Nice Girls(21)

I turned over in bed and closed my eyes.



I could remember Olivia in sixth grade.

She was still blond and tiny. She wore a bright pink hoodie. The two of us sat in the back of our math class. We were taking a test. And I was doing well, jotting down answers that I’d long practiced.

The math teacher quietly slipped out of the room for a bathroom break.

Olivia was suddenly tapping me on the arm. She looked at me expectantly, her hand held out. I was supposed to pass her my test.

My stomach sank when I thought about the grade she would get. She had put in no effort. She hadn’t studied. She had piggybacked off me, the chubby sixth grader who at least fucking tried.

But I passed over my test anyway. I watched her blond hair cover the paper as she copied my answers. My stomach sank, my fingers digging into my chewed pencil.

That was when I first realized that maybe I hated Olivia after all.





11




I slept on and off through most of Saturday. In my sleep, I kept seeing Olivia’s arm in the sand, the pale bone sticking out, almost radiant against the rotted flesh.

When I woke up, I kept waiting for the image to go away, but it never did.

At around dinnertime, Dad finally opened my door.

“You need to eat, Mary,” he said, turning on the light.

I crawled out of bed in the same clothes that I’d worn to the party.

In the kitchen, I watched as Dad piled a small helping of spaghetti onto a plate for me. I wasn’t hungry at all. The two of us had dinner in silence, the kitchen TV airing a college football game in the background. I moved the spaghetti around my plate until I could leave.

Dad offered to make me tea, muttering that I needed to hydrate more if I was going to drink myself into a damn hangover. I said nothing and left him in the kitchen.

In the shower, I stood there, letting the water spill over me. My mind was blank. I couldn’t process anything except for a single thought:

Olivia was dead.



The next morning, I heard Dad open the door to my room. He tried to stir me awake to go to Sunday Mass with him. But I kept my eyes shut tight, pretending to be asleep.

I stayed like that until he eventually gave up and left for church by himself. Then I was alone.

I grabbed the phone off my nightstand. Zero text messages.

I searched for Olivia’s name on the Internet and the recent news about the arm. But I only found the same repeating articles—the announcement that rising social media star Olivia Willand had gone missing.

The police had yet to release the information. They’d inform the Willands first and extend their deepest sympathies. Knowing Mr. Willand, he would demand to know where the rest of Olivia’s body lay. There would be red-and-white rescue boats skimming over the lake, searching for the rest of her. The police, maybe even the FBI, would scour the city.

Afterward, if anything else was found, Mr. Willand would demand to know who had killed her and why. And the police wouldn’t have an answer. Olivia’s killer would go free.

It was all so bleak.

I put my phone back on the nightstand and buried myself under the sheets.



For dinner, Dad made me join him again. He’d bought a fried chicken meal and made mashed potatoes. He tried to get me to eat, but my stomach was so empty that I felt bloated.

“Did anything happen at St. Rita’s today?” I asked.

“Not much. We prayed for Olivia during the petitions.”

“Were her parents there?”

Dad shook his head.

He turned on the kitchen TV, switching it to the news. The news anchors talked about a discrimination case between a lesbian couple and a bakery owner. Both parties were hoping that the matter would go to the Supreme Court. Then the anchors talked about a fire in North Hamilton.

I peeled off a piece of fried chicken skin and nibbled on it. One of the anchors paused, squinting at the screen.

“On Saturday morning,” the anchor began, straight-faced, “a group of residents discovered an arm that washed up on the shore of Liberty Lake.”

I sucked in my breath. The screen flashed to a pale-faced runner. It was the same one who had been gagging in the sand.

“Uh, so our running group was just passing through the area. For the lake views, you know?” said the runner, blinking rapidly. “But as we ran, I noticed something weird in the sand. I thought it was a stick or something. But up close, we couldn’t believe it—it was a whole . . . arm.”

“Police say the arm was found on the northwestern shoreline,” continued the news anchor. “Since this morning, rescue boats have continued to drag the lake for further evidence. Investigators have already retrieved several other unspecified human remains from the lake. Though forensic evidence is still being processed, investigators believe that the remains belonged to nineteen-year-old DeMaria Jackson.”

My head was spinning now, as if I had whiplash.

The news channel showed a picture of a pretty teenage girl. She had long black plaits and full eyebrows, and she was darker than Dwayne and Charice. In the photo, she was smiling on a cracked brown couch, her knees held tight to her chest.

“Ms. Jackson was reported missing from Liberty Lake this past July. Authorities believe that she was a runaway at the time. Ms. Jackson’s family has declined to comment on the situation. We’ll keep you updated as more details come in.”