Sweet Water(39)

The fight is the one thing that I hoped wouldn’t get out, because a dead girlfriend is one thing, but a girl found dead after a heated argument with her boyfriend is another.

Finn is in trouble, but Yazmin is dead.

“What was it about? The fight?” Monroe asks.

Finn sighs. “It was stupid. Yaz hated having her picture taken. Unlike any girl I’ve ever met.” His voice sounds woeful, like he found a rare gem and lost it.

Maybe he did. Most teenage girls I’ve met would practically trade their real life for positive likes on their fake one—their social media page.

“I snapped a candid shot of Yaz on my phone because I had so few pictures of her. She didn’t see me; she was so into the article she was reading in Time magazine. Yaz was always trying to keep up with current events, very focused on school and her job as student treasurer. She had her sunglasses on while she was reading that day because we were sitting outside. She wasn’t even looking at the camera.” He sighs, and his breath quivers, a sound of desperation.

“So what was the problem, then?” Monroe asks.

“I posted the picture on my Instagram, captioned #MyMafiosoQueen #VeltriInVersace.” He shakes his head.

“And she didn’t like that?” Monroe asks.

“Not at all. She said she came to this school to shake her former reputation. I think she was trying to project some kind of image, a member of student council and all, and she thought I was ruining it.”

“That all?” Monroe presses.

Finn looks at Martin, not me, for guidance. Martin nods, as if to say, “Go on.”

“No, she said it was disrespectful to her culture. That I had no right to use her heritage like that.”

“Did you realize you were being derogatory?”

“Now, wait a minute. That comment was not derogatory,” Martin defends.

My shoulders slump, and I cross my legs to keep from having to excuse myself. This is bad, and I can already see the headlines Monroe is trying to create.

Son of tech firm owner connected to death of girl after slanderous Instagram post is leaked—and then deleted.

I cringe. It doesn’t matter if it is true or not; the public will be overly satisfied with this conclusion. I place my hand over my mouth. I think I’m going to be sick.

“Of course not to you, Mr. Ellsworth,” Monroe says with salt in his voice.

“Or anybody. She was being a silly, difficult teenager.” Martin sounds stuffy, like William, and I want to kick him under the table and tell him to shut up. Martin is only making it worse.

“Well, she’s a silly, dead teenager now. How do you suppose that happened?” Monroe bites on his pen cap and then puts it back on the tip with his teeth.

Martin loses his scowl quickly. “I don’t know.”

“Did you take the post down?” Monroe asks Finn.

“Right away. But everyone at school already saw it. She got angry because her brother texted her about it. That’s how she found out I’d posted it.”

“Officer, that post obviously did not have ill intent,” I speak up. Poor Finn. He probably thought he was being sweet, but he’d been in over his head with this girl.

“Perhaps, but it angered her. Did the drugs occur before or after the fight?” Monroe asks.

“During. It’s also part of the reason I left. I wasn’t feeling well, and we were fighting.”

Monroe’s aggressive affront is making Finn’s lies okay for me. Monroe is not on our side.

The police are on no one’s side, I remind myself.

Except Alton. He’s on our side.

Monroe clears his throat. “Why the drugs? Yazmin doesn’t seem the type. You’ve painted her as very studious, good morals. It doesn’t seem to fit.”

Finn shrugs, and he looks absolutely, bedsheet-white exhausted. “Like I said, she was still dealing with a lot from the car accident. She said the pot chilled her out. The only other thing she seemed to do to relax was play her guitar. She took lessons. Both she and her brother.”

Music and reading were my emotional buffers for surviving childhood too. I remember thinking I’d heard a guitar player again last night. This time Tom Petty instead of Pink Floyd. I told Joshua that my parents had met at a Petty concert, and I wondered if it was a sign from my mother to stay the course, or maybe drive off it.

The song was “Learning to Fly.”

Monroe straightens up on the breakfast-bar stool. “Tell me about Yazmin’s brother.”

Finn makes a face. “Cash is quiet, a year younger than Yazmin, not very friendly. He goes to a city school, so I don’t know him well, but I don’t think he likes me.”

“Why did they go to different schools? Yazmin and Cash?” Monroe’s notepad is threatening to bleed to death with ink, he’s written so much.

“Yaz scored higher than he did on her entrance exams and made it into the Academy on scholarship. It was some alumni-funded academic award.”

“Where was she from again?” Monroe asks.

“The Rocks,” Finn says.

McKees Rocks is a lower-income area of the city, and all I can think of is Yaz introducing herself to William, mentioning where she was from, and then insulting him on his watch and his political party. No wonder Finn hasn’t talked to his grandfather since then.