“What about you? I thought you couldn’t drive without an adult in your car.”
“I can’t. I snuck out.” She nodded back at the trailer. “That’s where Aiden lives.”
I glanced at the trailer, which was old and filthy, the siding grayed and the awning torn. Plastic lawn chairs circled a fire pit full of beer cans.
“So you’re still seeing him.”
“Yeah.” She took another drag while looking at me from the side, self-consciously. “Sorry you got sent back.” Cautious now. “How was it?”
“Not great.”
“Things have been sucking for me too.”
She was comparing her life to my life? I gritted my teeth, tried to remember she was just a kid.
“How’s that?”
“Mom’s been freaking out since Cathy was murdered.” She sighed, her mouth twisting in a sad smile. “I remember her from when I was a kid. She was funny and she used to come over all the time, then she got messed up and I wasn’t allowed to see her anymore. Weird to think she’s dead, you know?”
I did know, remembering how I’d sat in Nicole’s room after she died, staring at her things and trying to understand that she was never coming back. I kept quiet, knowing the less I said, the more Ashley babbled. And she did.
“My mom and dad are fighting all the time now. Mom’s watching me constantly. I can’t do anything. We’ve fought a lot too, about Aiden and you.”
“Me?”
“I told her I didn’t think you and Ryan killed Cathy, that it didn’t make sense. She told me to stay out of it and let the police handle it.”
“Good idea.”
“There’s something up, though. She’s spending all this time with Kim and Rachel, but she never even talked to them for years. Now she gets lots of calls. I saw her clearing her cell phone history, but she left her cell on the counter today and she had a text from Rachel saying they had to meet ASAP.”
After my little visit.
A guy came out onto the front steps, banging the door behind him. He wasn’t much taller than Ashley and had a scruffy goatee. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, just baggy jeans that showed the top part of his underwear.
“You coming back in, Ash?” He gave me an odd look, like he was trying to figure out where he’d seen me before.
“Yeah, in a minute, just talking to a friend.”
He stared at me again for a second, then went back inside.
“I’m not supposed to be talking to you,” I said. “If he says anything…”
“He won’t. I just thought you should know what’s going on with my mom, so you can be careful.”
“She’s your mother. Why are you telling me this stuff?”
She stared down at the cigarette in her hand and said, “I never thought I’d be a smoker, didn’t think I had it in me. But then one day I just started and now I like it. It makes me wonder what else is in me, like maybe I have all kinds of sides I don’t know about.”
I was still trying to process what she’d said, and what it meant, when she looked up and quickly said, “I think my mom did something bad, like really bad.”
We stared at each other. I thought about what I should do, if I should just be honest with Ashley. Finally I said, “She lied at my trial. I never fought with my sister that night—lots of other times but not that night. Shauna hated me.”
“So it was like how I wrote in my essay? She was a bully?”
“Your mom and her friends were brutal to me, even after they started hanging out with my sister. But something changed that summer in the weeks before she died. I’m not sure what happened between them, but something did.”
A pulse was beating hard in the pale skin of Ashley’s throat.
“Do you think … do you think my mom did it?”
“I don’t know what went down that night, but those girls know the truth. Cathy was starting to talk to people about what happened. Now she’s dead.”
“So you think my mom did something to Cathy?” Her voice was scared, lifting up on Cathy’s name. “Just because she’s a bully doesn’t mean she’d murder her, right? Like how you were angry at Nicole, that doesn’t mean you’d kill her.”
Her expression was almost desperate, and I wondered if the real reason she’d wanted to do the documentary was to disprove her fears that her mother might be a murderer. Would she confront her? I didn’t have any reason to protect Shauna, but I still wasn’t sure of Ashley’s motives—what if she found out somehow we’d talked to the dealer, and threw it in her mother’s face? Next thing you know, he’d go missing too. It was better if I didn’t reveal too much else.
I said, “You should talk to your mom about that.” I’d have loved to see the look on Shauna’s face if Ashley did drop that bomb. I caught a motion out of the corner of my eye, a curtain flickering in the window. Aiden was watching. I wondered if he’d figured out who I was yet, if he’d call the police.
“I’ve got to go,” I said.