“By what?”
“But later,” Banning went on, continuing to ignore her, “he told me that when he saw you, it all came back. His, I don’t know, failure. He never said that word, but that’s what everyone thought. Failure. He hated it. The scrutiny and the second-guessing. I used to go to the hardware store with him, places like that. Everyone knew him, and they’d always be offering him their theories. Where he should have looked, people he should have talked to. Small-town detective with a small-potatoes career, and then the one big case. And he blows it.”
Lily took a deep breath. Stared at her feet. Reality still stung, no matter who was upset or disappointed. Kirkhalter had failed at his job, and she’d called him on it, and what’s true was true. He should have found Cassie. A good detective would have found her. No point in saying that now.
“Hey,” she said, looking up. Corner of Sycamore and Hamilton. “Where are we?”
Banning was steering the car into a carefully paved driveway, lined with the glossy leaves of what would soon be tulips. A modest white split-level on the corner, with a red door and closed white shutters, manicured lawn, and a twisty-branch Japanese maple in the farthest corner, its pale green leaves rearranging themselves in the afternoon’s golden sun.
“My house,” Banning said. He reached behind the visor, pulled out a garage door opener. When he clicked it, one side of the two-door garage began to clank open.
Banning’s phone, she thought, remembering what was in her hand. She had Banning’s phone. As he eased the car into the darkened garage, she tapped the screen again, making the newspaper article appear.
But as the car came to a halt, a shaft of light slashed through the gloomy garage. A door from inside the house had opened. And in the narrow doorway, a shadowed figure edged by an orange halo of incandescent lighting raised a hand in greeting.
Lily squinted.
The woman was coming toward her.
Waving.
Smiling.
BEFORE
CHAPTER 37
CASSIE
She’d thought it would be easier than this. Cassie zipped her black jacket closer around her neck, stuffed her gloved hands into her pockets, and kept her head down against the gathering December evening, crossing the snow-dusted quad on her way back to her dorm. She felt the safest out here, in public but alone, surrounded by classmates whose baggage consisted of nothing but textbooks and midterms and who’d gotten busted. She’d tried to participate, fit in, stay cool, but it was as if the universe were tormenting her. At every turn, someone or something—some fragrance or remark—twisted the knife in her conscience.
Marianne had a knife of her own. Her clingy roommate insisted on discussing Jem so endlessly that Cassie, plagued with nightmares about being chased and then trapped, had yearned to ask her to stop. But she couldn’t. She had to make sure Marianne told her everything she heard. Marianne could provide another set of eyes and ears.
A few nights ago, they’d both gotten ready to sleep, and Marianne had propped herself on one elbow to face Cassie across the narrow braided rug between their matching twin beds, her pink-and-green comforter almost colorless in the late-night gloom. When they moved in that first day, Marianne had pushed to have their comforters match. Super-cute, she’d said, but super-cute was the last thing Cassie wanted. In the just-past-midnight dark, with the rumble of someone’s CD playing down the hall, Marianne had brought up Jem once again.
“So, Cass? One more thing about Jem Duggan?” Marianne’s voice was just louder than a whisper, as if that would be less annoying to someone who was trying to sleep.
Cassie had pulled her dark green blanket up to her nose, wishing she could get out of the conversation. But if Marianne had information, or was nosing around someone who did, Cassie couldn’t afford not to hear about it. She closed her eyes, trying to keep a balance. Every time she did that, though, she saw Jem and his dark hair, and smelled that pink wine. When she opened her eyes, Marianne was staring at her.
“Cass? Are you asleep?”
Which had to be the stupidest question in the world.
“No.” Cassie tried to keep the emotion out of her voice, needing Marianne to believe there was absolutely nothing wrong. Nothing like the emotional residue of a harrowing experience and the deep yearning for the dark safety of sleep. “What about him? Did you hear anything?”
“I don’t mean to upset you, I really don’t, but, like, you said you didn’t have any kind of connection with him, Jem, I mean, I know that, but I was talking to Lyssa down the hall, and she said she’d seen you, that very day. She thought you didn’t remember her name, but she knew yours. She was kinda pissed off, that’s why she remembered. She even saw you talking to him. Jem. Like you were flirting with him.”
“Flirting with—” Oh god, she had been. She thought about that moment and how annoyed she’d been that he was there. That bitch Lyssa. Had nothing better to do? But it all seemed so long ago now, and so pitiful.
“Oh, so funny. Flirting? That’s so lame. I mean—yeah, he was there, at Wharton, that day. I guess I forgot about it. Did she say anything else? Lyssa?”
“No, I guess, just that you were talking to him. And she thought you two were hitting it off.”
“Huh.” Cassie gathered all her energy and propped her own head on her hand, looking back at Marianne as if she’d just had a revelation. “You think they had a thing? She was, like, watching him? And jealous?”
“Do you?”
Even in the gloom, Cassie could see Marianne’s eyes widening. It was a random thing to say, but whatever.
“Oh, it’s all so boring,” Cassie replied. “So high school. Don’t you think? Let’s sleep.”
She’d needed to keep her roommate close, too, to make sure she didn’t inadvertently come across some tidbit of a lie that Cassie had woven and forgotten. Marianne loved to trip her up, to remind her of things she’d said offhandedly about herself, as if the girl were keeping some file of Cassie’s history in her head, ready to correct her about her own life at a moment’s notice. That was one good thing about having a roommate, about having no privacy. When you wanted to know about the other, it was easier if you were already joined at the hip.
Marianne, Cassie knew, wasn’t hiding anything. Nothing worrisome was in her roomie’s dresser drawers or under her mattress or in the pockets of the clothing hanging on her side of the closet. Nothing in her notebooks either, or in the diary stashed flat against the wall and then hidden by a row of Marianne’s philosophy textbooks. What was in Marianne’s head, though, that’s what scared her. Why she had to stay vigilant.
Now, classes over for the day, she yanked open Alcott Hall’s heavy wooden door, hoping Marianne was out with friends or studying somewhere and she could have more time by herself. Christmas vacation was coming, at least. She’d look at her calendar, and try to focus on studying. And try to plan.
But no. Marianne was sitting at her desk. Instead of having a book propped in front of her, she had a little swivel mirror.
“Oh, cool, perfect.” Marianne didn’t look up as Cassie entered, but focused on her own reflection as she drew a careful line along the edge of her eyelid with a streak of kohl. “There’s a party. In—” She looked at the wooden clock radio on her nightstand. “Two hours. This girl’s having it at her house. Her parents are in New York or something.”
“Have fun,” Cassie said. “Don’t get caught, though. At her house? She’s a townie? Isn’t that kind of…” She let her voice trail off, letting Marianne fill in her own pejorative.
“She’s cool. It’ll be cool. Everyone’s going. You have to come,” Marianne said. “It’ll be fun.” She’d barely taken her eyes off her little makeup mirror, watching Cassie behind her and now applying mascara from a pink tube at the same time.
Plain-Jane Marianne had latched onto the idea of makeup from somewhere, maybe from Cassie herself, and now applied it with care and growing expertise. Transforming herself, Cassie thought. Almost a
s if she’d watched Cassie, learning from her, following her lead, creating a new version of herself in Cassie’s image.
Marianne, mascara wand in midair, turned to face her. “Hey. Have you heard anything about Professor Shaw? Any news?”
And that was exactly the conversation she did not want to have, not even with herself, because no, she hadn’t heard anything. Or even if he was still in the hospital, really. He hadn’t been in class, and no one seemed to know where he was. No one said so, at least. Some new biology professor had shown up, and she’d just told them Professor Shaw was “on leave.” When he returned, she’d have to make sure he remembered it was his idea that the two of them hang back. When the alarm bell rang that morning, he’d looked at her, significantly, telegraphing that he’d wanted her to wait for him. Something like that. She kind of remembered that. But she needed to keep that whole situation to herself.
“Huh?” Answering Marianne, she pretended she was trying to remember who Professor Shaw was. “Oh, yeah, no, I’m sure we’ll hear when the time comes. But so, this party? The girl’s parents are gone?”
So then she’d had to go to the thing, just to keep the subject changed. Wearing matching jeans and black puffer vests and dark hunter’s plaid mufflers—Marianne had gotten hers about thirty seconds after she saw Cassie’s and there was nothing she could do about it and it wasn’t like she could stop wearing hers just because Marianne copied her—they’d traipsed across the snow-blanketed campus, across the “us and them” line of Concannon Street, which meant they were off campus and into the town of Berwick. Stars scattered across the inky sky, so vast and so distant, Cassie thought as they walked, and she wished she could be as far away as they were, as hard and safe as they were, and not haunted, every second, by who might know what and what might happen next.
She’d made a calendar of it, secretly, on the inside of her main notebook. Every day that passed after Jem—after Jem—she’d crossed it off, counting her days of freedom.
When she put an X on the day, as close to midnight as she could, she took a moment to thank whoever that she had survived yet again, with no sirens and no phone calls and no flinty-eyed detectives interrogating her about where she’d been and what she’d done. What she’d gotten away with. She didn’t think of it that way, of course, because she hadn’t actually done anything at Jem’s. It would just look like she had.
That reporter at the hospital, though, Tosca something. Manukian. Cassie had read her stories in the Berwick Journal about the fire and the explosion and the investigation, but unless she’d missed it, Tosca hadn’t interviewed anyone who’d mentioned Cassie. Maybe that whole thing was over? Maybe this Tosca was on to the next big story?
A chill rippled the back of Cassie’s neck, and it wasn’t the darkening night or the damp of the unexpectedly early snow. She remembered the day after Jem’s death, how the story had made big headlines in the U-News, how she’d grabbed for it, folding the school newspaper in quarters to read it quickly and ducking into the bathroom so she could have some privacy as she skimmed the printed words for her name. The articles went on and on, all about how deeply sad it was, how ironic, that the person who’d been so valiant that he’d risked his life to go back into the building and apparently try to save Professor Shaw seemed to have succumbed as a result of the concussion he’d received as he failed in his “brave mission.” It didn’t mention family, and officials were only “offering their deepest sympathies.”
But not one of the articles mentioned her.
Good, Cassie thought. But even as she’d been relieved, she’d also harbored one dark and ugly question. The one that kept torturing her. How did this reporter Tosca know Jem had gone in specifically to get Professor Shaw? Only she, Cassie, knew that. There had been just the two of them in that conversation. Jem was the only one who could have told someone his goals. And it would have been so easy for him to mention her name. There’d be no reason not to.
She imagined the interview, Tosca interrogating Jem, him still in his hospital bed, maybe medicated. Why did you try to go back inside? the reporter would have asked him. To rescue Professor Shaw, he’d said. Then the reporter—or nurse, or doctor, or relative—would ask, Who told you he was still inside?
And her name, Cassie Atwood, was the only answer.
What if that reporter started looking for Cassie Atwood? And then, of course, Tosca Manukian the reporter would recognize her as the same person who’d been in that hospital waiting room. And there would be the connection. Zachary Shaw, Jem Duggan, Cassie Atwood. All Cassie had wanted was to go to college, and have a cool, fun, popular college life, and now look. She was screwed, and it wasn’t her fault. She walked, head down, hands jammed hard into her pockets, as if to keep herself earthbound.
And holy crap, she’d been sitting with Jem in the hospital waiting room. Talking with him. She’d even said something so loudly that people had looked at them! Shushed them! Anyone could have seen them, told someone, who then told someone, who then told someone else. And they’d put it all together and they’d come right after her.
Those tiny moments, those little things that don’t mean anything at the time, or mean something else at the time, they all seemed to be tangling together into one big, horrible decision, and she was only eighteen, and how was she supposed to know any damn thing?
It felt like everyone in the world would soon be looking for her. Like that reporter. Tosca Manukian. What would happen when she found her?
“What’s wrong?” Marianne asked.
Cassie brought herself back to the present, to the cold night, the silent streets, the sounds of their footsteps in the cracking glaze of hardening snow. “Wrong?”
“You kind of moaned,” Marianne said.
“No, I didn’t.” Cassie had, maybe, made a tiny sound. Her stomach hurt, and everything hurt.
“Sure.” Marianne stopped under a glowing streetlight, pulled a piece of notebook paper from her pocket, consulted it. “We’re almost there, I think.” She looked up from the directions. “Seriously. You okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Geez,” Marianne said. “You’re fun.”
Tosca Manukian. Cassie stared into the night. Reporters like her only wanted to ruin people’s lives. To take things that weren’t true and make them seem true, or seem to be on purpose, or write stories that were totally wrong, only to get headlines. At the hospital, Tosca Manukian had asked about Professor Shaw’s condition, specifically, and then asked her, Cassie, if she’d been there at the time of the explosion.
“Cass?” Marianne’s voice sounded accusatory. “Honestly. You made that sound again, and don’t tell me you didn’t.”
“Sorry.” Cassie wrapped her muffler more tightly around her neck. “I keep stepping on rocks or something.”
Marianne must have been talking, and Cassie’d forgotten to listen. Circles of orange from the streetlights dotted the piles of shoveled snow that lined the narrow sidewalks, and she saw her own breath puff white as she spoke.
They’d reached an intersection, square-fronted homes with pointed snowcapped roofs, each with one triangular pine tree in the front yard. The street showed rutted tire tracks where brave drivers had persevered through unplowed streets. Cassie eyed the sky again, her stars now beginning to vanish randomly in the gathering clouds, their light erased by relentless dark. “Just thinking about how cold it is. Are we almost there?”
“It says 19 Ardella Street. This is Ardella.” Marianne stopped, waved the paper she’d pulled from her pocket. She pointed to a green street sign, just readable in the streetlight glow. “You see nineteen?”
They both peered one way up the street, then the other.
“I can’t see any numbers,” Cassie said.
“Or kids, right?” Marianne tilted her head as if considering. “Kind of weird. You’d think … oh, crap, are we too early?” She looked at Cassie, eyes wide, hugging herself with flannel arms. “Are we like, lamely too early? Are we idiots?�
��
“It’s after ten,” Cassie said. “How can that be early?”
“I guess so.” Marianne shrugged, acquiescing. She pointed to their right. “I see lights on down there. Let’s try that.”
Cassie heard a car slushing up behind them, its tires hissing in the icy mix on the pavement, headlights grazing the gray street.
Marianne stepped off the sidewalk.
The car was coming fast. In the dark, and the snow. And Marianne in that black vest and dark flannel. She grabbed her roommate’s arm. Yanked it. Hard.
“Car!” she said. “Watch it!”
Marianne flinched, twisted, tried to take a step backward, but one booted foot slipped off the snowy curb. She landed, rear first, in the dank slush along the gutter.
“Ow!” she yelled, flailing her arms to regain her balance.
Cassie leaned down, offered a hand. “Oh, I am so sorry! You okay?”
“So stupid.” Marianne waved her off. “My whole ass is wet. Now we can’t even…”
“Girls?” The low voice came from the car. A man.
His car had stopped beside them, and as Cassie turned, she saw who was inside. She thought of the black marks she’d put on her calendar. Wondered if yesterday was the last day she’d make one.
Wondered if her time had run out.
“Girls?” The police officer had pulled his cruiser to a stop, hazard lights flashing, and aimed his flashlight at them through the open driver’s-side window, its powerful beam alternating between Marianne and Cassie, who took a step backward, trying to put as much distance as she could between herself and this intruder.
The yellow beam landed on Marianne. “You all right, miss?”
“Yeah.” Marianne puffed out a white breath. “Just tripped. All good.”
The beam crossed the gloomy half-dark, landed on Cassie. She could almost feel the heat from the too-bright bulb, as if it were searing through her, then blinked, startled when the light shone on her face. She tried to look pleasant, and natural, but she couldn’t help wincing in the glare. She put her fingers to her forehead, shielding her eyes.
Her Perfect Life Page 19
