October 20
The Present
12:45 A.M.
Brooks didn’t want to stay to say hi. He had to go back to the convention, he said. It was good to see her, congrats on everything, truly. But he didn’t need to shoot the shit; it’s not like they were ever friends to begin with.
Brooks left and Ellie waited for her other guest. She saw him before he saw her. He looked exactly like he used to, with that long hair in his eyes, but skinny had turned to gaunt, and he looked a bit feral, skeletal. But at least he’d gotten his teeth fixed. He was still handsome, filthy-sexy, and she wondered if that was why she was so jealous that night, when he’d paid so much more attention to her friend than to her.
Because she’d loved him first.
Before Brooks, before Archer, before Todd.
There was Arnold.
They used to ride their bikes on the riverbank, and go hunt frogs together. They read comic books and wrote stories and sometimes when her dad was home between prison sentences and fighting with her mom, she would go over to Arnold’s house and they would watch television. He was her first kiss and her first love.
But then his mom died, and he had to take care of his grandma, and his sister started turning tricks and dating sugar daddies, and he dropped out, and he started selling drugs. He shared them with her sometimes. They’d do poppers in the alley and laugh and laugh. He’d asked her to go to some party where he was working; it was the same party Leo wanted to go to but didn’t, and that was where she’d met Brooks. Then it was all Brooks all the time and she forgot about Arnold.
Now he was all grown up just like her. He’d survived, just like her, made his way out of Woods Forest Park, just like her. Not too far, though; she heard he still lived around Portland. Never married, though. Some guys weren’t the type.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” he said. He smiled. “Happy birthday.”
“Thanks.”
Arnold had cleaned himself up. After that night, after she married Brooks, he went back to school. Something about that night shook him out of himself. He didn’t want to end up like her dad, lying dead in a trailer somewhere. He didn’t want that for himself. He got clean and he got out. He became a cop. He worked vice, just on the other side now.
She’d been scared at first, when she heard he was in law enforcement, but then nothing happened. He left her alone, until tonight. Why was he here? What did he want? What was he going to do with what he knew about what she’d done?
There was no statute of limitations on murder. Her father was a felon, and as much as she’d tried to run away from her past, it was always there, always there in front of her. Was that where she was going to end up? She supposed there were worse things than being poor.
“So what’s going on? I don’t hear from you for twenty years and now you show up on my birthday?” she asked.
“Is that a crime?” he asked.
“Fuck you,” she said, laughing. “Seriously, why are you here?” She shuddered. He was the only one who knew what really happened that night. The only one who knew what she’d done. “Do you need money?”
Arnold tossed his cigarette into the bushes. He shook his head, amused. “You can keep your money, birthday girl.”
“What, then? What do you want? Why are you here, Arnold?”
He shrugged. “I was feeling nostalgic. I heard about your party from Dani; she saw it on your Facebook page, wasn’t hard to find your address, so I figured I’d come and say hey.”
“Hey,” she said.
“I miss her, you know. Leo.”
“I do too. All the time,” she said defensively.
They both were silent then, remembering the girl they used to know.
“Anyway,” he said at last. “I came because I’ve got a present for you.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I think I did,” he said. “I found it in an old storage unit.”
“What is it?”
He brought it out. It was her bag from that night. She’d left it in Leo’s room, in the pool of blood. She opened the bag, knowing what she would find. Her Polaroid camera and the photos. Leo. Her and Leo. Leo and Brooks. Leo and Arnold. Leo and Dave. Leo and her dad together. Her father reaching for the camera. Blood on the floor.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh my god.”
“It’s yours.” He yawned. “I thought you should have it. Destroy it, keep it, whatever.”
She zipped up the bag. She would destroy it. Burn it in a big bonfire. The kids could roast marshmallows on it. “About that night,” she said. “About what happened . . .”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Arnold said, waving it away, like it was nothing, like it never happened. “It never was.”
Maybe he was right. Maybe it could stay in the past forever, where it belonged. She wasn’t that person anymore. She hadn’t been that person in a long time.