This is Not a Love Letter Read online

  It’s kind of funny, and we start laughing.

  My phone buzzes on the coffee table. I rush for it. On the screen, it says: Chris. It’s your phone. It’s calling me.

  Oh my god.

  I answer, hopefully, “Chris?”

  Silence. The person is breathing on the other end.

  “Hello? Who is this?”

  “Bitch.”

  “Where’s Chris?” I say. “Why do you have his phone?”

  No response. No breathing. But the person doesn’t hang up.

  I scream. “What have you done to Chris, you fucking sick asshole?”

  “Give me the phone,” Steph says, reaching for it.

  “Answer me!” I yell.

  More breathing.

  “I have a gun, just so you know. It’s loaded.” Oh god. I’m so scared. I don’t want him to kill you if you’re still alive. “Please. I want my boyfriend back. Please let him go. I’ll do anything.”

  The guy hangs up.

  “Fuck you!” I scream into the phone. I’m filled with panic. Searching for something to do. Some way to help you. I should have let out a loud scream, broken his fucking eardrums.

  My chest tightens around my breath like a fist. It hurts. My whole body is shaking. Steph wraps her arms around me.

  “It’s okay,” she repeats. “It’s okay.”

  Her voice comes from far away. I’m not really hearing her. I’m thinking about how your phone pinged near my house yesterday.

  I hold up my hand to shush Steph, and then I walk carefully around the piles to the back door, no time to put on my shoes.

  I run outside in my bare feet and through the rusted gate. Steph’s right behind me. The gate slams behind her. It’s loud. The neighbor’s dogs are barking. I sprint. There’s a car with its lights on, in front of my friggin house.

  The engine roars, and there’s a flash of light as they drive fast, away from my house. I fly down my driveway, toward the road. It’s a yellow Honda. Dave Johnson’s car.

  I chase after it, screaming and cussing him out, but he just drives away. I call the detective, can’t barely breathe. “The guy just called me from Chris’s phone. He called me a bitch. I think it was Dave Johnson. He was outside my house.”

  “What?” the detective says. “Back up, Jessie.”

  “Dave Johnson has Chris’s phone! I ran outside because of what you told me about Chris’s phone pinging by my house yesterday and Dave Johnson was there.”

  “You saw his face?”

  “I saw his car.”

  “You got the plate?”

  “No, but it was him.” Why didn’t I get the plate?

  “Okay, Jessie, we’ll get the call tracked right away. Is your mom home?”

  I feel hysterical. “She won’t help! She never helps.”

  “You shouldn’t be alone right now, love.” That word, love, stops me, it’s so Irish, so kind.

  “Steph is here,” I say.

  “Okay, you girls just stay inside, and lock your door, okay?”

  I’m staring at Steph. Too late. We are standing on my lawn. The bright streetlight is shining down on us. And I can’t just sit inside and do nothing.

  11 AM Tuesday, the police station

  The next morning, Josh and I sit across from Detective McFerson on cushy chairs in his relatively bare office. His face looks grim. He asked us to come in. No idea why. And I’m kind of scared.

  His office is weird. It doesn’t look like the office of a detective who’s doing everything to find a missing guy. There’s no giant board, like on TV, with all the details of your case. Some files are sitting on his desk in front of him, along with a cup that holds some pens and a gold-framed photo of a blond woman and two little girls.

  I try to read the label on the top file, but he flips it over.

  The smell of Indian food is wafting in from the hall. I feel hungry and try to remember the last time I ate.

  He clears his throat. “I asked you kids to come in because I wanted to tell you that we’re halting the ground search.”

  I jump up. “You can’t!”

  Josh glances at me, worried.

  “Sit down, Jessie,” the detective says. I glare at him, and drop down in my chair, clicking my short fingernail on the plastic armrest.

  He takes in a heavy breath. “We’ve been talking to a number of friends and his family…I want to be honest with you, Jessie. We think that there’s some evidence he may have taken his life.”

  “What?” I shout, glancing at Josh. His face has gone white. Did he tell him about the rig? “What evidence?”

  “The print, for one,” he says. “We got the lab results back. It looks like it could be a match with his running shoes. It’s a seventy percent match and indicates a forward trajectory. Whoever belongs to that shoe went into the water.”

  “Even if it’s his print”—I break off, gulping, trying not to cry—“someone could have pushed him in. It doesn’t prove anything.” You can swim, but the current is strongest now. The rapids are close. I close my eyes. Breathe. I force the words out. “If he jumped, there wouldn’t be any print. He’d jump all the way into the water. Maybe they hit him in the head. Maybe he was barely conscious.”

  “We also have an eyewitness now who saw him on the riverbank, right by where you found that print.”

  I glance at Josh. His arms are resting by his sides. He looks exhausted. He has no more energy to fight.

  “Did the person actually see him jump in?”

  “No, he didn’t,” the detective admits. “The eyewitness was walking across the bridge. He saw Chris standing on the bank. He said he didn’t think much about it at the time. But he noticed because it was so late, and he saw a person of color, which isn’t so common here.”

  “Who is the eyewitness?” My voice sounds strangled.

  “The person was anonymous. They called in. We don’t have a name.”

  “That’s convenient,” I say. “What time did he see him?”

  “After midnight.”

  “But you can’t see that spot from the bridge, not even in the day.”

  He raises his big eyebrows. “Jessie, we think he went down to the river earlier, ate those pistachios, thought about it for a while, and then he went back to say good-bye.”

  “You think he dropped the pistachio packet on the ground? He would never litter. Something had to have scared him.” Would you have littered just to get back at me? “What about the phone calls I’m getting? And his phone showing up all over town. And how Johnson’s dad tried to pin the vandalism on Chris, even though Becky said she and Tamara did it, and Becky might be tall but she doesn’t look like Chris at all. Nope, there’s no creepy shit going on. It’s just fucking normal that a guy jumps into a river that terrifies him, even though there are a million other ways to kill yourself.” My rage is full on now. He lifts his eyebrows. I want to tear those eyebrows right out. “It’s hard for you to imagine, isn’t it? Those nice white boys hurting him, throwing him into the river. You don’t want to see their perfect futures ruined, do you? So of course you say he tried to kill himself. You know what that’s called? Racism.”

  “Whoa.” He waves his hands. “First off, I’m not racist, at least no more than anyone else. I try not to be biased.” He’s gritting his teeth. His cheeks are flushed. He looks real mad. Give me the calmest person and I’ll push him to the brink. He goes on, “I do think Johnson and his friends were harassing Chris, possibly for months, and that recently this harassment has gotten out of control. It might have played a role in Chris’s depression. But there’s no evidence of foul play. None.”

  “There’s no evidence he jumped!”

  “Jessie,” he says, softly now. “We think his depression may have gotten worse over the winter. It might even have had a seasonal component. And then, it didn’t get better. Once the chemicals go off—” He shakes his head.

  “What do you mean, his depression?”

  He squints at me, and then at Jo
sh. “You don’t know?”

  “His mom said something,” Josh admits.

  “What?” I bark.

  Josh explains, “I guess he had issues, like, before. In Brooklyn.”

  My chest hurts. You did mention something. That you were having trouble getting your shit together. That was part of why you all moved to Pendling. More nature, that kind of thing, get out of the big city, but I thought it meant you were in with the wrong people. Yes, like a gang or something. I know that’s messed up.

  The detective clicks his pen on his desk. “Did you notice anything lately?”

  I don’t want to admit to anything because then he’ll stop looking at Dave Johnson.

  Does love have to end in heartbreak?

  “A little,” I say. “After March, I guess, he acted needier, or he’d space out sometimes.”

  Josh sighs, heavily.

  I add, “But I don’t think it means anything.”

  “The Northwest can be hard on people sometimes with all the rain; seasonal depression can affect some people pretty strongly, and it doesn’t always go away.”

  I just stare at him.

  “I’m just trying to sort out the pieces here, Jessie. Sometimes the most obvious answer is the right one. But I’m not giving up. Not by a long shot. We’re going to find that phone. And”—he hesitates—“you should know, we’re going to search the river tomorrow. We’re sending divers in.”

  “Divers?”

  “It’s standard procedure when someone goes missing near water.”

  My heart is a small quivering animal. “I bet you anything they aren’t going to find him in there.”

  Josh looks at me, miserable, and then shifts back to the detective.

  “You might be right,” McFerson says. “But I learned a long time ago not to make wagers about death.”

  I don’t say anything, even though I know he’s wrong. And tonight, I’m going to prove it.

  10:00 PM, Tuesday, the bridge

  I wait until ten. This is when you were last seen running toward the river. Our last reliable sighting. I need it to be really dark out.

  I jump on my bike and ride fast toward the bridge. The rain is coming down in sheets, slapping me in the face, making it hard to see. Cars splash me with pothole water. I’m getting drenched from all sides. But I ride faster, following my light, ducking my chin.

  Did an eyewitness really see you in our spot? Did you come down here, think about jumping, and then come back later? Is it really that simple? Then why does someone have your phone? Why are they calling me?

  You’re running beside me now. It makes me feel a little less alone. You grin at me, dimple and all, and rain water drips down your face into your mouth. You stick out your tongue to catch it. I join you. Did we ever do this? Is this a memory? Or just my imagination? It feels real. You feel so damn alive.

  How can they be searching for you in the river tomorrow?

  You sprint ahead. Your T-shirt is soaked. Your running shoes kick up muddy water onto the backs of your legs and your white shirt. I chase you on my bike.

  I hit the bridge.

  My tires buzz on the slick surface.

  I jump over the curb onto the sidewalk, and my bike skids out, but I manage to get it back under control. You disappear. I’m disappointed, even though it’s just my own damn mind, and I could make you come back if I wanted. I need the real you, not the imaginary you.

  Halfway up the bridge, I stop and lean the bike against the railing. I stand there for a minute and scan the surface of the swirling, angry water below. There are no floating bodies. Which is good.

  I look toward our spot, or where I think our spot is. Hard to see in the rain.

  Beside me, cars are whizzing by. The headlights hit me, but nobody stops. Nobody wonders why a girl has stopped on the bridge with her bike in the pouring rain.

  The river hisses below, black and churning. The lights on the bridge shine down on it, shimmer off the surface, like a shield, hiding whatever might be underneath.

  I tuck my hands into my armpits. The railing is not high. A person could easily climb it and get on the other side and jump. If it were a high bridge, maybe they’d build a higher railing.

  I look at our spot. Mr. Tom, the cedar, blocks the view. The branches swoop down, block even people standing on the bank. The eyewitness couldn’t have seen you standing there. That’s what I like about our spot; we can see out, but people can’t see in. I mean, if he could see you from the bridge, think of all those times we had sex there. Oh god, right? In my brain, I hear you say, Making love. Ha-ha. You always say, making love.

  I walk along the bridge and stop every few feet to look, but it doesn’t make a difference. I walk back. Maybe if the person were taller? I step up on the lower bar of the slippery railing and then go higher.

  When I’m at the top of the railing, I lean forward, like I’m on the Titanic. The cold wind whips my hair against my face, the rain beats down, and I squint, trying to see if there’s any way someone could see you. It makes no difference. The guy couldn’t have, at least not near our spot. And the rest of the bank is really tough to get down. There’s too much shrubbery and trees and moss.

  Why wouldn’t you just jump in by the Pitt, closer to the rapids, if that was your plan? Maybe you tried, but Johnson and them were there? Your second choice would be our spot.

  There aren’t a ton of black guys around here so the eyewitness couldn’t have seen a different black guy. Unless it was the whistler. Trying to make it look like you killed yourself.

  I stare down at the swirling, dark water. The rain is dumping down on me. I’m shivering like crazy.

  The whole thing makes no sense. Not to be morbid, but everyone has the one way they’d choose to go, if it came to that, and there’s no way this would be yours. You’re terrified of the river. I’m terrified of fire. You think I’d light myself on fire? No fucking way. Why would anyone pick the very most terrifying way to die?

  The river rages below. The wind blows right through my wet T-shirt. I’m shaking from the cold. I close my eyes and send out another useless brain message. Hey, baby, give me a sign. Let me know if I need to stop looking.

  I wait. There’s no thunder. No lightning. No sign.

  11:20 PM Tuesday, researching

  On the news tonight, the detective says they are moving into a body-recovery phase. He says there is sufficient evidence to believe you’re in the river. I turn off the TV.

  Sufficient evidence, my ass.

  Body-recovery phase?

  Oh god.

  Tears drip down my face. I’m a sniveling mess.

  If they’re sending divers in, I got to be prepared. You know me. I need to learn everything about the science of it. Somehow, it calms me.

  I pull out my laptop and start researching, wiping away at my face. Hard to read with all the waterworks going on. If you’ve been in the river since Friday night, that means your body’s been submerged in water for four days. Will your body have deteriorated in the water? Will you be bloated?

  Now don’t take this like I’m giving up. I know you’re not in that river. I know it. With every part of my soul. But I still got to be ready, that’s just how I am. So I type into Google: What happens to dead bodies in water? This is what I learned, for your information. (You’re welcome.)

  What Happens to Dead Bodies in Water: An Optional Science Report for Sickos

  If you drowned in the river on Friday night, your body would sink as soon as the air in the lungs was replaced with water. Rigor mortis would set in after about three to six hours. Now you’d be stiff, at the bottom, drifting among the weeds. Your body would stay down there until the bacteria in your gut produced enough gas to make your body float back to the top. This would take about a week. After your body floated back to the top of the water, your head, arms, and legs would still hang down because they wouldn’t have the gas making them float. A body in water stays pretty intact for that first week of floating, though it ge
ts cracks and blisters. Then fluids from your gut cavity would start seeping out of your nose and ears, and eventually the pressure from the gas could make cracks in your skin for the fluids to ooze out of. Bugs would be attracted to your body at this point. You’d still be identifiable without relying on DNA tests for another week. Your skin would turn blackish green. That’s what it says, but I’m pretty sure they’re only talking about white people’s skin. So I don’t really know what you would look like, if you were in the water. Which you are not.

  7:00 AM Wednesday, the river

  In the morning, Josh rides by on his bike with Sam, and I follow him on good old Ella, down to the water. I have to ride hard to keep up, but I’m so damn exhausted. Steph came over after work and slept on the sofa. I crashed out for a while, but mostly, I just did YouTube research, watching people searching rivers for bodies.

  My breath wheezes out of me. God, my legs are aching.

  It’s weird following Josh when I normally follow you. I’m used to staring at your back muscles in your gray T-shirt as you run.

  Then pop! There you are. You’re jogging beside me now, looking from Josh to me, your dimple creasing, but you’re not smiling. You have to admit, it would be weird for us to go separately.

  Josh slows on the trail as he nears our spot. Sam’s tongue is hanging out of his mouth. His big lab eyes look back at me.

  I call up, “Let’s go watch by the Pitt.” I can’t be in our spot, not now. I’ll just keep imagining you jumping in.

  Josh rides on.

  At the Pitt, there are more beer bottles than last time. There’s some charred firewood too. Looks recent. Maybe people were down here last night. I wonder if it was Johnson. How could he have an alibi? I keep thinking about how he couldn’t look at me.

  Josh and I sit on the bank, and Sam runs around to the water, laps it up, and then climbs the bank by the trees and flops down next to us on his side, tongue hanging out.

  The divers are upriver, under the bridge. My stomach turns. Why would they be there? Do they think you jumped from the bridge? You wouldn’t need to do that. You could just jump from the side and let yourself drift out to the rapids. I mean, if you didn’t hit your head or get sucked under, you could still live, but people die in this river all the time.