ELIZA
“YOU’VE GOT TO tell the police,” I say to Desmond. I grab my phone and start to dial 911, then change my mind and look up the number for the Palm Springs PD on Google. “Right now.”
“Okay,” Desmond says, though he sounds uncertain.
I manage to punch in the digits. The phone starts to ring, and I thrust it at him. He holds it outstretched like a writhing snake.
“I’m not really versed in speaking with law enforcement,” he says. “What do you want me to say?”
I snatch it back and listen as a receptionist answers in a peppy voice that I’ve reached Palm Springs PD, and how may she direct my call? “I’m looking for Lance,” I bark.
“Lance . . . who?” the receptionist asks, all bubbles and sunshine.
As if there’s more than one Lance working at Palm Springs PD? But I don’t remember his last name. Had he even told me his last name? “Lance the forensic psychologist. Lance who visits patients in hospitals.”
“Please hold.”
They play Hall & Oates’s “Maneater” while I wait. Who chose that?
“Can you describe the person you saw?” I ask Desmond. “Was it a girl? A guy?”
“I don’t know.” He looks sheepish. “I just remember . . . a dark flash. Obsidian.”
“Why didn’t you tell the cops this when they interviewed you? They did interview you, right?”
“Well, sure, they came when the ambulance came, and they asked me what happened. But this is when I presumed you’d fallen in. I didn’t know to be on the lookout for a criminal. And they didn’t ask if I’d seen anything.”
I curl my hand into a fist. Of course the cops didn’t ask him. They’d probably already made up their minds I was drunk and suicidal.
“You have to tell them what you saw,” I urge again. I realize how I sound. I picture Desmond later tonight, having absinthe with Paul, his comic-con buddy who’d been with him poolside, talking about his crazy run-in with the paranoid almost-drowned girl. But I’m also so relieved. There was a teeny, tiny part of me that did wonder if my family was right—maybe I had jumped into that pool, just like all the other times. Maybe I was having a psychological break. Or maybe my tumor was back. Maybe I was sick again. But no: I had an assailant. So there. I practically want to sing it from the rooftops. I’m right.
A voice breaks through “Maneater.” “Hello, you’ve reached the Palm Springs PD tip line. If you have information about a crime, please leave your tip at the beep.”
My heart sinks. Then again, I suppose what I have is a tip—it’s better than nothing. After the beep, I say what I have to say, then hang up.
“Well, hopefully they’ll call. And then I’ll conference you in, if you’re available. Or at least I’ll give them your number.”
“Of course,” Desmond says. “I’ll give you my address. I’m happy to help. Very happy.”
And then he looks at me. I stand to go, but he remains seated. His eyes soften. There’s an expectant smile on his face, like he’s waiting for the real party to start. Then something hits me. It’s possible that I did something, poolside, when I woke up on the deck. I have a bad habit of having sex with strangers, despite how ridiculous I find them.
I can almost picture it. Desmond pulled me out of the pool, revived me, and I took off all my clothes in gratitude. I grabbed his crotch. Maybe we actually had sex there on the concrete before the EMTs came. And instead of being like every other guy and disappearing the moment the deed is done, Desmond actually has a conscience and has come over to see if I’m damaged and vulnerable. Or maybe he wants to have sex again. I weigh my options. He’s a weird stranger who gets assassinated for fun, but he believes in me. And to be honest, his interest in me is flattering. I guess I don’t have very high standards.
I take a breath and move closer to him. All at once, his greenhouse scent is appealing, and my nipples go hard. The moment my lips actually make contact with his cheek, he shoots away.
“Um,” he says, fiddling with his vest. “Hello, nurse.”
I fumble, too, jumping back so fast my calf slams against the table.
“I, um,” Desmond is making a lot of noise with his keys. “I have a . . .” He checks his watch. “Work to do. A lot of vendors to visit. So, um . . .”
“Yep, lemme walk you out.”
We get to the screen door at the same time and both reach for the handle, resulting in an awkward dance of him letting me go first, then me letting him go first, then both of us trying to stuff through the space together. We pass through my shiny kitchen, and I’m never so grateful for the pretty room in my life—it gives me credibility, sanity, even though if Desmond peeked in the pantry he’d notice an unhealthy amount of Kraft macaroni & cheese, which I eat by the truckload, even though I’m not supposed to.
We stop at the door, and I don’t know what to do with my hands. Finally I just stick out my palm for him to shake.
“Thanks for coming by! Thanks for saving me!” Because what else do you say?
The door shuts. I spin around and survey my quiet house. My living room is filled with odd antique trunks and armoires I purchased from an antiques dealer in Santa Cruz. The pale pink couch has a mysterious stain on it that might be blood—it was like that when I bought it. In the corner is a dusty RCA Theremin from the 1920s. I’ve meant to take lessons, but I’ve never gotten around to it.
All of a sudden, the hair on the back of my neck stands. Someone is watching me. I sense a flicker in the corner of my eye and whip around, certain I’m going to discover a presence there. The curtains flutter as if someone has just jumped through the open window. Or maybe it’s just the breeze.
“Hello?” I call out shakily.
No answer.
What if this isn’t over? What if whoever tried to hurt me is still out there, hoping to hurt me again?
I rake my fingers down my face. My fingernails knead harder and harder until I know I’m close to drawing blood. But it isn’t satisfying enough, so I twist a lock of hair around my fingers and pull hard. The pain is sharp, eye-numbing. I stifle a yelp. And then I run upstairs as fast as I can, eager for a closed door, eager for darkness, eager to get away from whatever this is.
• • •
My bedroom is long like a bowling lane and almost as thin. On the walls are animal skulls and posters of Wednesday Addams, who was my childhood idol. On my bureau are vitamin bottles, vitamin powders, a healing stone given to me by a shaman I visited in the desert, an iPod loaded with meditation tapes that I try to use but that don’t really work, and the energy drawings I did with an art therapist that revealed my soul was a dark, twisted knot. I’m trying my hardest to prevent the tumor from invading my body again. But sometimes, I think the preventative shit is worse than the illness.
I think I saw someone running away.
I swallow hard. It’s vindicating that Desmond has confirmed this, but it scares me that such violence actually exists. Who could have pushed me?
I picture my mother’s face swirling above me yesterday in the hospital. And Bill’s, and Gabby’s. Who alerted them to come? How had they arrived so quickly? Then I remember it hadn’t been that fast—I’d been sleeping for quite a few hours before I spoke to them. But still. Is it possible they’d already been in Palm Springs? But what am I presuming, that one of them pushed me? Why would they do that? Because I’m a drain on them? Because they’re sick of my shenanigans? Because I’d done something to one of them? Something inside me rolls over with a ripple. Maybe. But why can’t I remember what that is?
I stop on Gabby again. It’s not as though we’re close. After Bill made the introductions the first time she and I met, I went into the kitchen, and she followed. I didn’t ask her to follow me. Nor did I really want her there.
“Um,” Gabby said quietly once we were alone. “I heard your dad died. So did my mom.”
I snorted. Like I was going to have that conversation. Straightening my spine, I pulled out a big bottle of vodka from the freezer. My fingers burned with cold as I unscrewed the cap, and I poured myself a tall glass.
“Want some?”
Gabby’s eyes widened. “No way.”
I tipped the glass to my lips like I was a pro. I’d never had vodka before, but I felt like I needed to establish myself with this girl early on so she knew the pecking order. I took the tiniest sip and tried not to wince. I watched Gabby stare at me in horror.
“Maybe you shouldn’t do that,” she whispered.
Then my mother and Bill walked in. My mother immediately saw the bottle on the counter. “What’s that?”
Neither of us answered. Gabby pushed her glasses up her nose.
“Who got that out?” my mother said, staring at me.
Gabby cleared her throat. “Um, I did. I just wanted to try it.”
Bill looked appalled. “You?”
“Oh, please.” My mother rolled her eyes “It was clearly Eliza.”
“No,” Gabby’s voice was stronger now. “It was me.”
I don’t know why she took the blame. I wanted to believe it was because I was so crazy and unpredictable that she thought it would be better just to defuse my actions and not make waves. But I wasn’t entirely sure. I needed to be sure. I needed her to fear me. Why I needed that so badly is something I can’t remember now, but I distinctly wrote about it in my journal: I don’t need her feeling sorry for me. She doesn’t know what I can do.
Through the years, I proved to Gabby what I could do. I locked her in a closet and stood outside reading facts about body decomposition from a criminology textbook. I put preserved animals I found at pawnshops on her pillow at night. I was a fan of fake plastic spiders in cereal bowls, a rubber dismembered hand in her backpack, and once, shoving the old child-sized coffin I kept in my room into the front entrance of the house and squeezing myself into it just before she walked through the door. Gabby had fainted when she saw me—just crumpled bonelessly to the floor, thwacking her head on the doorjamb. She’d needed stitches on her eyebrow. And yet, when Bill asked Gabby what had happened, she said she’d tripped. She never told on me for anything I did to her. She just absorbed all of it silently, stoically, pretending like it never happened.
Why didn’t she ever fight back? I heard her arguing with her friends on the phone. I hacked her email and uncovered quite a few heated debates on a Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince fan fiction message board. She lost her shit when a girl at school called her a “fuckface.” I’d called her far worse. Was she doing it because she’d figured out not reacting was the path to victory? Or was she storing up each and every incident, cataloging it carefully and referring to it often, slowly growing angrier and angrier and then downright vengeful? Was she a volcano ready to blow?
Do you really think someone would want to hurt you? Lance had asked. Gabby might have wanted to, but I just couldn’t imagine Gabby doing such a thing. She didn’t have the chutzpah.
I open my eyes and look around. The light seems different in my room. For a moment, I’ve forgotten my train of thought. I’ve had a stroke, I think frantically. But the clock says it’s only a few minutes later, and all of my limbs work. I reach for my cell phone, but I’ve received no new calls. I’m about to put the phone down when I hit the button for my saved photo gallery. There’s a video I don’t remember recording first in line in the preview window.
I press Play.
The camera pans over the hospital room I’ve just left: first the corner with the sink, then those ugly paisley drapes, then a slice of window, the view of the parking lot. I hear a small sigh. The camera shifts, then shows my body on the hospital bed: my arm, my fingers, my chin. My eyes are closed.
I look at the video’s time stamp: 10:09 p.m., yesterday night. The angle is such that I could have held the phone outstretched, selfie-style, but there was no way I’d taken it. I’d only found out my phone was in my room this morning.
Seized with an idea, I scroll back past the video to see if I had taken any pictures at the resort . . . but I hadn’t. The last photo in my camera roll was an image of an antique cymbal-playing monkey toy; a customer had brought it to the store where I work in hopes of making a trade. The monkey was old and well loved, some of its fur rubbed off, the little battery compartment on its butt rusty and corroded.
I stare into the middle distance, prickles dancing up my spine. When I purchased my phone, the setup prompts urged me to assign a security passcode, but I’d declined—I had a knack for forgetting numbers, and it seemed inevitable that I’d lock myself out again and again. I’d tried to set up fingerprint recognition, but the technology couldn’t read my print right away, so I gave up. In other words, anyone could have accessed my phone without any trouble at all. Someone easily could have recorded the video . . . but who?
I click the Details button, but all it says is that the video was taken at the hospital. I stare at the little map of Palm Springs on the screen. I’d never realized the town was such a grid.
My throat is dry. My head is throbbing. But all of a sudden, it seems foolish of me to be just lying here, inactive. I have proof now. Someone was running away. Someone followed me to that pool. Someone could still be following me now.
I push off my covers and head down the stairs. I’m still in the acid-washed jeans from the hospital, but there’s no time to change. I find my house keys at the bottom of my purse and ready them at the door. My car isn’t here, so I’ll have to take an Uber, but that won’t be a problem. Where I’m going, I’m not sure. I just have to go somewhere. I have to figure this out.
Then a hand clamps on my shoulder. I squeal and jump back. “You’re not going anywhere.”
I turn around. It’s my roommate, Kiki Ross. She slides around me, grabs my keys from my hands, and blocks the door. Her eyes are wide. Her mouth turns down with fear and possibly anger.
“Come here, Eliza,” she says in a low voice. “We need to talk.”