“Ethan,” he says, and I sit down, staring at him.
Uncle Gavin exhales through his nose. “The police found Marisa less than an hour ago,” he says. “She was in her car. She’s dead, Ethan.”
I stare at my uncle. My mind has just gone blank, like a TV when the power goes out. Service interruption, please stand by. “What?” I manage.
“Her car was parked behind a warehouse off Fulton Industrial,” he says. “She was in the trunk. The police think she was strangled, but that’s not clear yet.”
I lean back in my chair, stunned. Marisa is dead? Murdered? Horror wells up in me, filling that mental blankness. But what is almost worse than the news is a small voice at the back of my skull. Lucky for you, that voice says. I want to vomit. “No,” I say aloud.
Uncle Gavin leans in front of me and grips my upper arms. “Ethan,” he says. “You have to tell me. Did you do it?”
I stare at him, eyes wide. “Did I—Jesus Christ!” I throw his arms off me and stand up so fast the chair shoots back across the floor on its casters. “I didn’t kill Marisa! Jesus. No. Shit.” I can’t think. I’m wheezing, taking huge gasps of air. And suddenly I can’t take in enough air. It’s as if my windpipe just shrank to the size of a pinhole. I stare at my uncle, waving my hands. I can’t breathe.
“Ethan.” It’s Frankie. He moves into my view, edging Uncle Ethan away. “Ethan, look at me. Look at me.” I look at Frankie, my eyes wide, mouth gaping open. “You’re hyperventilating,” he says. “Just look at me and breathe in, okay? Breathe in, and then let a breath out. In, out.” He takes my hands in his. “Here. Cup your hands together, okay? Yeah, like that. Now bend over and breathe into your hands, okay? Like that.” I bend at the waist and lower my face into my cupped hands and do what he says. In, out, slowly, into my hands. In, out. After several breaths, the gray fuzzy feeling that was encroaching at the edges of my vision falls away, and I’m able to sit up and take in a slow, deep breath, then let it out.
“Thanks,” I say weakly.
Frankie nods. I take in another breath, let it out. It’s amazing that I’ve done this all my life, breathing, almost always without thinking about it, and then the second it seizes up, I’m helpless as a trout tossed up onto a riverbank.
Uncle Gavin is talking to Caesar about something. Marisa’s phone—that’s it. Because Marisa is dead. Someone killed her. The thought is abhorrent, but I find myself repeating it in my head, as if that will allow me to wrap my hands around it. Marisa is dead. Someone killed her.
And I have her phone.
Sweet Jesus.
I nearly hyperventilate again, but I bend at the waist and drop my head between my knees, dignity be damned, and concentrate on not passing out.
By the time I sit up, warily, and regain my bearings, Caesar has opened the microwave and is removing the phone, unplugging it and then turning it off. Uncle Gavin has put on a pair of black leather gloves he pulled out of his jacket pocket, and he takes the phone from Caesar. Frankie has a container of bleach wipes and pulls out a wipe and hands it to Uncle Gavin, who wipes every surface of the phone carefully. I watch all of this as if it’s a slightly boring crime procedural on television.
“You’re sure there’s nothing?” Uncle Gavin asks Caesar.
“No,” Caesar says.
My brain feels like it has congealed, conscious thought reduced to a slog, but I clear my throat to speak, and my uncle turns his dark eyes on me. “She knows … she knew what happened to my parents,” I say. “To me and Susannah. Marisa knew.”
As usual, I can’t read the expression on Uncle Gavin’s face. “She was disturbed, that woman,” he says. “What happened to your parents was in the news. She must have done her research.”
“She did,” Caesar says. “We looked at her search history.”
Uncle Gavin shakes his head. “Vulture,” he says, his mouth turned down in disgust.
A thought emerges, like glimpsing someone skating through fog at night. “She had the name of one of the men who shot my parents,” I say. “In her calendar. And another guy. The two that … got arrested running drugs.”
His tone dark, Uncle Gavin says, “I saw her calendar, her texts. Her twits or whatever you call them. She was stalking you, Ethan. Trying to learn everything about you.”
“But … she had their names in her phone,” I say. “Maybe she called them—”
“Ethan,” my uncle says. “How could she have done? One of them is in prison.”
“Not Ponytail,” I say. “Maybe she, I don’t know, found him somehow—”
“Ethan,” my uncle says again. “This woman lied to you. She took a job at your school to worm her way into your life and get some sort of … thrill from your own misery. She was a vampire, Ethan. She fed on what happened to you.” He puts a hand on my shoulder. “And someone killed her, Ethan. It’s a terrible thing, her death, but she was preying on you and your sister. You realize that, yes? And now her phone doesn’t do anything good for you. If you take it to the police, what will they say? What will they think?”
He pauses and considers me. I know what he means—the police will want to question me, want to know why I have her phone. They will treat me like a suspect in her murder. Fear starts to wind itself around my throat and lungs, threatening to squeeze. I feel trapped, at the dead end of a dark alley. Uncle Gavin seems to be waiting. “What do I do?” I ask.
Uncle Gavin pauses, then says something to Caesar that I don’t catch, and Caesar hesitates, but then he walks
