Page 71 of Body Count

He shook his head again.Tears fell.They mixed with the blood on his face, and when they dripped from his twenty-year-old jawline, they spattered the floor pink.

“Tell them!”

“I didn’t kill him!”His shout was mangled, the words almost too thick to understand, but he repeated himself: “I didn’t kill him!”

I stared at him for a second.Then I reached to turn off the recorder.

Before I could, though, Jordan spoke again.More softly this time.The words still muddled, catching in his throat, but clearer.“I hurt him.”

“What?”

“It was me.His face.His eye.I did that.”He started to cry in earnest.“It was me.”

25

In that dark, stinking apartment, Jordan cried for a long time.

When he finished, I helped him onto the sofa.I got some paper towels, wetted them at the sink, and pressed them into his hand.He stared at them.After a minute, I took them back and cleaned him up a little.

“A split lip,” I told him.He flinched when I checked it, but I made a warning noise and touched it again.“Give it a few days, and you’ll be pretty as ever.”

He didn’t seem to hear me.He didn’t have that look they get sometimes, that thousand-yard stare when they’re seeing somewhere else, or nothing, or hell.He was looking at me, searching my face, but if he heard me, the words didn’t register.

“Tell me what happened.”

His shoulders turned in.He chafed his arms.He talked down, toward his legs, but I could hear him fine.

“It was at Sunny’s party.”

Like I didn’t know.But I said, “Okay.”

“Tip wanted to split up.He said it was better that way.”

“Better how?”

Jordan pressed his fingers against his eyes, but tears seeped through.“To find somebody, you know.To hook up with.”

“But you didn’t want to.”

“No!”He dropped his hands and sent a wet, angry look up at me.“I loved him!We loved each other!”

“But he was still screwing around.”

“He said we were too young to be, you know, just the two of us.He said it would get boring.He said he loved me, but maybe he wasn’t built that way.To be with only one guy.”

“What did you do when he wanted to split up at the party?”

Jordan managed a miserable shrug.“I said okay.I always said okay.We’d had so many fights about it before, and—and if I put my foot down—” He breathed heavily through his mouth and wiped his eyes a few more times.“If I put my foot down, he’d break up with me.”

“What did you do?”

“I wanted to keep an eye on him!”Defensiveness made his tone sharpen.“To make sure he was okay!He drinks way too much.Drank way too much.”He had to wipe his eyes again.“If somebody gave him something, he’d do it.Didn’t matter what it was.He wanted to have fun.What if somebody put something in his drink?Or what if he was just too messed up and got in the wrong car?That happens all the time.Somebody had to watch out for him.”

“You followed him.”

“I was taking care of him.”

“What happened when Tip caught you?”

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