Frenzy

by V. J. Chambers

  “No,” he said.

  “Why’d you check? Did you think I was going to shoot you?”

  “It’s habit, that’s all,” he said.

  “So, you habitually handle the gun?”

  “Jesus.”

  “You’re not telling me everything about yourself,” I said. “You know everything about me, but you’re holding something back.”

  He looked down at the gun. He stared at it. Then he shut his eyes. He took a deep breath. “Maybe.”

  “What is it?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t? Of course you can. All you have to do is open your mouth and explain.”

  “No.” He took the gun out of the kitchen.

  I followed him. “After everything I’ve told you, what could you be holding back that’s so bad?”

  He put the gun in the closet.

  “Have you shot people? Is that it? Because lots of people that I know have shot people. Hell, my own father is only home with my family because he’s out on parole. That’s not going to phase me, Levi.”

  He shut the closet door. “This is all a mistake.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He looked at me. “This isn’t going to work. This thing with us isn’t going to work. It can’t work. I don’t know what I was thinking to even try, but there’s nothing about it that makes any kind of sense.”

  “What?” My voice had dropped to a whisper.

  He took me by the shoulders. “Look, we’re… different. In a lot of ways. You’re too young for me, anyway. I guess I spent all this time around college students, and it made me think I was one too, but I’m not. And I thought I could try to be with you, but I can’t.”

  “Because I found this gun?”

  “Because of everything, Molly. Because this is crazy.”

  “So? You can’t end it.”

  He dropped his arms, letting go of me. “I have to.”

  I stood there, stunned.

  He walked around me, back into the kitchen. He picked up the cutting board, which was covered in chopped up vegetables and slid the veggies into the trash can. “Go back to your dorm.”

  “Levi—”

  “No, I mean it,” he said. “Get away from me, and stay away from me. And I’m not using you for that shit with Professor X, either. I won’t make you part of this. I should never have gotten involved with you in the first place.”

  “But—”

  “Molly.” He looked at me, his face stony. “Go.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  My dorm room was empty. I turned on the light and went and sat down on my bed.

  Levi was the most wishy-washy person I thought I’d ever met. The boy was giving me whiplash. First he couldn’t kiss me. Then he did, and he wanted us to be together. Then I found that gun, and he didn’t want to be together anymore.

  Levi had kicked me out of his apartment. He’d said that it was completely over between us. He’d said we couldn’t be together.

  And it had something to do with that gun.

  I could have taken it if he’d broken it off because he didn’t have feelings for me or something. That would have made sense.

  This was too strange.

  What was going on with Levi? If the gun had something to do with his plan for revenge, then why wouldn’t he have told me about it?

  When I’d accused him of having something to hide, he’d admitted it.

  And now I might never figure out what it was.

  Somehow, the frustration of not understanding was even worse than the hurt of his rejection.

  I’d really been developing feelings for Levi, and I’d wanted to become closer to him. But right now, all I could think about was what he wouldn’t tell me.

  Then the phone rang.

  The dorm phone.

  I remembered that Levi had called me on it once before. Maybe it was him.

  The only other person who’d ever called the dorm phone was Professor X.

  I picked it up. “Hello?”

  “Molly.” The deep, distorted voice. Not Levi. Professor X, then.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want my money. Do you have my money?”

  “You said that I had two weeks until I had to give it to you.”

  “Right. Well, that’s two days from now.”

  Two days? It couldn’t be. I had to have more time than that. “No, that can’t be right. There’s no way it’s been that long already.”

  “It has.”

  “But I’m not ready.” Levi was supposed to help me with the money. If I didn’t have Levi, then what was I going to do? “I need more time.”

  “If you can’t come up with the money¸ maybe we could come to some kind of arrangement, Molly.”

  “Arrangement?”

  “You could work it off.”

  “Work what off?”

  “Cori’s debt, of course. You already live in her room. You’re friends with all her friends. You kiss the boys she kissed. Why not work for me as well?”

  “What? No. I don’t want to sell drugs.”

  “Then get me the money.” Click.

  Shit.

  * * *

  There was a knock at the dorm room door. Crap, was it Professor X or one of his goons, come to try to convince me to become a drug dealer?

  “Who is it?” I asked, my voice trembling.

  “Parker.”

  Parker? What was he doing here? I went over to the door and flung it open. “I thought you broke up with Jill.”

  “I did,” said Parker. “I came by now, because I know she’s doing work study. I was hoping you’d be here to let me in.” He looked worse than he had last time. He had a straggly beard and ratty, stained clothes, and it didn’t smell like he’d showered in a long time.

  “How’d you get into the building? You don’t have keycard access.”

  “I went in behind a couple girls,” he said. “They held the door for me. What’s with the third degree, Molly? You still playing detective?”

  I stepped away from the door. “What do you think the fastest way to get four thousand dollars is?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Um, I really don’t know. But if you figure it out, let me know. That’s actually why I’m here. Jill owes me like fifty bucks for ecstasy pills I bought her. I’m coming to collect.”

  “But she’s not here,” I said.

  “It’s okay. I know where she keeps things.” He came inside and went to Jill’s dresser. He opened the top drawer and began flinging out underwear and bras onto the bed.

  “Um, I’m not sure you should do that. You can’t just come in here and take Jill’s money.”

  “Watch me.” He kept tossing Jill’s underwear out of the drawer. “I know she keeps a stash of money in here. I saw her put it here.”

  “Parker, I think you have to leave.”

  “Not leaving.”

  “You need to. I’m going to get someone. I’m going to get the R.A.”

  Parker laughed. “Your R.A. is five foot three and skinny. I’m pretty sure she’s not going to stop me.”

  “Well, then I’ll call campus security.”

  “Whatever,” said Parker. “By the time they get here, I’ll already be gone.”

  “Really,” I said. “You have to stop.”

  He didn’t. He hauled even more clothes out of the drawer. “It’s not here.” He sorted through the clothes on the bed. “How can it not be here?”

  “Parker, please.”

  Parker stopped moving. He picked something up out of the pile of bras and panties. It was a glass knick knack in the shape of a mushroom, about the size of someone’s fist. He stared at it. Then he set it in the middle of Jill’s dresser.

  He picked up the clothes and stuffed them all back in her drawer. He slammed the drawer closed. “Fuck her.”

  “Parker—”

  “I’m leaving,” he said. “Don’t you worry.” He stalked out of th
e room.

  * * *

  I paced, trying to figure out what I was going to do. I didn’t have that money. I needed to find some way to get it. But how? I didn’t think I could get my hands on that much, not unless I talked to my dad or something. And I didn’t want to do that. But if Professor X kept pushing, I was going to have to exactly that.

  It would be better if I could find the actual money. Cori had hidden some of it in this room, under her mattress. Maybe she’d hidden the rest of it somewhere else. I knew it wasn’t in this room, at least not on her old side, because I would have seen it when I moved in. There had been no other place to hide money.

  I didn’t think there was anyway.

  What if I was wrong? What if there was a corner of carpet that was pulled up, with money tucked underneath? What if there was a hole in the wall, just the right size to shove in a wad of cash?

  I had to look.

  I got down on my hands and knees and began examining every inch of the walls and floor. I promised myself that, when I got done with that, I’d look at the ceiling too.

  The door opened. “Molly?”

  I was crouched down underneath my desk. I peered out around the legs. “Hi, Jill.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Um…” I crawled out from the desk and got to my feet. “I might be in trouble.”

  “So you’re hiding under the desk?”

  “No, it’s just…” I bit my lip. “Well, it’s a long story. The thing is, I think that Cori might have hidden money somewhere in this room, and there are people—scary people—who want it back, and I only have two days to find it.” I looked down at the floor. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t figure out how to make this better, you know? Do you have any idea where she might have put something?”

  Jill didn’t say anything.

  I looked up. “Jill?”

  Jill was standing in front of her dresser. “Did you do that?” She pointed.

  “Oh,” I said. “Parker was here. He’s in a bad way. He was trying to steal money from you, but he couldn’t find anything. I think he’s losing it. Anyway, he found that mushroom thing in your dresser drawer, and he put it on top of your dresser.”

  Jill swallowed. She went over to the dresser and picked up the knick knack. “He put this here?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Look, I really need to find that money.”

  “Cori gave this to me.” She turned the mushroom over in her hands. “It was for my birthday last September. She said she saw it in a shop in town, and it reminded her of me.” Her face crumpled. She sat down on her bed and burst into tears.

  Shit. Jill was freaking out at the worst possible time.

  I went and sat down next to her. I put my arm around her. “Hey, it’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay,” Jill said through her tears. She was sobbing. “Cori’s gone, Molly. She’s never coming back. She’s dead.”

  I patted her back. “I know, it’s really sad. And I know this is a terrible time to ask you about this, but I really need to know if there were places that you know of that Cori hid things.”

  “No,” Jill said, still crying. “I don’t know anything like that. Why do you care, anyway?”

  “Because she hid money, and I need to get it back. Some of it was left in the room. Maybe she took the rest of it with her when she took all her stuff. Where’d she take her stuff, anyway? Did she go home? To her parents’ house?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jill. She got up off the bed, wiping at her face.

  “Well, you said that you guys argued, right? And then when you came back her stuff was gone.”

  “Yeah,” said Jill. She started to sob again. “I argued with her. The last things I said to her were ugly. I made her move out. I wasn’t a good roommate. I wasn’t a good friend.”

  I got up too. “You did the best you could. You can’t blame yourself for it.” I hugged her.

  She sniffled into my shoulder.

  “She wouldn’t have had time to go home, would she? Where did Cori’s family live?”

  “The other side of the state,” said Jill, pulling back. “Are you going on about something?”

  “Well, then, what did she do with her stuff? Did she have a car?”

  Jill rubbed her eyes. “I, um… Yeah. She had a car.”

  “So she probably put her stuff there.”

  “No.” Jill shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “What happened to her car?”

  “The police searched it, I think,” said Jill. “I don’t think there was anything in it.”

  “Her stuff’s got to be somewhere.”

  “Stop thinking about Cori’s stuff,” said Jill. “It’s not important.”

  “It is if the money was there.”

  Jill took a shuddering breath. “How much money are we talking about here?”

  “Thousands of dollars,” I said. “The envelope I found had ‘#3’ written on it. And I know that it was only one third of the total amount. So, I think there were probably two other envelopes, but I don’t know where they are.”

  “If she had money, whoever killed her probably took it,” said Jill. “You know, Molly, the way you won’t let this Cori thing go is kind of disturbing.”

  “Well, you’re the one who’s crying about her right now,” I said. “It’s not like she isn’t still important to people.”

  “I knew her. You didn’t know her,” said Jill, her voice rising. “You are like obsessed with her. And you need to drop it. Why are you talking about money while I’m crying?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Whatever,” she said. “I don’t know if I want to be around you right now.”

  “What? You want me to leave?”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  I took a step back. “Wow.”

  She looked away. “You don’t understand anything, you know? You didn’t know Cori. She’s not a real person to you. Instead, she’s a puzzle you’re trying to solve. Maybe you should let it alone, you know?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Besides, Cori hid everything. She always put stuff in weird places. She’d have drugs in candy boxes and stuff. One time I even saw her putting them in the back of this frame that had dried flowers in it. She could have hidden anything anywhere. You’re never going to figure it out. You’re never going to figure her out.”

  I remembered that Townsend, the professor, had told me about those dried flowers before.

  But that wasn’t what I was thinking about right then. “Flowers…” I said. “Flowers!” I grabbed my coat. “Okay, Jill, I’ll give you some space. I have something I need to check out.” I ran for the door.

  “You’re leaving?” Jill looked completely confused.

  “Didn’t you want me to?” I yanked the door open.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I pounded on the door of Jonah King’s dorm.

  A guy I didn’t recognize answered the door. He was wearing a backwards baseball cap. He eyed me. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Is Jonah here?”

  He stepped aside from the door. “Man, I swear, more chicks come here looking for the gay guy than for all the rest of the straight guys who live here.” The apartment-style dorms generally housed four people per apartment.

  I walked into the dorm.

  “Jonah!” yelled the guy. Then he went to the couch in the living room and picked up a controller. He was playing some game with a lot of shooting. The sound of the digital gunfire was loud in the background.

  Jonah came out of one of the bedrooms. He was surprised to see me. “Melanie?”

  “Molly,” I said. “Cori gave you a vase with flowers in it?”

  He nodded. “Yeah?”

  “Where is it?”

  “I put it in my room,” he said. He started back the hallway.

  I followed him.

  His room was divided up the middle using wardrobes and desks. They’d used them like a partition to se
parate one side from the other. Jonah’s side of the room was neat and clean. The other side was trashed. There was even an open box of half-eaten pizza on the bed. I wrinkled my nose, and hurried over to Jonah’s side.

  The flowers were sitting on the window ledge. They were silk flowers—not real. The vase was brown ceramic, decorated with little fake jewels.

  I snatched it up. I tore the flowers out of the vase and threw them on Jonah’s bed.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” he said.

  I turned the vase over and shook it out on the bed.

  An envelope fell out.

  I picked it up. It was thick—just as thick as the one I’d found under the mattress. On the front, it said, Prof. X, #1. I grinned. “Jackpot.”

  “What is that?” said Jonah.

  I riffled through the contents of the envelope. Lots of cash. “It’s money Cori owed to a very bad guy. You didn’t have any idea it was in here, did you?”

  Jonah shook his head. “No, but she did tell me it was important that I didn’t—”

  “Get rid of them, yeah,” I said. “She told you she was going to want them back. That’s why I thought there might be something more to the flowers than just flowers.”

  “Why do you think she gave me the money?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Cori liked to hide things, didn’t she?”

  He nodded. “So, what are you going to do with that money?”

  “Give it to the guy she owed it to,” I said. “Otherwise, he’s coming after me.”

  “Oh.” Jonah’s eyes widened.

  I turned the envelope over in my hands. It was marked #1. The one in my room had been labeled #3. There was another envelope out there. I’d bet on it. I pulled the money out and quickly counted it. Yup. Two thousand.

  “Geez, that’s a lot of money,” Jonah whispered.

  “You ever see Cori with an envelope like this?” I said.

  “You mean one stuffed full of money?”

  I nodded.

  He thought about it. Then his eyes lit up. “Actually, the night that she gave me those flowers. Earlier, before the show, I saw her with that guy you were with before.”

  “What guy?”

  “You know, the pretty one.”

  “Levi? You mean Levi?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “But I didn’t know who he was. Anyway, she gave him a big, thick envelope like that.” He pointed.