Chapter 14
Frankie
“Look what I got!” I hold up Erica’s purse by its thick strap and let it dangle from my finger in front of Alex.
I would have been able to take just the camera if I hadn’t knocked over the entire pizza tray tower at Billy’s shiva, but when Millie basically bombarded me, I had to slip Erica’s purse behind my back and smuggle it out of the house.
Thankfully, it’s one of those tiny ones, and when I looked inside, I only found the camera and an old lip gloss.
Alex and I are sitting cross-legged in the sunny spots on my bed, the afternoon sun warming my cheeks.
“You didn’t!” Alex leans forward to grab it, but I yank it away.
“I did.” I unzip the bag and pull out the camera, presenting it to Alex in both hands. “You should thank me because I waited to go through the photos with you.”
Alex’s brow knits in worry, and he shakes his head forcefully. “I don’t think we should look at that,” he says. “It’s not ours.”
“Seriously? I thought you wanted to do this.” I frown, taken aback.
“You wanted to investigate. I wanted to go swimming. And I still do. We only have a few hours of sunlight a day when we’re not inside the shack. We should be out in the pool or the ocean instead of…” He motions to the bag. “Whatever this is.”
“You’re not the least bit curious?” I cross my arms over my chest.
“Fine. Let me see it.” I toss the camera to Alex, and it lands in his hands but then bounces off my comforter and onto the hardwood floor with a bang. “Shit, sorry. Do you think it’s busted?” Alex asks.
I jump down and retrieve the camera, inspecting it. “Dude, you dented the corner.”
“Whoops,” Alex says. “Sorry.”
I frown and press the power button. “Aha! It still works. Wanna see?”
Alex begrudgingly scoots down to the floor beside me, and we both lean back against the bed.
I start scrolling through her most recent photos, seagulls and clouds and selfies Erica must have taken with her arms outstretched. In one, Lucy kisses her cheek as Erica sticks out her tongue.
“You can see the date,” Alex says, pointing at the screen. “These are from before Billy’s party.”
I detect a hint of relief in his voice, which annoys me. I wish he were as into this as I am.
“Looks like she didn’t take any photos that night,” Alex says. “Can we get in the pool now? It’s like ninety-five degrees outside.” He points to the window, where sun is streaming in.
I keep staring at the camera, flipping through old photos, full of party shots from other kickbacks.
If Erica documented those parties, there’s no way she would have left her camera at home for Billy’s.
“Maybe you were right,” I say. “After Billy died, maybe she didn’t want anyone to see what happened that night. Maybe she deleted them.”
Alex looks like he’s about to protest again when there’s a knock on my door. Millie pokes her head inside.
“We’re all gonna hang at your pool, Alex,” she says. “You guys wanna come? Trevor’s setting up the waterslide.”
Alex stands up and dusts off his shorts. “More than anything.”
But I’m not ready to give up on this camera. Not yet. And based on Alex’s desperation to get away from me, he won’t be any help. “You guys go ahead. I’ll be over in a few. I gotta…take a dump.”
Millie rolls her eyes. “Gross, Franks.”
“We all do it!” I call, but they’re already gone. Once their footsteps recede, I turn Erica’s camera over in my hands. There’s a little button on the back, and when I push it, the SIM card pops out.
I reach for my computer and dig deep into my box of wires to pull out the dongle that connects the SIM card to my computer.
It only takes a few moments before the folders load, and when I double-tap it open, I see a slew of images, the same ones we saw on her camera, and miraculously, a trash folder.
There’s a quickening in my chest as I click the trash icon and dozens of images load. “Bingo,” I whisper. My heart beats fast as I scroll down to the date of Billy’s party and see there are fifty photos.
I open the first one, and it’s immediately clear why she didn’t want anyone to see these.
The first photo is of Dylan doing a keg stand, and then the second is of a bunch of girls in their class taking shots from small plastic cups.
Then an image of Justin Vreeland with his arms crossed over his chest, scowling at something off-screen the same way he did to me on Main Street the other day.
I inhale sharply and remember what I’m looking at: suspects.
Quickly, I grab a paper and pen and start making a list of everyone in these photos. I see no one surprising—so many members of the senior class, Billy’s cousin Olivia, Ethan.
I keep scrolling, getting a sense of what the party felt like—beer pong and cartwheels in the sand, the thinning of people, a mad dash into the water, excited faces when they come up for air. Nothing to suggest that someone might have been plotting to hurt Billy.
This is a dumb idea. It is foolish to think I could find anything in these images other than a renewed dedication to not partying like these people. Instead of making it look fun, they all look like they’re acting in a bad movie where someone winds up pregnant or, I realize with a shock, dead.
There’s only one image left, and I open it, expecting more of the same. But this one’s a photo of the water, the dock extending into it in the distance, no faces in frame.
Except.
I lean closer and turn up the brightness on my screen, which is when I see it. Him.
In the corner of the photo is the small silhouette of a boy wearing no shirt, only a pair of jeans rolled up at the ankles, his feet submerged in the ocean.
He’s turned to the side, so I can only see half his face.
I zoom in and bring the screen closer, expecting the image to change in front of me.
But it stays exactly the same, an anonymous boy, one of our own.
I scratch my pen against the paper and finish my list. Shirtless mystery kid. I snap a photo of the screen with my phone so I can come back to that one later.
The SIM card fits into Erica’s camera easily, and I slip the device back into her bag, but when I do, my finger catches on a hard corner poking out of the zippered pocket, a slip of paper coated in something that feels glossy, like a professionally printed photograph.
I pinch it between my fingers and pull it out, blinking when I see it in my hand.
It takes me a moment to fully take in what I’m looking at: an abstract image.
Black, with grainy white and gray lines.
An outline of something that looks like a small turtle.
Or maybe a bean. A little alien. The picture looks just like those pages in my health textbook, in the chapter on how babies are made.
But that can’t be what this is. That was a sonogram from a pregnant person. This was in Erica’s bag. This…
I squint at the slip of paper, study the contours, the border. In the top corner is her name—Richardson, Erica.
Holy shit.
This is a sonogram. Because Erica is pregnant.
—
The next day, I’m a live wire at work, unable to sit still in the welcome hut.
I could barely sleep last night, thinking about the sonogram I found in Erica’s bag.
There were so many moments that I almost told Lucy, that I almost texted Alex.
But something about that little image tucked away in her bag made me keep the information to myself.
The wind picks up, blowing up the corners of the towels in the hut, and I pull my hoodie tight around my middle.
“I’m gonna get a lemonade. You’ll be okay?” Alex asks.
“Yep,” I say. “It’s not like someone’s going to attack me here.
” I wave my hands around at our little office as Alex nods and rushes off to the clubhouse.
But I have to admit that as soon as he leaves, my stomach starts humming.
It’s quiet today, the only sound coming from the pitter-patter of a drizzle picking up overhead.
Spinning around in my chair, I reach for my book of logic puzzles and steady my breathing. But just as I’m about to crack it open, someone knocks on the welcome hut, and I lean out the window. “Hello?”
“Oh, good. Someone’s here. Wasn’t sure with the weather.
” Erica’s standing there, shivering in a thin T-shirt and shorts, flip-flops strapped to her feet.
Her hair is damp, from the pool or the rain, I’m not sure, and she’s got an anxious look on her face.
There’s a buzzing in my stomach, and I grip my pencil so hard I think it may snap in half. “Mind if I come in?”
But she doesn’t wait for my answer, just barrels through the door. “What’s up?” I say as nonchalantly as I can.
“I can’t find my purse,” she says. “Small black thing with a thick strap. I thought it might be in the lost and found. Mind if I check?” She motions to the cardboard box behind me.
Everything inside my body tenses. Obviously, the bag isn’t in the lost and found.
It’s in my room, hidden under the bed with a pile of sweatshirts I was supposed to fold last week.
“Actually…” I start, the admission hot on my tongue. But when Erica snaps her attention to me, her skin sallow and her eyes wide and frantic, I hesitate.
“What?” she snaps. “Actually what? Because this is kind of important, and I don’t have time for actually.”
“Um…”
Erica pushes past me and starts digging through the box.
I can picture the sonogram in the bag, the wobbly lines etched onto the paper.
I could tell her I took her bag by accident.
I wouldn’t even have to say I saw what was inside.
But the way she’s tossing things around like they did something to hurt her makes me nervous.
I haven’t thought this through. I haven’t even considered what she might do when she finds out I know.
“Fuck,” she says, her voice sharp, all edges. “It’s not here.”
“Why don’t you fill out this form, and if we see it, we can let you know?” I reach inside my desk for the paper and hand it to her, trying to keep my fingers from shaking.
She snatches it and scrawls across the page before thrusting it back into my chest. “Useless,” she says, and storms out of the hut.
“What was that about?” Alex ducks back into the shack holding a grease-stained paper bag. “Rishi threw in some French fries so we could at least wait out the storm with full tums.” He points to the sky out the window, a full downpour only moments away.
“Nothing. She wanted ponchos for the pool in case it rained.” The lie comes out quick, but I know if I tell Alex what she was after, he’ll ask me why I didn’t just fork it over.
I should just tell Alex about the sonogram, too, but something in my gut says to keep it a secret for a little longer.
Alex didn’t want to do any of this anyway.
Maybe I’m doing him a favor by keeping him in the dark.
After all, I haven’t told him about that photo of the shirtless kid on the beach.
The one I’ve been staring at, trying to figure out who it was.
Who else might have been at the party. I make a mental note to keep studying it.
Who knows, maybe I’ll find a hidden clue.
“Cool,” he says at the same time that his cell phone rings. Ethan’s name scrolls across the screen, and Alex picks it up quickly. “Yo, what’s up?” He stops chewing, and his eyes go wide, making direct contact with mine.
“What?” I ask, and lean in close to the phone so I can hear Ethan’s voice, too.
“—and they searched the Sea Witch,” Ethan says.
“Is that Billy’s boat?” I ask.
Ethan’s quiet for a moment, then speaks. “Frankie?”
“Yeah, we’re at work.”
Ethan sighs. “Fine, put me on speaker, then.”
Alex taps the screen and Ethan’s voice fills the hut. “You’ll find out anyway. Might as well hear it from me,” Ethan says, almost dejected. “Detective Hampton told the Godwins that they searched their family boat, the one moored in the Sound, the Sea Witch.”
“Did they find anything?” I ask, pressing my palms together.
“Billy’s fingerprints are all over everything. The boat was deep-cleaned that day, so they know he was there sometime after that, in the early hours of the morning.”
“Okay,” I say, glancing at Alex, who’s chewing on a cuticle.
“And they also found DNA samples. Blood. Spit. From a few different people.”
“Blood?!” I can’t help but scream the word.
“What does that mean?” Alex asks, nervous.
“It means,” Ethan says, his voice trembling, “that Billy wasn’t there alone. Mrs. Godwin thinks whoever was with him may have…”
Ethan doesn’t need to finish the sentence.
Alex and I are stunned into silence, and though I have no idea what he’s thinking, the only thing running through my head is this: If Erica’s pregnant, then Billy has to be the father, and if she told him that night, maybe he was furious. Furious enough to start a fight.
A shock of cold rushes through me when I realize what that means. That DNA may be Erica’s.