The Last Good Place of Lily Odilon (4 page)

“This is Detective Andersen,” said Gherdt, “and his colleague, Officer Demiola. They’re here—”

“Thanks, Principal Gherdt,” interrupted Andersen. To Albert he said, “We were hoping you could answer a few questions about a”—he cleared his throat—“chum of yours. I gather you’re close with a senior named Lily Odilon?”

“What’s happened? Is she okay?” The words fell from Albert’s mouth.

Andersen raised an eyebrow and took a step closer to Albert. “I’ll tell you, kid, we’re not sure she is. Mind if I ask you a few questions, see if we can’t shed a little light?”

“Um.” Albert didn’t know what to say, because he didn’t quite know what was happening. He cleared his throat, but still found no safe words.

Turning to Gherdt, Mrs. Patel spoke up. “Vernon, don’t you think we ought to call this boy’s parents? They should know their son is being questioned by the police at school this morning.” Even with what she was saying, there was a fair amount of the usual pep in her voice.

Before Gherdt could reply, Andersen said, “That’s a good idea, ma’am.”

“Both your parents at work?” Gherdt asked, on board because the cop was on board.

“Yes. But my mom works in town, so it’d be better to call her.” He was babbling, not really knowing what was coming out of his mouth but knowing it was coming out too fast. Something about this guy’s pale, expressionless eyes turned him into a scared little kid. That, and Albert wasn’t used to talking to cops. “They’ll have to page her, though, so she might have to call you back.” Still babbling.

“That’s fine,” said Andersen, crossing his arms over his chest. “Do you folks mind going into the other room to do that? I’d like to chat with Albert here while we wait—if he doesn’t mind.”

Albert did mind, but he said nothing. They were all looking at him again, so he nodded.

Gherdt and Mrs. Patel left the room with Detective Demiola, who was saying as he shut the door on Albert and Andersen, “I have a few questions for you folks about Miss Odilon …”

“Lily’s a friend of yours?” asked Andersen once he and Albert were alone.

“She is,” said Albert, his voice coming out weak. “More than a friend. I’m her boyfriend.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

The guy didn’t worry much about putting a guy at ease, Albert decided. “Friday night, or I guess actually Saturday morning. It’s a long story.”

“I have as much time as you need.”

Albert squirmed in his chair. “Sure, but shouldn’t I wait until my mom gets here?”

Andersen sat down on the couch and tented his fingers, merely looking at Albert.

“I mean,” Albert went on, “am I being questioned? Am I in trouble for something?”

“I’m just trying to understand. You’re not under arrest for anything. What do I have to arrest you for? We’re just talking because it looks like something bad could’ve happened to your girlfriend and I figure you want to help. You do want to help?”

“I want to help. Maybe you can tell me what happened to Lily? I haven’t heard from her since … the last time I saw her, and I’ve been kind of worried.”

“Why would you be worried?”

“I don’t know.” This was true; at least, he didn’t know how to explain the uneasy way he’d felt when he’d woken up in Lily’s bed with no Lily.

Andersen scratched his eyebrow, saying, after a pause, “Okay, but if you were so worried—for whatever reason—why didn’t you tell somebody?”

“Her parents were out of town, and Lily—she gets funny ideas in her head sometimes and does unusual things.”

Andersen pounced on this. “What kinds of ‘unusual things’?”

Albert wished he’d said nothing. It was too hard to explain. “Nothing bad, just … she’s just a free spirit or whatever. You can ask anyone who knows her.”

“We intend to.”

“I didn’t want to get her in trouble.” It sounded stupid when he said it out loud.

“That’s not the real concern here.” Andersen leaned forward, catching Albert’s eye. “Let’s start with you telling me about the last time you two were together. Go slow and don’t leave anything out.”

Albert tried. He filled Andersen in on the entire chronology—starting with crawling through Lily’s window Friday and finishing with being led out of class by Mr. Gherdt just a short while earlier. Andersen let him tell his story uninterrupted, then made Albert go through the whole story again, this time questioning things—asking for clarification here, more detail there. Sometime during the second telling Andersen had stood again, listening with his back to Albert, as if this would give him some different perspective on the same story. He paced the small room as Albert spoke and the detective’s hovering made Albert nervous—which, Albert suspected, was the point.

When Albert had finished his story the second time, Andersen took a seat on the couch again. He was perched on the edge, though, not relaxed into the cushions. His expression was hard to read, and Albert wasn’t sure if the detective thought he’d done well or not.

Then there was a cursory knock on the door and Mrs. Patel was poking her head into the room without waiting for an invitation to enter. “Mrs. Morales just called back. She’ll be here in ten.”

“Fine, fine,” said Andersen, motioning for Mrs. Patel to leave. When the door closed again, he said to Albert, “Like I said, we’re just talking here, and I appreciate your willingness to cooperate. I’m going to ask your mother to bring you down to the station tomorrow so you can give me your statement. Officially. That is, if you’re still feeling cooperative.”

“I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

Andersen looked at him. “Nothing about your story you’d want to change?”

“I told you everything I know, everything I remember,” Albert insisted. “It’s not a story. It’s the truth.”

“So your story will stay the same when I tell you we found Lily’s car an hour ago?”

Blindsided. “Her car? What about
her
?”

“What about her?” Andersen was looking at his phone, like he wasn’t that interested in Albert anymore.

“I mean,” said Albert, aware that he was raising his voice but seemingly unable to stop, “if you found her car, where is Lily?”

Albert stood, as did Andersen, who said, “Are you curious about what we found?”

The room felt hot and Albert felt like he was suffocating. “Why don’t you just tell me?” he demanded, his voice even louder. “Is she stuffed in the trunk or something?”

The cop put his phone back in his pocket, saying, “The car was left at Meyer’s Drug in Middletown, parked around back with the keys still in it.” He didn’t appear troubled by Albert’s outburst. “The store owners called it in, said it had been parked there since yesterday. No sign of the girl. But the drug store is on the edge of town, not far from the highway or the dump. We have a search crew out there looking.”

Albert felt the blood drain from his face, and he struggled to understand what these words meant. He was saved trying to figure out how to ask when the door opened. He looked over and saw that his mother was there. She gave him a frightened looked, but it was also a hard look and a disappointed look, too. She was flanked by the other cop and Gherdt. Andersen went to her and they exchanged a few low words Albert couldn’t fully make out; Andersen’s sounds were firm, while Albert’s mother was unusually tame.

Albert stood like a dumb animal, looking at his shoes and lost inside his head, until someone drew him from the conference room and dropped his backpack into his hands as the five of them made their way down the little hall and into the front office.

The cops left immediately, without another word to Albert or his mother. Gherdt seemed like he had more to say to Mrs. Morales, but when one of the secretaries told him she was patching a call through to his office, he left with one irritated backward glance at Albert. And though Albert had never thought the guy particularly liked him, the suspicion he thought he saw in the principal’s expression gave him a rude jolt. This guy saw him every day, had even joked with him in the lunchroom before and had never had to discipline him. Albert’s stomach clenched, and he wondered what exactly they all thought he’d done and how they could think he was that kind of person. Still, he felt like he should have been expecting this reaction somehow; whenever an adult acted mistrustful of him, he always began to believe he must somehow deserve it.

With the principal gone, this left Albert with his mother, who was looking up at him with her own hard-to-read expression; the school secretary, who was trying to pretend they weren’t there; and Mrs. Patel, who had returned to hover the way she always did.

Mrs. Morales glanced pointedly at Mrs. Patel, then turned to her son and put a hand on his cheek. “You look pale and your skin is clammy,” she announced. “I’m signing you out and taking you home.”

“I’m fine,” he said, embarrassed. He was suspicious of her concern; past experience had taught him to suspect she was hiding some rage, too, at being called away from work to deal with trouble at her son’s school.

His mother was still inspecting his face. “You look like you’re going to faint.”

At this point no one in the room was even pretending not to listen, and Albert felt like the secretary and Mrs. Patel were now staring at him, waiting for him to collapse or do something interesting. He agreed to leave with his mother just to make it stop. He’d had enough scrutiny for the day.

The ride home was quiet, and tense. Albert’s mother kept her eyes on the road, not giving even a sideways glance at Albert; as for Albert, he put his hands in his lap to stop them from shaking and stared out the window until they pulled into the driveway at home.

“I want to explain—” Albert began, once they were home and standing in the kitchen. It was really important that he make her understand, but he didn’t know which words could do that.

“I don’t want to hear it,” his mother said curtly. “If it’s about why you were out in the middle of the night, well, I’m not stupid. I don’t like it and I thought we raised you better, but …” She trailed off. Her mouth was a thin, hard line. “I guess I’ll hear the whole story tomorrow when you talk to the police.” She paused, adding, “As for the rest of it—I know you didn’t have anything to do with that girl disappearing.”

That girl.

Albert didn’t trust himself to speak. He left the kitchen and went to his bedroom, shutting the door softly. His mother hadn’t stayed home with him on a school day since he was eleven. Though he was in his room and she was on the other side of the house, thankfully leaving him completely alone, knowing she was there at all—that she was thinking about him—was a weight. And though she was as sharp with him as usual, her show of motherly concern, something he hadn’t seen much of since about the time he’d turned twelve, was disturbing. For the past few years, he’d become used to their relationship’s two gears: the nag and fight gear—the one where he screwed up and she harangued him about it, and the tolerance gear—where they pretty much ignored each other as long as Albert didn’t do anything to set her off. Today’s mom-ishness seemed like a bad sign, like when there’s a death in the family and everything is subdued.

At the thought of death Albert shook his head, as if he could physically knock the thought of death—especially death and Lily—out of his head.

Kicking off his shoes, he stretched out on his bed. His eyes were wide open and he stared at the dusty popcorn ceiling. He saw old dust turning brown-gray and a cobweb in the corner. The drabness reflected the way he felt. Drab and trapped, too, like some pathetic little bug in that spider web. His mind kept chasing after Lily. He couldn’t help thinking that if he’d somehow been able to hold her really tight, he could’ve pressed the wildness that must’ve possessed her that night right out of her body. He saw it squeezing out of her like a sigh. Maybe then she wouldn’t have bolted.

Albert turned over onto his stomach. What had Lily been up to that night? He went through various reasons, ranging from running to the store for turquoise nail polish to a sudden desire to see the sun rise over the landfill, but he couldn’t settle on one that felt like it might be
the
reason. He kept coming back to the question without an answer. The only thing he was dead certain of was that the road things were traveling on now was not the one Lily had intended when she got up in the middle of the night and slipped away. She was wild, but not cruel.

So whatever had to follow scared the hell out of him.

He felt a hot, dense unhappiness lodged somewhere between his throat and his chest. It might have been relieved by tears, but he couldn’t cry. Not that he
wouldn’t
, but he just wasn’t able. So the knot got bigger and more difficult to stand.

Sometime later, Albert awoke to the gloomy mid-afternoon. He was still lying on his stomach. He experienced a sleep lag right after he opened his eyes, where he knew something was wrong but didn’t remember what. He’d been so awake the last he remembered, he was surprised to find that he’d been sleeping for—check the clock—two hours. The image of Lily’s face surfaced in his mind, and he let out a soft groan. He rolled onto his side and closed his eyes again, trying to sink back into a protective layer of sleep before his brain began its pointless picking, picking, picking at a problem he could do nothing about. He knew it was weak, but he needed a little more time to pull it together. So much had happened so quickly.