Then You Were Gone (13 page)

“Just—for a second. Stop, please?” I bend for my bag, pulling Julian’s binder notes from the front pocket. “I have something of yours.”

“What?”

I pass the ball of crushed loose-leaf. He unravels it. His face fades to a tinny blue. “Why do you have this?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Did you go through my shit?”

“I thought maybe—I just got freaked out. You left your
binder at my place and we’d just . . . I shouldn’t have looked, I know, but I saw the letter, the apology . . .” He’s blinking at me.
Bat, bat
. “You wrote that to yourself, right?” I’m babbling now. My ears are hot. “I thought maybe you’d done something . . .”

“Like what?”

“. . . but now I know you didn’t.”

He sits down on Dakota’s bed. “You thought I hurt her?”

“I—” I sit next to him. “I didn’t know.”

He takes a breath. Exhales. Takes another one. “You went through my shit.”

“I’m really sorry.”

“I would never hurt her.”

I’m a jerk. A thief.

“I would never hurt
you
,” he insists.

I let my fingers creep close to his thigh. Julian looks at me briefly, then gets up and starts searching again.

I get on my knees, check under the bed, pulling out and riffling through the same storage boxes I looked at last week. Thoughts of Dakota straddling Murphy flick through my brain, all of it in pornographic detail: after-school BJs, car sex, supply-closet hand jobs. What the hell happened between them? What did he
do
to her? Did they fight? Did she fuck up and threaten Gwen? Did he hit her too hard with something heavy and blunt, then toss her body off the sunshiney Santa Monica Pier?

“Christ.”

Murphy?
My preppy public-school god?

“Crap.”

“What?” I whip back to life.

Julian is heaving, hunched over a teensy tower of textbooks. “This is pointless.”

“Should we tell someone? The cops?”

“Tell them what? That our lit teacher drives a Volkswagen?” He tumbles back against the bed, breathlessly lighting his smoke.

“The cigarette . . . ?” I fan the air. “Emmett?”

“Dakota certainly won’t mind.” He inhales deep, exhales, shuts both eyes. “I just . . . I don’t get it.” I creep across the floor on hand and knee. He passes me his cigarette. “Why you?” he says.

“Me?”
I ask, confused, dragging lightly on the squishy filter.

“Yeah,” he says, rolling onto one hip, leaning sideways. “Why’d she call
you
and not me?”

“I—” I cough out some smoke and scrape my fingers through my hair. “I don’t know,” I say, suddenly guilty. “Wish I knew,” I finish. I pass back the cigarette.

Saturday.

Sam and I go to the river, which is less like a river and more like an empty cement ravine coiling through the city, valley to beach. We’re walking. It’s sunny. We pass people on horses. Written on a rock in red spray paint:
Raper
.

“Shouldn’t it be
Rapist
?” I say to Sam.

He looks at the rock, at me; he smiles. “Your lit teacher called the house last night.”

I freeze. Fear curls around my waist, binding me. “Why? Why the hell would he
call
you?”

“He says you’ve been pretty emotional. That you aren’t turning in your work.”

“I did—I
have
—that’s complete horseshit. He has my
Jane
essay. He’s refusing to read it—”

“Whoa, kid, it’s okay. No one’s reprimanding you. He
said you got a little weepy at school yesterday and he recommended”—he pulls a slip of paper from his wallet—“you make an appointment with this woman.” He reads, “Griffith?”

“Griffin.”

“Right, her. He said to call her.” He passes me the paper with
Griffin
written in messy cursive.

“I’ve already seen her. She didn’t help.”

“Adrienne, hey, just—do what the guy wants. Screw your head on straight. Get your grade up. It doesn’t take much—”

“It’s been a shit month.”

“I know. I explained. I told him about Dakota.”

“You did
what
?” Rising panic. “What did you tell him?”

“No, nothing. I said you knew her. That you were friends. That this—that this has been hard on you.” He’s watching me. “What’s with you? Why is that bad?”

“Did you tell him about the car? About the Bug?”

His chin wrinkles. “Why would I tell him that?”

I relax. I say, “Sorry,” and soften.

He blinks, eyeing me still. Kicks a wet rock. “Am I missing something?”

You’re missing something, yes
, only, “No,” I say, instead. Surprising myself. “No, no—I’m being crazy.”

I want to tell him everything, but am feeling stupidly superstitious. We’re on the verge of something, me and
Julian. Saying this stuff out loud might, I don’t know, cast some sort of jinx. Foil our dinky investigation.

“You’re sure?” Sam asks, inspecting my face.

“I’m pissed about the paper,” I tell him. “Murphy’s been pressuring me and I—” I shake off a chill. “I cried about my paper.”

I’m on Lee’s deluxe doorstep.

I used to love this place.

I loved how Lee lived like a Hollywood prince is his parents’ opulent art deco home. I liked lying on silky couches and hiding behind heavy curtains, and I
loved
the way Lee legitimately valued his life. He wasn’t one of those shitty kids who rolled around in piles of money, smoking French cigarettes and eating cocaine. He adored his parents and loved their home and he really, really appreciated life. Lee loved me. For a minute, I loved him. And then shit happened and I fucked it all up.

Ding
, the bell. The door cracks. “Hi,” I say. Lee lets me in.

We sit on the den sofa. I wonder if this is the last time I’ll sit here watching the walls shimmer—all that shiny gold-leaf paper. “We’re breaking up, right?”

“I kissed Alice Reed,” he says.

“What, once?”

“Not just once.”

I don’t tell him about the things I did with Julian, because what would that matter now? “I figured,” I say. “She called me. She’s called me a bunch, actually.”

“She’s scared of you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“She likes you.”

“She
likes
me?”

“Sure.”

I grimace. “She likes you better.”

Lee smiles. I smile. Acting happy hurts. “I’m sorry for treating you like shit,” I say.

Lee bobs his head. “Thanks.”

I slide across the couch cushions and wind my arms around his neck. “I don’t deserve you,” I whisper, and Lee starts to vibrate. He’s shaking like crazy and crying. “Hey, hey . . .” I coo.

“I don’t need to be with her. I can be with you, still.”

“I don’t think you can,” I say, and we cling to each other. Lee pulls his head back and kisses me.

I’m awake.

It takes me fifteen seconds to realize that that chirpy bird melody is my phone. I switch on the bedside lamp and grab my cell off the nightstand. No freakin’ number. Four a.m.
Fuck, Alice. Seriously?
I pick up.

“What now?”

Sobbing. Full-blown hysterical shrieks. The voice is high and broken and alarmingly familiar. It’s not Alice. It says, “Adrienne?”

I shoot out of bed, fully freaked. I trip over my jeans, crumpled up in a ball on the floor. “Who
is
this?” I screech. My heart is all fast and screwy like a metronome off its beat.

“It’s me,” replies a thin, shaky voice from so very far away. “It’s Dakota.”

“Sometimes I think—” She starts, then stops, hurling herself down onto the floor, next to me. “Don’t you ever wonder what real love feels like?”

“Real love?”

“Yeah. Like really real love.”

“I guess,” I say, uneasy. “Sure.” I pick at the berber carpet, pulling loose a few nylon loops.

“I never think about loving anyone. You think that’s weird?”

“I—” I stiffen. “Never?”

“Not ever.” She blinks. “I only ever think about people loving me.”

I look at her perfect, poreless complexion. Her bony shoulders. Her puffy upper lip. “That dress looks better on you,” I say.

She pulls her chin to her chest, looking down, assessing herself. “Does it?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say. “It does.”

She smiles. Then she cups my cheek with one hand and kisses me. She does it easily, with zero hesitation. She leans forward, her lips parting, and nudges my mouth with her mouth. I don’t stop her. I don’t ask where it’s coming from or what the hell she means by it. I kiss back. Because maybe it feels nice or maybe I haven’t been kissed enough. And who doesn’t want to be wanted by her?

She moves closer. She sucks on my bottom lip and laughs. She takes my hand and sets it firmly on her breast. I jump a little, but leave it there. Then, abruptly, she pulls back. Swipes at her smeared lipstick. Says, coolly, “Everyone’s the same. Boys, girls.” She shakes her head, glaring. Then she gets up, grabs her coat and bag, and heads for the door.

“Where are you going?” I whisper, still on the ground.

“I told you. On my date.” She’s halfway down the hall already. She’s not looking back.

It’s quarter to six, dark still, and Julian’s doing ninety on the I-15. We haven’t talked since LA. Dakota’s three hours east, in some teensy desert town by Barstow. This is happening. I’m scratching and pinching at my thighs through my jeans because, yes,
this is totally real
.

Julian chews his nails to the quick. We blow smoke out open windows. Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” plays on repeat for a fourth of the trip, making me feel really sentimental and tense.

•    •    •

Half past seven. We’re here. The sun creeps over a dry, jagged landscape. Julian parks the car in a dirt lot beside Dakota’s motel. The place is sad—ten crumply units, side by side in one long row. Neon sign: “Vacancy. Free TV. Guest Laundry. No pets.” For three full seconds I’m sick, then just as fast, I’m fine. I’m watching the moment, not in it.
You
dump your boyfriend. You chase the dead girl.
Life in second person. Things are better this way.

We walk to unit four. Julian looks past me, hesitates, then knocks. We wait a bit. He knocks again. We wait some more. There’s some clicking. The door rattles and cracks.

“Adrienne?” I see a sliver of nose first, shiny and thin. Then one wide eye.

“Can you undo the chain?”

She shuts the door. The lock scrapes. Then there she is, all of her: bare-faced, kid-like, wearing an oversize Bowie T-shirt. Her legs are bruised. She doesn’t look like the real Dakota.
Mischievous. Cocksure.
She looks beaten and girlish. A bony pile of white skin and limp hair.

“I can’t believe—” My relief is epic. I feel warm and loose. “I’m just so happy to see you.”

She doesn’t say anything back. Her eyes flick sideways, to Julian. “Why is he here?”

A whack to my gut. I look at sad, stiff Julian.

“I don’t have a car,” I say lamely. “And he cares about you.”

She turns away, walks inside, hides herself. “Make him leave, please? I don’t like the way I look.”

I’d like to, like, repeatedly rip her face off.

Sorry,
I mouth, facing Julian.

“I’ll be in the car,” he says flatly, and he’s hurt, I see it, but he backs away. I follow Dakota inside.

Stained carpet. Orange, pilly bedspread. Kitchenette. TV. The place has a sweet, chemical smell that makes me spacey and nauseated. I beeline for the sink, grab two clear cups with a grayish tint off the bar, and fill them with tap water. Then I walk one over to Dakota.

“Here.”

“Glad you came.” She sips some water and pats the bed. Smiles wanly.

I sit, guzzling from my glass. The water tastes like pennies. “How long have you been here?” I ask, fitting the cup between my thighs. It’s the first thing I think to say.
Where the fuck have you been?
seems too cruel and aggressive.

“A while.”

“Doing what?”

She shrugs. Bends over. Picks up a half-eaten package of Red Vines. “Want some?”

No, I don’t want some.
I’m furious. Suddenly. It’s a wild feeling—fierce, knotted, stuck just beneath my rib cage. “I don’t,” I whisper.
Red Vines?
Why the hell am I here? A month of misery, self-loathing, guilt—all for what? For
this
? Why is Julian stuck outside in the car? What sort of crappy creature can’t even say,
hi, hello
, to her ex? Why’ve I spent weeks—no,
years
—obsessing over someone so totally hard-hearted and
fucked
? Why was I wearing her clothes, worshipping at her altar of rock?
Christ
, why’d I obliterate my relationship with Lee? I twist fully forward so she can’t block me out. “Dakota.”

She takes a tiny bite of licorice, mumbles, “Uh-huh?” She’s chewing still, and rocking slightly. Pitching back and forth, her knees tucked under her sheer shirt.

“Are you high?”

“Don’t be dumb.”

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck OFF.
I swallow a scream. “You know what people think back home, right? That you’re dead. That you killed yourself.”

She doesn’t flinch, look up, change shades. She stays very much the same—pleasantly unresponsive.

“Do you know why?”

Another shrug.

“They found a note in your Jeep.” And, “You made quite a splash.”

She sighs heavily, gets up, picks a pair of jeans up off the floor, and slides them over her feet.

“Do you remember the last time we hung out?” I ask.

She looks at me, finally, fully connecting. “The guy who owns this place?” she says, switching subjects. “He cuts me a deal.”

I can’t help but wonder what he gets in exchange. “Oh yeah?”

“I couldn’t afford it otherwise. I mean, it’s a shit hole, but I’m broke.”

Of course.
“So that’s why you called?”