by Rachel Rust
“Aren’t you going to go again?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
She lifted her gaze to me. “Nayfen go bye-bye.”
My stomach plummeted. My brain scrambled for a response.
I kneeled down next to her. “Nathan didn’t go bye-bye, he’s just busy with other stuff right now.”
Her fingers gathered up more mulch.
“Do you miss Nathan?” I asked, forcing each word through a barrier of pain.
Liliana giggled. “I wuv Nayfen. Nayfen funny!” She threw a fistful of mulch and smiled up at me, her eyes twinkling in a direct ray of evening sun. She needed her Nayfen.
“You want to see Nathan again?” I asked her.
She nodded emphatically.
“Okay, I’ll find him for you.”
I had no freaking clue how I was going to deliver such a huge promise, but it was time something happened—something transformative, something besides shuffling papers on a law office desk. Someone had to risk it all to set things right again. Maybe I didn’t have the fancy clothes and law degree of Rose the Attorney, but I had something she didn’t: Love for Nathan.
****
By the time I returned home from the park, the sun was just above the horizon. I headed straight to my bedroom.
Cleaning had never been my forte. I could make a bed, straighten piles of messy clutter into neater piles of clutter, but when it came to things like dusting, vacuuming, and taking dirty dishes to the sink … I was hopeless.
Standing in the center of my bedroom, chaotic piles of life surrounded me in every direction. I had read once that clutter in physical spaces could lead to cluttered mental functions. Maybe it was all psychobabble, but I dropped to the floor and began scooping up dirty clothes. One at a time, I threw items towards my laundry basket across the room. Less than half made it in. I pictured Nathan, sitting on the floor, leaned back against my door, laughing at my pathetic aim. He teased me with his crooked smile. I picked up a dirty sock and hit him square in the face, then watched as the sock bounced off the door and landed on the floor, right where he would be sitting. But there was no Nathan. No crooked smile.
I reached behind me to pull a pair of jeans that had made their way under my bed. My hand hit a cardboard box. For a moment, I didn’t move. Then, ignoring the jeans, I grabbed the pink shoe box and placed it on my lap.
I removed the lid. The familiar pink pointe shoes inside filled me with anguish.
They screamed of my life in Minneapolis. Somewhere in the basement were boxes full of awards from that life. Awards I didn’t want to see anymore. Reminders of a past I could no longer be a part of.
I slipped my shoes and socks off—ignoring the mulch chips that fell out—then slid my feet into the shoes. My toes butted up against the wood platforms. It had been months since I had worn them last, but they fit like a glove and were every bit as familiar as they ever had been.
Wrapping the inside ribbon around my ankle, I thought about a dance clinic in Milwaukee I had attended two years prior. An elderly Russian teacher had yelled at me in front of the entire class, saying that I had tied my ribbons incorrectly. She made me sit in the middle of the classroom and tie them—to her liking—five times in a row. The only reason the other students didn’t laugh at me was that they were fearful of the teacher.
Sitting in the middle of that room, being humiliated, was one of the worst memories I had. She was scary mean, that old lady. And yet, when she finally did release me back to the other students, I scuttled to the back of the group, untied and retied my ribbons the way I wanted to.
I grabbed Nathan’s unopened letter off my desk and tore my finger into it, leaving behind a wake of jagged edges. His penmanship greeted my hungry eyes.
Lydia,
I miss you but as I write that I have no idea if it’s fair of me to say. I don’t know if these letters to you are fair. It seems like a lot to ask of you to read them and think of me when I know you don’t deserve even a second of the shit that’s happened around here. You don’t deserve to know someone in jail. Sometimes I feel like you deserve better than to even know me.
And yet I want to write you because in all my years in Thorn Creek I was never happier than when I was with you. I know nothing can erase my past but you made it fade just by being next to me and by being nice to me. You make me want to be a better person. You were easy to fall for and I know I could fall for you over and over again.
I want good things for you because you deserve good things. And I want you to find something that makes you happy and smile every day. I don’t know when I’ll see you next, but know that I’m always thinking about you.
Love, N
My eyes scanned the letter a few more times. Something that makes you happy. My eyes surveyed those words especially. I glanced down at my pink shoes and bent up my left knee. The pain wasn’t bad that day, but only because I had managed to be good to it over the last couple of weeks. Laziness, it appeared, was good for a bad knee.
I undid the ribbons and slipped the shoes gingerly back into the box. They made me happy. A good knee would make me happy. Dancing again would make me happy. Yet, my mind was occupied with other thoughts—other things that would bring happiness. Tasks that needed to be accomplished. Victories yet to be scored.
I slipped my socks and sneakers back on.
Dirty investigative work required sturdy shoes.
****
I parked down the block from the police station as Sergeant Rollins walked to his car. As soon as he drove off, I opened my car door. I didn’t know where he was going or how long he’d be gone, but that moment was my only shot.
I rushed down the sidewalk as fast as my knee would allow. Inside the station, the front desk was empty. I shuffled down the back hallway where the white walls were punctuated with cheap brown veneer doors. All the doors were closed except one.
I peeked my head in.
Theo White Eagle looked up at me from behind his desk. “What can I help you with?”
“I want to see Nathan.”
Theo’s head shook. “Eighteen or with a parent. You know that.”
“Yeah, I know, but I also know Rollins is gone and it’s sort of late and not many people are here.”
Theo’s eyes locked with mine. “No.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“Pretty please with a cherry on top?”
“Get outta here. I got work to do.”
I remained stationary as he turned back to his computer and began typing. With no intention of moving, I was determined to either see Nathan or annoy the hell out of Theo White Eagle.
“What’re you working on?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Do you spend a lot of time typing reports?”
He continued to ignore me.
“I bet it gets irritating, huh? You want to go out and get bad guys but you’re always stuck in a stuffy little office on the computer. Doesn’t sound like exciting police work to me. And it smells like you guys have to drink really awful coffee around here.”
Theo exhaled hard out his nostrils but said nothing.
“Do you guys ever get to go out of town for big police conventions?” I asked. “Do they even have police conventions? Like at big hotels, full of booths with people showing off the latest police gadgets and stuff? My parents go to conventions a lot for work. I’ve been to a couple, they’re boring, but people give out free things. Like this one time I got a free water bottle—the good kind, too, with a flip straw. And at the same convention I also got a new lanyard. It was orange, which isn’t my favorite color, but that’s okay.” I took a quick breath. “My favorite color is purple. What’s your favorite color?”
Theo’s face twitched.
“I bet it’s blue, isn’t it?” I asked. “Cops and the color blue kind of go hand in hand for some reason. Kind of like cops and doughnuts. Do you guys eat a lot of doughnuts around here? I don’t
mind doughnuts, but they can’t have sprinkles, I hate sprinkles. Do you like sprinkles? Do you—”
Theo’s hands dropped with a thud onto his desk. “Two minutes, not a second more.”
I smiled broadly. “Thank you.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
He’s in Tan
The worst part of the jail cell was the tiny window. Not its size so much as the fact that it was frosted glass. I hated not being able to get a clear view of the outside. Sometimes it was even hard to tell if it was sunny or cloudy. But despite the darkness of the cell, sleep remained elusive. My mind never shut off. No matter how tired I got. Over and over thoughts spun, irrational and out of control.
Lying back on the cot, I crossed my arms over my face, thankful that Saul, the town drunk, had finally been let go after sobering up. He had been hauled in overnight after falling asleep on someone’s front porch. And all day, Saul had decided that I needed to be educated on 1980s show tunes. I wasn’t sure what the songs were supposed to sound like, but slurred and with half the lyrics missing probably wasn’t it.
“Nathan,” Theo’s voice called out. “You have a visitor.”
I sat up, wondering what the hell Ed could possibly have to say that I didn’t already know. No one had any better information or any more of a plan than they did two weeks ago. My lawyer hadn’t given me any new updates, and Ed and Heather did nothing but try to fill me full of empty hope. As if that was helpful.
The only thing I hated more than shit was sugar-coated shit.
I walked to the cell door as Theo opened it. “My uncle?”
Theo shook his head. “You have two minutes, not a second more, and this never happened.”
“What do you mean? Who’s here?”
“You’ll see.”
The visiting center wasn’t far from the cells, just down a short hallway. I followed Theo to the heavy metal door which lead to the visiting area. It was a small room, divided in two by a long counter with mesh separating its upper spaces—visitors on one side, jailbirds on the other. No bulletproof glass and phones like in the movies. Under the counters were hard metal stools to sit on, and I assumed their lack of comfort was to help keep conversations short and to the point.
Upon walking into the visiting center, my insides squeezed tight at the sight of Lydia. Her green eyes widened at the sight of me. I glanced down at my tan jail scrubs, half-wishing she hadn’t come. I didn’t want her see me like that—demoralized into wearing government-issued attire which exclaimed I was a bad person.
“Two minutes,” Theo reminded us.
I ignored him and sat down in front of Lydia. Her eyes brimmed with tears, making my own face pinch. The burning behind my eyes was unstoppable, and my vision became cloudy despite my attempts of resisting the tears. I wanted to rip away the metal mesh between us and melt into her.
“I was told you couldn’t visit me,” I said.
She smiled. “I have my ways.”
I chuckled, quickly dragging a finger under my eye to keep a droplet from falling. She did have her ways, there was no arguing that, and I couldn’t quite figure out what those ways were, but nonetheless, they were exactly what drove me crazy about her. Her ways. She was sensibility in a world of fucked-up chaos. Sweet in a world that had given me nothing but bitterness.
She put her fingers against the mesh, and I did the same. Her fingertips pressed against mine and I pressed back, wanting more than anything to wrap my arms around her. Breathe her in.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
Fine. The word nearly came out, but she wasn’t gonna let me get away with a bullshit answer. My fingertips dropped from hers and picked at the mesh. “Not too good,” I said, my voice barely louder than the ambient sounds of the room. “I hate it in here, and…” I forced my mouth to stop talking as warmth pooled in my eyes. I looked down at my lap and tears fell loose, plopping onto my tan pants, leaving behind circular evidence of my fear.
“Babe,” Lydia said, thrusting her petite fingers through the openings of the mesh.
A small smile crept across my face at the word babe. No one had ever called me that before. I placed my fingers between hers, captivated by the touch, the feel of her tickling the skin between my fingers. “I’m scared,” I whispered.
“I’m scared too, but you didn’t do it, which means there’s a way out of this.”
A chuckle huffed out of my nose before I could stop it. “It’s not looking too good from where I’m sitting. My attorney keeps saying she’s looking into new things, but so far she hasn’t found a damn thing to help me. And the matching bullets … that’s bad, Lydia.”
“But who cares if it was your gun?” she said with a rushed tone. “You didn’t have possession of it. You said it was in your bedroom here in Thorn Creek the whole time you lived in Denver, which means anyone could have taken it and used it.”
“But it was in the footlocker when I was unpacking the night I returned,” I said. “So if someone took it and used it at the Pit Stop that same night, they put it back right away. How would I not have seen ’em do that?”
Lydia stared at me. I had just put a million more thoughts into her already crammed-full mind.
“What are you not saying?” she asked.
I shrugged. I didn’t wanna burden her with any wild goose chase nonsense that hadn’t even led my lawyer anywhere.
Lydia pulled her hand away. “Nathan, tell me.”
I sighed. “I just think it’s odd that I didn’t see anyone put the gun back. If it was really used that night—”
“If?” she asked, eyebrows raised. “You don’t think your gun was used? Why would they say it was if it wasn’t?” She leaned forward, lips nearly touching the mesh, and whispered, “You think Rollins is lying about your gun having been used? Like maybe the ballistics test is fake or something?”
“I don’t know, maybe.” But that thought had bounced around my head numerous times as I wasted time lying in my cell. Rollins was a prick, and I didn’t doubt for a second that he’d be desperate enough to cook the evidence. But I was careful not to let those thoughts brew out of fear of uncontrollable anger rising up. And the one thing my attorney and aunt and uncle had told me during every visit was to—no matter what—keep my temper in check.
“Have you said anything to your attorney about this?” she asked.
I nodded. “She said she’d consider the notion.”
Lydia’s head reared back, eyebrow cocked, and I smiled—a legit smile in the midst of doom and gloom—because she was so damn cute when pissed off.
“‘She’d consider the notion?’ What the hell does that mean?” Lydia asked. “Is she actually going to look into it or did she just say that to shut you up?”
I shrugged.
“Someone needs to seriously look into that,” she continued. “Someone needs to do something worthwhile, and it doesn’t seem like anyone is.” Her fingers went to her chin as her eyes studied the mesh in front of her. “Maybe—”
“Time’s up,” Theo said.
A painful lump formed in my chest. Lydia was about to disappear from in front of me … again. My eyes scanned her as quickly as they could, soaking her in, forcing her to memory. Her hair, her eyes, her lips. I placed my fingers to the mesh again and she did the same.
She whispered to me, “We’re going to fix this. Maybe your attorney hasn’t found anything yet, but I will.”
I stood up with intellectual thoughts of how ridiculous it was that a hundred-pound, seventeen-year-old girl would think such a thing was possible. But despite rational thoughts to the contrary, I believed her.
I stared at her face as I walked back through the door, taking in every second until the heavy door slammed closed.
She was gone.
I was alone again.
Chapter Thirty-Six
She Steps Out of the Dark
I idled in the hallway until Theo White Eagle finally returned to his office. “Thank you,” I said as he walked pa
st me.
“For what?”
I put my index finger and thumb to my lips, zipping them closed.
Theo relaxed back in his leather office chair. “I don’t blame you for wanting to help Nathan, but make sure you’re watching out for yourself. Don’t get so wrapped up into his problems that you put yourself in a bad position.”
I pivoted to leave. “Thanks again—I mean, never mind, I wasn’t here.”
“No, you weren’t.” He turned back to his computer.
I walked out to the reception area, then turned back around and headed into Theo’s office again. An exasperated look crossed his face when he saw me. I couldn’t blame him, even I was starting to think I was a pain in the ass.
“What do you know about that house that burned down a couple years ago?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Not much, it was before I was on the payroll. Why do you ask?”
“Some people think Nathan did it.”
“People think Nathan does a lot of things.”
“I hear he threw your iPod into the river when you were younger.”
Theo smiled. He was a good-looking guy. Sharp nose, long face. “Son of a bitch,” he said with a little laugh. “I bussed a lot of tables at The Shack to afford that thing.”
“Is that why you two stopped being friends?”
Theo looked up at me with just his eyes. “No, is that what he told you?”
I shrugged.
“Nathan and I stopped being friends when I took this job. He didn’t wanna associate with cops. I didn’t wanna mess up my career by being friends with a criminal.” Theo sat forward, elbows on his desk. “Sounds harsh, but I couldn’t risk it, because the thing about being friends with Nathan is that he has this way about him, doesn’t he? There’s this sense that he’s got it all under control. He convinces you that everything’s all right, meanwhile he’s dragging you down with him.”
