by Julia Derek
I could get some cash from Mom’s wallet and buy stuff to eat and soda to drink. The thought of salty potato chips and peanut M&M’s made my mouth water. But was it safe to walk around in this neighborhood all alone at this hour? It didn’t seem like it.
I decided that getting my hands on some goodies to eat and drink was more important than my safety. Besides, on second thought, I doubted it was a dangerous area. Yes, it had a whorehouse and was totally rundown, but that didn’t mean it was dangerous to be here.
I found Mom’s wallet in her tote bag and dug out a twenty-dollar bill that I would use. Then I put on my shoes and jacket and snuck out of the room.
Thankfully, it wasn’t dark in the hallway, so I could easily find my way to the stairs. I walked as quietly as I could down to the entrance lobby, not sure what to expect. With the exception of someone seated inside the glass-covered booth in the wall, the area was empty and dead quiet. As I passed the hole, I noticed the person inside it. It was a different one now, a much younger and prettier woman. She looked up and smiled at me.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“No, I’m just going out for a walk. I can’t sleep. My mom and I are staying in 2 D. She’s still there. I’ll be back soon.”
“Oh, okay,” the girl said and returned her attention to something in her hands, maybe a book or a magazine, I couldn’t tell.
I didn’t meet anyone else on my way out of the building, nor did I spot anyone on the street that I walked on. While it was dark out, there were enough working streetlights in the area to see okay. It was easier to remember my way around than I had expected, and it didn’t take very long before I spotted the convenience store we had passed earlier. It was lit, so it appeared it was one of those that were open 24/7.
Yes, I thought, excited. It was chilly and damp outside, and I was not in the mood to walk around more than a few minutes. Plus, my stomach was rumbling with hunger. I could hardly wait until I could stuff myself full with chips and M&M’s, maybe some sour patches, wash it down with lots of soda. I hurried up to the store and pushed open the heavy door. Except for the short, Hispanic-looking guy behind the counter, there wasn’t a soul in the place. He glanced up at me from the phone in his hand and gave me a bored look, then ignored me.
I took my time scouring the shelves for the right potato chips, chocolate, and candy. I decided that I would only get chips and M&M’s, a king-size bag. Then I went over to the fridge and tried to make up my mind whether I wanted Coke or Pepsi. I was deeply torn. I preferred Coke, not Diet Coke, but all they had was Diet Coke and real Pepsi.
I turned around and sent the guy behind the counter a look. He didn’t react, so I called out: “Excuse me, but do you have real Coke?”
“Nope. We’re sold out. Whatever is in the fridge is all we have.” He said all that without looking up from his phone once.
I sighed to myself. Fine, I’d have to do with the Pepsi then. I couldn’t stand anything diet; it tasted so fake. I opened the fridge and got a large Pepsi bottle, then headed over to the counter to pay.
Twenty minutes later, I was back at the whorehouse where I took a seat on one of the old wicker chairs in the lobby. I didn’t want to wake Mom with my chewing and drinking. She wouldn’t be too happy when she saw how much candy and stuff I had bought anyway. If you asked her, I was eating way too much crap. Well, she did too, but she conveniently forgot about that.
As I devoured the potato chips, I paged through a New York Post from a few days ago that someone had dropped on the unsteady glass wicker table. Buried in the middle, there was a story about Dr. Wilkins’s murder and the investigation, and how the authorities were still on the lookout for us, whom they believed were hiding somewhere in the country.
I remembered then that I had the letter Mom was supposed to have mailed to Detective Morales in my hoodie pocket. I should open it and see what she had written him.
I placed the large soda bottle and the bag of chips I had systematically been emptying on the table, then got the letter from my pocket. I considered briefly whether I should try to open it in the flap, so that I’d be able to seal it again when I was done. I checked the flap, which was tightly sealed. Hmm. It would be hard to do without it looking like the letter had been tampered with. It suddenly dawned on me that I could just get a new envelope and copy the address if I sent it later. Mom would never know I had taken it, and neither would Detective Morales. He didn’t know what her handwriting looked like.
I ripped open the envelope and pulled out the folded sheet of paper inside.
Unfolding it, I got ready for an interesting read.
But there was nothing to read. The sheet was completely blank.
I stared at the blank sheet, wondering if something had happened to the words. As I took a closer look, it sure didn’t seem like it. The sheet was completely untouched.
I chuckled to myself. Yeah, well, moron. Of course they didn’t just disappear. Where would they have gone? I checked the envelope to see if maybe I had missed additional sheets inside it. But it was completely empty. All that had been in that envelope was this blank sheet of paper.
I scratched my head. Why had Mom put a blank sheet of paper in the envelope? Was it possible that she had made a mistake? That must have been what had happened. I guess it doesn’t matter if I mail it now, I thought. I put the sheet back in the envelope and the envelope in my pocket. I made a mental note of asking Mom about it later. Informing her that Detective Morales hadn’t gotten the letter she had wanted to send him.
I read through the article in the paper a little more carefully to see if I could learn something new, or if it was different from the ones we’d read online.
The only thing I learned wasn’t something I didn’t already know. It was just something I had forgotten, that Dr. Wilkins’s first name had been Jonathan. Not that it was all that important.
I put the paper aside and finished eating the chips, then walked back up to our room. I could eat the M&M’s there without risking waking Mom. Unlike the chips, eating M&M’s didn’t make as much noise, I told myself. Not if I chewed lightly at least.
35
Mom was no longer in the bed when I walked into the room. The bathroom door was closed and it sounded like the shower was running. The light in the ceiling was on, softly illuminating the bed and everything else around. I wondered if that was on purpose or if it was just a coincidence due to a soon-to-be-expired lightbulb. There was no lampshade around the bulb, so I figured it was the latter. They didn’t seem to care about sprucing up things around here more than absolutely necessary. I realized for the first time that there was a security camera attached to a corner in the ceiling. An old-looking camera, but still. That was more than I had expected of this place. I guessed they wanted to be sure nothing too freaky happened here. I wondered what the people using the rooms thought about it.
Mom’s tote bag was lying sideways on the bed, her wallet, a pack of Tampax, a keychain, and that pretty hourglass with the glittering, multi-colored sand next to it.
I stared at the hourglass for a moment, then walked up to it. There was something weird at the bottom of it. What was that rust-like dark color? I picked it up and took a closer look at the stains on the light wood and frowned. Wait, was that blood? Old, dried blood. Or was it actually rust? I couldn’t tell. I smelled the stains and I thought they did have a faint smell of blood to them. Suddenly, I was no longer feeling like eating any of the M&M’s I had brought up, even though I hadn’t even opened the bag yet and I loved M&M’s. Instead, a quiet sense of nausea spread inside me, and my chest felt uncomfortably tight. In addition to the creepy stains, I had just discovered that there were two letters carved into the bottom of the hourglass.
J W, it said in swirling font.
Not wanting to look at the letters and the blood any more, I flipped the hourglass around. Watching the glittery sand slip through the narrow hole connecting the top with the bottom was so soothing, and right then I craved to be soo
thed. I felt how sleek the glass was with my other hand, how smooth the wood was at either end as the pile of sand slowly grew higher.
Wait, how could I be so sure it was blood? Blood smelled like iron and rust was a product of iron. Oxidized iron. We had talked about that in science class recently. So it made sense that it smelled like iron. It was probably just rust then, I decided. Maybe I had misunderstood those swirling letters too. Maybe it was something else, a symbol or something.
I flipped the hourglass around again and took another peek at the carvings.
No, they definitely looked like the letters J and W.
J and W like the initials of Jonathan Wilkins, a small voice in my brain whispered, that I instantly shut down. J and W could stand for a lot of things. If they even were letters.
It struck me that it would be very odd for an hourglass made of wood and glass to have so much rust on it. There wasn’t any rust on the three gold stems that held the two wooden-pieces together. Not only did they look completely rust-free, but they also appeared new.
Why would there be rust on it at all? And all of it on the lower wood plate?
A chill went through me and a renewed wave of nausea rocked my stomach.
Had it been blood on that hourglass then?
The shower shut off in the bathroom, making me wince, and I could hear Mom step out of the bathtub. I dropped the hourglass in the same place where I had found it, then I removed my shoes and jacket and plopped down on the bed.
It didn’t take long until the bathroom door opened and Mom appeared in the doorway. She had a white towel wrapped around her body and her butchered black hair was wet. She used a hand towel to dry it, rubbing her scalp hard.
“There you are!” she exclaimed. “I was getting worried that you had been kidnapped or something.” She chuckled lightly. “Seriously, where did you go?”
“I woke up and was super hungry, so I went to the bodega we passed on the way here and bought some… fruit.”
She cocked a brow at me. “Fruit? What kind of fruit? The crunchy, fried, salty kind also known as chips and the chewy, colorful kind also known as candy or maybe chocolate?”
Mom was hard to fool.
I waved a dismissive hand, as though that would make her stop questioning me. “Okay, I did buy some of that—”
“With what money?” She put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at me.
“Um…” I shifted in place. “I got some money from your wallet.”
“How much?”
“Just like, um, a twenty.”
She gazed at me sternly. “Twenty bucks? That’s a lot for a snack. Don’t do it again. You know we don’t have much cash. Next time, ask me first.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
“That’s okay. I’ll hurry up and get ready, and then maybe we can go out and find some place where we can have breakfast. That is, if you’re still hungry.” She glanced at me pointedly.
“I could eat something,” I muttered, looking down at my hands.
She walked over to the bed and reached for her tote bag. She paused when she saw the stuff that lay beside it. She reached for the hourglass and handed it to me. I took it from her, confusion written all over my face. Why is she giving this to me?
“Pretty, huh? I got that for you,” she said casually as she went over to her backpack and pulled out some clothes. I had frozen in place, not sure what to do. “There’s some dirt at the bottom. I was going to remove it before giving it to you, but then I forgot all about it. Now it’s too late.”
She had gotten it for me? From where? And why?
Turning away from me, she pulled on a fresh pair of underwear and a new bra. “You like it, don’t you?”
I stared at the shapely thing in my hand, the sand glittering. “Um, yeah, it’s very pretty. You—you got it for me? Why?”
“Because I thought you would like it. I just forgot to give it to you. It’s an antique. Keep it. It’s yours now. When we get home, we can figure out how to clean it. If you still want to. You might not.”
I stared at her for a moment as she stuck her head into a navy sweater and slipped it down her body. Next she pulled on a pair of black stretch jeans.
“How about you take a shower and then we go out for breakfast somewhere?” she suggested and rubbed the hand towel in her short hair again. “It’s kinda early still, so we should wait a little before we go. There are towels in there that you can use.” She nodded toward the bathroom. “They’re stiff like cardboard, but that’s probably because they’ve been washed in chlorine so many times. Which is a good thing, considering the place we’re in.”
“Okay,” I said and stuffed the hourglass into my deep hoodie pocket, feeling the letter inside it. Numbly, I walked over to the bathroom and entered it, closing the door behind me. It was warm and wet in there, the mirror covered with steam. I pulled a shirtsleeve over the heel of my hand and wiped some of it off, so I could see myself. I wanted to check if I looked as weird as I was feeling. I couldn’t tell. Just that I looked pale like a ghost as always with that ugly, black hair that was getting so long I could soon put it in a small ponytail. What little tan I had gotten in Florida seemed to have turned a dull gray.
Mechanically, I switched on the shower and began to remove my clothes. She had gotten it for me? Why? When? And from where? And what had she meant by getting it anyway? Buying or stealing it? Did I dare ask?
No, I wasn’t going to ask her where she had gotten it, I decided as I stepped under the showerhead, hot streams of water blasting over me. I honestly didn’t think she would respond well to such a question. I also didn’t think I was ready to deal with the answer. I would never be ready for her answer. I don’t know why I thought so, only that I felt certain of it.
I took my time in the shower, carefully washing my hair with the soap provided, and all of my body. Over and over. I felt like I couldn’t get clean enough. Something about this whole situation was very disturbing, but I had a hard time putting my finger on exactly what that was. At the moment, all I knew was that I didn’t like it and that I would prefer to stay in the shower for many more hours. Forever even. But I couldn’t do that; I would have to get out of it and join Mom soon. She would wonder what I was doing otherwise. I couldn’t have her suspect me of anything.
I shook my head and laughed. Suspect me of what? I wasn’t doing anything I shouldn’t, and I wasn’t about to either. I was just letting my fears and imagination get the best of me. She had nothing to do with Wilkins’s murder. Why would she? It was ridiculous for me to even think that for one second. Besides, they already caught the guy who killed him. Today, we would find out more details about that.
I kept chuckling as I soaped up my hair for a third time. Why was I being so silly? Of course I should ask her where she had gotten the hourglass. Why would she get mad? She wouldn’t. When we had breakfast later, I’d ask her where she had gotten it, why, and what she thought all the dark stains were about.
36
At eight thirty, we went to have breakfast in a small coffee shop several blocks away from the whorehouse, in a much, much nicer area. It turned out we weren’t very far from Yorkville, which was a low-key, affordable area where lots of old people lived. The coffee shop we were in was the Mom and Pop kind. Mom loved such places and used every excuse there was to frequent one. On our way to it, we had picked up a copy of the New York Post, eager to find out what was going on with the arrested teen. It was a little early, but we still hoped for some fresh news on the situation.
We didn’t even check the front page before we had taken a seat inside the coffee shop. (The place was called Gregory’s Hot Coffee Shop. Stupid name, right? Who wanted cold coffee?) That wasn’t for lack of trying, but it was windy and it had begun to rain, which made it very hard to read the paper outside. Our goal had been to keep the paper dry so the ink wouldn’t run from the raindrops falling evermore aggressively from the gray sky.
Gregory’s Hot Coffee Shop had a surprising amo
unt of people in it, considering the early hour and the bad weather, but we managed to claim a table.
While Mom went to get coffee and tea and blueberry muffins for us to eat and drink, I took a seat at the small table to make sure no one snatched it. I had brought the paper with me and used a few of the paper napkins I got from the cutesy stand on the table to dab it dry. When I was satisfied, I took a look at the front page as I waited for Mom to join me. Some blond chick in a bikini took up half the page. I doubted she was what we were looking for, but I still checked out what followed beneath the headline that said Killer Crush in big, bold, black letters.
I was right; this story was about some chick who had stalked and killed her high school crush.
The story I was interested in wasn’t even on the front page, but in the bottom half of the fifth page. Once I spotted the headline, I couldn’t stop reading:
THE POLICE ARREST THE WRONG PERSON FOR UPPER EAST SIDE PSYCHOLOGIST MURDER.
Spellbound, I kept reading what the article beneath had to say:
Desperate to make progress in the recent Upper East Side murder, the police made the mistake of arresting a former patient of Dr. Jonathan Wilkins on Monday morning. The arrest was based on an anonymous tip given to the police in which the tipster claimed Nathan Gordon, 16 years old and Dr. Wilkins’s former patient, had uttered several death threats to Dr. Wilkins. Some of them had been made directly to Dr. Wilkins’s face, according to a witness. Gordon was released early this morning when it was determined that he had not been in the city the night of the murder. Also, the prints on the murder weapon did not belong to him. The police are now refocusing their efforts on finding thirteen-year-old Shane Hanson, who has been on the lam with his mother, Jennifer Hanson, for the last couple of weeks. If you see Shane or Jennifer Hanson, please contact the police at 1 800 577 TIPS immediately. A reward of $10,000 will be paid to the person who has a tip that leads to an arrest. They are considered very….
