“You must have loved her.” The new cop, Lieutenant Marshall, was a lot nicer than the last one. The last one, Detective Neughter—pronounced New-ter, he told us, like being named after the act of cutting a dog’s balls off was a good thing—was pale and mean and smelled like tuna fish.
Lieutenant Marshall smelled clean and minty. His eyes crinkled when he smiled. He had dark hair, just graying at the temples, and kept his hands in his pockets. Relax, he seemed to be saying. Just relax. I’m on your side.
“She was my best friend,” I said. “So, yeah. Pretty much.”
He moved around the table, removed a hand from his pocket, and rubbed the back of his neck. He didn’t look at me. Not because he was angry—because he knew I didn’t do it. I trusted Lieutenant Marshall. “It must have made you mad when she started going out with Owen Waldmann.”
“Not mad,” I said, but my mother cut me off.
“Don’t,” she said. “You don’t have to say anything, Brynn.” Then, to Lieutenant Marshall: “We don’t have to be here. Don’t try to trick her.”
He spread his hands. “If she has nothing to hide, she doesn’t have to worry.”
If. But I skimmed over that word, if, ignored it.
Instead, I started to burn. I started to crackle and sizzle in my seat. My mom didn’t understand. She was making me seem guilty when I wasn’t—she was making it seem like I had something to be ashamed of. Only Lieutenant Marshall understood. “I wasn’t mad,” I said, a little louder. “It’s just . . .” I trailed off, and Lieutenant Marshall nodded encouragingly.
“That’s all right,” he said, smiling again. I decided he was exactly what I would want my dad to look like, if I had a dad. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Brynn. Your feelings are perfectly natural.”
I closed my eyes. How to explain it?
I wasn’t mad. I was exploded. I was full of tiny shrapnel shells. Torn apart with jealousy. It hurt to breathe. My lungs were rattling with cut glass. I wanted to take Owen’s eyes out with a toothpick—not just for me, but for Mia, too. I wanted to go back to the night Summer and I kissed and the miracle happened and then she started to cry and I kept my arms around her while she shook in my bed and her spine knocked against my breastbone and her feet slowly thawed from icicles to skin again. Except this time, I’d make sure to fix whatever had gone wrong. This time, I wouldn’t screw it up.
I opened my eyes again.
“I didn’t understand” is what I said. Lieutenant Marshall was still nodding. “I didn’t understand why I wasn’t good enough.” I didn’t mean to say the last part, but the words just flopped out of my mouth on their own, like dying fish. And my sister, Erin, was staring at me, a look on her face like I was a wild animal, disgusted and frightened and confused all at once. I looked away, fighting the sudden urge to cry. The blinds were only lowered partway and I could see into the station’s main room and the clutter of desks and sun slanting through the windows and the dusty water cooler and ancient fax machines. But Mia was gone. She must have gone home.
Why were they keeping me here, then, if Mia got to go home?
For the first time, really, I got a bad feeling, a gnawing suspicion that Lieutenant Marshall was maybe not as nice as he was pretending. That these questions weren’t routine. That they weren’t just looking for my help so they could find the person who’d done it. Suddenly, it was as if insects were chewing my stomach from the inside.
Lieutenant Marshall was still smiling. He sat down on the edge of the table, crossing his hands in his lap. Relax. “You must have been pretty pissed off,” he said, “when she started spreading all those rumors about you at school.”