You'll Be the Death of Me(16)

    He ignores me, crossing to the oversized windows and looking down. “The police are pulling up,” he reports. “Right in front of the building. How would they even know to be here? Did Ivy call them?”

“I don’t think so. She would’ve said something if she did,” I say. “You think the police have the code for the door?”

The sound of shattering glass makes us both flinch. Cal passes a hand across his mouth. “I think they’re using a different way in,” he says. More glass breaks, and muffled voices reach our ears. “They’re gonna be here any second.”

“Dude, what…” I glance between Cal and the syringe. “What’s going on? What the hell are we supposed to do?”

Cal’s eyes take up half his face as he says, “I think we should leave.”

Now I do laugh, low and harsh. “Great idea. We’ll just wave at the police while we carry an unconscious girl past them, and leave poor…”

I can’t bring myself to say Boney’s name. Maybe it’s not even Boney, I think. Maybe it’s some tortured artist who overdosed and…what, exactly? Flung the syringe away before he collapsed? “Leave this poor guy behind,” I finish.

I was in the room once before with a dead person. It was my great-uncle Hector; he was eighty-four and sick enough that we made the trip to the Bronx when I was nine years old to “say our goodbyes,” as Ma said. Uncle Hector was in bed, lying motionless with his eyes closed, my aunt Rose clutching his hand with a rosary. And then, suddenly, he was a different kind of still. I could see it even from across the room, and my mother could, too. Ma put her hand on my shoulder, squeezed, and murmured, “That was very peaceful.”

    There’s nothing peaceful about any of this.

“We don’t have to pass the police,” Cal says. “There’s a back staircase at the other end of the hall. It opens into an alleyway behind the building. Totally different street.”

That seems like simultaneously the best and worst idea I’ve ever heard. My brain isn’t working properly, and I wish to God that Ivy would wake up and do the thinking for us. “Okay, but…shouldn’t we tell them what we saw?” I ask.

“Like what? A pair of sneakers and a syringe? They’re gonna see the same thing. If whoever’s over there can be helped…” Cal crosses back toward the room’s entrance and pauses on the threshold, his voice dropping into a near whisper. “They’ll help him. We can’t. All we’re gonna do is get into a shitload of trouble because we’re not supposed to be here.”

And just like that, he’s gone.

I hesitate for half a beat, looking from Ivy’s face to those goddamn purple sneakers, until the voices below me start getting way too close for comfort. I think about what might happen if I stay. I didn’t do anything wrong, but unlike Cal, I can’t count on cops giving me the benefit of the doubt. Getting found like this—holding an unconscious girl in the same room where somebody might’ve just died—could get me arrested or worse. Even if it doesn’t, the last thing I need is police poking around in my life, questioning me.

Or my family.

My eyes linger on the syringe on the floor, and I make up my mind. Cal’s right: there’s nothing we can do to help anyone except ourselves. I hoist Ivy a little higher in my arms and run after him toward the back stairs, as quickly and silently as I can.





CAL


In the studio, my entire being had a single, simple goal: get away. So once I bolt through the back door, into a deserted street with no police and no other people in sight, relief floods through me.

For about five seconds. Then all I can think is Now what? Mateo bursts out of the door after me, carrying a still-unconscious Ivy. The parking garage is a good half mile away, and Boney…Jesus.

Boney Mahoney might’ve died back there.

I’ve known Boney since kindergarten, long enough to remember how he got that ridiculous nickname. It was in second grade, when we all had cubbies in the classroom labeled with our names. We’d made the labels ourselves, with Magic Markers on construction paper. One day Kaitlyn Taylor tripped while she was carrying a cup of water, sending its contents splashing over Boney’s Brian Mahoney label. The marker ran so badly that all you could read was the initial of his first name and the end of his last name. Everyone called him B. Oney after that, which naturally morphed into Boney, and it stuck.

    Besides him quizzing me about my dads, the longest conversation we’d ever had was during Kenny Chu’s birthday party at a rock climbing gym in fifth grade. It’s the only party Boney and I ever went to together, because Kenny’s mom made him invite every boy in class. We were both standing on one of the big cushy mats, waiting for our turn, when Boney looked around and said, “Why do you think they have gyms where you can climb rocks, but not where you can climb trees?”

I’d never thought about it before. “Maybe because it’s hard to grow trees inside,” I told him.

“You could make them. It’s not like these are real rocks,” Boney pointed out.

“True,” I said. “Someone should get on that.”

He cocked a finger at me, eyes narrowed. “If you invent it when you grow up and become a millionaire, I get half.” No surprise there; Boney was always looking for ways to make money. In fifth grade, he was best known for buying cheap candy and selling it to us during lunch at a huge markup. Which I bought, obviously, because candy.