Love in the Time of Serial Killers(25)

Sometime around my junior year, after the Incident, I’d buckled down. I realized I was spending as much energy pretending to work or not working or putting off working as I would if I actually just, you know. Did the work. I turned my grades around, applied for scholarships, and went to a college several states away where I could start living my life on my own terms.

But right now, I was much more interested in Alison’s life. “I see you got married,” I said tentatively. “Congratulations.”

She looked down at her ring and then back up at me, beaming. “Thanks,” she said. “Our third anniversary is coming up in September, actually. We’ve planned a big weekend at Disney.” She held up her watch now, rolling her eyes a little self-deprecatingly as Mickey’s hands ticked around the face. “I know, I know. My wife Maritza’s one of those Disney people, and she converted me.”

Alison and I had spent a lot of real estate in our eighth grade notes making fun of those classmates who seemed to go to the amusement park every weekend, always coming back bragging about some new dessert at Epcot or comparing favorite rides. Every week there was a different one that was considered the “right” answer, and once a girl had plopped down at my lunch table and fired at me, staccato-fast: “Haunted Mansion or Space Mountain?”

“What,” I’d said. My mouth had probably been filled with chicken sandwich with too much mayonnaise on it. Truly, eighth grade was a black hole.

The girl repeated her question faster, if possible, as though I were wasting precious time. I’d heard of both rides, obviously—I didn’t live under a rock. The answer seemed like a no-brainer to me. “Haunted Mansion,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “Ugh,” she said, and then moved on to the next table.

Looking back, at least some of those kids had to be lying, desperate to fit in with the popular annual-pass-holder crowd. But sometimes it felt like Alison and I were the only two people in the universe who hadn’t been to Disney and, more importantly, the only two people who didn’t care to pretend otherwise.

I knew Alison wouldn’t be the same person I’d last known almost fifteen years ago. I wasn’t the same person as I was then. But for some reason this one reminder of how much had changed, how different our lives were, depressed me.

“What about you?” Alison asked now. “Are you seeing anyone?”

“Not . . .” I trailed off, leaning forward a little on the railing of the gazebo to make sure my eyes were working right. Because unless I was hallucinating, it looked like Sam was walking through the library parking lot, a book tucked under his arm. He disappeared inside.

“. . . exactly,” I finished.

Alison waited, as though expecting me to say more, but I just couldn’t believe this development. Had I conjured him somehow?

Or was he following me?

But no, that was insane. If anything, my brother would’ve pointed out, I was the one who should be singing “Creep” at the next karaoke night.

“Well,” Alison said, glancing over her shoulder, as if trying to figure out where my attention had gone. “Listen. I know things didn’t end on the best of terms all those years ago. But I’m really glad to see you, and I’d love to hang out if you have time while you’re in town. What do you think?”

Even a few days ago, the very idea would’ve made my guts twist. But for some reason, now the idea almost seemed . . . nice. Doable, at least.

We got out our phones and exchanged contact info, made a few more minutes of banal small talk about changes to the area over the last decade, and said goodbye before Alison had to go back to work. For one horrifying second I thought she was going to hug me, but then instead she just lifted her hand in a little wave. A minute after she’d left, a text came in—This is Alison! it said.

What are the odds, I started to type across my cracked screen, then deleted it. For some reason, my normal sarcasm felt all wrong here, like I was making fun of a cute kitten picture on the internet. So instead I typed, This is Phoebe! and, at the last minute, a smiley face.

I glanced up to see Sam emerging from the library, and I slid my phone back in my pocket. Here went nothing.





NINE





I THOUGHT OF SIX different opening gambits in my twenty-yard walk to Sam, but ended up settling on the first one that popped into my brain once I was standing in front of him.

“Hi,” I said.

He startled, dropping the two books he was holding, a piece of paper fluttering to the sidewalk. Not gonna lie, it was a little satisfying to do that to him after he’d scared the bejeezus out of me that first night. And his phone even made it through this encounter intact. I was bitter, but not vindictive.

I bent down to help him pick up the books. One was a novel I remembered getting quite a lot of buzz a few years back, about a brother and sister and their family home, spanning five decades of their lives as they navigated life and love and loss. Or whatever. Honestly, even if any story described as “epic” or “sweeping” didn’t normally make my insides shrivel, the plot of that one seemed a little too close to home right now.

The second was just a heavy reference text with a garish grass-green cover, the word Soldering printed across the top in royal blue font.

There was a picture on the cover, too, that appeared at first glance to be some vaguely 1980s geometric pattern they loved to put on reference books, but on closer inspection turned out to be a pair of earrings.