Page 50 of The Obsession

Aisha took her cell phone out. “Let’s do a preliminary check.” She scooted over to sit next to me and paused, her lips pursed. “Is it sick that I’m kind of excited about this?”

“Yes.” Although to be perfectly honest, I was also somewhat excited about it. No, excited wasn’t the right word. I was filled with a sick sort of anticipation, the way it feels to be at the very top of the roller coaster, right before that stomach-lurching plunge. And when Aisha typed in Sophie’s name and called up pictures she’d been tagged in, the fall was so much worse than I’d been expecting.

“Dang, girl,” Aisha said.

Yeah, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t speak.

Sophie…Sophie was…me.

I’d been prepared to identify Logan’s obsession as a fetish, like maybe he thought all Asians looked the same, but holy shit, the resemblance.

Sophie was me, but on my best day, after I’d spent ages applying makeup like a total pro. Her skin poreless and porcelain smooth, her eyes lined in a very wicked, mischievous way, her lips painted into a startling red heart, her hair silky and tousled. Like Aisha so kindly pointed out before, I was nice to look at, but I wasn’t what you’d call stunning. Sophie was. Hauntingly so. There was something about her that shone even through the pictures, that made you want to reach out and cling to her. There was an aura, something almost otherworldly about her.

I didn’t want to blink as Aisha scrolled through the pictures. I didn’t want to miss a single shot, she was so heart-stoppingly beautiful. She’d been popular; most of the pictures were of her with other people, most of them laughing. A few were selfies—Sophie pouting or smiling, posing with some of her favorite makeup, her favorite perfume. Some of them were candids—not the posed sort of “candid” that featured a carefully angled face looking away from the camera, but actually caught without Sophie knowing about it. In one she was laughing unabashed, her mouth full of half-chewed food. In another, she was calling out to someone in the distance, her hand raised in a wave. She was so full of life.

I realized part of me had expected something that showed death looming over her. Muted pictures with a vintage filter of Sophie looking depressed. But these images showed that, if anything, death had come as a surprise for her.

And, sick as it may sound, looking at these pictures of Sophie was giving me an idea. That maybe what happened to her could be a way out for me.

I shuddered. No. I couldn’t possibly do that, not even to someone who was blackmailing me. Not even when he was threatening to ruin my life. Could I?

* * *

When I came home, I trudged to the kitchen, where last night’s dirty dishes were piled up in the sink. Our countertop was filled with trash collected throughout the week—empty wrappers, paper cups, wilted leftovers. Mom was working on a big project, and I hadn’t seen her for a while now; by the time she came home, I’d already be in bed.

I still couldn’t let go of the idea that had started to form earlier today. An idea that had to do with drugs, and my easy access to them. But the very thought filled me with revulsion. I paced about for a while then decided to at least spend my anxious energy doing something useful.

I grabbed a trash bag and went around the house, picking up all of our crap. Soon, the bag was full, and I lugged it over my shoulder and headed outside.

“Howdy, neighbor!” someone called out from across the street.

Mr. Chan was the only person I knew who actually said the wordhowdy. He was a fifty-year-old man who’d immigrated here from China thirty years ago. He prided himself on watching a ton of old Westerns and southern cooking shows to make himself sound more American. He was always saying stuff likey’allandfixin’ to. It was sweet and heartbreaking at the same time, because all that effort he put into sounding less Asian reminded me of Pa. I had a soft spot for Mr. Chan, and right now, he was the only person who wasn’t involved in any way with the train wreck that was my life, which made him a welcome sight for sore eyes.

“Hi, Mr. Chan,” I said, walking over to him.

“It’s been a while, Dee!” He patted my shoulder affectionately. “How you doing, you okay? You shore do look tired.”

I bit back my smile at the Southern pronunciation ofsure. “I’m okay, I’m coping.”

“You’re a brave lil’ dumpling, you are.” Mr. Chan shook his head and sighed. “It’s terrible, what happened to Brandon. He was a good guy.”

I gave him a polite nod and a noncommittal smile. “Yeah.”

“Bad way to go, that. Gruesome.” He shuddered. “I don’t know why his pardner’s so keen on watching it.”

The non-smile froze on my face. “Sorry?”

“Yeah, you know, the tall one? Latina, I think? Or maybe Hawaiian. She could be Hawaiian…”

I wanted to scream at him to focus. “Detective Mendez?” I said.

“Yeah, that’s the one. She came by yesterday, real nice, she was, and asked if she could get the footage from my security camera,” he said and pointed up at his garage.

The world crumbled under my feet. Mr. Chan had a fancy-looking security camera mounted on top of his garage door, pointing in the direction of my house.

“I got a few of these babies after the Underwoods’ shed got broken into last year,” he said proudly. “You like it? It’s state-of-the-art, very high-tech, can zoom in real close. The cop lady was very impressed by it, you know.”

“That’s—it’s very—big,” I croaked. “So you can look right into my garage with that?” Did my voice sound as panicked and close to tears as I felt?

---