Then You Were Gone Part 18

"I am."

"No, about consequence." He picks up the computer and slides it into his canvas tote. "I gave you two extensions."

"I know you did."

"Two." His face is red and veiny. "I believed in you. I was-I am-invested in you succeeding."

"So how is this"-I gesture back and forth between us-"me succeeding?" I'm p.i.s.sed now-ready to repent but getting shut down.

"You can still bring your grade up. It's not too late, okay? You take an incomplete on Jane Eyre and you work like crazy the rest of the quarter."

I exhale. My eyes blur. "s.h.i.+t." I swipe at them-trying to rub away my tears.

"Adrienne . . ." His voice is soft.

"G.o.d, f.u.c.k." I look at him through gla.s.sy eyes. "I f.u.c.ked it up. Everything is so, so f.u.c.ked up."

"Adrienne . . ."

"You say my name a lot."

"Come on, come outside, okay?" He throws a hand forward, stepping sideways. His knee cracks. "Come on, walk me out."

Outside it's LA's version of icy weather: low fifties and dull skies. I hold my sweater close to my body and shuffle alongside Murphy. I've stopped crying.

"You sure you're okay?"

I start up again. Ugly blubbering. I miss Lee. Murphy pulls me into a loose embrace and I sob against his jersey polo. He pats my head and I feel momentarily, inexplicably turned on. I jerk back.

"Hey . . ."

"Sorry. Sorry, sorry!" I rub my face, feeling gross and weird and out of my f.u.c.king groin, mind, whatever.

"What's up with you?"

I shake my head till I'm sick with dizziness. "Don't know. Maybe I'm having some sort of psychological break." I laugh, but mean it. What if I'm crazy? "My boyfriend-we broke up."

"I'm sorry."

"I mean, I think. I think we broke up." We walk across the gra.s.sy quad, through to the faculty lot. "Did you know . . . ?" I trail off.

"What?" His expression is warm. "Did I know what?" He smells faintly of spicy men's deodorant. I like it. "Did you know Dakota Webb?" I ask quietly. "I mean, did she have you for lit?"

His smile dies. "Last year."

"She was my friend," I say quickly. "A long time ago." He doesn't reply. He doesn't try to coddle or comfort me. "I hated her," I hear myself say. "For a long time I really hated her. I didn't miss her, or wish nice things for her, I just-I wanted her to feel unloved and miserable." I stop, checking Murphy for signs of horror and shock. But he's facing forward still, stone-faced. "Then she died," I add, and that's when he looks at me. He's white like snow. "She just died," I say, knowing it, believing it, finally. "Now it's different, you know? I don't hate her anymore."

We've stopped walking. We're facing each other. Murphy pulls a set of keys from his computer bag. "I didn't know you two . . ." He doesn't finish. "I'm really sorry, Adrienne. You must be . . ." He shakes his head. "I'm bad with things like this. Gwen b.i.t.c.hes about how hopeless I am with emotional stuff." He smiles past his pastiness.

I point at his s.h.i.+rt. "Sorry," I say. There's a wet spot where I cried.

He tugs on his jersey, looking down. "No sweat." And, "You need a lift somewhere?" He gestures left, to his car.

"Oh, I-"

His car. His f.u.c.king car. We've been standing three inches from-holy c.r.a.p-from a yellow VW Bug. I'm sick. I've been drop-kicked. "That yours?" I manage.

He walks to the driver's door and undoes the lock. "Gwen's dad's. We keep it in the spare garage. I don't drive it much, but the Honda has a busted carburetor." He runs a hand over the oval roof. "Ugly, right? It's a tin can. Pete-my father-in-law-he's sentimental." He smiles, sheepish. Nevada plates. Ma.s.sive dent by the back left wheel. Yellow and dented and old.

I can't speak or breathe, barely-and I must be pale as paper, because Murphy's eyes are forming question marks. "Adrienne, you okay?"

"I . . ." What the f.u.c.k. What the h.e.l.l is happening? No way this is some nutty coincidence. What business does he have driving Dakota places? Or me, for that matter? "I have to go," I stutter, backing up.

"Adrienne?"

I sprint, tear, down a residential street off Melrose-just four blocks to cover between bus stop and ranch home.

Murphy.

Murphy all along.

My high school lit teacher. The guy who grades my papers and threatens me with Griffin in Guidance, the guy with the wife and newborn.

I stop, breathe hard, check the house number with the address I have scrawled on my wrist in black Sharpie. It's a match. I knock. The door swings open. There's Julian, looking boyish. Maybe it's the bare feet, or his mussed hair and Zeppelin T-s.h.i.+rt-but whatever it is, he looks human and sweet.

"Hi, come in," he says, yanking me forward. "Come upstairs," he says, taking my hand.

His place is so regular. Fuzzy carpet and taupe walls and the soft murmur of a distant television. We go to his room. It's ferociously neat. Laundry, folded. Bed, made. I wonder if he did a quick clean-job when he got my frantic call.

"Sit."

I sit on the floor. So does he. He looks tight and uncomfortable.

"What do you know about Nick Murphy?" I ask.

Julian, confused and a touch hostile, says, "What do you mean, what do I know about Nick Murphy? Is that a trick question?"

"No, I mean, do you know if-" I'm suddenly sweating. "I mean-do you know if . . . if Murphy and Dakota were involved?"

Julian laughs, his lips cracking into a huge, ridiculous grin. Then: "Holy s.h.i.+t, you're serious?" He sobers up. "No. I mean, I don't know."

"He drives a yellow Bug."

"Murphy?"

"Yeah."

"He drives a Bug," he says to himself. Then, "What the f.u.c.k, he drives a Bug?"

We watch each other, disbelieving.

"What the h.e.l.l does that even mean?"

"I don't know," I say. Because, truly, I don't.

We're in Julian's Datsun. Then we're not.

"We're really doing this again?"

We're at Dakota's back door, knocking, not getting any response and breaking in with the spare key/fake rock.

"What now?"

We're upstairs.

"No effing idea," I say. "What the h.e.l.l are we looking for this time?"

"I dunno." Julian's already digging through Dakota's desk drawers. "Proof, a clue-anything that links her to Murphy."

"Hey."

"Hmm?"

I stand still, watching him spin out. "Stop for a sec?"

"Why?" He checks his wrist.w.a.tch. "We need to be quick, don't we? Emmett?"

"Just-for a second. Stop, please?" I bend for my bag, pulling Julian's binder notes from the front pocket. "I have something of yours."

"What?"

I pa.s.s the ball of crushed loose-leaf. He unravels it. His face fades to a tinny blue. "Why do you have this?"

"I'm sorry."

"Did you go through my s.h.i.+t?"

"I thought maybe-I just got freaked out. You left your binder at my place and we'd just . . . I shouldn't have looked, I know, but I saw the letter, the apology . . ." He's blinking at me. Bat, bat. "You wrote that to yourself, right?" I'm babbling now. My ears are hot. "I thought maybe you'd done something . . ."

"Like what?"

". . . but now I know you didn't."

He sits down on Dakota's bed. "You thought I hurt her?"

"I-" I sit next to him. "I didn't know."

He takes a breath. Exhales. Takes another one. "You went through my s.h.i.+t."

"I'm really sorry."

"I would never hurt her."

I'm a jerk. A thief.

"I would never hurt you," he insists.

I let my fingers creep close to his thigh. Julian looks at me briefly, then gets up and starts searching again.

I get on my knees, check under the bed, pulling out and riffling through the same storage boxes I looked at last week. Thoughts of Dakota straddling Murphy flick through my brain, all of it in p.o.r.nographic detail: after-school BJs, car s.e.x, supply-closet hand jobs. What the h.e.l.l happened between them? What did he do to her? Did they fight? Did she f.u.c.k up and threaten Gwen? Did he hit her too hard with something heavy and blunt, then toss her body off the suns.h.i.+ney Santa Monica Pier?

"Christ."

Murphy? My preppy public-school G.o.d?

"c.r.a.p."

"What?" I whip back to life.

Julian is heaving, hunched over a teensy tower of textbooks. "This is pointless."

"Should we tell someone? The cops?"

"Tell them what? That our lit teacher drives a Volkswagen?" He tumbles back against the bed, breathlessly lighting his smoke.

"The cigarette . . . ?" I fan the air. "Emmett?"

"Dakota certainly won't mind." He inhales deep, exhales, shuts both eyes. "I just . . . I don't get it." I creep across the floor on hand and knee. He pa.s.ses me his cigarette. "Why you?" he says.

"Me?" I ask, confused, dragging lightly on the squishy filter.

"Yeah," he says, rolling onto one hip, leaning sideways. "Why'd she call you and not me?"

"I-" I cough out some smoke and sc.r.a.pe my fingers through my hair. "I don't know," I say, suddenly guilty. "Wish I knew," I finish. I pa.s.s back the cigarette.