The next morning, the sadness is still there, but something else as well—anger.
Dr. Shum can hardly drive me to the park fast enough. I barely pay attention to Mrs. Shum, who tries to distract me by talking about the ongoing construction of her exhibit. She doesn’t seem to realize that I won’t be in Arizona long enough to see any of it. If my mother has her way, I’ll be returning to New Jersey with her and Stuart as soon as the police let me leave the state—something Stuart promised last night would happen very quickly.
In the conference room at the information center, Dr. Shum holds the morning briefing. As he announces that he will be assuming my father’s responsibilities for the next few days, I scan the room, looking for Jalen.
He isn’t there, so I head for the cliffs. I’m out of breath and sweating by the time I finish the long climb up the ladders. In front of me, the exterior wall of the ruins looms. Its blackened windows stare at me like empty sockets in a ruined face. In the ringing silence they seem to say, Go away. There’s nothing inside here but death.
I slip sideways through the T-shaped entrance and into the small, dark chamber. It’s noticeably cooler inside and very quiet. I don’t linger in this room with its round opening to the basement chamber and memories of Jeremy Brown pinning me to the floor, shoving his slimy tongue into my mouth.
I climb the wooden ladder up the wall and through the chimney-like opening in the ceiling. More than ever, the space seems decayed and rotting, claustrophobic in the darkness. I emerge in a chamber on the third level and wind my way through the broken rooms and narrow passages. It doesn’t take me long to find him.
He’s standing in the small chamber where the skeletal remains of a Native American child were once found in the interior wall. Jalen’s back is to me, and he’s sliding his hands along the wall as if checking for cracks. His head all but touches the domed surface of the ceiling.
“Jalen,” I say coldly.
He turns, wipes his forehead with his arm. His always-serious face studies me for a few seconds before he speaks. “Did you talk to him?”
I make an ugly, scoffing noise. “Like you don’t know.”
He shifts his weight. “Know what?”
We look at each other for a long moment. He is so physically beautiful that I want to run to him, but he betrayed me. The image of my father’s face when they handcuffed him flashes through my mind. “That he was arrested. Last night.”
Jalen’s straight black brows pull together. “Arrested? What are you talking about?”
My hands straddle my hips. “The police showed up with a warrant two hours after you left. You told me you would give me time to talk to my dad. You lied to me. I didn’t even have time to call his lawyer.”
“I didn’t tell anyone.”
“Then how did the police know to show up?”
“I don’t know.”
“So it was all a bad coincidence? How stupid do you think I am?”
His jaw tightens. “You’re not stupid. But you’re drawing the wrong conclusions.”
“How, then, did the police know to come?”
He stays silent.
I ask, “Were you ever really into me?”
I want war, but his brow unfurrows and his features go still, unreadable, as if he has been carved from mahogany. Staring at the purposeful blankness of his face, I wonder suddenly if I have fantasized everything about our relationship.
“Were you,” I repeat, “ever really into me?”
His nostrils flare slightly. “What do you think?”
I clench my fists. “How long have you suspected my father?”
“How long have you thought my father was having an affair with Emily Linton?”
He shakes his head. “It crossed my mind. But I didn’t call the police.”
“Liar!” My mind and heart race, trying to put all the clues together. I feel sick at the conclusion.
“It’s Emily you really liked, isn’t it? That’s why you kept pulling back. Not because of your uncle. You were only with me to stay close to my father. To get evidence against him.”
He stares at me in stunned silence. “Do you honestly believe that?”
I’m rolling down the hill now, faster and faster with the spin of a story that grows more credible by the moment. “It’s a lot more believable than a story about a crazy uncle who thinks I’m going to die. What kind of illness allows someone to see the future?”
It’s a fair question, made cruel by the edge of sarcasm in my voice.
His eyes turn flat and cold. “You’re upset, but you don’t get to talk about my uncle like that. You don’t get to denigrate something you don’t understand.” Slowly, deliberately, he turns his back to me and resumes sliding his hands along the cracked surface of the masonry wall.
I look at the stiffness of his shoulders, the set of his head. The architecture of hurt. Yet I’m not sorry. “I never want to see you again.”
For a moment, Jalen’s hands stop moving. I wait for him to turn around and fight for us, to tell me I’m wrong, but then those fingers start skimming the surface of the wall. Part of me wonders what he’s looking for, but mostly I feel sick with the thought that he’ll never touch me again, that we’ll never kiss again. I broke up with him—I told him I never wanted to see him again. Yet now that it’s happened, I feel more empty and lost than I have ever felt in my entire life.
Around lunch time, my mother calls to say that she and Stuart are still at the Newark Airport. Bad storms in the Northeast have delayed and canceled flights. She thinks they might get out sometime in the next hour or so, but they’re going to have connect through Chicago, which means she won’t land in Phoenix until late tonight.
“But don’t worry, honey,” she says, “Stuart and I will be there tonight. Just try to hang in.”
The soothing tone of her voice enrages me. She doesn’t ask about Dad. Doesn’t care that he’s been arrested or if he’s guilty. All she wants is to reclaim me like I’m some kind of prize. After everything that’s happened, it makes me want to scream. What about how I feel or what I want? I think about how she cheated on my father and want to confront her, but long distance isn’t how I want to do that.
“I love you, honey,” she says.
You know nothing, I almost shout. The anger boils so hard there are no words. For the first time in my life, I hang up on her. When she calls back, I don’t answer.
Walking out of my father’s office, I pass Mrs. Shum in the museum section. She’s supervising two workers in the process of bolting a railing to the wall. It fits perfectly with the wall-length canvases she’s painted.
Mrs. Shum smiles. “What do you think?”
“I want to see my father. Will you take me?”
Her smile fades. “Why, Paige? What’s happened?”
“I need to talk to him.”
She studies my face. “Isn’t your mother landing in a couple of hours? Why don’t you wait until they get here?”
I explain about the delay, and she fingers a long silver earring. “Of course. We’ll talk to Dr. Shum just as soon as I’m finished,” she promises.
I can’t wait that long and storm off to break my vow and make my second trip of the day to the ruins.
In the late afternoon sun, the rungs are hot, but not unbearable. The sun draws vertical lines of sweat that race each other down my back and dribble between my breasts. Higher and higher, I climb. I try not to think about Jalen, but I can’t help it. Accusing him of having a thing for Emily was a long shot, but he didn’t deny it. After all, he was the one who found that book in my father’s office. What if he’d planted it there? What if he was the one who’d hurt her? He would be physically strong enough to move her, and his father has a key to the front gate of the park. Jalen could have borrowed it. His beauty is so strong I wonder if it’s blinded me to the truth. Has anyone asked him where he was the night Emily disappeared?
The thought is so horrible that I don’t notice someone else on the ladders until we meet on the ledge. Our eyes meet, and the dread fills me.
“Hello, Paige,” Jeremy Brown says as if he actually is glad to see me.
I stare the look on his face, and it all comes back—the tang of his saliva and the bite of his fingers. “Jeremy.” I have to push the word out of my suddenly dry lips.
Unless one of us retreats, we’ll have to pass each other on the stone ledge between the two ladders. The thought of him sliding up against me—accidentally rubbing against me—makes my stomach roll. As far as I can see, we’re alone.
I think about retreating, but then remember something else about that time in the basement chamber. The moment he realized I was scared, the more excited he got and the more he enjoyed what was happening.
“I heard about your father.” Jeremy’s face shines with sweat, and a lock of black hair lies lank on his face. I can’t read his eyes behind his sunglasses. “I’m sorry.”
“What do you know about my father?”
He shrugs. “An article in the paper. For what it’s worth, Paige, I don’t think he had anything to do with what happened to Emily.”
I wet my lips. “Why?”
He shifts his weight. “Well, for one, he was with you, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.” I hold his gaze and wonder if I imagined the sarcastic note in his voice.
“So it can’t be him, then,” Jeremy says. “But in the meantime, do you need something? A place to stay? A ride anywhere?”
The sweat drips down the front of my tank top. Doesn’t he realize he’d be the last person I’d want to stay with? “I’m staying with the Shums.”
“The Shums,” he repeats. “We have a guest house and a pool. You could stay with us.”
“Are you crazy?”
“I’m not the creep you think I am. What happened between us was a mistake. I see that more clearly now. I’d heard you liked to play games, and I thought you were into me. I never meant to scare or hurt you.”
“Who told you I liked to play games?”
He shrugs. His red shirt clings to his thin chest, but I haven’t forgotten how strong he is. “Emily. She said you were fearless. That the two of you were a little wild.”
I shake my head, unsure if I’m more disgusted with him or angry at Emily. Why had she been talking about me to Jeremy? And how could he possibly think I’d like what he did to me? “Liar,” I say. “She never said anything, did she?”
He smiles. “Look, you want to go up the ladder; I want to go down. I’m pretty much on probation. The last thing I need is for you to go running to Dr. Shum with another story.”
He takes another step and then another until he’s at the halfway point. There’s still time for me to retreat, but if I do, there probably won’t be enough time to climb back up to the cliffs before he gets to me.
“Come on, Paige,” he says. “Don’t make this more than it is.”
“I don’t trust you.” I wipe my sweaty palms on the front of my shorts, but the hands I feel are Jeremy’s.
He raises his arms as if I have pointed a gun at him. “I’ll take the outside. You can push me over the ledge if I try something.” Twin, deep smile lines frame his mouth. “That’s a joke,” he adds when I don’t laugh.
I take a breath and remind myself that if I want to see my father today I need to talk to Dr. Shum now. Before I can change my mind, I step forward, pressing so close to the cliffs that the rough edge scrapes my arm.
It’s a mistake to do this; I know it and yet I do it anyway. I get closer and closer, and then I step into his shadow. I wait for his arm to come down—for him to trap me somehow—but then suddenly I’m past him.
When I reach the base of the third ladder, I stop and turn around. He’s watching me. Grinning. “Stop it,” I yell. “Stop staring at me.”
“Just making sure you’re safe.” His voice follows me up the next two sections. “I told you, you can trust me. I’m not the person you need to be worried about.”
It sounds like a warning and a chill goes up my spine. I pause even as I reach for the next rung. “What do you mean?”
He shrugs. Half his face is hidden by his glasses. “Read the paper. If your father wasn’t having an affair with Emily, then somebody else was. And that person is still loose, isn’t he?”
“If you know something, just say it.” A fresh wave of heat and sweat soaks into my already wet clothing.
“I’m just trying to help you, Paige. I’ve always liked you. And I still do. If you ever need me, just call. Any time. Day or night. I’ll help you.”
He’s a creep and probably just playing me. “You can help me by staying the hell away from me.” I feel his gaze following me as I climb the rest of the ladder, but I don’t glance down. I won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how much he scares me. When I get to the top, I hurry to the ruins and try to ignore the nagging suspicion that I am missing something—that something he said is important. As hard as I try, I can’t figure out what it is.