by Dana Mele
“Back to your corner. This is the final rule. You don’t get to kiss me until my lips are breathing distance from yours. That means if I was a Dementor, I could suck out your soul.”
“Exquisite image. That’s a lot of smiles for someone who looked like they were ready to explode when I first sat down.”
“Challenge extended.” I smirked.
“That’s one.” He grinned, and the boyish excitement in his eyes was contagious. He wasn’t Brie but he would be a fun, sexy distraction.
* * *
• • •
AND HE WAS. He always was, right until the end. I never meant to fall for him.
I never meant to hurt him.
I certainly never thought he could hurt me.
Now he looks up at me from the bottom of the stairs with the most innocent expression, and I’m so tempted to ask if he wants to go for a drive that I actually take a step down toward him before he spins with a half wave and heads back down the path and I’m stumbling into his shadow.
7
I call Greg that night after a bit of studying. My first instinct was to call Brie to tell her about Spencer and Tricia, but if I don’t force myself to study, it doesn’t happen, and I’m anxious to settle up my debt with Nola.
Greg answers the phone, and I hear music blaring in the background. For a moment my breath catches in my throat. When Todd died, I stole his iPod and listened to his music nonstop—in class, in my sleep, while I ran endless miles. This album, xx, by the band The xx, was always the last to play, and when it stopped, so did I. It was so hard to press play again, to restart, to get out of bed.
“Hello, Kay Donovan. Am I under arrest?”
I breathe again. “No. I have a favor to ask.”
He lets out a short laugh. “I didn’t know we were on favor-asking terms.”
“We’re not, necessarily, but we have a lot in common. We were both cuckolded by a lewd encounter between Spencer Morrow and Jessica Lane.”
“That’s a lighthearted way of discussing a pretty heavy matter.”
“Yes, but it’s life, and if you get too serious, you drown in it.” I stretch out on my bed and kick my legs up against the wall, my feet landing on a poster of the U.S. Women’s Soccer team.
“You’re quite the philosopher.”
“Not really. To the point. I would like to ask you on a date.”
There’s a pause.
“Not with me. With someone a little more you. She’s quirky. And pretty. She has a certain je ne sais quoi.”
“You haven’t told me anything concrete.”
“She speaks a little French, does a little ballet, and is a mean hacker.”
He is silent and I check the phone to make sure the call hasn’t dropped. “Kay, you remember my ex-girlfriend just died, right?”
“Like I said, this would be a favor.” I search desperately for a more convincing argument. “It’ll be a good distraction. Get out of the house. Turn off that depressing music.”
“Don’t quit soccer for cheerleading, Kay.”
“That came out wrong. When my brother died, the single, solitary thing that kept me sane was going out and doing stuff. I know grief is different for everyone, but...”
His voice is softer when he speaks again. “Sorry about your brother. I’m not a doer, though. I’m also a boring date.”
“I think you would be a thrilling date,” I say.
I hear a stifled laugh and blush involuntarily. It was a stupid thing to say. “You know I’m a person of suspicion in a murder case, right?”
“It’s not officially a murder case, is it?”
“I don’t know. They didn’t use that word when they questioned me, but I’ve already been called in twice. That’s not a good sign.”
I hold in a sigh of relief. If they’re focusing on Greg, they’re not focusing on us. Maybe Morgan will never follow up after all. But I still owe Nola her date. “Also, I’m not greatly attached to the bachelorette in question.”
He laughs. “You’re a terrible salesperson, Kay Donovan.”
“Maybe. But again. She speaks a little French and does a little ballet. And she’s artsy, like you.”
“Well, artsy people do congregate together. We’re like crows.”
A murder of crows. “So, do we have a deal?”
“No. That’s completely one-sided. What do I get?”
I think. “Name something.”
“Let’s talk again. Not a date,” he says quickly. “But let’s meet up at some point and compare notes and scars. Will that work?”
I nod slowly, considering. “Yes.” It will be an opportunity to size him up again, and to dig a little deeper about Jessica’s blog. “But first, you have to follow through with Nola.”
“Nola. Okay. Give me her info.”
* * *
• • •
THE NEXT DAY, classes resume, and it feels strange being back in a classroom, taking notes and trying to focus as if the past weekend had never happened. Friday seems like a month ago. But it’s only been three days since Jessica died. It feels surreal to be going through the motions of an ordinary day, and I text Tricia several times to see if she’s still speaking to me. She doesn’t answer, and she isn’t at lunch. Brie tells me she wasn’t in trig or Comp Lit, either. She’s still on the class roster, though, and Hannigan is in his office when I walk by, so the task hasn’t magically resolved itself. By the end of lunch, I have fifteen minutes before the timer on the revenge blog runs out, and I begin to panic. Even if I do somehow force Tricia to drop out of school now, her name isn’t going to disappear that quickly.
I step outside and call Nola.
“Busy.”
“Don’t hang up.”
“Hook me in one line.”
“I have fifteen minutes left to get rid of both Tricia and Hannigan and I need your help. Fourteen.”
Nola saunters out of the dining hall, spots me, and waves. “That’s two lines. Why the change of heart?”
“Because I’m desperate,” I whisper. I feel terrible. But this is a temporary fix. Hannigan has to go. There’s no question about that. But then something occurs to me. Tricia’s name just has to disappear. Not Tricia herself. The program is only going to register her name being removed, and Nola can totally make that happen. “I need you to take Tricia’s name off the class roster.”
Nola leans against a tree trunk and pulls her laptop out of her backpack. “That doesn’t sound like skewering.”
“I didn’t make up the rules.”
“And Hannigan?”
“I’m going to report him.”
She nods. “Okay. My payment?”
“Nola, I’m in a time crunch. Let’s just say I owe you a favor to be called in when you want. Okay?”
“That works.”
She types while I scrawl out an anonymous letter calling out Hannigan as a teacher in a relationship with an unnamed student, and drop it in Dr. Klein’s mailbox. I drop Hannigan a second anonymous note letting him know that if he doesn’t resign immediately, I’ll give Klein the name of the student along with photographic proof. Just as I’m about to leave the building, though, her administrative assistant calls to me from the top of the stairs and asks me to take a seat outside her office. I sit in the waiting room in a state of stifling dread, expecting to field questions about Tricia, but when I’m ushered into the office, Detective Morgan is waiting for me inside along with Dr. Klein.
“Sit down,” Dr. Klein invites, pointing to an azure suede chair.
I sit and smile nervously. “Is there something I can help with?”
“Detective Morgan is going to ask you some questions, dear. I’m just here as your chaperone,” she says.
I turn to Detective Morgan. “Okay.”
She smiles. “How are you holding up, Kay? Rou
gh couple of days.”
“I’m all right.”
“I saw they canceled your big game tonight. That’s rough.”
Rough twice in two sentences. Not exactly an impressive vocabulary. “It is.”
“I understand you had some scouts coming to watch you play. Some recruiters.”
The unblinking way she’s staring at me is incredibly unnerving, not to mention the level of stalking she’s obviously engaged in. “Yes, that’s true.”
“Rough,” she says for a third time. For some reason, this really irritates me.
“How can I help you?”
“Just a few questions about the other night, Kay. Can I call you Kay?”
I try not to let my annoyance show. “Everyone else does.”
“You say you found Jessica a little after midnight.”
“I didn’t time-stamp it. We found her and then you guys showed up and we reported it right away.”
She looks from Dr. Klein to me incredulously. “Now, I thought you told your friend Maddy not to call us.”
“No. My friend Brie told Maddy to call Dr. Klein first. We didn’t want Jessica’s family to find out on the news or the internet that their daughter was dead.”
She scribbles in her notebook. “So you told Maddy not to call us because—”
“Brie told Maddy.”
She smacks her forehead dramatically. “Brie told Maddy not to call us to protect Jessica’s family.”
I can’t help the irritation from edging into my voice. It feels like she’s deliberately twisting my words. “I said she told Maddy to call Dr. Klein first. Then the cops.”
Detective Morgan assumes an innocent expression. “My bad. To protect Jessica’s family.”
“Yes.”
She flips through her notes. “So this in fact contradicts your statement at the scene that you didn’t know who the victim was.”
I blink. “No, I didn’t know.”
“You just said you wanted to protect Jessica’s family.”
“I did. I just didn’t know it was hers.”
She taps her pencil against the notebook skeptically. “Which is it, Kay?”
I draw in a deep breath and try to remain calm. “We wanted to protect the unknown victim’s family. We were pretty sure she was a student and Dr. Klein would know who she was.”
“Okay.” Detective Morgan raises her eyebrows and writes this down. She doesn’t look like she believes me. “So.” She looks up at me again. “When I arrived at the scene, you were holding a soaking-wet garment and had scratches all up and down your arms.”
My throat begins to go dry. I do not like where this is headed. “I dropped the costume into the lake, like I said. We had planned to go swimming. And I ran through the thornbushes to help Brie out of the water.”
“Why not run around them?”
“Because my friend was screaming and I needed to get to her.”
“How many seconds did you save by running through the bushes?”
“I don’t know off the top of my head.”
“Guess.”
My eyes flick over to Dr. Klein. She nods encouragingly, but her hands are knotted together. “Maybe twenty?”
Detective Morgan notes this down. “You were with your friends all night?”
“Yes. At the dance.”
“Were you ever alone?”
I hesitate for a second. Brie said we should tell the police that we weren’t. But I don’t know if she ever confirmed this with the others. I end up splitting the difference. “Not significantly.”
“What’s significant?”
“Not long enough to murder someone.” The more I talk, the more I realize I’m digging myself into a six-foot-deep hole.
“How long does that take?”
“I don’t know, I never did it.”
She smirks. “Cute. To verify, you were never alone, for even a second, the entire night?”
Shit. “I went back to my room briefly to change my shoes before we met up at the lake.”
“Right around the time Jessica Lane was killed.”
“I didn’t know she was killed.” My eyes dart over to Dr. Klein again, but she is looking down at her desk.
“Now you know. Maybe knowing will help jog your memory.” Detective Morgan taps her pencil on her pad. “You were dating Spencer Morrow for quite a while.”
“Yes.” I get another awful flash of him with her again, of my Spencer with dead Jessica. Dead but animate, cold but passionate. Why do I always have to picture her dead with him?
“You broke up when he began seeing Jessica Lane.”
“I didn’t know it at the time.”
“You know it now?”
“I just found out.”
“Convenient.”
My face feels hot and my heart is pounding like it wants to burst out of my chest. I want to scream at Detective Morgan to fuck off. But that would just make me look worse.
“Just a couple more questions. When campus police officer Jennifer Biggs arrived on the scene, you told her not to touch anything because it was a crime scene, correct? There was a girl with slit wrists. Most people see that, they think suicide. What made you think crime scene?”
“I don’t know.” My voice creaks out in a dry whisper.
“Just now you acted surprised when I told you Jessica was murdered. But just before that you called her a victim and conjectured on how long it would take to murder someone. That’s quite a performance, Kay.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Is it true you’ve been in almost constant contact with Jessica’s ex-boyfriend, Greg Yeun, since her death?”
“Not constant.” I feel like I’m going to throw up. The room is spinning like a carousel, faster and faster.
“Were you in Jessica’s room the night she died?”
I shake my head and the room tilts sharply.
“Is there anything else you’d like to tell me? Anything at all?”
I open my mouth, dry heave, and then lean forward and vomit on the floor.
* * *
• • •
UP UNTIL THE whole murder incident, this year’s Skeleton Dance had been the best to date. As seniors, we ruled the scene. Tricia awed the room in her custom designer ball gown with her killer dance moves, and Cori dictated the playlist to the juniors assigned to the sound booth. The art club in charge of décor had completely transformed the ballroom into a glittering midnight forest swirling with mist and distorted shadows. Tai ran an underground cocktail bar from the bathroom, and Maddy flitted around taking pictures and uploading them to the event website while Brie danced, chatted, and took a selfie with virtually everyone in the room. Parties are always a little more difficult for me. I rarely settle into a function like my friends do. I feel like I need to be someone’s date or guest or I just kind of melt into the corners. Dressing up helps, though. As Daisy, I was able to identify a Gatsby type, a junior rugby player dressed in an expensive-looking suit.
I swirled over to her tipsily, ignoring the redhead she was talking to, and smiled my brightest Daisy smile. “Hello, Jay.”
She looked confused, but pleased at the attention. “Flapper.”
“Mrs. Daisy Buchanan.”
“Ah. Wrong Leo. Wolf of Wall Street.”
She offered me her hand, but I took the drink out of her other one—a ginger ale and lime with gin—downed it, and then dragged her onto the dance floor. “Dance with me, Jay,” I said, laying my head against her chest.
And she did. That’s the thing about Halloween, about costumes, about playing parts. By the end of the night we were making out in the bushes behind the ballroom, and Maddy was giggling and snapping pictures while Cori applauded and the Wolf of Wall Street, whoever she was, scrambled up, embarrassed, gathering her suit and ap
ologizing for some reason. I yanked the phone out of Maddy’s hands and deleted the photos.
“I’m so sorry for my friends. Pictures are gone.” I showed the display screen and scrolled backward through the photos to prove it.
Wolf gave me an embarrassed smile. “Whatever. See you around.” She ducked back into the building, and I tossed Maddy the camera and dropped back onto the ground.
“You’re so bad.” Maddy giggled, collapsing next to me breathlessly and taking a swig from her glittering pink flask.
“Bad isn’t the word. Mildly scandalous.” Cori stretched her long, freckled legs up against the brick side of the building and laid her head in the grass. Cori belongs in Gatsby. She’s a born aristocrat, a golfer, a coarse and blunt personality with sharp features and a sharper wit. She can be too bristly and opinionated at times and it would be easy to dislike her if she didn’t decide immediately to befriend you, but she did decide, so we’re solid. “Rest in peace, Spencer.”
“Have you even heard from him?” Maddy asked.
I shook my head. “Spencer had his chance.”
“How do you just . . .” Maddy sighed and gazed up at the sky. “Make someone like you?”
“I don’t.” I wished she hadn’t used those words. “Liking is one thing. Dancing is another. Just ask.”
Cori smirked. “That was more than dancing.”
“Then ask for more.”
She laughed loudly, a hoarse, hearty laugh. Cori’s laugh is so distinctive, it drew Tricia and Tai out of the building, Tai carrying her apothecary in her oversize purse and Tricia still dancing. Tai crouched down and opened her bag of refreshments.
“Sounds like time to power up. Chocolate vodka shots?”
“God, no.” I turned my head toward her and the stars trailed along. “Give me something that fizzes.”
“Prosecco. With notes of grapefruit and honey.” She poured me a mini flask, but I gave it back to her and took the bottle.
“Should we begin to wander toward the lake?” Tricia lifted the bottle and took a long drink.
