But Joey had just set me back on my boot heels. Humiliated me, actually. Ruined pretty much any chance that I might let anyone else get close for a good long while. I hadn’t been nasty enough about it that Alex had taken me literally.
And IknewAlex. Didn’t I?
It’s what everyone said when someone in their lives hit the headlines. I thought I knew him. But I’d thought that about Joey, too, and I wasn’t sure of that anymore. Of anything. At all.
Lemon propped her chin on my hip in concern, and Bear licked the tears off my face as I cried.
I must have fallen asleep finally, because I woke from a nightmare at some point—falling, a black cavern below. The same dream I had all the time, the same jolting wake-up, as though my sleeping self couldn’t let my dream self strike bottom.Wasthere a bottom?
Then the dogs leapt off my mattress and raced away. What the—?
I sat up, groggy and confused. It was still dark, early winter morning. I’d already had one early morning, but this Friday was still going to happen as scheduled, apparently.
Oona was knocking around in the kitchen a little more noisily than normal. I took a deep breath and rolled out of bed.
She was standing at the counter in her shabby plaid robe, a man’s. Evidence of some past conquest or a secondhand find, I didn’t know. It hung down to the floor, and her floppy gray bunny slippers poked out below the hem.
“You know we can’t leave food out, right?” she said, still rubbing her short dark hair dry with a towel. She’d punk it up later. “You don’t think ants can climb up this high, butoh, they like a challenge.”
I was barely awake, and stood there, blinking in the light. Oh, right. The cereal I’d poured.
“And it’s pretty wasteful, anyway,” she continued. “Mixing three servings worth of, like, red number forty–dyed marshmallows into the good stuff and then not even eating it. I’m the one who buys the good granola, you know, not Alex.”
This was bad timing. I’d already caught the tremor in the arrangement of favors that allowed me to stay in the apartment. And I’d forgotten to buy milk.
If Oona kicked me out, I’d have to move back into my childhood bedroom at Alex’s house and stop pretending I hadn’t hit bottom. Or—
Where would I go if I couldn’t trustAlex?
“Sorry,” I said. My eyes welled up. “I…”
Oona’s gold nose hoop glinted as she cocked her head. Like Lemon did, hearing a noise she didn’t recognize.
“Come on, Doll,” she said, more gently. “Crying? Who are you? I’m notthatmad. And you’ve been helping so much with the dogs, anyway—you know what? Never mind. I just… haven’t been sleeping well lately with all the banging around next door and the ghost has beenreallyactive… This isn’t a sobbing situation, is it?”
“Joey’s dead,” I whispered.
“What? Wait,what?” She looked all around the apartment, as though something or someone would contradict me. “Oh, no. Oh, that’s— Is that what was going on out in the alley? They’ve got it yellow-taped off but— Oh, you poor little snow angel, are you serious?”
She made a physical gesture that made me wonder if she’d been about to hug me.
We weren’t on hugging terms. She cradled her own elbows. “So he… he didn’t run out with the rent money, or hedid?”
“I don’t know,” I said impatiently.
Oona was older than me by about fifteen years, with a real job and everything, but sometimes she could be so… something. I didn’t know her all that well, really. I’d only been there a week, but she’d been out a few nights already—the visiting cousin in town—but when we were in the same place at the same time, she could be overly chatty and fluttery, like a wild bird caught inside, flapping at the windows.
“But he’s dead, either way,” I said. “And Alex…”
I stopped. I couldn’t bring Alex into this. I wasn’t ready to face what he might have done and why, or ready to rat him out without being sure, anyway. Oona and Alex were pals, and she wouldn’t want him to go to jail—but she was also a stickler for rules. Like cleaning up the kitchen after you used it. Like not murdering people.
“What about Alex?” she said cautiously.
“Nothing. I just… I don’t know how to feel.”
“Sure, you do,” she said. “It’sJoey. Dopey, argumentative Joey who might have robbed you blind and got you kicked out of your place—”
“And cost me, like, my entire vinyl collection,” I said.
