He’s the one who stayed. Who chose me.
“I will,” I say. “I’ll do better.”
His eyes are back on the road. “I believe you.”
Silence fills the car again. Gramps and I have never needed to say much to understand each other. But sometimes, I wonder if it’s really that we just don’t know what to say.
He doesn’t speak again until we’re pulling onto our street. “I called Cassidy on my way to meet you. She should be here shortly.”
Is it even possible to love someone this much?
Olive is waiting for us in the front hall. She takes in the blood that’s drenched my clothes, my skin, even my hair. She’s fresh and clean in her fluffy robe.
I shift my weight on my feet, but my soles stick to the wooden floors. I’ll have to scrub the bloody footprints away tomorrow. I’m always tracking filth and tragedy into my family’s clean, normal existence.
An old image comes back to me. My mom, standing at the kitchen sink. The line of her shoulders tight as she scrubs Lucy MacDonald’s blood off my running shoes.
Gramps walks past us into the kitchen. Water pings against the bottom of the kettle as he makes tea.
Olive is still watching me. I start pulling off my shoes.
“The phone woke me up,” Olive says finally. “When the police called.”
I nod. Ava’s blood has wicked up my laces, gluing the knot together.
Mom never said a word about those shoes with Lucy’s blood on them. Later, I found them lined up neatly in the front hall, mostly clean except for a few ambiguous brown stains. I never wore them again. Mom left three months later.
“Do you want help?” Olive asks. I shake my head. She steps closer, like she might touch me, and I tense. She stops.
“I’ll just… be upstairs if you need me, then.” Seconds pass. Olive turns and walks up the stairs. I continue picking at my laces.
The front door slams open. Cass is here. She’s wearing sneakers and a sweatshirt over her pajamas. She throws her arms around me, all elbows and bleached hair.
For a second, I sag against her with relief. Cass holds me together. Her hair is in my face, and the smell of her shampoo is so unbearably ordinary.
I push at her shoulder. “Get off, I’m disgusting.”
She squeezes me until it hurts.
“All right.” She pulls back. “Time for a shower, and then I’m putting you to bed.”
Cass doesn’t let go of my hand as she leads me upstairs. She hustles me into the bathroom and helps peel off my sticky, crusty clothes. Her nose is red, and the corners of her eyes are damp, but she’s quiet except for soft commands to raise my arms or move my hair.
I stand in my underwear and look at my stained skin in the mirror.
Cass leaves. I lose track of time standing in the hot blast of the shower with my hands braced against the wall. The water swirls around the drain, at first a rusty pink, then finally clear, but I still don’t move.
Today, I saw a dead body for the second time in my life. It wasn’t any less horrifying. I saw the exact moment Ava went from alive to dead. The first girl I ever kissed. The girl who put on that purple lipstick yesterday morning. Gone.
This life I’ve reconstructed for myself over the last two and a half years is a lie. Other people might be able to fool themselves, but I know: none of us are ever safe. No amount of hot water can burn that knowledge out of me.
I emerge from the shower flushed and tender, as frail as one of those blind, hairless baby mice.
When I enter my room, Cass turns her face away and sniffs. She was crying. Her sweatshirt is draped over my desk chair. It’s stained with Ava’s blood from when she hugged me.
I focus on getting dressed. I don’t know what I’d say that could possibly make it better.
My pajamas are so normal against my skin. Another reminder that the world has stayed exactly the same, even as a seismic shift has occurred inside me.
We get in bed and turn off the lights. Under the covers, Cass grabs my hand. We used to sleep this way all the time when we were kids. Cass’s parents travel a lot for work, and she’s spent at least a couple nights a week at my place since elementary school. Back then, it was always my job to cheer Cass up, distract her, anything to make her less sad that her parents had left without her again. It had been years at that point since my dad left, and I already knew how to pretend until it didn’t hurt anymore. Later, when Mom disappeared, too, I was prepared. Cass and I both learned how to not need them, how to be each other’s family.
It’s been a long time since I’ve taken care of her like that, though.
She whispers, “I can’t believe Ava’s just gone.” Through our clasped hands, I can feel her shake and shake as the sobs break free. I squeeze her hand tighter, putting all of my own pain into that fierce grip. I want to cry, want to let it all out, but I swallowed my tears one too many times earlier, and now they refuse to come.
After a long time, her shivering eases. “You went without me.”
“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
More seconds pass before Cass says, “I’m scared.”
My grandfather wouldn’t say it in the car, but it’s what he was thinking. Scared it’s all starting again.
I am, too. But my throat is too tight to speak. I squeeze her hand again and hope she knows what it means.
She trembles against the pillow as fresh tears start. “We’ll be okay. We’re going to do this together.” She doesn’t say it like a question, but I hear it anyway.
“Always,” I answer. “You and me.”
My last murder investigation ended with my mom leaving. That hurt, but it was a hurt I was ready for. Who am I going to lose this time?
“Promise you won’t go without me again?” she asks.
“Promise.”
A sick part of me wishes that she had been there. Saw what I saw. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so alone. But then Cass would be just as broken as me, and I can’t stand the thought of that.
Eventually, Cass’s breathing slows. She sleeps. I try to do the same, but every time I close my eyes, the haunting rattle of Ava’s last breath jolts me awake.
“I heard she found the body,” someone says.
I clutch my notebooks closer to my chest. Ignore it. Ignore it.
“Yeah, over in Whitley. Middle of the night.”
The whispering gauntlet of the school hallway stretches in front of me. It’s Monday. The first day back in school since Ava… since the alleyway.
Cass and Gramps wanted me to stay home. The two of them tracked me around the kitchen this morning like bloodhounds with separation anxiety. I swore I could handle it.
“Didn’t she find that other girl, too? Lucy MacDonald?”
Cass’s locker is on the other side of the building. Now I’m alone and exposed.
Heads turn as I pass. Up ahead, there’s a poster on the health-class door naming every kind of STI. I keep my eyes trained on that list.
Syphilis.
Gonorrhea.
“Why was she even there?”
I don’t really want to be here, but I couldn’t stand another day at home. I spent the weekend in a kind of numb delirium, staring at my bedroom wall with hollow, aching eyes. Occasionally, Cass or Gramps brought me mugs of tea. Plates of food. I took bites, but didn’t taste. And then there were the nightmares.