Nowhere Girl

by Susan Strecker

  “Oh my God, that’s hysterical.” I had to put my beer down to keep from spitting it out. “Did she get in trouble?”

  “Well, seeing as she learned it from us…” Chandler said.

  “Us?” Odion raised his eyebrows.

  “Okay,” Chandler conceded. “It might have been me. But anyway, we gave her a stern talking-to about how we don’t use bad words in public. Then we high-fived each other, because her context was perfect.”

  “You know,” Brady said, his voice serious, “there’s a correlation between when kids start using curse words and how likely they are to get in trouble with the law.”

  Odion played with the clasp on a silver bracelet on his wrist. “This is true?” he asked.

  I could see Brady trying hard not to smile. It amazed me how well I’d come to know him after only a few months. “Bullshit.” I balled up my napkin and threw it at him.

  He held up his hands in a you got me gesture. “I had you going there for a minute.”

  Odion let out a sigh of relief. “Mads is good girl,” he said.

  “All right, in Mads’s honor, fuck this,” David said. “Let’s go play us a criminal game of Cranium.”

  “I call Gabby until Duncan gets here,” I said, tugging on her sleeve.

  We gathered around the wooden farm table and squished ourselves on one side so we could see the TV. Brady grabbed the bottle of B&B from the kitchen, wedged his chair next to mine, and knocked over the brandy when he reached for a game piece. It didn’t break, but the top hadn’t been on, and it spilled across the table.

  “Fuck,” Chandler said.

  “You see?” Odion pointed to him. “Madelyn learned it from him.”

  Brady got up and grabbed a dish towel off the counter. “Jesus, I’m sorry.”

  “No problem,” Gabby said, reaching for the mop behind the door and passing it to Brady. “I do it all the time.”

  “I guess we need more B&B,” I said. I found my gray-and-black Puma sneakers under the table. “I’ll be back in fifteen.”

  Brady stopped mopping the floor. “I’m blocking you in,” he said. “Do you want me to drive?”

  Chandler took the mop from him. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll finish cleaning.”

  Odion tapped the floor. “Sweetheart, it’s mostly all gone now.”

  “Yeah,” David said. “It’s good enough.”

  Brady and I headed for the door, and before it shut behind us, I heard Chandler say, “Do they both need to go to the store?” He sounded exasperated.

  “Why not have a little company?” Odion asked back.

  David, I was pretty sure, was clueless.

  Brady opened the passenger door for me. His truck smelled like the flowers he’d brought and like him, leathery and earthy, and I felt dizzy and nervous as he went around to get in. “Wine Cask is closest,” he said.

  We didn’t speak on the way there. One Eskimo was on the radio. Why, why, why did you need him? Where was I? When I leaned over to turn it up, my arm brushed his, and I felt my face flush.

  In less than five minutes, we were in the parking lot of the Wine Cask, and in that amount of time, I became convinced that Brady didn’t give a shit about me, it was all in my mind, and that kiss was nothing more than a friend with a friend. He turned off the ignition but didn’t move. Across the street, a pizza place’s OPEN sign blinked in its window.

  “Last week…” he started. He’d parked in front of the liquor store, and a red neon BUDWEISER sign was flashing on his face. “The kiss.” He almost sighed it out.

  “I’m sorry about that.” I began to babble; it was something I sometimes did at readings when I didn’t want to answer a question. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I know what it seemed like, but I was giddy from our ride, and I apologize.”

  I went for the door handle, but Brady touched my arm. “Hey,” he said. “Not so fast.”

  I turned back, my heart doing flips in my chest, and leaned back in my seat. I could feel Brady watching me. I hated my profile; it showed the soft, fleshy part of my neck. He leaned toward me, and I thought he was going to kiss me, but instead, he put his finger under my chin and turned my face toward him. And then he drew away. When he did, I felt a wash of relief and horrible disappointment. But in that same second, he doubled back and kissed me. Gently at first, barely parting my lips. When I didn’t pull away, I felt his tongue on mine, tasted the oaky flavor of wine. I leaned into him and felt the seat belt dig into my sternum, before the tightness of the nylon gave way to other sensations, his fingertips on my face, his wet lips, the stubble against my chin. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want to. And Brady seemed hungry. It seemed he was searching for something, his breath coming quickly, as though he were ravenous, starved, and I waited for that same desire to take me, to whisk me away. Here was a boy I had loved terribly, obsessively in high school. This was the boy I’d imagined kissing me, holding me, touching me since the minute he walked into Kingswood, and yet as we sat locked together in front of the Wine Cask, in a sexy tête-à-tête for anyone to see, I felt absolutely nothing, completely flatlined. It was like kissing my brother, as gross as that analogy was. Finally, I pulled away. I saw him swallow and catch his breath.

  “Jesus,” he said, shaking his head like he was waking up. “I don’t know what that was.”

  “Brady,” I said. “Listen—”

  He cut me off. “Cady, I don’t want to fuck you up. Fuck up your life.” He was facing the front again, and the neon reddened his face, pulled back, and then reddened it again. He was beautiful, gorgeous as ever.

  Why had I felt nothing? What was wrong with me?

  “Cady.” Brady closed his eyes.

  I thought maybe if I tried it again, maybe if we weren’t in front of the Wine Cask, I would feel something.

  He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.” He opened his eyes. “I’m not going to do that again,” he said. “That was fucked.”

  Because I did not say anything, because nothing this dramatic had happened in my life with a boy, ever, I sat there, dumbly holding my hands in my lap.

  “We should get going,” I said as lightly as I could. “They’re going to send a search party.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Okay.” I watched him reach for the door handle.

  After we’d gotten the B&B, we rode back to Gabby’s house in silence. I counted the streetlights to keep my mind busy. Thirteen. Fourteen, including the one that only flickered occasionally. When we pulled into Gabby’s driveway, I noticed that, despite all my wishing, the clock had betrayed us. We’d been gone twenty-seven minutes for a trip to a liquor store a half mile away.

  “We’re not going to mention this,” Brady said. “Right?”

  For some reason, this was insulting, as though he were ashamed or thought I was a blabbermouth. All the windows were lit up. Inside, I knew they were wondering where the hell we were.

  “Under one condition,” I said. I felt Brady take a little energetic step back.

  “There’s a condition?” He cocked his head. “What?”

  In the half light, I saw those fine cheekbones we used to speculate about. Gabby said he was Native American. I said he was perfect.

  “Promise?” I asked.

  “All right,” he said.

  “I get to interview Larry again.”

  Brady’s jaw flexed. “No fucking way,” he finally said.

  An orange tabby cat was sitting on the railing on the second-floor porch of the old Victorian where Gabby lived. I had a feeling that I’d never finish the book if I didn’t get back in that room with Larry Cauchek, if I couldn’t get a sense for the way a serial killer really thought.

  “The whole police force knows my name. I am protected up and down. All I need is to get in there one or two more times and talk to a person who is shackled at the feet and arms.” Even though I’d felt flatlined during the kiss, I still wanted Brady Irons to have felt what I thought he was feeling during it, but now, with Gabby’s house br
ight in the darkness, I wasn’t so sure, and it made me feel a little pissed off. “You promised,” I said. “So deal?”

  “All right,” he said. “Deal.”

  They were all sitting around the table, still, with the Cranium game laid out before them, waiting. Duncan had arrived, but he wasn’t sitting next to Gabby; David was sitting next to her, and Duncan was the odd man out.

  Chandler watched me set down the B&B. “That took a while,” he said.

  I tried to scrunch my face in annoyance. “You wouldn’t believe the line in that store. Can anybody count change correctly?” I did my best indignant I-can’t-believe-people-can-be-so-stupid spiel and hoped that that was good enough.

  Chandler raised his eyebrows at us. “If you want to play, you’re going to have to grab chairs from the kitchen,” he said.

  “Fine,” I said. I got a chair and shimmied in next to Duncan.

  In truth, I didn’t think I could handle sitting with Brady again. Kissing him felt as though I’d been doing it all my life. But not in the sparks-and-fireworks way, in a different way I couldn’t quite explain, as though we were family, kids playing pretend, trying to find some semblance of reality in the other’s touch.

  Gabby and David won Cranium. Duncan and I lost. And Brady, Odion, and Chandler came in second. I kept glancing at Brady during the game, and about seventeen times, I caught his eye, but he’d turn away, and so would I.

  It was a quiet game. It was as if our awkwardness spread itself over the table, and I felt at once like I wanted to make everything right again and that I had no idea how. Finally, everyone left. Only Duncan remained, emptying wineglasses and scraping cake into the trash.

  “Shoo,” Gabby told him, taking a pack of cigarettes out of the drawer next to her stove.

  Duncan hunched his shoulders, deflated. He was wearing a nice linen shirt and pleated pants. “You want me to leave?” he asked sheepishly.

  Gabby winked at him. “I love you, but it’s girl time.” She got his jacket from the chair in the living room. It was a Paddington Bear coat with the same wooden buttons. “I’ll see you at the library,” she told him, patting him on the butt as he went out into the night.

  Gabby closed the door. “I much prefer fucking him in the library,” she said, grabbing the rest of the bottle of wine Brady had brought. “Screw the dishes,” she said. “Let’s talk.”

  “What do you think that was about?” she asked after I told her about the kiss, even though I’d told Brady I wouldn’t tell anyone.

  “I don’t know.” I slumped against the couch while Gabby drank wine from the bottle and smoked her cigarette. “Maybe he’s not the same person he was in high school. Maybe I’m not.”

  “You’ve been in love with him since we were toddlers.”

  “No,” I said. “I’ve been in love with him since second semester freshman year.”

  “Yeah.” She blew smoke out her nose. “Since we were infants. I think you’re stressed. The guy is fucking gorgeous.”

  I reached for the wine and drank it. “Chandler hates him,” I said.

  Gabby leaned back next to me and put her feet up. “I know.” There was no surprise in her tone.

  “I wish I hated him,” I told her.

  “That would be no fun,” she said, taking the wine back and pulling a long swig from it. “No fun at all.” She smiled at me in the candlelight. Her little nose ring glinted, and her mouth was the color of blackberries and looked exotic from the wine.

  “Why do you like him so much?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know.” She let out a stream of smoke. “I think it’s nice to have a guy look at you the way he does. Like he’s curious about you.”

  “Greg doesn’t do that,” I admitted. “I’m not sure he ever did.”

  She dropped the cigarette in a glass of wine someone had left behind. “Oh, honey,” she said. “Do me a favor.”

  “What?” I asked, getting up.

  She got up with me holding the wine and gave me a little hug, careful not to bonk me in the head with the bottle. “Try again with him.”

  When I got in my car and headed home, I realized I wasn’t sure whom Gabby meant. Brady or Greg.

  CHAPTER

  27

  Terhune Orchards at nine on a Saturday morning in the beginning of May was deserted. The two hundred acres were shaded by apple and peach trees. “We could walk and talk,” Patrick had said, “and no one would overhear us.” I got there seventeen minutes early so I could think about what I was going to say and get comfortable with the surroundings. Ever since Savannah, I needed extra time to get familiar with new places.

  The air smelled of cinnamon, and I felt instantly at ease. The family who ran the orchard had set up a farm stand north of the parking lot, and I thought I’d have enough time to pick up some cheese and cardamom before Patrick got there. But as soon as I started toward it, I heard him call my name.

  I wouldn’t have known it was Patrick if I wasn’t expecting him. He’d tied a black bandanna around his head, tucked a pack of cigarettes into the back pocket of his torn jeans, and was wearing a dirty wifebeater.

  “Day off?” I called, using my hand like a visor against the sun.

  He laughed, his white teeth incongruous with his attire. When he got close enough to touch me, he said, “Undercover. I’m supposed to be a dirtbag. Do I pass?”

  “With flying colors.” He smelled like strawberries. “Almost,” I told him.

  “Almost?”

  “Um, you smell a little fruity. Have you been wearing your wife’s perfume?”

  He laughed. “I’m not married.” There was something in his voice that sounded apologetic. “My son loves to give the dogs baths with his strawberry-scented shampoo.”

  “Do you still have greyhounds?”

  “Good memory.” He smiled. “Want to walk in the shade?”

  We headed toward the orchard. “I didn’t know you had a son,” I told him.

  They’d set up a table at the edge with baskets. A sign told us to pick our own, but in early May, there was really nothing to pick. Patrick grabbed a basket anyway and hooked the handles on his elbow.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Darlene got pregnant before we split up. She didn’t really want a baby, but luckily for me, mistakes happen.”

  I felt bad for this big teddy bear of a guy. “What’s his name?”

  “Aiden Patrick.”

  “That’s a nice strong name,” I told him. And Patrick grinned. The orchard smelled of fresh mud and bark, and I wanted to lie in the grass and take a nap in the sun.

  Apple trees were planted in neat rows lining the path, and I told Patrick about my dreams and the hypnotist. “I don’t want to believe it’s someone I know,” I told him. “It’s like ever since I met you and Jon at the station, I’ve been trying not to think everyone I know is a possible killer.”

  We’d reached the top of the hill. Terhune’s had put a little bench beneath one of the apple trees, and a split-rail fence separated us from the acres of blueberry bushes stretching out below.

  Patrick went over to it. “It’s like one of your books,” he said.

  I sat down beside him. “Yeah, but in the books, I get to decide who did it.”

  He didn’t answer. It was unusually warm, and I could feel sweat trickling between my breasts, and my breath was coming quickly. Patrick was sturdy, standing there like one of those big trees out on the land in back of our house that I wanted to hug because they were so solid.

  It took a while for him to speak again, and then finally he said, “People get obsessed with girls, Cady. And let’s face it, girls get obsessed with people—a teacher or someone at your parents’ restaurant. I don’t know. We interviewed everyone we thought Savannah knew and came up empty. But we’ve got to try again.”

  I watched him in that wifebeater, the way he had of moving one foot forward when he stood, as if stepping into life. I got up from the bench and stood at the fence by the blueberry bushes, haphazard a
nd happy. In a couple of months, they’d be bursting with fruit, and Chandler and I would come pick them and then make pies. Beyond the orchard, I could see our town laid out like a little stage setting, the square and the churches and, even though I couldn’t see them, all the people, moving about with a possible murderer in their midst. And what had felt sure and right a few moments ago, that steady solidity in Patrick’s voice about trying again, rose up like an overwhelming wave, and I felt suddenly like I was drowning. “Do you think he’s still here?”

  “That’s a good question. I want to find out if anyone who knew Savannah left town within a few months of her murder. If we’re right and the perpetrator cared about her, the guilt may have driven him away.” He got quiet and toed a rock with his boot. “Believe me, I know what it’s like to have guilt wrap itself so tightly around you that all you want to do is run.”

  “Shouldn’t the police have investigated things like that sixteen years ago?”

  “Yes, of course, but the original theory was that a stranger had done this, not someone who knew her. We thought she had been lured away and accosted, so we concentrated on that vein.”

  “This is so fucked up.” I turned my back to the fence. “One minute it’s a stranger, the next it’s someone who knew her and was obsessed with her, maybe a teacher or someone from the restaurant.” I felt like I might cry. “Maybe the killer left. Unless he couldn’t leave. It could be somebody one town over or a mailman or maybe someone from the high school.” I could feel something rise in me, something I had been trying to stamp down every minute of every day. “Or you know what? Maybe my parents are right. Maybe we might as well keep the case closed.” And because tears were blurring my vision, I left the fence and started walking down the hill, not sure really where I was going. My car sat in the parking lot, waiting for me.