12. Liz
LIZ
IT’S ONE OF those nights that just feels like it’s going to end in disaster.
Sadie is drinking way more than she usually does, and even though I’m trying to maintain control of the situation by pouring watered-down drinks for her to make sure she’s not drinking straight vodka, I know I’m not the only one pouring.
Ben has his arm around her in the corner like she’s a piece of luggage.
You know the way guys can do that—just sort of casually tossing an arm over a girl, not even around her.
It’s possession, not love, and I would know because I’ve been on the receiving end of it more times than I can count.
Usually, the guy is a lot older. Usually, there’s something I want badly enough that I’ll tolerate his bullshit so I can get it.
But tonight, seeing Ben and Sadie together just makes me sad.
It’s been complicated ever since what happened last year, and it’s not that I’m sad because I wish it were me instead of her with Ben.
It’s just… sad. I feel like I can see their entire lives playing out in front of my eyes, and I wish Sadie could see it too and run as far away in the other direction as she can.
Although, as I constantly try to remind myself when it comes to the Coopers—not my life, not my problem.
My mom used to have a phrase that went something like that.
She would say, “Not my circus, not my monkeys,” which always made me laugh when I was little.
I’d ask her where the monkeys were, and she would inevitably say, “I see one right in front of me!” and start tickling me.
I smile in spite of myself, even in the middle of the drunken chaos of Trevor’s.
I probably don’t think about my mom as often as I should.
(I don’t know how often you’re supposed to think about a dead parent.
Does it depend on how old you were when they died?
What kind of relationship you had with them?
Whether or not they unintentionally saddled you with a religious freak of a stepfather?)
The smile doesn’t stay on my face for long, though, because at about ten p.m., Jayne Cooper walks through the door. I have to do a double take, because for a second, I think she’s Sadie and that she just somehow got outside to the bonfire and is coming back inside.
Jayne is dressed in the exact same outfit as Sadie.
My brain can’t quite make sense of it in the moment, but then I realize: If Jayne is here, I can only assume something has gone horribly wrong.
Are Steven and Carly here too somehow? Or are they coming back early?
Did Jayne just suddenly, against every piece of her character I’ve ever understood, decide that she really wanted to drink shitty beer in a field with the rest of us commoners? And dress like her sister to do it?
I turn around to the corner previously occupied by Ben and Sadie to warn Sadie that her sister is here and to hopefully try to get her even vaguely, partially more sober than she is now. But she and Ben are both gone.
“Just my luck,” I mutter to myself. Figuring it’s better to talk to Jayne myself instead of waiting for her to track down Sadie, I make my way over to her.
The house is so packed that Jayne has barely had the chance to move more than two feet from the front door, and I grab another cup of beer from one of the tables nearby on my way to her as a peace offering. And also because I figure it’ll piss her off to even be handed something so beneath her.
“Jayne,” I say. “To what do we owe the… pleasure… of your company?”
She eyes me up with a level of distaste that she usually has the good sense to hide in front of Sadie.
“Let’s pause here. You saw Jayne walk through the door at Trevor McClain’s house?”
“Yeah.”
“And would you say that you were the very first person to talk to her at the party? That she didn’t even have the time to speak with anyone else before you got over to her?”
I give Detective Budd a look that I hope conveys how completely useless this line of questioning is, but she’s been nice enough so far, and I figure it can’t hurt to humor her.
“Right,” I reply. “Jayne walked through the door around ten—I remember because Trevor’s parties have this ‘ten for ten’ kind of thing that the guys do.”
“God help me for asking, but what is ‘ten for ten’?”
“Trevor rounds up ten guys in the first hour or so of the night, and then at ten o’clock, the so-called chosen ones have to do ten shots. They had just finished up, and that’s how I know what time Jayne showed up.”
“Yikes.”
I shrug. “Like I said before, been a while since you’ve been in school, huh?”
“Watch it, Miss Stratton,” Detective Budd replies, but I can tell she’s at least a little bit amused. But as I watch her face, it transforms almost imperceptibly from amusement to suspicion. I know that look well. It’s one of Levi’s favorites when he’s looking at me.
“You’re sure, then, that it was ten p.m., and that Jayne didn’t speak to anyone else before you came up and offered her a drink? What about immediately after that?”
“After that? We were going to go looking for Sadie together. She told me that Steven and Carly were on their way home, which was basically a four-alarm emergency. I wanted to ask her about the shit I’d seen her taking out of her dad’s bag, but I figured that was a question for Saturday morning, not Friday night. ”
Detective Budd is furiously taking notes, and it’s making me feel increasingly insecure. This is all basic stuff; why is she writing like her life depends on it or something?
“Did you have a text from Jayne telling you that her parents were coming home and asking when you and Sadie would be back?”
“What? No.” I shake my head. “Jayne and I are not exactly texting buddies. I assume she texted Sadie, but, no, she never texted me.” I pause. “Why? Did she say she did?”
Detective Budd doesn’t answer me.
“Okay, what’s going on?” I say finally. “I’m just telling you the timeline. I don’t understand why you’re being so obsessive right now.”
She takes a break from staring at her notebook and looks up at me.
“First of all, Miss Stratton, the obsessiveness you’re referring to is called doing my job.
Second of all, you may as well know, in case it changes anything you’re telling me, that the reason I’m taking such detailed notes right now about your account of the evening is because—and I’m going to shoot straight with you here, because you deserve that—what you’re telling me right now does not match up with what Jayne Cooper is telling me. ”
My heart drops in my chest like a block of cement.
I can feel my pulse racing. Sweat starting to form on my temples.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. This is the reaction of someone who is guilty of something—I’ve seen enough true crime shows to know that.
But I’m not guilty. Not like that. What the hell is going on here?
“I can see that’s news to you,” Detective Budd says, eyeing me carefully.
“Um.” I take a deep breath, trying to steady myself. “Yeah. Yeah, that is news to me.”
“Now that you’re aware, is there anything else you’d like to tell me about what happened when Jayne showed up? Anything that you might be remembering differently now?”
I wish I could say yes. I should say yes. Detective Sloane Budd’s eyes, so open and frank when she first came into this room with my bag of McDonald’s, are now impossible to read. And I know why. I’ve just gone from a witness to be pitied to a suspect to be interrogated.
Fuck.
“Did something happen to your necklace?” Detective Budd asks me suddenly.
My hand instinctively flies up to my neck, and I remember it’s not there.
Jayne must have told her about our necklaces. I wonder if she told her BS story that Sadie gave it to her first.
“Miss Stratton?”
“Oh, I…” I can barely get the words out. I start crying—like, ugly crying. Detective Budd must think I’m losing it.
“I lost it somehow last night,” I say through my tears.
“I don’t know what happened to it. I literally never take it off, except to shower.
I wear it everywhere. And I lost it last night, of all nights.
I’m such a shitty best friend. Such an idiot.
It’s the most important thing Sadie ever gave me, and I managed to lose it… on the same night I lost her.”
Detective Budd now looks at me with such pity that it just makes me cry harder.