“Are you sure?” he says. “You’re okay?”
I nod. “I’m really tired,” I say. “I think I need to sleep.” And he nods back, like I’m finally making sense.
I get in my car and I drive myself home, where I play that message over and over.
So it’s not Ryan on the voice mail. But Delia knew something someone didn’t want her to know, that’s for damn sure. And she threatened to tell. So whose secret was it? And what were they willing to do to make her keep it?
Chapter 14
Morning. Saturday. Slanty winter sunlight comes through my window. I can hear my mother banging around downstairs. I barely remember getting into bed, but sometime late last night after listening to that message a dozen more times, I fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep. I sit up, heart poundingly awake now. Well, Ryan was right about one thing: I sure as hell needed this. I don’t feel better, but I feel sharp, quick; the cloud has lifted. I am, if it’s possible, even more determined. This is a cold steel arrow to follow. It will help me ignore everything else.
I swing my legs out of bed, grab my towel, and walk down the hall to the bathroom. I turn on the shower and stand, shivering, waiting for the water to heat up. I haven’t showered since Wednesday night and it is a relief to be clean.
Back in my room I get quickly dressed—dark jeans, gray boots, black T-shirt. And Delia’s sweater again. I think about calling Ryan to apologize again for last night, or maybe, even better, to say hi and pretend everything is normal. But I’m not even sure I have that in me. When I look at my phone, I realize it’s after eleven and he’ll have finished swim practice and be out for waffles with his teammates. So instead, I call Jeremiah, glad I took his number two nights ago even though I wasn’t sure I wanted it. I need to see if he’s found out anything new, and I think I might even tell him about Tig and what I found out at his party. I get his voice mail. “This is Jeremiah Fiske. I’m not able to come to the phone right now. Please leave me a message and I’ll return your call as soon as I can.” He sounds so formal, like he’s expecting a call about a job at a bank.
“Hey,” I say. “It’s June. De . . . Call me back.”
But then something occurs to me and I call him again, get his voice mail again. I close my eyes, really concentrate on his voice this time.
I try to imagine him angry.
I hang up, then listen to Delia’s message again, fast-forwarding through the first part because right now I can’t bear hearing her talk to me, asking me for something so simple and small that I would not, did not give her. I stop, instead, at second forty-two. The shouting. But it’s impossible to tell who the other person is.
So now what?
I make my way downstairs. My mother looks up when I come into the kitchen. It smells like burnt coffee in here and she is scraping scrambled eggs into the sink. She always does this, like she forgets that we have a garbage can, and don’t have a garbage disposal. And that scrambled eggs are not a liquid. I used to bother telling her. I don’t anymore.
She works the night shift at a nursing home, which means she only got back a couple hours ago. She hasn’t been to sleep. And there’s something on her mind that she’s going to want to talk about. I know that from the way she’s moving and the expression on half her face when she turns partway around to look at me. I’m some kind of weird expert at reading my mother, like she’s a radio signal and I can always pick up the frequency, even when I don’t want to.
“You slept late,” she says. Her tone isn’t accusatory the way it sometimes is. She sometimes feels bad for not being around much, so she tries to make up for it by occasionally getting mad at things she thinks parents are supposed to. But not this morning.
I shrug.
There is bread on the counter, so I put two slices in the toaster and take out the peanut butter. There’s an apple in the fruit bowl and I start eating it. I realize now how hungry I am.
“That girl who went to your school who died . . .” She is prompting me.
I try to keep my face blank.
She continues. “Someone at work was talking about her, one of the night nurses. Said it was a girl from her nephew’s school, which is your school.” She reaches out for the coffee pot. “Delia. You knew her.” She pours the dregs into her mug, adds too much sugar, stirs, licks the spoon. “You used to bring her over here sometimes.” She leans against the sink and raises the mug to her lips. She’s trying to get me to look at her. I pop the toast early. I spread the peanut butter on thick.
And she is still watching me, waiting for an answer. “I did,” I say. And then I take a big bite so my mouth is glued shut.
She nods, half-pleased with herself, as though remembering the name of the only best friend her daughter ever had is some impressive feat to be proud about. Then her face drops. “Sucks,” she says then, “that that happened.”
She is staring now, and I accidentally look her in the eye. It feels too personal. I quickly look away. I know she is really trying here, that is the thing. Under different circumstances, I suppose I could probably get pretty sad thinking about how this is the very best she can do. But I do not have room for this now.
“Yeah,” I say. “It does.”
After that we are both silent. My mother stirs her already stirred coffee, clanking her spoon against the side of the mug.
My phone buzzes with a text, and I know we are both relieved. I figure it will be Ryan, or maybe Jeremiah, even. But it’s Krista:
You weren’t in homeroom yesterday. You okay?
It’s weird, because we’re not the kind of friends who check up on each other. I mean we’re barely even friends at all. Before I can respond, another text comes in:
Wanna meet up?
I look up at my mom. She glances at me, then her eyes flick over to the cabinets. She’s wondering whether I’ll say something if she does what I know she wants to do. I look at the text again, and I’m surprised to realize the answer. I guess I need to talk to someone. And right now I don’t have a lot of options.
Krista is sitting cross-legged on the trunk of her car when I get to the Birdies parking lot. She’s wearing a big puffy jacket, no gloves. Her nose is red in the cold.
It’s weird to see her outside of school, because except for the party, I never have. She spots me and waves me over. When I get to her, she doesn’t say hello, just slides so there’s room next to her on the trunk. Then she takes a breath and starts talking fast as though she was planning out what she was going to say before I arrived. “I was always kind of jealous of you guys. I guess that might seem weird to say now, considering. I’m not trying to complain about Rader or whatever. He’s great, obviously, but our thing is not like what you guys had. You always seemed, like . . . so perfectly in tune with each other, like, connected in some cosmic way. Back before, when you were together.”
“Wait, what?” I say. It takes me a second to realize what she even means. It’s been so long since anyone thought this, though people used to all the time. Krista thinks Delia and I were a couple, in love.
I shake my head. “It wasn’t like that. We were friends.” And I’m careful not to use the word “just,” because I remember what Delia always said. “Friends aren’t just, dating is just. Friends are the very highest thing.”
“No shit?” says Krista. “But you were always . . . all over each other.”
I shrug.
Delia and I were always kind of touchy. But it wasn’t sexual, even though sometimes people, guys especially, wanted to see it like that. I remember once, at a party, she’d been playing with my hair, braiding it and unbraiding it, twirling it through her fingers. A guy was staring at us, practically panting, like he was watching porn. “It’s soothing, like knitting,” she said to him. My hair was longer then. She took my braid and wrapped it around her neck. “Look, I made a scarf. . . .”
“Kinky,” the guy said. And
Delia snorted and rolled her eyes, and then ignored him even though he tried to get her attention for the rest of the night. She hadn’t been trying to impress him. She did it to make me laugh.
Now I turn to Krista. “Seriously,” I say. “That’s just how we were.”
Krista nods. She looks like she’s suddenly realized something. “Well, then I guess that Buzzy thing was a serious long shot.”
“Who?” I say.
“You know . . . Buzzy, the girl from the party who asked for your number. The one I was trying to set you up with. I guess I can tell you that now, since, y’know, it’s not like I’m going to make it uncomfortable for you guys.” Krista lets out an awkward laugh and rubs her nose. “Too bad, though. Buzzy’s the best.”
And then we just sit there in silence. Coming here was a bad idea, I think. I was looking for comfort when there is no comfort to be found. There wasn’t any for Delia, and I don’t deserve any either. I start to get up off the trunk.
“Buzzy is how I found out what really happened, actually,” Krista says slowly.
And then I stop. My pulse speeds up. “Buzzy knew Delia?”
Krista shakes her head. “No, but this girl Buzzy dated for, like, a minute, who I was hoping you’d help her get over, that girl was Delia’s new best friend or something. She feels really sad for her ex now, Buzzy does. Like, wants to be there for her, a shoulder to cry on and all that even though the girl doesn’t seem into it. That’s what Rader was telling me, anyway. I don’t know . . .”
Krista keeps talking, but I’m not listening to her anymore. Two words flash fire inside my brain. Best friend. Somehow it had never occurred to me that Delia had one. Other than me, I mean. Especially not after what I saw down by the water.
“. . . suicide is a horrible bitch,” Krista is saying. “That’s why I texted you. Because you didn’t come to school, and then last night Buzzy said what happened with Delia. My dad had a cousin who did it, killed himself, I mean. He was really messed up about it for a long time. So listen, if there’s anything I can do, then . . .”
And what I am thinking is this: Delia’s best friend was the one person she really talked to. Her best friend was her heart, her secret keeper, her everything. Whatever there is to know, Delia’s best friend is the one who is going to know it.
“Krista,” I say slowly. “I think maybe there is. . . .”
Chapter 15
Even sobbing, Ashling is beautiful.
Underneath the red blotches her skin is porcelain smooth, and, though swollen, her eyes are clear and blue. And here I am, watching the pain pouring out in the form of snot, tears, and muffled wailing. My gut clenches, and I try to keep from floating off the way I always do when things are too much. I hand Ashling tissue after tissue, while Krista leans in and pats her arm. “Oh, honey,” Krista says.
Finally, the ocean leaving her face slows to a stream, then a trickle. Ashling smiles at me, mouth shut tight, perfect lips quivering. She reaches out and squeezes my hands. “I’m so glad Buzzy gave you my number. It’s nice to get to talk to someone else who loved her.” She shakes her head. “No, screw that. Loves. Present tense.”
Ashling finishes mopping the tears. There is a feeling peeking through the numbness now, a tickling deep in my stomach. Mostly, it’s relief that Delia had someone in her life up until the end, a best friend who really truly cared. But under that, way down at the bottom, is the tiniest pinpoint of something else, and I don’t want to admit even to myself what it is—it’s jealousy. Which is disgusting, I realize. But there’s no time for any of this now, because I’m here for a purpose: I need to find out what Ashling knows. And to do that, I need her to know the truth.
But how do you even tell someone something like that?
You blurt it out. “Do you think it’s possible . . . that Delia didn’t . . . really kill herself?”
Ashling opens her big eyes wide. She looks like a doll.
“You mean like her spirit is still out here?” Ashling says. Her voice is low, slightly Southern sounding. She nods and smiles a bit. “I feel it too.”
“No,” I start. “I mean, what I’m trying to say is . . . that maybe someone else did. Kill her. Who wasn’t her.”
There. The words are out. I can’t take them back now. I brace myself.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Krista lean forward, like, holy shit. Ashling is clenching her jaw.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t want to say it like that, but I’m not sure how else to do it.”
“Why would you think that?” She sounds disgusted.
And so I tell her everything, from that first moment at the memorial when I met Jeremiah and then saw the burned-down shed, to the voice mail she meant to leave me and the voice mail she didn’t but left anyway, and my visit to Tig, and Delia’s need for protection. I tell her everything up until this very moment with the three of us sitting here together in this coffee shop, where Ashling is slowly shaking her head, and Krista is staring at the two of us like she’s watching the very best episode of her very favorite TV show.
“Delia was no one’s victim,” Ashling says. Her voice is soft. “She lived life by her own terms, and she died by them too.” Ashling’s eyes fill up again, but underneath the sadness there is something else. She seems angry. “And how dare you say otherwise.”
It would never have occurred to me that someone would want to believe their best friend had killed herself, that somehow that would be preferable to the alternative. But if she cares about Delia as much as she obviously does, I can’t stop here. I have to keep going.
“I know it’s so completely beyond insane to even imagine that someone could have . . .” I’m trying to make my voice calm, to modulate my tone so she’ll listen. I know the look that’s in her eyes now, I’ve seen it before on my mom—that wild animal look. And you have to be careful to keep them from biting you or bolting. “Did you see her or talk to her the day she died? Did she maybe mention anyone who was . . .”
“I talked to her for, like, three seconds. But she didn’t say anything about anything. She was coming off a bunch of drugs from the night before. She picked up to say she felt like shit and she was going to go back to sleep. And that’s literally all.”
“Okay,” I say. “But it’s just that Jeremiah said—”
Ashling snorts and cuts in again. “You’re actually going to believe that idiot about anything?” She shakes her head. “He was totally out of his depth with Delia. He never had any idea what was going on.” She sets her jaw and shakes her head again. “He didn’t even know his girlfriend was cheating on him is how much of an idiot he was. So if you want to take his word for anything about anything? Well, that’s on you, girl. It has nothing to do with me, or my best friend, or what happened. She was miserable. She was using drugs. Her life at home was even shittier than usual. If you were her friend, you would have already known that, and you wouldn’t be questioning any of this. What happened to her is, she made a choice. And it was hers to make.”
Ashling stands. She looks like she’s going to cry again, but then instead narrows her eyes and grits her teeth.
And then before I can say anything else, she turns and starts toward the door.
“Wait!” I call out. My entire body is tingling. I get up and chase after her. “You said Delia was cheating on Jeremiah.”
Ashling blinks. “So . . .”
“Who was she cheating with?”
Ashling raises an eyebrow and smiles slightly. “That was her own business,” she says. Then she shrugs, pushes through the door, and she’s gone.
And I am left standing there as the thoughts swirl in my head, arranging themselves into shapes. And then arranging themselves again.
I feel Krista’s hand on my shoulder.
“Do you really think she was murdered?” she says very quietly.
But I don’t turn
. I’m barely even aware of her. I’m thinking of Jeremiah standing alone in the dark, his big hulking body and Boy Scout face. I’m thinking about how Delia was cheating, and Ashling said Jeremiah didn’t know. But what if she’s wrong? What if he somehow found out?
Chapter 16
Ryan’s hair is damp from the shower, and the chemical tang of chlorine still clings to his skin. I can smell him from his bed, where I sit, cross-legged, watching his naked back. It’s hours later. After Ashling left, I left Krista. I needed to be alone. I spent the rest of the day just driving and thinking, running everything over and over in my head.
And now here I am, trying to pretend like everything is normal, like anything is.
“You sure you’re up for going?” Ryan asks. He opens his closet and takes out a shirt—green with PANTS printed on the front. His favorite. He slips it on over his head. And then, just like I knew he would, he takes out a green button-up shirt to wear over it. A couple of days ago, before any of this happened, I would have felt oddly satisfied to notice this. There’s a sweet comfort in knowing these kinds of things about a person.
He turns back as he does up the buttons.
“It’s only that usually . . .” He trails off. “Hanny’s parties have never really seemed like your thing.” He is putting it mildly, being polite.
Max Hannigan is part of the popular sports crowd, which is one of the ones Ryan is a part of. He’s tall and rich, with a big giant jaw. Delia once said, “He looks like a date rapist, but one who’d only stop raping you because his dick wouldn’t stay hard.” She said things like that, and I’d laugh in spite of myself. I still think of that sometimes when I see him.
He has an enormous house with a pool, and his parents are always going out of town and either are oblivious or do not care that whenever they go away, he has fifty people over to drain their liquor cabinet. We’ve met dozens of times outside of school, but every time we meet, he acts like he’s never seen me before in his life.