Chapter 4
IT TWO IN THE MORNING, Dez sits in the hospital waiting room and silently pleads.
Please. Heal. Please.
Around her sit other people’s families, wearing bathrobes and inappropriate shoes, ripped from the flow of their lives into panic and confusion just like Dez.
A mounted TV from the mid-nineties is chained to the ceiling, tuned to the weather channel, but Dez stares straight ahead, at a large coffee stain shaped like a three-legged centaur on the vinyl wall.
She’s had no news of Mo, only the vacant, placating line from the receptionist that the doctors are “doing everything they can.” She sits alone, knees knocking with nerves, under a black sludge of guilt.
She hears her mother and her uncle talking in low voices outside the automatic sliding doors. About her. She catches pieces she cannot concern herself with yet.
Lawyer, her uncle’s saying. How expensive?
Her mother’s shaking voice: The district attorney?
Dez’s hand goes to the edge of the eyeball in her apron pocket. She’s been studying the biowaste bin in the hallway behind the receptionist, looking for a chance to get rid of the eye.
But she knows she’ll never get rid of it. Not really. Somehow it will see her for the rest of her life.
She takes out the napkin the stranger on the motorcycle gave her to wipe her eyes.
She stares at the drawing, feeling a crater in her gut.
The likeness is faithful down to the pattern of her freckles, the curve of her nose, the cowlicked peak of her hairline.
It’s somehow more accurate than a photograph.
The lines capture an essence Dez sees every time she looks in the mirror.
They show the hunger and conviction in her eyes, limned with her deepest fear.
That she will never reach her dreams, that she isn’t even worthy of having them.
Every time Dez gets as far as wondering how the existence of this sketch is possible, the mechanical whir of the waiting room’s automatic doors brings her back to her surroundings.
To her brother. To this current crisis, which is bigger than anything she’s ever known.
“Dez?”
Her mom stands in the doorway. Dez pockets the napkin and searches for the reassurance she usually finds in her mother’s gaze.
The problem is she doesn’t recognize her mom, her face painted strange by grief and panic.
Dez watched the change come over her as they sat in the hospital lobby last night, and Dez whispered her version of the story, only leaving out that while fighting off the man in the mask, Dez had taken out his eye.
She’d been too sickened with herself to tell her mom that part.
And one more thing. Instinctively, she left out the interlude with the stranger on the motorcycle, before the cops showed up.
She had told her mother, in other words, what mattered about Mo’s current situation. And it changed her mother into a new person, someone Dez wasn’t acquainted with and wasn’t sure liked her very much.
“The police want you to sit for questioning.”
Dez nods.
“Uncle Bob doesn’t think you should talk to them yet. Without a lawyer.”
“Do they think I—”
“They do,” her uncle says, coming to stand behind her mom.
He stuffs his hands in his jean pockets, worrying the crease between his eyes.
His bad news stance, a more serious version of his pose every time Dez makes an expensive mistake at the Dairy Barn.
“All the cash is missing from the till. And there’s no evidence anyone else was there last night.
No fingerprints but yours on the cash register. Or on the driver’s side of your car.”
“That’s impossible,” Dez says.
“Maybe when they get the DNA evidence back from the lab …” But her uncle doesn’t sound optimistic.
“I’m not making him up.” Anger flares in Dez. “There was a man with a mask and a gun. Why else would I—” She closes her eyes. She can’t go back to the moment she burned Mo. “How else would my car have crashed into the ditch?”
“They think you were driving,” Uncle Bob says quietly. “They think you crashed and ran.”
Dez looks at her mother. “Mom?”
“You need a lawyer, Dez,” her mother says, looking down at her hands.
Is this the moment Dez reaches into her apron and shows her mom and her uncle the eye? It might be the only evidence supporting her side of the story, the truth. But she hesitates. Her family is already so disgusted with her, she can’t bring herself to show them what else she did last night.
Out the window, Dez sees the two cops who’d given her a ride to the hospital. They’re heading for the automatic doors, for the waiting room. For her.
Dez stands and brushes past her family. She sees a sign for the cafeteria one flight up and hurries for the stairs. She’s close to hyperventilating when she bursts into the empty, cavernous room.
The seating area is open, but the buffet and registers are closed and dim.
Dez sinks onto a hard, beige chair in a dark corner.
She puts her head down on the Formica table.
How quickly her entire life has changed.
Five hours ago, she’d been mopping the Dairy Barn floor, her biggest concern getting her film school application in before the midnight deadline.
Which seems ridiculous now. She’d been considering texting Asher.
Way back when ambition and flirtation still existed.
Somehow texting Asher doesn’t feel ridiculous. In fact, it feels almost urgent. She could use someone to take her mind off things.
She doesn’t have to tell him about Mo, about the alternate reality she slipped into when she threw that pan of oil.
She can pretend she did just apply to AFI.
She can pretend that even though it’s ungodly late, she wanted him to be the first to know.
She can pretend to still be the filmmaker Asher had met that day on the beach.
She feels for her phone in her pocket, but just as she’s about to take it out, the aroma of weak coffee finds her nose.
Dez looks up to see the motorcycle rider from the county road.
There’s a mischievous late-night twinkle in his eye as he sets down two lidded Styrofoam cups of coffee, then dumps an assortment of chips, candy bars, and plastic-wrapped cookies on the table in front of her.
“Where did you—” she starts to say.
“Hot meals end at eleven. But the vending machines party all night long.”
“Forget the food,” Dez says. “Where did you come from? What are you doing here?”
“Well, Dez, the truth is—”
“How do you know my name?” she demands, shooting to her feet so she can look him in the eye. He’s half a foot taller than her and seems amused by her attempt at chesting up to him. She fishes into her pocket for the napkin. “What is this?”
He takes the napkin from her, stares at it with interest, as if he’s seeing it for the first time. “It appears to be a portrait of you.”
“Did you draw it?”
“No.”
“Yet you gave it to me earlier. And now you’re following me around. Why?”
“I can’t wait to tell you.” He’s smiling but there’s an unmistakable note of sarcasm in his voice. “But maybe you’d like to take this conversation somewhere more private—”
“I’m not going anywhere with you—”
“Sure about that?”
On the far side of the room, the same two cops enter the cafeteria. They haven’t seen her yet. Dez looks at the man in front of her, who tips his head toward a door behind him that READS ROOF ACCESS.
Dez leads the way, disappearing up the stairs. Motorcycle man grabs the coffees and follows her. When they clear the top of the stairs and press outside to the hot, still night on the roof, Dez turns on the guy in the leather jacket.
“Answers.”
He smiles. “Questions.”
“I don’t think you’re cute.”
“I disagree.”
“You think you’re cute?”
“I think you think I’m cute.”
“I also don’t think you’re funny.”
“I’m sorry about your brother.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Rafael de la Cruz. My fans call me Rafe.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I bring you good tidings of great joy,” he says, taking a sip of coffee.
“I swear to God, if you’re some sort of proselytizer—”
“You got in.”
Dez blinks. “I did what?”
“To Acheron.” He pauses for effect. “Not just in, I should say. They’re giving you the Total Package.
Room, board, the coveted summer internship.
They’ve even overlooked the fact that you don’t have a four-year degree.
As a special bonus, you’ll also receive the eternal contempt of your less-rewarded cohort.
Anyway, it’s all included.” He pats her cheek.
“You’re looking at me like you’re about to say you don’t understand. ”
“I don’t understand.”
“Right, well, here’s an acceptance letter, spelling it all out.
Save us both some time.” He hands her a sealed envelope with her name and address on the front.
There’s a coat of arms on the top left corner featuring a tree split down the middle with a snake wrapped around the trunk like a rope holding it together.
Next to the coat of arms, the word Acheron in the same ornate type she’d seen engraved on his motorcycle. She’s never heard of the place.
“What is Acheron?”
Rafe stares at her. “The film school? Only the world’s most elite.”
“Bullshit,” she says. “I didn’t apply there.”
Rafe laughs. “No one applies to Acheron, Desdemona. One is selected.”
“How?”
“By top scouts whose business is recruiting visionaries. Ours have been following your socials, which is an actual thing I’m supposed to say. God, I hate this job.” He takes out his phone, consults the screen. “Where was I? Some film you made called Glimpse—”
Dez’s eyes shoot up to meet his. “No one’s seen that yet.”
Outside her hard drive, Glimpse has only ventured into the Dropbox link she shared with Silas while she was editing it.
“We’ve seen it,” Rafe says with nonchalant authority. “If it’s on any cloud, anywhere, our scouts can access it.”
“That’s a huge violation of—”
“We see cutting-edge talent in you, Dez. A rare gift.” He raises an eyebrow. “Still feel like fighting me on this?”
Dez swallows. It doesn’t make sense, but is he telling the truth? A film scout found her work, saw talent in her?
“Didn’t think so,” Rafe says. “Which brings us to my cameo tonight.” He touches his chest. “I’m here to lift the velvet rope on the life you’ve always dreamed of. I understand the timing is terrible—family tragedy and all. But our next term begins tomorrow—”
“Tomorrow?” Dez’s stomach twists. “I was applying for programs next year.”
Rafe gives her a pitying look. “That’s your response?”
“Are you a professor?” she asks.
“Oh, no.” He laughs. “You’ve heard the expression those who can’t do, teach.” He lifts a shoulder casually. “I can do.”
“You’re a student, but they let you handle recruitment?”
“What can I say, Dez? People like me.”
“When I saw you on the street earlier, you knew who I was?”
“That was a coincidence.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Okay, yes, I was coming to find you. Our scouts told me you worked at the Dairy Barn. But it was pure chance to find you already on your way to me.”
“Why didn’t you mention all this then?”
“You mean, when you were like this?” He bends over in an imitation of her, puts his head between his knees, and heaves. “I’m aware,” he says, righting himself, “that as we speak, you’re still only a motion away from emotional insolvency, but we don’t have the luxury of time.”
“If this is real, why didn’t I get notified sooner? A letter. An email. Something reasonable—”
“Because,” he says, “a spot just opened up.”
“Why did you give me that napkin?”
“That’s called foreshadowing.”
Even if this pompous ass is telling the truth, even if this ludicrous offer is real, there’s no way Dez can start graduate school right now. Not at Acheron, not anywhere. She starts for the door to the stairs. “I can’t have this conversation. I need to find a lawyer—”
“Have the police charged you with anything?” he calls after her.
Dez stops. “No.”
“Have they asked you not to leave town?”
They had, yes, in the car on the way to the hospital. She swallows.
“Without a court order,” Rafe says, “they can’t enforce it. Yet. Acheron retains excellent legal counsel. They’ve gotten students out of scrapes you wouldn’t believe. Of course, you would have to be enrolled to avail yourself of their services.”
Dez shakes her head. “I can’t leave my family.” She doesn’t know where Acheron is, but if it’s outside this hospital, it’s too far from Mo. “Where did you say the school is?”
“Nestled in the Sawatch range near the summit of the Colorado Rockies. About as far away from Death Valley as you can get. People find it quite scenic.”
He’s got to be kidding. This whole thing, an odd joke. Even if her brother wasn’t in the ICU, how would she get to Colorado by tomorrow?
She shakes her head. “My brother—”
“What’s your brother’s name?”
“Moses. Mo.”
“Don’t you think Mo would want you to accept? Anyone who loves you would want you to seize this opportunity.”
“Maybe next semester.”
Rafe laughs again. “There won’t be an opening next semester. This spot will be filled by midnight. If you’re not taking it, I have others to notify. People die for this.”
He pulls out a card from his wallet and hands it to her. “Here’s where I’ll be at midnight. If you’re in, meet me there. If not …” He glances around their surroundings. “Well, we’ll always have this shitty roof.”