Last Seen Leaving (18 page)

“I'm not ashamed, I am
straight
,” I lied, clutching tightly to the leather cushion of the seat. “I'm not talking about this anymore, so just drop the subject!”

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you,” he replied in a sober way, and was then mercifully silent for the remainder of the drive to my house. Still, as he pulled up to the curb, he said, “Let me see your phone for a second.”

“Why?” I asked suspiciously.

“I want you to have my phone number, in case you ever want to talk.”

“That really won't be necessary,” I said breezily, and tried to let myself out. The door wouldn't open, though, and the buttons on the armrest wouldn't respond, either. I glared at Kaz. “The child locks are on.”

“I know.” He smiled, pleased with his own cunning, stomach-melting dimples appearing in his cheeks. “Let me see your phone.”

“Are you kidding me? You're holding me hostage?” I gave him an imperious look, but he merely held out his hand, palm up. Annoyed, I slapped my phone into it. If that's what it took to free myself, then fine. “I'll just delete it the minute you let me out of the car.”

“At least I can say I tried.” He entered his information into my contacts list, returned the phone to me, and disengaged the safety locks. Impatiently, I shoved the door open and started up the walk to my house. Behind me, Kaz called out, “You know you can call me anytime!”

“Don't hold your breath,” I retorted, jamming the phone into my pocket and hurrying to the front door, every step an excruciating exercise in self-consciousness, aware that he was watching me the whole way. I could have erased his entry right there, while he was looking, and driven my point home—but I didn't.

He'd said I was a
good kisser
; he'd said he wanted me to call him. I was embarrassed and confused and upset and thrilled all at the same time.

That fleeting kiss had been more intense, more exhilarating, than any kiss I'd ever shared with a girl—more exciting even than my seven minutes in heaven with January—and I could still feel my lips tingling where Kaz's had touched them. The memory made my heart speed up and the pressure build in my groin again, and no matter how complicated it made things, I could at least admit to myself that it had been incredible. I wasn't going to call Kaz, but having his number in my phone was like a souvenir of that intoxicating moment in the hayloft. It was something I couldn't talk to anyone about, not even Micah, but it was an event I could relive over and over in my head as often as I wanted, and his number was my proof that it had happened. I couldn't bring myself to get rid of it.

 

FIFTEEN

IT WAS 4:00 A.M.,
when I ran out of excuses for staying up and finally had to crawl into bed, that I could no longer stave off my encroaching apprehensions. The second I closed my eyes, the darkness in my room filled with swarming ravens, black feathers flashing as they were drawn by the scent of my ex-girlfriend's blood.

The hoodie burned like a sun in my mind, its hideous red-black stain a depthless tattoo etched into my memory. No matter how many ways I tried to argue it with myself, no matter how many angles I viewed it from, my hopes lost ground against my ascending conviction; unable to blank my mind, the thoughts trampling the air from my lungs, I was forced to admit to myself that I'd known—from the second I'd recognized what lay at my feet in that meadow—that January was really dead. There was no other explanation.

Regardless of her bitter antipathy to the Tammy and Jonathan Walker Show, I simply couldn't see January doing something as diabolical and operatic as tossing fake blood all over her clothes and then hiding somewhere, calmly watching an entire community go into an uproar when they were found. If it
were
a hoax, the police would figure it out in very short order, and my girlfriend would go from being a tragic figure to a national pariah in the blink of an eye—at which point no university of any esteem would want to have her as a student, no matter the outcome of Mr. Walker's election. It would unquestionably mean the end of her California dreams, and she was too smart and too driven to compromise that goal for such short-term satisfaction.

But if she hadn't left her things in that meadow, tangled in duct tape and soaked in blood from who-knew-what, then someone else had.
Someone else had
. Her clothes hadn't been deposited somewhere obvious, somewhere they'd be found immediately—and they hadn't been sent directly to the Walkers like a severed finger, accompanied by a demand for payment, either—which meant they were not a message. They had simply been dumped, an inconvenience, abandoned there by someone who had apparently first spilled January's blood,
so much blood
, and then …
what?

My pulse raced, my palms were clammy and damp, and I gasped for air as I began to face that she was gone—really gone. We'd shared so much, and it seemed impossible to me that I would never again be able to tease her about the warty old lady on the bus—
you look just like I did when I was your age!—
to fantasize together about life in California, to listen to the familiar rhythms of her bitching about her rags-to-riches life story. I'd never be able to apologize for hiding from myself in our relationship, to confront her about the lies she'd told Kaz and Reiko, or to ask her just what Anson had really overheard between her and Jonathan. There was a hole in my life now where January Beth McConville used to be, and a year of friendship, four months of dating, and a lifetime of inside jokes and little memories had vaporized irrecoverably.

Finally, at 6:00 a.m., a wrenching, unearthly howl erupted from deep in my throat. I curled up in the fetal position and sobbed until my stomach ached and I couldn't breathe. I cried like that for an hour or so, and finally, numb all over, I fell asleep as the morning sunlight was at last beginning to dispel the ravens from my bedroom.

My parents let me take the next day off from school, and I spent most of the morning trying to figure out what I could do with myself besides playing
BioShock
, trying not to think about the day before, and wishing I had more weed hidden in my breath mints container. Micah and Ti came over in the afternoon, their parents having called them in as well, and the three of us spent several emotional hours sharing our favorite memories of January. Micah wouldn't look either of us in the eye when saying her name, and it was clear he believed she was dead; Tiana was defiant, however, and refused to let either of us get away with using the past tense.

The afternoon was cathartic, grief and doubt erupting in stormy bursts; but Ti did eventually get us laughing when she reminded us of the time that Señora Findlay, our erratic Spanish teacher from freshman year, had been haranguing the class about our collective failure to pass a pop quiz, while January, standing unseen in the doorway behind her, had simultaneously mimicked the woman's every exaggerated physical movement to perfection. She'd received detention for a week when she was discovered, but it had been worth it.

We ordered pizza, made root beer floats, told more stories, and seesawed between laughter and tears for the rest of the day. By 8:00 p.m., I was physically and emotionally exhausted, my body hurting all over like I'd been dragged six blocks by a panicked horse, and I fell asleep in the living room.

It rained torrentially the next day, and school was a gloomy affair. A makeshift shrine to January had been set up outside the theater: a picture of her mounted on a blank paper canvas underneath enormous letters reading
BRING JANUARY HOME;
all around her photo students had written personal messages. Half of them said
we miss u!
or some idiotic variation thereon, and many of them were from kids January had hated unabashedly. That afternoon Jonathan Walker gave his press conference demanding harsher sentencing laws in cases of crimes against children, and received the very outpouring of support that Eddie had predicted. Even teachers were talking about it.

Then, later that evening, all hell finally broke loose.

I thought there'd been a horrible glitch in the matrix when I got home from school, and Micah and I found ourselves standing outside my house and staring at the cop car parked in my parents' driveway. It was as if the previous Thursday were being repeated all over again; with a wave of nausea, I tried to think if I had any other friends who were suddenly unaccounted for. Micah and I stuttered our good-byes, and I walked stiffly to the house, feeling chilled straight through to the bone as I pushed open the door and let myself inside.

Two detectives that I'd never seen before were positioned in our living room, exactly where Moses and Wilkerson had been a week ago, while my parents sat facing them on our sofa. One had a mustache, and was introduced to me as Garcia, and the other was a tall, gangly blond man called Becker. Before I could ask about the unexplained change in the lineup, my dad indicated the cushion between him and my mom, and said, “The police had a few more questions to ask you about January.”

When I was seated, Becker turned his horsey countenance on me. In a mild voice, he asked, “I understand you participated in the search party out at the Walker place the other day. How're you holding up, Flynn?” It was a meaningless question, and I offered a meaningless reply. Nodding, he started getting to the point. “We've read over your statement from when you spoke to our colleagues, and we'd like to talk a little more about the last time you saw your girlfriend.”

“What do you want to know?”

“We'd like you to think some more about how she behaved that night.”

“Um … what do you mean?” I asked, even though I was pretty sure what he meant was,
this is your chance to change your story before we call bullshit—with consequences
.

Becker gave me a bland look. “Are you sure she wasn't acting strangely in any way? Angrier or more upset than usual?”

“Not really,” I prevaricated, thinking once again about January's hands urgently fumbling at the waistband of my jeans. What had made her want to take that step, that night? My secret made me feel like I'd been acting unreasonably, but now that I thought about it, I couldn't figure out why she'd been so insistent about it. “I mean, yeah, she was upset.… Like I said before, we had kind of an argument and broke up.”

“You said it was mutual,” Detective Garcia interjected coolly, and I froze. “When the other detectives were here last week, you said the breakup was mutual. That it”—he glanced at some notes in his hand—“‘just happened.'”

“Well … they asked if we'd had a
fight
, and we didn't. We argued a little bit, but that's all,” I said, sounding like a complete ass. My temples were immediately damp with sweat, and I knew the lie was written all over my face. Suddenly I couldn't remember the details of all the half-truths and obfuscations I'd related to Moses and Wilkerson the week before, and
why were there new detectives, anyway?
“I mean, she'd been acting kind of distant for a while already and, technically speaking, breaking up was her idea, so it wasn't, like, you know … a
fight
.”

“So the breakup was
her
idea,” Becker repeated, making a note of it, and I nodded vigorously. “When you say she was
distant
, what does that mean?”

“I don't know … she'd ignore my texts, or she'd make excuses not to get together, or we'd make plans and she'd blow them off … that kind of stuff.”

“And this was unusual for her?”

“Well, I mean, yeah, I guess.” I shrugged miserably. “I just sorta figured maybe she was mad at me about something I didn't know I'd done.”

“That happen a lot?” Garcia asked. “She get mad at you and not say why?”

“Sometimes.” It had been known to happen; although, truth be told, January's episodes of icy, silent resentment had synchronized almost perfectly with the moments when I had gracelessly terminated some increasingly passionate interlude without any explanation. She'd never needed to say why she was upset, because the reason was obvious, even if I didn't dare acknowledge it.

“Prior to when she started ‘acting distant,'” Becker began, in a way that suggested air quotes, like he was barely humoring the notion, “you two were still pretty close, though, right? Spent a lot of time together?”

He made it sound like a loaded question, but I couldn't figure out where the trap was, so I just said, “Yeah, of course.”

“There isn't anyone else in the picture, is there?” he asked suddenly.

I hated repeating myself, but the only thing I could think to say was, “Huh?”

“I mean, if we ask around a bit, we're not going to find out that maybe one of you two was seeing someone else on the side this past month or so?” His tone dripped with fake confidentiality, very come-on-you-can-tell-me, and I bristled at the question.

“No, of course not! And what does that have to do with what's happened to January, anyway?”

“Just answer the questions, please,” Garcia ordered sternly, and my mouth snapped shut. Sometimes I might fancy myself a bit of a rebel, but I had no desire to piss off the cops. “I'd like to discuss the last night you saw your girlfriend again. What exactly did the two of you talk about?”

I felt heat welling up inside of me, my mouth drying out like an old sponge. Omitting facts was one thing, but downright lying to the police felt especially wrong, a cardinal sin against an innate sense of order. Furthermore, I wasn't even sure I was capable of inventing a convincing and benign argument out of whole cloth on the spot; but how could I possibly answer this question truthfully without turning my entire life upside down?
Why were they asking about this?
Licking my lips, I began uncertainly, “We … we talked about California.”