A FEW WEEKS LATER, Hadley and I have dinner with Mr. McCabe again—our fourth dinner in as many weeks. Since our first dinner with Mr. McCabe, Hadley hasn’t mentioned the fact that I lied about being friends with Zabet. In fact, now she covers for me, including my name in stories about things she and Zabet had done together. The first time that she did this, I looked up at her, startled, and she gave me a secret smile as she spoke, like saying, Yes. This is okay. And so now I have a whole new history, one that includes late-night calls, home-pierced ears, and summer-break doldrums with Hadley and Zabet. When Hadley tells Mr. McCabe things like, “But it was Evie who said we shouldn’t miss curfew,” I can almost believe it happened that way myself.
Tonight, Mr. McCabe makes the same spaghetti he always does.
“I should expand my repertoire,” he says. “Sorry, girls, I’m one-note.”
“Don’t say that,” Hadley says, twirling up more on her fork. “It’s really good.” To prove her point, she takes a bite.
Mr. McCabe shakes his head, visibly pleased by her words. “You could ask Elizabeth—it’s either this or lasagna or something out of a box. And it’ll be nothing out of a box for you girls.”
“It could be, like, a tradition,” I say.
He sends a finger at me in a swoop. His energy is still frenetic, his gestures and cadences like a hopped-up game-show host’s. I wonder if he’s always this hyper; I get the feeling that it’s just when we’re around.
At the end of dinner, Mr. McCabe holds out his hands, each closed into a fist—one toward Hadley, one toward me. I glance at Hadley, and she’s already extended her hand, palm open, under his. So I do the same. Mr. McCabe leans forward, his shoulders up around his ears, looking like he’s getting ready to bound up onto the table. He opens his hands, and something light and feathery falls into mine.
I examine what I’ve got—a thin, tarnished chain with a glass globe strung on it, a tiny gold seed suspended in the globe’s center. I remember this. I saw it hanging around Zabet’s neck, but I was always too far away to see what was in the globe. Once I saw her tuck her chin under the chain and tip the globe into her mouth, pulling it out shiny with spit. I look over at Hadley. She has a necklace strung between her fingers, too. The chain is gold, and lined up along the center is a row of glass beads. She looks over at what I’ve got, and something moves over her face, running like a tremor through her eyes and cheeks and burying itself at her mouth, which she tightens up, forcing it into a smile.
Mr. McCabe sits back, satisfied. “I thought you girls might like those. They were Elizabeth’s, and well, what would I do with them besides get them out and look at them from time to time?” And . . . though he says this lightly, it sounds like that is what he, in fact, really does want to do with the necklaces instead of give them to us. “They should be worn.”
“Thank you,” Hadley and I both say together.
“That’s a mustard seed.” Mr. McCabe tips his chin at me. “Elizabeth’s mother wore that in the seventies. It’s supposed to be good luck.”
“Zabet wore it all the time,” Hadley tells me, then adds. “I mean, you know that.”
Mr. McCabe points to the necklace in my hand. “She wasn’t wearing it when—” Mr. McCabe stops and wipes a napkin over his mouth like he’s going to mop up the end of his sentence. She wasn’t wearing it when she was killed. Is that what he means? I glance over at Hadley, but she’s gazing down at her own necklace. Mr. McCabe looks at us miserably. “The police do the best they can,” he says. “I know that. I have to believe that. But I had thought by now—well, I guess it was only a hope—I had hoped by now that they’d have found him.”
Hadley and I are both still. This is new, Mr. McCabe confiding in us about the murder investigation, and I worry that if I move or speak, he might remember himself and stop talking.
Hadley, as always, is bolder. “Do they have any suspects?” she inserts smoothly, still looking down at her hands.
“Huh,” Mr. McCabe huffs. “Huh. They don’t call them suspects anymore. Persons of interest, that’s what they say. And, no. None they’ve told me about. No persons of interest. No one’s interesting. Everyone’s boring.” He shakes his head. “My brother keeps saying, ‘Wouldn’t you like ten minutes in a room alone with him? He killed your daughter. Wouldn’t you like ten minutes alone with him cuffed to a chair and the police and lawyers out for a long coffee break?’” Mr. McCabe stops shaking his head and looks right at me. It takes all my will not to look away. His eyes are not angry, not sad, but startled, as if he is watching something he can’t quite believe is happening. “And I would. I’d take those ten minutes. But not to hit him, not to . . . just to ask him, ‘Why? Why did you? How could you?’”
I break his gaze.
“Well, it’s good luck, in any case,” he repeats. “The necklace is.”
I bring the seed up to my eye. I wonder how long it’s been suspended in the glass. I wonder if it was planted now, like, in the ground, could it still sprout? Through the glass globe, I see Hadley staring at me and the necklace.
“Do you want to switch?” I ask.
“No,” she says, and I can tell she’s lying. Then to Mr. McCabe, “No, I love mine.” She holds it up with the clasp open. “Will you help me?”
Mr. McCabe assists each of us, his hands fumbling at the backs of our necks. The globe of my necklace fits in the divot of my collarbone, swinging forward and then bouncing back against my throat when I reach for my cup. When we leave, Mr. McCabe walks us to the door, and we can see the shadow of his face in one of the glass cutouts, watching as we pull out of the driveway and down the street.
I touch my necklace, pushing the globe deeper into my skin until it presses against my windpipe. Hadley glances over at it again.
“Do you want it? You can have it.” I reach to undo the clasp. Really, I’m insincere. I want to keep the mustard seed necklace for myself, so I’m hoping that she’ll say no. In fact, I’ve made my voice eager and my gestures quick in order to startle a no out of her, and I pause with my hands on the clasp, waiting for her to demur.
“No, no, you keep it,” she finally says. After a few more miles, she says, “Zabet really liked it a lot. She believed in the luck part. Guess she was wrong, huh?”
She punches in the cigarette lighter, but when it pops back out, she doesn’t take it. She raps a fist against her forehead. “I don’t want to go home. Do you have to?”
I don’t. Mom is on a date with a car salesman Veronica introduced her to, so she has no need for my company. On her date nights, she paints streaks of blush so high up her cheeks that the pink powder stains her hairline. Her regular poses and pauses change into something less refined, something baser and looser—a blow-up doll, a big dumb girl. Instead of come hither, she telegraphs get on over here, you!
She comes back from these dates late and tipsy. I always make sure that I’m in my room with the lights out by the time she bumps around the kitchen, knocks bottles off the shelf in the bathroom, curses when the water is too cold, and finally collapses with a sigh of bedsprings. In the morning she’s pale and sweaty from last night’s wine, her face like some pearly-fleshed mollusk. She presses the heel of her hand into her forehead as she sips her coffee. “Why do I do it?” she always asks. The one time I actually offered an answer to this question, she didn’t speak to me for a week.
In the car, I tell Hadley, “I have some time.”
We end up at a diner near the highway. I order a pop, but Hadley gets another meal: coffee and a plate of pancakes.
“I need to get the taste of spaghetti out of my mouth,” she says and then looks stricken for a second. “God, I’m such a bitch,” she sighs.
I don’t say anything, because I know that when she calls herself a bitch, she doesn’t mean it to be entirely an insult. There’s a table of guys across the aisle all with coffees and no food. I don’t recognize them from school, so maybe they’re older. A couple of them sneak glances at Hadley, her hank of light hair, her laced-up boots, her tough-girl clothes, her sneer.
A few of Hadley’s old friends are playing quarters at a booth near ours. They wave at us shyly, and Hadley returns a weary salute.
“They suck,” she whispers to me, and I’m more pleased by this than I should be. Twice, kids at school have come up to me in the halls to ask if I know where Hadley is, and when she was sick one day, the guidance counselor sent the packet of her missed homework with me. We’re considered best friends now; we’re considered a pair.
While we’re waiting for our food, we blow straw wrappers at each other and use the jam containers as bricks for a miniature pyramid. We stare out at the entrance ramp to the parking lot, which beads up with a steady string of cars. There’s been an away game, and we see the school buses return, their headlights high and familiar.
“Ugh. They’re coming back,” Hadley says and rests her head on the tabletop, a chunk of her hair landing in something sticky, probably syrup from her pancakes. She spends the next few minutes dabbing at it with a wet napkin and picking the strands apart.
“I feel drunk,” she announces a few minutes later.
“All you’ve had is coffee.”
“And syrup.”
“Wicked combo.”
She snorts. “Yeah, wicked. You ever been drunk?”
“No,” I say.
She studies me. “No.” She agrees that I haven’t. “Have you ever hitchhiked?” She nods out to the highway.
“No. You?”
She rolls her eyes. “I have a car, dummy. Have you ever—” “I’ve never nothing.” “God, Evie. You’re sixteen. You should do something.” She looks around. For something for me to do, I guess. Her eyes land on the table across from ours. “Go talk to those guys.”
I feel myself blush at the suggestion. The boys aren’t looking at us now; they’re hunched over the center of the table, doing something furtive with the sugar packets. “I don’t have anything to say.”
“Pick one and tell him to meet you in the parking lot to make out.” She says this like it’s nothing.
“Sure. Right. Hi, stranger.”
Hadley shrugs. “He’ll come.”
“No,” I whisper.
“Of course he will. He’s a guy.” She shrugs again.
I try to keep my eyes half lidded, my voice nonchalant. “Is that something people, like, do? I mean, have you?”
“Shit!” Hadley says. “They’re leaving.”
She slides out of the booth and grabs my hand. It’s all I can do to latch on to a sleeve of my coat and pull it after me.
“We haven’t paid!” I say, but we’re already out the door and in the parking lot, stamping our feet against the chill of the spring night.
The boys have already piled into their car, exhaust putting out its back. The car rolls forward a few feet and then stops. We hear a shout and see the wave of a hand out one of the windows. At us? Hadley takes a step toward it, pulling me after her. Just as she does, the car shoots forward, out of the parking lot, and down the road.
“Wait!” Hadley shouts after them. “My friend was going to give it to you!”
“Hadley!” I try to cover her mouth, but my hand is still tangled in hers. She yanks my arm, breaks free of me, and runs around the parking lot in circles.
“Come back,” she cries to the boys. “My friend wants you!”
I chase after, trying to catch and shush her. It’s a ghost that’s taken us up; I can feel it in my chest, a high happiness that wavers, arms pinwheeling wide, on the edge of some other scarier feeling. We hop and poke at each other’s sides. Hadley yodels and, when I try to cover her mouth again, blows a wet raspberry into my palm.
“Gee, thanks.” I wipe my hand on my jeans.
“Aw, Evie.” She takes ahold of my head and pulls it close to hers, knocking our temples together. She holds my head too hard, and when I squirm, she won’t let it free. “Let’s run away together.”
Then she’s pulling me across the parking lot and down the muddy slope of the drainage ditch, then back up the other side of it to the edge of the highway. She’s singing something high and tuneless, her hair flying out behind her and into my face. I feel a syrupy strand of hair flick up beneath my eye. She’s got me by the arm still, and when we get to the shoulder of the road, she forms my hand into a fist, thumb up.
“Hadley,” I say, but she’s jumping around me, wild, with her hair over her face so that I can’t read her expression. Then she’s stretching my arm out toward the road. “Hadley!” I say again, and make a swipe at her with my free arm. “Come on.” I’m half laughing now, mostly because I don’t know what else to do. She’s pulling my arm so hard that I have to put all my weight on my heels if I don’t want to tumble out into the road. “Come on. Let’s get your car.”
“No, Vie. We’re out of here. Someone will pick us up. We’ll hitchhike to Chicago. New York!”
“Hadley. We can’t. It’s not . . . it’s dangerous.”
“We’re dangerous!”
She lets go of my hand, and I drop the hitchhiking thumb. I present my palms to her, flat. “We’re not,” I say.
She reaches for my face, and I flinch, but it’s only my necklace that she wants. She closes her hand around the globe. I can feel her fist, warm and hard at my throat. I swallow against it, frightened.
“I’ll protect you,” she says in a voice so fierce that I have the impulse to laugh at her, except then suddenly I don’t feel like laughing at all. She tightens her grip on the necklace and the chain digs into the back of my neck. “You can count on it. I’d fight him. I’d—”
“Hey,” I say to her, coaxing. “Hey.”
She lets go of the necklace. “Let’s just go, okay, Vie? We’re gonna go.”
“Where?”
She spins around. The intersection is dead, no cars coming or going, only the traffic light hanging from its wire, blinking red.
She sags against me. “Aw, hell,” she mutters.
But then from around the corner, a car appears, as if she’s called for it. And even though Hadley’s no longer signaling for a ride, the car slows as it passes us, pulling to the shoulder of the road a few yards from where we’re standing. Hadley’s head jerks up like she’s scented something on the wind. She stares at the car. It’s dark blue and compact and nondescript. It looks more like a mom’s car than a killer’s car. Still, I’m not getting in it. Hadley, though. She’s already taken a step for it.
“We can’t just—” I say.
A head pops out of the passenger window, followed by shoulders and arms: one of the boys from the diner. He perches on the frame of the open window, holding the top of the car to steady himself. He’s what my mother would call lanky and what I would call stringy, and his jacket is a size or two too big, making him look even stringier. His cheeks are ruddy, like he’s just drunk something warm.
“Hey, ladies,” he calls, and there’s some noise from inside the car in response, the word ladies sung in a falsetto. The boy ducks back into the car for a second and then pops out again. “I apologize. My friends are losers.”
At this, the car jerks forward a foot, and the boy curses and nearly falls out onto the ground. He keeps his grip on the roof, though, and swings back into the car as soon as it stops. I look over at Hadley, who’s watching the car with a little grin on her face as if this is all for our amusement. In a moment, the boy is back out, though just his head this time.
“We’re going to a party. Near campus.”
“They’re in college,” I whisper.
Hadley ignores me. She tosses a shoulder and tilts her head at the boy as if to say, So? What does your party have to do with me?
“You ladies”—the car jerks forward again at ladies—“you wanna come?”
There’s no question that Hadley will want to go, so I wait for her to answer him. But she doesn’t answer him; instead she turns and watches me steadily as if waiting for something. I nod at her to mean that I agree, we can go, but she just keeps looking at me.
“What?” I whisper.
“You tell him,” she says, tipping her head toward the guy in the car.
“Me? Tell him what?”
“That we’ll go.”
“Oh. Well. It really doesn’t matter who tells him, does it?”
“Scared, little Vie?”
“No. It’s just . . . he’s mostly talking to you.”
“Go on. Don’t be a baby.” Her voice isn’t mean as she says this last bit; rather, it’s indulgent, almost as if I am a baby.
“I don’t—”
“It’s not a big deal. Just say yeah or okay. Just one word.”
There are other passengers in the car, their silhouettes moving behind the windows. The boy turns and says something to one of them, then sticks his head back out the window and a stringy arm along with it. He looks at us expectantly. I feel as I haven’t used my voice in years, and if I open my mouth, only a sighing wheeze of ancient dust will swirl out.
“You coming?” he asks.
Hadley sneaks a hand under my coat and pinches my side.
“Yes,” I whisper too soft for him, or even Hadley, to hear. But before Hadley can pinch me again, I gather my breath and say it louder—too loud really—a shout that travels past the boy and the car and all the way down the road.