Lost Girls

starting in with her instructions to the jury about not talking to a soul with regard to what you heard today or will come to hear over the course of the trial, et cetera, et cetera.

I should be pleased, but instead I feel the bubble and pitch of rising nausea. Everything inside made tight. I try to shake it by looking over at my client for whom I've just done a more than adequate job, but the sight of Tripp's drooping face just makes it worse.

An unwelcome feeling. But one so strong and unrelenting that for the time I have to wait before it passes I can't help but think there must be something in it.

chapter 26

Someone entering the hotel and climbing the stairs toward my room. I don't hear this although I'm still certain, like knowing you're being watched while sitting alone in your room. And now it occurs to me that maybe I've been alone in the upper floors of the Empire Hotel too long altogether. I've come to know all of its yawnings and groans to the point that there is now an unsettled intimacy between us. This is why I feel the footsteps on the stairs before I hear them, deliberate and hollow. Sharp knuckles through the wood.

I don't ask who's there, don't look around for something heavy or sharp just in case. Instead I go to the door without thinking and pull back the bolt.

''Hey, Mr. Crane.''

Eyes open to a soggy Laird Johanssen, the three-quarter-length sleeves of his Meat Loaf T-shirt dripping Murdoch rain down to his fingertips. It's the Bat Out of Hell album cover with a demon biker blasting out of his grave riding a flaming Harley.

''Laird,'' I sigh, and realize that I'd been holding my breath. ''How did you know this was my room?''

''Guy downstairs,'' he says, shaking back the jellied cables of his hair. ''Told him I was your associate.''

I stand back to let him in and immediately Laird's presence in the room feels absurd. Nobody else has been in here the whole time of my stay and now that I have a visitor it's the doughnut-shop kid with the glasses permanently stalled at the pimply precipice of his nose. I walk back to the desk and sit down but for a moment Laird remains fixed just inside the door. Looks around at the pages of The Murdoch Phoenix on the walls, his head slipping into a slow nod.

''Ve-ry in-teresting,'' he says in a German-psychiatrist voice.

''Well, it's a pleasure to see you again, too, Laird, but what can I do for you?''

''Actually, it's more like what I can do for you.''

He moves over to the bed and sits on the edge of the mattress that barks loudly at having to bear his sudden weight. Then he pulls his arms out of the straps of his backpack and zips it open, a vicious grin playing over his lips.

''Forgot to give you something the other day,'' he says, and pulls out a pink folder, waves it in front of his face as though fanning himself.

''What is it?''

''What do you think?''

The grin, now less vicious than merely lopsided, stitched onto his mouth as though by some botched surgical procedure.

''I can't guess, Laird.''

''I liberated it after word got out at school that Ashley and Krystal had gone missing. It was only a matter of time before Principal Warren would come down with the pliers to break open their lockers and hand everything over to the pigs. So I beat her to it, and managed to preserve this little beauty.''

He waves the folder again, and I resist the urge to jump up from my chair, snatch it from his hands, and smack him across the face with it.

''How'd you get into their lockers without breaking them open yourself?'' I ask instead.

''Well, one way was to know their combinations.'' He says ''combinations'' in four distinct syllables as though speaking to a child.

''They told you?''

''Fuck no, man. I just knew.''

''And you took whatever it is you have there for yourself.''

''That would be the picture.''

His mouth gaping at me in what flips between mirth and the masking of chronic pain. But then I think: That's what being a teenager is, isn't it? Trying to have a good old giggle while seriously wondering if things might be better if you were dead, or maybe made someone else dead. Youth as a carousel of mirth and pain, over and over and all at once. Usually you only see it for what it is after you've graduated into the shady protections of adulthood and can look back with the wish to do it all over again, except this time in the name of vengeance. But Laird seems to understand all this even as he lives it. Maybe this kid is a little too smart for Murdoch, too gifted for the gifted program. Or maybe he's only exactly as he appears: a weird little fucker who's decided to translate his unpopularity and useless froth of hormones into the kind of superiority found only in the true voyeur. Laird wants to believe there's been a role for him in all of this, in the lives of Krystal and Ashley and all the other hot girls. And now he wants to believe he has a role for me too.

''You're a smart guy, aren't you, Laird?''

''I didn't bring my report card along with me, but yes. I'd say so.''

''You sure seem to know a lot about Krystal and Ashley, anyway.''

''Work, work, work.''

''Did you know everything about them?''

''Not everything.''

''What color were their eyes?''

''Blue. Both.''

''How much did they weigh?''

''Light. Whatever. I don't know.''

He stops waving the file. The grin sags.

''Why did you ask me that?''

''No reason.''

''Hey, man, you're not--''

''No, no, I'm not anything. Relax.''

But now Laird looks anything but relaxed. Arms stiff at his sides, a look on his face as though he requires immediate use of the facilities.

''C'mon, let's see what you've brought me,'' I say, pitching up for a jovial tone. What I don't want is him running out of here without letting me see his little prize. ''Hey, now, let's have a peek,'' I laugh, and now Laird laughs, too, or at least allows the unfortunate grin to return to his face, and hands the folder over to me. Inside there's a single sheet of paper that I pull close so that everything else but its text is blocked out of what I can see.

Rules of the Literary Club

No boys allowed (except for Dad).

No story can be stopped until it's finished.

No real names. No real families.

Everything is make believe.

The words carefully handwritten in blue ink, each sentence resting on dead-straight, invisible lines. Below them, one next to the other, two lipstick kisses for signatures. Perfect red, every wrinkle left marked on the page. The paper held close enough that I can read their lips. The color of their skin surrounding open mouths like maps of