LEMON BEAUTY BAR
The handwriting isn’t familiar, but then it doesn’t need to be. I already know whose handwriting it is. Josiah is watching me through the brush of his overgrown bangs, waiting for me to finish reading and figure it all out. And I do. Saff ’s mystery. I solve it.
“She did it to herself,” I say.
Josiah nods.
“She dosed herself and asked you to tell her what to do when she was under,” I continue. “She made you promise.”
I don’t have to ask why Saff would choose Josiah to help carry out her punishment. If she could get him to make a promise, Josiah would keep it. He’s a good guy. That’s why he was my friend. Josiah is a hero with a moral code, no bullshit. Except he doesn’t look so heroic just now. He looks pale and pretty much terrible.
“I didn’t know she was going to dose herself like that,” he says. “She waited until I promised and then stuck the zom on her collarbone. That close to the neck, you go out.”
“She doesn’t remember any of that night.”
“On her collarbone,” he repeats. “I’m surprised she remembers any of that week. I almost didn’t go through with it, Rhett. I really almost didn’t. But we were playing this stupid game—”
“I know. She was the scapegoat.”
He stares at his hands like he’s just discovered them lying there in his lap. “I didn’t do it because she was the scapegoat. Kind of the opposite. I did it because she asked me to. And I thought the scapegoat deserved a moment of … of respect. She explained it to me. Why she wanted to do it.”
“Because of how she treated Astrid?”
“She said she needed to know how it felt. How she’d made Astrid feel. She said she was afraid of becoming someone who couldn’t feel things.”
“So you did it,” I say.
“Yeah. I did it. But I took the soap away from her when she got sick. It was enough. I got Ellie. We cleaned her up, got her dressed and home.”
I ask one more question, though I already know the answer to this one, too. “Why didn’t you tell her? After, I mean. Why didn’t you and Ellie tell Saff that it was her all along?”
“She made me promise that, too: not to tell her. She said it’d ruin it. That it’d make it feel, like, noble or something. And that the whole point was to feel like Astrid did. Like a victim.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t know she was going to get you to—you’re trying to find out what happened that night, right?”
“She asked me to help her,” I say, but the sentence doesn’t have the same power as it did before, when I would think it to myself.
“I kind of figured that out when you showed up together at school.” Josiah shakes his head. “I should’ve known she’d go to you.”
“Wait. Why?”
“Well, because of the Apricity. Because deep down she must remember taking it.” He gestures at the paper in my hand. “And she knows your mom works for the real thing.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
“And because she always talks about you.”
“She does?” It’s a stupid question, but that’s what I ask: She does?
“Yeah. Out of the blue, she’ll say, I wish Rhett was here, or I wonder how Rhett is doing. She’s the only one of us who actually says …” He shakes his head again. “But we’re all thinking it, man. I hope you know that.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say, and suddenly it’s true: I do know it.
A little while later, when Josiah walks me out, he says, “So I’ll see you again?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Soon?” he says.
“Yeah,” I agree. “Soon.”
CASE NOTES 3/30/35
THE SOLUTION
I can now conclude with reasonable certainty that Saffron Jones committed the perfect crime. She built a machine of revenge and set it to run, concocting a series of unsavory tasks, eliciting the help of Josiah Halu to carry them out, giving herself an amnesiac dose of zom. She did this to assuage the guilt she felt over bullying Astrid Lowenstein during the Scapegoat Game. Because of the effects of the drug and the promise of secrecy she exacted from Josiah, Saff doesn’t remember that she was not just victim but also culprit. Cruelest are the punishments we visit upon ourselves.
I MEET UP WITH SAFF, ready to tell her that I’ve done it. I’ve solved her mystery. Even if I don’t know how I’m going to tell her the truth, even if I don’t know how she’ll react when I do. We drive to Golden Gate Park again, to that same road behind the flower conservatory where we met to figure things out right at the beginning. Six days and a thousand years ago. The whole way there, I’m thinking about how I should say it, what the best words would be. I’m thinking that if she cries I’ll go ahead and pat her arm. Or hug her? But before I can say anything, Saff cuts the engine, looks at me level, and says, “You know, don’t you?”
“It was you,” I say, all my careful words gone from my head. “You did it to yourself.”
I see her take the news. I see it change the smallest things about her face. She doesn’t cry, even though her eyes are big like she might. She breathes in shakily through her nose, then out again.
“Okay,” she finally says in a small voice. “Okay. I remember now. I mean, I remember enough.”
“Do you want me to tell you the rest?”
“Don’t.”
She turns and looks out through the windshield. I watch her profile for a second, but I hate people staring at me, so I turn and look where she’s looking, which is up. I remember how you can see the spires of the conservatory through the treetops. I search for them there among the green.
We’re quiet for a minute, just looking. Then Saff says, “I thought maybe it was the Apricity that told you to stop eating.”
“What?” I say. “No.”
So many people have asked me why I refused to eat, my parents, my doctors, my therapists, my nurses, Josiah, and that’s just naming the headliners. But Saff doesn’t ask me why. I mean, she does, but she asks it in a way that I can understand.
“Motive?” she says.
I glance over at her, and she’s looking straight back at me.
“Come on: motive?” she repeats.
And I do something all the Apricities in the world could never have predicted. I go ahead and answer her.
“It felt strong. Denying myself something I needed to feel strong. Not giving in when I was hungry felt strong.”
“Okay.” She nods. “Yeah, okay. I get that.”
But somehow I’m still explaining. Because suddenly there’s more. “I think it’s that I wanted to be what’s essential. I wanted to be, like, pure.”
“Shit, Rhett.” She smiles, her eyes big and bright and sad. “Me too.”
And I want to tell her that her smile is what’s essential, that her smile is what’s pure. But I could never say something like that out loud.
So I do what I can. I lick my thumb, reach for her face, and rub the eyebrow pencil away. There are little hairs in an arc, just starting to grow back. Then I do something more. I lean over