Shade Me (6 page)

But how could I explain all that to Dru? There would be no explaining it in a way that would make sense to him. And I wasn't big on sharing life experiences with others. Of course he would be curious about me. Suspicious, even. Dad had treated everyone like a suspect for years after Mom's death. Because anyone could have been.

“I wanted to see if she was okay,” I said.

“I get that.” He stood and placed his hands on his hips. “But you said that you two weren't close. I've never seen you hanging around our house or with my sister at all. Is there more to it that I'm not seeing?”

Yes. There was more to it. More, even, than just the memory of my mom. More than being shaken by seeing a classmate snaked up in all those wires. More than any sort of morbid curiosity or even the fact that part of me wanted to see him again.

It was more than Peyton calling me.

It was that she had called
only
me. She had called me when she had scores of friends, admirers, bandmates, and her own family right here in Brentwood. And that wasn't even accounting for the army of official legal help I was guessing the Hollis family had on call.

She had called me.

Me.

Someone she had no ties with.

“It's just . . .” I scratched the back of my neck, trying to decide how much to let him in on what I was thinking. “I know that Peyton tried to call me last night. I don't know why, and I don't even know for sure it was her. But I know that somehow I became involved in something that it makes no sense for me to be involved in. I know that Peyton—or someone using Peyton's phone, but my gut tells me it was her—called me about an hour before she was brought here. She didn't try to call you or your parents or your half sister. She called me. Why, Dru? How am I involved in this?”

He didn't respond, just shook his head helplessly.

“I don't know either,” I said. “And maybe a lot of people
could walk away from that, but apparently I can't. So that's why I'm here. So I can get answers when she wakes up.”

“And if she doesn't make it?” he asked, his voice rough and unsteady.

I swallowed, considered Peyton's form. She was so bruised and battered, it would be difficult to believe that she could possibly survive, even if I hadn't seen the crimson pulsing through Bay 19 last night. “Then I really can't walk away,” I said.

He sank back into his chair, but instead of picking up Peyton's hand, he leaned his elbows on the mattress and rested his forehead in his hands. He rubbed his eyes with his palms and slowly looked up at me. “You're going to find her attacker,” he said. Not a question. Not a suggestion. A fact.

Live in Color. Live in Color. Live in Color.

Red. Blue. Yellow. Orange. Green.

Peyton's tattoo pulsed at me, so beautiful, so brilliant. The black-and-gray rainbow surrounded by undulating letters. Lying in that bed, her chopped brown hair greasy-looking against the softness of the pillow, rings of dried blood around her nostrils, her face misshapen and discolored, Peyton didn't look like the edgy girl-in-charge who I'd always known her to be. I could still hear that frightened voice—the one I'd mistaken for a child—coming through my phone the night before. Peyton was in trouble, and for some reason she'd thought I could help her. She wasn't
frightening or frustrating or annoying here—she was dying.

I couldn't walk away. Not this time. Not like we'd all eventually walked away from my mother.

I supposed this was the conclusion I had been arriving at ever since I'd gotten the mystery phone call the night before. Dru hadn't been the only reason I'd wanted to show up at the hospital today. I'd wanted to show up because I couldn't just let it go.

“Yes,” I said. “I'm going to find out who did this to Peyton. And why.”

D
RU DIDN'T HAVE
much to say after I told him I was going to find Peyton's attacker. He seemed so tired. And maybe a little afraid.

“I'll talk to my dad,” he said. “See about offering a reward.” But the words were monotone, emotionless, and I actually felt kind of sorry for him. What must it be like to be the only one in the family who was there to stay by Peyton's bedside? And why was it I would never have thought Dru Hollis to be the sitting-by-someone's-bedside type?

So I sat opposite him, cataloguing the visible wounds on Peyton. There were two obvious blows to her head. One had split the skin under her eye and blackened the entire side of her face. There was bandaging around her head that
suggested trauma to the back of it as well. One arm was now casted. The hand on my side of the bed was swollen, the palm a fist of purple and green. Clearly she'd tried to defend herself with it.

A few stragglers came in here and there. They hung their heads with appropriate sadness—some of the more artistic girls actually wiped the corners of their leaking eyes—and left behind cards and more balloons and flowers. Some of the girls had obvious histories with Dru; others were obvious about their desire to create histories with him. But, without exception, we could hear them giggling or gossiping in the hallway before they'd even left the unit.
How hot is Dru Hollis, you guys? Think we could get into Exchange tonight? God, her hair was the grossest.

Fake.

Fake. Fake. Fake.

I wondered who among them could have been her attacker. Who had Peyton pissed off? Maybe someone who'd gotten trampled at one of her concerts or wasted at one of her parties. Someone she'd insulted or left out or turned down. Or a boyfriend she'd dumped. Maybe it wasn't about her at all—maybe someone had auditioned for something and blamed her dad for not getting the part. Maybe Dru had loved and left the wrong girl . . . or the wrong girl's mom. God, the possibilities were endless.

Dru had just gotten up and announced that he was
going down to the lobby to find a soda when Bill Hollis burst through the door, crisp tan slacks and navy Club Med polo looking far too fresh to have been on an airplane for fifteen hours. Behind him came a bored-looking blonde, petite and tan, pressed into a skintight wrap skirt and sandals. I'd never seen her before, but I assumed she was the elusive matriarch of the Hollis family: Vanessa.

“So what's the situation?” Bill Hollis barked before Dru or I could even speak, striding to Peyton's bedside. He looked down at her, his hands on his hips, the way he might regard a film location or a testy set. “Christ,” he mumbled.

“Oh,” the woman breathed, scurrying to the other side of the bed, where she bent over Peyton, brushing stray clumps of hair off her forehead. “My God. Look at her.” She turned to Dru, reached up to cup his head in her hands. “Oh, Dru.” He ducked away from her touch.

“The situation?” Bill repeated, clearly annoyed at having been interrupted. He finally saw me in the room and gave a curt nod—what I guessed was his version of hello. I stood up, feeling awkward, and maybe even a little starstruck—Bill Hollis was standing two feet away from me. I opened my mouth to excuse myself from the room.

Dru's eyes flicked to me, uncomfortable, but he didn't give me time to speak. He gestured toward Peyton. “This is the situation. She's been like this since they brought her in.”

“And what are they saying about her prognosis?” Bill
Hollis asked, checking his watch, still all business, as the blonde settled into the chair Dru had vacated and began tapping on her cell phone.

“They're not,” Dru said. “Not to me, anyway. Still too early to tell, I guess. But it doesn't look good.”

“No, it doesn't.” Bill Hollis turned to me, his icy blue eyes turning my insides cold. “And you are?”

But before I could open my mouth, Dru answered for me. “A friend of Peyton's.” I gave him a curious look. Why the lie? But I guessed maybe I knew why. Bill Hollis was not in a mood for games—and who could blame him?—and he might consider it a game for someone who wasn't exactly a friend to be there. Fern green feathered around us, giving me an itchy feeling I always got in awkward situations.

“Were you the one who found her? Do you know who did this?” Bill Hollis asked, his gaze penetrating me. And then, as if flipping a switch, his eyes softened and his mouth curved into a pleasant tilt—the man from the magazines. “Should we be thanking you?” He held out his hand. “There will be a reward, of course.”

I stared at it, unsure what to do, my head shaking of its own accord. Bill Hollis was probably not the kind of guy whose handshakes went unreciprocated, but something about him oozed minty distrust that made my heart pound, even more so than with Dru. I was too scared of him to touch him.

“No,” I said, meaning no, to all of the above.

The blonde suddenly sprang from her chair. “Dru. Baby,” she said, her voice a purr. “Have you eaten? Have you slept?” She ran her hand over his head, down his cheek, resting it on his shoulder.

Dru rubbed his palms over his face, sidestepping away from her. “No, not much,” he said. “I've been waiting for you.” This he said mostly to his dad.

“Well, you should get something,” she said. “I'll drive you. We don't need two of you in hospital beds.” She stood, bent over the bed, and ran a knuckle down the side of Peyton's face. “The poor dear,” she said, and then she was gone.

“You should go with her,” Bill Hollis said. “I'm going to find a doctor. Get some information.” He glanced around the hospital room. “We need to get her moved. I'll call Cedars-Sinai. Someplace a little more private. This is no place for one of ours. The press.”

“Dru,” the woman called from the hallway.

Dru nodded, and then, with a glance at me that was both wary and warning, followed the woman out of the room.

“I should go, too,” I mumbled, and hurried out, wondering what I had just witnessed.

DAD WAS GONE
when I got home. He'd left a note on the kitchen counter that he was on a shoot in Santa Monica and not to expect him home until the following night. With
some single dads, “being on a shoot in Santa Monica” could be code for just about anything, but with my dad, it meant he was actually taking photographs in Santa Monica and would be coming straight home after. Ten years was a long time to get over losing your wife, but Dad was still married. Married to his camera. Married to a ghost.

Some people would probably really hate it if their dad was sleeping around, finding someone new, but I actually wanted my dad to move on. I worried about what might happen to him after I moved out. In some ways, I thought Dad's inability to move on was part of why I was chronically failing. If I didn't graduate, I wouldn't have to leave him. If I didn't leave, I wouldn't have to worry about him being alone. It was a fucked-up system, but the Kill family was nothing if not fucked-up.

I went straight to my bedroom and dropped my things on my bed, then shucked off my clothes and headed for the shower.

I leaned forward against the tile shower wall and let the water massage my screaming back muscles.

“Who could it be?” I muttered to myself, my words echoing off the walls. “Who hurt you, Peyton? Was it one of your friends?” My head jerked up. I brushed the water off my chin. Her friends. Of course. Peyton Hollis had about a billion Facebook friends. I knew this because pretty much every single person on my paltry friend list was also connected to
her, even though not a single one was actually connected to her in real life. I didn't get on Facebook very often—social media was a little too social for my taste—but it seemed like every time I was on there, one of Peyton's posts was staring me in the face. Most of the time it felt like I was the only person I knew who wasn't friended to Peyton, but it didn't matter because I saw all her stuff anyway, through her adoring fans.

I rinsed the conditioner out of my hair and soaped myself up quickly, then got out and dried in record time. I slipped into a pair of sweats and a T-shirt and plopped into my desk chair, opening up my laptop at the same time.

“All right, Peyton,” I said, logging onto Facebook. “Let's see what you've been up to lately.”

I had zero messages and zero notifications. Typical. The top post in my feed was by Jones, a link to some video of an “epic prank.” Assholes being assholes. Typical. Not surprised at all that Jones liked it. Wouldn't be surprised if one of Jones's bro-gang perpetrated said epic prank.

But Jones was a good enough starting point. I knew for a fact that he was friended to Peyton, so I followed his post to his page, scanned his friends list, and clicked through to her page. Easy.

Her last post had been on October 7, which, now that I thought about it, had to be right around the time she disappeared from school.

Must get to the bottom of things.

The post was, of course, filled with worried questions from 240 of Peyton's closest friends. The only hint that Peyton would give, though, was in a comment halfway down the thread that provided a single word:

Family

So Peyton had been frustrated with her family just before chopping off her hair and disappearing from school. But so what? We all had family drama, right? In some ways it was the most normal post Peyton had ever put on her page.

I scrolled down. There were links to songs and a shitload of memes about being wasted. There were tongue-out, Solo-cup-wielding party selfies and a photo of her last pedicure. Everything she posted—everything!—was treated like it was the most profound thought all of Brentwood had ever heard.

And then there was this:

u will not win dis.

The post was written by Gibson Tally. I didn't know him, but I knew of him. He was older, a notorious drug-head dropout, who'd gone out epically, smashing lockers and kicking dents into the sides of Assistant Principal Elliot's Mercedes
on the way. He was everyone's hookup for weed and once got arrested for supposedly calling in a bomb threat during an antidrug assembly. He was constantly in fights and in jail and reportedly carried a gun with him everywhere he went.

He was also the lead guitarist of Viral Fanfare.

Was he more than that to Peyton?

I clicked on his name and it took me to his profile, but it was too private for me to see anything other than photos of him playing his guitar. He'd acquired a few tattoos and facial piercings since I'd last seen him. He'd also acquired a hard look in his eyes that sent a chill through me.
u will not win dis.

I went back to Peyton's page and read the comments under his post. Most of them were asking what was going on; a few were making typical Facebook jackass jokes. Only one stood out, from a girl named Liz who I'd seen clinging to Peyton's orbit.

I heard about you and the band. Is it true?

But Peyton hadn't responded to her, and nobody else seemed interested. I scrolled through the comments again, looking for anything I might have missed, wondering what it was that Liz had heard about Peyton and the band. What Peyton was trying to “win” against Gibson Talley. Was he joking or threatening? I'd assumed he was threatening, because
of his bad-news reputation, but with Facebook, you never could really tell who meant what they were saying. Facebook made my head hurt. It was like a jumpy mishmash of colors. This was why I didn't hang out on it much. It was impossible to follow anyone's true thoughts there. It was impossible to block out the rainbow.

I wondered if Detective Martinez had been through Peyton's Facebook yet, and, if so, what he made of Gibson Talley's remark. Or did the police only do things like that if someone died?

I scrolled down farther, past a few more parties and one throwback picture of Peyton in a black leather fringed bikini.

Wait a minute. I went back to the bikini. It might or might not have been black—it was the photo itself that was black-and-white. Peyton was standing shin-deep in a sparkling swimming pool, her hip cocked out to one side, the rope of a life preserver draped over her shoulders and snaking down her hip. Her hands were on her hips, the life preserver ring draped casually around one wrist, the letters
SO
a soft glow across the top of the ring—
SO, yellow, pink
. Peyton's face was dwarfed by sunglasses, her lips painted a deep color that came across as slick black in the photo.

She looked amazing.

As usual.

I clicked on the picture, and it took me to a photo- and art-sharing website. Aesthetishare.com. Peyton had been
posting for three months. I scrolled down to her earliest posts. One of a moppy little dog. A nearly nude bathroom mirror selfie. One of a pair of shoes—a scuffed and worn pair of cherry-red Chucks—with kneesocked legs still in them. The toe of one of the shoes was lifted by a sizable rock. Pretty standard. I'd seen a zillion photos like these on Instagram.

I scrolled up to the next one. Peyton, with Viral Fanfare. She was grasping a microphone, her mouth wide open in one of her high notes. Her eyes were scrunched shut, her hip jutted out. I scrutinized the other band members, but they all looked totally in their own zones. All except Gibson Talley, whose eyes were on Peyton as he played his guitar. I stared into the photo, trying to glean anything I could from it—love, anger, scorn—but got nothing. If Gibson Talley was battling Peyton over something, which his post suggested, it could have been any number of things. I continued to scroll. The three photos above that one were similar—more Viral Fanfare performances—and in none of them did anything look abnormal.

But the one above those was different. They weren't performing. Instead, they were standing inside a recording studio, in a line, their arms wrapped around one another like a bunch of kids at camp. The bassist and the drummer were smiling like it was their birthday. But it was Gibson I couldn't quit looking at. His face was set in a smug look of
victory, his eyes looking away from the camera. His guitar was draped across his body—the word
Hendrix
, printed on the strap, jumped out at me in tie-dye letters. His left arm was casually resting on the drummer's shoulder, but his right arm . . . his right arm was crooked around Peyton's neck, his fist practically under her chin. A pose of conquest.