“What time did you leave the party?” she presses.
I don’t know. I don’t remember. But of course, I can’t say that.
“Around eleven,” I answer.
She arches an eyebrow.
“The party apparently ended a couple of hours later. Why did you leave on the earlier side?”
I don’t know how I’m supposed to respond. Can she tell that I’m holding something back? I touch my cheek, my fingers resting on the scar.
“I’m not the most popular girl at parties.”
“But still you went,” she says pointedly.
What is she getting at?
“Practically our whole class went. I didn’t want to miss out.”
“Nicole,” she says, studying me like a hunter eyeing its prey. “Did you have a romantic relationship with Chace Porter?”
The question barrels in from out of the blue, catching me off guard. For a moment I’m sure I misheard, until Detective Kimble repeats the question. “Were you romantically involved with Chace Porter?”
“We were friends,” I respond, my voice breaking on the past tense.
“Just friends?” Officer Ladge gives me a sharp look, and my breath catches in my throat. I don’t know how, but they know things they shouldn’t—and now I have no choice but to tell them more than I want to reveal.
“We got close. But he had a girlfriend, and it…well, it didn’t work out.”
Headmaster Higgins comes to my defense.
“Officers, is this really the time to rehash perfectly normal adolescent drama? Miss Morgan is clearly in shock.”
“The issue pertains to what we found at the scene of the crime. It currently plays a critical role in our investigation.” Her eyes never leaving mine, Detective Kimble opens her briefcase and retrieves a small item wrapped in plastic. “This was in the victim’s coat pocket when his body was found.”
She places it on the headmaster’s desk and I’m afraid to look, I can’t bear another shot of pain. But then I catch the familiar edges of a photo-booth strip—and it’s as if he’s in this room with me, answering every question I’ve ever had.
I push out of my seat in a trance, leaning over the desk to gaze at the plastic-covered images. As I look down at our glowing faces from junior year, the sounds and sights of the happiest day of my life come rushing back to me. I can hear the whoosh of roller coasters and the shrieks of revelers; I can feel Chace’s hand interlacing with mine as we step through the turnstiles into the Long Island Sound Memorial Day Carnival.
The sun beams down on us as the band begins playing a cheerful Disney tune, and I have the sudden desperate desire to bottle this moment—because this kind of perfect happiness can’t possibly last forever. As if reading my mind, Chace nods toward a photo booth, situated between the lines for the Ferris wheel and the cotton candy cart.
“I think we need a souvenir from our first real date,” he says with a grin. “What do you say?”
“Nicole? What do you have to say?”
The detective’s brusque voice jars me out of my reverie. I blink, my mind joining my body back in this tense office, my eyes refocusing on the pictures in front of me.
In the top photo, I’m nestled in his lap like I belong there, my face lit by a soft smile while his lips rest on my shoulder. The second picture has us giddy, turning to each other instead of the camera, our faces crinkled with laughter. His hands are wrapped around my waist in this shot, while my palms press against his chest.
The last picture has always been my favorite—when we forgot the camera’s existence entirely, and it froze us in a moment of unbridled affection. His head bent down as he whispered to me, his fingers cradling my chin. All I could do then was look up at him, my eyes filled with the wordless awe of being loved.
It was just an interlude, a crescendo in time, and before I was prepared for it to end, life swung back into its monotonous chorus. And then my accident happened, shattering any notion that the happiness in these photos was real or lasting.
I thought he’d forgotten this—us. I thought I was the only one holding it in, storing it for safekeeping in the most secret part of myself.
The detective clears her throat loudly.
“So can you explain to us, Miss Morgan, why the boyfriend of Lana Rivera had these photos of you two in his pocket when he died?”
I lie on my bed, arms folded as I watch my unexpected roommate putter around our dorm, folding dull-looking clothes and pinning up posters of wrinkly old violinists on her side of the wall. Living with her is going to be some party, all right.
“So,” she says, turning to me with a bright smile. “Was that guy you were with your boyfriend?”
“Not yet,” I say lightly. “What about you? Dating someone other than Bach?”
She bursts into giggles.
“No. I mean, there is this one guy in Virtuoso with me, but…” She shrugs. “He’s not really worth it.”
“Worth what?” I ask, surprised to find I’m actually curious about this frizzy-haired creature.