by April Henry
“Mom—” Tori gets off her coffin, then stretches out her hand, trying desperately to reach her mother. But even at the end of the tether there’s still at least five feet between them. Tori’s face is contorted, mouth stretched wide, eyes squinted, but there are no tears.
After her parents finish speaking, the pastor invites the audience to share memories of Tori at one of the mics set up throughout the auditorium. While he speaks, Tori wipes her dry eyes, composing herself.
Aspen goes first. “I will miss talking to Tori so much. No one can take her place.” She starts to sob.
“Good Lord.” Tori shakes her head. “It’s not like we were even that close. That’s Aspen for you. She loves the drama.”
A laugh spurts out of my mouth. Under my scarf, I press my lips together. Try to contort my face into sadness.
But Aspen’s head whipped in my direction. Now she stares at me with narrowed eyes. I know she’s not fooled.
One by one, people go up to the mics. Teachers, neighbors, parents, and lots of kids from our school. People talk about how funny Tori was, how pretty, how smart. Charlie watches all of them. I can tell he’s making mental notes, maybe looking for discrepancies. But who’s going to say something bad about Tori in front of all these people?
What would people say about me if I died?
Adele was quiet and a little weird. She saw things and then she had to take drugs so she wouldn’t. The first time she kissed a guy, she was drunk and he was someone else’s boyfriend. Oh, and once she tried to fake kiss some guy but accidentally kissed him for real for a second. She lived with her grandfather. She didn’t have any close friends. She never caused any trouble.
Suddenly, the way Tori lived her life seems a lot more appealing. She may have acted recklessly, she may have hurt people’s feelings, but at least she lived.
When it’s Petra’s turn at the mic, her voice is shaking. “All I have to say is you took a beautiful soul from this earth. How can you live with yourself? Tori was only seventeen years old. She didn’t deserve this.”
Tori rolls her eyes. “But it would be okay if I were thirty-seven? Ninety-seven?”
I have to admit, I like this Tori much better. This version is honest, sarcastic, and funny, but now I can also see her vulnerability.
In the row ahead of me, Maddy P and Maddy D start to wail, their arms around each other.
“Everybody’s sorry,” Tori observes, “but it’s like they’re sorry for themselves. Not for me.”
In a strangled voice, Murphy says, “I will never forget how Tori’s face looked when she was laughing. Her laugh made you laugh.”
At his words, a bit of the tension goes out of the room. A few people smile and nod.
I’m so lost in my thoughts I don’t see Luke going up to a mic. The sound of his voice makes me raise my head.
“I’ve been trying to think about what to say about Tori. But the problem is, I can’t really believe she’s dead. Because if there’s one thing Tori was, it was alive.” His voice cracks. “She was one hundred percent alive.”
Tori puts her hands over her face. Speaking through her fingers, she says, “You have to tell Luke I’m still here.”
“How can I?” I whisper. “He won’t believe it.”
“We could talk through you.”
Even if Luke believed me, how long would such one-way conversations be satisfying?
After a few more people speak, the pastor begins to wrap things up. “Tori’s death reminds us that you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. So don’t leave words unsaid. Tell your friends and family you love them.” He looks out over the crowd. “Now go in peace.”
Next to me, the baby starts to fuss as people get to their feet and shuffle out to the aisle. Deciding to wait a few minutes, I bow my head like I’m praying. I ignore the people who push past me, stepping on my feet.
“Tori, I have to go soon,” I whisper.
“But … but I’ll see you again, right? You’ll come visit me at the cemetery.”
I realize it’s my choice. This could be the last time I see Tori. The idea has a lot of appeal. What do I really owe her? Even if I do find her killer, it won’t fix anything. It won’t bring her back to life.
And if being close to one dead person makes me feel this bad, what will hundreds do?
“Adele?” Tori says.
“Adele?” a man’s voice says.
It’s Detective Geiger. He’s standing in the aisle, looking at me with his tired blue eyes.
“There are a few things I need to clear up from our interview the other day. Would it be possible to talk to you?”
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1, 3:39 P.M.
YOU HAVE TO HELP ME
“Would you mind if we went down to the station?” Detective Geiger asks. “That’s where my notes are.”
My mind is racing but not going anyplace. It’s like pushing the accelerator on Grandpa’s truck while it’s still in Park.
“What does he want?” Tori demands from the stage.
“You’re not in custody,” Geiger says when the silence stretches out. “We just need your help to clear up a few inconsistencies.”
“Sure, I guess that’s okay.” I don’t want to go with him, but I can’t figure out a good way to say no.
We head to the exit, the detective’s hand under my elbow. Heads turn. Eyes narrow. Charlie stares at us, his mouth half open.
“Adele, where are you going? Adele!” Tori’s shout is like a punch to the side of my head. But there’s no way I can answer her without Geiger noticing, so I don’t.
It’s a relief to step out in the rain-scented air. My headache immediately starts to recede.
“My car’s right over there.” Geiger points his chin at a dark blue four-door sedan parked not far from a shiny black hearse.
In the car, he turns on a news station. On the drive there, we listen to stories about a bombing in Turkey and a snowstorm in Colorado. He parks in an underground lot filled mostly with marked police cars. In the elevator, he waves a card key over a sensor before pushing the button for the eighth floor. I can’t think of any small talk, and it seems safer to stay quiet anyway.
After the elevator door opens, I follow the detective as he walks past a warren of cubicles. There are more men than women, more plain clothes than uniforms. They take no notice of us. They’re busy talking on phones or to each other, looking at screens, typing on keyboards. The only thing that keeps it from looking like any other busy office is a photo lying on someone’s desk. Eight by ten, it’s a color close-up of a knife wound.
Geiger grabs a gray file, a tape recorder, and a slim black folder off one of the desks we pass, then opens a door and waves me inside. It’s as basic as a room can be. Three chairs that don’t match, a small table, a gray speckled linoleum floor, and nothing on the walls.
“I’m going to record this just like I did when we spoke on Tuesday. Okay?”
“Sure.” I take one of the chairs as he sets the recorder on the table between us.
“Today is December first, and this is Detective Geiger talking with Adele Meeker.” He looks at me. “Adele, this is just a casual conversation. I want to clarify a few things, and we’ll be out of here as quickly as possible. We appreciate you being willing to help us out.”
“Okay.” I remind myself to say the bare minimum.
He pulls out his notebook. “Don’t worry if you feel you have already answered these questions. What time did you arrive at Tori’s house for the party?”
“Around eight.”
Geiger takes me over the evening minute by minute, step by step. Had I used any drugs? How much beer had I had to drink? Who had I seen there? What had they been doing? Who had they been with? Who had I talked to? What about?
He’s scribbling in his notebook when something starts to rise from the linoleum floor behind him.
I suck in my breath.
His head jerks up. He looks at me, then behind him, then at me again. “Is ev
erything okay, Adele?”
So whatever the dark, round thing is, he can’t see it. A needle of pain slips behind my right eye.
“Um, it’s fine.” I try to pick up the thread of what I was saying. “So Murphy and Justin were play fighting, and…”
The thing behind him keeps rising, without distorting the linoleum, like the floor is a still pool of water. Then it tilts, and I realize it’s a woman’s head.
What’s happening? All I know is I’d better act as if nothing is wrong. “And Justin and Murphy were talking about the best way to hit someone. You know, in a fight.” I resolutely focus on Geiger, not on the dark-haired young woman. Her head is all the way through the floor now, as well as her neck and the tops of her bare shoulders.
She’s staring straight at me.
“Oh my God.” Her voice is rusty. “You can see me.”
No. Not another dead person. Tori is bad enough. This woman’s face is gaunt, her teeth yellow. Despite that, I don’t think she’s much older than me. Or at least, that’s how old she was when she died. Now she’s stuck being nineteen or so forever, just like Tori’s going to be wearing that halter dress for eternity.
I tear my gaze away and paste it back on Geiger. Who is staring straight at me.
“You have to help me,” the woman says from behind him.
That’s what everyone wants from me these days. I rub at the now familiar pain in my temple.
“Adele,” Geiger says, “you seem really wound up, like there’s something you’re not telling me.”
I’m being pulled in two directions, between the living and the dead. And neither of them is happy with me.
“I’m telling you everything,” I lie. “It’s just that I have a headache.”
“Please—” The woman’s voice breaks. “After all these years, you have to help me. Please. My name’s Lisa. Lisa McMasters. You have to tell Mark my name.”
Mark must be Detective Geiger. But that doesn’t matter. Because I’m not going to do what she asks. I’m in enough trouble as it is.
Geiger resumes his questioning. “And you said this was just before the game of hide-and-seek got started? What time was that?”
“Maybe around nine?”
Lisa’s voice is like a drill in my head. “Why won’t you listen to me? I know you can hear me. I know you can see me.”
I cup my hand around my eye, so it partly blocks her from my peripheral vision.
Geiger sighs. “You won’t even meet my eyes, Adele. What is it you’re not telling me?”
What am I going to say? That looking directly at him means looking at the dead woman behind him?
“You have to tell him who I am and who killed me,” Lisa insists.
Like someone making a snarky comment, I cough words into my fist. “I can’t.” The fake cough is followed by a real cough.
Geiger gets to his feet. “Do you need something to drink, Adele? I can get you a soda or water from the vending machine.”
Do I want him to leave me alone with nothing but a dead girl for company? But maybe I’ll be able to explain to her that I can’t afford to be seen talking to someone other people can’t see.
“Actually, water would be great. Thank you.” I’ve seen enough cop shows to know that even after he leaves, someone is probably still watching me on a camera. Listening to me. Waiting for me to mutter a confession to myself. Or to fall asleep with my head on the table, proof that I’m an uncaring killer.
I pull my scarf over my mouth, prop one elbow on the table, press my hands together, and tilt my head over them. I can always claim to have been praying. Praying with my eyes open, focused on a section of the floor that to anyone else will appear empty.
“Don’t pretend like you can’t see me. I know you can,” Lisa says. “But why?”
My answer is the ghost of a whisper. “All I know is it runs in my family. Why are you here?” I think of Rebecca at the museum. “Are you buried under the building or something?”
“No. My skull’s in a box in the evidence room. It’s the next floor down.”
“That explains why I can only see your head.”
“What? No, I’m all me. I’m all here.” Lisa grits her teeth and then slowly, a pale, slender hand pushes its way up through the linoleum. The fingers wave at me before the hand slides back out of sight.
How can I see all of Lisa if only her skull is in the evidence room? Then I remember that those misty ropes always run from the back of the head. And it’s the skull that holds the brain, which in turn holds our thoughts, our memories, the things that make us us. It must be enough.
Lisa speaks into my silence. “I’ve been here for years. These days, I mostly just sleep. But then I woke up because I felt you somehow. I had to climb up the shelves to get here. This is as far as I can go.”
“Are there other dead people there?”
“A couple of times there have been. But then their bones get identified and taken away. Mostly I’m alone.” Her voice sounds so weary. “That’s why you have to tell him my name. So I can go too.”
“How many years have you been there?”
She sighs. “I’ve lost track. I was murdered in 1977 and dumped in the woods. And then there were”—she makes a face—“animals. A couple of years later, some hunters found my skull and called the police. But they didn’t find the rest of me, and they couldn’t tell who I was. So they put my skull in a box and stuck it in the evidence room. I’ve been there ever since. I just want my family to know where I am so they can take me home to North Carolina. And at least if I was in a cemetery I wouldn’t be alone. My parents must be gone now too. I’m hoping I’ll be buried next to them.”
“You were murdered?”
“I worked at a truck stop. One of my customers killed me.”
“You were a waitress?”
Lisa looks away. “Not exactly.”
I get it. “Oh.”
“The guy who did it was one of my regulars. His name was Johnny. Johnny O’Reilly. Balding guy with these pale blue eyes the color of ice.”
“Look, Lisa,” I whisper, “there’s no way I could tell the police and have them believe me. They’ll just think I’m—” The door opens with a creak. I press my lips together.
Geiger’s got two bottles of water, and he sets both of them in front of me.
He sits, and for a long time he’s quiet. I’m careful not to look at either him or Lisa. Instead I study the blue plastic water bottle as if I’ve never seen one before.
Finally he sighs. “Adele, you know you’re not under arrest, not even in trouble. We’re just talking here, and you can leave anytime you want. But at the same time, this thing is going forward, and we need your help.” He slips a photo out of the gray file and puts it next to the water. “We have to talk about this, Adele. And this time, I need you to tell me the truth.”
The photo’s black-and-white and blurry. It shows a person wearing a hoodie, talking on a pay phone mounted on a brick wall.
It could be anyone.
But it’s me.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1, 3:54 P.M.
WHICH THINGS ARE REAL
Judging by the angle, there must be a camera mounted above the entrance to the 7-Eleven. Should I claim the person in the photo isn’t me? But if they fingerprinted the phone, all they would need to do is take my prints. Why didn’t I wipe it clean before I left?
Geiger stabs the photo with a thick finger. “Adele, we know this is you. We know you’re the one who called 9-1-1 to report Tori’s body. So how did you know it was buried in Gabriel Park?”
“Let me guess,” Lisa interjects. “She told you.”
I keep my focus on the detective. Like picking my way across a barely iced-over pond, I try to mostly tell the truth without falling through.
“I was cutting through the park, and I noticed…” I almost say her dress, but at the last second I realize the real dress was buried. “Under one of the trees, the dirt was a different color and mounded up. From the s
hape, I wondered if it was a grave. But I didn’t really believe it, not until I brushed the dirt off Tori’s face.”
“I’ll bet she didn’t believe it either,” Lisa says. “When I was out in the woods, it took me forever to accept that I was dead.” It takes effort to pretend I don’t see Lisa, don’t hear her. I worry the headache is making me forget to hide any reaction to her.
Geiger is silent for a long moment. Finally he says, “Not many girls would be brave enough to get down on their knees and actually start to dig up a grave.”
“Maybe it was more just being stupid.” I close my eyes for a second, remembering the horror both Tori and I had felt when we saw her dead face. “And then when I realized it was her, I went across the street and called 9-1-1.”
“Why didn’t you call from your cell phone?”
My thoughts skitter. Isn’t that what an innocent person would have done? “It was super low on battery. I was afraid it would cut out in the middle.”
Geiger’s blue eyes bore into me. “And why didn’t you give your name to the dispatcher?”
“I wanted to help. But I didn’t want to get too involved.” I realize this doesn’t quite jibe with my earlier explanation about a low battery.
“But you are involved now, Adele. You’re in this thing up to your neck. For one thing, you disturbed a crime scene.”
“It’s not looking good for you,” Lisa chimes in.
I ignore her, as well as the pain in my head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what it was when I started.”
“We have casts of the shoe prints we found at the scene, but it seems likely that you walked all over the killer’s prints, replacing them with your own. Do you still have the shoes you wore that day?”
I hadn’t even thought of that. What if I screwed up the best chance the cops have of catching the killer? “Yeah, they’re at home.”
“What brand are they?”
“Vans. Black slip-ons.”
“We’ll need to check them. Just to cover all the bases, I’d like to take prints of the bottom of the shoes you’re wearing now.” He opens up the slim black folder and removes some loose forms.