The Girl with the Wrong Name (13 page)

Andy’s half-assed memory had gotten it half right. Sarah did tell him to meet her at a back window, but it wasn’t a brownstone on Bergen Street; it was an old, run-down shelter on Parker Street. Now it made so much more sense. She wasn’t hiding him from her parents; she was hiding him from a three-hundred-pound security guard.

“Helena, are you sure
you never met Sarah here?” I asked. “I know
she was here last weekend. I know it.”

Helena peeked back through her door, then stepped to the mirror by her bed. It was her entire room: a full-length mirror nailed to a bare white wall, a twin bed with a standard-issue brown blanket, and a wooden dresser.

“All right, look,” she said, staring into the mirror, carefully removing each of the seven sparkling hoops from her ear. “I wasn’t sure I could trust you when I first met you. I didn’t know if you were one of us or one of them. If you weren’t the sixth girl, then I thought maybe you were one of Ms. Renaux’s cousins or something. That’s why I didn’t tell you about Sarah.”

“Wait. You
do
know her?”

“No, I never actually met her. I just knew a chick named Sarah had been here for a night, and I knew she ran away, so I wasn’t about to snitch.”

“She ran away? She’s gone already?” My chest felt brittle, like my lungs were turning to stone. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She glared at me over her shoulder. “Well, I didn’t know how much you cared until I saw you in the lobby just now.”

I dropped my head in my hands and massaged my throbbing temples.

“Look, Theo, you got to understand something.” Her tone softened as she turned back to the mirror. “What you saw with Victor out there . . . I mean, yeah, that happens sometimes, but that’s not the usual around here. We don’t get a lot of visitors. Most of us either got families that want to forget we ever existed, or else
we
want to be forgotten. We only want people to see us when we want.”

I nodded. “I understand.”

She finished taking out her earrings and started brushing her hair. “I don’t know if you do. We K.O.P. girls, we’re kind of like ghosts. We want to stay invisible. A lot of the girls don’t even give their real names when they come in here. Mr. Wyatt has to give them temp names like stray dogs at the pound, because you can only have so many Jane Does walking around one spot. Sometimes a girl will come in here so messed up, she doesn’t even remember
her name. But I don’t always buy that one. I think it’s just another way to stay lost. It’s like Ms. Renaux always says . . .”

She left the sentence hanging. I know she was expecting me to confirm what Ms. Renaux always said. I met her gaze in the mirror. “Some want to stay lost,” I echoed.

“A
lot
of us want stay that way. So I wasn’t about to say shit to you about Sarah. If a girl doesn’t want to get found, then she does not want to get found. Period. Besides, the whole Sarah thing freaked me out, so I wasn’t going to say anything about it in front of Ms. Renaux.”

“What do you mean, ‘the whole Sarah thing’?”

She gathered her ponytail in a black elastic, glanced through the door again, and sat down close to me on the bed. She drew in a deep breath, and it was a little shaky as she blew it out. “Okay,” she murmured. “I only told my girl Felicia about this. And I’m only going to tell you because you’re Sarah’s friend, but you got to
swear
you won’t go making a scene about it to Ms. Renaux or anybody else. The girls feel safe here. We know how to ignore the creepy stuff, and I ain’t about to mess that up.”

“I swear,” I said. Still, I forced the next logical question through my lips. “What creepy stuff?”

“I’m going to
tell
you.” All her brash confidence had melted away. She sat on the edge of her spare mattress, suddenly looking much younger. “Ms. Renaux has this thing about keeping girls out of Room Nine.”

I felt another twinge in my stomach, more painful than the last. For the briefest instant, I saw myself huddled in the corner of my bedroom, blasting the Beatles’ “Revolution 9” on endless repeat. I could hear the voice on the track, repeating the words. The voice I’d always thought was John Lennon’s.
“Number nine
. . .
number nine
. . .
”

“Shit, I’m already freaking you out,” Helena said.

“No, I’m fine,” I said. I hadn’t even noticed I was clutching her coarse blanket. I let it go.
Keep breathing. It’s not what you think. It can’t possibly be what you think.

“Okay.” Helena wrung her hands. “Okay, so the girls were all whispering at breakfast on Sunday about how Ms. Renaux put this Sarah chick in Room Nine. No one even wants to walk past Nine. It’s got this energy. It’s, like, too empty. I try not to look through the window when I walk by. I always come in from the other side just so I don’t have to pass it. I didn’t know Ms. Renaux put a girl in there, so when I heard those sounds coming from next door, I just about lost my shit.”

There was that rush in my ears again. “What sounds?”

Helena bit her lip. “I don’t really know. All I could picture was, like, a big rat clawing at the wall. Lots of little drags. So I got out of bed and peeked through my door, and I saw Ms. Renaux standing right in front of the room, looking in. She must have been staying late at the office. Maybe she heard the scratching from upstairs. She was staring through the door, and she had this look on her face. It was like . . . in those commercials for scary movies, when they show you the audience watching the movie? They get that look when something real sick jumps out, you know? That’s what Ms. Renaux looked like. And she swung open the door and ran into the room, and I heard her yell, ‘Stop it. Stop it!’”

“Someone was in there?” I choked out.

“I didn’t even know it. I figured it was a new girl, freaking out on shrooms or H, scratching at the walls or whatever, ’cause we get those sometimes—girls who ain’t even come down yet. That’s what I told myself, and I slammed my door shut and hid my ass back under the covers.”

“And then what?”

“Then I don’t know. I didn’t really see anything else. I heard Ms. Renaux come running back out to the hall, all agitated and freaked out, whispering to someone. It could have been Mac—it could have been anybody. All I know is, by lunch on Sunday, everyone was talking about how that Sarah chick ran away, and I thought,
Good for her
. If anyone tried to check me into Room Nine, I would have run for my life, too, and never come back here ever.”

“So that was it? She never came back?”

“Well, that was the thing.” Helena examined the folds in her frumpy dress, avoiding my eyes. “Even after Sarah was gone, I still heard the sounds sometimes. Only late at night, like, waking me up halfway. I think maybe it
is
the rats. There’s got to be rats under these rickety old floors. That’s probably why they’re fixing it up, right?”

I tried to get her to look at me. “You really think it’s rats?”

“Like I told you. The girls feel safe here. We know how to ignore the creepy stuff.” Helena glanced at the digital alarm clock next to her bed. “Damn, we’re going to be late for the rehearsal dinner.” She jumped up and gave herself one last look in the mirror, redoing her ponytail, checking her ass, and frowning. “Shit, we’re supposed to be making K.O.P. look good. You got to leave. Delores only gave you ten minutes.” She finally looked at me. “Hey, how come you’re not dressed yet? Aren’t you going to the steakhouse?”

“What steakhouse?”

“Delmonico’s Steakhouse . . . ? The rehearsal dinner? Aren’t you going?”

I jumped up from the bed, trying to shake the dread that had consumed me, that had made me forget almost everything, even the wedding. “Yeah, I just need to run back to the hotel and change,” I lied. “I might be a little late.”

Out in the hall,
Helena’s door closed behind me, and I could feel the air change. It went sterile and cold. My legs began to quake, just as my whole body had when Andy first showed me Emma’s picture. I forced myself to step next door. The number nine hovered right above that tiny window, daring me to peek through it. I heard the rush of my beating heart again, but now there was something else, a faint ringing in my ears, high-pitched and constant.

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the room was trying to sound a warning, trying to push me away. But I had to look. Would I recognize the furniture? The walls? Was it like one of those memories Andy described? Locked up in some story box in my head, with nothing but a song to remind me? I knew I’d blocked out The Night in Question, but what about last Saturday night? How well did I remember that? I’d spent it in the corner of my room, listening to that Beatles song over and over . . . hadn’t I?

I inched closer to the scuffed plexiglass and leaned forward, squinting into the darkness. I could just make out the black-and-gray outlines of a bed and a small desk, barely lit by the sunset through a barred window by the ceiling—

The shadow of a man bolted past the window. I buried my mouth in my hands to stifle a scream. Three more times, he flew past; he was pacing furiously, like a madman. I was afraid to look at his face, but on the fourth pass, I caught the profile of his perfect, ski-slope nose.

Andy
. . .
?

Of course. He already knew the way in through that upstairs window. He must have snuck in while I was talking to Helena. I glanced down the hallway to make sure it was still deserted; I could hear Mac and Delores laughing about something. Drawing a shaky breath, I yanked the handle and slid through the door.

“What are you
doing
in here?” I whispered.

He didn’t answer.

Bad idea to step inside. I’d attributed my tremors to fear, to some kind of post-traumatic stress after The Night in Question. But now I felt a weight. Like the ceiling was crushing me flat, and my bones were rattling from the resistance.

“Andy, I don’t want to be in here,” I said. It had been cold just outside the door, but inside it was sweltering and stale, like the hot air had been sealed inside ages ago, drained of all its oxygen.

Andy finally stopped pacing and froze by my side. The weight was crushing him, too; I could see it. He was cracking from the pressure, even though the room itself was nothing but an empty shell. A stained twin mattress on a frame. A battered desk and dresser. A grubby mirror on the wall. A mirror image of Helena’s room, in fact, except for an ugly blue throw rug on the floor. He jabbed a finger toward the mattress.

“She was there,” he said, his voice wavering like static. “She was crying on that bed. No, not crying. She was screaming. He wouldn’t get off of her. He was so much bigger
.
He was crushing her flat against that bed. He wouldn’t get off no matter how hard she squirmed, no matter how loud she screamed.”

“Who?” I tried to get him to look at me. “Andy,
who
wouldn’t get off of her?”

“I know him,” he said. His cheeks turned as pale as the walls. His eyes darted from side to side like a camera capturing every moment. “I mean, I thought I knew him, but I don’t. Not really. I don’t really know him at all.”

I’d made a promise to myself, but I couldn’t keep it. I couldn’t stop the doubt from creeping back in. “Andy, is it your face? Are you on the bed?”

He turned and focused on the door. “There were other men, too.”

“What other men?”

“I could hear them running down the hall.”

“Andy, look at me. Was it you on the bed? Was it you and me?” My chest was heaving—knots in my strangled throat. “Was I fighting you off? Was I scratching at the walls? Was it you and me?”

“No,”
he assured me. “But I could hear those other men shouting.”

“What men? Maintenance men? Mac?”

“No.”

I shook my head. He wasn’t making any sense; maybe he’d distorted the memory somehow. How could a whole group of men have gotten in? How could a gang of men have sneaked in through that office window without anyone noticing? Helena said Emma was in
the office all night. She would have seen them—she would have stopped the whole thing from happening. But then who? Who’d have the balls to allow a bunch of men through the front door of K.O.P. on a Saturday night?

I thought of Delores and Mac. Maybe I was asking the wrong question. Never mind who’d have the balls; who would have the
authority
? That was the word Delores had used,
authorization.
And only one man would. The inkling landed like a mosquito, biting at my ear. A group of rowdy, shouting men . . . The Saturday before the wedding . . .

A bachelor party. A bacchanalian celebration of Lester Wyatt.
While his wife-to-be was here.

“Theo, she was here,” Andy said, as if reading my mind. “She saw it. At least, part of it.”

“Who?” I murmured, even though I knew the answer.

“Emma. She was a witness.”

Helena told me Emma had seen something through the window, but now I knew what she had seen. And I had the distinct feeling she hadn’t told a soul about it. I backed away from Andy, pulled open the door, and ran from Room Nine. I didn’t stop, and I didn’t look back to see if Andy was behind me. I kept my eyes focused forward as I dashed past Delores and Mac, their faces twisted in surprise. I ran as fast as I could out the door because I didn’t want Andy to follow.

I was going to Delmonico’s Steakhouse, and I was going alone. No one would stand between me and Emma Renaux when I finally shook the fucking truth out of her.

Lou thought I was faster and meaner now? She had no idea.

Chapter Thirteen

“What
happened
to her?”

I didn’t scream it. But I enunciated the question loudly enough to silence the chatter in the fancy dining room. I’d never seen so many adults shut their mouths at once. The buzz of conversation died a quick death, melting into the plush red-and-gold carpet. It hadn’t been hard to spot Emma; she was right at the center table, under a candelabra-style chandelier, surrounded by, I guessed, Charles and Sally Renaux and a college-aged boy who was probably her younger brother. All of them in expensive formal wear. All of them seated on silver satin cushions, like a royal family.

“I know you were there,” I said to Emma. “I know you saw it all, so just tell
me what you saw.” I wanted to stay calm and controlled, but I couldn’t stop my voice from climbing. “Was it Andy? Because if it was Andy, then you have to
tell
me
.
I need
to know what happened in that
room
.”

Emma’s manicured nails flew to her gaping mouth. Her eyelids fluttered in horror. A hundred eyes stared back at me. I was the party-crashing psycho in a sweatshirt and sweatpants, so I figured I might as well run with it while I could. It was too late to turn back now.

“Do
any
of you people know Sarah?” I swept the room with a steady gaze, picking out a pair of eyes every two or three mortified faces, trying to read their minds. “You think you can just sweep her under the rug? You think you can act like it didn’t happen, and she’ll just disappear from everyone’s minds? Well, she won’t disappear from mine!”

Emma burst into tears, breaking the silence. The next thing I knew, two powerful hands had latched onto my shoulders. They shoved me through the silent crowd. I tried to squirm away and caught a glimpse over my shoulder; it was Emma’s brother, of course. A fratty-looking friend joined him. Together they lifted me just far enough off the floor to keep me from breaking free.

“No!” I growled. “NO! Somebody get them off of me!”

But I might as well have been invisible. It was like Helena said; I was a ghost. Nobody uttered a sound or moved a muscle. I writhed and kicked as the two forced me into the ladies’ room and slammed the door.

I do not respond
well to enclosed spaces. Especially after I’ve been manhandled by thick-necked frat dudes in lavender pants. The door wouldn’t budge. They must have locked it. Or they were just blocking it with their steroid-pumped bodies. Either way they’d trapped me in here alone.

“Open it!” I shouted. “Open it, assholes! Open the door!” I pounded on it a thousand times harder than I’d pounded on the bathroom stall at the Magic Garden. “If you don’t open this
goddamn
—”

But the door burst inward, sending me reeling back into one of the stalls.
Jesus, another bathroom stall.
Emma’s brother charged at me, a sweaty blur of blond fuzz, thick lips, and rum-and-Coke-soaked breath.

“Shut
up
!” he hissed. “What the hell is the matter with you? Are you on drugs? You’re scaring the crap out of my sister. You’ve just ruined the whole party.”

“You think I give a
shit
about her party?” I pushed my face back into his. Then I hesitated. The next thought came quick.
He was there. Emma’s brother was in Room Nine with all his repulsive fratty friends.

The groom had
to invite the bride’s brother to the bachelor party; it was an unbreakable rule. Even if Lester Wyatt thought Emma’s brother was the douchebag he clearly was. But had Lester Wyatt invited all her brother’s disgusting frat-bros, too? Had he brought them to a house full of damaged teenage girls in the middle of the night?

“I honestly don’t care who you are or what’s wrong with you,” he said. “But you need to get the hell out of here now. Whatever happened . . . happened. What’s done is done. And there’s nothing any of us can do to change it now. So let it go.”

My face shriveled behind my veil of hair. “Whatever happened . . .
happened
?”

“Fine, okay, I’m sorry, I get it.” His skin reddened, fists clenching at his sides. “I get that you’re upset. I just need you to be upset someplace else.”

“Jesus, what kind of sociopath
are
you?”

“Will you
shut
it?” he whispered. “My sister has waited her entire life for this wedding, and I’m not about to let you fuck it up. Here’s how it’s going to go. You are going to walk out of here without saying another word to anyone. You’re going to stay away from this wedding, you’re going to stay away from my sister, and most of all, you’re going to stay the hell away from Andy.”

“Andy?
How
do you all know Andy? He’s never even been to New York—”

“Tyler?” a slurred voice called, silencing me. Whoever it was, I could hear the fear in his voice. “Dude, where are you?”

“I’m in here,” Emma’s brother answered from our stall, his eyes glued to mine.

“Dude, we got one of the Motel Six coming. I mean, coming fast, like right—”

I heard the door burst open.

“
Excuse
me?” Helena’s unmistakable voice. “I believe this is the ladies’ room, no?”

“Yeah, we’ll be out in just a sec,” Boarding Stool growled.

“No, I think you’ll be out now,” Helena said.

“Okay, okay, chill, Mama.”

“Mama?”
I wish I could have seen her face in that moment. “How about you call me ‘Mama’ again, and we see what happens?”

A haughty sniff. “I was just leaving.”

“Yeah, I thought so,” Helena called after him. “Theo? Where you at?”

“I’m in here,” I called out.

Tyler’s eyes flashed in fury. Before he could move, the door exploded open behind him, slamming into his spine. He winced and collapsed ass-backward on the tile floor.

“Let’s go.” Helena grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. “Out.”

“No,” Tyler grunted. He shook his head, massaging his back, his flabby red features locked in a cringe. “We haven’t finished our conversation—”

“I wasn’t talking to you, white boy. I was talking to my girl.”

“Fine.” He snickered through his pain. “Your girl is all yours. Just get her the hell out of here.”

It wasn’t until we
were safely down the street that Helena finally let go of my wrist. “Girl, what the hell were you trying to do in there? What were you thinking?”

“I was trying to get the truth,” I said, rubbing the tender skin where she’d seized and dragged me. “Helena, it was Emma’s brother. He did something to Sarah the night of Wyatt’s bachelor party. He practically just admitted it.”

She arched an eyebrow. Her ponytail flopped limply over her shoulder. “Bachelor party? There wasn’t any bachelor party.”

“Last Saturday night at K.O.P. There must have been a—”

“You don’t think I would have noticed a bunch of assholes having a party
in the middle of K.O.P.? I told you, it was creepy quiet that night. Theo, all due respect, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about Tyler. You saw what he did. He cornered me in that stall. He could have done anything to her. They could have done awful, disgusting—”

“Theo, Sarah is
fine
,” Helena groaned.

I stared at her. “What do you mean, she’s fine?”

She glanced back through Delmonico’s front doors. “Listen,” she whispered. She eyed the noisy passersby, a gaggle of Wall Street tourists jabbering in French. “I just heard Mr. Wyatt in the kitchen. I heard him say Sarah was coming to the wedding.”

I stood still, trying to process this. “Mr. Wyatt said that? You heard him say that for sure?”

“Yes,” she insisted. She shifted on her feet, her eyes flitting back to the door. Something about her wasn’t right. “Me and Felicia were in the kitchen when you went all psycho on Ms. Renaux. We were trying to get a break from all the richies. Her folks dragged her into the kitchen right where we were hiding, and Mr. Wyatt ran in behind them to calm her down. I heard him tell her that Sarah
wanted
them to have the wedding. That she was going to be there with them tomorrow.”

“No, that’s . . . maybe you weren’t standing close enough. Maybe you misheard him.”

“I didn’t mishear anything,” she snapped. “I told you. Sarah is fine, everything is fine.”

“If everything’s fine, then why are you so nervous? It’s Tyler and those boys, isn’t it? They’re trying to intimidate—”

“Those
pendejos
?” she snorted. “With the purple pants?”

“Well then, what?”

She reached under the frilly collar of her dress, pulled a folded white envelope from her bra strap, and handed it to me. “It’s because Mr. Wyatt wants you to have this.”

I stared at the envelope. “Mr. Wyatt? Gave this to you for me?”

“Yes. Now just take it and go, all right?”

“No, I want to talk to him.” I started back toward the restaurant.

“Not right now, you don’t.” She grabbed my arm and held me back. “He wants to talk to you alone—as in, not in front of Ms. Renaux.”

“About what?”

“Theo, if I knew, don’t you think I’d tell you?” she murmured urgently. “This is the most Mr. Wyatt ever talked to me in my life. Someone must have told him you came to my room or something. Look, just take it and
go
. If Ms. Renaux sees me doing this, it’s going to be on me. Just be there, okay?”

She jammed the envelope in my hand and turned to run. Before I could open my mouth to protest, she’d vanished back into the restaurant.

Be where?
I wondered, ripping open the envelope.

I walked back home
with the wedding invitation dangling from my fingertips.

I tried to think, tried to latch on to one coherent idea, but I couldn’t. None of this made any sense. Why would Lester Wyatt want me at his wedding? Why would he want to talk to me at all? I was the party-crashing freak. The girl who’d snuck into his shelter. Who’d crashed his fiancée’s bridal shower. Who’d just screamed at his fiancée. And he didn’t just want, he
needed
me to be at his wedding. What did that even mean?

I found Andy sitting on the pavement, leaning against the side of my building, looking as lost as I felt. As lost as he looked the first day I saw him.

“Where did you go?” he asked. He sounded tired, beaten down. “You ditched me in that place.”

“I’m sorry. I kind of confronted Emma. At the rehearsal dinner.”

“You went to the rehearsal dinner without me?”

“Yeah, lucky for us.”

“Why lucky?”

“Because Emma’s brother would have killed me if he saw me with you. I’m supposed to stay ten miles away from you.”

“Emma’s brother said that?” Andy looked baffled. “He doesn’t even know me.”

I sighed and sat down next to him on the ground. “Andy, he knows you. That whole family knows you, you just don’t remember.”

“Right,” he mumbled, turning away. “Well, maybe Emma’s brother is right. Maybe you should stay away from me.” He refused to look at me.

“Andy, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“You thought it was me,” he said, staring down between his legs at the sidewalk.

“What?”

“In that room. When I was starting to remember things. You thought I was remembering something
I
did. You thought I could do something like that to Sarah.”

“No,” I lied. “No, I never thought that.”

“No, you’re right, you didn’t think I did it to Sarah, you thought I did it to
you
.” His head jerked up, his eyes finally meeting mine. “Like . . . like I did something so sick to you that we
both
blocked it out
.
So sick that we had to make ourselves forget. You thought I could do something like that to you.”

My throat suddenly felt dry. My cracked lips struggled to form words. “I was in a panic. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’ve been that way ever since—”

“What if you’re right?” he interrupted.

That was not what I’d expected.

“Not about the part where she’s you,” he went on. “I know Sarah is Sarah, but what if
I’m
the one that hurt her? What if that’s why I don’t remember? What if there’s some horrible part of me that came out that night and—?”

I shut him up by shoving the wedding invitation in his face. His eyes quickly flashed over it. “What’s this? Where did you get this?”

“Lester Wyatt gave it to me,” I said.

“What do you mean, he gave it to you?”

“Well, he didn’t actually give it to me. He had Helena give it to me.”

“Why would he give you an invitation to his wedding?”

“That’s the nine-million-dollar question. He says he needs me to be there. He wants to talk to me alone. And I think she’s going to be there, too. I think Sarah is going to be at the wedding. Helena heard Wyatt say it.” I almost took his hand. “Andy, I think she might be
fine
. I think maybe the stuff you remembered in that room—”

“Never happened?”

“All I know is, after everything we’ve been through this week, I trust Helena’s ears way more than I trust your memory.”

A distant light seemed to flicker inside him. “You think she could really be there? You think all the stuff I saw might have just been some shit I dreamed or something?”