Moonglow (13 page)

My father doesn't even turn around to acknowledge Barnaby; he keeps staring at me. His eyes lock with mine, and he holds my gaze until I speak.

“Maybe,” I say, sounding like an idiot.

“Maybe?” my father replies. “Were you in a fight or not?”

“I don't remember!” I clutch my neck to prevent any of the scratches on my chest from becoming visible.

Something in my father cracks, and his patience is lost, possibly sucked into whatever world is holding my memory ransom. He bangs his fist so hard on the bathroom counter the three fake marble containers holding Q-tips, cotton balls, and our toothbrushes topple over.

“What do you mean you don't remember?!”

“Just what I said!” I scream. “I don't remember much of what happened last night!”

Damn it! I hear the slip of my tongue just as it comes out of my mouth, but there's no way I can take it back.

“Then tell me what you do remember,” my father demands.

Fine! He wants to know everything I know, then I'll tell him. “We were on our way home, taking the long way, it wasn't dark out yet, not really, and I remember seeing the moon.” An image of a full moon pops into my head, and its beauty disrupts my thoughts. What was I saying? Was I talking about the perfect roundness of the moon, a halo hanging over all mankind?
A halo hanging over all mankind?
Maybe I am on drugs.

“Dominy!”

My father's voice brings me back to reality. Where was I? “Then . . . then the next thing I remember is waking up near the hills, with my clothes all torn up!”

My father's steady, slow breathing reminds me of my own. “What do you mean ‘we'?”

That's his takeaway? I tell him I can't remember what happened to me during the night and that I woke up on the outskirts of town with my clothes ripped and that's what he asks.

“Dominy, who else was with you?” he insists.

It's hard to speak while sobbing, but I finally answer his question. “Jess.”

If this news comes as a shock or if this was the information my father expected, I have no idea because my vision is distorted by my tears. My hearing, unfortunately, is fine.

“Where is Jess now?”

I feel as if I've been carrying this secret around with me for a lifetime instead of a few hours. My chest feels like it's going to cave in, like a huge weight has been laid on top of it; it's incredibly hard to breathe, and all I can see is Jess's face dangling in front of me. She sways for a bit and then sits on the bathroom counter, watching me talk to my father, wondering what I'm going to say next. Her face and body keep changing: She looks like my best friend; then she looks like my best friend's dead mutilated body; then she's my best friend again. I can't take it anymore! I need help. I need my father!

“She's near the hills!”

“Why? Dominy, why is she still there?”

I can't see anything except Jess's bloodied face, and I feel like I'm going to fall. But this time when I reach out my hands, I'm not alone; I feel something. I hold on to my father's arms, and they feel strong and steady, and he doesn't move away. He's going to help me; my father's going to make it all right so I can tell him the truth. My knees buckle when I confess. “Because I killed her!”

I was wrong.

Instinct has proven more powerful than unconditional love, and my father rips his arm away from me. Doesn't want to be infected by the poison that he knows I am. My body twists in reaction, and my hand hits the bathroom wall a second before my face does. The impact is cushioned, but still severe. As I steady my body, I examine my father. Thoughts and ideas are being calculated in his head. I've seen this look before; whenever he has to make an important decision, he cocks his head to the right, and the skin around his eyes wrinkles. Since this is probably the most important decision he'll ever have to make—how to deal with his homicidal daughter—this might take a moment. But sooner than I expect, he speaks.

“Barnaby go to your room,” he says firmly. “Don't get on the computer, the TV, or your phone. Just stay in there and read a book until I get back.”

“But I have to go to school,” he replies quietly.

“Not today!”

When my father turns to face me, he can't look me in the eye right away. I don't blame him; I can hardly look at myself either. “Give me all the clothes you were wearing last night,” he orders.

Scooping up my jeans I place them on top of the ripped shirt he's holding. Silently he follows me into my bedroom where I add my jacket to the pile. When he turns around, his face is stern, not completely devoid of compassion, but he's in action-hero mode, and everybody knows an action hero only has time for compassion after the dirty work is done. My father's dirty work is just about to begin.

“Go take a shower, then change your clothes and stay in your room,” he says. The instructions continue. “If the phone rings do not answer it; that goes for your cell phone too,” he orders. “No texting either, no communication whatsoever until I get back.” He sees something out of the corner of his eye. “Where are your shoes?”

Wordlessly, I look around my room until I see my ruined Pumas, one resting on top of the other, underneath my desk. Picking them up I'm surprised to find the soles are caked with dirt, a multicolored clump clinging to each bottom. Brown, beige, red. I hand them to my father, and he adds them to the pile of clothes he's holding. Using my jacket as a towel, he bends down and scoops up some dirt and debris that's fallen onto the carpet. As he kneels before me, I'm reminded of when I was little and he used to bend down to tie my shoes for me. That seems like it happened to another person.

Something on my face must alert him that he needs to include some fatherly piece of wisdom along with his authoritative instructions. “Everything is going to be all right, Dominy,” he says. As an afterthought he adds, “I promise.”

His words are empty. There's no way he can follow through; we both know that. But we both want to believe he can, so we remain quiet. I watch him race down the stairs, and when I hear the back door slam, my body starts to shake.

Afraid of being alone, I take the fastest shower on record, ignore my image in the mirror while I change into some clean clothes, and go into my brother's room. I lean against the wall for a bit, then slide down until I hit the floor. Barnaby's on his bed, not lounging or sprawled out, but sitting on the edge of the bed, the palms of his hands on his thighs, his feet barely touching the ground. His legs aren't swinging back and forth; his life is no longer a playground. The kid's in shock, and I don't blame him. I am too, but at least I'm responsible for my condition; he's had his thrust upon him.

He's so far into his own private world that he doesn't hear my cell phone vibrate yet again with another text message. I look down at the carpet between my legs where I've placed the phone and see that it's another one from Caleb:
Im wrried call me

It's his fourth text. The first one asked me if he could come over for my birthday; the second assumed that my father didn't want to have any company; the third asked if I was sick or mad at him for some reason; and now this one asking me to call him.
If I called you, Caleb, and told you what happened, you'd be even more worried. No, in this case silence definitely is golden, and the only way to prevent you from being an accessory to my crime.
Our silence, however, is interrupted when Barnaby and I hear a car pull into the driveway.

Barnaby is the first one downstairs to greet my father when he enters the kitchen through the side door that leads to the garage.

“Why'd you park in there?” he asks, oddly out of breath for a track star.

“Don't ask questions,” my father says, his voice kind, but firm. “Just go upstairs and leave us alone.”

I can see the muscles in my brother's neck and all around his jawline clench and twitch. He understands that these are unusual circumstances; he understands that my father is trying to handle a crisis; but he doesn't understand why he has to be left out of the action. What he's missing is how lucky he is to be able to leave the room.

When we're alone, my father ushers me into the garage and closes the kitchen door behind us. The windowless garage door has been pulled down, so we're completely alone, unseen. We're surrounded by bikes, patio furniture hibernating for the winter, boxes filled with junk that we'll never use but that have sentimental value so we'll never throw them away, and now my father's police car, so there's very little room for us to move, which is kind of good because I feel my strength slipping away from me every second I'm in my father's presence. Movement will only make me weaker.

“I know about Jess.”

My head nods slowly; I don't know if I'm making it move or if I'm on autopilot. Against all odds, I still must be in control, because I start to talk, and I actually sound rational.

“I've been thinking about it, Dad, and I must be wrong,” I start. “There's no way that I could've killed Jess. She was my best friend! It had to be somebody else or . . . or a cougar, a coyote or something!”

“No, Dominy, it was you.”

My father's words have a finality to them, as if he knows exactly what happened without even being there. As if he knew this day would come, as if he's been planning for this day my entire life.

“What?” I whisper. “How can you be so sure?”

He places his hands on my shoulders, but I toss them off of me. I don't want a father who believes I'm a murderer; I want one who can erase what just happened.

“I can explain everything,” he tells me.

Well, why don't you start?!
“Where'd you go?” I ask. “And what . . . exactly do you know about Jess?”

Calmly, too calmly, he opens the trunk of his police car, and Jess is lying there, wrapped in a dirty gray flannel blanket, with only the side of her face and her shoes visible. I open my mouth to scream, and my father pulls me in close to him so I can bury my face in his chest and scream so no one can hear me. His touch is repulsive; his touch is salvation. I feel his chin resting on my head, and I scream even louder, holding him so tightly that when my body shakes uncontrollably his does too. It's like we're the same person.

Screams tumble out of me, ram into my father's chest, struggle for life, and die. One after the other until the raw sound subsides and turns to soft whimpering. The scents of sweat and dirt and cold air cling to my father, and I breathe in deeply. A whiff of decay overwhelms and excites me. Abruptly, I pull away and look up at him. I may no longer be innocent, but I feel younger than I have in my entire life. “How could I do such a thing?” I ask.

Before my father can answer, a loud garbled sound fills the garage and then a voice. It's his deputy Louis calling on his police walkie-talkie.

“Chief, we have a missing person's case,” Louis says, his voice bookended by bursts of static. “Jessalynn Wyatt. She's friends with Arla and Dominy.”

My father puts a finger up to his mouth, silently ordering me not to speak. “I know who she is,” he replies.

“According to her mother the kid's been missing since yesterday afternoon. Arla said Jess might have gone over to your place last night 'cause it was Dom's birthday. That true?” Louis asks.

There's nothing in his voice to indicate that his statement hides a deeper meaning, but it still sounds like an accusation to me. My father agrees. There's a slight pause, and then I watch my father lie to the man who he trusts with his life. “No, we were just going to do a family thing, but Dominy got sick so we even canceled that.”

“Got it. Think the kid could be a runaway?” Louis asks. “I don't know her that well.”

This time when my father lies he has to close his eyes. “Could be,” he answers. “Check the bus and train stations and tell her mother . . .”

“Chief?”

“Tell her mother we'll do everything we can to find her.”

“Will do.”

When static once again fills up the garage, my father slowly closes the trunk of the car, pushing on it until we hear the lock click shut. Jess and the static and Louis's voice are gone, and once again it's just my father and me. Or this man who's standing before me who resembles my father, but whose actions I don't recognize. “Why did you lie?”

He still can't look at me. He presses down on the trunk again to make sure it's securely locked and walks to the front of the car. I tug at his arm like I'm five years old and want ice cream. “Where are you going?”

“To get rid of the body,” he says flatly, getting into the driver's seat.

The door slams shut; the engine turns over; my father puts on his seat belt. What is going on? Why isn't he completely freaked out, surprised? Why is he acting like he had “cover up all traces that my daughter committed murder” on his to-do list for today?

“Daddy!!”

I have to bang on the window three times before it starts to descend, eliminating the barrier between us.

“Why did you lie to Louis?”

Finally he looks at me, and I shudder. I have never seen him look more apologetic and anguished and helpless than he does right now.

“Because this is all my fault.”

Chapter 10

Why am I surprised when I see that Jess's seat is empty? Did I really expect my father to bring her body to geometry and prop her up in a chair? Shove a pencil in her hand and make it look like she was waiting for the bell to ring so class could start? Am I losing my mind?

Yesterday was like a dream. Barnaby and I spent the day home from school, each allegedly suffering from the same twenty-four-hour bug, while my father spearheaded the search for my best friend after secretly burying her body in a location that he hopes will remain secret. Around lunchtime he came home and spoke to us in a sort of shorthand as if the house were bugged. He never mentioned Jess's name or the specifics of where he'd been or what he'd been doing all morning; he just gave us the go-ahead to text our friends in an attempt, we both implicitly understood, to make it appear to everyone outside our family that life in the Robineau household was still normal. He did caution us—very firmly—to keep our texts simple and short, let our friends know we were staying home sick. Refrain from including any details about my disappearance the night before or murder or evidence tampering or crime scene contamination, or, of course, Jess.

Dutifully, Barnaby and I played along. And if it hadn't been for my father's last comment to me before he drove off with Jess's body wrapped in a dingy blanket in the trunk of his police car, I would have thought he was just doing his fatherly duty: protecting his daughter. But his words make me think that he's also protecting himself.

That's what he said. He didn't explain what he meant; he didn't elaborate on his comment. He just drove off and ignored it when he returned home. As confused as I am about my father's motives, I want to protect him as much as he's protecting me, so when Danny Klausman asks if I heard from Jess, I do as my father taught me. I lie.

“She sent me a bunch of birthday texts,” I say as casually as if I were telling the truth. “I had to cancel my dinner 'cause I must've caught a stomach bug or something; my brother had it too.”

I prove to be a good liar, and Danny believes every fictitious word I've told him.

“Could've been food poisoning,” he suggests. “I had that once when my mother tried to make Mexican. Her chili was rancid or something. The whole family was going from both ends if you know what I mean.”

Sadly, I got the picture. Danny really is disgusting though, and for once I don't feel bad for dubbing him The Dandruff King.

“Did that happen to you?” he asks with an expression that can only mean he's hoping my answer is yes.

“Just throwing up,” I say. “But Barnaby wasn't, so I don't think it was anything we ate, just a dumb virus.”

It is so easy to lie. I never really did it before, never saw the point to it unless, of course, it was a way not to hurt someone. But it's also hard to keep a lie straight. Now that I've mentioned that Barnaby didn't throw up, made that part of our fake scenario, I have to make sure that's what he tells people or I'll be proven a liar. And if I can lie so effortlessly, chances are an eager assistant D.A. will make the case that I can commit murder with the same ease. Now I know why I rarely lie; it's hard work. I have never been more thankful to see Mrs. Gallagher walk into class, because for the first time in my life geometry doesn't seem so complicated.

Getting through lunch, however, is going to be like getting through one of those laboratory mazes. I'm a mouse in search of a piece of cheese, and I simply don't know which way to turn to find my reward.

“Domgirl! I can't believe you were sick on your birthday,” Caleb declares.

Do I turn to the left or to the right? Do I stand still? Do I let the guilt that's clawing at my insides break through my skin and confess, or do I maintain my made-up innocence?

“Total bummer,” I tell him sheepishly. Fake innocence wins.

“So what up?” he asks. “You were feeling okay when I saw you during last period. Something happen after school?”

An inner voice tells me that “Lying is another word for protecting.” It's exactly the reminder I need to get me to open my mouth and speak.

“No, I wasn't feeling great all day, but I thought it would pass,” I say. “It did, but only a day later.”

“Well, this weekend we'll do something,” Caleb says. “Just me and you.”

Smiles are contagious, and in spite of what I'm hiding in my heart, I look harmless, one half of a smiling couple. I'm just a girlfriend enjoying a sort-of-intimate moment with her boyfriend at a lunch table in the middle of a normal school day. Like a bad omen the scratches on my chest tingle; I'm about to discover this is a day that's about to become anything but normal.

“Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod!” Arla whisper-shouts as she sits at our table in an empty chair next to Caleb and across from me. Not quite sitting actually; her leg is tucked under her so she's sitting on her calf, and her body is leaning across the table. She's acting like one of those special ADD students whose parents are unsuccessfully trying to wean them off of Ritalin. Her body is bouncing slightly, so her long crystal necklace isn't just dangling from her neck; it's swaying, the crucifix at the end of the necklace swinging toward me, then retreating as if salvation were just out of my grasp.

“Did you hear about Jess?”

Her hand feels warm on top of mine. I look down, and I have to fight back the tears.
Don't give yourself away; don't give them any reason to question you later; keep lying; keep acting as if you don't know anything.
That's what I tell myself, but it's hard when I see Arla's hand, because it reminds me of Jess.

Not in the color or texture, but in the fingernails. They're painted Jess's favorite color, lemon yellow. The MAC name for it is Sunblind, and the shape is the squoval that Jess just introduced us to. Only last week we piled on her bed to rewatch—for about the fifteenth time—the online video starring Saoirse demonstrating how to achieve the square-meets-oval look on her friend Nakano's hand. Jess so adored Nakano that she e-mailed him to tell him he should branch out and do his own spinoff videos. He wrote her back and thanked her, but said he's happy just being Saoirse's sidekick.

I'm so lost in absurd thoughts about Arla's fingernails and Jess's online friends that I see Arla's mouth moving, but I don't hear what she's saying.

“Rewind please?” I ask.

She runs a squovalized fingernail through the bangs of her wig. Since it's Thursday, she's sporting her goth-black, shoulder-length, straight-haired wig with bangs that tickle the tops of her eyebrows. It's Jess's favorite for the obvious racial implications. Just as Arla shifts in her chair and lets go of my hand, I start to shake. I can't help it; all I'm doing is thinking about Jess, seeing her face in front of me, the “before” and the “after” looks, and now I have to listen to Arla talk about her.

“My father told me that Jess disappeared,” Arla repeats.

“What?!” I say. It's only one word, but I say it with such conviction that I hate myself.

“Like vanished?” Caleb asks.

“Poof,” Arla replies, snapping her fingers. “Into thin air.”

“Oh come on,” Caleb says, shrugging his shoulders. “That's ridiculous.”

“Tell that to her mother,” Arla replies. “She never came home after school and that was two days ago!”

Words and ideas are forming in Caleb's mind; he's trying to digest this information and make it palatable. He's got innocence and an optimistic spirit on his side, so he should be successful. He is.

“She's probably being all dramatic about something stupid and took off. They'll find her,” Caleb says confidently. “She can't be that far, and nothing ever happens in this town anyway.”

Cupping her chin with her hand, Arla presses one lemony-yellow squoval-shaped fingernail against the side of her light brown cheek. The color combination is like something out of a design magazine. Her words, however, are right out of the police blotter.

“Remember Mauro Dorigo?”

“Who?” we both ask.

“Fat bully a few years ahead of us,” she clarifies. “About two years ago he up and disappeared right around Thanksgiving too.”

Recognition seeps into Caleb's face, but not into mine. Clearly, Arla is much more informed as the daughter of the deputy sheriff than I am as the daughter of the man in charge.

“Whoa! I do remember hearing about that,” he exclaims. “He was a runaway right?”

Arla's eyebrows rise so high they get lost amid her bangs. “That's what they told the press,” she explains, knowing full well that we know “they” means “her father.” She drops her chin and her voice. “But there was no note, no family problems, nothing that would indicate he'd want to run away,” she confides. “And there hasn't been a trace of him ever since.”

I have to ask. “So your father doesn't think Jess ran away either?”

She grabs my hand again, but by now I'm so cold she can't warm me up. “Oh, Dom, I'm sorry, I thought your father would've told you already.”

I can only shake my head.

“Should've known,” Arla replies. “Your father's professional; mine's got a big mouth.” She waves her hands to make us lean in closer to her so she can finish her story. “They don't know anything yet, but my father said the first twenty-four hours, which we're already passed, are the most crucial and so far they don't have a clue.”

“What about Napoleon?”

I try not to look as shocked as Arla and Caleb when I ask the question. My goal is to make my face look like I've made a valid deduction, not like I'm casting blame on someone else. “I mean, you know,” I stutter, “he is her boyfriend; maybe she's with him.”

“They've already talked to him,” Arla says, shaking her head. “Anyway, Dom, you know that Nap would rather be with you than with Jess.”

Even if I didn't agree with her, even if I were the Helen Keller of Two W, I'd still have to protest. Remember, I'm sitting across from
my boyfriend.
The same boyfriend I've been trying to convince that he has no rival.

“Oh that's ridiculous!”

“Dominy Suzette Robineau! You cannot tell me that you haven't noticed the way that boy looks at you?” Arla asks.

“And just how does
that
boy look at
my
girlfriend?”

“Nap looks at Dom the way he should be looking at Jess,” Arla replies.

“I knew it!” Caleb explodes. “I've had just about enough of this d-bag!” Caleb stands up, and his eyes scour the cafeteria in pursuit of his nemesis. I look at Arla with a scrunched up expression that silently asks, “Why'd you have to spill the beans?” And she responds with an equally scrunched up expression that silently says, “I'm sorry; I thought he already knew.”

“Where is he?” Caleb asks, his neck twisting side to side. “It's time I taught twinboy a lesson in how to behave.”

Arla and I twist our necks as well, hoping to find Napoleon before Caleb does in order to prevent the inevitable fistfight.

I search for the sweetest, most girlfriendy voice that I possess. I find it. “C'mon, Caleb, forget about Napoleon,” I practically purr.

“Not until he understands the rules,” Caleb seethes. “You're my girl, so hands off!”

“Caleb,” I say in that same sugary voice, “he never put his hands on me.” I'm hoping this piece of information will placate him, make him stop acting like a Neanderthal. It has the opposite reaction, even though his vocabulary expands by a few centuries.

“I'm speaking figuratively!” he shouts.

The only thing that prevents Caleb from leaving the table to search for Nap in every classroom throughout Two W is Archie's arrival. I can sense that something's wrong while Archie's still two tables away. Gone is his bouncy walk, gone is his trademark smile, and when he sits down next to me there's no funny greeting, no fist bumping with Caleb, just a dour expression and silence. His gaze is unfocused; he's staring at something on the table, and he wears sadness as if it were a perfectly tailored jacket.

I'm not sure if it's biologically possible, but he looks whiter than usual; in fact, the only color in his face is coming from his eyes. Spreading out from the outer rim of his deep purple irises, a common albino trait, are spindly red spider webs, so numerous and thick that they threaten to wipe out the white parts of his eyes. Archie's been crying, and he looks as if he's about to start all over again.

“Winter, what's wrong?” Caleb asks.

Slowly Archie looks up at us. He wants to speak but has lost the ability.

“Dude, tell us,” Caleb says kindly. “What's going on?”

When he speaks, his voice is hoarse and shaky. “They found Jess.”

This is what it must feel like for people who are about to hear a jury's decision or the results of a biopsy; they exist in a kind of suspended animation. Not breathing, not really living, just waiting for a signal from some more intelligent, exterior force as to how they should react. Should I sigh in relief? Should I squeak in delight? Or should I remain quiet and ponder how I'm going to die?

If they have found Jess's body, it's only a matter of time before they connect her death to my father or me; either way the truth will be revealed, and I'll have to pay for my crime. Doesn't matter that I can't remember committing any crime, that I had absolutely no motive; I'm still going to have to pay. And the three people sitting at the table with me will want to see that happen.