“Thank you,” Claire said to him. “Thank you for fixing my phone. Or for finding it. Or, you know.”
She and Meredith walked to the car in silence. She tried to walk carefully but not too carefully, evenly but not too evenly. The last thing she wanted was to stumble, but she also didn’t want to look like she was trying not to stumble. By the time she got in on the driver’s side Meredith was already seat-belted in and had her head leaning against the window, looking back at the house. Claire turned the car on, then promptly turned it off again. She rolled down her window and took a deep breath. She would sit for a few minutes in the fresh air. She would sit and enjoy her cup of coffee from the Deli Barn. She would—
“What are you doing?” Meredith asked.
“It’s nice out. I thought we might just sit for a minute.” She picked up the coffee and took a sip. “How was the party?”
Meredith stared at her. The bloody tear on her cheek was smudged, and some of the white face paint beside it partially rubbed away. Had someone touched her face?
“Your face is smudged,” Claire said.
Meredith reached up to flip open the mirror on the sun visor. Something jangled on her wrist. It was a silver chain bracelet. Claire reached out for it and Meredith snatched her hand away.
“It’s pretty,” Claire said. “I just wanted to see.”
“You can buy one,” Meredith said. “They’re five dollars. You can buy your own. It all goes to charity.”
“What charity?”
“Mrs. Bellow.”
Claire took another sip of the coffee. She was fine. Everything was fine.
“Mrs. Bellow isn’t a charity,” she said.
“She is now,” Meredith said.
15
It was supposed to be an eighth-grade party, exclusively, but it wasn’t like Abby Luckett’s parents were paying attention to every single person who showed up in their front yard, so there were a handful of high school kids there, some invited, some not. Abby’s brother and cousin, the one her mother had looked ready to plant a wet kiss on for fixing her phone, were in high school, obviously, but they were the ones who were supposedly in charge while Abby’s parents sat in their bedroom watching porn and fooling around. Or at least that was what Abby said they were doing. But there were other high school kids, too, mostly freshman boys who’d come for the rumor of smuggled-in beer and eager girls, and including the lax bro who Meredith found in a corner of the stuffy, noisy basement with Becca, passing a tall skinny can of beer between them.
“Want some?” the lax bro said, holding it out to her.
“I’m okay,” she said. This was a Life Lesson from Evan, something he’d taught her last year but which she had not had occasion to use until tonight. When someone asked her to do something she didn’t want to do, for whatever reason, she should say “I’m okay.” Not “No thanks” or “I’m not really into that” or, god forbid, “My parents won’t let me,” or anything else suggesting fear or naiveté. Just plain and simple, “I’m okay.” Evan claimed this would get her through 75 percent of awkward teenage situations.
“More for us,” the lax bro said, passing the can to Becca.
“This is Jeremy,” Becca said. “Jeremy, Meredith.”
“The famous Meredith,” Jeremy said. “How does it feel to be famous? Have you sold your movie rights yet?”
“Jeremy is Lisa’s boyfriend,” Becca explained, which Meredith already knew because she’d seen his picture in Lisa’s locker and also in Lisa’s room. He looked smaller in person than in his pictures, and considerably less gorgeous than his beach Frisbee photo. He wore no costume or makeup. Most of the kids had a bloody scar or two on their faces and a couple of the boys had masks or fangs. Meredith had gone for the all-white face paint, bright red lipstick, and a single bloody teardrop, because that’s what Becca and Amanda and Abby were doing. Zombie chic, they called it.
“Was Lisa’s boyfriend,” Jeremy said, his words sliding together, connected like cursive. He looked squarely at Meredith. “We know she’s dead. Me and Becca know. Everybody else is pretending. Coming up with these crazy shit stories. Making themselves feel better, I guess. What do you do to make yourself feel better?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Nothing.”
He leaned into her. “You must do something,” he said. She felt his breath hot on her face and she thought of Lisa, her quivering lips, her panting. “You tell yourself any crazy stories, Meredith?”
He was drunk, or something like it. The embarrassing truth was she didn’t really know what a drunk person looked and sounded like. Once, at a family wedding, her parents were on the dance floor flinging their bodies around like total maniacs to the song “Footloose,” and her mother had kicked off her high heels so wildly that one had flown into someone’s table and shattered a wineglass and her father had actually fallen onto the dance floor laughing. She still wasn’t sure, looking back on that night, if they’d been drunk or just really, really happy. But she knew she had never, except on TV, heard someone slur their words like Jeremy was doing right now. There was a part of it that seemed fake, like he, too, had only seen drunk people on TV.
“Nobody ever comes back after this long,” Jeremy said, slouching into his chosen corner. “Cops are desperate. They show you that picture? The mystery dude nobody recognized? Turns out that guy was some guy from Starbucks. Just some guy she talked to one day. She’d talk to anybody.”
“Anybody’d talk to her, more like it,” Becca said.
“Cops are pathetic,” Jeremy said. “Searched my room. Searched my fucking locker. Why don’t they just start digging?”
“Where, genius?” Becca asked. “You can’t dig up the whole world. She could be anywhere.”
They were very matter-of-fact about it, Meredith thought, especially considering they were the people who were supposedly closest to Lisa. What would Lisa say to them, these two? What would Lisa say, sitting in her bathtub, to know that they had given up on her?
“Meredith was the last person to see her alive,” Becca said. “Except for the guy who did it.”
“That’s so weird,” Jeremy said. He stared at her. “Meredith, isn’t that weird? You were the last person to ever see her. The last person. Ever.”
“Except the guy,” Becca said again. “He was the very last.”
“You were the last friendly face she saw,” Jeremy said wistfully. He studied the beer can in his hand for a moment, then looked again at her. “Are you sure you don’t want some of this?”
“I’m okay,” she said.
He shrugged, apparently shrugging off his melancholy as well. “You know what she’d want? Do you girls know what she’d want? She’d want us all to have a good time. She wouldn’t want us sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves. She’d say, ‘Go on and live a little.’?”
He detached himself from the corner and wobbled off into the party.
“That’s totally not what she’d want,” Becca said, rolling her eyes. “He didn’t know her very well.”