Harmless (16 page)

I read the same sentences over and over again.

When we're awake, different parts of the brain communicate constantly across the entire neural network. In the deepest part of sleep, however, the various nodes of your cranial nervous system lose all their connections.

The silence of the library was distracting. I could hear the humming of the air conditioner and the buzzing of the fluorescent overhead lights. Mr. Frank, the librarian, was typing something into the computer.

…
In the deepest part of sleep, however, the various nodes of your cranial nervous system lose all their connections
.

Suddenly someone was sitting across from me. Ms. Malachy. She must have had superpowers beyond just the power to sniff out secrets.

“What are you doing?”

I held up the magazine.

She nodded. “You know, it's Tuesday.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“It's okay to feel like taking a break. Talking can be difficult.”

“Uh-huh.” I started flipping through the pages of the magazine, pretending to be searching for something.

“But I also know that when you feel like taking a break, that's probably when we're getting somewhere.”

She slipped off her sandals and tucked her feet underneath her. This seemed totally inappropriate to me. No shirt, no shoes, no service.

“I'm going to tell you something, Emma. I sometimes avoid things that are difficult too. Even in my role as a coun-selor. I let things slide by because I'm afraid of losing my stu-dents. I'm afraid if I push something difficult, that come the next week I'll be sitting at my desk staring at an empty couch. Sometimes that couch is empty anyway, even when I don't say what's on my mind. When that happens it's because the student with whom I'm meeting knows that the difficult stuff is right there, about to be unmasked, even if I'm not the one to pull the mask off it.”

I stared at her hard. “What are you talking about?” I asked, even though I knew.

“Last week, I let you tell me that everything at home was fine, and I didn't mention to you that I'm aware of what's gone on with your father at the college. I let you tell me that what happened with you and this boy Owen was no big deal, when I know this can't be true. I let you tell me that the arrest of David Allen meant nothing to you. I know these things weigh on you heavily, I can see that on your face and in the way you carry yourself, and I wanted to tell you I'm sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't honest. It's not right for me to pretend around you when all I ask of you is that you don't do the same to me.”

I closed the magazine. I looked up and I judged the distance
between my chair and the door to the sun-drenched outside to be about fifteen steps, yet even with my head sending my legs the command, they wouldn't move. Like in sleep, there was something interfering with the connections in my brain, and it had been there, I realized, for a while now.

Mariah

The ghost we invented
to protect us that night had now returned to haunt me.

I thought about David Allen all the time. I imagined a cell for him with warm light, soft music, Egyptian cotton sheets on his plush king-size bed and gourmet home-cooked meals. I created this world for him knowing this wasn't what it looked like inside a jail cell, but I wanted him to have these comforts. I wanted him to have a vacation from the cold hard world of homelessness. I wanted these things for him even though, I had to remind myself, he was the one who had kidnapped and killed Elinor Clements.

David Allen couldn't be charged with the crime of taking Elinor away from her family and friends (no body, no evidence),
but they seemed to have arrived at some place that began to resemble peace, or at least acceptance. She was finally memorialized. A small local park was named in her honor. Kids at her school wore pink rubber bracelets with her name stamped on them.

I felt divided in two, which was not entirely new for me. There was the Mariah from Dexter County who lived in a tiny apartment, and the Mariah who lived in the Dalrymple house with its never-ending hallways and its black-bottomed swim-ming pool. There was the Mariah who everybody at Odious thought I was—stuck-up, bitchy, tough, cool—and the Mariah I really was: none of those things. And now there was the Mariah who hated David Allen and wanted to see him in pain, and the Mariah who felt sorry for him and wished he had Egyptian cotton sheets.

My mom thought I needed a break this summer and tried talking me into a camp in California. I could see Carl's fingerprints all over that plan. They'd go off on a cruise together while I went to some stupid camp. I refused to go, even though I briefly considered going and then ditching the camp and spending my time searching the streets of Los Angeles for my real father. Then I remembered that I'd invented the idea that my father worked as an actor in Los Angeles, much the same way I'd invented this cell for David Allen with soft light and gourmet meals and fancy sheets. And I decided that lately, I'd had more than my fair share of ghosts. I just wanted to spend the summer at home, living my life and hanging out with Silas as much as possible.

He had a job lined up at the bookstore on Grand and I'd
applied for a job there too. I also applied for a job at the gar-den center and the stationery store, neither of which excited me. What I really wanted to do, almost as much as I wanted to work with Silas at the bookstore, was to work in a homeless shelter, but I didn't even bring that up to Mom or Carl because, given the circumstances, I knew they'd look at me like I'd gone crazy.

Silas was having a rough time. Emma was still moping around and I knew things between Silas and me wouldn't really start happening until he stopped worrying about her, or at least until he accepted that she wasn't his responsibility. But there was something sweet about his obsession with Emma, and it made me want to be a better big sister to Jessica, so I started taking her out one afternoon a week for ice cream sundaes. This scored big points with Mom, who dropped the whole summer-camp-in-California idea.

I never had any intention of following Carl's rule about not spending time with Anna anymore, but somehow it happened anyway. She always went home right after school. She sat with Tammy Frost and her crowd at lunch and I didn't have any interest in that table of people at all. But the more David Allen haunted me, the more I felt the pull toward Anna and Emma, and since Emma had made it very clear that she didn't want to be my friend anymore, I called up Anna and invited her over.

It was a Sunday, and even though summer hadn't officially started, it was hot and humid. Carl was off at a conference for the weekend and Mom was delighted that I'd invited someone
to the house because this wasn't something I made a habit of doing. I guess she'd forgotten about Carl's ban on all things Anna.

She brought her bathing suit and Mom made us a pitcher of mint lemonade and we sat on the striped lounge chairs and watched Jessica do handstands and retrieve rubber rings from the bottom of the deep end. Finally Mom called Jessica into the house—she thought Jessica had had enough sun and chlorine—and told her it was time to have a peanut butter sandwich and watch
Finding Nemo
. Anna and I were alone.

“So what have you been up to lately?” I asked. We both had on sunglasses and she was in a stretched-out blue Speedo one-piece that wasn't exactly flattering.

She turned to me, pushed her glasses up and shot me a huge smile. “Okay. Promise you won't tell anyone?”

“Uh … sure.”

“I mean it. Promise for real. It's a secret.”

What would ever have made her think I wasn't good at keeping secrets?

“Okay. I promise.”

She took a sip of her lemonade. “It's just like you said. As soon as I stopped thinking that he was out of my league, it happened, and now I'm with Tobey Endo.”

“You are?”

“Don't sound so surprised.”

“No, I mean, that's great. I had no idea. But why the secret?”

“That's just the way it is with us. We IM and we hang out
sometimes on weekends but we don't really want everyone to know at school because then you have to deal with all the gossip and stuff and who wants to deal with that?” She squirted some sunblock onto her thighs and started rubbing it in.

“Wow. You and Tobey. That's great, Anna, really.”

I had a feeling I was supposed to ask her more but I couldn't think of a single question, so I just cut to the reason I'd invited her here in the first place.

“I've been thinking a lot about David Allen.”

“Pervert.”

“What?”

“Not you, moron, him. He is so gross. Ew.” She shivered. “I'm so glad he's gone and I don't have to see him again. Tobey says he'll probably plead guilty and take a lighter sen-tence to avoid a trial, so thank God we won't have to go to court.”

“But, Anna, he didn't do it. Doesn't that bother you?”

“Not really. Look what he did to Elinor Clements.”

“We don't know that for sure.”

“Yes we do. Who else could it have been?”

“Anybody!”

I was shouting now. I hadn't planned on having this fight with Anna. I hadn't anticipated that I'd take the position that David Allen hadn't hurt Elinor Clements, but suddenly it was the only argument that made any sense to me.

“What do you know, Mariah? You think you know more than the police?”

“Of course I do. I know that David Allen didn't attack us
that night. The police don't know that, but I know that. And so do you.”

“This is stupid. Let's just forget about it. Please. It's over.” She pushed her glasses back down onto her face so I couldn't see her eyes.

“It's over,” she said, and she turned her back on me.

Anna

When Mom told me
that Detective Stevens was stopping by after dinner I told her no. I guess maybe I was more forceful than I usually am with Mom because she took a step back and looked at me funny.

“What's wrong, honey?” she asked.

“Nothing. I'm just done with this. That's all. I have nothing left to say.”

She pulled me into a hug. She smelled a little like the onions she'd been cutting in the kitchen. I pushed her away.

“Listen, Anna, I know you want to bury this. I know the school year is almost over and summer is here and that makes a great time for a fresh start. I want you to have that too. But if Detective Stevens needs your help, you owe him that.”

“What can I possibly do for him? They've already got David Allen. Case closed.”

“I don't know, dear, but I told him he could stop by. I've made an apple crumble.”

“Yippee.”

She looked a little hurt, but I wasn't in the mood for babysitting my mother. I went up to my room and closed the door. I turned on my computer.

AnnaBanana133: hey
sK8teR817: hey Hendricks, wats up
AnnaBanana133: Det. Stevens is coming over soon
(dunno why)
sK8teR817: maybe theres a break in the case
AnnaBanana133: ???
sK8teR817: new evidence or something
AnnaBanana133: yeah, i guess so
sK8teR817: i wanna hear about it after
AnnaBanana133: cool

I didn't say much during dinner. I thought about Tobey, sitting in his room in front of his computer, the police scanner buzzing with static in the background. I thought about his striped wool hat that he wore even in the heat and the curls of sandy brown hair that poked out the bottom of it. I thought about the way his lips had felt when he'd kissed me. Or I guess I should say, when I'd kissed him. After we'd had our coffees at the Big Cup, he walked me part of the way home. The sky was electric, it was just about to get dark, the streetlamps hadn't gone on yet, and standing in front of a big brown stucco house
with yellow and white striped awnings, I leaned over and put my arms around his neck and started kissing him. He seemed surprised at first, and so was I, but then he just went with it and we stood like that, kissing until the dark blue sky was turning black and I knew I was pushing my luck and I'd better get home. I thought maybe that kiss would change what it was like between us at school, but it didn't. I guess we just made more sense through IM and outside of ODS.

Dad was in the middle of talking about work and I was pre-tending that I was listening when the doorbell rang. Detective Stevens wasn't in uniform. He was wearing jeans and black basketball shoes and a gray hooded sweatshirt. With his short hair and his ears that stuck out and his big smile, he almost seemed like he could be a boy coming over to pick me up for a date, if that were the kind of thing that happened to me. He turned down my mom's offer of some apple crumble and I felt a twinge of embarrassment for her. He asked if my parents minded if he talked to me alone and they said no. He'd already explained why he didn't want parents around when he interviewed witnesses, but still, I was suddenly desperate to stay at the dinner table. I was glued to the seat. I made a vow to listen to Dad and take an interest in his work, but they both looked at me like
Get up, what are you waiting for?
and so I had no choice but to stand and follow Detective Stevens out the kitchen door. We sat on the back steps underneath an exposed lightbulb with moths flittering around it.

“How's the school year wrapping up?” he asked.

“Fine.” He looked different out of uniform. I noticed his face for the first time. He had gray eyes and freckled cheeks
and slightly crooked teeth. He wrapped his arms around his knees and pulled them to his chest.

“I'm not even really supposed to be here,” he said.

“So why are you here?” I didn't mean to sound harsh, but that apple crumble was sounding good now and I just wanted to go back inside and have dessert with my parents and then go to my room and IM Tobey. I wanted Detective Stevens to go away.