do you mean by ‘withdrawn’?”
Jenna sighed, pushing back her hair so that it stood on end. “Quiet, distracted. She kept cancelling stuff at the last minute. Like, we’d arrange to go to the movies, or just to hang out, but then she’d cancel right before we were supposed to meet. I thought … I actually thought she was going to break up with me.” She looked back at me, her eyes once again wide and a little wild, filling with tears.
“Do you know why she wasn’t home on Sunday night?” This was a question that had been bothering me; why had Elle not been at home and why hadn’t anyone noticed that she was missing earlier?
“She … she was supposed to come over to my house, to hang out, but then she texted to say she wasn’t feeling up to it, so I figured she was just going to stay home with her family. I texted and called a couple times but when she didn’t answer I thought maybe she’d just gone to bed early or something.”
There was a shot of silence while I swallowed a mouthful of coffee. “Do you think she went out anyway? To meet someone else?” I asked at last.
Jenna nodded, blinking rapidly at me as a way to stave off tears. “Maybe. It’s the only reason why her parents wouldn’t have known where she was. If they thought she was at mine, then they wouldn’t have been worried, right? But what if she told them she was with me but she was actually somewhere else?” Her voice broke as she was speaking, tears falling silently down her cheeks, and I reached for a napkin from the stainless-steel dispenser and handed one to her. She took it silently, wiping away at her face.
“Had she ever done that before?”
“I don’t know,” Jenna said, shrugging her shoulders helplessly. “Maybe, I guess.”
“Do you think she could have been seeing someone else?”
“You mean cheating on me?”
I drew in a breath, watching Jenna’s face fall ever further. “Yeah.”
Jenna swallowed, shaking her head. “I didn’t ever think she’d do that. But I don’t know now. Maybe she would?”
I felt awful asking Jenna all these questions, making it so much harder, so much worse. It was like I was digging through the rubble of a ruined building and kept uncovering body parts; I wanted to stop, but there was a chance there was a live one down there, and I needed to know. “Is there anyone you can think of who she might have been seeing? Anyone at school she was flirty with? Anything like that?”
“No,” Jenna replied, just looking at me.
“Are you sure? What about if I put it this way instead: Was there anyone who seemed interested in her? Even if she wasn’t interested back?”
Jenna put down the mug of coffee she’d been drinking from and licked her lips. “Yeah, there were a few.”
“A few?”
“There were some guys at school who were constantly hitting on her. As if we were just some sort of act. Like we were there just to turn them on or something, and because everyone knew Elle was bi, they’d always hit on her, super creepy, all like, ‘let me know when you want a man’ or whatever. As if because she was attracted to men and women she’d be attracted to a complete asshole.”
“Who were they?”
Jenna thought for a second. “Johnny Phillips, Mike Stiles, Adrian Turney. I don’t think she was seeing any of them though. She thought they were assholes.”
“Are you sure?”
She shrugged, and leaned back in the booth. “I guess I don’t know.”
“Did the police ask about these guys?”
“No, they just wanted to know where I’d been and if Elle had seemed different at all recently. They asked if she’d been seeing anyone else, like you did. If we had an open relationship.” She raised her eyebrows at me.
“So, there’s no reason these guys—Johnny, Mick and whoever—would be questioned by the police?”
“Mike. And no, I don’t think so. Unless they decided to question the whole school.”
“Okay. Do you have any of these guys’ numbers? So I could get in touch with them if I need to?”
Jenna shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. But they’re all on Facebook. You could just message them there.”
“Right, of course.”
Jenna gave me a thin smile and shifted in her seat, looking down into what I assumed was her nearly empty coffee mug. I could tell she wanted to leave.
“Hey, have you ever been up to the Altmans’ lake house?” I asked, and Jenna nodded.
“Yeah, plenty of times,” she said.
“What about those guys? Would they have been there too?” I was thinking about that compass drawn in the snow next to Elle’s body, all four points leading to an “N.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. Mike might have been to a party there once or twice. Why?”
I told her about the compass, which she didn’t seem to have read about yet, and watched as her face drained even further of any color.
“Anyone could have seen that compass though,” she said after a pause. “Elle had a tattoo of it on her ankle.”
“She did?” I asked, but as soon as she had said it, it all came flooding back.
I’d sat there, in that very diner, sometime at the end of the last summer, catching up with Elle and she’d told me all about it. I hadn’t seen her in months, not since the beginning of the year probably, and we’d had a lot to talk about. She’d spent a few weeks of the summer in Austin with Nate and then they’d driven back together so that she could take possession of his old Land Cruiser.
***
“You got a new tattoo,” she says excitedly, reaching for my arm and turning it over so that she can better see the arrow pointing down towards my palm, its tail just scraping the inner crook of my elbow. “Why an arrow?” she asks.
I look down at my arm, her warm hand still wrapped around my wrist, and it feels as though I’m looking at someone else’s. I’m used to the tattoo by now—I’ve had it since January—but for some reason I feel unhooked from my body, let loose from its rigid confines. “I got it for Nora,” I say eventually, my voice sticky, constricted, and raise my eyes to meet Elle’s, watching as they widen a little. “She always seemed to know exactly where she was going. I could use a little of that in my life I guess.”
Elle grins at me and she seems to be bubbling over with something. “It’s like we match,” she says animatedly, pulling her leg up onto the diner bench and twisting her ankle towards me so I can see it: an inky black compass with all points ending in “N.” It’s still a little red, sore. “Nate got one too,” she says, “on his arm though. Guess we’ll have to force Noah to get one at some point too. But look,” her finger traces the compass on her ankle gently as she speaks, “it’s like your little arrow matches the pointers on the compass. Part of the family.”
Something heavy fills my stomach and even though I find it difficult I manage to smile at her. “Don’t you have to be eighteen to get a tattoo?”
Elle makes a face as if she’s disappointed I’d ask her such a question, and proceeds to roll her eyes. “Yeah, and Mom absolutely flipped. It was ridiculous. As if she doesn’t have more important things to worry about than me getting an effin tattoo.”
I can’t help but really smile at her then; there is nothing more endearing to me than Elle’s quiet refusal to curse. We move onto talking about her parents, who, Elle believes, are in the process of getting a divorce, although neither one of them will talk about