CHAPTER TWELE
They ask a lot of questions, police officers. Sometimes they ask questions that make sense, like how well did you know the deceased. And sometimes they ask questions that seem completely random, like what kind of sandwich were you eating, and where did you get it. I guess some of it is just them trying to make small talk, and some of it is them trying to figure out if you’re telling the truth.
They showed up pretty quickly after I called them—three squad cars and an ambulance. The emergency workers ran over to Jacinta and tried to revive her, even though I’d said she was dead when I called 911. Maybe they were just following protocol. It seemed a little silly to me. But they didn’t keep at it long. Pretty soon they stopped and got out a body bag, started doing paperwork. You could tell they’d seen this sort of thing before.
I didn’t cry, not then. I was numb. The thought crossed my mind that I ought to tell them about Delilah Fairweather, that she was the girl driving the car last night, not Jacinta. But I didn’t say it. I don’t know why.
I told them what they wanted to hear. I did not tell them about the pink envelope. I’d hidden that in my boot even before I called 911. It was for me, anyway, not for them. If Jacinta had wanted to say anything to them before she killed herself, she would have called them. But she hadn’t, of course, and instead waited for Delilah to do the right thing.
The cops said I could go home, and that’s when Jeff Byron pulled up. He got out of the car and ran toward me, and he tried to say something to me, but I wouldn’t listen. I felt nothing but revulsion when he grabbed my arm. I shook his hand off like it was burning hot. I think he was going to follow me across the lawn, but one of the cops said something to him quietly, and Jeff just stood there and watched me go. I could feel his eyes boring into my back as I opened the sliding glass door to the kitchen and shut it behind me. It was nearly dark outside now.
I stood in the front room, looking through the window and watching as the ambulance pulled away, Jacinta’s body stowed in the back. The cops followed. Jeff stood by his car for a long moment, staring at the house, before getting in and driving off. That’s when my cell phone rang.
It was my mother.
I picked up. I picked up because I’d forgotten I wasn’t talking to her, and because it seemed like the normal and proper response to one’s phone ringing. It rings, you answer. That’s how it works. I went through the motions as if I were a machine set to automatic mode.
“Hello?” I said. It sounded to me as if my voice were coming from very far away.
“Darling!” my mother chirped. Her voice betrayed not a hint of sadness or remorse.
“Mom?”
“Yes, it’s Mom, sweetie. You have been so tough to reach today!”
“Oh,” I said. I had the feeling that if I were up to having normal emotions, I’d be confused. Instead I just listened.
“You know, about earlier today—I don’t want you to worry one bit. It’s not going to affect anything. We’ve already got my lawyer working on it, and today I met with the most amazing PR man who is going to fix this mess. I may have to sue a few parties in the process, but that’s all right. What’s important to me is that you know I’m fine.” She was jabbering away at a mile a minute.
“I’m going home, Mom.” My voice sounded faint in my own ears.
She missed a beat then.
“You’re w-what?” she asked.
“I’m going home. To Chicago. Tomorrow. I’m going to buy a ticket online. I’ll have a shuttle service bring me to the airport.” I said it all mechanically.
“But darling, you’re still here for another two weeks!” she said. “Surely you want to spend more time with your little friends.”
I was silent for so long that she finally said, “Well—I’m not coming back tonight, so I won’t get to say goodbye to you. I want to say goodbye. Don’t you?”
“Goodbye, Mom,” I said, and hung up.
She didn’t call or text back.
I called my dad, even though I knew he was probably at a game with his summer league team. He didn’t pick up his cell, but the sound of his voice on his outgoing message made me tear up. I still didn’t feel anything, exactly, but my eyes got wet all the same.
“I’m coming home, Daddy,” I said hoarsely, after the beep. “Tomorrow. I’ll see you soon.” And that was it.
I ran a bath and poured some bubbles in. I stripped off all my clothes and stepped into it. It felt like a womb, warm and safe. My shoulders dropped a little, and I let out a ragged sigh, and opened Jacinta’s envelope.
The note had a URL and a password. It also contained other things—passwords and certain instructions—but she’d drawn big arrows pointing to the URL and password, so I figured that was the most important part. I got out of the bath just as soon as I’d gotten in, wrapped my wet body in a towel, and went to my laptop. The URL led to a website, Vimeo, with a password-protected video. My fingers shaking, I typed in the password and hit enter.
The video was nothing fancy. Jacinta had clearly shot it on her web cam earlier that day. She’d put on one of her fabulously weird outfits, pinned her hair up at odd angles, and done her makeup to perfection. She looked, as always, like a stunning alien visitor to Earth. And she told her story, straight to the camera.
“I want you to know that while I’ve lied about plenty of things in the past couple of months, everything I’m about to tell you is a hundred percent true.
“I’m Jacinta Trimalchio, but my real name is Adriana DeStefano. I was born on Staten Island. My father was a weapons contractor; my mother was a housewife. When I was little, my father got a big contract to provide body armor to the US government. We made a lot of money. We moved to the Upper East Side, and they enrolled me in Little Trumbo, Trumbo Academy’s elementary school. That’s where I met Delilah Fairweather.
“We loved each other right away. We were best friends, but we were always something more, something bigger than friendship. When I couldn’t see her for a day, I cried. When she couldn’t see me, she threw tantrums so bad her mother would call my mother in desperation and ask when our next playdate could be. We were a part of each other, Delilah and me. We were intertwined. She was a year younger, but we used to tell people we were twins. We said we were going to marry brothers and live in the same house.
“When I was eleven and Delilah was ten, my father was indicted on federal charges. The court found that he had knowingly and deliberately sold faulty body armor to the government, and that it had been used in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and had resulted in injuries and deaths. My father had blood on his hands, the papers said. The news cameras camped outside our building all day and all night. They followed my mother when she brought me to school. We couldn’t go anywhere. We couldn’t do anything. And nobody would talk to us. In school, Delilah would look at me with these big, sad blue eyes, but she wouldn’t speak. I knew it wasn’t her fault. I knew her mother had told her not to talk to me. But it cut my heart.
“They took everything—the apartment in the city, the cars, the beach house in East Hampton, and all the money, everything but my trust fund. They sent my father to prison for a long, long time. He killed himself there, right away—hung himself with his bed sheets. We had nothing left. His family came to the funeral, but none of my mother’s family, none of my friends. Nobody even called.
“We moved to Florida. It was supposed to be temporary. My grandparents gave my mom some starter money, and she rented a one-bedroom apartment. I slept on the couch. She got a job as a cocktail waitress. She met a guy there. Soon he was my stepdad. He hit me when he was drunk. I told her, and she hit me, too. She said I was trying to ruin the only good thing in her life. She sent me to live with my grandparents in their retirement village. About a year later, her husband was arrested and put in prison for assaulting a man at a bar. My mother didn’t apologize, but she asked me to come back home. I went.