by Andrea Bartz
Thoughts like popcorn:
Did I never make it to the concert, then?
What did I say to her?
What did I see?
What did I do?
Maybe she was already dead?
The time stamp. On my screen, I clicked back to the moment I’d opened the door: 11:11 (make a wish!). When had Sarah called the cops? I Googled around a bit before I realized that duh, this was an absurd thing to expect to find. Case files. I needed those case files.
I returned to the video, my stomach whirling. I cued it up to my entrance: navy-blue nail polish on my fingers, the smooth clack of the door opening. I listened over and over to the exclamation I’d made when I looked inside. It was gibberish, “[inaudible]” on a transcript. I listened to it enough times that the distortion eventually organized itself into a nonsensical phrase, namely me chirping “Heavy skies senile?,” and then that was all I could hear.
“Heavy skies senile?” Rewind. “Heavy skies senile?”
Fuck. Fucking brain hearing it wrong, latching onto the wrong words, the wrong interpretation.
Well, and. Fucking brain going totally offline at 11:11 on August 21, 2009.
A surge so sudden that I barely made it to the bathroom in time to vomit, hot tears and snot streaming down my face. When I finally sat back, I leaned my head against the wall and wept, weirdly enjoying the sound of the wet sobs bursting out of my throat. I listened and cried until I heard my phone vibrate in the kitchen. It was Tessa, finally seeing my text about un-deleting videos.
I called her, tears welling again as the phone rang, and I panicked about what I’d say when she picked up. Her “Hey!” was so inappropriately cheerful.
“Tessa, I was there,” I said, my voice wobbling. “I found a video from that night that I’d deleted right after, but in it I go to her apartment and—”
“Slow down, Lindsay, breathe,” she broke in. “I can’t hear anything you’re saying. Are you okay?”
“No, that’s what I’m trying to tell you!” The sound of my own croaking voice spooked me.
“What’s going on?”
I took a long, quavering breath. “Can you come over?”
A beat. Then: “I’m on my way.”
* * *
I texted Damien, too, but again he didn’t respond. As Tessa sped across the East River, I watched the other videos; they were spastic, twenty-second snippets of drunk postgrads messing around. What was I looking for? In one from July, we passed a joint and discussed what our entrance music would be if we walked out to a song like a pro athlete taking the field. I suggested “Queen Bitch” for Edie and laughed cruelly, and she responded by playing it on her phone and remarking, “Oh, Lindsay, it’s cute when you try to be mean!” A ripple of annoyance. Was that a clue? Was that evidence?
Tessa set her watch to ping mine when she got close, and at the sound I walked to the window and watched her lock up her Citi bike on the street below. Cars whizzed behind her and I pictured it for a moment, a drunk driver careening off the road and onto the sidewalk, Tessa pinned to the bike-share structure from the waist down. My heart sped up at the thought and adrenaline shot through my limbs. I blinked again; she crossed the street and made her way up my stoop, then leaned on the bell. I buzzed the front door and heard it unlatch a few floors below.
I’d sprawled on the sofa. “Don’t you have those keys I gave you?” I asked, dangling a leg off the cushion.
“Somewhere. I didn’t realize getting up to let me in would be the death of you.” She set about making me tea, banged a cupboard.
“Thanks for coming over,” I called. “I hope you weren’t in the middle of anything.”
“It’s fine. Will and I were just watching TV.”
“Oh.” I scooched deeper into the couch and slung my knees over the armrest. “Well, I’m glad you’re here. I’m actually having this internal battle where I don’t want to tell anybody, but I think I’ll go crazy if I do that.”
Tessa carried over a steaming mug. “Just tell me what happened. We’re gonna figure it out.”
I leaned my head back and groaned. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“You said on the phone you were there? Start there.”
But I didn’t start there. I recounted Sarah’s casual admission that she’d questioned Edie’s cause of death, then launched into my call with Kevin, his reveal about a mysterious ER visit and a prescient conversation with Edie earlier that month, right before she died—his conviction that she wasn’t suicidal.
“Okay, that would definitely freak me out,” she said when I paused to rub my face. “But Sarah also course-corrected once she got a little perspective, right? She can’t have been that convinced if she dropped it afterward.”
“That’s true. Everything she mentioned on Monday was really flimsy. I can see why she kinda grew out of it.”
“What was she basing it on?”
I tugged at the teabag’s string. “Like, she mentioned how the gun was in Edie’s right hand, but she was a lefty like you. How she was found in her bra and underwear, that kind of thing.”
Tessa scrunched her nose. “I see why it all feels…alarming when you look at it through a new lens. But, Lindsay, you know that’s not much. And the two people behind this theory were Sarah, who’s rescinded it, and Kevin, who maybe felt motivated to not believe it was suicide since the gun was his.”
Jarring, the way the names popped out of her mouth. Like hearing your cousin call your father “Uncle Mike.”
“You mean so that he’d feel less responsible?”
“Right, exactly. How would you feel if your friend used your gun to kill herself? Maybe it was easier to pin it on some big, bad, anonymous monster, you know?” She picked at a hangnail. “All the adults in the situation, the detectives and her parents and everyone, concluded it was suicide, right?”
“I know, I know.” I pulled in a deep breath. “But there’s another thing. The reason I actually started poking around again is that…well, I think I told you Sarah remembered something differently from the night that Edie died. I have a memory of being up at this concert with her and Alex while Edie…while it happened, and Sarah was like, ‘No, you weren’t there, you’d already gone home.’ ”
“Whoa.”
“I know, it was really weird, she was adamant about it. But of course I was there, I remember it. I was drunk, but not wasted or anything. So I just kinda thought I’d…you know, prove her wrong. Obviously this was an important night to me.”
“But you said on the phone you think you…I couldn’t really understand you.”
I pulled my laptop off the coffee table and cued up the last few seconds of the video. “Watch this.”
When it ended, she continued to frown in confusion.
“This is the night,” I told her, pointing. “And based on the time stamp, this is right around when Edie died. And look, I walk into her apartment. My fucking frenemy is about to die and I just waltz into the room.”
It was so absurd, said aloud, that I almost cackled. Tessa frowned and watched the end of the video again.
“You’re sure that’s you?” she said.
“The person walking into the apartment? Yes, I’m sure.”
“But you’re not sure she’s in there.”
“Tessa, the timing works out perfectly. And I’d just seen all my other friends.”
“Where?”
She hadn’t viewed the first few minutes of the video yet. I blushed, knowing she was about to hear Alex and myself slandering the dead, but I hastily rewound it anyway. She watched, her eyes narrowed.
“Whoa, I didn’t realize you and Alex had such strong feelings about Edie.”
“I don’t remember either of us saying that. I don’t even remember being that pissed. In normal, sober life. But they’d broke
n up and were still living in the same apartment, and Edie and I weren’t on great terms, and…I’m kind of a mean drunk,” I finished lamely.
“I’ve seen it.” She said it without thinking and the moment froze up, all awkward.
I cleared my throat. “So it pretty much had to be Edie in there.”
“What about Kevin?”
“He had a show that night. In Greenpoint.”
“And there’s no one else who could’ve been in the apartment? Seems like enough time passed that any one of those friends could’ve walked in…”
“I know, but the timing, it’s right before Edie…” We exchanged exasperated looks.
“So let me get this straight,” she said. “You’re saying that now that you know you went into the room, you think you actually…what, found her body and didn’t tell anyone?”
“Or saw something I shouldn’t have. Like who was in there with her.” The thought blinked on like a lightbulb: This would explain so much. Lindsay Bach’s Pathetic Decade. I’d fact-checked a story once about the health consequences of harboring secrets, how the chronic gush of stress hormones eats away at the brain. What if you don’t even know about the skeletons in the closet?
“Or you walked into an empty room. Or your friends were in there refreshing their drinks or smoking pot or something and the time stamp is an hour off. I mean, right?”
“Maybe. But, Tessa, what if I saw, like, the smoking gun and was too drunk to realize it? Up until this morning I was convinced that I’d just gone to the show with my friends and then gone straight home. Or what if I said something awful to her right as she was feeling depressed and had a gun at her disposal? I was raring to tell her off, you know.”
“I thought you were convinced it wasn’t a suicide now.”
“I don’t knooow. Ugh, I just wish I could remember this moment. I had no idea I blacked out, and that’s really scary.” A headache throbbed against my nose and forehead. Beneath it, behind my eyes and temples, was a shadowy thought, one I desperately didn’t want to dredge up.
“Okay, okay.” She refolded her legs under her. “This is…you’re not thinking straight. Let’s talk this out. What do you remember from that night?”
I’d gone over it so many times in the weeks and months after, and then again this week, my brain finding and then easing into those deep, ancient grooves. “I went over to their apartment around maybe nine thirty, normal time,” I said, “and Edie wasn’t there. I was on edge because I’d pumped myself up to have this friend breakup talk with her. I kinda casually asked where she was and somebody just said she was around and would maybe meet us later.” I could see exactly where each of us was sitting and even knew what I was wearing: a way-too-short denim romper and white Keds. “The rest of us were pregaming in the apartment. I think Alex was playing bartender. And I was drinking extremely fast because I was nervous about seeing Edie. I was already feeling pretty tipsy by the time we went up to the roof. And then Kevin left for his gig.”
I finished my tea, now cold. “We were up there for a while, and then we came back inside and walked over to the party. I mean, I don’t really remember walking there, like actually being in the staircase, but why would I?”
“Then what?”
I sighed. “The band was like synth-pop—god, what’d we call it? Synth-wave? Chillwave! We were dancing like idiots and bouncing off each other and stuff. And then I had that moment of clarity when you realize you’re too drunk, so I left and a random girl smoking outside helped me hail a taxi. I couldn’t stop thanking her.” I swallowed. “That’s what I remember clearly. But Sarah swears I never came to the show. I figured she was just remembering it wrong.”
“It sounds like you remember it pretty well.”
“I thought so, too. But the video…”
The thought again, beating at the inside of my skull. I resisted as it threatened to take shape, to crystallize. My eyes welled with tears, and Tessa pushed me on: “What happened the next day?”
“Well, I woke up at home on my bed, fully dressed. I had the worst hangover of my life, which made the entire next day especially fucking surreal.”
“God. I’m so sorry, Linds.”
“It was bad. My phone was dead, so by the time I saw all the texts, the cops and everyone had already left. I was so sick, I remember throwing up in a sewer grate on my walk to the subway and then buying Gatorade at a bodega and rinsing out my mouth. So gross. When I got there, Sarah was sitting on these steps just outside the front door, and her face—oh my god. I sat down next to her—I was, like, fighting the urge to vomit, and my head hurt so bad I could barely look at her straight—and she just looked at me and she goes, ‘I found her.’ God, it broke my heart.”
It’d been a beautiful morning, breezy and cooler than normal, and a bird had chosen the nearest tree to sit and sing its little heart out. I’d gazed at it, wishing I could tear its lungs out and make the sound stop.
“How did she find her?”
“She came home to start getting ready for bed and found the body.”
She closed her eyes. “Jeez, poor Sarah. How’d she seem?”
“The next morning, you mean? She just seemed exhausted. Obviously they hadn’t slept all night. Sarah’s and…I think Alex’s parents were coming in that day. That’s right, Kevin had spent the night in jail ’cause of the unlicensed firearm and was waiting to talk to the DA, and then he was gonna go stay with Alex’s family. So everyone was just waiting to be brought back to hotels.” I’d felt jealous, to be honest: accosted by this news and then too many steps behind and away to get any support. None of my so-called “friends” had asked if I’d wanted to go with them; I’d just waited until they’d all left, then gone home, climbed back into bed, and bawled.
Tessa stood up and crossed into the kitchen, bending to root around in her backpack. “You said you and Edie were on bad terms?”
“Yeah. We were basically inseparable for a year. And then I started to feel like our friendship was sort of based on me being fucked up and her being more together than me.”
Tessa returned with a bar of dark chocolate; she broke off a chunk and handed the rest to me.
“That’s why I’d made up my mind to separate myself from her, which would mean also separating myself from the whole crew, which was scary. But necessary, you know? Deciding felt very adult. And then a week before she died, we had this stupid fight over nothing.” I held out the bar and she took it, foil crinkling.
“What happened?”
I let the chocolate melt on my tongue for a moment. “It was so inane. The weather was shitty and someone had invited me over, maybe Sarah, and I’d brought a bunch of DVDs in case everyone felt like being lazy and staying in. Edie still wanted to go into Williamsburg and I was jokingly being whiny, you know, ‘It’s raaaaining, let’s staaaaay,’ and she just snapped.” I could still see the look on her face, could still feel the blow of her shrieked words. “She just started screaming that I was the most selfish and controlling person she’d ever met and that I was always acting like I owned the place when it wasn’t even my apartment.” God, it’d hurt. The bruise resurfaced, still fresh. “Then she stormed out of the apartment and all of us were like, whoa.”
“Whoa is right,” Tessa said. “Did you ever talk about it?”
I shrugged. “She texted the next day and just said she was sorry for, quote-unquote, flipping a bitch, and that she’d been stressed about other stuff. I’d been thinking about cutting ties anyway, so I just told her it was fine. But after that, things were…tense. It was like she’d cut me off before I could do the same.”
Tessa set the chocolate on the coffee table. “ ‘Stressed about other stuff.’ You didn’t ask what?”
“Not really. I mean, everyone was stressed out. It was two thousand fucking nine. Edie’s parents were about to lose her childhood home, Kevin and Al
ex couldn’t find real jobs, Sarah had been laid off…”
“I remember,” Tessa said. “That era, I mean. All these weird aftershocks and this feeling like…” She hesitated.
“Like right after an earthquake, when you’re not actually sure if it’s about to get worse,” I offered.
Tessa nodded.
“You were still in Chicago then, right?” I asked.
She nodded again. We sucked on our chocolate. “I might have asked you this before, but I forget: Why was Kevin keeping a gun in the apartment?”
“Oh, it was awful. The good little Southern boy had this antique pistol from his grandfather that he kept in this chest in the living room—like a steamer trunk? He loved that gun. It didn’t occur to any of us that you can’t just randomly have an unlicensed firearm in New York. It was hardly ever loaded, and he never let us touch it. Apparently he’d gone target shooting in Bucks County the weekend before and just hadn’t dealt with it yet. God, he’ll never forgive himself.”
“Would Edie even be comfortable using it?”
“I dunno. I can’t think why she’d have touched it before.”
Tessa nodded and looked down. I pictured the gun in Edie’s slender hands. Maybe she’d pointed it at herself—or at me—just to fuck with me. It felt like something she’d do.
“I bet she’d never even held a gun before,” I added. “New York City’s not exactly a place where you grow up hunting.” Unlike Bumfuck, Wisconsin. Unlike me. And then the thought blared on, so loud I couldn’t stop it: I would’ve known exactly how to use Kevin’s gun. It would have been the most natural thing in the world. And I knew what an uncontrollable surge of anger could cause me to do. Had I…could I…?
With a crack, Tessa snapped another piece of chocolate from the bar. “So whoever had the gun had to know it was there and get it out of the chest to use it?” she asked.
I took a breath. “I’m, like, ninety-five percent sure it was put away. I mean, the living room wasn’t that big and we were all hanging out there earlier that night, and I certainly don’t remember seeing it. But it could have been out, sure.”
