People Like Us

by Dana Mele

  I keep a straight face. “It’s all relevant.”

  “Okay, I’ll play. She was kind. Generous. Impressive. She started her own company when she was fifteen. How many people do you know who can say that?”

  I shake my head. “None.”

  “Beautiful, obviously, but so are a lot of people. The other things, pretty rare.” He fidgets with the lip ring. “I liked talking to her and being with her. That’s what really matters, right? And I guess it was mutual.”

  “Guess?”

  “I’m not a mind reader.”

  “Why’d you break up?”

  His expression darkens. “I’m not a mind reader.”

  “Fair enough. When was the last time you talked to her?”

  “Last night.”

  “Last words?” He flinches and I cringe. “I’m sorry, I put that badly. I meant—”

  “I know what you meant,” he interrupts me. He takes his cell phone out of his pocket and shows me the screen and I can see the last fragment of their conversation, at 9:54 p.m. last night.

  GREG YEUN: If you’re sorry, why did you do it?

  JESSICA LANE: I didn’t say I regret it. Sorry doesn’t mean regret. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry for you.

  GREG YEUN: You pity me?

  JESSICA LANE: You’re putting words in my mouth. Stop it.

  GREG YEUN: You know what I regret? Knowing you.

  My heart begins to pound. Those are dangerous words. “How long ago did you break up?”

  “Officially, three weeks ago. But you know how things drag on, don’t you?” There’s a pink flush in his cheeks and his eyes shine like they might tear up, but he holds a steady gaze. For a split second I feel a bizarre urge to reach out and stroke his hair, because I know that wild look. I’ve worn it a thousand nights alone in my room, staring into the darkness, trying to will myself into another person or place or thing. And by the morning, I always succeeded. But he doesn’t know how to do that. It makes me want to rock him and whisper that even the worst things can be forgotten. You just have to keep forgetting over and over again.

  “Nothing lasts forever,” I finally say.

  He swallows hard and nods.

  “Spencer and I are about three weeks over, too,” I offer. The conversation on Greg’s phone looks hauntingly familiar. In the context of Jessica’s death, it takes on a sinister tone. As awful as it sounds, I wanted to hear that Jessica may have been suicidal, that Greg could give the police a reason to cross murder off the list. This isn’t going to do it. “One last question. Did she ever mention me? Or anyone else from Bates?”

  He eyes me carefully. “No.”

  But he’s always so hostile toward me. It doesn’t add up. He must know something about the link between me and Jessica.

  “Why did you agree to meet with me? Tell me all of this?”

  “The cops are going to question me, probably sooner rather than later. I should be thanking you for giving me a chance to rehearse.”

  “They haven’t contacted you yet?”

  He shakes his head. “They will. But who knows? They may not consider me a top suspect. I wasn’t there that night.”

  I stand woodenly and offer him my hand, and he takes it with icy fingers. His eyes are blank as he shivers under his layers of wet clothing. “Thanks for meeting me.”

  “Good luck with your investigation. Hope you catch the killer.”

  “I hope there is no killer,” I say in a slightly unsteady voice.

  His eyes travel over my face carefully. “Jess was happy. She was so full of life; she was luminous. She had her life mapped out to the minute. And even if she ever hurt herself, it wouldn’t have been like that. She was afraid of blades. She didn’t even shave her legs. She wouldn’t do this to herself. Someone else did. And it sure as hell wasn’t me. I’d watch my back, Kay.”

  I press both of my palms onto the tabletop to hold myself steady. “Why me?”

  “Who’s the link between you and Jess?”

  I shake my head.

  “Spencer. The relationship wrecker himself.”

  6

  I run the entire way back through the rain and drip mud onto the library floor as I sign myself out. I head straight to Brie’s dorm and pound on her door. She’s watching a movie with the lights dimmed and hurriedly invites me inside, tossing me a dry change of clothing.

  “Spencer was sleeping with Jessica,” I blurt out.

  She looks dubious. “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty damn.” As I explain, I peel my wet clothes off and gratefully slip into a flannel button-down and boxers. “I just met with Greg. He said she cheated on him with Spencer. They broke up three weeks ago. Remember Justine said he cheated with a Bates student?” I give Brie a meaningful look. “And Greg says there’s no way she killed herself. She was happy, she had plans, she hated blades.”

  “So that gives Greg a motive.” She makes room for me on the bed.

  “And me.” She combs my knotty hair with her fingers. “Of every person in the universe, Spencer had to have sex with a dead girl.”

  “That’s a morbid way to say it.”

  But when I picture Jessica, I see her as the body in the lake, and now I see Spencer there with her, her cold, white arms locked around his back, his hands slowly lifting her waterlogged dress.

  I can’t picture her alive. I don’t remember seeing her around campus very much. After first year, we get to choose many of our own classes and Jessica probably took most of her electives in the STEM departments along with Nola and Maddy. Cori, who has been premed since kindergarten, also takes mostly STEM electives. Poets like Tricia and people like me who want something new every day tend to stick to the humanities. Tai’s parents also force her to take what they’ve decided are all pre-prelaw courses, in case a pro career falls through. Brie has an overloaded course schedule because she’s determined to pack it with humanities and STEM classes. It’s part of how she manages to be friends with so many people without going out as often as the rest of us.

  So even though it’s a small school, it’s still possible to miss someone. I try to blink the images away.

  “Greg also showed me some pretty damning texts from the night she died. Between him and Jessica, I mean.”

  “What were you doing with Creepy Greg?”

  “I’m not going to sleep well until this murder thing is dropped.” It’s never been easy to lie to Brie, and I hope I’m pulling it off. I do want the murder investigation to be dropped. I still need athletics to start back up. I need to earn a scholarship and keep my parents sane and at a manageable distance. But if I don’t follow through with the revenge blog, none of that even matters. Because what Jessica had on me will destroy everything I’ve worked so hard to get.

  I switch a light on and Brie shields her eyes. She wears sky-blue Ralph Lauren pajamas, and her hair is held back from her face by a matching headband. The light reflecting in her eyes makes them look even rounder and brighter than usual. Even in the middle of the night, Brie is beautiful.

  She sighs loudly and pauses the movie. “Kay. You need to stop obsessing over this.”

  “Well, I think it’s weird that you’re not more interested in the murder of a fellow student. Whose body we discovered. And who we might be suspected of killing.”

  She touches a finger to my lips. “You’re being paranoid again. No one suspects anyone of anything, and if they did, it would be Greg. Or maybe Spencer. We’re golden.”

  The thought of Spencer doing it makes my skin crawl. “Why would Greg give me all that information if he was guilty? He said he wanted to rehearse for the police, but—”

  “That’s reasonable. Lawyers rehearse their clients and witnesses over and over to get their stories straight.”

  I shiver and pull my bare legs up under the sheets. “They had a huge fight right
before we found her. Like two hours before.” My hair is more or less smoothed now, and Brie is stroking my neck. I turn to look up at her.

  “That fits the timeline pretty well. But we can’t assume she was murdered without evidence.”

  “Greg did. She had everything going for her.”

  “No one has everything.”

  Our faces are close and I wonder how long she’ll stay like this with me. My heart stops. My lungs stop. I am paralyzed this close to her, poisoned by longing, and for an aching instant I think she’s going to kiss me. It’s our broken record, the moment we are doomed to relive over and over. There’s no outcome except to stop and start over.

  She stands suddenly and begins folding the wet clothes I’ve discarded on her floor. I squeeze my eyes shut and force myself back into the role I’ve been assigned.

  “You never know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. Sometimes people are just unhappy.”

  “You don’t think she would have told him if something was wrong?” I pick up the towel I’ve drenched and roll it into a neat ball. She takes it from me, shakes it out, and hangs it up.

  “Sometimes people don’t feel like they can.”

  I take Brie’s hand, a wave of fear washing over me. “You would tell me, wouldn’t you?”

  She hesitates only for a split second. “Yes.”

  “You said you couldn’t tell me what Tai said that made you cry.”

  She gazes at my hand in hers and I follow her eyes down. She’s taller and more muscular than me, but her hands are smooth and graceful while mine are dry and too big for my tiny wrists. I always feel self-conscious holding hands. “That’s different.”

  “It’s not. I’d never forgive myself if something happened to you and I could have stopped it.”

  She looks at me for a long time without saying anything. “If I didn’t talk to you, I’d talk to Justine.”

  My eyes feel like needles are poking at them but I nod and stand abruptly.

  “I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, Kay. I’m just saying we all have safety nets that cross over different people. I tell you some things and I tell Justine some things. You don’t tell me everything, do you?”

  Almost. Almost everything.

  Brie is the only one at Bates who knows my best friend and my brother died, though she doesn’t know how. She knows my mother tried to commit suicide, though she doesn’t know it was my fault. She knows just about as much about me as you can reasonably know and forgive. And somehow, she makes me feel like my freak-show life is totally normal. I guess that’s what I love about Brie. She makes me feel like everyone has secrets, and hiding them is just part of the human experience.

  “I’m going to try to study before bed.”

  “Okay.” She stands and gives me a hug. “Don’t let this get in your head, Kay.”

  I read over my old texts from Spencer as I struggle to fall asleep. I wish I didn’t sound so much like Greg and he didn’t sound so much like Jessica. I think about texting Spencer to tell him what I found out, that Greg may be suspected of killing the girl he cheated on me with, that it’s definitely beyond over between us, but that would be pointless. Every time I text him to say it’s over, we end up getting back together.

  Instead, I end up playing the one saved voice mail I have from him on repeat until I fall asleep. It’s a birthday message from over the summer. It’s fifteen seconds long. I’m embarrassed for clinging to it just to hear the sound of his voice. But I keep hitting replay until I drift off into darkness.

  * * *

  • • •

  I SKIP BREAKFAST the next day in favor of an extra-long morning run to clear my head. After a brisk shower, I meet the others outside the dining hall to walk to chapel together. It’s a crisp morning, and the sky is shockingly blue. It always feels jarring when there’s a funeral or a memorial on a beautiful day. I link arms with Brie as we walk across the courtyard with the rest of the student body, an army of teenage girls dressed in proper black dresses with respectful hair and makeup. Since it’s a memorial, we’ve been instructed to ditch our uniforms. Most of my peers probably haven’t dealt much with tragedy at this point in their lives, but all of us have trained in formality. It’s our way.

  Tai isn’t there, but as of this morning, her name is still on the class roster, and the oven timer on the revenge website is ticking down.

  No one says a word to me until I finally turn to the others. “Can we talk about Tai?”

  Tricia spits out the gum she’s perpetually chewing. “Are you goddamn serious?” She looks, as usual, model gorgeous, with her hair swept up from her swanlike neck, her long lashes framing her usually warm deep-brown eyes. Right now they look cold as ice.

  Brie waves solemnly at some of the track team members and then turns back to us. “Tai was exaggerating. Kay never attacked her.”

  “We had a fight; it’s over.”

  Cori balances on one foot as she pulls a sagging knee sock up her freckled calf. “I can’t believe you’re defending yourself. I heard she’s leaving. For good.”

  I try not to react visibly. “Did she tell you that? When is she going?”

  “No, she didn’t tell me. She’s on a total communication blackout. I know things.”

  Brie shoots me a look. That means the info came straight from Klein’s office to Cori’s parents. This whole thing went down lightning fast.

  “Don’t blame Kay,” Maddy says quietly. “Tai doesn’t back down. She would never drop out of school unless she had done something wrong.” By now we have all stopped dead in the middle of the path, and everyone is staring at me. I wave them aside under a leafless willow tree to allow others to pass. Tricia hesitates at the edge of the path, gazing down at her Christian Louboutins. Then she takes them off and runs barefoot over the cold grass, scowling.

  “You’re hiding something.” Cori twists a winding branch around her arm until it snaps. Her usually rosy cheeks look drained of blood. “Why won’t you tell us what really happened?”

  “Yeah, Kay. No secrets,” Tricia says.

  Brie places a hand on each of their arms. “It isn’t Kay’s secret to tell. It’s Tai’s.”

  Tricia’s eyes well up for a moment, and then it evaporates. “She’s my best friend. If she’d really done something wrong, she would have told me.”

  I look at each of them in turn. “Are you saying I made something up to screw her over?”

  No one says anything for a moment.

  “Tai will be fine,” Brie says firmly. “We’ll all be fine. We don’t even know she’s leaving.”

  “Then where is she?” Tricia is hugging her arms tightly to her chest, her shoulders squared and rigid. She looks like she’s about to fall apart. I want to comfort her, but I’m the one who did this.

  The chapel bell begins to ring, signaling the beginning of service. “I don’t know,” I say wearily. “I can’t say any more. I’m so sorry.”

  “Come on, girls.” Tricia links arms with Maddy and Cori, turning away from me. “Time to honor the fallen.”

  * * *

  • • •

  EVERY PEW IN the tiny chapel is packed with students and additional members of the community, and people crowd into every corner. Jessica’s family sits in the front row. They look like the prototypical Bates family, despite the fact that she was here on scholarship. Her mother is tall with broad shoulders and sharp features. Her eyes are puffy and bloodshot, but she doesn’t cry during the service. Her father is stoic, his jaw clenched, posture hunched, and his fingers woven together, rough boating knots. There is a younger sister, not yet old enough for Bates, and an older brother, handsome, broken, his arm protectively slung around his sister’s shoulder. There won’t be a funeral here—that will be private and after the body has been examined—but there is a large framed picture of Jessica surrounded by cascades of lilies.


  I despise lilies. They are the floral mascots of death and everyone knows it. I had to inhale their stench, mixed with the thick perfume of Catholic incense, during the funeral masses for all four of my grandparents, then Megan, and then my older brother, Todd, just two months later, the year before I started at Bates. I have no patience for lilies.

  The service is longer than usual so that a variety of homilies, poems, and songs can be crammed in, and then afterward pastries and coffee are served. The room is thick with students and teachers, and I do my best to nod politely as they filter past one by one. It reminds me of Todd’s wake, when we were forced to greet every mourner. Like we were hosting a party or something. I resented every person who showed up for making me feel like I had to entertain them. Now I sense the same resentment bubbling up as fellow students gather me into weepy hugs and professors offer handshakes and low words intended to be comforting, but probably repeated on a loop to every student in the room. Robot words. I eventually manage to pull Tricia and Brie into a secluded nook where we can speak uninterrupted.

  I’m observing Jessica’s family and nibbling a chocolate croissant when Maddy scurries over excitedly, pulling Cori by the elbow.

  “Look likes Notorious has news,” Tricia observes.

  Maddy ignores her. “We need to talk about Tai.”

  “Didn’t we already do that?” Cori says, straightening her collar in the stained-glass window.

  “I know what happened,” Maddy says meaningfully. She beckons us to incline our heads together and whispers into our ears, “She was doping.”

  “Was not.” Tricia eyes my croissant and takes a sip of coffee. Tricia was extremely overweight her first year, and after a surgery and summer of extreme dieting, she’s physically transformed. Now she refuses to eat outside her nutritionist’s daily menus. She was stunning then and she’s stunning now, but she’s intense about sticking to her menu.

  “Interesting.” Brie tilts her head at me.