Hot and Cold

When I think back on my high school days, I remember how cruel we were. To ourselves, to our parents, to each other. I tried to remind myself of that every time Mariah gave me sass or did something stupid, but it didn’t help me understand her. She often said I just didn’t get it, and she was right. They say your brain isn’t developed until your mid-twenties and it must be true, because I can’t remember why we were so cruel, or what logic went into the dumb shit we did. My memories of my young years are glazed with hormones, hot with the conviction that everything was rigged against me. It’s not like I woke up at 26 and thought cool, I’m done cooking now. What a weird ride that was. It’s more like one day I called my dad and realized we weren’t talking past each other anymore. We were finally speaking the same language.

Mariah won’t ever look back on high school because she died three months before her 16th birthday. She won’t ever know her finished mind. I won’t ever understand her. And I won’t ever understand what happened to her, or why.

Here are the facts. On December 13th, 2015, she went to her friend Kate’s house for a sleepover. Her friend Shauna was there, too. Shortly after midnight on December 14th, she was found crouching in a tool cabinet under their porch. She was only wearing a pink bikini. It was 6˚F with a windchill that brought it down to -4˚F. She had a BAC of .14, and her cause of death was hypothermia. No one was charged.

I begged the police for anything they could give me. They could only give me that list of facts, and their apologies, which meant basically nothing.

“Look, Cal. It was a tragedy. But it was an accident,” Detective Schifflin told me a week in. “Accidents happen. Do you know how fast hypothermia can happen? When it’s that cold, when you’re wearing nothing, when you’re wet?”

“Yeah, I know how fast it can happen, Ian.” I used to drink with him at the Hop sometimes. I knew him well.

“15 minutes, Cal. That’s the coroner’s estimate.”

“You told me that already. I get it. But why aren’t you doing anything? Where’s the investigation?”

“What do you want me to do, Cal? There’s nothing to investigate. Mariah got locked out and she died.”

“You’re a detective. I want you to detect!”

“Cal –”

“And stop saying my fucking name!” We got nowhere after that. I don’t drink with Ian anymore.

It’s been eight years since then. I don’t know where the time has gone. I go to work, I come home. I buy beers at the Quik-E-Mart, I drink them in front of the TV. I think about Mariah. Every night used to be different with her around because she was always changing, and now it’s all one sad blur. But tonight feels distinct, because tonight I got a bad idea.

It started at the Quik-E-Mart. I was later leaving work than usual. When I got to the register with my Coors in hand, I froze. The cashier wasn’t Enid. It was Kate. She was scrolling through her phone.

“Cash or credit?” she asked, still looking at her screen.

“I. Um. Cash,” I stuttered out. She looked up. I waited for a flash of recognition to pass over her face. It didn’t come. She’d gained weight, a lot of it. Her face was puffy and her hair was greasy. She looked worn and mean. She held out her hand impatiently, wanting to scan the beers. I shoved them towards her. “You know what?” I said. “Never mind.” I ran out of the store.

I stood in the parking lot, shivering. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something monumental had just happened. It was silly. Of course, I had seen around Kate before. She still lived with her parents, and it’s a small town. We stood in the same line at the post office a couple of times. I’d spotted her in the produce section at the Shop Rite, and once on the highway, speeding past me in a beat-up Honda Civic. But we’d never been alone together. We hadn’t looked each other in the eye like that. Had she really not recognized me?

I drove home in a daze. There was one thing stuck in my head, and I chased its tail around. Mariah’s autopsy had shown no trauma, sexual or otherwise, except for a faint line of bruises on the outside of both wrists. Ian had considered it irrelevant.

“There’s no way to know how it happened. It was pretty icy on the deck. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume she slipped and fell out there.”

But it never sat right with me. I couldn’t get a memory from my childhood out of my head. Freshman year of high school I joined the Football team and one of the hazing rituals had left me trapped in a locker. It was alright for a little bit, just cramped. But the longer I was crammed in there the deader my legs felt, and there was no way for me to shift around and get blood flow going again. I was a big guy, even then. Probably a half hour in I started hammering on the locker door, begging and pleading to be let out. My wrists ached long after my legs recovered.

I think it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that Mariah’s bruises came from slamming them repeatedly on a door, begging the whole time to be let back into the warmth of Kate’s home.

Grief is funny. It waxes and wanes, but it also jumps out at you. Mariah is less of a hole in my life now. She’s more like a slightly sore tooth I carry around, prodding it occasionally to see if it still hurts, and usually it’s bearable. Except when I smell someone who uses her shampoo and I’m slammed with an immediate, tense need to hug her. I try to avoid playgrounds for the same reason, because if I see a pretty little dark-haired girl from behind, I can’t look away. You don’t want to be that guy.

But tonight, it’s not the same old sadness that catches me by surprise. It’s fury. I have a bad idea, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to do it.

I worry I hit her too hard. She’s slow waking up, tied to a chair in my basement. I haven’t hidden my face. I want her to know who I am.

“I thought that might be you,” she says. “You look like her, you know.” The thought brings my heart to my throat. I had been prepared for her to scream and beg when she woke up, but she's quieter than I thought she'd be. She sounds resigned. “Are you going to kill me?” Her voice breaks on the last word.

“I don’t know yet,” I say, and I’m not lying. Well, I’m leaving room for doubt. She’s quiet for a little, but I can see she’s thinking. “Mostly I want to ask you some questions.” She laughs bitterly.

“We could have done that over coffee, you know. Didn’t have to take me like this.”

I had walked back to the Quik-E-Mart and staked her out in the parking lot, waiting until she reached into her bag for her car keys before hitting her over the head and finagling her into the backseat. I feel I’ve done the best I can under the circumstances, but there’s a part of me that knows it isn’t enough. This is most likely going to end with me in prison, especially if Ian gets it in his mind to go through the CCTV from her shift and sees my face there.

“Maybe. But I don’t want to drink coffee with you.”

“You want to know what happened to Mariah.” I nod. She sighs. “It’s not going to help you, man.”

“You can let me figure that out for myself.”

“Fair enough. Ok. You probably won’t believe me, or care, but I – well, I’m not the bad one.” She pauses and clears her throat. “You’ve got to be patient with me on this one. I haven’t told this story to anyone, ever. I never thought I would. It’s complicated. I won’t tell you I didn’t do anything. But please, please understand, it was an accident. Mariah wasn’t supposed to get hurt.”

“She didn’t get hurt. She died.”

“I know, I know,” she shrugs like that fact is just a spot of spilled milk, and I’m suddenly really fucking glad I took her this way. “Is it ok if I start at the beginning? Like, way back. I promise I’m not stalling for time. I promise it’s all relevant.” The thought of time as a factor in our conversation hasn’t registered to me yet. I have an uncomfortable vision of Ian bursting into the basement just before she gets to the confessing bit.

“Get to it, then.” She nods. Takes a shuddering breath. Spills.

“I don’t know how much you knew about Mariah. I don’t know how much you know about Shauna, or me, or the three of us together. I get the feeling Mariah didn’t tell you much. Which, like, fair. I didn’t tell my parents shit either. And what was there to say at first? ‘Hey, my friend’s a fucking psycho, I’m scared to go to sleep with her around, but also if I lose her it’s going to be social suicide.’ No. You can’t say that. You can barely think that when you’re 15. There’s no room for nuance at that age. You’re friends or you’re not.

“And besides, there’s something glamorous about it all. There’s always drama around her, and sometimes it’s fun. She does crazy stuff and you follow along because it’s better than being bored. I feel like I should be clear right now. The crazy one is Shauna, not Mariah. Not me. You might not remember how tight Mariah and I were. Wendy did all the playdate shit. You were always at work. No, I’m not saying that as a criticism. Just like, sharing with you what you need to know.

“Anyways, it’s like this. Mariah and I were best friends. Ride or die. Elementary, middle, all of it. She was like a sister to me. I can tell you don’t like me saying that. But neither of us had siblings. We missed out on that. We found it in each other. She used to sleep over at mine every Friday night. You’d have your date night with Wendy, and Mariah and I would watch movies and eat crap and whisper at each other after midnight across the guestroom bed. I need you to know this, I need you to believe it, because I need you to know that I never wanted it to be this way. Of all three of us, if there’s one person who should be alive right now, it’s Mariah. It’s not me. It’s her.

“When Wendy left it’s like a light went out in Mariah. She didn’t want to watch movies anymore. She didn’t want to talk about anything, but I could tell she was all tied up in knots inside. It was so hard to be her friend at that point. I’ll admit it, I lost patience. I was awful to her, and we drifted a little. By the time Sophomore year started, I was up to here with her moodiness. I wanted to help her, and she wouldn’t fucking let me. And along comes Shauna like a ray of sunshine, sitting next to me at lunch, making me laugh until I nearly piss my pants. She’s the shiny new penny at school. She’s hot and she knows it, everyone knows it, and she chooses me as her best friend.

“I tried to keep Mariah in the loop. I really did, at first. But three’s a crowd. And I got so jealous. If Shauna braided Mariah’s hair, I’d start thinking about a Nair smoothie. Shauna was like that. She hooked you, made you need her approval more than you needed air. She had to be the belle of the ball, always. And she hated Mariah’s poor-little-me act even more than I did. I don’t know when it started, but we made up code words. If Mariah was in a bad way, Shauna would say something like ‘Oh, my cat Smokey is being such a little bitch today,” because the joke was that Shauna didn’t have a cat. And then I’d say something like 'She’s probably in heat,' and then we’d both be cackling, and Mariah would just sit there like a lump.

“Maybe she knew it was a code. I don’t know. I hope she didn’t know how mean we really were to her. That’s something I pray on a lot. But I think she did, because she started eating lunch in the library instead of the cafeteria, and she stopped coming over every Friday night. And then she met Tony.

“I know you don’t know about him. She never would have told you, given all the rules you set on her dating. I’m not saying they were bad rules, but they were harsh. Like there’s no way a teen could turn that kind of thing off once it started going. She was just totally obsessed. And he liked her well enough, but I don’t think it was a be-all-end-all thing for him ever. Especially once Shauna set her sights on him. Yeah, I think it was malicious. I didn’t think that then – oh, she put on a good show. ‘It’s love at first sight, yadda yadda, I can’t control myself.’ But she was obvious about it. Feeling up his muscles in PE. Saving his number with a heart in her phone. Texting him when he was with Mariah. Textbook snake shit.

“Mariah took a lot of things laying down. But Tony, she would’ve done anything for him. And now – now we’re up to December, that year. Shauna talked Mariah into coming over to mine for a sleepover. Tensions were so high. I knew it was a bad idea, but part of me was hoping it’d all blow over. Mariah would let Tony go. She’d start coming over again, sitting with us at lunch again. Shauna would get what she wanted and chill the fuck out for a little bit. Wishful thinking.

“What actually happened was that Shauna’s got a brand-new iPhone, the first one of us to get one. We got dolled up, did each other’s makeup and take selfies. It’s all fun. Mariah brought some SoCo and we were drinking it with OJ, but Shauna’s mixing the drinks and I think she made Mariah’s really strong. So, when Shauna told her we should take some hot photos for Tony, I see her rile up. She told Shauna to go fuck herself, she’s not stupid, she sees what’s going on. She’s not ok with it. Shauna got scary. She smiled at Mariah, but you could tell something's brewing up there.

“I try to smooth things over. I told Mariah to go change into my new pink bikini. Like, why would Shauna want to send Tony sexy photos of Mariah, if Shauna’s trying to get with Tony? I’m not pretending I’m a saint here. I knew what was up. But I also just wanted everything to be ok. Mariah went off to change, and Shauna fucking lost it at me. Told me we need to get her good. We need to prank her on video. I – I suggested the hot tub. That’s on me.

“My dad was a cheapskate. He liked the flex of having a hot tub. He hated paying to heat it. He’d keep it at like 50, 60 degrees, not 80 like you’re supposed to. Took forever to warm up, so we hardly used it unless he had guests over who he wanted to impress. I tell Shauna, let's tell Mariah the hot tub’s all heated up and ready to go, she jumps in. Prank! It’s cold. She liked the idea. Got that smile back.

“You can probably fill in the rest from here. Do you want me to keep – Yeah? Ok. Well, the prank went off seamlessly. But then Shauna grabbed me and pulled me inside. She locked the door. Mariah’s out there screaming her head off. Shauna filmed her the whole time, saying nasty shit. Just terrible. And that’s – that’s the last thing she heard someone say. That’s what she went out on. I don’t know how to live with that. I dream about that sometimes. Like, I hear her banging on the door again and again and again. I can’t drink SoCo anymore because it puts me right back in that kitchen, laughing with Shauna when I want to cry at what we’ve just done. What I’m doing to her. My best friend. I’m killing her. I don’t know it, but it’s happening already. She’s dying behind a glass door, looking at me.

“I guess she gave up after a little while. She stopped. And Shauna was telling me all this stuff about Tony, all about how he fucks. And I won’t lie. I had a little crush on him too, ok? He had a thing about him. I wasn’t like Shauna. But I liked hearing about him, maybe too much. So as long as she’s telling me this stuff, why would I stop her? Why would I go out and check on the noise that’s not happening anymore?

“We did, eventually. It couldn’t have been more than a half hour later that we found her. Part of why it took so long is where she went. I kept hoping, the whole time we were searching, that she’d gone to a neighbor’s house or something. But you know. We’re kind of deep in the woods. I hoped maybe she got into my mom’s car or something, the garage. But it was all locked up, and she didn’t know the code. I found her under the porch, all scrunched up in that tool cabinet. You know they call that ‘terminal burrowing?’ I looked it up. When people are – are dying of hypothermia, they hide in small places. Maybe they trick themselves thinking it’s cozy or something. But yeah. We found her there, and it’s too late. I killed my best friend and I didn’t want to.

“I guess I wanted to tell you this better. I wanted to say I didn’t kill her, so that you’ll let me out of here alive. I don’t know if I deserve that anymore. I don’t think I want to remember this anymore. Shauna killed herself. Three years ago. Tony left her. I don’t know why. We lost touch when she went to college. There’s only one person left to punish for this, and I guess it’s me.”

She’s sobbing hysterically and breathing like she just ran a marathon. I’m absorbing her story. I started off mad at Kate’s insinuations – How dare she say I didn’t know my own daughter? But she was right, I knew nothing about this.

“Thank you,” I say through the frog in my throat. “And also, fuck you.” I turn to walk out of the basement, and that’s when she really screams for the first time.

“You can’t leave me down here. Oh god, you’ve got to let me out. Please. I’m so sorry. Oh my god, please. I’m sorry.” I close the door behind me. I turn the TV up all the way. It almost drowns her out. Not quite. I listen to her scream while I fill the buckets. I check the porch thermometer. It’s 10˚F and dawn is a small glimmer over the mountains.

I drag Kate’s chair out into the backyard, then return for the Home Depot utility buckets. Their metal handles dig into my fingers through my gloves. Kate begs me for mercy. She tells me she lied, she didn’t do anything, it was all Shauna.

“If I were really looking for poetic justice, I’d put you in one of her old swimsuits,” I say. “But this’ll have to do.” I pour the first of the buckets over her head, dousing her in cold water. She screams and screams. I smile. I wonder if Shauna smiled like this. I wonder if Mariah screamed like that. Kate quiets. Her lips are blue already.

“Please, please, please, please,” she chants through shivers. On and on. It takes longer than I thought. She’s bigger than Mariah was, wearing more clothing. These things probably make a difference. Finally, she says no more.

I stare into the sunrise, now full bore. I strip myself. When I’m in my underwear and nothing else, I tip the last bucket over myself. I sit in the snow and I wait for the cold to take me, too.

In my last coherent thought, I hear my phone ring. It’s in my hand. It’s Mariah.

“Daddy,” she says. “Can you come pick me up? It’s getting weird here. I want to come home.”

“I’m busy,” I whisper. “I’ll see you in the morning.”