The sheriff is still out looking for bad guys and all I can do is sit here thinking up my own.
If Marcus has an alibi, he couldn’t have attacked me. He couldn’t have killed Gretchen. He wouldn’t go to jail. I can’t decide if I should be relieved or scared.
A long-buried part of me never wanted it to be him, but it made so much sense.
And if not Marcus, who else could it have been?
I bend to touch a small carving inside my closet door that says Zack & Ken. The edges of the letters are so worn they look like they’ve become part of the floor rather than something slashed into it. I have no idea who Zack and Ken were, but when I was little I made up personalities for them and they became the boys in the closet who kept monsters away. I leave the door ajar and climb under the quilt with my clothes on. Some primitive part of my brain feels safer this way.
I close my eyes, focusing on neutral things like the weather getting warmer, Aunt Dina’s recipe for rainbow cookies, and what I’ll wear to commencement. But my eyes burn when I think Gretchen will never see another spring. Rainbow cookies were her favorite. And when I imagine her absence at graduation—an awful punctuation mark at the end of everyone’s high school memories—tears spill down my cheeks. I curl into a ball, fighting waves of fear, guilt.
It didn’t have to be her. It could have, should have been me.
I pick up my phone. All my feeds are clogged with memorials to Gretchen and people voicing shock and despair over her death and what happened to me. But there’s nothing concrete about who did this. Nothing I didn’t already hear at the diner. I like a few statuses and all the condolences, but I can’t bring myself to post anything or comment. That would make it too real.
Serial Experiments—a comic book based on the UltaShock video game—lies on top of a couple textbooks by the bed. Right where I dropped it before we went to Brianne’s party Friday night. I pick it up, in desperate need of a distraction, but when I find where I left off, Gretchen’s voice dances through my head.
“Wait, tell me again why she wears pigtails?”
“I don’t know, because she’s badass.”
“They’re pink pigtails. I thought she was supposed to be a ninja or something.”
“An assassin—and that’s the whole point. She’s smart, and deadly with a crossbow. No one expects it.”
Gretchen dropped the comic into my lap, twisted my hair into thick pigtails, and laughed. “Bad. Ass.”
It’s well after dark and I’m half dozing when I’m startled by the clomp of shoes on the stairs. From the sound of it, more than one pair. My heart pounds with every creak of the floorboards as they tiptoe down the hall, stopping at the door of my room.
“She’s asleep, finally. Can’t you come back in the morning?” my mother asks.
“Why don’t you wake her. This won’t take long.” I recognize the sheriff’s voice in a whisper.
“You said they’re just routine questions.”
“They are, but I’ve got Carlton Meyer breathing down my neck, Marlene.”
The hall goes quiet and I hold my breath. I’m ninety-nine percent sure they’re hugging now. My mom and Sheriff Wood dated briefly when I was little, and though I was never sure why they broke up, it’s clear they still care for each other, if just as close friends. Eventually, my mom peeks her head into my room and I look up at her in the dim closet light.
“Oh, you’re awake.”
She crosses the tiny space to perch on the edge of my bed. My mom had me young. She’s only thirty-six, but right now she looks a lot older than that. Her thin brown hair is pulled away from her face and I can see every crease around her mouth and eyes in the light of my closet. She lifts my comic book off my chest, setting it carefully aside without losing the page.
“Roger’s here, sweetie. I know it’s late, but do you feel up to running through things with him again?” She doesn’t usually refer to him as “Roger” with me. I think she’s trying to make me more comfortable.
“No, of course it’s fine.” It takes effort to make this sound like I mean it. I barely remember what I said the first time he questioned me and I’m nervous about having to talk through it again. But Sheriff Wood’s the one person in town who might be able to figure out what happened to me and Gretchen, and I’m counting on him to be straight with me. I need to know what’s going on with the investigation or I’m going to lose it.