by Andrea Bartz
“Tessa,” I break in.
“What?”
“I found the keystroke logger.” How much would she admit to?
“Huh?”
“On my laptop. Like you used on Will. And I know I didn’t put it there, so.”
She pops a chunk of pineapple in her mouth and chews thoughtfully. “What are you saying?”
I take a deep breath. “Is it yours?”
A beat, a long one, and then Tessa’s expression softens. “Linds, you don’t know what it’s like to have to stop your best friend from killing herself. It made me realize you’re really fucking good at not letting on when you’ve hit rock bottom.” She sets her fork down on the plate. “I just didn’t want that to happen again. I’m sorry if that feels like an invasion of privacy, but I didn’t know what else to do. I can’t always be here to keep an eye on you, and…” She spreads her palm over her belly. “I mean, soon it’s gonna be kind of hard to see each other at all.”
I blink at her, then nod. We eat in silence for a few more seconds.
“There’s something else,” I say.
“Okay.”
“I know you’re Jenna.”
She swallows, blinks. “Who’s Jenna?”
“I remember you now.”
Another silence, both of us frozen, and then, from inside my room, the sound of my phone ringing. We both turn to look at it as the hollow buzz starts again.
Then we’re both moving, a race, and the dishes explode on the floor as I dash into my bedroom, yanking my phone off the nightstand just in time to see that it’s a missed call from Damien. I’d thought Tessa was running for the same thing, but I look up and she’s in the doorway with a knife from the sink, sticky with fruit juice.
“Give me the phone,” she says, a hand outstretched.
“Tessa…”
“Give me the fucking phone. Don’t test me.”
I stare at her, then look down and begin frantically swiping. Home button, emergency call, 9—
She snatches it out of my hands and glares at me as it begins ringing again. She holds down a button to turn it off, then slips it into her back pocket.
“Okay, let’s calm down,” I say, lifting my palms. “Think this through. You don’t want to hurt me.”
“None of this was supposed to happen,” she says as her eyes fill with tears. “I thought you’d just make peace with what you’d done.”
“Tessa, put that down.” I back farther into the bedroom and she follows, the knife tip shaking.
“I’m sorry, I can’t, you can’t know.”
“Think this through. This isn’t gonna save you. It’ll only make everything worse.”
She shakes her head. “I have to do it,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
The moment slows and I have time to take it all in: the knife quivering in her left hand, the tear that tumbles down her cheek, the sudden step forward with her left foot, and then—graceful, slow-motion—the right hand swooping out and closing around my wrist.
I jerk back and yank at her fingers with my other hand, and the knife darts forward, slices my knuckles. I scream and keep twisting, then shift my weight and land a kick to her gut. She shrieks and releases my arm, doubling over.
“I’m pregnant!” she screams, as if I’m the reckless one. “How could you!”
I scramble onto the bed and tumble off it behind her, shooting through the hallway and toward the front door. I hear her pounding up after me, and I’m a few feet from the door when she lands a tackle. My temple hits the hardwood floor and I see stars, millions of them, a dazzling image of the night sky.
She drops the knife with a clang and clasps both of my arms behind my back. A crash near my head as she pulls my lamp off the side table and then she’s wrapping the cord around my wrists, again and again and again. A pile of slick photos topples from the end table, too, fluttering through a few feet of air together, and one lands upside down, tipped up against the table leg: Edie and me, pale in the camera’s flash, on any one of a million anonymous nights.
This is it, then. I wonder what Tessa’s planning next: a bottle of force-fed whiskey, perhaps, followed by a few handfuls of antidepressants crammed down my throat. No, of course: a gunshot to the head, my fingerprints on the trigger, and a suicide note on my phone. I love you, I’m sorry, goodbye. Lucky for her, I never did delete any of the files that point to my obsessive research, my potential guilt—the case files, the Flip cam videos. The email from Edie. Her old diary, now trapped inside my phone.
Tessa climbs off me, and I take the opportunity to roll onto my back and sit up. She comes back with a gun in her hand—a decent one, I observe blandly, a Ruger 9mm. I look up at her and she meets my eye, staring as if across all ten years.
A bang at the door.
“Please help me!” I scream, before I can think. “She has a gun!”
Later I’ll realize that my instincts were ahead of me, that I’d noticed she hadn’t clicked off the safety yet. But I don’t know it yet, so she just looks at the door in alarm, and I tuck one foot under me and stand and heave into her with all my might, the lamp dragging across the floor behind me, and the banging continues and I scream, “Kick it in!” and we both fall into a jumble, Tessa and me, and I can’t use my arms to catch myself, and so her body breaks my fall.
* * *
The following hours and days I can barely remember, my brain hazing out like it’d just exhausted itself. 2009 all over again: sterile interrogation rooms, dazed calls and texts from other people in my life.
It’s explained to me over and over again until it sticks: When I followed the link from Damien’s email to the web-based audio app, I’d inadvertently uploaded the file into his account, where he’d found it that same morning. He called both Tessa and me, and then 911; he was on his way, but the cops beat him to my door. Jenna Teresa Hoppert was arrested on the spot and charged with all sorts of things, most notably Edie’s murder. I remember her stepping all over the fallen photos as two police officers led her out my front door.
* * *
I get three days off work, which feels simultaneously absurd and reasonable; I imagine my higher-ups deliberating over this, frowning and arguing over what feels right. The news vultures barely pick up the story, and I’m surprised, given that Edie was so young and beautiful and Tessa’s and my jobs are both at least in the top quartile of interesting. There’s a bombing in Dublin and no one cares about us washed-up hipsters, histrionic and grown. I’m relieved, I notice, taking stock of my emotions: grateful no one expects me to pant out the story like someone on a reality show. I feel a weird satisfaction in keeping it private, tucking it into the past where someday maybe it’ll grow soft and smoky and eventually dissipate.
Damien keeps me company whenever I ask him to, and we take turns comforting each other when a wave of horror comes crashing through. For the first time, I see him cry, and after a few times he stops trying to conceal his tears from me. The lead detective checks on me regularly, like a sweet old neighbor, and he’s reminded me a few times that I’ll need to testify at the trial. It won’t be for a few years, he says, which makes me feel sleepy and old, that this ordeal will stretch all stringy until I’m in my late thirties. Like I’m so adult now that three years is nothing. Do juveniles awaiting sentencing get the speedy public trials we’ve all been promised? Do they hurry things along for teenagers, for whom each month is a brave eternity?
Tessa never contacts me, but I know she’s growing bigger, rounder, through some incredible yet banal alchemy, and though I can’t explain why, I catch myself counting down the months until her due date. I don’t speak to Will, either, but I feel a balloon of sadness every time I think of him; I know what he saw in sweet, funny Tessa, and he didn’t deserve any of this. Damien talks to him sometimes, over email, I think, but I stop him the first time he tries to tell me how Tes
sa’s doing, where she’s being held, the legal calisthenics Will is performing on behalf of her and their unborn child. I have a feeling it’ll be a girl, and I can’t help thinking I’ll meet her someday, know her as my shape-shifting friend’s final iteration, giraffe-eyed and innocent and so sure of her goodness.
Word spreads quickly to Alex, Sarah, and Kevin, and one by one they reach out to say something kind, something supportive and nonjudgmental, never mind that I’ve been best friends with Edie’s killer for years now. Kevin suggests a reunion sometime in the fall, and he somehow makes it sound jubilant and not at all macabre, and for some reason I agree and am surprised to find myself looking forward to it.
A few weeks before the gathering, Alex asks me to meet him, insisting there’s something he needs to say; Damien persuades me to go and suggests I meet Alex at the restaurant across from his apartment in Chelsea, so he can keep an eye on things from his front window. I’m jittery on the walk from the subway, unsure I can look Alex in the eye without thinking about our faces sinking toward each other like magnets.
We hug hello and get seats at the bar, and I feel it on him, too, something high-strung and uncomfortable. For a few minutes, we make small talk. He tells me he and his wife just made a down payment on a house in Sleepy Hollow; I feign elation.
Then he leans in and asks it, and I have to admire the bluntness: how am I doing vis-à-vis my best friend turning out to be a psychopath, in so many words. It’s a question that feels complex and corrugated every time I dip inside for an answer.
“It feels like a breakup,” I tell him, “the kind where you trusted the person and they did something really bad, cheated on you or whatever. And then you look back and realize you were making a lot of excuses.” I rub my fingers along the condensation on my glass. “And if I were younger, ten years ago or whatever, I would be freaking out about it, I’d be so embarrassed and ashamed that I let this person into my life.”
He begins to protest, to come to my defense, but I cover him up: “I know, no, I’m saying that now that I’m older and wiser, I know not to be embarrassed, that that’s a stupid reaction. I mean, part of me can’t help feeling like there’s a whole scales-falling-from-my-eyes, should-have-known-better element at play.” I shrug. “But then most of me is like ‘Fuck that. You are 100 percent not at fault.’ It’s funny, it’s almost like all the dumb friend breakups and shitty guys from the last decade have prepared me for this. I’ve bounced back enough times to be like, ‘Yep, somehow gonna recover from this one, too.’ ”
“Totally. With your bullshit meter intact. Good for you. At the end of the day, thank god you’re safe.”
“Exactly.”
We’re quiet for a minute, then he looks up.
“So I actually asked you to meet with me because I wanted to apologize.”
It’s one of those peculiar movie moments; I’m a few inches above my body, watching him speak.
“Lindsay, it was not okay for me to be flirty or whatever, and it definitely wasn’t cool for me to kiss you. Jaclyn and I have been—it’s been a rough year, we were struggling with some fertility stuff, but that doesn’t excuse it at all. I took advantage of you when you were vulnerable and I’m ashamed and I really, really apologize.”
Christ. It strikes me how strange it feels, hearing a man deliver an unequivocal apology. He looks away and sucks on his straw, like he wants to say more but knows he should quit.
“Hey, thanks,” I say. “I really appreciate that. Obviously I’m not completely innocent there, but I appreciate it and totally…I forgive you, of course.” I feel like a bad actor stumbling through lines, but I press on. “Also, I’m really looking forward to the reunion and everything, but after that, I think it’s best if we’re not in touch anymore.” I swallow. “I’m just trying to focus my energy on, like, finding a healthy relationship, and you—it’s not your fault, but this sort of takes up emotional space for me.”
“Yeah, I get that. I’m really sorry.”
“I know.” I gaze out the front window; two sparrows alight on a tree that blocks my view of Damien’s apartment. Then I look back at Alex, and we exchange a brave smile. “It’ll all be okay.”
“It will.” He plays with his napkin. “And I’ve got some other news.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Jaclyn’s pregnant.”
I squeal. “Congratulations! You’re gonna be a dad!” A little peal of sadness: Yes, I just told Alex it was over, but this makes it real.
He chuckles, beaming. “I can’t believe it. I know this is an overshare, but between you and me…I was really worried. Fertility-wise, I mean. Because the last time I was trying, it was with Edie, and nothing came of it. Thank god, in retrospect, but yeah.”
I start laughing, which is probably the wrong reaction, but everything about this is suddenly hilarious. What a thing to tell me, seconds after discussing our near affair. “You and Edie were thinking about having a baby? In Calhoun?”
“I mean, trying-not-trying. God, we were stupid. It was this half-baked, unspoken idea we’d had, probably because things were not going super well in the relationship even though we loved each other so damn much.” He jangles the ice in his drink, takes a final sip. “It was, like, the ultimate idiotic hipster choice. Thank god that didn’t materialize.”
Edie’s unborn child—I can’t believe it. I thought I’d die without knowing what had happened. I consider telling him, then lean on the bar instead, waving for the server. “This man’s going to be a father!” I call, pointing.
The bartender offers us a round on the house. I order another Diet Coke and Alex gets a look on his face and then orders a pickleback, beaming through the server’s eyebrow flash. I smile, too, as we watch him pour pickle juice into a glass and whiskey into a shot glass, then smack everything on the table with an eye roll.
Picklebacks. A 2009 classic, and Edie’s favorite.
We raise our drinks high, each waiting for the other to propose a toast.
“To Calhoun,” I say, and we clink.
“Didn’t you used to write?” he asks as he slams his glass onto the counter.
It’s not at all what I expected him to say. “Me?”
“Yeah. Poetry or something.”
“Essays. I did. That was a big era for navel-gazing. So yeah, I spent a lot of time being really, really in my own head. Or up my own ass, maybe.”
“Hey, don’t minimize it. They were good. I remember that piece you had in n+1.”
“Oh my god, I haven’t thought about that in years.” I lean back, remembering. That pretentious lit mag…I’d been so excited when they’d published my reported essay on the social politics of a kickball league. And a bit shy about it, so that I’d posted about it on Facebook but hadn’t mentioned it to the gang. But Edie had bought a bunch of copies and spread them out on their coffee table like a bouquet. That was actually really sweet of her.
“All I’m saying is, I got my guitar out of the basement last week,” Alex says. We grin at each other and then hide our faces behind our water glasses.
When I get home, I open up my photo archives from that summer, choosing one at random. It’s an outtake. We’re at Coney Island, having just tumbled out of a smelly sedan Alex borrowed from a bandmate. Sarah had set her camera with a timer on a barricade and then sprinted over to where we were standing, but she was still running when the shutter clicked, and Kevin was beginning to tip over from his one-legged Captain Morgan pose, and Alex’s mouth was open yelling at Sarah to hurry up, and Edie had further ruined the photo by tickling my ribs with the hand she’d wrapped around me, so that the rest of us were mid-drama and Edie alone gazed at the camera, smiling beatifically. Only it wasn’t ruined, I see now. I check the date: May 23, 2009. It was perfect.
* * *
A few nights later, at home in my pajamas, I sit down at the kitchen table and
write an essay; it’s about finding in my best friend’s sudden and scary incarceration a support network I’d heretofore failed to notice, a whole hammock of loved ones I’d always been too closed off to really see. I give it a headline, Losing a Friend But Finding the Love, and read it over, making changes as I go; I like it, crisp and honest, so I look up Modern Love’s submission guidelines and hit send with a little spritz in my chest. I get the automatic reply saying I’ll hear back within twelve weeks, and so I do the math, projecting myself into twelve weeks from now when I’ll have a yes or, more likely, a no, and I smile at the fact that all those weeks feel solid, that I can trust the months to unspool for another fifty years like a ball of yarn.
* * *
Another week passes in the familiar rhythm of sunrises and sundowns, the days growing shorter, impervious to the drama that rumbled in and then out of my bones. One Tuesday, the mail guy drops off a stack just as I’m leaving my office for the day, and I find among the time wasters a card with my name and work address handwritten on the front. The address label is a couple’s initials, and it takes me a moment to recognize one as Sarah’s.
I slip the envelope into my purse and rip it open on the subway. It’s a cool letterpress card with a sheet of printer paper folded inside, and I smooth out the creases to read it:
Dear Lindsay,
I hope you’re well, and I hope you don’t mind my sending this to your work address—I don’t have your home one. I wanted you to have our new address, and I figure, who doesn’t like receiving mail? ☺ I’m super excited to see the whole gang in October. Kevin is going to stay in our guest room, which will be fun.
Anyway, lately I’ve been fixating on some things I said during our meet-up at Skylight Diner, and I just wanted to reach out directly. You know, no more keeping things bottled up, like in 2009.
I stop reading and blink around the packed subway. There’s a little boy asleep against his mother’s shoulder; a college-age woman reading a book with a slick cover design and an obviously ironic title: Self-Esteem for Dummies. I think back to the last few months, the self-suspicion and disgust camped in my chest, the paranoia shining back out onto other people. It felt familiar yet wrong in my body, like software meant for a much-older operating system. I take a long sip of air and continue reading.
