Frankie
It’s been three days since they brought Justin Vreeland in, and all morning at the welcome hut, I’ve been trying to overhear snippets of conversation, but the general consensus seems to be “we know nothing.”
So annoying.
“Don’t you think they’d want to put out some public safety announcement telling us what’s going on?” I ask Alex, kicking my feet up on the desk.
“Not really,” he says, his hands moving quickly over a wooden pocket puzzle.
I blow out a raspberry and cross my arms over my chest. “So unfair.”
“Oh my god, lay off.” He tosses me the completed puzzle, and when I catch it, I wiggle it around so I can start from scratch. “I thought you were done with this investigation. It’s over.” His tone is sharp and biting.
“Not until they say they actually got him for Billy.” I lean in toward him. “What’s up with you? You’re totally on edge.”
“No, I’m not,” Alex says, turning away from me. I want to protest, but there’s a knock on the front window of our little hut.
“Hello?” someone calls. “Can I get a little help here?”
I swing my legs around and roll my desk chair over to see a tall Black woman peering into the window. “Hi!” I say. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m checking in for a pickleball lesson.” Her voice is high and bouncy, like she’s had ten cups of coffee before noon. “Ellen Davis.”
I glance up and try to place the woman, with her high cheekbones and coiled locs. She looks so familiar, but I can’t remember where I’ve seen her before.
“Sure,” I say. “Let me check.” I scan the sheet for her name. “Are you a member here?”
“No. I’m a guest. Maybe the reservation’s under their name?” She looks around, then lowers her voice as she leans in. “Vreeland?”
That’s when it clicks. She was standing with Justin and his mom outside the police station last week. I try to catch Alex’s eye to see if he recognizes her, too, but he’s tapping something out on the staff computer.
“Vreeland?” I repeat.
The woman nods, checking her phone. “Hold on, I have to take this.” She steps away and presses her phone to her ear.
“Deirdre? What is it?” She pauses. “No, I’m at the Club.
Was going to get a lesson in before…They what?
” She pats her forehead with the heel of her hand.
“Well, that’s circumstantial.” She pauses. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Alex’s eyes flick to mine finally, and I mouth the word Vreeland to him, a look of recognition passing over his face.
She hangs up and turns back to us, apologetic. “Never mind. Thanks anyway.”
As she rushes off to the parking lot, I spin around and press my palms into my knees. “Dude, that was totally his lawyer.”
“Seriously? What was her name?”
“Ellen Davis,” I say as Alex starts typing on his phone.
“Ooh, look here. Says here she’s worked on dozens of murder trials in Manhattan.”
An electrical current zaps through my body. “Do you think we should go down to the station on our lunch break? Do a little stake out and see what’s going on?”
“Frankie, no.”
“Come on, it’ll be fun!”
“That’s not fun. That’s messed up.” Alex turns away from me and starts drumming his fingers against the desk.
“What’s up with you?” I ask, an edge sliding into my voice.
“Nothing.” He stays turned around, not looking at me.
“So, don’t you want to solve the puzzle?” I crack my neck this way and that, suddenly impatient. I want to shake him and drag him over to the station, but Alex curls his knees up under his chest, leaning away from me almost like he’s scared.
“It’s not a puzzle,” he says. “It’s a murder.”
“A better reason to figure out if Justin did it or if there’s some other freak on the loose.” I throw my hands up in the air. “Don’t you want to know?”
“But it’s not our job,” he says. “And besides, Billy sucked anyway.” Alex’s voice rises to a peak, then cracks when he says Billy’s name. I try to catch his eye, but Alex turns away from me, looking at the water.
Alex’s chin quivers, and suddenly, a puzzle piece clicks into place inside my brain. Alex’s indifference to finding out what happened. I swallow and try to calm my voice, make it as kind as possible. “Alex, what did he do to you?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
“Come on. It’s me.”
“It’s too embarrassing,” Alex says.
“As embarrassing as the time I farted so loud on the bus to the Met that everyone opened their windows and called me Frankenfarts?” I ask.
“Worse.”
“Well then, it sounds like you’ve been torturing yourself by keeping it a secret.”
“Fine,” Alex says. His spine curls into a C shape, and he sneaks a look at me before resting his cheek on his knee. “You know how when I came out, I said there wasn’t any specific reason why I was doing it then? Only that I was ready?”
“Uh-huh.” I had long suspected that Alex was attracted to boys, mostly because in middle school, he kept wanting to watch The Kissing Booth movies over and over, pausing on the Jacob Elordi scenes.
But I had never asked him point-blank, assuming if he wanted me to know, he would tell me.
And he did, in January, when we were sitting side by side with the logic puzzle book splayed out on the coffee table in front of us.
We were halfway done with the clues when Alex said, without looking up, “I’m gay, you know. ”
“That’s great,” I said, squeezing his hand. “I love you.”
He told everybody else in quick succession, and that was that.
“Well,” Alex says slowly, “that’s not entirely true. All fall, I had been talking to someone that I met in that game theory forum online.”
“Okay,” I say slowly.
“This guy…We talked to each other about real stuff,” Alex says.
“He was the first person I told I was gay. He said he lived in Kimber Cove, and at one point we talked about meeting up. We had this whole plan, and I was excited. But I wasn’t an idiot.
I’d heard horror stories about this kind of thing.
Seen all the documentaries about creeps trying to hang out with kids or whatever. ”
I nod, but my stomach ties itself into knots.
“So anyway, I did some sleuthing. Checked out the Kimber Cove yearbook, looked up some databases. It was so obvious this guy didn’t exist, and I felt like a freaking fool.”
“Billy,” I say, my fists tightening by my sides.
Alex blinks, his eyes wet and glassy. “I basically shut off contact with him, deleted my account. Everything. But then at school one day, I opened my locker, and right there were the print-outs of our entire conversations.”
“No.” I cover my mouth with my hand.
Alex nods. “Billy goddamn Godwin was standing right behind me, smirking like an asshole. He saw me holding the papers and did this dumb little wave. Then he walked right up to me and asked me to solve the same problem we’d been working on in the forum.”
“I’d kill him,” I say. The words come out like I have no control over them. “If he hadn’t…already…Shit.”
Alex shakes his head. “I couldn’t figure out why he did that, but then I realized that was his shtick.
Being an asshole. He was taunting me for being gay, even though who the fuck cares.
So, I said screw it, he’s not going to out me before I out myself.
That’s why I told everyone. After that, he never talked to me again, like I had ruined his prank. ”
“Did you ever tell Ethan?”
Alex nods. “Yeah,” he says, sucking in a big gulp of air. “Ethan said not to take anything Billy did seriously.”
“He didn’t kick his ass?”
Alex shrugs. “You know Ethan. He just wanted to keep the peace. Trevor told me to ignore Billy, so that’s just what I did. I hate to admit it, but in a weird way, I’m kind of grateful that he’s gone. He didn’t deserve…this. But you know what, neither did I.”
I open and close my mouth, not knowing what to say, only knowing that I prize Alex’s safety and well-being above almost anyone’s, that whoever hurt him would have been dead to me anyway.
“I don’t want anything to do with him. Even now that he’s dead.” Alex looks up, his usually bright eyes dark, searching for recognition. “Does that make sense?”
I reach for his hand and hold it tightly in mine. “Yes,” I say, even though I’m not quite sure it does. “Of course.”
Alex swallows and looks up toward the Snack Shack. “Now, can we never talk about this again?”