Police cruisers parked along the weed-dotted access road connecting the street with the orchard. A few neighbors hiked up to watch. A boy our age came the nearest and froze, a scarecrow in between trees. I watched him pull a notebook from his back pocket and take notes. Graham walked in his direction. My mom had arrived by then; Dad had returned from helping Ina.
My parents told me to pay attention to the plainclothes officer talking to me. He asked if I recognized the girl, and suddenly I wasn’t sure. “Maybe,” I said.
I closed my eyes and saw my face instead of hers. The officer asked if I could take another look. It was important. I wanted to give her a name. Help her. My parents and the officer crawled back up the rock with me.
She was a stranger. The wind became a dusty, battering force, snatching sheets of paper from a clipboard, skimming them across the dirt until they netted in the weeds. Graham was alone with the melon. The new boy and his notebook were gone.
As my parents guided me away, I turned to glimpse the girl’s face between the officer’s legs.
“She’s like me,” I said to my mom. A girl.
It was the officer who replied. “Nah, hon, nothing like you, just a runaway asking for it.” He licked his thumb and brushed away a fleck of dirt on his otherwise shiny boots. “These girls leave their nothing towns and head west or south to Los Angeles and they end up hitchhiking on the interstate. Get into the wrong truck. Get hooked up with the wrong people. Drugs—” Mom’s hands pressed over my ears. Too late.
When we were home Mom made chai and put my iPod on in my bedroom. Dad brought out an old nightlight that projected stars on the ceiling; its white constellations hardly registered in the summer evening light. A tear leaked from his eye when he kissed me on the forehead. After they left me, I sat in my desk chair at my window staring out at the gray ocean. Nah, hon, she’s nothing like you, just a runaway. I couldn’t get the officer’s voice out of my head. She was a girl. Untied sneaker. Temporary tattoo of a heart on her ankle that had faded with washing. Ordinary. I was ordinary. How had she asked to be hurt?
She looked like one of the girls who were sometimes on the beach. Viv and I had seen them once or twice. Viv had radar for girls just above high school age. Free girls. Those who didn’t live here. Dramatic lives full of shrieking and chasing one another around their circle and falling into the laps of boys with them. Viv tore a slit up her Free People dress after we watched them. Stretched the neckline so it hung off her shoulders. For a while she talked about hanging out with them, in the same dreamy tone she used when speaking about Luke McHale. She heard from a classmate, who heard from their older sister, who bought pot from a girl on the beach once, that there were teenagers who came to Seven Hills for its fabled beach and waves. Word had spread that you could camp at night in the Ghost Tunnel, officially the Golden Hills Tunnel, that there were plenty of orchards to steal fruit from, and that the police wouldn’t bother you unless you drew too much attention.
I wondered then, in my room, after finding the girl’s body, was she one of those surfing-by-day-and-camping-by-night-in-the-tunnel girls?
Neighbors gathered on the Marlos’ front lawn the next day. Viv tried to eavesdrop from the porch swing. They shooed her away before she learned anything useful. But she could tell the adults had hunches.
That same day, a woman I recognized only from seeing her on parade floats visited us. Dad introduced her as Mayor Carver. Mom said they needed to have a grown-up talk with me. The woman started out nice. So sorry you had such a scare. Her tone grew accusatory as she warned me not to share details of the incident with anyone but my parents. You don’t want to scare people more than they already are, do you? I didn’t think so. Then you shouldn’t mention how she looked. No need to tell anyone about the T-shirt and the rocks and all that nonsense. I didn’t answer.
On the third day after, Viv, Graham, and I were in the barn. I was sprawled on the floor, back of my skull on the flat of a raised nailhead protruding from a plank. It hurt, but I was the kind of bored that makes you pick a scab, that used to make Graham and me dare each other to reach into a snake hole. Viv was tossing chocolate-covered raisins at the book in Graham’s hands, and he was complaining that I’d given up on the true crime paperback we were three-quarters of the way through, each taking our turn with a chapter, when there was a knock on the slider. I sat up too fast. Amid the stars firing off, the strange boy with the notebook waved through the glass. There was a rush of relief, like I’d been raw and itchy waiting for him to show up already, and once he had I could be normal again.
Harry’s family had moved into the ranch house up the street, the one the grown-ups called the rental. Harry’s dad was trying to resuscitate its patchy lawn; his mom was giving the shutters a fresh coat of paint. Harry came searching through the apple orchard like we’d drawn him in as the sirens had three days before. It seemed close to magic to me. Really, Graham had hung out with Harry the day before and invited him to find us in the barn the next afternoon.
It was obvious that our threesome had been inadequate once he was with us. He plopped down on a beanbag chair and showed us his notebook, full of observations from the few days he’d lived in Seven Hills. He’d noticed things from when I found the dead girl that I hadn’t. Like that an officer started taking pictures of Graham’s watermelon in the dirt like it was a part of the investigation. And that a woman who had a dog wearing a sweater stood chatting with the police. Mayor Carver, Graham informed us. Harry was born to be a journalist.
Before I realized it, I admitted that I’d been dreaming about the dead girl. Graham admitted he’d been late with the watermelon because Stepdad Number Three refused to give him a ride; Graham hoped his mother would divorce him soon. Harry had a way of getting you to say what you were dying to, just by being a good listener.
Viv, gnawing on her nails, stayed quiet and eyed Harry. He tossed one of her chocolate-covered raisins into the air; her caution waned as one after another pinged off his teeth. He was terrible at catching them, but his eyes shone as he kept trying. He was nothing like the boys at school with their easily shattered egos, boys who lashed out if you laughed at them. Eventually Viv blurted, “You didn’t see me at the rock when we found the girl because I had to go in the house and wait for the police with my mom. She has cancer. It means she gets tired really easily. But I was there.”
Harry gave a solemn nod, seeming to understand that even in this awful thing, no one wanted to feel left out.
How didn’t the three of us combust without Harry?