The principal clears his throat at the use of the word damn, which I think is kind of ridiculous considering it’s the least alarming thing we’ve heard since Nolan opened his mouth.
“And here’s the thing,” he says. “We can’t do anything about that unless you report it. We can’t stop your friends from driving drunk and killing themselves or someone else unless we know they’re behind that wheel ahead of time. Girls, we can’t prosecute that guy who spiked your drink unless you tell us it happened.
“And you don’t want to, I get it. It’s a small town. The person behind the wheel is your buddy. The person who touched you is your best friend’s cousin, is your parent’s coworker, is someone everybody trusts so no one is going to believe you. But I’ll believe you.”
The room is so quiet I swear you can hear people weighing their options.
“The truth will always out,” Nolan says, his gaze heavy on the crowd. “And I and the rest of the department will see justice served.”
“What about Comstock?” a boy yells out. “You guys never found out who did him in.”
There’s a spatter of laughter and some murmured agreements, but Nolan rolls with it, absorbing the slam. “I know, right? Only two murders ever committed in this town and we haven’t solved either of them.”
Sara leans in to me. “I thought Comstock was arrested for . . .” She trails off, nodding toward Alex instead of finishing her sentence.
I shake my head. “He was arrested but never charged, not enough evidence. They had to release him, and that’s when—” I draw my finger across my throat, although there was more to it than that. A lot more.
“Yep,” Nolan goes on. “Pretty funny, right? The cops can’t put a guy away so someone else takes care of it, serves justice on their own terms.”
“Hell yes” comes a call from the audience.
“Kinda cool.” Nolan nods. “Until you actually think about it. I’m assuming I don’t have to tell you what happened to Comstock.”
He doesn’t; it’s the stuff of slumber-party talk. The kind of party where nobody sleeps well.
“Think about it for a second,” he says. “There’s someone out there who can do that. They’re loose. They’re among us. And they’ll do it again. Hilarious, right?”
Yeah, nobody’s laughing. We’re all pillars of cement in our chairs. Except Alex, who I notice is lounged back, looking at Nolan the same way dogs do when they take each other’s measure. I guess hearing someone say they don’t heartily agree with what happened to Comstock might be kind of hard to take.
The screen behind Nolan suddenly lights up, the only thing on it an email address and phone number.
“That’s my info,” Nolan says. “I knew if I said come up and get business cards half of the people who wanted to wouldn’t, and half of those who did would toss them five minutes later. So get out your phones and take a pic. Everybody. Right now.”
We do. All of us. There’s a wave of movement across the auditorium and a bunch of camera clicks in stereo. I’m willing to bet some of the girls are going to use Nolan’s number for reasons other than reporting underage drinking and sex crimes, but it’s cool that we’ve got this moment, everyone with their phones in the air.
Except Alex. I look over at her and she shrugs.
“I don’t have a phone,” she says.
“I’ll email it to you,” I tell her, and she shrugs again.
I think about reaching over and taking her hand, or rubbing her shoulder. Something to show my solidarity with her over the fact that right now everyone in this room is thinking about her dead sister.
But I don’t, because much like a strange dog, I’m not sure if she’ll bite me when I do.
13. ALEX
We all walk out of the auditorium into the bright lights of the hall, blinking. It’s a harsh awakening that breaks the spell the cop managed to weave, quieting constantly running mouths and forever-lit-up phones. In the anonymous dark, the air was heavy with thoughts, the blond girl sitting next to me fighting to breathe normally when a boy suggested she’d be the one raped of the five of us who were called out. Out here in the light it’s harder for her to hide how badly that upset her. Her face is tight, her smile stretched too thin, and she pretends to have a wayward hair in her eye that explains the pooling tears.
The light is taking a toll on all of us, the deeply personal thoughts brought on by darkness whisked away as someone makes a joke, and then another, and soon all anyone wants to know is what’s for lunch. Not who will be a victim and who a perpetrator. A hand clamps on my arm and I jerk away immediately, down and with a twist so that they can’t keep their grip.
“Whoa, hey, sorry,” a male voice says. Jack is right in front of me, and I have to focus on stringing together the right words in order to seem normal.
“Are you okay?” he asks when I don’t say anything.
“You’re always asking me that,” I say, and part of me wonders if that’s because he instinctively knows I am definitely not.
“No, I mean . . .” He brushes his hand through his hair. “That assembly. It was pretty fucked-up. Sorry.”
I don’t know if he’s saying that he’s sorry that he swore, or that he’s sorry I had to sit through that, or if he’s sorry that he scared me when he grabbed my arm. I’m cradling the wrist that he touched, holding it against my chest because where our skin met burns so badly I’m sure it’s blistering, and I don’t want him to see how hard my heart is beating.
“Did I hurt you?” he asks, eyes on my hands.
“No,” I say. “I’m . . .” I stop talking because I don’t know what I am.
“Good, because I wouldn’t do that—hurt someone, I mean.” His eyes have moved up to mine, and they’re so honest I have to wonder what mine look like to him.
“You or anybody else,” he adds.
“You can’t know that.” I say the first thing that comes to my mind, a reactionary cog setting another in motion. “It’s impossible to know what any one of us will do in a given situation. Especially intense ones.”
His friends are gathering at the end of the hall, looking back at us. The blond girl calls his name and he waves at them to go on, drawing a pout from her as the second-period bell rings. He walks with me to class like it’s a normal thing, and I let it feel that way too, for a moment.
“Alex Craft,” he says. “I think every situation with you is an intense one.”
I feel a smile on my face, muscles that haven’t twisted in that manner since I talked to him last shaking with the oddity of it. An answering smile echoes on Jack’s face, and I can see laugh lines forming around his lips, a life only starting but already well lived.
“Anyway,” he goes on. “I don’t want you to be upset about what that cop was saying, about the person who . . . well, you know. About there being a killer out there, and that they’ll do it again.”
I settle for smiling as we part instead of answering. Because the only words I have are:
The cop is right.
And it doesn’t upset me at all.
14. PEEKAY
“Best. Assembly. Ever,” Sara says as she gets in my passenger seat. Her basketball conditioning was canceled, so she’s bumming a ride—and probably dinner—off me. “People were either going to cry or start punching each other,” she says. “Loved it.”
“I felt bad for Alex,” I say.
“What’s her deal, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly, flipping off the car full of junior boys who are riding my ass. “I’m not sure she so much has a deal as she just minds her own business.”
“Uh, yeah, small town. No such thing,” Sara says. “Take it from the lesbian contingent of one.”
“You’re not the only lesbian in town,” I tell her for the hundredth time.
“Do me a solid and let me know when you spot another one,” she says as I pull into my driveway. Sara cranes her head to look at the bell tower, as always. I’m so used to growing u
p next to the church I don’t even see it anymore, don’t think about the massive graveyard that I live next to, either. Giving people directions to my house has always been easy—drive out of town on the state route until you’re in the middle of nowhere and suddenly there’s a huge church. I live next to it. Easy to locate, sure. Easy to pretend not to be the preacher’s kid when you use the steeple as a navigational point? Not so much.
I grab the bag of bulletins from the backseat and we go inside. Mom and Dad are sitting at the dining room table, trying to look like they haven’t been waiting on me, which immediately sends out warning signals.
“What?” I ask before I even put the bulletins down.
“Sara,” Mom says, walking toward her for a hug. “Good to see you.”
Sara hugs her back but repeats my question when she steps away. “Yeah, sorry, Peekay’s parents, but definitely what?”
My dad doesn’t go in for a hug on either of us, but gives us both an awkward smile. “We heard you had an assembly today.”
Sara and I both make half-vomit noises. “Was there some kind of parental alert call system that kicked in?” I ask.
“Do I need to go?” Sara asks.
“No, it’s probably best if you hear this too,” my dad says as he ushers us into the living room, my mom following with glasses full of iced tea that have been poured for a while now because they’re sweating like crazy. Mom and Dad sit on the couch, Sara and I take the love seat, and we all look at each other.
“So what did you think about the assembly?” Mom finally asks.
“Uh . . .” I share a glance with Sara, who makes her eyes really big and takes a huge sip of iced tea. Lots of help there. “It was kind of scary, you know.”
Dad surprises me by saying, “Good.”
He goes on: “Sorry, honey. The truth is often alarming. I’ve been fielding phone calls all day from parents, and I’ve been telling them the same thing. I understand you were one of the girls the officer pointed to when he mentioned rape statistics?”
“Yeah,” I say, the one word catching in my suddenly dry throat. “Me and Sara both. Were people pissed off about that?”
“Some,” Dad says. “Apparently Branley Jacobs’s mom called the school and gave the principal an earful over it.”
“I think Branley was kind of upset,” Sara says. “Somebody made a joke and . . .” She stirs her tea. “I don’t know if she was crying or anything like that, but she sure wasn’t laughing.”
“How did you feel about it, honey?” Mom asks me.
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “I wasn’t, like, pissed off or anything, but it was weird. I mean, we hear numbers like that shit—oops, sorry. We hear statistics like that all the time, but when he actually pointed at five of us . . .”
“It made it real,” my dad says, nodding.
“Yeah, like, really real.”
“That’s what your father said to the parents who have been calling,” Mom says. “If we have to hit you over the head with a sledgehammer to make you be careful, then I’ll be the first one in line at the hardware store.”
“I don’t want you to walk around scared,” Dad says, eyes sliding over to Sara. “Either of you. But things aren’t good around here. There’s never been a lot of money in this county, but times are tighter than ever and poverty breeds desperation. People look for escape in different ways: through drugs, through alcohol, and through sex.”
My hands leave my glass to cover my face.
“I’m sorry, honey, but it’s true,” Dad says.
“You were doing great until you said sex,” I tell him, my words muffled by my fingers. “Now I can’t look at you.”
“For the record, me neither” comes Sara’s similarly muted voice beside me.
“We’ll keep talking, but you don’t have to look at us, okay?” Dad says.
I nod, and I feel Sara doing the same thing beside me.
“I don’t know how much you know,” Dad says, giving me a little pause where I can feel free to volunteer all my sins if I feel so inclined.
I don’t.
“There’s been an influx of heroin in the county.”
“Bad heroin,” Mom clarifies, and I know Sara is trying just as hard as I am not to laugh at the idea that apparently she classifies some heroin as good.
“A handful of people overdosed last week,” Dad goes on. “It’s out there, along with meth—which in some ways is even more dangerous, because people are trying to make it themselves.”
“Cook it,” Mom corrects, and I have to wonder if they went to some kind of seminar or something where buzzwords were printed on PowerPoint slides in italics.
“We’re not stupid; we know you drink,” Mom says, and I am so damn grateful my head is already down. “We know what it’s like growing up here, honey; we did it too. But neither one of us was ever the preacher’s kid.”
“And I know that’s not easy for you,” Dad adds. “I want you to have a normal high school experience without that defining you. But you’re also my daughter, and I’m just a dad who wants his girl to be safe.”
“I am safe, Dad,” I say, and part of me wants to keep my face covered and part of me wants him to know that I didn’t start crying until this moment, and embarrassment has shit to do with it.
“Sara.” Dad clears his throat. “This applies to you too. Just because you’re not interested in boys doesn’t mean they’re not interested in you.”
“Oh, sweet baby Jesus,” Sara says into her hands.
“Girls,” Dad says. “If either one of you is ever in a situation you’re not entirely comfortable with—call me. I don’t care what time it is. I don’t care who is there or what is going on. You call me and I will come get you.”
I’m totally crying now, and I don’t even care. I look up at my dad and he’s crying too; my mom’s got her hand on his knee like she’s the only thing keeping him attached to the world.
“Baby girl,” Dad says. “There’s nothing you can ever do that will make you unwelcome in my house.”
I nod, a few tears falling into my lap when I do. Sara’s still got her face covered. Mom takes my glass to refill it and Dad goes to get some tissues. Sara looks over at me and wipes her eyes.
“You’ve got the best parents in the fucking world,” she says.
15. ALEX
It’s dark when I get home, even though the sun is still up.
Our windows stay closed, our curtains drawn. It’s easier for Mom to ignore the outside world this way: out of sight, out of mind, the only thing perpetually in her line of vision a bottle of scotch. I put myself in her way accidentally, our paths crossing in the kitchen as I get a glass of water. She looks up at the clock, confused.
“You’re home?”
“School lets out at three, Mom.”
Her eyes thin out as she squints at the clock, the shakily applied eyeliner she puts on only for herself crimping together as she does.
“It’s three-thirty,” I supply.
“Oh.” She busies herself for a few minutes, trying to make it seem like she came into the kitchen for something other than to refill her glass. I wait her out patiently, sipping my water and crunching ice between my teeth.
“How was school?”
I imagine this question is asked all over the world, every day, receiving everything from flippant answers to in-depth reckonings. But it’s hardly ever asked here, in this house. The last time I answered this question I was wearing a Hello Kitty book bag and the heels of my shoes lit up when I walked.
I pulverize some ice with my molars while I think. I could tell her, I suppose. Let her know that Anna was on the minds of everyone today. Something that rightfully belongs to only us resurrected once again as a cautionary fairy tale, a warning to all the Little Red Riding Hoods that there are wolves in the forest.
I could tell her, but I don’t. Because I know why the curtains are drawn and the windows are shut. Nothing is ours; nothing is sacred. The one thing we shared was
pulled into pieces, memorialized and mythologized so that everyone could participate in it. When she was missing, Anna’s picture was tacked in so many places around town it’s what I see when I think of her, not her actual face. I see that picture next to a lost cat poster and a lawn-mowing service advertisement.
I learned later they did find that cat.
“School was fine,” I say, and dump the rest of my water in the sink.
16. PEEKAY
We’re cleaning cat ears.
Rhonda doesn’t require us to come in on Sundays, but somebody has to feed the animals. Yesterday Alex and I helped five cats and two dogs find homes, one of them being the newly spayed dump, who was pretty cute once she got cleaned up. We agreed we probably could have placed a couple more cats if their ears were nice and pink inside like in the wet-food commercials. We told Rhonda to take a much-deserved break today and we’d come in, feed everybody, and make our cats a little more like the ones you see on TV.
So I skipped church to clean cat ears. Normally that wouldn’t fly, but since we had a half-mortifying, half-heartwarming family moment Friday, Dad was okay with it.
It’s kind of a gross job. A lot of these guys come in here with ear mites. They get this nasty black buildup that has its own special smell if it’s been sitting in their ear canals a while. It doesn’t matter how much I wash my hands; I can still smell it hours later, like an onion.
And cats don’t exactly love having their ears cleaned, so it takes two people. Alex has this weird hypnotic effect on them. I wrap them up in towels, bundled tight like cat burritos in my arms, and then Alex talks to them, low and soft. I don’t know if she relaxes them or if it’s more like utter defeat because they know they’ve come up against an unstoppable force with a Q-tip, but they go limp after a few minutes. When she’s done, she’ll nod at me and I let them go. They stalk off with their ears down and their tails in the air, trying to regain whatever dignity we took from them.