Now, here in my room, I get undressed. I pull out a pair of thick black wool tights. I put the tights on and my jeans back over them. I slip on my dark gray leather boots and lace them up. I am trying so hard not to think about anything, not to think about where I am going and why.
I rifle through my drawers until I find what I’m looking for. The sweater—so soft, dark green with delicate gold threads. This was Delia’s. I haven’t worn it in a very long time. She gave it to me back when things were still good with us. “It makes me look diseased,” Delia had said, throwing it at me. “Please save me.” Delia was always so, so generous, acted like it was nothing. Acted like you were doing her a favor accepting whatever she gave you.
It is the nicest sweater I own by far. I put it on, my jacket over it, and a black scarf as big as a blanket, because it’s January and I know it will be cold down by the water.
I park in the little alcove at the side of the road and get out. It’s been years since I’ve been here, but I know the route by heart. There’s a car right in front of the hole in the fence around the reservoir, and I shake my head. You’re supposed to park far away. This is trespassing. No one is supposed to know that anyone is out here.
I squeeze through the hole and walk down the narrow dirt path. My stomach turns over and over. I hear quiet murmurs, and as I get closer the murmurs turn to words.
“You can’t start a fire, man. It’s too cold.”
“Fuck off, I was a Boy Scout. I have skills.”
“Oh yeah?” A few people laugh. “They give out patches for rolling a jay?”
I can see them now, a small group huddled in a circle around the bonfire spot. Someone is bent down, flicking a lighter over a pile of twigs. They smolder weakly, thin ribbons of smoke curl up.
My eyes start to adjust, and by the light of the big bright moon I can make out thick coats, army jackets, hats, gloves. Their breath is cotton in the icy air.
I walk up behind them, my heart beating fast. I don’t belong here, here among her friends. “Hey,” I say. A couple of people half turn.
I work my way into the circle between a tall wiry guy and a tall girl with short dark hair and lips so red I can see them in the moonlight.
Someone takes out a bottle of vodka, the cheap kind that comes in a big plastic jug. “To Delia,” one of the guys says. “A girl who could really fucking drink.”
“To Delia,” the others say back. And then there’s a splashing sound as someone tips the bottle over the ground. And I feel a deep wave of sadness—this is it, this is her good-bye, a few people standing out on a cold January night, pouring shit booze onto frozen earth. They pass the bottle, taking long gulps. Who were they to her? How well did they know her? How much do they care?
When the bottle gets to me, I hold it far from my face so I won’t have to smell it. I don’t know how to begin, but I know it might be my only chance for answers. So I just blurt it out.
“Was she in some kind of trouble?” My voice sounds strange and hollow.
A guy turns toward me. “What are you talking about?”
“Was Delia in trouble?” I say.
“Who even are you?”
“I’m June,” I say. “A friend.”And I feel like a liar.
There is a silence.
“Delia wasn’t in trouble,” the guy says. “She was trouble.” He sounds pleased with himself, like he thinks this is a very clever line. I hate him, whoever he is.
Someone lets out a laugh. I keep going. “But something must have been really wrong,” I say. “For her to . . .”
“Well, obviously,” another guy says. “People who are fine don’t generally off themselves.”
“It’s not like she would have said what it was though.”
“If you knew her at all, you’d know that.” Someone reaches out and takes the bottle from my hands. “Delia didn’t tell anyone personal stuff about her life.”
But she did, I want to shout. She always told me.
“Listen,” another voice says. This one is female, kinder than the others, slightly southern sounding. Only, before she can say any more, a bright light is slicing through the trees, lighting up our faces one by one. Two car doors slam and the beams from two flashlights shine out into the night.
“Shit,” someone says. “Cops.”
“Tigtuff?” one of the guys asks.
Tigtuff?
There’s another voice then, gravelly and low. “Not on me, thank fuck.”
And all at once there’s frantic motion, everyone running in every direction. Adrenaline zips through my veins, but I force myself to stand right there. Here’s something I know that none of them seem to, that Delia never understood either: if you run, they will chase you; if you stay and fight, you might lose. Sometimes, when there’s danger, the answer is to curl into yourself and wait. I take tiny silent steps down toward the reservoir. I climb up over the big rock and crouch down.
It’s so peaceful there, the commotion behind me, the moon reflecting off the water, shimmering silver.
I turn toward the road. The cop car’s doors are open now, the light pours out from within. I see the silhouette of a cop holding a bottle up in the air. Someone was stupid enough to bring it up with them.
I stay where I am for a long time, as names are taken and tickets handed out. One person is led into the back of the police car, and everyone else is either driven or drives themselves away.
And then I am alone again. And I am afraid. And this time I don’t even know why. I start back up toward the road. My toe snags a root and I lurch forward, but I catch myself just in time. My heart is hammering, and I’m not sure if it’s the near fall or something else. I keep going, quietly, carefully. I can hear my breath and the wind and the beating of my heart.
Then, footsteps.
Someone else is out here. A square of blue light sweeps by.
I want to turn and run, but I know if I do, this person will hear me. I force myself to breathe. Whoever it is must be here for the memorial, same as I am. But still I reach into my pocket and wrap my fist around my keys so the sharp ends stick out between my knuckles. The light goes by again. It stops on me.
“Hello?” a voice calls out. It’s low and male. The footsteps are getting nearer. “Please,” the voice says. “Wait.”
He’s close. He holds his phone up to his face so he glows. Big jaw, thin mouth, short nose. I realize I know who he is.
I saw him with Delia a few months ago, out in the parking lot at school. I remember watching them, curious about her and this guy who wasn’t her type. He was a wrestler, not tall, but wide and sturdy-looking, like a bulldog. Wholesome, somehow, too. Delia had jumped up on him from behind, wrapped her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his waist. And he ran around the parking lot, fast like she didn’t weigh anything at all.
“I’m Jeremiah,” he says. “I recognize you.”
“We go to school together,” I say, because sometimes when I meet people from North Orchard outside of school, I have to tell them this.
Jeremiah shakes his head. “Not from there. From a picture she kept in her room. You both have these hats on. She talked about you. You’re June.”
I know exactly what photograph he means, because I have a copy too. Mine is in the back of my closet, and I haven’t looked at it in a very long time.
“I’m sorry, you’re too late. For the memorial, I mean,” I say. “People were here before.” I try to slow my still pounding heart. “Other ones. But the police came.”
“I know. I was watching.”
“You didn’t come down.”
“I wasn’t here to drink with those people.” He pauses. “I came looking for answers.”
There is something in his voice then; it hits me in the center of my chest. “Me too,” I say. “I’m trying to find out why she did it. Why she . . .
”
The wind whistles. I pull my coat tighter.
“She didn’t kill herself, June.” Jeremiah leans forward. “Delia was murdered.”
A pulse of white-hot energy rushes through me. I stare at his face, half lit under that big yellow moon. “What are you even talking about?”
“She hung around with a lot of messed-up people. She wasn’t afraid of anyone or anything. Even when she maybe should have been. She wouldn’t have killed herself, and if it looks like she did . . .” He pauses. “Then it’s because someone made it look that way.”
I reach out for something to grab on to. There’s nothing but air.
“So we have to figure out who did this to her,” he finishes. “Because no one else is going to.”
I say, “If someone . . . I mean . . . We need to go to the police.”
“I already went. And they wouldn’t listen. They pretended to humor me, then gave me some pamphlets on grief and sent me on my way.” Jeremiah leans forward again. “We have to figure this out ourselves.”
His words are sinking in.
“You’re the only other person who cares enough to ask the right questions.”
I can barely breathe.
“She wouldn’t have done this to herself, what they’re saying she did,” he says.
“But what are they saying?”
Jeremiah is quiet for a long time. “Come with me,” he says finally. “There’s something I need to show you.”
Chapter 7
I follow Jeremiah back to the road. What the hell am I doing?
I feel like I’m in a dream. I think, This guy is crazy with grief. I shouldn’t even be following him.
We get in our cars.
We make our way on the narrow twisty roads. Up Beacon, down McKenna, onto leafy Red Bridge. It seems like we’re heading right for Delia’s house, but instead of pulling up in front, Jeremiah makes a sharp right and pulls into the cul-de-sac that connects to the woods behind it. He parks. I pull in behind him.
For a moment I sit there in the silent dark, the only light the yellow circle from someone’s front porch. I press my hand to my chest. I haven’t been anywhere near Delia’s house in over a year, but I used to come here nearly every day. This was more my home than my actual house was.
I open the door and step out. Jeremiah is waiting for me. I will the memories to stay away. I can’t handle them now.
“It’s down through the woods,” he says quietly.
He holds up his phone again, flips on the blue light. He steps up onto the grass between houses and disappears among the trees. I follow.
We’re surrounded by darkness. The leaves crunch beneath our feet. I’m breathing heavy. In, out, in. And that’s when I smell it : this strange scent I cannot understand. It’s weak at first, but as we reach the edge of the trees, it hits me like a punch in the face. There’s burnt wood and leaves, scorched rubber, melted plastic, gasoline. I pull my scarf up over my mouth and nose. But it doesn’t matter—the stench is so strong.
“What the hell is that?” I say.
We are standing at the edge of Delia’s backyard now. Jeremiah points his phone toward the remains of a structure out in the grass. I can’t tell what it is.
“How they say she did it,” he says.
“How she . . .” I stop. Then I remember: this is where Delia’s stepfather’s shed is supposed to be. He uses it to drink and jerk off, Delia had said. And what I’m looking at now is what’s left of it—half of a wall, a metal frame, and a pile of burnt things.
Jeremiah turns toward me. “This is how they’re saying Delia killed herself. That she burned herself to death in there.”
I breathe in. I can taste it. My legs start to shake.
“There was firewood inside, she doused it in lighter fluid, herself too, and, whoosh, lit it up. So they say.”
I can feel the heat crawling up from my stomach. Images flash through my mind—Delia trapped, the fire all around. She’s scared, screaming.
And it’s real now. I can’t breathe. Delia, who was so tough, who would say anything, do anything, go anywhere, wasn’t brave about everything. Memories come—Delia shrinking away from a tiny bonfire on the night she first confessed it. Delia flipping out because a guy was playing around with a lighter too close to her. I remember the look in her eye when she told me about her awful nightmares of nothing but flames. If I have one while you’re here, she had said, squeezing my hands tight, you must promise, promise you will come and wake me up.
Delia was scared of just one thing. This was it.
“There’s no way she did this,” I say. And I know in that moment that what I’m saying is true.
Jeremiah nods. He turns toward me, out there in the dark.
“So now you understand,” he says, “why I need your help.”
We’re up by my car now, Jeremiah and I. And I’m this close to losing it entirely.
“Maybe we can go back to the police,” I say. “Maybe we can tell them . . .” I am desperate, grasping for anything.
“They’ve already seen this place. There’s no point in going to them until we can tell them something they don’t already know.”
“I haven’t . . . I hadn’t spent time with her in so long, I don’t know anything about . . . Where would we even start?”
Jeremiah turns away. “I might have an idea.” He raises his gloved hand and puts his finger on the window. “I did something a few weeks ago that I’m not very proud of.” He traces a circle in the condensation on the glass. “She got a lot of phone calls when we were together, but she didn’t always pick them up. I guess maybe I was a little jealous. She wasn’t always the easiest person to have as a girlfriend, you know.” The words are tumbling out of his mouth, faster now. “Usually she’d bring her phone with her when she went to the bathroom, but this one time a couple weeks ago she forgot, I guess. The phone was ringing, it had been ringing all afternoon. So I don’t know, I didn’t even really mean to, but then . . . I answered it. It was a guy, and he said, ‘There’s no point in trying to avoid me. I know your friends, I know where you hang out. I’ll find you.’ He was all crazy mad sounding. I asked who he was, what he wanted, but he hung up. I checked, and the name on the phone was Tigger. When Delia came back from the bathroom, I didn’t say anything. I knew she’d get pissed at me for snooping if I did, and I didn’t want her to be mad at me. I’m such an idiot. I should have said something. I should have . . .” Jeremiah pauses then. He rubs the circle off the glass with his fist and looks up. “If we need somewhere to start, I think he’s it.”
I am silent. But all of a sudden I realize something:
Tigger. Tig.
My breath catches in my throat.
Tigtuff?
Not on me, thank fuck.
The pieces are clattering together, bits of memory arranging themselves into a shape.
“What?” Jeremiah says. He is staring at me, jaw set, head tipped to the side. “What is it?”
Down by the water they weren’t talking about “tigtuff” but “Tig’s stuff.”
I open my mouth to tell him, and I’m stopped by a thought. Can I trust him? This guy who I’ve never spoken to before, who spent tonight hiding out in the dark, watching, who answered Delia’s phone and never told her about it?
“Nothing,” I say. I press my lips together. But what’s Tig’s stuff? It’s the sort of stuff guys like the ones down by the water might bring out for a night of getting fucked up. It’s the sort of stuff one would very much want to hide from the cops.
And as I understand this, I understand something else: just what that makes Tig . . .
Chapter 8
Before the sun rose, I was already there, sitting in my car in the parking lot of Bryson High. I haven’t been to sleep. For five hours I drove, thinking about Delia. It was like over Christmas when I was a
lone, only this time I was kept company by images I couldn’t escape. Every time I blinked, there was the shed, charred and crumbling. Every time I took a breath, there was that stench. I turned the radio up loud and forced myself to sing along. Scream along. It’s what I had to do to keep the tears from coming.
Now I sit huddled in my coat and scarf, watching as the sky turns from black to gray to clear, cold blue. At 7:20 I get out and walk toward the school, waiting for the students to arrive. If this were a regular day, I’d be nervous knowing I’m about to have to talk to so many people I don’t know, to ask them for something. But as it turns out, there are many worse things to be scared of.
Finally, they begin to trickle in—two tall girls in fuzzy boots and pea coats, a small guy with an enormous backpack, three huge dudes in football jackets.
I’m not sure who I’m looking for, exactly, and I could barely see them last night, but Delia’s type of person is never that hard to spot.
There’s a girl in all black with short dark hair. I walk up to her. “Did you know Delia Cole?” I say.
“Who?” the girl tips her head to the side, confused. She smiles slightly. I ask again. She shakes her head.
I ask a guy with a skateboard and two girls wrapped together in one very long scarf, a kid with a Mohawk and a dozen more people after that. They all say no. But someone who knows her is here somewhere and I’m not giving up until I find them.
Three guys are walking toward me now. Two are tall and lanky, one is shorter and sturdier; they’re dressed in black and green and gray. I feel a tingling in my gut.
I make a half circle and come up behind them. They don’t notice me. They’re talking. I listen.
“. . . appear in court,” says one of them.
“I can’t believe you’re even here today.”
“My mother bailed me out at two in the morning. Then stood over my bed at six and told me to get up for school.”
Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls Page 3
