by Amy Gentry
“Okay, mija, but you should probably call them back before that. I said I would give you the message. I’m sure you haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I haven’t.” I reminded myself there was no reason I would be a suspect in Fash’s killing—Fash had never hurt me directly, and I hadn’t been near him on the night of his death. It was a mark of my mounting paranoia that I felt that even my mom, who knew nothing about any of it, could harbor suspicions about me.
Suddenly I felt desperate to convince her that I was doing something legitimate. “I might be moving back out here to L.A., Mom. I had an audition yesterday. I have an agent now and everything.” There was no need to mention the offer from Cynthia Omari, since it might fall through. Anyway, my mom had only the haziest idea of what a podcast was.
“That’s so wonderful, mija. Your friend was telling me all about that contest you won in Austin. Why didn’t you say anything when you were here?”
“Well, it was only second place,” I corrected her, thanking Kim silently for having blurred the details to make me sound better. “Would you mind putting her on for me? I have something to ask her.”
“Oh, mija, she’s just leaving! Let me catch her. I’ll have to put the phone down for a minute.” I heard the scratchy sound of a telephone receiver being set down on a soft surface.
Why would Kim be leaving after just one night? I wondered if something had happened to scare her and cursed myself for not getting in touch earlier. It was a tall order to ask her to visit Clements now, but she was the only person I could trust for the job. I was starting to think she was the only person I trusted, period, at least when it came to this Amanda business. I remembered my impulse to tell her about Aaron Neely, back before the Funniest Person semifinals, and wondered what had kept me from doing so. If only I had told her, maybe things would be different now. Kim would have believed me, and she wouldn’t have laughed; she knew just how dark men like Neely and Fash could make our lives. At the same time, I knew instinctively that she would have had no patience for the likes of Amanda, with her bruised-looking eyes and her delusions of grandeur. Kim wouldn’t have listened to Amanda for even a minute, and I hoped that was what she was about to tell me. The telephone made a few more rustling sounds, and I crossed my fingers.
“Hi, Dana. New phone number?”
My heart stopped. My blood thrummed in my ears. And yet even so, it was a split second before my brain caught up to what my body already knew.
In the meantime, Amanda went on. “Thanks so much for giving me directions to your mom’s house. She’s so nice! We were up late last night, chatting over a cup of tea. Talking about you, mostly.”
I caught my breath at last, tears prickling in my eyes. “Get out of my mom’s house, Amanda. Right now.”
She laughed. “All good things, I promise. No embarrassing childhood photos were shared.”
“Get out of that house before I call the police.”
“Oh, you really should,” she said, affecting a serious tone of voice. “Your mom told you they were looking for you, right? The sooner you call back, the less chance there’ll be any misunderstanding. What do you think they were calling about, Dana?”
I was speechless.
“Anyway, she was telling me what a loyal friend you are. Like with your friend Jason from high school. That’s him in your prom picture, isn’t it? And I was telling her that I know I can always rely on you when I need something. Especially when you owe me one.”
“I don’t owe you anything.”
“Oh, yes, you do,” she said teasingly. “And I think it should be at least as good as what I did for you, don’t you?”
So that was it. She didn’t want me just to hurt Jason; she wanted me to kill him. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. A death for a death. She was homicidal. Thinking of her standing just a few feet away from my mother sent tears streaming down my cheeks. “Please, please, leave my mom alone. Don’t hurt her.”
“That would only ever happen to one person,” she said brightly. “And he would deserve it, don’t you think?”
“I’m not going to hurt Jason. I’m not going to hurt anyone.” And yet I had before. Someone had once begged me, on his knees: Please don’t hurt me.
“Yes, you will,” she said, as if reading my thoughts. “But just to make sure everything goes smoothly, I’m heading out to see you.”
A chill went through me, followed by an electric surge of rage. “If you’re planning on cleaning out your creepy little rat hole, don’t bother,” I said. “We took pictures of what we found there. All the proof we need that you’re a psychopath.”
She was totally unruffled by the news. “Thanks for checking on my stuff. Now maybe you understand why you’re the best person for the job. Though, honestly, I think you already knew.”
“Shut up, shut up, you lying bitch!”
“Dana, if there’s one thing you know about me, it’s that I’m honest,” she chided. “Brutally honest.”
“I’ll kill you,” I whispered. “If you come near me or Jason, I will kill you.”
She laughed again. “Is that a promise? I have a promise for you too: I will never, ever lie to you, Dana. Remember that. What’s that, Mrs. Diaz?” I squeezed my eyes shut to block out the mental image of Amanda faking pleasantries with my mom. When that didn’t work, I imagined bashing in Amanda’s skull, but her face morphed into a man’s face and began begging for mercy. Please don’t hurt me.
“Listen, I have to get on the road, you know the drive to L.A. is a killer . . . Oh, and I’m bringing you that wig you left in your apartment, in case you need help getting into character. You’re welcome. Okay, your mom wants to talk to you again, I’m handing her the phone . . .” There was another shuffle of the receiver, and I heard, distantly, the words “Bye, Mrs. Diaz!”
“Mama? Mama? Is she gone?” I fought to keep my voice from betraying my tears.
“Yes, darling, she just walked out the door. Did you need her again?”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, mija! I wish you wouldn’t worry so much.”
I held the phone away from my face for a second and sobbed as quietly as I could. Now that the danger had passed, there was no need to scare her. The game was up; Amanda knew I had a new phone, which meant she knew Jason and I were onto her. And she was on her way.
“Mija? You still there?”
I pulled myself together. “Mom. I need you to tell me everything you and Amanda talked about yesterday. It’s important.”
“Oh, sweetie, I don’t know. She’s very easy to talk to. She told me more about what’s going on with you than you ever do.”
I swallowed hard, at the thought of her in my bedroom, looking at my high-school yearbooks. “She said you talked about Jason. What did she say?”
“You didn’t tell me they knew each other. His brother too.”
“She talked about Mattie?”
“She’s his pen pal. What a nice girl, cheering up an inmate. I guess everybody needs a friend.”
I almost laughed but choked it down. “I love you, Mama. Please take care.”
“You too, mija.”
I hung up. There was no more time to waste. It was time to tell Jason.
The question was, what?
22
Jason’s face darkened at the mention of Mattie. “My brother? What does he have to do with any of this?”
We were sitting in the booth at the R & R. I didn’t want to talk in the house, or in my car, or near either of our phones. Anywhere might be bugged. I’d insisted we sit on the same side of the booth so that we could talk in lowered voices—though now I felt worried there could be someone behind us, listening in behind the high partition. It was as likely as anything else that had happened.
I took a deep breath. “Amanda went to Amarillo to visit Mattie in prison. I think she’s been writing to him for a while.”
“So you were right about the password. She must have been writing him befo
re we broke up.” Jason pushed his coffee mug away and put his head in his hands. “You know Mattie’s always hated me. Who knows what lies he told her? No wonder she stopped trusting me.”
“Why does Mattie hate you so much?” I said, trying not to betray the fact that I’d already read one explanation.
“Oh, I don’t know. Sibling rivalry stuff, I guess. I got good grades and Mattie got Fs, so Dad always rode him harder than me. He probably thinks it’s all my fault he’s in prison. He likes to blame other people for his problems.” He looked up. “And he used to creep on my girlfriends too. Any girl liked me better than him, it drove him crazy. Even you.”
It was so close to what was in the letter, it was a little eerie. Hearing Mattie’s words corroborated gave me a strange feeling, just like hearing Amanda’s Runnr story had. The same story, or at least a story with more or less the same details, could sound so different, depending on who you trusted. And I trusted Jason. But then again, I had once trusted Amanda. Only what I knew about Mattie kept me anchored to the version of reality that came out of Jason’s mouth. I could never trust anyone who would do what Mattie had done to me.
But while I was considering this, Jason’s face had started flushing, and now it was a dark, angry red. He stared into his coffee.
“What is it?”
“It’s just—I knew it. I knew there was someone else. I thought maybe she was seeing Neely behind my back.” He chuckled grimly. “How could I be so blind? My own goddamn brother.”
I felt us veering into dangerous territory. “What could he do? From prison, I mean.”
“Besides seduce my girlfriend by snail mail?” He laughed bitterly. “Tell a bunch of lies about me, give her a reason to hate me even more. He probably helped her find a bunch of my exes to tell her even more lies.”
“Could he—would he want to have you killed?”
Jason paused, sobered by the question. “I always knew he wanted my life,” he said. “I didn’t think he would ever try to take it from me. But maybe I was always just a little bit naive about how far he would go.”
Mattie’s weight. The smell of tequila in the dark.
“Jason, Amanda is headed here, right now. She’s on the road. She’s about”—I reached for my phone to check the time, but I’d left it in the car—“about twelve hours away is my best guess.” I took a deep breath. “I think she’s out to kill you.”
He looked at me for a long moment, frowning, as if he hadn’t heard. “How do you know all this shit about my brother? Have you been talking to Mattie too?”
“No!” I thought of the letter in my purse and wondered what he would do if he found it. “Did you hear me, Jason? Whether or not Mattie’s behind it, Amanda is coming here to kill you.”
“I’m not afraid of that skinny bitch,” he snarled. “She wouldn’t have the guts.”
“Jason, she’s violent. She may even have killed before. Just trust me.”
“Then we’ll call the police.”
“We can’t,” I said miserably.
“To hell with that,” he said. “It’s past time for a restraining order. We have enough evidence for that, if nothing else.”
“Let’s go.” I couldn’t tell him here, not in the restaurant.
Jason waved the waitress over, and she pulled the check out of her apron pocket and handed it to him with a knowing smile. “I had it on me just in case,” she said. While Jason dug through his wallet for a credit card, she said, “How long have you two been together?”
“Not long,” I said just as Jason looked up from his wallet and said, “Four days.”
“I knew it,” the waitress said. “Same side of the booth. That’s either less than a week, or it’s twenty years. And you two don’t look old enough to have known each other that long.”
“You’d be surprised,” Jason said with a smile.
I pulled two twenties out of my pocket and threw them down. “Keep the change,” I said, and her eyes widened gratefully. She’d go to her grave thinking her tableside patter had done the trick, and in a way it had. I would have tipped a lot more than 40 percent to get the hell away from that diner and its memories.
Back at the house, I didn’t tell him everything. I left out Aaron Neely and Doug Branchik and Carl M. I let him think it had all started with Fash groping me, with what he’d done to Kim and other women in the scene. I let him think the pact was completely hypothetical—just two women talking in a bar, the way women do when men aren’t around. An inside joke. I told him I’d never taken it seriously, never planned to do it, and had no idea Amanda would go so far.
In other words, I told him almost nothing.
But it was enough. He looked at me like I was a complete stranger. “Jesus, Dana. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I know it sounds crazy,” I said. “But—”
“Try criminally insane.” He shook his head. “You told Amanda to go rough some guy up, and now he’s dead. And you’re telling me she wants you to do the same thing to me?”
“Which, obviously, I would never do!”
“Well, thanks a lot,” he said sarcastically. “I appreciate that you’re not going to kill me.”
“I didn’t even know you knew each other. Or I would never have—”
“Pledged to kill a total stranger?” He looked at me with disgust.
“Not kill,” I protested guiltily. “Anyway, it was just a joke.”
“Yeah. Not one of your best.” He slapped his hands down on his knees and stood up.
“Okay, you’re right. It was stupid and juvenile,” I said in desperation. “But I never meant—”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have listened to that crazy bitch in the first place.”
“I told you, I didn’t know she was serious. How could I?”
“I’m not talking about Amanda.”
I stared at him.
“Kim starts talking smack about what some guy may or may not have done, like, years ago, and you decide to pass his name to a total stranger? For her hit list?”
“I can’t believe you would talk about Kim that way. In case you haven’t noticed, she’s my friend.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “Weird, right? It almost seems like you’re the one hunting down my exes to become best friends with them.”
“I didn’t say she’s my best friend,” I snapped. “You’re my best friend. But I happen to like Kim. And what’s more, I believe her. Don’t forget, Fash did something to me too.”
“He groped you, horror of horrors.” I stared at him in disbelief. “Look, I’m not saying it’s nice, but—he was drunk, right? Maybe his hand slipped.”
“It wasn’t an accident, Jason. He grabbed my breast and rubbed his hand up and down, and—I can’t believe you’re giving me the third degree on this. What’s next? Do you want to hear what I was wearing that night so you can decide if I was asking for it?”
“Forgive me for questioning your story just a tad more carefully than you questioned Kim and Psycho Revenge Lady before you bought their stories hook, line, and sinker.”
“You know what?” I had stopped feeling guilty and was getting angry. “This is exactly why we don’t talk about this stuff when men are around. Because you bend over backward to defend the guy, even if you’ve never met him and you’ve known the woman for years.”
But he hardly heard me, he was so angry. “You knew Amanda for all of five minutes. And you believed her, despite the fact that she happened to be a psycho with advanced cyberstalking skills and a background in blackmail.”
“She must have left that off her resumé,” I said. “I guess I should have done that second round of interviews in my friend-making process after all.”
“You should have done something, Dana.” He dropped the sarcastic tone. “All I’m saying is, she probably has all kinds of recorded evidence against you. Conversations on your phone, texts, e-mails—”
I sucked in my breath sharply. I’d been so focused on the fact that Amanda
was stalking me that I hadn’t thought of incriminating evidence, but of course she could have saved all our interactions. Screenshots of every text, recordings of every phone call. For a moment I thought frantically back over our conversations, trying to remember exactly what words we had used and wondering how they could be interpreted. It was so awful, I clamped my mind shut on the memories. “We were careful.”
“Think, though—you said something on the phone sometime, right? Whatever your joke was? You talked about a hit?”
There was a long pause. Finally, I said, “A strike.”
He just shook his head. I put my hand on his elbow, and he threw it off. And stalked out of the door.
I followed and caught up to him striding down the uneven sidewalk, letting the overgrown bushes and trees bend against him. As I scrambled to keep up with him, they flew back and thwacked me in the chest, the shoulders, the face. I threw a hand up to shield my eyes and pressed on. “I know it doesn’t make any sense. I know that. I just—if you only knew.”
He kept walking. My legs were so much shorter than his, I almost had to break into a run to keep up.
“Sometimes it feels so dark, just waking up every day as a woman, in a woman’s body. What we go through. What we have to live with. Groped, harassed, stalked, followed down dark alleys. It makes you paranoid.” He snorted. “Except you’re not really paranoid, because there really are people out to get you. Men. A lot of them.” Jason’s pace didn’t slacken and I was running out of breath, but I couldn’t stop talking. I thought of Amanda, Kim, Ruby, Becca. “Every woman I know has gone through something. Raped, assaulted, harassed, forced out of jobs. Trapped in abusive relationships. We talk about it with each other when the guys aren’t around. And since most of us aren’t out there making revenge pacts, I don’t know what the incentive would be to lie.”