Are you sara, p.13
Are You Sara?, page 13
When I trail off, Ajay steps forward and places his hands on my arms. His grip is gentle but his gaze tears right through me, and I can’t tell if I want to throw myself at him or make a run for it.
Was it only last night that I fell asleep in Tommy’s arms? A guy—a boy—who doesn’t make any sense. Then why did it happen? Did I imagine everything between us?
“I’ll see you in class tomorrow?” Ajay finally asks.
“Maybe,” I say, “although you never know with me . . .”
He laughs, a full one straight from the belly.
The only thing I’ve ever cared about is getting out, getting ahead, and pulling my family up with me. I was going to be the one to make it. To change our fate. To earn a place for us so we can finally belong. With Jason, I was willing to do whatever it took.
But where would that road have taken me? To what end would it have led? Now I’m back to relying only on myself.
Not once have I ever dreamed of being happy. It never even occurred to me. I wonder if it’s even possible.
34.
Tina won’t shut up about Ajay.
Ajay is so cute. Ajay is so intelligent. Ajay is such a good guy.
“Why haven’t I heard about him before?” Tina asks me, as we turn off Main Street. “Don’t worry, I didn’t tell him I had no clue who he was. But you should have told me there was a guy in the picture. Is he going to be my brother-in-law?”
“No,” I say, double-checking the directions on my phone. “We’re not dating.”
“Will you be?” She giggles. “Because Ajay is definitely—”
“Tina,” I warn. I look over to find her sulking. “What’s wrong?”
“What do you mean, ‘What’s wrong?’ What’s wrong is you never talk to me. I tell you everything. I text you when a cute girl even looks at me, but I have no idea what’s going on with you.”
I sigh, trying not to seem frustrated. “Well, what do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know. Anything? Tell me something about your life? You call all the time, we talk all the time, but you don’t say shit. Even Mom and Dad say so.”
“Oh yeah, and what do they say?”
“How you’re like a ghost sometimes. Even before you left. And now that you’re away it’s like, oh, does she even exist?”
I swallow hard, stopping at the pedestrian crossing. I don’t know how to react to what she’s telling me, so I don’t react at all. I call home practically every day, or text at the very least. Even if I am a ghost, I’m a good daughter. Everything I’ve done is for them. For our family.
I stare at the lights across the road. The numbers count down, changing from green to orange as they draw closer to zero.
“Can you at least tell me one thing?” I hear Tina say. I nod stiffly, and she continues.
“Have you and Ajay ever banged?”
I groan and then dart onto the street, even though the light is still telling me to wait. There are no cars on the road, and Tina jogs behind me until she catches up. We pass by the police station and hang a left. Tina slows down as we approach.
“I thought we were going to your place . . .” She trails off, and I look up and catch her eye. “No. Fuck no. I’m staying with you tonight.”
I keep my pace, despite her whining, and only stop when we’re right in front of the bus terminal. It smells like gasoline and piss.
“Mom and Dad already know you’re catching the 8:45,” I say, turning to face Tina. I texted them while she and Ajay were deciding what kind of pizza to order. “They’re going to pick you up from the downtown terminal. You have ten minutes before your bus leaves, so you might want to use the bathroom.”
“No,” she stammers. Her lips are quivering, but I don’t budge.
“Yes.”
“I said no!” she screams, so loudly that a passerby turns to gawk. “I’m staying with you. I came all this way—”
“And I said yes! You are going home right now—”
“Is this about that dead girl?”
My legs start to tremble. When I don’t say anything, Tina continues.
“Yeah. I heard last week. It’s all over the news.”
I pause, looking down at my shoes. “Do Mom and Dad know?”
“No. They haven’t watched television since Kamala Harris was elected.” Tina laughs. “I figured you didn’t want them to worry.”
“You figured right.”
“Well, we’ll go straight to your place and lock the door. You don’t need to worry about me.”
I do, actually. Tina can’t be here. She doesn’t know that the dead girl was found on my doorstep. She doesn’t know that it was supposed to be me.
“So, which way is—”
“I said no, Tina.”
My voice is low and hoarse, and Tina narrows her eyes as she studies me. She starts to yell at me. She tells me I’m acting like an “effing bitch.”
My sister has never called me that before, at least not to my face. I don’t want to be a bitch. I don’t want my baby sister to look at me the way she is now—like she hates my guts. All I want is for her to be safe, and around me, she isn’t. Not yet. Not until I deal with Jason.
“Are you done?” I cross my arms, interrupting Tina’s tirade. “Your bus leaves in eight minutes.”
“I hate you,” she spits.
I roll my eyes. “I love you, too, Tina.”
“No.” She bangs her shoulder against mine as she brushes past me toward the terminal entrance. “You fucking don’t.”
I hate that Tina is mad at me. I consider texting her to apologize, but I don’t. I can’t think about that right now. She’s safe and on her way home.
And I need to come up with a plan.
My earphones are at the very bottom of my backpack. I plug them into my phone, pick a playlist and then hit the pavement. I stick to Main Street and the busier roads around campus. I don’t know where to go, but I’m not ready to go home. Jason hasn’t replied to my threatening text. Does he think I’m bluffing? I don’t think I am. If he came anywhere near Tina, I would kill him. I would do whatever was necessary.
Windermere is a small town. There are only so many streets. And eventually I find myself walking by Gavin’s. It’s busy outside. Students are clustered in groups, smoking, waiting to go in or leave, or maybe they haven’t decided yet. It appears the news of Ellis’s death hasn’t affected business. I wonder if anyone knows that it all started here.
“Sara?”
I can barely hear my name over the music, but I stop dead in my tracks and look around. It’s Cassidy, one of the bartenders, smoking by the garbage bins. We don’t know each other that well. I only worked at Gavin’s for a few months, and our shifts rarely overlapped.
“Hey,” I say, pulling out my earphones. “How are you?”
“How are you?” She sucks on her cigarette, blowing smoke out her nose. “I heard Gavin fired you.”
“Yeah, he did.”
“Douche!”
I nod, studying her. Cassidy wasn’t working that night. I wonder if she knows about Ellis.
“It’s busy tonight,” I prompt. “A good crowd, considering . . .”
“Is it?” She glances behind her, through the large window. “Seems pretty average to me.”
I nod. It appears as if Cassidy doesn’t know a thing. No one knows the dead girl everyone in town is talking about was here before she died.
“How’s Gavin?” I try instead.
“An asshole, as usual.” Cassidy throws her cigarette on the ground, stepping on it. “He’s been in such a mood lately. I think it has something to do with the police being here.”
“The police were here?” I ask, keeping my voice cool.
“Yeah, they’ve been around at least three times, but no one seems to know why.” Cassidy lowers her voice. “Well, the guys in the kitchen do, but they won’t say a word. Said Gavin will fire them if they talk.”
“Oh, really,” I say with a smirk.
“Do you know what’s going on?” Cassidy gasps. “Oh my god. Is that why he fired you?”
This is the fifth time I say what happened out loud, and with Cassidy, I play with the truth. I tell her Ellis was at Gavin’s the night she died, but I leave out my involvement. I don’t tell her we switched Rides.
“Oh my god. She was underage.” Cassidy wipes her brow after I tell her the story. “Why didn’t he hook up the cameras? Isn’t it, like, the law, though?”
I smile. “It is the law, yeah.”
“What a scumbag.”
“I know, right?” I pause. “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
Cassidy shakes her head adamantly. “Of course not,” she says, even though I know she will. It’s the reason I told her.
“Anyway, do you want a beer?” Cassidy asks, shaking out her hair. “It’s on the house.”
“I probably shouldn’t go in.”
“Come on. Gavin isn’t even here tonight.”
I glance inside. I’m not much of a drinker, but a beer sounds like exactly what I need.
Cassidy laughs. “There are no cameras, right? He’ll never know.”
“Right.” I smile at Cassidy and then follow her inside. “Just for one.”
35.
There’s an empty stool at the far end of the bar, and I force myself not to look down the hallway that leads to Gavin’s office, to the bathroom where I first found Ellis. Cassidy slides me a pale ale and then moves on to a girl nearby waving her credit card in the air. There’s a big crowd waiting for drinks, fighting for the bartenders’ attention. It’s just Cassidy and some new girl on bar tonight. There should be three, even four, front-of-house staff for a crowd like this. It was even busier the night Ellis died, and it was just Gavin and me up there, as well as the three guys back in the kitchen, who he treated even worse than me.
I introduced myself once, during my first shift. The kitchen guys are all international students. The two from China and Nigeria didn’t say much, but the guy from Bangladesh was friendly in that slightly assuming, South Asian way I’m used to. He told me he was raised near Dhaka and had moved to the U.S. to study, that he had nearly completed his master’s degree in organic chemistry and was trying to give up smoking. He must have guessed my heritage, because at some point he started speaking to me in Bengali, and we chatted until Gavin yelled at me for messing around and summoned me back to cover the bar.
I’m halfway through my beer. Lethargy spreads through my limbs as I try to remember the kitchen guys’ names and decide if I should go find out what they know. Every shift, I always thought about going back into the kitchen and saying hello, but never did. Maybe they won’t even talk to me. Maybe they think I’m a snob, that I’m too westernized to have had the decency to be friendly with them.
I lean forward against the bar, resting on my elbows. The alcohol is making me think less clearly, but I know I can’t stay here forever. I need to make a move, and soon. Whether it’s tonight or next week or next month, Jason is coming for me. I’ve provoked him, but I can’t just sit here and wait for it.
I glance toward the window, past the busy barroom and outside onto the street. This is an undergrad bar, and the smoker’s pit right next to the door is full of toddlers puffing on joints, cigarettes, sipping out of soda bottles not so secretly filled with alcohol. They are laughing, carefree. It makes me nostalgic for a time I’ve never experienced, and I’m about to turn back to my beer when I see someone. He’s wearing a different jacket, and a black beanie partially covers his forehead, but it’s definitely him.
It’s Tommy.
He’s leaning against a brick wall, face blank, his hands stuffed into his jeans pockets. I think about going out there to say hello, but then he notices me.
I smile at him through the window. A beat later, he comes inside.
“What are you doing here?” I ask him, after he’s maneuvered through the crowd. He unzips his jacket and stops short right behind me.
“I’m meeting up with friends.” He checks his phone, shaking his head as he slips it back into his coat. “If they ever show up.”
“Well, it’s probably past all of your bedtimes.”
“You’re making fun of me again,” Tommy says. “You think I’m too young for you.”
The beer has loosened my tongue, and I press my lips together as Tommy throws me a lazy grin. I’m embarrassed about teasing him about his age, that I’m flirting with him. That I’m sitting here talking to him to begin with.
“You didn’t call me,” he says.
I sit up straight and avoid his gaze. “I didn’t have the chance.”
“You know I’m twenty-one, right?” he continues. “I’m not too young for you.”
“Tommy, stop—”
“Just hear me out.” He rests his hand against the curve of the bar, leaning forward. “We should do something. I don’t know. Let’s go on a date, Sara.”
He looks so young and earnest, and I wonder if he’s ever been on a real date before, with and as an adult, and it isn’t just something he’s seen people do in the movies.
“I don’t know,” I say, stalling. “I don’t know anything about you—”
“What do you want to know?” The girl next to me leaves, and Tommy slides onto the free stool. “I’m a history major. I like beer. I like you.”
I laugh. I have to hand it to him. It’s not every day that someone makes me laugh.
“What else do you want to know?”
“Well,” I say, “why aren’t you on social media?”
“Bishop Bailey Hall forbade it.” Tommy shrugged. “And after we graduated, a lot of us never bothered. It seems like a waste of time.”
I nod, agreeing.
“Wait, how did you even know?” He smirks. “Oh, I see—you looked me up, you little stalker.”
Playfully, I shove him. “Hey!”
“You can’t get enough of me, can you?”
“If you must know,” I say pointedly, “I looked you up before I met you. Back when . . .”
I trail off and a knowing glance passes between us. I didn’t creep Tommy online after I met him in person. I looked him up before I knew about his alibi and thought he might have murdered Ellis.
I turn back to my beer, and we don’t say much as Tommy orders his own. I’ve ruined the moment, but maybe that’s a good thing. I was letting myself get derailed from planning my move against Jason. This isn’t important, and Tommy Eagle is just a distraction.
Or is he?
In my peripheral vision, I see the bathroom door open. It stalls halfway, as if there’s someone on the other side who was about to come through but then decided otherwise. My whole body stiffens.
“Sara?”
I don’t respond to Tommy. I’m frozen, my gaze fixated on the door, suspended in time. I feel his hand on my forearm, and just then the door opens fully. A girl stumbles out, and another one after her. They look both irritable and giggly in equal measure. I’m holding my breath, and I finally let it out.
“Sara?” Tommy repeats. “Are you OK?”
I turn to him. “I don’t think so.”
He nods, glances at the bathroom door and then back at me.
“You said you found her in there,” Tommy says eventually. “And now you’re wondering if you could have done something different. If you could have saved her.”
“I—”
“You couldn’t have saved her, Sara,” he interrupts.
I shake my head, press my eyelids tight.
“Sara.” Tommy’s standing up next to me now. I can feel his arm on the back of my chair, his hand firmly on my shoulder. “Listen to me. This isn’t your fault.”
“And what if it is?” I open my eyes. “What if it is my fault?”
Tommy’s breath is hot against my ear. He’s a kid, innocent, just like Ellis. I need to walk away. I need to get up and go home. My reckoning has nothing to do with either of them. But I’m paralyzed. I’ve lost control.
“You need to let her go, Sara.” He’s whispering in my ear, his other hand brushing against my thigh. “We both do.”
I drink two more beers, and for the second night in a row, I don’t go home. Instead, under cover of darkness, I walk back with Tommy to his dorm. His large hand is dry and soft, and he doesn’t let go of mine until we’re in front of his door and he fishes out his keys.
Inside, I sit at the foot of his bed and watch him kick off his shoes. He kneels down in front of me. We’re eye to eye. I put both my hands on his cheeks.
“Kiss me.”
He does, but it’s too gentle. Infuriated, I pull off his T-shirt and run my hands over his chest, his arms, pulling him closer to me as he fumbles with my jeans. I hear myself groan as his body slides against mine, and he pushes me back and down onto the bed.
Our bodies move together, like one body. Our clothes come off, piece by piece, until finally we’re both exposed. I don’t have a condom, but Tommy does. After he puts it on, he places his hands on the bed on either side of me, shifting forward.
“No,” I say.
“No?”
I shake my head and wrap my legs around his waist as I kiss him, contorting my body around his until it’s Tommy who’s on his back. The blood rushes to my head as I climb on top, as I dig my fingernails into him and he sinks back into the bed.
“That’s better.”
He smiles, and I wonder what I look like from down there. I close my eyes as I press myself on him. I rock back and forth, and my hands slip up around his neck.
I push down on his throat. I grip harder.
I squeeze until I come.
36.
SARAH ELLIS
One year earlier
I got off the wait list today, but only because Daddy called a friend of a friend at Windermere University. It’s a few weeks until classes start up and I hadn’t heard anything, which isn’t surprising, considering how I fucked up my senior year marks and only stand a chance at a decent college because I did well on the SATs. Anyway, this morning he said enough was enough and he was going to call in a favor, and I exploded. Clearly, I said, I didn’t deserve to be there, and I didn’t want to take anyone else’s spot, and then Daddy exploded, which he never does. He turned sunburned red and said what I deserve has nothing to do with anything, and I had made their lives miserable enough with the whole Duke thing, and I said I wanted to go to Windermere, so that’s where I was “going to fucking go.”
