Burning Blue (11 page)

“That was messed up, what Chrissie said.”

“I’m letting it in one ear and out the other.”

A black Mercedes pulled up. Nicole relaxed when she saw who was inside, a dour-looking woman in her fifties. “Thought you were Mom for a sec,” Nicole said.

“She called the club,” the woman said. “They said you were here. Let’s go, Nicoletta. You follow me. Or better yet, I’ll follow you.”

“I have to drive Jay home. Jay, sorry, this is Sylvia. Sylvia, Jay.”

The woman gave me mean eyes and half a grunt. Then, to Nicole: “
Now,
Nicole. Dinner is on the table, and then you have to talk to the doctor.”

“I’ll grab the bus,” I said. “Have to go to the Apple Store anyway.” I walked her to her car.

“My turn to come clean,” she said. “Back inside, when you said to Chrissie, ‘Why would she ruin herself?’ The word
ruin
? It hurt.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. I meant like ruin your life. I’m making this worse.”

“I know what you meant.” She gave me a quick hug and got into her car and drove away. Sylvia gave me a glare before following after Nicole. I wondered if Nicole was even allowed to drive now that one of her eyes was ruined—
compromised
, rather.

I felt somewhere between uneasy and frightened. That Nicole had ruled out Chrissie so easily was, frankly, odd. In fact, she seemed not to be interested at all in talking about who the attacker might have been. Was this her way of coping, total denial? Was she afraid to find out who had burned her? A chilling thought flashed my mind and took root before I could suppress it: Did she know who the attacker was, and she was protecting him?

By the time I got home, Shane Puglisi’s shot was on the ’net with more of that Burned Beauty’s Beau garbage for a headline. Somebody’s headlights had saved me, casting me in silhouette. Not that this mattered. The minute Sam and the rest of the team rolled into the East Side Tennis Club, Dave Bendix was sure to have gotten word I was hanging courtside with his girlfriend. If he confronted me, I’d simply tell him the truth: Nothing was going on. Nicole and I were friends, like she said, end of story. She had my back, I had hers. I revved up my laptops and started digging, not even close to knowing just how deep into darkness I would have to go to find out who burned Nicole Castro.

From Nicole’s journal:

Tuesday, 26 October—

Nye: “How do you feel about what Chrissie said?”

Me: “How would you feel if somebody accused you of burning yourself?”

Nye: “Have you ever wanted to hurt yourself?”

Me: “Have I ever wanted to hurt myself? No. Never. What possible motivation would I have? Do you really think I did this to myself?”

Nye sits there, reptilian in his stillness and as barren of warmth as the surface of the Moon, staring at me.

Nye: “You’re under a remarkable amount of pressure. You’re the go-to person for your peers. You’re deeply empathic. You assume a great deal of others’ pain and, by your own admission, internalize it. It would be understandable if you were feeling a need to let that pain bubble to the surface. Add to that your parents’ separation—”

Me: “Dr.
Nye.
I. Did not. Burn myself.”

Nye: “I believe you. My question was merely in regard to any inclination you might or might not have to injure yourself. If you ever do feel such an impulse—”

Me: “I don’t.”

He blinks. I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen him blink. I excuse myself to the bathroom to catch my breath.

Skype session w Dad weird. He keeps asking me about David. I can’t bring myself to tell him about David’s asking me to lie for him. Three times now, he has asked. Begged. I wanted to scream, “Nobody thinks you did it, Dave. You’re being paranoid. You have no motive. Relax.”

Lying on my bed, picking at a scab. I’m a drone, painkiller makes the blankets feel too heavy, except I’m not under the blankets. How many days of rain have we had? Everything is slowing down. Out the bay window the wind bends the trees down, down, the branches creaking without relief, a deepening growl in the air. The rain isn’t falling. It’s floating, but not in a benign way. I see individual drops. They’re bigger than I’d imagined, rounder, fine-milled buckshot.

All I used to think about was the future. It was bright, shiny. But after the burn, thinking about the future feels wrong in some way, an abstract sin. Is it bad to dream of myself as I was before? To dream I’m hanging with Jay and Emma and maybe Marisol and Sam, before I was The Girl Who Had Acid Thrown in Her Face; we’re all at the beach, playing volleyball, glittering waves, the faint taste of salt and smiling and no sunburn, no bandages, no being stuck for the rest of my life in my room, my bathroom, staring at It?

Staring at the donor site this past Saturday as the surgeon removes the stitches. Me: “Why are they purple?”

Doc shrugs as he tugs the stitches from my hip: “Why not?”

Mom glares at him.

Doc: “How’s the case going? Police any closer to finding out who did it to her?”

Mom slaps the examination table. “Could you not be so cavalier? You’re not rehashing the latest
CSI
episode at the watercooler. She’s right here in front of you. She’s right
here.
You will acknowledge my daughter’s presence, Doctor. Or else we’ll just have to get another surgeon. There are plenty of you out there, but there’s only one Nicole. And you will respect her. Are you clear on that?”

He takes a moment to let Mom’s words bleed into him. He studies me, then he really looks at me. “Nicole, I’m honored to be working on you. Your bravery inspires me. It truly does. I’m sorry, I meant I’m grateful to be working
with
you.”

Mom nods and wipes a tear from her cheek and tries to say thank you but the words are deep in her throat and come in a weak whisper.

The doctor doesn’t need to be grateful. How could one be grateful for having to deal with the Thing that lives on the left side of my face? All of the pretending. It’s dissolving me. Relying on her feels too easy but so good. Dead without her. Deadened without her smile.
I’m
so grateful. She winks at me. I try to wink back. She nods and mouths “I love you.”

Emma on the mend. Nothing else matters.

From the notes of Dr. Julian Nye, Tues 10-26:

Nancy, please transcribe and email the following to Jane Schmidt, Brandywine Hollows High School. Dear Dr. Schmidt, in my session with Nicole Castro tonight, I learned that you are concerned she is overly reliant on her mother. You and I spoke about this prior to your coming on in Nicole’s treatment. As lead therapist in Ms. Castro’s rehabilitation, I ask that you refrain from sabotaging my therapy plan. Your job is a simple one: apprise Nicole’s teachers of her special needs. Sincerely, Julian Nye, MD, PsyD

Dr. Nye, Nicole needs to be getting out and about, not
hiding
out in her house. In my one conversation with her father, he seemed to be of the same mind. You’re doing the Castros a disservice, particularly Mrs. Castro, who is worrying after her daughter 24-7, in prescribing this under siege, batten down the hatches mentality.

Dr. Schmidt, I am convinced that the patient exhibits a latent interest in self-harm, even if she herself is unaware of her inclination at this time. Until we figure out what this is and how it might manifest, if it hasn’t already, I do think it’s appropriate that the Castros “batten down the hatches,” as you so delicately put it. God help you if, while she’s following your “get out and about” admonition, that girl is attacked again.

Tuesday night I set out to eliminate the weak maybes from my suspect list, beginning with Mr. Sabbatini, except I couldn’t eliminate him. He went from weak maybe to what’s going on here after I cracked his Gmail Sent folder.

JS contacted me. I have located what you need. Pick it up Wednesday during my office hours, between 3 and 4pm. Be discreet. If anyone finds out about this, considerable trouble will follow for BOTH of us, I am sure I do not have to tell you. Please do not be late, as I must leave promptly at 4. By the way, I am not pleased about this. I think it puts you at an unfair advantage.

JS was Jane Schmidt. The intended message recipient was Nicole.

I triple-checked my online anonymity and took a shot at worming my way into Detective Jessica Barrone’s laptop. I had to see where she was on Sabbatini, if anywhere. At this point I was back to feeling fairly certain Barrone wasn’t onto my hacking. Again, she would have shown up at the apartment door by now with a search warrant if she knew about it. I was less convinced that she didn’t have a car of plainclothes officers tailing Nicole. Maybe they caught me following her into CVS? Why else would she have called my father? While I was poking at Barrone’s drive, her firewall was re-upping with new patches, and I had to get out of there.

I had to overcome my want to trust Nicole blindly. I texted her,
Want to hang tomorrow?

Nicole got back to me with,
Sounds cool. When where?

4pm BHHS?

4 @ BHHS out front. Jay?

Yes?

‘night.

Wednesday afternoon I was in the media center, reading my favorite book,
The
Invisible Man,
or pretending to. Really I was looking out the window. I’d positioned myself in the front west corner, where I had a view of the parking lot. The buses and most of the cars were gone by 3:15. Nicole pulled into the lot at 3:38, when everybody was at practice or in chess club or whatever and she would have the lowest chance of running into anybody. She pulled right up to the front entrance and did her usual 360-degree scan for that idiot photographer Puglisi, or maybe she was looking out for the Recluse. Except that if Sabbatini or Schmidt was the Recluse, and Nicole knew this, then she was faking fear. Was she just acting scared, putting on a show in case Detective Barrone had eyes on her? Was I any better, spying on her from the library window?

I checked the lot for a tail. A couple of cars could have been unmarked police vehicles, a Ford sedan, a Chevy cruiser, but they were empty. I checked the woods for telephoto lens flare and didn’t see any.

Nicole was wearing a ball cap with the bill pulled low. She adjusted her sunglasses, flipped up her collar, put her head down and marched into the building.

I hustled out of the media center and put myself out in front of the main entrance doors to sneak a peek down the corridor. Sabbatini’s office was at the end of the very long hall, but this vantage point was better than none. I didn’t want to get caught just hanging out in front of the building, staring through the door glass, so I pulled out my skateboard and knife pliers and pretended to tighten my wheel truck.

“Thought you would’ve had that fixed by now,” Mr. Sager said, leaning out from behind the school’s welcome sign. He had steel wool in his heavily gloved hand. He dipped it into that same bucket I’d kicked a few days earlier. He scrubbed a graffiti tag somebody had scribbled onto the sign with indelible marker. “I saw you,” he said. “In the library window. Scanning the lot. Do you really think he’s that stupid to attack her again, what with everybody on guard?” He slopped the acid onto the graffiti. The marker faded as Sager scrubbed it. The paint was coming off the sign too.

“Nail polish remover,” I said.

“Say again?” Sager said.

“The indelible marker. It takes it right off, no scrubbing, just a wipe, without messing up the paint underneath. In other words, you don’t need the muriatic acid.”

Sager stopped scrubbing. He stared at me. “Except I’d need a whole lot of nail polish remover now, wouldn’t I?” He gestured to the side of the building with his chin. I leaned around the corner to see it. The entire three-story brick wall was bombed with graffiti, taunts from our rivals, the Blue Devils.

I felt like a jerk, but at least I could cross Mr. Sager off my suspect list. He would need every can of muriatic acid he had in his shop to scrub that paint out of the brick. He shook his head and then got back to work.

A jacked-up Highlander rolled down the entrance ramp. One of the dudes leaning out the windows was John Kerns, kid brother of Rick, the Volta-Shock billboard I flipped freshman year. John’s locker was a few down from mine. He wasn’t pumped up like his brother. He was actually kind of wimpy. But he was happy to bully you verbally. “Need a little help with your ride there, Spaceman?”

“Now, now, let’s be nice,” this other dude said. “His name’s
Sbarro.
”

“Tell your mommy I’ll have my eggs over easy tomorrow morning,” I said.

“Dude, you’re like a veritable king of comedy, you know that? Hey, do you wear diapers?” The doors opened, and they started to get out of the car.

“I was having a conversation with my friend here,” Mr. Sager said, stepping toward the Highlander. “And you all interrupted.”

That got an eye roll from Kerns’s little brother. The Highlander peeled out with one of the kids throwing half a donut at my skateboard and “Sweet wheels, Spaceman.” Sager waited till they were gone. He headed into the school without looking at me.

“Sir?” I said. “Thanks.”

“What’d I tell you about calling me sir?” The rain was coming down harder. “Watch yourself, Nazzaro. You really want to find what you’re looking for?”

A few minutes later Nicole left Sabbatini’s office with a bulky plastic bag tucked under her arm. I stepped back from the glass door, hopped my skateboard and rode a curb rail in the vicinity of her car. “Hey.”

“Hey. Waiting long?” she said.

“Nah.” I kicked my board into a spin like the dude in Tony Hawk: Shred. I would have looked super-slick if I’d caught it with my hand instead of my chin. “So, that hurt.”

“Ooh. Icepack?” Nicole opened the car door and held up a stuffed CVS bag.

The Highlander was ripping up the road again, coming from the opposite direction. John Kerns and his crew slowed to a roll when they saw me talking with Nicole. Kerns had his phone out, clip in progress.

“Get in,” Nicole said, getting behind the wheel.

I’d checked the schedule, and the wrestling team was away on a meet two towns over, where Dave Bendix was likely grinding somebody through the mats into the floorboards. The meet would end in less than an hour. Dave would check his phone and find the link to the video mini-Kerns was recording. “Yeah, I better not,” I said, indicating the Highlander with a nod. “I don’t want Dave to get the wrong idea.”

“Right, so you don’t need to worry about that. David and I are over.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“I promised my mother I’d be gone for forty minutes max, and if I’m late, she’ll freak and call the cops and put out an APB for me.”

I got into Nicole Castro’s car, eyeing the Highlander. It sped out of the lot.

“Mind holding this?” She handed me the Sabbatini package. Shaped like an Amazon box a foot wide and half as thick, it weighed about as much as a gallon of battery acid packed in on all sides by bricks of C-4 explosive. “When?” I said, my eyes on the package.

“When what?”

“When did you break up with Dave?”

“He broke up with me.”

“Are you serious? Why?”

“I saw you, Jay.” She geared the car. “At the media center window before. Watching me as I drove in.”

“So?”

“You wanted to meet at four.”

“Right.”

“Why not right when school ended?”

“Nicole, relax, I wanted to bang out my homework before we hung out.” This was true, too. I honestly spent about ten minutes on my calculus work sheet.

She looked at me over her glasses. “I have to ask you something.”

“This is going to hurt, isn’t it?”

“Are you a truthful person?”

I frowned. “Mostly.”

“Okay, that’s the right answer.”

“Stop.”

“Hitting too close to the bone, am I?”

“No, I mean
stop.
” I reached between the seats and jerked up the handbrake, but it only slowed the car when we needed to have stopped dead fifty feet back.

“Oh my god—” Nicole hit the brakes and the car fishtailed as a deer flew across the road. Another half second, and we would have clipped it. It was a doe, so no antlers, but she was big, and she would have totaled the car, rolling right up the windshield and into us. Nicole pulled over. “How’d you see that?” she said.

“In my peripheral . . . Yeah.”

“It’s not true, you know? What they say about the eyes. You lose one, the vision migrates to the other? At least it hasn’t happened yet.”

The sunglasses weren’t helping her either. Sky darkened by thunderclouds, hundred-foot pines close to the road, heavy evergreen. Driving in the near dark with one eye? That sucks, if it’s even legal. “I meant to ask you if you were allowed to drive.”

“I had to take a vision test. I now have
special accommodations.
” She showed me her temporary license. In big black letters it said VISION IMPAIRED. “The real card is supposed to come in two weeks. The woman said it’s bright green with a red stripe.”

“Christmas all year round,” I said. Total idiot.

“Of course I’m not supposed to be driving unsupervised anyway.”

I knew that much. You had to be seventeen to drive without an adult in the car, but nobody followed that rule. You couldn’t. In Brandywine, if you didn’t drive, you were stuck with me, on the bus. “I’d offer to drive, but my only experience is Grand Theft: San Andreas.”

“And the forklift.”

“Tops out at five miles an hour. It’s a good ride, though. Come on down to work one day, we’ll take her out for a spin in the appliances aisle, blades high, ram a few refrigerators, get the adrenaline going before start of shift.”

She scanned the woods. “The doe.”

I checked the woods, following Nicole’s line of sight. The doe was grazing with her fawn. “She’s fine,” I said. “Not even close.”

Nicole broke down. She grabbed my hand. We sat there like that. A truck whipped past. The Subaru shook. She took her hand back. “Sorry.” She put the car into drive.

The package had been thrown to the floor when she stopped short. I picked it up, pretending to accidentally spill it. No wonder I’d thought it was shaped like an Amazon box: It was an Amazon box. It definitely weighed between twenty-five and thirty pounds.

“Death by chemistry,” Nicole said. “Check it out.”

I opened the box—slowly.
Advanced Placement Chemistry, a Teacher’s
Guide
, last year’s.

I could scratch Sabbatini and Schmidt off my list. Add them to the Sager scratch-out and I’d knocked off three suspects in one day. Not bad. I was feeling relieved until I remembered I still had no idea who was after Nicole. The only specific people left on my list were Kerns and Dave, and both continued to be nowhere in terms of motive.

Nicole tapped the teacher’s guide. “How do you print a book twenty-eight hundred pages long? Murderers. How many trees did it take to make that?”

“Um, like, not even one. Just a guess.”

“At least break it up into chunks. No book should be longer than two hundred and fifty pages, ever. I’m supposed to lug that thing around?”

“Beats going to the gym,” I said. “They tell you to wipe the sweat off the machines with your towel, but all that does is spread the bacteria around. Even those sani-wipe things are only marginally effective. And then if you forget your flip-flops, you have to wear plastic bags on your feet. You have no idea what I’m talking about.”

“I can only assume you mean for the showers.”

“You assume correctly.”

“Do we have a little OCD working there?”

“A tinge.” I checked out the book. The student version had the answers in the back, but this one had them written out step-by-step. “Firing your chem tutor?”