“So what do you guys think Iris is going to tell them?” Paulie asks, expertly redirecting our attention. Marcelina gives her a grateful smile.
“Not a damn thing,” Roya says, reaching to the bottom of the french fry pile to extract an unsoiled wedge. “There’s nothing to tell.”
Paulie rolls her eyes. “Okay, but they’re going to ask if she knows where Josh is, and—”
“And she doesn’t,” Roya interrupts. “None of us do. We all know where some of Josh is,” she adds in an undertone, “but none of us are ever going to know where all of Josh is.”
“Except me,” I murmur.
“Except you,” Marcelina says through a mouthful of fries.
“Speaking of,” Roya says, reaching for my burrito, “are you doing anything tonight?”
“What? Tonight? Why?” I see Marcelina and Maryam exchange eye rolls. They start talking to each other about some makeup trick they want to try, and Paulie joins in on the conversation, even though she almost never wears anything beyond lip balm. And just like that, Roya and I are alone in the middle of the cafeteria. She watches me with raised eyebrows. “I mean, yeah, why?”
“I want to go to the reservoir,” Roya says around a large bite of my lunch. A piece of rice is caught in the divot of her top lip, and she flicks out the tip of her tongue to get it. I steal a sip of Paulie’s water, but it doesn’t make my mouth feel any less dry.
“Sure,” I say. “To, uh … take care of a thing?”
“Yeah,” Roya says. “To take care of a thing. You walked today, right? I can drive us there after sixth period.”
“Okay,” I say, and then Paulie is asking me a question about makeup that I don’t know the answer to, and the moment’s over. Under the table, Roya’s foot brushes against mine, and Paulie has to repeat herself three times before I answer.
“Oh, fuck,” Roya mutters. I glance over, and she’s looking behind me.
Her mom is standing in the doorway, and she doesn’t look happy. She’s wearing slacks and a fitted black blazer—the outfit she calls her “head-bitch-in-charge uniform.” Her badge hangs from her belt and her hair is up in a tight, shiny brown bun, and there’s no two ways to look at it: she’s here in a professional capacity, and she does not have time for games. She points at Roya, then hikes a thumb over her shoulder. Roya stands up, slinging her backpack over one shoulder. She jams her hands into her pockets and stalks out of the cafeteria without saying goodbye to any of us.
As she disappears through the doorway, my phone rings. I look down. It’s Roya’s name and face on the screen. I answer, expecting it to have been a butt-dial, but a muffled version of Roya’s mom’s voice comes through. I put my phone on speaker and rest it in the middle of the table. We all lean forward to listen.
“Were you at that party?” Chief Cassas is asking. There’s rustling. I’m pretty sure Roya’s got her phone in the front pocket of her hoodie.
“Yes.” That’s Roya’s voice, loud and clear. She called me from inside her pocket on purpose, I’m sure of it now. Two things dawn on me at once: First, the fact that Roya knows that we would all lie to her mom to protect her, and she wants us to have our stories straight. Second—the fact that she can call me without looking at the screen.
I bite my lip and try not to smile. She has me on speed-dial.
It’s probably nothing. She probably has all of us on speed-dial.
Or maybe not. Maybe it’s just me.
“I can’t believe this,” her mom is saying. “You told me you were going to be at Alexis’s house. Are you lying to me now? Is this what we’re doing?” Roya says something I don’t catch, and there’s another rustle. “I don’t care if you wanted to go, you know the rules, and—”
“It was worth it,” Roya says. “I’m never going to have another prom night, Mom. I wanted to be with my friends. I would do it again.”
There’s a long silence, and I turn the volume on my phone all the way up, thinking that maybe Roya’s covered the mouthpiece of the phone by accident. It turns out to just be a pause in the conversation. Her mom’s answer comes through at top volume, and we don’t miss a single word.
“Do you know what happened to Josh Harper?”
We all wait, holding our collective breath. Marcelina snaps the hair tie around her wrist in a quick, steady rhythm.
“No,” Roya answers simply, and we can hear her mom’s sigh.
“Okay,” Chief Cassas says. “Okay. We’ll talk about the rest of it tonight, then.”
“Fine,” Roya says. “Am I grounded, though? I was going to go to the reservoir with Alexis this afternoon and …” Her voice has gone vague, uncomfortable. There’s a sudden cacophony of rustling, like she’s shoved both hands into her pocket and is fumbling with the phone. We don’t hear the rest of her question or her mom’s answer, and then the line goes dead, and the bell rings.
None of us move. All around us, people stand up, clearing their tables and dropping trash into the row of huge gray garbage cans in the middle of the cafeteria.
“Okay,” I say. “Well. See you guys later?”
“Yeah,” Paulie says. She’s the first to go. She plants a kiss on top of my head, then walks away without saying goodbye.
“Don’t worry,” Marcelina says, running both hands through her hair before starting to put it up in a messy bun. “Roya and Iris are solid. They’ll be fine.”
I stay at the table as they all leave, knowing that I’ll be late for study hall but not caring. I stare at the ten black hearts on the backs of my nails and imagine all of my friends, one by one, lying about whether or not they know what happened to Josh.
If Marcelina’s wrong, and they’re not fine, it will be because of those lies. It will be because they lied to protect me. If they’re not fine, it’ll be all my fault. But I’m too scared to do the right thing and turn myself in, or at least tell them they don’t have to lie.
My friends love me more than I deserve. That’s never been a question. The question is, how long will it take them to realize that?
8.
WHEN I GET TO THE parking lot at the end of the day, Roya isn’t there yet, so I walk up and down the rows of parking spaces looking for her car. My phone is buzzing in my pocket, but I don’t pull it out, because I know what the notifications will be.
Did you hear about Josh?
Do you know what happened?
Did they call you in for questioning?
I heard he ran away from home.
I heard he got kidnapped.
I heard he died.
It’s all anyone can talk about. Josh is missing, and the cops are asking students about it, and nobody seems to know what happened. That gray-haired cop let Iris go after a few questions about the party, but that wasn’t the last time I saw the cop—she’s been pulling kids out of classes all day. Everyone is trying to figure out who was at the party, who saw Josh leave, who he was with. Everyone is trying to figure out if they should be sad or scared, or if they should admit that they didn’t really know him that well, or if it even matters that they didn’t know him. Because if one of your classmates vanishes, even if you never talked to him before, it still hits you. We all know that we can disappear, even if we don’t really feel it in our bones yet. We’ve spent our whole lives being reminded that we can disappear, from don’t-talk-to-strangers to don’t-drive-drunk. But it’s hitting a lot of people now for the first time that other people can disappear. That people they care about can disappear.