Take the Fall(4)

Gretchen. My best friend. How is that even possible?

“I don’t know,” I whisper.

She sinks down beside me. Dina is usually the calm, levelheaded member of our family, but since Friday night we’ve all transformed into more paranoid, neurotic versions of ourselves. She scrutinizes me until a tear escapes down my cheek.

“Oh, sweetie, I know you’re scared. I’m sorry.”

I wipe my face and she wraps me in her arms.

“I’m fine. I’ll be okay.” I say it as much for myself as for her.

“Look, I get it, Sonia.” She shakes her head. “It’s busy down here, all you have to think about is french fries and sodas and whether someone wanted dressing on the side or extra cheese. But you need to give yourself room to let all of this process. Maybe if you do, you’ll remem—”

“There’s nothing wrong with my memory.” I take a painful breath. “I just never saw a face.”

She takes my hand and squeezes. My mom says I’m an exact copy of her little sister, which always used to make me blush. We do have the same facial expressions, dark curly hair, and bright green eyes, but she has a sprinkle of freckles across her nose that make her look even younger than she is, and she’s taller and more athletic. When Dina took me and Gretchen out to a movie once, Gretchen told a group of cute high school guys that Dina and I were sisters. Dina started to correct her, but Gretchen kept embellishing until Dina went with it and even flirted with one of the guys. Dina laughed about it later, but it was clear Gretchen had made her day. The realization that Gretchen will never do anything like that again sits heavy in my chest. I cover my face with my hands.

I’m startled back into the moment when my uncle starts yelling.

“What do you mean you don’t know where she is?”

“She’s here, I just saw—”

“I can’t believe you let her convince you this was okay, Marlene.”

“What was I supposed to do, lock her upstairs?”

“Under the circumstances? Yes.”

“Don’t start in on the parenting bullshit, Noah, if I—oh—” My mother rushes to where Dina and I sit behind boxes of plastic straws and paper napkins. “Sonia, thank God. Are you okay?”

“Sonia’s fine,” Dina says, rising to face her older brother and sister. “She’s just going upstairs for a bit.”

I stand to protest, but blood rushes to my head and I have to steady myself against a shelf. Maybe I should lie down for a little while. Uncle Noah’s face softens when he sees me. He looks a little like old, out-of-shape Elvis when he frowns.

“Those reporters get in your face?” he asks.

“You look exhausted.” My mom feels my forehead. “Dina’s right, you should go upstairs.”

“Isn’t the sheriff coming by?”

My mom and Uncle Noah exchange a glance.

“What?”

“He got tied up, but he’ll be by later, sweetie.”

I look from my mom, to my uncle, and finally to Dina, who seems just as clueless as me. “What’s going on?”

“We’ll talk about it when the sheriff gets here,” my mom says.

“Something happened, didn’t it?” My voice goes shrill; I knew this was coming. “What is it? Did they find something?”

“It’s nothing like that,” Mom says. “Now please, go upstairs.”

“Just tell her, Marlene.” Noah double-checks the lock on the security door.

My mom gives me this look like she wants to throw herself between me and her own words. “Marcus Perez claims to have an alibi. They had to let him go.”





TWO


THE LAST OF THE DAYLIGHT fades from my little bedroom until I’m left in blackness. I tiptoe across the wood floor and turn my closet light on. To chase away the shadows, and whatever else might lurk in the dark.

The sheriff is still out looking for bad guys and all I can do is sit here thinking up my own.

If Marcus has an alibi, he couldn’t have attacked me. He couldn’t have killed Gretchen. He wouldn’t go to jail. I can’t decide if I should be relieved or scared.

A long-buried part of me never wanted it to be him, but it made so much sense.

And if not Marcus, who else could it have been?

I bend to touch a small carving inside my closet door that says Zack & Ken. The edges of the letters are so worn they look like they’ve become part of the floor rather than something slashed into it. I have no idea who Zack and Ken were, but when I was little I made up personalities for them and they became the boys in the closet who kept monsters away. I leave the door ajar and climb under the quilt with my clothes on. Some primitive part of my brain feels safer this way.

I close my eyes, focusing on neutral things like the weather getting warmer, Aunt Dina’s recipe for rainbow cookies, and what I’ll wear to commencement. But my eyes burn when I think Gretchen will never see another spring. Rainbow cookies were her favorite. And when I imagine her absence at graduation—an awful punctuation mark at the end of everyone’s high school memories—tears spill down my cheeks. I curl into a ball, fighting waves of fear, guilt.

It didn’t have to be her. It could have, should have been me.

I pick up my phone. All my feeds are clogged with memorials to Gretchen and people voicing shock and despair over her death and what happened to me. But there’s nothing concrete about who did this. Nothing I didn’t already hear at the diner. I like a few statuses and all the condolences, but I can’t bring myself to post anything or comment. That would make it too real.