Jane stepped up to the counter. The woman’s demeanor instantly changed from irritated to a warm, welcoming smile. “Welcome to Lava Java, what may I get you?”
Jane asked for drip coffee, decaf, with room for cream. Jane paid and the woman handed her the coffee with a smile.
“Is that Trevor Blinn who just went into the back?” Jane asked.
“Yes.” The woman’s smile didn’t waver.
“I went to high school with him, but I was in a very bad car accident and I had amnesia. I haven’t really talked to Trevor much since the accident. I would love to say hi to him.”
An admission of amnesia usually brought a nervous laugh, or a blink of disbelief, or a look of immediate pity. She got the last from the barista. “Oh, OK.” She didn’t say more and she didn’t move to summon Trevor. Jane sat down with her coffee and pretended to check her phone. But she decided she was not going to just sit here and meekly drink her coffee and not talk to him. She had to get him to agree to talk to her, later if not now.
Trevor reappeared and the barista stopped him in the doorway. She whispered to him, and Trevor’s gaze went to Jane.
Jane raised a hand in a shy wave. The barista whispered to him again and Trevor shook his head. The older woman said something again to him and his mouth tightened, but he came over toward her table.
“Hey, Jane,” he said.
“Hi, Trevor.”
“Um, did you get more of your memory back?” He had a deep voice, a little scratchy, with a Southern drawl.
She shook her head. “But I still remember you when we were younger. In elementary school.” She thought, He knows that; I don’t need to tell him. I can’t be this nervous. I can do this.
“My aunt says I can talk to you, but if we get busy again…” He was giving himself an escape route.
“Sure. Thanks.” She forced a smile, steadied her voice.
“Do you want a refill?” He nodded toward her cup.
“No, thank you.” He sat down.
“What can I do for you?” Jane thought he had a nice face; plain but strong, his mouth firm, his eyes a light blue. He needed a shave; the bristle on his chin was reddish-gold. She tried to think of him in a Lakehaven Roadrunners football uniform, like David had worn, but no picture came to mind.
“I want to ask you about the day of the crash.”
“Jane. I really don’t have anything to say to you about it.”
“You stood up for me that day in school.”
“What, Parker? I would have done that for anyone. I don’t like Parker.”
“What’s he doing now? Going to charm school?”
“He got a football scholarship at Tulane,” Trevor said tonelessly. “Look, I don’t have long to talk.” His voice was low, like he didn’t want the other customers to hear. “What do you want from me?”
“If everyone could stop hating me, maybe just for a minute, it would be so great.”
He looked away, back toward the coffee counter. “I don’t hate you, Jane. I just have nothing to say to you. Why would you even come here?”
“It was an accident. I swear it was. I couldn’t have hurt him.”
A hardness came into Trevor’s kind, plain face. “David was my friend. My best friend. And you…” He looked at her, the years behind them, and she thought, He lost me, he lost David, I wasn’t always good at thinking about other people’s pain.
“Wasn’t I your friend, too?” Jane asked quietly.
He looked down at the table.
She tried to offer a cute memory like it was a gift. “I mean, we ‘got married’ in first grade. And I beat up that mean girl for you in fourth.”
Cute memories did not work. “Jane. Everything changed.” He looked at her and then looked away. Miserable.
“What happened, Trevor? You come once to the hospital to see me. You stop a guy who’s threatening me. But you don’t talk to me, you keep your distance from me. When I needed my friends so badly.”
“I was your friend, Jane. You don’t have to ask. But I can’t be now.”
Seeing him was so much harder than she thought it would be. The thought that everyone from her childhood—the time she did remember—could think so poorly of her was hard to bear. This is why you stayed away from them all, she thought. You were afraid of total rejection. It was easier when you turned away from them.
“Look at this,” she said. She pulled the note from her backpack, still in its clear plastic envelope.
Trevor read it through the plastic. “What is this? Is that blood?”
“Yes. Mine. It was in my jeans pocket when the crash happened. It’s David’s handwriting, isn’t it?”
He read it aloud. “Meet me after school in the main parking lot. Don’t tell anyone. I need your help but it concerns us both. I’m in bad trouble. Will you help me?”
“Is that his handwriting or not?”
He studied the note. “Yes, it looks like it.”
“None of us know the truth about that night. There is a big secret here and I’m going to find it out.”
“Jane, this isn’t a movie. If he was in trouble, he would have asked me or Kamala. He didn’t have a lot to do with you in those days.”
“We grew up next door to each other. We were like brother and sister.”
“I don’t think that’s quite accurate,” he said in a flat tone.
“He wrote, ‘It concerns us both.’ So what were he and I involved in before the accident?”
“I don’t know.” But she thought he was lying. She lied her way through her days and she knew the betraying quick flick of the gaze.
“He didn’t want you or Kamala or Adam or anyone else to know. Just me. Something affecting me as well.”
“If he was really in trouble, David would tell me.”
“He gives me this, and then that night he dies? Trevor, please, maybe someone ran us off the road. Why would we even be on that road? Or maybe we were chasing someone, or someone chasing us…”
He leaned back suddenly, pale, his mouth twisting into a frown. He rubbed his hand along his unshaven chin, like an old man. “This is an awful big jump, Jane,” he said. “This is crazy.”
“Tell me about the last time you saw us.”
For a moment he didn’t answer. She glanced over toward the coffee counter and saw a young woman idly watching them; no, watching Trevor. An odd little bolt of anger surged in Jane’s chest. Finally, he spoke: “You were walking to his car together in the school parking lot. I started to say hi, because you both went past me, about twenty yards away, and I called hey, but neither of you looked at me. You were arguing, I think.”
“He was upset?”
He looked at her. “No, you were. He was calm.”
“But he was the one in trouble.”
“He stopped you and I started to walk toward you to see what was wrong, I wasn’t trying to be nosy, but I thought, hey, something’s wrong with my friends…and I heard him say to you, ‘This concerns more your dad.’”
The words were a slap in her face. “My dad? Why would he and I be talking about my dad?” She blinked. “Did I talk about my dad a lot?”