Free The Last September: A Novel by Nina de Gramont

regretted saying no. By this time, the university police had arrived, too. The officers approached me as Eli’s stretcher was loaded. I watched the ambulance pull away, already regretful. I should have gone with him. I should have been right there next to him, holding on to his hand.
    “We saw the whole thing,” said the valiant frat boy before they could ask a single question. “He was standing alone at the edge of the building and then he just jumped.”
    It hadn’t occurred to me until I heard this defense that someone might think I’d pushed him. One officer scribbled on a notepad while the other looked hard at me.
    “Was he drunk?” he said. “Acting strange?”
    I nodded. The officer’s pencil halted, expectantly, so I cleared my throat and said, “Yes, he was acting strange. Yes, he was drunk.” That last word gave me a second of hope. Maybe that was all it was.
    The officer lifted his eyes and squinted at me in the dimly lit parking lot, then reached out as if to push the hair off my face. I stepped back.
    “Did he hit you?” the officer asked.
    “No,” I said, shaking the hair back in front of my face. “No, I’m fine.”
    His features sharpened as he paused, deciding whether to press the issue. Then he said, “Do you know how we can get in touch with his family?”
    My opportunistic heart jumped, just for a moment, hovering like a raptor in the air. Then it landed splat on the pavement, worried and confused.
    ON THE CAR RIDE over to Eli’s house, the officers were sensitive and solicitous. Why wouldn’t they be? Here I was, innocent, fragile, and quivering—the embodiment of everything they were assigned to protect. The redheaded officer sat in the back, giving me the front seat so I wouldn’t feel like a criminal. When we arrived, Eli’s house stood dark—his roommates were either asleep or back at Pub Club—but the front door was unlocked. I led the officers up to his room, expecting to find chaos. But when I pushed his door open, the spare order took me by surprise: the bed perfectly made, the floor swept, the walls empty. It looked almost like a military barracks. The one thing not tucked away in a drawer was Eli’s address book, the thin faux-leather kind that banks give away for free. As I picked it up, I caught my reflection in Eli’s mirrored bureau: a dark-haired girl who looked dazed and much younger than nineteen, with a troubling red mark across her forehead.
    “Moss,” I said, handing Eli’s address book to the redheaded officer. “His parents are named Moss.”
    “Are you sure you don’t want to call?” the officer said. “It might be better if a friend tells them.”
    We walked downstairs to the kitchen phone. I dialed 1 and then the number written in neat, slanted handwriting next to the words
Mom and Dad
. I listened to it ring once, twice, three times, not sure if I would prefer a live human being or the answering machine.
    “Hello,” said a male voice, too young to be Eli’s dad.
    “Mr. Moss?” I said.
    I heard an amused pause and could imagine Charlie’s face, wry and smiling. “Sort of,” he said. “Though probably not the one you’re looking for. Can I take a message for him?”
    “It’s about Eli.” I tried to pitch my voice lower, so Charlie wouldn’t recognize it. Then I remembered all those weeks and months of silence. Why would he remember my voice after forgetting me so immediately, so resolutely? Something inside me hardened. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but Eli had an accident. He jumped off the roof of a fraternity house. He’ll be okay, but somebody needs to come out here. Right away.” The silence on the other end had stopped smiling. “I’m sorry,” I said again.
    Charlie spoke with a faint pause after each word: “Why would he jump off a roof?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “He was acting strange. He was acting wrong. I think there’s something wrong.”
    “Brett?”
    Charlie’s voice suddenly steadied, as if his