Page 25 of The Fall of Iris Henley
MONDAY, OCTOBER 10, 12:32PM
THE SUNNYSIDE UP
Outside I hike my backpack up my spine and look around. The street, thank God, is empty. School is about to let out but I don’t want to face anyone there.
Instead I walk the three blocks to the Sunnyside Up. It’s not a perfect place to hide—everyone in Varda eats there—but it’s close, and honestly, I’m hungry. Inside the air smells like coffee and bacon. The only customers this time of day are a few old men parked on the stools at the counter. A sign saysPLEASE SEAT YOURSELFso I do, in a booth sticky with syrup.
The screen of my phone is crowded with alerts. I flip it face down on the table in front of me, not ready to look.
“What do you need, hon?” Laurie, the waitress, has appeared next to the table, pencil poised over the order pad. I wonder if she recognizes me. She’s worked here since my parents were in high school, but that means she doesn’t bother learning any of our names. We’re all “hon” to her. Maybe I’m just another hon and she’s not sizing me up, replayingeverything she’s ever learned about me, trying to decide if I’m a cold-blooded killer.
“Um, coffee with cream, please,” I say. My stomach lurches; I haven’t had enough to eat today to balance out the caffeine. “And can I get just, like, a side of toast?”
“Sure thing, hon,” Laurie says. She barely even looks at me as she scrawls it on the paper. I can’t believe how relieved I feel to be invisible.
When she leaves I finally turn my phone back over. I’ve got twenty-two messages. Obviously Hayden and Sophie want to know what’s going on, but I see other names—Bella Zseleczky, Lacy Smith, people wanting to know if I’m okay, oh my God, I saw your locker, I missed you in choir, are you okay?
But when I open Sekrit, I see that not everyone is worried. Someone named Chaotic_Rain has posted a blurry picture of me in the back of the cop car. It’s been upvoted ninety-seven times already, and the comments section is giddy.
sugarspice:FINALLY
Pickle_rick_69:hope Mays has a flak jacket lol, that chick is dangerous
coffeecutie:do you think they have cheer squads in prison
I shouldn’t be surprised. Someone’s always watching. I glance around the diner and see security cameras, one up near the door, one angled down from the counter. The three men at the counter are familiar, the way everyone’s familiar in this town, but I don’t know them. One is reading a folded-up newspaper. Two are watching bowling on the TV behind the counter. Not a smartphone in sight. Maybe I should just move to mygrandparents’ retirement community in Phoenix. No one’s going to be googling my name there.
I open the group chat I share with Hayden and Sophie.
ME
Can you cover for me with Gloria? I’m not going to make practice.
I’m ok but need to catch my breath
SOPHIE
WHAT IS GOING ON
HAYDEN
yes, we’ll cover (w/gloria and everyone else). come over to my house tonight, we have to talk
My food comes and I spread butter thickly across the toast. The coffee is bitter and grounding. I close my eyes and try to stay in the moment, just to catch my breath.
The noise in my head has been nonstop all weekend, a thousand different accusations and suppositions and hypotheticals. Now Sheriff Ramos’s voice is there too.Who would start a rumor like that? Why?Good question.
But there’s a bigger question—one that’s been flitting at the edges of my mind for six months now, that I’ve been too afraid to think about.
Did Rocky really do it?
Or did someone else get away with murder?
In the days after the murder, there were a lot of people that’d wanted the sheriff to call in investigators from a bigger city. Varda was so small we didn’t have a forensics department to speak of. But the official verdict was that it was cut and dried.That the scene told a clear story: a vulnerable girl, a boy that had always gotten away with anything he wanted. A gun that belonged to that boy, still in his hand when the bodies were discovered.
But Ramos seemed on edge in his office today. That makes me wonder how certain he is that the crime was solved. Have the rumors reignited some doubt at the back of his mind? Have they made him reexamine the evidence?
And if so—what does the evidence point to?
