Interlude

by Anna Cruise

  “Nash—“

  “I’m serious. Just go. I’ll…I’ll explain everything later. I promise.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Someplace safe.”

  I don’t know if that’s actually true, but I do think I’m safer than I would be at home. Especially after what happened with Gino and now with the cops snooping around. Cops that I have no idea whether I can trust or not. Lydia’s paranoia has rubbed off on me.

  “Does this have something to do with Joey?”

  “I can’t talk about it.” Even though I don’t really think anyone is listening to my conversation, I don’t want to push things too far. Just in case. “But I’ll tell you. Soon.”

  There is silence, and then Chase sighs. “Alright, man. I’m at the end of the block. You sure you don’t want me to go back? Poke around?”

  “No.” I say it too loud and sneak a glance at Lydia. She’s watching me, a frown on her face. “Look, I gotta go. I’ll be in touch soon. I promise.”

  I end the call and stuff the phone in my pocket.

  “Who was that?” Lydia asks.

  “None of your business.”

  She grins. “Really? You’re going to try to keep secrets from me?” She looks at my pocket. “People think their phones are private. Their emails. Their everything. Didn’t you learn anything from the Snowden thing?”

  I’m not sure how NSA spying is working its way into our conversation and I don’t really care. Because there are cops at my house and my cat’s outside and I couldn’t tell my best friend what the hell is going on.

  Lydia puts a plate on the counter. Eggs along with a bagel slathered with cream cheese. A glass of orange juice is right next to it. An identical plate of food is next to the stove.

  “For you,” she says.

  She made me breakfast. It’s a nice gesture but my stomach is in knots and I don’t know if I can eat. I sip the juice.

  “You’re not going to eat?” She takes a bite of her bagel. Cream cheese coats her upper lip and she licks it off with her tongue.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  I swallow more juice. It’s sweet and tastes good and I down half the glass in one gulp. My phone buzzes in my pocket. A text from Chase.

  I swipe right. No words, just a picture.

  Of Sherlock in Chase’s lap. In his car.

  I suck in a breath. Somehow, some way, Chase grabbed the cat. I don’t know what’s going on in my house – with the cops, with anything – but at least I know I won’t find my cat pancaked on the pavement. It’s little comfort.

  “What?” Lydia’s voice has an edge to it. “What are you looking at?”

  I stuff the phone back in my pocket. “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit.” Her eyes search mine, and it feels like she’s trying to hack my mind. “Tell me.”

  I don’t respond. I spear a tiny piece of egg and force it down my throat. “These are good,” I say. “Thanks for making them.”

  I am trying to pacify her, trying to distract her, and I’m pretty sure she knows it. She nods.

  We eat in silence. Actually, she eats and I sort of push the eggs around on my plate and finish my orange juice. All I can see, all I can think about, are the cops at my house. Did they find Gino and his friends? Are they looking for me? Is there a warrant out for my arrest? What for? And, thanks to Lydia and our conversation from the previous night, I wonder if they were good cops or bad cops. Although, at the rate I’m going and the trail I’ve left for them, I’m not sure I can consider any of them ‘good cops.’

  “You should eat,” she tells me. “There isn’t much in the way of groceries here and we can’t exactly go out.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  “I meant because we don’t have a car.”

  Oh. Because Claire is gone. I wonder why Lydia doesn’t have one – how does she get around? – but I don’t ask. I set the empty glass on the counter and spread the eggs around so it looks like I’ve eaten some. The bagel remains untouched. I feel tired, unbelievably so, and it takes a lot of effort to walk my dishes over to the sink. I try to set them down but the glass slips from my fingers and lands on the counter, shattering into pieces.

  “Shit. I’m sorry.” At least that’s what I try to say. But my throat is tight, my tongue thick.

  Lydia is watching me. “It’s fine. It’s just a glass.” She frowns. “Are you okay?”

  I’m anything but. My legs feel heavy and I’m having a hard time moving. But it isn’t like a panic attack or a mental breakdown – at least I don’t think it is. My heart isn’t racing and I’m not sweating. Instead, it’s like I’m in a slow-mo movie scene, where time is almost standing still. Even my brain is a little foggy, and I wonder if maybe I am suffering from some sort of breakdown. Maybe this is just how it manifests in me. Maybe the news from Chase sent me over the edge, and instead of raging out of control or freaking out, my body is reacting by just going catatonic.

  I don’t know and I’m pretty sure I don’t care. I stumble into the living room and crumple on to the couch. Lydia is by my side. She looks fuzzy, soft, like I’m staring at her through my grandma’s reading glasses.

  “Nash.” Her voice sounds like it’s underwater. “Are you okay?”

  I am. I’m better than I’ve been in days. Because I don’t give a fuck about anything that’s going on.

  She sinks to her knees. Her face is within inches of mine. Her eyes cloud and her face is a mask of concern.

  “You’ll be okay,” she whispers.

  Her lips brush my forehead and I smell a hint of orange and they feel good, warm and gentle against my skin. I want to reach for her, want to pull her to me and hug her, but I can’t get my arms to move.

  She rubs my arm and her lips move to my cheek. I can’t keep my eyes open but I feel her, hear her, smell her. Her mouth brushes mine and I try to kiss her back.

  The feel of her lips and her hands is the last thing I remember.

  nineteen

  I’m going to be sick.

  My stomach is rolling and my head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton balls and I can’t make my brain tell my eyes to open.

  “Nash.”

  I recognize the voice, barely.

  “Claire?” I croak.

  I force my eyelids open. Everything is hazy, out of focus, and the bile rises up in my throat. I try to stand up, try to get myself to the bathroom, but I can’t. I can’t even sit up. I lift my neck and try to shift so I hit the floor but I’m not fast enough and I end up puking all over my shirt.

  “Shit.” Claire’s voice sounds like it’s coming through a tunnel. “Are you okay? What’s wrong with you?”

  I don’t know what’s wrong with me. She shoves a bowl under my chin just as I vomit again, half of it ending up on the floor. It’s all orange juice and stomach acid and I choke on the taste, the texture. My eyes are focusing now but I avoid looking at her because I don’t want to see the disgust on her face.

  She puts her hand on my forehead. Strokes my hair. I’m not expecting this.

  “It’s okay,” she murmurs. “You’ll be okay.”

  I vomit again but it’s more of a dry heave – there’s nothing left in my stomach. I sink back against the armrest and close my eyes. I feel like shit.

  Her hand drifts to my shoulder and she gives me a light squeeze. “Better?”

  I nod, even though I still feel like I’m dying.

  “Good,” she says.

  I glance at her. She doesn’t look grossed out and she doesn’t look pissed that there is a puddle of vomit on the carpet in her friend’s apartment. She looks concerned.

  I’m not expecting this, either.

  “Have you been sick the whole morning?” she asks.

  I don’t know. Because I can’t remember the morning. As far as I know, it still is morning.

  “What time is it?”

  She looks toward the kitchen, checks the time displayed on the microwave. I see the numbers but can’t focus on th
em, can’t figure out what they mean. “1:30. When did you fall asleep? And when did you start feeling sick?”

  “I…I’m not sure.”

  A frown creases her forehead. “You’re not sure? Is that the first time you got sick?”

  “I think so.”

  She goes to the kitchen and comes back with a dishtowel and something in a spray bottle. She squirts the puddle of puke on the carpet, then drops the towel over it.

  “Was it something you ate?” she asks. Her expression changes. “Lydia isn’t the best cook, you know.”

  Her tone is joking, but I don’t smile; I don’t have the energy. I think hard, trying to remember the morning. The phone call from Chase – was that real or did I dream it? The cops. The cat. Lydia making breakfast.

  “Lydia,” Claire calls down the hallway. “Hey, did you know Nash is out here sick?”

  If Lydia cares, she doesn’t respond. Or at least I don’t think she responds, because I don’t hear anything.

  Claire’s hand is on my arm again, but this time her fingers dig into my skin. She’s leaning over me and then she straightens, breaking contact. “Lydia?”

  The apartment is still. Silent.

  “Shit,” she mutters. She hurries down the hallway and I hear a door open. “Lydia?”

  I’m still not all there – I just want to sleep – but I can put some things together.

  Claire is worried.

  And Lydia isn’t there.

  Claire reappears. Her hands are on her hips. “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She’s not here.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s not okay,” she snaps. “You guys were supposed to stay here. You had to stay here – I had the car!”

  I don’t know what to tell her. I’m still trying to figure out how I ended up on the couch. And how long I’ve been here.

  “Where would she have gone?” I ask. “And how would she have gotten there? Without a car, I mean.” We’re still in San Diego, but this part of Solana Beach isn’t exactly prime for public transportation.

  Claire shakes her head. “No clue. But we need to find out.” She stares at me. “Are you going to be okay?”

  I try to nod. “Think so.”

  She glances at my shirt. “You need to change.”

  I try nodding again. This time, it works.

  “Zoe might have some of Dylan’s stuff in her room. I’ll go check.”

  She reappears a minute later, holding a blue and white, short-sleeve button down that I normally wouldn’t be caught dead wearing. She notices my expression.

  “It’s either this or the vomit shirt.”

  I sit up. My stomach still hurts and my head feels like a helium balloon, but I manage to tug my t-shirt off without getting puke on my hair. Claire takes the shirt using just her thumb and forefinger and drops it to the floor. The smell of puke is pretty strong and I’m a little surprised she’s not gagging. Because I want to.

  She helps me into the button down and I notice her fingers are trembling as she works on the top button. “Do you want to stay here?” she asks.

  “What?”

  “I have to find her.”

  “Find her? Maybe she just went to the pool. Or for a walk.”

  “No.” Claire’s voice is firm.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know my sister.” She does the last button, then smoothes the shirt with her hand as if I’m some little boy she’s sending off to school. “And I know where she went.”

  “Where?”

  “What was the one thing we told her not to do? Last night while we were talking.”

  I can barely remember a few hours ago, so last night feels like an eternity ago.

  She answers for me. “The drugs. We told her to leave the drugs, to not do anything about them.”

  Bits of it come back to me, a piece at a time, like a half-finished jigsaw puzzle.

  “I have to find her.” Her voice catches. She looks at me and tears burn her eyes. “Before Gino does.”

  twenty

  “Where are you going to look?”

  We are sitting in Claire’s car. I didn’t throw up and I didn’t fall down the stairs walking out to the parking lot, but my stomach is a mess and my head still feels like it’s going to float away.

  “Clairemont.”

  More comes back to me about the previous night. The drugs. Lydia said they’re in a storage unit in Clairemont. But it’s not like it’s a small suburb in San Diego – and I have no idea how many storage places are in the city limits.

  I tell Claire this.

  “I know,” she says as she pulls out of the driveway and into the road. “But that’s all we have to go on.”

  I settle against the headrest and close my eyes. All of the memories from last night are back – the incident at my house, the drive with Claire and my conversation with Sara, and the stuff she and Lydia told me last night. But the morning is still a blur, at least everything after my conversation with Chase. I grabbed my phone as Claire and I were walking out the door and checked my recent calls. Chase and I talked earlier that morning. And there was a text of him with the cat. So at least I know I didn’t make those things up in my head.

  But I don’t know what made me sick. Was it the stress of his phone call? Did everything just come to a head and I’d gone off the deep end – made myself physically sick? I don’t know if that is even possible, but I also know I didn’t eat anything that could have made me puke. We all had the same eggs the night before and Lydia and Claire were both fine. And if I had eaten breakfast with Lydia, bad eggs or something, she would’ve felt the effects, too. All I had was orange juice.

  Claire reaches into her purse and pulls out her phone. She hands it to me. “Here.”

  “What do you want me to do? Look up storage facilities?”

  She pauses. “Yeah, that would work. But I want you to call Lydia, too.”

  “I thought you tried her.”

  Claire had spent five minutes repeatedly calling her while I cleaned up in the bathroom. Even though I was wearing a new shirt, Dylan’s horrible plaid one, I wanted to rinse my mouth and splash water on my face to see if it would make me feel better. It didn’t.

  “I did,” she says. “Like a million times. She didn’t pick up.” She puts her blinker on and merges into the onramp lane. “So we need to keep trying.”

  I don’t argue because I don’t have a better idea. I swipe the screen and click on the phone icon, then hit recent calls. Lydia’s name is the only one in the long list of recents. I click on it and the phone rings.

  And goes to voicemail.

  I try again.

  I keep trying as we cruise past Del Mar, then past Torrey Pines. Traffic slows a little as we hit the 805 split but it clears pretty quickly and soon we’re speeding past the UCSD exit, then diving into the canyons between La Jolla and the northern part of Clairemont.

  “Nothing?” Claire asks.

  It’s a pointless question. If Lydia had answered, Claire would have heard me speak, right?

  I end the call and hit the web browser instead. I type in the search box and a list of storage facilities pops up. Two in Clairemont Mesa, one straddling the border between Pacific Beach and Clairemont, and one in Kearny Mesa.

  “There are four,” I tell Claire.

  I give her the address to the closest one and we exit the freeway at Balboa.

  “What exactly are we looking for?”

  She shoots me a glare. “My sister.”

  “So she’s just going to be waiting on the street? Waiting for us to come find her?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. She pulls into the left lane and turns her blinker on, waiting for a lull in traffic so she can cross over into the parking lot of PB Storage. “But it’s all I have to go on.”

  She parks the car in the lot, next to a couple of U-Hauls, and we both get out. I’m wobbly on my feet and the sun kills my eyes, but at least I don
’t feel like I’m going to pass out.

  The facility is small, a few rows of garages, ten to each row. The white stucco has faded to a dirty cream, and the garage doors are in desperate need of paint.

  “Would she need this size unit?” I ask. Because I still have no idea what half a kilo of heroin looks like.

  “I have no idea.” Claire glances around the empty facility. We are the only ones there. “It’s not like I’m intimately familiar with the drug trade.”

  I lean against the wall. I’m still weak. “I don’t think she’s here.”

  Claire shoots me a look. “Clearly.” She has her keys in her hand and repositions her purse on her shoulder. “On to the next one.”

  Back in the car, I pull up the next place on her phone. It’s a few miles away, off Clairemont Mesa Boulevard.

  “What if we don’t find her?”

  “We will.” Claire’s voice is resolute.

  I close my eyes as another wave of nausea washes over me. I know I won’t be sick – there’s nothing left in my stomach – but the symptoms of food poisoning or whatever else sidelined me still linger.

  “We have to,” Claire says.

  It takes me a second to realize she’s continuing her train of thought.

  “We have to find her.” Her voice breaks and she clears her throat, swallows a couple of times. “Because she’s all I have left.”

  I feel a flicker of sympathy for her. This mess we’re involved in is as little her fight as it is mine. We both are victims of circumstance – Claire by being Lydia’s sister and becoming involved, and me by having Joey as a roommate and getting dragged into things by accident. Not accident, I remind myself. Lydia purposely dropped the drive with me. But I don’t think she knew Gino would show up, or that things would spin out of control so quickly.

  A loud ring startles me and Claire practically jumps out of her seat. “My phone.” With one hand on the wheel, she reaches for it. “It’s Lydia.” Her voice is flooded with relief.

  She taps the speaker button and I almost roll my eyes. Even in crisis, she follows the rules.