“What?”
“The night of the parade last year. She spent the night here. With me.” The expression on his face is a mix of embarrassment and guilt. “We’re not little kids, Addie, we’re sixteen years old—”
“You were fifteen last summer.”
“Yeah, well, we didn’t do anything—or that much.” He averts his eyes. “So she was here that night, and she told the police that because it’s the truth, and then they started asking questions about the journal and if she went into Fiona’s room, but she didn’t, I know she didn’t, I would’ve woken up if she did, you know what a light sleeper I am, and anyway, Marion didn’t do anything.”
“Okay.” I put a hand on his arm. “I believe you.” But my mind is racing. Marion, here with Davy the whole night, the night Fiona died. “That still doesn’t explain why you’re looking for her journal now.”
He lifts his shoulders. “I thought maybe if I could find it, it would prove to them that Marion didn’t take it. They called her to the police station again yesterday to ask her questions. Her dad had to have her lawyer come out from the city.”
My heart skips a beat. Why do they think Marion, tiny little mouse Marion, has anything to do with all of this?
“What else did they ask her?” I ask Davy.
“Just about what she did when she was here that night, and then about what she was doing the night her brother died. She told them she was just at home, but she doesn’t think they believe her. They even—they even asked about our relationship.” Davy looks mad now. “Like they thought it wasn’t real or something.”
My mind is racing. I don’t know what to think. “Did you really think you’d be able to find Fiona’s journal when the police couldn’t?”
“I thought I’d at least try.” He frowns. “But all I found was this box of paper.” He picks up a shoe box off the floor with what indeed looks like paper in it. “No journal.”
I walk forward. “Let me see that.”
I riffle through the shoe box, thinking maybe the scholarship info came in snail mail form, but there’s nothing in there from the American Ballet Academy, just old receipts, mostly for leotards and tights. Next to me, Davy’s moved on to her desk.
“Did you find anything else in here?” I ask. “Anything from the American Ballet Academy?”
Davy shakes his head. I set the box down and frown.
Just because there’s no proof of any scholarship doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. I’ll just call them and find out.
I go over to Fiona’s desk. Her pink music box with the pop-up pink ballerina sits on top, the one I took her necklace from the day after she died. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard that tinkling tune, but I remember it like it was yesterday. Dunn-dun-dunn-dun-dunn-dun-dun-dun-dunn…“Greensleeves,” it’s called. It’s sad and haunting, and I have no idea why anyone ever thought it would be a good song for a little girl’s jewelry box.
That song’s creepy, I told her once.
I like creepy music, she replied. Someday I’m going to star in Giselle, which is, like, the creepiest ballet ever.
You’re weird.
You love me.
When I was searching her room last fall, I didn’t open the jewelry box. I didn’t want to hear that tune again. It would have made me too sad. But maybe she kept something from ABA in here—something I might have missed the day I took the necklace out. I was in too much of a daze then, my eyes puffy from crying. I open it now.
There’s a second where I hear only silence, and I have a moment of panic, thinking it’s stopped working. But no—there are the notes that will always remind me of Fiona.
Dunn-dun-dunn-dun-dunn-dun-dun-dun-dunn…
There’s no letter in here. But I do notice a little scrap of paper curled around the tiny ballerina. I pick it up. It’s a torn bit of paper with a series of numbers on it: 073114.
I frown. It doesn’t mean anything to me. Probably Fiona’s locker combination at her studio or something. I pocket it just in case.
I listen to “Greensleeves” one whole way through while Davy rummages through the lower desk drawer. It’s a mess of random things: old cards, a stuffed animal, a tangle of ribbons. The top drawer is no better: pens, paper clips, hair ties.
Davy sits back with a frown. “There’s nothing here.” He sounds frustrated.
“I didn’t think there would be.” I rise. “Clean up before you go,” I tell him. “And, Davy?”
“Yeah?”
“Just tell me if you find anything from the American Ballet Academy, will you?”
“Sure,” he says, but his head is bent over the bottom drawer, moving things around, and I’m not even sure he heard me.
20
The next day, I call the American Ballet Academy to ask about Fiona’s scholarship, but the lady on the phone is distinctly unhelpful, refusing to disclose any information on the grounds of privacy.
I’m filled with pent-up anger when I hang up the phone. If it were any closer than the city, I’d march over there right now and demand to—I don’t know, speak to the manager or something. But I can’t do that from here.
So I throw on my sneakers and head out on a run.
Running’s like math. Predictable. Uncomplicated. One foot in front of the other, over and over again. Put two and two together and get four. No interpretation, no nuance. When I was little, whenever things would start to veer off course for me, I would retreat into numbers. Multiplication tables. Prime numbers. The digits of pi. This past year, I ramped up my running, added it to my list of coping mechanisms, chanting my prime numbers along with my steps.
Forty-one, forty-three, forty-seven, fifty-three, fifty-nine—
Jeremy used to come with me on my runs, jogging along next to me and calling it his “pre-workout” before the more intense ones he did for football.
Not Gen, though. Gen hated running.