“Thank you,” Griffin says.
He and Kim trade quick glances, and Kim nods her head slightly. Jess’s hand freezes on the edge of the first panel, one of the three printouts she showed her dad.
“Kim told me your comic is set in a fantasy boarding school?” Griffin says. “Is it like Pearson Brooke?”
Jess watches Kim take her seat, just far enough away to give them a false sense of privacy. “Not unless you think Pearson Brooke is magical.”
Griffin laughs, and it almost sounds real. “Some people would. But I know the magic here is made of money.”
Jess’s fingertips are warping the edge of the printout. She drops it to avoid ruining the paper, and immediately Griffin moves it aside to reveal the next page, which shows Kestrel’s arrival.
“Is this the main character?” he asks. “Kestrel, right?”
“Yeah.” Jess takes off her backpack and sets it on the floor. “Kim told you about her?”
“A little. But I want to hear your perspective. What’s her story?”
Haltingly, Jess explains the background of the Blackwood Hall School and the Kestrel story line. Griffin nudges her along, dropping in compliments as they flip through the black-and-white panels. The panels she drew over Christmas break aren’t in the portfolio yet, although she brought them with her today. She makes no move to take them out of her backpack. The comics in the portfolio end with a scene in the woods where Kestrel and Laney are doing a spell to open a Doorway to Faerie.
“I really like the background here,” he says, studying the last panel. “Did you base it on something from real life or do you make it all up?”
“The story’s all made up. I mean, it’s about magic.”
He turns to face her, leaning against the table and slouching a bit, all casual. “I’m just asking because the woods you’re drawing—they’re so realistic. They look a lot like Ellicott Park, you know?”
“Well, I live right across the street from the park,” she says, not hiding her sarcasm.
He smiles a little, acknowledging her tone. “Obviously. And what about the characters? Where do you get your inspiration for them?”
“I don’t know,” she says dismissively.
He studies her for a second, as if he were trying to find a crack in her wall. Jess looks right back at him, not giving an inch. His expression grows more somber, and he says, “I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot. I’m not trying to trick you into anything. But you should know that there have been some developments in the investigation, and they concern you.”
“You don’t really want to see my comics,” Jess says flatly.
“No, I do.” There’s a brief flash of embarrassment in his eyes. “But primarily so that I could talk to you in a less—less formal setting.”
Jess glances at Kim Watson, but she’s engrossed in reading her phone—or at least pretending to be engrossed in it. “What do you want?” Jess asks the detective.
He settles himself against the table, acting relaxed again. “We’ve talked to a number of your friends who were at the party that night. They’re—”
“They’re not my friends.”
He grimaces slightly. “Okay. Sorry. We’ve talked to several of the other people who were at the party. The funny thing about parties is that everybody’s sort of having their own private party, if you know what I mean. I remember going to parties that I thought sucked, but other people who were there had an awesome time. Maybe they drank a little more than me, or vice versa.” He smiles at her, but when she doesn’t respond, his smile dies. “The point is, everybody we talked to gave sort of different stories about what happened, but everyone circles back to one event. That’s you and Ryan arguing in the kitchen. Some of them disagree on who said what exactly, but they all saw you or heard about it right after. And several of them saw you pick up the gun.”
“So what? I already told you about that.”
Griffin gives Jess a concerned look. “We believe that the gun you handled the night of the party was the gun that was used in Ryan’s death.”
Jess begins to put her comics back into the black cardboard portfolio. It’s a loan from the Brooke art department, and the bottom edge is worn soft from sliding on and off the shelf.
“Jess,” Griffin says, “do you know what happened to the gun that night?”
“No.”
“Do you have any idea who might know?”
She can’t seem to fit her papers back into the portfolio. She has to remove them and restack the sheets. “Why would I know that?”
“I get the sense that you see more than you let on.”
Startled, she looks at him. “What do you mean?”
He nods at the comics. “You’re pretty observant. You have to be to do what you do.”
She doesn’t respond and goes back to closing up the portfolio.
“I saw the video online,” he says. “The one from the party, with you in the background.”
“I don’t know who put that online,” she says quickly.
“We’re going to find that out,” Griffin says.
“You are?”
“Absolutely. Whoever put that online is trying to draw attention to you, which makes me wonder why. It also makes me wonder if you know something.”
She gives up trying to close the portfolio’s clasps. “What could I know? They’re not my friends. None of them even talked to me the whole night—except for Ryan, and she was a bitch to me.” Jess looks directly at the detective. “I don’t care if she’s dead.”
Griffin acts sympathetic.
“That doesn’t mean I would do anything to her,” Jess adds.
“Of course not. You told us that you left the party with Angie around midnight, right?”
“Yeah. We had to get back by one a.m.”
“When you got back to West Bedford, did you go home immediately?”
“Yes. I already told you all this.”
“Did Angie drive you back to your house directly?”
“No, she went back to her house. I walked home from her house.”
“This was around one in the morning?”
“Yes. Like I said.”
“What route did you take when you walked home?”
Jess’s forehead furrows. “What do you mean? Like what streets?”
“Yes.”
“The regular ones. Hawthorne to Birch Street to Ellicott.”
“Your house is on Ellicott, right across from the park, right?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Did you see anything that night when you were walking home? The neighborhood must have been pretty quiet. You were probably one of the few people out at that time.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I don’t remember anything. It was late and I was—I was drunk. I wanted to get—get away.”
He doesn’t say anything. She picks up her backpack from the floor. “If there’s nothing else you want to ask me, can I go?”
He straightens up. “Sure. Thanks for talking to me, Jess.” He pulls a business card from his pocket and holds it out to her. “The reason I asked if you saw anything—anything at all, it might have seemed totally normal to you—is because we think that time of the night is a very important part of figuring out what happened to Ryan. If you remember something, will you call me? It would be really helpful to us.”
She takes his card. “I don’t remember anything.”
“But if you do, please let me know. Anything at all.”
ANGIE IS IN THE PROPS CLOSET BACKSTAGE, STANDING ON tiptoe and reaching into a box on a high shelf. Her hoodie rides up as her arm stretches, revealing the skin of her lower back. Jess, standing outside the door, watches Angie pull a magic wand out of the box. It’s made of a wooden dowel wrapped in purple and silver ribbons, with a tinfoil-covered star
stuck to the end. Angie makes a note on a clipboard resting on a lower shelf and then turns to replace the wand. She starts when she sees Jess in the doorway.
“Jesus!” Angie says. “You scared me.”
“Sorry,” Jess says.
Angie puts the wand away. “What’s up? You wanted to talk?”
There isn’t much room in the props closet. All the walls are lined with shelves, and the shelves are jammed full of boxes and miscellaneous items—a fake skull in a Plexiglas box, a horn cup, a stack of witch hats. Jess edges into the closet, nudging a box of scripts out of the way. The crowded space smells like mothballs and makeup.
“The police came to Brooke earlier today,” Jess says. “That guy, Lieutenant Griffin, said that he’s trying to find out who uploaded the video.”
“Really? Did he have any leads?”
“He didn’t tell me if he did.” Jess tucks her hands in her pockets. “Did you talk to Margot about the video?”
A flash of irritation crosses Angie’s face. “No. You didn’t want me to, so I didn’t. Is that all you wanted to know?”
“No, I . . .” Jess takes another two steps into the props closet, and Angie takes one step back—the only step she can take. Her foot bumps into a garishly painted pirate chest on the floor behind her. “I don’t want things to be weird between us,” Jess says. “I mean, any weirder than they already are.”
Angie tugs down the bottom of her hoodie. “It’ll be okay,” she finally says, but she doesn’t sound convinced.
“Are you okay?” Jess asks.
Angie shakes her head briefly. “I’m fine. It’ll be fine. How was Brooke today, other than the police thing?”
Jess blinks. “It was fine.”
“See? We just have to let things get back to normal.” Angie rubs at her eyes.
Jess stares at her. “Normal?”
“Yes. Normal,” Angie says. Her voice is a little tight.
Jess takes one more step toward Angie, closing the space between them. She touches Angie’s forearm, tugs one of her hands free. Angie lets Jess take her hand, their fingers interlacing.
“What are you doing?” Angie whispers.
“What are you doing?” Jess responds. “You’ve been my best friend since—”
“I’m still your best friend,” Angie interrupts.
“Is that all?”
Angie meets her gaze. She looks tired and scared. “Jess . . .”
“Why did you kiss me?”
Angie looks down. Her hand is limp in Jess’s grip. “We—I was—” She takes a deep, shaking breath. “I shouldn’t have done that. I promised Margot that—I promised. I’m so sorry, Jess. You will always be my best friend. Always.” She pulls her hand away, and Jess doesn’t resist. “I wish things were different,” Angie says, and then slips around her and out of the props closet.
THE LAMP CUTS A CIRCLE OF LIGHT OVER JESS’S DESK. Her eyes are gritty from lack of sleep, and the back of her neck aches from stooping over her sketchbook. Two pages are full of sketches of Raven’s face, each one fine-tuning the angle of Raven’s eyes and the lines of her mouth. Jess refers to the character sketches as she works on the two-page spread that will be the climactic scene in Kestrel’s story.
It’s set in Kestrel and Laney’s dorm room, but the twin beds and dressers stand amid rocks and undergrowth. A tree grows in the lower-right corner of the room, pushing against the edge of Laney’s desk. Leaves whip around the room on currents of wind represented by swooping gray lines, and gather in a pile against a boulder erupting from the floor near Laney’s bed. On the right side of the spread, Kestrel faces Laney. Jess draws Kestrel with a slightly feral expression, lip curled hungrily as she reaches for Laney. The two girls are close, divided only by the gutter between the two pages. Jess draws Laney leaning toward Kestrel, her eyes closed. Above her—almost emerging from Laney’s body—Jess adds a third, ghostly figure.
Her hand starts to cramp. She flexes her fingers a few times and continues. The specter soon takes Raven’s form. Her long hair floats in a cloud around her face, and her lips are slightly parted as if she’s speaking, but her eyes are hollow and unseeing. Jess draws a tiny circle in Raven’s forehead and darkens it. She adds a trickle of blood running in a black line from the bullet hole down the ghostly girl’s cheek.
LIEUTENANT GRIFFIN’S CAR IS PARKED ACROSS FROM West Bedford High School. Jess crosses the icy street quickly, and by the time she reaches the passenger side he is already leaning across the front seat, opening the door. She slides her backpack off and climbs into the heated interior.
“I think we should drive somewhere,” Jess says.
“Okay. Where?”
“Just away from here. Everyone’s going to be leaving school in a second and I don’t want anyone to see me.” She wedges her backpack on the floor between her feet and reaches for the seat belt. “Thanks for coming,” she adds.
“No problem.” He pulls the car away from the curb and turns down the next street, heading in the direction of Ellicott Park. “What did you want to talk about?”
“I remembered something.”
“That’s great.”
She side-eyes him, but he seems intent on driving. “I didn’t think this was important earlier, but now . . . I think maybe it is. The night that Ryan—that night after the party, after I got home, I got a bunch of texts from Ryan.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. I was already at home by then. They woke me up. It was confusing at first because they didn’t come from Ryan’s phone. They came from Margot’s phone.”
He turns down the next street. “What do you mean?”
“I mean Ryan wasn’t using her own phone to text me. I didn’t understand at the time, but now I think it’s probably because she didn’t have my number. Margot did, though.”
“Why?”
“Because she had to invite me to her party and Angie gave her my number. Anyway, the point is, I think Ryan was using Margot’s phone to text me.” Jess stops talking and glances at Griffin. When she doesn’t continue, he catches her eye.
“What were the texts about?” he asks.
“They were about the letters in the park.”
“What about them?” Griffin pulls the car to a stop on the side of the road and leaves the engine running.
“Well, earlier that night at the party she basically denied that they existed. But when she texted me, she accused me of taking them. So I was confused—I was half asleep anyway, but my phone kept buzzing and I didn’t understand what was going on at first. I couldn’t understand why Margot was texting me and saying that I took her letters. Then I realized it wasn’t Margot, it was Ryan using Margot’s phone. And Ryan said that she went to go get the letters, but they were gone. She accused me of taking them.” Jess pauses, looking out the window. Griffin has driven them to the edge of Ellicott Park. The bare tree limbs are blanketed with snow.
“When we talked the first time,” Griffin says, “the day you brought us to the park, you didn’t mention any of this.”
Jess turns to face him. “I sort of forgot.”
He raises his eyebrows but doesn’t say anything.
“I mean,” she amends, “I forgot that she said the letters were gone. I remembered that she texted me but it didn’t seem relevant. I just told her to fuck off and went back to sleep. To be honest, I didn’t really remember what she texted until I took you to the park to show you the letters, and then they were there anyway. So I figured Ryan had been lying.”
He doesn’t take his eyes off her. “Do you have the text messages on your phone?”
“No. I deleted them. I didn’t want to keep them around. They were kind of mean. But the stuff Ryan texted isn’t the point. Don’t you get it? Ryan was in the park that night. She was texting me from the park accusing me of taking her letters, and she was texting me from
Margot’s phone. So Margot had to be with her.” Jess unbuckles her seat belt and moves her hand to the door latch. “And the letters were back—if they were ever gone in the first place—by the time I took you to get them. The only people who knew those letters existed were Ryan, that dude she was sleeping with, Margot, and me. I didn’t take them, so that leaves the dude and Margot. If the dude took them, why would he put them back after Ryan died? It had to be Margot.”
“Why would Margot have taken the letters?” Griffin asks.
“I don’t know, because she’s a bitch? Anyway, that’s what I figured out. I thought you might want to know, since I read online that Ryan was shot in the chest so somebody had to be there to shoot her. And if Margot was there, it seems pretty obvious to me what happened.” She opens the door to get out of the car.
“Jess,” Griffin says.
“What?”
“We found out who posted that video from the party.”
She turns back. “Who?”
“Margot.”
The color drains from Jess’s face.
“So I’m really glad that you told me about the texts—and your theory—but it’s pretty obvious that you and Margot don’t exactly get along. Why should I believe you?”
Jess gives him a withering look. “You don’t have to believe me. It’s the truth. Why don’t you get Margot’s phone records? Can’t you check her location data or something and find out where she was? I didn’t like Ryan, but I don’t think she deserved to die.” She slams the door behind her.
JESS IS ALMOST AT THE TRAILHEAD ACROSS FROM HER house when she spots the blue Mini parked on the side of the road. She pauses beside the car. The neighborhood is quiet, and nobody is on the sidewalk except for her. The brief ride she got from Griffin put her a couple of blocks ahead of the rest of the school traffic. The trail into Ellicott Park is still snowy, but it’s been packed down a bit over the past few days. Jess steps off the sidewalk and into the park.
She has barely gone twenty feet down the trail when she sees a girl in a maroon parka in the distance, walking toward her. The girl sees Jess too.