She's Too Pretty to Burn

by Wendy Heard

  The team is dripping wet and gathered around Coach Morris, who’s explaining something with broad hand motions. I slink up, trying to be invisible, but Coach sees me.

  “Oh, Mick is here. Lucky us,” she says.

  I squeeze myself in beside Amber at the back of the group. Cheeks on fire, I say, “I’m so sorry, Coach. My ride dropped me off late.”

  “What, like, your limo?” Liz snaps. She’s at Coach’s elbow, holding the clipboard.

  “Limo?” I echo.

  “You’re so important now, right?”

  “No. What? Of course not—my friend dropped me off. He was running late. Like I said, I’m so sorry. I’m ready to practice.”

  “You sure?” Coach’s eyes are burning into mine.

  I stammer, “I know I’ve been off my game lately.”

  “You’ve been flaking on this team for a week. Maybe if the LA Times were here, you would be motivated to treat this more seriously.”

  Half the team looks amused, and the other half looks freaked out and sympathetic. No one wants to be in the hot seat.

  To Coach, I say, “The LA Times?”

  Beside me, Amber murmurs, “The article? Did you not see it?”

  I shake my head.

  “We’ve all been texting you. It was in the Sunday paper.”

  “I lost my phone.”

  Coach says, “Why don’t you take the day off. Take tomorrow off too. Think about what you want. Clearly this isn’t working.”

  I feel like there’s a gaping, growing hole in my chest. I back up, away from the team. Their eyes are like daggers. Liz has a little angry smile blossoming on her lips. I turn and run.

  In the locker room, I pull the swim cap off so hard it takes some hair with it. I open my locker and shove the cap in my gym bag. My hand brushes the roll of film, a hard little lump. I pull my shorts on over my bathing suit and step into my flip-flops. I’m crying. It’s inside me—Lily, dead—that means something—Veronica’s hands on me, the camera—click.

  The little boy at the pool, cold and clammy.

  I press my hands to my face and try to stop the flow of tears. I don’t want to see the article Coach was talking about. I can’t think about how many other people have seen it. I want to escape, but it’s me that’s the problem. There’s nowhere to go that I won’t also be.

  I sink down onto the floor next to my gym bag, my back to the lockers, and draw my knees up to my chest. I wrap my arms around them and press my face into the bare, warm skin. My chest is too tight. My ribs are made of steel. I’m dizzy. The floor is rolling beneath me, an earthquake.

  In my head, Veronica’s voice says, “Sweetie. Sweetie.” It’s soft, purring—as if she’s here with me. There’s something so comforting about her. She’s the only person who’s ever made me feel like all these panicky things are going to be okay, that they’re not as big and scary as they seem.

  A hand touches my head.

  My whole body startles, and I snap my head up.

  She’s here, sitting on the bench in front of me, leaning down with her hand outstretched.

  I can’t believe she’s real. I feel like I conjured a mirage. I’m still hyperventilating.

  “Whoa, you’re not okay at all.” She slides down onto the floor beside me and wraps an arm around my back.

  “I can’t breathe,” I squeak out in a wheezing whisper.

  She squeezes me hard. “Breathe in, one, two, three, not too fast, then out, one, two, three, slow. In again…” She keeps counting. I follow the count, sucking air in slowly, then letting it out. After a few minutes of this, my ribs relax and expand.

  I let my head fall back against the locker. My whole body is tingly with the aftereffects of the panic attack. Her arm is warm around me.

  She says, “Why are you in here and not out there with the team?”

  “I was late again, and Coach was mad. She told me to leave. She—” My throat closes. I swallow. “Something about the LA Times.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  I turn my head and really look at her for the first time. Her hair is in a tangled ponytail, and she has no makeup on. She’s wearing an old Beatles T-shirt with cutoff jeans. She looks amazing. I’ve never been so glad to see anyone.

  “Do you know anything about the article?” I ask.

  She pulls her phone out of the back pocket of her shorts, and her thumbs fly across the screen. “Carmen mentioned it in an email, but I forgot to look it up. I’m assuming they just wrote something up from that interview they did at the gala.” We peer at the screen together as the Google search results load.

  There it is, in the LA Times Sunday Arts and Culture section. The headline reads “Haunting Portrayal of First Love Precedes Death at Gala.” The image accompanying the headline is the viral photo of me, captioned with the words Just Kissed. Photographer: Veronica Villarreal. Model: Micaela Young.

  “Oh no.” My hand is pressed to my lips.

  She clicks the link. It pulls up a full-length article accompanied by other images from the gala, including a photo of Veronica standing in front of the wall of photographs, looking composed and brilliant with her red lips and vintage dress. We skim the article, and words pop out at me like bullets: Hauntingly intense eye contact. Surreal beauty. Artistic integrity—analog process—intentional return to craft—the kinesthetic nature of fine art and true love.

  “Jesus. Christ,” Veronica whispers.

  “Oh my God,” I whimper. This is a disaster.

  She lets the phone clatter to the floor and takes my hand in hers. “I’m so sorry. I know you didn’t want any of this.”

  She doesn’t even know the half of it. I’m in so deep, with Nico and Lily and the whole rock-climbing bridge thing.

  “Come here.” She pulls me, trying to get me onto her lap. “Come here and let me hold you. Where have you been?”

  “I’ll squish you.”

  “You won’t squish me. Come on.”

  I allow her to collect me into her lap like a child. I bury my face in her shoulder and wind my arms around her neck, and we stay like that for what feels like a long time, until my heart slows and my tears run dry.

  My eyes rest on my gym bag.

  The film.

  I want to give it to her so she can hide it or destroy it. But can I trust her? What if she shows the picture of me setting the fire to the police? Or her mom? Their relationship … I don’t trust it. It’s so close. I can’t keep the film, though. I’m not sure how to destroy it; it’s not like I can just set a fire right here.

  “Okay, now you’re squishing me a little,” she says.

  I back up off her and sit on the cold concrete floor. She keeps my legs, so they’re still wrapped around her hips. We’re intertwined.

  I have to trust her. Don’t I?

  She’s on that roll of film too. She wouldn’t want the photos shared any more than I would.

  “You’ve been avoiding me,” she says.

  “I lost my phone.” Sneakily, my hand reaches for the side pocket of my gym bag, behind her where she can’t see it. If I can slip it into her purse for her to find later …

  “But where have you been staying? Your mom says you never went home.”

  Oh God. She knows. I feel my face flush with embarrassment. “I’ve been staying with friends. I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “Worry me?”

  I feel the blush deepen. “I didn’t want you and your mom to get me put in a foster home,” I confess.

  “I would never,” she starts to protest.

  “Your mom would.”

  She shuts her mouth, considers, and says, “Mick … why were you still at the gala when Lily died? Why were you with Nico? Did you see what happened to her?”

  My fingers have the film pinched between them, but now what? Do I just tell her and hope she—

  She says, “I want to believe good things. I want to believe you didn’t know Nico was coming that night, that you ran into him in the parking lot or someth
ing and got roped into one of his plans, just like you did with the fire. Because you wouldn’t hide something like that from me, right? You didn’t know he was going to be there?”

  I’m fighting a terrible battle in my head. We can have this conversation after I get my car. But tonight, I have to help Nico, and she can’t know about that.

  My eyes fly down to her purse, resting on the ground beside her. I wrap both arms around her neck, using the gesture to change the film from one hand to the other. Now that it’s in my right hand, I slip it into one of her purse’s side pockets, the decorative kind no one ever uses. She won’t find this for a while, I don’t think.

  “Mick?”

  “I … We can’t talk about this today. I promise, I’ll explain everything soon.”

  She puts her hands on my shoulders and pushes me away from her so she can look into my eyes. “Mick. Tell me you didn’t know he would be there.”

  A long pause. I can’t tell her the truth, but I won’t lie to her. Not anymore, not for Nico.

  She cocks her head. “I keep remembering what really happened that night of the fire. Nico and I were arguing. You were standing there watching. And then you took the torch from him. You set that fire. He didn’t make you. He didn’t even ask you. You’re not this innocent girl. You chose him over me the night of the fire, and again the night of the gala. Do you even understand? I had to get questioned by the cops, I had to lie—you totally screwed me over, Mick. Do you know what it was like to find Lily’s dead body and have no idea what was going on and—her dead face—”

  She looks like she’s going to lose it and start crying. I feel so awful, so full of guilt, I don’t know how I’m not sinking into the ground.

  “Why?” she pleads quietly. “I thought we were falling in love. Why would you do all of this?”

  “We are,” I try to say, but she pushes me off and stands up. She turns and heads for the exit. “Where are you going?” I ask.

  She stops, a hand on the door that leads out into the sunshine.

  “Away from you.” She slips outside and is gone.

  “Come back,” I whisper.

  Her question hangs in the air. Why have I been doing all these things? How did I get here?

  I’m lost.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  VERONICA

  I dialed Nico’s number for the hundredth time and hurled my phone across the bed when it went to voicemail yet again.

  I stood in the middle of my room, hands on hips. I was so pissed at Nico, I wanted to go down to his warehouse and set his precious supplies on fire, or at least give him a slap in the face, but when I’d tried to do just that this afternoon, after leaving Mick at the pool, he’d been gone.

  He’d recruited Mick to help him with his install at the gala without telling me. They’d been talking and planning together behind my back. Had he been the reason I was invited in the first place? Questions upon unanswered questions cluttered my brain, and I picked up a pillow and screamed into it.

  All day, I’d been trapped in this room, trying to figure out what to do. On one hand, I could come clean to the police, turn Nico in, and make up a story that made me look innocent in every way. I could even tell them Mick had something to do with the fire.

  I wasn’t going to do that. Why I was holding myself to some code of honor when they were clearly backstabbing assholes, I had no idea.

  I retrieved my phone from the bed and dialed Nico again. Straight to voicemail.

  I didn’t want to text him anything about this.

  Fine. I’d try his warehouse again.

  I grabbed my purse, shoved my phone inside it, and threw open my bedroom door. “Mom!” I yelled.

  “In the living room!”

  I found her in her favorite chair, typing furiously on her laptop with her glasses lopsided on her nose. “You working?”

  She smiled ruefully. “Seven thousand student emails.”

  “Can I take the car? I want to get out of the house for a while, maybe go see Nico.”

  “Isn’t it late? What time is it?”

  “It’s not even ten yet.”

  “Oh, okay. Well, be home by midnight.”

  “Thanks!” I grabbed her keys from her purse and hurried out the front door.

  I drove around the back way and pulled into the parking lot across the alley from Nico’s warehouse. I put the car in park and was retrieving my purse when a loud crash outside made me jump to attention. I tried to see through the windshield, through the flickering streetlights.

  I saw movement in the back alley. People were bustling in and out through the sliding freight door. Nico’s car was parked so his headlights beamed into the warehouse to provide light. He and David were rushing back and forth to his stolen catering van, loading things into the refrigerated storage area in the back.

  There was Mick, exiting the side door, lugging a large duffel bag. She tossed it into the back of the van, and David slammed the doors shut.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered. Could they possibly be prepping another install? No way. After what had happened—after his whole tear-filled speech about not being able to do his art anymore? After all the shit David told me?

  Nico moved his car into its normal parking spot. They piled into the van, David driving, and backed away from the warehouse.

  “Are you fucking kidding me,” I muttered, turning the car back on.

  I followed them through the seedy warehouse neighborhood toward the freeway. Nico took a right onto the on-ramp for Coronado Bridge.

  Coronado Bridge was about a mile long and connected mainland San Diego to Coronado Island, which is mostly a tourist destination. I wondered if Nico was planning something at the big hotel on the island, or if maybe the congressman was there for some reason. And of course, Mick would want to help him. She’s his trusty assistant, I thought bitterly.

  In the middle of the bridge, they slowed down so much, I thought they were going to stop. I had no choice; I had to pass them if I didn’t want Nico to know I was following him. In my rearview mirror, the van’s headlights swerved right. They were pulling over in the middle of the bridge.

  “What are you doing?” I screamed.

  Too late to find out now. I’d have to go all the way to the island and turn around. Cursing under my breath, I drove on, the ocean a glimmering, dark carpet hundreds of feet below. The road spat me out on Coronado Island, and I did an illegal U-turn to get back on the bridge.

  As I was getting on, the van passed me, heading for the island at full speed. I craned my neck trying to see where they were going. What was he up to? Why had he stopped in the middle of the bridge if the island was his destination?

  My phone rang. Maybe Nico had seen me; maybe he was finally calling me back. I grabbed for it, but it was my mom.

  I didn’t want to get pulled over for talking and driving, so I ignored it. My mom called right back, though, which was weird. I answered the phone as I exited the bridge, back into the warehouse district.

  “Mom, I’m driving,” I said, putting it on speaker.

  “Where are you?” Her voice was urgent.

  “I was trying to hang out with Nico, but he wasn’t home.” True enough.

  “Well, get back home. The police are here.”

  My heart exploded, a horse galloping in my chest. “What do they want? It’s, like, eleven o’clock at night.”

  “Just get your ass home, girl.”

  This couldn’t be good. The layers of lies and secrets were piling up fast now, like dirt being shoveled into a grave.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  MICK

  I stand on the edge of Coronado Bridge, clutching the railing behind me. The harness wraps around me like a vise. The damp, salty wind whips at my ponytail. Earlier, I asked Nico to look up survival rates for falling off this bridge. Answer: zero.

  This is the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done. These could be the last moments of my life.

  I wonder if this is ho
w Lily felt before she lost her balance and tumbled off the roof. I wonder if she saw it coming. And that little boy—before he jumped in, did he have any premonition that it might be the last thing he did?

  In a strange way, the fear is pulling at me. The water is calling my name. Would it matter if I did fall? My mom doesn’t want me. Veronica’s face was full of disgust and disappointment when she closed the locker room door behind her. My swim team friends think I’m some kind of … I can’t let myself remember their faces. The shame it brings is too sharp; it cuts me up on the inside.

  When I push those thoughts away, one echo replaces them: my mom’s voice saying, Get out.

  I want to jump.

  The thought shocks me. I didn’t know that was inside me. And at the same time, all these years, all I’ve ever wanted was to disappear.

  Maybe that’s why I keep letting Nico talk me into this stuff. Maybe I want the worst to happen. Maybe I want to self-destruct.

  From behind me, on the other side of the railing, David says, “You ready? You got your headset on? I’ve got you. Don’t worry.” I’m outfitted in harnesses and ropes. I just need to rappel down to the top of the column, and the only way to do that is to jump.

  My heart is pounding. The water is dark and sinuous. It’s beautiful.

  I was beautiful too, in the picture Veronica took of me. For one shining second, I was something.

  I let go of the bridge and jump.

  Free fall, and then my harness catches me with a full-body jerk that knocks the wind out of me. I’m dangling, heart exploding out of my chest while I wait for the rock-climbing gear to fail.

  But David has me. He’s lowering me down to the top of the column. There’s a moment of panicked fumbling, and then I catch the handholds Nico drilled into the column, and I’m clutching the makeshift ladder like a life raft.

  In my ear, the headset crackles. Nico’s voice says, “You okay, Jagger?” He’s on the next column over, a hundred feet closer to Coronado Island.

  “This is scary,” I squeak.

  “You’ll get used to it in a second. When I was drilling in these hooks, I was terrified at first, but then it started feeling normal.”