Free No One Tells Everything by Rae Meadows Page B

the address. She bites her thumb. Her heart hammers in her chest and she feels slightly faint. It is quiet outside her door, and when she peeks through the blinds, the stoop is empty. She slips out to the corner and deposits the letter, checking twice that it has disappeared down the mail slot.
    ###
    On one of her many scattered pages Grace finds the number of Steve Daniels, a high school classmate of Charles’s, now finishing his freshman year at NYU. He responded immediately to her email—she pretended she was a reporter from the magazine—and said he knew Charles. When she calls him she guesses from his breathy, conspiratorial tone that he can’t wait to talk.
    They agree to meet at a new NoLita bar that’s all brushed steel and cement. He’s in a tight T-shirt, jeans, and black cowboy boots, and when Grace arrives he is flirting with the strapping, overly bronzed bartender. Steve’s hair is a lustrous black, closely cropped, and his long-lashed eyes sparkle with the newfound freedom of college. Unlike Charles, he is small and graceful, and she wonders what he’s hiding beneath the immaculate exterior construction.
    She holds out her hand and he kisses it like they are courting. She orders a club soda and he orders a Red Bull and vodka. His movements are mannered and theatrical. He plays his part with relish.
    “Oh. My. God. So crazy, right?” he says as he situates himself. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard.”
    “So you knew Charles?”
    “I knew who he was. We had a couple of the same classes.”
    “But you weren’t friends?”
    “Have you seen that thing he posted on our high school’s alumni page for our class? They must have taken it down already. Oh man.” He covers his mouth for a moment with his hands for emphasis. “He said something like ‘What’s up Hunter High School! When not hanging out with my girl, I’m hazing pledges. My life is dedicated to keeping my fraternity number one on campus, my girlfriend smiling, and my Land Rover clean. I don’t work but who the hell has time to when happy hour starts at 4?’ Did he really think people would be like, ‘That dude’s so cool now’?”
    Steve shakes his head and looks out into the bar. He catches the eye of someone at a table behind Grace and gives a barely perceptible head nod.
    “Was he picked on in high school?” she asks.
    “He was fat. A nerd. It was painful how he tried to get people to like him by paying for stuff. I mean, yeah, high school sucked. But lots of people get picked on. Lots of people don’t fit in. But murder? Jesus.”
    Steve’s mask has started to slip. He has not yet learned how to cement it fully in place. Time and practice will help. And denial is good. He sucks down his drink and touches his hair.
    “Did he have any friends?” she asks.
    He shrugs and gives her an empty look. His eyes flash and betray his affected distance.
    “I think he hung out at lunch in the drama department, probably so he wouldn’t get his ass kicked. There was this girl Kelly who ate there sometimes. She was kind of a punk chick. Or goth or whatever. She went to art school in California.”
    Steve pretends to search for an eyelash in his eye.
    “Where did you eat lunch?” Grace asks gently.
    Steve smiles but only with his mouth, then his eyes dip and he looks away. He looks chastised and his shoulders sag.
    “Okay, yeah. I ate with him sometimes,” he says.
    She waits.
    “We were friends by default, I guess. If you could call it that. It was better than being alone. I kind of hated him. I hated that he was in love with a cheerleader and thought that she could like him. I hated that he thought he could dye his hair blond and look better. I made fun of him.”
    Grace opens her eyes in surprise.
    “I know it sounds harsh,” Steve says. “But I didn’t want to see him make more of a fool of himself than he already did. And I didn’t want it to rub off on me. We didn’t talk about real stuff. We kind of didn’t want