Jacinta was silent.
“I know you must be upset,” I said. “I know this is hard. But you have to get a lawyer, and you have to go to the police yourself. You have to show them you’re not guilty.”
Jacinta’s voice, when it came, was faint and exhausted.
“I can’t afford a lawyer, Naomi.”
“Sure you can,” I said, even though I realized I didn’t know what I was talking about. “You’ve got your trust fund, right?”
“It’s done. Gone. I spent it all this year.”
“You spent all of it?”
“My nose job in April. The house June through August. The parties. The car. The Birkins. Everything. It’s gone.”
I racked my brain desperately for an answer. “Well, they’ll get you a public defender, then. If they even charge you! Which they might not, if you go to them before Delilah does. Tell your side of the story. Tell the truth. Show them you’re not afraid.”
Jacinta was silent again. I plunged onward.
“You can’t give up!” I whispered, turning away from the older woman who had just sat down beside me on the bench. “You can’t! I know you’re sad. I know you’re scared. I know you lied about a lot of stuff. You can’t let her lie about this. They could put you away for life!”
“I know,” Jacinta said, her voice so quiet I could barely make it out. “I know they could. I have to go now. Thank you for everything.”
“No, just listen—” I pleaded, but she hung up.
Then it was my turn to call with no answer and text with no response.
I felt the dread and fear pool in the pit of my stomach. This was bad. This was very, very bad. Maybe I should go back to my mother’s apartment and apologize—even if I didn’t mean it—and try to get her to charter me a helicopter back to East Hampton so I could sit with Jacinta. She needed a friend right now. Well, she needed a lawyer, but if that wasn’t possible, maybe a friend could help. Or maybe I could get her a lawyer! My mother’s lawyer was undoubtedly still at the house—he might know somebody who would take Jacinta’s case for free, or let her work out a payment plan or something. Anything. I just knew I needed to get to her as soon as I could, and the Jitney would take at least three hours if the traffic were all right.
Then the Jitney arrived, and I had to get on it. At this point, there was no way to tell if my mother would help me get back to the Hamptons. I couldn’t risk not getting back there that day. If a slow bus was what I had to take, a slow bus was what I would take. So I got on the Jitney, and I found a seat by the window by myself, and I watched the sights and sounds of Manhattan blend into the sights and sounds of Queens, and then Long Island. I had my iPod on me, and I listened to a bunch of episodes of my favorite podcast, “Stuff You Missed in History Class.” The hosts’ voices provided the background noise I needed to keep some part of my brain busy.
By the time we reached East Hampton proper, I was utterly nauseous. At first I blamed it on the bus ride, but I knew that the bus wasn’t the problem. Because it wasn’t just nausea that had me in its grip; it was fear.
I’ve spent a lot of my life, at least since I was about eleven or twelve, trying as hard as I could to be nothing like my mother. But when the Jitney dropped us off and I called a cab to pick me up, I felt a kind of panic I’d never experienced before. My heart was beating very fast, and I was sweating buckets. My teeth were chattering, but I wasn’t cold. I actually felt as if I were overheating. It was the most uncomfortable feeling in the world, and all I could think was, I have to get to Jacinta’s house. I have to get to Jacinta’s house. Everything will be fine if I just get to Jacinta’s house.
I did what my mother’s expensive, superstar private yoga teacher taught her to do: deep breathing. You breathe in for four, hold for seven, and then out for eight. You’ve got to get the breath down into your belly for it to work—at least, that’s what the yoga teacher said. So I did it, and it helped. But it didn’t stop the panic—it just made it more bearable.
When the cab driver arrived, he looked at me with concern.
“You okay?” he asked. I must’ve been as pale as Jacinta was on a normal day.
“I’m fine,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Just a little tired.”
When we drove down the street, I expected to see police cars parked in the driveway and Jacinta being led off in handcuffs, but that wasn’t the case. In the late-afternoon sun, everything looked perfect. Not a blade of grass out of place. And the street was utterly quiet—no sound of lawn mowers buzzing or hedge clippers swishing, no groan of the weed whacker, no little kids out playing. Nothing. Perfect and complete quiet. And yet, I still couldn’t fully relax. I rang Jacinta’s bell several times, but I couldn’t detect any movement inside the house. Maybe the police had already taken her in?
I walked into my house and kicked off my sandals. Upstairs, I ripped off my Marc Jacobs dress and threw it on the floor. I changed back into the outfit I’d worn on my trip from Chicago: the Cure T-shirt with a belt, the old Docs. It felt like slipping back into my real skin instead of the plastic facsimile I’d been wearing all summer long. I yanked my two suitcases out of the closet and started throwing clothes in as fast as I could. I left the Marc Jacobs dresses hanging in the closet, except for the one I’d tossed on the floor. All the while, my nerves jittered.
Immediately after I finished packing, I began to feel a little dizzy. I realized I hadn’t eaten anything since Kix with Jacinta hours ago. It was five o’clock now. I went downstairs and made myself a BLT. I walked out onto the back deck to eat it, and that’s when I saw something floating along the gentle current in Jacinta’s river pool.
I couldn’t have said what it was from where I stood, just that it was something that wasn’t a raft or a pool toy. I could’ve just let it be, but my gut told me to investigate. I was about thirty yards from the pool when I dropped my sandwich and began to run.
And then I was there at the poolside, staring down at Jacinta’s naked body floating facedown in the water like a waterlogged angel.
I knew she was dead. I knew it the way I’d known I shouldn’t leave her that morning. But I had to do something. Anything. I had to act.
And so I pulled her out of the water, her long, lean body topped by a soaking mess of white-blond hair. She was cold and limp, and even as I lay her down to begin CPR—something I’d learned in health class the previous year—I knew it wasn’t going to work. There’s the kind of dead from which you can bring someone back, when a heart stops for a brief collection of moments because of trauma or sickness, and you can shock it or pound it back to life. And then there’s the kind of dead that’s just final, from which there is no return, when the spirit or soul or whatever you want to call it has completely left the body. When you’re alone with the body, you can feel the absence of something, some intangible presence that indicates personhood. I was alone with Jacinta’s body, breathing into her mouth, pumping her chest, but Jacinta wasn’t there with me. Jacinta was gone.
And then I did something that still doesn’t make sense to me.
I sat down next to her, cross-legged, and put her head in my lap. I stroked her hair and rocked back and forth gently, and I said, “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.” I didn’t weep. I didn’t scream. Over and over again, I told myself and the shell of my friend that it was okay. It was okay. It was okay.
That’s when I saw the pink envelope lying in the grass.
It was addressed to me.