NOT FOR SALE Read online

  Chel laughed brightly and stepped into the spotlight. "Yeah, you got us. Do you go to Ignatius? You look familiar."

  What a lie. He didn't look familiar. He looked as far away from familiar as it was possible to get.

  "No, I'm public. They think it's good for me."

  "Shit, I'm sorry."

  They both laughed. The flirtation settled into its normal course—Chel bright and sunny, the guy acting cool, and me on the sidelines watching.

  What the hell. I cracked another beer.

  * * * *

  We didn't have to wait for the bathroom, thank God, and we locked ourselves in. "How am I supposed to get home?" I folded my arms as she plunked herself down to pee. Whoever decorated this place was into peach-scented candles and little peach-shaped soaps. It was disturbing.

  She actually flipped her hair at me while sitting on the pot. "God, don't be such an asshole. Bebe's here, she can drive you. Or Alicia. Come on. He's cute."

  "You're ditching me." I barely glanced in the mirror. My hair was still a mess. No amount of product would make it behave. Goddammit. "For a boy who goes to public, for Chrissake."

  "He's hot. Call a cab. Jesus."

  "Slut."

  "Jealous bitch."

  I let out a gusty sigh. "Can I have your keys at least, get my bag out of your trunk? And do you have a fucking condom?"

  "All condoms are fucking condoms, it's what they're for." The old joke broke us both up. I was pretty buzzed. So was she. None of it was important anyway. "I'm not going to screw him. Jesus. He's just really hot. I like him."

  "You should be careful." It was wrong, or at least it felt wrong. We went on the buddy system. She could use me as an excuse to get away from a guy who got too grabby.

  "Thanks, Mom." She finished and wiped. "Look, it's just—"

  "It's fine. I'll get home somehow." I waited for my turn to pee.

  She wouldn't look at me. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes were bright. Was she sweating? Just a little? "My door's unlocked, just pop the trunk."

  I shrugged again. "I'll lock it after I do."

  "You're such a worrywart. Jesus. Who's going to steal it with a bunch of rich kids around?"

  Rich kids are the worst kind of thieves. Going to private schools had opened my eyes to that, at least. I didn't say it. She wouldn't understand. "Fine. Move. Let me pee."

  That cracked us both up pretty good. We were friends again by the time we opened the bathroom door and she hurried off down the hall, waving over her shoulder at me. Her hair moved in a golden wave, her long legs smooth and unblemished; she switched her hips before she got to the stairs and disappeared. A redheaded girl in a strappy satin dress, exactly the wrong color blue for her skin tone, pushed past me into the bathroom.

  I tucked a tiny peach-shaped soap in my skirt pocket. I'm a rich kid, too.

  That was the last time I saw Chelsea alive.

  * * * *

  I was hungover and my feet hurt from dancing. Bebe and the gang decided the party was tragic as soon as I hooked up with them. They headed to the Rose, so I went, too, after I retrieved my bookbag from Chel's little red convertible. I'd closed it up nice and tight.

  But when your dad comes in your room without knocking and says, "What did you do?" with his eyes narrowed and his lips drawn tight, none of that matters.

  "I didn't do anything." I peered up at him. My mouth was sour and my head hurt. Morning sunlight fell in through the curtains I'd forgotten to pull closed.

  "Five minutes and I want to see you downstairs." He gave me the patented Legal Eagle Stare, the one that makes people sweat when they're giving testimony.

  I wondered just how drunk I'd gotten last night. It wasn't horrific or anything. I'd just been on a steady buzz all night, and did a couple of shots before Bebe dropped me off. She almost took out our mailbox on the way out of the driveway, too. But no harm done.

  When I got downstairs, still almost-retching over the taste of toothpaste and my face stinging from cold water, my heart was beating like thunder. The fat guy in the breakfast nook all but shouted cop! Our housekeeper, Consuela, had disappeared. And Dad's hazel eyes were still narrowed.

  I edged into the room and that's when the questioning started. I figured out pretty early it was Chelsea they were after, not me—and when the cop started in on me about Jack I got a bad feeling. A really bad feeling. Adults just don't ask these kinds of questions unless something's happened.

  I surprised myself by starting to cry.

  "That's enough," Dad said. And for once I was glad he's a total asshole. I mean, he can't help it. He's a lawyer.

  "Can she come downtown and give a statement?" The fat man looked like he didn't think Dad was going to go for that, and his halitosis was making my nonexistent breakfast roll around inside my stomach. "And help come up with a sketch of this Jack kid? You—" This he directed at me. "You don't have any idea where he goes to school or anything, right?"

  "He said he was public." I was actually hugging myself, the sharp points of my elbows digging into my cupped palms. "Going to public school," I added when the cop looked blank.

  "Of course she'll cooperate." Dad stood up, smoothly, and the cop stood up, too. Morning sunlight poured in through the kitchen windows and scraped the inside of my brain clean. It was a Saturday morning before noon and something horrible had happened.

  "Wait." I unhugged myself long enough to grab the back of a chair. "What happened? You still haven't told me what happened."

  The cop gave me a long, weird look. He had piggy little eyes, and his gaze dropped below my chin and ended up on my chest. I was in the cami I wore last night, no bra, but still, a cop shouldn't look like that.

  "We don't know," he said finally. "She's just missing."

  Right then I knew he was lying. But they lie all the time, all of them. It's no big deal. Except right now it was, because it was Chelsea.

  Dad got rid of him and came back into the kitchen. "Is there anything you didn't tell him?" He had his lawyer voice on. Whenever he argued with Mom he used that voice. I think it's why she left him. But he got custody, because of the prenup guarding his money and because he's an attorney.

  I didn't know why he even went for custody instead of dumping me on Mom. He barely ever talked to me. But he's a collector. I guess I was just one more thing to keep when Mom committed the sin of leaving.

  "Like what?" I held onto the chair. My knuckles were white. "She said she was going with him. I went with Bebe. What's really going on?"

  He gave me the same weird look. But he didn't look mad, for once. "Get ready to go. We're going to be spending an hour or two in the police station."

  * * * *

  They found her naked in a ditch outside of town with her throat shredded and her legs obscenely splayed. I know because I saw it on the news when I got home, before the sketch of Jack's face went up. The sketch artist hadn't gotten him right, mostly because I couldn't put it into words. How he was different. I couldn't even explain it to myself.

  The grainy, blurry video of the police swarming the ditch wouldn't have told anyone anything. It was all reading between the lines at first—second disappearance this month, possibly sex-related, victim young teenage girl last seen at a party in West Hills. And then the details from one of the tabloid shows: throat cut, body unclothed. They do it every time there's a nice juicy murder. The St. Mary's angle was spread across the screen. Schoolgirl Murder!

  The cops weren't even bent out of shape about the drugs and booze at the party. They didn't even ask. Just about Jack. Who was he? What exactly had he said? What had he been wearing? How tall was he? Did I know anything about him, anything at all?

  Other kids had seen Chel leaving about midnight with a dark-haired guy, but nobody had talked to him. Only me, and I hadn't even said anything. All I'd done was listen to him and Chelsea flirt, and he hadn't said anything about himself at all.

  Dad came into the kitchen and flicked the television off a little too hard, al
most snapping the knob. I didn't realize I was hyperventilating until Consuela set flan in front of me, and clucked all over the kitchen, and made her special hot chocolate with cinnamon, too. She's been like that ever since she came to work for us, way before Mom left. I mean, who needs hot chocolate when it never gets cold down here? It's not called Sunny California for nothing.

  It was almost like having Mom back.

  Not really.

  I finally went back up to my room and sat in the window seat with my knees pulled up. I was still kind of hungover. It was a bright sunny day. The wind had picked up, and the air was golden because of the dust and smoke wheezing through town. The Santa Anas had started.

  My entire body was numb. I kept expecting my cell phone to ring Chel's song—"Just Say Yes," a forgettable number from a girl-band we'd both been gaga over in eighth grade even though we hadn't known each other. When we found out we both had loved the song it was like, whoa, Twilight Zone, and we were meant to be friends.

  I kept wanting to pick it up and dial her and hear her voice. Hey, bitch, she'd say. What the fuck you up to?

  The phone did ring. Bebe Marshall called. And Jenny Mailer. And JoJo Horschak—I didn't know she had my number. A couple other girls.

  I turned the little crystal-dotted phone off. They weren't calling to wish me happy birthday or anything. It would be ohmyGod and have you heard and did they tell you?

  Dad tapped at the door. "Honey?"

  Uh-oh. I made a sound, staring out over the backyard. The pool glittered, hard blue. Tomorrow was Sunday. The landscapers would be out at some ungodly hour, clipping and mowing and pruning.

  He opened the door halfway. He's so narrow and tall, that was all he needed. "I have a partner dinner at La Scala's, but I can cancel. Would you like—"

  "Go ahead and go." I stared out the window. "It's Saturday. Consuela'll make tamales." Like always.

  "I can cancel it. I can take you out instead."

  Oh, Jesus, no. We would just sit and stare at each other, he would make awkward conversation, I would wish I was anywhere else. "It takes, like, months to get into La Scala's, Dad. Just go. I don't want to go out."

  His thin, clean-shaven face flushed. He was trying to do the dad thing. Really, I got it. But Jesus. I hugged my knees even harder. My hair fell over my shoulders. I could still taste the beer from last night, even though I'd brushed my teeth.

  "If you're sure." He waited a beat. His hair's cut a little longer than the usual attorney's buzz, because it's thick and wavy like mine. I think he counts the hairs in his brush every morning.

  Chel'd thought so, too. A bubble of something hot and spiked burst right inside my chest.

  "I'm sure. I really don't want to go anywhere."

  He nodded. "I'll keep my cell phone on."

  Oh, awkward. I hunched down even further. "Okay."

  He left me alone after that, thank God. I waited and waited and finally took a shower, washing all the hangover and rancidness off me.

  I didn't use the peach soap. It was on my windowsill, where I'd sat and stared at it. The lump of different soaps in my shower hurt when I scrubbed it over my skin, hard, lather rising in fluffy streaks. Each week the cleaners wipe under the multicolored lump, put together from pieces stolen from parties all over the county, and put it back.

  I wonder what they think.

  * * * *

  That night I dreamed.

  There were cliffs, and the sea. It crashed over and over again, throwing up huge chunks of opalescent bubbles. I stood at the edge looking down, and I was suddenly very sure Chelsea was down there drowning. I couldn't hear her or see her, but I knew.

  I stood looking down and the bubbles flushed pink. Then they turned red, and a sickening smell belched up, blowing my hair back. I tried to wake up but I couldn't. There was something heavy on my chest, the breath all got squeezed out of me, and the dream turned black until I. . .

  . . . opened my eyes to sunlight the next morning and found out my period had started. I had a nasty sore throat, too, and a hedge trimmer and lawnmower in the backyard were drilling right through my head. I'd bled all through my pajama bottoms and the whole thing made me so sick I stumbled into my bathroom and threw up until I couldn't retch anymore. Then I sat there on my knees on the cold tile floor and cried.

  * * * *

  By the next Friday I'd stopped bleeding. I had to go back to school, too. Dad got over the treating me like a delicate flower thing and told me so.

  I had the same dream—ocean, drowning, bubbles— every night. I'd stopped bleeding but I was cramping, which wasn't normal. And I felt weird. Sore throat, a little tired, but nothing other than that.

  I hadn't talked to anyone and it was like being a leper. Girls stared and whispered until blonde Bebe and redheaded Jenny showed up and stood on either side of me like bodyguards. That reassured everyone that I was still part of the clique and there hadn't been any weird moving around in the pecking order. "Hey," Jen said. "How are you? Your phone's been off."

  I wondered if she'd gotten her period yet. She looked perky. "My dad." I shrugged. "Lawyer stuff. He said not to talk to anyone until the cops . . ." I stopped there. You can only take a lie so far.

  Bebe perked up. "You had to talk to the cops? How many times?"

  Jenny elbowed her. "Jesus, Bebe. Try not to dance on the grave or anything."

  That was something new. Usually Jenny and I watch while Bebe and Chelsea do the blonde follies.

  But Chel was gone. And we were on the steps in front of St. Mary's pile of gray stone, the cross on top of the chapel's pointed roof glittering in the sun. There were ten minutes until first period, and everyone was looking at us.

  "Sorry." Bebe dipped her head. Her long hair fell over one shoulder. She always looks like a shampoo commercial. She swung her bookbag. "We saw the guy, too. Chel looked drunk."

  Christ. "She had a couple beers. Not enough to . . . you know."

  "Maybe he slipped her something?" Jenny rolled her green eyes. The curls in her coppery hair aren't natural. I know because she smells like perm every once in a while. You just can't wash that smell out even if you get it done on a Friday afternoon and stay home all weekend. "Sorry. It's just, Jesus, you know?"

  I did. "Let's go inside." Just then my cell phone started buzzing. I dug in my blazer pocket to fish it out, and cold fingers ran up my back. My stomach began to hurt.

  The phone was tinkling "Just Say Yes." I flipped it open and stared in disbelief.

  Chel. Four little letters on the LCD display.

  "Who's calling?" Bebe craned her neck to see, but I hit the power button and held it down. The song died, strangled, and her name winked out.

  "I don't know," I said. It was the truth. My fingers felt cold, even though the sun was blazing down on us. Getting from air-conditioned car to air-conditioned school is sometimes the worst part of the day, and everything was full of dust. The wind was up, teasing at everyone's hair. I'd zapped myself twice on the fridge this morning trying to find something I felt like eating. "Let's go in."

  Bebe took the hint, and we all started up the steps. "There's a party at Kell's tonight."

  "Tragic," I mumbled. People were staring. I fought the urge to hunch my shoulders. You can't ever look weak while walking in to school. It's blood in the water.

  * * * *

  Friday night another blonde girl disappeared. Amy Macanzito. They found her Sunday morning. Throat cut. Body naked. Schoolgirl Murders, the paper and the TV blared. It was official.

  The next Thursday, Dad was working late and Consuela had retreated to her room with Mexican wrestling on her television. It was a warm fall night, the wind full of dust and smoke but falling off a little around dusk. I plunged into the pool, stroked out to the middle, turned over on my back, and just floated. The stars came out in ones and twos.

  If Chel was here we'd be sitting on the concrete edge, dangling our legs and talking desultorily. The winds made everyone nervous. Sometimes during them
you heard sirens all night, all over town. People go crazy listening to that low moan day and night. Chel said it was bad electricity that drove them nuts.

  My stomach trembled. I'd pushed my dinner around my plate, but Consuela hadn't said anything beyond offering me a double helping of dessert. She was awful quiet lately. I knew she was worried by the way she kept making my favorites.

  High scudding clouds hung like veils. Light drained away from the sky while I lay floating. My cheeks were wet, but it didn't matter in the pool. Hot tears beaded up and vanished in the chlorinated water. My hair was going to frizz big-time.

  After a while I moved. Water lapped. The pool was lit, a jewel of blue, its reflections starring the back of the house in a wide slice. It looked like the house had jazzed up for a party. I thought of bringing the dish soap out and dumping it in here.