The Perfect Stranger

by Megan Miranda

  He stood, picked up his jacket, headed for the door.

  “It’s too late for that choice, Kyle.”

  He stopped at the door, turned to face me. “I know what I won’t do,” he said. “I won’t try to justify the fact that a man killed himself over a lie I told.”

  He waited then, staring me down.

  Keep your mouth shut, Leah. No argument is won with rage. No point is awarded by throwing the vase on the table beside you. There is nothing civilized about a scream.

  I watched him leave. But inside, the rage burned hot, like raking coals, as it had back then.

  * * *

  I DID NOT PRINT Aaron Hampton’s name, but it wouldn’t be hard for anyone to work it out.

  I figured the university would take care of the rest. That they would launch an investigation and get him for this, if not something bigger. That it would tip the police, who would take a closer look at the case.

  I imagined Aaron seeing the opportunity. Piggybacking on the rash of suicides everyone had been talking about and adding one more. Leaving a bag full of extra pills beside Bridget’s drowned body in the tub, as if she had purchased them. Setting the scene. Her wide smile now forever immortalized in black and white, a string of interchangeable faces.

  Even if I couldn’t prove that he’d had a hand in her death, I’d at least do this to him. I wanted his employer to see it, ruining his career. I wanted Paige to see it.

  I wanted him to pick up the paper and read it—as I knew he would. I wanted him to see my name on the byline and know it was me.

  It was a thrill that started in my spine and ran across my arms and legs as I hit send on that piece.

  The day after the story ran, Aaron took a fairly straightforward approach. A wooden beam, a braided rope, a practiced knot, with a sedative to help it all go down smoothly, to steel his nerve.

  On paper, the suicide of Professor Aaron Hampton became just one more hit in a string of bad press for the campus that semester. The beginning of an enormous mental health services overhaul, the start of a larger conversation. He would be forever remembered as the victim alongside those girls, and I hated him for it.

  And as a result, I had been exiled from everything my life had been. As if I had tied that noose and strung him up myself.

  CHAPTER 28

  After Kyle left, I took a few minutes to cool off, cool down.

  Then I opened my personal email to look at the message from TeachingLeahStevens, ready to respond. To speak to him as he was speaking to me, with a screen and a filter between us. I could be anyone, as could he.

  But when I signed in, I had another, newer message. From Noah. Subject: Requested Info. There was no personal message inside, just copied-and-pasted information, along with a set of attachments.

  Noah had come through. Because he knew he did owe me. This was an admittance of guilt on his part, too.

  I quickly understood the lack of information I’d been able to find on my own. Bethany Ann Jarvitz had spent most of her twenties at a state correctional facility in Pennsylvania.

  I leaned closer to the screen, taking it all in.

  Bethany Ann Jarvitz was born to Jessica Jarvitz, a single mother, deceased for nearly a decade of a suspected drug overdose. No father listed. There was a string of addresses, all apartments, scattered around the tristate region, changing every year until her incarceration. She had a very short employment record, because she’d been sentenced at the age of twenty in a case of arson and involuntary manslaughter. Her next of kin, listed on an old employment insurance document, was a cousin by the name of Melissa Kellerman. There was no education listed, which meant she probably hadn’t finished high school.

  I felt her story fading even more. This was not the type of person for whom the public would rally, or coordinate fund-raisers, or post signs with requests for strength and prayers. No, this girl would be on her own.

  I remembered Martha saying they were still waiting on next of kin at the hospital. I did a quick search of the name Melissa Kellerman but found nothing. It was such a common name, like my own, and I didn’t know what town she was from or her age. The hospital must not have had much luck, either.

  I looked for details of the case leading to her incarceration. Wondered if someone could’ve come after her for revenge after all this time—taking justice into their own hands, thinking the court system had not done quite enough. Based on the victim’s name, which was all that was printed in the original article, I was able to trace the start of the story: a fire, suspected arson, that claimed the life of a thirty-two-year-old man inside. She had been caught on a security camera from a store across the street, along with one other person, though the other person remained unidentifiable from the footage. Only Bethany was facing the camera, and her image, zoomed in, grainy, and pixelated, was posted alongside a plea to the public to come forward with any information.

  Bethany eventually had been picked up while crashing with friends. Someone had apparently turned on her, turned her in. The other person, as far as I could tell, had never been identified.

  I almost responded to Noah, wanted to send my thanks, but I understood that this was it, the final severance package. That I was now on my own.

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT I REACHED the home of Vince Mendelson, first speaking with his wife, Tiffany. Tiffany was not fond of my calling, or my reasons for calling, and so I expected not to hear anything more from Vince himself. I was surprised when, at ten that night, I received a call from the man himself.

  “This is Vince Mendelson,” he said, his voice gruff and deliberate. “I hear you spoke to my wife earlier, that you need information about a girl.”

  I knew from the way he said a girl that there was a story here. He wouldn’t have called if there wasn’t one. It was as if he, too, had been waiting for this call all along.

  “Yes, thanks for getting back to me. It’s about the apartment you were living in eight years ago in Allston. Your name wasn’t on the lease, but I hear you were the last person to occupy it.” Amelia had asked me not to use her name, and it was the least I could do—though I was sure he knew how I got his name. There was only one path that ended with him.

  He sighed, cutting to the chase. “You spoke to her?”

  “I did,” I said, and the silence hung between us—something unfinished there after all this time.

  “Amelia said she assumed you were the one who stayed for the remainder of the lease.”

  “I didn’t, though,” he said. “I moved out right after Ammi, after we broke up—”

  “Wait. What did you call her?” I cut in.

  “Amelia, sorry. She didn’t used to go by that. She went by Ammi.”

  I thought of how similar that sounded. Whether I’d only heard the name how I thought it should be. Whether I was the one who’d created this Emmy to begin with. If the wind or her voice or the fact that I wasn’t fully present made the words slur, the letters shift, and I heard her say Emmy when really she had introduced herself as Ammi, as someone else altogether. And when I called her back, called her Emmy, started writing it this way—she had just gone with it. I was, in truth, searching for someone whom I had created.

  “Amelia said there was a girl. The reason you broke up,” I said.

  A girl, he’d said, as if he’d known it would circle back to this.

  “Yeah. A girl I kind of knew from high school. I ran into her outside a bar, just a twist of fate. We were doing shots, way too many shots, and she gave me this story—her boyfriend had just kicked her out, she had nowhere else to go, and could she crash for the night. I mean, what could I really say? We had done way too many shots, and the next thing I know, I’m back home and Ammi’s standing over us, yelling . . . I don’t know how she got there, I don’t think I . . . Well, it was a long time ago. But she wouldn’t hear it, and I couldn’t prove it, and Ammi left a week later. I let myself mope for another few days before moving in with an old college buddy. It wasn’t my place to work
out the details with the apartment. I figured Ammi handled it.”

  Outside a bar. Her boyfriend had just kicked her out. She had nowhere else to go. Her profile in the crowded bar, a chance encounter. Me calling her name as she brushed by—

  “Who was the girl,” I said. “The girl from high school. The girl in your bed.” A twist of fate, paths crossing again.

  “Her name,” he said—and even before he said it, I could hear it, a whisper in my head—“was Melissa.”

  * * *

  VINCE LEFT ME WITH the name of the high school and the year of graduation, one of the larger school systems in upstate New York. I looked up the contact information for the school, which had a pretty subpar website—I needed to see her face and know that it was her.

  And I had to understand who Bethany was to her. I had to figure out what had happened, why Emmy was gone, why we were even here. One thing I knew for sure: She had dragged me into her past, as I had once brought her into mine.

  I pictured her again in the bar, in my apartment, the way she ate straight from the bag when she didn’t seem to notice me watching—she was starving.

  Had there even been a fiancé? Or had that, too, been a lie? Feeding me a story she knew would appeal to something baser inside that I would understand. I thought of all the things you couldn’t do without a name. Thought of all the things you wouldn’t be able to do alone. Rent or buy an apartment, a house, or a car. Get married. Get a job with benefits. If you stay in one place for too long, you’ll end up in someone else’s pictures, in someone else’s life.

  I wondered if this was why she told me to come, why she was so willing. Not just to help me because I had no place else to go. But because she couldn’t move without someone else.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING, I had plans to dig into Bethany’s background some more. But I had to get through the school day first. I refreshed my email, hoping to see a response from the high school contact I’d looked up after speaking with Vince, but there was nothing. I was jolted from the screen by the light knock on my door.

  Izzy looked the same as always, polished and presentable, but her mouth was a set line, her eyes shifting back and forth.

  “Yes, Izzy?”

  She took a step inside the classroom, seemed to be unsure of what she was doing here. She had a paper in her hand, her fingertips blanching white, and she said, “I found this.” Though she didn’t hold it out to me.

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “Can I see it?”

  She held it out in her fingers. It had been folded into a small square, the creases worried over, the edges tattered. “I didn’t know whether I should give it to you. I didn’t know.”

  I unfolded the lined paper, smoothed it down on my desk, and tried not to make a sound.

  It was a drawing, done in pencil, from across this very room. There was a rough sketch of a desk in the corner, a woman behind it, and I could tell from the details—the hair, the chin, the slope of the nose—that it was me. There were empty chairs between the woman and the viewer. And I knew that Theo had sat in that chair across the room during detention, intently working on something. That he’d first sketched the scene of the lake before throwing it away for me to find. This must’ve been what he was working on when we were leaving. But I didn’t understand why Izzy was showing me this, where she’d found it, what she thought it meant.

  “Where did you get this?” I asked.

  She shook her head. Shrugged. “In the library,” she said, as if the thought had just come to her.

  I had a feeling she knew more—could feel her wanting me to ask something—when the overhead warning bell rang. She blinked, and in that moment before she stepped back and lost her nerve, I reached out for her sleeve. “Izzy, wait,” I said.

  But she backtracked to the door—“I need to get to my locker before class”—and I had already lost her. She was slipping away, everything about her shutting down.

  How had I missed her? The girl right in front of me, raising her hand, telling me, It wasn’t Cobb.

  A minute later, the second bell rang for the start of class, and she returned in the sea of faces, like everyone else. Sitting in the desk beside Theo, holding herself very still, as if remembering that people were always watching: that she was both Izzy Marone, girl taking notes, and Izzy Marone, girl being watched taking notes.

  I didn’t call out to her after class, didn’t ask her to stay behind, didn’t want to spook her or give her away. She had come to me in confidence, as I had asked them to do. She had listened when I spoke, and she’d found a way to reach me. But I still didn’t know what she was saying: that Theo was responsible and Cobb was not? Then why not tell someone? And it seemed ludicrous. What would Theo have to do with a twenty-eight-year-old woman down by the lake?

  I was used to being an outsider, looking in. With a little distance, a little perspective, you could watch the moves on the chessboard, witness the string of cause and effect unfolding.

  But this. This was disorienting. The circle happening around me, to me, because of me. Stuck in one place, you could not see everything happening outside your line of sight.

  CHAPTER 29

  I had resolved right then that once I had something substantial—not crumbs thrown up as defense, a bunch of half-assed alternate possibilities reeking of desperation—I’d present it to Kyle, with the story already framed for him. Once I knew what was happening, so I could be absolved. So Kyle could see the ins and outs, the who and what, the logic of it all. So he would have no choice but to believe me. So he could pass it on to his boss and be believed.

  But to get that, to see the thread from Emmy to Bethany to me, I’d have to see inside Bethany’s life. I had the address from the apartment front office, and I pulled in to the lot before the nine-to-five folks made it home.

  The apartment complex was everything I had imagined: walk-up units with outdoor staircases, originally conceived as town-home style, though elements had been left unfinished. Wiring for the outside lights was in place, but the lights had never been added.

  Cars were parked in about half the spots, though it wasn’t quite the end of the business day. There was nothing outside each individual door to distinguish it from the next. I heard the television coming from inside a few units as I walked to Bethany’s apartment on the third floor.

  I checked all the normal places for a spare key: over the doorjamb, potted plants (there were none), or welcome mats (also none). I checked the staircase landing for hiding spots but found nothing.

  I heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and I backed away, leaned against the rail, took out my phone, and tried to look busy—like I was waiting for someone.

  The footsteps belonged to someone moving fast in heels, and they slowed as they passed—then stopped.

  The shoes were low-heeled and black, attached to bare legs, black shorts, a white blouse tucked into them—a waitress uniform, I thought. The woman was about my age, maybe younger, with dark lipstick set against pale skin and bleach-streaked hair.

  “Are you Bethany’s sister?” she asked.

  For once, I was glad for the similarities in our faces. For the way that, if you were looking for it, you might find me in her or her in me. “Did you know her?” I asked, pushing off the railing.

  “Sure, yes, I’m her neighbor.” She raised her hand to her chest. “I’m Zoe.” And when I didn’t respond, she said, “Do you have a key?” I shook my head, and her smile stretched wide. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  She pushed through her apartment door, came back out a few seconds later with a plastic bag slung on her arm and a large ring of keys, metal jangling as she flipped through them. “This one,” she said. It had a piece of tape stuck to the top, with the letter B in blue pen. “I’m kind of the spare key holder around here.”

  The type of person everyone trusts, whom everyone shares their secrets with. I used to be that type of person, too.

  She slid the key into the lock, turned it for me. “T
he police came through the day after they found her, but they didn’t take anything. I let them in, made sure they didn’t go through anything they shouldn’t, but I think they’ve been waiting for you—for next of kin, is what they said, in order to look any closer. Nobody’s been here since. Do you have any information? Is she doing any better?” She raised her hand to her chest again and shook her head. Shame, such a shame. “I’ve been meaning to get to the hospital, but I share a car with Rick on the second floor . . . we’re on a pretty tight schedule.” She said this apologetically.

  “Everything’s the same,” I said, though I didn’t know whether that was true. I made a mental note to check with the hospital and that woman Martha again.

  “Well, here you go,” she said, pushing the door open. “Are you staying here?”

  “No,” I said. “I just want to get a few of her things.” I stayed in the entrance, staring at her until she realized I wasn’t inviting her inside.

  “Okay, well, I’ll be next door when you’re done.” She handed me the plastic bag. “Her mail. I’ve been collecting it. Don’t really know what to do with it. I mean, I’m sure there’s bills and stuff . . . ”

  “Thanks,” I said, hanging it on the inside door handle.

  “Let me know when you’re done and I’ll come lock back up,” she said.

  Bethany’s apartment began as a narrow hallway with a coat closet. Contents: one raincoat; one longer wool jacket with pulls in the material; an umbrella in the back corner, a cobweb clinging to the inside handle. The hallway opened up to a carpeted living room, cutting abruptly into laminate flooring where the kitchen began, the wall behind covered in a row of cabinets, a refrigerator, a stovetop, and a sink. There were dishes in her sink, two glasses, two plates. Everything frozen in time.

  The living room had a television on a faux-wooden stand, a cable box inside. There was an open door to the side, leading to a bathroom with a closed door on the other side—her bedroom, I assumed.