Eternal: More Love Stories With Bite (8 page)

"Hi." He didn't quite have to shout to make himself heard over the music. Nice voice.

"Hi!" Chelsea chirped. "Want a beer?"

"Sure." He wasn't averse to the notion. Of course, who would be at a party like this?

There was an awkward silence. Both of them were looking at me. I gave Chelsea a sideways glance and cracked one of the beers, handed it up to him. I had to stretch and sit up to do it, and I kept my fingers on the bottom of the bottle so I didn't touch him. I went back to studying the pool.

He noticed I wasn't looking. "Did I interrupt something?"

"No, no, it's cool. She's just tragic. I'm Chelsea."

Tragic. That was a good word for it. I squeezed my knees together and leaned back in the chair. Maybe another beer was the answer.

"Jack. You go to St. Mary's."

Well, he got no points for stating the obvious. There was a beat or two of silence. If I was interested at all, now would be the time for me to be polite and introduce myself.

I didn't. It would only be grief. I knew the rule—if she was interested, I didn't even get to look. I was the accessory girl here, the brain to her looks. It was my job to be snarky and supportive.

Small price to pay for basking in her borrowed glow. Or at least, it seemed that way when we became "best friends."

I've
been
on the unpopular end of the stick. I don't want
to
revisit
it.

Chel laughed brightly and stepped into the spotlight. "Yeah, you got us. Do you go to Ignatius? You look familiar."

What a lie. He didn't look
familiar.
He looked as
far
away from familiar as
it
was possible to get.

"No, I'm public. They think it's good for me."

"Shit, I'm sorry."

They both laughed. The flirtation settled into its normal course—Chel bright and sunny, the guy acting cool, and me on the sidelines watching.

What the hell.
I
cracked another beer.

* * * *

We didn't have to wait for the bathroom, thank God, and we locked ourselves in. "How am I
supposed to get home?"
I
folded my arms as she plunked herself down to pee. Whoever decorated this place was into peach-scented candles and little peach-shaped soaps. It was disturbing.

She actually flipped her hair at me while sitting on the pot. "God, don't be such an asshole. Bebe's here, she can drive you. Or Alicia. Come on. He's cute."

"You're ditching me." I barely glanced
in
the mirror. My hair was still a mess. No amount of product would make it behave. Goddammit. "For a boy who goes to
public,
for Chrissake."

"He's hot. Call a cab. Jesus."

"Slut."

"Jealous bitch."

I let out a gusty sigh. "Can I have your keys at least, get my bag out of your trunk? And do you have a fucking condom?"

"All
condoms are
fucking
condoms, it's what they're
for."
The old joke broke us both up. I was pretty buzzed. So was she. None of it was important anyway. "I'm not going to screw him. Jesus. He's just really hot. I like him."

"You should be careful." It was wrong, or at least it felt wrong. We went on the buddy system. She could use me as an excuse to get away from a guy who got too grabby.

"Thanks, Mom." She finished and wiped. "Look, it's just—"

"It's fine. I'll get home somehow." I waited for my turn to pee.

She wouldn't look at me. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes were bright. Was she sweating? Just a little? "My door's unlocked, just pop the trunk."

I shrugged again. "I'll lock it after I do."

"You're such a worrywart. Jesus. Who's going to steal it with a bunch of rich kids around?"

Rich kids are the worst kind of thieves. Going to private schools had opened my eyes to that, at least. I didn't say it. She wouldn't understand. "Fine. Move. Let me pee."

That cracked us both up pretty good. We were friends again by the time we opened the bathroom door and she hurried off down the hall, waving over her shoulder at me. Her hair moved in a golden wave, her long legs smooth and unblemished; she switched her hips before she got to the stairs and disappeared. A redheaded girl in a strappy satin dress, exactly the wrong color blue for her skin tone, pushed past me into the bathroom.

I tucked a tiny peach-shaped soap in my skirt pocket. I'm a rich kid, too.

That was the last time I saw Chelsea alive.

* * * *

I was hungover and my feet hurt from dancing. Bebe and the gang decided the party was tragic as soon as I hooked up with them. They headed to the Rose, so I went, too, after I retrieved my bookbag from Chel's little red convertible. I'd closed it up nice and tight.

But when your dad comes in your room without knocking and says, "What did you do?" with his eyes narrowed and his lips drawn tight, none of that matters.

"I didn't do anything." I peered up at him. My mouth was sour and my head hurt. Morning sunlight fell in through the curtains I'd forgotten to pull closed.

"Five minutes and I want to see you downstairs." He gave me the patented Legal Eagle Stare, the one that makes people sweat when they're giving testimony.

I wondered just how drunk I'd gotten last night. It wasn't horrific or anything. I'd just been on a steady buzz all night, and did a couple of shots before Bebe dropped me off. She almost took out our mailbox on the way out of the driveway, too. But no harm done.

When I got downstairs, still almost-retching over the taste of toothpaste and my face stinging from cold water, my heart was beating like thunder. The fat guy in the breakfast nook all but shouted
cop!
Our housekeeper, Consuela, had disappeared. And Dad's hazel eyes were still narrowed.

I edged into the room and that's when the questioning started. I figured out pretty early it was Chelsea they were after, not me—and when the cop started in on me about Jack I got a bad feeling. A
really
bad feeling. Adults just don't ask these kinds of questions unless something's happened.

I surprised myself by starting to cry.

"That's enough," Dad said. And for once I was glad he's a total asshole. I mean, he can't help it. He's a lawyer.

"Can she come downtown and give a statement?" The fat man looked like he didn't think Dad was going to go for that, and his halitosis was making my nonexistent breakfast roll around inside my stomach. "And help come up with a sketch of this Jack kid? You—" This he directed at me. "You don't have any idea where he goes to school or anything, right?"

"He said he was public." I was actually hugging myself, the sharp points of my elbows digging into my cupped palms. "Going to public school," I added when the cop looked blank.

"Of course she'll cooperate." Dad stood up, smoothly, and the cop stood up, too. Morning sunlight poured in through the kitchen windows and scraped the inside of my brain clean. It was a Saturday morning before noon and something horrible had happened.

"Wait."
I
unhugged myself long enough to grab the back of a chair. "What happened? You still haven't told me what happened."

The cop gave me a long, weird look. He had piggy little eyes, and his gaze dropped below my chin and ended up
on
my chest. I was in the cami I wore last night, no bra, but still, a cop shouldn't
look
like that.

"We
don't
know," he said finally. "She's just missing."

Right then I knew he was lying. But they lie all the time, all
of
them. It's no big deal. Except right now it was, because it was Chelsea.

Dad got rid of him and came back into the kitchen. "Is there anything you didn't tell him?" He had his lawyer voice on. Whenever
he
argued with Mom he used that voice. I think it's why she left him. But he got custody, because of the prenup guarding his money and because he's an attorney.

I didn't know why he even went for custody instead of dumping me
on
Mom. He barely ever talked to me. But he's a collector.
I
guess I was just one more thing to keep when Mom committed the sin of leaving.

"Like what?" I held onto the chair. My knuckles were white. "She said she was going with him.
I
went with Bebe. What's really going on?"

He gave me the same weird look. But he didn't look mad, for once. "Get ready to go. We're going to be spending an hour or two in the police station."

* * * *

They found her naked in a ditch outside of town with her throat shredded and her legs obscenely splayed. I know because I saw it on the news when I got home, before the sketch of Jack's face went up. The sketch artist hadn't gotten him right, mostly because I couldn't put it into words. How he was
different.
I couldn't even explain it to myself.

The grainy, blurry video of the police swarming the ditch wouldn't have told anyone anything. It was all reading between the lines at first—
second disappearance this month, possibly sex-related, victim young teenage girl last seen at a party in West Hills.
And then the details from one of the tabloid shows: throat cut, body unclothed. They do it every time there's a nice juicy murder. The St. Mary's angle was spread across the screen.
Schoolgirl Murder!

The cops weren't even bent out of shape about the drugs and booze at the party. They didn't even ask. Just about Jack. Who was he? What exactly had he said? What had he been wearing? How tall was he? Did I know anything about him, anything at all?

Other kids had seen Chel leaving about midnight with a dark-haired guy, but nobody had talked to him. Only me, and I hadn't even said anything. All I'd done was listen to him and Chelsea flirt, and he hadn't said anything about himself at all.

Dad came into the kitchen and flicked the television off a little too hard, almost snapping the knob. I didn't realize I was hyperventilating until Consuela set flan in front of me, and clucked all over the kitchen, and made her special hot chocolate with cinnamon, too. She's been like that ever since she came to work for us, way before Mom left. I mean, who needs hot chocolate when it never gets cold down here? It's not called Sunny California for nothing.

It was almost like having Mom back.

Not really.

I finally went back up to my room and sat in the window seat with my knees pulled up. I was still kind of hungover. It was a bright sunny day. The wind had picked up, and the air was golden because of the dust and smoke wheezing through town. The Santa Anas had started.