Dark Rooms (38 page)

For a long time Jamie and I sit there. We have nothing left to say but are curiously unwilling to leave each other. It's as if we recognize that once this conversation is officially over, the whole thing will be over,
Nica will be over, dead and gone in a way she wasn't before. Or maybe we're just too drained to leave. I can't think of a time I've felt so tired. All this effort to solve a crime that turns out not to have even been a crime, a mystery that wasn't a mystery in the first place. I didn't even have to force anything out of Jamie. The truth had always been there, just waiting to come out. Telling me was probably a relief for him.

Finally he stirs. “I've got to get back,” he says. It's weird to hear his voice after such a long silence.

“What are you going to tell Ruben?”

He looks at me, totally lost. “About what?”

“The Doritos.”

“Oh yeah, the Doritos.”

“Check the vending machine in Great House. That one usually has those little bags of Cool Ranch.”

“Thanks for the tip. I'll swing by.” He turns, lets his gaze drift out the window, across the empty lot. Then he says, “So are you going to go to the police with this?”

“I don't know. I haven't thought about it yet.”

“Anything you decide is fine with me. Just let me know so I can prepare or whatever.”

I nod.

He looks at me for a while, then nods back. As he opens the door, I see that he's left his zebra-striped Bic in the cup holder. “Stay as long as you want,” he says. “Just lock up behind you.” He squeezes my arm. I'm disappointed when he grabs the lighter as he exits.

I'm home without quite knowing how I got there. Have no memory of walking back from campus, though obviously I must've since my car isn't in the driveway. I can't find my keys, am tired of looking, so I just upend my bag onto the welcome mat. They come tumbling out. So do my wallet, my sunglasses, my ludicrous lipstick stun gun, the tiny Hello Kitty figurine holding a tennis racket that Jamie won for Nica and me at an arcade last winter and Nica let me keep, a ChapStick tube with no cap,
Clarissa
, Ruben's pills, a ballpoint pen, tampons—three of them, one nosing out of its wrapper. Also Mom's photographs, which land in a clump, facedown. For a long moment I just stare at them, at their vacant white backs. Then a swirly breeze passes. Before it can scatter the sheets across the porch, I pick them up. After lifting the welcome mat, pouring whatever's on it into the mouth of my bag, I bring the key to the door, only I don't need to. The door falls open as soon as I touch it. In too much of a rush to lock it earlier, I guess.

I collapse on the bottom step of the staircase, unable to make it any
deeper inside than a few feet. For a while I just sit there in the dark in a kind of blanked-out stupor, eyes drying out because I keep forgetting to blink. And then, from Amory Chapel, comes the chiming of the quarter hour. Returning to myself, I notice that the photographs have slipped from my hand, are fanned out on the floor. I pick them up, one by one, smoothing them on the flat of my thigh. No lights are on in the house, but there's a streetlamp in front of it giving off just enough glow for me to see by.

There are about thirty photos total, each depicting the same scene: Nica, lying in the grass, dead. Unlike the one hanging in Mom's studio, though, these are full body shots, taken not from behind but straight on. Mom must have been crying and shaking as much as she said she was because at least two-thirds of them are out of focus, the frame wrong somehow, off-kilter; and gazing at them, at their slightly askew perspective, gives me motion sickness. Or maybe what's making me want to puke is the sight of my sister curled up, not in sleep as I'd originally thought, but in pain, clutching at the smeary horror of her stomach, the blood so thick and rich and dark it looks more black than red, a trickle of it coming out the left corner of her mouth, crawling down her chin. After holding the pictures to my face, forcing myself to examine each one, I let them fall to my lap.

I begin to imagine Nica's last moments on earth.

I imagine her waking up, soaked in sweat, heart slamming into her chest, relieved the night before was just a dream, the panic that must've set in as she realized it wasn't. I imagine her looking at Jamie, lying beside her, with disgust and, under that disgust, love, which disgusted her more, and him looking back at her with love and nothing but, which disgusted her more still. I imagine her opening her mouth and saying the worst things she could think of so he'd feel as low and dirty and full of shame as she did. I imagine her anger, so strong she wanted to kill him, and then her terror as she saw he was going to kill himself. I imagine her grappling with him for the gun, smaller
than she would have thought, heavier, too, and the sound, sharp yet muffled, that hung in the air when it went off, the shock of the bullet piercing her skin, her flesh, an organ inside that skin and flesh. And as I'm imagining all this, I'm flipping through the stack of photos. I'm not looking at what I'm doing.

And then I am.

Mom had a book that Nica and I used to love when we were kids, so young we didn't even know how to read books yet. We'd fight over this one, though. It was on Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. In the upper corner of each page was a small square with Fred and Ginger in it. By thumbing the pages quickly, you set the figures in motion, and they would perform a little dance for you. It seemed like magic to Nica and me, this moving image we could make move ourselves, make come to life, basically. Something like that magic is happening now. Nica isn't dancing for me but she is coming to life. Her left hand is, anyway. The fingers curl, then uncurl, the movement small yet definite—a twitch. I flip through the photos again, watch closely. Curl, uncurl. And again, watch even more closely. Curl, uncurl.

I let the photos flutter to the floor, wait for my brain to make the necessary connections. After a minute or so it does: dead girls don't twitch, therefore Nica wasn't dead when Mom took the photos, not all the way, at least; if Mom had run home for the phone rather than her camera, Nica might still be alive; Nica had died once but been killed twice.

I wait again. This time for the sadness or rage that's sure to follow. I wait and I wait but neither comes. And that's when it dawns on me. I've been emptied. No, emptied isn't the right word. Doesn't convey the violence of what's been done to me. I've been stripped. Scraped. Gutted. Gouged. I don't know why it's this horrible thing that's doing me in, why it's worse than all the other horrible things I've had to endure. But somehow it is. Without thinking, I reach for Ruben's bag, inside my own, and unseal it. I scoop out a handful of pills and stuff
them in my mouth. I start chewing, and it's like chewing chalk, and I don't want to do it. I force myself to, though. Force myself to swallow, too.

The chapel bell tolls the half hour, then the three-quarters. Benzos usually work fast on an empty stomach. Only tonight they're not. And I realize that Jamie's right, that Ruben's been getting ripped off, that the pills are fakes. I turn to the window, find my reflection suspended in the black depths of it, just sort of floating there, attached to nothing—an image of me looking at me looking at me. I close my eyes so I don't have to look anymore.

I must fall asleep because the next thing I know, I'm being pulled out of a dream by a knock on the door and for several seconds I can't tell what's real. Then I think: Damon. He heard my voice mail, got Renee to give him a ride from the hospital. Who else would be coming by the house this late besides Dad and Dad has a key?

I rise, cramp-legged and tingle-headed, a little stunned at how glad I am that Damon's here. I walk quickly to the door, almost falling into it so eager am I to get to him. As I begin to twist the knob, though, that knock sounds again—one-knuckled, three raps, a pause between each—and I realize it's coming not from the other side of the door but from inside the house. My arm drops, and slowly I turn, heart accelerating, clattering against my ribs, the hairs on the nape of my neck standing erect.

He's leaning against the doorway to the kitchen, sunglasses on, yawning and stretching his back. Shep.

I'm surprised to see him, but I'm also not. Once a guidance counselor, always a guidance counselor, and I've missed the last three days of school. I start to ask him how he got in the house, and then stop because I already know how. Instead I ask him, “Have you been here long?”

“Hours.” He glances down at his watch. “Whoa, make that hours and hours. Oh well. Guess I Bo Peeped, huh?”

“Bo Peeped?” I repeat, confused.

“Yeah, you know, fell asleep on the job.” He pantomimes a person snoring.

Irritation fast replacing fear, I say, “You nearly gave me a heart attack is what you did. There was no need to come by in person. You could've just called.”

“I did call. E-mailed, too. Not a word back. I was getting concerned. Wanted to make sure you're still alive, which, I'm happy to say, you seem very much to be. Unless I'm looking at a ghost.” He walks over and pinches the flesh of my upper arm, smiles. “Nope. One hundred percent real live girl.”

“Why didn't you come over during the day?”

The smile turns into a frown as he lifts his foot to peer at the bottom of his flip-flop, sees something stuck there. A pebble maybe, or a wad of gum. He scratches at it with his thumbnail. “Your dad works nights. I figured you might want to talk and that you'd probably rather do that when he's not around.”

“But I wasn't around either.”

“No, but the door was unlocked so I assumed you'd be back soon, that you'd just ducked out for a second—a quick run to the store for ginger ale or crackers or something. Thought I'd make myself comfortable in the kitchen while I waited.” He laughs. “Made myself too comfortable, obviously. Plus, there was the chicken soup. I was afraid if I didn't put it in the fridge, it would go bad.”

“You brought me chicken soup?”

“
Made
you chicken soup,” he says proudly. And then, letting his foot fall to the floor, “You eat chicken soup, don't you?”

As those suddenly worried eyes fix on my face, I have to look away. Making soup for me, cookies for Jamie. Supplying drugs for Jamie, too. I experience a flash of sympathy for Maddie and Ruben. No wonder they used to enjoy kicking me so much. The combination of neediness and eagerness that's coming off Shep—that must've come
off me—is pitiful to behold. And yet I don't feel pity, I feel revulsion. He just wants to please me and it only makes me want to hurt him.

Ignoring his question, I say, “Think we can have that talk tomorrow?”

“No problemo.” And then, as I start to move to the stairs—he showed himself in, he can show himself out—he says, “When?”

“What do you mean, when? Tomorrow. Isn't that what we just said?”

“Sorry, I meant what time tomorrow?”

It takes effort not to roll my eyes. “How about I e-mail you in the morning? We'll figure it out then.”

“Sure, sure. That would work. Remember, though, that anything during school hours is tough for me. Not impossible but tough.”

“I'll keep that in mind.”

He looks at me, head cocked, body statue-still. I return the look, only now I don't bother to hide my impatience, sighing and tapping my finger against the banister. I'm hot to be alone so I can think of someone I can score pills from. Graydon Tullis? He'll probably just have pot. Maybe, though, he'll know who to get in touch with, the right person. But as the seconds tick by, I start to grow uneasy under Shep's gaze, soft and mild, and yet at the same time homed-in and intense. Is he ever going to look away? Blink? At last he does both. And then he says, “You poor kid. You want to go to bed, don't you?”

What I want is for this conversation to be over. But I nod anyway because going along with whatever he says is, it suddenly occurs to me, my best bet for getting him out the door.

He clucks his tongue. “You must be done in.”

“I am.”

“Really tapped out.”

“Sure.”

“Hitting one wall after another.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Just as tired as you can be.”

I'm about to say “You got it” or “Wow, yeah,” throw in a couple more nods for good measure. But there's something about how he phrases this last sentence, or the way he spaces out the words, or the voice he uses that makes me hear it differently. And all at once I understand that I'm agreeing with everything he says because everything he says is true. I
am
tired. So so tired.

“You need to rest,” he says.

Yes, I do need to rest. Very badly.

“Need to get away from everybody, all the people you know who want something from you, and just conk out.”

He couldn't be more right. Everybody I know does want something from me. And the idea of being around any of them at the moment fills me with horror. Even the urge to see Damon, so strong only minutes ago, is gone.

“It's time for you to just sleep and sleep and sleep. You'd like that, wouldn't you, Grace?”

More than anything in the world I'd like that.

“I bet it's hard for you to sleep, though. I bet there are nights when you lie in bed, waiting for sleep to come and it won't. You toss and turn, stare at the ceiling, listen to the clock counting down the minutes till morning. It's its own special kind of torture, not being able to sleep. There's nothing worse.”

No, there isn't. Just the thought of that happening to me now—tonight—makes my stomach drop, then start snatching at itself in panic.

“Not that sleeplessness is something you can't get around. Is there anything in the house that can help knock you out?”

There isn't. I'd ransacked my bathroom days ago for Klonopin—an antidepressant and a sleep aid in one—trying to find even a single pill rattling around the bottom of a drawer or skulking in the back of a cabinet. I'd come up empty. And then, remembering
something, I glance down. Ruben's Baggie is still on the second step of the staircase, where I'd dropped it. Excited, I reach for it. As I do, though, I remember something else: that the pills inside look like pills yet are not pills. The realization that the good long rest Shep has been talking about isn't going to be mine is a shocking and painful one. Overwhelmed by my stupidity and feebleness and bad luck, I sink to my knees, my legs just giving out.