Shade Me Read online

  For the next hour I punched and kicked until my legs were wobbly and my arms felt like they’d been filled with sand and even the blue faded. I was drenched with sweat, my hair lying in a limp ponytail down my back, my dobok wet through at the shoulder blades. I felt good. Like I could take on anyone, even anonymous bad guys. I felt like me again.

  After, I went back to the changing room and peeled off my dobok. I used a towel to wipe myself off, then sat on the bench, trying to cool down and catch my breath.

  I couldn’t get Peyton out of my mind. I felt guilty for not going back to the hospital. I didn’t know why she’d asked for me, but she had, and it was shitty of me to just leave her lying there in a hospital bed because I was too afraid of running into her friends or her brother or whatever other dumb excuse I’d been giving myself for staying away. I still didn’t want to, but I had to go see her. Just suck it up and go.

  PEYTON’S ROOM WAS just as I had expected it to be. There were flowers on every flat surface, as if a celebrity had died. There were stuffed toys and so many balloons they were like cloud cover along the ceiling. In the middle of the jungle of get-well wishes, looking sallow and broken in a nest of crisp white blankets, lay Peyton. Sitting next to her, just as he had been the night before, was Dru.

  He had been leaning his forehead against the mattress but looked up when I walked in. I suddenly felt smelly and gross and wished I had showered after my workout. And then I was pissed for being worried about something as stupid as Dru Hollis thinking I smelled bad. I could wrap him up and take him down before his muscles could twitch a response. Why would I worry about what he thought?

  Because he makes you see violet, Nikki. Even more than Jones, my brain tried to answer, but I shoved the thought away. That was last night. That was me in a weak moment.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  I gestured at the plants all around. “For starters, these people. And, I don’t know, your family. Don’t you have another sister?” I knew he did. She was younger than me. A sophomore. She was fragile and wispy, with creamy actress skin and perfect everything. She was Peyton: The Starlet Version, waiting to happen in full force the minute we crossed the graduation stage. I’d seen her a few times, in the halls. She was always giving this sweet little smile and giggling like a tween, but there was something calculated about her. I couldn’t stand her.

  “Half sister,” he said. “Luna. She came earlier.” His mouth turned down when he said this, and I wondered if maybe she’d been a big, dramatic mess, and he wasn’t very good at crying scenes or something. I could definitely see a Hollis being unable to handle emotion. Emotion and the press didn’t always go together.

  “What about your parents?”

  “Out of town,” he said. “In Monaco. They’re trying to get back right now.”

  I tried to imagine what it must be like to have something like this happen while you’re on vacation. I couldn’t do it. When Mom died, our lives stopped. Dad shut down, seeming to wrestle with so many regrets and memories they practically bowled him over.

  Ever since, he’d been an emotional desert. He never talked about Mom. A freelance photographer, he wandered through life clutching his camera like a safety blanket, without even seeming to notice when a model hit on him or an actress threw herself at him. He was just a void. Half the time, he ignored me. The other half, he tried to be my friend. But I knew he would come to my side if something happened to me. Instantly.

  Wouldn’t he?

  He never solved Mom’s murder, I thought, for the thousandth time. He tried, I reminded myself. But every lead was dead.

  “Anyway,” Dru said, “a few friends have been in and out. But that cop has been hanging around and making everyone feel uncomfortable, so they haven’t been staying.”

  “The same one from last night?”

  His jaw tightened. “I guess. Crew cut, stubble, major superiority complex.” Again, there was something in his voice I couldn’t quite place. Something severe, off-putting.

  “Detective Chris Martinez,” I supplied. “Seems pretty harmless. Has he found any suspects yet?”

  “Not that I know of. He’s all about chasing his own tail. I told him he should be out there, asking around, interviewing people, following leads, or whatever it is cops do. Not in here, watching her . . . die. It’s not like Peyton’s attacker is going to be hanging out at the hospital.”

  I stepped closer to the bed. At the moment, the monitors were all shrouded from my line of sight by balloons and plants. I was trying to keep the colors at bay. But I could feel the crimson edging in on me. My palms started to sweat.

  “That would be pretty stupid with you sitting right here. I’m guessing you wouldn’t mind it, though, getting a chance for a one-on-one with the person who did this.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Yeah.”

  I took another step. The crimson was flooding my peripheral vision, but I ignored it. My mouth was dry as I went all the way to Peyton’s bedside and eased into the chair across from Dru. I focused on her tattoo, letting those colors dazzle the crimson away. Red is an apple. Blue is the sky. Yellow is the sun. Orange is a tabby cat. Green is the grass. . . . “Have there been any changes?”

  He shook his head, still not looking at me. “Looks like it was a blunt weapon. A board or a baseball bat or something. Messed up her brain pretty bad. I wish I could have stopped it. In some ways she’s the centerpiece of our family. When she moved out, it upset everyone.”

  “She’s the centerpiece of a lot of things,” I said, thinking about the conversations at school, my voice coming out more bitterly than I’d intended it to. Then it sank in what he’d said after that. “Wait a minute. She moved out? Where?”

  Dru paused and squinted at me. “Why are you here, Nikki?”

  I ignored his question, my mouth moving faster than my brain. If people knew she’d moved out, they weren’t talking about it. Which was odd. “When did she move? Where is she living?”

  He shrugged. “A couple of weeks ago. I don’t know where. Nobody told me.”

  A couple of weeks. Right around the same time she got her hair cut and stopped coming to school. This seemed like more than a coincidence. Something had clearly been going on with Peyton Hollis before this happened. “Can’t you ask your parents where?”

  “I told you, they’re in Monaco. I don’t know what was going on. Why are you here, Nikki?” he repeated a little more forcefully.

  “They called me,” I said.

  “Yeah, last night they did. But why are you here today?”

  That, really, was the question of the hour. Why was I there? Why, after the sucker punch of reliving my mom’s murder in that bay last night, had I come back?

  A distant part of me realized that maybe that sucker punch was why. Maybe because I had to prove to myself that it wasn’t my mom lying there. Maybe to keep the nightmares from coming back, or even just to assure myself that, even though my mom’s killer had never been found, Peyton’s attacker would be. Maybe, somehow that I couldn’t explain, coming back today made me feel safer.

  But how could I explain all that to Dru? There would be no explaining it in a way that would make sense to him. And I wasn’t big on sharing life experiences with others. Of course he would be curious about me. Suspicious, even. Dad had treated everyone like a suspect for years after Mom’s death. Because anyone could have been.

  “I wanted to see if she was okay,” I said.

  “I get that.” He stood and placed his hands on his hips. “But you said that you two weren’t close. I’ve never seen you hanging around our house or with my sister at all. Is there more to it that I’m not seeing?”

  Yes. There was more to it. More, even, than just the memory of my mom. More than being shaken by seeing a classmate snaked up in all those wires. More than any sort of morbid curiosity or even the fact that part of me wanted to see him again.

  It was more than Peyton calling me.

  I
t was that she had called only me. She had called me when she had scores of friends, admirers, bandmates, and her own family right here in Brentwood. And that wasn’t even accounting for the army of official legal help I was guessing the Hollis family had on call.

  She had called me.

  Me.

  Someone she had no ties with.

  “It’s just . . .” I scratched the back of my neck, trying to decide how much to let him in on what I was thinking. “I know that Peyton tried to call me last night. I don’t know why, and I don’t even know for sure it was her. But I know that somehow I became involved in something that it makes no sense for me to be involved in. I know that Peyton—or someone using Peyton’s phone, but my gut tells me it was her—called me about an hour before she was brought here. She didn’t try to call you or your parents or your half sister. She called me. Why, Dru? How am I involved in this?”

  He didn’t respond, just shook his head helplessly.

  “I don’t know either,” I said. “And maybe a lot of people could walk away from that, but apparently I can’t. So that’s why I’m here. So I can get answers when she wakes up.”

  “And if she doesn’t make it?” he asked, his voice rough and unsteady.

  I swallowed, considered Peyton’s form. She was so bruised and battered, it would be difficult to believe that she could possibly survive, even if I hadn’t seen the crimson pulsing through Bay 19 last night. “Then I really can’t walk away,” I said.

  He sank back into his chair, but instead of picking up Peyton’s hand, he leaned his elbows on the mattress and rested his forehead in his hands. He rubbed his eyes with his palms and slowly looked up at me. “You’re going to find her attacker,” he said. Not a question. Not a suggestion. A fact.

  Live in Color. Live in Color. Live in Color.

  Red. Blue. Yellow. Orange. Green.

  Peyton’s tattoo pulsed at me, so beautiful, so brilliant. The black-and-gray rainbow surrounded by undulating letters. Lying in that bed, her chopped brown hair greasy-looking against the softness of the pillow, rings of dried blood around her nostrils, her face misshapen and discolored, Peyton didn’t look like the edgy girl-in-charge who I’d always known her to be. I could still hear that frightened voice—the one I’d mistaken for a child—coming through my phone the night before. Peyton was in trouble, and for some reason she’d thought I could help her. She wasn’t frightening or frustrating or annoying here—she was dying.

  I couldn’t walk away. Not this time. Not like we’d all eventually walked away from my mother.

  I supposed this was the conclusion I had been arriving at ever since I’d gotten the mystery phone call the night before. Dru hadn’t been the only reason I’d wanted to show up at the hospital today. I’d wanted to show up because I couldn’t just let it go.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m going to find out who did this to Peyton. And why.”

  5

  DRU DIDN’T HAVE much to say after I told him I was going to find Peyton’s attacker. He seemed so tired. And maybe a little afraid.

  “I’ll talk to my dad,” he said. “See about offering a reward.” But the words were monotone, emotionless, and I actually felt kind of sorry for him. What must it be like to be the only one in the family who was there to stay by Peyton’s bedside? And why was it I would never have thought Dru Hollis to be the sitting-by-someone’s-bedside type?

  So I sat opposite him, cataloguing the visible wounds on Peyton. There were two obvious blows to her head. One had split the skin under her eye and blackened the entire side of her face. There was bandaging around her head that suggested trauma to the back of it as well. One arm was now casted. The hand on my side of the bed was swollen, the palm a fist of purple and green. Clearly she’d tried to defend herself with it.

  A few stragglers came in here and there. They hung their heads with appropriate sadness—some of the more artistic girls actually wiped the corners of their leaking eyes—and left behind cards and more balloons and flowers. Some of the girls had obvious histories with Dru; others were obvious about their desire to create histories with him. But, without exception, we could hear them giggling or gossiping in the hallway before they’d even left the unit. How hot is Dru Hollis, you guys? Think we could get into Exchange tonight? God, her hair was the grossest.

  Fake.

  Fake. Fake. Fake.

  I wondered who among them could have been her attacker. Who had Peyton pissed off? Maybe someone who’d gotten trampled at one of her concerts or wasted at one of her parties. Someone she’d insulted or left out or turned down. Or a boyfriend she’d dumped. Maybe it wasn’t about her at all—maybe someone had auditioned for something and blamed her dad for not getting the part. Maybe Dru had loved and left the wrong girl . . . or the wrong girl’s mom. God, the possibilities were endless.

  Dru had just gotten up and announced that he was going down to the lobby to find a soda when Bill Hollis burst through the door, crisp tan slacks and navy Club Med polo looking far too fresh to have been on an airplane for fifteen hours. Behind him came a bored-looking blonde, petite and tan, pressed into a skintight wrap skirt and sandals. I’d never seen her before, but I assumed she was the elusive matriarch of the Hollis family: Vanessa.

  “So what’s the situation?” Bill Hollis barked before Dru or I could even speak, striding to Peyton’s bedside. He looked down at her, his hands on his hips, the way he might regard a film location or a testy set. “Christ,” he mumbled.

  “Oh,” the woman breathed, scurrying to the other side of the bed, where she bent over Peyton, brushing stray clumps of hair off her forehead. “My God. Look at her.” She turned to Dru, reached up to cup his head in her hands. “Oh, Dru.” He ducked away from her touch.

  “The situation?” Bill repeated, clearly annoyed at having been interrupted. He finally saw me in the room and gave a curt nod—what I guessed was his version of hello. I stood up, feeling awkward, and maybe even a little starstruck—Bill Hollis was standing two feet away from me. I opened my mouth to excuse myself from the room.

  Dru’s eyes flicked to me, uncomfortable, but he didn’t give me time to speak. He gestured toward Peyton. “This is the situation. She’s been like this since they brought her in.”

  “And what are they saying about her prognosis?” Bill Hollis asked, checking his watch, still all business, as the blonde settled into the chair Dru had vacated and began tapping on her cell phone.

  “They’re not,” Dru said. “Not to me, anyway. Still too early to tell, I guess. But it doesn’t look good.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” Bill Hollis turned to me, his icy blue eyes turning my insides cold. “And you are?”

  But before I could open my mouth, Dru answered for me. “A friend of Peyton’s.” I gave him a curious look. Why the lie? But I guessed maybe I knew why. Bill Hollis was not in a mood for games—and who could blame him?—and he might consider it a game for someone who wasn’t exactly a friend to be there. Fern green feathered around us, giving me an itchy feeling I always got in awkward situations.

  “Were you the one who found her? Do you know who did this?” Bill Hollis asked, his gaze penetrating me. And then, as if flipping a switch, his eyes softened and his mouth curved into a pleasant tilt—the man from the magazines. “Should we be thanking you?” He held out his hand. “There will be a reward, of course.”

  I stared at it, unsure what to do, my head shaking of its own accord. Bill Hollis was probably not the kind of guy whose handshakes went unreciprocated, but something about him oozed minty distrust that made my heart pound, even more so than with Dru. I was too scared of him to touch him.

  “No,” I said, meaning no, to all of the above.

  The blonde suddenly sprang from her chair. “Dru. Baby,” she said, her voice a purr. “Have you eaten? Have you slept?” She ran her hand over his head, down his cheek, resting it on his shoulder.

  Dru rubbed his palms over his face, sidestepping away from her. “No, not much,” he said. “I’ve
been waiting for you.” This he said mostly to his dad.

  “Well, you should get something,” she said. “I’ll drive you. We don’t need two of you in hospital beds.” She stood, bent over the bed, and ran a knuckle down the side of Peyton’s face. “The poor dear,” she said, and then she was gone.

  “You should go with her,” Bill Hollis said. “I’m going to find a doctor. Get some information.” He glanced around the hospital room. “We need to get her moved. I’ll call Cedars-Sinai. Someplace a little more private. This is no place for one of ours. The press.”

  “Dru,” the woman called from the hallway.

  Dru nodded, and then, with a glance at me that was both wary and warning, followed the woman out of the room.

  “I should go, too,” I mumbled, and hurried out, wondering what I had just witnessed.

  DAD WAS GONE when I got home. He’d left a note on the kitchen counter that he was on a shoot in Santa Monica and not to expect him home until the following night. With some single dads, “being on a shoot in Santa Monica” could be code for just about anything, but with my dad, it meant he was actually taking photographs in Santa Monica and would be coming straight home after. Ten years was a long time to get over losing your wife, but Dad was still married. Married to his camera. Married to a ghost.

  Some people would probably really hate it if their dad was sleeping around, finding someone new, but I actually wanted my dad to move on. I worried about what might happen to him after I moved out. In some ways, I thought Dad’s inability to move on was part of why I was chronically failing. If I didn’t graduate, I wouldn’t have to leave him. If I didn’t leave, I wouldn’t have to worry about him being alone. It was a fucked-up system, but the Kill family was nothing if not fucked-up.

  I went straight to my bedroom and dropped my things on my bed, then shucked off my clothes and headed for the shower.

  I leaned forward against the tile shower wall and let the water massage my screaming back muscles.