Todd Strasser - Blood on my hands

I apologized for barging in, then found the bathroom and washed up. When I walked back out, the door to the bedroom was open and Jodie and Zelda were gone. Still feeling dizzy, I went downstairs and outside to get some fresh air. Alex’s parents had white wicker furniture on the porch and I sat in a wicker love seat. The air was cool and springlike, and pretty soon things stopped spinning and I began feel better. Then the front door opened and Katherine came out. “Want some company?” she asked, sounding sweet and concerned.

“Sure.”

She sat down beside me in the love seat. “How are you feeling?”

“A little better, thanks,” I said.

Katherine moved close and put her arm around my shoulders. She’d never done anything like that before. “You really love him.”

“I think so.”

“You just think so?” she asked.

“No, no, I mean yes, I really do.”

“It’s amazing, you know?” Katherine said.

“What is?”

“Just that you can be so sure. I mean, like, at our age. And you are sure, aren’t you?”

It was strange how she always seemed to know what was on my mind. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I mean, yes, I’m sure I love him, but I’m not sure what I’ll do if he gets sent overseas for a long time. I won’t be seventeen until almost July. It feels too young to have to wait so long.”

“I can imagine.”

I turned and looked at her. “You can? Really?”

Katherine nodded sympathetically and hooked her light brown hair behind her ear. She was wearing ear knots with little green whales. “Sure. Like you said, we’re sixteen. How can we really know what we want?”

I looked into her eyes, which that night were unexpectedly kind and caring. “Can I tell you a secret?”

She nodded.

“Sometimes I feel like I need Slade more than I want him. Like we’ve been together for so long that I’m afraid of what life would be like without him.”

Katherine squeezed my shoulder. “I think you’d be fine.”

The front door opened and Dakota came out. When she saw Katherine and me, she stopped and stared, then spun around and went back inside, slamming the door so hard behind her I thought the glass might break. Beside me, Katherine sighed loudly, then said, “Sorry, I have to go.”

Sunday 4:37 P.M.

I KNOW THE yearbook photo Slade was talking about. In it I’ve got shoulder-length blonde hair and a bright smile. A lot of that hair is now at the bottom of a brown paper bag, and what’s left on my head is jet-black and spiky. I’m wearing enough black eye makeup to pass for a raccoon, and I dyed and plucked my eyebrows until they were thin black slivers to go with my black lips and nails. Topping it all off is a thick, abstract Sharpie tattoo on the side of my neck. Thanks to the rubbing alcohol, it looks almost real.

The police scanner blurts on.

Female voice: “Bravo five-eleven, what’s your ten-twenty?”

Male voice: “Bravo five-eleven. Over by the train station.”

Female voice: “Go over to Kearn’s Deli. Ten-sixty-two on a possible sighting of person wanted for questioning.”

Male voice: “Ten-four.”

A 10-62 means to take a report from a citizen. I don’t think it’s paranoid to imagine that the person wanted for questioning is me. So that means someone thinks he or she saw me and has called the police to report it. Of course, it’s a mistake. No one’s seen me. No one… except Slade.

I feel my stomach knot, from both hunger and anxiety, and I rip out the seams of Alyssa’s jeans and resew them so they’re skinny, then rip the knees and a pocket before scrawling on them and the sneakers with black Sharpies. All this work keeps me busy until, despite my nervousness, I’m starving. Finally, stomach grumbling, I stand before the bathroom mirror and consider what I’ve created. Scratches hidden by makeup. Black hair, black eyes and lips, black clothes. Short of piercings, I am as punk as can be.

But now I have to leave this place, and if this disguise doesn’t work, I won’t be punk. I’ll be in jail.

If, as I suspected, Dakota was Katherine’s killer, I wouldn’t be totally surprised. I had learned that she was practiced at appearing to be things she wasn’t. I knew, for instance, that she could be fast and aggressive with boys, even if she pretended to be the opposite. Even though she was pretty, with shoulder-length auburn hair, a trim figure, and an unusually ample chest for a girl her size, she never talked about dating. And while lots of girls wore tight low-cut tops and flaunted their cleavage, she stuck to turtlenecks and blouses.

But Slade had told me what had happened while he and his dad had been doing the renovation of the Jenkinses’ kitchen. Dakota had taken a shine to one of the workers, a guy about Slade’s age. She started hanging around, finding excuses to talk to him, “accidentally” bumping into him, and dropping hints.

“What kind of hints?” I asked.

“Oh, you know.” Slade reddened slightly. “The kind of stuff a girl does and says when she’s interested. And she’d touch him, too, when she talked.”

“Your friend told you that?”

“Yeah. I mean, it was kind of weird. Not the kind of thing that happens a lot when you’re on a job.”

“What did he do?”

“Well, that’s where it got even weirder, because there’s this unwritten rule that you don’t mix business with pleasure, especially when it’s the daughter of the client. So at first the guy just tried to laugh it off, but the more he did that, the more insistent she got. Like once she set her mind on something, she had to have it. Finally the foreman had to take him off that job and put him on another one.” He paused for a second, then added, “But even that wasn’t the end of it. She got hold of his phone number and sent some text messages. You know, that kind of thing.”

“So… she was really aggressive?”

Slade nodded. It sounded strange. Not that a girl would do something like that but that the girl in question was Dakota.

“And?”

“Don’t really know. After that, I never heard anything more about it.”

Sunday 4:42 P.M.

IN THE OLD EMS building, my hand trembles as I reach for the door. Who would imagine that going outside could be this hard? But I’m scared. What will happen if I get caught? Who’ll defend me? My mother has no money. She used everything she had on Sebastian’s defense and then had to declare bankruptcy. And despite all that, Sebastian is still in jail with an eight-to-fifteen-year sentence for aggravated assault. It would have been worse had it not been for the private defense lawyer paid for by his friend Jerry.

But I can’t hide forever, so out I go. It’s early September and everything is still green and warm. I walk along the sidewalk toward town, looking straight ahead and taking determined steps. I remember something Jodie once said: A costume is the least convincing part of a role. It’s the acting that makes or breaks you. My only chance is to act like I’m just another punk with someplace to go.

It’s a good thing no one can hear the thudding of my heart.

First stop is the convenience store. As I walk in, my eyes go immediately to the newspaper stand by the door. On the front page of the local paper is a large slightly blurred color photo that I try not to focus on, knowing it must be one of the shots of me kneeling beside Katherine’s body. Above it in big thick black letters is the headline.

POLICE SEARCH FOR LOCAL TEEN IN MURDER INVESTIGATION

Sex Assault Considered Possible Motive

Sex assault? I want to pick up the paper and read it, but I can’t. Don’t look , I tell myself. Act normal. There are a few other customers in the store, but I don’t look at them, either. As I pull a prepackaged ham-and-cheese sandwich out of the refrigerated display and grab a soda, I consider what this unexpected development could mean. If it was a sex assault, then it couldn’t have been Dakota. But then who killed Katherine? Is it possible Slade was right? That it was just some random stranger?