“Yesss.” Polly tears the foil off the plate to find a still-warm, grilled-to-the-perfect-crisp quesadilla and devours an entire triangle before she speaks or maybe even breathes.
I guess this is what they mean when they say it takes a village. You never know when you’re going to have to help your neighbor’s child stave off an iron deficiency.
After the first triangle, she exhales and her shoulders drop a few centimeters.
But she’s still quiet, almost evasive, like there is something on her mind. And I wonder if those seventh-grade girls are bothering her again.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
She shrugs as she starts on another triangle.
“You want to talk about it?”
She shrugs again.
“Tippy Schaeffer is at my house for dinner. So you can’t be having a worse day than me. It’s not allowed. Sorry. I don’t make the rules.”
Polly’s expression borders on stricken as she scoops the last two triangles off the plate and hands it back to me.
“You’re making me nervous, Pol.”
“I don’t know…” She takes another bite, like she’ll need the energy to talk. “My dad dragged me to some dinner party yesterday. I hate it when he does that.”
I answer with a slight nod, and for a moment, I can see myself in the corner of a bar in the Garden District, pretending to read as I watched Aunt Delia charm the chef of some local haunt. It’s easy to remember the bubble of her laugh and the way she waved a hand like a conductor as she spoke. When she wasn’t looking, I would mimic her gestures, the swirl of a fingertip or the way she held a wineglass. Playing at being elegant and removed, just like she was.
“I was the only kid there. It was awful,” Polly says, pulling a face.
“Oh. Ew. Sounds like child labor. Want me to help you file a report?”
She doesn’t laugh like she usually would, though. “The grown-ups only ever ask me how school is going and then ignore me. And I’m not allowed to bring my phone because my dad says it’s rude.”
“You’re not missing anything,” I say, thinking of my own dinner party. “A lot of the people here are out of their minds. Too many years of huffing aerosol sunscreen fumes or something.”
She makes a faint sound, like maybe she’s laughing or agreeing. I wait for her to keep going, but she stares at the quesadillas in her hand for a long moment until she finally says, “They all kept talking about that girl. The one at Marcus’s restaurant? You know, the one that they said got killed?”
“You don’t have to be scared, Polly. The police are going to find out what happened. You’re safe.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not that.”
There’s another long pause, and now, her reticence feels ominous. Because I see it—the fear in her eyes, sharp andunflinching. Fear like that doesn’t belong in the eyes of someone so young. It should come later, when she learns more about the world. But Polly’s fear unlocks something feral in me, a dread I can’t soothe with logic. This must be how Aunt Delia felt, holding me after everything fell apart. I want to make Polly the promises Delia made to me—to tell her the world is a worthy place, that the fear will pass. But I don’t know if it will.
And then the words burst out of her, like she’s been holding her breath for hours.
“I heard these two ladies talking after dinner. They were in the kitchen, by the back door, and one of the dads there was asking my dad about some brand of clubs or something. And I was sitting in the living room, waiting to leave. And they didn’t see me, because when you’re the only kid at the party you’re basically invisible. But I overheard one of them say the night Gemma died, she left the party with Beau.”
She looks at me, terrified of how this confession will land. I hold my face steady.
Tippy said Gemma was with a man on Marcus’s security footage.
“I’ve told you before, gossip’s basically verbal backwash,” I say, aiming for nonchalant but feeling my throat tighten. “Remember when Claire Maguire tried to convince you she was Sabrina Carpenter’s cousin? People say dumb shit all the time. Usually for attention.”
But as I speak, I’m somewhere else. My mind is caught in a loop, turning this information over and over.
Is Beau’s name already in some police file? Why were they together that night? Why didn’t he tell me?
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” I insist. “But thanks for telling me.”
We stare at the grass under our bare feet for a second before I remember my house is full of guests, and I’m not sure how long I’ve been gone. “I better go back inside and say good night to Tippy and the rest of my dinner guests.”
