I stared her down until she looked at me. “I can’t do this anymore,” I said at last.
“Then don’t.” Desiree went back to her phone, made a point of ignoring me.
“Everything all right?”
I turned, found Aunt E standing at the curtain. “I’m going home,” I said.
By the time I got out of the building, I’d blocked Desiree on everything. Phone and email. I’ll show her—that was all I could think.
But as it turned out, I’d only showed myself.
INSTAGRAM LIVE JANUARY 16, 2018,
5:00 a.m. Eastern @TheDesireePierce212
A snowy New York sidewalk. Desiree Pierce stares straight at the camera, ignoring people streaming out of the club behind her. She’s solemn as she addresses the camera. “Someone saved my life today. Want to meet them?”
Erin Ambrose crowds into the frame so they’re cheek to cheek, their equally glassy eyes a few inches apart.
“This is Erin…” Desiree trails off, unsure of what comes next.
Erin speaks up. “Ambrose. Erin Nicole Ambrose.”
“Pretty!” Desiree says, then remembers she is supposed to be stoic. “This is Erin Nicole Ambrose and she is my hero. Let me explain. I was expecting a really important delivery of cookies.”
Erin chimes in. “I love cookies. I literally cannot function without them.”
“Exactly. I usually keep enough around, but I was running low. And my friend—Alfie—was supposed to drop them off. At midnight. And midnight comes—”
Erin interrupts. “No Alfie.”
“One a.m.”
“No Alfie!”
“Two a.m.”
They say it together. “No Alfie!”
They look at each other. Giggle. Then again remember this is supposed to be serious. Desiree turns back to the camera. “I call him. No answer. I keep calling because now I really want that cookie. And guess what? His car broke down. He wanted me to pick them up. But I’d been drinking, and I don’t drink and drive. I really thought I’d have no cookies. I’m all sad. And then this one comes up to me and is all ‘Why are you so sad?’”
Erin jumps in. “She explained to me what happened. And I felt so bad.”
“But today turned out to be my lucky day because Erin had cookies.”
“I was happy to share.”
“And we ate cookies and danced our asses off and now we’re going to eat.”
“I’m starv—” Erin stops abruptly. When she speaks, she’s panicked. “My purse. I left it in the club.”
Desiree’s eyes widen. “Crap. I remember seeing it in the bathroom. I’m sure we can get back in if we just explain.” She looks at the camera. “Love you all. Talk later.”
Fourteen
Get your skinny butt on up. It ain’t even five o’clock.”
Past Me should have changed the locks as soon as I moved into Gram’s house so Aunt E couldn’t just let herself into my apartment. As it was, she found Present Me in bed on my laptop. I’d been trying to hack into Desiree’s Instagram since I’d gotten back from the hotel. The username wasn’t the problem. The password was. I’d tried my birthday. Her birthday. Gram’s birthday, which I had tatted on my inner right wrist. Mel’s birthday, which I knew only because The Shade Room did a yearly post. Even Veronika’s birthday, which I’d searched for online, noting that her age was off by about two years. All were Not It. Lisbeth Salander I was not.
I wasn’t the only one who broke ties with Desiree after the accident. E! followed suit, dropping her from NYZ. The grapevine, by way of Aunt E, told me she’d been devastated. The network had wanted her to seek professional help. We all had wanted her to seek professional help. And she’d refused, parroting her new go-to line, that she’d never drink and drive.
Like the rest of us, the police had disagreed. Desiree had been charged. Just like I told her she’d be. But I hadn’t accounted for Mel’s money, which had gotten her a good lawyer, who in turn had gotten her off with just community service. She’d done an Instagram video in the car from the courthouse. A publicist must have been on the other side of the camera holding cue cards and a gun because Desiree went on and on about learning experiences and mistakes—all while not admitting any semblance of guilt.
There was no further mention of her blacking out or that she wasn’t driving. I’d thought maybe she’d given up on that story, but what Sherry had overheard suggested otherwise. Could Desiree have been telling the truth all these years? It suddenly seemed like it wasn’t BS at all, and that she’d found someone who could prove it. I could think of only one person who’d know if Desiree had been behind the wheel.
Zor-El.
But if Zor-El had been such a Good Samaritan, why wasn’t she helping Desiree now? Sherry’d made it sound like Desiree was angry. If someone else really had been driving, Desiree obviously hadn’t known who it was. If she had known, surely she’d have gone to them directly.
Had Desiree found someone else there that night too?
If another person had been involved, they’d clearly had something to lose, since they hadn’t come forward. What had they been hiding? And how desperate would they have been to keep it secret?
Since Zor-El was the only witness I knew about, she seemed like my best chance to find out what Desiree had uncovered—and what it might have to do with her death.
I just needed to find Zor-El.
But it wouldn’t be through Desiree’s Instagram DMs. Or her missing phone. Or the hotel bill that listed calls but not numbers, in order to protect their guests’ privacy.
So I’d gone through Desiree’s stuff twice. There weren’t any names, numbers, email addresses. Save for scouring her Instagram posts for an “I was there when you had your accident—LOL” comment, I wasn’t sure what steps to take next.
Instead of getting up, I asked Aunt E, “Did Desiree ever talk to you about The Accident?”
Aunt E and I hadn’t spoken much about it ourselves, but that’s what we’d always called it when we did. The Accident, like it was some privileged-white-people-in-peril show on HBO.
“Not a once,” Aunt E said.
She didn’t expand, as usual, just zeroed in on my Warm Apple Pie candle and trudged over piles of dirty clothes to blow it out. “I hate these things,” she said. “Always getting my hopes up that you finally cooked something.”
One of the reasons Aunt E and Gram had worked so well was they’d complemented each other. Aunt E was TV and ten-minute showers. Gram, books and baths. Aunt E was color. Gram, classic black and white. Aunt E had a loud mouth. Gram had a sweet tooth. One she’d passed down to me. Her chocolate pie recipe had been my potluck go-to since Kat first invited me to friendsgiving freshman year at Penn. But then both Gram and my mom died back-to-back and even chocolate pie lost its taste.
Aunt E looked around. “This room is more of a mess than the last episode of Real Housewives.”
I couldn’t argue. Aunt E loved her reality TV as much as her Bible. Once CBS canceled Guiding Light, she’d simply packed up and moved down the dial to Bravo and VH1. “Now get up, Lena. Buck’s gonna be here any minute.”