Or like a reptile, I thought. I dug through the file and came out with a photo of Luna, taken from one of the tabloid pages. She was quite a bit younger, but it was the best I could find. I handed it to Barb. “Was this the girl?”
“No,” she said right away. “I mean, she looks kind of like her in the face, but the girl had long black hair. Jet-black.” She pantomimed long hair flowing. “We joked that it was so long it had to be a wig.” A wig. Of course. Jet-black hair. Jetta. It made sense now. The new girl at Hollywood Dreams suddenly leaving, the blond man looking for a place for a girl with a jet-black wig.
“Oh, it was way too shiny to be real hair,” Deb said. She held up her hand. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. We see all types here.”
“So what happened to the girl?” Chris asked.
“We didn’t have anything for her,” Deb said. “We’re pretty small. We thought it was odd that he would come all the way from California to try and find something with us here. We moved out of California long ago. No more ties there.”
Barb was still gazing at the photo from the clipped article about the movie. She tapped it. “I do remember this, though. It was right before we relocated. Do you remember, Deborah?”
Deb scooted her chair close to Barb again and stared at the photo over her shoulder. Now that they had gossip to spread, they seemed much more relaxed. “Oh, yes, of course. That was a sad, sad deal, huh.”
Barb handed the article back to me. “That movie was supposed to be the big movie of the year. The director they chose—that Carrie Kill—was one of ours. She was so excited about it.”
“What happened to it?” I asked, staring at the photo as if I didn’t know it by heart. As if I didn’t know the people in it. “I couldn’t find it anywhere.”
“Didn’t ever happen,” Barb said. “They were about halfway through filming and there was an accident. A big fire. Somehow a spotlight fell onto some props and whoosh.” She bloomed an invisible fire with her hands. I saw it in the usual reds and oranges I associated with the word fire. “That producer was so angry, he pulled the whole project. And eventually we left California altogether.”
Deb was shaking her head sadly. “He had so many other movies to make, but it was really the end for poor Carrie. She died a couple years later, if I’m not mistaken. Eleven would have been her only film.”
My heart thumped hearing it from someone else. No, she didn’t die, I wanted to snap. She was murdered.
“Eleven?” Chris asked.
“Wasn’t that what it was called, Barb? It was a number, anyway.”
Barb snapped her fingers. “Yes, that was it. Eleven on his jersey. Ten people dead. Will anyone catch him before he kills number eleven?” She said the last in a deep voice meant to sound like a commercial voice-over. “Not my kind of movie.” The phone rang and she jumped to answer it.
Deb stood and smoothed out her slacks. “Is there anything else, Detective?”
“No,” Chris said. “I think that was all.”
She stuck out her hand; Chris shook it. “Sorry we couldn’t be more help.”
But she had no idea how much help she’d actually been.
20
IT WAS A long four and a half hours home. We weren’t really speaking anymore. There was just too much to talk about. Too many revelations. Too many secrets. Too much confusion. Talk seemed dangerous.
I couldn’t tell if we trusted each other more now, or less. I couldn’t tell if I was relieved to have someone know about the synesthesia or if I hated it. My gut told me I hated it. I just maybe didn’t so much hate that it was him.
God, it was so confusing. Why was he so damned confusing?
Not to mention there was the whole drug thing. I believed with every fiber of my being that he was not taking or selling them. I knew he had a plan, because Chris Martinez always had a plan, and his plans were always For the Greater Good. My plans were usually to save my own ass.
Mostly, I spent the time under my hoodie, working out what might have been his reason for buying drugs from those kids. And the rest of the time was spent rehashing what Barb and Deb had said, and how my mind had lit up like crazy every time they said one word: Eleven.
A tomato-colored word, juicy and smooth and warm from the sun. Tomato, tomato, tomato.
I drove the last hour, and Chris slept. Or at least he pretended to sleep. He didn’t look particularly comfortable or restful. Maybe he, too, was working things out in his head. I dropped him off at the station, and we went our separate ways.
I couldn’t wait to get home.
“JESUS, YOU HAD me worried,” were the very first words out of Dad’s mouth when I walked into the house. He came eagerly downstairs as soon as he heard the door open. He was carrying an armload of laundry, but dropped it on the landing when he saw me.
“Sorry,” I said.
He wrapped me in a hug, and then held me out at arm’s distance. “What in the hell were you thinking? What friend? What was in Vegas? You’re eighteen, for Christ’s sake.”
“Almost nineteen,” I muttered, breaking away from him and taking my backpack upstairs. “And just a friend. It was a spontaneous thing.”
“Nikki.” Sharp. I turned. The backpack bounced softly against my leg. “I know you. Spontaneous and Nikki do not go together. Not without trouble. What was going on in Vegas? Who were you with?”
“Fun, Dad. Fun was going on in Vegas. Maybe you wouldn’t recognize it, since you seem to have dedicated your whole life to swearing it off.” I knew I was pushing it, but after everything I’d learned, I was in no place to play nice with Dad. Not anymore.
He pushed his glasses up on his nose. He looked stunned.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I’m young and I want to have a good time. And obviously I can’t have any fun here without having to look over my shoulder all the time. So I went to Vegas with my friend and we had one night of fun and now I’m back. And everyone is safe and everything is fine.” That last part was a bit of a stretch. Everything was so far away from fine I couldn’t even recognize fine anymore.
“And was this friend that guy Chris you were hanging out with before?”
I felt my face burn. “We stayed in separate hotel rooms, if that’s what you’re asking. Dad, we’re just friends. No sex, I promise.” Truth. That seemed like a barrier Chris and I would never, ever cross. “We wouldn’t even think about that. Not with each other.” Lie, Nikki. You know that’s such a fucking lie.
“I still don’t like it,” Dad said. But I could feel Concerned Dad retreating, to be replaced by the usual—Friend Dad. The dad who didn’t really want to be a dad. “Next time, just tell me beforehand, okay?”
“Sure,” I said. It was impossible for me to keep the sourness out of my voice these days, especially when it came to being honest and my dad. I continued up the stairs, but he stopped me.
“You want me to wash your clothes?”
The backpack brushed my leg again. I knew what was inside—a file folder filled with stolen newspaper articles. He would never understand why I had those.
“No, thanks. I’ll take care of things.”
IT SEEMED LIKE the man would never give me space now that I’d come back from an unapproved mini vacation. Everywhere I turned, he was lurking just behind, looking at me over his glasses, passing me in the hallway, asking me through the bathroom door if I wanted a snack. He did it under the guise of “cleaning house,” but it felt like more than that to me.
It felt like surveillance.
Did he already know? Had he seen that the articles were gone? How could he? What reason would he possibly have for noticing they were missing? Had Angry Elephant called him, told him there was a couple snooping around the studio, asking questions about Eleven?
I tried to keep myself busy to take my mind off it. I popped a bag of popcorn and parked myself on the couch and watched TV, every single show reminding me somehow of Chris.
That actor looks like Chris, only with blue eyes.
That police station doesn’t look anything like Chris’s station.