Not Quite Dead Yet, page 28
Billy patted his jacket, a silent kind of thank you.
Jet looked up again, beyond the leaves, to the dark sky above. Not really all that dark, actually, little silver pinpricks of stars winking down at her.
“What are you looking at?” Billy craned his neck. “Trying to catch another one?”
“Well, you’re gonna need all the luck you can get, Billy, without me here to look out for you.” She sniffed. “Actually, I was looking at the stars. People do that too, huh? No reason. Just nice to look at.”
“Yeah,” Billy said, but he wasn’t looking at the stars, he was looking at her.
Jet didn’t warn him. She dropped down, sat back, the grass wet through her jeans.
“Whoa, you OK?”
“Yeah.” She went all the way, legs out, resting her head back on the grass, not too hard against the bandage and the throbbing inside. “I’m just laying here,” she said.
“Why?” Billy said, immediately joining her, his head close to hers, legs pointed the other way. Their own little mismatched triangle.
“Because I wanted to.” Jet stared up. Could you always see this many stars here? Jet had never bothered to really look up before, to try counting them, just because.
“I was thinking,” Billy said. “Nina said it was a secret that Dianne knew but her family doesn’t, so maybe it wasn’t your parents Emily overheard but—”
“—We don’t have to talk about it,” Jet spoke across him.
“What?”
“That.”
“OK.” Billy nodded, grass blending with his dark hair, too straight among the curls. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Anything. Anything at all.”
Jet counted the stars.
“Why didn’t you want to marry JJ?” Billy asked, voice small, barely making it through the darkness.
Jet’s chest contracted, ribs closing into a shield. Well, she did say anything. And this was Billy. She trusted him, with her truck, with her life, and maybe something else too. Her chest opened up and she sighed.
“I used to think JJ was good for me. He pushed me, said I should be the best version of myself, dream even bigger. I think that’s who he loved: the best version of me, the one with the big ideas. He would have resented me eventually, when none of it worked out. And nothing ever works out. I give up, so I gave up on him. I think he thought he was settling with me, and maybe I thought the same too. Because there had to be someone better for me, someone perfect—not here, maybe in Boston—once I’d fixed my life, become that better person. And what was the other choice: I marry him and get stuck here in Woodstock forever? Become my parents? Or Luke and Sophia?”
Billy pulled out a handful of grass. “You wanted to leave?”
Jet tilted her head, glanced over at him. “Don’t you? Don’t you ever think about it? Somewhere new? Maybe a lot of somewheres. Not the place that’s supposed to be home, but the place that feels like home. Find other bars to play your music in, make lots of people smile, because you make everyone smile, Billy. Live out of a truck and have dirty socks and cold beers and sit under new stars every night? Don’t plan, or worry about the time. Just…be.”
Her eyes prickled, a new sheen, made the stars even brighter.
“Yeah,” Billy said. “I’ve thought about leaving, I have.” He glanced over at her, Jet saw in the corner of her eye. “But there was always something keeping me here.”
Jet sniffed. “Not realistic anyway. Life can’t be about that, about wasting time. Has to be about something bigger, doesn’t it?”
Billy shrugged, not so easy lying down. “I don’t know, I think it might be simpler than that. I think life is about finding your person, your one person.” He paused. “And you better make sure that they really love you back, so they don’t just pack their bags one night and abandon you. They have to love you back. That’s it, I think.”
Jet looked over at Billy, hair and grass bunching, tickling her neck. Should she just tell him about his mom? Did she owe Billy that, before the end? But it might change things and Jet didn’t want this to change, didn’t want Billy to look at her any different, that sparkle behind his pale blue eyes. If Jet had time, she wanted it to be like this. Just this.
“Look.” She pointed up at the sky, drawing a shape with the stars. “Do you see it? No, look this way, Billy. Yeah. That’s its eye, that’s the other one. It’s a frog, see?”
Billy laughed. “Of course you see a frog. You love frogs.”
“You don’t see it?”
Billy breathed out, looked at her. “If it’s a frog to you, then it’s a frog to me.”
“It’s a frog.”
She dropped her arm to the grass. Turned to smile at Billy.
“Soooo…are you cold too?”
“Absolutely freezing,” he laughed, teeth chattering. “And I’m soaking wet.”
“Me too. Shall we…?”
“Yeah.”
Billy stood up, towering over her. He bent down, reached out, offered her his hand.
“Err, Billy,” Jet said, dragging her head up, pushing her neck into folds. “Wrong hand.”
She waved with the working one.
“Shit, sorry,” Billy hissed, switching hands.
Jet snorted, eyes finding Billy’s. He snorted too, and that fucking did it.
Jet exploded with laughter, couldn’t hold it in, rolling onto her side, ribs against the ground, dead arm somewhere beneath her.
Billy laughed too, hard, harder, weaving in and out of Jet’s whistling old man cackle.
“Why are we laughing?” Billy laughed, bent double, tears in his eyes.
“I don’t know.” Jet struggled to speak, to breathe. “It’s not even funny.”
But it was, it was the funniest thing in the world and all the stars, and they laughed and they couldn’t stop.
Not when Billy found the right hand this time, pulled Jet to her feet.
Not as they stumbled away, crashing into each other, laughing too hard to walk straight.
Jet’s stomach ached with it, and she forgot about the worse one in her head.
Billy would try, swallowing the laughter, his after-sigh setting Jet off again, because it was catching, and they both had it.
Red-cheeked and snotty-nosed and scrunched-up eyes.
They walked and they laughed.
This. Just this.
* * *
—
Jet lay in bed, too awake, staring up at the ceiling. There were no stars here, but they weren’t far away.
She was smiling.
Her cheek hurt, just the one side she could feel, because she couldn’t stop smiling.
Couldn’t fight it, didn’t really want to try.
“Good night, Billy,” she called first this time, through the half-open door.
“Good night, Jet.”
Friday
November 7
Twenty-Eight
“Mom?” Jet called through the empty house.
Not empty.
Reggie scuttled around the corner, launched himself at her.
“Hello, hi, is that the Regmatron?” Jet tickled his ears, one-handed, fingers down his spine to the base of his helicopter tail. “Who’s a good boy?” she asked, because she always did. “Who’s a good boy?”
Reggie yawned, pattering over to Billy, wagging for him too.
“Of course Mom’s out when I need to speak to her.” Jet straightened up. “All this talk about Please come home, Jet, but she’s not even here. And she calls me useless.”
“She’s got to be back sometime.” Billy closed the front door. “We can wait.”
“We have time,” Jet said.
Ms were hard to say now, one side of her mouth too weak to press her lips together, speaking out the other way, smiles cut in half. She only knew because she’d tried to smile at Billy this morning, when he made her pancakes for breakfast. Got up early to do it. Better than fries.
Jet followed the dog, through the doorway into the living room. Here again. No pools of blood or spatter anymore, but Jet knew where they’d been, scrubbed away, painted over.
Billy held his breath, walking through behind her.
He’d seen it that way too.
Held Jet’s lifeless body, seen the insides of her undone head. His voice breaking as he screamed her name, breaking something inside Jet too as she’d watched and rewatched the doorbell footage.
Billy shouldn’t have ever seen something like that; he was too good for it.
He breathed again when they reached the kitchen.
Reggie pounced on a balled-up sock, discarded beneath the bar stools, grunting as he showed it off to them. His wagging tail disturbed the two dish towels hanging by the stove, made them sway. Marching avocados and lemons, an incomplete set.
Jet kept going, through the laundry room to the side door.
She pulled down on the handle.
It was locked now, lesson learned. Just too late to make a difference.
She flicked the catch and tried again, pushing the door open.
Reggie was first out, barging past, off to dig a hole for his sock and lose it forever.
Then Jet stepped out, then Billy, not one word between them, like they both knew exactly where they were supposed to go without ever needing to say it.
To the pool.
It was covered now, a white plastic cover, creamy against the surrounding ash-wood deck. Wouldn’t be uncovered until the summer, or late spring, or whenever Dad decided they’d had two sunny weekends in a row and it was time.
Jet wondered then if they’d ever replaced the water, or if it was still the same water that drowned Emily, hoping the chlorine would take the death out of it.
Her footsteps echoed on the deck, coming to a stop. Billy’s too.
“You were here that day.” Jet stared at the pool. “Do you remember it?”
Billy chewed his lip. “As much as any eleven-year-old can remember a day like that.”
Jet nodded. “Tell me again.”
“When we found her?”
“The whole thing.”
Billy took a breath, filled himself. “It was a nice day. I was out in the yard with Mom, helping her plant a new flower bed. Sunflower seeds, I think. They still grow there now. Dad was inside cooking, or maybe he was out at the store picking up stuff for a barbecue later. He came back, and he said Luke had been knocking on the door, asking to come play with me. Which was…” Billy paused. “Well, Luke never wanted to play with me. He was thirteen, I was eleven. And you were mine—m-my best friend. But you were out at that spelling thing, so Dad asked if me and Luke wanted to play soccer outside. We played for a little while. And then…see, I was thinking about this last night, after we found what we found. And I thought it was strange at the time, but I haven’t thought about it in years.”
“What?” Jet looked up from the pool.
“So, we’re playing soccer, one on one, and Dad’s referee and Mom’s still gardening. And Dad throws the ball for us, but it goes right into the bushes at the back of the yard, against the fence. We both go in, me and Luke, to find the ball, because it was really overgrown back there. And I find it, and we come back out. And Luke’s arms got all scratched up, and I remember Dad making a big deal out of it, seeing if Luke wanted a Band-Aid, asking Mom to go inside to get some cream. Think he felt responsible. But…” Billy locked eyes with her. “I don’t know how much you can trust my memory. But the thing is, what I remember—”
“—Billy.”
“I think Luke’s arms were already scratched up before we went into the bushes. He was wearing a T-shirt, and I was sure of that at the time.”
Jet studied his stormy eyes. “What kind of scratches?”
“Lots of them,” Billy said, “all over both arms. Little ones. The kind you’d get if you climbed through a bush and got scratched up by thorns, or if someone scratched you, like in a fight. The police asked about them later, when we were giving our statements. We all told them about the bushes: me, Mom, Dad, Luke. But…” Billy’s eyes darkened, lines pulling around them. “Last night, I was thinking, there’s something else too. Luke said he hadn’t been in the pool at all that day. That’s what he told us, and the police after.”
“Yeah, I know,” Jet said. “He hadn’t.”
“He said he’d been inside all day, playing PlayStation. Didn’t know where Emily was, got bored, came around to see if I was free to play.”
“Yeah, that sounds right.”
“Except,” Billy said, “when we were playing soccer, when I got close, to tackle him, I think I could smell it on him, in his hair.”
“What?”
“Chlorine,” Billy said, eyes widening, mouth too, a flash of his bottom teeth.
Jet looked back at the covered pool, a switch in her heart, throwing off the pattern.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“No, I’m not sure. It was so long ago. And maybe it’s only because of what we saw in Emily’s messages. But I think…I don’t know. Sorry.”
Jet chewed the inside of her cheek, felt nothing, only knew she’d broken the skin when she tasted the metal bite of blood. It was seventeen years ago; Billy was just a kid. Jet couldn’t really trust her own memories of that day, so that ruled Billy’s out too. Luke did go in the pool later, after. Billy was probably getting confused.
“What happened next?” she said.
“When we finished playing soccer, Dad was starting the grill and Luke was going home. But then Luke realized he’d forgotten a key and wasn’t sure if any of the doors were unlocked at yours. Mom said she’d walk Luke back, make sure he got in OK. I went too. Followed my mom everywhere back then.” He sniffed. “We tried the front door first. Knocked. No one answered. We thought Emily had probably gone out. So Mom walked us around the side to try the doors at the back. It was open, that side door.” He pointed to it, the one into the laundry room. The same one Jet’s killer had walked through. “Me and Mom were just about to leave when Mom looked over here and…” He trailed off, eyes flickering over the covered pool.
“You saw Emily,” Jet said, not a question.
“You couldn’t really see her,” Billy said. “Just the colors. The shape. On the bottom of the pool.”
Jet swallowed.
“Mom screamed when she realized. Screamed so loud. Luke ran back over. Dad heard, across the road. He came running. So did Mr. Griffin, from next door.” Billy closed his eyes, like he could see it all again, unfolding in front of him, seventeen years gone in a blink. “Dad was the one to jump in, right away, all his clothes. He swam down to the bottom. Those were the longest few seconds I can ever remember. He came back up without her. Said that her hair was stuck in the drain and he couldn’t pull her up. He told Luke to run inside and find some scissors. Luke did, fastest I’d ever seen him move. He jumped in the pool to get the scissors to Dad. Dad went under. Even longer this time. Came back up with Emily in his arms, hair ragged, half cut away.”
Billy moved closer to the pool.
“He got her out, right here.” He bent to touch the exact tile. “Luke helped, pushed her legs up. And then Dad started CPR. But…she was already blue. I remember thinking that—that it was too late. Mr. Griffin called the ambulance. And Mom, she was hugging Luke. And I watched. Right here.” He stepped back and pointed at his feet, where he’d stood as a little boy. “Dad refused to stop, the whole time, even though I think we all knew. The ambulance arrived maybe ten minutes later, took over. And then it was only a couple of minutes, until you got home with your parents.”
Billy looked over at her finally, back here and now.
“You were still holding your little trophy.” Billy choked up, coughed into his fist. “I’ll never forget the sound your mom made, when she saw Emily. People don’t scream like that, it…”
Jet remembered it too. But people did scream like that. Billy had, when he found Jet.
“So it was your mom who found Emily?”
That pit of guilt opening up in Jet’s gut again.
“Yeah,” Billy sniffed. “She was the first.”
“Did she…did she ever talk about Emily after?”
Billy looked at the sky. “We sometimes talked about what happened, about that day. She always got upset.”
“But did she ever mention…did she know what Emily wanted to tell her, or that she wanted to tell her something?”
“What are you thinking?” Billy asked her.
Jet wasn’t sure what she was thinking, hoped she’d figure it out as she was speaking.
“Well, Emily’s message said she’d started to tell your mom on that Friday, but then your mom had to leave. So maybe your mom knew something, a part of it, if it wasn’t just a school thing, if it was the secret about Luke, what Emily overheard. And, with Emily dying the next day, maybe she would have thought it was more important, I don’t know. Told someone what she knew, wrote it down or…”
Billy’s bottom lip folded up. “She never said anything to me.”
“But you were a kid,” Jet countered. “Do you…do you still have any of her stuff?”
Billy glanced back at Jet’s house, his own childhood home hidden behind it.
“Yeah,” he said. “Dad wanted to throw most of it out, but I made him keep it. It’s all boxed up in the attic. Not her phone or her laptop or anything like that. She took those with her when she left.”
“Any of her work stuff, from school?”
“Yeah, I mean there were her work diaries, some calendars, things like that.”
“From 2008?” Jet asked, a tiny trickle of hope, filling in that pit in her gut.
“Probably.” Billy was still looking toward his house, eyes faraway, farther than that. “Mom liked to keep things like that. Had memory boxes from each year, ticket stubs, pressed flowers—you know, that kind of thing.”
