When we were on a break during the festival, Chavi had chased me through the maze, both of us laughing our heads off, and when I made it through to the exit, Josephine had caught and twirled me in great circles until Chavi crashed into us both. We couldn’t even get up we were giggling so hard, breathless and full of life.
I didn’t mean to lose contact with Josephine, but I think we both knew it was going to happen. As much as I loved her as another sister, there was a Chavi-shaped space between us, and the edges of it hurt.
With the too-small crown of roses still on my head, perched at a somewhat precarious angle, I plop back onto the bed and start reading again.
She’s talking about the second day, when Dad gave Mum so much shit about eating a burger that she went and got two beef hot dogs just to be spiteful, and the tone shifts. I remember us sitting a little apart from everyone, sprawled over a blanket with Josephine in the shade rather than at the picnic tables or the pavilions. Chavi and I always made a point of scarfing our burgers down first so Dad wouldn’t see them.
He wasn’t any more religious or observant than Mum, but he felt guiltier about it.
Or just guilty, I suppose. Mum seemed to embrace plainspoken agnosticism with a sense of relief.
Reading Chavi’s words, I can sort of remember the man who came up to us, because he asked us if we were sisters. I was sitting in her lap, and even back then, when I was a too-skinny almost-twelve-year-old waiting for my weight to catch up with my growth spurt, it was just a stupid question. Sure, Chavi was darker than me, but I was still spectrums browner than any of our very white neighbors.
He seemed sad. I couldn’t put my finger on why I thought that, not even when Chavi asked me later, but I remember that. He just seemed sad, even though he was smiling at us.
Chavi mentions him again a week later, after our monthly Sister Day breakfast at the diner. We went to the cinema after that—Saturday mornings, they’d play black-and-white classics on the big screens—and she went to get candy while I was in the restroom. She seemed flustered, but when I asked her about it, she said a jerk from one of her classes asked for her number.
That isn’t what she wrote, though. She’d noticed what I hadn’t, that someone had followed us from the diner. When I was in the bathroom, she lit into him for being creepy, told him she’d call the manager and the cops if he didn’t leave us the hell alone.
He thanked her.
She writes that she was confused as shit by it, but he thanked her for being such a good sister and then left the cinema.
She doesn’t mention him again.
A week later, she was dead.
Dammit. I can’t remember anything else about him. Just that he was sad and had a sister. I know I didn’t write about him; for a while after Chavi died, I escaped into compulsively reading my last weeks with her. I still reread that journal more than any other.
“Priya!” Mum yells up the stairs. “Archer’s here!”
He’d probably just gotten to Denver when we texted Finney, and he had to turn around and drive all the way back.
When I get downstairs, he’s on the step with the tissue-wrapped stalks of hyacinth. He glances up at me with a grimace. “Sterling says to let her know if I make you uncomfortable, and she’ll do something painful to me the next time we spar in the gym.”
“I like Sterling.”
“I’m sorry I made that kind of protection necessary.”
“Why did you?”
He doesn’t answer immediately, still crouching down to take pictures of the untouched flowers. “The FBI uses cold cases in academy training to teach us that we can’t solve every case,” he says finally. “It’s supposed to teach us pragmatism.”
“What did it teach you instead?”
“You know, I honestly used to think that cases only went unsolved because investigators got lazy.” He transfers the flowers to an evidence bag, then seals and signs it. When he straightens, he leans against the wall like he’s settling in for conversation. “I was an idiot, and arrogant. My academy friends and I used to brag that we’d have flawless case records.”
“Then you learned that life is messy?”
“I grew up black in small-town South Carolina, where my high school mascot was a Confederate general; I thought I knew all there was about life being messy. People look at me now with a suit and a badge and think I don’t belong.”
“And you want to prove them wrong.”
“I do. But . . . I can’t use other people to do it. And seeing the strain you’re under . . . I was incredibly stupid to suggest you should make yourself bait. I was ignorant and out of line, and I sincerely apologize.”
“Accepted.”
He blinks at me.
“If you really want to grovel, I can hand you over to Mum; she’s much better at demanding that sort of thing.”
Chuckling, Archer peels off the neoprene gloves and shoves them in his pocket. “You really are something.”
After he leaves, I text Sterling. No need for unmanning; he even made a very good apology.
Good, I get back, but I’ll probably try anyway. Really make the lesson stick.
When the shipping container is finally in place, Mum heads up to Denver to put a few hours into the office. The move is less than three weeks away, so they’re piling a lot of work on her to make sure she’s ready. To do my part in making sure I’m ready for the move, I settle in with the schoolwork that it was too loud to do this morning.
Around four, there’s a knock on the door.
I freeze, staring down the hall at the door like if I just look hard enough, I can see through it. I almost call out “Who is it?” but don’t.
Easing off the couch, I reach for Chavi’s softball bat, which now lives in whatever room I’m spending time in. We had to pack the knives. The bat is heavy and solid, the grip comfortingly rough in my hands.
“Miss Priya?” a male voice calls. “Miss Priya, you home?”
Is that . . . is that Officer Clare?
I switch my screen over to the camera feed, and yes, that’s Officer Clare standing on the porch, his hat in hand. His voice is unmistakably Texas. With absolutely no intention of answering him, I take the time to study him. He’s probably in his forties, his face worn but otherwise unremarkable. I try to place it against my admittedly spotty memory of the cops around Chavi’s murder.
He looks vaguely familiar, but not in any meaningful way. He’s not overwhelmingly bland like Landon is—was—he just doesn’t spark specific recognition.
“If you’re home, Miss Priya,” he calls through the door, “I just swung by to apologize for the other day. I’ll try you another time.”
It seems to be the day for apologies.
Mum has the contact info for Officer Hamilton; I text her with the news of Clare’s visit so she can let Hamilton know.
Why would Clare come, without his partner, to a residence where he expects a minor to be home on her own? It’s different when Eddison does it; he’s family, and it was years before he’d hang out just the two of us. Maybe I’m paranoid, given everything else going on, but I don’t like Clare showing up here.
Mum texts back three rows of flame emojis.
Her name is Chavi Sravasti, and she’s extraordinary.
She’s painting faces at a spring festival when you first see her, and rage fills you. It’s been years, but you still remember Leigh Clark’s duplicity, her evil. How sweet and demure the preacher’s daughter appeared at the same tasks, but it was only a mask for her true behavior.
But there’s something different about Chavi. She laughs and jokes with the children, chivvying the adults into getting their faces painted as well. She’s talented, too, branching out beyond the school carnival symbols into masks and detailed works. Like most of the girls—and many of the boys—she wears a ribbon crown of tiny fabric roses over her dark hair.