I wake up Tuesday morning with someone else's blood under my fingernails, which is honestly the least weird thing that's happened this week.
The weirdest thing is that I can't remember Monday.
Not like "oh, Monday was boring so it all blurred together." I mean Monday is just... gone. A black hole where twenty-four hours should be. The last thing I remember is Sunday night, eating leftover pad thai and editing episode forty-seven of my podcast, Death Becomes Her: A True Crime Comedy. Now it's Tuesday, I'm in my bed, and there's what looks like dried blood caked under three of my fingernails.
I sit up too fast and my head screams at me. There's a taste in my mouth like I licked a ashtray, which is weird because I don't smoke and I don't lick things that aren't food or occasionally my boyfriend when the mood strikes. Ex-boyfriend. I have to remember that now. Tyler's gone. Tyler left because—
No. I'm not thinking about Tyler right now.
I'm thinking about the blood.
I stumble to my bathroom and flip on the light. The woman in the mirror looks like she lost a fight with a bottle of tequila and a dumpster. My black hair is matted on one side, my mascara has migrated south to create raccoon eyes, and there's a bruise on my collarbone that definitely wasn't there Sunday night.
The blood is definitely there. Dark rust-colored crescents under my nails.
"Okay, Maya," I tell my reflection. "Let's not panic. There's probably a perfectly reasonable explanation."
My reflection looks skeptical. She's smarter than me.
I wash my hands three times—once for each nail, because that's how my brain works—and try to reconstruct Monday. Dr. Hartley always says I need to "sit with the discomfort of not knowing" but Dr. Hartley also wears sweater vests without irony, so his judgment is suspect.
Dr. Hartley.
I was supposed to see Dr. Hartley on Monday. Monday at three PM, same as every week for the past eight months. Ever since Tyler found my notebook—the bad one, the one with all the intrusive thoughts I'm supposed to be managing—and decided that dating someone who casually writes "seventeen ways to kill someone with a pencil" in the margins of her grocery list was a dealbreaker.
Did I go to my appointment?
I check my phone. Forty-seven missed calls. Thirty-two texts. My podcast partner Imani has sent me a progression of increasingly frantic messages:
girl where are you
maya this isn't funny
the police are here???
CALL ME
Police?
My hands start shaking. I call Imani. She picks up before the first ring finishes.
"What the actual fuck, Maya."
"Good morning to you too. Why are the police—"
"Where ARE you? Are you safe? Are you at your apartment?"
"Yes? I just woke up and—"
"Don't leave. I'm coming over. Don't talk to anyone. Don't answer your door unless it's me. Jesus Christ, Maya, everyone thinks you're dead or arrested or—"
"Why would anyone think I'm dead?"
Imani goes quiet. It's not a good quiet. It's the kind of quiet that happens right before someone tells you your cat died or your podcast is getting canceled.
"You didn't see the news," she says finally.
"I just woke up. I don't even know what day it is. Monday is just... gone. I can't remember—"
"Dr. Hartley is dead."
The words don't land right. They bounce off my brain like stones skipping across water.
"What?"
"They found him last night in his office. Maya, they think—" She stops. "I'm coming over. Don't move."
She hangs up.
I stand in my bathroom in my underwear and a Talking Heads t-shirt with someone's blood under my nails, trying to process that my therapist is dead. Dr. Lawrence Hartley, who spent eight months teaching me that my intrusive thoughts about murder don't make me a murderer, who laughed at my dark jokes about true crime, who was literally the only person besides Imani who didn't look at me like I was a ticking time bomb.
Dead.
My phone buzzes. A news alert.
LOCAL THERAPIST FOUND MURDERED IN OFFICE
I click it even though I know I shouldn't.
Dr. Lawrence Hartley, 52, was found deceased in his office at the Riverside Professional Building Monday evening. Police are treating the death as a homicide. Dr. Hartley appeared to have been struck multiple times with a blunt object. Sources close to the investigation say the murder weapon was found at the scene—a podcast microphone with the logo for "Death Becomes Her: A True Crime Comedy."
My microphone.
The room tilts. I grab the sink.
My microphone. The one I've been missing since... since...
I can't remember.
There's a knock at my door. Three sharp raps.
I'm not wearing pants. I'm also possibly a murder suspect. These problems feel equally urgent.
"Maya Chen?" A man's voice. Deep. Official. "LAPD. We need to ask you some questions."
I look down at my hands. At the blood. At my phone screen showing a picture of Dr. Hartley's office building with police tape across the entrance.
This is fine. This is totally fine. I just need to explain that I can't remember Monday, that I would never hurt Dr. Hartley, that the blood under my nails is probably from... from...
What's a normal reason to have blood under your nails?
"Ms. Chen, we know you're in there."
I pull on yesterday's jeans—Monday's jeans?—and walk to the door on legs that don't feel like mine. Through the peephole I can see two detectives. One is a woman in her forties with sharp eyes and sharper cheekbones. The other is a man who looks like he wandered off a cologne commercial—square jaw, dark hair, eyes that probably make suspects confess to things they didn't do just to keep him looking at them.
I open the door.
"Maya Chen?" Cologne Commercial asks.
"That's me."
"I'm Detective James Cross. This is Detective Sarah Mendez. We need you to come down to the station to answer some questions about Dr. Lawrence Hartley."
"Am I under arrest?"
"Should you be?" Detective Mendez asks. Her eyes drop to my hands.
I realize too late that I'm picking at my thumbnail, at the dried blood still lodged in the corner. It's an old nervous habit. Dr. Hartley was helping me stop.
Was helping. Past tense.
"I didn't kill him," I say.
Detective Cross tilts his head slightly. "We didn't say you did."
"But you're here. You think I did."
"We think you might have information. When did you last see Dr. Hartley?"
"Sunday. No. Monday? I had an appointment Monday at three but I don't remember—" I stop. In true crime podcasts, this is where the suspect says something stupid that gets them arrested. "I think I should call a lawyer."
"You can do that at the station," Detective Mendez says. "We just need you to answer a few questions. Unless you'd rather not cooperate?"
It's not really a question.
I grab my phone and my keys and follow them downstairs, where a police car is waiting. A few of my neighbors are watching from their windows. Mrs. Kowalski from 3B is definitely filming this on her phone. Great. I'm going to be a TikTok.
As Detective Cross opens the car door for me—at least he's polite about ruining my life—I catch my reflection in the car window.
There's something in my jacket pocket. The jacket I apparently wore on Monday, the Monday I can't remember.
Something square and plastic.
I slide into the backseat before they notice me noticing. Before they notice that whatever happened Monday, whatever I did or didn't do, I left myself a clue.
And the thing about clues? They're only useful if you're brave enough to follow them.
Or stupid enough.
I've never been great at telling the difference.