Friends Like These(83)

“Well, from the journal, it doesn’t sound like he was breaking in anywhere. The group met him in some off-campus bar and invited him back to party on the roof. Guy was drunk, got too close to the edge, and slipped. Bad accident made a whole lot worse when they didn’t call anyone. Stupid kids.”

“Not drunk, no way,” Dan says. “Not Paretsky. He had some kind of metabolic thing or gluten intolerance or allergy or something. I remember. He was a couple years ahead at Hudson High. A single drink, and he’d get real sick. Vomiting and all that. Ended up being everybody’s designated driver. Shitty hand of cards, huh? First that and then the roof. That was the first thing I thought when I heard he’d died.”

Dan is still talking, but I’m not listening anymore now that I’ve reached the bar. I lift the ice tongs, the engraving there clear for the first time. Two looping letters, in the exact same font as the corkscrew.

“LG,” I say out loud, looking around.

Finally, I see it, the bronze plaque on the wall above the bar: LOCUST GROVE, EST 1883.





ALICE


I finally have Evan Paretsky’s address! And Hudson is only an hour away from Poughkeepsie.

I’m still not exactly sure what I’m going to do when I get there. Maybe I will just leave a note anonymously at Evan’s house, like I told Maeve I planned to. His mom does seem very, very angry— I saw her on the news. Not just about Evan’s death, but also about him being falsely accused. It’s hard to imagine she’ll react well to me admitting I was involved.

And, yes, I know I could just mail a note. But I need to at least see her read it. To know for sure that she got it.

Maeve said to mail the note certified— she wasn’t even joking. But she also said that I had to take my medication before she’d even consider helping me. And I did take it. It was good anyway because I think my mom was planning to come up for a “visit,” too— her code for a meds check. I know it wasn’t helping anything, me not taking them. But I have now, and I already feel myself settling. Eventually I’ll settle too low, that’s always the problem— the place where my brain moves like sludge. But for now I’m in that sweet middle ground.

I’ll ask Derrick for his car on the way out. I know he’ll say yes. He always does. And Maeve will come, I could see it in her eyes— she’s already on my side. She knows I need to do this. Besides, she owes me. I let her keep that last shirt she stole from me without even saying a word.





DERRICK


SATURDAY, 8:41 P.M.

I felt relieved when I saw Maeve waiting at the end of Jonathan’s dark driveway in her leggings and sweatshirt, arms filled with the jackets she’d brought for us. God, I really was so in love with her. And, no, our conversation earlier hadn’t gone as far as I wanted it to, but something had shifted between us. I could feel it.

Maeve opened the back and tossed the pile of jackets in before getting in on the passenger side.

“Are you okay?” she asked as she climbed in.

I nodded, gripping the steering wheel so I wasn’t tempted to reach for her. “I feel like a jerk, but I’m fine.”

“Keith is the jerk, not you. You were trying to be a good friend. Where have you looked so far?”

I’d looked everywhere, that was the bottom line. I’d been at it for nearly an hour already. And I’d texted Keith at least fifteen times before getting back in the car and driving around town. Of course, if he didn’t want me finding him, he wouldn’t be found. I’d known the risks— that Keith might be lying about meeting Finch, using me so that he could buy drugs downtown. That maybe he’d even slip away and head to the train station to avoid rehab. But I hadn’t been thinking very clearly. I was too worried that Keith was going to see Finch, and that Finch would tell him what I’d done that morning, maybe also about the pictures of Maeve in my bag. What if it all got back to her?

After I left the Falls, I’d made three bigger and bigger circles around downtown, weaving my way up and down the streets, but there was no sign of Keith. There was no sign of anyone besides the customers going in and out of the Falls, including apparently Jonathan and Stephanie, according to her text, but I hadn’t seen them any of the times I passed.

Stephanie did tell me that Keith had seemed frightened of something or someone when they last spoke. But she didn’t know of who or what, so the information succeeded only in making me feel more stressed. It seemed pretty obvious now that whatever was going on didn’t have anything to do with Finch.

And so three times I’d driven past the rest of the stores, all long closed, and the big old Victorian homes on the edge of downtown, disintegrating and boarded up until I finally accepted it: I’d lost Keith. I pulled to the side at the dark dead end of Main Street, alongside those once-beautiful houses, to text Maeve. To make sure Keith hadn’t stopped back at Jonathan’s house— and because I just needed to talk to her.

Keith’s gone.

A response, right away: What?

I know, I’m an idiot. He took off.

There was a long pause. I imagined Maeve sitting in the living room, debating what to say to me. Annoyed, of course. They were all going to be annoyed with me. She was probably wondering how much she should let me off the hook. Maybe even because she felt sorry for me, or obligated. Because of my feelings for her. But I didn’t want Maeve’s pity. I wanted Maeve.