“Where have you two been?”
I froze in place, turning my neck to see my father sitting on the living room couch, staring in our direction. He was holding a beer, his fingers ripping at the damp label, a little pile of paper scraps collecting on the television tray. Sunflower seeds scattered across the wood. He was clean, showered, his hair combed back and his face freshly shaven. He seemed put together, dressed in khakis and a button-down, shirt tucked in. But he also seemed tired. Exhausted, even. His skin seemed saggy and his eyes sunken in, like he hadn’t slept in days.
“We got lunch,” my mother said. “Girls trip.”
“That sounds nice.”
“But Chloe isn’t feeling well,” she said, looking at me. “I think she might be coming down with something.”
“Sorry to hear that, honey. Come here.”
I glanced at my mom and she nodded slightly. I walked back down the steps and into the living room, my heart hammering in my chest as I approached my father. He looked at me, curiosity in his eyes as I stood before him. Suddenly, I wondered if he had realized his box was missing. I wondered if he was going to ask me about it. He reached his hand toward my forehead and pressed.
“You’re hot,” he said. “Sweetheart, you’re sweating. You’re shaking.”
“Yeah,” I said, my eyes to the floor. “I think I just need to lie down.”
“Here.” He grabbed his beer and pushed it against my neck, and I flinched, the cold glass numbing my skin, its sweat dripping down my chest and dampening my shirt. I felt my pulse, hard against the bottle, a cool beating. “Does that help?”
I nodded, forcing myself to smile.
“I think you’re right,” he said. “You should lie down. Take a nap.”
“Where’s Coop?” I asked, suddenly aware of his absence.
“He’s in his room.”
I nodded. His room was on the left side of the stairs; mine, the right. I wondered if I could sneak in there without my parents noticing, curl into his bed, and pull the covers over my eyes. I didn’t want to be alone.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Go lie down. I’ll come get you in a few hours, take your temperature.”
I turned on my heel and started walking back toward the stairs, the bottle still pressed to my neck. My mother followed me, her closeness comforting, until we hit the hallway.
“Mona,” my dad called out. “Hang on a second.”
I felt her turn around, face his direction. She was silent, so my father spoke again.
“Is there something you need to tell me?”
* * *
Aaron’s eyes are drilling into my skull as I gaze out toward the river. I turn to him, unsure if I heard him correctly, or if my memories are flooding my subconscious again, clouding my judgment, confusing my brain.
“Well?” he asks again. “Is there?”
“Yeah,” I say, slowly. “That’s why I called you here. This morning, I got a call from Detective Thomas—”
“No, before we get to that. Something else. You lied to me.”
I look back toward the river and lift a coffee to my lips; we’re sitting on a bench by the water, the bridge in the distance looking even more industrial and bleak with the settling fog.
“About what?”
“About this.”
He holds his phone in front of me, and I grab it with my free hand; I’m looking at a picture of myself, wandering amidst a crowd of people. Immediately, I know where this was taken. My gray T-shirt and topknotted hair, the mangled trees dripping in Spanish moss, the yellow police tape blurry in the distance. This picture was taken one week ago in Cypress Cemetery.
“Where did you find this?”
“There’s an article online,” he says. “I was looking in the local paper, trying to identify some people to talk to, when I came across images from the search party. Imagine my surprise when I saw that you were there.”
I sigh, silently berating myself for not paying closer attention to those journalists I had seen walking around with cameras slung from their necks. I hope Daniel doesn’t see this article—or worse, Officer Doyle.
“I never told you I wasn’t there.”
“No, but you told me Cypress Cemetery held no special meaning to your family. That there would be no reason to think dumping Aubrey’s body there would be suspicious.”
“It doesn’t,” I say. “There’s not. I just stumbled across the search party, okay? I was driving around, trying to clear my head. I saw it in the distance and decided to look around.”
He stares at me, his eyes narrowing.
“In my line of work, trust is everything. Honesty is everything. If you lie to me, I can’t work with you.”
“I’m not lying,” I say, holding up my hands. “I swear.”
“Why did you decide to look around?”
“I don’t really know,” I say, taking another sip of my coffee. “Curiosity, I guess. I was thinking about Aubrey. And Lena.”
Aaron is quiet, his eyes trained on me.
“What was she like?” he asks at last, curiosity creeping into his voice. He can’t help it; I know he can’t. Nobody ever can. “Were you friends with her?”
“Something like that. I thought we were, when I was little. But now I see it for what it really was.”
“And what is that?”
“She was an older cool kid looking out for a younger nerd,” I say. “She was nice to me. She gave me hand-me-downs, taught me how to put on makeup.”
“That’s a friend,” Aaron says. “The best kind, if you ask me.”
“Yeah,” I say, nodding. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. There was something about her that was just … I don’t know. Magnetic, you know?”
I glance at Aaron, and he nods knowingly. I wonder if he had a Lena, too. I imagine everyone has a Lena in their life at some point. A person who comes blazing in like a shooting star and fizzles out just as fast.
“She used me a little bit, and I knew it, but I didn’t even care,” I continue, tapping my fingers against my coffee cup. “She didn’t have the best home life, so our house was something of an escape for her. Besides, I think she had a crush on my brother.”
Aaron raises his eyebrows.
“Everyone had a crush on my brother,” I say, my lips twitching into a gentle smile, reminiscing. “He didn’t like her like that, but I think that’s the reason why she came around so much. I remember, there was this one time—”
I stop, catching myself before I go too far.
“Sorry,” I say. “You probably don’t care about that.”
“No, I do,” he says. “Go on.”
I exhale, push my fingers into my hair.
“There was this one time, that summer. Back before everything happened. Lena was at our house—she was always making excuses about why she needed to come to our house—and she convinced me to break into Cooper’s room. I didn’t really do stuff like that … you know, break the rules. But Lena had a way about her. She made you want to push the boundaries. Live your life without fear.”
I remember that afternoon so vividly—the warmth of the afternoon sun stinging my cheeks, the blades of grass pushing deep into my back, itching my neck. Lena and I lying in the backyard, making shapes out of the clouds.
“You know what would make this even better?” she had asked, her voice raspy. “Some weed.”
I rolled my head on its side so I was facing her direction. She was still staring into the clouds, her eyes focused, her teeth digging into the side of her lip. She held a lighter in one hand, absentmindedly flicking it on and off between her bitten-down fingernails, the other held above the flame, moving closer and closer until a little black circle appeared on her palm.
“I’m positive your brother has some.”
I watched an ant crawl slowly up her cheek, toward her eyebrow. I got the feeling that she knew it was there; that she could feel it, crawling closer. That she was testing it, testing herself. Waiting to see how long she could take it—just like that fire, searing her skin—how close it could get before she was forced to reach her hand up and brush it away.
“Coop?” I asked, tilting my head back. “No way. He doesn’t do drugs.”
Lena snorted, pushing herself up onto her elbow.