Burn Our Bodies Down(63)

I don’t know what my fight with Tess left us as. I don’t even really know what we were before. I met her two days ago and maybe I should’ve been careful, kept myself away, but I was scared, and Tess was something to hold on to, so I didn’t. And now it could be gone. Like closing a circuit with too much power running through it.

“Friends?” I say. “I guess.” That’s the best I can do.

Gram reaches out and adjusts the lie of one of my curls. “That’s good. It’s important that people see you here, see you with her. I have to have some difficult conversations, and Theresa’s family can go a long way toward making them easier.” She smiles, earnest and warm. “I’m talking to you as an adult here, Margot. I need your help. Can you do this for me?”

I can’t deny the lure of it. The way she welcomes me into what she’s doing, makes me part of it and of her. Like she knows I’d do anything for that. “Yes,” I tell her, before I can catch myself. “I can do that.”

Gram steps back, gives me a firm nod. “Right, then,” she says. “Into the lion’s den.”

The room is packed. Round tables on a linoleum floor, with two well-stocked buffets on the far side and a bored-looking boy my age standing near a smaller table, where a phone is plugged into a pair of speakers playing cheery jazz. Across the walls are displays of children’s artwork and motivational posters, like somebody decorated with whatever they could find on short notice.

All of Phalene is probably here, mothers quieting unruly children, fathers in clutches around the side of the room while a quartet of older couples dances slowly in the center. A table by the side is full of teenagers who would probably be in my class if I went to school here. Most of the police force seems to be here, too, congregated near the front, where one of them is setting up a box for donations.

The dress Gram put me in feels too tight, squeezing my ribs, the zipper rubbing the small of my back. I spot Eli off to the side, but Tess isn’t with him. He seems to be looking for her too, searching the crowd with an anxious frown.

I have to talk to her. I have to apologize and make it right.

I catch Eli’s eye and wave, and for a moment I can tell he’s thinking about pretending he doesn’t see me. But then he lifts a hand, gives me a wave back with a smile that looks like he’s trying very hard to be polite.

“Can I—” I start, but Gram cuts me off.

“Back in the truck at six,” she says. “Behave, Mini.” And then she’s practically prowling across the dance floor, making her way to a group of men bent together as they discuss something in hushed voices.

Mini. It should feel good. It almost does.

Eager to avoid talking to any of the police, I head for Eli, who is rearranging two stacks of cheese on his small paper plate with careful precision.

“Hey,” he says without looking up. “Hang on. This is delicate work.”

“Sure.” I guess I should be glad he’s even speaking to me without Tess here to make him.

“Okay,” he says finally. I watch as he spears a square of cheese and holds it out to me, the colorful plastic frill on one end of the toothpick crinkling between his fingers. “Cheddar?”

I raise my eyebrows. “No thanks. You seen Tess?”

Eli shakes his head. He’s keeping a good distance between us, like he wants everyone watching to know I’m making him uncomfortable. “No,” he says. “But I’m sure she’ll be here soon.”

I check the room, but I just see the crowds of people, the police officers standing out in their dark uniforms. Anderson and Connors are probably here somewhere. I forgot, really, that Phalene would have more police than just them, but I recognize the third cop from the scene of the fire at one end of the table, assembling what looks like a pastrami sandwich.

No Tess. No Millers. I turn back to Eli. “Have you talked to her at all today?”

Eli removes the top layer of cheese from his plate and stuffs it into his mouth. “She texted me last night,” he says. “But it didn’t make a lot of sense.”

Maybe she told him what’s wrong. “Can I see?”

Eli’s pause is too long. The answer is no.

“Never mind,” I say. I bet it was about me. “I’ll find her.”

He looks over my shoulder, and his eyes widen. “I don’t think you’ll have to.”





twenty-three





i turn around. There’s Tess, coming through the door with her parents behind her. She’s wearing a seersucker dress, a billow to the skirt and a cling to the bodice, with straps that have slipped just off her shoulders. Hair in a knot, and from a distance it seems like somebody was careful with it, but when she looks to one side, her expression oddly vacant, her eyes bloodshot, I can see a lime-green hair elastic barely managing to hold it up.

Flanking her, Mr. and Mrs. Miller look a sight better. They’re each in fresh summer clothes. Striped shirt and slacks for him, and a pale blue dress for her that looks like a sister to Tess’s. They’re put together in a way she isn’t, but when I look more closely, I see the same redness in their eyes. The same tightness in their shoulders.

What the hell? Tess was a little subdued yesterday, sure, but she looked nothing like this. Neither did Mrs. Miller.