“I don’t care about it, okay? It’s so not important. What, you’re afraid that once I see it, I won’t want to hang out with her anymore, right? That once the mystery of what’s underneath those bandages is over, the fascination will have worn off for me. Or that maybe it’ll disgust me? The lack of symmetry? Is that what you’re thinking?”
“No, Jay,
“A person like me?”
“Yes.” She leaned forward, tapped a note into her computer. “I’ll have to write a letter to the DA about you, of course.”
“Going to tell him I’m a nut job, right? Thanks a bunch, Doctor.”
“I’m going to tell him you’re a great kid.”
I was actually touched, but not so much that I was above setting my magic phone onto her desk and ripping off her BlackBerry’s new password.
Later that Friday afternoon and into the night, I raided Schmidt’s patient files for Angela Sammick’s case folder. Angela had made no mention of Dave Bendix, but she had body image issues that Schmidt rated severe. She noted that Angela had a plastic surgery wish list on perfectbeauty.com. I torched through the firewall, maybe five seconds. Angela had uploaded pictures of herself. Using the site’s graphics tools, she reconstructed her body, but most of her wish list focused on her face, new nose, chin, cheekbones.
I went out onto the fire escape with a cup of what I thought was instant cocoa until I sipped it. It was one of those no-frills brands, and the label had said chocolate mint, but it tasted more like boiled Scope. The fresh air felt great for all of ten seconds before it became too cold for somebody wearing a tee and boxers. The stars didn’t so much twinkle through the pines as sever them.
I sat on the living room floor, pressing my back against the radiator grate. Across the room, the wall looked weird. Until two days ago, my father’s paintings had covered it entirely, gifts from friends and artists. But now there was a box of blank wall where the painting hocked for my bail money had been, I couldn’t remember which. The art had become ordinary, the way you rarely look out a window to take in the view after a month or so of living in a place.
Nicole called. “My dad just left,” she said. She sounded really groggy. “I can’t drive. Come over. Please?”
The security company SUV was back out in front of the Castro house. The door opened. Sylvia was teary. She led me to the kitchen, where Mrs. Castro was crying. “A hit job,” she said. “The detective thinks it’s possible the Sammick girl was paid to do it.”
I’d been contemplating the same idea on the ride over. That new Angela on perfectbeauty.com didn’t come cheap, $135,000. Now I understood why Detective Barrone hadn’t seemed too happy when Angela was caught. She was holding back on the arrest in the hope Angela would make contact with the person who hired her to do the hit on Nicole. Could Dave Bendix have promised to pay for all that plastic surgery in exchange for Angela’s burning Nicole? Why, though? How could burning Nicole help Dave? It couldn’t. Being connected in any way to the attack almost guaranteed he wouldn’t get into Harvard.
“Your father’s book,” Mrs. Castro said. “Did you remember to bring it?”
I hadn’t. “How’s Nicole about all this?”
“Actually, she seems to be hanging pretty tough about the Sammick situation. We just got the call. Emma died this morning.”
Her bedroom was cold and dark, but sweat glistened on her forehead. The only light came from a miserable crescent moon being dunked into brown clouds. She was lying on top of the covers. Her pajama bottoms stuck to her legs. She wore a thick hoodie. The front was rolled up to cool her sweaty stomach. The window was open. I went to close it. “Leave it,” she said. “Please.” Her hair was messy, straggly over the bandage on her cheek. She put out her hand for me to hold it. “Prozac,” she said.
I looked to her night table for a prescription bottle and found none. “Where is it?”
She shook her head. “The shrink made me take it. Or made Mom make me.”
“I thought Schmidt was a psychologist.” You needed to be a psychiatrist to prescribe Prozac. My father was on it after my mother was killed.
“The other shrink,” Nicole said. “I can’t get out of bed now, but I don’t want to be asleep. I took her with me to the national Girl Scouts conference speech last spring. The pageant directors, you know? They set up these events. This was one of my first speeches after the coronation. All those mothers looking up at me, their daughters looking up to me. I was trembling. Emma calmed me down. She introduced me, not a twitch of nervousness I could see. She spoke so well, a little adult. She was amazing. ‘You are so going to rock this,’ she whispered into my ear as I took the podium. ‘No way you can’t. I’m your good luck charm.’ She was, too. She was my good luck angel. People say it all the time: The world was a better place with her in it. You dismiss it as a cliche, but the problem is it’s true. It also means that the world is a worse place without her in it.” She put her hand to my cheek. She pulled me to her so that I was spooning her. She smelled of strawberry shampoo and antiseptic. We watched the moonlight go weak on the walls with the thickening clouds. After a few minutes she started to breathe more slowly and then snore, very lightly. Then she sneezed and fell into a sneezing fit. She went to the bathroom.
The neighbor’s cat was at the window, staring in. When I went to close the window, the cat jumped away. Nicole watched from the bathroom, blowing her nose.
FORTY-EIGHT
The next day, Saturday, I called Nicole’s cell, and she didn’t pick up. I tried the house phone and got the machine. When I got home from work Saturday night, I hadn’t heard back from her. Sunday afternoon, I got her mom on the house phone. “She’s sick with a terrible flu, Jay. She’s been sleeping all weekend.”
I hadn’t slept all weekend. I had been trying to figure out what my father was doing in Marathon. I couldn’t get it out of my head, what he told me that night when I asked him what he’d done with all his attempts at painting. “I burned them,” he’d said.
I met Cherry at Sbarro for a slice. “Here’s the thing about boys,” she said. “You’re all idiots. This isn’t PMS bitchy she’s going through, okay? She lost a sister.”
“Technically, they weren’t sisters.”
“Technically, you’re brainless. This is exactly what I’m talking about. You need to give her space, Jay. Tell me you didn’t text her.”
“A couple of times. Okay, four.”
“You’re worse than a girl. Give her a few days. How are you doing, though? About Emma, I mean. Are you okay?”
“Me? Fine. I mean, yes it sucks, but you know. It’s not like I knew her. Collectively I spent maybe a couple of hours with her. Seriously, I’m cool.”
“You’re so not cool, you poor boy.” She pulled me into a hug. I was exhausted, and I sort of cried into her hair. “Crying can be sexy when it’s done in a rugged albeit sensitive dude way,” she said. “Can I bite your earlobe? Just a nibble? No?”
My suspension ended the next morning, Monday. I was eating by myself, under the B-wing stairs. A bunch of dudes from wrestling rolled up on me. Rick Kerns was suspended for another week, but this other heavyweight was happy to fill in for him as pack leader. He nodded. “Spaceman. Heard you and Dave are cool about Nicole.”
“Nothing’s going on,” I said.
“Whatever,” he said. “Hey, that was ballsy. What you did for her, I mean. Jay, seriously, man, come to practice sometime. We need dudes like you on the team.” He nodded again as he headed off.
“Later, Jay,” somebody else said as they left.
