by Gin Price
Furniture torture.
I knocked on Liv’s door and rushed inside the moment she opened it.
Unfortunately, her room wasn’t much better.
“Something the matter?”
“I don’t know. Your house is kinda giving me the heebies.”
“My parents are home. Enough said.”
I felt a little guilty telling her I didn’t like her house. “I guess I’m just used to Rosahlia’s.”
“No, it’s really this place. It used to be cool but my mom redecorated everything, even my room. She didn’t like my choices.”
Ahh. That explained a lot.
“I think I woulda liked it better the way you had it.”
She smiled begrudgingly. “How come you’re here?”
“Because I’m a horrible friend.”
“Go on,” she said.
“I realized what you said in Art class is true. I’ve been so full of myself that I haven’t bothered to ask how you’re doing. I’m worried about a lot of things, but that’s not a reason to ignore you and become self-involved. So, I’m here to offer myself to you.”
Her brows furrowed. “What does that mean?”
“I’m here to listen, to pummel, to whine at—whatever you need, Liv. You’ve been there for me when I’ve let you, and now it’s time to return the favor because I think there’s something else going on with you other than me being selfish.” I walked to her bed and sat on the edge. “And I’m not leaving here until you tell me why you were in such a foul mood in school.”
She stared at me for a while and then lifted a shoulder with the same indifference she couldn’t pull off earlier in Art. Parents often ignored this shrug thinking it was all part of teenage angst. But among ourselves, we all knew it was a way of saying “I hurt, and I don’t know how to put it to words,” so I dragged her down next to me and hugged her.
As I suspected, she cried and told me all about her horrible weekend with her coldhearted parents.
Once she calmed down, she spoke clearer and I could follow the conversation better. “I don’t know what to say to them. They ask me questions and I’m terrified to say anything in case I get the answer wrong. And the questions aren’t really the type normal kids worry about getting wrong.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“This time, they asked me how school was and if I’d given any thought to what I might do when I’m old enough to move out. Pretty subtle, huh?”
I felt horrible for her. My mother had her moments of mood swings, but I never questioned that she loved me, even after she lost the battle with her depression. I couldn’t imagine having a mother who thought of me as a burden. Though I knew firsthand, having a mother who thought of herself as a burden could be disastrous.
The air hung with the thickness of Liv’s melancholy, so I wrapped her up in another hug, hoping my continuous affection would be enough to ward off the negativity. She sniffled.
I didn’t want her to cry again. “Well, you could always tell her you hope to be a successful interior designer. Maybe then she won’t attempt it herself, ’cause Jesus, Liv, this place is creepy.”
“I know, right? I hope the ’rents leave soon so I can go back to Rosahlia’s.” She leaned away from me and eyed my pocket. “Is that your phone vibrating?”
“Huh?” At first I forgot I brought it. “Oh. Yeah. I’m trying to remember to have it on me all the time.” I fished for my cell and eyed the display. A text message. “It’s from Warp. That’s weird.”
WE NEED TO MEET NOW. SHOTGUN WALL.
I read the text message and frowned. “He wants to meet. You wanna come?”
Liv shrugged. “Sure. I’ll have to meet you out front. I’m not sure why, but I’m grounded. As long as I don’t leave in front of them, they’ll never know I’m gone.”
I smiled. “Okay, I’ll meet you around the corner.”
***
By “shotgun wall” I could only assume Warp meant the wall we were at when I met Haze. The same one where the crazy business owner came out with a shotgun. Not exactly a place I wanted to revisit, but since Warp never texted me, I figured it was important.
Liv and I walked up, and though Warp stood there, I barely noticed him. All I could see was a big depiction of my face and beside me…Heather, both of us bathed in sunshine that stretched past the clouds. A halo hung over her head and her eyes were mockingly turned up to the sky. I looked pretty normal, though my eyes were slightly rounded, almost as if I were surprised by something.
“At least I’m not fat,” I said, trying to downplay my anxiety.
“This is no time for jokes, Emanuella! This is a blatant threat. I told you hanging around that guy was trouble, and now look.” Warp wore all black, looking a little like a Ninja warrior on a kill mission. I had an image of him running across rooftops anime-style wielding a large, sharpened, and unsheathed katana in search of Haze.
“He wouldn’t do this.”
“This is his signature style. No one else in this hood paints the way he does.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I accused.
“I know exactly what I’m talking about. There is a particular style to every artist’s work. And he is the only one with this thin to broad line style on the curves of these clouds, and that type of line is in every one of these pieces of you!”
“You don’t know jack about graffiti, Warp. You think someone can’t copy a style? People forge paintings all the time!”
“Yeah,” he shot back. “For millions of dollars. Who would take the time for a no-name graffiti artist?”
I folded my arms across my chest, shaking my head at the ridiculousness of his accusations. “You’re so against him you’ll say anything.”
“I don’t know, “ Liv interjected, her voice low as if she didn’t want to make me angry but wanted to give her opinion. “On a style so specific, it’s hard to imagine someone copying it.”
I studied the masterpiece more carefully. Other than the fact that I was situated beside a dead girl, I didn’t see a reason to freak out. “Let’s say you’re both right and Haze is doing this. Why? It doesn’t make any sense anymore.”
“Since when does a psycho make sense?” Warp took out his phone and began texting.
“What are you doing?” I asked, afraid he was sending out a personal APB.
“I’m going to tell Surge. I want him to keep a close eye on you at all times.”
“That’s enough, Warp!” I walked over to him and slapped his cell out of his hand. It skittered a few feet away. “I know you’re my brother and all, but you’re not my father.”
“Pops isn’t at home and can’t be, or I’d call him and tell him what’s going on!”
“I don’t know why you are making a big deal out of a stupid picture! It’s just someone trying to bully me and get under your skin. You’re falling for it!” But Haze’s words came back to me, calling me a fool or some such for challenging the writer. Could someone really be trying to threaten me because I messed with their art? Could it be Haze?
“I’m going to tell Surge anyway.” He bent and picked up his phone, rubbing it off on his pants.
“You’ll be wasting his time.”
Warp shook his head and palmed his phone. Digging around in his pocket with his other hand, he produced a folded piece of newspaper and with shaking hands, thrust it at me.
“You think I’m wasting my time?! Look at that, Emanuella, and tell me I’m being too cautious.”
Liv moved next to me and rested her chin on my shoulder as I unfolded the paper. The color print of a graffiti wall was the first thing that came into view. The next was an outline of a body right below it traced with mourning flowers.
Liv gasped, and I scanned the parts of the article that had survived Warp’s hasty ripping. I caught sight of Hea
ther Craig’s name and realized this was her murder scene photo as it had appeared in the Tribune two years ago…
I knew Warp felt this picture was proof of guilt, so my heart didn’t want me to look too closely. My head, though, scanned the graffiti with a thirst to know the truth. The painted landscape was actually quite intricate and stunning. There were clouds that parted to reveal stylized rays of the sun, shining over the beginnings of a name over a swirling background. I could see the H and a few lines above the H that denoted there was more to the piece than I could see.
The graffiti proved Warp right about one thing, something bizarre was going on. I looked from the artwork in the photo and the newest painted on the shotgun wall in front of me. The article was damning, but I wanted more. I needed more. I needed something that didn’t make Haze look guilty.
“The photo’s caption says the graffiti is the last thing Heather ever painted. She worked on it seconds before she was murdered,” I said out loud, but my brain was lost in the enigma.
“The fact that someone is spraying in the exact same style is proof the police were wrong, LL. Heather didn’t paint that wall. Her murderer did. I think she knew whoever killed her and where he would be and she went there to confront him.”
“You’ve already convicted Haze in your mind. You think he was there painting this piece and when she came to talk to him, he killed her?”
“The police suspected him,” Warp pointed out.
“The police suspected everyone!”
I hadn’t even felt Liv move away from me but I saw her now as she stood next to my brother, her face ghost white. “This is not good, Ellie,” she said in a small voice.
I didn’t want to agree with her but I did—only, not for the reason she would think if I voiced my agreement. Right now, all I knew was that Haze thought someone was biting his style. If he was right, and whoever was mocking his work killed his sister and was now painting me…shit was definitely not good. “I think I’m…”
“You’re not thinking,” my brother interrupted me with a yell. “The truth is staring you in the face! You broke up with him and now things are going to get worse unless I do something.”
“Part of the article is missing,” I mumbled. I stated a fact only, focusing on the one thing that didn’t scare the pants off of me.
“I was in a bit of a hurry. They tend to frown when you rip stuff out of old newspapers in the library.”
My head bobbed, acknowledging his words but unable to focus on any of them. “It wasn’t Haze. He wouldn’t kill his own sister.”
Warp glared at me as if I was the stupidest woman alive.
Instead of being supportive, as I would have liked, Liv’s face was contorted with concern. “Ellie, please.”
“Like you said, we’re not together anymore anyway. But even if we were, I know he wouldn’t hurt me.”
“You’re being a moronic child,” Warp came back at me. “This asshole is threatening you!”
“No, I’m being rational. There is someone else involved here, Warp. There has to be.”
“Well I’m not taking the chance. Even if you’re right and it isn’t Haze, which I doubt, someone’s obviously making a statement. And it’s time to make one back.”
In the background, I could hear Liv arguing that starting a war could make things worse. She begged him not to do it, to call the police. Warp argued that there wasn’t enough evidence to hand over to the police and involving them might speed up my stalker’s plan to kill me. I’d heard all I could take and drowned them out.
My entire body felt as though it were stretching in every direction, reaching toward every fear I’d ever experienced.
Who hated me so much? Who hated Haze so much?
Or was I really blind to the truth? Had Haze come up with an elaborate plot to find someone who reminded him of his sister, drag her through hell, pretend he liked her, harass her secretly while openly championing her, only to kill her in the end? Was he doing that to me?
Either way I looked at the situation, whether my boyfriend was at fault or not, one thing was straight-up: A murderer was targeting me.
Eighteen
UR not n class
I looked down at the message on my cell and sighed, half expecting the text to be from Haze. He’d been trying to get ahold of me since last night, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk to him. Not yet.
Monday night, Surge had waited in the park for him like I asked, and the two of them were in the middle of discussing callus treatments when Warp’s text telling Surge he thought Haze was after me went through.
According to Surge, Haze looked at the picture Warp sent of the graffiti on Surge’s phone with a horrified expression, apologized and took off.
Nothing made sense. If Haze was some sister-murdering freak, why would he look so horrified? I knew my judgment might be clouded, but the way Surge explained Haze’s shock-face in such detail, I think even he was a little doubtful of my boyfriend’s guilt. Not that he would admit it to me.
“Aren’t you supposed to shut those things off in here?” Surge asked, interrupting my thoughts—and the thoughts of everyone else in the library.
“Keep your voice down,” I said and looked from the newspaper I’d been scouring to my phone on the table beside me. “I have it on vibrate. If Warp tries to text me and I don’t answer he’ll go apeshit.”
“No, he’ll call me and then go apeshit.”
Poor Surge, he didn’t dare leave my side. He claimed it was because my brother hounded him, but we both knew he was terrified something would happen to me the instant his back was turned.
“Is it Haze?”
“No. This time it’s Liv. I told her I had something to check out but I had you with me.”
He nodded. “Everyone is a little weirded out. I dunno what I want to wish for. That it isn’t your boyfriend or that it is. I’d rather know who to strangle to keep you safe, but I know you don’t want him to be guilty.”
“You know as well as I do that things aren’t adding up. Everything points to Haze but…”
“Yeah, I know, LL. I would’ve taken a beating last night if he were the type to kill. If I believed otherwise, I woulda knifed his ass.”
I gagged on a sudden whoosh of breath. “Tell me you’re not carrying a weapon around with you! You get caught with that, the cops really will bust you.”
“It ain’t metal. No alarms are gonna go off. My cousins told me how to keep myself armed for protection but fool the pat downs and metal detectors. I can’t really protect you if I don’t have a weapon, LL.”
I blinked. The situation was getting beyond serious. The words death and murder were being thrown around a lot more in my inner circle than ever before, and Surge was taking to carrying a shiv. Maybe it was time to call Pops and the police.
“You’re thinking kinda loud,” Surge said.
“I’m thinking this is next-level shit, Surge. We’re not cold case detectives. What are we doing?”
“We are being cautious. Someone with the exact graffiti style suspected in a murder two years ago is painting faces of you. It’s too weak to go to the cops with some ‘I-think-someone-might-be-threatening-me’ complaint. They might call your dad, but I don’t think they’re going to spring for round-the-clock watch of a troubled teenager in the hood who has no evidence that anyone actually is threatening her.”
“Well, there is my picture painted on the wall….”
“You mean the wall that was erased last night?”
I blinked. “Damn. You think Haze erased it?”
“I don’t know who did, but anything that linked Heather’s murder to a threat against you is gone.”
This couldn’t be good. I stared down at the newspaper in front of me, trembling. “This is all so fucked-up.”
“Hey, I think I found the paper,” Surge practically yelle
d, only to be shushed by the librarian. “Yeah, yeah lady, I’ll zip it. Just give a brutha a break all right. Been in here three hours.”
The librarian shook her head at Surge, but like almost everyone else in the city, she was instantly mollified by Surge’s persona.
Making room on the table by pushing the other papers aside, I slid Surge’s newspaper in front of me. Now that I didn’t have my brother breathing down my neck, I took the time to read the whole article and shivered. The report said the attacker chased Heather up the fire escape, only to throw her over the edge when he’d caught up to her. What a horrible way to go out; no one deserved to die like that. I glanced up at the captured picture and frowned.
“Wait.” I took out the torn piece Warp had given to me last night and placed it beside the article. “I don’t get it. This newspaper is intact. Warp said he ripped it out of the library’s copy.”
I looked up in time to see Surge frown at me. “I don’t get it, either.”
The picture in the paper was easier to see than Warp’s torn version, including a look at the crowd gathered for the vigil, and the outline of Heather’s body traced end-to-end with flowers. In the background I could see Liv, as well as Heather’s family. Haze stood there, the camera capturing his expression.
Grief was written all over his face. I recognized it well, as it mirrored my own feelings when my mother had passed.
I remembered my mother’s funeral then and the sparse number of people who stood beside her casket to pay their respects. She had so few friends and even fewer family members. No wonder no one had seen her death coming. There was no one there to see the outcry, and my brothers and I had been too young to read the signs.
My brothers—oh my God, my brother!
I squinted down at the edge of the photo to the blur at the corner and felt my heart stop an instant before kicking into overdrive. “Oh my God, Surge. Look!”
I turned the paper toward him and pointed to the corner.
“So?”
