White Rabbit(11)
Only I don’t have an or. At the moment, there’s no better explanation. It’s pretty obvious that April and Fox weren’t alone in the house all night; in addition to the massive supply of drugs and alcohol on the dining table, grocery bags heaped atop the kitchen island disgorge a sick-making bounty of junk food. Brightly colored packages of chips and candy have been ripped open, many of them half-empty, and crumbs litter the counter. There were people here—but who and when and how many, we won’t know until April comes out of the bedroom.
I turn to say something and catch Sebastian flicking his eyes away. “What?”
“Huh?” He glances back, trying and failing to effect an innocently blank expression—his who-me? face. He used it all the time when we were together, and he was terrible at it.
“You were looking at me. What?”
“Nothing, it’s just…” Sebastian shrugs, and his eyes do that down-up thing over my torso again. “Have you been working out or something?”
My face heats up again, this time with embarrassment, and I cross my arms self-consciously over my bare chest. I wanted him to notice, of course; this is basically the moment I’ve been imagining, repeatedly, for the past six weeks: Sebastian seeing the hot new Rufus Holt, wishing he could have me back and hating himself for letting me go. Only the situation is all wrong, Fox’s grisly death crowding the moment, and my ex-boyfriend’s puzzled eyes seem to track the changes to my body with only clinical interest.
And, just like that, I feel humiliated all over again. Even standing in the middle of an actual crime scene I can’t escape how much I’ve let him get inside my head. How much I want Sebastian Williams to still want me, and how much it hurts that he doesn’t.
To my utter relief, the door to the master suite pops open at just that moment, and April sidles meekly into the room. She’s wearing jean shorts and a loose-fitting shirt, her auburn hair falling to her shoulders in damp, tousled ropes. Her face is still drawn and colorless, but her eyes look way more alert.
“How are you feeling?” I ask neutrally, moving toward her through the wreckage of the family room.
She stares, her expression flat. “Better, I guess. Um … thanks.” Her gaze drifts toward the kitchen and fixes in place, like a missile system locking onto target. There’s no way she can see Fox from the little vestibule, but the presence of his body commands attention nevertheless. “Is, um … is he still…?”
“You want to go into the bedroom to talk?”
April gives a minute and almost frightened nod, and then the three of us retreat through the door, shutting it again for good measure. My little sister sinks down on the edge of the bed, letting her hair fall into her face, while I straddle a shabby-chic chair placed in front of a shabby-chic vanity. Sebastian stays close, breathing more easily now that a physical barrier stands between Fox and him.
“What happened tonight, April?” I prompt.
She sniffles, picking at the dark polish on the nails of her right hand, and says, to my left kneecap, “I’m not sure. I mean, I don’t really remember.”
“Try to think,” I suggest through my teeth, already thin on patience, just like that. “You called me for help, right? I can’t help if you don’t tell me anything.”
“But I don’t know anything, Rufus.” Her voice shakes, her big blue eyes meeting mine, filled with tears. “We were having a party, and I got tired so I came in here to lie down, and then … when I woke up, I was in the kitchen, and … and Fox, he, he…”
She starts to cry, dropping her head forward as her shoulders quake and loud, mucusy snorts sound from behind the curtain of her hair. April wipes her face with her hands over and over, until Sebastian leans past me to swipe some tissues and hand them to her. She accepts them wordlessly and, after a few moments, lifts her chin again.
I’m not sure what it says about me as a person, but I spend a good, long moment studying her expression for possible evidence of bullshit before I speak again. “What were you on when we got here?”
“Nothing,” she declares, impossibly.
My jaw goes tight. “Don’t lie.”
“I’m not!”
“April, when we found you in the kitchen, you were so fucked up, you couldn’t even walk,” I remind her, heat slowly turning my brain into a tropical greenhouse. “There’s an avalanche of coke and pills in the dining room that you could slide down with a toboggan, and you want us to believe you were sober?”
“I didn’t take anything!” She practically screeches it this time, and I almost think she’s telling me the truth. “I never use that stuff! Fox … I mean, okay, he got me try some things once or twice—but I hated the way they made me feel!”
“Even white rabbits?”
“Especially that shit.” She shudders. “I took some once and I thought plants were growing under my skin. I almost cut my arm open trying to let them out.”
Sebastian and I exchange a perplexed glance, and I turn back to my sister. She looks me in the eye, her expression level and grim. If she’s lying, she’s gotten a lot better at it than the last time we faced off—but if she’s telling the truth, it makes no sense. “Look, just … let’s start from the beginning. Who was here tonight, and what happened?”