It’s only when I look at the screen that I realize something’s wrong—well, not wrong, different. There’s just one file and usually the interview DVDs include around twenty different video clips.
I sit down, hit play. The video is short, less than four minutes, and it’s at a distance, shot from a telephone pole near the parking lot . . . you can see my mom step onto the ledge, you can see her hesitate, and then jump.
Watching it the first time made me hurl. The second time, I nearly cried. The third? I realize she hesitates because she’s talking and my heart rams into my throat.
I sit up straight. Is there someone else there? I rewind the video. She talks. She jumps.
I do it again. She talks. She jumps.
I close the video, pop a CD into the other drive, and install an editing software package I downloaded last year from a Russian site. Running the security video back through the program, I can pause on the frame where my mom looks like she’s talking. Then I enlarge it, lighten the shadows, tweak the coloring. . . .
And realize there’s not just one person standing behind my mom. There are two.
The one on the right is slim, tall, and could be anyone. The second is bulky, tall, and has to be Joe. Has to be.
What’s he doing there?
I rerun the enhanced video, watch how the figures move, sweat breaking out between my shoulders. I can’t tell what they’re doing. There’s light from the streetlamps below—enough for them to see, nowhere near enough for me. After another minute, I turn it off, sit on my hands to make them stop shaking. It’s been four years. This shouldn’t be so hard.
So why’s my face wet with tears?
Get it together. Get it together.
Think it through. Why did I get the DVD in the first place? Is this linked to the other interviews I’ve been receiving?
Possibly, but there’s no label, no message at the end of the video, no handwriting like before, so either the person who’s been giving them to me has changed it up . . . or someone else gave me the security video.
So who would that be?
What a joke. Like I care. Now that I’m past crying all I can think about is Joe. I know it’s him in the background. I know it. It’s in the line of the shoulders, the way the figure swings to the left after she jumps. It’s him and it makes me think of his nasty smiles. Except they weren’t just nasty, were they? They were . . . knowing. Smug. Dangerous.
In the months after my mom’s death, he used to watch me. It felt like every time I looked up, he was staring. I thought it was because he had forgotten how to grieve. Really it was because he enjoyed watching my pain.
Or because he was trying to figure out if I knew.
If I guessed.
My temples really are thumping now, my pretend migraine coming to life. I scrub them hard with both hands before hitting the eject button. The DVD slides out and, for a second, I just stare at it.
Is that . . . ink?
Picking it up by the edges, I examine the DVD’s inner ring and think—think—there’s a smear of green ink on the inside. Like someone’s thumb was stained, smudging ink onto the plastic as the DVD was put into the case.
Griff draws in green and blue ink, but he would never have given me this footage. He doesn’t think I should be pursuing this. He doesn’t—
Oh, shit, now I’m crying all over again.
36
It takes more courage than I would have thought to walk up to Griff the next morning at school. I wait for him in the hallway, feeling a bit like a spider hiding in a corner, until he stops by his locker on the way to homeroom.
“Griff?” I put my hand on his arm and he recoils.
“What is it, Wick?”
Heat rolls up my neck. “Did you give me the DVD? Of my mom on that building?” I can’t bring myself to say “suicide” anymore because it’s not accurate. I can’t bring myself to say “murder” either.
“No idea what you’re talking about,” Griff says.
He does though. Griff’s barely breathing. His body’s strung so tight and I don’t understand. We’re not together. He gave me something he knew I would want even though he didn’t approve, didn’t think I should have it.
He helped me even though I’m the last person he should ever want to help.
How did he even know?
“Thank you,” I whisper, rolling my hands into fists so I don’t touch him.
“Don’t read anything into it.”
How can I not? I need to say something here and I don’t know what it is. I want him to look at me, but he won’t.
Griff shuts his locker hard. “Milo told me you wanted it.”
I blink. Milo had no business telling Griff anything. “I . . .”
“What kind of person would give you something like that?”
I bristle. “Someone who wanted me to know the truth.”
“You really believe that’s what this is about?”
“That’s exactly what it’s about.”