Cold Calls (15 page)

And in that dream, she'd bump into this guy somewhere, like a Starbucks or Hot Topic, and he'd have on a Komor Kommando T-shirt or a T3RR0R 3RR0R patch on a leather jacket, and he'd see her old-school Thrill Kill Kult hoodie, and right there they'd have a connection, since how often do you run into somebody who likes those bands in this town? So they'd get a coffee or whatever, and they'd be talking and everything would be so easy and—

“Has he got a girlfriend?”

Shelly shook her head clear. “Who?”

“Eric.”

“I think so,” Shelly said, imagining the picture she knew was out there. “At least he did.”

“Figures,” Fatima said. Then she looked at Shelly. “You know something? I'm glad I met you. Well, not
how
we met or
why,
but I'm still glad.”

“Thanks,” Shelly said. Then, “Me, too.”

“My mom's been hyper-restrictive on me lately. She made me promise not to talk to any of my real friends till I'm back at school.”

“Oh.”

“But you don't count, since I met you after she told me.”

“Wow, lucky me,” Shelly said, her tone slipping past Fatima, whose smile didn't change.

“And you know what else? I'm glad you know my secret.”

“Hmm.”

“It felt like this weight I was carrying everywhere. I couldn't tell my friends, because you know how friends can be.”

“Trust me, I know.”

“And I'm not stupid enough to talk about it online. Besides, a Muslim saying she has doubts about her faith? No offense, the Christians would be all trying to convert me. And Muslims take everything so frickin' seriously.
Anyway,
” she said as Eric came in the door, “I'm just glad I could tell somebody.”

He pulled up a chair and sat down. “Tell somebody what?”

“That I've got five minutes before my mother picks me up,” Fatima said.

“And we've only got two days to solve this,” Shelly said, uncapping a black Sharpie.

E
RIC WAS IN THE PARKING LOT OF THE GYM WHEN HIS
grandmother's old phone wailed. He yanked it open, the blue-gray screen sputtering on, and when he saw the number, his heart thumped in his chest. He swallowed hard, forced himself calm, and said hello.

“I hope you don't mind me calling like this,” April said.

“No, it's okay,” Eric said, no idea what to say, so he said, “Hi.”

She gave that little laugh that he'd missed hearing. “Hi.”

Now what? Tell her how much he'd been thinking about her, how much she meant to him, how he hated not seeing her, not talking to her, and now not knowing what to say when they did talk? “How you doing?”

“I'm doing good,” she said, and there was that laugh again. “I'd ask you the same thing, but . . .”

“Yeah. Well . . .” Well?
Well?
That's it?

“I hear Garrett stopped by to see you.”

Now he laughed.

“He didn't do anything stupid, did he?”

“No,” Eric said, the lung-busting sprint to catch the last bus as it pulled out of the gas station popping into his head. “He just sorta, you know, did the big-brother talk thing. That's all.”

“He can be like that,” April said. “He gets it from my parents.”

Eric could see it. The friendly intimidation, the all-seeing, all-knowing swagger, the need to be in control, the underlying threat of violence. Like father and mother, like son.

“So, are you, like, suspended forever or expelled or something?”

He said, “Just for the week. I'll be back Monday.” But he thought,
Unless that picture gets out.
She was quiet, but he knew what she was thinking, so he told her without waiting to be asked. “I don't know what I was doing. It was stupid and ridiculous. I just . . . I don't know.”

He could hear her breathing, could imagine her twirling her hair around her finger like she always did when she was on the phone.

“Basically, I feel like an asshole,” he said.

“You should,” she said.

“Good. I do.” He paused, thought for a second, closed his eyes, and said it. “What happened?”

“You should know, you were there.”

“Not that,” he said. “Us. What happened?”

April sighed. “Eric . . .”

Eric.

Not
hon,
not
babe
. Eric.

“We went over this.”

“I know,” he said.

“Things happened so fast.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, you had just broken up with Simone, and I was still sorta seeing Nate . . . It just got really intense really fast, that's all. I wasn't ready for it. And neither were you.”

Eric felt himself nodding along, all of it true. But that didn't make it easier to hear.

“I need more time,” she said. “That probably doesn't make any sense—”

“Yeah, it does,” he said, even though no, it didn't.

“Thanks,” she said.

Then it got quiet again and he could picture her close, smell the perfume he'd given her on her neck, feel the warmth of her body against his.

I love you.

He wanted to say it, needed to hear it. But he knew it was too soon for that.

“So,
anyway,
” he said, dragging the word out like one of her crazy-ass girlfriends. “Next week, you see me at school, I'll completely understand if you totally ignore me.”

“We'll see,” she said, her goodbye lost in her beautiful laugh.

 

Shelly loved when she timed it right.

Her father's coffee cup was in the sink, but the pot was still warm, and that meant that she had
just
missed him and had the house to herself all night.

Golly, what a
shame.

She dropped her backpack on a kitchen chair and picked up the note her father had left on the table:

 

Hey,

Get your homework done early.

There's some pasta in the fridge if you want to heat it up. Or you can order a pizza.

Don't bother waiting up for me.

Jeff

 

Shelly thought it was an old note she had forgotten to toss out until she noticed a final line.

 

PS—You got a letter.

 

They came every couple of weeks, a handwritten address on an orange-trimmed Home Depot envelope, enough pages folded inside to require an extra stamp. Shelly had never read any of them, but she could guess what they said.

They probably started off with a time-based reminder that would pick away at the scab—
7 months, 3 weeks, 5 days, 12 hours, and 25 minutes ago
—then maybe cut to some sort of mental picture—
how happy he was, how he loved to smile
—then a reality check or two—
the call from the hospital
or
what it was like to turn down the street and see all the police cars
—for sure several paragraphs of insults, curses, and threats, wrapping the whole thing up with a wish-you-were-never-born finale.

And there it was, propped up against the plastic flower centerpiece.

She picked up the envelope. Three, maybe four pages inside, the paper crinkly from her mother's firm handwriting.

Shelly knew there was a chance that the letter wasn't anything like what she'd imagined, a chance that it wasn't fueled by hate and intentionally cruel. There was even a chance that it might hint at some far-off forgiving, some come-home invitation.

There was a chance, all right.

Same as a snowball's in hell.

She left her father's note on the table and dropped the unopened envelope in the garbage.

T
HE FIRST THING HIS MOTHER SAID WHEN SHE GOT HOME
from work was “How was your day?”

Considering the shit that was going to be hitting the fan soon, it was a good day, and Eric told her so. Conversation over, she announced that they were having hamburgers for dinner and asked him to get a fire started so the grill would be ready when his dad got home.

Burgers
and
the chance to play with fire? She didn't have to ask twice.

Twenty minutes later—after half a quart of lighter fluid and roof-high flames—the coals settled down to a glow and Eric sat on the steps of the deck with his iPad and checked for Facebook updates.

Apparently something “absolutely frickin LMFAO hysterical!” had happened Saturday night at an undisclosed location involving shaving cream, vodka, a math textbook, and a page ripped from
Playboy,
and this event then led to a lot of repostings of lyrics from old Gorillaz songs and references to somebody named Sir Jasper of the Dip. Oh, and Marshall and Rosi were now officially a couple. Whoever they were.

Outta the loop for a few days, and it might as well have been forever.

There was a picture from a party at some senior's house, and there in the background, almost invisible, was Ian, the guy who'd filmed his now-infamous mac and cheese attack and posted it on YouTube.

He and Ian weren't friends because Ian didn't have friends. And he seemed to like it that way, roaming the halls of the school with his black band T-shirts and black skinny jeans, black vests in the fall, black trench coat in the winter, his straight black hair keeping one eye always hidden. Too big to get picked on, and weird enough to pull a knife on the fool who'd try. There were plenty of rumors about him, and if only half were true, he was a guy you didn't want to mess with. But it was those rumors that had had Eric tracking him down after school, and he didn't flinch when Eric described it, no what-if-I-get-in-trouble? or what-will-the-coach-say? Just a simple cash transaction and it was done.

True, Eric hadn't paid him yet, but he assumed that Ian would understand and there'd be time to make good on it.

Besides, there wasn't much Ian could do about it now anyway.

There was a friend request from Fatima, and he clicked on confirm.

She was cool and, from what he could see, good-looking. Her headscarf covered her hair and ears, and she wore it tight under her chin, framing her face in white cloth. She had gorgeous dark eyes, and her skin had this tint to it, something between tan and brown, what April would have called an olive complexion. She had a great smile, too, which didn't hurt. But it was probably a conversation with some guy that was behind her big secret, and the last thing he needed was another older brother threatening to kick his ass.

It was Fatima's idea that she take home all the stuff they had printed out about their victims to see if she could find anything in common. She seemed excited by the challenge and promised a full report, and both he and Shelly were happy to let her do it. But even if she found something, they were running out of time to do anything. It was already Tuesday night. Thursday at this time, it'd be too late.

Wait,
when
on Thursday?

What was the deadline?

Noon?

After school?

Midnight?

First thing in the morning?

He wondered if it was in one of the caller's old messages, so he clicked on Gmail, rekeying his password and hitting
ENTER
.

That's when he saw the subject line for the new message.

Check out the hot picture I took of April!

For a lifetime he didn't move, didn't breathe, then a finger shot out and tapped open the email.

And there it was again.

The picture that started it all.

Taken with a camera app on an iPhone from the foot of the bed.

His bed. In his room.

Hi-res and in perfect focus.

Her head on the pillow, hands gripping the ends, eyes closed, a half smile biting closed on her lower lip, her blond hair all over the place, the earrings her parents had given her earlier that day for her seventeenth birthday catching the light from the flash.

The rumpled sheets made her early-summer tan look golden dark, and where she wasn't tan, her skin glowed pinkish white. The bellybutton ring her mother said she was too young to have impossible to miss in the center of the photo.

Next to the bed, in a pile on the desk, her teal Abercrombie T-shirt, white Victoria's Secret bra, and black Wet Seal thong.

The way the camera had been held—high overhead, stretched up, trying to capture it all, a crazy-angle lucky shot—the photo showed another leg—lean, muscular, an unmistakable J-shaped scar from an ancient bike accident, still visible above his knee.

She had said, “Don't even think of taking any pictures.”

And when the flash went off, she said, “Delete it now.”

Later she said, “Swear you deleted it.”

Swear it.

That was three months ago.

Eight weeks later, it was over, the picture the only reminder of what used to be.

A picture he said he wouldn't take.

A picture he swore he'd delete.

A picture a stranger now had.

There was more.

Above the picture—separated by semicolons in tiny, eight-point type—the names, numbers, and email addresses of every contact on his phone.

The iPad bounced as his knees started to shake. He stood up fast, and the dizziness brought him right back down. He forced in a gulp of air and felt his stomach lurch, the roaring sound in his head making it hard to think, the voice in his head—his voice—screaming that it was already too late.

He got up, slower this time, and walked away from the house, toward the pine trees that lined the edge of the yard.

That picture.

No doubt at all as to who it was.

Where it was taken.

Or who had held the camera.

And now everybody he knew would have their own, personal copy.

Instinct made him scroll down past the picture, and that's where he found the note.