by Sara Hammel
Evie turned a page crisply and loudly. I was bored. I was worried.
I took a swipe at her book.
She gasped as it flew out of her hands and onto the floor with a thud. “What are you doing?” She had to smile, though, and then she couldn’t help but laugh, and that was a start.
“Okay,” she said. “Fine. I’m being antisocial. You want to talk?”
Duh. Of course I did.
“All right. Let me offer you a simile about my life. You probably don’t know what that is, but let me give you an example.” She adjusted her rear end on the hard crate and tightened her ponytail. “If Celia is like a forehand winner,” she said, “then I’m like…”
She looked off into the distance, and I followed her eyes to a mass of cobwebs up in a corner of the ceiling until it came to her: “I’m like … a defensive lob: slow, round, and desperate.” She looked at me with a satisfied expression.
I wasn’t amused.
“Okay,” she tried again. “Look, Chelsea. It’s not your fault everyone loves you around here, and that you’ve got Beth, and that my parents are total losers who don’t want me.”
Whoa. That was not true.
“It’s a fact, Chelsea. God, how many times has Lucky left me here—totally forgotten about me—since my mom went out west?”
Okay, that was true. But to be fair, Lucky had been coming here for, like, fifteen years and it had been only a couple years that he’d had a kid to think about. Lucky was a longtime fixture at this place, having started his tennis career here at sixteen. He disappeared after college when he’d gone on the pro circuit and traveled to exotic places to play tournaments. He made it to number one hundred ninety-nine in the world, which is actually quite impressive, contrary to what tennis novices might think of that number. And then he quit. One day he walked through the club’s front door again, and Gene hired him on the spot.
Evie continued trying to explain her philosophy to me. “It’s not that I expect my parents to change,” she said. “It’s more that I want different ones entirely. In fact, I want to get out of my life. I want to be someone else so bad, Chelsea. Have you ever felt that way? No, you probably haven’t…”
I had to admit I hadn’t. It’s weird, but even though I retained clear, terrible memories of what had happened to me when I was younger, I was still okay with being me. As my mom liked to say, It’s your entire story that makes you who you are, not just the happy things.
“I’d love to be anyone but me,” Evie said wistfully, reaching for that last Twinkie. “Anywhere but here.”
I took that in and realized I’d failed this time. I hung my head and sighed. I wasn’t equipped to talk her down from this one. But we’d get there. I wasn’t giving up on her.
Before
So Evie and I were secretly following Annabel on the July day when my mom figured out Annabel was in love with a mystery man. Annabel was easy to spot in her hot-pink halter top. After she’d handed Nicholas his lunch of meat sandwiches, Annabel glided toward the women’s locker room. Evie and I picked up the tiniest hint of a hum coming from her, a happy tune I couldn’t place. But just as Annabel was about to enter the locker room, Evie touched my shoulder and froze. We weren’t the only ones tracking her.
Patrick was perched on the back of the main lobby’s big sofa, which happened to be directly across from the entrance to the women’s locker room. Annabel swanned into the locker room, and Evie and I pretended to walk on by Patrick, eventually settling about ten feet away from him at one of the tables in front of the TV.
The expression on Patrick’s face as he watched Annabel disappear into the locker room was indescribable, but I will try: picture love, plus anger, plus longing, plus sadness, plus … a dash of hatred. In that order. Annabel hadn’t acknowledged him when she passed by, so we couldn’t be sure she’d even seen him. That was the thing with Annabel. She didn’t show her cards or let on what was really happening with her. You just caught glimpses of who she might be, of who you thought she was, of how she was willing to portray herself on a given day. In any case, I didn’t think Patrick would’ve noticed Evie and me if we’d started juggling kittens with a clown chorus singing behind us. This was another one of those times Evie’s social invisibility worked in our favor.
She whispered to me, “We should follow her in there.”
I thought about that, but before we could make a move, Annabel stormed out.
We were shocked. We’d never seen Annabel storm anywhere. “How the—” she seethed at Patrick. “How did you do this? How did you get into my locker?” She was spitting mad. She shook something at him: a piece of notepaper folded perfectly down the middle. “You’re sick, you know that?”
Patrick looked at her with ice in his eyes, a closemouthed, self-satisfied smile on his face. I’d never seen him like this; I’d never seen anything sinister from him.
“This kind of stuff is why—” Annabel shook her head, and again refrained from finishing the thought. “You’ll never be the man he is, and you know what? You can say what you want, write what you want, think what you want. I guess I can’t stop you.” She crumpled the paper in her hand and jabbed her index finger at him. “But the next time you touch anything of mine, I’ll call the police. You got that?”
Before
I couldn’t sit in that storage room with Evie for another day. Sure, I’d still hang out with her as I always had, but I couldn’t stay cooped up in that room all day long like she’d started doing. Nothing I did was helping get her out of there, so one day I just hit the wall; I had to skedaddle. It was so hard, leaving her behind. It went against everything I stand for. My protective instinct is fierce for Evie; it had been that way since we’d met.
July was around the corner, and it was going to be a scorcher today. I walked with Evie toward Court 5 and back to her hideaway after Lucky dropped her off at the club’s front door, and sat with her while she got situated with a can of Cran-Apple from the vending machine and her latest tome, the one about the scary doomsday clock. She was slogging through dark novels when it seemed to me she’d be a lot happier reading Summer Cool: The Book, obsessing about boys, and splashing in the pool like the other girls her age I’d seen around the club.
But I knew it was hard for her. Things were getting worse. Tad and his cohort had been working really hard this summer to find new fat-related insults. She’d tried out a few comebacks on me, such as I won’t always be fat, but you’ll always be a moron, and I won’t be fat forever, but you’ll forever be stuck with that ugly face.
They sounded pretty good to me, but it wasn’t the same when it came time to make a stand, mostly because Tad never confronted her by himself. It was always in a crowd, always when he had reinforcements, while Evie stood alone. The one time she did summon the courage, during a rare assault when no one else was in earshot, she snapped back, “God, Tad, can’t you think of anything more original? That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Yeah!” He cackled. “It doesn’t make sense because you can’t hear it. All that blubber is blocking your ears.”
Evie didn’t talk back after that. It was so stupid because I didn’t think she was fat. Just bigger than some other people, and so what? The girls were mean, too, but mostly behind her back, pretending like they weren’t talking about her when clearly they were. For the most part, their cruelty lay in excluding Evie—like she was a terrible person who smelled horrible.
But even with this awfulness, I didn’t want Evie throwing her summer days away over those dopes. So on that day when I’d had enough, I let her know I was taking off. She squinted at me, looking a bit lost and definitely surprised. We’d spent practically every hour of every day together for the past two summers.
Well, she was welcome to follow, but I couldn’t take it back there another minute. I wandered up to the front desk to see my mom. I’d go back and check on Evie later, of course.
* * *
This happened for a few days. I spent more time at the
front desk than ever, and one day my mom finally said it.
“Why aren’t you with Evie? She still hiding away in the storage room?” She hopped off her stool. “Look, Chels,” she said. “No one can make a person do what they don’t want to. The kid drew a crappy hand in life, I’ll give ’er that. But only Evie can make the choice to come out of her funk. Everyone makes a choice.”
I felt really sad hearing that, because I didn’t see Evie making a different choice anytime soon. My mom saw my distress and her voice softened. “We’ll make sure we stand by her, support her, and do our best to make up for that father of hers. Okay?”
She squinted at me, then pulled me in for a hug and a kiss. I got it, I really did. But it didn’t seem fair that Evie was punished every single day simply for being who she was. It seemed to me it wasn’t Evie’s funk. It seemed to me the world had put its funk on her, and she was having a hard time standing strong because she was alone. If she was supposed to be facing life by herself, where were Evie’s weapons? Where were her instruments for fighting?
I didn’t have the answers. It was one of the hardest things I had to do that summer, to leave Evie alone with her pain. If Evie wanted to hide in a musty old room all day when the sun was shining and there were a million corners to explore and no one to stop us from exploring them, I had to let her. I had to give her the gift of tough love.
After
Nearly two weeks into the investigation, Evie and I were tired, hot, and a little irritable after another day of trying to keep up with the detective. We found the lobby empty and plopped down on the sofa. Evie laid back and closed her eyes. It was so quiet … and then—
“Hello, girls.”
Evie’s eyes flew open and she found herself looking directly at Detective Ted Ashlock’s white, upside-down face as he leaned over her. She scrambled to sit upright, tighten her ponytail, and pull her shirt down over her tummy.
“You’ve been quite the little detectives lately.”
I looked over from my perch and smiled, and he smiled back at me. I didn’t think we had too much to worry about from him, but Evie’s eyes were the size of tennis balls. Ashlock stood there calmly. He said, “What exactly do you think is going on around here?”
That question could be mildly scary to kids at the best of times, but said in that Ashlock voice, coming down like a hammer out of his pale, thin frame, it was paralyzing.
“Annabel’s dead,” Evie said. I think saying it out loud made our loss more real, and I thought I caught a tear or two welling up in her eyes.
“That’s right,” the detective said. “And I’m trying to find out what happened, but my work has no room for kids. This isn’t some TV episode where everything gets solved and wrapped up in an hour. This is a real person, and another real person may have done this terrible thing to her. Do you understand?”
Ashlock slid into the matching chair to Evie’s left. He put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. “What’s your name?”
“Evie.” She pulled at her T-shirt again, stretching it over her knees.
“Lucky Clement is your father?” She nodded. “And your friend here?” He tilted his head my way.
“My best friend. This is Chelsea. Her mom is Beth Jestin—”
“Nice to meet you, Evie and Chelsea,” he said. “Come to think of it,” he added, putting his hand to his chin like that famous statue, “if you’re the Chelsea, you’ve made quite a name for yourself around town.”
I knew what he meant—it was this thing that happened earlier in the summer—but I wasn’t a hero or anything. I was glad I could help. But Ashlock’s face changed as he checked me out. He knitted his brow and took a harder look. Ah. He thought he knew me for reasons other than my “heroism.” My case had, indeed, been quite a big deal back in the day.
He quickly got down to business. “So. You know a few things about what I’ve been doing. Do you have any theories about what happened?”
Evie paused and I watched her gauging him, wondering how much to trust him.
“It’s okay,” Ashlock said. “No one will ever know it came from you … It’ll be our secret.”
He took out that ever-present hankie and blotted his upper lip, and Evie blurted out, “How come you never take off your hat or your jacket?”
I thought that was gutsy considering she wore sweatpants even when it was hotter outside than the center of Earth, but Ashlock didn’t seem offended.
“I have a condition,” he said. “I’m allergic to sunlight.”
Evie was immediately fascinated. “Really? So do you burn up if the sun’s rays touch your skin, or—?”
He smiled. “It’s not really that dramatic,” he said. “Some people with this condition do have to stay indoors their whole lives, but I just have to be very careful. I break out in a terrible rash if I’m outside for too long, and sometimes, even with my hat, I won’t know the sun’s hit me until it’s too late and I get a bad burn like if you spill hot coffee on yourself. Sometimes, I even have to wear gloves in the summer.”
Actually, I had noticed how his shirt was buttoned up to the base of his neck. Now his diabolical wardrobe choices were starting to make some sense.
Evie nodded her understanding. She said, “I guess we do have a few suspects in mind … Some of the same ones you do.”
“How do you know who my suspects are?”
“Because we heard you question them.”
“Just because I question someone doesn’t mean they’re a suspect. Sometimes we have to shake people up so we can get to the truth.”
“Like you’re doing to us now?” Evie asked.
“Maybe.” He smiled at us, a mild, weary upturn of the corners of his mouth. I could see him doing that classic Ashlock mind-reading thing with Evie, and it was clear he liked what he saw. I thought they had a lot in common: authentic and kind, but not very popular.
He took out his notebook and stared at Evie. She sat up straighter and unhooked her shirt from her knees. She said, “I don’t know who did it, and that’s … scary.”
Ashlock nodded his understanding. “You don’t need to worry about that. I’ll tell you a little secret, but you have to swear you will never, ever repeat what I’m about to tell you to anyone. Do you understand?”
Oh, man. We were on pins and needles. We were finally going to get some answers.
“If this was murder, and I’m not saying it was, it was about Annabel. It wasn’t about you, or Chelsea, or anyone else at this club, or in this town for that matter. Whoever did this is not a danger to either one of you,” the detective said gravely.
“Okay…” Evie said.
“But I have one condition if we’re going to get along,” he added. He leaned in closer. “You can’t go poking around trying to find out who did this. Because then, and only then, would this person become a threat to you. Do you understand?”
Evie looked at me, and we both understood. If the perp thought we were onto them, we could be next. We’d have to be more careful with our snooping.
“Now, I’d like to hear what you think.”
Evie took a moment, directing her eyes up and off to the right as she contemplated the weighty demand. “Well,” she said finally, “I don’t think Harmony had anything to do with it. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.” Ashlock didn’t let on whether he agreed with that or not. “Other than that, I really don’t know.” Her voice cracked. “No one I know is a … killer.”
He nodded, and didn’t press her anymore on that topic; he seemed to remember she was only twelve. Evie regarded him for a moment, then decided to go for it. “Everyone’s saying Goran did it,” she said. “That he’s going to be arrested any day now. You know, because he was”—oh Lord, I knew she’d choke on these words—“totally into Annabel. Like, it was a lovers’ spat that went bad or something.”
Ashlock didn’t look convinced. “You knew they were dating? My understanding is that they never told anyone about their romance.”
Evie shrugged.
“They didn’t have to say anything. I think a few people saw them … hanging out at one time or another.”
“You and Annabel were friends?” he asked gently.
Evie was choked up and could only nod. Ashlock said softly, “She was a nice girl, wasn’t she? But Annabel was a very private girl, too. Even her best friends didn’t know everything about her, so we’re doing a lot of work to get to know her.”
Ashlock reached into his pocket and gave her a fresh hankie folded into a triangle. “It’s clean, I promise,” he said when she hesitated to take it. “I have to carry a whole bunch of them around with me.”
Evie smiled politely and wiped her eyes, but was too shy to blow into the cloth, and handed it back. Then she looked away and quickly, as if we wouldn’t see, wiped her nose on her T-shirt sleeve. She forged on. “I’m sure he didn’t do anything to her, but Patrick really liked Annabel, and when Annabel didn’t like him back, he got mad.”
Ashlock raised his eyebrows—I was learning how valuable that move was to his interrogation technique—and got his pen and pad ready. Evie told him about the last time we saw Annabel, about the confrontation with Patrick and that mysterious note, about how we’d never seen Annabel show emotion like that, ever.
Ashlock gave her a nod of respect and said, “This is very helpful, Evie,” he said. “Thank you for sharing with me.”
I thought that was a sweet way of putting it. Evie nodded and said in a grown-up voice, “You’re welcome.”
As he tucked his notebook away, Evie said, “Detective? Did Patrick do this?”
The detective didn’t miss the frightened look on her face. “I want you to remember something as the investigation goes on,” he said. “People aren’t always who they seem to be on the surface.”
