah thought he was going to kiss her. But he’d just squeezed her arm and told her to go to sleep.

  When she got home from work that night, she discovered that Brian had saved her one of the cupcakes. It was perched on the kitchen counter, the plastic wrap tucked under it.

  She ate the cupcake standing up, then took a shower to wash away the smell of cigarettes and fried fish.

  After her shower, she went to the fridge and got out a beer. She stood in the kitchen for a long time, the unopened beer in her hand.

  Finally, she put the beer back and tiptoed down the hall to Brian’s room.

  She stood by the bed awhile without saying anything. Brian was sleeping with one arm thrown back, and to Sharlah he looked like a little boy. Sweet. Defenseless.

  Brian stirred and opened his eyes.

  “Sharlah?” He stretched and yawned. “What’s up?”

  “I wanted to tell you thanks for the cupcake.”

  “You’re welcome.” He smiled then, a lazy grin that started with his eyes and slowly took over his face. “Is that it?”

  “It’s cold on the couch.”

  Brian threw back the covers and scooted over to make room for her.

  She found that she could talk to Brian about anything, because he never judged her. After a few weeks, curled up together in the dark one night, she told him everything – about her folks, her brother in prison, all the ugly things in her life.

  Because she was the one to tell Brian about them, she got to decide, for once, what those things said about who she was.

  She was 17, and for the first time she could remember, Sharlah was happy.

  THREE

  Sharlah was up early Sunday morning, even though she had the day off.

  She’d had a hard time sleeping, turning everything over and over in her head. No matter how she looked at it, though, Brian and 130 pounds of pot just didn’t make any sense.

  She’d never seen Brian get high. He always said it made him stupid and he was stupid enough already. And he knew how she felt about breaking the law.

  Everybody made it sound like there was a lot of money involved. But if Brian had extra money and spent it, she didn’t know where.

  His truck was five years old and paid off. His parents gave it to him when he turned 16 and then made Brian take over the payments when he quit college.

  The house she and Brian rented was the nicest place Sharlah had ever lived, but that wasn’t saying much. It was basically a wooden shack – one bedroom, one bathroom, nothing special – set on a narrow, weedy lot in a so-so part of town.

  Their furniture was second-hand. The most expensive thing in the house was the stereo, Brian’s high school graduation present.

  The truth was, Brian wasn’t into making money and buying stuff. He wasn’t envious of other people’s new cars. He didn’t care that they couldn’t afford cable and didn’t get MTV like all of their friends. The thing he worked hardest at was learning to play “Jack and Diane” on his guitar.

  Sharlah always teased him that his favorite things were drinking beer, playing guitar and making love, “not necessarily in that order.” Brian would smile at her and say, “Definitely not in that order.”

  Brian had no ambition, that’s what his folks said, like that was the worst possible thing. Brian told her that’s what his college girlfriend had said, too, when she dumped him – that he wasn’t trying to “do anything” with his life.

  It didn’t help that he was constantly compared to Kevin, one of those super-confident people who always seemed to come out a winner. It was easy for Kevin to please his parents, because the stuff they wanted came naturally to him.

  Brian wasn’t good at the things his parents thought were important, and the things he was good at, well, Mitch and Renee thought those things didn’t matter. He could never make them happy.

  Sometimes when Brian was down, he said he felt like all his friends were leaving him behind – Kevin was settled down, and Cliff had quit his construction job and was trying to put together a deal to open a bar.

  Sharlah told Brian that everybody did things on a different schedule and he shouldn’t worry. But she also noticed that Kevin and Cliff didn’t seem to call much anymore.

  In fact, Sharlah hadn’t heard from Cliff and Missy since Brian’s arrest, which annoyed her. People at Sharlah’s work had known about it, and she imagined it was all over the bar where Missy worked, too. If something bad had happened to Missy or Cliff, Brian would have been checking in to see whether he could help. He was loyal like that.

  Instead, it looked like it was up to Sharlah to get in touch with them.

  Sharlah took her cereal bowl to the sink and washed it. She’d been looking forward all week to her one day off with Brian, and now she was at loose ends. It was too early to call Missy; she never got up before noon.

  The bathroom needed cleaning, but that wouldn’t take more than 20 minutes. She also needed to go by the diner and let her boss know about Brian’s hearing. She wanted to get some new books at the library – she was hoping Cinnamon Skin was back on the shelf, finally – but the library didn’t open until noon on Sundays.

  Brian laughed at the way she had the library schedule memorized, but she always told him it was his fault, because getting a library card had been his idea in the first place.

  He’d seen the way Sharlah pored over the used paperbacks at the thrift store and was disappointed when she couldn’t find something good. Now she went to the library at least once a week and always came home with an armful of books.

  At first, she’d stuck to authors she already knew – Sidney Sheldon, Jackie Collins, Judith Krantz. Eventually, though, she got to know one of the girls who worked at the library, and Jeanie started making suggestions.

  Now Sharlah read all kinds of books, although mysteries were her favorite. Lately she’d been reading John le Carré, because Jeanie recommended him. The only problem was that he used a lot of words she didn’t know, and she had to keep a list and look them up in the library’s big dictionary. She’d been a little embarrassed about the list at first, worried that Brian would make fun of it, but he never did.

  After Sharlah cleaned the bathroom, she decided that she might as well do the kitchen floor, since she had the mop out already. Everything else in her life might be falling apart, but at least the house could be clean.

  Then she took a pail of watered-down bleach out to the front porch and spent an hour on the patch of red Missy left when she threw up an evening’s worth of Tequila Sunrises.

  As she scrubbed, she worked up a head of steam about Missy. It was just like her to leave a big mess at somebody else’s house and not even think about who would clean it up. Sharlah decided that she wasn’t going to worry too much about what time Missy would wake up. She’d head over there to return Missy’s album when she felt like it, and if Missy was asleep, well, she’d just have to get up.

  Missy and Cliff had just moved to one of the new condo developments down on Seawall Boulevard, a sparkling white stucco complex with two pools and Gulf views. Missy said they got a deal on the rent because Cliff’s stepdad knew one of the developers.

  Every time she pulled into their parking lot, Sharlah had to tamp down her jealousy. Missy always
tried to pretend the place wasn’t that great, complaining that the closets were too small for all her clothes and that the long entry hall wasted space.

  Sharlah walked past Missy’s yellow Datsun parked crookedly in its assigned space – and part of the adjacent space – and climbed the stairs to the second floor, shaking her head. It was just like Missy to take two spaces.

  From the walkway, the development was a solid white wall with a series of identical blue doors. At No. 217, Sharlah stopped and raised her fist to knock.

  She noticed that the door was open about an inch; Missy was up early. Sharlah was a little disappointed. She’d been looking forward, in a mean way, to waking Missy up.

  She knocked once and pushed the door in another inch or two. “Missy?”

  Sharlah heard voices inside, and for a minute she thought Missy might be on the phone. But then she heard a laugh track and realized it was the TV.

  “Missy? Hey, it’s Sharlah.”

  For no reason that she could explain, Sharlah’s heart began to pound. She was tempted to put Missy’s album down inside the door and take off. Instead, she forced herself to push the door all the way open, into the long entry hallway.

  The condo looked like her house after the police had searched it, only Missy – being Missy – hadn’t bothered to clean up. The door off the hall to the bedroom was open, and Sharlah glanced in. The sheets were half pulled off, and the bedspread pooled onto the floor. Pieces of a broken lamp littered the carpet.

  “Missy?”

  The name stuck in Sharlah’s throat. She swallowed hard and tried again. “Missy?”

  Then she saw a bare foot with hot pink toenail polish jutting into the hallway from the kitchen.

  Sharlah crept forward and reached out, her hand shaking, to touch the sole.

  It was cold.

  Sharlah snatched her hand back.

  When she was 13, Sharlah cleaned house every other week for Mrs. Whiting, a neighbor lady. One Saturday, Mrs. Whiting hadn’t answered the door, and when Sharlah let herself in, she found the old woman in her recliner. She looked asleep, but when Sharlah touched her arm to wake her, it was cold, just like Missy’s foot was cold.

  Sharlah reached out again. She had to be sure. She closed her hand around Missy’s ankle and waited, hoping to feel a pulse, some sign of warmth or life.

  There was nothing.

  Sharlah had to knock on six doors before she found somebody home. The man in No. 229 said she could come in to wait, but she didn’t.

  The police found her outside on the concrete walkway, her back against the metal railing, knees pulled up. She faced the door of No. 217, the Men at Work album clutched to her chest.

  The officers walked into Missy’s apartment to see for themselves. After a couple seconds, they walked out. One stationed himself in the doorway and unclipped his radio.

  Sharlah caught a few of the words: White. Female. Deceased.

  The other cop took Sharlah’s arm and helped her up, which surprised her, because she had no memory of sitting down. He guided her down the stairs to a police car.

  “We’re going to wait here,” he said, opening the passenger door of the cruiser.

  For the second time in three days, Sharlah was sitting in a police car, spelling out her name, where she lived, how old she was. This cop, at least, was being nice and turned on the AC.

  He scribbled down everything she said. “I know this is upsetting,” he said. “The girl upstairs, who is that?”

  “Missy Burke,” Sharlah said. “That’s my friend Missy.”

  “You got a good look at her, then?” he said. “You’re sure?”

  “I didn’t see all of her,” Sharlah said. “I only saw her foot. I went to the edge of the hall and felt it, and it was cold. I assumed it was her. Is it somebody else?”

  Hope flickered briefly in her chest, but one look at the cop’s face extinguished it.

  A van marked CORONER pulled into the parking lot.

  Sharlah answered a few more questions – why she’d come by Missy’s place, when she’d last seen her, where Missy worked.

  Another car pulled up, this one unmarked, and the cop told her the detectives had arrived. He said she should wait in the car, and he got out to talk to them.

  More police were showing up by the minute – in uniform, not in uniform. People started wandering out of their condos and over from the pool to check out the commotion.

  Suddenly, Sharlah felt exhausted and shaky.

  Brian was going to take this really hard. He and Missy had been friends forever.

  A cop tapped on the passenger window and then opened the door.

  “The detectives want to speak with you.”

  Sharlah got out of the car, nearly dropping the Men at Work album. She’d forgotten she was still holding it. The cop gently took it away.

  He walked Sharlah to the foot of the stairs and introduced her to another cop. He wore baggy brown dress pants, a white short-sleeved shirt and an ugly green tie. He was old, with broken veins in his nose and cheeks. Sharlah didn’t catch his name.

  He asked a few of the questions she’d already answered – what time she’d arrived, why she’d come, what she’d seen. He didn’t write anything down, just watched her as she repeated everything she’d said earlier.

  “And you only saw the foot, correct? You never looked around the corner and saw the rest of the body?”

  “Her foot was cold,” Sharlah said, “so I went for help.” She’d thought that was the right thing to do, but now the cops had asked her about it twice, which made her wonder if she’d messed up somehow.

  The detective watched her for a moment. He seemed to be weighing something.

  “The victim suffered what we call blunt force trauma. Most of the damage is to the back of the head.” He put one hand behind his head, near his neck, demonstrating. “Would you be willing to look at her face and make the positive identification for us? We haven’t tracked down her folks yet, and we’d like to get this done.”

  Sharlah’s instant reaction was no, she didn’t want to look at Missy’s dead body. But then she thought again. “If I do it, then her mom or dad won’t have to, right?”

  “That’s right,” the detective said.

  Sharlah took a deep breath. “OK.”

  Missy’s body came out of the condo on a wheeled stretcher, zipped up in a black plastic bag. The detective led Sharlah over to the stretcher.

  “Ready?”

  Sharlah nodded.

  One of the attendants unzipped the bag a little, just enough to show Missy’s face and neck, down to the edge of her white T-shirt.

  She had a purple mark above her right eye and another on her cheek. Her hair on one side was matted with blood, turning it from blonde to rust. The strangest thing, Sharlah thought, was how her lips seemed to have no color at all.

  “That’s her,” Sharlah said. “That’s Missy.”

  The attendant zipped the bag. The detective told her that an officer would drive her downtown to the police station to answer more questions.

  The ride went by in a blur. At the station, the officer showed Sharlah to a small room with two chairs and a table and left her there.

  The AC was turned up high, and Sharlah was dressed for running errands on a hot, humid day in a car with a weak air conditioner. It didn’t take long for goose bumps to rise on her bare legs and arms.

  She hugged herself for warmth. She didn’t have her watch, and the room didn’t have a clock, but everything seemed to be taking a long time.

  She guessed that someone had to tell Missy’s mom. What a horrible job that would be.

  Sharlah had met Missy’s mom once. She seemed young and cool, more like an older sister than a mom. She and Missy shared clothes and fought like sisters, too. Sharlah had witnessed some of their screaming matches over the phone.

  Missy had terrible temper tantrums. She was like a little kid that way, but she could also be really sweet. It was hard to believe anyone
would kill her.

  When Missy was in a good mood, nobody was more fun. Mostly, Missy just needed to be the center of attention. Brian said it was because she hardly saw her dad after the divorce and her mom was running around dating instead of spending time at home.

  Sharlah hoped Missy’s mom had the money for a big funeral with lots of flowers. Missy would definitely want that.

  About the time Sharlah was thinking she should go find somebody, in case they’d forgotten she was there, the detective she’d met earlier came into the room.

  First, he asked Sharlah a bunch of questions that she swore she’d answered twice already. Then he asked how long she’d known Missy and how they’d met.

  Sharlah did her best to explain it, how Missy and Brian and Cliff had all known each other since grade school. Cliff moved to town first, to work for a friend of his stepdad’s. Brian moved down to room with Cliff after he left school. Then Missy came and Brian had to move out, which was why Brian lived by himself when Sharlah met him. She probably went into more detail than the cop wanted, because she’d always felt like Cliff and Missy screwed Brian over on the roommate thing.

  How did Cliff and Missy get along, the detective wanted to know.

  “They’ve been together since high school,” Sharlah said. “They get along fine.”

  “You sound like you’re not so sure about that.”

  “Why are you asking me this?”

  The detective put down his pen. “Who do you think might have done this to Missy?”

  Sharlah realized where the questions were going, and she was shocked. “You think Cliff did this?” She shook her head. “No way.”

  “I’m just exploring possibilities,” the detective said. “Did you ever witness any physical fights between them? Did Missy ever confide in you about anything like that?”

  “Cliff would never hit her,” Sharlah said. “If anything, it was the other way around.”

  “Tell me about that,” the detective said, raising an eyebrow. “Missy was violent?”

  “No! Missy was just…” Sharlah trailed off, trying to think how to explain. It seemed unfair to paint Missy in an unflattering light when she was dead.