“Did you see anyone else?” I ask. The sound of sirens is getting closer.
Ivy shakes her head. Color starts to return to her cheeks, and her shoulders straighten as she walks toward the sneakers. “I don’t know why I was so spooked, I just—”
Then she gasps, stops in her tracks, and collapses onto the ground.
For a second, I’m too shocked to react. Then I yell, “Ivy!” and sprint toward her, dropping to my knees and pulling her still form toward me. I put one hand against her neck and lift her face toward mine, heart hammering, to check her pulse and her breathing. Both are steady, but her eyes are closed and she’s a dead weight in my arms. “Ivy,” I say again, like there’s any chance of her answering me right now. “What the hell happened?” I look toward the cabinet, wondering if she fainted from shock at the sight of a dead body, but I still can’t see anything except the purple sneakers.
Cal crouches beside me and points. “I think that happened.”
I follow his gaze and almost laugh, even though there’s nothing funny about any of this. There’s a syringe lying a few feet away from us on the floor, sharp and deadly-looking. My heart rate starts to return to normal as I say, “Guess somebody still faints at the sight of needles, huh?” I look past the syringe, and catch sight of a phone beneath a nearby easel. “Grab Ivy’s phone, would you?”
Cal does and stuffs it into his pocket, his face pale. “Mateo, do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” I ask, seconds before realizing the sound of sirens has gotten louder than ever. All of a sudden, it’s like they’re on top of us.
“Something’s off. Something’s wrong.” Cal’s practically vibrating, bouncing on the balls of his feet with adrenaline-fueled anxiety.
I can’t believe I even have to say this, while holding a motionless Ivy and backing away from a maybe-dead guy, but—“A lot of things are pretty fucking wrong right now, Cal.”
He ignores me, crossing to the oversized windows and looking down. “The police are pulling up,” he reports. “Right in front of the building. How would they even know to be here? Did Ivy call them?”
“I don’t think so. She would’ve said something if she did,” I say. “You think the police have the code for the door?”
The sound of shattering glass makes us both flinch. Cal passes a hand across his mouth. “I think they’re using a different way in,” he says. More glass breaks, and muffled voices reach our ears. “They’re gonna be here any second.”
“Dude, what…” I glance between Cal and the syringe. “What’s going on? What the hell are we supposed to do?”
Cal’s eyes take up half his face as he says, “I think we should leave.”
Now I do laugh, low and harsh. “Great idea. We’ll just wave at the police while we carry an unconscious girl past them, and leave poor…”
I can’t bring myself to say Boney’s name. Maybe it’s not even Boney, I think. Maybe it’s some tortured artist who overdosed and…what, exactly? Flung the syringe away before he collapsed? “Leave this poor guy behind,” I finish.
I was in the room once before with a dead person. It was my great-uncle Hector; he was eighty-four and sick enough that we made the trip to the Bronx when I was nine years old to “say our goodbyes,” as Ma said. Uncle Hector was in bed, lying motionless with his eyes closed, my aunt Rose clutching his hand with a rosary. And then, suddenly, he was a different kind of still. I could see it even from across the room, and my mother could, too. Ma put her hand on my shoulder, squeezed, and murmured, “That was very peaceful.”
There’s nothing peaceful about any of this.
“We don’t have to pass the police,” Cal says. “There’s a back staircase at the other end of the hall. It opens into an alleyway behind the building. Totally different street.”
That seems like simultaneously the best and worst idea I’ve ever heard. My brain isn’t working properly, and I wish to God that Ivy would wake up and do the thinking for us. “Okay, but…shouldn’t we tell them what we saw?” I ask.
“Like what? A pair of sneakers and a syringe? They’re gonna see the same thing. If whoever’s over there can be helped…” Cal crosses back toward the room’s entrance and pauses on the threshold, his voice dropping into a near whisper. “They’ll help him. We can’t. All we’re gonna do is get into a shitload of trouble because we’re not supposed to be here.”
And just like that, he’s gone.
I hesitate for half a beat, looking from Ivy’s face to those goddamn purple sneakers, until the voices below me start getting way too close for comfort. I think about what might happen if I stay. I didn’t do anything wrong, but unlike Cal, I can’t count on cops giving me the benefit of the doubt. Getting found like this—holding an unconscious girl in the same room where somebody might’ve just died—could get me arrested or worse. Even if it doesn’t, the last thing I need is police poking around in my life, questioning me.