Something else is bugging me.
I slide open the closet and pad down the hall in my socks. Fumble for the switch to the outside porch light.
Turn it off.
Open the front door. Unwrap the flag.
Turn the porch light back on.
Flip the finger to the old man on the wall.
After that, I barely remember my head hitting the pillow.
No quiero entrar el armario con las piernas.
I don’t want to go in the closet with the legs.
I’m good at Spanish, but I’ve never dreamed in it.
Creo que Señor Finn estaba aquí.
I think Mr. Finn has been here.
My eyelids flash open. I’m not dreaming. People are a few feet away, outside the closet door. A window opening. The start-up of a vacuum, maybe in the living room.
My group home instincts fly back.
Alguien viene!
Someone’s coming!
That was a standard hiss from Lucy Alvarez—at ten the youngest of all of us, whose bed was closest to the door at the group home. It sent us scrambling to hide our contraband.
In this closet, I am the contraband.
I quickly grab my phone off the floor. I thrust the backpack into a corner with some purses, stand up, and slide my body behind the rack of Odette’s clothes. I line up my feet in between two pairs of shoes. There is no time to grab the quilts and pillows and fold them back on the shelf.
I’m crossing my fingers that no one will want to go into the closet with the legs.
It was the beer, I think. The maid noticed the missing beer. Or maids. There are two of them. Possibly three. That’s why they think Odette’s husband has been here.
The vacuum shuts off. More Spanish, but it’s comfortably blurry, from another room. So when the closet door slams open, I’m not prepared.
There’s a pause while I hold my breath and whoever is standing in the opening considers my pallet on the floor. Or considers my feet. Or considers the backpack. Maybe all of it. I don’t know how observant this person is, and my own eyes only see the dark blue lace on one of Odette’s very short dresses. I’m wishing Odette didn’t make such gutsy fashion statements.
Ven acá!
Come here!
She’s calling one of the other women.
I’m thinking, Grab my backpack. Run. I’m fast—enough to anchor the 4x400 in regionals and probably enough to run six blocks and beat out the 911 call. But I wait.
Muy triste, the woman is saying softly. El señor Finn estaba durmiendo aquí. Lo dejaré solo.
Very sad. Mr. Finn was sleeping here. I will leave it alone.
Si, déjalo.
Yes, leave it.
The door shuts, dropping me back in darkness. I’m grateful for a lot of things right then. For Lucy Alvarez, who read all of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to me in Spanish from her bed by the door (and taught me how to cuss like a good Mexican—chinga tu madre being my favorite).
For the kind housekeepers, who, if they weren’t sensitive human beings, would have grumbled and folded the quilts and pillows and stuck them back on the shelves. In the process, they would have heard my breath. Nudged my arm. Seen there was an extra pair of legs.
I hide behind blue lace for almost two more hours, until I hear the doors click.
While I search my backpack for my makeup bag and toothbrush, I decide this scary little interruption was a good thing.
The housekeepers have come and gone and won’t be back for at least a week. Maybe I can stay a couple of nights if I continue to be careful. I slide open the closet door softly. It’s only 8:32 A.M.
Odette’s puffy white comforter doesn’t look creepy. It looks like a cloud of marshmallows.
Just for a minute.
“Angelica Odette Dunn.”
My name wakes me up. There’s a man hulking over the bed, reading from my driver’s license.
My first thought is a Spanish/English jumble.
Mr. Finn is aquí.
My second is, He took my backpack. My map, my phone, my keys, my backup eye, my money. My survival kit had been sitting on the end of the bed.
It’s hard to think right now with him standing over me. My heart is banging. I press both of my thumbs to a soft spot below my knuckles on my middle fingers, a trick I learned from Bunny.
“So, Angelica Odette Dunn,” he says. “What are you doing in my bed? And what the hell are you doing with your hands? Keep them where I can see them.”
“Finger yoga,” I stutter out. “I’m resetting myself. So I don’t have a panic attack. Really. It’s a thing. It relaxes a nerve around the heart.”
“Bullshit.”
“I can explain everything. Can I have my backpack? What did you do with it?”
“Start with the explaining.”
I pull myself into a sitting position, my eye searching the room for my backpack. Nowhere. Not good, not good, not good. “I was here for the memorial ceremony yesterday.” My drawl has wormed out of its hole. “The hotels in town shut down. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be in Odette’s bed. It’s wrong.”
I’ve got a much better picture of him now that I’m upright. Not so hulking. But tall, like in the photo on the dresser, where he looms almost a foot above Odette. Except instead of a Big Bend T-shirt, he’s wearing a blue collared shirt and tie. Retro Warby Parker specs, not sunglasses. Instead of a smile—pure, hot anger.
“So you’re one of the cult?” he asks. “A groupie?”
“Groupie? No. Nothing like that. I loved Odette. I named myself after her. You saw that on my driver’s license.” Slow down. Find your rhythm and everything will be OK. “I want to know who killed her. I want … justice.”
“Don’t we all,” he mutters. “Everything you just said, by the way, is the textbook definition of groupie. Add the items I found in your backpack—a stalker map and a gun—and you are well over the top. You’re going to need to speed it up here if you want to convince me not to turn you in to the police.”
“I knew Odette. I knew her. She helped me. She changed me. Five years ago. She helped me get an eye. This magic eye.” I’m tapping frantically on my face. I must look insane.
I have a quick decision to make here, and I make it. I slide out my eye and hold it in the palm of my hand. I don’t expect him to touch it. I do expect him to be just the slightest bit shocked and to take it down a notch.
I can count on one hand the people I’ve purposely exposed my empty eye to, and now I’ve done it twice in the last twenty-four hours.
My head is tucked, the way it always is when my eye is out. Finn reaches for my chin and forces my face up. I fight the urge to pull away.
I know what he’s looking at. My zombie eye. My deepest vulnerability.
Shame, uncertainty, anxiety, nausea. Every single fucking time it feels like this, and every single fucking time, I think, maybe I will be over it.
“That’s a nice trick,” he says, dropping my chin. “But it doesn’t make you less of a criminal. It doesn’t prove anything to me. Put your eye back in and get up.”
Bunny will be so disappointed if she has to bail me out of jail. Criminal. Will I lose my scholarship? Will I lose her?
That’s when Odette rescues me.
“I think I have something that will,” I say. “Prove something to you.”