The breath I’d been holding rushed out. “So I’m okay? They can’t arrest me?”
He thought for a moment, then said softly, “For now.”
I massaged my temples. Reece disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a soda and a bottle of aspirin.
He shook his head. “I never would have put you in a situation like that if I’d known you’d get stupid.”
I spilled a few pills into my palm and tossed them back.
“Imagine how I feel.” I set the bottle down on a crate, my throat squeezing around the pills and forcing them down. “The first guy I ever kiss is a narc who’s trying to shut me up, and the first guy to feel me up is Vince DiMorello . . .” I shuddered.
Reece paled. “That was your first kiss? That day in the hall at school?”
I didn’t answer.
He dropped his head into his hands and let out a slow breath.
“Don’t flatter yourself.” I stood up, defensive. “I’ve kissed other people . . . like Jeremy.”
Reece stiffened. “Jeremy?”
“Yes, Jeremy.”
He stood up and pulled his hand through his hair, looking at me with a grave expression. “We need to talk. I should probably get dressed first.” He backed toward his bedroom. “Wait here. I’ll be back in five minutes. I’m serious this time. Five minutes. Don’t go anywhere,” and he disappeared into his room.
I guess I deserved that.
His muffled voice came through the bathroom door over the sound of running water.
“There’s leftover pizza in the kitchen. Help yourself.”
We need to talk. So this was it, I told myself. I’d broken our agreement, and the deal was over. The official break-up of a non-existent relationship. I pulled his phone from my pocket, and set it on a small shelf where he kept his key ring and his wallet. Then took off his pendant and laid the thistle beside them, next to a framed photograph. I picked it up. The faded image under the glass was lightly torn around the edges. Two boys stood arm in arm, one a smaller version of the other. Matching grins and blue eyes, their unruly bangs falling into identical sets of dark lashes.
But Reece said he didn’t have a family.
There are a lot of things about Whelan you don’t know.
I set the frame down. The shower was still running in the next room. I reached for the worn brown leather trifold and opened it. His driver’s license was there, bearing his own name and his real photo. A few credit cards, a library card, and a gym membership. When I flipped open the third section, something fluttered out. I bent to pick it off the floor. It was black-and-white and grainy, and folded to fit inside the wallet’s crease. A photo of a girl. I held it closer to see her. She had long hair, high cheekbones, and pretty eyes. Her lips looked full and glossy, even without color. I recognized the dress before I recognized her face. It was me. At the rave. Reece must have cut it from a surveillance photo and saved it. But why? And was he disappointed to find out I wasn’t really like the girl in the picture at all?
I returned the photo to the wallet and set it on the shelf. Then sank into the couch where Reece had been sitting. It was still warm and made a strange crackling sound under me. I pressed and released my weight, feeling something give beneath the thin cushion. Reaching under it, I withdrew a clump of papers—the torn pages from Reece’s textbook. I need you, it said, the words opening a fresh wound inside me. I pushed the pages aside, letting the crinkled periodic table drift to the floor.
I glanced to the closed bathroom door, listening to make sure the water was still running. I stuffed my arm back under the cushion and my fingers closed on something heavy. They withdrew a thick file folder and I turned it sideways to read the tab. Boswell, Nearly. Bold red letters across the front said Confidential.
My profile was printed inside: name, date of birth, nickname, schools attended, no previous criminal record . . . I paused at my parents’ names. Mother, Ramona Stevens Boswell. Father, Donald D. Boswell—I knew David was his middle name from the real driver’s license I kept under my bed. A brief note about him followed and I devoured the details even though they made me sick. He had no less than a dozen aliases and was “wanted” for felony charges, missing for five years, and his only known associate, listed merely by case number, was apparently serving time for another three.
I flipped the page. My name, followed by the words accomplice and possible suspect jumped out everywhere, beginning with the notes from my first “interview” with Lieutenant Nicholson.
Then came pages of reports in Reece’s blocky print. I glanced through them, surprised by their brevity. Sparse of detail and sterile in content, several dates and conversations were missing. Nothing about my escape from school the night of the play. Nothing about our conversation under the bleachers. Nothing about my trip to the hospital to see Posie, or our conversation by the airport after we’d fled the museum.
I flipped past them, thumbing through toxicology and autopsy reports. A handwritten note, time-stamped early this morning, confirmed they’d found ketamine residue in Kylie’s body last night.
I flipped past the lab reports to a stack of photos. Dozens of them.
I was captured over and over again in grainy black-andwhite images. Me, walking to school. Me, at the Bui Mart buying my newspaper and laughing with Bao. Me, getting into Jeremy’s car. Me, holding Reece’s hand in a dark alley. Me, dancing with Vince DiMorello. Lonny Johnson whispering in my ear. Me again, barefoot and laughing, slung over the shoulder of a dark-haired boy with a close-shaved head. Oleksa. Oleksa had carried me to the alley?
. . . an undercover cop claims he saw you before the time of Kylie’s murder, and verified that you were inebriated and unconscious . . .
I dropped the file. The contents sprawled like wreckage across the floor. Bodies lay tangled among them. Naked arms with haunting markings . . . all of them numbers. And—a periodic table.
I stood quietly, the lumpy sofa squeaking with release.
It’s personal. I’ll put it all on the table for you. That was the clue under the bleachers.
I reached for the periodic table. Reece had circled five elements in blue. The sides of the cube snapped together inside my brain.
Ten, the atomic weight of the element Neon. Abbreviation Ne.
Next had been Marcia Steckler. She’d been 18, Argon. Abbreviation, Ar.
I stopped when I reached Posie Washington, straining to make out the blistering mark in the photo, but I remembered it as clearly as I remembered the smell of her flesh burning. Element number 3. Lithium. Li.
I set Posie down, the photos like headstones laid out in a neat row.