“I never told you I wasn’t there.”
“No, but you told me Cypress Cemetery held no special meaning to your family. That there would be no reason to think dumping Aubrey’s body there would be suspicious.”
“It doesn’t,” I say. “There’s not. I just stumbled across the search party, okay? I was driving around, trying to clear my head. I saw it in the distance and decided to look around.”
He stares at me, his eyes narrowing.
“In my line of work, trust is everything. Honesty is everything. If you lie to me, I can’t work with you.”
“I’m not lying,” I say, holding up my hands. “I swear.”
“Why did you decide to look around?”
“I don’t really know,” I say, taking another sip of my coffee. “Curiosity, I guess. I was thinking about Aubrey. And Lena.”
Aaron is quiet, his eyes trained on me.
“What was she like?” he asks at last, curiosity creeping into his voice. He can’t help it; I know he can’t. Nobody ever can. “Were you friends with her?”
“Something like that. I thought we were, when I was little. But now I see it for what it really was.”
“And what is that?”
“She was an older cool kid looking out for a younger nerd,” I say. “She was nice to me. She gave me hand-me-downs, taught me how to put on makeup.”
“That’s a friend,” Aaron says. “The best kind, if you ask me.”
“Yeah,” I say, nodding. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. There was something about her that was just … I don’t know. Magnetic, you know?”
I glance at Aaron, and he nods knowingly. I wonder if he had a Lena, too. I imagine everyone has a Lena in their life at some point. A person who comes blazing in like a shooting star and fizzles out just as fast.
“She used me a little bit, and I knew it, but I didn’t even care,” I continue, tapping my fingers against my coffee cup. “She didn’t have the best home life, so our house was something of an escape for her. Besides, I think she had a crush on my brother.”
Aaron raises his eyebrows.
“Everyone had a crush on my brother,” I say, my lips twitching into a gentle smile, reminiscing. “He didn’t like her like that, but I think that’s the reason why she came around so much. I remember, there was this one time—”
I stop, catching myself before I go too far.
“Sorry,” I say. “You probably don’t care about that.”
“No, I do,” he says. “Go on.”
I exhale, push my fingers into my hair.
“There was this one time, that summer. Back before everything happened. Lena was at our house—she was always making excuses about why she needed to come to our house—and she convinced me to break into Cooper’s room. I didn’t really do stuff like that … you know, break the rules. But Lena had a way about her. She made you want to push the boundaries. Live your life without fear.”
I remember that afternoon so vividly—the warmth of the afternoon sun stinging my cheeks, the blades of grass pushing deep into my back, itching my neck. Lena and I lying in the backyard, making shapes out of the clouds.
“You know what would make this even better?” she had asked, her voice raspy. “Some weed.”
I rolled my head on its side so I was facing her direction. She was still staring into the clouds, her eyes focused, her teeth digging into the side of her lip. She held a lighter in one hand, absentmindedly flicking it on and off between her bitten-down fingernails, the other held above the flame, moving closer and closer until a little black circle appeared on her palm.
“I’m positive your brother has some.”
I watched an ant crawl slowly up her cheek, toward her eyebrow. I got the feeling that she knew it was there; that she could feel it, crawling closer. That she was testing it, testing herself. Waiting to see how long she could take it—just like that fire, searing her skin—how close it could get before she was forced to reach her hand up and brush it away.
“Coop?” I asked, tilting my head back. “No way. He doesn’t do drugs.”
Lena snorted, pushing herself up onto her elbow.
“Oh, Chloe. I love how naive you are. That’s the beauty of being a kid.”
“I’m not a kid,” I said, sitting up, too. “Besides, his room is locked.”
“Do you have a credit card?”
“No,” I said, embarrassed again. Did Lena have a credit card? I didn’t know any fifteen-year-olds with credit cards—Cooper definitely didn’t have one—but then again, Lena was different. “I have a library card.”