Surface Tension - Kling Christine - Страница 39

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“My name is Seychelle Sullivan. Maybe Elysia mentioned me.”

I saw in her eyes that she did recognize my name, but her defenses weren’t down yet.

“Yeah,” I went on, “we sure had some great times together. Did Ely ever tell you what we did on her seventeenth birthday?”

A hint of a smile sparkled in her eyes, and she nodded. “She told you about the gorilla suit? She once told my friend B.J. that she loved gorillas. Well, I was complaining to him that I didn’t know what to get her for her birthday, and he said, ‘Let’s rent her a gorilla suit!’ And we did. We made her wear it all weekend—even to work. Only she’s such a shrimp, it was the funniest-looking, shortest-legged gorilla you’ve ever seen.” The room grew terribly quiet when I stopped laughing. “I mean was. She was such a shrimp. God, that’s hard to get used to.”

After another long, uncomfortable silence, Sonya stuck out her chin and said, “She called you her guardian angel. But I don’t believe in angels.”

“Yeah, she called me that because I was just trying to look out for her. I knew she didn’t have parents who were going to care, but I cared. A lot. And Ely knew that.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

“And I still care about her now. I care about what they’re saying about her, and I know it isn’t true. I don’t believe Ely’s death was an accident or suicide. I don’t believe she was willingly using drugs again, either. Someone killed her.”

She walked over to the closet and began pulling clothes off the hangers, balling them up and throwing them into the suitcase. “I don’t know anything about that.”

I stayed quiet for a while, knowing the silence would work on her.

Finally she flopped down onto the bed and sat hunched over. She stared at the carpet and rubbed her toes across the fibers. Finally she looked up. “What do you want? I don’t know nothing. Leave me alone!”

“Were you working the door when Ely came home Friday night?”

Her blue eyes glanced up at me with a guilty look, the way Abaco used to look when she’d been left in all day and had peed on the floor in the cottage.

“I don’t think I should be talking to you.”

“Why not? I was a friend of Ely’s. I’m just trying to find out what happened to her. Don’t you want to know what happened to her?”

I almost didn’t hear it, she spoke so softly. “No,” she said, and she started to cry. She had looked so tough, so invulnerable at first, that I had nearly forgotten she was just a kid.

I pushed aside her suitcase and sat next to her. “What is it, Sonya?”

“Sunny, call me Sunny. Ely did. I hate Sonya.” She wiped at her eyes trying to regain her composure, but the tears continued to spill down her cheeks. “Shit, I gotta get out of here.”

“How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

Oh, man, at fifteen, I was still playing on a girls’ softball team and hanging out on the river with my dad. I was tall and lanky then, dressed in cutoffs and T-shirts to hide what curves I had, and boys ignored me. I had no idea what it would be like to be a little girl in a woman’s sex-kitten body like Sunny’s.

“Where are you from?”

“Indiana.”

“Don’t you think your family misses you?”

She didn’t answer right away. Then she said, “I don’t have a family. My parents died when I was little.”

“I’m sorry. I kinda know what that’s like. My mother died when I was eleven.”

She didn’t say anything for a long while. The room was quiet aside from her occasional sniffles. Finally she looked up, her blue eyes now rimmed in red. “Do you still miss her?”

Decades can go by and you can think you are so over it, and then one little question can just rip it all open again and make the wound as fresh and raw as it was that hot day on the beach. “Yes. Every day of my life.” She nodded and didn’t say anything more for a while as we sat there next to each other each essentially alone with our memories.

She inhaled deeply. “I was raised by my sister and her husband.”

“Where’s your sister now? Maybe you could go back to live with her.”

“I don’t know where she is. Probably dead. She got on drugs, and then she tested positive. She just left.”

There was more to the story, and though I felt pretty certain I knew what it would be, I had to let her tell it.

“That was when Ray started going after me. Then he threw me out because I wouldn’t sleep with him anymore. Said I wasn’t good for anything.”

It was a different variation of the story told by most of the girls in this place.

“Is there anything I can do to help you?”

She turned and looked at me, as though calculating what harm or good I could do her. “You helped Ely a lot. She told me.”

I took a deep breath to keep the quiver out of my voice. “She was my friend. I’m really going to miss her.” Sunny stood up and went into the tiny bathroom. I heard the water running. When she returned, the tears had stopped.

“I might know something that could help you a little. But see, I’m getting out of here. And I don’t have all that much time or money.”

I opened my shoulder bag and pulled a twenty out of my wallet. Her offer hadn’t been well disguised, so I figured there wasn’t any need to try to be tactful. I put the twenty on the bed. She snatched it up and stuffed it in a tiny satin handbag hanging on the doorknob.

“Okay. I came here about four months ago. That’s when I first met Ely.” Sunny went back to throwing things into the suitcase. “She didn’t talk much at first; she was always busy with her work and all. But after a couple of months, she started giving me some hints about how to make it and all. She told me the real story about this place, trying to keep me out of trouble, but by that time, it was already kind of late.”

“What do you mean, the real story about this place?”

She went on with the story, ignoring my question. “I thought I knew exactly what I was doing, and I wouldn’t listen to her at first. But it turned out she was right after all. This place isn’t what I thought it was.”

“What are you trying to say?”

She didn’t answer right away. When she did speak, the words came more slowly, more measured. “You asked me about if Ely was clean. Yeah, she wouldn’t ever have used drugs again. Even if she wanted to kill herself, she wouldn’t have done it like that.”

Collazo now knew she hadn’t killed herself, but I didn’t see any reason to scare this girl with those kinds of details.

She picked up a small stuffed dog off the bed and hugged it to her chest. “Promise you won’t tell anyone I told you this?”

I nodded solemnly. “Yeah. I promise.”

“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “I hope I’ll be gone out of this town by tonight anyhow. See, I was working the door Friday night when she came in. She signed in and went back to the room. An hour or so later, she left. She went running out, real upset like, crying and screaming and all. Then yesterday morning, Minerva calls me into the office and tells me Ely’s dead. She says the cops called and said they’d found Ely in the river and they were coming over here to talk to the people who knew her. She tells me I’m not supposed to tell anyone that Ely was here on Friday. She ripped the page out of the sign- in book where Ely signed in. She promised me something if I’d go along with them.”

“What did she promise you?”

“I can’t tell. It doesn’t matter. Ely told me not to trust them, but I didn’t believe her. I should have.”

“What about James? Sunny, do you trust him?” At the mere mention of the name, she turned all teenage moony and lovestruck. It was obvious she had a big-time crush on him.

“I can trust him all right. He’s not like the others. He doesn’t know everything that goes on here. He’s gonna help me get a new start and all. I know he will.”

The phone rang and she picked it up.

“Yeah? Oh, hi!” Her face stretched into a wide smile. “Uh-huh ... okay.” Her eyes flicked in my direction. “Yeah. Well, a little.” The voice on the phone grew so loud, I could hear the angry tones across the room, and Sunny’s smile slowly burned out. “Okay. I promise. Bye.” She hung up the phone and turned to face me. “You gotta go.”

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