Blind Spot (18 page)

Dellian turned around.

I stifled my smile. “Fritz? What—”

“I said
get away!
” Even though I knew he was acting, I jumped.

Fritz whipped his chair around and began wheeling down the hall, away from the classroom, still yelling.

Dellian sprinted after him, trying to hush him as students and teachers came running from all directions.

“What’s wrong with him?” JJ asked. “What did you say?”

“Nothing.” The rest of the class had come out. They were all looking at me.

“You told him Heather won’t go out with him, didn’t you?” JJ said.

“Heather?” I said. “Heather Torres?”

“The girl with the pink hair,” Ruth said.

“She doesn’t like him?” Jeffrey asked.

“What? No . . . I mean . . .” How did they know that? Now that I thought about it, yeah, it made sense. How had I missed that?

It didn’t matter. I had a job to do. Fritz’s love life would have to wait. “I’ll fix things with Heather, okay? Just not right now.” I hurried over to Dellian’s desk.

I’d just pulled the key from the back of his planning book when Jeffrey asked, “What are you doing?”

“Seeing what’s on the agenda for today,” I said.

“You can’t. He didn’t put you in charge.”

Typical Jeffrey. I didn’t have time to come up with a lie. I needed to find that damn photo before Dellian came back. “Look, Dellian’s trying to suspend me. There’s something in here that can stop him. Fritz is helping me. He freaked to get Dellian out.”

The room was deathly still. Great. I should’ve lied. “If you need to tell Dellian, I understand,” I said. “But I’m running out of time, so—”

Jeffrey walked to the door.

It figured. Now I really had to hurry
.
My fingers fumbled with the key in the lock.

“I’ll whistle when he’s coming,” Jeffrey said.

“And I’ll stall him in the hall if you need more time,” JJ said.

“Me too,” Ruth added.

“Thanks.” I smiled briefly and then returned my focus to the drawer.

There were files inside that hadn’t been there before.

I took them out in one big stack. Then the yellow paper pad. Then . . . nothing.
Where’d it go?

I went through the files, page by page, in case the photo had slipped in between.

It hadn’t. It wasn’t there. He’d taken the photo. My only leverage.

When I walked into the nurse’s office after class, Fritz was parked next to the bed I’d brought Tricia to so very long ago.

“Hey! You get that
assignment
done?” he asked with a sly grin.

“Couldn’t find it. Hi, Mrs. Martin,” I said to her baggy nurse’s smock. She looked a lot thinner than I remembered. “Can he leave now?”

“If he’s ready. He had a panic attack,” she said. “It happens. I’ve had a few myself lately.”

“It’s the chair’s fault,” Fritz said. “It makes me crazy sometimes.”

“Oh? I heard it was Heather,” I teased. “How come you haven’t asked her out?”

Fritz shrugged. “I guess I was afraid she’d say no.”

“She’ll say yes.” I pushed Fritz to the door. “Her wardrobe is less black lately; she’s done mourning Greg.” I blushed. I’d forgotten Greg’s mom was there.

“I didn’t hear that.” She laughed. “If you need help again, I’m here. You too, Roz.”

“Actually,” I turned back, “I’m having a problem in AP. Maybe you could help?”

My heart was hammering its way out of my chest by the time I entered AP. My legs shook as I sat in the no-sit zone and waited for the bombs to fly.

The bell rang. I focused on the chalkboard behind Dellian.

He was peering over the podium at me, an impish grin on his face. He grabbed his roll book and lifted his red pen dramatically in the air. “Roswell Hart.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Dellian?” Mrs. Martin tapped on the open door.

Mr. Dellian flinched in surprise. “Yes?”

“I was hoping to observe today. May I?”

“Of course.” He gestured for her to enter.

She walked past me to the back row and stopped at my “assigned” desk. “Is this seat okay, or is it taken?”

The class knew what was up. We held our collective breath.

“That’s fine,” Dellian said with a thin, polite smile.

“Thank you.” She sat down. “Please, continue. I believe you were on Roswell?”

A manic giggle rippled through me. I had to clench my lower lip between my teeth to keep the laugh from escaping.

“Right, yes. Roswell Hart.” Dellian had to physically force the word out of his mouth. “Present.”

The class breathed again. I stared down at my notebook, biting my lip until it bled and digging my nails into my palms, but it was no use. A smile spilled across my face.

I flew out the door when class ended to avoid a confrontation with Dellian. Greg found me at my locker, books clutched to his chest. “That was awesome, what you did, telling my mom.”

Dryer sheets. Watermelon. My smile slipped away. It hurt too much to stand there and pretend we were friends. “I gotta go,” I said, and walked away.

Heather was waiting at my locker the next morning. I could tell by her bright spring colors that life was good. “Let me guess,” I said as I pulled my locker open. “Fritz asked you out?”

“You knew?” She slapped my arm. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It took a while to convince him you’d say yes. I thought he might chicken out.”

We headed toward our classes. “He told me what you did in History yesterday; pretty gutsy. Are you worried about class this morning?”

“Am I! I’m about to puke, but what can Dellian do? Mrs. Martin knows the whole story.” I sighed. “Still, Dellian’s sneaky. I know this isn’t over.”

“Oh, my God!” Heather stopped so abruptly, I ran into her.

“What?” I stepped around her to look. My heart leaped into my throat. My lungs failed.

Greg was at his locker, his arms around Missy.

No, that’s not Greg,
I thought.
My eyes are mistaken.
But I knew this time they weren’t. Heather had seen it too. I slunk closer to the couple in question. Closer to that outline I’d grown so good at identifying. Closer to the carefully ironed khakis. The curly mess of hair.

Too close.

The nastiest odor I’d ever smelled—lavender and vanilla mixed with watermelon bubblegum and dryer sheets—hit me with an acrid slap. Greg wasn’t just hugging Missy. He was
comforting
her,
holding
her, while she cried on his shoulder.

I ran. Through people. Down hallways. Into the handicapped bathroom. I wanted to scream, cry, tear the walls down around me. But the hurt was too intense. I could only rock back and forth like Bart, hugging myself.

“Roz? You okay?” Heather tapped on the stall door. I unlatched it. “I didn’t realize you liked him that much,” she said, coming inside.

“Me neither,” I managed to whisper before a lump squeezed my throat shut.

“Maybe it’s not what it looked like.” Heather pulled a bag of M&M’s from her pocket and poured me some. “Jonathan’s been hooking up with Jenny Rinker behind Missy’s back.” She poured the rest of the bag into her palm. “I bet she just found out.”

“And ran to Greg for comfort?” I said. “Great.”

Heather stared at the candy in her palm. “Roz, I’m sorry I was such a bitch about you two.” She flicked a green M&M with her fingernail. It skipped across the tile and disappeared under the stall. “I thought it was, you know . . . payback for me and Jonathan.”

I wasn’t following. “What do you mean?”

“At Ethan’s?” Heather shoved the rest of the candy into her mouth. “The night Dellian and Copacabana found me?”

“Wait, what?” It took a second. “You and Jonathan? While we were dating?”

“I thought you knew,” Heather said. “Greg didn’t tell you?”

“You . . . and Greg knew?” I felt as if I’d been stabbed in the back, and then in the gut, and then in the back again. So much betrayal. I couldn’t catch my breath.

Heather slumped back against the wall. “You and Jonathan were in that fight and I was really drunk . . . things just happened, okay?”

“Things just happened?” I said. “You guilt-tripped me over and over about Greg, and you’d screwed Jonathan behind my back?” I clawed at the door latch.

“I didn’t screw him!” Heather said. “Where are you going?”

I was through trusting people. I hated everyone. I flung the stall door open and let it smash against Heather.

“You’re not going to do anything with Fritz, right?” Heather cried after me. “To get back at me? We’re even, okay?”

Even.

I would’ve laughed if I wasn’t about to cry. That’s all we were.

Not friends. Just even.

I didn’t bother going back to my locker. I ran past Principal Ratner and a hall monitor, out the front doors, past the city bus stop, and the next bus stop, and the next. I didn’t stop running until I’d run the three miles home.

I sequestered myself in my room, under my UFO sky, turned on AM 760 so I wouldn’t hear any songs that reminded me of all the backstabbers in my life, and willed the world away.

But I couldn’t will the world away.

The broadcast played less than seventy-two hours later.

The body of seventeen-year-old Tricia Farni was pulled from the Birch River Friday night...

Three things cannot be long hidden:
The sun, the moon, and the truth.

—Buddha

Dead.

Tricia was
dead.
Not shacking up with some drug dealer or hooking her way across Alaska—but dead. How could that be?

She’d said to give her until homecoming to end whatever sick thing was going on between her and Dellian, and yeah, it ended all right. But
who
ended it? Dellian had seen her that night, talked to her. He had said so himself when he came looking for her—what if that had been a ruse? A ploy to make it look as if she’d run off? To keep everyone from learning the truth about what had happened to Tricia that night?

My heart ached to think about Tricia, frozen in that river all winter, alone and voiceless, while I was oblivious, barely giving her a thought, hating her all the while. Why hadn’t I asked questions? Why hadn’t I looked for her?

Because I was a bitch. I didn’t care. But not anymore. I was going to find out what had happened. I was going to give Tricia a voice.

But how? God, if only I could remember that night! All the time I spent trying to forget what I
did
remember—Jonathan and Tricia in the loft—and as sick as
that
was, I had an even sicker feeling now about the things I
couldn’t
remember.

I had to find out what happened that night, to fill in the gaps I was missing, and there was only one person I knew for sure who could do that for me: Jonathan. As much as I hated him for hurting me, I hated Dellian more for hurting Tricia. Whether her death was suicide, accident, or murder, I believed Dellian was involved. I believed it like I believed in extraterrestrial life—a gut feeling with no proof. To get proof, I had to start filling in the blanks, and like it or not, that meant talking to Jonathan.

Early Easter Monday, I pulled on my jacket and walked to Jonathan’s house. As I walked up his driveway, he stepped out of his car. My heart started to pound. Although I’d seen him plenty of times around school, we hadn’t spoken since that day outside the counseling office. The day the detective came asking about Tricia.
I feel nothing,
I reminded myself.
He’s just a guy I need information from.

“Hey, Beautiful! Can you believe this shit?” he said. “Tricia’s dead!”

“No, I can’t believe it.” I kicked at a small mound of snow underneath his mailbox. “Jonathan, what happened with Tricia that night?”

“You know. She just attacked—”

I winced. “Not that. After. What happened
after?
”

Jonathan shook his head. “I don’t know.”

My head swung up and my mouth dropped. “You don’t remember either?”

“Of course I—” He frowned. “What do you mean? What don’t you remember?”

A gust of wind blew through the trees. I pulled my jacket tighter around me. “That night. I remember the loft,
obviously.
” I tried to sound nonchalant as I looked back down and kicked at the snow some more. “And I remember walking through the party with you to leave. The rest is a blur of random things.” I paused. “Was Dellian there? I remember him, but . . . he was sick, right? Tricia took him home from the dance.”

He stared at me. “You seriously don’t remember?”

“Seriously,” I said. “No.”

“Ooh.” Or was that “Ugh”? A cross between a sigh and a groan—either way, it didn’t sound good. “I get it now.” He rubbed his face with his hands. “Shit.”

My stomach twisted. “Get what? What aren’t you telling me?” I said, training my dots on his ear, desperate to see his facial expression now.

“When you said to tell the cop we’d argued and I took you home, I thought you were, you know, keeping our stories straight. I didn’t know—” He cursed again and looked down the street. “We shouldn’t talk out here.” He nodded at his car. “Come on.”

I obeyed, too afraid now to breathe.

“Look.” He rubbed his forehead before continuing. “I’ll tell you about that night, but if that cop comes nosing around again, stick to what we said before, okay? She’ll think we’re frickin’ guilty if you change your story.”

“Change my story? Jonathan,” I said, panic rising, “what happened?”

“You were wasted. I was letting you chill in my car until you felt better, in case you puked, you know? Then Tricia comes screaming all sorts of crazy shit. She dragged you out of the Vette.”

My mouth fell open. “Oh, my God! I fought—I fought with her? Is that how she—”

It was too horrific for words.

“Died? No. No way. I got you away from her before any damage could be done. That’s when Dellian showed.”

“So he
was
there!” It was slightly comforting knowing my memory wasn’t a total bust.

“Yeah, she called him when we left the loft.”