Nearly Gone (21 page)

I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. You won’t believe me anyway.”
“I’ll believe you. I want to help you.”
I turned my face to stop him from coming any closer.
“Explain it. Help me understand. What will happen if I touch you?” He waited, inches away.
I felt naked, completely exposed. I let the truth spill out of me, hoarse and wet and uncertain. Too afraid to look at his face. “When I touch someone, I feel what they feel. I can taste it. I don’t know how or why. I just know I can’t control it. The only way to stop it is not to touch anyone at all. So I don’t. Because it’s too hard to be inside someone’s heart. And that sucks.”
I looked tentatively at Reece.  “.  .  . And I don’t know, maybe that’s one reason why I read the personals. Because I was tired of being the girl who would never know what it’s like to fall for someone.” I took a shuddering breath, waiting for him to laugh or tell me I was crazy. He didn’t. “And then these ads started showing up, and it’s like they were written for me. I put the pieces together and I knew that something was wrong. So I went to Nicholson and everything backfired.” I swallowed, steeling myself for the craziest part. “I felt him at the rave. I touched him and I knew it was
him,
but I never saw his face. It was all too much. All the people and the drugs. I felt it all and everything went wrong!
“And that’s what will happen if I touch you. I’ll feel it all. I’ll know how much you hate me, how you think I’m crazy, how you think I—”
“Then do it.” I jumped at the urgency in his voice. He stepped in close, until my back pressed against the wall and there wasn’t any air between us. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “You think you know how I feel about you? Then touch me.” He took my sleeve and drew my hand to his chest. The damp shirt clung hot to his skin. It rose and fell fast with his breath.
Slowly, I slid my hand up over his collar, and spread my fingers over his bare skin. His pulse thrummed hard. My heart raced with his fear and the rush of his desire.
He leaned in slow, lips close but not touching. Waiting, as if I might pull away. I leaned into him. His mouth was soft and yielded to mine. He returned my kiss slowly. I brought my arms up around his neck and drew him into me, drinking in his tenderness and need. His fingers dug into my hips and pulled me close. No guilt. No regret.
“Why are you doing this?” I closed my eyes, afraid of his answer.
He pressed his forehead to mine, a bittersweet sadness spilling into me. His lips parted, hesitated. “Because I might not get another chance.”
We both jumped at the bang on the door. Neither of us moved.
“Police. Open the door.”
Reece looked to the lineup of crime scene photos on the floor. Another loud bang. He cursed softly and pushed me gently aside before I could register his panic. He kicked out a foot, scattering the pictures into a random patternless mess before he scooped it all up and shoved it into the open file. His other foot found the periodic table and kicked it under the couch.
My eyes flashed to the sofa, and back to Reece.
The police didn’t know about the message under the bleachers.
I’ll put it all on the table for you.
The table. That clue was the Rosetta Stone to the whole case. It was the only clue that could lead the police to the periodic table and spell out my name. But it never made it into the file. Reece never told them. And without Reece’s notes, the numbers—the most incriminating pieces of evidence against me—were meaningless. My mind rewound to his phone conversation in the park by the airport, the visitor’s log he’d stolen from the hospital, the cabbie he’d paid to give a false statement . . . He’d been systematically destroying evidence. Concealing facts. Covering for me . . . The police weren’t here for me. They were here for him.
He took a deep steady breath, surveying the room as he walked to the door. With a last pained look at me, he flipped a lock and the chain stretched taut, snapping against the strip of sunlight that poured in. Blue uniforms appeared in the gap.
“Reece Whelan?” The officer held a slip of paper against the opening. “We have a warrant to search the premises.”
Reece shut the door, slid the chain back, and two uniformed officers stepped into the room. He waved to the female officer and gestured coolly to the file on the milk crate. “Hey, Rhonda. No need to search. I’ll spare everybody the drama. It’s right there.”
The other officer crossed the room and inspected the tab. He thumbed through the file, pausing to glance at me over the photos, and then nodded to his partner. She approached Reece and turned him face-forward against the wall. He didn’t resist. She smiled apologetically, as if they knew each other.
“Sorry, Reece, but you know the drill. You’re under arrest for obstruction of justice.” She snapped the first cuff shut and recited the rest of his Miranda in a monotone voice. “Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?”
Reece nodded, his face turned in profile against the wall as the second cuff clicked shut. He craned his neck, speaking over his shoulder to her as she patted him down. “Do you think you can give us a minute?”
“Make it quick,” she said, dropping back a few feet. The blue uniforms stood close to the door, hands on hips, listening to their radios.
Reece spoke in a low voice, careful not to be overheard. “You need to know something. We busted Lonny after the rave. I’ve been in lock-up all night. We had to make him think I got busted too. I grabbed your file when they released me this morning, and I left the reports from last night’s bust on Nicholson’s desk. Lonny made a deal and turned over a list of his ketamine buyers,” he said so quietly I almost couldn’t hear him. “You weren’t on it . . . but Jeremy was.”
“Jeremy?” I stared at Reece. That just wasn’t possible. It had to be a mistake. Jeremy wouldn’t buy street drugs, let alone from someone like Lonny.
I took a step back. “No. They’ve got the wrong Jeremy. There’s more than one Jeremy at West River. There has to be someone else I know on that list. Who else did Lonny sell to?”
The officers paused their conversation and turned toward us. Reece spared them a glance and pitched his voice lower. “Vince.” He bent to look me in the eye and whispered, “Think about it, Leigh. You know he’s not smart enough to pull off something like this.”
But Jeremy? Jeremy was smart, and he knew me better than anyone. He knew I read the
Missed Connections.
He had access to my locker. He’d been at every crime scene. And he and Anh . . .
Nicholson’s question haunted me.
Do you know the person who wrote these ads, Miss Boswell?
“What are you saying?”
Reece didn’t speak, his thoughts implicit in his silence.
I shook my head. My heart warred with itself. All the clues, all the circumstantial evidence fit. Anyone who didn’t know him as well as I did could actually believe he did this.
“Maybe you’re wrong,” I said, desperate to believe it. “Maybe it isn’t the same Jeremy.”
Reece put his lips close to my ear and whispered, “Leave town, Leigh. Get out of the state. Get someplace safe until I’m . . .” I felt him pause for a breath. “Just get away until this whole thing blows over.”
“I can’t!” I whispered back. Where would I go?
The officer cleared her throat in warning. Reece pulled back and raised his voice just enough to satisfy her. “Try. For me. I’ll be gone at least two weeks, and that’s if things go well.” If not, then they’d send him back to juvie. He’d risked everything. His future. His freedom. For mine.
“Take the trash out before you leave.” He aimed a meaningful glance toward the sofa. “And try not to do anything stupid while I’m gone.” He straightened as the officer laid a hand on his shoulder.
I shook my head. They couldn’t take him. This wasn’t his fault.
“If you get into trouble, call Gena,” Reece said quietly. “I’ll find you when I’m out. I promise.”
They escorted him to the door. His cuffs rattled and something crumbled inside me. He stopped in the doorway and turned.
“And Leigh? I always knew you were worth it.” He smiled weakly as the officers closed the door.
I pulled back the curtain and watched through the window as he ducked into the squad car and the door snapped shut. Reece didn’t look back.

I knew something wasn’t right the minute I stepped off the bus. Sunny View was too quiet. No filthy puddle-jumping kids with shaggy hair pitching gravel in the street, the usual troublemakers nowhere in sight.

I paused beside a neighbor’s trailer. I could just make out the corner of my own a few yards away. A car was parked in front, but we didn’t own a car. The dark blue Crown Victoria sat catty-corner in the street, its front fender leaning into our trash cans. There were three antennae on the roof and extra lights mounted in the rear windows. An unmarked police car. I couldn’t see my porch from where I pressed up tight against the neighbor’s siding, but I heard a persistent knocking on my door.

I patted my pockets as I backed up the street, retracing my steps to the bus stop. I’d left the phone in Reece’s apartment and locked the door behind me when I’d left. No way to call Gena. And nowhere to run.

I jumped at the
snap-clink
of a lighter flipping shut. Lonny perched on his saggy front porch, elbows on his knees. His tank top was moist at the neck, tattoos blooming like ghosts through the thin white cotton. He squinted at me, reaching slowly behind himself into the waistband of his jeans. He laid something between his legs. The silver barrel glinted in the sun. We stared at each other while he lifted the cigarette to his lips. His exhale felt like a bullet between the eyes.

A screen door slammed on the opposite side of the street. I turned slowly. TJ stood barefoot on his front step, holding a trash bag full of empty cans. His uncle was slurring and swearing through the open door, but TJ didn’t seem to hear. He looked at me with his brows drawn together, and then to the gun between Lonny’s legs. The two locked eyes. TJ set the trash down, but he didn’t go back inside. Instead, he watched.

I slipped quickly between the police car and my porch, and stood behind the two plainclothes officers. Lonny’d spent the night in jail because of Reece, and his girlfriend was dead, maybe because of me. He wouldn’t think twice about shooting me, but he’d think twice about doing it in front of two cops and a witness.

My mother stood in her robe in the open door. Her hands weren’t visible, and the detectives stood at the bottom of the porch, eyeing her cautiously. Sweat trailed over their temples and darkened their collars, their balding heads cooking pink in the sun. My mother kept her eyes square on their faces and said, “Nearly, get inside.”

I scrambled past the officers and under her arm. “Gentlemen,” my mother said sharply, “my daughter is a minor. I know her rights. You need my consent to ask her anything or to come inside my home, and I’ve no intention of giving it to you.” They couldn’t see her fingers close over the baseball bat she kept behind the door. “You’d best be on your way.”
The older one placed a toe on the stoop. “We just want a few words with her . . .”
The bat came off the floor, and my mother’s voice dropped low. “We’ve got nothing to say, unless you’ve got a warrant.”
The man paused, his foot creaking on the drooping wooden step. His eyes flicked to her arm where it disappeared behind the door, and he stepped back, slow and easy. Neither spoke, and when the silence threatened to extend indefinitely, Mona slammed the door. She kept one hand on the bat as she slid the dead bolt home and snapped the chain in place. Then she stood sideways at the window, peering through the curtain slit. She didn’t let the fabric fall until a cloud of gravel kicked up, bouncing off our aluminum walls like hail.
Mona paced to the kitchen, snatching her cigarettes off the counter.
“What do the police want with you?” Her voice was eerily calm as she slapped the box hard against her open fist.
I sank slowly into the scratchy vinyl chair. I couldn’t explain. I wouldn’t know where to start.
“Does this have something to do with that boy?” Mona asked through a mouthful of smoke. “I knew it. I knew he was nothing but trouble.” She shook her head, letting her ashtray clatter to the table.
“It’s nothing like that, Mom—”
“Don’t lie to me, Nearly!” She smacked the table hard enough to rattle me.
I looked at her hand and saw my crinkled trig exam—the one I’d used to wrap her Mother’s Day gift—smashed flat under her palm. I’d scored 100%, but I’d missed the bonus question, an impossibly tricky equation that no one in the class had bothered to answer. The bonus question was filled in, complete, in the same messy scrawl my mother used to write our rent checks every month.
“Stop talking to me like I’m an idiot,” she said.
I pulled the test toward me, my mind working over the numerals and letters, the logic sinking in. My mother, who climbed a pole for a living and scraped her paychecks from a stage, had finished my trig test.
“What are we doing here?” I whispered.
My lips parted, clearing a path for all the angry words I’d been swallowing for years. But I couldn’t squeeze all that bitterness through the knot in my throat. I balled up the test in my fist and shouted, “What are we doing here?”
My mother’s eyes were glassy, her lips pressed into a thin line. The cigarette smoldered away between her fingers.
“All this time you could do this?” I shook the test in her face. “And you kept us here?” Years of questions and anger burned to the surface. That test was like a match in my hands. I wasn’t supposed to be like her. I was supposed to be like him. The one who’d found a way out. “Why?”
She was crying, her eye makeup dripping in long black streaks down her face. “I never graduated high school!” she shouted, as though that were somehow my fault. “What was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to take care of you? Your father left me nothing!”
I gritted my teeth, holding back the worst of the things I wanted to say. I wanted to hurl everything I had at her, to throw everything I knew now back in her face, but each word was a boomerang. I couldn’t inflict pain without hurting myself.
“You don’t get to lecture me on boys, or grades, or school anymore. You don’t get to build my future out of your busted, burned-out life! That was your failure. Not mine.” I took a last look at the trig exam before tossing it into the trash. “It’s too late for extra credit.”
I locked myself in my room and collapsed into my bed.
In a matter of hours, I’d probably be arrested for four murders I didn’t commit. My mother had kept secrets from me for years. Neither of my parents were who I thought they were, and this trailer—this life that had always been the best she could do for us—was a lie.
I reached under the mattress and withdrew the train ticket from the bag.
Reece was the only one left I could trust. Leave town, he’d said. Run, before everything came crashing down around me. It didn’t matter if running made me look guilty. The police thought I was guilty anyway. Get someplace safe, he’d said. Save yourself.
But that wouldn’t save
him
.
And if I ran, that would leave Jeremy squarely under the investigators’ microscope.
Besides, I only had the ticket, no cash. The ticket was enough to get out of town, but the only cash in my future was the scholarship I was going to lose anyway.
I shut my eyes. Kylie’s bloody face stared back at me. Emily, Marcia, Posie, Teddy, and now Kylie . . . And yet, this whole mess was far from over. Whoever was framing me wasn’t finished.
Ne + Ar + Li + B + Os.
My name was still incomplete.
Obviously, whoever was doing this was in no hurry to have me arrested, only giving the police part of the picture. Just the bodies of my students. He was holding back, biding his time, withholding the one piece of evidence that would seal my fate—the clue he’d left for me under the bleachers—but he’d put me in an inescapable box. Made it impossible for me to go to the police without incriminating myself. He was forcing me to play this through, but I was damned either way. In the end, it would be my name spelled in blood. But why? Why me?
I lay there for hours, watching the light shift in my room. By late afternoon, my head was swimming and I was no closer to understanding any of it. I should’ve been studying for my chemistry final, but there hardly seemed any point in it now.
The front door slammed and I peeked out my window. It was just before dark and Sunny View Drive took small bites of my mother until she was a tiny red speck under the traffic light. I was alone.
I opened my door and headed to the kitchen, hungry, tired, and confused. Mona had fished the trig exam out of the trash and left it for me, smoothed out on the table. Stuck to it was a yellow Post-it note addressed to me.