That’s all she is now: a body.
One medic asks me a question over her shoulder. I don’t understand the words. I blink in response, and she gives up on me.
Another one of the medics grabs me, tries to ask me something. My tongue is too thick and dumb. He shines his flashlight in my eyes, then says something to the others before hustling me away, one arm around my shoulders.
I look back. Ava’s face is blocked from my view as the EMTs work, but I can see her foot. Her olive-green pants have ridden up, exposing a sliver of bare ankle above those chunky black boots. The hem of her coat is visible, the shearling lining gone sticky red.
My sweatshirt is still tied around her waist.
Out on the street, the EMT sits me on the curb while he rummages around in the ambulance. He reappears with a package, ripping it open to pull out a shiny space blanket. The strange fabric rustles against itself as he hands it to me. I stare at it. The whole world is like a jigsaw puzzle knocked to the floor. I can’t figure out where the pieces are supposed to go.
“You’re shivering,” he explains, and I realize that I am.
My sweatshirt is still tied around her waist.
I take the blanket and unfold it around my shoulders. My blood-soaked clothes are sticky and cold where they brush against my skin.
“Are you injured?” The EMT crouches down and examines my eyes, my skull, my arms. He pulls my limp body this way and that.
“No.” My voice comes out hoarse. “I’m fine. I…” I don’t have any more words.
“Do your parents know where you are?” he asks gently.
It’s 7 a.m. in Berlin right now. Mom is waking up without a single thought about where I am.
I shake my head.
More wailing sirens. Squealing breaks. Two police cars pull up on the street.
“You hang tight.” My EMT stands and jogs over to meet the cops, leaving me alone on the curb.
The other medics come flying out of the alleyway, rolling a stretcher between them. Through the whirl of activity, I catch a glimpse of Ava’s face: slack and gray and horrifying all over again. And then she’s blocked from my view, and the doors are slamming shut, and the medics are shouting instructions to each other the whole time, urgent and fast like they can still save her, but it’s all for nothing.
I already know. They’re too late.
I keep leaving my body, then smashing back into it. My mind is blank. Empty. Except for one thing: Ava is dead.
Ava is dead.
Her bloody shearling coat.
Ava is dead.
The look of horror as the last bit of life left her.
Ava is dead.
The smear of blood I left on her neck.
Heels click on the pavement as someone approaches.
“Flora.” Detective Jennifer Richmond appears in front of me. I know her. She looks tired, and not surprised to see me.
Richmond takes in my bloody clothes, the tears still streaming down my cheeks, the way my shaking hands clutch the space blanket to my chest.
She sighs. “Are you okay?”
I don’t answer, and she nods like she didn’t really expect it. I am very obviously not okay.
“Wait here, please. I’ll be back in a few minutes to talk to you.” Richmond turns and joins the other cops at the mouth of the alleyway. Two patrol officers and Richmond’s partner, Detective Roy Clemens. I know him, too. They disappear out of sight, and I’m alone again.
Ava is dead.
My clothes dry stiff and itchy in the freezing air. My space blanket crinkles every time I move. A car alarm goes off a few blocks away. It keeps going and going, ignored, until it gives up out of neglect.
Ava is dead.
The slushy gurgle as she tried to force out her last words. But they were pointless. Meaningless. No final good-byes or messages for her mom.
I tilt my head up to the sky and take a deep breath of icy air. The light pollution in Whitley has turned the sky to a sickly bruise, and the lack of stars makes me claustrophobic.
Ava is dead.
Richmond returns. “Okay, Flora, I’m going to need you to tell me what happened here tonight.”
I don’t know what to say. Yesterday, Ava was a girl from my school. I passed her in the halls. I thought about kissing her sometimes. A lot. We talked for the first time in ages. Now Ava is dead.
I open my mouth, but still nothing comes out.
Richmond’s radio crackles at her hip. “Two-two-one, this is Dispatch.”
Richmond speaks into the radio. “Go ahead.”
“Two-two-one, be advised victim died.”
Ava is dead.
I knew. But now it’s real.
I blink once. Twice. I turn and throw up on the pavement, less than two feet from Richmond’s shoes.
In the corner of my vision, she shuffles her feet. Embarrassed for me. I keep my eyes trained on the dark orange splatter of my vomit. What did I even eat for dinner tonight? Sweat breaks out all over my body. I’m freezing. The shaking starts up again, and I rattle so hard my tender, adrenaline-soaked joints ache.
Distantly, I hear Richmond respond to Dispatch. Her eyes averted, she takes her time silencing her radio and returning it to her belt.
I don’t want to be here anymore.
“Have you called my grandfather?” I ask.
“He’s on his way. Flora, I’m very sorry for what you’ve been through.” Her voice is full of an awful, careful gentleness, like she’s reading from a training script. “I know this must be traumatic, but I need you to tell me what happened tonight.”
My words won’t come. I found my first dead body at age fourteen, and I was never the same again. Lucy MacDonald. Another girl like Ava. Like me. I found Lucy broken, bloody, discarded. The person who did that to her walked away untouched and unpunished.
I learned something then that most people don’t know: no one is safe. We all think we are, but at any moment someone can erase you without a second thought. The world will go on, unchanged, like you were never there at all.
Yesterday, Ava was alive. She had a normal day, just like mine. Math homework. Texting her friends. Dinner. Her eyeliner was never exactly the same on both eyes.
Today, Ava is dead.
But why? Who would kill her? What was she so scared of when she called me?
Richmond watches me through my long silence. “If you need to take a minute before you feel ready, that’s okay. I do need to search your backpack, though.”
The bag is next to me on the curb. I pull it closer. “Why?”
Richmond clenches her jaw. A crack in her mask of professional sympathy. “Calhoun, you were standing over a dead body when the EMTs got here, covered in blood, and the murder weapon is missing. You know what probable cause is. Hand me the backpack.”
I give it to her.
“Thank you.” Richmond sets the bag on the hood of the patrol car behind her. I watch wordlessly as she opens it and pulls out item after item. The Taser. My tactical pen, which writes in three colors and can shatter an eye socket. Lockpicks. Leather gloves.
“What the hell is this?” She holds up a vial of fine grayish powder.
“Dust.” I read about it in a book about the FBI. They use it when they want to break in somewhere and make it look like they haven’t touched anything. I don’t tell her that part.
Richmond looks at me a long time, then places the vial on the hood along with everything else. When the bag is empty, she pulls out her phone and takes a picture of everything laid out on the car hood.