Page 26

In that dark, stinking apartment, Jordan cried for a long time.

When he finished, I helped him onto the sofa. I got some paper towels, wetted them at the sink, and pressed them into his hand. He stared at them. After a minute, I took them back and cleaned him up a little.

“A split lip,” I told him. He flinched when I checked it, but I made a warning noise and touched it again. “Give it a few days, and you’ll be pretty as ever.”

He didn’t seem to hear me. He didn’t have that look they get sometimes, that thousand-yard stare when they’re seeing somewhere else, or nothing, or hell. He was looking at me, searching my face, but if he heard me, the words didn’t register.

“Tell me what happened.”

His shoulders turned in. He chafed his arms. He talked down, toward his legs, but I could hear him fine.

“It was at Sunny’s party.”

Like I didn’t know. But I said, “Okay.”

“Tip wanted to split up. He said it was better that way.”

“Better how?”

Jordan pressed his fingers against his eyes, but tears seeped through. “To find somebody, you know. To hook up with.”

“But you didn’t want to.”

“No!” He dropped his hands and sent a wet, angry look up at me. “I loved him! We loved each other!”

“But he was still screwing around.”

“He said we were too young to be, you know, just the two of us. He said it would get boring. He said he loved me, but maybe he wasn’t built that way. To be with only one guy.”

“What did you do when he wanted to split up at the party?”

Jordan managed a miserable shrug. “I said okay. I always said okay. We’d had so many fights about it before, and—and if I put my foot down—” He breathed heavily through his mouth and wiped his eyes a few more times. “If I put my foot down, he’d break up with me.”

“What did you do?”

“I wanted to keep an eye on him!” Defensiveness made his tone sharpen. “To make sure he was okay! He drinks way too much. Drank way too much.” He had to wipe his eyes again. “If somebody gave him something, he’d do it. Didn’t matter what it was. He wanted to have fun. What if somebody put something in his drink? Or what if he was just too messed up and got in the wrong car? That happens all the time. Somebody had to watch out for him.”

“You followed him.”

“I was taking care of him.”

“What happened when Tip caught you?”

Jordan’s scoffing little breath was surprisingly mature. “He didn’t catch me. He was so wasted he didn’t have any idea what was going on.”

“Something happened, though.”

The boy stared off into the middle distance. Tears were drying on his cheeks, leaving pale salt tracks that were only visible when the light hit them exactly right.

“The guy who owns that house,” Jordan said, “do you know him?”

I nodded.

Jordan ran his arm under his nose and said, “He’s a creep.”

I nodded again.

“I went to pee, and when I came back, I couldn’t find Tip. When I’d left him, he’d been passed out in a chair, so I was freaking out. I thought somebody had taken him. Or I don’t know, he’d gotten sick or something. I looked everywhere.” Jordan swallowed. “I found him upstairs in that guy’s office. He was trying to give him a—he was on his knees, trying to get that guy’s pants open. Tip was so trashed he couldn’t even pull the zipper down. And that guy, he was pulling Tip’s hair. Hard, you know. Trying to hurt him. He was saying the worst stuff to him.”

“Saying what?”

“Calling him a fag. A fag whore. ‘Do you like that, you stupid fag?’ Stuff like that.”

Jordan stopped and cut his eyes away.

“What else?” I asked.

The boy squeezed his eyes shut.

“What else did Sunny say?” I said.

Jordan shook his head, but he answered in a whisper. “He said, ‘You want that big cock?’ And I thought, jeez, who is this guy who thinks he’s hot shit? And then he said, ‘This’ll be a first for me. Mother and son. Whose pussy do you think is going to be tighter?’” Jordan opened his eyes, but he wasn’t seeing me. “And then he slapped Tip. It was so loud. And what he said—it was like my brain turned off. All I wanted to do was—” But Jordan stopped. He swallowed. And then he said, “But Tip just moaned.” He drew out the word with disbelief. He didn’t say the rest of it, but I could hear the words he couldn’t bring himself to utter: like he liked it .

It was yet another version of the little drama that had played out at that party. I wondered how much of it was true—enough, probably, that I needed to talk to Sunny again. He’d insisted he hadn’t known who Tip was, but it sounded like not only had he known, but he’d gotten off on it.

“Did you know what he was talking about?” I asked.

Jordan shook his head, but he said, “Tip’s mom is, like, a dancer. There’s this place, the Beaver Trap.”

I thought about following up, asking if Tip had told Jordan about his mom’s experience at one of Sunny’s parties. But instead, I asked, “What did you do?”

The boy rolled one shoulder. “I ran in there. I told him to leave Tip alone. He told me to get out of his office.”

Jordan stopped, so I asked again: “What did you do?”

“I hit him.” His voice was shaky. “I never hit anybody before.”

“Did he hit you back?”

He laughed, and the sound startled me. “He just stared at me. He touched his cheek, and he said he was going to call the police, and then he left. He wasn’t going to call the police, though. He acted so tough, but I don’t think anybody had ever hit him before.”

“What was Tip doing during all of this?”

“Getting in the way. Grabbing at me. Yelling at me. He didn’t really know what was going on, but he knew enough that he wanted me to leave him alone.” Pain tightened Jordan’s voice. “Somebody had to take care of him.”

“Did you and Tip fight?”

“No.” But then Jordan said, “Not then. He grabbed a drink—there were two drinks on the desk, and I guess that guy, he’d made them. Because they were real glasses, you know? Not the plastic cups we were using downstairs. And then he went back downstairs. He wanted to keep going.”

I remembered the glasses in Sunny’s office. Holding the drink he’d mixed for me. Cool in my hand. How fragile it had felt, like if I tightened my fingers, it would shatter.

“I went after him,” Jordan continued. “I told him we had to leave. What if Sunny came back? What if he went to get some of his friends? Tip didn’t want to go, but I made him. I don’t think he knew what was going on. When we got outside, though, he must have figured it out, because he tried to go back in the house. I grabbed him, and he—he shoved me. He told me to leave him alone. Because I was ruining everything, the way I always did.” Jordan ran his fingers under his eyes, collecting a fresh trickle of tears. “He pushed that stupid glass into my hand and said I needed to chill. ‘You need to chill.’ He kept saying it and pushing that glass into my hand, like if I took a drink, I’d stop being—stop being so fucking pathetic.” His voice stalled out, and it was several moments before he finally managed to say, “I got so mad.”

Outside the apartment, a car door slammed. Male voices rose, competing with each other, shouting and laughing. Something about who owed money for pizza.

“I told him we were leaving,” Jordan said in a small voice. “I tried to grab his arm. He shoved me again, and he turned to go inside. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean it.”

And then I knew. He didn’t have to finish the story, because I knew. I’d seen Jordan lose control only a few minutes before. How he’d grabbed the closest thing at hand and hurled it at me.

“I just—I just threw it. The glass. I wasn’t trying to hit him. He was going inside.” He started crying in earnest. “But he turned around. He was starting to say something. I think he was going to tell me to go home without him. He turned around, and I’d already thrown the glass, and I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.”

Tears became sobs. I sat there and listened to the sounds of a heartsick boy who didn’t know what to do with all his guilt and grief and rage. In the distance, the familiar beeps and rumbling progress of a garbage truck provided the background track.

When the worst of the weeping was over, I said, “Why did Tip lie?”

Jordan sniffled and dabbed at his eyes with the paper towel he was still holding. If anything, he looked even more miserable—and guiltier—than he had before. “I felt awful about what happened. I did. I knew I had to—to pay for it, or whatever. But then I was with Tip when he woke up. I was the only one. His mom and dad were out in the hallway after his mom tried to claw Rory’s eyes out, and Rory had run off, and Tip kept asking me what had happened, and I realized he didn’t remember.” He twisted the paper towel in his hands. “I told him he’d been trying to score from this shady guy, and they’d gotten into an argument. I told him he had to make up another story. We had to come up with one together. Or he’d get in trouble, you know? So I made up a description of what the guy looked like, and we decided we’d say the guy came out of nowhere, like he was bashing Tip or something. And Tip was scared because his dad is Highway Patrol, and he knew his dad would kill him if he had a drug bust on his record, so he went along with it.”

There were a lot of things I wanted to ask, but I went with the most pressing question: “How fucking stupid are you?”

“I was upset! I wasn’t thinking clearly!”

“Upset? You weren’t upset. You were being a cowardly little shit because you didn’t want to get in trouble. You lied to those detectives. You sent all of us on a wild goose chase. You wasted everybody’s time. You let Tip think it was his own fault he got hurt.” That arrow went home; Jordan’s color dropped. I continued, “And you know the worst part? You helped Tip’s killer, you absolute fucking moron.”

Jordan made a weak, protesting noise and shook his head.

“What else have you been lying about?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Jesus Christ, Jordan.”

“I swear to God!”

“Do you know who killed Tip?”

“What? Of course not!”

“Don’t give me that. You’ve been lying since the day I met you. Do you know?”

“No!”

“Where were you the night Tip went missing?”

“I was at a night class, like I told those detectives. They talked to my professor and everything.”

“A night class? So fucking what? That’s an hour? A couple of hours? And then you came home, and Tip was mysteriously gone, but we only have your word for it.”

“He was gone.”

“Or you came home and you got in another fight.”

Jordan shook his head.

“Why not?” I asked. “You keep telling me you loved Tip, but you didn’t love him. You wanted him to be your boyfriend, and he wasn’t interested. He kept you around because you did things for him. You were a nice little house-fuck, and you did your chores—”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“—and he’d go out and hook up with whoever he wanted and do whatever he wanted and he didn’t give two fucks about your feelings—”

“It wasn’t like that!”

“—and even after you fucked up his face, he wasn’t interested in you. He didn’t want you. And you couldn’t stand that. You thought you finally had him because nobody else would want him, and he still didn’t want you. I bet that made you crazy.”

“We loved each other!”

“He didn’t love you. He didn’t even care about you. And you didn’t love him, not by the end. By the end, you hated him.”

“Yes!” The scream rang out in the kitchen. Jordan was trembling. “Yes! I hated him! I hated him! He was a fucking whore, just like his mom, and nothing I ever did was good enough for him! What the fuck is so awful about me that he couldn’t just love me?”He stood, and the crumpled paper towel spilled onto the floor. Pushing his hands through his hair, he paced the apartment’s front room, words tumbling out of him. “It was like—it was like if he could fuck enough guys, it wouldn’t matter what else was wrong with him. Rory was like that too. It wouldn’t matter that Tip’s dad hated him because he was jealous, or that Rory was always alone because nobody could stand to be around him for more than a quick fuck. I tried telling him it didn’t work like that. I told him I loved him. I told him that was enough.”

But it isn’t, I almost said. It never is.

Instead, though, I tried to focus. “What didn’t you tell me, Jordan?”

Jordan glanced over at me, his expression confused, as though he’d forgotten I was there.

“You don’t have to cover for anybody anymore. Tip is dead, and you told me what happened between the two of you. Now I need to know the rest of it. What else was going on in Tip’s life that you didn’t tell me? Who would have wanted to hurt him?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about the drugs?”

“He scored at parties sometimes.” If anything, Jordan looked even more confused. “You think someone killed him because of drugs?”

“I want to know what you haven’t been telling me.”

“I already told you! I told you about—about the party. I didn’t mean to hurt him—”

“Not that. The rest of it.”

“There isn’t anything else!”

“Bullshit! You’ve been lying since the minute I met you, and you’re lying now.”

“I’m not lying!”

“You and Tip cooked up that description of Darnell. You went to my house with Rory. You got in a fight with Darnell. And then somehow Tip ends up in my bed. That’s not a fucking coincidence, so tell me what the fuck is going on.”

Jordan gave me that look again—a mixture of confusion and disbelief. And then he said, “Who’s Darnell?”

“Darnell,” I said. “You went to my house, shit-for-brains. You sat in the car, and Rory went up to the door, and he got in a fight with Darnell.”

“That was your house,” he said, like he hadn’t understood something until right then. And then he fixed those stupid blond curtains and peered out at me and asked, “You really don’t know?”

“Know what ?”

He seemed to consider something for a moment. Then he started toward Tip’s room.

I followed.

“I didn’t know either,” he said. “I would have broken up with him if I’d known. People are so fucked up. You think you know them, then you find out they’re not anything like what you thought. That night you followed me to the park? Rory showed me, and we got in a huge fight. Tip was gone, and it was like…it was like he wanted it to be worse. Like he wanted to make it hurt even more.”

“Showed you what?”

But Jordan only pushed open the door.

Tip’s room had been searched—professionally, but thoroughly—since the last time I’d been here. You saw it enough times, and you started to recognize it, the economized attempt to make things look okay-enough-ish after ripping shit down to the studs. I wondered if Tip’s parents had been through here as well; I’d have to ask Jordan. But if it had been Tip’s mom, I would have expected her to take everything, and as far as I could tell, all of Tip’s belongings were still there. The air was stale, slightly off; it had been closed up too long, and the month-old laundry was getting rank.

Jordan moved across the room to the progress flag and undid the tacks holding it to the wall. He didn’t try to catch it; he just let it glide to the floor.

Behind it were photos. Dozens of photos. They were all approximately the same size, many taken in bad lighting, and they looked like they’d been printed on regular copy paper, instead of photo paper. At home, I thought. On a regular color printer. In every photo, naked bodies were on display. Many of them showed Tip’s face—mugging for the camera, his expression blending the smugness of a kid who’d just nutted with a kind of silly playfulness. In some, Tip’s partner seemed unaware of the photos—a bare back turned to the camera, or a face only partially exposed, eyes closed to suggest a post-cum daze. In others, the boys and men looked into the camera. One was a picture of Tip with an older man’s head between his legs. Tip looked like he was enjoying the rush.

“Rory’s got one too,” Jordan said. “He told me all about it after Tip left. Told me it was a competition. Their body count walls, that’s what he called them. Like a fucking scoreboard.”

The deputies hadn’t taken down the flag, I thought. It was a numb, distant realization. They’d searched his room, but they hadn’t taken down the flag. Because the whole case had been half-assed from the start.

“He’s got one of you,” Jordan said like someone walking out onto ice. “Rory. He said it’s you, anyway. There’s something over your face.”

I almost burst out laughing because it was so unreal. Sunny’s party. The college bros maneuvering me upstairs. The bag-and-tag job. Because, you know, it made it harder to get off if they had to see my face.

“This is why we went there,” Jordan said. He reached out, his finger brushing the curling edge of one of the photos. “To that house. To your house, I mean. Rory said Tip might be there.”

It was another picture of Tip. But different from the rest, because it had been taken after Tip had been injured. He still wore the bandage over one eye, and the cuts from the broken glass were scabbed and raised. But that only registered distantly, because I recognized the room in the background. I recognized the sheets on the bed, and the closet door, and way the light fell through the window. I recognized the broad back, and the sleeping face in profile of Darnell.