When we pass Point Loma Boulevard, Ben pulls off into a small dirt lot along the edge of the cliffs and parks the 4Runner in one of the empty spots. From the angle we’re parked, if the car accidentally shifted into drive, we would roll off the end of the earth. Looking straight ahead, all I can see is clear blue ocean.
Ben looks over at me. “There’s a blanket in the backseat behind you. You pick a spot where you want to sit down, and I’ll grab the food.”
I find a flat spot and stare blankly off into the distance—the richness of the colors, the feel of the heat on my skin, there’s nowhere more perfect he could have taken me.
When Ben comes over, I can smell the food, and he doesn’t need to tell me what it is—it’s from Roberto’s. I take the bag from him and peek inside. It’s my favorite. Burritos, chips, and guacamole. I look up and stare at him for a second, and I want to ask how he knew this was my favorite, but I’m at a loss for words.
“Come on,” Ben says, nodding toward the ocean, and we climb over the guardrail. I spread the blanket near the edge of a flat cliff overlooking the ocean—it’s as close as I could get without worrying about taking a wrong step and sliding to a rocky death.
As I sit down, Ben tosses me a can of grape soda, and I wonder how he could possibly know how much I used to love this stuff. He must see it on my face, because he smiles and looks down. “You must have had grape soda every day for lunch in sixth grade.”
“How do you know that?” I laugh.
“We were in the same history class, right before lunch.”
“No, we weren’t.” I would remember that.
“Mrs. Zaragosa, sixth-grade history,” Ben says. “You sat in the last row two seats from the front. I sat in the third row, all the way at the back. Sometimes you would get hungry and eat your lunch in class.”
I remember
that
, and I feel like a moron for not knowing he was in my class. “Your memory is scary good.”
He blushes. “Only when it comes to you.”
Off to the left, in the middle of the ocean, there’s a big rock that’s its own island, a landing spot for the seagulls, and I watch them as they fly in, land, and squawk at one another before taking off. Ben leans into me, the heat of his body keeping me warm as the wind picks up off the ocean. Below us, there are only rocks and white water crashing against them. The sun is starting its descent, and it hangs like a huge golden globe near the edge of the water, casting red, orange, pink, and purple streaks in the sky.
It feels like we’re the only two people in the world, and for a minute I let myself forget about everything else.
We sit next to each other, shoulder to shoulder, the sun setting in front of us, eating my favorite food in the world, and I just know—this is why I have a second chance. This is why I came back from the dead—so I could really feel alive.
“This might be the coolest thing you could have done for me,” I say, bumping my shoulder into Ben’s.
His fingertips brush over the back of my hand until his whole hand covers mine and gives it a light squeeze.
Tearing my eyes away from the sky, I look at Ben. His floppy brown curls are falling into his face, shading his eyes, but I can see the look on his face, like he’s laughing at himself.
“What?”
He shakes his head. “I almost just drove us to the movies.”
He’s lying. I can see it in his face. He might have thought about it, especially when he was all tense in the car, but he knows me too well to just take me to a movie.
I smile, and that’s all it takes. He leans forward and our lips touch, and it’s like his lips were made to fit around mine.
His arms tighten around me, and I reach up to the back of his neck and pull him into me. Our lips part, our tongues touch, and I taste him until a sigh escapes with my breath.
Ben pulls back just a fraction of an inch so our foreheads are touching, and his lips smile against mine.
“This was perfect,” I whisper.
He closes his eyes, and his voice is quiet, like the words are simply being exhaled. “It was better than perfect.”
I
’m still thinking about the way Ben’s lips tasted as he turns the car onto my street.
I can’t stop smiling.
And every time I look over at him, I notice he’s smiling too.
Yes, I am completely aware that I’ve suddenly morphed into one of
those girls
. I don’t care.
But as he’s about to pull into my driveway, I reach out and put a hand on his arm. “Stop here,” I say, trying not to sound like anything is wrong.
Struz’s TrailBlazer is behind my Jeep. They’re the only two cars in the driveway.
The smile falls off my face, and the warmth in my body is gone. I shiver a little as I open the passenger-side door. Something’s wrong. I can feel it.
Ben acts like he’s about to turn the car off and walk me up to the door, but I shake my head. “I think something’s wrong.”
“What?” he asks. “I’ll come in with you.”
I shake my head again and look at him. I try not to worry about whatever is going to come next and just remember how awesome this day was—this
whole
day. “We should do this again.”
He leans across the car and as his lips brush against mine, he whispers, “Definitely.”
It’s not until I get out of the car that I realize Struz is standing on our doorstep, one arm raised as if he’s been knocking, but his palm is flat against the door like he’s tired and supporting himself.
I feel short of breath, but I turn and wave at Ben as he drives away. Then I look back at Struz and my house, and will myself to walk up the driveway.
All the lights in the house are on. Every single one. Our windows are lit up enough that they could illuminate the whole street.
“Elaine!” Struz calls to my mother. “Please open the door.”
He turns when I’m only about five feet from the porch, and I can see his eyes are bloodshot, like he’s been crying. Sadness and relief wash over his face in a weird mixture, and then he pulls himself together, stands up straight, and takes a deep breath.
“J-baby, unlock the door for me?” he says. “Your mom locked me out.”
On any normal night, I would. I would roll my eyes and we would exchange looks and sighs that said we didn’t know what to do about her.
But this isn’t a normal evening. Something is very wrong.
I hold my keys tightly in my fist. “What happened?”
“J, this is important,” Struz says. “She’s been freaking out for at least twenty minutes.”
“What happened?” I repeat.
“Jared is in there with her,” Struz says, and that almost makes me lunge for the door and fumble with my keys. I’ve managed to keep Jared away from most of her episodes. But I’m not going to let Struz play me like that.
“Why isn’t Jared at Chris’s house? They had an English project....”
“I picked him up and brought him home,” Struz says. But he doesn’t tell me why.
“If you want me to unlock the door, you tell me what happened, or we stand out here all night.”
Struz looks away from me, and not at anything in particular, and then he looks back, and his eyes are watering. “It’s your dad. Earlier today he went to investigate a lead on his own, I’m not sure what....”
My voice shakes when it comes out. “And he’s not back?”
As soon as I say the words, I realize how wrong they are. I can see in Struz’s face that it’s worse than that, and a cold feeling of dread settles deep in my chest and begins to spread outward, its tendrils reaching out, squeezing the air from my lungs.
“San Diego PD found his body a couple hours ago in one of the canyons behind Park Village.”
H
is body.
San Diego PD found his body.
He’s dead. My dad is dead.
As I’m trying to process that, I’m struck with the most ridiculous thought.
We’ve done the same thing for Jared’s birthday every year. He invites his friends over, and Struz and my dad play baseball or football with them, and then my dad barbecues ribs, chicken, and hot dogs.
Next month when I have fourteen teenage boys in our house, who will grill the food?
And then I feel absurd because who cares about that? My dad is dead. I’m never going to come home to find our garage door wide open again. I’m never going to wake up to a phone call at two a.m. from him, apologizing for missing dinner and asking if he should bring home ice cream to make up for it. I’m never going to wake up for school and find him passed out in his work clothes at the desk in his study.
The weight of that knowledge sucks all the air out of my body, and I reach out until Struz catches my hand and steadies me. I bend slightly at the waist, leaning forward in some instinctive attempt to protect my organs from physical pain even though it won’t help.
My dad is dead.
“J
-baby.”
“J, it’s going to be okay.”
Struz is talking to me. I force myself to gulp down as much air as I can and straighten up. But something is ripping me apart from the inside out, because this isn’t right. This isn’t supposed to be happening.
It has to be some awful nightmare and in a minute I’ll wake up and go tell my dad about it and he’ll laugh because he’s going to die an old man in his sleep long after Jared and I have moved out of the house and gotten families of our own. Because the job is never going to claim him—not like that.
San Diego PD found his body....
“We’ll figure it out,” Struz says, his hand on my back.
I pull away, thinking suddenly of the
way
my dad died. The corners of my vision are blackening. I feel a little like I might pass out. Someone killed him. “Do you know who did it?”
“Not yet, but we will,” Struz says. I see the determination in his eyes, and I want to believe him. He won’t just sit on this. Neither will the other agents in my dad’s squad. Even if it goes cold it’ll be the case that sits on Struz’s desk, the one he looks at every night before he goes to bed until he figures it out or until he dies. Whichever comes first.
But that doesn’t make the weight that’s pressing down on my chest let up. “Maybe it’s a mistake,” I say, even though I know it’s not. “What lead was he chasing up? What the hell was he doing in the canyons behind Park Village?”
It really doesn’t make much sense. Cops patrol the canyons behind Park Village because it’s this crazy huge housing development and kids always hang out there and get drunk or smoke weed. The only time my dad ever went out there was when I was a sophomore and this kid a year ahead of me threatened to bring a gun to school and didn’t show up for homeroom the next day. The teachers locked us down and called the police. Alex’s mom heard about it and called my dad. He and a couple of his agents dropped everything and went searching for the kid. They found him in the canyons.
They hadn’t needed to; it was a suicide. Not like this.
Thinking about that—about a case and the death of
someone else
—helps keep me grounded, helps me focus on what’s important at this second, and I look at Struz straight-on to make sure I can gauge his reaction as I ask, “Was his body dumped there?”
Struz sets his jaw and doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t need to. He’s trying to stay composed, but I can see how angry he is, and I know I’m on the right track. My own anger burns in my chest before spreading through my veins to the rest of my body, and my fingertips itch with the urge to break something. Or someone.
The real question is what was my dad doing and who was he meeting in Park Village?
The dull throbbing of the car keys digging into my palm makes me realize I’ve been clenching my fists. I believe Struz. I know he’ll work forever to figure this out. I know because so will I.
The sound of something breaking inside the house brings me back to the immediate problem. My mother. “Did you tell her?”
“She’s his wife,” Struz says, and he doesn’t need to say that he told her, he doesn’t need to say that it was probably a mistake to do it before I was home, and he doesn’t need to say he wasn’t thinking clearly.
For once, I’m not mad. I take a deep breath and think about how I can use this to my advantage. Because in the next few days—or weeks or months or even years—while the FBI scrambles to solve the loss of one of their own, I don’t want to just sit on my hands and wait for them to give me a few pieces of the information I’m entitled to know.
“I’m sorry, J-baby,” Struz whispers, and I know the apology covers everything—from what’s going on with my mother behind this door to the fact that my father is gone, to everything in between.
I nod and move toward the door, taking my time as I find the right key and make sure it actually fits into the lock. I look at Struz and hope he’s preoccupied enough, and that this is enough of the truth that he won’t catch me when I lie, “You take care of her, and I’ll take care of Jared.”
He just nods.
“The Xanax are in her bedroom. Give her two. That’ll put her to sleep.” Which is true, but if she’s well into an episode it’ll take him everything he’s got to get her back into her bedroom and force her to take the pills.
Which will give me enough time.
I take a deep breath and turn the key.
The inside of my house is only a step away from a scene from
The Exorcist
. The end table in the foyer is overturned, its lamp in pieces. Pizza sauce and some kind of liquid are splattered on the walls.
“Jared!” I call immediately.
In the kitchen, there are shattered pieces of porcelain everywhere. A half-eaten pizza is on the tiled floor, and a two-liter bottle of Coke lies on its side, liquid still seeping out and making a puddle on the floor.
Jared is standing wide-eyed and frozen in the center of the kitchen, watching as my mother pulls dishes from the good china cabinet—her wedding china—and throws them as hard as she can at the floor. As a bowl hits the tile and shatters, Jared flinches, the only evidence he hasn’t gone completely into shock.