Читать книгу Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls - Lynn Weingarten - Страница 11

CHAPTER 7

I follow Jeremiah back to the road. What the hell am I doing?

I feel like I’m in a dream. I think, This guy is crazy with grief. I shouldn’t be following him.

We get in our cars.

We make our way on narrow twisty roads. Up Beacon, down McKenna, onto leafy Red Bridge. It seems like we’re heading to Delia’s house, but instead of pulling up in front, Jeremiah makes a sharp right and pulls into the cul-de-sac that connects to the woods behind it. He parks. I pull in behind him.

For a moment I sit there in the silent dark, the only light the yellow circle from someone’s front porch. I press my hand to my chest. I haven’t been anywhere near Delia’s house in over a year, but I used to come here nearly every day. This was more my home than my actual house was.

I open the door and step out. Jeremiah is waiting for me. I will the memories to stay away. I can’t handle them now.

“It’s down through the woods,” he says quietly.

He holds up his phone again, flips on the blue light. He steps up onto the grass between houses and disappears among the trees. I follow.

We’re surrounded by darkness. The leaves crunch beneath our feet. I breathe heavy. In, out, in. And that’s when I smell it: this strange scent I cannot understand. It’s weak at first, but as we reach the edge of the trees, it hits me like a punch in the face. There’s burnt wood and leaves, scorched rubber, melted plastic, gasoline. I pull my scarf up over my mouth and nose. But it doesn’t matter – the stench is so strong.

“What the hell is that?” I say.

We are standing at the edge of Delia’s backyard now. Jeremiah points his phone toward the remains of a structure out in the grass. I can’t tell what it is.

“How they say she did it,” he says.

“How she . . .” I stop. Then I remember: This is where Delia’s stepfather’s shed is supposed to be. He uses it to drink and jerk off, Delia had said. And what I’m looking at now is what’s left of it – half of a wall, a metal frame, and a pile of burnt things.

Jeremiah turns toward me. “This is how they’re saying Delia killed herself. That she burned herself to death in there.”

I breathe in. I can taste it. My legs start to shake.

“There was firewood inside. She doused it in lighter fluid, herself too, and lit it up. Whoosh. So they say.”

I can feel the heat crawling up from my stomach. Images flash. Delia trapped, fire all around. She’s scared, screaming.

And it’s real now. I can’t breathe. Delia, who was so tough, who would say anything, do anything, go anywhere, wasn’t brave about everything. Memories come – Delia shrinking away from a tiny bonfire on the night she first confessed it. Delia flipping out because a guy was playing around with a lighter too close to her. I remember the look in her eye when she told me about her nightmares of nothing but flames. If I have one while you’re here, she had said, squeezing my hands tight, you must promise, promise you will come and wake me up.

Delia was scared of just one thing. This was it.

“There’s no way she did this,” I say. And I know in that moment that what I’m saying is true.

Jeremiah nods. He turns toward me, out there in the dark.

“So now you understand,” he says, “why I need your help.”

We’re up by my car now, Jeremiah and I. And I’m this close to losing it entirely.

“We can go back to the police,” I say. “Maybe we can tell them . . .” I am desperate, grasping for anything.

“They’ve already seen this place. There’s no point in going to them until we can tell them something they don’t already know.”

“I haven’t . . . I hadn’t spent time with her in so long, I don’t know anything about . . . Where would we even start?”

Jeremiah turns away. “I might have an idea.” He raises his gloved hand and puts his finger on the window. “I did something a few weeks ago that I’m not very proud of.” He traces a circle in the condensation on the glass. “She got a lot of phone calls when we were together, but she didn’t always pick them up. I guess maybe I was a little jealous. She wasn’t always the easiest person to have as a girlfriend, you know.” The words are tumbling out of his mouth, faster now. “Usually she’d bring her phone with her when she went to the bathroom, but this one time a couple weeks ago she forgot, I guess. The phone was ringing, it had been ringing all afternoon. So I don’t know, I didn’t even really mean to, but then . . . I answered it. It was a guy, and he said, ‘There’s no point in trying to avoid me, I know your friends, I know where you hang out. I’ll find you.’ He was all crazy mad sounding. I asked who he was, what he wanted, but he hung up. I checked, and the name on the phone was Tigger. When Delia came back from the bathroom, I didn’t say anything. I knew if I did she’d get pissed at me for snooping and I didn’t want her to be mad at me. I’m such an idiot. I should have said something. I should have . . .” Jeremiah pauses then. He rubs the circle off the glass with his fist and looks up. “If we need somewhere to start, I think he’s it.”

I am silent. But all of a sudden, I realize something:

Tigger. Tig.

My breath catches in my throat.

Tigtuff ?

Not on me, thank fuck.

The pieces are clattering together, bits of memory arranging themselves into a shape.

“What?” Jeremiah says. He is staring at me, jaw set, head tipped to the side. “What is it?”

Down by the water they weren’t talking about “tigtuff ” but “Tig’s stuff.”

I open my mouth to tell him, I’m stopped by a thought. Can I trust him? This guy who I’ve never spoken to before, who spent tonight hiding out in the dark, watching, who answered Delia’s phone and never told her about it?

“Nothing,” I say. I press my lips together. But what’s Tig’s stuff ? It’s the sort of stuff guys like the ones down by the water might bring out for a night of getting fucked up. It’s the sort of stuff one would very much want to hide from the cops.

And as I understand this, I understand something else: just what that makes Tig . . .