ELIZA
I OPEN MY eyes and sit up on the pavement, the sun baking my skin. “Eliza?” says a voice.
I blink hard. The sun burns a harsh circle onto my retinas. A shadow appears over me, and I smell overpowering deodorant. “You Eliza? You call me?”
The man has on aviator sunglasses, a creased, pin-striped shirt, and jeans that pull tightly across the waist. Behind him, a white Honda Pilot chugs. I look around and see the familiar buildings of the Westwood Center—the Whole Foods in particular—and it all comes back. But besides the two of us, the alley is empty. When I wince, pain explodes across my face. I touch it carefully, expecting blood, but all I feel is tenderness.
“I said, you Eliza?” The man gestures to his car. “You call Uber?”
“Y-yes,” I manage to say, pushing up to sit. I look around one more time. No one seems to be lurking about. But there was someone.
“I’ve been waiting,” the man says, annoyed. “I’ve probably called you six times. I was about to leave.”
I stumble to my feet and stare down at myself. All of my clothes are still on. My bag is on the ground. I grab it and rifle through it. My wallet is there. So is my phone. I touch the circle at the bottom and look at the time. Only a few minutes have passed since I looked at it last.
“Someone else was just here,” I tell the man. “Did you see?”
He’s already walking to the Pilot. “I wasn’t back here until two seconds ago. You want the ride or not?” He gives me a glare. “But you can’t pass out again. And no puking.”
I flinch. “I’m not drunk.”
“Uh-huh.” He adds something else under his breath.
I don’t know what to do, and my pounding head isn’t making it any easier to decide. If I leave, then I’m leaving the scene of the crime. I need to call the police now, while whoever did this is still in the area. Only, if nothing was taken, was there really a crime? All of a sudden, the details feel jumbled. The sun is too hot against the crown of my head.
There’s a whoop, and I look up. A police car is pulling into the alleyway. Still on my ass, I watch as an officer leans out the driver’s side. “We just got a call that someone fainted back here.”
I whip around to the Uber driver. “Did you call the police?”
The Uber driver holds up his hands. “No way, man. I just got here.”
The cop stares at us. His partner in the passenger seat peers over his Ray-Bans, then says to me, “Everything okay, miss?”
My throat feels as though it’s coated with corroded metal. “Someone accosted me back here. I think a crime has been committed.”
Driver Cop’s gaze swings to the Uber driver. The Uber driver steps away, hands shielding his chest. “I just got here, man. You can check my GPS. I saw nothing.”
“It wasn’t him,” I say, feeling pretty confident about that. “It was someone else.” But something doesn’t make sense. I assess the alley one more time. If I was alone when Uber guy found me, and if Uber guy didn’t call the police saying I fainted, then who the hell did?
Driver looks at his partner. Ray-Bans gives a nod. They get out of the car simultaneously, the act beautifully choreographed. Their shoes make crisp sounds as they cross the asphalt to me.
“Uh, excuse me?” the Uber driver says. “Can I go now?”
“Not yet,” the cop says. “We may need you to make a statement.”
The Uber driver says something in Spanish under his breath. The cop who was driving squats down and places his hands on his knees. His uniform is a crisp black. There’s a shiny badge on his front pocket that says O’Hara. The name is too lilting, too poetic to belong to a police officer.
“What’s your name?” he asks me.
“Eliza.”
“What happened?” Ray-Bans points to my face. I touch it experimentally and wince; I can feel a bruise.
“I fell,” I say. “Someone startled me. I spun around, but I couldn’t see who it was, and then I felt very woozy.” After this all comes out of my mouth, I realize how flimsy it sounds. You can’t arrest someone just because they come up to you and touch you on the shoulder.
“Did the person say anything to you?” O’Hara asks.
“No. I don’t think so. But at the end, after I fell, the person said, What the hell? Get up! Please!”
“Please.” O’Hara looks amused. He glances at his partner. “Polite.”
I try to stand, but my footing feels wobbly, uncertain. I grab on to O’Hara’s shoulder for balance, my mouth nearly kissing his cheek. O’Hara reaches out to steady me, and once I’m upright, I notice that his eyebrows have hitched up. His partner glances at him, a small sliver of a look. His mouth curls into a smirk.
“You all right there?” O’Hara towers over me, at least six-two.
“I don’t know,” I insist. “I might have a head injury. I feel . . . dizzy.” I look at them expectantly. Neither makes a motion to write this down. There are no efforts to call an ambulance.
“Well.” O’Hara clears his throat. “I think what you need, Eliza, is some coffee.”
“It’s possible you might have misinterpreted whoever you saw in the parking lot,” his partner, whose nametag reads Larkin, adds. “Maybe they were just trying to help. Maybe they were worried about you.”
My cheeks burn. I’m not drunk, I will silently. I might have a brain tumor. It’s not my fault. But then I remember the meade I’d drunk before leaving Steadman’s. How many shots had I taken—two? Three? More than that? What was in meade, anyway? Was that why I was so fearless when intercepting Leonidas’s phone?
“We can give you a ride home,” O’Hara says, kindly. “Or to the hospital, if you want to get checked out.”
“No hospitals,” I say.
“Uh, can I go?” Uber Driver says again.
“Yeah, go ahead.” Larkin waves him away.
I’m out of options. I trudge to the cruiser and slump into the back. It smells like old leather. There’s some sort of paper bracelet in the footwell with the logo from a seedy strip joint. Larkin shuts the door behind me. I slump down as far as I can go in the seat. If my mother saw me now, she’d probably forcibly send me to the Oaks. I’d have no say in the matter.
I swipe to unlock my phone, then press the photos button, eager to look at the picture I’d taken of Leonidas’s call screen. One of the numbers on the list is needling at my memory—I know it, I just don’t know why I know it. But when I access my gallery, the image is gone. I swipe and swipe, but it isn’t anywhere.
“Uh?” I eke out, jutting my chin toward the silent figures in the front seat. O’Hara raises his eyes to me in the rearview. There was a crime, I want to say. Something was taken from me. When I was passed out, someone went on my phone and erased a photo.
I try to compose my words, but even before saying them, I know how they will sound. I will then have to explain sneaking into Leonidas’s dad’s office, which seems like too much of an effort and probably not something I should be talking about. This is my punishment, I suppose, for snooping.
It just doesn’t seem like this punishment fits the crime.