The dark-haired girl drops a sandal and twists around to retrieve it, breaking from her friend. When she spots me, suspicion tightens her face. She looks as if she might say something, but her friend grabs her again by the hand and off they go. I exhale before realizing I’d been holding my breath.
I used to see her everywhere. I grabbed a girl on the L only last year, shouldered my way through a holiday-packed train car and barely managed to hook a hand around her purse strap before she plunged onto the platform.
“Kaycee,” I panted out, until she turned and I realized she was far too young—she was the age Kaycee was when she ran, not how old she would have been now.
One time, late senior year, I found her on her knees in the bathroom, the toilet flecked with blood. She kept saying the same thing, over and over, as I stood there wanting to feel vindicated but feeling nothing but panic and a hard dread: if this thing had come for Kaycee, none of us were safe.
She reached out a hand, but not as if she wanted me to take it. As if she was fumbling blind in the dark for something to hang on to. What’s happening to me? A convulsion worked through her and she turned to the toilet to retch.
I remember thinking the blood was far too red.
I remember, later, thinking, How would you fake that?
Chapter Four
I know where I’m supposed to be going, but I stall a little longer and end up in the drive-in parking lot of Sunny Jay’s: the seedy general store slash liquor shop where all the high school kids used to buy without ID. Myself included. Across the street, what used to be a patch of scrubby land used informally as a secondary dump has been cleared out, irrigated, and converted into a public playground: a few screaming kids coast down a bright red plastic slide and pump their legs on a spanking-new swing set while their parents wilt in the shade. A big sign on the chain-link fence reads Optimal Cares! Not exactly subtle.
I shift my car into park and practically jog to the door. Inside, I head straight for the meager wine section, scanning the crappy pink zinfandel box wines and the Yellow Tail and the jugs of Carlo Rossi. I’m about to pull a decent-looking albeit dusty Malbec from the shelf—hard to go wrong there—when someone speaks up behind me.
“Need help?”
“No, thanks—” I turn and the bottle slips. I barely manage to catch it.
There are a lot of things I’ve never forgotten about Barrens—a lot of things I can’t forget. The smell of chicken farms in summertime. The feeling of being stuck in the wrong place, or in the wrong body, or both. The pitch-black night, the silence.
But I have forgotten this: you can’t go anywhere in this town without running into someone. It’s one of the first things you shed in a city, the feeling of being watched, observed, and noticed; the feeling of racketing like a pinball between familiar people and places, and no way to get out. First Misha, and now…
“You need anything, you let me know.” Dave Condor—who always went by his last name—goes back to counting money into a register. His hair half obscures his face. Something about him always set me on edge, even in high school. Maybe because he was always quiet, fluid, like he’d just yawned into being.
I slide the bottle back onto the shelf and take a couple of steps toward the door, already regretting the detour. My dad would probably say this was punishment for wanting a drink in the first place.
Before I can make it outside, he looks up. “Wine’s pretty old. Not in a good way. More of beer and liquor people around here,” he tells me. “Not from here?”
He doesn’t recognize me. It feels like an achievement. I smile. “Why do you say that?” I ask, genuinely curious. Maybe the small-town stain can be scrubbed away after all.
But he just shrugs and grins. “I know all the girls in Barrens. The pretty ones especially.”
“I’m sure you do,” I say, and he squints at me, as if he’s seeing me through a filter of smoke.
I remember all the stories about Condor in high school. He got in trouble for dealing weed—I remember that—and he dropped out a few months shy of graduation, when I was still a junior. I remember Annie Baum getting in Condor’s face the same year he got his girlfriend, Stephanie, pregnant. So Condor, she said, I hear you like putana? Because Stephanie’s dad came from Ecuador. And Condor had stood up without saying a word, grabbed his bag, and walked out.
Putana was probably the only Spanish word Annie Baum ever learned.
But there was something else—something involving the Game. I never heard exactly. Condor was a slippery kind of person, always sliding through cracks just before you could pin him into place. He wasn’t popular, but he wasn’t unpopular, either. He lived outside the system. Even the stories about him got refracted and rounded off, bounced back to us before they’d had a chance to solidify. Brent O’Connell and his friends supposedly went to Condor’s house and beat the shit out of him. Was it something he did to Kaycee? Or tried to do? It was after Becky Sarinelli died, I know that. And I remember, too, that Condor and Becky Sarinelli were friends.
That’s the thing I remember most of all: that Condor was always in trouble. Or he was always finding trouble.
He stands up. “Want something drinkable?”
He moves out from behind the counter and crosses the room in a few steps. He still has that weird graceful quality, even though he’s built like a farmer, all shoulders and forearms and blunt hands.
“This one’s decent.” When he reaches for a bottle on the top shelf, his T-shirt rides up, and I see a tattoo wrapped around his torso: a pair of wings. “You like Bordeaux?”
“I like wine,” I say. “I’ll take it.” I follow him up to the register. I have no cash on me, so I hand him my card. When I see him puzzling over the name, I blurt out, “We actually know each other. I’m Abby Williams. I was a year behind you and we were in the same Spanish class.”
Unexpectedly, Condor laughs. “I do remember you now,” he says. “So you are from around here.”
“Originally.”
“Well, I’m surprised you remember me. I was never in class those days. Skipped out to smoke up in the woods behind the football field, most of the time. Hence, my kingdom.” He opens his arms to indicate the store, the narrow racks filled with cheap liquor, a whole aisle dedicated to the smallest bottles for the alcoholics who can afford only a little at a time. He doesn’t sound bitter, though. “So what are you doing back in this charming little town?”
“I’m working on a case, I’m a lawyer now. Environmental law.”
“Big time, huh? Good for you.” I can’t tell if he means it or not.
“Pretty junior, actually,” I say, not to downplay it, just to clarify.
“Still, you got out. That’s something. That’s a lot.” This time, I know he means it. “Here.” He hands me the bottle without ringing me up. “On me. A welcome-home present.”
“You don’t have to.” I reach for the bag, and as my hand makes contact with his, something passes between us, a quick transfer of chemistry and heat.
That’s the whole problem with instincts: they’re all fucking wrong.
“I want to.”