I suppose she was trying to make me jealous, imagining her with someone else. She was a child, always looking for attention and drama to keep herself entertained. And she never heard from that guy again.
“Someone said you were in tears.” The detective held me in his gaze; I could tell he wasn’t sure whether I was being honest or not.
“I wasn’t,” I said with a little laugh. “Really.”
“So after the library, where did you go?”
“I came back here,” I said.
“You left the library at around eight, according to witnesses,” said the detective. “And you came here around nine-thirty? But the library is only a ten-minute walk at most.”
I didn’t say anything right away. I remember this from my father: Don’t say too much. Talk as little as possible.
Finally, “I just walked around a bit.”
“But you weren’t feeling well.”
“I thought some air might do me good.”
“Witnesses say that she left a few minutes after you did.”
Witnesses say, witnesses say, witnesses say. If I had a dime for every time I’d heard that phrase. People, it seemed, were always watching, taking measure, issuing judgments. They couldn’t wait to start running their mouths off. But did you know that eyewitness testimony is often totally unreliable? The human memory only records events through the filter of its own frame of reference. We try to fit the information we receive into schemas, units of knowledge that we possess about the world that correspond with frequently encountered situations, individuals, ideas, and situations. In other words, we often see things as we expect to see them, or want to see them, and not always as they are.
When I didn’t say anything: “So you didn’t see Rebecca again that night?”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t. I walked around, maybe longer than I thought. And then I came back to my room.”
“It seems like she might have caught up with you on the path.”
“But she didn’t,” I said. Don’t get defensive. Don’t let them rattle you.
“Okay,” he said. He gave a quick nod, as though everything had been settled. He made to stand up, then seemed to change his mind.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” he said. “What is your relationship to Rebecca? Or-you call her Beck, right?”
“We’re friends, roommates. Good friends,” I said.
“More than that?” He’d lowered his voice to a whisper.
I started to quiver inside, a kind of shocked and angry shaking that started in my core and radiated out. It took my voice away. I looked toward the other room. Had anyone heard him?
“No,” I breathed. I wanted to scream at him. Who said that? Who would say something like that? Ainsley?
He could see that he’d upset me, held up both his palms in a gesture of surrender. “Okay,” he said. “I’m sorry. I have to ask all of these questions, Miss Granger. It’s my job to look at all the angles.”
I didn’t say anything else, just looked down at the table between us. He slid his card under my gaze. “Call if you think of anything you want to discuss, no matter how small.”
“Okay,” I managed. When I looked up at him, I wore a polite smile. “I will.”
He stood, and I felt a wave of relief that the conversation was over.
Then he stopped. “I was going through the files of the case a couple of years back-Elizabeth Barnett?”
“She fell down the stairs,” I said. “It was an accident.”
“Right,” he said. “It was ruled an accident. There was no evidence of foul play and she had been drinking heavily.”
I nodded, felt myself choke up a little at the memory of those horrible days, the searching, the waiting. Why did this keep happening?
“You were with Elizabeth the night she disappeared, weren’t you? You and Rebecca?”
“We were at a party together,” I said. What was he implying? “There were lots of people there. Half the school.”
“But the three of you went to the party together, isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” I said. “We did.”
We’d all gone together, but Elizabeth had been meeting her boyfriend there. It had taken us a long time to get ready. We’d been drinking before we left, trying on different outfits. They’d been giving me a hard time because I went into the bathroom to change, didn’t want to parade around in my underwear like they did. But it was good-natured enough. We were mainly focused on Elizabeth, how she thought it was going to be her first time with Gregg. She’d shopped for the occasion, and showed us her black-and-pink lace panties and matching bra. Her body was perfect; it looked like molded plastic. I found myself staring at the swell of her hips, her lush and pretty breasts, the lovely hollow of her belly button.
“God, who looks like that?” said Beck. “You’re perfect.”
Elizabeth just giggled and pulled on her clothes. “Yeah, right.”
She wasn’t a girl who knew her own beauty. And she was more beautiful for it. The three of us left together, giddy and happy, and ready for a good time. But when we walked through the door together, Gregg was waiting, looking smitten. I still remember how he enfolded her, and how she looked at him with a wide smile and glistening eyes. Love, a promise delivered already broken. Who said that?
But the rest of the night is a bit of a haze. We drank too much, all of us. But maybe especially me. When I drank, I found such a delightful state of blissful numbness, something about the way it mingled with the meds I was on. Naturally, I wasn’t supposed to drink. But I did anyway. When I wake up after those nights, all I can remember usually is some blend of music, voices, light, a weird collage of my encounters. The same is true of that night. I sometimes dream of Elizabeth crying, but I don’t know if that happened or not. I dream of being angry with her, but I don’t know why.
“There was a fight that night, too,” the detective said.
“With her boyfriend,” I said. “She fought with her boyfriend.”
I thought about Gregg and how he had never looked the same after Elizabeth died. Even now, he looks thinner and less golden than he used to. That’s what happens when tragedy touches us. It fades out the colors, takes off the shine. Of course, we all know that the world tends toward destruction, that everything withers and falls to pieces. But we imagine that there’s so much time. When someone we love dies suddenly and tragically, it’s like seeing the curvature of the earth. You always knew it was round, a contained sphere floating in space. But when you see the bend in the horizon line, it changes your perspective on everything else.
I sat silent, waiting for the detective to go on. But he didn’t. He stood in the doorway a second and then walked out. I sensed he was trying to make a point, but I didn’t know what it was. I heard him talking to Lynne and Frank, and I sat there, shaking, until Ainsley walked in.
She had dark rings under her eyes, and her hair was wild. She sat where the detective was sitting and reached out for my hand. Mine looked big and ugly next to hers.
“I can’t go through this again,” she said. “I think I might go home. My parents are coming tomorrow.”
“No,” I said. I didn’t want to be alone here in the room without either of them. “It’s fine. You’ll see. She’ll come back.”
“I can’t sleep,” she said. She put her head down on our clasped hands and started to cry. She was the most sensitive of the three of us. She freaked out at exam time, got edgy when she’d had too much caffeine, cried at sad movies. Ainsley was a delicate spirit, gentle and easily upset. I moved around to her this time and put my arms around her. We sank together to the floor, the chair scraping back. I could hear the low rumble of voices in the other room.