Once, Anna had told me how she imagined she’d get ready for a date. “I’d want to wear a dress,” she’d said, her voice dreamy. “A pretty one. And perfume. I’d want to smell like lavender.”
—
CASSEROLES WERE THE STANDARD TOKENS of condolence in Birdton, and within three days of Anna’s death, we received eleven of them. The only one we ate was the one from the Andersons. The Andersons were notable for being the only black family in Birdton, and their casserole was notable for being the only one without cream of mushroom soup.
I assumed when the bell rang, on the fourth day, that we were about to receive our twelfth casserole. Instead, when Dad opened the door, the policeman from the hospital was on our front porch, holding not a casserole, but a notepad.
After an awkward pause, Dad ushered him in, told him to sit anywhere he wanted. Mom asked him if he wanted coffee, or if perhaps he’d prefer tea.
“No thank you,” he said politely as he sat down on the edge of a chair, notebook in hand. Unlike some of the other people who’d dropped by—neighbors and family friends who seemed ready to camp out in our living room for as long as necessary—he appeared to have an efficient visit in mind.
“I’m sorry for the delay,” he began. “We’ve been a bit short-staffed, and there was some confusion at the beginning, so it took longer than we thought to get to this point. But I wanted to let you know that the police chief himself has been very involved in this case, and we now have some information.”
He paused and looked at me and my parents, all seated on the couch across from him, as if waiting for a sign that he should continue.
I glanced at my dad. He in turn looked at my mom. Tiny as she was, all small bones and narrow shoulders, she managed to look more solid than he did at that moment. “All right,” she said to the policeman. “Tell us.”
The policeman nodded. “Well, we’ve been talking to kids at the high school. Anna’s friends and classmates. Trying to figure out if there was anything we should know about what happened.”
“Anything like what?” Mom asked.
“Just standard questions. Seeing if anyone had any information that might be useful. There was a big party that night down in the quarry, and most of the kids we talked to were down there. Anyway, we managed to find someone who knew what happened.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Lily Stevens.”
Lily. It made sense that it would be her. She and Anna had been partnered for a history project last spring and they’d become friends—and then in the fall they’d joined cross-country together. For a long time, Lily’s claim to fame had been her parents’ dramatic breakup, which involved her dad hightailing to Florida with his secretary, leaving behind only a sticky note on the kitchen table. Then, over the summer she’d suddenly gotten very pretty—in a cat-eyed, witchy kind of way—gotten a boyfriend, and become completely insufferable. Pretty or not, I was fairly sure she was, and had always been, a moron, although Anna had tried to combat this idea by saying that surely Lily’s being in calculus with me was solid evidence to the contrary.
“Lily’s mom was out of town,” the officer continued. “Some seminar on”—he blinked at his notes—“spiritual healing. Lily said that she and Anna were going to hang out at her place—have some ‘girl time.’ When Anna didn’t show up, Lily figured she’d been caught sneaking out. So it looks like it’s what we thought—that she lost her footing climbing out her window. There’ll be an autopsy with a toxicology screening, but we expect that to simply confirm that’s what happened.” He stopped and nodded, as if to punctuate his sentence.
“ ‘Girl time’?” I repeated, incredulous. The phrase seemed plucked from another era, conjuring images of paper dolls and lemonade, pastel-colored magazines and curling irons. “Girl time” was not what Anna had in mind for that night. “Girl time” did not involve a change of clothes or perfume. “That’s what Lily said?”
He consulted his notebook, scanning the page with a quick glance, and then nodded. “Yes. Something about movies and wine coolers.”
“Movies and wine coolers? Just the two of them?”
“Yes,” the officer said.
“At the station, they asked if Anna had a boyfriend.”
“Yes, and you said she didn’t,” he said. “That’s what all her classmates said as well.”
“I know I said that. But she was wearing a dress. She was wearing perfume—lavender.”
He shrugged. “Girls do that, right?”
“Anna didn’t. She and Lily weren’t planning to hang out by themselves. Lily’s lying.”
“Jess—” Mom’s voice was quiet, measured, and I turned to her, hopeful that she’d back me up on this. Instead, she shook her head. “I know this wasn’t typical for Anna, but that doesn’t mean Lily’s lying. Isn’t Lily dating some boy at school?”
I nodded. “Charlie. Charlie Strumm.”
“Okay, so maybe Lily and Anna thought he and a friend of his might come over, but there weren’t any concrete plans. Or maybe Anna just wanted to get dressed up.”
I stared at her. “Since when did Anna do that? Get dressed up just to get dressed up? Put on perfume?”
“People do that sometimes, sweetheart. People change, try new things—”
“No. That doesn’t make any sense. Anna was going to see someone. She was going to see a boy.” I was positive. Because of the dress. Because of the perfume. Because of something even less tangible that I couldn’t explain.
Mom’s eyes blurred. “Please don’t yell. I know you and Anna had been fighting more recently, and that must make this even
