Dewey only has to remind me of that a few times before I can remember on my own. I’m starting to remember better, I think. The police help too. I know now that the fatter one is Gibbs. I’m still working on the other one.
They are at school the day I go back. The doctors said my memory probably wouldn’t get better anytime soon because they can’t figure out why I keep forgetting things. They think it might help if everything just goes back to normal. I guess that’s okay, because I’m bored of Metatron.
It’s a Monday when I go back. It’s raining. I don’t remember much else. I probably go to English and calc, and it doesn’t matter that I don’t remember because I wouldn’t have learned anything anyway. The police are here and pulling people out of class for the arson investigation. It’s official now. They can only talk to people over eighteen who want to talk back. Dewey tells them I don’t want to, but that isn’t true. I do want to help, because I can’t stop thinking about being a suspect.
Mostly I wonder if Janie is ignoring the police like she is ignoring me. I text her every day and she never responds, and I guess it must be because she doesn’t get service in Nepal or something. I wish she would just talk to the police so they know that we didn’t do anything. I wish she would just come back and help me remember. I wish she would just come back.
I asked Dewey if she can even refuse to talk to the police when they’re investigating arson, if she’s even allowed to be out of the country, and he told me to shut up.
He also told me that Ander is a suspect too, because he’s Janie’s boyfriend and because they traced the gas purchase to his credit card. Wes Bennet swears they had already left the party when the fire started, and Ander says he lost that credit card before wrestling regionals. But nobody knows whether or not they should believe them yet.
I don’t remember wrestling regionals, but Dewey tells me we lost.
The less fat detective tells me that it took less than ten minutes for the house to burn.
Gibbs tells me that it started on the second floor. It didn’t spread from the bonfire like everyone thought.
He tells me that someone spilled and spilled gasoline there, so much gasoline that there is nothing left of her room at all.
He tells me and watches me for a reaction, as if these things will help me remember.
He also tells me that I’m a good kid, but I figure if I really did start the fire, that won’t matter much.
He also asks me what I knew about Ander and Janie.
“Nothing,” I tell him. “I knew she liked him. She had this plan to get the two of them together. It worked, huh?”
“Was he ever violent? Specifically with Janie,” he asks me.
I blink. “I don’t know. Was he?”
Gibbs shifts and looks uncomfortable. “We talked to some of her friends. You know, Carrie Lang, Katie Cross. They said—” He pulls out a notebook and flips through it. “They said that she was upset. Maybe afraid. They think he might have hurt her.”
“Oh,” I say. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
Gibbs sighs and closes the notebook. “Her parents don’t know anything, either, so we can’t do anything if he did.”
He watches me for a reaction. I don’t really have one. I just don’t remember.
Eventually he sends me back to class.
I don’t go back to class. I go to the art room instead. If anyone asks, I’ll say that I forgot which class I was supposed to go to. Or that I forgot how to get there.
The art room is in the workshop wing. The senior studios are a series of closets next to it. Down the hall, Dewey is probably smoking in the metals lab with other slackers. Janie skips class all the time here too, but not really. She just bats her eyelashes and tosses her hair and teachers write her passes to wherever she wants.
I go to the art room, but I don’t remember how I get there.
Her studio is empty. I’ve only been here one other time, at the beginning of the year. I stepped inside and filled it; it was tiny and dingy and badly lit and had no windows and she must have loved it, because I had barely been there for five seconds when she started shrieking that I was bumping into things and ruining it all. Back then it was already full to bursting. I remember. Her weird-ass crap spilled off the shelves.
There’s only dust here now.
I close the door. The movement stirs the air, and I smell her. The room still smells like cinnamon and vodka. Like lemons and sleep. Like her shampoo and the overpriced tea she ordered from a website that gave her computer viruses. I keep telling her that she’s probably drinking bong water, and she keeps ordering it.
It’s so empty.
I wonder if she brought it all to Nepal with her.
I wonder if she is happy in Nepal.
I wonder why she will not text me back.