Dead to Me (5 page)

Every morning when I walked to school, I told myself,
You are Philip Marlowe. You are Sam Spade. You are ice, you are stone, and nothing can touch you.

If you tell yourself something like that enough, you begin to believe it, but that’s a problem, too.

Better watch out or your face will freeze that way.

Every day after school I checked the mailbox for a letter from Annie. After a month with no word, I started to worry and to wonder what might have kept her from writing to me. I imagined all
kinds of terrible scenarios, many of them as lurid as the stories circulating around school—Annie kidnapped by gangsters or murdered in a ditch.

Eventually I decided to ask around. There
were
people out there, I reminded myself, who cared about Annie, who weren’t just chasing after her story. And even if those people
didn’t know what had become of her, at least they weren’t likely to lie to me.

First, I went to the drive-in parking lot where Annie’s friends met after school. My parents didn’t approve of any of these people—the girls wore tight sweaters and bright red
lipstick, while the boys pegged their pants and rolled packs of cigarettes into the sleeves of their T-shirts. Of course, more damning than their appearance was the fact that none of them breathed
the rarified air of our neighborhood, and none of their fathers lunched at the Cocoanut Grove or had memberships at the Los Angeles Athletic Club.

When I walked up to them in the parking lot, they recognized me right away, and the girls all hugged me and cried, while the boys bought me more sodas than I could possibly drink. They all asked
about Annie, and nobody seemed to know much of anything. She hadn’t been coming around lately anyway, they said, and no one knew where she’d been going after school.

Randall Pensler was more or less the leader of their circle, and I knew that for a month or so, he’d almost been Annie’s boyfriend. She’d snuck out the window to meet him a few
times, but then our parents got wind of it and made her break it off. My coming around seemed to make Randall uneasy, and he found reasons to avoid looking my way, so I was surprised when he
offered me a ride home. He was quiet on the drive and smiled a sad, weary smile when I asked if he’d let me out a few blocks from our house.

“Annie used to make me do that,” he said, pulling up to the curb. I thanked him and started to get out of his beat-up coupe.

“Alice, wait,” he said, grabbing my arm. “I remember there was this guy.”

“What guy?”

“I don’t think she would have gone with him, but there was a guy named Rex who hung out at this bar I used to take her to. I’d leave her alone for five seconds and when I came
back, he’d always be right there chatting her up. Said he was some kind of talent scout, but it seemed shady.”

“Annie would never get mixed up with someone like that,” I said. “She knows real talent scouts.”

“I know, I know. Annie was too smart for that.” He shook his head vehemently. “But she was always saying that she was going to be a singer and that she wanted to do it without
your dad’s help. I wonder if maybe she saw a chance and took it.”

I nodded. Annie was impetuous. There was no denying that. Randall studied my face, which was twisted up in thought, and shrugged. “It probably wasn’t anything.”

“No, probably not,” I said.

As I got out of the car, I noticed him staring at me with sad eyes.

“You look just like her, you know,” he whispered.

I knew it wasn’t true, but his words still made me blush, and I hurried to close the car door behind me.

Maybe Annie’s friends hadn’t forgotten about her, but my parents hadn’t even spoken her name in front of me since the day she left home. Night after night we sat at the table,
not speaking, eating one solemn roast beef dinner after another until I couldn’t take it anymore.

One night, when my father asked me to pass the butter, I said, “You act like she never existed.”

His mustache twitched, and he reached over my plate and got the butter himself.

“Annie does not intend to come back,” he said. “She made that much clear to your mother and me.”

“You’re lying,” I said. “She wouldn’t do that to me.”

My mother took my hand in hers.

“Honey,” she said, “I know that you and Annie were very close.”

“
Are
very close,” I said.

She squeezed my fingers and acted like she hadn’t heard me. “But your sister isn’t well. She’s not herself. She’s not our Annie anymore. And we can hope with all
our hearts that she comes back to us someday, but we can’t dwell on what’s happened or how we used to be.”

“It doesn’t mean we’re forgetting her,” my father added. “It means we have to move forward with our lives.”

Even then, I knew the difference between moving forward and running away, and I knew which one this was. They might have moved forward, but I didn’t. I didn’t forget her. And I
didn’t forget who took her from me.

Without Annie, everything seemed empty. I still went to the movies with Cassie, but the only ones I wanted to see anymore were the gangster pictures that ended in a hail of bullets. Paging
through movie magazines only made me think about my father and how I blamed him for driving Annie away; my mother and how she’d pushed Annie into a life she’d never wanted. Cassie
seemed to understand, and she clipped her movie star pictures quietly while I hunched in the corner of her bedroom, reading my crime novels.

Eventually, I started reading in my own bedroom, by myself. Once I got used to that, I found I liked walking to school alone, eating lunch alone, going to the movies alone. Alone, there was
nothing to distract me from the only thing I wanted to think about, the only thing in the world that mattered to me.

My sister is gone. My sister is gone. My sister is gone.

One day, my mother knocked on my door holding an envelope in her hand. Thinking it was the letter Annie had promised to send me all those months before, I grabbed it out of her hands and tore it
open, slamming the door in her face.

The letter inside read:

I threw it in the trash can.
I miss her, too.
It took a lot of nerve for her to write that. She barely knew my sister and couldn’t even get a full sentence out
around her. What could I possibly have to talk to her about? She hadn’t lost her sister. I had.

But then I thought about how badly I’d treated Cassie, how I’d shut her out, and I fished the letter out of the trash.

I turned the paper over and wrote my reply on the back:

Ever since, our friendship had been like that. It wasn’t like I’d discarded her for other friends. I didn’t want new friends, either. For years, it had been
just me and my books and my room. Occasionally, a boy would decide I was mysterious and try to make a project out of me. For a few weeks, I’d allow myself to be pried out of my bedroom and
taken to diners and dances and the sad parties people threw in their parents’ living rooms. I’d be around people and see what I was missing. The only problem was, nothing ever looked
better to me than my bedroom walls. I didn’t feel like I’d been missing anything. The boys eventually decided I wasn’t mysterious and that there were other strange, damaged girls
with thousand-yard stares who made better projects than I did.

Cassie didn’t give up on me, though, not completely. She’d occasionally make a nice gesture; I’d respond just enough to keep her from writing me off. She’d invite me to
her birthday party; I’d send my regrets and a card. She’d save me a seat next to her at the school assembly; I’d walk homework assignments over to her house when she was out sick.
She’d ask me about my sister, and I’d say,
No, I don’t know anything. I haven’t heard. I’m okay.

But what I really wished I could say was,
Leave me alone. Stop asking. Stop caring about my life.

T
he morning after I burgled my father’s office, I woke up early, ate a quick breakfast, and left a note saying that I was going to the beach
with Cassie’s family. They wouldn’t ask too many questions about that.

Then I went to the trolley stop and caught the Red Car across town to the County Hospital. I was relieved to find Annie exactly where I’d left her the afternoon before, but I was
heartsick, too. There hadn’t been a miracle, and the longer she lay there, the harder it was to imagine she’d ever wake up.

Jerry Shaffer was right where I’d left him, too, asleep in the chair next to Annie’s bed, the previous day’s
Los Angeles Examiner
folded up on the floor next to him.
When I said his name, his eyes flew open and he sat up like a shot. Seeing only me, he relaxed and rubbed his eyes.

“Sorry, kid,” he said, clearing his throat. “I must have dozed off there for a minute.”

I leaned over my sister and brushed a lock of hair from her forehead. A fresh bandage covered the angry-looking black stitches and most of the ugly purple bruise that had spread across her face.
Even after two days, it still felt strange to be this close to her.

“How is she?” I asked.

“One of the orderlies was in here about every ten minutes last night. I was starting to think something was wrong with her, but the doctor just came by. He says she’s
stable.”

“Was there anyone else?” I asked, glad to hear that the money I’d given the orderly had been well spent. “I mean, did anyone else come to see her?”

“Why? Were you expecting someone?”

“She has friends, doesn’t she?”

“Of course she does.”

“Then where are they?” I asked.

Jerry didn’t answer at first. He got up from the chair next to Annie’s bed and began to pace the linoleum. It was a simple question. Of course, where Annie was concerned, I was
beginning to see there wasn’t any such thing.

“I’m still looking for them,” Jerry said, then gave me a dark look. “Alice, no visitors is a good thing. A very good thing. There aren’t that many hospitals in Los
Angeles, and the person who did this wasn’t trying to put her in one.”

I considered the implications. “You’re saying they think she’s dead?”

“It would explain a few things.”

It was such a strange thing to be relieved about, but I was. I felt a lump in my throat and fought back the urge to cry. It didn’t have anything to do with Jerry being there—I
didn’t care what he thought. Crying would have made me feel better, and I didn’t want to feel better. I wanted to do something.

I reached into my purse and handed Jerry the matchbook I’d burgled.

“Marty’s?” Jerry drew in a breath through his teeth. “Where’d you find this?”

“In my father’s desk,” I said. “What do you know about it?”

“I know it’s no place you have any business going to,” he said, opening up the matchbook. “I don’t suppose you tried calling this number?”

I shook my head, and Jerry shrugged. “Something to look into, I guess. There are a few other leads I want to check out this morning. Do you mind holding down the fort for a
while?”

“Are you still looking for Annie’s friends?”

“Yeah,” Jerry said, but he paused before he said it, and I wondered whether that was what he was going out to do at all. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

A few minutes after Jerry left, the orderly I’d paid off the night before stuck his head into Annie’s room.

“Everything okay in here?” he asked.

I nodded, and the orderly stepped inside. He was nice-looking in an earnest, country way, and there was a little bit of a twang in his voice. I guessed he was probably from somewhere around
Bakersfield.

“She’s got a lot of people worried about her,” he said. “Your friend the detective, he gave me money to keep an eye on her, too.”

“Really?”

“He went out for a couple of hours around midnight.”

Jerry Shaffer hadn’t said anything about that, or about paying off the orderly, for that matter. I wondered where he’d gone at that hour.

“Do you know who did this to her?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“But you think they’re going to come back?” asked the orderly, his eyes wide.

“I hope not,” I said.

“My name’s Eugene, by the way,” he said. “I was just stopping by because my shift’s about to end, and—”

I opened my purse and started to pull out the dollar bills I’d brought along just in case I needed to pay the orderly again. When I held the money out to him, though, he pushed my hand
away.

“It’s not that,” he said, shaking his head. “I just wanted you to know that I talked to the nurses on the next shift. I told them about you, and they said they’d
keep an eye on your friend’s room if you want.”

It was such a small gesture, but the kindness of it took my breath away. I wasn’t alone—Annie wasn’t alone. There was a whole floor of nurses watching out for her. When I tried
to thank Eugene, no sound came out—I could only mouth the words.