reflection in the mirror, she didn’t see a glimmer of James, as she’d hoped. All she saw was a middle-aged woman in a man’s coat that didn’t remotely fit.
The apartment complex was in one of the unimproved parts of the county. It loomed behind a shopping mall that housed a dollar store, a Salvation Army, and a facility called Payday Advance. feverview dwellings, an old tan sign said at the entrance. A faded starburst in the corner crowed rentals available! The complex consisted of a cluster of buildings joined by crumbling walkways. Some of the cars in the parking lots had the beginnings of rust and unrepaired dents. One of the apartment windows was covered with a trash bag. The strip mall’s enormous parking lights towered over the trees; it never got truly dark here at night.
As Sylvie pulled into a parking space, she looked around. A curtain fluttered behind a window. A shadow shifted behind a tree. Even though Tayson said everything would remain hushed up, this could have gotten out somehow—and maybe Sylvie wasn’t as anonymous as she thought she was. She’d watched enough news programs to know how ruthless the press could be when they got hold of a story, especially one that featured an injustice between the rich and the poor. When she walked to her car to drive here, she thought the flowerbeds in the garden looked unusually tamped-down, as if someone had been standing in them, peering through the kitchen window. And a lid to one of the garbage cans she kept outside the garage had blown off. Or maybe it had been removed. The garbage bags were still intact, though, the trash not rooted through. And when she turned off her car in the Feverview lot, she wondered if an investigative unit might be crouched in the bushes near the entrance. Maybe a reporter was rehearsing his script right now, ready to go in front of the camera and speculate why she was here and what she was doing. Paying her respects? Striking some kind of deal? Admitting that she knew something?
She cocked her head, trying to coax whispers from the silence. A young black man ambled out one of the complex doors, looking just about the furthest person from caring about Sylvie or a school scandal. The man’s pants hung nearly to his knees, and he had one hand in his pocket, the other hand sort of at his hip, clenched. He walked right past Sylvie’s car with that same kind of aggressive yet apathetic swagger that Scott had. Sylvie shrank into the seat and stared down at her lap, not wanting to make eye contact. The man walked right by.
The aura of Feverview reminded her of the first time she’d been to Philadelphia—really went to Philadelphia, not one of those chaperoned trips with her grandfather to art retrospectives or symphony performances. She and James had gone when they were still dating, walking around Old City and wandering down Independence Mall. Even in the nicest parts of town, homeless people staggered up to them. A bicycle messenger nearly knocked Sylvie over, a lanky, unattractive man wearing a business suit and carrying a briefcase muttered as he passed, and a bunch of tall black men with soft hair laughed aggressively at a joke Sylvie was certain was about her.
Sylvie had grasped James’s hand tightly, but he’d just laughed. “You’re acting like you’ve never been here before.”
“I never came by myself,” she explained.
James poked her side. “You’re so sheltered. We need to get you out in the world a little more.”
He had felt this way about her from the day they’d met. She’d first seen him on the grounds of Swarthmore when Sylvie was a college freshman. It had been a crisp fall day, and James, ten years older than she was, had been walking around and admiring the campus, killing time before meeting with an old family friend in Haverford. Sylvie had been sitting on a bench, trying to come to grips with college life, which was unsettlingly alien. So many of the boys there had long, scruffy hair and
The apartment complex was in one of the unimproved parts of the county. It loomed behind a shopping mall that housed a dollar store, a Salvation Army, and a facility called Payday Advance. feverview dwellings, an old tan sign said at the entrance. A faded starburst in the corner crowed rentals available! The complex consisted of a cluster of buildings joined by crumbling walkways. Some of the cars in the parking lots had the beginnings of rust and unrepaired dents. One of the apartment windows was covered with a trash bag. The strip mall’s enormous parking lights towered over the trees; it never got truly dark here at night.
As Sylvie pulled into a parking space, she looked around. A curtain fluttered behind a window. A shadow shifted behind a tree. Even though Tayson said everything would remain hushed up, this could have gotten out somehow—and maybe Sylvie wasn’t as anonymous as she thought she was. She’d watched enough news programs to know how ruthless the press could be when they got hold of a story, especially one that featured an injustice between the rich and the poor. When she walked to her car to drive here, she thought the flowerbeds in the garden looked unusually tamped-down, as if someone had been standing in them, peering through the kitchen window. And a lid to one of the garbage cans she kept outside the garage had blown off. Or maybe it had been removed. The garbage bags were still intact, though, the trash not rooted through. And when she turned off her car in the Feverview lot, she wondered if an investigative unit might be crouched in the bushes near the entrance. Maybe a reporter was rehearsing his script right now, ready to go in front of the camera and speculate why she was here and what she was doing. Paying her respects? Striking some kind of deal? Admitting that she knew something?
She cocked her head, trying to coax whispers from the silence. A young black man ambled out one of the complex doors, looking just about the furthest person from caring about Sylvie or a school scandal. The man’s pants hung nearly to his knees, and he had one hand in his pocket, the other hand sort of at his hip, clenched. He walked right past Sylvie’s car with that same kind of aggressive yet apathetic swagger that Scott had. Sylvie shrank into the seat and stared down at her lap, not wanting to make eye contact. The man walked right by.
The aura of Feverview reminded her of the first time she’d been to Philadelphia—really went to Philadelphia, not one of those chaperoned trips with her grandfather to art retrospectives or symphony performances. She and James had gone when they were still dating, walking around Old City and wandering down Independence Mall. Even in the nicest parts of town, homeless people staggered up to them. A bicycle messenger nearly knocked Sylvie over, a lanky, unattractive man wearing a business suit and carrying a briefcase muttered as he passed, and a bunch of tall black men with soft hair laughed aggressively at a joke Sylvie was certain was about her.
Sylvie had grasped James’s hand tightly, but he’d just laughed. “You’re acting like you’ve never been here before.”
“I never came by myself,” she explained.
James poked her side. “You’re so sheltered. We need to get you out in the world a little more.”
He had felt this way about her from the day they’d met. She’d first seen him on the grounds of Swarthmore when Sylvie was a college freshman. It had been a crisp fall day, and James, ten years older than she was, had been walking around and admiring the campus, killing time before meeting with an old family friend in Haverford. Sylvie had been sitting on a bench, trying to come to grips with college life, which was unsettlingly alien. So many of the boys there had long, scruffy hair and
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