“They came to visit me that spring, Mom and Annabelle. It was my big show. The only first-year student with a solo. I was so arrogant. They loved me at school. I was the youngest in my class, only seventeen. Graduated high school early to go. Teachers couldn’t stop talking about how talented I was. Other kids asked for tutorials. I was high on it.”
There’s a long pause, and I know we’ve arrived. The terrible part. The part that broke him.
Unlike me, he doesn’t look away. He lets me see it. The fury, the hatred, the anguish. I don’t avert my eyes.
“They came to see me. We lived around here, it wasn’t far, but things at home made it hard for them to come into the city much. Only, they never quite made it. Nasty accident on I-95. A truck. An explosion. Fire.” A violent tremor overtakes him, but he fights it off with gritted teeth. “They burned alive in the car.”
He pulls out a cigarette. I wait.
When he speaks again, his voice is flat and controlled. “So that was it for me. No more dancing. I dropped out of school. Joined the circus, of all things.”
I can’t help myself. “Shut the fuck up.”
He snorts. “I was such a romantic. A fool. Run away with the circus. Find myself.” He rolls his eyes. “But I could dance, and I learned the tightrope and acrobatics quick enough. On our off nights, we’d get hammered and fight, so I learned that, too. I traveled around the country, leaping from the trapeze on the weekends and falling out of my bed drunk on the weeknights.” He pauses. Opens his mouth to say something else, then snaps it shut. Finally: “I lasted six months before I got bored. Friend of mine knew a guy in Whitley running underground fights, said it was decent money, I could choose when I worked. So I came back home.”
We stare at each other, both spent.
I didn’t think he’d be honest with me. That he’d tell me this much. I didn’t think I’d be that honest with him, either. I didn’t mean to be.
Can’t take it back now.
Valentine drops me off at home. With him gone, I feel scooped out. Empty, but painfully so.
Talking about all that old stuff didn’t make me feel better. Not like people always say it will. It feels like someone took a bread knife to my insides, and now my guts are raw and ragged.
I drag myself up the stairs. Low murmuring voices are coming from Olive’s room. One of them sounds like Mom. Must be time for her weekly check-in with Olive.
In my room, I drop my stuff and flop facedown on the bed. Eyes closed, I see again that look on Valentine’s face. Tilted to the sun. Remembering what it felt like to fly through the air.
I can see him so much more clearly now, and to be honest, it doesn’t look good. This awful, ugly thing happened to him, and now he’s like the halogen group on the periodic table. We learned about this in chem last week—one electron shy of eight, so they can’t help but react with everything. Always combusting, or whatever. The thing is, I’m pretty combustible myself.
Okay, so my metaphors need work. I’m exhausted.
A knock on my door. I roll over to see Olive standing in my room.
“Mom wants to talk to you.” She holds her phone out to me.
I search Olive’s face, watching for any signs of resentment. Here I am, stealing her spotlight again. Cutting into her mommy-daughter time. But there’s nothing there except maybe awkward sympathy.
“Hi, honey!” Mom’s overchipper voice, tinny and wobbly, comes through the speaker.
Olive gives me a look, asking silently if I want her to stay and be my emotional buffer.
I shake my head. I have to face this alone. She hands me the phone and leaves.
“Hey, Mom.” I perch on the edge of my bed, muster a weak smile, and hold the phone out so I’m within the camera frame.
My mom is sitting at her kitchen table, a mug of tea in one hand. Her eyes trace over my face, taking me in, looking for clues. Signs of how fucked up I am today. She does it every time we have one of these calls, even when there’s no murder investigation going on.
I do my own examination. She looks happy. Her cheeks are rosy, her hair is tied up in a sloppy bun, and she has a smear of blue paint on her cheek. There’s no way she doesn’t know it’s there, so she must have seen it and decided it looks cute. It does.
“Baby, how are you?” Her eyes go big and sad with gooey maternal concern, but it feels overexaggerated. Like she’s trying to compensate for the distance.
“I’m fine.”
The skin around her mouth tightens at the obvious lie, but she doesn’t push it. Of course not.
“How was school?” She moves right along.
Well, I missed half of it to go dumpster diving with a violent street fighter who’s as mentally unstable as I am, but…
“It was okay.”
“How’s that history paper going?”
I stare at her blankly. History paper? Did I forget to hand something in?
And then I pick up the thread again. Right. History paper. On the first Red Scare. I mentioned it last time we talked in an attempt to fill one of those long silent spells.
If that’s any measure, I haven’t spoken to Mom in at least three weeks.
Video chat was one of the cornerstones of Mom’s propaganda mission before she left. In this day and age, with modern technology, you’ll hardly notice I’m gone! It’ll be like I’m right there in the room with you.
I hated her then. I don’t think either one of us can remember the last time we really got along. Even before Lucy, it was always like we were speaking different dialects of the same language. Just different enough that we got the gist but never fully understood each other. But those weeks before she left for Germany, that was the first time I truly hated her. I hated that she could pretend nothing would be different, when of course everything had already changed.
When Lucy died, it was like I was seeing the world for the first time. The violent, horrible truth of it. All Mom wanted was to go back to Before, but I couldn’t.
I hated her for the lies more than I ever hated her for leaving.
“I got a 90,” is all I say.
Mom gives me an encouraging smile. “That’s so great, sweetie.”
Another long silence. The little thumbnail image of my face in the bottom of the screen is distracting. Even shrunk down to an inch tall, I look tired.
Two minutes into this call, and Mom hasn’t mentioned Ava. It’s the last thing I want to talk about, especially with her, but the dishonesty of it fills me with poisonous rage.
I swallow it down. “How’s the gallery show coming?”
Her smile grows warm and genuine as she tells a probably humorous story about misplaced paintings, art world intrigue, and German hijinks. I nod and go hmm in all the appropriate places.
These days, she looks so young, so pretty. She was only twenty when she had me. She and Olive share the same delicate, rosy kind of beauty. They’re a matched set in family photos. I always look like a scrawny goblin, eyes too big for my face, sulking at the edges of pictures.
Going to Germany was good for her. I can see that, and I hate myself for resenting her.
A long pause. Shit, I’ve missed one of my cues. The good humor leaves her eyes, and she’s back to evaluating me with concern.
“I miss you,” she says, finally. I don’t think she’s lying. I’m sure she does miss me, but that’s because she can only like me from four thousand miles away. “I want you and Olive to come visit again this summer.” She launches into a long description of her neighborhood, and her face is animated and cheerful again. She’d love so badly to bring her two girls on a summer adventure in Berlin. Laugh together in the shops. Show us the work she’s making. Let us drink a glass of wine at dinner, sometimes. Hop a train to Paris or Amsterdam.
I can see it so clearly, this adventure we could all have together. Or really, I can see Olive and Mom and some other girl. Prettier. Better rested. Cracking sarcastic jokes. All the wit with none of the snarl. Her idealized version of me.
>
It hurts that a part of me wants it. Wants to be that Flora. The if-only girl. The could-have-been.
Mom’s telling me about a museum she wants to take us to that used to be a Nazi bunker turned gay nightclub. As usual, she doesn’t notice the existential crisis I’m having.
I cut her off. “Listen, Mom, I gotta run.”
She stops midsentence, confusion turning to hurt. “Oh, okay—”
“Olive needs something,” I lie.
That sad, burdened look settles on her face. “Okay, honey. Well, uh, I love you, and I miss you. Please be careful, okay?” She gives me a wide-eyed, meaningful look. That’s it. All of the acknowledgment she can manage.
“Uh-huh. I will. Good luck with the gallery stuff. Send pictures. Love you, bye.” I hang up before she can say another word.
I take a shuddering breath.
“You okay?”
Olive’s standing in my room again.
“Who knows?” I say, which is a little more honest than I mean to be. Seems to be a theme today.
Olive smiles. “I think I have something that’ll cheer you up.” She hesitates. “But you have to promise not to be mad, okay?”
Well, that’s not suspicious at all. “I am 100 percent not promising you that.”
She stamps her foot in a way that makes her look exactly thirteen. “Flora!”
“Show me what it is, and then we can negotiate how angry I am.”
She wars with herself for another second, then relents. “Fine. But I think I did pretty good, and I expect the appropriate amount of gratitude in return. Come here.”
I follow her into her bedroom, and Olive pulls out her computer. She angles it toward herself so I can’t see. It’s almost cute, but I hold back my comments about her ridiculous cloak-and-dagger behavior.
Olive types a few things in. “Okay. I think your first impulse is going to be anger, but in the long run you’ll see that this is an awesome and useful thing I’ve accomplished.”
I won’t lie, the suspense is starting to get to me, but I call upon the DNA I inherited from my grandfather and attempt to look cool and detached.
She says, “I hacked into the police evidence database.”
“You did what?” So much for detached.
It all comes out of her in one rushed breath. “I was at Zoe’s house after school, and then I remembered that Zoe’s mom works for the district attorney, so I told Zoe I had to go to the bathroom but instead I went in her mom’s office to see if I could find anything for you, and I got all her log-in information.”
She is way too pleased with herself. Part of me is her big sister and wants to crush that smug little smile off her face, and part of me is super impressed. She can never, ever know about that part.
She must be reading my mind because she says, “Oh, come on. This is cool. You don’t have to fake it.”
I cross my arms. “You could get in huge trouble for this, and you know I’ll be the one to take the blame.”
She waves me off. “I was totally careful! I assumed they would have extra security, so I did some research before I logged in. I guess it sets off all these red flags if you sign on from somewhere besides the police precinct, so I’ve spent the last couple hours learning how to fake an IP address.” I scowl at her, and she mutters, “It’s not that hard. You can find tutorials for anything on YouTube.”
I hold out for another three seconds before I sit down beside her on the bed. “Show me.”
She navigates through the directory. “This has all the evidence for the entire state of New York, so you can use it on future cases, too.”
“Yeah, if the FBI doesn’t bust us.”
“This is totally not their jurisdiction,” she says, and I grab a fistful of her comforter to stop myself from shoving her off the bed.
Olive opens Ava’s file, and I scoot in closer. There are a few reports that detail the evidence from the scene, plus interviews with several people in the area, including me.
Our breathing syncs as we skim through the interview transcripts, but just as I suspected, no one saw anything that night.
“How is that possible?” Olive frowns at the screen. “There were gunshots and everything, but no one came to look?”
I shrug. “The killer chose the location well. I was there today. No windows with a line of sight onto the alley.”
Olive looks at me sideways. “That sounds pretty carefully planned for a random mugging.”
It feels good not to be the only conspiracy nut for once. Must be in the Calhoun blood.
Olive is only saying what I’ve been thinking. That Ava’s death was no accident. It was planned, premeditated. And then covered up to look like a robbery gone wrong.
I try to imagine what kind of person could pull that off. It’s not that I think Cass is definitely wrong; I watch the news—kids kill each other all the time. But Olive’s right: it’s such a well-thought-out plan. Ava’s murderer has done an excellent job of convincing almost everyone that her death was nothing more than a random act of violence.
I know Matt Caine has me biased. It’s easy for me to believe that a powerful older man killed Ava, that this is all tied up in some intricate web of corruption, but I have to be more careful this time. I need proof, and I don’t have it yet.
Then again, if there’s one thing I learned from Lucy’s murder, it’s that the world is a fucked up place, and the people who benefit most from that are people like Matt Caine and Congressman James Dorsey.
Olive clicks back to the main menu. There’s another folder for photos. Her mouse hesitates over it.
“Are you ready?” She asks so gently, it makes me feel like I’m the little sister.
I already went back to the crime scene today. I talked about Lucy, really talked about her, for the first time in years. I can do this.
I nod.
Olive pulls up the first photo. I don’t think either one of us is breathing.
The first few are from the scene. By the looks of the light, they were taken in the early dawn hours, after Gramps and I left. A photo of the entrance to the alley, cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape. The pool of Ava’s blood, still fresh and glistening, not yet the unidentifiable brown stain I stared at this afternoon. More blood splattered around the scene, each stray droplet neatly numbered with one of those yellow placards.
I breathe through my nose. I can feel Olive watching me out of the corner of her eye. I’m okay. I was there earlier today. I’ve seen all of this already.
Olive clicks on the next picture, and I stop breathing.
This one was taken in the morgue. Ava is lying on her back. Someone closed her eyes. Her shoulders are bare, but there’s a sheet pulled over her chest. The lighting is cold and sterile, emphasizing the gray lifelessness of her face.
Olive’s voice is small. “Is that what she looked like when you found her?”
My vision goes soft around the edges. “She was still alive when I found her.”
Olive hesitates, then continues clicking through the pictures. A close-up of Ava’s face. She’s still wearing the same winged eyeliner she had on that day at school. The left side is a little higher than the right. A shot of the bullet wounds. Two close together, one about six inches up. They wiped away the excess blood, and now all that’s left are congealed red holes. The surrounding skin is covered with a scattering of purplish brown dots, almost like freckles. It’s called tattooing, from the gunpowder.
“Then again”—Olive’s voice is shaky, but determined, like she’s trying to prove she can do this with me—“three bullet holes, scattered all over her chest so she didn’t die right away, that doesn’t seem like this person knew what they were doing. Right? Isn’t that, like, an amateur thing when the gunshots are all random?”
I’m underwater, and she’s calling down to me from the surface. I can’t move, can’t blink, can’t do anything but stare at the holes the killer blasted through Ava’s body. They’re not large. Smaller than a quarter. Th
ey still killed her, though.
Olive’s shoulder brushes mine. We’re on our stomachs on her bed. We could almost be a catalog spread for sparkly tween clothing or maxipads, if not for the grisly pictures on the screen.
I spring off the bed. “I can’t do this.”
Olive looks at me with concern. “Do you need a break? I can make us soup or something.”
“No, I can’t do this with you. At all.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“I can’t look at pictures of murder victims with my little sister! You’re getting all involved, and you shouldn’t be.”
“That’s completely unfair.” Olive stands. “You do this kind of stuff all the time. What difference does it make if I help?”
“You’re going to get in trouble, or hurt, or I don’t know, like, grow up too fast or something. I don’t want that for you.” I turn for the door.
She steps in my path. “Well, that’s not really your choice, is it?”
“Yeah, it is. I’m the older sister. I make the calls for both of us, and I don’t want you to turn into me. I’m enough of a disaster for the whole family, trust me.”
She rolls her eyes. “Oh, my God, you are so self-centered! Look around, my life has already changed.” Olive enunciates like I’m very dumb. “Mom is gone, and I get that it was her choice and it’s not your fault, but you’re still the reason she left. Everyone at school knows who my sister is, and not in a good way. Today I got pushed to the ground playing touch football in PE, all because I told Dan Maeller to shut his stupid mouth about you.”
I don’t know who Dan Maeller is, but he’s dead. “I’ll deal with him. Tell me when people say stuff, and I’ll deal with them.”
“That’s not the point! If everything’s going to change anyway, I might as well have a say in it!”
It’s an uncomfortable echo of my thoughts earlier. The way Mom treated me after Lucy died, like everything could go on the same as before.
But every second, I inch a little closer to completely falling apart. I can barely take care of myself, and now I’m going to drag Olive into this?
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