Tagged. Mara Purnhagen
pulled his laptop out of his backpack. “I believe you,” he said. “Unfortunately, I don’t know anything, either.” He began typing.
“You must know something,” I protested. “You’re his best friend.”
Eli didn’t answer me. He was staring at his computer screen. “Just checking my e-mail,” he said softly. I could tell he was reading, and once Eli got into his computer, forget it. He completely focused on that and nothing else. “Well, Trent’s not suspended,” he said finally. “Yet.”
A car pulled up to the window and Eli stood up. It was a big order: five drinks, each one different, including a strawberry cheesecake cappuccino, which is a hassle to make. Eli started on a low-fat, almond latte while I handled the cash register. We worked well together. Eli was fast and efficient, and I double-checked everything, made sure the lids were on tight and cleaned up afterward. After our customer left, Eli sat back down at his computer while I rinsed out the steamer cups.
“So he e-mailed you?” I asked.
“Yeah, but it’s brief.” Eli read aloud from the message Trent had sent: “I’ll be back at school tomorrow. They’re checking my alibi. Not to worry, it’s all good. No proof, no crime.” Eli started to say something else, but stopped. I knew he was holding back, but I wasn’t going to push it.
“I wonder what his alibi is.”
Eli yawned. “He was out of town visiting relatives.”
“So you do know more than you’re telling me.”
He smiled and shook his head. “Why does everyone assume it was someone from our school?”
“Who else would do that to the building?” I wiped the counter and made sure we had enough medium-sized cups. I knew we’d be getting an after-work rush in a half hour, and nearly everyone ordered a medium.
I glanced at Eli, who was still typing away at his computer. I wanted to remind him to do the inventory, but I also knew he would get it done and I didn’t want to sound like a nag. If Eli was anything, it was reliable. And adorable, in a way. When we first began working together over the summer, I thought he was potential boyfriend material, but the timing was off. He had just started dating Reva, a junior who came around all the time to gaze at him and glare at me, and I was just breaking up with Kevin Cleaver, a senior I had dated for a total of three months.
Kevin and I had dated casually because we both knew he was leaving for college at the end of the summer. He took me to the prom, where we danced and laughed and ate chicken Marsala. We had fun, and I thought we would keep seeing each other until August, when he left for school.
Then, a month before he was supposed to leave, he announced that he’d been “hooking up” with a college girl he met at a party. It was the first time anyone had broken up with me. Kevin just stood there, his hands shoved into his pockets, and shrugged. “We both knew this wasn’t a long-term thing, right?” he asked, and I nodded and said something like “Yeah, sure, no big deal.” But I was crushed. It actually surprised me that I was so hurt. I mean, I knew it was a temporary thing, but still. I guess it was the fact that I had been so easily replaced. I thought I had mattered to him at least a little, and when I realized I hadn’t, I felt even worse.
“You look tired,” I said to Eli. He had dark circles beneath his eyes and he kept yawning.
“I need to get back on schedule,” he said, not taking his eyes off the computer. “I stayed up too late over break. Ben was in town and he never sleeps.”
Eli’s brother Ben went to college out West somewhere, where he was an undeclared senior. According to Eli, Ben changed his major every semester and would be in school at least another three years.
Eli looked at me. “So, what did you think of it?”
“Think of what?” I was debating whether or not to bring another bottle of almond syrup out of the back room. We were getting low.
“The gorillas. What did you think of the gorillas?”
“I think someone wasted an awful lot of time and effort. I mean, they’re just going to be removed.”
“But what did you think about the actual gorillas? Did you like them? Hate them? Anything?”
I considered it. My first thought had been that someone—most likely Trent—was going to be in a lot of trouble. But I also thought that the gorillas had been very well done. Beautiful, almost.
Eli would probably think I was crazy if I called them beautiful, so instead I said, “We debated it in history. You know, whether it was art or just vandalism.”
“And?” Eli seemed pretty intent on the topic.
“And the class was fairly divided.”
“Which side were you on?”
I knew what he wanted me to say. Despite his claims that he didn’t know anything, Eli was almost certainly covering for Trent.
“I haven’t decided,” I said finally.
Eli stood up and stretched. “Well, let me know when you do,” he said. “I’m going to do the inventory. If you get a chance, check out the article on my computer.”
After he went back to the storage room, I sat down and picked up the laptop. The screen showed the front page of a newspaper from Tennessee. Mt. Juliet Encounters Gorilla it read. It was about a town near Nashville where a four-foot high gorilla had been painted onto the wall of an abandoned building. There was a small black-and-white picture of the building. I pulled out my camera and compared the pictures I had taken earlier in the morning to the one in the article. The gorilla was exactly the same as the ones on our school. Exactly. I checked the date of the article.
“Two days ago,” I murmured. Mt. Juliet was at least a four-hour drive from Cleary, maybe more. Was that where Trent’s relatives lived? If so, it was a bad alibi. And why paint the same picture in both towns? The police would be able to connect him to both places and he’d really be in trouble. If Trent’s relatives did live in Mt. Juliet, it wouldn’t make any sense that Eli would want me to read the article. He would be pointing the finger at his best friend. I was confused.
Eli came back from the stockroom just as cars began lining up for the after-work rush. I wasn’t sure what to say to him, but fortunately we were so busy making drinks that neither one of us had time to talk. Finally, just before six, we began to close up for the day.
“So what did you think of the article?” Eli asked.
“Well, it’s obviously the same guy,” I said, handing him my camera. He clicked through the images I’d taken that morning.
“These are good,” he said. He paused at a shot I’d taken of the crowd. “This one’s really good.”
I looked over his shoulder. The picture on the screen showed one of my crowd shots. A group of freshmen boys had just moved in front of me, blocking my view of the wall. One of the boys was holding something in his cupped hands, and the others looked down at what he held, smiling. I didn’t get a look at what was in the boy’s hands, and just after I took the picture, they walked away.
“The gorillas aren’t even in that one,” I pointed out.
“I know, but it’s still a good shot. Very clear. Plus, it’s not staged. There’s something real there.”
“I guess.”
Eli turned off the camera and handed it back to me. “You should take more pictures like that.”
“I think people would notice if I stood around taking pictures of them.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. You could try to, you know, stay out of the way.”
Something I tried to do every day, I thought. But taking pictures of unsuspecting students seemed like an odd thing to do if you weren’t on the yearbook staff.
“Think