Rosebush (29 page)

“You pushed me away and said, ‘What are you doing?’ and I said, ‘I thought this was what you wanted.’ And you said, ‘No. Not with you. Never.’”

I didn’t remember any of that either, and although that probably would have been my reaction, I like to think I would have been nicer about it. “Harsh,” I told him now. “Sorry.”

He held up a hand to stop my apology. “You were just speaking your mind. Then you told me to go away and leave you alone. And I did.” He put his hands in his pockets and jingled his keys nervously. “I was a little angry as I went back into the party. But then I felt bad. So I called your cell phone and apologized and tried to convince you to let me come get you. I asked where you were and you said, ‘I’m on Dove Street.’ And then—”

He paused and made a small circuit around the room, stopping in front of the windowsill with the flowers and presents on it, shifting them around, touching each of them in turn. With his back to me he said, “I was talking to you and I heard tires squealing and—and your phone went dead.”

“You heard me get hit?”

“I didn’t know what I heard. But that’s what it sounded like.”

He paused and turned around.

His face was bleak, his eyes haunted. “I’m sorry, Jane. I am truly sorry.” The way he said it was different from anything else he’d said. This, alone, sounded true.

I stared at him hard. Not because he’d heard me get hit. But because so much of what he’d said didn’t make sense.

“I’m on Dove Street.” I said the words, testing them out in my mouth. That was the street I’d been found on, but the statement felt wrong. The bird part, that touched a chord, but Dove Street—

“Are you sure I didn’t say Peregrine Road?”

“Positive. Weren’t you found on Dove Street?”

“Yes. But that—it’s not right. It doesn’t feel right.” How could I explain this?

“Peregrine Road is just around the corner from Dove Street,” Officer Rowley said.

“You told me Dove Street,” Ollie insisted, his voice rising and his face getting slightly flushed.

“Okay. I’ll have to take your word for it.” But how would I have come up with Peregrine Road if I hadn’t seen it? Even though I’d been there the previous summer with Kate, I never paid any attention to the street names. Why would I imagine saying the wrong street name? And forget the right one?

“Your cell phone records confirm that Mr. Montero was the last person you spoke to,” Officer Rowley said. “I was hoping this would jog your memory.”

“It didn’t.” Now I’d gone from hearing phone calls no one else believed happened to
not
believing in phone calls that absolutely took place.

I stared at Ollie. Why didn’t I remember?

“Are we done here?” Ollie asked Officer Rowley. “Can I go?”

She nodded.

“Take care of yourself, Jane,” he said. “If I were you, I’d stop trying to remember and just concentrate on getting better.”

“Thanks.”

I was so distracted I forgot to look for panty lines again when he left.

“Did you call me earlier, Miss Freeman?” Officer Rowley jolted my attention back

“Yes. I got a very strange phone call.” She sighed and put her hand on her hip. “A real one,” I continued. “You can ask Loretta. It was from a girl in my class named Elsa. She had an accident the same night as mine.”

“Elsa Blanchard. She phoned you? I was under the impression she was in the psych ward, and there are no phones in the rooms there.”

“I don’t know, she was very weird about it, talking about hiding and how she wasn’t supposed to be on the phone. But she said something—odd.”

I could tell that Officer Rowley was only barely believing me. “Yes.”

“She said that she was only trying to help me make the pain go away. And there was something about the way she said it, and the fact that her car was then crashed, that made me wonder—I mean, could she have been the one to hit me? And then crashed into a post to cover it up?”

“We explored that idea two days ago, Miss Freeman. There’s no question that all the damage on Elsa Blanchard’s vehicle came from the impact with the post. And even if it hadn’t, her car was of too low a profile to have caused your injuries. You were hit with something like a sedan.”

If Elsa hadn’t been confessing to hitting me, what the hell had she meant?

Officer Rowley left.

I was in the wheelchair still mulling that over, and searching every corner of my mind for some memory of Ollie trying to kiss me, when Sloan walked in half an hour later looking for my mother. Part of me wanted to be mad at her, hate her, but I couldn’t. Her dark hair was glossy and she wore almost no makeup on her oval face with the wide-spaced eyes. Her outfit looked like something I would have worn.

When she saw I was alone, she tried to back out, but I stopped her.

“Hey. Can I ask you a question?”

She swallowed hard and stayed near the door. “I should really find your mom. She wanted me here at five fifteen and it’s almost five thirty.”

“Yeah, of course, I’ll make it fast. I was just wondering, the night of the party, were you with someone?”

Her chin went up and she squared her shoulders. “I’m not sure that’s really any of your business.” God, she was already becoming a mini-my mother. And yet that answer kind of made me like her even more.

I smiled to let her know I wasn’t the enemy. “Sorry, I did that wrong. I just want to know if you were with David.”

“David?” she repeated, and although she was tense, she also seemed slightly relieved. “He drove me home.”

I’d had all the hedges, evasions, shadowy half-truths I could take. I forced myself to ask what I really wanted to know. “Did you have sex with him?”

I was ready to hear anything. But I was still surprised by her answer.

Chapter 26

Sloan said,
“I don’t know.”

She drew closer to my bed now, her eyes apprehensive and scared but kind, like an animal being tamed. “I don’t know if you remember, but at the party you walked into me.”

“I remember. My stuff dropped and you helped me pick it up.”

“Right. Well, you put your drink down and you just left it there when you took off. So I drank it.”

“And?”

“I think it must have had something in it because after that, everything kind of gets weird. I went looking for my friend and then I don’t really remember what happened until David was on top of me waking me up and saying we had to get out of there.”

“You woke up with David on top of you?” Her words took a moment to fully penetrate. “Oh, Sloan, are you okay? I mean, do you think something happened you didn’t want to happen? Do you want to talk to a nurse?”

Her face registered surprise and gratitude. “You’re so—That is really, really nice of you to ask. But I’m okay.” She leaned toward me. “Plus—I have my period, so—”

I knew how David was about periods so I figured she was right. Nothing had happened. Not that I really thought David was capable of taking advantage of someone like that—when they were drugged—but then, I wasn’t really sure of anything anymore.

“That still must have been upsetting. What happened after he woke you up?”

“He drove me home. I probably shouldn’t have gone with him because I think he was pretty wasted, but I didn’t realize that then. The next day he tried to talk to me, something about his car, but I ignored him. And I haven’t seen him since…Well, except here.”

At least David wasn’t lying about that.

“And I solemnly swear I won’t, ever,” she added.

“If you want him, he’s all yours.”

“He’s, um, not my type.” Her pocket buzzed. “Oops, that’s your mom. I’ve got to run.”

She was at the door when she stopped and turned around. “There’s one other thing. Remember how you couldn’t find your lip gloss? And you told me if I found it, I could keep it?” She blushed and looked nervous. “This is kind of lame, but I’ve had, um, people say I look like you, and I thought maybe it would look good on me too.” So I kept looking for it. I found it. The lip gloss, I mean. But you can totally have it back.”

“No thanks.” The last thing I was interested in at the moment was lip gloss. Which was a very new development for me. “I hope that,
um, people
like it on you.”

She smiled and blushed. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

I wished there were something she could have done to help. That anyone could. I fought back through the darkness to the party, to try to put this piece into place. If what Sloan said was true, then the red plastic cup had actually been drugged. But it wasn’t how I got dosed.

Langley? No, Langley was in front of the
bathroom
door, not the bedroom door, and she was trying to keep me from getting out, not pushing me in.

But—

Is that what it said? Or do I only think that because it’s what people have told me?

I heard Nicky’s voice from two weeks ago: “Maybe you should try thinking for yourself once in awhile”

Was I that easy? That spineless?

If it was Ollie, why didn’t I remember talking to him?

The phone was still ringing.

That’s when I realized it wasn’t ringing in my memory but ringing in my room.

“Loretta,” I yelled. “My phone is ringing.”

“Go answer it, sweetheart.”

“Can you hear it?”

“Sure as apples.”

My heart pounded. This could be the time I showed everyone I’m not crazy.

“Hello?”

“Hi, jelly bean,” Langley said.

Loretta had come to stand in the doorway. I waved her away.

“Hey. How are you?”

“I’m okay, but I don’t think I can make it there today. Popo—”

“Is he worse?”

“Well, he’s not any better.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“Thanks. How are you?”

I stared at the balloon bouquet starting to dip slightly in the corner of my room. “Confused. David was here. He told me about Sloan.”

Langley exhaled. “Oh.”

“So when you blocked the door from letting me out of the bathroom—”

“Yes?”

“What did you hear me say again?”

“‘I can’t take it anymore. It’s over. I’m done, it’s done. I just want to end it.’ Things like that.”

“Are you sure it was about David?” My eyes roamed over the flower arrangements on my windowsill.

“I thought so. Why?”

“I—I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. Thanks.”

“You sound low. I’m going to come over there.”

“No, don’t. Stay with your grandfather.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“I love you, jelly bean.”

“Love you too.” I gave the receiver a kiss and hung up.

The phone started to ring again immediately. I answered it saying, “Seriously, I’m fine.”

“Are you, Jane?”

I swallowed. It was the caller. Why hadn’t I shouted for Loretta?

I moved the phone to the bed and stretched the cord as far as it would go. “Hi. How are you doing?”

“It’s time.”

“Time for what?” I asked. I held the phone away from me and leaned toward the door. “Loretta,” I whispered. Finally someone else would hear.

“Don’t play dumb. You just knelt there. In the middle of the road. You know you wanted it as much as I did. And you know why.”

My entire body went cold.

Loretta rushed past me and grabbed the phone. She held it to her ear for a moment, then gently replaced it in the cradle.

You just knelt there.
Only two people would have known that. Me. And the person who ran into me.

This wasn’t a prank. This was a killer.

I looked at Loretta. “Why did you hang up? Why didn’t you talk to him?”

“No one was there.”

No. It wasn’t possible. “But there had been someone there. He was talking right up until you took the phone out of my hand.” I looked at her. “You have to believe me. He was talking.”