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Vero88: The cops thought something was off about her too. I mean, how many times did they interview her?
ChandlerEsq: Because she was Allie’s roommate. It makes sense they’d want to talk to her the most.
ShaunaRose: But I still haven’t heard a good explanation of why she didn’t report Allie missing for 72 hours. That’s 72 hours when the cops might’ve had an actual chance of finding her.
I fought back a wave of nausea, a feeling I experienced so persistently these days that I had difficulty eating. Food just didn’t taste good anymore; my body didn’t seem to want it.
DNAmy: I think Natasha was jealous as shit of Allie. Allie was everything Natasha wasn’t: rich, beautiful, popular. I think she got sick of Allie getting all the attention.
Chazzer: Disagree. I know people who went to LACSA when they were there, and they said they were really close.
ShaunaRose: I heard they weren’t that close that last semester. Like, it seemed like something happened between them.
ChandlerEsq: What are you suggesting? Natasha couldn’t have killed Allie in their apartment. The cops went over that place with a fine-tooth comb. Also, Allie had like twenty pounds on Natasha. I don’t see Natasha overpowering her.
ShaunaRose: Yeah, I don’t see Natasha getting violent in that way. But she’s scary smart, right? Perfect SAT scores, top of her class. If she wanted to get rid of Allie, she wouldn’t be obvious about it. She’d be subtle.
I leaned forward, heat prickling over my skin. These people didn’t know me, I told myself. They didn’t know anything about me.
ShaunaRose: Look, Natasha knew Allie’s weak spots. Her addiction issues. Her history of depression. Maybe it’s like the cops initially thought: Allie killed herself. But maybe she got a little push from Natasha first.
The light from the computer screen was too bright, stinging my eyes. Slowly, I lifted my hands from the keyboard and pressed them over my face. And when I took them away, the room had disappeared. The familiar black curtain had descended.
CHAPTER 7
As I sit in reception, listening to the blaring commercials on the TV, my vision begins to return. I can make out shapes and colors now: the blue squares of the chairs across from me, the dark huddle of a man sitting in the far corner of the room. And then the double doors on the other side of the room swing open, and someone walks toward me. I blink as his details begin to solidify.
Ruiz.
I stand up, gathering my purse against my stomach. When he reaches me, I say, “I’m feeling better now.” The room is still fuzzy and indistinct, but I could walk through it on my own if I wanted to.
He frowns. “How did you get here today?”
“I took an Uber.” I can’t drive, not with my condition. Not until I’ve gone a full year without an episode. Before today, I’d been a month away from that mark. Counting down the days.
He nods, then seems to come to a decision. “I’ll drive you home.”
“You don’t have—”
“I know I don’t,” he snaps. Then, he tries again, softening his tone. “I’d like to, okay? I’m headed home anyway. I’ll drop you off on my way.”
He feels guilty, I think, for bringing me down here. For putting me through this.
I follow him out into the parking lot. It’s chilly out here, but the sun is bright, reflecting off the tops of the cars. I take in the colors, the textures, absurdly grateful for this simplest of things: my sight. My episodes never last longer than a few minutes. But while they’re happening, all I can think is: What if the darkness doesn’t end? What if, this time, it stays for good?
When we reach a Jeep—a newer model, glistening black—Ruiz unlocks it with a press of a button.
I hesitate. “What happened to your old car?” He used to drive a battered old Nissan with rips in the seats.
“That thing? It finally bit the dust.”
When I get in, I’m enveloped in new-car smell. I run a hand across the upholstery. I don’t know why I find it so jarring that he drives a different car, one that doesn’t seem to match up with my mental picture of him.
Ruiz opens the driver’s-side door and slides behind the wheel but doesn’t start the car right away. Instead, he stares straight ahead, through the windshield. “So, these episodes,” he says. “Is that why you stopped driving?”
I fiddle with my seat belt strap. Ruiz had noticed, years back, that I wasn’t driving anymore, but when he asked about it, I’d told him my Civic had broken down and I couldn’t afford to fix it.
“Yes.”
He shakes his head slightly, as if irritated. “So what is it, exactly, with this—you called them ‘episodes’?”
I buckle the seat belt around me. “My doctor calls it conversion disorder. It’s not that uncommon, apparently,” I say lightly, as if the episodes don’t bother me that much. As if they don’t make me feel like I’m losing my grasp on my sanity. “I take pills,” I say, marveling at my steady voice. “That stops them, mostly.”
“But it didn’t today.”
“No. Not today.” I haven’t been taking the Inderal lately. It hasn’t seemed necessary. I’ve been doing so much better.
I wait for Ruiz to say something more. But he just sighs, then turns the key in the ignition and puts the car in reverse. He drives out of the parking lot and onto the street. For a few minutes, it’s totally silent in the car.
Finally, when we’re stopped at a red light, he says, “So I hear you’re in law school now.”
I glance over at him. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Matthew.”
Of course. Matthew is the one who fields calls from the detectives, acting as a buffer for Isabel, who tends to get emotional whenever new information arises.
“How far in are you?” Ruiz asks.
“This is my first year.”
After dropping out of LACSA, I’d had no desire to go back to school. I couldn’t see the point. But eventually, with considerable prodding from Mom, I finished my degree through online classes and then worked up the nerve to apply to Loyola Marymount.
“Well, that’s great.” The light turns green, and he accelerates through the intersection. “I know that’s what you always wanted.”
Was it? I honestly can’t remember. “Thanks,” I say quietly.
Now that I’m in law school, I’m not sure I really like it. In my head, it always held a kind of glamour, but the reality involves reading through pages and pages of dry text until my eyes hurt. Still, I’ve always done well with that kind of thing—logic, memorization, standardized tests—and people expect you to do something worthwhile with skills like that. My mother is elated about this chapter in my life. Some days I think that’s reason enough to keep going.
I change the subject before Ruiz can ask anything more. “How’s your sister doing?” He has three younger sisters, but it was the youngest he was always worried about: Raquel, with the unpaid parking tickets and the loser boyfriend.
“Oh, she got married,” he says, and it’s the first time today that I’ve seen him smile.
“Oh wow.” I’d always thought of Raquel as a teenager, but I suppose she’s in her early twenties now. “To the loser boyfriend?”
He shakes his head. “No, a new guy. A good guy. She’s got a baby now. A little girl.”
This, too, feels like the ground shifting from beneath my feet. I don’t know how to find my balance with Ruiz anymore. It seems strange that we once talked so easily to each other.
Finally, Ruiz pulls up to the curb outside my apartment building. It occurs to me now that I never told him where I lived. But of course, my address must be on file somewhere.
“Well, thanks for the ride,” I say as I unbuckle my seat belt.
“No problem.” He turns to me, and for a minute I think he’s going to say something else, something that matters. But he just waits a moment, then says, “Take care, Natasha.”
As I walk up to the door of my apartment building, I keep my head high, my shoulders straight. The important thing is to hold on to my pride, or what’s left of it after my breakdown at the station. I can’t allow myself to feel the rest—the horror of those evidence bags, the knowledge that Allie is still missing—until later. Until I know I’m alone.
CHAPTER 8
The elevator stops on the third floor, and I step off into the hallway that leads to my apartment. Gray carpeting stretches from one end of the corridor to the next, and the place smells like cheap air freshener.
Personality-free, Allie observes. Couldn’t you have at least chosen a place with character?
I wrinkle my nose. Allie never understood what it was to have a budget. Or career concerns. Her grand plans for what our lives would look like after LACSA involved us traveling through Southeast Asia or renting a picturesque apartment in New Orleans. It sounded great, but Allie was ignoring one crucial reality: there was no way I could have afforded to accompany her. My mother and her father had divorced in our senior year of high school, so I was back to living an ordinary person’s life, with an ordinary person’s budget. My mother expected me to get a job after college, not jet-set around the world, partying with Allie and her friends. Still, I let Allie continue dreaming up ideas. In her mind, I knew, my ability to come along was not an issue. She’d just pay for me. Wasn’t that what trust funds were for?
I turn the corner at the end of the hallway, squinting under the overhead lights that make everything look dull, institutional. This apartment complex is decidedly not the future Allie once imagined for me. It’s not even the future I imagined for me. I don’t know what I expected my early twenties to look like, but it definitely wasn’t this.
My neighbor Abby emerges from her apartment, her wire-haired Chihuahua clutched in her arms. “Oh, hi,” she says when she sees me approach.
“Hi,” I say, creasing my face in an imitation of a smile. As soon as she moves past me, I let the friendly expression drop. I’m exhausted, and all I want is to get back inside my apartment, where I can curl up in bed and watch old movies on TCM until my brain goes numb.
But when I near my front door, my footsteps slow. There’s something lying across the doormat, a lumpy, dark shape. My breath hitches in my throat, and I remember the early days of the investigation, when I’d come home to find strange pieces of mail on the doorstep, packages from true-crime fans that I had to hand over to the police to inspect. But that was years ago. No one should know where I live now. The name on my mailbox downstairs just says N. BARIAS.
As I get closer, I see that the huddle on the doormat is just a piece of clothing that has fallen in a loose heap. Looking closer, I see the familiar curve of a collar and realize it’s my blue coat. Relief floods through my bloodstream. In my rush to get to the police station, I must have dropped it on my way out. I hadn’t even noticed I’d left it behind.
I bend down to scoop it up, then let myself into my apartment and toss the coat over the back of a dining chair. I walk down the narrow hallway to the bathroom and open the medicine cabinet. Inside, I find the bottle of Inderal and shake it gently. Only one pill left.
Shit. If I want to refill it, I’ll have to make another appointment with Dr. Rajmani. I stopped seeing him months ago, which had felt like a reprieve. I’d gotten so tired of rehashing my thoughts and feelings for his benefit. These last few months, I’ve come to think another approach is better. Don’t stir things up; just let them settle, like sand on the ocean floor. It had been working really well, until today.
I push my hands through my hair, pulling it loose from its neat ponytail. If the episodes are back, I need those pills again. But if I call for an appointment, Dr. Rajmani will want to talk about why the episodes have returned. And I can only imagine the expression on his face if I tell him about today, about going into the police station.
If only there was an easier way to get the pills—no talking about feelings required. If this was four years ago, I’d know exactly how to get my hands on what I wanted. Greg Novak. Back then at LACSA, if you wanted anything prescription—Xanax, Vicodin, Ritalin, you name it—you called Greg.
Greg and Allie met halfway through our freshman year, in a theater class. I’d seen him around on campus, of course—he was hard to miss—but suddenly he was always in our apartment: rummaging in our kitchen cupboards or flopped across Allie’s bed, swiping through Grindr profiles on his phone.
One day, during the second semester of our freshman year, Greg walked into our apartment and tossed a little baggie to Allie with a cheerful “Delivery for you!” before heading into our kitchen and pouring himself a drink. Allie opened the little velvet pouch, the kind that jewelry comes in, and peered inside. “Ooh la la. Thanks, Greggie.” Then she blew him a kiss before tucking the baggie in her jeans pocket.
Greg’s delivery service. Everyone knew about it.
I close the medicine cabinet and stare at my pale reflection in the mirror. Well, Greg’s hardly an option now. We haven’t spoken since his arrest. After the police named him their prime suspect, his picture was splashed all over the tabloids. The National Enquirer ran a front-page story with the headline DID HE DO IT? emblazoned above a picture of his face.
But Greg had never been charged with Allie’s murder. He never even faced charges for the pile of pharmaceuticals the cops found in his apartment. His family hired some big-name lawyer, and before you knew it, it wasn’t Greg in the headlines anymore; it was the LAPD under the microscope, facing allegations of mishandling evidence and putting undue pressure on Greg during their interrogations.
Still, Greg didn’t get off scot-free. His name would forever be associated with Allie’s disappearance. And his friends—that crowd of people who’d surrounded him at wild parties—they all melted away. After his arrest, an in-depth investigative piece by the LA Times shone a light on LACSA’s robust prescription drug economy, and a string of expulsions followed. Then Greg’s parents shipped him off to rehab in Wyoming. That was the last I’d heard of him—from the people in our circle of friends, at least.
The commenters, of course, stayed on top of his movements. Some said Greg had followed up his stint in rehab with a year in an ashram outside Mumbai. Others said he’d moved to the Caribbean, where he finished up his degree at some obscure university.
About a year ago, one of the most obsessive commenters, MayBee634, had spotted Greg walking past the coffee shop where she worked in Silver Lake. Holy fucking shit, guess who just rolled past me? she wrote. She hadn’t gotten a photo—He was moving fast, like he didn’t want to give anyone time to recognize him—but the sighting set off a ripple of interest on the forums. Greggie’s back! The commenters who lived in LA were determined to track him down. And they were surprisingly resourceful.
One of them found Greg’s new residence and posted a picture: a sleek, modern house, lots of sharp angles and massive panes of glass. Some people always fall on their feet, I guess, MayBee634 said.
It wasn’t long after her post that someone spray-painted across Greg’s garage doors, in large red letters: WHERE IS SHE?
I’d watched this drama play out with mixed feelings. On the one hand, Greg did seem like the most likely person to have been involved in Allie’s disappearance. On the other, I could never quite make myself believe that he’d hurt her. As much as he irritated me, I knew that Greg worshipped Allie. Once, when they’d been standing in line for coffee at Café Bijou, holding hands, I’d watched him lift up her hand and casually kiss her knuckles, as if he was hardly aware he was doing it.
And if their relationship was complicated—love mixed with resentment, admiration crossed with fear—I could understand that. Perhaps better than anyone.
CHAPTER 9
May 2007
The first day Allie came over to the apartment where Mom and I lived, I’d been caught off guard. Mom had mentioned Giles was coming over for an early dinner, but she hadn’t said anything about him bringing his daughter. When I answered the door, though, there she was, standing next to Giles in skintight jeans and a shirt so sheer that I could see the outline of her lace bra underneath. Gold geometric earrings glinted at her ears. She looked a lot like her mom, whose face was currently featured on several billboards overlooking the 405. But while Isabel’s beauty was ethereal, Allie’s was definitely of this world. She had full lips and a smattering of freckles across her cheeks. Big black eyes that dared you to keep staring at her.
“Natasha, this is my daughter, Allie,” Giles said, his eyes hidden by a pair of expensive sunglasses.
“Hi.” I wiped traces of peanut butter from the edge of my mouth. My clothes were rumpled from lounging on the couch, my hair frizzy after having been let loose from its ponytail.
Allie glanced over her shoulder at our apartment courtyard, where the neighbor’s kids had scattered their toys. Our complex was one of the nicer ones in the neighborhood, despite being located in what the kids at school laughingly called the “Slums of Palos Verdes.” The joke being that Palos Verdes was so ritzy that the “slums” consisted of white stucco apartments with red tile roofs and pink bougainvillea climbing the walls.
Giles nudged his daughter. “Allie, this is Natasha,” he prompted.
Allie turned her attention back to me. After a pause long enough to make me wonder if she was going to say anything at all, she finally said, “Hello.” Then her lips curved upward in what might’ve been—but didn’t feel like—a smile.
When she stepped into the apartment, I felt the place shrink somehow. The cheery living room I’d known my whole life suddenly seemed dingy and cheap. The mustard-colored throw on top of the couch couldn’t mask the sunken cushions underneath it. And the potted plants, I noticed, were covered in a thin film of dust.
Allie turned, doing a 360-degree assessment of the room.
