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E Z R A
WHEN EZRA'S NAME is called out on the intercom, he's almost grateful to be excused from both the upcoming assembly in Sierra's honor and her face on his camera. He's in the AP Government classroom, lingering after it's been drained to look through last year's pictures of the five of them, when it buzzes: Ezra Atkinson, principal's office, immediately. The assembly's in six minutes. He'll miss it.
Thank God, he thinks. At least it'll get him out of the melodrama; at least Sierra's doing something else for him aside from making him a prime suspect in her murder investigation.
Ezra looks up from an old photograph of Sierra and Valerie to see one of them sitting on the desk in front of him.
Valerie, the only emotion the universe treats him to. Shoulders hunched, uniform pristine, she swings her legs back and forth as if she's regressed into girlhood. The window opposite her makes half of her a stripped shadow; the other half is what bothers him, though, because it looks pale, too pale, almost bleached. For a moment, he wonders if the red painting her lips is the only blood she has left.
He is hanging the camera's strap around his neck when she speaks, in a percentage of her full voice. Not anger, she's not angry. Her anger is not passive like this. Her disappointment is. She sounds like she hasn't spoken since her last time crying, like the tears still clog her throat, like he was the cause of them. Disappointment: "She was your friend, too. You sick bastard."
Headmaster Richmond's office is muggy with a kind of warmth that doesn't perforate your skin but lives inside it, a tumorous thing. Two minutes inside this mostly alien space and the heating's already getting to him. The urge to shrug his blazer off and loosen his tie yanks at his elbows. But he remains still, spine pressed to the leather chair, legs crossed, left ankle on his right knee. Elegantly impenetrable.
Though he can't say the same about Detective Meadows—sitting across from him in Richmond's chairman throne, Meadows has undone his slim black tie to accommodate the thermostat's blast. Sweat glistens on his dark skin, a jewel of it on the temple. "So, Ezra Atkinson. Let's start easy."
"As you wish."
"Saturday night. Where were you from eight to eleven?"
"Northwood Park. A corner of it, where the street lamps were recently fixed. I was studying Latin."
Meadows flips through his file. "The park. Is there anybody who can vouch for your presence at a corner of it? For every second of those three hours?"
Kira's name hasn't been called on the intercom, which means she hasn't been interviewed yet. If he gets out of here quick enough and crosses his fingers that Meadows talks to one of the others first, he can still catch her. He guesses at where he'll find her, indulges himself in the idea of seeing her. Maybe on the lacrosse field bleachers, boots muddy, black licorice in her teeth. Maybe by his arch (their arch), the one connected to Reed; yes, maybe she's there, leaning against it in her leather jacket, frowning at nothing but the aged cracks around her with a cigarette pinched between her dagger-like fingers.
