Chapter 2
Hal’s corpse isn’t the first I’ve seen up close.
The memory always starts like this:
The sharp scent of antiseptics burns the inside of my nose. Thick, salty tears fill my throat. Underneath my fingertips, there’s no pulse. Only ice-cold skin. He lies motionless on the table.
Dead.
His body is spared the cuts I suffered. The scars that took months to fade. But a river of dried blood snakes from his temple to his collarbone.
Traumatic brain injury, the doctors whisper. Their voices are like thin breezes. Nearly silent compared to the ache thundering in me.
Helpless, I stare at him. Blue lips that once held contagious smiles. Sunlit tan skin now pale as milk. His eyes are shut, but I remember how green they were, like aloe. Under the LED panel lights, shards of glass glitter in his wavy brown hair.
He was smart. Funny. He stole attention from every room. He held me like nothing could rip us apart. He was everything.
He was…mine.
And in the flash of a traffic light changing. The press of my foot against the accelerator. In a blink, the suddenness of another car smashing into ours, London Sanders became a was instead of an is.
Outside the hospital room, my parents wait with his. They give me a moment, for a goodbye. But my splintered voice can only say this:
I’m so sorry.
Over and over.
Those words change nothing. They don’t silence the howlingly loud guilt inside me. They don’t bring him back.
I was sixteen when I stood over my first dead body.
I’m eighteen when a detective questions me about the second one.
“Mr. Clarke?”
The sterile hospital room fades. So does London’s body. My shaking hands clutch at empty air, desperate to hold on to him a little longer.
I’m back in the alley behind Viva Catalina’s. The stench of rancid trash clogs my throat again. Yellow tape ropes a barrier around the area. Red and blue lights from a SBPD patrol vehicle cast weird shapes along the brick wall in front of me.
I focus on the ground. Hal’s corpse is gone. Crime scene markers map out where he was. They tell the story of what the police think happened. No one truly knows, not even me.
“You were saying?”
Detective Rosado looks as if she would rather be anywhere but in a fetid alley behind a pizzeria at 5:53 p.m. on a Thursday.
“I—” It hurts to swallow. “What now?”
Rosado sighs. “You said you saw someone else here.” She consults her notes. “Another boy? Cary?”
A shiver ripples through my muscles. I refuse to blink. If I do, his face will be there. Sculpted stone. Shimmering eyes.
An impatient knot forms on Rosado’s light brown forehead. “Cary as in…Grant? Like the actor?”
Max sidles up to me. “More like Elwes. From The Princess Bride.”
It’s one of her favorite movies. Her warmth is welcoming. She eyes Rosado, her lips curling with obvious intrigue. The detective is at least a decade older than us. That’s never stopped Max before.
Rosado doesn’t return the interest. “And this Cary? You saw him—”
Max half turns to me. “What happened with him?”
I recognize her curious expression. “It’s not what you think.”
“But you thought he was hot, right?”
Rosado pinches the bridge of her nose, annoyed. “Sorry, am I hearing this right? You were flirting with the potential suspect?”
“I wasn’t,” I insist.
Despite Max’s hopes, I have no interest in Cary. How could anyone? He’s as cold as the Pacific just after sunrise.
He’s also a murderer. At least, it looks that way.
“Auggie, I don’t think it was him,” Max says. “He was still sitting at his table when you—” She bites her lip. But I know what that pause means. What she’s trying to hide from me.
Pity dressed as sympathy.
My eyebrows knit. “I saw—”
Rosado cuts me off with a raised hand. Her partner, a short and stocky white man, approaches. He whispers in her ear.
“We have another witness,” Rosado announces. “The manager from the coffeehouse next door. He said he saw Mr. Clarke having a panic attack?”
My mouth goes impossibly dry.
Rosado’s eyes scan me for a second longer before she moves on. “He didn’t see anyone else. Just Mr. Clarke. And the body.”
Panic flares under my rib cage. A cornered beast trying to escape. I’m familiar with the potent stare she gives me. There was a dead white man left in an alley. The only other person around was a young Black boy.
I’ve heard this story before. I know how it ends.
On instinct, my fingers reach for the threaded bracelet around my wrist. I pull hard. My breaths sync to the mild sting.
“I didn’t—”
“You’re not a suspect, kid,” Rosado interrupts.
I flinch at her tone. It’s how most adults talk to teens. As if we are always being dramatic. Every thought and feeling and experience we have is an overreaction.
The officer on the night of the accident spoke to me the same way.
It wasn’t your fault, kid.
How does he know? He wasn’t in the car. Was it supposed to be comforting? Nothing about what he said made me feel any better about my boyfriend, my first love, being dead.
“We spoke with the other customers and staff inside Viva Catalina’s,” Rosado continues. “Mr. Connely showed no signs earlier.”
“No signs of what?” Max asks, startling me.
I forgot she was there.
“A heart attack,” Rosado says flatly.
“A heart attack?” I rasp out, confused.
“That’s what SB Cottage Hospital’s emergency docs believe. They’re running tests. We’ll know in a few hours.”
Rosado pockets her notepad. End of discussion. Case closed.
But it can’t be.
“I’ll be in touch if we have more questions,” she says, like she’s read my thoughts. Before she turns away, her eyes study me one last time. “Are you sure you saw someone else, Mr. Clarke?”
Yes, I want to scream.
Cary was right here. Where Detective Rosado is standing now. I saw him…didn’t I?
Grief does weird things to the brain chemistry. My dad said this a few months after the accident. He works at the hospital. As a pediatric nurse. He was the first person at my side that night when the ambulance brought us to the trauma center.
Sometimes, I think I see him. London. In the corners of crowded rooms. Walking down a street. A shadow moving along the walls, shaped like him, with his broad shoulders and long, narrow torso.
It will pass, Dad promised. It hasn’t yet.
I know what I saw in this alley. And I know Detective Rosado will never believe me.
“Mr. Clarke?” she repeats.
I look away. “Maybe not.”
Angela closes the pizzeria early.
“Out of respect,” she says, frowning at the stool Hal loved to sit on. “We lost one of our own today.”
Hal was a Viva Catalina’s lifer. He came by every afternoon for the last fifteen years. At least, that’s what the staff says. I didn’t know him that well. I knew his order, the well-worn, frayed-brim hat he took off every time he greeted someone.
But I didn’t know he was in his late forties. That he had no partner, no children. Not until Angela tells me.
I stare at the hardwood floor, ashamed. Sad.
Who will mourn him? How will they react when they find out he died in an alley behind a pizzeria? Who will cry at his funeral?
My vision hazes as a memory comes into focus. A church’s tall wooden doors. My trembling hand reaching to open them. The swift recoil of my arm when I thought about what was waiting for me on the other side.
“Okay?” Angela asks, squeezing my shoulder.
As the image disappears, I nod. I’m fine. I have to be.
I can’t bear one more look like the one Detective Rosado gave me.
I used to get it all the time. From teachers. Our neighbors. Anyone who knew what happened to London. Who he was and who I am.
The boy who survived.
Angela tells us to close up and go home. When she returns to her office, we shift into motion. Cleaning and putting things away.
While wiping down tables, I absently walk to table nine. The corner booth. A plate waits in the center, an untouched pizza crust the only thing left on it.
Cary was here when I ran outside, I remind myself.
“You missed a spot.”
Max leans over my shoulder while I scrub furiously. As if I can wipe Cary’s sharp face from my memory. The spark of gold in his black eyes—an ember flickering in the shadows—when he saw me in the alley.
“You could help,” I grunt.
“I am.”
“How?”
“By reminding you that cleaning is an avoidance tactic,” she says frankly.
“Excuse me,” I say, turning, “but I don’t remember signing up for a session with Dr. Cho.”
Her face darkens.
Max hates being compared to her parents. Specifically, her mom, one of Southern California’s most sought-after therapists. She’s longing for Max to follow in her footsteps. Max is majoring in art history at Santa Barbara State. Because she loves art, but also out of pure spite.
“That was rude,” she gripes.
“Sorry,” I say, genuine.
“You need to talk about it.”
“No, I don’t.” Frustration eddies in my blood again. “I need to finish cleaning. So I don’t get fired. So I can pay rent.”
When her mouth twists sourly, I grin. She can’t argue against that point. She can, however, knock over a saltshaker before walking away. I welcome her pettiness. Anything to steady the ebb and flow of my thoughts.
“We should go out,” Junie suggests, predictably. An early night for him is just before the sun rises from the ocean. “Let’s get drinks. In honor of Hal!”
Tonia shakes their head. “Please. You just want to get wasted.”
“You know me too well!”
Junípero Cruz is sunshine poured into a human body. He’s all smiles and jokes. Lit up with the kind of energy I used to have.
“You in, Maxie?” he says.
Max meets my eyes. There’s a question waiting in hers: Are you in?
We both know the answer.
Junie swings an arm around her shoulders. “Come on, you have to. For Hal.”
Tonia groans from the kitchen. “Please stop using a dead man’s name as an excuse for your debauchery.”
Junie grins relentlessly at Max. “Fine,” she sighs out. “But not too late. I have Intro to World Art at eight a.m.”
“Gross.”
Max watches me. “Auggie?”
My fingers itch to grab my bracelet. Or drum against the air to the rhythm of my wild heartbeat.
I can always tell when you’re anxious, London used to say. You do that thing with your hands. Like you’re composing a song.