Page 48

‘Mom?’ Jet called through the empty house.

Not empty.

Reggie scuttled around the corner, launched himself at her.

‘Hello, hi, is that the Regmatron?’ Jet tickled his ears, one-handed, fingers down his spine to the base of his helicopter tail. ‘Who’s a good boy?’ she asked, because she always did. ‘Who’s a good boy?’

Reggie yawned, pattering over to Billy, wagging for him too.

‘Of course Mom’s out when I need to speak to her.’ Jet straightened up. ‘All this talk about Please come home, Jet, but she’s not even here. And she calls me useless.’

‘She’s got to be back sometime.’ Billy closed the front door. ‘We can wait.’

‘We have time,’ Jet said.

M s were hard to say now, one side of her mouth too weak to press her lips together, speaking out the other way, smiles cut in half. She only knew because she’d tried to smile at Billy this morning, when he made her pancakes for breakfast. Got up early to do it. Better than fries.

Jet followed the dog, through the doorway into the living room. Here again. No pools of blood or spatter anymore, but Jet knew where they’d been, scrubbed away, painted over.

Billy held his breath, walking through behind her.

He’d seen it that way too.

Held Jet’s lifeless body, seen the insides of her undone head. His voice breaking as he screamed her name, breaking something inside Jet too as she’d watched and rewatched the doorbell footage.

Billy shouldn’t have ever seen something like that; he was too good for it.

He breathed again when they reached the kitchen.

Reggie pounced on a balled-up sock, discarded beneath the bar stools, grunting as he showed it off to them. His wagging tail disturbed the two dish towels hanging by the stove, made them sway. Marching avocados and lemons, an incomplete set.

Jet kept going, through the laundry room to the side door.

She pulled down on the handle.

It was locked now, lesson learned. Just too late to make a difference.

She flicked the catch and tried again, pushing the door open.

Reggie was first out, barging past, off to dig a hole for his sock and lose it forever.

Then Jet stepped out, then Billy, not one word between them, like they both knew exactly where they were supposed to go without ever needing to say it.

To the pool.

It was covered now, a white plastic cover, creamy against the surrounding ash-wood deck. Wouldn’t be uncovered until the summer, or late spring, or whenever Dad decided they’d had two sunny weekends in a row and it was time.

Jet wondered then if they’d ever replaced the water, or if it was still the same water that drowned Emily, hoping the chlorine would take the death out of it.

Her footsteps echoed on the deck, coming to a stop. Billy’s too.

‘You were here that day.’ Jet stared at the pool. ‘Do you remember it?’

Billy chewed his lip. ‘As much as any eleven-year-old can remember a day like that.’

Jet nodded. ‘Tell me again.’

‘When we found her?’

‘The whole thing.’

Billy took a breath, filled himself. ‘It was a nice day. I was out in the yard with Mom, helping her plant a new flower bed. Sunflower seeds, I think. They still grow there now. Dad was inside cooking, or maybe he was out at the store picking up stuff for a barbecue later. He came back, and he said Luke had been knocking on the door, asking to come play with me. Which was …’ Billy paused.

‘Well, Luke never wanted to play with me. He was thirteen, I was eleven. And you were mine – m-my best friend. But you were out at that spelling thing, so Dad asked if me and Luke wanted to play soccer outside. We played for a little while. And then … see, I was thinking about this last night, after we found what we found. And I thought it was strange at the time, but I haven’t thought about it in years. ’

‘What?’ Jet looked up from the pool.

‘So, we’re playing soccer, one on one, and Dad’s referee and Mom’s still gardening.

And Dad throws the ball for us, but it goes right into the bushes at the back of the yard, against the fence.

We both go in, me and Luke, to find the ball, because it was really overgrown back there.

And I find it, and we come back out. And Luke’s arms got all scratched up, and I remember Dad making a big deal out of it, seeing if Luke wanted a Band-Aid, asking Mom to go inside to get some cream.

Think he felt responsible. But …’ Billy locked eyes with her.

‘I don’t know how much you can trust my memory. But the thing is, what I remember –’

‘– Billy.’

‘I think Luke’s arms were already scratched up before we went into the bushes. He was wearing a T-shirt, and I was sure of that at the time.’

Jet studied his stormy eyes. ‘What kind of scratches?’

‘Lots of them,’ Billy said, ‘all over both arms. Little ones. The kind you’d get if you climbed through a bush and got scratched up by thorns, or if someone scratched you, like in a fight.

The police asked about them later, when we were giving our statements.

We all told them about the bushes: me, Mom, Dad, Luke.

But …’ Billy’s eyes darkened, lines pulling around them.

‘Last night, I was thinking, there’s something else too.

Luke said he hadn’t been in the pool at all that day.

That’s what he told us, and the police after. ’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Jet said. ‘He hadn’t.’

‘He said he’d been inside all day, playing PlayStation. Didn’t know where Emily was, got bored, came around to see if I was free to play.’

‘Yeah, that sounds right.’

‘Except,’ Billy said, ‘when we were playing soccer, when I got close, to tackle him, I think I could smell it on him, in his hair.’

‘What?’

‘Chlorine,’ Billy said, eyes widening, mouth too, a flash of his bottom teeth.

Jet looked back at the covered pool, a switch in her heart, throwing off the pattern.

‘Are you sure?’ she asked.

‘No, I’m not sure. It was so long ago. And maybe it’s only because of what we saw in Emily’s messages. But I think … I don’t know. Sorry.’

Jet chewed the inside of her cheek, felt nothing, only knew she’d broken the skin when she tasted the metal bite of blood.

It was seventeen years ago; Billy was just a kid.

Jet couldn’t really trust her own memories of that day, so that ruled Billy’s out too.

Luke did go in the pool later, after. Billy was probably getting confused.

‘What happened next?’ she said.

‘When we finished playing soccer, Dad was starting the grill and Luke was going home. But then Luke realized he’d forgotten a key and wasn’t sure if any of the doors were unlocked at yours.

Mom said she’d walk Luke back, make sure he got in OK.

I went too. Followed my mom everywhere back then.

’ He sniffed. ‘We tried the front door first. Knocked. No one answered. We thought Emily had probably gone out. So Mom walked us around the side to try the doors at the back. It was open, that side door.’ He pointed to it, the one into the laundry room.

The same one Jet’s killer had walked through.

‘Me and Mom were just about to leave when Mom looked over here and …’ He trailed off, eyes flickering over the covered pool.

‘You saw Emily,’ Jet said, not a question.

‘You couldn’t really see her,’ Billy said. ‘Just the colors. The shape. On the bottom of the pool.’

Jet swallowed.

‘Mom screamed when she realized. Screamed so loud. Luke ran back over. Dad heard, across the road. He came running. So did Mr Griffin, from next door.’ Billy closed his eyes, like he could see it all again, unfolding in front of him, seventeen years gone in a blink.

‘Dad was the one to jump in, right away, all his clothes. He swam down to the bottom. Those were the longest few seconds I can ever remember. He came back up without her. Said that her hair was stuck in the drain and he couldn’t pull her up.

He told Luke to run inside and find some scissors.

Luke did, fastest I’d ever seen him move.

He jumped in the pool to get the scissors to Dad.

Dad went under. Even longer this time. Came back up with Emily in his arms, hair ragged, half cut away. ’

Billy moved closer to the pool.

‘He got her out, right here.’ He bent to touch the exact tile.

‘Luke helped, pushed her legs up. And then Dad started CPR. But … she was already blue. I remember thinking that – that it was too late. Mr Griffin called the ambulance. And Mom, she was hugging Luke. And I watched. Right here.’ He stepped back and pointed at his feet, where he’d stood as a little boy.

‘Dad refused to stop, the whole time, even though I think we all knew. The ambulance arrived maybe ten minutes later, took over. And then it was only a couple of minutes until you got home with your parents.’

Billy looked over at her finally, back here and now.

‘You were still holding your little trophy.’ Billy choked up, coughed into his fist. ‘I’ll never forget the sound your mom made, when she saw Emily. People don’t scream like that, it …’

Jet remembered it too. But people did scream like that. Billy had, when he found Jet.

‘So it was your mom who found Emily?’

That pit of guilt opening up in Jet’s gut again.

‘Yeah,’ Billy sniffed. ‘She was the first.’

‘Did she … did she ever talk about Emily after?’

Billy looked at the sky. ‘We sometimes talked about what happened, about that day. She always got upset.’

‘But did she ever mention … did she know what Emily wanted to tell her, or that she wanted to tell her something?’

‘What are you thinking?’ Billy asked her.

Jet wasn’t sure what she was thinking, hoped she’d figure it out as she was speaking.