“It says so on the mailbox.” She put her hands on the banisters and swung herself down the last few steps, landing neatly on the basement floor. She was no longer blushing. Trenton still felt like his skin might melt off at any second.
“Christ,” she said. “You guys ever clean down here?”
Trenton finally thought of something to say. “Um . . . who are you?” His voice was a croak. He cleared his throat.
“Katie,” she said, as though that answered his question. She waded right into the piles of old furniture and books and rolled-up carpets. While she had her back to him, Trenton coiled the rope quickly and stuffed it in between two cardboard boxes, hoping she wouldn’t see it.
“I’m Trenton,” he said, even though she hadn’t asked.
“Cool.” Katie bent down to scoop up a soccer ball and toss it to him. “You play?” Trenton was temporarily distracted by her butt, which was not so round as Angie Salazar’s but pretty close, and by the small hole in her jeans, which revealed that she was wearing cute red underwear beneath them. He barely managed to catch the ball.
“No,” he said. Then he blurted, “I can’t play anymore. I was in a car accident.”
“An accident, huh?” She was looking at him the way Dr. Sawicki, the shrink he’d been forced to see after his parents had finalized their divorce, had looked at him when he said he was doing fine—as if he were lying and she knew it, and he knew it, but she was too polite to point it out directly. Except Dr. Sawicki had normal brown eyes, nice eyes, like the eyes of a cow. Katie’s eyes were hazel, practically yellow. More like a cat’s.
Trenton wanted to ask her where she had come from, and what she was doing there, but he couldn’t find his voice. Katie turned away from him again.
“Look, Tristan—”
“Trenton.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.” She nudged a roll of wrapping paper out of the way with the toe of a beat-up green Converse sneaker. “I didn’t mean to barge in on you. I can see you’re busy. Sitting on stools, playing with ropes. I get it.” So she had noticed. Trenton felt a rush of humiliation so strong it was almost like anger. She was laughing at him. “So I’ll just, you know, say good-bye and see you later—”
“Wait,” Trenton said. His voice sounded very loud, and the girl—Katie—paused at the foot of the stairs.
“Wait.” Trenton licked his lips, which felt very dry. “Why did you come? If you didn’t think there’d be anyone home, why’d you come?”
Katie hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Fritz,” she said, making a face. Her two front teeth overlapped a bit, and one of her incisors was very, very pointed. It gave her a lopsided look that was almost reassuring. “My cat. He got out.”
“What does he look like?” Trenton said.
Katie blinked. “Like a cat,” she said. She turned to go and then stopped, pivoting slowly back around to face him, seemingly struck by an idea. “Wait a second . . . Richard Walker . . . I saw something about a funeral.”
The word funeral sent an unpleasant vibration through Trenton’s chest. “He’s my dad,” he said, and then quickly corrected. “Was.”
“Shit. I’m really sorry.” She was staring at him in that way again—like she was trying to decode him.
“Thanks,” Trenton said shortly, crossing his arms. He turned away, slightly, letting his hair swing forward; he was aware that he had a particularly angry pimple on his left cheek, and he didn’t want her to see it. “We weren’t that close,” he added, so she wouldn’t feel sorry for him. “We’re just here for the funeral. And to clean up.” He paused. “The house is mine now.” Immediately, he didn’t know why he’d said it.
“Oh, yeah? That’s pretty sweet.”
Trenton jerked his head up to look at her and she blushed. “I mean—sorry. Sorry for your loss,” she said. “That’s what you’re supposed to say, right?” She shook her head, and her short spiky hair shook with her, like alien antennae. “I’m the worst at this stuff.”
“It’s all right,” Trenton said. He was relieved, actually, that she wasn’t pretending to be sad and solemn and knowledgeable. Like Debbie Castigliane, his mom’s next-door neighbor, who’d come over bearing a tray of take-out lasagna like it was myrrh, sitting wide-eyed in the kitchen and patting Caroline’s hand, and all the time counting the vodka bottles in the trash, feeding on the grief like a human mosquito.
“I mean, here I am, just running off at the mouth and you’re in the middle of some big family tragedy . . . ” Katie was still talking, still moving around the room, poking things.
Trenton had a sudden memory of the time when he was eleven and his dad had come out to the island. They’d met at Walt Whitman Mall and stopped in front of the Macy’s for a bit and watched a woman with a tight red apron and a smile as white as plastic demonstrate the latest advances in nonstick pans at a big booth. She flipped and slid and swirled and all the time, she never stopped talking or smiling. His dad had bought a complete set of eight pans.
Katie reminded him a little of the woman with the pans. It was dizzying to watch her, even harder to keep up with what she was saying.
“Hey.” She bent forward and, before Trenton could stop her, snatched up the rope from where he’d stashed it. “What’s with the noose? You weren’t about to kill yourself, were you?”
“What? No.” Trenton realized, too late, that the note to Minna was still sitting out.
“Come on, ’fess up. You were.”
Trenton felt a flicker of irritation. “Even if I was, do you think I would tell you?”
“I don’t see why not. Can’t see what difference it would make.” While she was looking down at the rope, studying it, Trenton quickly shoved the note to Minna in his back pocket. “Hey—you know what you could do with this?”
“No,” he said.
“Autoasphyxiation.” She reached up and coiled the rope once around her neck. As Trenton took a quick step back, horrified by the look of it, he stumbled on a box and had to sit down to avoid falling. Katie laughed again and unwrapped the rope from her neck. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of it. People choking themselves while they . . . Oh, man. There I go again. Sorry. God forgot to give me an off switch.” She reached out and punched him in the arm. “You don’t mind if I keep it, right?”