Chapter 12: Under Her Bed

Our apartment sat on the second floor of a yellow house on Pine Street, above a dentist's office.

I had lived there for four years.

I had signed the lease with Kendra at the kitchen table on the day we turned eighteen, laughing, with a pizza between us.

I still had my key.

Eli followed me up the stairs without a word.

He had not spoken since I told him to turn around.

I could feel him behind me, tall and silent, his face closed.

I unlocked the door.

The apartment was empty and very clean.

Kendra's cardigan hung on a chair, and her yoga mat leaned against the wall.

The mailbox slot in the hall had a basket under it.

It held a dentist's flyer and a pizza menu.

"Mail," I said out loud. "She took the mail every day."

"June," Eli said carefully. "What are we doing?"

"I don't know yet."

I went down the hall to Kendra's room.

The door was shut, and I had never once gone in without knocking.

I turned the handle.

The room smelled like her perfume.

The bed was made with a white comforter.

A row of framed photographs sat on the dresser, the two of us in seventh grade, at prom, at my mother's grave.

I looked at them for a moment.

Then I knelt and lifted the edge of the comforter.

Under the bed sat a plastic storage tub with a snap lid.

It was the kind you buy for winter sweaters.

A strip of masking tape ran along the front, labeled in Kendra's looping handwriting:

JUNEBUG.

I stared at my own nickname.

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