Chapter Fifteen Maya

Chapter Fifteen

Maya

June 2023

With a gasp, I wake at six a.m. covered in sweat. Amy. Her roommate. I have to talk to her.

Reaching for my phone, I navigate to my sister’s Instagram, scrolling until I find a photo of the two of them together.

Amy’s profile has almost no pictures of her but is filled with political posts and nature shots, and, when I click through her latest stories, there’s a new picture of a place I recognize: the Lake Carnegie towpath.

—

As I approach Lake Carnegie, the sight of the stone bridge overwhelms me with emotion. I remember Cecily and Kai running across it after our team won intramural volleyball. Skinny-dipping in the lake with Nate. Lila at the stern of a boat in the early morning as her crew team’s oars slid over the water. I’ve never seen it this lush, though, the Japanese maples and purple nightshade blossoming along the shore.

But underneath, a darker buzz: cicadas, a cold breeze shaking the branches. My sister’s body was found here.

I suddenly picture her being pulled from the water and grip onto the ledge as a chill passes through me.

On the other side of the bridge is the towpath where Naomi liked to jog alone. What if she’d been on a run when someone attacked her?

I’m thinking of the possibilities when something brushes my arm, making me jump. A head of long black hair streaks past. A young woman. I’d been so lost in thought I hadn’t heard her approach.

She turns to look at me over her shoulder. “Sorry—” and fear flashes across her face. She slows for a moment, opening her mouth as if to say something, and closes it again. Amy. But she turns, continuing down the trail, faster now.

“Hey, wait.” I jog after her. I could see that she’d recognized me. Why is she running away?

Amy ignores me, picking up her pace so she’s increased the distance between us.

“Amy!” I struggle to catch up.

She’s in clothes that look too warm for the heat, her dark hair draping over her shoulders.

As I gain on her, my chest tightens. Strange, of course, that she hasn’t answered my messages, that she’s pretending she didn’t hear me call her name, but something else too. I remember helping Naomi move in freshman year, how Amy had sat on the bed in her room reading a book, watching us from beyond the crack in the door. She was quiet, observant. If anyone would have spotted something different in how Naomi was acting, it would have been her.

“Amy! Hey!” I shout, and finally she slows to a walk. “Hey, it’s Maya, Naomi’s sister.”

She looks at me with trepidation as I approach, slowly lowering an earbud from her ear. “I remember you,” she says quietly as her eyes slide to the ground. The girl looks up at me. I notice she’s shivering. “I’m so sorry about what happened.”

“Thank you. I’m sure it’s hard for you too, you were one of her best friends. Listen, did you see her? I mean, did you see her the day she died?”

She shakes her head, looks down, her black hair falling like curtains over her face.

“Do you know what was going on with her the last few months?”

She bites her lip, and I can tell she’s trying to hold back tears.

“I talked to Liam, and he seemed upset…Did they have a falling-out?” I remember the way Liam grabbed my wrist. The broken racket.

“She—” Amy starts to sob. “I’m sorry.”

I stand there, unsure of what to do.

“Oh, no, don’t. It’s okay.” I touch Amy on the arm. She swipes at her tears, but they keep coming. She’s sobbing hard, the way a child would, gasps shaking her whole body.

I want to reach out and hug her, but I barely know this girl. She looks terrified, but I can’t tell if she’s scared of me or of whatever happened to my sister.

When Amy finally calms down, I lean in, lowering my voice. “I know this is hard. Trust me, I know. But if you know something…I promise to keep it between us. I just want to find out what happened to her. She was the only family I had left, and I loved her so much.”

She looks at the ground and doesn’t respond.

“She canceled our plans Friday night because something came up, and I’m guessing she came here to meet someone. Do you know who that might have been? Was it Liam? Or someone else in Sterling? Or even Greystone?” I wasn’t even sure Amy knew what Greystone was—she wasn’t even a member of Sterling Club, and these societies were meant to stay secret, after all.

But Amy flinches when I say Greystone. She looks at me, eyes wide, and I realize she does know—either because Naomi told her, or Amy found out on her own—but then she says, so quietly I have to strain to hear, “The night before she died, she was acting really weird…like on the verge of a breakdown. She kept saying she thought someone was following her. But I have no idea where she went that night.” Her voice gives way. “I guess she could’ve been with this guy Ben? But…I’m not sure…I don’t think he’d ever do anything to hurt her.”

She’s looking down at her feet, arms wrapped around herself. There’s something she isn’t telling me. “Do you think you could let me into her room?”

Amy’s eyes flick up to mine. “Um, sure, I guess. Follow me.”

—

Amy unlocks the door to their room and turns on the light. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen their room. I haven’t seen it since the day I’d helped her move in. I feel guilty—Princeton’s not far from the city at all, but I hardly ever came out here to see her, and when I did, I’d come for a quick dinner and avoid campus.

The common area is what I expected: the turquoise IKEA couch I bought for Naomi, the old lamps that belonged to Margaret. Books, clothes, makeup. An antique mirror we’d found at a flea market in Brooklyn. The wall covered in Polaroids of the three of them, though fewer than the last time I saw it, some bent and worn. Tears prick my eyes, and I have to look away.

That’s when I notice a strange spot on the wall, one that seems to have been covered in fresh paint. In fact, the entire wall seems to have been recently painted and is slightly off in color. Odd. But when I turn to ask Amy, she’s gone.

I move toward her bedroom. The door is closed and blocked with crime scene tape. The police had told us that they’d finished searching her room, and we were free to gather her belongings whenever we wanted, but it’s still a shock to see it this way. Carefully removing the crime scene tape, I enter Naomi’s bedroom, pulse quickening. As I survey the room, my eyes fall on the framed photograph of the two of us on her desk, in our matching blue swimsuits, and the sight of it makes me choke up.

The rest of the space was clearly disturbed from the police investigation. Her drawers have all been opened and pawed through, fingerprint powder dusted on her desk, on the mugs and wineglass. The air still smells faintly of Naomi’s perfume: light and youthful, with notes of vanilla.

I close my eyes for a moment, steadying myself. I have to keep it together. Stay focused. Find some sort of clue. Something, anything the police might have missed.

The top drawer of her desk is filled with random items: gum, loose credit cards, lip balm.

“The police took her laptop…” I startle at the sound of Amy’s voice, and when I turn around, she’s pointing to the bottom of the desk. “But maybe check and see if they took her notebook? She kept it there, in the bottom drawer. Maybe there’ll be something useful init.”

But in the bottom drawer are just sketches and notes from class. No notebook.

“That’s weird…” Amy says, her face wrinkling in confusion. “I could’ve sworn…They must have taken it.”

I search more quickly now, going through her dresser. The pressure of tears is right behind my eyes, but I have to keep going.

After another thirty minutes, I decide it’s no use. The police have taken everything important, and there’s nothing left.

Sighing, I bend down to pick up a piece of paper that’s fallen under the dresser, and that’s when I notice it. I reach under the dresser and pull it out. A dried flower petal. I turn it over in my hand, and looking under the dresser again, there are more, and a small piece of folded card stock, all the way in the back, difficult to reach.

It’s faded, barely legible, with a gold leaf design printed around the edges, and on it, a handwritten note: Naomi, I’m sorry about last night. Let me make it up to you. —M.

“I don’t know what those are doing there,” Amy says, standing behind me. She’s reading the card from over my shoulder, and when I look up at her, all the blood has drained from her face.