Before We Were Innocent, page 23
I feel a wave of uncertainty, like Joni has cracked the smallest opening inside me.
“Ev made some choices too. Good and bad. Like the rest of us.”
I close my eyes for a few seconds. When I open them, Joni is staring at me gently.
“You’re doing her a disservice,” Joni says. “Ev was so much more than an angel. She was a teenage girl.”
* * *
—
I’ve already turned away to leave when Joni grabs my arm and makes a soft whooshing sound as if she’s been punched in the stomach. Behind Mrs. Aetos, the bedroom door is opening slowly, and I find that I’m holding my breath, willing it to be Evangeline.
“Oh shit,” Joni breathes, and I can see that it’s not Ev but Theo who has walked into the bedroom. It’s Theo who is now standing next to his mother, but it’s not the Theo I saw in the magazine spreads or the corporate portraits, it’s Theo as he was in Greece—Theo in a T-shirt and shorts, his hair a little too long and messy, his smile wide and untouched by tragedy or loss. I blink a few times, and as he approaches the window to draw the curtains, I notice the changes in him—the thicker arms, the shadow of facial hair. For just a moment, I imagine that he sees me, crouching in the bushes and watching his everyday tragedy, but then the thick curtains fall across the window, and I realize that he wasn’t looking for me at all.
* * *
—
As Joni drives us back to Malibu, I close my eyes and think again about what she said about Evangeline. I know that I, along with the rest of the world, have been guilty of mythologizing Ev after death, but I also know that I brought out the worst in her that summer, and that, without me, she would have lived past her nineteenth birthday at least, perhaps would still be here today. Or maybe not here, in this car with me and Joni, but somewhere far away, because the Evangeline of my creation drifted away from us after that summer, throwing herself into life at Brown before moving to New York to become a food stylist after college, like she’d always wanted. I can almost picture her now—frowning slightly as she moves a sprig of rosemary one millimeter over for the fiftieth time, training a team of juniors who adore and envy her in equal measure, and I wonder if her quiet determination might have grown into a worldly confidence the moment she was away from the slippery trappings of her childhood.
Tentatively, I wonder who I might have been in this same universe, and whether Theo would be in it with me, but I keep drawing a blank, like even my subconscious has put its foot down and placed a limit on my capacity to self-harm.
FORTY-ONE
2008
A FTER OUR ARREST, WE were held in a police cell in Mykonos for twenty-two hours. Both my parents and Joni’s mom had flown out, and between them they had found us an Athenian lawyer, Nikki, who explained the complex judicial process to us. The statements we had given as witnesses would be inadmissible now that we were suspects, so we would have to give another statement, no longer under oath. When Nikki asked if I’d had any of it explained to me by either the police directly or through the translator, I didn’t know what to say. I’d had so much information hurled at me in both English and Greek over the days following Evangeline’s death, and I hadn’t known how to process it—how to separate it into categories of things that were normal procedure and things that might destroy my life. All I’d known was that guilty people hired lawyers, and while I was guilty of many things, pushing Evangeline wasn’t one of them.
Nikki explained that we would be escorted to the prosecutor’s office in Syros, where we would appear first in front of an investigative judge and then before the prosecutor assigned to our case. These two people held our future in their hands—between them they would decide whether the case would be dropped and we could fly back home with our parents, or if our nightmare would continue.
From a holding cell in Syros, I scanned over the lists of evidence and translated witness testimonies that the police had gathered to support the charges against us, unable to focus for too long because I still didn’t believe any of it was happening—not only that Evangeline was dead but that these adults, these experts, these people I had actually met, somehow thought Joni and I had planned it. I saw references to Pierre Lauvin, to Joni and obviously Evangeline, but also some names I didn’t recognize who must have been either guests at the party or associates of Pierre. Nikki explained that Pierre had made a career out of securing young women to accompany wealthy men on yachts, and that there was reason to believe this was more than just an escort service, that it was used to traffic women. It seemed so outlandish that anyone would believe that Joni and I had got caught up in some sort of sex trafficking scandal that I almost felt relieved when she said it. Surely any judge would understand that Joni and I had no idea about any of it and that our biggest mistake had been buying into the lies that had been sold to us—that we would ever truly be sexually liberated, that the summer after we graduated high school had to be unforgettable, that we would be friends for the rest of our lives. At any rate, I figured that my parents’ presence in the country would somehow restore some sense of order, of normalcy to our lives.
I had one supervised visit with my parents in Syros, and my knees buckled when I walked into a windowless interrogation room to find them waiting for me, so incongruous to the setting I was now worryingly used to. When I sat down, I noticed that my mom’s roots were pushing through, the gray hairs wiry and startling, and my dad’s hand trembled as he pressed his cup of water against his lips. They both had a constant supply of tears, enough for us all, that leaked down their cheeks throughout the meeting.
“I shouldn’t have let you come,” my mom kept repeating. “I had a bad feeling all along.”
“I’m so sorry,” my dad said. “Love, I’m so sorry.”
I never asked what he was apologizing for.
“This is preposterous,” he said too. “They must know this is entirely preposterous.”
I thought of Evangeline’s pale face when I left her on the rocks.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Is it true what they’re saying?” my dad asked before I left, and my mom clenched her hand around his arm as a warning. “In the press?”
“Which part?” I asked.
“The bad parts, Bess,” he said, already looking older than he had before he’d asked me the question.
“Most of it,” I said. “Yeah.”
* * *
—
Soon after, Nikki gravely told us that the authorities were going to push for a charge of murder. Not death by negligence, loosely comparable to a manslaughter charge (where we might have turned on our friend in a drunken haze), but cold-blooded, premeditated first-degree murder. While the transcripts of Joni’s and my initial police interviews were now inadmissible in court, someone at the police station had leaked them to the press, and outside scrutiny on the case had only intensified. It seemed almost absurd to me at first, this sex-cult-gone-awry angle—the idea that Joni and I had tried to initiate Evangeline into Pierre’s sex ring, and, once she refused, we decided she was worth less than nothing to us. They were supporting this claim by presenting the Tinos notes—that stupid, unfunny trash we’d written purely to impress each other, which now counted as evidence, however flimsy, that getting rid of our friend was already in the forefront of our minds. They would imply that we were sick of feeling judged and cloistered by her, of always feeling so envious of her wealth and popularity and her goodness, and had decided to exact the ultimate revenge. Theo Aetos had, after all, received that final text from his sister, forecasting her own death. If I felt sick reading Theo’s name and the message that lost any nuance, any humor when you knew what came after it, I felt even worse when Nikki told us that a devastated Stavros Aetos supposedly wanted every avenue not only pursued but ransacked in the hunt for justice for his only daughter.
“The country has been crippled by this recession,” Nikki told us sadly, as if it were some sort of logical explanation for what was happening. “There’s a lot of anger and frustration.”
I thought about the things I’d been reading about Greece’s fate in the same newspapers that tore Joni and me to shreds, how unemployment and financial rot were already threatening to ravage the infrastructure of the entire country, and how they’d known it was coming for months, even as the hotel staff and restaurant servers had forced friendly smiles and pretended for us that nothing was wrong, and a heavy knot formed in the pit of my stomach.
“It would be unfortunate if they decide to proceed with the charges,” Nikki said as we were escorted through the courthouse by armed local police officers. “But stranger things have happened.”
Unfortunate, I thought, rolling the word around my mind as I weathered another thick wave of nausea. Unfortunate is dinging your rental car when you’re on your way to return it, or planning a barbecue only for it to rain the entire day. Unfortunate is not being detained in a foreign country for killing your best friend, and understanding that while you may not be guilty of that specific crime, there are a thousand other ways you need to feel ashamed of yourself.
“And what happens if they do that?” Joni asked. “How long until we would get to trial?”
“We wait. Six months, a year, up to a maximum of eighteen months while we build our cases,” Nikki said apologetically. “It’s a long time.”
I sat next to Nikki in the prosecutor’s office in Syros, stricken and numb. I listened to the translator’s gentle tone as Nikki presented an initial defense, first to the investigative judge, a dispassionate older woman who made sure to meet my eye as she asked me to confirm parts of my statement I barely remembered, and then in front of the prosecutor, a young woman with close-set eyes and a hard mouth who fired off a stream of questions that I answered falteringly. As Nikki tried to persuade these strangers that my only crime was being reckless and young, I figured that everyone was probably right, that the person they were talking about didn’t sound like she deserved to be free at all. After a conference with the prosecutor that lasted less than thirty minutes, the judge took one final look at me and ordered my pretrial detention at Korydallos Prison. As foreign nationals, Joni and I were automatically considered flight risks.
* * *
—
Joni and I were handcuffed and bundled into separate police cars that would take us to our home for the foreseeable future. Korydallos was the only prison with a women’s wing that could accommodate us, and it had been gleefully described as one of the most notorious prisons in Europe in the media coverage I’d read. As Joni and I stood on the empty top deck of the ferry, under police custody, the engine rumbling beneath our feet as the incongruous crystal ocean unfolded behind us, neither of us said a word. After a while, I squeezed my eyes shut because I understood that it was the last time I’d see anything so beautiful, so uncomplicated, and I figured knowing it was the worst part.
I thought about my parents flying back to Los Angeles and having to pick their lives back up without me. I thought about my place at NYU—how, any moment now, some other student would be called up off the waiting list and she’d be the one taking my place in a week, shyly joking after class with people who were never destined to become my friends. I thought about Ev’s body being transported back to Calabasas, where she would now never leave, and of Theo, boarding a flight back home without his sister, and then I decided not to think anymore. Instead, I let a strange sense of disassociation wash over me as we reached the mainland, as if I had floated out of my body somewhere over the Aegean Sea. I figured this couldn’t actually be happening to me, not really, because I would never have turned and hugged my parents calmly after our fates were sealed, nor would I later be able to withstand being screamed at like an animal as I was led into a stinking, roach-infested cell fit for two people that was filled with five strange and hostile faces I would soon have to know and understand. There was no way any of this was actually happening, because I simply wouldn’t be able to survive it, and the fact that I could still taste the salt on my skin from the ferry ride from Syros made it all the more surreal.
Every day I woke up, shocked that I hadn’t faded away in the night, and every night I somehow found myself still there, closing my eyes in the vain hope of getting even an hour’s sleep amid the sickening heat and the shrieking and the crying and the yelling that was so loud it felt like the walls were vibrating. I retreated further into myself, avoiding eye contact and dutifully doing anything that was asked of me, eating whatever was given to me, until I could barely remember what I even used to do or say, or like or dislike. Joni would sometimes kiss the top of my head or take my hand in hers, but even she knew not to demand anything from me. And somehow, that’s how it worked. I just kept on surviving, even when I wished I wasn’t.
FORTY-TWO
2008
WHAT ELSE IS THERE to say about prison?
* * *
—
Prison is your best friend’s voice in your ear, telling you everything is going to be okay.
FORTY-THREE
2018
I DREAM OF EVANGELINE FOR the first time since she died. We’re in a parking lot on the edge of Venice Beach, and she is finally learning to skateboard. I watch as she scoots herself along slowly at first, barefoot in the smocked dress she bought on Olvera Street, before carefully placing her second foot on the board. She sails across the tarmac for about thirty feet before jumping off, the board skittering from beneath her feet and landing in the sand.
“Bess,” she calls, waving me over. Her cheeks are glowing with pride as she redoes her ponytail.
“You just have to pretend,” she says, once I am close enough to hear her. “I never understood, but that’s all it is. You have to pretend like you can do it before you can.”
* * *
—
I’m chiseling away at an ancient jar of instant coffee when something catches my eye through the window. A black car, low and silent, creeps slowly past, stopping for just a moment outside the front of Joni’s house before quickly pulling away. As soon as it’s gone, I move toward the window and close the shutters. I’m still standing there when Joni walks into the room.
“I’ve now seen the same black Tesla drive past twice,” I say. “And that’s just the times I’ve noticed. It can’t be a journalist, right?”
“In a Tesla?” Joni says. “Unlikely.”
“Okay,” I say, grateful once again for her infinite well of confidence.
* * *
—
I try to work for a few hours while Joni has a meeting with her publisher, but I find that I have the concentration of a hoverfly, staring at threads and threads of messages and somehow being entirely unable to decipher what is happening, as if I’m trying to read a language I was once fluent in. Do people really send harshly lit photos of their most vulnerable body parts to a stranger they met five minutes ago? Do they really bring up their dead wives, dead brothers, dead parents so soon, trusting someone on the internet with their most damaged selves? This time, when my brother calls me, I answer it.
“Hey,” I say.
“Where are you?” he asks irritably. “Mom said you were back in the cabin, but I’m outside and it looks even more desolate than usual.”
“I’m at Joni’s,” I say. “You should have called first.”
“Bess, I really think you should leave Malibu,” he says. “Just until this is all over.”
“It’s already over,” I say slowly. “Didn’t you read the article you sent me? Willa’s boyfriend was arrested yesterday.”
“I know that he was arrested,” Steven says tersely. “But Nova has a contact at the sheriff’s department, and it sounds like even they know they’re reaching. This guy’s saying the blood in his car was old, that he hadn’t even seen Willa in over a week when she disappeared. He just fucked up enough in the interview to secure the charges against him, and I don’t think I need to remind you how that can happen, Bess.”
There’s a pause, where I don’t say anything.
“Will you please just be careful?” he asks, his tone softer now.
“Steven,” I say. “You don’t need to like Joni, but you can at least accept she isn’t a murderer.”
“I’m not saying Joni did anything,” Steven says. “Or even that this boyfriend of Willa’s definitely didn’t. But I know I don’t like you being there alone.”
“I have been alone since I was eighteen years old,” I say. “I don’t know how it’s slipped your memory, but you weren’t exactly desperate to be around me when I came home.”
“This isn’t about that,” Steven says after a moment.
I let out a loud snort to show him what I think about that.
“That woman is like a hurricane, Bess,” he says. “She breezes through the world entirely on her own terms, not caring when she leaves mass destruction in her goddamn wake.”
“Listen to me,” I say, my voice barely above a hiss now. “Joni is the only person who’s ever even tried to help me rebuild everything I lost, instead of treating me like some hideous monster to be hidden away or, more specifically, unveiled only once you’re engaged and it’s too late to bolt. So you need to drop it and let the police at least attempt to do their job, Steven. It’s over.”
I hang up the phone without waiting to hear his reply.
FORTY-FOUR
2009
A FTER SIX MONTHS IN Korydallos with no trial date in sight, our lawyer, Nikki, informed us that while she was still working on collecting enough evidence to apply for a review of our case, we had also been held for long enough that the judicial council, the dikastiko symvoulio, would be legally obliged to review our case regardless. They would decide whether there was enough existing evidence to continue to detain us or whether the case should be thrown out, in which case we would be released and free to fly back to the US.
