Breaking Beautiful (25 page)

He pulls me toward him and our lips touch for the first time since the day in the cave. The freshmen snicker again. A few seconds into his kiss, I stop caring who’s watching.

He pulls away. “Better?”

I can’t speak so I nod.

He presses his forehead against mine. “Anytime you need that, you know—”

Someone behind Blake catches my eye. James is leaning against his car watching us. I stare back at him hard. I’m tired of being afraid. I turn my lips toward Blake’s ear. “I’ll probably need a lot of those.” For a second, even my interview with Detective Weeks doesn’t seem so bad.

Chapter
35

My dad picks me up after school and goes with me to Detective Weeks’s office a second time. They exchange pleasantries.

“Just looking for some basic information and clarification. You can certainly wait until she has a lawyer present if that would make you more comfortable, but she isn’t being accused of anything.” This from Detective Weeks.

Dad glances over at me, maybe a little longer than he should. Is he wondering if I’ll need a lawyer? Finally he says, “No. It’s fine. We intend to cooperate fully. We want you to find out who’s harassing Allie with those notes.” He looks at Detective Weeks hard, like he’s giving him an order. They shake hands again. He turns to me and touches my shoulder. “I’m going to walk back to the shop. You can pick me up there at six.”

Detective Weeks’s office is still pretty bare. A couple of books and maybe a new box or two are on the shelf. It still
doesn’t look like he expects to make Pacific Cliffs a permanent home.

He re-explains what he told Dad about information and clarification, and lawyer, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m about to be interrogated, especially when he turns on a little recorder and says the date and has me say and spell my name.

Then he gets down to business. It’s almost a relief. “I want you to tell me anything you remember about the night Trip Phillips died.”

“I don’t remember anything.” I touch the tigereye, then squeeze my hands together in my lap.

“Nothing before the dance or getting ready?”

“Get out of the way, Andrew. I have to get my purse. I have to go
.”

“
Don’t go. Stay with me. It’s our birthday
.”

“
You don’t understand. I want to. I just can’t, okay. Trip would be furious. He’s been planning tonight forever.”

I clench my hands, remembering how hard Andrew tried to get me to stay home that night. It feels like something I shouldn’t tell Detective Weeks so I say, “No, sir.”

He leans toward the tape recorder. “It should be noted that Miss Davis is suffering from memory loss due to injuries sustained in the accident that killed Trip Phillips.” He riffles through some notes. I brace myself for something bad. “The cotillion fell on the night of your eighteenth birthday, correct?”

I nod. He gestures to the tape recorder, so I say, “Yes,” in a voice more mechanical than Andrew’s communicator.

“You attended the dance with Trip Phillips, who died in a car accident later that night.”

It’s not a question but I answer, “Yes.”

“What were you and the deceased Mr. Phillips’s plans after the dance?”

“I don’t remember.”

“According to the report, your mother said you were supposed to come straight home after the dance, that you had been grounded?”

“Mom said you have to come home right after the dance. No exceptions
.”

“
I will, if I can
.”

“
Promise me. Straight home.”

“I guess so.” I shake my head to clear the voices that are flooding my brain. He raises his eyebrows. “Yes,” I say into the recorder.

“Do you remember why you were grounded?”

“You’re lucky I’m letting you go to the dance. Your dad said absolutely not.”

“I snuck out of the house.”

“To do what?”

I take a breath. I have to remember something or he’ll get suspicious. “To pull Trip out of the mud. He and his friends went four-wheeling and got stuck. You can ask James and Randall. They were there.” If he did ask James and Randall, I wonder what they would tell him.

“Where were you and Trip Phillips heading after cotillion that took you up the cliff road?”

“Just a short drive. So we can be alone. So I can give you your birthday present. Your mom will never know. It’s not like the spaz is going to tell on us.”

Trip’s face floods the space behind my eyes, and his voice, not coaxing, just sure, so sure, that I would go wherever he told
me to go. Do whatever he asked me to do. Why was he taking me to the meadow?

“He wanted to be alone so he could give me my birthday present,” I answer.

Detective Weeks looks surprised that I actually answered. “Do you remember what that present was?”

Something else works its way forward.

“I want you to wear it. Forever.”

“No!” I realize I answered the voice in my memory, not his question. Detective Weeks pauses like he’s analyzing my outburst. I push back against the voices, sweat sliding down my back. “I mean, no, sir, I don’t remember.”

He shakes his head and continues. “Was Trip Phillips drinking the night of cotillion?”

I breathe in. Here’s my chance to make it all go away, to tell him that Trip was drunk, but I answer, “I don’t remember.”

He leans back. The scar above my eye pulses with every heartbeat, but I don’t dare move my hand to rub my head. “So you maintain that you remember nothing about the accident that killed Trip Phillips?”

“No … I mean”—scrape the tigereye for little flecks of courage—“yes. I don’t remember anything.” Nothing that doesn’t incriminate me.

“Let’s try something else. What can you tell me about Blake Evans?”

I force the swirls in my head to stop. “Blake?”

“Yes, Blake Evans. You were with him the night I pulled him over for a speeding infraction on November fifth of this year, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And what is your relationship with Mr. Evans now?”

I pause, but this isn’t something I can lie about. “Blake is my boyfriend.”

“So you two are romantically involved?”

“Yes.”

“And how long has that been going on?”

I should say forever, but I stick to “A few weeks.”

“I see, and before that, what was your relationship with Blake?”

“Friends.” I say it firmly.

“And how long have you and Blake been friends?”

“Since we were little, like four or five.”

“I see. And did you maintain that friendship when you were dating Trip Phillips?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Blake was gone for part of it, he was—” I swallow hard.

Detective Weeks shuffles through the papers and pulls out one to read. “Serving time in a juvenile detention facility in Reno, Nevada, for a breaking and entering charge.”

Everyone knows, but I feel like I’m betraying Blake when I say, “Yes.”

“What about after he returned to Pacific Cliffs. Were you and he friends then?”

“Stay away from him, Allie.”

“Not really.” I can’t look at Detective Weeks or the recorder. “I didn’t see him that much, and Trip didn’t like me to—” I stop myself.

Detective Weeks leans forward. “Trip didn’t like you to … ?”

“Trip didn’t like Blake.”

“I see, and how did Blake feel about Trip?”

“I don’t like the way he treats you, Allie.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t really talk to him then.”

“What about the night of cotillion? Did you talk to Blake that night?”

“You don’t just have to go with him wherever he wants. He doesn’t own you.”

Panic grips me. I didn’t remember until now that Blake was at cotillion. I keep my voice calm. “I don’t remember.”

“Did you have an argument with Blake that night?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did Trip and Blake have an argument?”

“You don’t learn very fast, do you, Juvie? She’s mine. She’ll always be mine.”

“I don’t remember.”

Abruptly, he says, “I don’t think I have any further questions at this time. We’ll be in touch with you later if there is anything else. Thank you for coming in.”

I’m really confused, but I give him a formal “You’re welcome.”

He turns off the recorder. “I want to show you something, Allie, off the record.” He turns around and fishes something out of one of the boxes behind him. It contains a piece of white fabric coated in dark brown stains. “Have you ever seen this before?”

I nod. “Yes, sir. It’s the sweater I wore to cotillion.”

He takes another plastic bag out of the box, something else that could have once been white, but it has the same brown stains and it looks like it might have spent time buried in mud.

He touches the other bag. “What about this?”

I shake my head no.

“It’s a T-shirt. A vagrant found it hidden under a log in the woods behind the cliff and brought it to my attention.” He picks up the bag with the sweater inside. “Do you know what the brown stains are all over this sweater?”

“Blood.” My stomach knot tightens. “My blood.”

“Right. So what do you suppose the brown stains are all over this shirt?” He touches the other bag.

“Blood?” I guess.

“It is blood, but the question is, whose blood?”

I wait for him to answer that question, but he acts like he wants me to answer it.

Finally sighs. “I haven’t got the lab results on that one so I can’t answer that for sure. But my guess is it’s the same blood that’s on the white sweater. Your blood.”

My scar throbs in time to the clock ticking behind him. I can’t figure out where he’s going with this. “Why would my blood be on—”

“This shirt is too big to be yours. Too small to be Trip’s. But if my hunch is right, and your blood is on this T-shirt, it means someone else was there the night of the accident, with you, with Trip.” He narrows his eyes and leans forward. “There might even be some of his blood on the shirt.”

I’m not sure if he means blood from the shirt’s owner or Trip’s blood. If Trip died going off a cliff why would his blood be anywhere but inside the truck or spread out over the ocean?

He puts the bags with their bloody evidence back in the box and sets the box on the shelf. “Lab results can be unpredictable.
It could be a couple of weeks, could be a couple of days. But if I’m right, there was another witness that night. Someone who might do a better job of remembering what happened.”

Blake. His name, his face, flashes in my mind. Was Blake there that night? Why would my blood be on Blake’s shirt? Why would anyone’s blood be on Blake’s shirt?

Detective Weeks shakes his head like I’ve disappointed him somehow. “You have to trust somebody sometime, Allie. I just hope when the time comes, you decide to trust the right person.”

.........

I don’t go home after I leave the police station. I drive toward the cliff, but I don’t stop there. Everything that Detective Weeks said swirls around and around in my brain. The spot of white, someone else there. Blake fighting with Trip. Blake fighting with me. And something else, something important. Something I can’t quite remember.

I go past the cliff, up the road beyond and officially out of Pacific Cliffs, to the one place I’ve avoided since the accident. The place that I’m now positive Trip was taking me to.

It’s a lot wetter than it was this summer. Dad’s truck slips and slides but makes it up the steep trail where Trip took me off-roading for the first time. When the trail gets too narrow, I park the truck and get out. The path winds back into the woods. I push low-hanging branches out of my way and step over long thorny vines.

“Watch your head. Maybe I should just carry you.”

After a few minutes I reach a clearing. A little stream flows
through the middle. Huge boulders line the bank. A tall pine tree stands in the center.

“Here it is. My special place. No one in Pacific Cliffs knows about it but me.”

I move toward the tree and trace my fingers over the letters. TRIP LOVES ALLIE.

“Now it’s
our
special place.”

He cut the letters deep, so they stand out like scars against the bark. Someday our names will probably be the reason this tree is weak enough to fall over in a storm.

I sit down on one of the boulders next to the stream.

“Close your eyes and hold out your hand.”

The setting sun filters through the tress. The stream rushes by. My head is throbbing, but I grit my teeth and will the memories to keep coming.

“Do you like it? I had it designed especially for you.

“
Nothing’s too good for my girl.”

Pain throbs in my chest and in my head. Gray swirls over the memory. I shake my head and breathe in deep to keep from blacking out. I stand up and walk into the woods while my heart slows down. A few feet in, something red, buried under the bushes, catches my eye. I squat down, careful not to get in the mud, and reach through the brambles. They snag my sweatshirt and tear into my skin, but I keep reaching until I have it in my hands. I pull it out into the light.

When I realize what it is I almost drop it again. Red, satin, high-heeled, and open-toed. It’s one of the shoes that I wore to cotillion. It’s barely recognizable, but I’m sure that’s what it is. The red has faded in patches to more of a pink-orange. It’s
covered in pine needles, rotting leaves, mud, and something else.

I brush my hand along the side to clear the debris off the side of the shoe. I examine it closer. At first I think the other stain is blood, like the blood on the white shirt Detective Weeks showed me, but when I touch it, it feels greasy.

“What the hell did you step in, Allie?”

My stomach aches with remembered anxiety.

“Be careful, you’re getting it on my truck.”

But he was in a good mood that night.

“Keep your feet on the floor, okay?”