The Girl Who Lives In My Garage • Jenlisa

twenty-two

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Chaeng says as I climb into the backseat, "but the goal wasn't to drive Lisa's parents out of their own house, was it?" The car isn't running, but the keys are still in the ignition, and the radio is playing.

"They got a phone call. The police have Lisa."

"What happened?" Jisoo asks.

"No clue."

"Follow them!" Chaeng bellows, raising a fist.

"And do what when we catch up to them? I tried telling them Lisa is innocent. Telling them again in front of police officers who don't believe she's innocent either isn't going to help."

"Did you get any more information that might help?" Irene asks.

"Just that they have evidence against Lisa. Her fingerprints on pill bottles. I don't know how she'd ever be able to prove that it wasn't murder."

"Shit," Irene says.

"Well, you tried," Jisoo says. "That's all you can do."

Chaeyoung points to the book resting in my lap. "What's with the book?"

"Bambam gave it to Lisa, but she didn't take it when she left. I found it in a box of her stuff."

"You stole?" Chaeng gasps. "All of Lisa's criminality is rubbing off on you!"

I roll my eyes. "I didn't steal. I'm just making sure the book gets into the right hands." Hopefully.

Jisoo starts the car. "So, what are we doing? Going home?"

"Home," I echo, disappointed. She pulls away from the curb, and I stare out the rear windshield while Lisa's house grows smaller and smaller, until it disappears.

We're back on the expressway, heading southeast, when I flip open the copy of the book. A few passages are underlined. Many pages have been dog-eared, but it's impossible to tell if they were folded to mark the place where Bambam left off or to mark something important in the text. The story looks like a bunch of letters, all addressed "Dear Friend" and all signed "Love always, Charlie."

Thinking there must be a response to Charlie somewhere, I turn to the back of the book. As I flip through the last pages, with more "Dear friends" and not a single "Dear Charlie," a piece of paper falls into my lap. It's in fourths with neat, crisp folds. The header on the page reads "Spectrum Hospital Discharge Papers" with Bambam's name and a date of early December. Not long before he passed away. Beneath the header is medical jargon—drug names, dosages, and purposes. But behind all of that printed information, indentations of handwritten words show through from the back side of the paper. Curious, I flip the paper over.

It starts out just like all the letters in the book. "Dear friend." At first I think it's one of the letters copied straight out of the book. But as my eyes scan down the page, reading rows of shaky but still readable print, I quickly realize that's not the case.

My heart stops.

This is not a letter from Charlie's life.

This is a letter from Bambam's life.

And Bambam's parents need to see it right now.

...

"What does the letter say?" Jisoo demands.

"Everything. It explains how Bambam didn't want to go through with the treatment. How he didn't want to be sick anymore. How he wanted to die on his terms, not the terms of this horrible illness. It doesn't come right out and say that Lisa had nothing to do with it, but if anything can convince her parents and the police that Lisa isn't a murderer, this is it."