“He died on you? For real? Take-him-to-the-morgue-and-bury-him died?”
My two best friends, Audrey Weinstein and Ben Tucker, stared at me in disbelief. Correction: Audrey stared at me in disbelief; Ben flat out didn’t believe me. He had also been snickering ever since I’d mentioned working on my latest romance novel. Even if I caved and started letting people read my manuscripts, I would never show them to him. He’d only start quoting the dialogue from Kidnapped by Her Italian Billionaire Lover whenever he was in the mood to mock me.
I didn’t think that one was my worst attempt at a novel, either.
My reply stamped out all traces of his amusement. “Yeah, he dive-bombed on top of me right before he went to the great Starbucks in the sky.”
The euphemism didn’t make me feel any better. I had hoped it would create a false sense of distance in my mind. If I could make an empty joke out of it, then maybe I wouldn’t be haunted by the way his body had tenuously clung to life before he had stilled. I’d mentally replayed it throughout the night, unable to stand even the familiar weight of my comforter. Not when it reminded me of his prone form draped on top of me. I could still hear that last breath rattling out of him, right into my ear, as he apologized.
To me or to someone else—I had no idea.
The only thing worse than feeling his final gust of air tickle my neck was being trapped beneath the weight of his corpse.
Ben’s smile disappeared and I could feel him giving me a slow once-over that had nothing to do with attraction and everything to do with his overly developed protective instinct that was on full display whenever he looked after his little brother, Cameron.
“Wow.” Audrey tucked a strand of her pitch-black hair behind her ear and then shot me a suspicious look. “Are you messing with us? If this is a new writing technique, I’m not okay with it.”
I pointed to the redness rimming my green eyes from my sleepless night, wishing that my skin had the golden undertone that Audrey had inherited from her Japanese-American mother. Whenever I was sleep-deprived or stressed people tended to ask if I was seriously ill. “Does this look like I’m kidding? I’ve been freaking out ever since it happened!”
“Em’s not that good an actress, either,” Ben said in what I considered a failed attempt to lighten the mood. I shot him my best death-ray glare when he ruffled my hair.
“Why didn’t you call us?” Audrey gestured behind us at all the students milling around the cafeteria, loading their trays with enough saturated fats to send someone into cardiac arrest. “New rule, Em: If someone dies, you don’t wait until lunch to casually bring it up! That’s not okay.”
“What was I supposed to do? Call you and say, ‘Hey an old dude just tackled me in Starbucks, but I’m fine. Mostly. I’m doing better than he is, which, y’know, isn’t saying much since he’s dead. He’s very dead. And I’ve gotta hang up and give the police my statement now. Bye!’”
Actually, that’s exactly what I should have done. Audrey and Ben would have bolted to the nearest subway station and kept right on talking to me until the reception in the tunnel disconnected us. They would have been there for me, without any hesitation. Except it was pretty damn obvious that Audrey wasn’t entirely over the breakup with Nasir, her boyfriend of four weeks, and the last thing I wanted to do was dump any of my baggage in her lap. Andrey wasn’t the type to verbally rehash a relationship. Once it was over all she wanted was plenty of personal space. Calling her mid-freak-out had seemed selfish.
And okay, that reasoning didn’t exactly hold up with Ben, considering that his Thursday afternoons usually consisted of coaching his eight-year-old brother, Cameron, in the finer points of baseball and smiling at whichever girl happened to catch his eye. I didn’t doubt for a second that if I had called in a panic, the two of them would’ve showed up, baseball bats at the ready. As far as Cam was concerned, I’d reached honorary big sister status years ago. Which was kind of disconcerting since I definitely didn’t have any sisterly impulses when Ben grinned at me.
So, yes, I could’ve called him for moral support, but I didn’t.
Instead, I’d done my best to answer routine questions for the cops without tripping over my own tongue. Tried and failed. Miserably. The transcript probably read something like this:
Witness: Emmy Danvers. Sixteen years old. Caucasian. 5' 7". Lanky build. Red hair. Green eyes. Painfully average. Slightly shell-shocked.
Officer McHaffrey: So, at what time did the altercation occur?
Emmy Danvers: Uh, I don’t know? I was sort of busy concentrating on my romance novel. It’s called Dangerously Undercover. My heroine gets roped into helping an undercover DEA agent. Although if you think about it, shouldn’t they be called DE agents? Otherwise you’re calling them Drug Enforcement Agent Agents.
Officer McHaffrey: Alright.
Emmy Danvers: Well, they take down a drug cartel.
Officer McHaffrey: I see.
Emmy Danvers: I doubt it. The plot is actually pretty complicated because her sister-in-law—
Officer McHaffrey: Let’s try to stay on topic, miss. I heard someone say that he took your drink. Did you confront him about it?
Emmy Danvers: I told him I wanted it back. Does that count?
Officer McHaffrey: Yes, it does. And did he return it to you?
(Emmy Danvers points to her sopping wet shirt, stained with the remnants of a grande mocha Frappuccino.)
Emmy Danvers: Uh, I guess he did?
Somehow I segued from there back to my romance novel, describing every plot point, while Officer McHaffrey did his best to maneuver me back to our very own—very dead—John Doe.
Officer McHaffrey: Can you tell me anything about his state of mind?
Emmy Danvers: Well, he seemed confused. Really paranoid and Alzheimer-y.
Officer McHaffrey: Alzheimer-y?
Emmy Danvers: (shrugs) Yeah. I think that sums it up.
I didn’t say another word, not because I actually believed the dead man was right and that I couldn’t trust anyone ever again, but because if I mentioned the dead man’s cryptic warning about my father, Officer McHaffrey would’ve been obligated to ask some pointed questions about my home life, and I didn’t want to get personal. The last thing I wanted to discuss right after having a stranger’s lifeless body rolled off me was my complete lack of a reliable father figure. It wasn’t as if being raised by a single parent increased the likelihood of being attacked by a strange man in a coffee shop. Explaining that I’d never met my father, not even for something as insignificant as a pumpkin spice latte, did make it far more likely that I’d graduate from uncontrollable shaking with adrenaline to full-on ugly crying on the sidewalk outside the Starbucks.
I focused on delivering one-word answers and nodding my way through the rest of the interview. It was the only way to postpone the tears I could feel welling up inside me, threatening to spill out at any second. Officer McHaffrey had barely finished thanking me for my cooperation when I bolted.
My sneakers slapped the pavement in a steady beat that offered no real comfort, especially when my breathing became shallow and choked. I couldn’t drown out the morbid whispers of onlookers, and their words continued ringing in my ears.
“He didn’t look sick to me, until—”
“Are you kidding? He had one foot in the grave before he even pushed open the door!”
“I wonder if the police have already identified the body.”
The tight knot of revulsion in my stomach only began to ease when I swiped my keycard into my apartment building, instantly smelling the familiar mix of mildew and detergent that lingered from the laundry room. Something about it steadied my pounding heart rate, helped clear my head. I needed to walk up the three flights of stairs to the cramped apartment I shared with my mom, change into my favorite pair of hole-ridden jeans and my baggiest sweater, before attempting to wash the coffee stains out of my clothes. Then I needed to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. That nobody had whispered a cryptic warning to me during their last moments on earth. That the storm had passed, the worst was over—insert reassuring cliché here—and that my life would now return to its regularly scheduled programming.
I might have even convinced myself, if I hadn’t double-checked all my pockets to make sure they were empty before shoving the clothes into the washer. There was something weighing down my jacket. Something that most definitely hadn’t been there before my run-in with a geriatric coffee thief. Fingers still trembling from shock and adrenaline and a dozen other emotions I didn’t particularly want to name, I delved deeper inside. I should have felt the papery folds of a secondhand book about the Vietnam War or a pamphlet full of conspiracy theories, some weird manifesto I could toss in the dumpster without a second thought. Instead the pad of my thumb slid across a smooth glass screen that I nearly fumbled and dropped to the ground because, oh holy crap, this did not belong with me. An old man slipping a handful of butterscotch toffees into my coat? Okay, that would be strange but sort of understandable in that who-knows-why-old-people-do-what-they-do kind of way. But randomly giving me one of the most expensive tablets on the market? That went well beyond weird.
Slate Industries had produced the Ferrari of electronics and my sticky Frappuccino fingers had no business holding one of their masterpieces. Roughly the size of a large smartphone but thinner than three quarters stacked on top of each other, it had been lauded as the tablet/phone love child hybrid that nobody realized they needed until they felt it resting in the palm of their hands. Then it became the next generation of tech they couldn’t live without. The Slate’s superior memory, speed, privacy settings, battery life, durability, and general awesomeness came with a hefty price tag attached.
And yet now one of them belonged to me.
For some reason all I could think as my fingers skimmed across the smooth chrome exterior was that anyone who could afford a Slate should be buying their own damn Frappuccinos. My Starbucks Stranger didn’t need to resort to theft to get his caffeine fix. But for some reason he’d claimed my drink, grabbed my wrist with his ridiculously strong fingers, and slid this outrageously beautiful machine into my pocket. So maybe keeping it was the right thing to do. Even to my own ears that rationalization sounded awfully thin. “Finders keepers, losers weepers” probably didn’t apply to cases where the loser turned up dead. Then again, turning over the Slate to the cops wouldn’t magically bring the old man back to life. Most likely, it would go mysteriously missing, and if an officer in the department happened to start using an identical Slate, well, none of the other cops would ask too many questions about where he got it. As far as I was concerned there was enough moral ambiguity to keep me on the safe side of karma. If I handed it over to the authorities, I would be denying a dying man’s parting gift. That would be rude. Disrespectful. Downright dishonorable.
I was merely respecting his final wishes.
“Earth to Emmy!” Audrey waved her arms dramatically in front of my face. “Are you even listening to me? You should have called us!”
I nodded and then did a quick sweep of the cafeteria. Nobody seemed to be paying us any undue attention, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. Probably leftover paranoia from the old man’s creepy warnings. “I know, okay? I should have called. Can we move on already?”
Audrey and Ben traded looks. The problem with best friends is that sometimes they know you a little too well. They can tell when you are holding out on them. And they have absolutely no qualms about poking and prodding until you’ve spilled all your secrets.
“Em’s just mad he interrupted her alone time with her fictional Prince Charming.”
I glared at Ben as my cheeks heated with annoyance. Ever since he caught me with a big dopey smile plastered across my face as I finished the last paragraph of a romance novel, he’d started giving me crap about my personal life. Which was blatantly unfair, because did I criticize him for hooking up with random girls after baseball practice or outside the batting cages or on the subway or wherever the hell else he happened to meet them?
No, I did not.
Much.
But that wasn’t the point.
Zzzzz! Zzzzz! Zzzzz!
The three of us stared in silence while my backpack jolted like the victim of an invisible stun gun.
Ben raised an eyebrow. “You going to answer that anytime soon?”
“It’s nothing,” I lied, grabbing my backpack off the chair and shoving it farther under the table. “Just ignore it.”
Confusion radiated from Audrey’s warm brown eyes. “I don’t get it, Em. Why are you suddenly hiding stuff from us?”
Because I don’t want you to tell me to do the right thing. Not yet.
Ben used his foot to snag the strap, and with one effortless movement he brought up the backpack and dumped all my possessions onto the lunch table. Textbooks, notebooks, my graphing calculator, a few cheap pens with the names of real estate offices on them, a special journal for all of my novel ideas, and the Slate I definitely should have left at home. I’d been uncomfortable with the idea of leaving it on my bedside dresser—or anywhere out of reach, really—which was stupid because I hadn’t been brave enough to do more than flip the Slate over half a dozen times, examining every smooth inch. The possibility, no matter how remote, that my information might be listed in the dead man’s contacts had scared me into inaction. Or maybe that had been the product of the shock finally catching up with me. Either way, I didn’t mean for the Slate to become my very own show-and-tell exhibit.
The Slate writhed on the cafeteria table before I snatched it up and stuffed it into the crumpled sweatshirt. It buzzed one last time and then quieted, probably because the battery had died. I wasn’t sure how I’d afford a charger, but that wasn’t my most immediate problem. Not when my best friends were staring at me like I’d gone off the deep end.
“What,” Ben asked with forced calmness, “is that?”
“You mean, beyond a total violation of my privacy?” I began shoveling all my belongings back into my bag. “My new Slate.”
Audrey’s jaw dropped open. “There’s no way you could afford that unless you sold your kidney on the black market.” I watched as comprehension dawned across her face. “The dead guy?”
“Can you keep your voice down?” I muttered. “This isn’t something I want to advertise.”
“You robbed a dead guy?”
“No! Of course I didn’t. He gave it to me. Sort of.”
“Yeah, nothing weird about that,” Audrey scoffed.
“He gave it to me,” I repeated. Neither of them looked impressed with the repetition of that particular point, so I quickly moved on. “That makes it mine. Case closed.”
Ben sat up straighter as he quickly zipped my bag shut. “I doubt the cops see it that way, since they’re headed right toward us.”