Imperfect Chemistry (19 page)

I shake my head slowly. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

I’ve been calling and texting Jensen numerous times over the last few days, but he never responded. Not that I expected him to, but I couldn’t stop myself from trying.

“Oh ye of little faith,” she says. “She should be here in about an hour. Come on.” She walks into the living room and I follow. “Hang out while I’m getting ready. Use this.” She hands me her MacBook.

“Use this for what?”

“I don’t know, you’re the genius. Follow some leads or something. Make some notes. Pretend you’re a detective or some shit. Who else could have ratted Jensen out?”

I open the computer and start it up.

While she’s showering I make a list of suspects. I include everyone I can think of who knows about Jensen’s extracurricular activity, including myself and Freya, Chloe, Liam, Candice, and Anita.

Liam is out of the country and has been for weeks so I eliminate him as a potential suspect for the time being since I have no way to contact him, but maybe Chloe will have some insight when she gets here. That leaves Candice and Anita.

I don’t know much about Candice – for example, something like her last name would be useful – but I do know a bit more about Anita, like I know she owns an art gallery and probably has electronic records stored somewhere.

“I have an idea,” I say when Freya emerges from the bathroom. She’s changed into jeans and a black long sleeve t-shirt. Her hair is still wet.

She sits on the couch next to me. “Oh yeah?”

“It’s a long shot. And it involves breaking and entering.” I shrug. “Perhaps violating a few privacy laws.”

“Of course it does.”

She doesn’t seem terribly concerned.

There’s a knock at the door and Freya stands to answer it. “She’s early,” she says, heading for the door.

I stay on the couch and listen.

“Hi, I’m Chloe, we talked on the phone?” I hear. She sounds a little nervous.

“Come in, Lucy’s already here.”

Chloe walks in and I can’t help but check out the woman who broke Jensen’s heart. She’s watching me, too, and I wonder if she’s thinking the same thing.

She’s very petite, shorter and smaller than I am. Her wide blue eyes give her an air of innocence and frailty.

She sits on the couch next to me, where Freya was sitting only moments ago.

“Freya told me a little about you.”

“Jensen told me a little about you,” I respond.

“He did?” She seems surprised. “Was any of it good?”

“A surprising amount.”

We engage in a brief staring contest. “Do you love him?” she asks suddenly.

“Yes,” I answer without hesitation and I’m almost as surprised by my response as she is.

“No shit,” Freya says. Apparently I’ve surprised her, too.

“Good.” Chloe nods. “He needs someone who can appreciate him in all the ways I couldn’t. Despite what you might think, I care about him a lot. Hurting him and breaking up with him, the way that it came about…it was the most shameful thing I’ve ever done and I will do anything to see him happy.” She says the words with such conviction, I have to believe her.

I nod slowly.

“Well that’s good,” Freya says, clapping her hands together. “Even though this is probably the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.” She sits on the arm of the couch next to Chloe. “And I’m glad you’re serious,” she says to her. “Because apparently we’re going to break some laws tonight. Now, who wants pizza?”

She orders the food and we go over my ideas and decide to break into the art gallery tonight. On nights when they don’t have a showing, they close at eight.

“I’m sure they have a security system. How do we bypass that?” Chloe asks while we’re eating. She was surprisingly excited once I outlined the plan.

“They do,” I say. “I’ve been inside the gallery. Do you have any magnets on your fridge?” I ask Freya.

“Yes,” she answers.

I nod. “Bring a few. We’ll pick up the other supplies on the way.”

After all, the ultimate goal of research is not objectivity, but truth.

–Helene Deutsch

After dinner, we raid Freya’s closet. We dress warm and all in black including gloves, to avoid leaving fingerprints behind. Then, Chloe drives us over to Sam’s and I run in and grab a few things. He’s not home, but I have a key that he gave me for emergencies. 

After Sam’s, I have Chloe take me to an ATM and then we head downtown. I tell Chloe to park down the street from the gallery, and have them both stay in the car while I do a quick walk by. There are cameras above the front and back entrances.

Checking the angle of the camera as I walk by across the street from the gallery, I stop in the blind spot and pull out the paint gun I brought with me, borrowed from Sam. The streets are fairly empty this late. When there’s no one around, I pull out my weapon and shoot at the lens. It takes two shots, but I finally hit it. I feel sort of guilty, but the paint will wash off and the camera will be good as new.

Once we’re in the clear, I use the walkie-talkie—also borrowed from Sam—to let the girls know I’m ready. A few minutes later, they come slinking down the street. We head through a narrow alley on the side of the building and find a window. It’s up higher than a normal window, and I’m glad. Most property owners won’t arm a window that sits higher because it’s more difficult to enter and they assume thieves will go for an easy entrance. We aren’t thieves, but we are on a mission.

Chloe’s the smallest one and I’m the tallest, so I boost her up to the window.

“You’re totally grabbing her ass,” Freya whispers loudly. “Is that weird? Groping your ex’s ex?”

Chloe starts laughing and nearly loses her hold on the window sill.

“Freya! Not now!” I tell her.

Freya sticks her tongue out at me, and I turn away from her to check on Chloe’s progress. She’s trying to pull the window open.

“It’s locked,” she whispers loudly.

“Here,” I hand her up the spark plug I took from Sam’s garage. “Hit one of the panes with the porcelain side.”

She complies and the small section of the window shatters. “Why was that so easy?”

“Simple physics. Now reach in, unlock it, and slide it open.”

She’s holding herself up slightly with one hand, so she has to open the large window one handed, but eventually she gets it done. Before she goes inside I hand her the magnet from Freya’s fridge.

“We’ll meet you at the front door,” I tell her before hoisting her up and watching her shimmy inside.

A few minutes later we’re in. The magnet was placed against the motion sensor on the door to trick the alarm and make it think the door’s still closed.

Once inside, I lead them to the office, behind the door marked private.

I boot up the computer and Chloe and Freya start going through the files.

“Maybe she has a file on Jensen and someone else saw it and spilled,” Freya says, pulling open a drawer and rifling through the paperwork.

The computer warms up and I head straight for the e-mails and personal files.

I find one from Jensen last week, letting her know he’s headed out of town for the
long weekend, but other than that…nothing.

“Did you guys find anything?” I ask.

“Nope,” Chloe says.

“Not a goddamn thing,” Freya says, shutting the drawer to the cabinet.

I shut down the computer.  After digging in my pocket for the cash I retrieved from the ATM earlier, I leave it in a small pile on the window sill.

“That’s why you needed cash?” Chloe asks.

“It’s not right to break a window and not pay for it,” I say.

“You’re like Mother Theresa,” Freya says.

“I don’t think Mother Theresa ever broke into an art gallery in a misguided attempt to win back her boyfriend, whom she lied to and ruined his life,” I say.

Chloe laughs and Freya grins at me.

I sigh. “Let’s get out of here.”

***

“Maybe we’re going about this backwards,” Chloe says.

It’s the next morning. We’re sitting in a corner booth at a little café not far from campus and we just finished ordering our food. After the unsuccessful misdemeanor committed last night, we had no idea what to do next and decided to meet for breakfast after a night of sleeping on it.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“We’re looking for who spilled the beans to Jensen’s dad, and we’re starting with the suspects,” Chloe says.

“Yes, Captain Obvious,” Freya says with a mocking salute. “So what?”

“Maybe we should start with Jensen’s parents instead.”

Freya and I look at each other and then I look back at Chloe. “You’re right,” I say.

“That actually makes sense,” Freya says. “We could spend the rest of our lives searching for leads and find nothing. And then Lucy will never get laid again.”

“Hey!” I object.

“If we work backwards, we might actually get somewhere. Chloe, you’re a genius.”

“Also,” I add, “Professor Walker has a university e-mail so I can easily hack into that from my house and see what I can find.”

“No more breaking and entering?” Chloe sounds almost disappointed.

I shrug. “Perhaps if the e-mail proves fruitless.”

The food arrives. The waitress sets all our plates down and checks if we need anything before disappearing again.

“So tell me about this boyfriend of yours,” Freya says to Chloe. “Liam?”

Chloe flushes slightly while squeezing ketchup on her eggs. “Yes?”

“You and Jensen were dating when you and Liam hooked up right?” Freya asks before stabbing a pancake with her fork.

“Freya,” I say. “That might be a sensitive topic.” I focus on Chloe. “You don’t have to answer that.”

“It’s alright,” she says. “Jensen and Liam have been best friends since high school. Liam transferred our junior year and they bonded over their art. I was with Jensen at the time, so we all hung out a lot.”

“Liam’s an artist too?” I ask before taking a bite of potatoes.

“No, musician and writer. But his parents weren’t exactly supportive either; they would rather he get a real job.” She pushes her food around her plate with her fork. “We’ve all been friends since then. Liam went travelling overseas as he likes to do.” She smiles fondly. “After we graduated high school and when he came back, things were…different.”

“Different how?” Freya asks.

“It’s a long story, suffice it to say that Jensen and I had been growing apart for a long time and Liam,” she pauses. “He challenged me. He helped me figure out who I am.”

“That’s nice,” I tell her.

“Sounds like a bunch of bullshit,” Freya says.

Chloe just laughs. “I would have said the same thing a year ago. Well, maybe I would have thought it, probably wouldn’t have said it out loud.”

“Why not?”

“I was…different, before Liam.” She takes a big bite of food and that stops the questioning for the moment.

“So you guys hook up and he leaves the country? Doesn’t that worry you?” Freya asks.

She shakes her head no. “He had the tickets purchased long before we got together and he’s always had serious wanderlust. He’s coming back home next month and then I’m taking next semester off and we’re going to Europe together.”

“Where is he now?” I ask.

“Colombia,” she says.

Freya finishes chewing a bite, wipes her mouth and throws her napkin on the table. “You don’t worry about him hooking up with some Sophia Vergara look-alike?”

“No,” Chloe answers immediately.

“Why not?” Freya sounds almost offended.

Chloe shrugs. “He picked me. And I trust him.”

“Hmph,” Freya says.

“Don’t mind her,” I tell Chloe. “She lacks confidence in romantic relationships due to prior abandonment and trust issues.”

“No psychoanalyzing at the breakfast table,” Freya says, picking up her napkin and tossing it at my head.

Chloe laughs.

Soon after breakfast we end up at my place with the laptop open on the coffee table in front of us.

They watch as I hack into the school’s computer system and pull up Professor Walker’s file.

“You are freaky good at this,” Freya says.

I scan through the e-mails and read them quickly for anything relevant.

“There’s nothing,” I say finally.

“Does this mean we get to play ninja warriors again?” Freya asks.

“I don’t know. We have no other leads.”

We sit there, staring at the computer for a minute.

The silence is broken when Chloe’s phone starts ringing.

“It’s Liam!” she says, blue eyes lighting up and a wide smile making her whole face glow. She stands up from the couch, answering the phone and moving away from us, into the kitchen.

“Ugh.” Freya throws herself back on the couch. “You people are disgusting.”

“You’ll fall in love again,” I tell her, still staring at the computer screen and tapping gently on the keys, thinking.

“Not likely.”

I can hear Chloe murmuring on the phone, still in the kitchen.

“No, he didn’t go there for the holidays. There was a big storm and he got stuck here,” I hear her say after a minute.

There’s a beat of silence and then her voice escalates. “You did
what
?”

She runs out into the living room. “Guys,” she says. “It was Liam.”

Freya sits up. “What do you mean it was Liam?”

“He sent a card to Jensen’s grandparents’ house, thinking he would be there for the holidays. It was the orange head at a museum in Buenos Aires. And it said something about Jensen’s art show?” she asks into the phone incredulously.
             

We watch as she listens to something he says and then she looks back at us. “It was in an envelope. His parents must have opened it,” she says.

“Shitballs,” Freya says.

“Definitely,” I agree.

“You have to call him and tell him,” Chloe says into the phone. There’s a pause in the conversation and then, “It doesn’t matter if he won’t talk to you. Leave a message. Send a text. Or an e-mail. I don’t really care, but you have to fix this!” She’s silent while he’s saying something and then she smiles, a glow lighting up her face. “I love you, too. Alright. Bye.” She hangs up, still smiling, still glowing. “He’ll take care of it, and he apologizes profusely,” she says, sitting next to me on the couch.

I stare at the computer screen and after a moment I log out of the university system. “Now what?” I ask when that’s done.

Chloe shrugs. “Now we wait.”

My mind races with the possible consequences and variables of what could happen next. Or what might not happen next. “What if Liam tells him and it doesn’t change anything?” I ask, voicing the thought that terrifies me the most.

Chloe puts a hand on mine. “Everything will work out,” she tells me. “Don’t give up hope.”