Page 84

I’m nervous. Angry. Exhausted. Done. With Mom, with Alyssa, with the documentary, with everything.

I grab the front door of the apartment building and step inside.

They’ve renovated since I was last here. Warm walls, towering bookshelves filled with nonsense like The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck and Girl, Wash Your Face, color-block carpets. It used to be all metal and dark wood, which was more to Dad’s taste. A lot of photos were taken of the place during the police investigation; maybe they needed a fresh start.

“Hello!” the uniformed concierge chirps. “How may I—oh.”

The concierge chokes. Figures. I look like my mother. I gesture for Felicity to follow and sweep past the front desk to the elevators.

Now that I think about it, I have no idea how often Mom visits this place. I imagine her getting the key card after Dad’s arrest, after the police were done sweeping for evidence, and riding the elevator to the top floor for the first time, stepping into a version of her husband she had no idea existed.

I don’t like sympathizing with my mother. I’ve done it enough already.

We take the elevator, because obviously we’re not walking eight floors. Felicity sniffs. Tugs at a strand of their hair. Taps the necklace against their lip.

“We’re not trespassing,” I mutter. “You’re fine.”

“I know.” They wrap the gold chain around their finger until it cuts off circulation and digs into the sides of their neck. “It’s a lot.”

The tip of their finger turns purple. I huff and untangle it for them, so they don’t hurt themself.

The elevator dings and spits us out at the top floor.

Dad’s penthouse isn’t the only “penthouse”—Potomac Loft Living has four of them. It’s just that they’re big and at the top, so, marketing strategies and all. The eighth-floor common hall is bright, the glass ceiling and towering windows looking out over the blue-gray expanse of the river. I pause for a moment here. While the inside of the penthouse only exists in my worst memories, this part, here, has been left relatively unscathed.

I wander past the apartment doors, to the window, and look down over the waterfront.

I like the District Wharf. There’s a tiny building outside the concert hall that sells the biggest snow cones in the city; if you’re lucky enough to visit on a good day, someone’s got a fire going in one of the built-in pits, and the string lights are lit all down the docks, and it’s beautiful.

That’s what my life was supposed to be: a pretty boy with rich parents in the most important city in the world. Going to concerts and washing black Xs off my hand in the bathroom. Painting my nails just because I thought the color was nice and no other reason at all. Staying out until it gets dark and the waterfront lights come on, walking down the long docks until I’m in the middle of the Potomac, watching the taxi boat go by. There probably isn’t a universe where Mom isn’t the worst and Dad isn’t a soulless right-wing shill, and there definitely isn’t a universe where my brain isn’t off-kilter, but it wouldn’t be this bad, would it? I’d be a run-of-the-mill bitch instead of …

This.

“It’s nice over here,” Felicity says beside me.

“Yeah.”

They’re watching me now. With those big brown eyes.

“What,” I mutter.

“Nothing.”

“Ready?”

“As I can be.”

No more stalling, then. Trying to wish another world into existence won’t change anything. I nod them over to apartment P02, slap the key card against the reader, and shove my way inside with Felicity on my heels.

The penthouse hasn’t changed at all.

Not that I was expecting it to, on a logical level. But it’s strange that it hasn’t grown or transformed the way I have over the years. Every counter and piece of furniture is covered in a thick layer of dust: the stainless steel kitchen, the too-soft couch, the narrow metal bands supporting the massive living room window. There are three years’ worth of birds’ nests on the balcony and bloodstains on the floor.

The blood has dried to a deep brown over the years. Portions of it, where the sun hits it for hours and hours a day, have faded. And it’s everywhere. One big splatter, then another, and more: half handprints, leg smears, an abstract art piece painted by a human body as it thrashed. The knife, the nylon rope, and the Metro card were all confiscated as evidence, but I could point out where they belong. There, there, and there. The counter, the table, the floor.

There’s no chalk outline, though. No stereotypical remains of police work. Just a reminder that the government doesn’t clean up crime scenes. That’s left to the families, and Mom never bothered.

This isn’t even the worst of it. On the other side of the couch, there’s the half-open door to the bedroom.