They never even looked up and probably had no idea I was there, but she just looked so upset, and he seemed really mean. And the other thing was his hands. They were clenched into fists. I don’t know; for some reason I just pictured him using them on her.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. It wasn’t my place. I just got the hell out of there as fast as I could. But I kept thinking about that girl, and when I saw the headline a few days later—well, I was just surprised it wasn’t her body they found.
Anyway. I don’t know if any of this is important, but I couldn’t sleep at night until I said something to defend that poor girl. He looked dangerous, and she looked sad. And I know, well, I know from experience that sometimes sad is what you feel right before you finally fight back.”
8
BECK
Coldcliff Police Station, September 5, 2:18 p.m.
OFFICER OLDMAN: Thanks for coming to meet with us.
BECK: Well, you made me. It didn’t exactly sound like an invitation.
OFFICER OLDMAN: Beck Rutherford. Is Beck short for something?
BECK: It’s my name. Are you going to arrest me for something, or can I get back to school now?
OFFICER OLDMAN: Don’t lash out at me, son. We just want to ask you a few questions.
BECK: I’m not your son.
OFFICER OLDMAN: Sorry. Beck. We have a few questions we hope you can assist us with in the Mark Forrester case.
BECK: Case? I thought he fell off a cliff.
OFFICER OLDMAN: It’s not that simple. We’re still investigating, and we’d like your help.
BECK: I already told the last guy my statement. I don’t know anything about what happened. I heard about it the same as everyone else.
OFFICER OLDMAN: From your girlfriend, right? Louisa Chamberlain?
BECK: No, I saw it online. I guess she called me, but I didn’t pick up.
OFFICER OLDMAN: Why didn’t you pick up when your girlfriend called?
BECK: She’s not my girlfriend, okay? And do you pick up the phone every time your wife calls? I doubt it.
OFFICER OLDMAN: Where were you the evening Mark Forrester died?
BECK: I was riding my bike. I already told the last guy. Don’t you share notes?
OFFICER OLDMAN: So you were on your motorcycle. Were you alone?
BECK: Yeah, I was alone.
OFFICER OLDMAN: Where do you ride it?
BECK: Just around. Mostly the roads around town. Not a lot of traffic. Don’t worry, I don’t go over the speed limit.
OFFICER OLDMAN: Sounds dangerous, being on your own like that. What if something happened?
BECK: Something doesn’t.
OFFICER OLDMAN: Did you know that Tabitha and Mark were taking a hike that day?
BECK: Why would I know that? Tabitha and I don’t even talk anymore. I really don’t care about her weekend plans.
OFFICER OLDMAN: Anymore. You don’t talk anymore. But you used to. Looks like you used to do more than talk.
BECK: Yeah, we used to hang out. But not now. She has her life. I have mine.
OFFICER OLDMAN: So you weren’t with her the night of Eleanor Ross’s party on August tenth?
BECK: No, I wasn’t with her. I mean, I saw her there, but I also saw a hundred other people. That’s kind of what happens at parties.
OFFICER OLDMAN: Sources say they saw you with Tabitha. We have an account that you left the pool house together.
BECK: Sources. Okay. I seriously doubt it. I wasn’t in the pool house that night.
OFFICER OLDMAN: Another witness puts you in the kitchen the same night. Says that you had your arm around her and stuck something in the pocket of her jeans.
BECK: She wasn’t even wearing jeans. She had a skirt on.
OFFICER OLDMAN: You remember what Tabitha was wearing the night of a party that took place last month?
BECK: (pauses) I have a good memory.
OFFICER OLDMAN: So maybe you can remember what Tabitha told you about her plans with Mark.
BECK: I can’t tell you something I don’t know. Look, am I under arrest, or am I free to go now?
9
ELLE
TABBY KNOWS ABOUT DALLAS. She didn’t find out because I told her, but because of what came after. Dallas was supposed to be nothing serious, a good excuse to lose my virginity because he was there and willing. But he went and became a defining moment in my life anyway. It’s unfair, how I fail spectacularly at not taking something seriously. It’s like my body has other plans.
Maybe Tabby knows the feeling.
It’s the first day of school, so of course I’m seeing him today, and I won’t be able to avoid him like I did all summer. He’s a year younger than us—Tabby called me a cougar when she found out—so he won’t be in any of my classes, but he’ll be everywhere else. I’ve known him for years. His family lives three doors down from ours, and his mom sometimes comes over and drinks wine with Mom on our deck, their laughter puncturing the sky. Now, every time Mrs. Mackey comes over and says “Hi, Elle,” I wonder what she knows. Now, whenever she and Mom are half drunk, voices carrying into the night, I wonder what they’re really talking about. If they stumbled onto dangerous ground.
“You’re nervous,” Tabby says when she picks me up in her dad’s blue Camry. “Relax. You don’t owe him a goddamn thing, remember?”
Her voice is hard, unflinching. She’s back, the girl who had the ability to make me feel both seen and invisible. Mark had done something to her, made her less somehow, turned her from larger-than-life into something scared of its shadow. Her shadow is here now, longer than ever, covering both of us like a tent. I’m used to its shade.
“You’re right.” I take in what Tabby’s wearing, or the lack thereof. Shorts that have ridden up so high that I can’t see where they end and a low-cut tank top. It has been three weeks since Mark died, three weeks during which Tabby has vacillated from a state of disaffected calm to a waterlogged mess, shot through with bolts of laughter and girlishness that she apologized for, like she shouldn’t be allowed to be happy when he’s six feet under. But now here she is, looking more herself than she has in months. Mark never liked her showing too much skin, she told me. I argued that it didn’t stop him the night they met.
The truth is, Mark not being around has made things easier. She’s easier, looser, more like she used to be. Maybe you’re thinking it would have been like that anyway. He doesn’t go to Coldcliff Heights. He’d be away at Princeton. But control makes distance evaporate. It shrinks people into specimens, easy to view under a microscope. And Mark’s eye was constantly on his microscope, studying Tabby.
I’m not sure how Tabby will act when we walk into the school. If she’ll reach for my hand or link her pinkie through mine, like I reached for her months ago, sure I was about to face my own reckoning. I’m not sure if she’s nervous, or if she’s scared to enter the real-life version of the online gossip minefield. But if she is feeling either, she hasn’t shown it. She isn’t shrunken anymore. She’s her full height, confidence sweeping behind her like the train of a wedding dress.
We shuffle down the hall, our flip-flops thwacking the ground. Pockets of girls are clustered by their lockers, staring. Tabby doesn’t seem phased.