Rosebush (11 page)

“Maybe that’s why you pretend everyone is dead in your photos,” he said, a statement, not a question. “Because only the dead can be perfect.”

“That’s not true!” I’d told him then.

“No tensions simmering under the surface, J. J.? No hidden fault lines waiting to shake things up?”

No, I’d said, and I’d believed it. I still believed it. I wished he was here now to see my perfect friends and the perfect video. It
was
possible. My life was really like this. The DVD was the proof.

None of these people would drug me. None of them wanted to hurt me. They were
friends
.

The final minute of the DVD cut to the night of the party, when Kate and Langley and I were getting ready in Kate’s parents’ massive pink-marble bathroom. We were in our matching fairy costumes—Langley in lavender, Kate in yellow, me in blue—as Langley filmed us in the gold-framed mirror. I watched these three girls with their tight, effortless friendship—I pick a thread off Kate, I can’t find my lip gloss so Langley lends me hers—and it made me smile. I was so lucky.

The three of us did our pinkie salute and made kissy faces at the camera in the mirror at one another, at some invisible audience. Then the scene moved to the party and the camera work got wobbly because we were dancing. Langley spun around, panning across the sea of bodies, and when she got back to Kate and me, Nicky di Savoia was there, hugging me. Nicky said something, gave me a kiss on the lips, and handed me a red plastic cup.

My mind veered back to the party.

I kept Nicky’s cup.

Did that mean Nicky drugged me? And then tried to run me over?

“Nicky?” I said aloud without meaning to.

“I know. She was so wired last night.” The video had ended and Langley popped the DVD out of my mother’s computer and put it on the windowsill next to my other presents. “The way she went off on Ollie was surreal.”

“What do you mean? Why was she yelling at him?” I asked.

“Not just yelling,” Langley said, her eyes wide for emphasis. “She kept saying, ‘How do you like Kicky Nicky?’ and giving it to him in the shins.”

Kate leaned in confidingly to say with a wicked smile, “Which was admittedly kinda fun to watch?”

“For a preacher’s daughter you’re a bit on the evil side. You know that, right?” Langley asked.

“Part of my charm.” Kate batted her eyelashes.

“Why do you think Nicky was freaking out?” I asked.

“It’s Nicky.” Langley shrugged like that was answer enough. “We tried to find her today, but there were a few people who didn’t get back to us to be on the first part of the video.”

“Probably still sleeping the party off,” Kate said. “I bet a lot of people are?”

Did she and Langley exchange a look?

Langley said, a little too eagerly, “The doctor said we should talk to you to help you remember what happened Thursday night.”

“Although frankly, if I were you, I might not,” Kate said.

“What do you mean?” I asked them.

“Well, since the night included Crippen break dancing—”

“Literally,” Kate put in, “as in ‘break the coffee table and an urn.’”

“—and a lot of sophomores in unfortunate knockoff dresses, you’re better off not remembering. The whole thing was more faux than fun.”

“My memories are so sketchy. I remember walking in and then looking for the boys.”

“We found them in that media room watching some special about the mating practices of bonobos and getting high,” Langley reminded me. “You crawled into David’s lap, but since Kate and I aren’t huge
Chimps Gone Wild
fans, we went in search of drinks and Dom came with us.”

“I remember that. And I remember sitting and talking to David and Ollie.” I riffled through my mind. Something about spiders? “Wait. I remember being in some nutty bathroom with you guys because—” I recalled Alex’s bad behavior then. “Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry. Alex is a jerk,” I said to Langley.

“It’s okay. It turns out that his father is being honored by the Austrian government that weekend and that’s why he can’t come, so it’s not that he didn’t want to see me.”

“So are you back together?” It was a bit hard to keep up with things between Langley and Alex, especially since none of us had ever met him and their entire relationship existed over phone and IM. But Langley had said that he might be The One, meaning The One she liked enough to get over her dismay about anything messy and actually have sex with, which meant she genuinely adored him.

“I don’t know. He’s on probation for making me wonder.” I laughed, which made the cuts on my face sting, but I didn’t mind. It was good to feel something, even pain. Langley went on. “That’s not what’s important. What else do you remember?”

“After the bathroom it’s just a big blank space.”

“You don’t remember anything?” Kate asked. “Like where you went?” She was leaning forward, a crease between her eyebrows. Her gaze, her tone seemed more intense than necessary.

“No. The doctor says that could be from trauma or from the hit I took to the head.” I didn’t mention what Officer Rowley said about being drugged. “Did either of you see me at all after I left the bathroom?”

“No.” Langley shook her head. “Kate and I were together all the time, but you disappeared.”

Kate nodded. “We assumed you were with David, but then we saw him and he was—”

“—looking for you too,” Langley finished. “That’s when we got worried and went driving around, but you’d just vanished.”

Why did I feel like they were talking too fast? Covering something up? Langley was smiling too much and Kate’s eyes kept wandering from me to Langley to the door. Was there some drama behind the scenes that everyone was covering up, had something—

“Excuse me.” Langley’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “But what is
she
doing here?”

Chapter 10

At first I
thought Langley meant my mother, but then I realized she was looking at the dark-haired girl standing slightly behind my mom in the doorway. She had one of the blue-satin padded hangers my mother favored with a suit jacket on it dangling from her index finger while she feverishly typed notes into a BlackBerry with her other hand.

“She’s Jane’s mother’s intern,” Kate whispered.

My mother had an intern? I had no idea. “Who is she?” I asked.

“Her name is Sloan Whitley,” was all Langley said, but her tone suggested that Sloan Whitley might be synonymous with Satan’s Girlfriend. It caught me off guard, especially because Sloan looked slightly familiar to me, like I’d seen her somewhere recently, and the impression in my mind was that she was nice.

“Was she at the party?” I asked.

Kate answered. “Yeah, I think I saw her there. Right, Langley?”

Langley shrugged. There was definitely something odd going on.

Sloan trailed my mother and Joe into the room, still typing. “…and Hetty Blanstrop at the
Post
,” my mother finished her sentence. “Ask to speak to Hetty directly. Do you have all that?”

“Yes, Mrs. Freeman,” Sloan said.

“Sloan, do you know all the girls? My daughter Jane in the bed, obviously, and her best friends, Kate and Langley. Sloan is a sophomore at your school. She wants to work in politics one day.” Bright smile.

Everyone murmured hello. Sloan blushed. She glanced at me fast, nodded quickly at Kate and gave Langley an unsure smile, then set the hanger on a chair and stepped outside to make her phone calls.

My mother hugged Kate and Langley and gave them each an air kiss on the cheek. “Girls, I’m so glad you’re here. We’re about to have a press conference announcing a reward for information about what happened to Jane.” She lobed a telegenically perfect sympathetic glance in my direction.

“A reward?”

“The police said it would help, so Joe has agreed to give a ten-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the apprehension of whoever did this to you,” my mother said, smiling at him.

“Thank you, Joe,” I said, meaning it but hating having to. “That is very generous.”

“Anything I can do to help,” he explained, suddenly bashful. “Wanted to do more, but that Officer Rowley said it wasn’t necessary.”

My mother patted his face and beamed on him the way I remember her smiling at my father at the breakfast table on the nights after they’d had me babysit so they could go out to dinner together. Their fingers would brush as she poured him more coffee and they would both jump back a little in this shy way and even though I felt a little left out, I knew this was love, and I wanted it for them forever.

Now she was doing it to someone else. “You are a wonderful man,” she told Joe. My stomach tightened.

She turned back to my friends. “Would you two be willing to answer phones for an hour later?”

“Of course,” Kate said. The tension in her had become even more intense once my mother arrived and I had the sense that she couldn’t wait to leave.

“I’m sure we could round up a lot of volunteers,” Langley confirmed, pulling out her BlackBerry. “How many people do you need?”

“Um—” For a split second, my mom looked lost. Then she snapped back into focus. “Coordinate with Sloan, if you don’t mind. Sloan? Sloan?” My mother went over to the door, muttering, “Where is that girl?”

“I think she stepped outside to make—” Kate started, but my mother had her head out of the doorway.

“Sloan,” she called. “Sloan? I need—oh there you are.” Sloan seemed to take my mother’s demands with complete calm. It was only my friends and I who upset her. “Sloan, I want to go over the script. Joe, please take Annie and wait for us on the front steps of the hospital. Kate and Langley, thank you for all your help. True friends. Jane is lucky to have you.”

Langley winked and as she bent to give me a kiss on the forehead, I caught a whiff of her Jo Malone grapefruit cologne. It was so familiar, so soothing, like the promise of normalcy. Kate gave me an air kiss on the cheek and whispered, “Get better, sailor girl.”

That gave me a lump in my throat. “Thanks,” I said to both of them, meaning it in big ways and small.

“Don’t be absurd,” Langley said. “What else were we going to do? Sit around at home and wish you were with us?”

The lump in my throat got bigger.