Nearly Gone (6 page)

He wasn’t hard to spot. The man in the navy suit came out of the auditorium at least a dozen times during the performance, his jacket buttons straining over something bulky near his waist. He walked to the water fountain without looking at it, eyes roving the hall in both directions as he drank. A thin comb-over flopped in an arc from his head, flirting with the fountain spray when he leaned over. When he stood up, he checked his watch and yawned.

Nicholson had sent one pathetic verge-of-retirement cop, but I guess that’s all my skinny prank theory was worth. I’d been observing his unimpressive stakeout for almost an hour from the courtyard. It was the perfect vantage point, dark enough to conceal me, with panoramic views of the halls in each direction. Nicholson was suspicious of me, and I wouldn’t add fuel to his fire by flaunting the fact that I was here.

The cop disappeared into the red hues of the theater and I crept back into the hall just as the auditorium doors pulled slowly closed. I withdrew the ad from my pocket. The clue suggested two possible scenarios.

The first—the reference to the play and the invitation to meet up after the show—was an obvious one. Almost too obvious. But the second?

Archimedes knew the play wasn’t the thing.
Was the play a decoy? Was the real prank happening somewhere else? Somewhere Archimedes—one of history’s greatest mathematicians—would likely be?
Do the math . . .
I couldn’t be in two places at once.
The cop already had the auditorium covered, so I followed my gut to the math department at the far end of the school on tiptoe, pausing every few feet to listen.
I ducked under the stairwell where I could see most of the wing, and since I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, I waited. The ad just said “find me after the show.” I checked the clock above the fountain. Ten. The show was ending.
After the show
was now. I squatted low, my breathing shallow. The wing was quiet and still.
The second hand crept slowly over the face of the clock, and each passing second I felt more and more like an idiot for being there. My knees began to ache where they pressed against the cold tile, and a cramp pinched my calf. I shifted positions, stretched my legs, checked the clock again. The whole thing was probably a complete waste of time. I wasn’t even sure I was in the right place, or what I would do if I spotted someone, or exactly what I thought they might be doing, but I stayed put, remembering what had happened to Emily. If there was a chance something like that could happen again, I couldn’t abandon my suspicion and walk away. I urged the red hand of the clock forward with my mind, wanting to get this night behind me.
By eleven o’clock, I was sure the audience was long gone. The actors were probably washing off their stage makeup and heading to the after-party. The cop was probably shaking his head, chalking the wasted night up to a paranoid girl.
I stepped out from under the stairwell, stretched, and scanned the dark passage. All closed doors.
With the exception of one. Room #112. My AP Physics class.
It was barely cracked, but I kicked myself for not having noticed it sooner. I eased it open, listening. The room was silent. Pitch-black. The hair on my neck prickled.
I reached inside and flipped a switch. The fluorescents flickered to life, turning lumpy shadows into recognizable shapes. Chairs stacked neatly upside down on tables, the blackboard wiped clean, trash can empty.
Everything neat. Nothing out of place. Except one chair.
Mine. It rested on the floor, flipped over as if someone got up in a hurry. I walked over and saw my desk.
Jagged deep letters were carved into the wood. You lost the gold crown.
Better luck next time.
Goose bumps rippled over me. The last message on my desk led to a dead cat on my doorstep. And that message was only in ink. This one had been carved in angry-looking purposeful lines, deep enough to splinter the wood. And this time I had no doubt it’d been left for me.
You lost the gold crown.
I paced, filtering through memories of lectures and texts, sorting what I knew about math and Archimedes.
Archimedes’ Principle was based on the story of a gold crown. He’d written his
Treatise on Floating Bodies
after discovering he could determine the weight of a gold crown by measuring the volume of water it displaced.
So what? What did that have to do with anything? Or with the play? What could the gold crown possibly have to do with . . .
Hamlet?
My brain worked fast, outpacing my pulse as it divided out all the factors until just one common denominator was left. A chill raced down my spine. There was a floating body in
Hamlet
 . . . Ophelia.
I took off at a run, my footsteps echoing back at me down halls that seemed to go on for miles. I flew around the corner of the gymnasium and slipped into the girls’ locker room. The door closed behind me and I waited, winded, while my eyes adjusted to the dim yellow lights. I headed for the moist hot scent of chlorine until the concrete gave way to rubber floor runners.
When I came to the door, I took a breath before inching it open.
The light around the Olympic-size pool was a steamy green. Watery lines danced on the ceiling, refracted light from below the pool’s surface. I stood, listening. The huge space was silent, as if the water muted all the sound except the ragged breaths I couldn’t quiet. I stepped slowly toward the pool, scanning the bleachers for shadows or movement.
“Marcia?” I called quietly.
My own voice came back in soft echoes.
“Marcia, are you here?”
I perched on the curved lip below the diving boards, beside the depth markings . . . twelve feet. I looked down the length of the pool, following the lap lines that wavered like long black threads, marking the distance to the opposite end of the pool. Except for one, which seemed to stop, disappearing prematurely into a blur of shadow by the far wall.
My skin prickled as I rounded the corner of the pool. The shadow in the water grew as I neared, a dark mass floating above it. As my feet picked up speed, the shadow cleared, the dark mass becoming black tendrils of hair, drifting like cobwebs over a pale face and tangling between purple lips.
“Marcia!” I ran to the edge.
Her eyes were closed, as if she was sleeping. She lay on the shallow bottom, mouth open and legs spread, her big cotton dress billowing up around her. Her gray fingers reached for the surface but didn’t quite touch.
I dropped to my knees and plunged both arms into the water. Her hand was cold and slippery and didn’t grab back. The dress, flowing and weightless below the surface, clung to a drain at the bottom of the pool. I pulled hard, but the dress was like an anchor, weighing her body down.
“Come on, Marcia! Please!” I dropped my grip to her wrist, leveraging all my weight. Her elbow scraped the lip of the pool. Then her head broke the surface, heavy hair tipping her head back on her neck. First her nose, then eyes, then lips. Then her face emerged, blue and green under the light. I pulled again, catching her underarm on the concrete. Her head rolled toward me, water spilling from her mouth and draining down her chin.
I whispered frantically, begging her to wake up, begging her dress to stop fighting me, but the harder I pulled, the more I was losing her. I looked at her wrist, feeling her frail joints strain. Her wet sleeve fell back, revealing a mark.
A number.
Through the water, the number eighteen appeared, clear and dark against her forearm like a blue tattoo. I stopped breathing, unable to move as her wrist slipped through my fingers. I watched her mouth and nose slide under. Watched the number drift slowly to the bottom, her sleeve stuck stubbornly in the crook of her elbow, dark hair floating above her.
I covered my mouth with my sleeve, icy streams of pool water trailing down my chest.
The locked exterior doors rattled on their hinges.
“Marcia? Are you in there?” came muffled voices from the other side.
I scrambled to my feet and looked down at Marcia one last time as the next set of doors shook, louder this time. I had minutes, maybe seconds, before they found another way in. And there was nothing I could do for her. She was gone.
• • •
I took a back stairwell to the second floor and hid in a remote girls’ bathroom, retching into the sink. When I was done, I washed my face and wrung out my sleeves, too afraid the automatic dryers would attract attention. I needed to get out of the building without being seen.
Someone had wanted me to be here tonight. Someone wanted me to find Marcia’s body. Maybe even get caught with it.
And he’d marked her. But why? What did it mean? The number looked like it had been written in blue ink, but it wasn’t smudged or faded by the water. Permanent marker.
They drew the number ten in permanent marker on her arm . . .
Like the number ten on Emily’s arm.
Like the blue markings on my chem lab table . . .
DEAD OR ALIVE . . .
I slumped to the floor.
The person who wrote those ads knew me. He knew I read the
Missed Connections
on Friday mornings. He knew exactly where I would go, leaving the door to my physics class open. He carved the message in my desk, and left the chair down to make sure I saw it. He knew how to communicate with me.
Somehow, this was all about me.
I needed to get out of here. I snuck out of the bathroom and down the stairs, emerging in a corridor near the auditorium. Blue lights flashed through the windows from the parking lot outside and walkie-talkies squawked muffled commands. I backed around the corner and peered around the wall, listening to the chaos on the other side.
Theater students lingered in tight groups as EMTs and police cleared a path. Jeremy stood a head taller than the crowd, watching through his camera and snapping pictures until a uniformed officer put a hand over the lens. Part of me wanted to grab Jeremy’s attention, wanted to pull him behind the wall with me and tell him everything. But a short girl with dark hair stood close to him. He tucked her under his arm, holding her close while she dabbed her cheeks with a tissue. Anh.
My reflection stared back from the darkened courtyard windows where I’d stood only an hour ago. I was too close, too visible here. I backed slowly away from the blue flashing lights. When I rounded the corner, I ran, cutting through dim halls I could navigate blind, stopping at each exit, checking the doors. All locked.
When the front hall came into view, it was silent. Empty. I smacked into the release bar and it yielded easily, sending the metal door flying into the wall outside. I jumped out of my skin at the crash. It was dark. Steam rose off the cooling blacktop. I pulled my hood low over my face, but the police by the auditorium were busy interviewing the students who remained and didn’t look over.
The parking lot was empty except for a handful of cars, including Jeremy’s Civic. I needed to get home. I was sure the police were anxious to speak with me, or at the very least would keep a close eye on me after tonight. I’d reported a crime before it had happened. Nicholson would be an idiot not to suspect me.
I felt eyes on me. A figure stood just beyond a weak halo of light. I sped up as we made eye contact. Lonny’s friend, the guy I’d crashed into, reclined against a motorcycle, silently taking in the scene.
I kept my head low as I veered from the sidewalk and slid into the shadows, avoiding the security lights, cutting through the ball fields, not caring that this route through the backyards of rough neighborhoods might be more dangerous than where I’d just come from. Wanting only to make myself invisible. But I couldn’t.
He’d been watching.
And he’d seen me.

The speed limit in Sunny View was a heart-stopping twenty miles an hour, and most people treated the three stop signs as suggestions. From my front steps, I watched the Civic come to a complete stop at each one. I checked my wrist in an aggravated pantomime for Jeremy’s benefit. I didn’t actually own a watch, but I knew we were going to be late and I wanted to get to school early. I needed to know what everyone saw or heard on Friday night and by now, the rumor mill would be churning out the details. Jeremy grinned weakly at me through the windshield as he pulled to a careful stop at my feet.

I threw open the passenger door. The air felt heavy and thick and seemed to press in from all sides. I rolled up my window and Jeremy flicked on the AC without a word, angling his own vent at me.

“I guess you heard about Marcia Steckler?” He looked hard at the road, his hands perfectly positioned at ten and two.
I swallowed before answering. “No, what about her?”
“She never showed up at the after-party on Friday. There was an . . . accident.”
I stared out the window, the world moving too fast, lines blurring. I shut my eyes. “What happened?”
“The police found her . . . in the pool.”
I fought to keep my voice from breaking. Only one person had seen me in school that night, and that was already one too many. If the police asked questions, Jeremy shouldn’t have to lie for me. “Was she hurt?”
“She’s dead, Leigh,” he said gently, as if placing something delicate in my lap. “I wouldn’t have believed it myself except Anh and I watched them carry her out.”
Ahn and I.
I bit my lip, letting a penned-up tear spill over. It was partly for Marcia and partly for me. I was in trouble. And Jeremy had been with Anh Friday night. When I’d needed him. When he should have been with me.
“Did you have a date or something?” They hadn’t even asked me if I wanted to go with them. I never had the chance to tell them no. He hadn’t just offered her a ride. He’d taken her to the play. Put his arm around her. And he hadn’t told me because he didn’t want me to know. Because they didn’t want me there.
“A date? With Anh? No.” He scrunched up his nose. His glasses slid down and he pushed the wire rims back in place with his index finger, a nervous habit. “Why?” he asked. “Would it matter to you?”
I didn’t answer, afraid I’d say something I’d regret. Something that might slice too deep to fix.
“Of course not,” he muttered to himself.
The silence was hard to breathe through.
“I was covering
Hamlet,
” he finally said, sounding tired. “For the school paper. Anh was just . . . there . . . with me.”
Anh was there with me.
And I wasn’t, was implied. I wanted to tell him that I
was
there. That I saw
everything
. That I touched Marcia’s blue fingers. That I held her cold hand and screamed at her to wake up while he was comforting Anh. But I couldn’t tell him anything.
He pulled into his assigned space, set the handbrake, and plucked the key from the ignition. We listened to the engine cool, an awkward and terrible tension between us until I couldn’t take it anymore and reached for his hand.
His skin burned, hot and anxious. His anxiety tasted like stomach acid and smelled like sweat. I hadn’t felt Jeremy like this in years. The mood stabilizers his shrink prescribed mellowed the sharp tang I’d come to associate with stress. Usually I could feel the way they cushioned his moods, leaving only mildly astringent aftertastes. Today Jeremy’s anxiety was bitter enough to make me gag. It was pure and unfiltered. “You stopped taking your medication.” It should have been a question, but I knew it with complete certainty.
“I’m fine,” he said, without looking at me.
“You’re not fine. I can tell. You’re skipping your appointments and you’re off your meds. Why?”
He didn’t answer. Just brushed back the thin blond hairs pasted to his temple.
“Does this have something do with Anh?”
He looked at me sharply. “Can we just drop it?”
I gave a single curt nod. If he didn’t want to share what was going on inside his head, I wouldn’t push him. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that all these awkward unanswered questions between us that seemed inconsequential alone, might build into something insurmountable.
Reluctantly, I let go of his hand. We both stared straight ahead. The gymnasium stared back, its doors sealed shut with strips of yellow tape.
“Why’s the gym taped off ?”
Jeremy shrugged. “The police don’t think Marcia killed herself. She was drugged before she drowned. I was listening to their radios in the parking lot on Friday night. They’re calling it a probable homicide.”
Probable. There was nothing probable about it. She’d been murdered and left there for me. “Does anyone know who did it?” I asked, piling one more omission on my growing mountain of lies.
“I don’t know.”
“Did anyone see anything?”
“I said I don’t know,” he snapped.
“What kind of crappy reporter are you?” I snapped back, the sharpness of his mood still lingering in me. I only meant to be sarcastic, but it came out sounding frustrated and critical. Maybe because that’s how I felt too.
He got out of the car.
“Hey,” I called after him, but he walked away. I hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings, but he was so tense—so on-edge without his meds. I should have been more careful. I was stupid. I should never have touched him. “Would you stop and look at me?” I just needed to see his face. He stopped, his sigh obvious in the fall of his shoulders before he turned. We stared at each other over the roof. I tucked my hands in my pockets and lowered my voice. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.” Inside I cringed, feeling like a hypocrite. Here I was, expecting him to share what was happening inside his head, and I hadn’t been willing to do the same. He was silent, and I didn’t push. I hadn’t earned that right.
Instead, I told him what was in my heart. “You know I love you, J. Don’t you?”
He thought for a minute, then said, “I’ll see you at lunch?” and walked away without waiting for an answer.