Dark Rooms (14 page)

“I've been calling your name for the past fifteen minutes,” she said. “You better hurry up. Dr. Simons doesn't have all day.”

I tried to respond, come up with a reason as to why I couldn't do what she was asking, but my mind had gone fiercely, hopelessly blank, and her mad face was getting madder and madder. So finally I just gave a resigned nod. Followed her into the office.

Thirty minutes later I was listening to the door of the Chandler Health and Counseling Center click shut behind me. I stood there, blinking into the strange, half-dazed emptiness of a school during summer break, the dirty-penny taste that follows a sudden blow to the skull coating my lips and teeth and tongue. I was in shock. I knew I was in shock even if I didn't feel like I was in shock, didn't feel like anything at all. In the space of a single afternoon I'd discovered that Nica's killer was out in the world somewhere, walking around, eating,
talking, laughing at jokes, and that not only was I no longer a virgin, I was an expectant mother, as well.

I took a step toward the parking lot and started to sink to the ground. Not a faint or a full-on collapse, more a forgetting how to walk. And it was as I was sitting on that stoop, my teeth chattering even though the sun, metal-bright and fiercely hot, was beating down on my head, the prenatal instruction booklet Dr. Simons had thrust at me as I left his office in my hand,
The Rag
spilled from my bag and spread open at my feet, that I suddenly understood, made the connection between my sister and my pregnancy, between the mystery of her death and the mystery of the new life inside me.

I'd known from the beginning that something about the murder wasn't right, that it had been solved too easily, that the explanation was too pat, senseless in a makes-perfect-sense kind of way: fringey weirdo with no friends or family kills the beautiful popular girl, kills himself. None of us close to her was even slightly implicated, bore so much as the faintest hint of responsibility. We were all off the hook. And I spent the entire miserable, lonely spring trying to pretend I didn't know what I knew. That's what the anti-anxiety drugs were about. Easier to lie to yourself when the link between your brain and your feelings has been chemically severed.

But the truth couldn't be denied. Not anymore. Not with this baby growing in my stomach. It was a reminder that the past wasn't done with me yet, that
Nica
wasn't done with me yet. I thought I'd escaped both, left them behind when I moved on to college. Here they were, though, pulling me back. And the only way I could ever truly be free of them was by setting things right. What I needed to do now was find Nica's killer, and fast. Get him behind bars or under dirt before the end of the first trimester, after which, according to Dr. Simons, termination became a lot less safe and a lot more expensive. That gave me twelve weeks since July fourth, so thirty days. If I failed to complete the task at the close of that period then I would have to forfeit
my life as I knew it, keep the baby. That was my vow: make someone pay for Nica's death or pay for it myself. No justice for her, no abortion for me.

Tick tock, tick tock.

My first break didn't come till four days later. It was hot and sticky when I awoke that morning, and it had been tough to get out of bed. I was fighting the growing desire to give up, to accept that I was in over my head, didn't know where to begin or what to do. Losing the fight, I reached for my cell to tell Mrs. Sedgwick I couldn't take the job after all, the one I'd applied for so I could be close to Chandler, to the scene of the crime and many of its key players. Only I was unable to get through to Burroughs even after trying for more than an hour. A voice mail that hadn't been set up yet answered every time. Realizing the conversation would have to be in person, I groaned.

Not bothering to run a brush through my hair or across my teeth, I walked over to campus. Burroughs was open, but Mrs. Sedgwick wasn't at her desk. While I waited, I decided to stop by the boys' bathroom, press my fingers against the name etched in the tile wall. Bask in the presence, basically, of my one piece of tangible proof. Assure myself that this whole thing was real, not a figment of my imagination. Touching MANNY FLO might, I thought, make me change my mind about quitting.

It didn't.

I returned to the library's main floor. Still no Mrs. Sedgwick. I left a note asking her to call me, then began the trek home. At the fountain outside Houghton Gymnasium I paused to take a drink, only I couldn't stop, drinking and drinking the ice-cold water until brain freeze set in.

As I straightened, dragging the cuff of my sleeve across my mouth, I looked. There, right smack in front of me, was Damon Cruz. He
was on his back, doing bench presses, so close that if there hadn't been a plate of glass between us, I could have reached out and wiped the sweat off his face. My eye went directly to it, the tattoo tucked away in the hollow of his arm, peeking through a blear of fine, dark hairs: a bright red heart spilling drops of even brighter red blood.

Suddenly, there's movement inside the house I'm watching. Someone's standing by the window in the front room. Damon. He's raising his arm to pull down the shade. And even though there's no need to check a thing I've already double-checked, triple-checked, quadruple-checked, I pick up the camera with the telephoto lens. Bringing it to my eye, I zoom in on that bleeding heart, the perfect complement to Nica's dripping arrow.

It's late. I'm on my way over to Damon's grandmother's house. Not to spy on him, though, as usual. He'd texted me the address while I was still at Chandler, told me to pick him up there at midnight. No explanation, just the order.

Fourteen days have passed since I discovered Damon was Nica's mystery man, but I'm still no closer to knowing if he's my mystery man, i.e. her killer. I do know a little more about him, though. His situation, anyway. The reason he isn't at UConn now, playing beer pong in some frat house basement, feeling up a girl from his sociology class under a poster of
Starry Night
or
Breakfast at Tiffany's,
Albert Einstein making a funny face, is because the baseball scholarship he was awarded is only partial, and with partial scholarships the amount of money given varies from year to year. So if he were to, say, ride the bench as a freshman—pretty much a definite since the average recovery period for ACL surgery is six to nine months—he'd be lucky to
see a dime as a sophomore. Which is why he's decided to sit this year out, wait until he's fully healed before enrolling.

Not that he's told me any of this himself. All my gleaning's been from Renee, the chatty type, fortunately. Damon still barely talks to me. Looks at me even less. I sure look at him, though. Every night through the windows of his grandmother's house. I don't know what it is I'm hoping to see—him torturing small animals, building a shrine to Nica in his closet, pouring his heart out into a diary I can later steal, find a full confession in. Whatever it is, I don't see it. His routine is the same, never changes. He and his grandmother eat dinner, move into the den after cleaning the kitchen. He does strength-training exercises as the two of them watch TV. At ten thirty, he kisses her on the cheek, goes upstairs, brushes his teeth, and it's lights out. His grandmother seems to be the only person he spends time with besides Max and Renee. At first I think this is odd, but then I realize it couldn't make more sense. All his friends are in college now, even U Bridgeport-bound Frankie. Apart from discovering that he prefers steak to chicken, courtroom dramas to police procedurals, Colgate to Crest, though, I've learned nothing.

There have, however, been two notable developments in the last week and a half: I'm feeling a faint tenderness in my breasts and a slight tightness at my waist, which, according to the website LaborOfLove.com, means the baby's entering its fetal period. The tail's disappeared, and the toes and upper lip are starting to form. Twelve more days and the external genitalia will be starting to form, too, bringing the first trimester to its official close.

As I turn onto Damon's street, I glance at the seat beside me and spot the stun gun—internal rechargeable battery, lifetime warranty, guaranteed to bring down a three-hundred-pound attacker in under two seconds, and, best of all, designed to look like a tube of lipstick, a bargain at $34.99 plus shipping from Amazon—peeking out of my bag. I'd ordered it so I'd feel safe when I was alone with Damon. A
smart move. The purchase of a competent, responsible, savvy person. Yet as I stare at the gun's ridiculous dainty canister, a shade of pink usually only seen on boxes of feminine hygiene products, I'm struck by a depressing thought: I'm not up to the task I've set myself. Not even close. To solve a mystery, you have to have powers of penetration, be able to get to the heart of things, and I'm the perpetual outsider who understands nothing. I'll never find out what happened to Nica, who's to blame. Instead I'll blow through the handful of days I have left following the same ass-backward pattern I've followed my entire life: me, the older sister, chasing after Nica, the younger, without ever quite catching up. I'll continue to stalk a guy who'll turn out to have nothing to do with anything; work a pair of jobs, equally crappy; eat bad, sleep worse. And this whole dropping-out-of-Williams-and-moving-back-home gambit will morph into some sort of grotesque last hurrah before I become a single mother with no college education and zero career prospects, living in the house I grew up in with my screw-loose dad.

I pull up to the curb in front of Damon's grandmother's house. I'm so used to sneaking into this neighborhood, trying to play its angles, melt into its shadows, I find it strange to be here on invitation and in the open. I feel exposed. Blatant, somehow. Like I'm asking to get caught, thrown out. Taking a deep breath, I tell myself to relax, calm down, remind myself that I'm not doing anything wrong.

I'm about to exit the car. Before I can open my door, though, Damon shoots out his. He's stiff-legged but still speedy in jeans and a navy sweatshirt, heavy clothes for such a warm night. He swings his body in the car, so fast I barely have time to toss my bag in the back. Without looking at me, he says, “Let's go.”

I've lived in Hartford my whole life, but the route Damon's taking me on is all side streets and back roads, and I lose my bearings quickly.
The effect, though, of relinquishing control, passively following his orders, is oddly soothing, almost hypnotic. The vibrations from the engine spread up my calves and thighs, into the bones of my lower back, as the concrete ribbon unfurls before me.

I turn on the radio. The song playing was a big hit last summer. The lyrics are about doomed love, about loss and suffering and anguish. The girl singer's voice, though, is so light and sweet and caressing that the words are transformed, become light and sweet and caressing too. Nica had been crazy about the song, listening to it over and over. I remember the two of us going to the outlet mall in Clinton for back-to-school clothes. The ride was over an hour with traffic, and Nica, who'd just gotten her license but still preferred to be driven, didn't talk to me practically at all. Spent the entire trip hunting for the song on the radio, roaming from station to station, finding it, then, before the final chord had even been struck, lunging forward, beginning the hunt again. “It's like torture,” she'd said, twirling the dial manically, “because you know it's playing
somewhere,
but if you don't get to it in time, you'll miss it.”

Usually when a shard of memory like this one presents itself to me, I just swallow it down. Let it cut my tongue, the roof of my mouth, my throat, inflicting the pain solely on myself. I'm about to do that now. But then, I do something different. Turning to Damon, I say, “This song.”

“Yeah?” he says, impatient.

“My sister loved it. My sister, Nica.” The pleasure it gives me to say her name in front of him is powerful, all the more so for being unexpected. It's like a pressure I wasn't aware of had been building inside me, building and building, and the release valve just got turned. I want to say the name to him again, get some more of that good feeling. I don't get the chance to, though, because at that moment he orders me to pull over.

“Where are we?” I say, killing the engine.

“Clay/Arsenal.”

Looking around, I realize I was wrong about Blue Hills being the shittiest neighborhood in Hartford. The street we're on—I don't know the name because the sign's missing—is deserted. On it are a gas station, a corner store, a vacant lot, and several mutilated billboards. The sidewalk is trash-strewn. Half the traffic lights have been knocked out. And above our heads a pair of laced-together sneakers dangles like a bunch of grapes from a telephone wire.

“I'll be back in five,” Damon says. “Lock all the doors.” As he reaches for the handle, I hit the Lock button on my fob. He tugs on the handle uselessly a couple times. “Lock them after I get out, I meant.”