“That’s all right. Let’s start with an easier question,” Janine said. “Where were you last night, February fifteenth?”
“At home,” Cameron said.
“Was anyone with you?”
“My mom was there.”
In truth, Cameron couldn’t remember February fifteenth. Last night. At home; my mom was there seemed like a simple and believable answer. He had somehow lost this night—it had slipped casually into all the Statue Nights in his Collection. It scared him to lose time like this, though he was no stranger to the concept. If Cameron could get every moment of his life tattooed on his body, he would, just to prove they had all happened.
“Cameron.” Janine paused, so stern in her turtleneck. He wished she would stop saying his name like that. She leaned across Principal Barnes’s desk, breathing coffee too close to Cameron’s face. “How would you describe your relationship with Lucinda Hayes?”
(One shade the more, one ray the less,
had half impaired the nameless grace)
Cameron often worried the beating of his heart would overpower the small space it occupied. Mom used to say his heart was too big for his chest—she meant it as a compliment, but Cameron started to imagine his heart swelled so big it clogged up his airways. He could feel it now, growing and shrinking, growing and shrinking. He was sure this would kill him one day.
“Cameron?”
He wanted to tell them how Lucinda looked in the morning. How the sun hit her face, how sleep congealed in the inner corners of her eyes, how long blond hair stuck, matted, to the back of her head. Her tan legs in their plaid cotton pajama pants as they slid out from beneath the purple comforter. He wanted to tell them how the pillow left crease marks on the side of her face, rivers on a map of an empty state.
(Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;)
“He’s not responsive,” Janine said to Principal Barnes. “We’re going to need to talk to a parent. We can bring him in for voluntary questioning if they’ll agree to it.”
It dawned on Cameron, in an unexpected moment of devastation, why they had pulled him out of class and why they were asking these questions: they thought he had killed Lucinda Hayes.
It all happened very fast.
Cameron was standing up, knocking over the plastic chair with the backs of his knees; he was opening the door; he could have been crying, he wasn’t sure, but his cheeks were hot, his skin was burning; he was Tangled, he was so Tangled.
A manila folder sat on the receptionist’s desk outside Principal Barnes’s office. Police officers stood in a semicircle a few feet away, talking in gruff voices. Cameron knew what the folder contained—Dad had been a police officer, after all. Cameron had seen plenty of folders just like this one. Dad used to pore over them in the den, drinking whiskey from a coffee mug, his back hunched, blinking fast with reddened eyes.
Lucinda Hayes was in the folder.
“No,” Principal Barnes said from directly behind Cameron. “Don’t—”
She was sprawled in terrible angles on the carousel at the elementary-school playground. Someone had hurt her, someone had really hurt her, because her head was turned to the side and her profile against the snowy red metal was mangled, twisted. One arm was tucked beneath her chest and the other was thrown over the edge of the carousel. She wore her favorite skirt, the purple one from school-picture day. Sparkly tights. And the blood—it dripped down from one side of her skull, smearing pulpy into clean snow.
This was not Lucinda—instead, some smashed and violated version of her, some sick thing he didn’t recognize, a photo from his own childhood he couldn’t remember taking.
Everything throbbed. Cameron was collapsing; he was converging. He did not dare to look away, though he was sure he would see nothing else for a long, long time. He could feel his heart shrinking and growing, shrinking and growing. This version of Lucinda was not aching or twinkling—he didn’t understand how someone had taken this from her.
(Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.)
One night, almost a year ago, Lucinda stood in front of her full-length mirror.
She wore only a bra and blue jeans. The bra was white, with a small pink bow sewn between triangle cups. Lucinda shifted her weight from her right hip to her left and back again. She tightened her bra straps as far as they would go, pushing her breasts together with her palms so they’d look fuller. It didn’t make any difference. Cameron loved her back, naked to the window—her shoulder blades, flat and smooth. Those lungs. Humans have thirty-three vertebrae, but he counted only six on Lucinda, a range of rolling foothills, exposed and fleeting.
These were Cameron’s favorite memories, and he stored them in a mental folder, special for thinking about late at night. His Collection of Statue Nights—on the lawn, looking in, stunned by the pure complexity of her form.
Lucinda had a birthmark on her right hipbone. It was the shape of a swan and the color of a red pepper gone bad left on the counter too long.
Jade
My favorite song is called “Death by Escalator.” It’s about a girl who falls on an escalator and hits her head on the bottom stair—her head smashes against ridged metal with every new stair that pops up.
If I sit at the right angle beneath the deformed tree in the Jefferson High courtyard, no one can see me. Today, the snow melts halfheartedly in patches, so I sit on a plastic lunch tray. Danny Hartfeld is the only other person outside. He reads The Hobbit with gloved hands. Danny Hartfeld and I end up in the same places sometimes, but he hates me, and that’s fine.
I pull out the bologna sandwich Ma packed and turn up the volume in my headphones. I’ve long been obsessed with the Crucibles’ first album, from 1986. It’s smash punk, not quite screamo. But today, “Death by Escalator” makes me think of Lucinda’s tan little body draped over the edge of the carousel. How I imagine it: her shiny nails drag in the dirt, blood is matted in her hair, her lips are frosty blue—
I yank the headphones out. I try to breathe normally, but I can’t remember how normal feels. A bouncy blond girl from the freshman student council approaches Danny Hartfeld with a piece of paper. He nods. Signs.
She starts toward me. With the headphones away from my ears, “Death by Escalator” is just static noise. The bass, the drums, all of it: gone. Lost in this distant, screaming buzz.
“Hi,” the girl says to me, enthusiastic. She holds out a manila envelope and a neon-purple Sharpie. “We’re sending a card to the family of Lucinda Hayes. Sign to show your support?”
“No thanks,” I say.
“Are you sure?” she says. “Just your name?”
“No thanks,” I say. I glare until she turns away.
I’ve only seen photos of New York City at sunset. Waning honey light paints the buildings, a golden wash. Skyscraper lights flicker on one by one—pinprick samples of every sort of life possible beyond this one.