Dare You

  “So what’s the plan?” he asked. He picked up the wadded wrap mess I’d let drop at my feet and began patiently rolling it.

  “What plan?”

  “Don’t play with me. I know you. There’s always a plan. So what is it?”

  “Maybe you’re wrong this time.”

  He finished rolling the wrap and dropped it into his bag with the other wraps, then leaned down and picked up the second one, which I’d dropped in exactly the same place. I snatched it from him. “Here. Let me.”

  “I’m not wrong. And you’ll save us both a lot of hassle if you will just tell me what you’re going to do next so I can tell you you’re crazy and try to talk you out of it and you can ignore me and do it anyway, and I can plan my evening around sitting in a parking lot, wishing you weren’t so hardheaded.”

  I snorted. “Pretty accurate, Detective.”

  “I know. So what is it?”

  “Well.” I paused while I finished rolling the wrap, then handed it to him. “I hadn’t really solidified it into an actual plan yet, but I was sort of thinking our business has some photography needs.”

  His hand froze over mine. “What?”

  I shrugged. “We should probably get an appointment with Matt Macy, commercial photographer, to help us market our business.”

  “We don’t have a business.”

  “You’re terrible at imagination, did you know that?”

  “Doesn’t it make more sense to just go question him on record?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Because he’s just going to tell you exactly how he’s involved with a murderous couple of families. And even if he’s not, he at least talks to the Basiles. I would guess he would be super excited to share with them that the cops questioned him. Have you learned nothing yet? Besides, the Hollises are ghosts. Nobody ever knows anything about them. Everyone covers for them.”

  “He’s just a photographer. He really may know nothing.”

  “Which we won’t know until we go look around the place a little bit. As budding entrepreneurs. Of . . . artisan soaps.”

  He squinted at me. “Soaps.”

  “Or pot holders or pillows. I don’t know. I don’t even care. We aren’t actually going into business. We’re just going into his business.”

  He looked at the ceiling, his jaw working. “And this doesn’t seem the least bit deceitful or potentially dangerous to you? Because it feels like that to me.”

  “Which was why I wasn’t going to tell you about it. Now you see.” I tapped my temple. “Not hardheaded, just practical.” I picked up my gloves and handed them over. He tucked them into his duffel.

  “And a little bit stupid, you know that, right?”

  I placed my hand over my heart. “That would hurt. If I cared what you thought.”

  “And if I say no to this idea?”

  I shrugged. “I’ll go without you.”

  “If I let you.”

  We went out into the parking lot. It was true that I hadn’t solidified the plan. I hadn’t even really considered it an actual plan until I was saying it out loud. But after seeing his reaction, hearing his doubt and his name-calling and his Neanderthal notion that he could stop me from doing something I wanted to do, I decided it was something that had to happen as soon as humanly possible.

  “I’d like to see you try to stop me,” I said.

  Truth was, he could probably keep me from doing anything he wanted to keep me from doing. He had boxed circles around me, hitting the heavy bag so hard the chain holding it to the ceiling rattled, then pummeling the speed bag in a steady rhythm that forced me to stop and watch, his biceps curled into themselves, sweat soaking into his shirt, the tattoo more visible, yet still too blurred to make out. There was no way I could outbox him, and it made me wonder how much he’d held back when we were sparring, but it felt like enough of a personal victory to just get out there and hit something again, without seeing Luna’s crazy face or hearing Dru’s dying breath. It felt like a win to dare someone to slow me down.

  He said nothing.

  “Good,” I said. “I’ll call and make an appointment.”

  13

  EVEN THOUGH IT was only June, it was already hot outside. Fire was the only color I could think of when I thought of heat—not a color, but a mix of ever-changing colors that were sizzling on my cheeks and the tops of my ears. I didn’t even want to smoke when it was this hot. I could feel the backs of my legs sweat against the leather seats in my car. I pumped the air conditioner up to full blast, aiming it right at my face. I also pumped up the music to help me think. Sometimes, the buzz of a guitar could distract me from my synesthesia long enough for me to have a coherent thought. If my teachers had let me listen to music in class, I might have been a better student.

  I thumbed on my Bluetooth while navigating to the pharmacy and cranked up the volume so I could hear over the air-conditioning. I dialed in Matt Macy’s number, and while I waited for the line to connect, my heart raced with fear that somehow he would know I was being dishonest. That I would show up at his studio only to find Luna there, ready to finish what she’d started in her backyard. But I figured I’d been required to do much more complicated things on the fly and had done just fine. Apparently, I was a hell of a liar.

  The phone rang four times before anyone picked up, and when it finally clicked alive, the voice on the other end was polished, businesslike.

  “Macy Photo.”

  A shot of silver squiggles coursed through me. My voice threatened to stay locked inside me. I cleared my throat. “Hi, my name is Ava Glass. I understand you can help me with my marketing campaign. . . .”

  STEPPING OUT OF the cool car into the heat felt like a furnace blast to the face, and I hurried across the parking lot into the refrigerator-like atmosphere of the pharmacy. I couldn’t remember the last time it had gotten this hot in Brentwood.

  I found a photo kiosk and slid the camera card I’d taken from the evidence box into the slot. It may have been a dead-end clue—probably was—and I hadn’t even bothered to tell Martinez that I was pursuing it, but I’d been wondering exactly what Dru was hiding when he stuffed this card into his pocket the night Luna poisoned me. It was a little like picking a scab; I had to know.

  It only took a few taps on the screen to pull up the photos. I leaned in and squinted, even though the colors jumping out on them told me what they were right away.

  Black and white, Peyton knee-deep in water, a life preserver looped over one arm. SOS. I knew this photo almost as well as I knew my own face. I’d studied it and studied it while Peyton was still fighting for her life. A few photos later, a family picture, standing on a pier. After that, Peyton at a bus stop, Fountain View peeking out from behind her head in the same blue I associated with all water words.

  This was definitely the card from Peyton’s camera.

  And there were more photos on it. A lot more. Photos that must not have made the cut in Peyton’s clue-dropping. Still, I’d brought them here; I might as well look at them. I scrolled all the way to the bottom and decided to work my way up.

  Most of them were from school—Peyton posing with friends, smiling wide, her arms around some lucky admirer’s shoulders. Whoever she had deigned to pay attention to that day looked as if they’d won the lottery. All of them. I could feel the admiration oozing out of the kiosk screen—not quite grapey; more like mulberry, a dizzy wine.

  There were some photos of Viral Fanfare. Everyone looked happy. Everything looked fine. Peyton’s hair was long, her neck bare, her clothes designer grunge. Marc Jacobs skirt. Alexander McQueen shirt. Rips and frays strategically placed. This was clearly before her infamous freak-out.

  But as the time stamp on the bottom right-hand corner of the photos got later in date, they began to change. They got darker, more abstract. No more were photos from parties and Homecoming and lazy days at the beach. Now there were close-ups of cigarettes in wrinkled mouths, a man’s belt curled up on nubby carpet next to a high school sweatshir
t. The front of what I now knew to be Hollywood Dreams, Vanessa Hollis’s secret little family escort service, with the bottom of Bill Hollis’s shoe poking out through the front door. Dumpsters and broken glass and a briefcase full of pills. Me, leaving my locker, my face pointed to the ground. A tattoo chair with ink spilled on the seat. Someone—Peyton, perhaps—had written the word RUN in the ink with her finger. The ink was black, but the word RUN was airy blue and white, almost like a cloudy sky. I didn’t like the way the juxtaposition made my head feel, so I quickly scrolled up to bury it at the bottom of the screen.

  There were several photos of a building—a warehouse with graffiti on the side. An amazing portrait of Jimi Hendrix. I chuckled. Some people postulated that Jimi Hendrix had been a synesthete. In case I hadn’t picked up all her other clues, Peyton had left me this glaring synesthetic message. The graffiti artist had scrawled the words PURPLE HAZE next to Jimi’s head—one of the few phrases in my mind that actually looked exactly like what it said it was. Peyton had known what she was doing. This was practically a billboard: Hey, dummy! I’m a synesthete, too! I supposed if I’d taken longer to figure it out, this was meant to be my final clue. The load of bricks over my head.

  There were a few more shots of the building, from different angles. In each of them Jimi stared out at me. A bird sat on a window in two of them and was midflight in the third. A van had pulled in front of Jimi on the last one, blocking out the bottom half of his face. The changes in the photos gave the scene a feeling of movement, like I was watching a video rather than looking at still shots. If she was trying to show me something more than the synesthesia link between us, I couldn’t see it.

  I scrolled up until I was back to the photos Peyton had begun sharing on her aesthetishare.com account. The photos I knew so well.

  These were Peyton’s pictures. She had been trying to make a case with them. A case that only I would understand.

  “Can I help you?” I turned and a smocked employee was standing behind me, smiling pleasantly. I jumped, almost feeling like I needed to cover the screen—to shield her from seeing the evidence Peyton had left behind. But there was no evidence here, was there? To this woman, these would look like any other amateur photographer’s photos of city life.

  The thought flitted through my mind that maybe that was what they were, and I’d only gotten lucky in following them to answers before.

  No. Dru stole these photos. There was something to them, and he knew it.

  “Do you need help?” the clerk repeated, pointing at the kiosk.

  “No,” I said, popping the card out of the machine. I held it up. “Brought the wrong card. I’ve already had these put on a CD. Duh.” I tried to let out a goofy-me laugh, but it only came out sounding more like a croak. “I’ll come back.”

  “Sure,” the clerk said. “We have a sale on candy bars, if you’re interested.”

  “No. Thanks, though.” I shoved the card back in my pocket and started toward the door, but then turned back. “Actually, I’m not sure where that CD is. Maybe I ought to have these printed. Can you do that?” I handed her the memory card, not wanting to let it out of my hands again, but for some reason certain that I would someday need these photos.

  It was a hunch. I could almost hear Detective Martinez say it: You and your hunches.

  14

  ARE YOU SURE you’re up for this?” Jones asked as he turned off Brentwood Boulevard toward Lone Tree Way.

  I rolled my eyes. “For the thousandth time, yes.” I flipped down the visor and studied my face in the mirror. There were dark circles under my eyes; I pressed my fingers into them. When did I get so rough-looking? Probably when I stopped sleeping. Again. “What I’m not up for is another nine hours of sitting in your bedroom with you looking at me like I’m already on death row.”

  Which was exactly what we’d been doing since I got to his house after leaving the pharmacy—lying on his bed, his chest deliciously bare and warm, but ruined by the magenta that pressed into my brain, swirled with slate wisps of worry. Every so often he would click his tongue and shake his head ruefully, or run his finger down my arm like he was afraid I would slip away at any moment.

  And the questions. He would not stop with the questions. What are you going to do, Nikki? Aren’t you afraid of prison? What if they really put you away? Is that detective helping you at all? What’s the point of having him around if he’s not even helping you? Are you scared? Do you need to cry?

  I wanted to pummel the questions out of his face. Instead, I pulled up Viral Fanfare’s Facebook page on Jones’s computer to see when their next gig was. They were doing an open show tonight at a bonfire party. Thank God. Something to do to take my mind off Luna and Rigo and Peyton and Dru and the weird connection with Brandi Courteur. It seemed like I almost couldn’t remember a time before the Hollis mess was all I thought about.

  As soon as the sun fell, I’d pressed Jones into taking me. And being Jones, who would do anything I asked, he got dressed and out to the car in record time.

  “Fair enough,” he said, lifting his hands off the steering wheel momentarily, and then putting them back on. He turned down a gravel road. “But if it gets to be too much for you and you need to leave . . .”

  “I’ll be fine,” I snapped. “Stop treating me like an invalid. It’s really annoying, Jones.”

  He looked like he wanted to say something but instead bit his lip. He probably wanted to forgive me for lashing out at him. In which case it was a good thing that he changed his mind. I was constantly reminded of why we’d broken up in the first place. It was so hard to hang on to the fun violet sensations when he was so very needy. I didn’t want him to need forgiveness. I wanted him to throw things back in my face. To challenge me. To call me on my bullshit. To be like . . . like Dru.

  Not for nothing, Nikki, but also like Detective Martinez.

  We bumped along the road, peering into the night, little pieces of gravel dinging the sides of his car. It was dark here. Country. The houses were spread apart, sprawling, hidden behind groves of fir and cedar and pine trees. Each house butted up to undeveloped land—lots of it—which was undoubtedly why Viral Fanfare chose to play there.

  “I haven’t seen the band since Peyton . . . ,” Jones started, and then, realizing his mistake, trailed off.

  “It’s okay, you can say it,” I said. “I haven’t seen them since Peyton died, either.” In all honesty, I hadn’t seen them play live, ever. I wasn’t high enough on the popularity list to be seen at a VF concert. I didn’t live in a mansion and my daddy didn’t drive a Lambo. I was too combat-boots-and-thrift-store for the lip-gloss-and-boutique crowd.

  But something had happened when Peyton died. I’d told myself that I was every bit good enough to go wherever I damn well pleased, even if it meant I didn’t exactly fit in with the it crowd. Because, as Peyton showed me, you never know what the it crowd is struggling with at any given moment. The it crowd could be completely miserable.

  Or in trouble.

  Big, deadly trouble.

  Besides, Vee had invited me. And being here made me feel close to Peyton. And it was a free fucking country.

  “Truthfully, I think there’s no way they can be as good without her,” Jones said. “She was a snotty girl, but she knew how to sing.”

  “I’m sure they wouldn’t replace her with someone who can’t sing,” I said. I pointed toward a house hidden behind some trees. “It’s up here.”

  Jones parked along the side of the road, with about fifty other cars. It was like graduation night all over again—everyone in Brentwood at the same party, the music a buzz that could be felt through the car seats—and I shivered a little, remembering the feeling of the handcuffs around my wrists, the red of police cherries bouncing off my skin.

  This wasn’t going to be like that. I was determined.

  The minute we stepped out of the car, we could feel the music. It was a thrashing, speeding, heavy sound, like chain saws and jackhammers being thrown dow
n a well. Behind it all, I could hear a high voice, strangely melodic, ethereal, out of place. It made ragemonster red wobble in my temples. I pressed my fingers against them to stop it.

  So Viral Fanfare had changed their sound. I’d never seen them live, but I’d watched enough YouTube videos to know that Peyton’s voice was sharper, more assured, the heavy punk downbeat the star, not the guitar. I supposed Gibson decided to finally take over the band in her absence—of course he’d make the guitar the star.

  The house was lit up, but there was nobody inside. I had no idea whose house it was, or if it even belonged to anyone I knew. It didn’t matter. We were all here now. It was ours. For a few hours, at least.

  We walked around to the back, and then to the back-back, behind the trees, following the glow and smoke of a bonfire. Beyond the fire were dozens and dozens of coolers lined up, dozens and dozens of people surrounding them. And about forty paces away was a short, portable riser with a river of extension cords flowing to it, Viral Fanfare furiously scrubbing out a song, and even more people dancing in front of the stage. Or more like jumping and thrashing to the beat.

  Jones peeled off toward the kegs, while I tried to shake the melted cherry Popsicle tension from myself as I walked closer to the stage. My teeth practically vibrated the closer I got, and I stayed off to the side, to avoid getting whipped by someone’s hair or getting an elbow to the eye.

  The music was good. Not as good as when Peyton was singing it, but it was still good. Edgy. Tight. I could see them getting a record deal any day now, which I knew was huge to them.

  The song worked its way up to a feverish instrumental showcase, and I watched as Seth pounded away on the drums, sweat flying off him, his bare chest so slick it shone. He volleyed over to Gibson, who wore only a Speedo and a pair of cowboy boots, his green Mohawk so stiff it could’ve been a weapon. He drained chords out of his guitar like a plug being pulled from a bathtub, and then it was Vee’s turn. Bass solos were usually pretty short, and Vee was no exception. She stared straight down at her hands as she plucked the strings. When she was done, she flipped her hair off her forehead and stared into the crowd, immediately locking eyes with me. She smiled and tipped her head, and then was thrust back into the music as the song crescendoed its way to the end. I found myself loosening up, bouncing a little to the beat.