Dark Turns (11 page)

He winced. His hand fell from her arm. The anger melted from his face. He looked sad.

She’d made him that way. Why? What had she really seen? A teacher doing his job? Guilt swelled inside her. “Peter, I—”

“You know what? Just go.”

“I’m sorry.”

His brow lowered as if waiting for some sarcastic punch line:
I’m sorry you’re such a terrible person. I’m sorry I’m such a bad judge of character
.

“I get that she was the one flirting. After last night with Aubrey throwing herself at you—”

“I don’t want little girls.”

“What do you want?”

He grabbed her waist. His lips pressed against her mouth. His tongue forced its way inside.

She closed her eyes as she returned the kiss. He tasted of bergamot and black tea. His skin smelled of grass, herbs, and a citrusy-mint. She didn’t recall the cologne from the prior night.

His hands slid beneath her butt and lifted. She wrapped her legs around his waist. They continued to kiss as he carried her to his room.

Her back hit the door. Light enveloped her as the wood gave way. He pulled at the fabric clinging to her skin, searching for a button or a zipper. She lowered a pointed foot to the ground and then unwound the leg remaining around his waist. His hands fell on her shoulders. He pushed the leotard to her forearms. Her breasts burst from the Lycra, assuming their full, round shape. His thumbs brushed her ribs and then slipped beneath the seam of the tights. His lips grazed her neck as he pushed the clothing to her hips.

She stepped back from him into the free space between the couch and the bed. She slipped out of the clothing, leaving only a black thong covering her nakedness. His eyes rolled over her body then returned to her face.

“God, you are beautiful.”

His fingertips caressed her chest, then her stomach. They traced her ribs and the sharp indent of her waist. His hands slipped beneath the strings fastening the thong to her body.

“You’re still dressed,” she whispered.

He unbuttoned his collar and ripped the shirt over his head, exposing a defined chest with developed pectorals, more pronounced than those on the average male dancer’s body. He unzipped. His boxer shorts, pants, and shoes fell to the floor in one fluid motion. A line cut into both his thighs, dividing the lateral muscle from the thick femur.

His hands returned to her thong. He pulled down the flimsy material and kissed her where it had covered. The act electrified her body. She moaned.

His hands pressed into her buttocks. She threw her head back as his thumbs moved to her inner thighs. She ran her fingers through his hair, freeing the strands that always fell into his eyes. Her body shuddered as he continued to work between her legs.

She touched his face and pushed against his chin, encouraging him to rise before dropping to return the favor. Her breasts pressed against his muscled thighs. She didn’t need to excite him. He was ready.

“No,” he said. “I want you.”

She draped herself on Peter’s bed while he ripped a condom free from its wrapper. A moment later, he was on top of her. The first time was a release, after the prior night’s sexual frustration and Nia’s year of forced celibacy. The second round was for showing off. Nia got him excited and then tried out different positions, displaying the flexibility she’d earned from fifteen years of dance.

When they’d finished, Nia felt girlish, giddy, and tired—the good kind, like after a particularly satisfying workout.
Peter touched her hair, a goofy look on his face. His lips pecked her nose.

“You must have class soon,” she said.

Peter kissed her neck. “I’ll call in sick. I’m sick.”

She rose from the bed and onto the floor. She bent to retrieve her thong. It lay just under the bed, discarded like a dust cloth. A hand squeezed her butt.

“Don’t go.”

“You have to teach and I have a choreography meeting for the fall show.”

His arms wrapped around her waist. He rose to his knees. “I know. You’re right,” he whispered. “When will I see you again?”

She scanned for her clothing. The leotard lay in a tangled heap beside the couch.

“Tonight? Can I come tonight?”

She laughed. “Haven’t had enough?”

He swept her hair to the side. His nose pressed against the base of her neck. Warm breath tickled the baby hairs at the nape.

“Can’t get enough.”

“I can’t come here at night. The students will see me.”

“I’ll come to you. I’ll be discreet.”

She tossed her hair as she finished dressing, knowing he watched her. “Everyone is in their dorms, asleep by ten.”

“Then I’ll see you at ten.”

N
ia swallowed the protein bar and rose from the couch to grab another. Dinner would consist of whatever she found in the cardboard boxes stacked beside the kitchen sink, plus the grapefruit on the counter. She’d planned on eating the fruit for breakfast tomorrow, but the choreography meeting had run long, and she hadn’t wanted to grab dinner and risk missing Marta.

She grabbed a knife from the drawer beside the sink and stabbed the center of the grapefruit. She forced the blade down to the counter, splitting the fruit open. The two parts fell away, exposing the bright pink inside. She grabbed a spoon drying in the plastic dish rack beside the sink and wedged it into the flesh.

A knock sounded. She shoved the spoon into her mouth as she crossed to answer the door.

Marta entered the room like a thief diving into an alley. She clearly didn’t want anyone to see her visiting. Talking to the RA was certain to provide grist for the Wallace rumor mill.

“Thanks for coming.” Nia gestured to the couch.

Marta sat on the cushion like a kid waiting outside the principal’s office. The girl tucked her knees to her chest. She pulled her extralarge sweatshirt over them, like a blanket.

“Want some grapefruit?”

Nia needed to put Marta at ease. Sharing food did that. But part of her hoped that Marta didn’t take the offer. She needed the acidity to break up the sugars from the protein bars. Alone, the soy sitting in her stomach would become a lead weight.

“I never really liked grapefruit. But I guess it keeps you thin.”

Marta was ten pounds lighter than when they’d first met three days ago. Disappearing water explained some of the postpregnancy weight loss, but probably not all of it.

“I don’t have much else. Would you like water?”

“No, thank you.”

Nia left her grapefruit and settled on the end of the couch. Her stomach rumbled, the churning acids kicked into high gear by the long-awaited presence of food. She longed for vegetables, steamed, over brown rice. Better yet, cucumber salmon rolls. Why didn’t the boondocks ever have sushi restaurants?

Marta chewed on her thumbnail. Nia didn’t remember that habit from their first meeting. Evidence of hunger? Frayed nerves?

“So you wanted to talk?” Marta examined the bleached, peeling skin beneath her nail instead of making eye contact.

“Yes. I wanted to know if Theo Spanos was the student you saw when you were in Claremont on Saturday.”

Marta gnawed on the end of a finger. She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Well, how did you know that the person at the bus stop was from school?”

“Um, I guess I didn’t, really. I just thought that I kind of recognized him.”

“Who did you think you recognized?”

Marta pulled the sweatshirt lower, folding more of her body inside, turning herself into a ball. “I don’t know. He just looked like someone who would go here.”

“Do you remember hair color or anything about his clothing?”

Nia waited for a response. A digital clock hummed somewhere in the room. Air hissed from floor vents. The girl continued to peel the skin from her finger with her teeth.

Nia placed a hand on Marta’s shoulder. “If you saw Theo, you have to say something. You don’t want one of your classmates to go to prison for a crime he didn’t commit.”

Marta tucked her hands beneath her armpits, shrugging off Nia’s hand and creating a shield of arms across her chest. “Even if I might have seen Theo, it doesn’t mean he didn’t kill Lauren. I mean, you and Director Battle found her body Monday, right before classes started. Theo had all Sunday to do it.”

“You should still come forward. The police think Lauren was killed Saturday evening, and they don’t believe that Theo was off campus then. It’s a big reason why they arrested him.”

A shriveled thumb sneaked back toward Marta’s mouth. “The police will want to know what I was doing in Claremont.
They’ll know I had an abortion.” Tears muddied Marta’s dark eyes. “They’ll tell my parents.”

“I don’t think they would need to tell your parents.”

“What if I’m asked to testify to Theo’s whereabouts? I’ll have to get up on the stand and say I saw him in Claremont. Then the attorney will ask why I was there. I’ll have to talk about aborting my baby in front of my parents, my classmates, maybe the whole world. The case will probably be televised by, like, CNN. My grandparents will see it in Armenia.”

Marta buried her head in her knees, reverting from teenager to toddler.

“I know it would be difficult. But if you saw something that could prove one of your friends is innocent—”

“Theo’s not my friend.” The sweatshirt muffled her voice. “I’m sure he barely knows I exist.”

“Well, he’s still your classmate.”

Marta raised her head. Her brows pulled down into a deep V. “And he might still be a murderer. I don’t know that he didn’t do it. I just saw him Saturday after I got out. It was already five. Maybe he strangled Lauren super quick that afternoon.”

Marta had seen him. That meant, in all likelihood, Theo was innocent.

Nia had traveled to Wallace by first taking the train from Manhattan to Claremont and then grabbing a bus to the school. If she remembered correctly, it had taken her ninety minutes to get to campus from Claremont. Round trip to the town would take three hours. Assuming Theo had waited at the bus stop for someone for an hour or so—or maybe even seen this girl—he would have spent nearly the whole evening off campus.

“The police can pinpoint time of death with forensics. If they have the time that you saw Theo, they can compare
that to the window when they think Lauren died. That could exonerate him.”

“And ruin me.” Marta’s brows retreated into a straight line. Tears again clouded her eyes. “My parents will never speak to me again. My grandparents will never speak to me again. I will be a baby killer. Nothing else will matter.”

“Your parents love you.”

The girl rubbed her forehead with her chewed fingers. “They won’t if they find out.”

“I know it must be scary. But you can’t let an innocent person spend their life in jail.”

Marta’s legs burst from her sweatshirt cocoon. She stood from the couch and stepped toward the exit. “Theo’s dad is a rich lawyer. He won’t let him go to jail. I’m sure they’ll subpoena bus stop tapes or traffic cameras, something to show he was there.”

“But what—”

Marta grabbed the doorknob. “I can’t destroy my life to save his.”

“Marta, wait.”

“I’m sorry. No.”

The door clicked closed.

Conflicting emotions roiled Nia’s insides. She didn’t want to hurt her student, but she had to go to the police. Theo must have told the detectives where he’d gone on Saturday. The officers wouldn’t have arrested him if they’d been able to confirm his alibi with a bus driver or a closed-circuit camera. He needed Marta’s testimony.

She would give Marta the night to think about what she had said and then talk to her tomorrow. Perhaps she could convince her to come forward without revealing her motivations for heading to the clinic. Marta could admit to some
lesser offense, like wanting to obtain birth control. The clinic couldn’t be forced to divulge the procedure.

Nia glanced at the time. The clock almost read nine o’clock. Peter would arrive in another hour.

*

Someone knocked just as she exited the bathroom. Nia held her breath, waiting for another sound. Maybe Marta had already decided to come forward. She tied the towel over her breasts. The knock sounded again—a short, quiet rap. Almost timid.

Peter stood in the hallway. He wore jeans and a T-shirt that made him resemble a Gap model. A bottle of red wine dangled from his fingers.

Nia felt a flush of embarrassment. She didn’t have wine glasses or food or even a bed big enough for two people.

“Come on in.” She shut the door behind him. “Welcome to my very humble abode.”

Peter winked. “I think I know your decorator.”

He placed the bottle of wine on the kitchen counter. “Did they give you the standard issue water glasses?”

Nia followed him into the kitchen area. She opened a cabinet and withdrew two of four skinny, ribbed glasses. “Most of my stuff is at my mother’s house. I took the train here, so I packed light.”

“No worries.” He pulled a steel utility knife from the front pocket of his jeans and flipped a corkscrew from the back. “I came prepared.”

“You did. How did you even get in? I thought your ID didn’t work in this building.”

“Some girls are smoking in the courtyard. One of them let me in after making me promise not to report her.”

“You promised?”

He twisted the screw into the bottle. “I told her lung cancer is a shitty way to die, like a proper authority figure. Then she said she was sure science would clone new lungs by the time she had to worry about it, like a proper spoiled Wallace student. Then I said she was probably right.”

He yanked the cork out of the wine. A triumphant grin spread across his face as he filled both glasses. The vessels made the wine resemble grape juice.

He handed her a glass. His fingers fell onto her towel.

“Have a thing for terry cloth?” she asked.

The smile turned devilish. “I like to take it off.”