The photo just sat there on the table and Detective Rowan pushed it toward me sliding it across the plastic, making a scratchy sound. I looked at it even though I didn't want to.
It was me, but not me, a picture from a camera high on a pole by the bridge, grainy like TV snow but clear enough to see my face, my jacket with the rip near the pocket I never fixed, my hands in my pockets, and my mouth doing a small curve, a tiny smile, like I knew a secret. My stomach felt cold, like I had swallowed ice.
Rowan watched me, his eyes barely blinking. "Explain," he said, his voice flat, not mean, just waiting.
I opened my mouth, my tongue dry like paper, "I was there," I got out, the words sticky, "earlier, on the bridge. I talked to her, then I left, I went home, I wasn't there for… for that."
"The time on the picture says 9:47 PM," he said, tapping the photo, "she died around then, 9:45 to 10, the doctor says, this is you, right next to her, and you're smiling."
"I don't remember smiling," I said, it sounded stupid, like kid stuff, I didn't remember.
"Do you remember being there at 9:47?"
I tried. I squeezed my brain. The bridge. The black water. Her back not moving. The feeling in my gut like a fist. Then turning, walking away, my shoes crunching on the gravel. Then fuzzy. A patch, like when you wake from a dream and it slips away before you can grab it. A blank space between the bridge and my front door. Maybe twenty minutes. Gone.
"I… there's a gap," I whispered, my voice small. "A short one. I might have stayed. Looked back. Something. But I didn't hurt her. I don't know how to do… air in veins." Saying it felt wrong. Air. You breathe it. You can't kill with it. But you can.
Rowan kept looking. The light above us buzzed. A fly tapped against the window. Tick tick tick.
"Memory," he said finally. "It's tricky. Under stress, it breaks. Hides pieces. Sometimes it hides pieces from us, to protect us."
"From what?" I asked.
"From ourselves."
The words hung in the air, mixing with the buzz and the tick-tick. I got it. The hollow feeling wasn't just empty. It was a hole where a memory should be. A guilty memory.
"Am I a suspect?" I already knew.
"Everyone is a suspect until they're not," he said, leaning back. His chair squeaked. "You found her. You were the last to see her. And now this picture." He waved at it. "You're a person of interest. Big interest. But I've been a cop a long time. People who kill like this… clean, no mess, like a doctor… they don't usually stand around on cameras, smiling. It's weird. The killing is invisible. The person on the bridge isn't. It's like two different people."
"Or one person," I said. The idea came fast. "But in two different… minds."
Rowan nodded slowly. "Yeah. That."
He let me go home. "Don't go far," he said.
Home didn't feel like home. The couch was gone. The cops took it. A white rectangle sat dusty on the floor. A couch ghost. I didn't sit there. I sat at the kitchen table. The chair leg wobbly.
Krivya. Now I knew her name. Before, she was just the girl—the one from the accident, the one in class, the one on the bridge. Now she was Krivya Sharma. Seventeen. Lived with her aunt. Quiet. Had a life. And her life ended while I was in the picture. Literally.
The texts had stopped. No more "You don't remember." Silence. Heavy silence. Like waiting for a shoe to drop, but not knowing where.
My phone buzzed. Rinos.
Rinos: heard, u ok?Me (Eryx): noRinos: need anything? i can come
I stared. My first thought was no. Go away. Let me be hollow alone. But the hollow ached. Big, quiet ache. I needed a voice. A real one.
Me: yes. come
He came quickly, carrying a plastic bag that smelled like fried food and a six-pack of FizzUp soda, orange. He didn't say hey or anything. Just set the food on the table. Two containers. Rice. Chicken curry. He pushed one toward me. Handed me a fork and a napkin. The napkin had a stupid cartoon cow on it.
We ate. The food was warm, greasy, good. We didn't talk at first, just chewing. Comfortable quiet.
After a while I said, "They think I might have done it."
Rinos took a big bite. Chewed. Swallowed. "Did you?" he asked. Just like that. No drama.
"I don't know." I looked right at him. "That's the truth, Rinos. I don't know. I have blank spots. And that picture."
He drank his soda. Gulp gulp. "You've been… not yourself. For a while. Like you're half somewhere else. Watching your life on a TV with bad signal."
"You said I was getting hollow."
"Yeah." He put his fork down. It clinked. "Look. I don't think you killed anyone. But something's happening. You live in your head too much. What if…" He rubbed his nose. "What if that other part of your head did something, without the you-part knowing?"
"That's crazy talk."
"Is it?" He raised one eyebrow, thicker than mine. "You're always talking about your world. Your made-up world. What if, for a second, the wall between your world and this one cracked? And something slipped through?"
It was a big thought. A scary thought. Where do you stop and your thoughts start? If you imagine pushing someone off a cliff… is that you? What if your hand moved without you telling it to? Because the thought was so strong?
"I'm scared to look inside," I whispered. The chicken felt heavy in my belly. "What if I find the guy in that picture? The smiler."
"Then you deal with him," Rinos said, simple. Like it was easy. "But not knowing is worse. It's like having a ghost in your skin. A squatter."
He was right. The not-knowing was a ghost. It moved my hands. Made my heart race for no reason.
After he left, the quiet came back. I looked at my hands. Were they my hands? They looked normal. A little dirty under the nails. A scar on my thumb from a broken pencil last year.
I needed to write it down. Not a diary. A log. Like a scientist. A crime scientist of my own brain.
I got an old notebook. The cover torn. I wrote the date at the top.
Facts:
Accident. Boy hit by truck. I watched. I remember the sound. A thump-crunch. Then… blur. Next clear thing: people yelling.
Bridge. I saw Krivya. I talked. I asked if she was okay. She didn't answer well. I left. I remember turning. Then… fuzzy. Next clear thing: my front door key.
Two blank spots. Two holes in the movie of my life. What was in the holes? Just static? Or a scene? A bad scene?
I went to my room. My bed messy. I hadn't made it. I looked at the wall. There was a poster of a spaceship, peeling at the corner.
Who are you? I asked the quiet in my head. For the first time, the quiet didn't feel empty. It felt occupied. Like something was sitting in the dark, just out of sight. Waiting.