Shade Me (7 page)

Peyton was the only one in the photo not smiling. Her eyes were pointed toward the floor. I could practically feel the tension coming off her. Whatever had been eating Peyton had already been going on when this photo was taken.

There was a date printed on the bottom of the photo. October 15. There were only five photos after that, all taken in black and white. A new artistic phase, I guessed.

In the first, Peyton stood in the pool with her life preserver.

The next showcased Peyton and her sister (
half
sister, my mind corrected, in Dru's voice), Luna, standing in front of a plate-glass window. Definitely not in Brentwood—maybe New York? A neon sign in the window promised violet
SEXSEXSEXSEXSEX
. Luna's head was tilted back, mugging, her hand buried in her hair, while Peyton jutted her chest out toward the camera seductively, a giant gold-glittering dollar sign on the front of her T-shirt. She had titled the photo
Double Rainbow
. For some reason the words immediately brought to mind the tattoo on her neck. Only the word
rainbow
didn't come out at me in its usual colors. I
had a hard time describing the color it made me think of in this photo. Glitzy cherrybomb, maybe? I sighed, rubbed my eyes. I hated when I got so tired even my synesthesia got confused.

Regardless, I pressed on. The next was a family photo, standing on a pier, the ocean rolling behind them. I zeroed in on Dru, who looked at home in the sun, his shirt unbuttoned and revealing a chiseled chest and a dark shadow of hair under his belly button. I blushed, cursed at myself, and quickly flipped to the next photo.

In this one, Peyton sat at a bus stop, her face turned away from the camera, her free hand caressing the back of her new haircut. She stared pensively at a cigarette butt on the sidewalk, her profile blocking out most of an apartment rental ad and some graffiti behind her head. A square of gauze covered her new tattoo. The overexposed black-and-white pixelation made her skin look grainy and pocked. She might have been mistaken for someone homeless in this photo, an effect I found to be brilliant and shocking. One of the richest girls in the city, mistaken for a homeless girl? Would she have died to know that was what someone would see in this photo, or was it what she'd been going for?

She'd given the photo a title:
Fear Is Golden
. Which made me chuckle, because the first thought in my mind was,
No, it's not. Fear is bumpy gray and black, like asphalt
.
But then I remembered I was the only person who knew that.

The final photo looked like a mistake. This was the only one in color, but it might as well have been black and white. It was a close-up of a stucco wall, the bottom of which was gobbled up by foliage. At the very top left-hand corner was a pinprick dot of reddish orange—a tiny light of some kind. I squinted at it, tried to zoom in, but nothing would work. It was as if she'd accidentally snapped a photo while she was walking by a building. But she'd given this one a title, too.

What Lies Beneath

I felt a familiar tickle, a sneeze coming on. The word
beneath
, the color of dust, always did that to me. But the tickle was soon forgotten as I saw the rest of the title.

It was a date.

October 20.

The date of her attack.

I
WAS JARRED
awake by the buzz of my cell phone against my cheek. I jerked upright, confused, blinking. I was still sitting at my desk, Peyton's YouTube channel pulled up. After a few seconds, I remembered. I'd fallen asleep poring over Viral Fanfare videos, watching every move Peyton made. Every time I saw even the tiniest flicker of something stand out, I backed up the video and watched it again, never sure if I was just imagining things.

I looked at my phone. It was 6:03 a.m. It was also the familiar color sequence of Jones's number on the ID. I sighed. Might as well get it over with.

“Hi, Jones.”

“Hey, beautiful.” He sounded sleepy, and I took a
moment to remember what Sleepy Jones's skin felt like—warm, smooth, muscles somehow rock hard without him even flexing, as if they were ready to spring into action at any moment. I loved waking up in Jones's arms. For those first few moments after blinking into consciousness, I could even pretend that maybe I wasn't in hate with love, and that our bodies fit together perfectly for a reason. That feeling only lasted a few seconds.

“What do you want?” I asked, cutting him off before he launched into kissy noises or some other sappy bullshit.

“Did I wake you up?”

“It's six o'clock in the morning, Jones, what do you think? I wasn't out running a marathon.”

“Wow, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” he said. “I'm just checking in. Just because we broke up doesn't mean I stopped caring about you.”

I wish you would,
I thought. “If only I'd woken up on a bed,” I mumbled instead. I rubbed my cheek. I could feel creases in my skin where the phone had been pressed into it for God-knew-how long. I yawned. “I fell asleep at my desk.”

“Chem? You need help?”

“No. I mean, sure, I always need help with chem. But no, I wasn't doing schoolwork.”
You probably should,
the voice in my head reminded me.
Academic probation, remember?
But I ignored that voice. It had been a long time since I could be guilted over not doing schoolwork. “I was watching videos.”

“Oh,” Jones said, his voice going up into that obnoxious falsetto he got when he was trying to be flirtatious.

“Not those kind of videos, you freak,” I snapped.

“Kidding, kidding,” he said. “You gonna be like this all day? Just asking so I can avoid you at school.”

“Yes,” I said, relieved. At least I could cross dodging Jones off my to-do list for the day. “I'm planning to be a huge bitch all day. Avoidance is a good idea.”

“You could never be a bitch,” he said. “That's why I love you.”

“Try me.”

He yawned, and again I could imagine him, his bare chest tan and warm, his amazing abs descending to a V right where the sheets pooled deep around his hips. I needed to stop thinking about it. “I'm not too worried. I know you better than you do, sometimes,” he said. He groaned as if he were stretching. “I probably should get ready. I just wanted to say good morning. I'll see you at school.”

“Okay, whatever,” I said. Gibson Talley's paused face stared at me, his hand in a downstroke on the rhythm of “Your Mother Loves It.” I started to hang up, but stopped myself. “Hey, Jones?”

“Yeah?” Hopeful. Eager. I rolled my eyes, hating that do-anything sound in his voice, and hating even more that I was about to take advantage of it.

“You know Peyton Hollis, right?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know the guy from her band? Gibson Talley?”

He made a humming sound. “I think I might know who you're talking about. Dropout, right? With the green Mohawk?”

“Yeah, that's the one. What do you know about him?”

“Not much,” he said. “Only that he lives in those apartments by the storage place. What's it called? Fountain something. Come to think of it, I saw Peyton Hollis walking over there not that long ago.”

I sat up straighter, the cobwebs suddenly blasted out of the sleepy corners of my mind. “When?” I asked.

“I don't know. It was probably a week or so ago. I only remember it because everybody was talking about how she freaked out. Had some sort of mental breakdown or something. You saw her hair, right?”

“Yeah, I saw it,” I said. “And you're positive that it was her you saw walking there?”

“Totally positive.”

“You're not messing with me just to get me back, are you?”

“Nikki, I can't believe you think I would do that.”

“Are you?” I repeated.

“No.”

“Because we're not getting back together, Jones. Not ever.”

He sighed. “So you've told me. Time and time again. Why are you so interested in Peyton Hollis all of a sudden, anyway?”

Instantly, the image of Peyton lying in her hospital bed flooded my mind. Dru, sitting there next to her, looking at me with a mixture of gratitude and suspicion. “Never mind,” I said. “But thanks for the information.”

I hung up and headed for a shower, my back stiff and aching from sleeping bent over my desk. I pushed my hands into the small of my back and stretched, mulling over what Jones had told me. It felt like important information, but I couldn't quite figure out why.

Halfway through my shower, it hit me.

When she moved out, it upset everyone,
Dru had said.

When she moved out . . .

I shut off the shower, dried myself, and slicked my sopping hair into a ponytail. It was now 6:42. School started in an hour, and I still had yet to get dressed and get my shit together. But how was I supposed to think about world history or English literature, or—the worst—chem, when I had just been handed a clue that might lead me to what happened to Peyton Hollis?

I wrapped myself in a heavy robe that Dad scored for me at Four Seasons Chicago last year and hurried back to my desk.

Just as I sat down, the doorbell rang. Glancing down
at myself in my robe, I decided to let it go. Probably just a delivery. But a few seconds later, it rang again, followed by insistent knocking.

“Fine, fine,” I muttered as I hurried down the steps, pulling the robe tight around me as I went. “You can just leave it on the porch, you know,” I called.

There was a pause, and then, “Miss Kill? It's Detective Martinez. From the hospital. Mind if I talk to you for a moment?”

Alarmed, again I glanced down at myself, my hands instantly flying up to my dripping hair. I wasn't one of those perfect-princess types of girls who always had to look like she just stepped off a runway when she left the house, but a robe with nothing underneath was maybe just the tiniest bit too casual for conversation with strangers.

“Miss Kill?” he called again. “Nikki?”

Groaning, I accepted the inevitable and opened the door a crack, awkward fern turning into all-out-embarrassed pine in my vision. There was Chris Martinez, smiling and holding up a steaming cup of coffee.

“Mind if I come in?”

Now, standing next to him in his pressed khakis and button-down shirt, I felt really naked. “I'm kind of busy,” I said.

But he was unflappable. “It'll only take a minute. You like French vanilla?”

Eyeing the coffee, I sighed and backed up, opening the door wider for him to come in. He stepped through the threshold without a word and pressed the coffee into my hand.

“Sorry to bother you so early. I thought I might try to catch you before school.” He paused and looked me up and down. “I apologize if I've caught you at an inappropriate moment.”

My face burned—I might as well have been standing in the middle of a pine forest at that point, I was so mortified—and I crossed my arms over my chest, just in case my robe might get any ideas. I sipped the coffee, which was—frustratingly—really good.

“Is there a place we can sit?” he asked.

“Not really,” I said. I didn't love cops to begin with. And Dad absolutely hated them after they botched Mom's case so badly. If he found out I'd let a cop into our house for a cup of coffee, much less let one sit down, he would probably flip. “Can we make this quick?” I gestured at my hair like I needed to do something with it. As if I ever did anything with my hair.

He shuffled his feet, shifting his gaze down to them momentarily, and then nodded. “Okay. I just wanted to ask you some questions about Dru Hollis.”

“What about him?”

“Well, for starters, what was his relationship with Peyton like?”

I rolled my eyes. “Detective, I already told you. I'm not friends with the Hollises. I don't know anything about Dru Hollis.”

“But you've spent some time with him since the incident,” he said.

The smell of the coffee wafted up, intoxicating. “Well, yeah, but it's not like I'm sitting there asking for details of his childhood.”

The detective nodded and licked his lips. I ran my fingers along my robe belt, just to make sure it was still intact. “Fair enough,” he said. “Do you know anything about whether or not he's been traveling lately? Maybe to Vegas? Or anyplace else, recently, where he might have caught up with some old friends? Or has he been pretty much staying around Brentwood? What has he been up to these days?”

I shrugged. “We haven't talked about that, either,” I said. “We're not spending our time sharing our secrets like besties. His sister is lying in a hospital bed.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Does he have secrets to share?”

“No, I didn't mean . . . How would I know?” I squinted. “What are you getting at, exactly? Do you think Dru had something to do with Peyton's attack?” He remained maddeningly straight-faced, and instantly I was taken back to those early days after Mom's death. All questions, no answers, and a ton of jumping to conclusions that never got any of us anywhere. Dad was right—cops were all alike, no matter
how much yellow I saw when I was around one. I cocked my head to one side. “He's been by his sister's bedside since she was brought in. He has been worried sick. He's cried. I've seen it myself. That's what I know about Dru Hollis.”

“Yes, he's been very interested in Peyton's care,” Detective Martinez said. But his face was grim as he brought his coffee to his lips.

“You know, I really need to get ready for school,” I said. I opened the front door, holding the knob in my hand, hoping that my robe wasn't gaping open, but too irritated to really worry about it too much if it was.

He hesitated, then gave a single nod and headed toward the door.

“Oh, and here. You can have this back,” I said, holding the coffee out toward him. “I don't like French vanilla.”

He took the coffee and stepped out. I slammed the door after him, then watched through the window as he pulled the lid off my drink and dumped it out in the grass. And kept watching until he got into his car and left.

I leaned against the front door for a moment. Clearly he was suspicious of Dru. But was it normal check-out-the-family suspicious, or was there something more to it? Or was he, like the cops on my mom's case, just completely clueless and reaching for anything he could get his hands on?

After I stopped shaking, I took a deep breath and decided on the latter, and then went back upstairs. Something I'd
seen in Peyton's pictures was gnawing at the recesses of my brain, and had been since my conversation with Jones. Something blue.

BACK AT MY
desk, I pulled up Peyton's Aesthetishare account and scrolled through the pictures once again. There it was, the one at the bus stop. Peyton was turned away, her free hand touching her hair. She was pensively staring at something on the ground. All stark black and white. Except behind her, the partially obscured apartment rental ad. Fountain View Apartments, which shone out to me in what I liked to think of as dolphin blue—the color I always associated with water words. Jones had seen Peyton walking near Gibson's apartment complex. He'd thought they'd been called Fountain something. But just above the ad, scrawled on top of the word
apartment
, someone had written something. I'd thought of it as graffiti last night when I'd first seen it, but my brain had catalogued something else about it. The silver.

Three numbers—412.
Silver, brown, pink.

My fingers felt cold against the keys of my laptop. Were the numbers a clue?

It seemed so unlikely, so impossible. But it made sense in a way I couldn't explain—just like I was eight years old again and trying to tell a doctor about my colors. I couldn't ignore it.

Dru and I had exchanged numbers the last time we were at the hospital together, just in case. I picked up my phone and dialed.

“Hello?” The voice sounded gravelly with sleep. I had forgotten how early it still was.

“Dru?”

“Who is this?”

“It's Nikki Kill.”

“Oh.” There was rustling, followed by beeping that I knew all too well. “Hey,” he said after a pause. “Sorry, I'm at the hospital.”

“Any changes?”

“No. She's still unresponsive. My dad wants to have her moved. Wants some specialist he knows to look at her, but it's too risky. The doctor said the brain swelling is not going down, either. It's bad, Nikki.”

Words stuck in my throat. I remembered my dad, pulling me into his lap in a special room at the hospital ten years ago, saying the same words.
It's bad, Nikki.
But he hadn't had to tell me for me to know. I'd slipped in the blood. I'd seen the crimson all over the room. I'd already known she was going to die.

“Hello?” Dru asked. “You still there?”

I cleared my throat. “I'm here.”

“Are you coming by today?”

“I have school,” I said. “But, um, that's actually why I was calling you.”

His voice went grim. “I graduated a year ago, remember? You couldn't pay me enough to go back into that place. I'd take one of my dad's stupid acting jobs if I had to.”