Jar of Hearts

  As she spoke to the officers, Geo kept calm. But on the inside, she was screaming. If the cops suspected anything, she would tell the truth. She would.

  “I got drunk last night,” she said to them. She didn’t have to look at her father to know that his face would be a mask of shock and disapproval. He’d never known her to drink, because she hardly ever had. “I didn’t mean to, but I hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch, and there was fruit at the bottom of the punch barrel—”

  “You never eat the fruit,” one of the cops said, the younger of the two. He wore a rueful smile, and his name tag read VAUGHN. “I’ve learned that the hard way.”

  The other cop, only slightly older, glared at him. His name tag read TORRANCE. If there was ever a good cop/bad cop situation, this was it, and these two were perfectly cast. Torrance was the ass, Vaughn was the one who was nice to you and got you talking.

  “Keep going,” Officer Torrance said to her.

  “I didn’t feel well. I wanted to go home, so I went to find Ang. We’d gone to Chad’s together after the game. She was with Mike Bennett, and they were … close. She’d had a bit to drink, too. She seemed comfortable where she was, so I said good-bye and headed out.”

  “You’re only sixteen,” Torrance said, his face like stone. “You girls drink often?”

  “Not at all,” Geo said, feeling a bit defensive, despite the fact that she had no right to be. Her father’s lips were pressed into a thin line; he wasn’t impressed. “I don’t even like alcohol, and Ang only drinks if absolutely everybody else is. She’s not the kind of girl who needs to drink to have a good time.”

  “Keep going,” Torrance said.

  “That’s it. I ran into my friend Kaiser on the way out and we talked for a few minutes. Then I walked home by myself, was home before midnight. I was feeling pretty terrible. I got sick before I went to bed.”

  She couldn’t help but think about her dress, currently covered in last night’s evidence, stuffed into a vomit-filled trash can inside the garbage bin in the garage. Maybe the cops would sense something fishy about her story, demand to see what she was wearing last night. Maybe they’d find the dress in the garage.

  If they did, she would tell the truth.

  But they didn’t ask. They didn’t seem suspicious at all. They questioned her father instead, who confirmed—somewhat guiltily—that he’d worked all night at the hospital and wasn’t aware that his daughter had come home drunk.

  “And you said the last time you saw Angela she was with Mike Bennett at Chad Fenton’s house?” the younger officer asked.

  “Yes.” She wondered if he was repeating the question to try and trap her in a lie. She had left Chad’s alone—Kaiser, if asked, could vouch for that, along with a dozen other people—but surely someone had seen Angela leave a few minutes later and catch up to Geo on the street.

  If someone did, and they asked her about it, she would tell the truth.

  But again, they didn’t ask. Instead, the older officer said, “Angela have a boyfriend her parents don’t know about? She ever say anything to you about running away?”

  Is that what they thought? That was the direction they were going in? Geo glanced at her father, who seemed mildly triumphant that they were echoing his own theory.

  “If she has a boyfriend other than Mike, she didn’t say anything to me,” she said, and it was the first completely truthful thing she’d offered all day. “As for the running away, I don’t know how many friends of hers you’ve talked to already, but Ang has a lot going for her. I think running away is for people who don’t like their lives. Ang loved hers.”

  “Well, I think that’s all we need,” Torrance said, standing up. Officer Vaughn followed. “If you think of anything else, give me a call.”

  He left his card on the coffee table, shook hands with her father, and left.

  Geo locked the door behind them, knowing she was about to get a lecture about the drinking. Which was fine, and she wasn’t planning to argue. She had no desire to be anywhere but home, anyway.

  “So? How long am I grounded for?” she asked her father before he could say anything.

  “Is that what I’m supposed to do?” Walt said wearily, dropping onto the sofa. “Have I ever grounded you before?”

  “No.”

  He rubbed his face with his hands. “You shouldn’t be drinking. And even more than that, you shouldn’t be walking home late at night. There are a lot of creeps out there.”

  I know. I’m one of them. “The neighborhood is safe, Dad.”

  “That’s not the point,” he said. “Ever since your mom died, it’s just been you and me. And I work a lot, which means you’re alone a lot.”

  “It’s fine—”

  “It’s not fine, goddammit,” he said. “You’re sixteen. You’re still supposed to need me for things, to be able to count on me, to be able to call me when you need a ride home. It’s not okay that you left a party drunk and felt you had no way to get home other than to walk ten blocks at close to midnight. Yes, we live in a safe neighborhood, but there’s still a lot of sickos out there. You should have called me. More important, you should feel like you can.”

  “But you were working.” Geo could see that he was upset. God, if he only knew.

  “The most important job I have is here, at home,” Walt said, standing up. “I have enough seniority at the hospital that I don’t have to do those overnights anymore. I agree to those shifts because they pay better. But it takes time away from you. It means I’m eating dinner in a cafeteria by myself and you’re eating at home by yourself, and that’s stupid. You’re the most important person in my life, and I ought to start acting like it. This is a wake-up call for both of us, do you understand?”

  Her father misinterpreted the look on her face and offered her a smile. “Don’t worry, I don’t plan to smother you. We both need our space. But I should be able to pick you up from somewhere until we can get you a car of your own. I should be home for dinner most nights.” His body sagged. “What if it were you who was missing? What if one night you didn’t come home? You’re all I have, Georgina. Angela’s parents, I know how they don’t spend any time with her. And now look, nobody knows where she is. I can’t even imagine.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be back.” The lie stuck in Geo’s throat. She almost choked on it.

  The cops questioned everyone who was at the party, but Mike Bennett got the worst of it. The St. Martin’s High School quarterback was hauled down to the precinct and held for twenty-four hours. His parents had to hire a lawyer. Everybody who was at the party—at least a hundred kids over the course of the night—corroborated Geo’s statement that Angela had spent most of her time with Mike. He admitted that Angela left him at Chad’s at some point during the night, and that he had caught a ride home with his buddy Troy Sherman, the St. Martin’s Bulldogs wide receiver. Troy had crashed at Mike’s house after they’d had a couple more beers, both of them falling asleep after watching a video of their last football game. He hotly denied that they had a homosexual relationship, refusing to admit it even when the cops strongly suggested that he could avoid arrest if he were honest. Mike’s parents threatened to sue if the cops didn’t quit with that line of questioning, as their son was currently being scouted by several college teams. With no other proof, the police let him go.

  Mike Bennett, so deep in the closet he was practically in Narnia, was overheard telling a couple of the guys in the locker room on Monday morning that he wouldn’t be surprised if Angela had run off to become a porn star. “Never knew a girl who loved sex as much as she did. That cheerleader thing? It’s all an act,” he said. “She was into some kinky stuff.”

  Of course he’d refused to elaborate on what kind of kinky stuff, but of all the rumors that would sprout in the coming weeks, this was the one that upset Geo the most. Sure, Angela had done some stuff with Mike, but not that much, because, hello, Mike was gay. He was lying to cover his own ass. On more than one occasion, Geo
had been tempted to confront him.

  But she couldn’t. And the hypocrisy of calling Mike Bennett a liar wasn’t lost on her.

  Angela Wong’s disappearance was both big news and big gossip. People who didn’t know anything about what happened were suddenly sure they had seen her places she’d never been, with people she didn’t even know. The conversation was ongoing, happening in every classroom, every period, across St. Martin’s High School, whether the kids knew her or not. And the more the kids talked, the more the stories grew, growing so ridiculous that Geo would have laughed had she not known the truth.

  “I heard she was last seen near the 7-Eleven,” Tess DeMarco said to Geo during their fourth-period calculus class. “And that she boarded a bus to San Francisco and is staying with some older guy. I bet she’s back within a week. She just wants to freak her parents out and cause drama.”

  “Oh, so you’re talking to me now?” Geo snapped, recalling the other girl’s eagerness to get her kicked off the squad. Had that only been last week?

  “What? We’ve always been friends.” Tess blinked, feigning ignorance. For a girl who’d wanted to be Angela’s best friend, she hadn’t wasted any time cozying up to Mike Bennett in the cafeteria during lunch. And he was only too happy to have another girl on his arm to play the role Angela used to.

  Lauren Benedict, also on the cheer team, piped up. “Seriously, guys, what if something bad happened to her? What if she found out Mike was gay, and he killed her? She could be buried in a ditch somewhere.”

  “Mike Bennett is not gay,” Tess said, her cheeks flushing. “Don’t talk about shit you don’t know, Lauren.”

  Geo shook her head and buried herself in her calculus textbook. She only wanted to go home. It had taken every ounce of energy she had to get herself to school that morning. “Shut up, both of you. For real.”

  It had only been three days, but the weight of the lies was taking its toll. Geo couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. Angela’s mother had called half a dozen times, wanting to know if Geo had heard anything new from her friends at school. The phone calls were torture, and after every one, she felt even worse. After the last call, she ran to the bathroom and threw up the chicken pot pie her father nuked for dinner. Walt chalked it up to anxiety over her missing best friend. And of course it was, but not in the way he or anyone else thought.

  Geo kept expecting the cops to barge in and arrest her. She couldn’t imagine how she’d get through another day at school pretending to be just as confused and concerned as everybody else. Exhaustion overtook her on the fourth night, and she finally fell asleep, only to wake up from a nightmare, her hair plastered to her sweaty face.

  “You,” the older cop had shouted in her dream. She was in the cafeteria and everybody was staring at her as the two police officers entered, pointing their guns and waving their badges. “You’re the reason she’s covered in dirt, rotting. You. You.”

  She cried into her pillow, a full body sob that racked her from head to toe. She had to say something. She couldn’t live like this, and it sure as hell wasn’t fair to Angela’s family. At the very least, Geo knew she had to tell her father. He would know what to do, but the thought tied her stomach in knots. She hated to disappoint her dad, and yet she knew his disappointment would be the least of what he felt once he found out what she’d helped do.

  The clock read one A.M. Walt was long asleep, his bedroom door shut, the volume on his white-noise machine turned all the way up. First thing in the morning, she would confess all to her father, and they would go down to the police station together. Yes, it would ruin her life, but at least she had a life to ruin. Angela didn’t. Her best friend never had a choice.

  Tomorrow. She would come clean tomorrow.

  The decision made, Geo managed to fall back asleep, only to be woken up again an hour later by a knock on her bedroom window.

  The sound startled her, and she turned over in bed. At the sight of Calvin’s face through the glass, her insides froze. They hadn’t spoken to each other since it happened, and she was starting to let herself believe that the next time they faced each other, one or both of them would be in handcuffs.

  She got out of bed. She was wearing an old pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt with a hole in the armpit. Her face was shiny, her hair twisted into a messy knot at the top of her head. She had three zits on her chin from stress. Calvin had never seen her looking anything less than put together, but she didn’t care now. They’d already seen each other doing the worst thing they’d ever done; greasy hair and a few pimples would have no impact on that.

  She opened the window and he climbed in, dragging with him a duffel bag that looked stuffed to the gills.

  “Where’s your car?” she asked, concerned that his bright red Trans Am was parked out front for all the neighbors to see.

  “Sold it.”

  She didn’t ask why. She didn’t care. He took a seat on the edge of her bed, dropped his bag on the floor, and reached for the jar of cinnamon hearts on her nightstand. There were only a handful left, and he shook out what remained, started popping them into his mouth.

  The jar was finally empty.

  “How’ve you been?” He gave her the once-over, raising an eyebrow at her baggy sweats, the messy hair. “You look like shit.”

  “I feel even worse than that.”

  “Well, don’t,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do about it now.”

  “I’m telling my father tomorrow,” Geo said. “It’s only a matter of time before the cops figure it out, anyway.”

  “No, they won’t.” Calvin reached for her hand, and squeezed. She tried to jerk it away, but he wouldn’t let go. “If they knew anything, if they suspected, they would have arrested us by now. Nobody will find out, so long as we keep quiet.”

  “I’m sick inside,” she said, staring at him. “Aren’t you? How do you sleep? How do you eat? I’m barely functioning.”

  He let her hand go, ran his fingers through his hair. “Then don’t think about it.”

  “How can I not?” Geo’s voice was small. “You killed her.”

  “You killed her, too,” he said.

  Her head snapped up. “No, I didn’t. How can you even say that?”

  “By law, it’s the same thing. You helped me move her body. You helped me cover it up. You lied to the cops.” Calvin’s tone was soft, matter-of-fact, all-knowing. “If this ever gets out, you’ll be just as guilty as me.”

  “So you’re taking off?” she said, gesturing to his duffel bag. “That’s what you’ve come to tell me? They’re still investigating, they’re still asking questions. I can’t … I can’t keep lying to everyone. I can’t keep lying to her mom.”

  “You don’t have to lie. Just don’t say anything.”

  He met her gaze with a steady one of his own. On the surface, he looked the same as he always did—handsome, relaxed, confident. But there was something new beneath the surface. Something she’d caught glimpses of whenever they’d argue, something that would peek out for a brief moment, and then scoot back into its hiding place. Whatever it was, it wasn’t hiding now. She sensed it. She could feel it staring at her, watching her from someplace inside him.

  “I love you,” Calvin said. “That hasn’t changed. You could come with me.”

  The words made her stomach churn. Whatever he felt for her, it couldn’t be how love was supposed to feel. What they had was something fucked up, something poisonous, something that would kill her if she didn’t get as far away from it as possible.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I have to finish school. And I can’t leave my dad.”

  He nodded. “I know. But I thought I’d ask anyway.”

  He leaned in and kissed her. Her stomach turned, and she tried to move her face away, but he grabbed it in both hands and kissed her more deeply. He had a cinnamon heart in his mouth; she could feel its hard knobbiness rolling around on his tongue. Sweet and hot and spicy, all at the same time. A familiar taste, and it now made her si
ck.

  “Stop,” she said, but he didn’t.

  He pushed her back on the bed and rolled on top of her, one hundred eighty pounds of lean muscle pinning her down. It wasn’t much different from when he’d kiss her after a bad fight, when he’d try to win her back after slapping or pinching or punching her. So she lay still while he kissed her passionately, knowing from past experience that squirming and protesting would only make him feel angry and rejected. If she lay still and let him touch her, he’d eventually see that she wasn’t into it, and stop.

  His hot breath was sickly spicy-sweet as he kissed her neck, her ears, and her shoulders, working his way down, pulling her T-shirt up. When he flicked her nipple with his tongue, she whimpered. It was so wrong, so incredibly, terribly wrong … but it did feel a little bit good, too. As horrible as it all was, she couldn’t deny her attraction to him. It was Calvin, after all, and this was their pattern. Plus, he was the only person in the world right now she didn’t have to lie to.

  And she still loved him, god help her. Feelings like that did not evaporate in a matter of days, much as she wished they would, much as she knew they should.

  She didn’t protest when he pulled her sweatpants down, or when he moved her panties to the side so he could find her wet spots and make them even wetter, the cool spice of the cinnamon on his tongue adding a layer of deliciousness that made her gasp. She was disgusted with herself but unable to help it. He had touched her like this so many times before, and he knew exactly what to do, exactly where to apply pressure, and for how long.

  When she heard the sound of his belt unbuckling, her eyes opened. They had never had sex before—not real sex, as she thought of it, not intercourse. She was a virgin, and she pushed his hand away, trying to sit up on the bed.

  “We can’t,” she said. “Calvin, please. You have to go.”