Heartsick (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

I burst out of the building and clamber down the steps, toward the crowd.

One girl has a hand over her mouth and big, wild eyes. Another student runs his hands up and down his backpack straps as though he’s wearing a parachute and is falling fast. Two girls kneel in the grass and hug. Mostly though, students are staring, whispering. Hushed.

The cop car is off to the side on one of those fake streets. A street for students, not vehicles. Unless they’re emergency vehicles. The lights flash, but the siren has stopped. A cop talks on a cell phone. Another is defending the perimeter.
Stay calm. Stay back.

I move toward the forbidden perimeter and the students. I trip. My legs shake.

The police tape acts as a stronger barrier than flimsy plastic should. I get in closer, gently inserting myself.

Someone is on the ground. There’s a foot and a twisted ankle. The heel is nowhere where a heel should naturally be.

The body is contorted, lifeless. I don’t place my hand over my mouth, mimicking the numb crowd, until I see the blood. It’s gooey against the hard pavement. I don’t cry until I see the black hair. His face is turned toward us. Even in death, his eyes blank and empty, we can all see it.

Purple.

It’s Danny.

I clench my jaw. I touch the police tape, my fingers tingling, feeling the glossiness. I want to rip it away, so that Danny isn’t alone. He’s just lying there. No one is touching him. No one is holding him. I rub my arms and stare at his eyes, as though we can communicate.
I’m sorry Danny. I’m so, so sorry.

Finally, I back away. Getting out of the crowd is harder than it was to get in. Everyone pushes forward, either trying to see or entranced by what they do see. I look up. He must have come from there. A window on the third floor or the green roof?

It settles in and what used to be murmurs around me become clear.

“Did he jump?”

“A grad student just found him.”

“Maybe he was depressed because of his...condition.”

“He did seem down when I ran into him last night.”

“Maybe someone pushed him?”

I’m surprised by the last statement. Especially the source of it.

Me.

People listen, but the idea is more important than the source, and soon the buzzing has morphed into various scenarios.

“He could have just gotten drunk and went up to the green roof to hang out and then...”

“Maybe.”

“Someone killed him.”

“No way.”

“This is surreal.”

I press the base of my palms into my eyes until I’m ready to take more in. Another cop car. A siren. An unmarked sedan that speeds up with purpose. Police swarm. They tell us to move along, unless we have pertinent information.

Luke is here. My chest fills with warmth, like honey over toast. His demeanor is formal. He looks good in his gray suit. I am horrid. I am alive to have a fluffy, girlish thought when Danny is feet away. Dead. Gone.

I catch my chest and shake my head. I’m not a horrible person. It just hasn’t set in yet. Danny is gone.

Gone.

Luke notices me. He says something to the cop next to him and points toward Danny. The cop scurries away. Luke comes to me
.
I go to him. The dew from the grass slips through my impractical flats. He reaches a hand toward me. I almost reach out to him. I want him to take my hand and tug me into his arms so that my nose is smushed against his breastbone and I no longer need to think about the world.

But, in a flash, he jerks his hand back, as if he suddenly thought better of it. He puts both hands in his coat pockets.

Okay...

“I knew Danny,” I say.

Luke nods. He is cool. He is crisp. “Did you see anything?”

“No,” I say. “But he said he was about to talk to a virus expert. His TA, I think.”

“Who is his TA?”

“Was.”

Luke cocks his head.

“Who
was
Danny’s TA.” The tears gallop in my throat.

Luke puts a hand on my shoulder, but his squeeze seems to say “pay attention” more than “I’m here for you.”

“When you’re ready, I want to talk to you about this. Okay?” His eyes are so green.

“I understand,” I say.

A cop comes dashing up to us. Luke whips his hand off my shoulder. Of course he does. I’m diseased. I’m untouchable.

“Detective, we’ve found the roommate,” she says.

Luke puts his hands on his hips, which draws his coat back. The gun lingers on his belt. I fold my arms to keep myself together. I bite my lips.

“Thanks, I’ll be there in a second.”

When he turns back to me, he gives a lame, limp smile, then rubs it off his face. “I’ve got to...” I see him motion toward the crowd but only out of my peripheral vision because I’m staring at his gun. His hands come down on my shoulders.

“It’s just a gun, because I’m just a cop and cops have guns,” he says. “Is this going to be a problem for us?”

I shake my head no. “No, of course not.” I don’t add that there is no “us,” not before, and not now. And the fact that he’s a serious detective with a firearm hanging off his hip makes me pretty sure there won’t be an “us” in the future. If there is no “us,” there is no problem.

“Good,” he says. He gives a half smile—only one cheek pulls up on his lips. He strides toward the crowd. Toward Danny.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I just want to go home. I want to lie on the hardwood floor spread-eagled and look at the ceiling, at the shadows in the collage, and take deep breaths. Danny is dead.

My chin quivers. Even though he sounded happy, could those murmured rumors of suicide be true?

I don’t believe it. He was following someone? Or running from someone? He wondered what “they” were doing. But who? Did “they” push him? Could someone really have killed Danny?

Or did he kill himself? It itches my mind. Was I not supportive enough with the don’t-worry-you-aren’t-the-devil’s-spawn pep talk? I thought I did okay.

I put a hand on a nearby tree. My fingernails drill into the dents. I breathe. Danny is dead. This is not about me. This isn’t even about the disease, or Poe, or Allan. His life should have spanned so far that all of those things would be mere blips. A minor episode he chatted about with his grandkids. But now, instead of a blip, they are the ending point.

I can’t spiral out of control. I need to go home, regroup and figure out how to survive this. That’s what Danny would have done.

I’m so focused on beelining it home, I slam into someone. He grabs my arms. It’s Rashid.

“Whoa, Quinn,” he says, smiling until he sees my face. His dark eyebrows move toward each other. My heart catches. He has purple eyes.

“Yeah, I uh...” he says. “I got it too.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say.

“There’s no reason to be sorry. Maybe I didn’t get it from you. And if I did, well, you didn’t do it on purpose.”

He’s forgiving me.

“He’s dead,” I say.

“Who?” he asks. When I say nothing, he presses. “Quinn, who is dead?”

I don’t know where to start.

He guides me to a bench and pulls a water bottle from his backpack. He reminds me to breathe as I try to explain, between sips, about Danny, what I saw, what I heard. The story still mixes with a bunch of hiccups.

“And the worst part is,” I say, “I don’t know. Maybe he did kill himself, but he seemed so happy this morning, he seemed so back to normal. And even though he was sad last night, it wasn’t suicidal sad. It was just sad sad.”

“What do you think happened?” Rashid asks.

“Someone killed him,” I say, trying to keep my hands from shaking.

“What?” Rashid says, rubbing my shoulder. “Quinn, you really think that? Who would do that?”

Jared’s group? That maniac Natalie? She’s been posting vicious things on Facebook about all the purple-eyed people and encouraging Allan business owners to not allow students with purple eyes in their shops and restaurants. And most of the business owners are listening. But maybe it isn’t either of them? Maybe it’s someone else? Who would kill Danny?

“I don’t know, but he did say he was going to talk to someone later today—”

A shriek bursts from a small crowd near us.

Actually, it’s not a scream so much as a loud, gurgled, cry. Rashid gets up, his hand on my shoulder, more protective than sexual, as he looks at the crowd. Most look like they’ve just received startling news.

Two students hug. Tears run down cheeks onto cashmere sweaters. The kind you’d see in a catalogue of happy, healthy college students.

“Hey James,” Rashid calls to one of the guys who’s looking at the sidewalk. His head springs up. “What’s going on?” Rashid asks quietly enough so that he doesn’t bother the crying girls a few feet away from us.

“Some freshman, Danny Rojas, was pushed off the green roof,” he says.

“Pushed?” I blurt out. Unlike Rashid, I am not delicate and polite.

The guy nods and explains. “Apparently there are footprints and some broken plants and stuff. He was walking backward and someone was walking forward. At him. At least, that’s what I heard.”

Rashid nods at the guy like he’s dismissing him. He’s probably one of Rashid’s students. He looks at me, questioning. Is this good news?

I can breathe, I tell myself. I can. It’s just low and shallow like someone has wrapped me up in twine or one of those things that’s supposed to keep your belly in for special occasions. Only the thing is around my chest, pulled tight. I think I will throw up. I get up. I will make myself continue the now seemingly long journey home. But I stand up too quickly, or the world isn’t ready for me, because it starts spinning, and soon the universe is unsteady. That is, until I feel Rashid’s hands on my shoulders. The world stops spinning. But the image of Danny’s frozen eyes still slips into my mind.

I swallow. “Danny was murdered,” I say. “I’m afraid, Rashid. I’m afraid someone is after us.”

I wish he would say I was silly and nonsensical. But he doesn’t. He rubs his chin. “Come on, let’s get you home.”

When we get to my house, we go to my room. I don’t care about prudeness and good girlness and innocence now, if I ever did. I sprawl on my bed and rub my comforter. The fabric is real, it grounds me. I stare at the ceiling, and feel my chest rise and fall. I need to calm down. Rashid lies next to me and soon his arms are around me. I cry.

“Danny, he was so young. I didn’t know him that well, but...I just can’t...” I bite my knuckles.

“I know,” Rashid says. “I didn’t know him well, either. But he was a good kid.” Rashid’s hair splashes on my comforter.

“How did you know him?” I ask carefully.

“He was in my biology 101 section.”

“You mean you were his TA?”

“Yeah.” He strokes a strand of hair away from my face
.
I try not to flinch. “He had the best questions. Stuff that wasn’t even going to be on the exam. He was just curious.”

I had just started learning to breathe again and now this.

“Yeah, he was curious.” I sit up. “He was curious enough that he talked to his TA about the disease. He said he thought his TA knew more about what was causing the purple eyes than he let on.” It tumbles in my brain. The virus expert he talked about was his TA. Right? My heart jitters.

Rashid sits up. He crawls toward me but I back against the wall, so he stops. “What? You think I caused this?” Rashid touches his fingertips to his breastbone, as though I’ve shot him there.

“Well, he said he talked to his TA.” I fumble with my memories.

“He didn’t ask me about this.”

“He said he talked to you. Because you’re an expert on viruses. Well, I was going to talk to you about bacterial infections and he was going to talk to his TA, or you...about...” I place my chin on my knees. No, this doesn’t make sense.

“I don’t study viruses, Quinn,” he says. “I could have tutored him, of course. I mean, I know about viruses. But if he was looking for an expert, it wouldn’t have been me. And he didn’t talk to me about this.”

The way Danny had talked about it, he’d arranged a meeting with an expert. But didn’t he say he had spoken with his biology TA? Shit, I should write this dribble down. And maybe I should also write
gullible
on my ceiling in lipstick, because I trust Rashid. I don’t think he’d lie about this.

Rashid slides toward me, carefully. He reaches a hand to my knee. “Quinn, we’ll be okay. They’ll figure out what happened to Danny. We’ll figure out why we have this condition. We’ll be okay.”

“We’ll be okay,” I parrot. And I let him gently take me into his arms. He spoons me and smooths down my hair. He kisses me, but it’s just one kiss, soft, not pressing. And I don’t need to worry about giving him purple eyes because we’re both already cursed.

Somehow, I fall asleep.

* * *

The door slams. I pop up like it’s the gun starting a race. My feet hit the ground. I’m running.

It’s Mandy.

“Did you hear...about Danny?”

Mandy squints. She looks like she’s holding in a sneeze but she may be trying not to cry. She swallows and nods. “I hope you’re okay. I know you were friends with him.”

Rashid stumbles out from my room, rubbing the back of his head. Mandy wiggles her eyebrows at me. Normally it would be funny. Normally I would blush and guffaw. But now?

“Don’t you think it’s weird,” I press, “Danny falling off the green roof?”

She sets her bag on the table. She steps toward me, but then slightly shrinks back. “Yeah, it’s weird, just completely random.”

“Random?” I ask, leaning toward her, forehead squished.

“Random.”

“Mandy, wake the fuck up,” I practically scream. Okay. I scream, there is no
practically
involved. Rashid holds his hand out as though I’m a tiger.

Mandy takes a step back. “What are you talking about?”

“They’re after us.” I whirl my finger around at the three of us. “If someone killed Danny, it has to be because he has purple eyes. Someone is out to get the people with purple eyes.”

Her forehead ruffles in concern. She looks at the ground for a long time. She finally mumbles, “Maybe he just fell. I mean, who would kill Danny?”

“He did not just fall,” I say. I try not to be sarcastic, but the sarcasm prances about. “And who would kill him? Just maybe it’s those religious freaks who basically attacked me. Did you forget? Or maybe it’s Natalie and her friends who have decided it’s their mission in life to rile up the whole town so that they’re against us. Are you really not seeing any of this?”

I am huffing. My fists are hard and closed against my thighs.

She stares at me. “Are you done?”

I twist and loosen my jaw. I raise my hands and feel the stretch in my shoulders before exhaling.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m done.”

“I’m sorry, this is just a lot for me to handle,” Mandy says.

“Well, it’s a lot for me to handle too.”