You Owe Me a Murder Page 3

  I shook my head. “Are you kidding? As soon as I took the bottle, all I wanted to do was run for it. I felt like I was going to freak out at any moment.”

  She laughed. “But you didn’t. Being good at something doesn’t mean that it isn’t hard or scary—​it just means that you keep moving forward when other people quit.”

  I laughed. “I tend to be a quitter. I’m scared of everything.”

  “Like what?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I could make a list a mile long. For starters, I’m terrified of heights. I won’t even go to my grandparents’ new condo in Miami because they live on the twentieth floor. Usually when things scare me, I’m the first one to bail. I won’t go skiing, kayaking, or anyplace that looks like it will have spiders, and I get hives when I have to go to the dentist and my dad’s a dentist.”

  Nicki wrinkled up her nose. “Now, I get the dentist phobia, but heights? If you’re going to be scared, be scared of something good.” She laughed. “You were scared to take the liquor, but you did it. That’s the difference between ordinary people and extraordinary. Extraordinary people might be afraid, but they do it anyway.”

  My chin lifted slightly in the air. The shame over stealing was mixed up with pride in doing something risky. I wanted to brag about what I’d done and apologize all at the same time. Most of all I wanted her to keep talking. “I still can’t believe I did that,” I said. I wanted her to understand I wasn’t someone who did things like this. Heck, I wasn’t someone who did things at all, but maybe it was as simple as deciding that I didn’t want to be that person anymore.

  Nicki threw an arm around me and gave me a half hug. “Think about it. I wonder what you might do if you let yourself really go? You know, every accomplishment starts with the decision to try. And then keep trying, even when it’s hard.” She smirked. “And of course, if life gives you an opportunity, take it before it disappears. Or at least before they put the antitheft device on it.”

  I packed up what she said and placed it carefully into my memory. It struck me that her advice was important. Not because I wanted to become a master criminal—​I felt bad about taking the booze and couldn’t imagine doing it again. But . . . I liked that I’d done it at least once. Been like Nicki. Daring. Not afraid. She seemed to have figured out the secret to life. All the brochures for the Student Scholars program had stressed how travel made a person grow. I’d secretly thought it was a bunch of marketing bullshit. How could a change in geography make a difference? But maybe it was possible: I could evolve into someone else. I could almost picture my mom’s approval . . . and the blog post she’d write about it.

  The public-address system squawked and announced that our flight would start boarding. I couldn’t believe how the three hours had flown by. I pulled the bottle slightly out of the bag. “Do you want this?”

  “You keep it. I don’t know the whole story with the guy and girl back at the gate, but I suspect you need it more than me.” She pushed herself up from the seat with a ladylike grunt. “We should get going. I still want to get that gum.”

  I reached for her arm before she started to walk away. “Thanks. I was feeling really down before.”

  “That’s what friends are for!” She poked me in the side as if I were being silly.

  “Well, I appreciate you making me a friend after only a few hours.”

  Nicki smiled. “Don’t you know? I decided we were friends the instant we met.”

  Three

  August 15

  16 Days Remaining

  Most people went to sleep as soon as the flight attendants cleared the trays from dinner and dimmed the lights. A few pulled out those squishy kidney-shaped pillows filled with buckwheat. The guy one row in front of me in a too-tight Darth Vader T-shirt was snoring already. Or drowning in his own phlegm. It was a bit hard to tell which from the sound he was making.

  I pressed my forehead to the window. I strained to see anything in the darkness, but all I could make out was my own faint reflection in the thick glass. I knew we were miles up in the air, but it seemed more as if we were under water. Black and cold. Even though it was late and the engines made a white noise hum, I couldn’t drift off.

  “How did you score a row to yourself?” I jolted, surprised at her voice. Nicki dropped into the far seat. She put her feet up on the middle space between us. She had on thick blue fuzzy socks. She wiggled her toes in my direction. “I’m stuck next to some old lady,” she whispered. “She smells like mothballs and greasy burgers.”

  “Where are you sitting?” I hadn’t seen her since I boarded.

  “Near the front on the other side.” Nicki nudged my knee with her foot. “Can’t sleep?”

  “Ever have that thing where you can’t turn your brain off?” I pulled my sleeves over my hands and swung my legs up into the middle seat, mirroring her.

  “All the time. Studies show that the higher your intelligence the more likely you are to have insomnia.”

  “Really?” Suddenly all the nights I’d lain in bed watching the minutes click by were justified.

  Nicki smirked. “No idea. I just made that up—​but it feels like it should be true.” She rubbed her temples. “I couldn’t sleep either. I thought you might be so kind as to help.”

  “Me?”

  “Well, your vodka.” Her eyebrows bounced up and down wickedly.

  I giggled. “You want to drink it here?” I peered around, but all the flight stewards had disappeared.

  “No one is going to care as long as we’re quiet. You in?”

  I didn’t bother to answer. Instead I dived for my tote bag under the seat in front of me. I pulled the bottle out like a magician pulling a rabbit from his hat. Nicki clapped silently.

  The first sips were like swallowing lit gasoline. It burned a trail down to my stomach, but after a few more, the edges started to soften. We talked about everything and nothing for hours. I showed her pictures on my social media accounts of the robots I had built. She told me how much she hated her parents’ divorce and her dad’s new girlfriend. I gave her the highlights of what had happened with Connor.

  Nicki’s mouth popped off the neck of the bottle with a smack. “Wait a minute. He asked you to drop out of a science contest so he could win?”

  I closed my eyes briefly as if I could block out the memory. “It’s worse,” I said, noticing my voice was slurring slightly. I should slow up on the vodka. “He didn’t ask. I gave up the science award. Told ’em I didn’t want to be a part of it anymore, because I knew they would then give it to him since he was in second place.”

  Her nose wrinkled up. “Why would you do that?”

  I waved my hands around. “I thought it would make him love me.” I sighed—​it sounded even more pathetic said aloud.

  It had made so much sense at the time. When I got the initial results, I went over to his house. I thought he’d be happy. He knew how much time I’d spent on my quadcopter. And he’d come in second. The two of us—​top of the heap for every high school in Western Canada.

  As soon as Connor opened the door, I held the notice I’d printed off above my head, whooped, and threw myself into his arms. But right away I could tell something was wrong. His body was stiff—​he held me, but it was like trying to hug a statue.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” He shrugged me off as if I were a too-warm coat on a summer day. “Congrats.”

  I wanted him to touch me again and found myself reaching out to tap his arm as I spoke. “Mr. Schmidt’s going to have a bird when he hears. He’s never had one student place, let alone two in the same year.”

  “Yeah.” Connor shoved his hands into his pockets. “You didn’t have to come here to tell me. They sent me an email too.”

  This wasn’t going how I’d pictured it at all. A sour knot twisted in my stomach. And even though I told myself that I was being paranoid, I was certain he was avoiding my eyes. “Are you mad that I won?”

  “No, of course not.” He looked past me down the street as if he hoped someone would come along to rescue him. “It’s just that I was counting on being able to list this on my college apps.”

  “You can still list it. You came in second.”

  “Yeah, sure. Listen, I told my mom I’d do some stuff for her in the yard before dinner, so I should go.”

  “I can help if you want.” I flexed my arm. “I’m stronger than I look.”

  “No, it’s fine,” he said. “I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”

  I had to fight the urge to shove my foot in the door so he couldn’t close it. “If you want, I can help you with your university application essays. I’m great at those things,” I offered.

  “No, it’s okay. I got it.”

  “I don’t mind, or you could write them and I could look them over. I’m a comma ninja, you know.” I was trying to make a joke, but it wasn’t working. I realized I was wringing my hands and made myself stop. I knew I needed to quit talking, but the words kept building up in my mouth until they tumbled out in a rush.

  He shrugged. “It’s all good. It’s the kind of thing I want to do myself.”

  “Are you sure you’re not mad about the science contest?” I found myself taking steps closer as he moved back.

  “I’m not mad, just stressed. Senior year coming up and all that. I’ll get over it.”

  But I had worried he wouldn’t get over it. I told myself that I didn’t need a fancy wooden plaque—​so why not drop out? The organizers would give him first, he’d be able to relax over his applications, and he’d realize how much I cared about him.

  Except it didn’t make a difference. If anything, it made things between us more awkward. Until he gave me the talk a day later.

  “It’s not you, it’s me. I s
till care about you—​but.”

  I hadn’t handled the breakup well. Understatement. My letter to Emily about what had happened must have sounded really dire and desperate, because Emily begged the camp supervisor to let her use their landline to call me, a strict no-no according to camp rules. But there was nothing she, or anyone else, could say that made me feel better. Not even my mom’s blog post on Dealing with Your Child’s First Heartbreak. And as stupid as I was for giving up my place in the science competition, it didn’t escape my notice that Connor hadn’t turned it down.

  Nicki snorted. “I know his type. They use people. He can’t stand the idea that you might be smarter than him.”

  “I don’t know if that’s it.” I hated that I still had the urge to defend him.

  She shook her head so that her hair flew around her face. “Don’t do that. Don’t make excuses for his shitty behavior. He’s a knob who made you feel bad about winning, because he couldn’t handle that he lost. I dated a guy like that once. I thought he was one thing, but in the end, he turned out to be someone else. Someone weak. He didn’t deserve me and this Connor guy certainly doesn’t deserve you.”

  I giggled at her slang. Knob. Knob. Knob. I took another long drink of the vodka, letting it warm me from the inside out. She was right. Connor was a knob. And if he didn’t want to date me, what did it say about his character that he still let me give up the award?

  “I’m mad about the science award, but that’s not what really ticks me off. What really makes me mad is that I didn’t see it coming.” The truth of the statement burned stronger than the alcohol. Connor was a dick, but I’d been stupid too, and I hated him most of all for exposing that side of me.

  “People like him should have to pay,” Nicki snarled. “If someone doesn’t stop them, they’ll just do it again to someone else. The guy I mentioned? He was married.”

  I sucked in a breath. “He lied about being married?”

  She waved off my comment. “No, I knew. He lied about how he was going to leave his wife. The point is, the weak ones will lie to get what they want.”

  I mumbled a sympathetic sound. Nicki was only a year older than me, but I felt a million years younger, as though I should be clutching a worn teddy bear. A married guy? It struck me as gross, but at the same time . . . more exotic than anything that had ever happened to me.

  We spotted the flight attendant strolling down the aisle toward us with a bottle of water and a stack of plastic cups. Without a word, we tucked the bottle of Grey Goose under the thin blanket we’d thrown over our feet.

  “You two need anything else?” the attendant whispered, leaning in as we took the cups of cool water from her.

  “No, thank you.” Nicki waited until the flight attendant had ducked behind the thick navy-colored curtain behind us before turning back to me. “I hate when people wear that much makeup. Who do they think they’re fooling? You’re old. Accept it.”

  I looked over my shoulder at the swaying curtain. “I didn’t notice.”

  Nicki sighed. “Women like her remind me of my mum. Putting on a show, trying to cover up who they really are.”

  “So, you live with your mom?”

  She looked down at her hands, her thumbnail chipping away at the pale dove-gray polish on her index finger. “I want to live with my dad, but she won’t let me.”

  “Can’t you go wherever you want if you’ve graduated?”

  “Whenever I mention it, she falls apart.” Nicki pitched her voice high and whiny. “Oh, I won’t be able to live without you. Your father took everything from me and now he wants my baby girl. I’ll die if you go.” She shook her head in disgust. “My dad feels guilty. He says I can’t move to Vancouver. He couldn’t live with her, but I’m supposed to stay.” Her eyes filled with tears that spilled down her cheeks.

  “Hey, it’s okay.” I fished through my tote looking for Kleenex. I didn’t find any, so I settled for passing over to Nicki a wrinkled paper takeout napkin that had been buried at the bottom.

  “Sorry.” She wiped the tears off her cheeks as if they personally offended her. She sniffed. “I’m not even sure I want to live with my dad as much as I don’t want to be with her. It just keeps getting worse. I’m always having to clean up after my mum. She’ll vomit in bed and not even wake up when she does it. I’m having to make excuses for whatever she’s done. If I stay, I’m miserable, and if I leave, then everyone thinks I’m a horrible person.”

  “I don’t think you’re horrible.” My chest ached for her. My mom drove me crazy at times, but she would never do anything like that, something that belonged in some kind of teen-issue novel.

  Nicki reached over and squeezed my hand. “Thanks.”

  I glanced down at our clasped hands. A wave of affection for her engulfed me. Emily and I had been best friends since elementary school, our friendship building slowly over countless sleepovers and shared secrets, but I had seemed to connect with Nicki instantly. That wasn’t like me. I’d always been the kid with straight As in elementary school but with scribbled notes on my report card about needing to work on my social skills. Nicki was the kind of person who wouldn’t have even noticed me, and maybe she wouldn’t have if the flight hadn’t been delayed, but it seemed as though she really liked me.

  Nicki took a deep breath as if shaking off her sadness. “I swear I don’t usually just spill all my secrets to a stranger.”

  My chest expanded with pride that she felt she could tell me things.

  “I promise not to tell anyone how much you hate Connor if you keep the truth about my mum to yourself,” she said.

  I raised my hand as though I were taking a vow. “Hey, what happens on the plane stays on the plane.”

  Nicki dived down for her purse and pulled out a Moleskine notebook. She tore several pages out of the back and passed them over. “Let’s get all the evil out. You make a list of everything you hate about Connor and I’ll make one for my mum. It’ll be cathartic.”

  I flipped the tray down and seized a sparkly blue gel pen from her hand, my fingers tingling with excitement. I wanted to put him behind me and this was exactly the kind of thing I needed to do. I’d had so much to drink that I needed to squeeze one eye closed to see the page clearly.

  I scribbled WHY I HATE CONNOR O’REILLY across the top and drew a sharp line under it. “I might need more paper,” I said, and Nicki laughed as she started on her own list.

  The anger I felt poured out of me and through the pen. I listed everything, from how he licked his finger before using it to turn a page in a book (seriously? gross) to how he made this weird fish-lip face when working on complicated equations. As soon as I finished, Nicki took the list from my hand and looked it over.

  “He quotes sports stats?” Her lip curled up. “Oh god, does he play that stupid fantasy football stuff too, where he makes up his own teams?”

  I snorted, picturing him checking his sports apps on his phone compulsively through the day and talking to his friends about trades. I inhaled vodka into my nose, choking for a second, until Nicki clapped me on the back. “You’re right, he is a knob,” I said. The tight ball of dread I’d been carrying around for weeks in my gut began to melt away. He wasn’t worth crying over.

  “The guy deserves the death penalty for being terminally in poor taste,” Nicki declared. I giggled. She pointed to the top of my paper. “You should add that.”

  I scribbled AND WHY HE DESERVES TO DIE under the heading. I paused. My mom would say being that vindictive gave the other person the power. I considered scratching it out, but Nicki was already reaching for the paper.

  She folded our sheets in half and tucked them into her bag, then held up her hands as if she’d made them disappear. “Love, the entire world would be better off without him and my mum. Now the list is gone and you can let go of him and the anger.”

  “I can’t let him ruin this trip for me.” My voice was low and serious as if I were making a promise to myself. I’d already let him ruin the summer. I couldn’t let him keep dragging me down.

  “Do you really want him gone?” Her voice was quiet and merged into the hum of the engines, making me lean forward to hear. “We have the perfect solution, you know,” Nicki said.

  “Solution for what?”