Heartsick (19 page)

Chapter Thirty-Six

I sigh audibly, to the point that eyebrows are raised. I swish my head around as heat swarms through my neck and face. “Um, that’s fine. I understand,” I say, tapping the counter a couple times before spinning around. “I’ll just, um, go then...”

I force my shoulders back as I walk to the door. But Tommy isn’t done. “You can find him on the green roof.”

I turn around. “What?”

“He said to tell you that, if you came by,” Tommy says. “He’s up there, if you want to see him.”

I nod and smile. I stare at the gray floor and swish my dress around.

“Well,” Raven says, beaming. “What are you waiting around here for? Go on, get.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, face red with the realization that they’re both watching me.

I cross the campus quickly, swiping over damp grass and leaves. When I get to the environmental building, my hands clutch at the metal railings of the twisted staircase. I try to take two steps at a time to the green roof.

Luke squats next to a set of plants in the large area marked off by flimsy yellow police tape.

He doesn’t hear me as I walk over. He rubs his chin, his lips parted as he scrutinizes something. He jots down a note and then shifts his weight and attention to another plant. His pants tighten around his legs as he crouches. His fingers reach out, touching the plants, moving the branches carefully. He is so purposeful and delicate with his movements. Warmth flourishes across my face and chest as I remember how precise and careful his fingers have been with certain parts of me.

I step closer. “Hey,” I say.

He jolts up. His hand swipes his gun, hovering above it like it’s high noon. I make myself look at his face, instead of the gun. He takes me in. His face relaxes, but just for a moment. Then something flickers in his eyes. He’s tense again. “Hey.”

He doesn’t move toward me or invite me behind the yellow line. I put my hands behind my back and look at my shoes to gather myself. Clearly I’m going to have to lead this little chitchat before we get to the point.

“I’m sorry we fought. I’m sorry I’m bugging you while you’re on the job,” I say, nodding to the plants.

He relaxes and steps toward me. “I’m not,” he says, his eyes close to mine, despite the plastic barrier.

My heart thumps and my jaw hurts from closing it so tight. The corners of his lips turn up. He looks down, which is good, because my whole body feels a little flushed. I think of ice cubes as I ramble on. “Anyway, I just needed to talk to you about something. It’s important.”

His head shoots up and his eyes narrow. “What happened? Did someone hurt you?”

I take one of his closed fists and gently open it. “Relax, okay?” I say. His hand goes limp in my palms. I massage it as I go. He can’t get all riled and overprotective on me. Not now.

“It’s Zachary. I think he might be behind this disease. He studies white blood cells and the immune system and stuff. And that means that I think he might have been the expert who talked to Danny the night before he died. But he didn’t tell you about that, did he? Even though it might have helped the investigation.”

Luke looks at his hand as I knead it with my thumbs. I gently let go and cross my arms. Luke stretches his hand and shakes it out, before looking at me. “No, Zachary never came forward to tell me about his research or talking to Danny.”

“So...that means you’ll look into him?” I lean forward, waiting for him to say yes, of course, he’s on it.

Instead he clicks his tongue in thought. “We are looking into possible causes of the disease as there may be a connection to what happened to Danny, but I can’t really talk about that part of the investigation.” Luke coughs and shoots me a look.

“Okay, but, you have to look into Zachary. He told me he went in to the hospital, but Dr. Brown and Peachy told him yesterday he needed to come in. So, he lied to me. And he was one of the first people to get purple eyes.” Luke just nods. I tighten my crossed arms. “You’re already looking into him, aren’t you? And you won’t even tell me what you found out?”

“I said I can’t talk about it.” Luke holds my gaze.

Now I’m the one with clenched fists. “Well, what about Danny’s death? Is there anything you can tell me about that?”

“I don’t have much to go on, but I’ll figure out who killed him.”

“He
was
murdered.” I run my hands through my hair and look over the edge of the building.

“Yeah,” Luke says, tilting his head as he looks at me. When I don’t say anything, he looks around and then lifts the yellow tape. “Come in here.” I duck my head, his hand briefly covering the back of it, to make sure, what, it doesn’t bang against the yellow tape? I smile at the ground.

He places his hand on the small of my back, his delicate fingertips rubbing along the fabric of my dress, and guides me over to the ledge. “See the broken bushes, and the heels, digging into the dirt.” I nod. “We know these are Danny’s because they match his shoes. He walked backward, hesitatingly, slowly. So probably not a suicide.”

“I never thought it was a suicide,” I say.

“I know.” He presses more firmly into my back.

“So where are the footprints of someone walking toward him, you know, if he’s backing away from someone?”

Luke smiles as he shifts to a bush and squats again. With his knees far apart, his pants tighten around his thighs and his, err, area. I stare for too long and flash a look back up at him. His cheeks bunch into a smile.

“So, you were saying, the footprints...” I squat as well and brush my hair behind my ears more times than it needs to be brushed behind my ears.

He points to a small indentation in the dirt, marked by a little white plastic marker. “Here’s a footprint, just as fresh as Danny’s, but going the other way. However, it’s hard to make out the shoe size. But based on the pressure and the moisture in the dirt, these indents were made by someone between one hundred and twenty and one hundred and sixty pounds.”

I nod. It’s just a little crescent-shaped dent. Then I slap my hands on my thighs and look around, searching for more footprints, but that isn’t what I see. I see, instead, a purple Krizzles box. Zesty mango.

“Oh my God.” I get up and walk toward it. It has a little white marker too. “This, what do you make of this?”

Luke shrugs. “Probably just trash, but you don’t want to take anything for granted.”

I shake my head. “Zachary eats Krizzles all the time. I mean every day. And he ordered that flavor online. They don’t sell zesty mango here.”

Luke’s face expands and he comes over and looks at it. He shakes his head. “No, not around here. But they sell this flavor in a few stores in D.C. I looked into it. There’re too many kids from D.C. to isolate it.”

“They’re Zachary’s, I know it. He was here, and considering it’s just a little damp, it wasn’t long ago,” I say, surprised I can get the words out with the way my throat is closing in.

The wrinkles around Luke’s eyes deepen. He stares out from under his blond eyelashes as the warm light of the descending sun casts shadows that strengthen his features. My throat doesn’t feel so tight. My brain doesn’t feel so wobbly.

But then he says, “You may be right, Quinn, but right now, it’s just coincidental.”

“You can’t bring him in for questioning based on this?” I point and gulp and tilt on my toes so that I don’t fall over.

“I wish I could,” he says.

I bite the inside of my cheek.

He steps toward me. “Quinn, I’m going to work on this, okay? I’ll find whoever killed Danny. If it’s Zachary or someone else. I’ll get them.”

I wish it wasn’t Zachary. I wish I could tell myself it wasn’t him, the guy who actually gets my random Monty Python references and who always gives me a string or two of his string cheese.

But it is him. Which means something even worse.

Someone is going to have to tell Mandy that she’s dating a murderer. Someone is going to have to tell Mandy that she is with a violent man.

Someone is going to have to tell Mandy that she made her mother’s mistake.

And that someone is going to have to be me.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

I make myself some peach tea and instead of having it in bed with a book, or sitting on our beanbag and watching ‘90s sitcoms, I sit at our kitchen table. No phone to scroll, no music to bob my head to. I stare at the tea. It cools in my hands. I never take a sip. After thirty minutes, I pour it out in the sink.

My phone rings. It’s Rashid. My finger hovers over the answer button before I’m brave enough to click it.

“Quinn.” He breathes heavily. “Are you at home? I’m on my way there.”

“Yes, what’s wrong?” I rub the fabric of my dress between my thumb and pointer finger.

He sighs. “You were right. I think Zachary is behind the disease.”

“What?” My heart twists and yammers.

“I found some of his lab notes. Look, I’ll be there soon. Just sit tight.”

Sit tight.

It isn’t hard to do. Everything is tight. My chest, my legs, my neck. Even the walls are tight. I wait for him at the door. It only takes a few minutes before he jogs up to me while holding his book bag by the straps. I have to swallow a surprised gasp as he takes me in his arms. I feel his heart beating fast through his shirt and his heavy breaths expand against me. “I’m sorry, Quinn. I didn’t want to believe you, but you got me thinking.” He unzips his book bag with a violent rip. He pulls out a bunch of printed pages and a notebook.

“A notebook?”

“Zachary is old school,” Rashid says. He hands it to me and runs his hands through his hair and sort of does this little half pace/half dance with the balls of his feet. “I found it in his room. Read it for yourself.”

I sift through the pages. Zachary’s handwriting is neat. Block letters. There are so many words like
siliconized
and
infarcted
and
cytokines.
It would take me forever to read all this carefully, and I don’t have forever. But I need to understand it.

I go to my room. Rashid follows. I sit on my bed and breathe. I rest my chin in my palm, nibbling at my nails, as I turn page after page.

While I can’t understand a lot at first, it’s strange how much I do. And, okay, I do of course have to ask Rashid about a few words. He sits beside me, pointing out what’s important and explaining Zachary’s thinking. I listen to him and skim the notebook at the same time.

A lot of the notes are just sporadic thoughts, such as,
It may be possible to harness the bone marrow’s machinery to make something stronger than white blood cells.
Or,
Livingston says to look at the effects of white blood cell deficiency.

“Who’s Livingston?” I ask.

“His advisor,” Rashid says.

“So he would know what Zachary was doing?” I ask as my thumb slides along the notebook page.

Rashid shrugs. “Maybe. Probably. I don’t know.”

I bite my lip as he turns the page. My mind buzzes with cells, and immune systems, and bone marrow. Then I see it.

Contagion.

A contagion, a virus that is engineered to create the new hyper-healing cells, may be the best route.

“A contagion that actually heals. This is the same thing.” I shake the notebook. “This is what’s happening to us!”

I flop on the bed and feel something warm and uncomfortable in my throat. I bury my face in my hands. “How could Zachary do this?”

Rashid slides his hands around my waist and pulls me to him. “I don’t think he could have done this on purpose. Maybe he accidentally got infected and didn’t know it. He gave it to Mandy and things got out of his control.” He rubs my back. Then his fingers push loose hair behind my ear before they slip under my chin, moving my head to a kissable angle.

His lips dive in.

I push away.

“Rashid...”

Rashid shakes his head. “Sorry, I know, this isn’t any time to kiss, I just—” He looks at me. “I couldn’t help it.” He smiles, a weak smile.

God, he’s fucking earnest. It’s not a great time for kissing. And it’s not a great time for ending things, but it never seems to be a good time for things to die.

“Rashid,” I say softly. “There won’t be a good time for kissing, not between us, anymore. I can’t do, well, this,” I say, limply flicking my finger between us. “I’m sorry.”

Rashid bites his lip and looks to the ceiling. “It’s the cop, isn’t it?”

“No.” I rush to it. But his face crashes. That’s the wrong answer. Well, it’s the right answer. Luke, with his gun, his overprotectiveness, it won’t work. But the charitable thing to say to Rashid is that I chose someone else over him, not that I chose no one over him. “Um, yeah.” I swallow. “We’ve been...talking.”

Rashid nods and wipes his face. “Lucky guy.”

“I don’t know if either of you are lucky,” I say, biting my lip and staring at my comforter.

“You couldn’t have known.”

“Zachary could have. He could have warned us. And maybe he knows even more now.”

Rashid nods and swallows. “We need to call the public health department.”

But I’m thinking of Danny. I’m thinking of the Krizzles.

There’s a jostle at the front door as Mandy comes in. I put my finger over my lips and Rashid nods. We hear Mandy toss something on the table before she heads to her room.

I whisper, “We will tell everyone. But first, I need to tell her.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

I ask Rashid to leave so I can think through what I will say. I tell him I’ll call once I’ve talked to Mandy and she understands what we have to do. It takes me thirty minutes to work up the courage.

When I enter her room, it’s dark. She’s taking a nap. I set the green notebook down next to the bed and crawl under the covers with her.

“Mandy,” I whisper. “We need to talk.”

She lets out a soft groan before turning over. Her purple eyes are luminous in the dark, but I see the red lining her eyes.

“You’ve been crying?”

“Yeah.” She closes her eyes and clenches her fists, her knuckles digging into her eyes as though she could rip the purple away. “I’m trapped now. It was bad enough that my dad even knew where I was, but now I’m trapped here. I can’t even run away.”

“But he can’t get in,” I say.

“Maybe he can. People are protesting. They want to get in so they can get the disease. What if he finds his way in?”

I close my eyes. I have to focus. I have to tell her about Zachary. I hug her under her maroon comforter. I can’t handle the weight of what I need to do and I taste salty tears and watery hiccups.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“Missing Danny,” I say, because I’m not ready to get into the Zachary stuff. “I’m worried about us. I’m worried someone will hurt us like they hurt—”

“He just fell,” she says flatly. I stare at Wisey, her stuffed owl in the corner. His plastic yellow eyes look harsh.

“No he didn’t, Mandy. And I think I know who killed him and who is behind this disease.” I let the words breathe in the air before I continue.

She frowns. “Who?”

I swallow. “Zachary.”

I’m stuffed up from crying and can only get air through my dry lips. Mandy’s frozen face and frozen eyes stay fixed for eternity.

Finally, she sits up and moves to the corner of her bed. She hugs her knees and cleans out the dirt from under one of her fingernails with another. “Does Luke think that?”

“No, well, he isn’t sure.” Something shadowy passes in her eyes. I can’t imagine what this would be like to hear. “But Rashid and I, we’ve been looking through some of Zachary’s notes.”

“Rashid?” Mandy says. “Why would you believe Rashid?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” I say, getting up from the bed. “Mandy, you’re usually so on top of things, but you’ve got a blind spot for Zachary. Please, just try to see this.” I thrust the notebook at her. She doesn’t open it. She stares. She doesn’t want to confront the truth. Not just about who Zachary is, but what it means about her that she trusted him.

But this is bigger than her. It’s bigger than our friendship.

“You can hate me if you want, but the more we know about whatever is going on with this, the better. I need to do what is right for Danny, and me and you.”

Her eyes wither then boil. “You don’t need to protect me.”

I sigh. “Mandy, listen to me, needing protection doesn’t make you weak. You aren’t your mom, you—”

“Don’t even,” Mandy says, holding a hand up. She presses her fists to her closed eyes. It must be easier for her to think of her mom as a two-dimensional weakling. It’s easier to avoid becoming a two-dimensional weakling than it is to avoid becoming a complex person, with weakness and strength, with a will that was beaten out of her. A woman who trusted the wrong man and paid dearly for it.

But Mandy can’t just stick her fingers in her ears and say
lalalala
. She trusted Zachary when she shouldn’t have, but she needs to wake up now.

“Mandy, he created this disease and he probably killed Danny to cover it up.”

Mandy shakes her head and swallows.

“I know you don’t want to hear this, but I think Zachary is more dangerous than you realize.”

She looks at the comforter and pulls a thread, spinning it around her wrist. “We’re all a little dangerous.”