feels like another lifetime. In the fourteen days following her arrest, she’s been charged; processed; admitted; screened for medical, dental, and mental health; assessed for trauma; and assigned a case worker named Aubrey, a flighty woman only a few years older than Anna who doesn’t seem cut out for the juvenile justice system. Anna should be home, packing for SUNY New Paltz. The semester will start next week, without her. A trial date hasn’t even been set.
“But you’re also totally delusional. You know that, right?”
This isn’t the first time Anna has considered the possibility that something may be off-balance with her “mental health and wellness,” as the counselors here like to say. At night, in her cot, she closes her eyes and sends a mental searchlight around the inside of her head, scanning for a sign, a clue, a patch of rot. But her mind stays inscrutable. And she passed her intake screening. No one has said a peep about mental illness, at least not to her face. Either she has everyone fooled, including herself, or her memories of that night are real.
“Maybe,” she concedes to Kaylee. “But I know what I remember. What I did.”
“Murder, Anna?” Kaylee squeaks. “You seriously think you killed some girl out in the Hamptons?”
Anna holds the receiver away from her ear until silence settles on the other end. She shifts her weight back and forth, back and forth, listening to the squish-squish of her sneakers. “Not murder, manslaughter,” she says softly.
“And the difference is?”
In the past two weeks, Anna has become an expert. “They’re charging me with manslaughter in the second degree. It means I recklessly caused her death.” And then concealed her body, a second felony. The two charges combined carry eight to twenty years in prison. Anna turns eighteen in December. If convicted, they probably will send her to Rikers Island. There’s been talk of shuttering the notorious jail complex for years, but it won’t be fast enough for Anna.
“Your memories are shit,” Kaylee says, shattering Anna’s thoughts, a rock into a sheet of glass. “You told them I was with you that night. Are you trying to punish me for what happened on the beach? Is that what this is about?”
It takes a minute for Anna to register what Kaylee’s asking. Her mind travels back a month and a half, to the Fourth of July, on the beach on Montauk. The last time she and Kaylee were together. “It was just a party. And I was never mad; I thought you were.” This isn’t about that, not even close. Isn’t really about Kaylee at all.
“You want to sink your own ship, fine.” Kaylee can’t see Anna flinch at her poor choice of words. “But leave me the hell out of it. All this time, I thought you were too messed up that night to remember anything. But apparently, you were much more messed up than I realized.”
“What do you—?”
“Listen to me, Anna. If you remember anything real, you have to know what happened—whatever happened—it wasn’t our fault.”
Anna tries to swallow, but her mouth is all sand and grit. “I said you were inside when she died,” she manages. “I told them you didn’t have anything to do with hiding her body.”
“No shit I didn’t. Because I wasn’t in the Hamptons, Anna. And neither were you. I don’t know how you got things so freaking scrambled. Mom and I had the cops here earlier this week, you know that? Wanted to have a little chat about my account of New Year’s Eve.”
Anna sucks in a sharp breath. “What did you tell them?”
“The truth, obviously. Well, the parts that mattered. That I never left Brooklyn. We never left Brooklyn.”
“But—” Anna wants it to be true. But she knows better now.
“No, you listen. The story you told police, the one they wanted me to confirm? Girl, you are way off, so let me jog your memory. We were at Starr’s. Everyone wanted to go dancing, but you were passed out on the couch. Mike and I got you in a cab, and you were home before ten. Got it?”
One more piece clicks into place for Anna. Kaylee got her in a cab. But Kaylee’s not telling the whole truth, because she got in that cab too. She was with Anna at Windermere. Anna remembers the three of them on the balcony together. Zoe’s silvery laugh in Anna’s ear. Kaylee pinching her cheek, holding back her hair. The freezing bite of the night wind rolling