At least I no longer had police protection. When all the shit with Luna was going down, Detective Chris Martinez had followed me everywhere, and it drove me crazy. It was police protection that I didn’t ask for and definitely didn’t want.
So how come thinking about Detective Martinez caused violet bubbles to burst in my periphery? How come I could taste grapes and smell periwinkle just thinking of his name?
And how come someone who was stuck so tight to me I couldn’t shake him no matter how hard I tried hadn’t come around in seven months? Not even to see how I was doing.
“Hello?” Dad said, snapping his fingers in front of my face. “Earth to Nikki. What do you think? About dinner?”
I smiled. It felt thin. “That’s fine,” I said. “But I think I might have a party to go to later, if that’s okay.”
Dad rocked back a little. “A party? You?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not a total loser, you know.” I bent to pick up my gown, still warm from the iron.
“Of course you’re not a loser. You just never go to parties.”
“First time for everything, I guess. If you don’t want me to go . . .” I shrugged into the gown, watching myself in the mirror, pretending to be nonchalant, like this was a conversation we had every day.
“No, no, that’s fine. It’s great, actually. I’ll tell your grandparents that dinner will have to be short.”
I zipped myself into the gown. It felt billowy, like a tent. Definitely not the type of attire I was used to at all. But at least it covered the ridiculous dress I had on underneath. I was only wearing it because Dad insisted that jeans with frayed bottoms and scuffed-up Chucks was not appropriate graduation attire. I’d walked into the mall and pulled the first thing I found off the rack. I figured most of the girls in my class would be looking like supermodels in painted-on designer clothes, so what did it matter what I wore? Besides, I had this bright-blue tent to cover it anyway.
“So who will be there? At the party?” he asked, moving out of my way so I could sit on my bed and cram my feet into uncomfortable shoes. This whole pomp and circumstance nonsense was so stupid.
I shrugged. “Everyone. I don’t know.” But I did know. There would probably be a zillion people at the party tonight, and for a change it wouldn’t be at Hollis Mansion. And everyone would be aware of that.
“And you’ll be safe?”
I pushed my foot into a pump and smoothed the gown over my lap. Dad had stopped asking me if I was safe every ten seconds, but I could see the lines etched across his forehead that hadn’t been there before the Hollis incident. There were so many things hidden between the two of us. It seemed like a chasm that could never be crossed.
I stood, faced him, and used my thumbs to smooth away the lines on his forehead. “I promise,” I said. “Luna is in juvie. Her parents are in Dubai. Dru . . .” Doesn’t exist anymore. The words caught in my throat, a brown-and-blue lump that pulsed in my mind. And something else. Something that made me think of endless loneliness.
I’d seen colors with emotions my entire life. Also with numbers and letters. Three was always purple to me. Four, silver. Five, white. The letter M was zebra ice cream swirl. The letter O was wet black like a ripe olive. My name was mostly orange, and the word echo was mustard yellow. The feeling of love was magenta and the feeling of fear was bumpy gray and black, and sometimes—okay, most of the time—I saw the colors before I even realized I was feeling the emotion to go along with them.
When other people suspected someone was lying to them, they might get a strange feeling in their gut. But for me, that strange gut feeling rolled in on a cloud of mint-green mist.
It was almost impossible to explain, and it took a lot of doctors to figure out that I had synesthesia. Which basically meant that my senses combined, and I had a pretty good memory because of it. It also gave me—and I didn’t actually know this until Peyton Hollis was brutally attacked in the parking lot of an abandoned building—great instincts. Only about 4 percent of the population has synesthesia, so nobody I knew understood what it was.
Well, almost nobody. Peyton understood.
My colors had been the same since day one. They didn’t change. They didn’t morph. And they didn’t go away.
But when I thought about Dru, I discovered a new one. That endless lonely feeling. That midnight color. A lost-in-space color. A black-hole hue. After being rocked by it for so many nights in a row, I was finally able to identify it: regret. Not skipped-school-and-now-I’ll-get-yelled-at regret. Not ate-too-much-cake regret.
The kind of regret that will never go away.
The kind of regret that leaves your heart wondering what the hell happened.
The kind of regret that has you sitting alone on your windowsill, a cigarette burning, untouched, all the way to the filter between your fingers, and swearing that you will never have that feeling again. That feeling came close to attachment. Intimacy. Maybe even a little too close to love. Maybe the kind of love that got people killed. Every. Single. Time.
I brushed away the midnight and kissed Dad’s cheek. “It’s just an after-grad party. It’ll be fun to say good-bye to everyone.”
Translation: it will be fun to get completely wasted and make the aching midnight go away.
“Just don’t drink and drive,” Dad said, pointing at me sternly. Which almost made me laugh. We both knew he was anything but stern.
“I promise. No drama, Dad. You know me.”
He studied me, and for a second, I thought he was going to get all mushy-parent-of-the-grad on me. But instead, he jumped, checked his watch. “We should go. You’re going to be late as it is. You wouldn’t want to miss the whole thing.”
I laughed. “It would be kind of perfect if I did, though. Since I missed most of my senior year.”
Dad chuckled, but on the inside, I knew he didn’t find it funny. On the inside, I knew he didn’t believe that I would be safe.
On the inside, he would worry that I would end up just as dead as my mother.
2
SOMETIMES I WONDERED how different I would be if Mom hadn’t been murdered. Would I have been one of the giggling idiots sitting two rows behind me, using my cell phone camera to check my makeup every five seconds? Would I have been the dorky super-prep valedictorian, sitting on the stage, my palms sweating around a rolled-up speech? Would I have wanted to be at the podium, instead of swiping at the beads of sweat rolling out from under my tilted cap and wishing the guy at the podium would just stop talking?
Or would I still be the girl swimming in a sea of beige, beige, beige boredom? Bottom-of-the-ocean boredom. Suburban-cookie-cutter-house boredom. Dull-skin boredom. My legs itched.
I looked over to my left. Someone had propped a framed photo in the seat of the first chair of the very front row. I couldn’t see the photo very well from where I was, but I knew who was in it. Peyton Hollis. The girl in first place, always. The girl who was All Things High School. The girl who was Head of Everything. The girl who probably would have been voted Most Likely to Take Over the Whole Fucking World.
The girl who gave it all up in the end. And the only people who knew why were all dead, in jail, on the run . . . or me.
Before the ceremony began, my classmates had gathered around the photo, crying into one another’s shoulders, leaving flowers and teddy bears and little gifts. Someone had draped a poster for Viral Fanfare, Peyton’s underground band, over the back of the chair. There was a mountain of sadness around that chair, and all of it felt like lies to me. I could barely see the chair for the dirty gray fog that hovered over it.
Even Jones had been in the crying crowd. Jones, who had admitted that he only went to Hollis Mansion for the parties, and who seemed to think the family was as royally screwed up as I did. After all, he had repeatedly warned me off Dru. But maybe that was just his hearts-and-flowers magenta talking. Maybe he liked Peyton a hell of a lot more than he liked the thought of me hanging out with Peyton’s brother.
&nb
sp; “God, can you believe it?” the girl next to me whispered, following my gaze toward the chair. “I mean, I knew she was gone, but it just seems so much more real now that she’s not here. It’s so sad.” She used a manicured finger to wipe the completely dry corner of her eye. Fake.
“I didn’t really know her,” I said. But of course everyone in the school was suspicious about what my connection with Peyton had really been. They’d all been very well aware of the vigil I’d kept by Peyton’s hospital bedside. They’d all been very well aware of the showdown at Hollis Mansion, even if nobody knew exactly what had happened there. Not knowing never stopped anyone from talking about it, like they’d had front-row seats.
“She was amazing,” the girl said. “She should have been here. Her sister should be the one in the cemetery, after what she did.”
I blinked. Not that I didn’t agree, and not that I hadn’t said those same words many times already, but it was harsh to hear it come out of someone else’s mouth. I caught Dad’s eye, up in the third row of bleachers. My grandparents waved at me. Proud. I waved back. “At least she’s in jail,” I said.
The girl excitedly clutched my wrist. “You didn’t hear? Oh, hang on.” The principal started giving instructions on how we would come up to get our diplomas, his voice booming compared to the tentative voice of the valedictorian.
“No, what?” I whispered, but she pretended she didn’t hear me. She wiped her eyes again and sat forward expectantly in her seat as the first row of students got up and made their way to the stage. “What?”
“We’ve got to go,” she whispered.
Eventually, our row stood up, and I took my diploma in a haze of spearmint curiosity so strong I felt I was chewing gum. I barely heard Dad’s and my grandparents’ cheers when I shook hands with the principal. I couldn’t smile or feel grateful. I could only move mechanically, wondering what the girl next to me had been talking about, what gossip I hadn’t heard. We somehow managed to get scrambled on the way back to our seats, and when we sat down, the girl was four people away. My chance was gone.
“You did it!” Dad exclaimed, weaving his way toward me through the crowd when the ceremony was over. He hugged me so hard he knocked my mortarboard off. Which was no big deal, since I was pretty much the only one who hadn’t thrown it into the air; the floor was carpeted with discarded hats. “I’m so proud of you, Nikki. So proud.” When he pulled away, I could see that his eyes were bloodshot and puffy. It had been a long road for both of us, and no matter what he said out loud, I knew neither of us ever thought we would get here.
“Good job, honey,” my grandmother said, shoving in for a hug.
“Yes, yes,” my grandfather added. “What’s next for you, Graduate? Where are you going to college?”
I smiled thinly at him. Obviously, my dad hadn’t clued them in about anything at all. They still thought college was something I might do. They probably thought I was a great student. Boy, wouldn’t they be surprised?
“What’s next is cake,” Dad said. “And a big plate of pasta to go with it. What do you say, Nik? Ready to celebrate?”
“Sounds perfect,” I said, my voice edging away some of the spearmint. Whatever the unheard gossip about Luna was, I needed to let it go. I needed to take my life back, stop letting the Hollises have it. “I just want to say good-bye to someone.” I pointed over my shoulder toward the giant mass of people who milled about with cameras and gifts.
“Sure, sure,” Dad said. “We’ll go get the car and meet you out front.”
They disappeared, but instead of diving into the crowd, I headed back for the now-empty rows of folding chairs on the other side of the stage, where we had only moments ago been sitting, still high school seniors. Peyton’s chair, which looked so full and loved before the ceremony, just looked abandoned and isolated now, a puddle of wrinkled programs dropped next to it. We had officially all left her behind.
The photo was of Peyton in her heyday. Before the ragged haircut and the neck tattoo. Before her break from her family. She was leaning against a wooden column in a sundress, smiling, her buttery hair snaking down her shoulders in purposeful “messy” waves. I recognized the beam as part of the gazebo in the backyard of Hollis Mansion. I hadn’t been in that backyard since Detective Martinez literally carried me out of it.
Dru had died only a few yards away from where Peyton stood in the photo. The grass around her feet began to seep crimson.
I closed my eyes. I hated crimson.
“It’s weird, her not being here, isn’t it?” I heard. My eyes flew open.
Vee, whose real name—Vera Reed—I’d just heard for the first time, when the principal called her up to the stage to get her diploma, was standing next to me. She’d combed out her dreads and looked about as uncomfortable in her spring makeup palette and cork wedges as I felt in my grad getup. In some ways, Vee and I were probably a lot more alike than either one of us wanted to admit. Vee had been the bassist in Viral Fanfare, and, despite a falling-out at the very end, had been Peyton’s friend. Maybe her only real friend.
“Seems like she should be,” I said.
Vee nodded, both of us staring at Peyton’s picture. I forgot to blink and my eyes filled with tears, so that Peyton almost seemed to move against the column. “Like she’s going to burst in any moment, cussing and laughing about her alarm not going off and making us start the whole thing over.”
“My housemaid forgot to wake me with my peaches and cream,” I said in a lofty voice. “Off with her head!”
Vee said, “You know she wasn’t like that, right?”
“I know. Neither was Dru.”
“But Luna.”
“Yeah. Luna.”
Vee shifted, tossed a guitar pick onto the chair. It landed on top of a rose and bounced a little, settled at an angle against the stem. “You think she sees this?” She shrugged, embarrassed, then gestured around the room. “I mean, from like, heaven or whatever? I don’t know if Peyton believed in heaven or not. I don’t know if I do or not, either. It’s weird to think about her looking down at us or something. But at the same time, it’s kind of comforting. I don’t know. I’m sure I sound stupid.”
“No, you don’t,” I said. “I’ve wondered the same thing.” I had, and I hadn’t. I’d thought about and wondered about and talked to Peyton before she died. Practically begged her for answers, sure she could hear me and somehow “see” what I was doing. I’d felt such a connection to her, sitting by her side in the hospital. But after she died, it was like that connection just snapped. She felt like a misty piece of the past. Like a memory of a dream. Something that never actually happened. Sort of the same way Mom felt to me. A pleasant invention in my mind.
But Dru, on the other hand, seemed just as alive to me as he had when he was stroking my side under the sheets in Peyton’s apartment. I had to force myself to ignore the feeling that he was watching me, always. That he was blaming me for his death.
Vee chuckled. “She would have had the most monstrous party tonight. We talked about it so many times. Viral Fanfare was going to tear it up. She bought her bikini months ago. She wrote three new songs to debut at the party. It was going to be our big announcement about the record deal she was sure we were going to get.”
“With Leo Powers,” I said.
“Yeah. The guy her dad got us in with.” She unzipped her gown and pulled it off, revealing a grungy pair of cutoff camouflage shorts and a ripped tee beneath. She wadded up the gown and dropped it on the chair next to Peyton’s, then wound her hair up into a messy ball. “Graduation was really important to her. And then she just stopped talking about it. It was like she knew, somehow, that she wasn’t going to make it to today. Do you think she knew?”
“Definitely.” The word popped out before I could even think it over. Because I didn’t need to. Peyton definitely knew that something was going to happen to her. She knew that her time was limited. She communicated that much to me without ever speaking, once. “But it’s over no
w,” I said. I cleared my throat and said it louder. “It’s over. And it’s time to move on. Half the people who put flowers here didn’t even know her at all. They just wanted to know her, because knowing Peyton Hollis was practically a competitive sport. It’s ridiculous, and I’m glad to be done with it. Did anyone ever actually know her?”
“I did,” Vee said. “And I think on some level you probably did too.”
“I don’t know anything,” I said. I never did, and I didn’t think I ever truly would. My life would be all about unanswered questions, from start to end. I turned to Vee. “Hey, listen. About the stuff with the band. Before.”
She waved me off. “I get it. You thought Gib was behind what happened to her. And I would do the same as you, you know. If I knew who did it, I would rip them up.”
“I’m still sorry.”
She smiled. It was weird to see Vee with a real smile, rather than one of her sardonic half grins. “It’s okay. We’re still together. We got a new lead singer. Do you know Shelby Gray?” I shook my head. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but I was hardly connected to the heartbeat of our school. Shelby Gray could have been any face in the building as far as I was concerned. “Technically, she’s a sophomore. Well, going to be a junior now. So she’s kind of young, but she can sing. And, more importantly, she can write. We can cover a lot of singing problems with the instruments, but we have to have songs to play, and none of the rest of us are any good at writing. Plus, she knew Peyton. Hung out over there pretty often, actually.”
Suddenly, the name clicked to a memory. Luna Fairchild, sauntering into the school, part of a snickering trio of besties, while I waited for her outside the sophomore entrance. The trio was made up of Luna, a girl named Eve, and Shelby Gray. Shelby knew Peyton, but I highly doubted she was one of Peyton’s friends. If she was at Hollis Mansion often, it was to hang with Luna.
“You should come listen to us,” Vee said. “You know, just sometime. We might be getting a show at Teragram this summer.”