“School was bad today,” said Mitchell.
Stefan pushed his hands into the pockets of his dark leather coat. Trudy bent her head forward like she was looking at her feet, then suddenly turned her eyes to the side so they were looking at Mitchell.
“What are we,” she said, “your parents?”
“No.” Mitchell’s parents were another story. “You’re my friends.”
When the elevator got to the very top of the building it opened up on a wide hallway. There were only two apartments on this floor — one at either end of the hallway. Stefan and Trudy’s apartment was on the right. The other one belonged to a guy named Giorgio Piccininni, but it was basically vacant because Giorgio was in Italy doing real estate or something. There were voices coming from Stefan and Trudy’s place and Mitchell thought he heard the sound of their Media Centre. He recognized the voice on the home theatre from the news channel and he thought he recognized the voices talking but it was hard to tell.
“I’ll wait out here,” he said.
Trudy took his arm. “Come on, scaredy-cat,” she said. “We went to a lot of trouble to make sure this place was safe for you.” Then she pushed the door open the rest of the way and gave him a little push. “Inside.”
Mitchell stumbled through the double doors. The main room was high, with a big sleek chandelier hanging down from a ceiling that was two entire floors up. At one end was a kitchen that opened up on a dining room. At the other end was a sitting area, which faced a television set that was almost as big as the Explorer. Five people were sitting around it, watching the 24-hour news channel. Mitchell couldn’t remember who all the people were, although he had met them all before — three times in person, and many, many times online in the chat room. Three of them were men and two were women. He didn’t think either of the women was Mrs. Lesley Woolfe. The news anchor on television was Gloria Stahl. She was talking about Delilah Franken and her high school sports record.
“Just make yourselves at home,” said Trudy.
One of the men turned to the door and waved. He was completely bald and his eyes were jiggly.
“Hey, Mitch,” he said. “Hey, guys. Everything going okay out there?”
Stefan smiled. “You know as much as we do.” He walked over and sat down on the arm of the sofa. “More, maybe. What’s she going on about?”
The woman nearest Stefan rested her hand on his knee and smiled up at him. “The Police Chief’s had another press conference,” she said. “He just did the usuaclass="underline" asked that anyone with information about poor Delilah’s disappearance should call CrimeStoppers. Didn’t have anything new to say.”
“Well of course he didn’t,” said Trudy. She put her hand on Mitchell’s shoulder. Her thumb touched the back of his neck and he took a sharp breath.
“Can I go on the computer?” asked Mitchell.
The woman by Stefan shook her head, but she smiled or seemed to. “Mitchell Owens,” she said, “you are a prize.”
Trudy’s hand slid off Mitchell’s shoulder and she took him by the hand. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll boot it up for you.”
“I know how,” said Mitchell. But he let her lead him to the sunroom anyway. He stood there for a moment, looking down over the flickering lights — the patterns of brake lights and headlights and signs and window lamps. Mitchell looked back when the computer chimed up to its logon screen.
“You are a prize,” said Trudy, typing the password which was BLENDER. “Shelly was right about that.”
“Ah,” said Mitchell. “Shelly.” That was her name.
Trudy’s eyes flashed again. “Do you like her?”
“What do you mean?”
“Could she—” Trudy gestured in the air with her hands and looked at the ceiling. “You know.”
Mitchell blinked. “What do you mean?”
Now Trudy’s eyes widened and she looked down at him with a tight little slit of a mouth. When she spoke, she whispered like she was shouting.
“You know what I mean!”
Mitchell looked over at the computer screen. The wallpaper was new — a scan of Delilah Franken, the one from the police website. Her hair was darker than it should be. She was wearing her graduation gown and she didn’t look comfortable in it. He moused over to the START menu and fired up Photoshop.
Trudy seemed to calm down. She put her hand on Mitchell’s shoulder and leaned close to his ear. “What are you up to there, Mitchy?”
“Make her happy.”
“Oh.” Trudy chuckled. “Well go to it, sport.”
Mitchell found the JPEG and opened it up. It was a big file and when he zoomed into 100 per cent all he could see was her mouth, a bit of her chin and the bottom of her nose. That was good. It looked like there was a blemish on her chin, maybe some acne because she was so stressed out about graduating, so he cloned some skin from her cheek onto it, then he opened up the Liquify filter and went to work on her mouth. Delilah was one of those girls who smiled like she was sad, with the mouth turned down at the edges. Mitchell fixed that, edging the pixels at the corners up and up and up. Once he was satisfied Delilah was happy enough, he applied the changes and went to work on her hair, which in the picture was a dingy brown. He magnetic-lassoed it with a one-pixel feather then went into Image>Adjustments>Curves, and he lightened it up and improved the contrast so it looked like she had blonde streaks which is how she wore it these days. He liked the idea, but not so much the effect: the feather made the background glow too much around her hair, like a halo. But he didn’t know how to fix it either. So Mitchell left it the way it was and saved it under another file name. He closed it, then he went into File>Open recent and opened it again. He did it again, four times.
“Wow. She sure is happy.”
Mitchell took a sharp breath.
“Really happy.”
He took his hand away from the mouse.
“Fucking overjoyed.” Laughter followed. Mitchell turned around.
The whole party, all seven of them, were there. Shelly was dangling a mostly empty wine glass beside her as she pressed against a skinny grey-haired man, who was leaning against the doorframe beside Stefan, who was bent forward over the back of an office chair, his hands on the arm-rests straddling the bare arms of another woman with short dark hair and light-coloured jeans who was sitting there legs crossed, one bare foot with manicured toenails brushing the shoulder of the bald man, who sat on the floor almost cross-legged. Behind them, a blond-haired fellow wearing a black T-shirt stood on his toes to look at the computer screen. Trudy was crouched down beside Mitchell, her hands on the desktop and her chin resting on her knuckles. She looked up at Mitchell.
“Happy now?” she said. Stefan laughed, Shelly giggled, and that set everyone else off.
Mitchell looked back at the picture. Delilah smiled back out at him, and he thought he could see why they were laughing. She was smiling wide: too wide, as wide as the Joker did in Batman. As he looked at it now, he saw the problem with that. It was unnatural. Delilah had never smiled that way. Not even in grade school. If she did, why she’d rip her cheeks right off her cheekbones and then there’d be nothing but blood and tears. Mitchell guessed it was pretty funny, seeing Delilah Franken smiling like that.
He let his breath out.
“I’m done on the computer,” he said. “Can I have something to eat?”
Trudy’s knees made a cracking noise as she got up. “Sure thing. Let’s go to the kitchen.”