“YOU’RE ACTING WEIRD,” Kyla says. “Is this about Mark?”
We’re in my bed. We just—you don’t need to know what we were just trying to do. Anyway, it’s like Mark is in bed with us because Kyla keeps bringing him up, and yeah sorry, I don’t want to think about my dead best friend when I’m supposed to be able to get my dick hard.
“My best friend died. So yeah, there’s a lot on my mind. There’s a lot going on. I guess, yeah, it’s about Mark.”
She traces a circle on my chest. It feels like a bull’s-eye.
“That’s not what I mean.” She stands up and slips back into the dress she wore over here. “I know you’re upset. But this is more than that. Just be honest. Is there someone else?”
Kyla was supposed to be a party fling. You’ve seen her type. Hot, but kind of cheap-looking. I’m not saying that to be mean. It’s just how she is.
“No, there’s nobody else. Just you.”
Her eyebrows creep up. “Why don’t you stop lying to yourself, Keegan?”
I don’t know what else she expects. Last night I took her on a date. She dragged me to this expensive place downtown. Ordered champagne. Made me pay. She doesn’t seem to get that Mark is gone and maybe I’m having a hard time dealing. The police keep releasing more statements, like Tabby is one of those wooden dolls my mom used to collect, where you’d open one and there’d be a smaller one inside it. That’s what this case is. A whole bunch of layers, encased in something pretty. People are fucking salivating over it.
Now they’re deep into Tabby’s phone, and there are all these calls to that Beck Rutherford guy, but just calls, no texts. The texts were to Mark, and they show she was pissed off. It makes me happy they found them, actually. Tabby has been trying to make herself out to be this good girl, this sob story, and those messages show who she really is. A head case.
Maybe Beck did help her with it. I saw them together. Plus, I saw him get up in Mark’s face at Elle’s party. Now his girlfriend, this Lou chick, wants my help trying to figure out the mystery, probably so she can clear his name or whatever. Maybe I should go along with it, though, if I can prove Tabby did it. I told her I wasn’t interested, but now I’m kind of wishing I hadn’t been such an asshole. Anything to get the two of them the fate they deserve.
“I’m not sure how much longer I can keep doing this,” Kyla says.
Doing what? I want to ask. It’s not like we’re even a couple. I never asked her to be my girlfriend. She just kind of assumed that’s what we were. I mean, she goes back to college in January anyway. She told me she was deferring this semester, but I didn’t bother listening to the reason why. Come to think of it, I don’t even know which college she goes to, or what she’s studying.
“Okay,” I say. “I don’t know what else you want from me.”
“I want you to appreciate me,” she says. “You might be sorry if you don’t.” Then she turns and leaves, all dramatic, and there goes any semblance of a boner, and any chance of me being in a good mood today.
I have to see Detective Stewart again this morning. He left a message that he wants to discuss new evidence. I see the guy more often than my friends. It’s kind of sad, really, because I don’t exactly have any friends. Mark was my friend and now he’s gone and everyone else was just a party acquaintance, people who weren’t there when the hangover wore off.
Today Stewart asks me about Beck. The last person I want to talk about.
“Would you say Mark knew about Beck Rutherford?”
I hate hearing that little prick’s name. His grungy leather jacket. The cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
“Yeah. Mark knew. He told me Tabby was fucking around on him. Sorry, screwing around. You know what I mean. He wanted to find proof.”
“So that’s where you came in.” I’m starting to hate Stewart, how he’s picking up steam, getting more comfortable the more I sweat in this chair.
“I guess so. I mean, he just asked me to keep an eye on things.”
“To spy on Tabitha?”
“Not spy. Just if I saw anything, to let him know.”
“So you never spied on Tabitha Cousins. You never followed her home.”
It’s not like that—I didn’t follow her home. It’s just that I saw her, on the back of his bike. He dropped her off down the street. I was in my car, inching up, trying to stay hidden. Beck Rutherford with his stupid long hair. He doesn’t even wear a helmet, although she did. They didn’t kiss, but I’m sure he wanted to, because he stood there and watched her go inside.
I watched, too. I texted Mark and told him she was with Beck. I wanted to confront her myself, to knock on her door and ask her what the hell she was doing with him when she had a guy who loved her so goddamn much that he would do anything for her.
Mark wrote back right away. Thanks man I’ll talk to her.
I almost chucked my phone. I’ll talk to her? He was so calm, so together. I wanted to run the guy and his bike right off the road. But I guess that was the difference between me and Mark.
“No,” I say, staring Stewart down, picturing him as my prey instead of my predator. “I never spied on that girl.”
He switches lanes, pushes his hands out in front of him in a rubbery knot. “According to our records of Mark’s whereabouts, you were the last person to see him before he died. Besides Tabitha. What did you and Mark do the morning of the hike?”
“I already told you guys. We went out for breakfast. At this diner we used to go to when we were in high school. It never changed.” I don’t know why I throw in that last part. It’s important, somehow. Rita’s never changed, even though we did. Same soggy French toast, same greasy bacon and eggs.
“Did you talk about Tabitha? Did Mark seem nervous, angry, or out of sorts in any way?”
They already asked me all this, way back at the beginning. I said no, just like I do now. He was his regular self. He had the protein plate, ate every last scrap. Mark never wasted food.
I said no, but it wasn’t the whole truth then, and it isn’t now. There was something he said to me. Something that made all the difference. But I can’t tell Stewart. I can’t tell anyone.
I can tell he doesn’t believe me, and I also know he’s turned into the enemy. He’s on her side now. Tabby. She got in his head somehow and she’s spreading her lies like some kind of disease. The thing you have to remember about Tabby is this: Her poison, or whatever it is, tastes so good you have no idea you’re being slowly killed until it’s too late.