Before We Were Innocent, page 18
“Do you have any questions for me?” he asked, and I paused.
“Just one,” I said. “When can we go home?”
He glanced at the translator and smiled quickly.
“Not just yet. But it won’t be much longer.”
* * *
—
I was disoriented and jittery by the time I signed my formal witness statement, and I waited for Joni on a plastic chair in the lobby, my thighs swimming in a pool of my own sweat. I felt winded with relief when I finally saw her striding out of the questioning room with her trademark swagger, sunglasses still pushed up on her head, and she grabbed my arm and instantly pulled me up and out of my stupor. We stood, foreheads nearly touching as Joni touched my cheek to check I was okay. I shrugged in response because I was still there.
Someone had called a taxi to take us back to our hotel, and we waited indoors until it pulled up outside. When we finally walked out of the station, arm in arm, we found two photographers and a journalist waiting for us.
“How are you girls doing?” the journalist asked.
“Okay,” I said instinctively, at the same time Joni muttered, “Just fucking peachy, how do you think?”
“Were you with Evangeline Aetos when she died?” the journalist pressed, and I felt Joni’s arm clench my own.
“Come on,” she hissed as she pushed me into a taxi.
“Joni . . .” I said, once we were inside. I looked at the driver quickly. He was a kindly-looking older man who was listening to a talk radio show, which he turned up when he saw me looking.
“It’s only because Stavros is so rich,” Joni said. “That’s why they care.”
“Maybe,” I said, slipping away from myself again. Already the shock had set in, and I felt as if I were playing a part, one I wasn’t entirely equipped to commit to in the way it required. I found myself wondering when this might be over, when I could return to being myself again, and then, with a crushing thud, I remembered that Evangeline was dead and that nothing would ever be the same again.
“Hey,” I said quietly. “Did you say anything I should know about?”
Joni shrugged. “We didn’t really go into any detail. They were too busy grilling me about the party and my debauched lesbian lifestyle.”
“Oh,” I said, so relieved that she hadn’t got carried away, or, even worse, crumbled, that I didn’t process what she said. “Okay.”
“Fuck them all,” she said, looking out the window. I looked up briefly, catching the eye of the taxi driver as he watched us in the rearview mirror.
THIRTY-TWO
2018
I MAKE THE UBER DROP me half a mile from my house, and I know that the familiar hypervigilance, my own desperate attempt at control, has taken hold again. As I walk down the track leading up to my cabin, I notice an intricate pattern of tire tracks weaving through the dust, and I think that perhaps Joni wasn’t lying to me about the reporters at least. It’s a barbed sort of consolation, and sweat drips down my temples as I round the final bend to find nothing but my ancient Saab parked outside my cabin.
I can hear the house line ringing as I climb up the steps to the porch and, once inside, I press the phone against my ear, half expecting it to be Joni calling with some magical, fabricated reason I need to come back to Malibu right this second. Possibly worse, it turns out to be my mom calling from Spain.
“Steven said you’d moved out for a while,” she says, sounding even further away than usual.
“He’s being dramatic,” I say, already on the defensive. It’s classic Steven to tattle on me to my mom, even though she’s six thousand miles away and we’re both the wrong side of twenty-five.
“He’s worried about you,” she says.
“He really shouldn’t be,” I say, and we’ve been on this carousel long enough that I no longer have to say the words I’m fine.
“I’m sorry to hear about Joni’s friend,” my mom says then, and I wonder now how closely my parents have been following the case, and whether this has brought back a flood of traumatizing memories they’ve had to repress. Other than the odd slipup, my mom hasn’t mentioned Joni to me in years, and I realize now that it’s late in Barcelona, nearly midnight, and my mom might actually be drunk on sangria or something.
“Friend?” I repeat.
“Girlfriend,” she corrects herself.
“I’ve never met her,” I say.
“But Joni?” she asks. “Steven mentioned you were back in touch.”
“Did he ask you to check up on me?”
“I’m not checking up on anything. I just wanted to see how you were both doing. We’re overdue a conversation, anyway.”
“Well, I’m okay,” I say irritably. “And Joni’s okay. And Steven really shouldn’t have bothered you.”
“I told you, he’s just worried about you,” she says. “Whatever happened to Ivan, by the way?”
“God, Mom,” I say. “We broke up eight months ago.”
“Good,” she says decisively, and I wonder again just how much she’s had to drink. “He was joyless. Just one of those joyless people.”
“Okay, thank you, Mom,” I say, but I’m smiling a little now because she isn’t wrong.
“You must come visit,” she says. “You’d love Barcelona.”
I don’t say anything. We both know I haven’t left California in nearly a decade, but she still insists on keeping up this charade.
“How’s work?”
I wince thinking of how meager my paycheck is going to be this month. I’ve probably managed thirty, forty cases in the past two weeks, which would equate to between fifteen and twenty dollars.
“It’s fine,” I say.
“And have you been writing at all? Creatively?”
I feel my cortisol levels rocket at her words.
“I haven’t written anything creatively since I was fifteen,” I say. “When we moved to Calabasas, funnily enough.”
My mom exhales. “I knew that place was a cultural vacuum the moment I saw it. I should have pushed harder for the Columbia position.”
“I don’t know if Manhattan would have been much better for my grand writing career,” I say. “I think I was just at that age where you get distracted by other things.”
There is a silence where we both realize that one thing at least would have been different if we’d moved to New York instead, and then I think she might pass the phone over to my dad so that he can ask me about the desert heat and the awful air quality, and when California lawmakers are going to treat the Salton Sea like the environmental emergency it is, and whether they even deliver newspapers out here and how Rupert Murdoch is still ruining the world and did I know that he saw one of his sons on a plane once (commercial!) and who the hell would waste their money paying for first class and why air miles are a total crock—
“Mom,” I say, every nerve in my body willing me to stop talking. “Do you like Joni?”
There’s another long pause, this time because this isn’t what we do in our family—we don’t talk about what happened because then we might also have to examine why it happened: why it was so easy for strangers to hate me.
“Like isn’t the right word,” my mom says after a long pause. “I’ve always felt sorry for Joni. She just seemed so lost, even before that summer.”
“But do you . . . do you think she’s capable of doing something bad?”
I hear her take a sip of something, and the thought of my own mother having to drink to fortify herself for a conversation with me makes me feel lonelier than ever. I angle the phone slightly away from my mouth so that my mom won’t hear how labored my breathing is, how much I’m depending on her answer to comfort me.
“I don’t know, sweetie, I really don’t. And luckily it’s not my job to know. My job is to support you.”
“I feel like I don’t know her anymore,” I say quietly. And maybe I never did.
“I always thought that Joni was insecure, like she was just waiting for the bottom to drop out, even before what happened,” my mom says. “It was almost painful to watch you girls together sometimes, she needed so much from you.”
I frown at my mom’s choice of words. “Insecure? Joni?”
“You wouldn’t have seen it because she covered it up with that bravado. But she was so vulnerable. And she’d already been through a lot. I don’t believe that her dad ever got in contact after she got home, even after everything. That does things to a girl, particularly one so young.”
“But that was after,” I say. “Before that summer, it always felt like I was chasing them both.”
“Memory can be a strange thing,” my mom says. “From where I was standing, it seemed like both of those girls adored you. I’ll admit I found Joni a little intense at times, and at first I was relieved when you seemed to be drifting apart, but I could never deny how much she cared about you.”
I grip the phone tightly, sweat prickling my palms.
“Steven doesn’t like her.”
“Steven was young when it all imploded. He doesn’t understand the nuances, the ways girls can hurt each other without meaning to—death by a thousand cuts? I think that phrase must have been written about teenage girls. Your brother thinks that you were an innocent, and that Joni dragged you down with her. And you know, maybe in some ways he’s right. I could never reconcile all those stories about you with the girl I raised. I still can’t.”
I can hear the stark grief in her voice, and I hold the phone a couple of inches away from my ear again, as if it might somehow blunt the edge of her next words.
“Sometimes I wake up at four a.m. and I wonder what would have happened if I’d never taken the job at Pepperdine. I wonder who you might have been, what you might have achieved, and it feels like I’m mourning someone I never got a chance to meet.”
Each word shatters through me like an expanding bullet, ripping me apart from the inside out. And that’s how it always is with my family—some sentimental remark, some otherwise throwaway comment, can plunge me right back to being eighteen and sick with guilt and needing my parents to tell me that I’m a good person, despite the bad things I’ve done. I try to plug the rising shame, but it’s too late. It’s always too late.
“This is why I left,” I say, just before I hang up. “This is exactly why I had to leave.”
THIRTY-THREE
2008
A FEW HOURS AFTER WE gave our statements to the police, Joni suggested we go down to the beach. We’d been locked up in our hotel room, forced to stare at Evangeline’s belongings—her clothes hanging in the wardrobe (because of course only Ev had insisted on unpacking), her glittery makeup scattered across the bathroom, and, worst of all, the cuddly white elephant toy she slept with every night peeking out from between the pillows. I couldn’t think of a single reason not to leave this room, preserved as it had been since before Evangeline died, so I agreed.
We walked down to the ocean, and I remember looking at the other people, a mixture of local families and sunburned tourists, and marveling that they had no idea what had happened just a few miles down the road. Those who had heard about Ev’s death had probably muttered a short prayer at most, a throwaway what a shame before it was instantly forgotten. Nobody else was locked in it like I was: trapped in a nightmare somehow born from both a senseless accident and the culmination of every single choice I had ever made.
Joni was quieter than I’d ever known her to be, and I wondered if she was already regretting her offer to lie for me. I couldn’t bear the thought that I was making losing Evangeline any harder for her, even if it meant going back on the pact we’d made on the beach.
“Joni,” I said quietly. “You know we can always go back and tell the police the truth.”
“But we’ve already given our statements,” Joni said, frowning at me.
“I know, but maybe we could say we were traumatized and confused?” I said softly. “I’m sure it’s happened before.”
Joni shook her head.
“It’s too late for that,” she said, slipping her hand in mine. “And I would never do that to you.”
I felt a swell of gratitude for her, mixed with a lingering dread.
* * *
—
At some point we were approached by a man selling ice cream from a large cooler hanging around his neck. Joni looked at me and I shrugged. We hadn’t eaten for over twenty-four hours, and ice cream wouldn’t have been my first choice, but I couldn’t exactly imagine sitting down for a meal without Ev either, choosing whether to have sea bream or calamari and communicating with a waiter like it was any normal day. Like yesterday never happened and Evangeline was just hungover in the hotel room like she should have been—unable to face the world yet.
“Cornetto, please,” I said, pointing at the picture on the cooler. “Mint chocolate chip, efcharistó.”
“Oreo sandwich,” Joni said.
“Oh, can I have that instead, please?” I said, pointing at the cookie in question. “Two Oreos?”
“God, you literally want to be me,” Joni said half-heartedly. “Make it more obvious, why don’t you.”
I smiled weakly and swatted her on the arm as she handed over the money for the ice creams. I appreciated her effort at normalcy, even if I knew we would probably never feel normal again, or not in the same way at least.
As we walked back toward the hotel, the sugar revived us slightly. We spoke about our childhood ice cream traditions and, for a moment, it almost felt like nothing had changed. When the sand burned the soles of our feet, we ran down to the ocean to cool them down, kicking water at each other accidentally at first, then on purpose. I was so absorbed by savoring that feeling for a few seconds longer, that pretense that nothing had changed, that I didn’t even notice the photographer capturing it all.
* * *
—
We didn’t go back to the hotel for hours. In our shared room, it was impossible to pretend that nothing had happened because the ghost of Evangeline was right there with us, asking us to check a mole on her back or insisting on sleeping in a full pajama set like a Victorian ghost because the air-conditioning was too intense. At one point I started to cry in the middle of the street, and Joni steered me away from the crowds, wiping my tears with her hands, her face filled with a level of concern I couldn’t even comprehend. At another point, we tried on the ugly fisherman hats that Evangeline had pleaded with us not to buy at a tourist shop only two days ago, and we laughed a little at our reflections, because we looked just as bad as she’d told us we would. Then Joni grabbed my hand and quickly pulled me out of the shop, but she wouldn’t tell me why we had to leave right at that moment, even though she’d nearly crushed my bones with her grip. Later, I would find out it was because an English girl had been secretly taking photographs of us in the mirror.
* * *
—
When we finally walked back into the hotel lobby around sunset, Theo was waiting for us. I felt a lightning bolt to the pit of my stomach, and it was so strong that I had to bend over slightly to absorb the blow.
“Theo,” I said softly, and as I took a step toward him, he took a step back.
“That’s Ev’s shirt,” he said, staring at me strangely. “You’re wearing her shirt.”
The woman sitting behind the reception desk pretended not to hear us.
THIRTY-FOUR
2018
THE CABIN FEELS LIFELESS. Endless hours stretch ahead of me as I try to recall how I once filled a single minute here, let alone an entire day. I keep the blinds down and curtains closed, shuffling around in the gloomy light as I make myself instant noodles whenever I remember I’ve missed a meal. I spend the rest of my time resolving as many 5oulm8s cases as I can to make up for the two weeks I barely worked, skimming across the complaints lightly, trying my hardest not to linger for too long in the darkest chambers of a stranger’s mind. I think of Joni often, and I remind myself that this life isn’t an accident. This is what I wanted.
On my third morning in the cabin, I wake up with the uncanny feeling that something has changed. A strip of sunlight steals through a crack in the curtains, and I can hear not so much a specific noise but rather an absence of the overture of silence to which I’ve grown accustomed over the years. When I peek through the yellow curtains, I spot the silver nose of a strange car parked outside the front of my cabin.
I search frantically in bed for my phone before realizing it must be on the sofa where I fell asleep watching Storage Wars last night. With a growing sense of dread, I throw on the same hoodie and sweatpants I’ve been wearing since I got back, and I creep into the living room. Through the flimsy curtains covering the door, I count the silhouettes of at least ten reporters at the end of my porch. When I finally locate my phone, I have seven missed calls from Joni, and a text that reads: Please come back.
I hold the phone tightly in my hand, savoring the unfamiliar feeling of being needed by someone, but then, just seconds later, I find myself wondering whether Joni tipped off these reporters herself, because we both know I can’t stay here now. The landscape is too barren, my cabin too exposed, for me to allow it to become my prison. I think maybe I’ll drive to Steven and Nova’s instead, even though just the idea of exposing my brother to these people again fills me with a bone-aching dread.
I take a few breaths as I steel myself to face the waiting reporters, pulling my hood down to hide as much of my face as possible. As I unlock the door, I wonder if some sick part of me gets a thrill out of being hunted, or at least believes it’s what I deserve.
