Blazing lights. A rush of uniforms. Sense-memory panic swelled inside Makani as her house exploded into chaos. Paramedics in white shirts rushed toward her grandmother. The police swarmed Ollie, and Chris embraced him fiercely. Another officer rapid-fired questions at her. Makani’s responses were a blur as Grandma Young was lifted onto a stretcher. A bearded paramedic peeked beneath Makani’s towel, and she was hustled inside the same ambulance. Neighbors poured from their homes. News vans squealed onto the street. The last she saw of Ollie was a flicker of pink in the front window as the ambulance doors slammed closed.
You’re in shock, they told her. As the nurses and doctor numbed, cleaned, and stitched her arm, the same police officer that had questioned her at home continued the interview.
Officer Beverly Gage. You can call me Bev.
She looked young for a Beverly, only a few years older than Ollie’s brother. She had a large oval face, friendly eyes, and long hair pulled back into a ponytail. Was this the same officer that Darby had found attractive? It seemed so long ago.
Her grandmother had been rushed into an operating room, but the hospital wouldn’t tell her if she was okay, and Officer Bev wouldn’t tell her if David had been captured. Bev’s timeline-related questions were mortifying. At least she saved the most prying inquiries until after the stitching was done, and they were alone.
Makani answered as truthfully as she could remember:
Yes, we had sex.
Um, ten minutes?
Then we talked for a while.
Maybe fifteen minutes?
I don’t know. About music. And some guy who wrote a lot about Morocco . . . Paul something? I don’t know.
Yes, and then Ollie dozed off.
I checked my phone, and then I watched him sleep.
I don’t know. Fifteen minutes? Twenty?
It was humiliating. And now it would go on file, typed up on some kind of awful official document or digital record or both. As Bev made another notation, Makani’s mind boomeranged back to her grandmother. She felt sick with guilt and helplessness. Grandma might die because David wants me dead.
Her thoughts spun again, and she imagined trying to explain herself when—when not if—her grandmother woke up. Makani had lied. Ollie had been naked. Illogically, these two facts felt so much worse than confronting the idea that someone had attempted to kill her.
I barely know him, she kept telling Bev. No, I don’t know why he’d target me.
The first half was true. The second half was a lie.
Makani thought that she had suffered enough—she’d lost everything that mattered to her in Hawaii—but the karmic cycle of life had circled back around. This, at last, was her final punishment.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Officer Bev was gone, and Makani had been abandoned in the single-occupancy patient room to wait for news about her grandmother. She moved to an uncomfortable chair, not wanting to remain on the bed. The air smelled stale but sterile.
Makani didn’t have her phone, so she couldn’t contact Ollie or her friends. Or even her parents. The police and the hospital had been trying to contact her mom and dad with no luck. But a kindhearted nurse with coppery hair kept checking in on Makani and brought her ginger ale and blueberry yogurt. She assured Makani that the surgical staff was brilliant, and their small hospital was fortunate to have them.
Every minute alone increased Makani’s anxiety. She’d been in the hospital for nearly four hours. She turned on the television to pass the time.
This was a mistake.
Standing on her grandmother’s lawn was the same hairsprayed reporter who’d chased her through the school’s parking lot last Friday. The graphic on the bottom of the screen read: FOURTH TEEN ATTACKED IN OSBORNE SLAYINGS.
“Did you hear any screams or unusual noises?” she asked an older man. He had a droopy but upturned mouth like a bulldog. It was the neighbor from two doors down.
“No, nothing at all. I was fixing my gutter when a boy tore across my yard in that direction.” He pointed with a gnarled finger and then pressed the whole hand flat against his face in disbelief. “I shouted after him from my ladder, but he didn’t look at me. He just shot around my carport and ran toward Spruce.”
Back in the studio, the live footage was superimposed above Creston Howard’s shoulder. Creston looked stiff and appropriately serious, though he couldn’t resist a toothpaste-commercial smile as he led them into the break.
No one should ever have to see their own house on the news. Makani wanted to crawl into her bed and hibernate for the rest of autumn. But then it struck her that she might not even be able to go home. Her house was a crime scene.
“The suspect is eighteen-year-old David Thurston Ware,” Creston said when the news returned, and goose bumps prickled her skin.
Thurston.
Now he had a middle name, too. It didn’t seem right that a murderer should be allowed to have anything in common with his victims. Makani supposed it was for the sake of the world’s nonhomicidal David Wares, those few people unfortunate enough to share his namesake. It was like being a Katrina after 2005; it only brought one thing to mind. But at least no one could mistake a woman for a hurricane. Hopefully, the release of his middle name narrowed the inevitable misunderstandings of which David Ware.
Makani’s name wasn’t being reported, most likely because she was a minor. And a survivor. But Ollie wasn’t named, either. Creston kept referring to him as a male friend of the victim. The police must be protecting him.
The news cut to a senior photo, and David’s image leached through the screen like an odious stench. His smile was dopey and innocent, and his hair was brushed to one side as if he were a little boy. He had a faint mustache. There was nothing intimidating about his appearance, but Makani’s stomach filled with caustic acid.
“The suspect was last seen wearing jeans and a camouflage hoodie,” Creston said. “He’s considered armed and highly dangerous. If you see him, do not approach him. . . .”
More footage of her house. More interviews with neighbors.
The man whose nose had been lopped off crossed his flannel-shirted arms. “Osborne, all of us, we’re scared for our lives.”
Makani wanted to change the channel, but fear held her hostage.
“It’s like searching for a needle in the cornstalks,” Creston said, and she loathed his inane glibness more than ever. But his coanchor nodded. Dianne’s makeup was so unnatural and extreme that it looked airbrushed by a T-shirt vendor on a beach. “And a reminder that all Sloane County schools have been closed for the rest of the week. . . .”
Did she only report on school closings?
“Good news,” a voice said beside her.
Makani startled at the jarring declaration. The coppery-haired nurse hugged her clipboard and said, “Your grandmother’s out of surgery.”