Page 26 of What Have You Done?

‘They came to visit me. At my trailer.’

‘Yeah?’ Joe sits down in his recliner.

Roddy takes a long swig of beer. Then he lowers the can and looks back at him curiously. ‘Pretty fucking intense when all you did was flirt with her.’

‘Yeah, no shit. Imagine how I feel. My picture all over the fucking place and all I did was talk to her. I should probably sue them.’ He raises his can and drinks.

‘Yeah, maybe you should.’ Roddy belches and says, ‘Anyways, they’ll leave you alone now.’

‘They’d fucking better.’

Friday, Oct. 21, 2022, 11:45 p.m.

I can’t sleep. It feels like I might never sleep again. So I’m back on my laptop.

Writing is how I process things. Mrs Acosta, our creative writing teacher, has been encouraging me. She knows I want to be a writer someday. That’s why I started writing this journal, just for myself, because you’ve got to start somewhere. ‘Writers write,’ Mrs Acosta says. She also says I have to find my voice. And I don’t know, maybe writing about what happened to Diana will help me deal with all this.

Of the four of us, Diana was the one with the most energy, the ideas, the enthusiasm. She was the only one who understood my ambition to be a writer someday, except for Mrs Acosta. Cameron and I used to be closer, but when he became Diana’s boyfriend at the end of the summer, he spent more time with her, and we’ve drifted apart. He’s a walking cliché – tall, strong, ruggedly good-looking, captain of the football team. Who else would date Diana, who looked like she should be a cheerleader? But she was too busy for that. She was beautiful and kind and a star runner, and so smart and funny too. And now my tears are falling onto the keyboard again.

Riley and Diana were always close, ‘besties’ as the girls like to say. I like Riley. She’s smart, too, and ambitious and very competitive, especially with me. We compete for top marks in every class we’re in together, which is most of them. Now our little group will fall apart. Diana was the heart and centre of it; she’s what held it together. And now Riley suspects Cameron might have killed her.

I’m miserable at home. Mom is great, but my dad is an asshole. He’s narrow-minded and has no interest in anything outside his own puny life. It’s just hunting or watching TV and hitting the booze. He watches a lot of sports on TV and drinks beer after beer – come to think of it, he’s a walking cliché too. Mom reads books to get away from him. They wanted more kids, but it didn’t happen. I guess that makes me all the more disappointing, so I wish they’d had more kids too. They’re obviously disappointed in each other. I don’t know why they stay together – it can’t be for me. Dad obviously had hoped his only child, his only son, would be a star athlete, like he was in his youth. He peaked in high school. But I’m hopeless at team sports and have no interest in them. I don’t think my dad has ever gotten over that.

Instead, I’m applying to NYU for English and creative writing. What the hell you going to do with that? Dad said. Mom just looked sceptical. I think she blames herself. She always encouraged me to read. She’s always read a lot herself, and our house is full of books. For as long as I can remember I’ve seen her sitting somewhere with her nose in a book. I tend to read the classics – In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote, is my favourite. I’ve read it three times. I think Mom maybe now wishes she hadn’t encouraged my reading so much, taking me to the library all the time.

Being a big reader is a bit unusual in my peer group. Except for Diana. She read good books, and we talked about them all the time. God, I’ll miss her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE NEXT MORNING is Saturday, and Cameron lies in bed, staring up at the ceiling. He can hear his mother downstairs moving around in the kitchen. It sounds the same as every Saturday morning, but he knows that now everything is different. He realizes that he’s hungry. He hasn’t eaten much at all since yesterday morning, when the police interrupted his breakfast. He gets up and pulls on jeans and a sweatshirt. He doesn’t bother with a shower. He doesn’t care. He goes downstairs and enters the kitchen.

His mother turns at the sound of him, as if she’s surprised to see him. She smiles. ‘Cameron, honey,’ she says, ‘what can I get you for breakfast?’

‘I’ll get it,’ he says, and grabs a bowl and cereal, takes the milk out of the fridge. He can’t stand her false cheerfulness; it sets him on edge. She hovers, and he feels as if she’s smothering him. He can feel her eyes on him, watching him, worrying about him, and he doesn’t like it. He glances at the clock on the stove: 10:14. He slept in. ‘Where’s Dad?’

‘Upstairs.’

The landline in the kitchen rings and his mother jumps. Cameron feels a jolt of fear surge through him. His mother stares at the phone, not moving, while it rings again. She’s closest to it. ‘Aren’t you going to get that?’ he asks, his voice tense.

She answers the phone and listens. She turns to look at him, and he knows.

‘Yes, he’s here.’ She goes still. ‘Yes. We’ll be there soon.’ She hangs up the phone and addresses him. ‘They want to talk to you again. We have to go to the police station.’

Oh God, someone saw me. They must know he was at Diana’s the night before last, after eleven, and he told them he wasn’t. He tries to rise out of his chair, but his strength has left him.

‘I’ll get your father.’

A half-hour later, Cameron and his parents arrive at the Fairhill Police Station. His mother had insisted he finish his cereal before they left, but he could hardly get it down. His father walks beside him with his hand on his shoulder, as if silently saying, I’m here for you. Cameron is grateful, but it isn’t going to be much help. His father can’t save him. They’d had a hurried, whispered conversation that his mother doesn’t know about before they left the house.

What if someone saw me?

Then just tell them the truth, and you’ll be fine, his dad said.

‘In here,’ Detective Stone says, opening the door to the interview room. It’s the same room they were in yesterday. ‘Just to remind you,’ Stone says, ‘you’re here voluntarily. You can leave at any time.’

Cameron nods nervously. It’s the same as before – Detectives Stone and Godfrey on one side of the table, and Cameron flanked by his anxious parents on the other. He wishes his mother wasn’t here, but he’s afraid to ask her to leave. They start the tape.

‘So, Cameron, you told us yesterday that you dropped Diana off at her house and she went inside at about eleven p.m., correct?’ Cameron nods. ‘Can you speak up for the tape?’ Stone asks.

---