You'll Be the Death of Me(18)

Did you know it would only take one hour to drive to space?

THERE ARE PINK DOLPHINS (YouTube link)

    Cal you have to get a friend for Gilbert. In Switzerland it’s illegal to own only one guinea pig because they get lonely.

She had a good point about Gilbert. My guinea pig was a lot happier after my parents agreed to let me buy a second one. Except then George died, and Gilbert was so inconsolable that he died three days later—so. Not sure it was a win, in the end.

I gaze around the dim room, nervously biting the inside of my cheek. I’ve never been in a bar before, which is the sort of thing I’d mention under different circumstances. “So this is where you work, huh?”

“Yeah,” Mateo says. “The owner doesn’t usually show up till around two, so I think we’re okay for a while.” He crosses over to the bar and ducks behind it, grabbing a couple of glasses that he fills from a small sink. He hands one to me, then sits down at a table close to Ivy. I lower myself into a chair across from him and take a long sip. My mouth tastes slightly less horrible when I’m done.

“You okay?” Mateo asks.

“I don’t know,” I say weakly. “You?”

“Same.” Mateo shakes his head, then drains half his water in one gulp. “That was a nightmare, back there.”

“I know.” I wipe a hand across my mouth. “Not really what I had in mind when I suggested we re-create the Greatest Day Ever.”

“We should’ve gone to the fucking aquarium,” Mateo says.

I can’t help it: despite everything that just happened, I snort out a laugh. A semihysterical one, sure, but it’s better than crying. “Cosigned,” I say.

Then Mateo’s expression shifts. It’s still tense, but more focused, like he’s getting ready to peer into the hidden depths of my brain. It’s a look I remember well from his mother—which is ironic, since he always hated it when she gave it to him.

    I know exactly what’s coming next.

“Cal,” he says. “Who’s the girl?”

“Huh?” I drink my water, stalling for time.

“Your friend. The one who works there.” Mateo’s tone sharpens when my glass is half empty and I’m still chugging away, studiously avoiding his gaze. “Was that by any chance her studio we were standing in?”

“Yeah.” The word slips out before I can stop it. Damn it. I can’t run my mouth here. I need to think. And I need to talk to Lara. I pull out my phone as I add, “But she wasn’t there.”

“Just because we didn’t see her doesn’t mean she wasn’t there,” Mateo points out, and I wish he’d stop being so reasonable for once in his life. “You said she’s there every Tuesday, right?”

“Usually.” My fingers fly across my phone as I fire off a text to Lara. Are you at the studio?

“So why wouldn’t she have been there today?” he asks.

“I don’t know.” I’m staring at my phone, willing her to respond as fast as humanly possible, and my heart takes a giant leap when gray dots appear.

No, couldn’t make it today.

I exhale a long breath. I’m beyond glad to hear that, but…Why not? I text back.

Decided to take a ceramics class! More gray dots, and then a picture of a glazed green bowl sitting beside a kiln appears.

Relief floods through me for a few blissful seconds, then recedes almost as quickly as it came. Because that still doesn’t explain why Boney…or whoever that was…was there.

    But I can’t ask that via text. I need to talk to you, I write back. Now. In person. She doesn’t respond right away, and I add, It’s urgent.

“Cal,” Mateo says. When I look up, he’s still wearing that I’m going to x-ray your brain look. “Are you texting her?”

“Yeah. She says she wasn’t there.” I know that’s not enough to stop further questions I can’t answer yet, so I stare around the bar for some kind of distraction. There’s a large, wall-mounted television to our left, and I point to it. “Hey, can we turn that on?” I ask. “Maybe whatever happened back there made the news.”

Mateo gives me a look that says This discussion isn’t over—also inherited from his mother—but gets to his feet. “Yeah, I guess. Check your phone, too.” He crosses over to the bar, reaching into the wooden cubby behind it to pull out a remote. I’m too nervous to navigate to Boston.com while he fires up the television, though. Somehow, it feels better to wait for information to hit me than to go looking for it.

The screen bursts to life with the volume way too loud, and we both wince until Mateo lowers it. It’s on the local sports channel, so Mateo clicks until he lands on a guy in a shirt and tie with the words Breaking News scrolling beneath him in red. “He’s in front of the art studios,” Mateo says, returning to our table with his eyes glued to the screen.

My heart plummets. Somehow, seeing the building on television makes this nightmare scenario much more real. “Shit. Do you think—”

“Shhh,” Mateo says, raising the volume back up a notch.

“…police are actively looking for information related to a tip that both they, and producers here at The Hawkins Report, received shortly before the body of an unidentified young man was discovered in this very building,” the reporter says.