Chapter 6
Giuliano’s was so busy I could barely get the guys behind the counter to take my order. They said it would take forty-five minutes. That usually meant an hour or more.
I texted Benj. Long wait.
I thought about the talk we still needed to have, how important it was that I stay calm and open, neither fretful nor impatient, neither skeptical nor insatiably curious.
He needed to learn that silence and walking away were only temporary solutions.
I needed to learn that even an incomplete conversation was worth having.
I added a smile emoji to my last text.
His reply was quick.
I promise not to eat the couch cushions.
I hearted the message.
I was just leaving the pizzeria with a paid receipt but no pizza when a young girl called out from behind me. “Ms. Rosso?”
Her glossy black hair was pulled back tight in a ponytail and she wasn’t wearing the thick eyeliner she usually wore at school. “Chandra. I didn’t know you worked here.”
She wiped her hands on her dirty apron. “Dishwasher. It’s not too bad.”
“Good for you,” I said, wondering if her wealthy doctor parents were using the job to build character or to work off the several hundred dollars of clothes she put on their Visa account without permission.
“I just wanted to say thank you for helping me talk to my mom after spring break. Things are getting better.”
“Oh, I’m so glad.” I wanted to say something more, or maybe I just wanted to hold on to this moment. “You’re sure you’re doing all right now?”
“I am.” She smiled. “I’ll ask my manager to upsize your pizza.”
“It’s already the biggest size you make. But thank you, Chandra. Really.”
She started to turn back, then changed her mind. “It’s really sad about Izzy. Some people didn’t like her. She was—you know—a show-off.”
I didn’t know what “show-off” meant—whether it was something about clothes, money, or grades. But I could tell Chandra wanted to say more.
After a moment, she added, “People tried to hassle her, but they couldn’t really, because she didn’t care about what people thought.”
I nodded, encouraging her.
“There was a photo going around. It didn’t matter, though. I mean, she was still popular.”
Oh, lord. One of those sexting things, probably. Didn’t kids ever learn?
“Do you think Izzy was being bullied?”
“No. She wouldn’t let people bully her.”
That didn’t answer the question.
Chandra added, “Izzy was too—you know. Confident.” She dragged a dusty forearm across her forehead, leaving a spot of flour above one eyebrow. “I’m saying this all wrong—”
“It’s okay.”
“No, what I meant to say—well, I didn’t really mean to say it, but . . .”
I nodded and smiled. Take your time.
“Izzy wasn’t being bullied,” she said. “She was the bully. I mean, sometimes. She could be mean. To some boys, especially.”
Chandra looked at me expectantly, as if we were playing a game of charades and it was my turn to guess. But I had nothing to guess. Nothing to say.
The pizzeria door opened. A middle-aged woman in an apron called Chandra’s name. Our conversation was over.
Back in the car, I replayed Chandra’s cryptic comments, but I could make nothing of them.
Izzy. And some boys. I could ask Benjamin, but he’d already been mute about Izzy.
They weren’t even in the same grade. He’d never mentioned her—or any other junior or senior girl, for that matter.
Summit was small enough for every student to recognize every other student on sight, but individual cliques inhabited separate universes.
Parked with the windows down, I googled for any news about the girls.
Nothing. Our local newspaper covered charity balls and missing pets.
No hard news. If a big-city paper like the Chicago Tribune picked up the story then we’d all know much more.
But our town fathers wouldn’t want that, and I wasn’t sure I wanted it either, not if the girls’ deaths were sensationalized.
I was still staring at the phone when I realized it was Monday, 7 P.M., the time every week that I called Willa, my late mother’s closest friend.
We sometimes called her “Aunt Willa” because she was a surrogate aunt, for lack of a better term.
I was her surrogate, too, because she had no one else.
Her only daughter died at the age of thirty-eight from breast cancer.
As Willa got older, she seemed more regretful about the past—not visiting me often enough during my foster care years, for example.
But I didn’t blame her for that. It was enough that she’d tell me spontaneously, especially if she’d already had a drink or two, how much my mother had loved me.
As for Ewan, she never mentioned him. I tried asking once, How old was he, when he started getting into real trouble?
She said she didn’t remember. I didn’t believe it, but I didn’t push, either.
It was too hot to make the call while parked outside Giuliano’s.
I needed to run the car and get the air-conditioning going, even if it meant wasting gas.
With another half hour or more to wait until the pizza would be ready, I headed north on Green Bay Road, counting on the dense green trees of yet posher neighborhoods to bring the temperature down by at least ten degrees.
When I could finally put my window up, with the AC fully kicking in, I speed-dialed Willa’s number.
“Happy Monday,” I said, when she picked up. “Go for a walk today?”
“Are you kidding? In this heat?”
“Good point. I hope you’re drinking a lot of water.”
The weekly call was always quick, just enough time to establish that Willa wasn’t broiling to death in her Winthrop Harbor mobile home, or freezing if it was wintertime, or sinking into depression.
I didn’t mind. I was grateful she let me feel useful.
It’s what I would have done for my own parents, if I still had any, or even for my brother, if things had worked out differently.
“Work okay?” she asked.
“Oh, you know.”
“Pays the bills, right?”
“Some of them,” I said, not even managing a fake half laugh.
“But it’s almost summer, so that’s good. What do you have—a few more days? You deserve a break. Or were you doing a summer school thing for them?”
“Probably not.”
I couldn’t bring myself to mention the student deaths, never mind my abrupt dismissal. She’d find out soon enough, and by then, there would be less irresponsible conjecture. Instead we talked about a book she was reading and a TV series she was rewatching.
“It was boring then and it’s boring now,” she said.
“Then why do you keep watching it?”
“The actor. Whatshisname.” I waited as she cleared her throaty smoker’s cough and complained about how her memory was going.
The AC was working but I lowered my window again just to take in the air: green, fresh.
It smelled like garden parties and expensive brunches with fancy alcoholic drinks that didn’t count as unhealthy because they were light and fizzy and full of fruit.
Like boutiques where women shopped for blood-red Italian leather boots and expensive sweaters that couldn’t go in the dryer.
It smelled like not worrying about anything.
The cost of private counseling for your child, if he seemed unable to make friends or process grief. The cost of a good lawyer.
When I reached the northern limit of Lake Forest, I turned in to the train station and made a U-turn, wishing I didn’t have to go back.
“That’s the worst thing about this.”
“About what, Willa?”
“Getting old. It’s terrible how much you forget.”
It’s what everyone said. They never seemed to realize. Forgetting wasn’t so bad. Remembering was worse.
I was halfway back to Pleasant Park when my phone started dinging with texts.
I glanced over and saw it was Willa, sending me photos of the actor she’d been talking about.
Then the phone rang. Willa again. It was her pattern, to send texts and then to call, to make sure you saw the texts.
I laughed but I didn’t take the call. I’d already taken longer than I’d meant to, and the pizza would be waiting.
When the phone dinged again, I silenced it and pushed the phone into my purse.
I’d just focused back on the road when my eye caught sight of a girl stepping out of a car that was pulled off on the shoulder.
My heart leapt into my throat. It was Izzy—same long black hair, same pale pretty face, and she was slamming the passenger door.
I stared, incredulous, watching as a muscular, light-haired teenage boy stepped out from the driver’s side, hurrying to intercept her in front of the car.
He’d just grabbed her by a shirtsleeve when I passed them. I checked my rearview mirror. A car was right on my tail. I tapped the brake but it was all happening too fast, and in seconds the girl was out of my view
Izzy. The cops had made a mistake. That dead girl in Wadsworth must be someone else. The police incompetence was staggering. But that was less important than the elation Izzy’s family would feel as soon as someone told them. Izzy is alive!
I looked for a place to turn around, cursing and counting the seconds.
One. Two. Three. I took a hard right, into a side street.
Up the first driveway and fast reverse, avoiding a mailbox by inches.
I turned back the way I’d come, impatient at the stop sign.
My shock turned to euphoria, a smile spreading on my face.
Since hearing the news from Duplass this morning, I hadn’t been able to stomach thinking for long about Izzy’s parents, Sofia and Dominic.
I’d talked to Sofia Scarlatti only once at a school fundraiser.
Sofia, with the jet-black hair, square jaw, and enormous, knowing eyes.
Like Sophia Loren, Rita had whispered, coming to take my place at the silent auction table, and I had agreed, wondering if Izzy, too, would blossom into that kind of bold, one-in-a-million beauty.
In thirty seconds I made a left-hand turn and was on Green Bay again, eyes scanning the road shoulder. And there she was, walking toward me this time, on the southbound side of the road.
Izzy.
Except it wasn’t.
This girl was skinnier. A few inches taller as well. The same hair, yes, but not the same hourglass figure. Not even the same face, I forced myself to admit once I’d passed her a second time.
I found yet another place to turn around. More slowly, now, I retraced my route, swallowing my disappointment, checking my rearview mirror to see that no cars were behind me when I passed the girl and pulled up just behind her, on the narrow shoulder.
Opening the door, I called, “Are you okay?”
She didn’t turn at my voice. I stepped out and shouted again. She was wearing rolled-up jeans and a white midriffbaring shirt, rising high enough that I could see a large, blurry tattoo on her lower back. She wasn’t carrying anything. Not a backpack, not a purse.
I jogged forward to catch up with her. At the sound of my feet on the gravel-strewn shoulder she spun around, eyes wild.
Her cheeks looked tearstained. One of her wrists was bright red, like someone had been grabbing her hard.
Or maybe she’d just done it to herself, twisting the skin, an anxious tic.
“I didn’t mean to startle you. I just saw you back there, with your boyfriend, or whoever that was. I wanted to see if you needed help.”
“I don’t need help,” the girl said, eyes full of fire.
“A ride? Can I drop you somewhere?”
“I don’t need a ride.”
I felt a surge of helpless frustration. If you’d just let me help you.
“What about shoes? Do you need those?”
She looked down with surprise, as if she hadn’t registered that she was barefoot. She didn’t seem drunk or drugged, only stunned. I knew that feeling. The numbness that took hold in the face of a man’s unpredictable rage. The jumpiness that followed, until it faded into shivery exhaustion.
“They’re still in his car. Fuck.”
We looked at each other.
I was wearing an old pair of worn-out running shoes that I’d slipped on quickly, just to drive to the pizzeria. Holes where my big toes rubbed the fabric. No socks.
“We look the same size,” I said. “I’m on my way home. There’s a lot of glass and stuff on the shoulder. If you don’t want a ride, at least—”
“Yes.”
I stepped out of the running shoes without bothering to untie them.
As she was bending over to take them, I offered her a ride one last time and asked if she needed just enough cash to get home or if she wanted to tell me her name.
No, no, and no. She studiously avoided looking at me again as she untied the laces with trembling fingers, then worked her feet into the shoes.
She did look like Izzy, if Izzy were older—and then again, maybe I was imagining it. It bothered me. My fading delusion, clearly the result of my own guilt and need. Wasn’t it obvious?
If you’d just let me help you.
“Thank you,” she said softly, busy double knotting the bright orange laces.
You’ll get past this, I wanted to say. Whatever this is. A man, a moment, a mistake. Keep going.
While she was distracted with the laces, I pulled my phone from my back pocket and took a swift, silent photo.
When I finally got back to Giuliano’s, the pizza was not only ready but cold.