Pretty, Nasty, Lovely by Rosalind Noonan

Author:Rosalind Noonan [Noonan, Rosalind]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2017-07-04T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

Thursday and Friday were more of the same, swimming against the tide, struggling my way to the surface to grab a breath. Classes, work, two hundred pages of reading, an essay, an article review. The makeup quiz for anatomy was painful, but at least I was able to answer most of the questions. Just in time to begin studying for next week’s test.

Thursday night there was an awkward moment in the A & P lab when I found myself staring at a woman’s hand, her fingernails still bearing a chipped coat of coral nail polish. It struck me that those hands had been touching the world a year ago. Buttering a slice of toast. Patting a child’s shoulder. Cuddling a cat.

With all the mysticism of death, losing my mom and Delilah and now Lydia had taught me the reality of the survivor—the simple disappearance of someone from your daily world. Now you see me, now you don’t.

I groaned when I got an e-mail from Dr. Finn about joining the suicide task force. As if I had time for some idiotic committee.

And there was the added suspense of knowing I was being watched and followed. When I scanned a crowd, I wasn’t sure who was a cop and who was a student, so I assumed everyone had their eyes on me. The slightest rustle of a dead leaf sent my heart racing. Paranoia can really zap your energy.

I had to remind myself that I’d survived much worse things. The accident . . . the aftermath.

No one here knew the details of the accident, circumstances that had made me hate my sister for years after it happened. Delilah had insisted on driving, and then while on the road she had badgered Mom about a three-day concert my parents had refused to let her attend. All the classic ploys—all my friends are going, I’ll pay for it myself, don’t you trust me?—weren’t working. In a tantrum, Delilah sent the car speeding ahead. Mom shouted at her to stop, but that made her go even faster. When the car went into a spin, I think Delilah regretted it. She yanked the wheel, and in the rearview mirror I saw a look of panic in her eyes. That raw fear, gritty and dank as mud.

“It wasn’t suicide,” I told my father afterward. “She was speeding, but she didn’t mean to crash.”

“We’ll never know.” He seemed so gray and wrinkled then, as if he had aged overnight. Only the ponytail at the back of his neck hinted at the cool, young dude he used to be.

We didn’t discuss it much, but I made myself an expert on suicide to prove him wrong. I wanted to point to signs and symptoms to discount my sister’s motives. I wanted to say, “See? Look at that. Definitely not Delilah.” But the facts were inconclusive.

Ironic that I was here all these years later trying to convince the police of the exact opposite. It was suicide. It was, you idiots. Lydia Drakos killed herself.

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