Somebody I Used to Know Read Online Free Page A

etective Reece said he wanted me to come to the police station with him. He said it was simple—I could agree to give a DNA sample and be fingerprinted and then they’d let me go. He told me I could feed Riley before we left, and he also made sure to tell me I could call an attorney at any time if I wanted, and while we rode downtown—me sitting in the passenger seat of his dark sedan, him driving and not saying anything else while pulsating jazz played on the radio—I considered doing just that.
    But I hadn’t done anything to that girl, except try to speak to her in the grocery store. As I rode to the station, I tried to understand how anyone could hurt a girl like that. Who would want to violently end such a young life? And for what reason? A rape? A robbery? A lovers’ quarrel?
    Other things came back to me during the brief car ride as well, things having to do with Marissa. We met during our freshman year of college when the dorm I lived in threw a mixer. I went with a few of my friends, not intending to stay long, but then a girl walked in wearing jeans that fit her body perfectly, her red hair cascading over her shoulders like a ruby waterfall. I’d seen her on campus a couple of times—walking on the quad, standing in line in the cafeteria—but we’d never spoken. She always seemed to be laughing or gesturing, always seemed to have some inner glow spilling out of her as though her body couldn’t contain it.
    If my life had been a cartoon, the illustrator would have drawn my tongue hanging out until it reached the floor.
    But the crowd swallowed her up. I caught occasional glimpses of her dancing, her body swinging to the music, her hair—that rich, wild hair—flipping across her face and then back as she moved. I remembered the song she danced to. “Seether” by Veruca Salt.
    I was transfixed.
    When my friends wanted to leave for another party, I told them to go on without me, that I’d catch up later. But I never did.
    I circled the edges of the party, dancing sometimes, talking to other friends, but with one eye always looking for that wild redhead. I never came close, and eventually I lost sight of her altogether and assumed she’d moved on, like my friends had. Why wouldn’t she? I couldn’t imagine a girl like that would have only a lame freshman mixer to attend in a dorm on a Friday night. I imagined she had parties and invitations and adventures awaiting her, as many as she wanted.
    I went down a short hallway, searching for the bathroom. The redhead emerged from the ladies’ room right in front of me. I almost froze in my tracks. We made eye contact, and I managed to say, “Hey.”
    “Hey,” she said, smiling.
    But I didn’t stop. I went right on into the men’s room, where I stood alone in the middle of the floor, the sweat from the crowded room and dancing cooling on my back. I saw myself in the mirror. Thick brown hair. Bright blue eyes. Thin and fit. A young guy in all his glory. In his prime, right? Why not?
    I turned around and went back out to the party. And there she stood at the end of the hallway. Her red hair was piled on top of her head now, and she fanned herself with her right hand. When I came closer, I saw hair plastered to the back of her neck by sweat, a spray of freckles across her skin.
    She looked over at me. “It’s fucking hot.”
    “It is.”
    “Do you know what would be funny?” she asked.
    I hesitated just a moment, a heartbeat that changed the rest of my life. I said, “It would be funny if you and I ended up married and having children, and we could always tell them we met outside the men’s room at a lame freshman mixer.”
    It was her turn to hesitate. Everything hung in the balance between us. I figured she’d call me a creep or a weirdo. I wouldn’t have blamed her one bit. I didn’t know where my statement had come from or why those words had tumbled out of my mouth. I simply felt bold. I felt that only bold words could work for a girl like the