I pulled up my chat history on my phone and searched her name. Our last message was from a few months ago, around finals, so I typed out what I hoped was the least awkward text:
Hey, hope your summer’s going okay. Kind of random, but wanted to talk to you about something.
Her reply was quick:
What’s up?
It felt insensitive to text casually about Ethan, but creepy to keep saying I wanted to “talk about something” until I could set up a way to see her in person.
Are you willing to talk about Ethan?
I guess so
Could we maybe meet?
Like right now?
Yeah
I’m at work but it’s dead here so you can come by if you want
Where do you work again?
Stan’s Subs on Main
K, see you soon.
Grabbing my sweater and keys, I decided I should get to Briony quickly, before she changed her mind about talking. I dashed through the living room to the front door, promising my mom I’d be back in an hour.
* * *
• • •
Briony was making a customer’s sandwich when I got there, stuffing it with peppers and pickles. I waited at one of the sticky white tables until the lady paid and was gone.
“Are you here by yourself?” I asked, approaching the counter.
“No,” Briony said. “But the assistant manager doesn’t care if I have visitors. As long as I don’t bother him while he’s in the back doing sudoku on his phone.”
“O-okay,” I stammered, trying to decide where to begin. “Um, great.”
Briony studied me for a moment, a resigned look coming over her big brown eyes.
“You said you wanted to talk about Ethan?” She lowered her voice.
“Yeah,” I said quickly. “I mean, I know you were one of the last ones who saw him. How did it all happen that night, that you guys rode the Laser Coaster with him? Was that something you did a lot, or…”
“No.” Briony grabbed a sponge and started wiping down the counter where she’d just made the sandwich. “We just all happened to be hanging out together in the Food Zone, eating some chicken fingers. I’d gone to Fabuland for the day with my brother, but he had kind of ditched me, so I was hanging out and eating with Anna and Lucas, since they’d both just gotten off their shifts. And Ethan came up to us and asked if we’d ride the Laser Coaster with him. I guess he knew Lucas pretty well from school. We were just like, sure, if you want. It was kind of random. But it was like, why not, my day pass meant I could ride all the rides, you know? He seemed really excited about it. He said he’d never ridden it before.”
It felt to me like Briony had explained all this many times in the past couple of weeks. It came out in a practiced sort of rush.
“And he had fun on the ride? Or did it, like, make him sick at all?”
Briony threw down her sponge and sighed.
“Yeah, the police asked that a lot. Because if he got really sick and dizzy or whatever, that would kind of explain him maybe losing his footing on the trestle. But you know…he didn’t seem sick at all. He liked it a lot. He wanted to ride it again. But…no one else wanted to.”
I hesitated before asking, “Why not?”
Briony put both her hands out and shrugged. “Personally, I was about ready to throw up and didn’t want to risk feeling worse. Anna and Lucas…well, I think they kind of had other plans.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. I didn’t know Anna and Lucas well, but I caught Briony’s drift that they were hooking up or something. “Got it. And this was right at closing?”
“Yep. Technically, after closing actually. Reggie let us go on the ride because Ethan was, like, begging. But after we got off, it was past closing, so we knew Reggie needed to shut it all down. I mean, Reggie was already running the ride for an extra few minutes to let us go on once. It didn’t seem right to ask for another ride after that. Everybody was already leaving and he was probably ready to head out too. Maybe Ethan didn’t understand that, I don’t know. But we left it that we’d just do it once that night and promised Ethan we’d do it again another day. He was all like, ‘I can’t do it another day.’ ”
A dark expression came over Briony’s face. “I guess he was right,” she murmured.
“That’s a strange way of putting things,” I said. It gave me a bad feeling. Even worse than when Morgan showed me the scorpion paperweight.
Briony shook her head. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought that myself. And why I didn’t just go ahead and ask Reggie to do it again. I mean, if we’d done it one more time, his whole night would’ve been different and he might not have fallen. Maybe someone would’ve been walking with him or seen him walking…maybe someone would’ve even given him a ride. Who knows? I just wish I’d said yes, you know?”
I nodded. “Yeah…Did anyone walk him out of the park?”
“He said he had to get his stuff, wherever you guys keep the personal stuff in the employee area and call his mom for a ride, so he was going in the opposite direction from us. We said bye and the three of us left the park. Anna and Lucas were heading to Lucas’s house. My sense was they were expecting his house to be empty when they got there.”
“Ohhh,” I said. “So you all said goodbye to Ethan where?”
“Right by the Laser Coaster. I don’t know if you heard…I gave him my sweatshirt.”
“No. When…?”
Briony closed her eyes for a moment. “He was wearing it when he died.”
“Oh God. But why…?”
“After we rode the ride, he kept saying he felt really cold.” Briony’s voice was quavering. She paused and rubbed the outside corners of her eyes. “And I had my big Patriots sweatshirt with me—it used to be my brother’s—so I gave it to him and he put it on. He seemed happy with it.”
“Was it like a cool night? A rainy night?” I asked. Since I’d been in North Carolina, I didn’t know the exact weather that night. But I’d think someone would’ve mentioned if it was raining, because then the trestle would’ve been slippery.
“No.” Briony shrugged. “It was pretty warm. A nice night, from what I remember. Anyway, I told him he could keep it, because I thought that would distract him a little, like a consolation prize for not riding the coaster again.”
“That was nice of you,” I said softly.
“Umm…I guess.” She wiped at the corner of her eye again, this time pushing away a tear. “It doesn’t feel nice now.”
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad, asking this stuff. I was just a little confused about things, having been gone when it all happened. And uh…with everything Morgan’s been through, I haven’t been able to get the whole story from her.”
“How is Morgan?” Briony asked.
“She’s okay,” I said noncommittally. “Hey…umm, that night…and I know this is weird, but do you happen to know if Ethan was carrying around a paperweight with a scorpion in it?”
“Yeah,” Briony replied. “Yeah, he was. He showed it to us in the Food Zone that night. Before we all walked over and rode the ride. It was blue, I think.”
So Ethan had had it when he rode the ride. Which meant he didn’t drop it on his way to Fabuland that morning. He’d had it with him on the trestle that night. And for some reason, he’d made it past the trestle. And then turned back and fallen off?
“So he had the scorpion thing with him,” I clarified, just to be sure. “That night.”
Briony nodded, her mouth twisting quizzically—presumably at why, of all things, I’d be asking about this.
“Yeah,” she said slowly, drawing out the word.
We were both silent for a moment.
“Thanks for answering my questions,” I said. “I’m not as confused now.”
; Briony nodded again.
“Ivy,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“That time you came over and we ended up watching old Mystery Science Theater 3000 clips on YouTube. That was fun. We should do it again sometime.”
I’d forgotten about that. It seemed like a thousand years ago. I couldn’t remember how we’d ended up watching videos instead of doing homework, but I remembered stretching out on her basement floor, laughing uncontrollably. It was one of those rare moments when it felt possible to make a new friend despite all my long hours studying and working afternoons at the doughnut shop. Not likely. But possible.
“I’d love to. But this week I’m kind of tied up with Fabuland. Tomorrow there’s this princess event I’m in charge of….”
“Oh yeah.” Briony grinned. “I heard about that from Drea. Well, when things are less busy, maybe we could hang out. Maybe with Morgan too, if she likes that kind of thing? And I bet Troy Haines would want in. He loves weird old movies.”
“Oh yeah, that’d be cool,” I said, and flashed a smile. I meant it. I just didn’t think it would happen. At least not until the fall. For now, the summer felt like it would last forever. “Thanks for talking.”
It had turned to dusk by the time I got into my car. I tried to focus on the road, but once I turned from the main highway through town onto the rural road that leads to my mom’s condo complex, my mind drifted to Ethan. The darkness of the road and the density of the trees reminded me of the path to the trestle. I thought of him wandering it alone in the dark before he fell. What was in his head that night?
I can’t do it another day. Why did he say that? Was he about to switch jobs? Was his family about to go away somewhere? Was it somehow related to whatever conflict had kept Winnie away from her job that night? Something happening with the Malloy family that was being kept secret? And why had Ethan been feeling cold on a warm summer night? Was he coming down with something?
I drove a little faster, eager to get back into the light and the familiarity of my mom’s place.
And then there was the sparkly blue scorpion paperweight.
Everything Briony had told me suggested that the paperweight had probably been Ethan’s, and that he had had it in his possession on the day he died. But I wanted to clarify with Emma tomorrow whether it really was such a rare item. Maybe the park had been awash in sparkly blue scorpion paperweights, and the one Morgan found near the trestle was one of many—not necessarily Ethan’s.
But if it really was rare, it seemed like there were two possibilities to account for the paperweight’s appearing on Morgan’s path that morning. One possibility was that Ethan had been disoriented, maybe even dizzy, from riding the Laser Coaster and had been wandering around near the trestle and fallen off. Still, the path forked toward Morgan’s house quite a bit away from the trestle, so Ethan would really have had to walk far without realizing it.
Another possibility was that he wasn’t headed home after work. Maybe he was headed toward his cousins’ house but then changed his mind. Or maybe he wasn’t alone. Maybe someone knew something more about Ethan’s last night.
As I pulled into the parking spot next to my mom’s, my mind inched toward the inevitable. The thing Morgan had implied but was hesitant to say out loud.
Maybe someone was lying.
SEVEN
The next morning was the Princess Day Parade, and I kept my eye out for Emma Radlinger while the rest of us were prepping in the big break room behind the arcade. After I spotted her—already dolled up in her Anna garb—I approached Emma and asked for help zipping up my shiny Elsa dress. She nodded and I turned around, scooping my hair to the side so she could get to the zipper. The dress was a little big, so the zipper went up easily. I hoped she didn’t notice.
“Thanks,” I said, facing her. I straightened her Anna brooch for good measure. “By the way, I wanted to ask you something. About that scorpion paperweight that Ethan won a couple of days before he died?”
“Oh. Yeah?” Emma twisted one of her Anna braids around her thumb. “What about it?”
“Were there lots of scorpion paperweights at other booths?” I pulled on my white Elsa gloves and straightened my blond-white Elsa wig. “Was there really only one blue one?”
Emma nodded, looking mournful at the memory. “Ethan said he checked all the booths. There were a bunch of red ones at the balloon booth, and mostly purple and dark green ones at the Wheel of Prizes station. He’d scoped them out. I don’t think much thought had gone into which colors were where. There are so many different junky prizes, you know? People only notice the exact mix if there’s something they really want.”
“Huh,” I said, making a mental note to ask Chris about the shipment of prizes. It was almost certainly him who’d ordered them. Chris handled all the administrative minutiae that my dad didn’t have the patience for. He might know the total number of light-blue paperweights that came in the early-summer shipment of prizes. Or have a slip that might give the exact numbers.
While Emma and I talked, I’d kept my voice low and an eye on Winnie Malloy. She was on the other side of the room, out of earshot. She was applying lipstick and tidying her hair, glancing at herself occasionally in a tiny mirror she’d produced from her purse. Her hair was twisted up in a chignon that I had to admit was more Cinderella than Morgan had ever looked. I wondered if she’d done it herself. If she had, she was pretty talented with hair.
“Why are you asking?” Emma nudged my elbow to bring my attention back to her.
“Oh…Morgan was telling me your story about it yesterday. So I was just curious.”
Emma puckered her lips. “You’ve talked to Morgan? Like, since the thing happened on the Ferris wheel?”
I nodded.
“How’s she doing?” Emma’s eyes widened with exaggerated concern.
“Okay,” I said noncommittally, then changed my mind. “Better.”
“Was there a guy involved in that whole incident somehow?”
“What makes you say that?” I asked.
“Last week she mentioned she was having trouble with some guy.”
“What guy?” I said, startled at this piece of news.
Emma shrugged. “She didn’t say. We were working, so it was more of an offhand comment.”
“Before or after…Ethan?” I said, glancing at Winnie. Now she had her phone pressed to her ear. Her lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying as she quickly slipped out of the room.
“That’s funny. I don’t remember. I think it was before….No, wait, actually after. I was telling her a story and it seemed like she wasn’t listening. Then she was just like, ‘I’m so sorry. I’m distracted. Guy trouble.’ ”
“Huh,” I said. I wondered if this had been a ruse to brush off Emma or something real—another thing Morgan had been keeping from me. You’d think any relatively intelligent guy who was into her would give her a break right after she’d gone through everything with finding Ethan. But maybe whatever guy she had been talking about didn’t fall into the “relatively intelligent” category.
“Is she back with Savoy?” Emma asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said, shaking my head.
Savoy was Morgan’s boyfriend until about six months ago. He’d gone to college last fall. They tried to make it work long distance but broke up over Thanksgiving break. Last I’d heard he was spending the summer working at a resort in upstate New York. He hadn’t come back to Danville, and Morgan never talked about him anymore. At least not to me.
“Maybe Tim Malloy,” Emma mused. “I saw him flirting with her a couple of weeks ago while he was buying pizza.”
“He’s kinda old,” I said.
“Yeah. But I hear he’s not so great with numbers. Maybe he hasn’t done the math to figure out that he’s four years older.”
�
�Umm,” I said, lowering my voice as Winnie came back into the room. I grimaced at Emma, trying to convey that we should maybe be quiet about Winnie’s brother when she was nearby. “I doubt he’d be prowling for girls right after his cousin died.”
Emma waved a hand at this thought, as if to dismiss it.
“So what was up with Morgan on the Ferris wheel?” she asked. “I mean, was that just a cry for attention, or what?”
I practiced my fake princess smile to mask my being offended at Emma’s unsympathetic phrasing.
“You know what happened, right?” I said. “She was drunk when she did it, and she passed out up there.”
“Really?”
I nodded gravely. “Yeah.”
“Oh my God. Then it’s so lucky she didn’t fall,” Emma said, her eyes widening.
“I know,” I replied, and meant it.
I scanned the room to make sure all the princesses were accounted for. As I did, I saw Winnie pulling a small bottle out of her purse. She began to dab something from the bottle onto her chest, right above the fairly low neckline of her blue princess dress. It took me a moment to realize what she was trying to do. She was applying cover-up to her tattoo. Kind of sweet, in a way, that she was taking the role so seriously. And just as I had that thought, Winnie’s gaze met mine, catching me looking.
“Ivy!” a voice boomed from the doorway.
Someone gasped, and as I whirled around, I saw Dani cover her front with her Sleeping Beauty dress, hiding her matching lilac bra and underwear.
“Ivy!” Dad yelled again as he stepped into the room. “There you are. I need you, hon. I need Carl Norton’s number.”
I marched to the doorway, pulling Dad with me until we were both outside, in the sunshine.
“Jesus, Dad. The girls were changing in there.”
“I didn’t see anything, I promise.”
I tried to breathe out my mortification, since I didn’t have time for it this morning. “That’s kind of not the point.”
All the Pretty Things Page 7
