The Sound of Us (15 page)

“Isn’t it called ‘Boyfriend’?”

“Whatever floats his boat.”

Before I know it, my time has run out. Holly asks if I have any last questions before they leave. And I do—one question for her. Roman says he’ll meet her outside.

After he’s gone I ask, “If you had to describe your relationship with Roman in one word, what would it be?”

She doesn’t even blink. “
Ya’aburnee.
”

Three hours later, I find myself in the small hotel room I can afford on my measly paycheck. There’s a cockroach in the bathroom, and I’m not sure whether it’s alive or pretending to be dead. I sit down and type Holly’s word into Google.

Ya’aburnee.

Arabic. Morbid and beautiful, it is a declaration of one’s hope that they’ll die before the other because life, no matter how wonderful and exciting, would be too difficult without them.

It means, quite simply, “You bury me.”

A thunderous knock wakes me out of a dead sleep. I spring ramrod straight, my legs tangled in the comforter. An empty wine glass I lost somewhere between the balcony and the couch goes rolling onto the carpet. I bend to pick it up as another loud
thud
quakes the front door.

I wince, massaging my throbbing temples. Oh, God, did I drink that
entire
bottle of wine? Where is the wine anyway? Looking around, I find the bottle wedged between the couch and the cushions. You know you’ve hit rock bottom when you’ve slept with a bottle of merlot.

No wonder my head’s pounding.

A muffled voice half-yells from the other side of the door. It sounds urgent. And sort of familiar. I disentangle my legs and roll off the couch, twisting my hair up into a bun.

“Coming!” I half-yell, half-moan.

Another knock, this time so urgent it rattles the deadbolt.

This better be the fucking president, waking me up at 10:07 in the morning. Or maybe Bon Jovi himself?

When I open the door, a young woman with magenta dreads throws up her arms. “Oh my
God
! Finally!” She barges inside, all sweet coconut perfume and four-inch heels. “Have you
seen
the rags this morning? You’re in some deep shit, Juniper.”

Am I still dreaming? I blink again, squinting at the blast of magenta dreadlocks that looks ridiculously eccentric this morning against her dark chocolate skin. “…
Maggie
?”

“Who else would it be? The Pope?” She rolls her eyes, digging into her purse, and pulls out a tabloid. She waves it into the air, the bazillions of bracelets on her arm jingling like sleigh bells. I wince at the sound.
Hangover no likey
.

“Mayday! This is deep.
You’re
in deep. And that was one
long-ass
ride! Jesus” —she pushes the trash magazine into my chest, pressing her legs together— “I gotta pee like a racehorse. Read it!”

She slams the bathroom door as I finally inspect the magazine. My stomach flips. A photo of gray eyes framed by a wild mess of pink hair peer over Roman’s shoulder, staring back at me.

The memory of the Lona comes back in full force. Dancing cheek-to-cheek. The
kiss
. John. Caspian’s sexuality.

It wasn’t a dream.

“Oh no.”

The headline slapped over my forehead reads, ‘ROMAN’S HOLIDAY?’

I tear through the magazine to find the cover story. “A full-page spread?” I groan, skimming through the article. “’Seen at an exclusive nightclub in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, with a mystery girl, have Roman’s expectations fallen since Holly Hudson?’ What the hell? Fallen?”

“And according to the rag,” Maggie shouts from the bathroom, “you are
totes
hipster!”

“Hipster?” I choke. “Seriously?”

The toilet flushes and she prances out, wiggling the bottom of her skirt down off her hips. “It also totes slut-shames you, like you’re some girl looking for a good time.”

A knot forms in my throat. “No one will believe this, right? Right?”

Because she’s my best friend, she shakes her head and contradicts herself at the same time. “They’ll believe it.”

Like they believed Roman killed Holly.

I slam the magazine shut. “We didn’t even
have
sex!”

She snags a banana from the counter and peels it open. She’s in her work clothes—as close as a pinstriped vest and an A-line crimson skirt are—but something tells me that she never went to work this morning, and won’t be going. “They won’t miss me,” she replies, taking a bite. “The second I saw that on
The Juice
site…I knew I had to be here for my girl. Besides, if I had to put the Seuss books back on the shelf one more time, I was gonna pop a kid.”

“I just don’t get how he could’ve gotten this picture.”

“
Hello
. Camera,
click
. That’s how pap do it.”

Because I’m still in my clothes from yesterday, and probably smelling to high heaven, I take John’s memory card out of my pocket and hold it out to her. “But I have the pictures.”

Her eyes widen as she snatches it out of my hand and turns it around in her hand, inspecting it. Without looking up from the chip, she asks, “Got your laptop on you?”

“It’s at home.”

“That’s fine.” She hurries over to the gargantuan purse she dropped by the bathroom door and pulls out her DLSR. She pops out her own memory chip and puts his in. “Okay, let’s see what’s on this then...” Her frown deepens as she clicks through the pictures, searching through the photos. “This can’t be right.”

“What do you mean?”

“
This
.” She shakes her camera. “This
card
. It’s not from the Lona.” Her mocha eyes connect with mine. “They’re pictures from the night Holly died.”

I snatch the camera from Maggie and scan through the photos, feeling myself pale at every one.

The photos aren’t close, but you can tell it’s Holly. They look like screenshots to a scene in a movie. She’s holding a glass of wine in one hand, listening to her iPod, her eyes closed. Her hair floats around her in the bathtub beside candles and incense, nothing more than a soothing bubble bath. She has one foot up out of the water. It’s black and blue. Hadn’t there been something about a fall the week before?

John must’ve been outside her bathroom window, nothing more than a peeping Tom.

But then...something begins to go wrong in the pictures. The wine glass tips out of her hand onto the floor, coating the tiles in a blood-red stain, and she begins to sink beneath the bubbles, her hair floating like a wreath around her. First her chin goes under, then her lips, and then sliding, sliding...

My stomach heaves. I shove the camera back to Maggie.

“He must’ve taken your photos on the local memory,” Maggie says, although her heart isn’t in it. She shuts off her camera and pops out the memory card again. “Roman really
wasn’t
there the night she died.”

“But John was, and he could’ve done something.”

Maggie shakes her head. She drops her camera back into her purse and begins to pace. She’s followed John for a year, kept up with him, idolized him, almost. The confusion on her face is sickening. “That shithead. He could’ve saved her! He could’ve—but he just—Juniper, this is big.” Then she gasps and seizes my shoulders with her claw-like nails so hard, it makes me wince. “This is our leverage. Two people can play at this game.”

“Yeah, by going to the
police
.”

She rolls her eyes. “Check in, okay? He just slut-shamed you on every major tabloid in the world. It’s on. It’s on like Donkey Kong.”

“By taking it to the police,” I reiterate. The last thing I want to do is become any more involved in this—this
paparazzi
madness, but when I say as much she just glares.

“We have a chance to do something, and before you say ‘oh, let’s wimp out and take it to the police’ think about this. What’ll the police do?”

“Charge him with criminal negligence...?”

She holds the memory card between us. “No, you love this guy, don’t you?”

“I don’t think I’d go that far,” I mutter under my breath.

“We’re going to fight like real Holidayers! Now put on your big girl panties. We don’t let other people win our war.”

“But I’m not a Holidayer.”

She rolls her eyes. “Take a shower and get ready. We’re going out.”

“Maggie, I’d rather just hide here under the couch for a few years until all of this blows over.” I start over to the couch, but she runs in front of me and puts up her hands to block my way. “
Maggie
,” I plead.

“Where the hell do you think John’s gonna be today?” she asks, ignoring the whine in my voice.

“I don’t
know
.”

“Yes you do.”

To prove her point, she snatches up the TV controller and turns it to MTV. It’s a full day of live coverage from St. Michael’s Cemetery—or it’s supposed to be. My shocked face stares at me from over Nick Lively’s purple-suited shoulder. She quirks an eyebrow. “
Now
do you know? I told you, this shit just got real. And I’m
not
going to sit around and watch my best friend get slut-shamed. Call me classy, but this means
war
.”

I purse my lips together. “The police can handle it.”

“Yeah, but they won’t release
everything
. If we hand this to the
public
? Not only will it put John at the scene of the crime, but also Roman will totes be off scot-free. He didn’t murder Holly. He wasn’t even
there
. So what do you say?” she offers, holding out her fist.

On the screen, a blue mohawk cuts through the crowd behind Nick Lively. Seeing it, my resolve strengthens. Where Boaz is, I’m sure Roman is soon to follow. But giving the photos to the press without Roman seeing them first? I just have this horrid mental image of Roman waking up tomorrow morning with new photographs of his dead best friend on the front page of the
New York Times
.

Nick Lively pulls up an old yearbook photo from sophomore year of high school when I still had braces and frizzy short hair. How the hell did they get that picture? The caption under the photo reads ‘JUNIE BALTIMORE, COMPETING WITH THE DEAD?’

My jaw twitches. Maggie’s right—if we’re going to do this, we can’t play nice.

“We give it to Roman first,” I tell her, and when she opens her mouth to rebuke I add, “Please?”

She sighs and drops her fist. “There goes my fifteen minutes of fame.”

“Don’t count that out quite yet,” I reply, ripping my eyes from the TV screen to get dressed. I don’t bother straightening my hair; I just braid it into a fishtail over my shoulder.

Maggie frowns at my Journey t-shirt and frayed shorts. “Juniper Marie Baltimore—” I wince at my full name “—we’re going to
war
, not a lawn concert.”

“I won’t stick out then, will I?” I retort.

“You have
pink hair
.”

Maggie parked her neon purple two-door car in the lot across the street. The car smells like roses and old take-out, probably from the week-old Chinese in the backseat. I shove the library books and magazines onto the floor and buckle up.

“Sorry for the junk,” she says. “You never know when the zom-pocalypse will come. And when it does, I’ll be ready.”

Every station I flip to is playing a Roman Holiday marathon. The end of “Crush on You” migrates into “Deep End,” a swoony song about—you guessed it—diving off the deep end for love, and then drowning in it. Maggie taps her fingers along to the beat, rocking her head back and forth, as we speed toward Conway. “You know, I always wondered...Roman and Holly are from Myrtle, right? How many people knew them?”

I shrug. “Not a lot, I guess.”

“But a good majority of them, right? Holly, at least, because I could
totes
see her as senior class prez or something. Oh! The viral video—the one at the golf course? Taken right
there
.” She points at
Arrg, Pirates!
as we drive past. A small smile creeps onto my face. My shoes still smell like the lagoon.

“Dad loved that place when I was a kid,” I reply instead, wanting to keep that night a secret, because it is the only thing that is truly mine anymore.

“OhmyGod, you could’ve
run into him and not even knew it!”

I think about the shape of Roman’s face, and the way his lips turn up when he’s amused. I shake my head. “Nah, I think I’d remember that.”

Maggie rolls her eyes and merges onto the interstate, following the signs toward Conway. “You sure? Because do I look exactly like I did when you first met me?”

“Sort of, minus the dreads.”

“And the fantastic boobs,” she adds, thrusting her chest up. “Think, because Roman doesn’t really have orange hair you know—”

“I know! I’ve watched you obsess over Holiday for five years,” I reply, rolling my eyes, and prop my elbow up on the door, putting my chin on my hand.

She huffs. “Jeez, take a chill, yeah?” It sounds like she drops the subject until suddenly, like she always does, she adds, “I just thought you’d have run into him before, is all.”

I do everything I can to not groan. “Well, I haven’t.”

She sneaks a glance at me from the road, thrumming her thumbs on the middle of the steering wheel. “Is something eating you?”

“Sorta,” I confess. “What John said last night—about me just being...” I hesitate, pressing my forehead against the warm glass of the window. “I don’t wanna be like...you know, just another, I don’t know, another
girl
.”

The edges of her rouge-colored lips quirk up. “Face it, girl, you’re in deep.”

The back of my neck prickles with heat. “No.” Although, I can’t shake last night, not even after his harsh words and hateful glares. When we were dancing cheek-to-cheek, it was...it felt like every love song ever made, and that isn’t something that a scornful scowl can erase.

I begin shaking my head. “I mean, I
shouldn’t
. He’s a
rock star.
”

“Yeah, duh. He’s got
models
lusting after him.”

“Yeah,” I murmur, sinking further down into my seat, “thanks for that.”

I lean up and change the station to classic rock. Guns ‘N Roses. “’Sweet Child ‘O Mine.’” I say, and for a moment I wonder if Roman would’ve hummed the chorus, or quizzed me on who played the guitar? But then I remember how he looked at me last night—like he wanted my skin to melt off my bones—and quickly turn off the radio.