I sat stock-still for a few seconds, then felt a curious rise through my torso, neck, and face like a glass being filled with water. A sudden muted hum like dipping your ears underwater. Then another punch of thick nausea.
Because the realization had hit me full force: I was there. After screaming that I wanted her dead, I had visited Edie in her living room the very night of her death. Drunk, murmuring, over-Edie’s-bullshit me, in a rendezvous I had no recollection of whatsoever.
Thoughts like popcorn:
Did I never make it to the concert, then?
What did I say to her?
What did I see?
What did I do?
Maybe she was already dead?
The time stamp. On my screen, I clicked back to the moment I’d opened the door: 11:11 (make a wish!). When had Sarah called the cops? I Googled around a bit before I realized that duh, this was an absurd thing to expect to find. Case files. I needed those case files.
I returned to the video, my stomach whirling. I cued it up to my entrance: navy-blue nail polish on my fingers, the smooth clack of the door opening. I listened over and over to the exclamation I’d made when I looked inside. It was gibberish, “[inaudible]” on a transcript. I listened to it enough times that the distortion eventually organized itself into a nonsensical phrase, namely me chirping “Heavy skies senile?,” and then that was all I could hear.
Fuck. Fucking brain hearing it wrong, latching onto the wrong words, the wrong interpretation.
Well, and. Fucking brain going totally offline at 11:11 on August 21, 2009.
A surge so sudden that I barely made it to the bathroom in time to vomit, hot tears and snot streaming down my face. When I finally sat back, I leaned my head against the wall and wept, weirdly enjoying the sound of the wet sobs bursting out of my throat. I listened and cried until I heard my phone vibrate in the kitchen. It was Tessa, finally seeing my text about un-deleting videos.
I called her, tears welling again as the phone rang, and I panicked about what I’d say when she picked up. Her “Hey!” was so inappropriately cheerful.
“Tessa, I was there,” I said, my voice wobbling. “I found a video from that night that I’d deleted right after, but in it I go to her apartment and—”
“Slow down, Lindsay, breathe,” she broke in. “I can’t hear anything you’re saying. Are you okay?”
“No, that’s what I’m trying to tell you!” The sound of my own croaking voice spooked me.
“What’s going on?”
I took a long, quavering breath. “Can you come over?”
A beat. Then: “I’m on my way.”
* * *
I texted Damien, too, but again he didn’t respond. As Tessa sped across the East River, I watched the other videos; they were spastic, twenty-second snippets of drunk postgrads messing around. What was I looking for? In one from July, we passed a joint and discussed what our entrance music would be if we walked out to a song like a pro athlete taking the field. I suggested “Queen Bitch” for Edie and laughed cruelly, and she responded by playing it on her phone and remarking, “Oh, Lindsay, it’s cute when you try to be mean!” A ripple of annoyance. Was that a clue? Was that evidence?
Tessa set her watch to ping mine when she got close, and at the sound I walked to the window and watched her lock up her Citi bike on the street below. Cars whizzed behind her and I pictured it for a moment, a drunk driver careening off the road and onto the sidewalk, Tessa pinned to the bike-share structure from the waist down. My heart sped up at the thought and adrenaline shot through my limbs. I blinked again; she crossed the street and made her way up my stoop, then leaned on the bell. I buzzed the front door and heard it unlatch a few floors below.
I’d sprawled on the sofa. “Don’t you have those keys I gave you?” I asked, dangling a leg off the cushion.
“Somewhere. I didn’t realize getting up to let me in would be the death of you.” She set about making me tea, banged a cupboard.
“Thanks for coming over,” I called. “I hope you weren’t in the middle of anything.”
“It’s fine. Will and I were just watching TV.”
“Oh.” I scooched deeper into the couch and slung my knees over the armrest. “Well, I’m glad you’re here. I’m actually having