Authors: Nick Lake
Unbelievably awkward silence.
Our thousandth awkward moment, give or take.
Then your radio crackled.
“714, what’s your 20?” said a pissed-off sounding voice. “Where’s my goddamn plush?”
“This is 714,” you said, thumbing the radio. “Leaving the warehouse now.”
“Good. Get to Pier Two STAT. Then I want four bags of Pokémon to Pier One.”
“10-4,” you said.
“Out,” said the voice on the other end.
“Out,” you said.
You stood up stiffly. I stood up too. “You want to come with me?” you said. “I don’t want to … just leave you here.”
“Um. Okay,” I said.
Come on, Earth! Swallow me right now.
But it never does.
You pointed to the far left corner of the warehouse. “Can you grab the Bugs Bunnies? There are three piles—small, medium, large. We need medium. I’ll get the rest. But I have to hurry.” Your voice was flatter than usual, like you were trying not to show your feelings, trying to pave over them with smooth hardness. Concrete.
“Can’t keep the kids waiting,” I said jokily.
“No,” you said. Still flatly.
I nodded, and started walking.
It was weird, that voice on your radio. I mean, for once a voice came from nowhere and actually helped—broke that terrible moment after you tried to kiss me and I moved away.
Has to be a first time for everything.
Here’s the thing though: I wish I had let you kiss me. Part of me wanted to, I promise. Even if we were disturbed right away by the radio, I wish I had let our lips touch, wish I had not pulled away. Wish I had not caused that hurt in your eyes.
But at the same time … I couldn’t. Not at that moment. And I was angry with the part of me that wanted me to, if I’m giving you the whole truth.
Even writing this down, I feel pretty sickened by myself.
I mean, Paris was gone, most probably dead, and I was even picturing the idea of kissing you.
Because I pictured it a lot.
Even then, just after Paris had gone missing.
Believe me, I hate myself quite a lot right now, but what can I do? I said I would tell the truth, and only the truth, so help me, God.
I offer two things in mitigation though:
1. We were only together in the first place because of her. Because I wanted to find her. I mean, that was the whole thing we were doing. The Twitter thing. Working stuff out. It was you who knew the shape of the street Julie had been on; you who worked out that the car could only have turned
out of a drive
. It was all you—the clues, they all came from you. So you and Paris, you were connected.
2. I was a teenager. Am a teenager. I figure if Paris were a couple years younger, and the situation were reversed, she would have wanted to be kissed too. If she never had been, I mean. Never kissed, I mean. She totally would. Yeah, you were the first person I kissed. Don’t get a big head about it.
3. I was grieving. I was. And people’s emotions do weird things when they’re grieving. They want to kiss boys and stuff, and scream and shout and laugh. Or they pull away from a boy who tries to kiss them, even though they want to, even though they really want to. It’s not just
feeling sad
. It’s more complicated than that. Even Agent Horowitz said it.
4. The voice punished me for it. I mean, not by making me hurt myself. I’d mostly stopped doing that, now that I knew the voice
couldn’t
kill my dad. Though sometimes I still cleaned my room and stuff when it told me to. Because the alternative was a lot of cursing and shouting from the voice, which was unpleasant. But … where was I? Oh yes. The voice did a lot of cursing and shouting after I got home that day. It was unpleasant.
5. I’ve gone over my two things. I KNOW.
You drove me to the pier. If it weren’t for Paris being gone, it would have been as good as the first time, cruising along the beach, the hard sand under the wheels, slaloming around the groups of people. You had turned the radio on—some MOR rock ballad was playing. The windows of the truck were open, and the wind whipped my hair.
It’s strange: A car on a road feels normal. A car on a beach always feels like flying. Like freedom. Even then I felt it, almost wanted to ask you if I could drive again.
You parked right by the pier and jumped down; threw the bags of toys up onto the side.
I looked at my watch. “You’d better drop me at home. Sometimes Dad comes back for lunch.”
“You grounded or something?”
“It’s complicated,” I said.
“Sure. Okay. I get that. I get complicated.”
“You do?”
“My mom died too. When I was fifteen. Me and my dad … Things are difficult between us.”
I was staring at you.
“Oh, ****,” you said. “Your mom’s not dead? I thought your dad said … I thought it was … I don’t know. Something else we—”
“No, she’s dead,” I said.
You were swallowing anxiously. “Sorry, sorry, I just …”
“It’s cool,” I said.
“I blurt stuff out,” you said. “It’s a curse. My voice is totally out of my control.”
Oh
, I thought,
you have no idea
.
“Anyway,” you said. “I’ll drive you home.”
I walked into Dr. Rezwari’s office and stopped. She was sitting at her desk, which was usually bare, and there was work all over it—files, sheaths of paper held together with clips. Her makeup was not applied as adroitly as usual; her lipstick was smudged and there were tracks in her eyeliner.
Her eyes were red and puffy.
“Are you all right?” I asked. She was looking at me blankly.
She did that blinking thing—I could almost see her consciousness swim up from some black depth. “I’m fine, thank you. Take a seat.”
I sat down.
“The voice is still gone?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Excellent. And how are you feeling?”
“Good,” I said.
“Okay,” said Dr. Rezwari. “And the medication. Any side effects?”
“No.”
“No drowsiness? Lack of appetite?”
“Oh, yeah. All of that. But that’s normal, right?”
“Yes. To a degree. Keep an eye on it, yes?” She moved papers around on her desk, absently.
“I will.”
“Great. You’re doing very well, Cassandra. I’m very pleased with your progress.”
“No thanks to you.” That wasn’t me. That was the voice.
“Uh-huh,” I said.
Dr. Rezwari rubbed at her eyes. Then she looked up at me and seemed surprised I was still there. “So … I’ll see you next week?” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Are you … um … can I help?”
“Excuse me?”
“You seem upset. Can I help?”
Dr. Rezwari laughed—a half-hollow, half-real laugh. “
You
want to help me? Your psychiatrist?”
“Sorry, it’s stupid, I—”
“No, it’s kind of you. I guess my work with you is done! The pupil has become the master. I’m fine, truly.” She moved another file, randomly as far as I could see. “I just … something happened to one of our outpatients. Something terrible. Nothing to concern you.”
“Paris?”
Her eyes sharpened. “You knew her?”
Suddenly I knew that I didn’t want to talk about Paris. “Not really. We met in the courtyard. But I read in the paper … about …”
“Yes,” said Dr. Rezwari. She made a sobbing sound. “Oh God. Sorry. This is so unprofessional. I was … I was very fond of her.”
I stared at her, surprised. But yes, why not? Paris was one of those people. She didn’t so much have charisma as an
aura
. To my amazement I found myself feeling a moment of connection with Dr. Rezwari. “Sorry,” I said.
“Thank you. And now I must let you go, try to gather myself before my next appointment.”
“Okay. See you next week.”
“See you, Cassandra.” She looked down at her desk and didn’t look back up.
I closed the door behind me, took the corridor lined with photos of old board members and then the green stairs down to the lobby, where the bus stop was.
“Liar,” said the voice. “You lied to her about everything. About your drugs. About Paris.”
“Shut up. It’s not six.”
“Fine. But you’re still a liar. And it’s going to get you in trouble.”
“This is it?”
“Yeah,” you said. We were sitting in your pickup early in the morning, outside a liquor store. You had an hour before starting work—and every second counted. I mean, what could be happening to Paris as the hours ticked by … We both knew it, but neither of us said it.
You showed me the screen of your phone. I looked at it. There was a list of tweets. The pictures next to them showed a whole range of people. Young, old, white, black. I didn’t know what you had done, but you had gotten a
load
of different people looking for that Jeep.
“Read it,” you said.
I read.
#SRT8 Lauderdale b/t Ash and Ocean
Spotted! Bayside 8th Street #SRT8
#SRT8 @ the Laundromat on Fort in Lauderdale
#SRT8 on Mayflower Drive in Lauderdale
#Lauderdale #SRT8 #Ocean & 10th
“That’s just a random sampling,” you said. “Notice anything?”
“Yeah. Lauderdale.”
“Hence, we are sitting here in Lauderdale.”
“And we’re just going to wait till we see a Jeep SRT8?” I was starting to feel less sure about this plan. “There are hardly any houses around here. It’s all factories and offices and industrial buildings.”
“Nevertheless,” you said, “Lauderdale came up most. That means someone who owns an SRT8 either lives here or works here. Furthermore, a lot of the tweets mention Ocean Avenue. Which is why we’re on Ocean Avenue.”
“You’re a latter-day Sherlock,” I said.
“That makes you Watson.”
“Fine. I’m comfortable with—”
I shut up. A black Jeep SRT8 had just turned right onto the street in front of us. It traveled north slowly. Its windows were darkened—privacy glass.
Perfect for a murderer
, I thought.
Murderers like privacy.
“There!” I said. “There!” There was a nasty worm of a thought at the back of my mind—this could be the person who …
who …
who took Paris.
“Yep,” you said. You turned the key in the ignition.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to follow it, obviously.” You checked the traffic and then gunned across the road to catch up with the Jeep. A guy in a BMW shook his fist at us.
“Keep two cars between us and them,” I said. “I saw it in a movie.”
“Yeah, I’m not going to do that,” you said. “I’d just lose them. I’m not a spy.”
“Okay.”
We fell silent as you kept after the Jeep, turning when it turned. At one point we hit some lights and the Jeep got through just before they went red. You braked, hard. “****,” you said, hitting the steering wheel with the palm of your hand.
But then the lights went green and you pulled away, and there was the SRT8, just turning left a block ahead. You accelerated—if there had been a camera, you’d have been so busted. You drove fast, turned the corner with the tires squealing. The Jeep was maybe two hundred yards ahead, just a Datsun mini-truck thing between us and it.
Then the Jeep slowed and turned into a driveway.
You slowed the pickup to a crawl and parked just down the street. I nodded at the car door and you nodded back; we both got out and walked down the street.
You took my hand. It was the first time our skin had touched. I don’t know if you felt it, but I did. It was … it was as if there were thousands of nerve endings there, in my palm, in my fingers, that I had never known about, that had just lain dormant for my entire life.
How can I have all this skin I didn’t know about?
I thought.
How can no one ever have touched it before?
Because I had never felt anything like this before.
I swallowed.
I looked at you.
We paused at the driveway where the Jeep turned, feeling the warmth of each other’s hands.
We saw the Jeep’s taillights disappear behind a warehouse, which was next to a massive amount of heavy equipment—cranes, diggers, rollers. A few guys were walking around in yellow hard hats, hi-vis vests on, brown boots and jeans a kind of uniform.
But none of this was what had snagged my attention.
What had snagged my attention was:
A sign on a couple of shiny stainless-steel poles, reading:
DEVON AND SONS DEMOLITION
.
“What?” you said.
“The sign. Let’s say you work for a demolition firm. Think you’d find it hard to hide a body?”
“Oh.”
Silence, as we both pictured Paris buried beneath the foundation of a building; her hair crushed by concrete.
Well, I did anyway. I don’t know about you.
That was when the Jeep SRT8 appeared again, around the warehouse. It bounced over the rutted earth toward us, the windshield darkened so we couldn’t see who was inside. We stepped back, eyes on the car.
Then another Jeep SRT8 came out behind it, black too, its windows darkened.
Then another.
And another.
“Oh,” you said. “Great.”
“It’s a
company car
,” I said, stupidly. “A company car.”
A long moment of silence.
“There’s a lot of stuff to demolish when the economy is down, I suppose,” I said. I felt bleak. Our lead was not a lead at all. It was just a firm that owned a load of SRT8s.
“Of course,” you said. “Stupid of me.”
We watched the four black Jeeps drive down the road west from us, in convoy, before disappearing from view as they turned onto Ocean, toward town. Then we started walking back to the pickup.
“Well, the tweet thing worked,” you said.
“Yep.”
“But now we have too many SRT8s.”
“So we’re nowhere,” I said.
“Yeah,” you said. “I mean, for now.”
You pressed the key fob and the pickup flashed and beeped. We opened our doors to climb in.
I put my hands against the dash. My breath was coming in gulps, violent. My heart was spinning, fast, like a blender. A blender that was turning my organs to mulch, to liquid.
I touched my cheeks. Tears were running down them; I felt like I was choking. Actually choking.