“I was in your room,” he said.

Her heart was beating so fast and so hard, she felt like it was making her rock back and forth.

“Look, I’m telling you,” she said, “none of my friends had anything to do with this, that’s crazy.”

“I’ll ask you one last time. Where do you get your drugs?”

She wanted to cry, but she wouldn’t let herself. “I don’t do drugs,” she said.

“I saw the bong in your-”

“A friend left it here, okay? I’m just watching it for her.”

“Watching it, huh?” He smirked.

She was a shitty liar and knew she couldn’t keep this going, so she said, “It’s mine, okay? What’re you gonna do, arrest me for having a bong?” “Possession of marijuana is illegal.”

“It’s not mine,” she said desperately.

“This is the last time I’m going to ask you,” he said. “Where do you get your pot?”

“My friend Darren.”

“How do I get in touch with him?”

This guy was such an asshole.

“Why do you have to-”

“What’s his phone number?” he asked.

Darren was a guy she’d gone to Vassar with- an on- again, off- again boyfriend- who was now back living with his parents on the Upper West Side. If he got busted, he was going to fucking kill her.

She gave Clements Darren’s number and said, “But please don’t call him. I’m telling you, he has nothing to do with this.”

Clements ignored her and asked, “Have any of your friends committed any crimes or talked about committing crimes or served any time for a crime?”

Immediately she thought of Darren who’d once spent a night in jail in Poughkeepsie when he’d gotten pulled over and the cops had found a joint in his car, but how much trouble was she going to get the poor guy into?

“No,” Marissa said. “No one.”

“I know we’ve been through this already, but did you ever meet Carlos Sanchez?”

“Never.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I just know, that’s why.”

He put a small plastic bag on the table with a driver’s license inside it. “Look familiar?” he asked.

She glanced at the picture- scruffy guy, kind of ugly, with cold, detached eyes. She’d never see him before in her life.

“No, never,” she said.

Clements didn’t seem satisfied. He asked, “Ever lend anyone a key to the house or-”

“No, I’ve never lent anyone a key, ever.”

“Are you telling me the truth?”

“What do you think, I gave somebody a key and said come rob my house?”

“Is that what happened?”

“No, of course not.”

She couldn’t believe this.

Then Clements stood and said, “Okay, you’re gonna have to come with me now.”

“Come with you where?”

“Out to the staircase for a second. I want you to take a look at Sanchez.”

Suddenly she felt sick. “You mean look at his body?”

“The driver’s license photo was several years old,” Clements said, “he’d gained a lot of weight. I want you to see if you recognize him.”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes you have to.”

Although she’d never seen a dead body before- well, except at a few funerals she’d been to- she just wanted to get to sleep and didn’t really care one way or the other.

She went with Clements out to the foyer. The body was still at the bottom of the staircase, splayed the way it had been before, except now Marissa could see all of it. There were technicians working near the body, maybe collecting DNA evidence or looking for fingerprints or whatever, and there was blood- it looked purple- on the bottom stairs and on the floor in front of the staircase. There was much more blood than Marissa had expected to see, which made her queasy enough, but then as she got closer, she looked at the dead guy’s face. His eyes were half open, and there was blood leaking out of his nose. Something looked weird about his mouth, and then she realized that most of his jaw was missing.

“Oh my God,” she said.

Misunderstanding her response, Clements said, “You recognize him?”

Starting to back away, she said, “No, I have no idea who is. Can I go now? Can I just go?”

When she returned to the living room, Clements wanted to talk to her mom, so she and her dad were left alone.

First he hugged her and assured her things would return to normal soon- yeah, right- then he asked, “So how’d it go in there?”

She didn’t answer right away, then said, “He made me look at the body.”

“What?” She could tell he was seriously upset. “Why the hell did he do that?”

She didn’t feel like talking to him about it. Things had been tense and awkward between them, well, for years, but since she’d graduated from college their relationship had become even more strained, what with him constantly on her case about getting a job and moving out on her own. Her plan had been to live at home temporarily, until she could support herself, so she’d gotten a part- time job at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through a contact from an art history professor. But she didn’t like her boss, and the job had had practically nothing to do with art- her main duty had been renting out tour head – phones- and after about a month she couldn’t take it anymore and quit. She’d been sending out rйsumйs and going on interviews, but her father wouldn’t let up about the “big opportunity” she’d blown, and it was hard to even be in the same room with him sometimes.

“He wanted to see if I recognized him,” she said. “Whatever.” She was exhausted and really didn’t feel like talking anymore.

But her dad couldn’t let it go and said, “This is getting ridiculous now. There’s no way he should’ve made you do that, I mean what’s the point of that?” He shook his head, brooding, then asked, “Did he ask you about your bong too?”

God, Marissa didn’t want to be having this conversation right now, especially not in the middle of the night when she was so exhausted.

“Yeah,” she said, “but it was no big deal.”

“How many times have I told you to get rid of that thing?”

“You’ve never told me to get rid of it.”

“I told you I don’t want you smoking in the house.”

“I think I’ve smoked in the house twice since graduation, but if it bothers you so much I’ll stop.”

“And I don’t want you drinking in the house anymore either.”

“When do I drink in the house?”

“The other night- when you had Hillary and that guy over.”

“That guy was Hillary’s friend Jared, who’s in med school, and we were drinking wine. I think we had one glass each.”

“Well, I don’t want any drinking in the house anymore. Is that understood?”

“This is ridiculous,” Marissa said. “I didn’t do anything wrong. You’re just taking everything out on me.”

“Excuse me?” he said, raising his voice slightly.

“Like this has anything to do with my bong or drinking wine. This has to do with you and your gun.”

Her father looked at her the way he had so many times lately, like he hated her.

“Just go to bed,” he said.

“See?” she said. “I didn’t do anything wrong and you treat me like I’m ten years old.”

“When you act out like you’re ten I’ll treat you like you’re ten. Just go to bed.”

Realizing there was no point in arguing with her father when he got like this, she left the room. There were still a lot of cops near the front of the house, though it looked like they’d finally removed the body. Avoiding the commotion and, worse, another confrontation with that asshole Clements, she took the back staircase up to her room.

Lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, she suddenly remembered she’d given Detective Clements Darren’s contact info. She called Darren, leaving a frantic message, telling him that the cops had found pot in her room and he had to get all the drugs out of his apartment ASAP.

Back in bed, she put in her iPod earbuds and listened to tracks by Tone Def, this new alternative/punk/postgrunge band she was into. She was still angry at her father for laying into her, and she just prayed that somehow all of this would blow over quickly. Living at home had been difficult enough lately; she couldn’t handle it if things got any worse.