Last Seen Leaving (34 page)

Cedric's gaze flicked between the two of us, his mouth flexing, his right eye beginning to twitch. Gravely, he said, “You should not have done that.”

“It doesn't matter, Cedric,” I told him. I wish I could say I was stalwart and unflappable in the face of death, that looking down the barrel of a gun freed my inner existentialist badass—but the truth is that I was unreservedly terrified. My legs were jellied, I was a heartbeat away from losing control of my bowels, and my only hope for survival lay in convincing a madman there was no point in killing me. “Even if you tell them he lied, it's already too late. Whatever you do to us now, the cops will have to investigate. You'll never get rid of all your creepy trophies before they get here; and even if you do, I saved photos of them to the cloud, and the police will find them sooner or later. Then they'll uncover the Hazelton story, they'll find the kids I spoke to at Dumas who told me about your obsession with January … and they already know you were the last person to see Reiko alive
and
that Reiko knew about January's rape. At that point, they could never believe you killed us in self-defense. No matter what, it's already over for you.”

After an agonizingly long moment, Cedric finally spoke. “Well then,” he said, his tone brisk and disturbingly hollow, “I suppose I've really got nothing left to lose, do I?”

And he pulled the trigger.

 

TWENTY-SEVEN

THE NEXT HOUR
lasted for about ten years. Most of it was a blur, a series of disconnected images that I could barely organize into a sensible timeline afterward. I remembered the gun going off, the roar of it shocking, much louder than it ever seems on TV; the top of Cedric's head exploding, his body pitching forward as the smoking barrel of the weapon slipped from between his teeth; the grisly red crater in his skull. He'd chosen not to kill me after all, but to turn the weapon on himself. And, to tell the truth, in spite of everything I'd said to him at the very end, I still wasn't entirely convinced that he couldn't have somehow bluffed his way out of trouble with Kaz and me dead.

I remembered speaking with the police, one officer after another, faces shuffling around like a deck of cards. My voice played like a recording, a distant, quiet monotone, as I explained again and again about what had happened that day. I spoke to some EMTs, too, who diagnosed me with a mild concussion, and announced that my hand was most likely broken. My parents were called, and I spent a long time sitting in the back of an open ambulance with them beside me, uniformed men and women cycling through with questions, advice, and veiled accusations. Night had fallen, the rain had stopped, and the bright, brilliant synthesis of light from lampposts, emergency vehicles, and gathered news teams formed a strangely beautiful and abstract smear of color across the slicked asphalt of the parking lot.

It wasn't until I was informed that I could finally leave and was following my parents to where they'd parked their car—not far from the vibrant yellow ring of crime scene tape that held back a steadily growing mass of spectators and media representatives—that I finally saw Kaz for the first time since the police had arrived on the scene.

He broke away from a knot of people outside the building and came sprinting across the parking lot, feet splashing in the puddles that still streaked the ground. “Flynn!”

I turned around just as he caught up to me and, as my parents stood beside the car and watched—bewildered, frightened, and fatigued by their brief involvement in the evening's ordeal—he pulled me into a fierce hug, tight and possessive. Pain scissored clear up to my right elbow, and I jerked backward with a grunt. “Ouch—careful.” Glancing awkwardly down at my arm, draped across my solar plexus in the protective cradle of a sling, I explained, “I'm on my way to the hospital to get this x-rayed. They think I broke it on Cedric's face.”

His hands on my shoulders and his head bowed, Kaz mumbled something that sounded like
stupid
. I told him I couldn't understand him, and when he looked up at me I was shocked to see tears rolling down his cheeks. “That was
so fucking stupid
, Flynn! What you did … you almost died!”

His mouth was trembling, his hazel eyes filled with fear, and I squirmed uncomfortably as if I were seeing something I shouldn't. “I didn't, though. Thanks to you. You actually … you saved my life.” I tried on an off-kilter grin. “Just don't think that means I'm your bitch now or something, because I—”

“Stop trying to make this into a joke!” He was really upset, his voice too loud. My parents were paying attention now, glancing at each other as if unsure whether they ought to step in, and I got the feeling some of the looky-loos beyond the crime scene tape were tuning into our little two-man drama as well. “If I hadn't gotten up there when I did, if I had been one minute later…”

“But you weren't,” I said, as if it were as simple as that—as if I hadn't been thinking obsessively about the exact same thing. Truth was, I wouldn't even have had one full minute left to live if Kaz hadn't shown up the second he did.

“Damn it, Flynn, I thought you were dead.” He was crying, his Adam's apple bobbing like a cork and tearing his voice to shreds. “When you didn't answer your phone … when I heard the struggling, the shouting…”

“It's okay now. It's over, and I'm still here.”

“He had a gun, Flynn, a
gun
, and it was
pointed at you
, and I was sure you were about to die and all I could think, the only thing that kept going through my head, was that you'd tried to kiss me and I'd pulled away! I'd thought we had all this time, but then there was this gun,
pointed at you
, and I couldn't stop thinking that I'd never get to kiss you again,
ever
, that I'd had my last chance and I'd blown it, because I thought … I thought…”

Something clenched hard around my heart, and my breath whooshed out of my lungs as I looked back at him. “Kaz…”

“I was wrong, Flynn.” He actually started to laugh through his tears. “I don't want to be your friend.”

I laughed, too, just as my eyes began to prickle and my vision clouded. “I don't want you to be my friend, either.”

And then he pulled me in again and kissed me. It didn't matter that my parents were watching—that, in fact, half the neighborhood was watching, along with a couple of local news teams—I lost myself immediately, and we were alone. His mouth was soft and warm and perfect, like melted chocolate, and I felt it all through me. My entire body hummed to life, and maybe it was because I'd just come so close to dying, but the feeling was so much more intense, so much more real, than anything I'd ever experienced before—even than it had been the first time. My aches and pains, the freezing cold that had woven itself through my very bones while I was sitting outside for an hour in the chill, damp night air … it all disappeared in an instant. I was aware of nothing but Kaz and the kiss that fused us together.

When he drew back again, far too soon, he pressed his forehead to mine and gasped for air. With a raspy laugh, he said, “You should … you should go to the hospital. But call me as soon as you can, okay? Promise.”

I smiled, wider than I had in days. “I promise.”

He said good-bye and, with a lingering look, turned and started for his car. I could feel my parents immediately, staring carefully at anything but me, and I kept my own eyes averted and my expression neutral as I crossed to the rear door of my dad's sedan and waited for him to unlock it. I didn't exactly regret casting aside my inhibitions for that kiss, but now that it was over and Kaz was gone, my face was already starting to beat with warmth as I imagined what kinds of questions my parents would be asking me on the way to the emergency room.

The locks blipped open at last, and just as I started to get into the car, my gaze settled on two very familiar people watching me from the edge of the crowd. Standing directly under a streetlamp twenty feet away from me, their stunned, openmouthed expressions lit up like displays in a museum, were Micah and Tiana.

*   *   *

The X-rays showed that I'd broken one of my metacarpals, and I was fitted with a massive, temporary cast that my dad immediately signed, over my vociferous objections; after that, I was given some phenomenal painkillers and finally sent home. I slept so well I surprised even myself, despite the fact that my parents woke me up repeatedly during the night to ask me my name, my address, and how old I was, just to make sure—as my dad put it—that my cerebellum wasn't “gushing blood like those elevators in
The Shining
.”

The questions they had for me about Kaz were disconcertingly respectful and polite—of the
what's his name, how old is he, is he your boyfriend, when do we get to meet him
variety. They kept me home from school the next day, and so Kaz himself dropped by in the afternoon—dressed like a Young Republican on his way to a job interview—and got a chance to answer most of the questions in person. We spent much of the day watching the news coverage, which was split between Cedric Hoffman's death and Senator-elect Jonathan Walker's victory at the polls, and for that reason I didn't see Micah again until Thursday.

My name hadn't been released to the media, but rumors had made their inevitable progress around the halls of Riverside anyway, and when I walked through the doors that morning with an incredibly obvious cast consuming half of my right arm, I instantly became something of a celebrity. Madison Reinbeck came up to me immediately and asked if it was true that I had also been shot while fighting for control of the gun; Lucas Navarro told me he'd heard that I'd been working for the cops and wearing a wire the whole time I was in Cedric's apartment; and Ashley Sobol told me that she'd heard from Mason Collier that if he were really, really drunk, he
might
be willing to let me perform a certain sexual favor for him. I told Ashley to tell Mason I was flattered, but that he'd missed his chance.

And then, much to my surprise, Micah came up to me, materializing at my locker right after the first bell rang. I was so startled that I couldn't think of anything to say. I stood there, afraid to move, like when a bee lands on your arm. After a moment of staring down at his shoes, he finally grunted, “Hey.”

“Hey. I thought—” I'd been going to say,
I thought you weren't talking to me
, but it seemed an ungracious way to start what I hoped was a détente, so I shut up.

Micah sighed. “Listen, dude. I just wanted to say that I'm sorry about how I've been acting. I guess—”

“It's okay,” I blurted out, so relieved that he finally wanted to put things behind us that I didn't even need to hear an excuse.

“No, you gotta let me finish,” he argued glumly, adding, “Ti's gonna cut off my taint if I don't share my feelings or whatever.” Another sigh. “When you told me that … you know, that you were gay, I freaked out. It was dumb, and I said a bunch of stupid stuff because I was freaked out, and I shouldn't have. You know I don't have a problem with gay people, dude, I mean my aunt's a lesbian, for fuck's sake.”

“Right.” I'd actually forgotten about that.

“It's just that, like, I kinda tell you
everything
, and I guess…” He rolled his eyes at Tiana in absentia, gritted his teeth, and continued, “I guess it
hurt my feelings
that you kept this from me for so long.”

“It wasn't because I didn't trust you, or anything,” I said, which was mostly true, but not entirely. I'd kept the truth to myself for so long in part because I didn't trust
anyone
with it. I was terrified of what it would do if I set it loose in the world.

“I know. I see that. Honestly, what really got to me was, like, we've known each other since forever, right? I remember when you were afraid of water and we were in Guppies together, and I had to promise not to let you drown.” He was talking about the swimming classes our parents made us take when we were in kindergarten—an epic nightmare for me, where each lesson felt like the last thirty minutes of
Titanic
. Micah, of course, was smiling at the memory. “We've had the same teachers, the same bullies, the same clothes—everything, man. I know everything about you, because we went through everything together. You really are like my brother, okay? And for fifteen years, it's like you're the only thing that's just steady, the only thing I
know
, sometimes even better than I know myself.” His mouth flipped sideways and another sigh shuddered out of him, and I said a silent prayer to God that Micah Feldman was not about to start crying. “What I'm trying to say is, this is the first thing about you—ever—that I can't … you know, relate to. I can't go through it, I can't be a part of it, and it feels … it
feels
like there's this gap suddenly between us and there's nothing I can do about it.”

He was silent after that, and there was such an air of humiliated desolation about him that I almost wanted to hug him. I almost did, too, just to make him writhe in discomfort. “Dude. You still know me better than anyone else. And how do you think I felt all those summers you went away to Hebrew camp and came back with stories about stuff I wasn't a part of? I'm not going anywhere, Micah. I still want you to be my best friend.”

“Me too,” he admitted, and he finally looked up at me with a furtive glance. Then, struggling to sound as if he were only barely interested, he asked, “So … that guy with the car, the one who was hoovering your face the other night. Is he, like, your boyfriend, or whatever?”

Innocently, I responded, “What guy? You mean Kaz?”

“
Kaz?
” Micah repeated with a shriek-gasp. “You mean Kaz as in
Fucking Kaz
? Kaz from the toy store, who was always trying to bone down with January?”