15

Odessa Dean @OdessaWaiting ∙ July 14

do kindness

hydrate

practice self-care

hydrate

wash your hands

hydrate

don’t EVER feed the trolls

hydrate (craft beer counts as water, right?)

#cleanliving

Twenty minutes and two trains later, we arrived at our destination. To pass the time, I popped in my earbuds and listened to a podcast and people-watched while Izzy played a game on her phone. For the record, people-watching on the New York City subway was better than scripted television most days, almost as good as my favorite YouTube channel.

Amanda’s apartment was in an older building. None of that alternating colors of brick with steel and glass with staggered pop-out balconies and freshly painted trim here, just a solid multifamily-style building with bars on the windows and a broken buzzer on the front door. The front door was propped open with a rock. Inside, all but one of the lights was busted out, leaving the dingy lobby in deep shadow. Cubbies lined one wall. Once upon a time, they’d probably had locking doors but now the residents picked up their mail on the honor system.

Someone had left their bicycle, the kind with a huge rack on the back for deliveries, propped up against the wall. The front wheel and seat were both missing.

There was an elevator straight ahead, which surprised me. Elevator buildings in New York were few and far between, outside of giant high-rises. Having one in the relatively short five-story building my aunt lived in was a luxury.

This elevator looked like it had been installed around the time that Calvin Coolidge was president. It was an ornate metal cage with a smaller cage tucked inside. There was a chain holding the door closed, and the top U-shaped bar of a padlock looped through the chain. The padlock itself was nowhere to be seen. The message was clear. Out of order, and for some time, if the dust on the chain was any indication.

“Take the stairs?” I suggested.

“Hundred percent,” Izzy said.

By the time we reached the seventh floor, I was dripping with sweat. Between all the stairs and the complete lack of air-conditioning, I’d felt like I’d just run a marathon. Izzy looked better but she was also out of breath. “And to think some people waste good money on a gym membership,” I quipped between gulps of air.

“Suckers,” Izzy agreed.

She knocked, and Amanda opened the door. After studying her Instagram feed, I would have been hard pressed not to recognize her again. Although, in her own home with barely any makeup on and poor lighting, she wasn’t the best, most picturesque version of Amanda. That much was certain. It gave me hope that with the right eyeshadow, I, too, could be a ten.

Yeah, right.

I wasn’t perfect, but I was perfectly content with the person I saw in the mirror every day, even if I didn’t have enormous eyes, glossy hair, and a flawless complexion like Amanda. She had one of those completely symmetrical faces that no amount of makeup could replicate. It was no wonder that she was an Instagram sensation.

“Come in,” she said, inviting us inside. “Make yourself at home.”

“Thanks,” I said, glancing around. Amanda’s studio apartment was small but neat. My room back home was decorated with secondhand furniture and old photos from high school. Amanda’s was decorated like a catalog with coordinating throw pillows on the daybed—which was made up like a sofa—and a vase of fresh flowers on the window ledge. Even the books on her shelves were organized by the color on their spines.

“Can I get you anything? Coffee? Water?”

“No thanks,” Izzy said for both of us.

“You guys had a question about the escape room we did on Friday?” Amanda moved a fuzzy pink blanket so she could sit on the narrow armchair by the bookshelf, leaving the daybed for us. “Is it okay to call you two ‘guys’ or is there something else you would prefer?”

“ ‘Guys’ is fine,” Izzy said. While everyone up north liked to make fun of my accent, I had one major advantage over them. I’d been using the gender-neutral “y’all” as long as I could remember, and didn’t have to worry about offending anyone by using the wrong plural pronoun. As a bonus, “y’all” could be used in a pinch as a singular pronoun if I wasn’t certain what pronouns someone preferred but didn’t feel comfortable asking.

Who would have guessed that the South—backward as it could be on delicate social issues—would hold the answer to gender-fluid language?

“You have a killer Instagram feed,” I said as I sat.

“Aww, thank you,” Amanda said, raising her chin slightly, as if a camera was pointed in her direction.

“I noticed that you were taking a ton of pictures in the escape room, but you only posted a few.”

“Sure. I mean, you only post the best, right?”

“Yeah, but I was wondering if I could peek at the other pictures? The ones you didn’t post?”

“Why would you want to do that?” Amanda asked.

“Because you might have captured something we missed,” I said.

“Don’t you mean something that the cops missed? I mean, why are you so interested? You didn’t even know Vickie.”

“No, but I think it’s horrible what happened to her.” It wasn’t a straight answer, but it was a lot better than My best friend is on the suspect short list and I want to clear her name.

“Further evidence that you didn’t know her very well. Am I right?” she asked Izzy.

“Big mood,” Izzy agreed. “To be fair, I hadn’t seen Vickie in ages. Not since high school, and even back then, we weren’t exactly besties.”

“I gotta ask, what was she like in high school?” Amanda asked.

“That was a different time. We were young. She was the entitled, stuck-up cheerleader, and I was the drama nerd.”

I could picture Izzy onstage. I bet she’d been great at it.

“So, nothing much has changed. Look, when I saw the invite on Facebook I clicked Maybe as a lark. I’m not really into escape rooms and Vickie and I haven’t been in touch since NYU except for an occasional like on each other’s posts. Then the day came and I thought why not? Now I’m wishing I’d stayed home.”

“I get it,” I said. “I really do. I wish Izzy and I hadn’t come along, too. But since we did, we’re all suspects. Maybe if I could have a look at the pictures on your phone, I might be able to figure out what really happened.”

“You’re too late,” she replied.

“Oh. Did you give your phone to the police already?” I gave Izzy a sideways glance. If Castillo had the pictures, then surely he was able to build an accurate timeline and prove whether or not Izzy was anywhere near Vickie at the time of her death.

“Nope. They didn’t ask. But I deleted the pictures already. My phone is always running out of space. Sorry, I’d love to be of more help.”

“Do you mind if I took a look?” I asked, holding out my hand.

Her hand tightened around her phone. “Like I said, I deleted them.”

“Yeah, but it’s real easy to undelete photos, especially if it’s only been a few days.”

“Whatevs.” She unlocked the phone, rose so she could reach the daybed, and handed her phone to me.

I went into her photo gallery and navigated to the deleted photos option. Hundreds of pictures popped up, many of them from yesterday. Amanda really did put a lot of effort into her Instagram. At best, I would take two or three pictures and post the one that was the least blurry. I put a little more effort into what I posted on the Untapped Books & Café accounts, but not by much. Amanda took dozens of pictures of everything, each from a slightly different angle and sifted through them all, removing every possible imperfection.

It took a minute to scroll back to Friday afternoon. When I started seeing pictures inside the now-familiar Brooklyn police station, I slowed down. There were way too many pictures for me to email or text to myself. “Do you have a cloud account?” I asked. There were lots of free services that made it easy to back up, store, and share files on the cloud.

“Yeah, but it’s full,” she said.

“That’s all right, I’ve got space on mine.” I opened her file-sharing app, logged in as myself, and started transferring pictures. This was gonna take forever. I handed the phone back to her. “The pics are still uploading.”

I wasn’t entirely comfortable leaving while Amanda was still logged in to my account. I didn’t have anything of value saved there, no embarrassing pictures or anything like that, but still, it was mine. I’d rather stick around until the transfer was complete, so I needed to keep her talking. “You and Vickie went to college together?” I asked.

“Yeah, she was a business major and I was into art, but we were in a few clubs together. Save the Planet and something else I don’t remember.”

“Save the Planet?” I hadn’t pictured Vickie as an environmental crusader, but then again, I didn’t know her very well.

“I think she only joined clubs to meet boys. That’s how she met my boyfriend freshman year.”

“Sounds like Vickie,” Izzy muttered.

“Yeah, she could be a real piece of work,” Amanda agreed. “Although, college, you know? He ended up dropping out and that’s the last I heard from him.”

“I don’t get it. If you and Vickie had bad blood between you, why spend the day celebrating her big award with her?”

“Like I said, a lark. And the boyfriend stuff was water under the bridge. Besides . . .” Amanda paused. She seemed to be considering her next words carefully. “Have you ever been friends with a bully?”

“Not exactly friends. There was this girl, Carin Butcher, who bullied me when we were kids, but my parents still forced me to invite her to birthday parties anyway. I try to be nice when I see her now, and we used to end up at the same events a lot because Piney Island is so small, but I don’t think we’re ever gonna be friends. She’s still mean to me to this day.”

“Bullies are the worst.”

“Hashtag fact,” Izzy agreed.

“Then you guys understand. Part of me was hoping that Vickie had grown up and become a nicer person. The other part of me was hoping she had split ends or a botched nose job. I was wrong on all counts. But by the time I figured that out, I’d already paid my share of the escape room, so I tried to make the best of it. And we all know how well that turned out.”

Izzy grunted in affirmation. “For reals.”

Amanda’s phone chimed, and she glanced down at it. “Looks like the pics have transferred.” She pushed a few buttons. “I’m logged out of your account. Anything else?”

“Nope,” I said. “Thanks for everything.”

“Sure, anytime,” Amanda said, walking us to the door.

“You really think those pictures will help?” Izzy asked as we trudged down the stairs. They were a lot easier going down than they had been coming up, but there were still a whole lot of steps.

“Who can say? They certainly can’t hurt your case.”

Izzy looked over her shoulder, back toward Amanda’s apartment. “You think she did it?”

I shrugged. “Hard to tell. She tried to play it off as no big deal, but I think she was still salty that her freshman boyfriend left her for Vickie. She wouldn’t have given me those pictures if she thought there was any evidence on them, but she sure wasn’t eager to let me see them in the first place.”

“Oh, please, she was worried that you might see a less-than-flattering angle. It’s Sunday morning, and even though she was at home alone, she had on makeup and she’s redone her nails since we saw her on Friday.”

Izzy was more observant than I’d previously realized. “So?”

“If her Instagram obsession and her neatly designed apartment are any indication, she really cares about appearances. A lot. You know how when you take a selfie, you’re always supposed to take it from above you, and off to your ‘good’ side?”

I nodded. “Yeah.” I knew how to work the angles to look my best in selfies. It was one of the perks of practically growing up with a smartphone in my hand. It was hard to work all the tricks while getting touristy landmarks in the background, but I’d gotten better at it since coming to New York, where practically every street corner was photo op–worthy.

“Whaddaya wanna bet there’s a picture in there where she’s got a booger or something?” We both giggled at the thought. For someone who seemed to care about appearances as much as Amanda did, that would be devastating. I made a mental promise to myself that if we did find a picture like that, unless there was vital evidence in that shot, I would delete it.

Once we got out onto the street, I looked around, uncertain which neighborhood we were in. The street was lined with everything from tattoo parlors to holistic massages to one place with blacked-out windows and a hand-lettered sign that read, “Appointments only.” We’d passed a small park on our way over. In typical New York fashion, half of its occupants pushed strollers and the other half pushed grocery carts piled high with all their earthly belongings. “Where exactly are we?”

“Alphabet City.” She pointed to a street sign. “We’re on Avenue C. Where the avenues run out of numbers on the edge of the East Village, Alphabet City begins, and continues to the river. This neighborhood had the best twenty-four-hour café back in the day. We’d sneak out and come all the way from Staten Island to sit in the garden until the wee hours of the morning. And the food! I mean, Parker can cook, don’t get me wrong, but their menu was divine.”

“What happened to them?” I asked.

“Like everything else, they eventually folded. I think there’s a dry cleaner in that spot now.”

“Want to walk by and see?” I suggested.

“No way. Too depressing.” Izzy led the way back to the subway, and I hurried to keep up with her. I glanced down at my phone to check the time. “Got someplace to be?”

“Between the long subway ride and transferring all those pictures, that took longer than I’d expected. It will take a while to get home, and I promised Betty I would cover for her tonight. If I wanted to get all of Aunt Melanie’s clothes washed, dried, and folded before work, I should have started an hour ago.”

“Leave it to me,” Izzy volunteered. “I’m off tonight.”

“I can’t ask you to wash my aunt’s laundry.”

“You’re not asking. I’m volunteering. Besides, I like doing laundry. It’s soothing. Gives me a chance to think.”

“You sure?” I asked.

“Positive.”

“Well, if you insist . . .” I handed her my keys, knowing she couldn’t access the building, much less my aunt’s apartment or the laundry room in the basement without them, and she’d given her keys back when she moved out abruptly. “Thanks.”

“No worries,” Izzy said.

On the train ride back to Williamsburg, I brought up the idea of throwing Parker a surprise birthday party. Izzy was all over it and was eager to get started. “You know, I don’t want to hijack Parker’s special day, but I’m sure he won’t mind if this doubles as my going-away party,” I suggested.

“Don’t even say that. Trust me. I know the murder apartment wasn’t your speed, but we’ll find something.”

“Even if we could find an apartment, and could manage to swing the exorbitant broker’s fee . . .”

“Extortion is more like it,” Izzy grumbled.

“Agreed. Even if we scraped together enough money to rent a place, the clock’s ticking. My aunt wants me out in three days.”

“So, we get creative. Leave it to me.”

Izzy had regaled me with stories of some of her previous creative housing solutions, and frankly, they horrified me. “I’m not squatting in a schoolhouse or pitching a tent in a graveyard or any of your other wacky ideas.”

“Never even crossed my mind,” she said. “Don’t you worry. Like I told you, I’ll find us something. I’ve got this.”