Confessions of a Murder Suspect

CONFESSION

I didn’t go to normal teenage parties—just adult events, or parties where their kids happened to be around. I stopped getting invited to real parties some time ago. But a while back, I heard about a no-adults party a senior was throwing in celebration of his early-admission acceptance to Harvard. It was a silly reason for a party as far as I was concerned, but I decided that I was going to try to go to it. And enjoy it.

Almost as if it were an experiment, or a test.

You see, at school I’d been learning about freedom movements all around the world, from the American Revolution to the Arab Spring, and I’d been thinking a lot about the benevolent dictatorship in which I was being raised. I’d been questioning how benevolent it was. And I was pretty sure I wanted out. At least, that night I was sure.

I saw all the other kids at the party drinking whatever they could find, and in order for this to be a true experiment, I had to do what they did. So I drank, first with caution, then with abandon. I don’t even know what it was. Given that I was already under the influence of Malcolm’s special cocktail of pills, who knows how it all might have interacted.

It was in the most mundane of places that I met James: standing by a keg. He appeared to be staring at my chest, which didn’t exactly make me comfortable.

“Sorry,” he said with an embarrassed smile, once he realized what he was doing. “Really. I swear. I was just noticing your necklace.” Before I could reply with a skeptical comment, he proved himself honorable. “From Tibet, right? Have you been there?”

“Bhutan, actually,” I said, stunned to be meeting a guy who knew even the first thing about Southeast Asian art. My interest was immediately piqued.

“It looks like a zhi stone,” he went on. “My mother started collecting them when we first went to Tibet. Did you know it’s supposed to have protective powers?”

“Of course.” I laughed. “It was a gift from my parents.”

His eyes flashed a little mischievously. “Who needs a zhi stone when you have the legendary Angel guardian angel?”

And so from the very beginning, James Rampling seemed to uncannily know just about everything about me, and to love everything I loved. Within a few minutes we found ourselves talking about the Arab Spring, and then Southeast Asian politics. This continued for at least an hour. By then we’d moved away from the crowd and were sitting halfway up a flight of stairs.

He leaned in closer and gently pushed the hair out of my eyes. “Tandy Angel,” he said, in an almost reverential, hushed way. “Where have the tigers been keeping you?”

“In a cage,” I said. “What do you think?”

“What do I think?” He stroked my hair again, pushing it behind my ears so he could look straight into my eyes. I instinctively tried to look away, but he took my chin and turned my face back toward his. He wouldn’t let me look away.

“I think,” he said, “that you need to be let out. The world needs you. I think that you’re exquisitely beautiful… and exquisitely smart.… And you shouldn’t be hidden away in a cage.”

As I worked through the memory, I replayed that incredible moment in my mind several times. It was the first time I’d been touched by a boy. And not only were his hands touching my face, but his eyes were touching me, too.

A part of me that had never been touched before.

His eyes lit up suddenly. “The caged bird’s ‘wings are clipped and his feet are tied,’ ” he began reciting, not letting his eyes stray from mine. “ ‘So…’ ”

“ ‘So he opens his throat to sing,’ ” I finished, staggered by James Rampling once again. He was quoting from my favorite poem at the time, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou. It was a poem that seemed to reflect how I felt about my life up to that point. I was surprised that James even knew it.

All the more reason why what happened next seemed like pure magic. As I jumped on the next line, he joined in.

And then we recited the whole poem. Together.

Would you laugh at me, friend, if I said it almost felt like we were reciting wedding vows right there, in the middle of the party? Can you blame me for believing I’d just met the one person in the world I was meant to be with? Who was meant to save me?

The rest of the world had fallen away by that point. James leaned in closer, ran his fingers down the cord that held the pendant around my neck, and let his fingers slowly caress the zhi stone—my “protection”—lying against my chest.

I reached up and rested my hand on his.

The sensation of that connection was almost too intense for my system to handle. I sucked in my breath as I saw him come even closer to my face.

And that’s when laws of physics stopped working. Time slowed down as his lips touched mine, so very, very sweetly.

That’s where the memory ended. I hit replay.

It was real. The kiss I’d written about had been real. This time, though, I could feel it, in every bone in my body.

Replay.

Replay.

Replay.

Each time, I hoped the memory would go a little bit further. I know it went further. Much further. Beyond one kiss. Beyond one night at a party. Beyond a mere fantasy of being touched, embraced, adored by a boy who actually understood me.

Something told me Dr. Florence Keyes had stolen almost every other memory I’d had of James Rampling. And someday, I was going to make her give them all back to me.

But right now, I had this one. I was going to enjoy it, savor it, this rare electric moment when my life had felt real and simple and joyous and free.

Reading the rest of that article could wait. Indefinitely.