Maybe someone would faint—like the dead kid’s mother had the day before. But, well, been there, done that.
Time for more dish on the shooters, she decided, and had nearly started for her car when she spotted the cop.
Officer McVee, she thought, edging around the tree. She’d tried to pigeonhole McVee a couple of times—the young female officer who’d shot and killed John Jefferson Hobart equaled pure clickbait. McVee wasn’t the cooperative sort, but right now said cop was hanging back, avoiding the gaggle of reporters and cameras.
Waiting.
Interesting, Seleena thought, settling down to wait herself.
The casket came out, so she took a couple shots with her long lens, just in case nothing better came along. She watched McVee moving up, and spotted one more prize.
Reed Quartermaine—teenage protector of the firefighter’s kid, the kid whose mother took one in the spine.
Seleena took a couple shots of them talking, then walking together, then getting in the cop’s car. And while everyone else headed to the cemetery, she ran to her own car.
She nearly lost them twice, but considered that more good luck. If she looked like a tail, the cop might spot her.
Running potential copy in her head, she parked a good distance away, watched from the car until her quarry settled on a bench.
Pleased with the investment she’d made in the lens, she wandered as close as she dared. She was just one more person casually taking photos of the bay, of the boats.
Maybe she couldn’t get close enough to hear the conversation—the cop wouldn’t talk to her—but she had her lead as she framed her shots.
On another painful day in Rockpoint, death unites heroes of the DownEast Mall Massacre.
Oh yeah, that leap was coming soon.
CHAPTER FIVE
— Three years later —
Simone rolled up to sit and nudged the man who shared her bed.
“You gotta go.”
He grunted.
She knew his name, even knew why she’d decided to have sex with him. He looked clean, in good shape, and had wanted just what she had.
Plus he had an interesting face, sort of chipped and chiseled and sharp. In her head she’d seen him as a modern-day Billy the Kid. The hard-boned western outlaw.
It had taken her awhile to embrace the idea that one-night-stands had particular and peculiar advantages over the drama and hassle of relationships—or the pretext of them.
It wasn’t taking quite as long for her to realize they also carried a whole lot of boredom in their wake.
The guy, Ansel, dressed in the dim glow of light through the window. She hadn’t pulled the shades—why bother?
She liked looking out at New York, and didn’t mind if some of New York liked looking back at her.
He said, “I had a good time.”
She said, “Me, too,” and meant it enough that it didn’t qualify as a lie.
“I’ll call you.”
“Great.” Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t. It didn’t matter much either way.
Since she didn’t bother to get up, he made his own way out. When she heard the door shut, she grabbed a sleepshirt, quick-walked out to lock the apartment door.
She wanted a shower and turned into the bathroom she shared with Mi in their tiny apartment. The fact that it boasted two bedrooms and was reasonably close to the campus offset the fourth-floor walk-up, the unreliable hot water, and the sting of the monthly rent.
But they were together, in New York. Sometimes they forgot to look for the ghost of the friend who wasn’t there.
Simone showered off the sex, stuck her head under the stingy spray of lukewarm water. She’d cut her hair into a short wedge and had recently dyed it the purple of a ripe eggplant.
It made her feel different. It seemed she searched forever for something that made her feel different from the girl from Rockpoint, Maine. Something that would make her look in the mirror one day and think: Oh, there you are!
She liked New York, liked the crowds, the rush, the noise, the color. And God yes, the freedom from parental criticism, questions, and expectations.
But she knew she’d come to fulfill Tish’s dream.
She liked Columbia, had worked her ass off to get in, but knew she’d done that to be a part of Mi’s dream.
She couldn’t find her own, and wasn’t sure she had one.
But being there on borrowed dreams was better than being home where everything reminded her. Where her mother would look at her choice of hair color with puzzled disapproval or her father, with that worried look in his eyes, would casually ask how she was doing.
She was fine. How many times did she have to say it? It was Mi who still suffered from anxiety attacks and nightmares. Though they came less frequently now.
She’d done everything possible to bury that night along with her friend. Since Mi’s release from the hospital, Simone read nothing that connected to that night, watched no reports on it. Every anniversary, she watched and read no news at all, in case she tripped over some mention.
She went home only on winter break and for a week in the summer—and the summer week she spent on the island with CiCi. When she wasn’t in class, she worked. When she wasn’t in class or working, she played—hard.
Out of the shower, she wrapped herself in a bath sheet—Egyptian cotton, courtesy of her mother—then swiped off the skinny mirror over the teacup sink.
No, she thought, not yet. She saw a girl with tired eyes and wet hair, and nothing more.
She hung the towel, dragged the sleepshirt back on. When she stepped out of the batheroom, she saw Mi in their sorry excuse of a kitchen, putting a kettle on their two-burner stove.
“Can’t sleep?”
“Restless. I heard the door.”
Mi had let her hair grow into a straight rain of black. When she turned, Simone saw another pair of tired eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“Doesn’t matter. Do I know him?”
“I don’t think so. Doesn’t matter, either.” Moving into the kitchen, Simone got out two cups. “The music was good, and he wasn’t a bad dancer. I wish you’d come with me.”
“I needed to study.”
“You’re acing everything—again.”
“Because I study.”
Simone waited while Mi fiddled with the tea. “Something’s up, I can see it.”
“I’ve been accepted for a summer research program.”
“That’s great—like last summer? Dr. Jung, biomedical engineer.”
“That’s the dream. Not exactly like last summer. The program’s in London.”
“Holy shit, Mi!” Grabbing her friend, Simone danced her around the room. “London! You’re going to London.”
“It’s not until the end of June, and … my family’s asked me to come home first. To spend the time after the semester ends and before I leave for London at home. I need to give them that.”
“Okay.” Maybe her heart dropped a little, but Simone nodded.
“Come home with me. Come home, Simone.”
“I’ve got a job—”
“You hate that job,” Mi interrupted. “If you want to waitress at some dump of a coffeehouse, you can do it anywhere. You’re not happy here. You’re doing okay at Columbia, but it doesn’t make you happy. You have sex with guys that don’t make you happy.”
“Rockpoint’s not going to make me happy.”
Trim, tiny, with that gymnast’s grace, Mi went back to finish making the tea.
“You need to find what does. You’re here because of me and Tish, and I’m not going to be here all summer. You should find what makes you happy. Your art— Don’t do that!” she snapped when Simone rolled her eyes. “You’ve got talent.”
“CiCi has talent. I’m just playing around.”
“So stop playing around!” Mi snapped again. “Stop playing around, stop screwing around, stop fucking around!”
“Wow.” Simone picked up the tea she no longer wanted, leaned back on a fridge manufactured in the last century. “I like playing around, screwing around, and fucking around. I’m not going to spend my life studying, researching, holed up in a lab because I don’t want to have a life. Jesus, when’s the last time you had sex?”
“You have enough for both of us.”