The Perfectionists (14 page)

“Um, okay.” Alex gently touched her arm. “Do you want me to come with you?”

She blinked, considering. Then she snapped her expression into something much more confident and brave. She had to get a grip. She couldn't afford to look guilty. She'd done nothing
wrong.

“It's okay,” she said brightly, giving Alex a peck on the cheek. “I'm sure it's all just a formality. I'll be back soon.”

And then she turned her smile on the detective and followed him outside to where his squad car was parked at the curb. She paused at the backseat, and the detective laughed lightly. “You can sit up front with me. Unless you're a criminal?”

Ava's cheeks reddened, and she managed to laugh as she scrambled to the passenger door. “Of course not,” she mumbled as she climbed in.

Not yet, anyway.

Ava had never been to a police station before, but it wasn't that different from what she'd imagined: drab blue walls, people behind desks,
WANTED
posters, linoleum. The detective took Ava into a small room at the back and asked if she wanted coffee. She declined, afraid that it would make her hands shake even more badly than they already were. There was a long mirror on one side of the room; her wide-eyed, dark-haired, beautiful face stared back at her. She wondered if the mirror was actually translucent on the other side of the wall. Were officers standing there, ready to watch her?

Her phone beeped.
You okay?
Alex texted.

Ava turned her phone over, too freaked to type back. She looked at her expression in the mirror again. She needed to focus.

Peters returned with his coffee and shut the door. “So. Ava Jalali. J-A-L-A-L-I, is that right?”

Ava nodded. “Uh-huh.”

Peters leaned forward. “Okay. It's come to our attention that you were the last person anyone remembers with Nolan Hotchkiss the night of his death.”

Ava frowned, her pulse racing double time. “I doubt that.”

Peters didn't blink. “An eyewitness said they saw you on the dance floor with him. You were ‘all over him,' as he describes it.”

Thank
god
Alex hadn't come here with her. All at once, the memory of Nolan's close, hot body pressed up against hers on the dance floor flashed into her mind.
Does your boyfriend know you're flirting with me?
he'd said, his breath smelling like booze. It had taken everything in Ava's power to keep it together.
What he doesn't know won't hurt him.
She remembered how hard her heart was pounding. How she kept peeking over her shoulder, terrified that Alex would step into the room and see what she was doing—she'd sent him on a wild-goose chase for her phone, which she said she'd left in his car, which was parked at the far end of the street. When Ava led Nolan upstairs, Alex was still probably searching for the phone that wasn't there.

“Who told you that?” she blurted.

“Is it true?” Peters countered.

Ava twisted a strand of hair around her finger. “I had too much to drink that night. But I have a boyfriend, and he knows Nolan and I were together a few years ago. He's still jealous. I'd rather he didn't know.”

“None of this will get back to him,” Peters assured her. “So you
were
flirting with Nolan?”

Ava weighed her options. If kids on the dance floor saw her, it might not be smart to lie. “I'm a flirt,” she said matter-of-factly. “Especially after a few beers.”

“Did you go upstairs with him?”

She drew back and made a face. “I wasn't
that
drunk.”

“Someone said they saw you.”

From her bravest, strongest depths, Ava found the courage to look the detective in the eye. “Did one of Nolan's buddies tell you that?” She leaned forward, batting her eyelashes. “Not every girl goes upstairs with guys at parties. Some of us have some dignity.”

“Okay, okay.” The detective flipped some pages of his notebook, staring at scrawl. “But
someone
went upstairs with Nolan that night—several eyewitnesses said they were sure they saw him going up with a girl. Any ideas who that might be?”

Ava shook her head, her long hair swishing back and forth. Her heart beat hard. “Nope.”

“And you weren't . . . mad at Nolan for some reason? Because I heard you two had a bad breakup. Nolan even started some rumors about you, if I'm not mistaken? Rumors that you were . . . more than a ‘flirt,' as you say. And maybe Nolan brushed you off at the party, wasn't into what you wanted. Maybe you got angry.”

“I assure you, Nolan wasn't the one who did the brushing off.” Ava paused, wondering if she'd been too sarcastic. “I'm sorry, Detective. But that's all I know.”

“Can you tell me where you went after you danced with Nolan?”

“Back to my boyfriend. Where I belonged.”

“And he can vouch for you?”

“Of course,” Ava said, looking Peters straight in the eye. Alex had returned shortly after she'd snuck back downstairs; she'd found him in the kitchen after the prank. It was, mostly, the truth.

The detective stared at her for what felt like ages. Ava stared back, willing herself not to blink.
They don't know anything
, she kept repeating to herself.
All they know is that he went upstairs with a girl. And they don't even know that, not really.

Finally, Peters drew back. “Okay, then,” he said. He tossed his empty coffee cup in a small trash can in the corner. “I'll drive you back to school. Thanks for your time.”

Ava's legs felt like Jell-O as she followed him down the long hall and climbed back into his squad car once more. After Peters slammed the door behind him and started the engine, he draped his arm over the back of the seats and smiled at her. “But you'll tell me if you remember anything else, right? Anything at all?”

“Of course,” Ava said, smiling her brightest, most helpful smile back at him.

But what she really meant was,
Like hell I will.

“SO IT'S THE SEVENTY-SIXTH MINUTE
of the game, and we're tied with Kirkland. And we're all on edge, because this is the game that decides who goes on to state. I'm hanging back in midfield, and here comes their forward.”

Caitlin poked at her salmon with the edge of her fork, only half listening as Josh recounted one of his soccer victories to the table. Next to her, her mother Sibyl laughed.

“I remember that kid,” she said. “He was massive. I couldn't believe he could move that fast.”

“Yeah, he's at Indiana this year. Full ride,” Josh said. He took another huge bite of his Dungeness crab cakes. “Anyway, so the clock is ticking, and this guy is huge and fast and heading straight for the goal. No one else is even close to him.” He paused dramatically. “I'm the only one who's got a chance to stop him.”

Across the table from Caitlin, Josh's dad, Ted, sipped a glass of red wine, his face flushed and pleasant. Next to him, Josh's mom, Michelle, watched her son with a rapt expression. Caitlin's moms were on her side of the table—Sibyl next to her, and Mary Ann on the other side of Sibyl. They were gathered at the Martell-Lewises' house for their weekly Wednesday dinner. Jeremy wasn't there, and Caitlin couldn't help but wonder where he was.

Just two days ago they'd almost kissed. Or . . .
had
they? Maybe she'd misinterpreted. Maybe he was going to lean forward just to give her a friendly, platonic hug. That
had
to be it.

“What happened then?” breathed Michelle, looking at Josh.

Caitlin fought the urge to roll her eyes. She was proud of Josh, too, but that game had been almost a year ago, and they'd all been there. They'd all
seen
what happened next.

Josh put down his fork and leaned in to the table. “There was no way I could overtake him—I could see that. He was too fast, and I was, like, thirty yards away. But suddenly, out of nowhere, it just hit me like a bolt from the blue. I could see the path stretched out at my feet, like someone had laid it out just for me. It was almost glowing, it was so vivid. And I knew—if I could just follow the path, I would head him off, just in time.”

Caitlin tried to hang on to Josh's words, but she found her mind drifting. She thought instead about what Ava had told her when she called her an hour ago. All those things Ava had said about getting called into the police station. About people seeing Ava go upstairs with Nolan. And if the police were onto Ava, how long before she mentioned who she was with and what they'd done? Then what would her parents do? Caitlin was all they had left now. This would destroy them.

Suddenly she heard Josh clearing his throat. She gave a little start as she realized that everyone at the table had gone still. Looking up, she saw that Josh had pulled a small black velvet box from his pocket. Smiling confidently, he slid it across the table toward her.

Caitlin's mouth went dry. Her eyes darted around the table. Ted had a knowing smile beneath his full salt-and-pepper beard, but next to him, Michelle's hands had flown to her lips. Mary Ann grabbed Sibyl's hand as they both watched, wide-eyed. Across from her, Josh gave her a
come-on-open-it-already
nod.

Only, Caitlin didn't
want
to open it. She was afraid to see what it was. Everyone was looking at her, though, and every second that ticked by made the moment seem even weirder. She took a deep breath and flipped the lid.

Inside was a pendant, hanging on a slender golden chain. It was in the shape of a small glass ball—inside was a small chunk of something green. The air flooded back into her lungs, and the tension at the table was broken.

“It's a chunk of turf,” Josh said, giving her his lopsided grin. “From Husky Stadium.”

“That's lovely,” Mary Ann exclaimed, leaning across Sibyl to peer down into the box. Caitlin thought she sounded a tiny bit disappointed. Did her moms actually want her to get
engaged
. . . when she was still in high school? Then again, that way, she and Josh would be the perfect soccer-playing couple . . . forever.

Caitlin didn't even want to think about it, though. And it freaked her out, a little, when she realized how
much
she didn't want to think about it.
Should
she be thinking about it?

“Thanks,” she said, finally finding her voice. She shut the box. “That's really . . . cool.”

Josh grinned. “You're going to dominate at semifinals,” he said. “I can't wait.”

Caitlin stared down at her plate, a blur of green and red. She knew this was a nice gesture. She knew it was supposed to make her happy. But for some reason, it just made her feel . . . trapped. Something about the way her moms were staring at her—like she was their last hope, like they
needed
her to be happy—and the way Josh was looking at her, so sweet but so unaware of anything she was going through, prickled at her in ways she couldn't even explain. She needed out of here before she started crying at the table.

“Um, can you excuse me for a minute?” she mumbled, jumping up. “I'm not feeling well.”

She turned and headed out of the kitchen and ran upstairs. But instead of going to her room, she went to Taylor's. She and her moms hadn't changed his room at all; there were still books on the floor where he'd left them, and the calendar was still turned to the month he died. They kept saying they would clean it out and turn it into a guest room, but somehow they never seemed to get around to it.

Images of Taylor came floating back to her as she fell onto his twin bed. Her little brother's habit of carrying all his textbooks at once in his backpack instead of using his locker like a normal person, so that he looked like a turtle under the giant hump of his bag. The way he looked bent over a Dungeons & Dragons figurine, painting the armor with a tiny, delicate brush, his tongue between his lips in concentration. The way he screamed, high-pitched and girlish, if someone startled him. Caitlin had loved to sneak up on him and poke him in the ribs just to see him jump.

Then she thought about Nolan shutting him into a locker for three hours, just as he'd documented in
Reasons Death Is Better Than School
. When Nolan had tripped him in the hall, sending him flat across the filthy linoleum. When Nolan had stepped on Taylor's iPhone to break it, or ripped the pages out of his Robert Jordan novel right in front of him. Caitlin hadn't seen most of these things happen—she'd only read about them in Taylor's journal after the fact. Taylor had swallowed all of it so bravely. He'd kept it to himself, the last entries both hopeless and resolute. To him, death
was
a better option than high school. He would escape Nolan.

No wonder she'd been so up for that prank at the party. No wonder she'd taken Julie by the arm when they all convened by Nolan's stairs, her body thrumming with adrenaline. Even now, even knowing she could be blamed for his death, she had no regrets for giving Nolan a taste of his own medicine.

“Caitlin.”

Startled out of her thoughts, she sat. Mary Ann stood in the doorway.

She thought her body language would drive her mom away, but Mary Ann walked in and paused next to the bed. She could feel her gaze on her. Her eyes were the same dark brown as Caitlin's. Whenever strangers saw her with Mary Ann and asked if Caitlin was adopted, Mary Ann would always say, “No, she's mine. Can't you tell by the eyes?”

Mary Ann sat next to Caitlin on the bed and folded her hands. “Is everything okay, honey?” she asked in a small voice. “Are you missing Taylor?”

“No,” she said sullenly. “I mean, yes, I always miss him. But no more tonight than usual.”

“Is it something with Josh?” Mary Ann sighed. “You two shouldn't fight. You're so good together.”

Caitlin stared at her mother, frustration building inside her. Why were her moms so obsessed with her and Josh's love life? “I'm not fighting with Josh. Why would you think that?”