Chapter Thirteen Maya

Chapter Thirteen

Maya

May 2023

That night, I wake sometime after midnight from a horrible dream. A watery image of Lila floating on her back in the lake, skin pale and bloated, lips discolored jaundice yellow and purple. I sit up with a gasp as the image slips away into the dark.

Water. I need water. I reach for the glass, gulp it down as my heart returns to normal. Still, a headache remains, my temples on fire as thoughts buzz loudly in my skull. Why am I dreaming of Lila when I should be trying to figure out what happened to Naomi?

Wide awake, I scroll through comments on Naomi’s social media, thinking about her, thinking about Lila, wondering who my sister might have been dating, who might know something. Anything. The only guy I’d known of was the tennis player, Liam, and Naomi had said she’d cut it off months ago.

Earlier this afternoon, I reached out to Naomi’s roommate, Zalikah, who said she’d be happy to talk to me, but her other roommate, the quiet one, won’t return my messages.

As I sit there in the dark hotel room, I think of Matthew. How he looked the same as he did all those years ago, like he’d stepped right out of my memory. He’d seemed nervous, hadn’t he? Or was it all in my head? Was I so gutted over Naomi’s death that my mind was spinning wild narratives of what could have happened?

When I google Naomi Mason, I find a new article about her death, posted yesterday evening. I click on it. A photo of my sister stares back at me: she’s at a table, studying, the edge of a bookshelf behind her, and she has looked up at whoever took the photo and smiled. It’s strange to see her like this, my sister, a local headline, my sister, gone. Closing my eyes, I brace myself and read.

The body of Princeton University senior Naomi Mason was found in Lake Carnegie Saturday evening. According to a statement made by the Mercer County Medical Examiner’s office, “It is too soon to determine cause of death, but at this time, no foul play is suspected.”

A member of Sterling Club, Liam Alexander III, commented on her death: “Naomi was a beloved member of our club, an intelligent, kind, and caring friend and classmate. We are deeply saddened by her loss.”

I pull my face back from the screen. Why would her ex comment on her death? It’s not like he was the Sterling Club president.

As I reread the article, searching for anything that might be useful, my eyes drift back to the picture: a mahogany bookshelf with antique hardcover books, dark wood paneling on the walls, intricately hand-carved.

Sterling Club. That’s the Sterling Club library.

On one side of the photo, a man’s arm rests on her shoulders, the rest of him cropped out. And my eyes stop on something: just below the roll of his sleeve is a small tattoo no bigger than a penny: the Greystone Society insignia.

—

Zalikah agrees to meet me at a café on campus. her fingernails are bitten to shreds, and she keeps glancing over her shoulder as if someone might come up behind her.

“I can’t believe they’re saying it was an accident,” Zalikah whispers.

I look at her. “You don’t think it was?”

She closes her eyes and draws in a breath. Exhales. “Oh god. I don’t know. I really don’t know.” She wraps her arms around herself and rocks forward and back. Forward and back. The motion makes me nauseated.

“Zalikah,” I say, trying to get her to look at me. “Can you think of anyone who would have wanted to hurt her? Anyone who she might have had an argument with?”

“Please, it’s Zee,” she corrects me as she shakes her head. Blinks several times as if fighting tears.

“How about someone she was dating?”

Zee looks up. “She did have an argument with someone the night before she went missing. Thursday around seven or eight. I heard her on the phone.” She swallows. Looks away.

“Who was it?”

She hesitates. “She didn’t say.”

“Was it her ex? Liam?” I bristle as I remember the bruise I’d seen on her wrist the night we had dinner last April. She’d laughed it off with some excuse, but it was clearly made by a hand grabbing her. After that, I never liked Liam. Never trusted him. “I remember him,” I tell her.

Zee breathes out. “Or this other guy…Ben. Ben Wong. She was sort of dating him earlier this year, but I haven’t seen him around for a while.”

Ben? I don’t remember her mentioning someone named Ben. But how closely had I paid attention? I’d been so busy. So overwhelmed with my own day-to-day problems, so focused on Dani. Had one of these boys gotten jealous? Taken it out on her?

I shudder, making a mental note to look up Liam’s and Ben’s socials when I get back to the hotel. “So you think it could have been one of them?”

Zee shrugs, bends a braid around a finger. She looks over her shoulder. “I mean, I don’t know, I just…I can’t believe Naomi would have gotten herself into a situation to have an accident like that. And don’t those true-crime podcasts always look at the boyfriend first?”

For the first time, I realize just how young Zee looks. And how scared. “It’s okay,” I say, gently. “We’re all just trying to make sense of it.”

Zee hesitates. “Talk to Liam.” She looks at her phone, then back at me. “He’s probably at tennis practice. You might be able to catch him if you hurry.”

—

Outside, the air is hot, oppressive. the concrete burns the soles of my shoes as I walk quickly down the hill toward the tennis courts at the bottom of campus.

I find Liam practicing at the courts, exactly where Zee said he’d be. An opponent waits across the net. Liam tosses the ball into the air, racket raised, and slams it down, firing the ball across the net.

His opponent sends the ball back to the far side with a loud grunt.

Liam lunges for it and misses, and to my surprise, he slams his racket against the ground, breaking it in two. I inhale sharply. Suddenly it’s easy to picture how Naomi could have gotten that bruise.

The coach and the other player disappear from the court, leaving Liam alone. Taking a deep breath, I cautiously approach. I watch from behind the fence as Liam sits on a bench, removing his knee brace and ripping off the tape and pre-wrap underneath it. He furiously tears the last of it and throws it on the ground. With another angry curse, he slams the bench before grabbing his broken racket and yelling out as if in pain.

His fist tightens on the racket, and I think he’s going to slam it into the ground again, but instead it slips from his hand, landing with a loud echoing rattle. He presses his hands to his eyes for a moment before his body goes slack. His head hangs low, forearms to his knees. I hold my breath, watching him, until, after a moment, he senses me and looks up, and to my surprise, his eyes are watery.

But then he blinks and narrows his eyes, his face confused. “What are you doing here?”

“Liam, hi,” I say, steeling myself.

He makes his way over, stopping short and eyeing me from behind the fence. He’s taller than I remember. Stronger too. I glance down at the broken racket, remembering how easily he’d cracked it a moment ago. Think of how he could break me, too, if he wanted.

Though the same age as Zee and Naomi, Liam strikes me as a fully grown man. He’s several inches taller than I am, lean and athletic, and there’s something about his eyes and the way he carries himself that makes me nervous, like he could snap any minute.

“Maya,” he says. “What are you doing here?” There’s a flicker of something unreadable in his expression, but as quickly as it appears, it’s gone.

“I wanted to ask you if you spoke to Naomi recently—”

“Why? You think this is somehow my fault, so you show up here, at practice?” He makes a sound that might have been a laugh and what he does next is so strange, it makes me draw back: he smiles, actually smiles.

It’s so alarming it takes me a minute to speak again. “I—”

“She was fucked up long before I met her,” he says. “There’s nothing I could have done to help her. If she did this herself, that’s not on me.” With a scowl, Liam turns away from me and begins packing up his things. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he mutters.

When he reaches down for his bag, I catch sight of something on his forearm. It’s small and easy to miss, but I zero in on it. The Greystone Society insignia. The tattoo I saw in Naomi’s photo. It suddenly clicks into place.

“Was she in Greystone with you?”

He stops. I take his silence as confirmation.

My heart beats fast as I find the opening in the fence and make my way over to him, keeping a good ten feet of distance between us. “Please,” I say, breathing hard. “I just want to talk, I’m just trying to find out what happened. Don’t you want to know too, or did you never actually care about her to begin with?”

He mutters something I can’t make out as he continues packing.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, I loved her. ” He looks up, and I see the emotion twisting his face. Not bitterness or resentment but a deep pain.

He shoves the broken racket into his bag and hauls it over his shoulder. With one last look in my direction he says, “Have a nice day, Maya.”

He’s halfway across the court when my legs snap into action. “Wait.”

I’m at his shoulder when he stops, and what happens next happens fast: he whips around and his hand flies at my face. I think he’s about to hit me, but he grabs my wrist instead.

He spits out the next words like a threat: “You act like you’re some kind of saint, but I know you’re hiding things too.” He releases my wrist. “I’m not going to stand here and take any more of this shit. Leave me the fuck alone.”

Liam leaves the courts and disappears into the clubhouse, the door slamming shut behind him.