Текст книги "Luckiest Girl Alive"

Автор книги: Jessica Knoll

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Vencino pounced. “What does ‘not really’ mean, TifAni?”

“No, okay? He didn’t.”

“Never?” Dixon prodded, gently. “Think back.”

“I mean, it was the usual talking shit about him. But no, Arthur never said, ‘I’m going to take my dad’s gun into the school and shoot Dean in the nuts.’” The word “nuts” made me giggle. I hiccuped and succumbed to a fit of silent, painful laughter, the kind that spreads like wildfire at a funeral, when someone breaks the somber silence with a wet, Diet Coke burp.

“My client is exhausted,” Dan said. “Maybe you ought to let her go home and get some rest. She’s fourteen, don’t forget.”

“So was Olivia Kaplan,” Detective Vencino said.

The sound of Olivia’s name straightened me out. I rubbed my arms, prickly with goose bumps. “How is Hilary?”

“She’s an amputee,” Vencino said, and nothing else.

I took a shaky sip of water. The room had chilled it even colder, and I winced when I swallowed, when the liquid skated by my lungs. “But will she be okay? Will she come back to Bradley?” I looked to Dixon to ask the question that I had been carrying around since I left the hospital. Maybe he actually had an answer. “Will Bradley, I mean, the school won’t shut down or anything, will it?”

“Do you want it to?” Vencino replied, behind Dixon.

I didn’t know how to make Detective Vencino understand just how much I didn’t want that to happen. I couldn’t return to my life just a few miles shy of the Main Line. Those few miles made the difference between Yale and West Chester University, moving to New York when you grew up and breaking ground for your own mini McMansion, hand stroking your belly, swollen like an overfed tick, as the baby kicked and kicked. I turned my hands up on the table. “I just want everything to go back to normal.”

“Ah,” Vencino said, holding up his pointer finger like he understood. “Well it can now, can’t it? That you’re rid of all the people who caused you so much distress?” A cyanide smile crawled onto his face, and he gestured at me with a sarcastic flourish, Vanna White presenting the shiny new Toyota Camry only the winner would take home. “Take her in, folks! Right here in our midst! The luckiest girl alive.”

Dan glared at Vencino. “That’s a little out of line, Detective.”

Detective Vencino folded his arms across his chest. “Sorry,” he spat, “I’ve got bigger fish to fry than worrying about TifAni FaNelli’s feelings.”

Dan sniffed at him, turning to address Dixon. “Do you have everything you need?” He patted my back. “Because I think it’s in my client’s best interest to go home and get some rest.”

Rest. That would never come easy, even when it was supposed to come easy, ever again.

Out in the hallway, Dan asked for a moment alone with me. He told me he would be by the house in the morning, to have that “conversation” with my parents that I couldn’t be the one to have. The following morning was Friday, and I would have preferred he wait until Monday, so I wouldn’t have to spend the whole weekend cooped up with both Mom and Dad, who would no doubt be disgusted by me. But Dan said if we waited until Monday there was a chance the story could leak, and I wouldn’t want my parents to find out from The Philadelphia Inquirer, would I? “Let’s not delay the inevitable.” Dan put his hand on my shoulder, and I stared at the floor, at his shoes made of such bad fake leather they looked rubber.

“You did good in there,” Dan said. “Vencino is a bully. He’s just trying to get under your skin. But you didn’t rise to the occasion. That was good.”

“But they think I planned this with Arthur or something,” I said. “How could they think that?”

“They don’t,” Dan said. “Like your mother said, they’re just covering all their bases.”

“Am I going to have to come back here?”

“You might.” Dan gave me that heartening smile people give you when the truth is something you don’t want to hear, and you need to be brave.

Mom made me take one of those Anita pills, to help me sleep. I wanted to save it for later, after Mom and Dad had gone to bed and I could flip through all of the news channels, on mute, the captions setting on, but Mom insisted I take it right in front of her. Like it was a fucking vitamin instead of a sleeping pill that they later found out is as addictive as heroin.

Within fifteen minutes, sleep started with those weird dreams that you jump awake from, thinking, Well, that was strange. I had what looked like a raspberry, a beautiful one, plump and jewel ripe, growing out of the crown of my head. I kept trying to cover it with my hair, but every time I passed by a mirror, I’d see its large bubble body in profile. Soon, more sprouted—one along my hairline, another by my ear. I’m going to have get these removed, and it’s going to be very painful, I thought. This is the point at which I’d normally leap awake, but that Anita pill blunted the instinct, so I just twitched, once, and then deep into the rabbit hole of the bizarre and terrifying I went.

I was in a crowd of people. They were my classmates, that much I knew, only I didn’t recognize any of them. We were standing at the edge of a dock, and the colors were dull brown and yellow, old timey, as though from an illustration of New York at the turn of the twentieth century. It started as a whisper, “Arthur is alive,” and grew to an excited hush, making its way over to me. “Arthur is alive?” I demanded of no one in particular.

There was a push in the crowd, all of us on the move, trying to find Arthur. I struggled to elbow my way out, but I was part of a formidable unit. I knew if I could just break free, I’d be able to find him. We weren’t going to find him like this.

And then I was out, and Arthur was in front of me, laughing. A sweet laugh, like he was watching Friends and something Chandler said had amused him. Chandler had always been his favorite.

“You’re alive?” I gasped, and Arthur kept laughing.

“Hey!” I pounded my fists on his chest. “You’re alive? How come you didn’t tell me?” I pounded harder, anything to make the delirious laughter stop. This wasn’t funny. “How could you not tell me?”

“Don’t be mad.” Arthur held my fists still, smiling at me. “I’m here. Don’t be mad.”

I woke with the bad feeling first. The disorientation followed—I just woke up, how could something bad have already happened? For a split second, giddiness took over, like it does on a Saturday morning, when you think you have to get ready for school and then you realize, ahhhh, it’s the weekend. Weekends would lose their magic for a while. Everything did.

There was the sound of food cracking on the stove and the time on the TV box read 12:49 P.M. Dan had said he was coming by this morning. Had he? Did he share all the lurid details with Mom and Dad while I writhed and sweat, just a few feet away?

The blanket had bunched around my torso, leaving my legs and feet exposed. I rolled onto my side, and the warm, starchy stench of an overheated and immobile body rose up in the air. “Mom?” I called out, anxious for her response. It would tell me how angry she was.

I heard Mom’s bare feet on the kitchen floor, and then nothing as she crossed over into the carpeted living room. “You’re up!” She clasped her hands together. “That pill really knocked you out, huh?”

There was no way she knew. “Did Dan come by?”

“He called, but I told him it would probably be better to come this afternoon, since you were still sleeping.”

I swallowed, and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth for a beat too long. I swallowed again, panicked, trying to get it to unstick. “Where’s Dad?”

“Oh, honey,” Mom said. “He went into the office. Something big is going on. He might even have to work this weekend.”

“He will?” I’d never known Dad to go into work on the weekends. Not ever.

Mom misinterpreted my relief for yearning. “I’m sure he’ll be home early.”

“What time is Dan coming over?”

“Soon,” Mom said. “Maybe you should shower?” She held her nose and and waved her hand back and forth, teasingly. “You smell a little ripe.”

I could smell likeOliviaright now, I almost said. Rotting. I came this close.

I’ve never been able to take fast showers. “What are you doing in there?” Dad would pound on the door and ask on school mornings. I don’t know what I “do” in there—what everyone else does, I guess, it just takes me longer.

I’d taken two showers since Tuesday, and combined they were shorter than my usual one. I kept hearing noises, kept pushing the curtain aside, so sure I was going to see Arthur’s ghost standing there, a strapping angry puff of air.

I turned off the water before I even rinsed off all the foamy suds on my back. “Mom?” I called, loudly. Whenever I spooked myself, sometimes the best remedy was just hearing Mom’s annoyed cry back. “Don’t yell, TifAni.”

I called for Mom again, really bellowed this time. Still nothing. I wrapped myself in a towel and dripped my way across the bathroom floor, pulling the door open and shouting, “Mooooom!”

“Jesus Christ I’m on the phone!” Her voice told me everything.

I crept into my room, the carpet turning a shade darker with each soggy footstep. I picked up the phone from the receiver and pressed it against my ear. I’d begged for my own phone. When I got it, I’d covered the handle in pink glittery stickers like Rayanne from My So-Called Life.

I picked up to Dan, in the middle of saying “. . . indication she’d been on the outs at school?”

“No.” Mom sniffed. “She’d had a sleepover at Olivia’s recently.”

“I think that was the night Dean attacked her,” Dan said. “She slept at Andrew Larson’s house.”

“Her cross-country coach?” Mom wailed. Dan and I listened to her blow her nose. “I don’t even know who this girl is anymore.” I gripped the fold of my towel tighter. This girl. “How could she do this?”

“Teenagers don’t always make the smartest decisions, Dina. Try not to be too hard on her.”

“Oh please,” Mom snapped. “I was in high school once. You don’t have a body like TifAni’s and go to a party with all boys and drink too much and not know exactly what you’re doing there. TifAni knew better. She knows what this family’s values are.”

“Even so,” Dan replied. “Kids make mistakes. TifAni has had to make up for hers in the worst way imaginable.”

“And so the police know all about this?” Mom was beside herself, no doubt thinking, laughably, how humiliating this was for a family such as ours, with all our values.

“TifAni told them last night.”

“And so, what do they think? That TifAni planned this, this massacre with the other school outcasts to exact her revenge?” Mom released a single “Ha!” As though this were the most preposterous thing in the world.

“I think that is one possibility,” Dan said, and I could picture the impact that had on Mom’s face. That Dan didn’t find this preposterous at all. “The problem is, they don’t have a single piece of evidence to prove that theory.”

“What about that gun? The one TifAni touched.”

“I haven’t heard anything about that,” Dan said. “Let’s hope that never comes to fruition.”

“But what if it does?”

“Even if it does, it’s hardly enough evidence to charge TifAni with a crime. And if Arthur showed that gun around, it’s plausible there would be other kids’ fingerprints on it, and I’m sure, with that, a story to corroborate TifAni’s.”

Mom exhaled loudly into the phone. “Well, I appreciate your calling me,” she said. “Hopefully this ridiculous speculation all dies down soon.”

“I’m sure it will,” Dan said. “They’re just dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s.”

Mom thanked Dan again and said good-bye. I didn’t hang up until I was sure I was the last one on the line, and the phone made a wet popping noise as I pulled it away from my ear. I wiped it on my towel before placing it back in the receiver with a careful click.

“TifAniiiiii!” Mom’s voice went ragged as my name wrapped the house in her call. I didn’t answer, just let the water droplets gather around me on the carpet in my bedroom—turquoise colored, Mom had let me pick that. It would get mildewy—she always nagged me about leaving damp towels on the floor—and it would be just one more reason for her to hate me.

Mom told me I was not the daughter she raised. I cried, but her mouth never stepped out of its tight line. After that, we settled into a seething silence. There was still no word about when school would resume, and I spent my days on the couch, TV dazed, getting up only to eat or shower or go to the bathroom. Being the recipient of the silent treatment meant there was no one to tell me to turn off the news.

Seven days after the shooting, Bradley was no longer the top news story, and when it was mentioned, there weren’t any new developments, just tearful interviews with parents and classmates who had been close to the blast in the cafeteria—but not so close that they weren’t alive and well for the camera, gesturing wildly with their still intact limbs. Occasionally, a news reporter would mention that police were investigating the possibility of others being involved, but no names or further details were given.

So on Monday afternoon, when Detective Dixon called and told Mom we needed to come back down to the station immediately, and to bring our lawyer, I was angry that Katie Couric hadn’t prepared me for the development that was about to come next.

Dan met us at the station, wearing his same limp suit. If Mom and I had been on speaking terms, I would have asked her why Dan dressed so poorly when he was a lawyer and probably made a lot of money. My little knowledge about lawyers came from the movie Hook, Robin Williams as the overworked, well-paid attorney who never had time for his children.

Dad was still on his way to the station when Dan and I were ushered into the interrogation room by Detective Dixon and Detective Vencino. This time, Vencino was holding a thick file folder and sporting a sly, knowing smile.

“TifAni,” Detective Dixon said, as we sat down across from one another. “How have you been?”

“Fine, I guess.”

“Well, that’s good to hear,” Vencino snipped. Everyone ignored him.

“We understand you’ve been under a lot of duress over the last few days,” Dixon said, his tone, his body language, his bizarre eyebrows, everything about him amicable. “And we’d like to give you the opportunity to come forward with any important information that maybe, just, slipped your mind the last time we spoke.” He brought his fingers to his head and demonstrated how this important information could disappear from one’s head in a poof of smoke.

I looked at Dan, the meanly lit room highlighting how vulnerable we both were. Whatever was in that manila folder matched Vencino’s agenda. “Let’s not be coy, Detectives,” Dan said. “TifAni has been honest with you. I’d say you owe her the same courtesy.”

I frowned at my lap, frantically searching my mind, unsure if that was the truth.

Dixon stuck out his lower lip and nodded, like this was a possibility, but he had to be convinced first. “Let’s let TifAni answer,” he said, and all three of them looked at me, expectantly.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I did tell you everything I thought was important.”

“You sure about that?” Vencino asked. He waved the manila envelope at me like I should know what was inside of it.

“Yes. Honestly, if I left something out I didn’t mean to leave it out.”

Dan gave my hand a reassuring little pat. “Why don’t you just tell us what we’re doing here?”

Vencino brought the file down on the table with a loud thwack. The force flung the front flap open, and a pile of colored Xeroxes reminded me. Slowly, with intent, Dixon spread the copies of the Bradley yearbook pages out on the table for Dan and me to see.

Vencino pinned each picture to the table with a yellow, ragged fingernail and read the things Arthur and I had written. “Chop my cock off.” “Choke me with it.” “RIP HOs.” I wrote that last one. Mr. Larson had told us to compose a Halloween haiku on an illustration of a grave, beneath the words “RIP Farmer Ted.” It had seemed like such a kiddie assignment at the time, but it had stuck in my head. Later, I’d jotted it down on Olivia’s picture and Arthur had giggled, insidiously, when he read it.

“This is your handwriting, is it not?” Dixon asked.

Dan regarded me sharply. “Don’t answer that, TifAni.”

“We don’t really need her to,” Vencino said and nodded at Dixon. Another file had materialized in his hands.

Notes. The ones Arthur and I used to pass all the time, even when we weren’t in class and could have just said whatever it was we were writing out loud. Some were about nothing . . . what a lemming Headmaster Mah was and what a slut Elisa White had become. I’d left my prints in the color of the ink, the same shamrock green as in the pages of the yearbook, my intent, laughable now, to proclaim my allegiance to Bradley. Not that they needed the green to even know it was me. I’d attended a Catholic middle school with nuns who didn’t know how to explain the sexual overtones in literature, and so it was eschewed year after year in favor of grammar and cursive classes. My perfect penmanship slanted and rolled across the pages of the yearbook, my DNA in every graceful loop.

Did you see Hilary’s hair today?

It’s so gross. Take a shower, sweetie pie. Her pussy must smell so rank. If she even has one. There were all these rumors in middle school that she was really a man. A hermaphrodite at the very least. I can’t believe Dean banged her.

Dean and Hilary? When? I’m pretty sure she’s a virgin.

Oh, come on. Everyone knows about that. Dean will put it anywhere. (No offense.) He’s going to be one of those guys who marries an ex–Ms. America but bangs the fat waitresses at T.G.I. Friday’s on the side. The world would really be better off without him. Raise your hand and ask to go to the bathroom if you agree.

You are never going to believe what just happened in the bathroom right now.

You better tell me fast, we have three minutes until the bell rings.

Paige Patrick was taking a pregnancy test.

And another note. A different day. This one dated at the top, because I started it and I was taught to put the date in the upper-right-hand corner of everything, even a stupid, hastily scribbled note.

October 29, 2001

Today Dean bumped into me in the hallway and called me a wide load. I’m seriously thinking about transferring. (I wasn’t! I just liked to say this to get Arthur to remind me of all the reasons why Bradley was superior to Mt. St. Theresa’s, which he would, happily: “Oh, you miss soccer mom training camp?”).

You say this at least once a week. You’re not transferring. We both know it. I’ll just kill them all for you. How’s that sound?

Swell. How are we doing it?

I have my dad’s gun.

What happens if you get caught?

I wouldn’t get caught. I’m wicked smart.

I didn’t know how to make the detectives understand. This was how we spoke to each other. We were all young and cruel. One time a freshman JV soccer player choked on an orange slice on the bus ride to an away game, and, instead of helping him, or even displaying the least bit of alarm, Dean and Peyton and all the guys laughed at the way the blood rushed to his face and his eyes bugged out of his head (the assistant manager finally realized what was going on and performed the Heimlich maneuver). For weeks afterward, the guys regaled us with this story, over and over, the veins in their necks straining with their laughter while the poor kid who choked on the orange stared at the lunch table, trying not to cry.

“I’m almost positive that when we look in your school notebooks we will see this is your handwriting, and that you use a green pen.” Detective Vencino patted his paunch, satisfied, like he’d just eaten a great meal.

“Well, you’re going to have to get a warrant to search TifAni’s things to be able to do that. And if you had that, you would have used it by now.” Dan leaned back in his chair and smirked at Vencino.

“It was just a joke,” I said, softly.

“TifAni!” Dan warned.

“Really,” Detective Dixon said. “It’s better if we hear it from her. Because as we speak, we are getting that warrant.”

Dan blinked at me, trying to decide. Finally, he nodded. Sighed, “Tell them.”

“It was a joke,” I said again. “I thought he was joking.”

“And were you?” Detective Vencino asked.

“Of course I was,” I said. “I didn’t ever think something like this would happen. Not in a million years.”

“I know it’s been a few years since I’ve been in high school”—Vencino began to pace—“but, little girl, you better believe we never made jokes like that.”

“Did you two ever discuss this . . . plan . . . verbally?” Detective Dixon asked.

“No,” I said. “I mean, I don’t think so.”

“What is this ‘I don’t think so’?” Vencino demanded. “Either you did or you didn’t.”

“I just . . . didn’t pay attention to it,” I said. “So yeah, he could have joked about it, and maybe I did too, but I didn’t make, like, a mental note of it or anything because it wasn’t something I took seriously.”

“But you knew he had one of the guns used in the attack,” Dixon said, and I nodded. “How did you know that?”

I glanced at Dan, and he gave me the go-ahead. “He showed it to me.”

Dixon and Vencino looked at each other, so astonished that for a second neither of them appeared angry at me anymore. “When was this?” Dixon asked, and I told him about that afternoon in Arthur’s basement. The deer head. The yearbook. The way he’d pointed the gun at me and I’d fallen on my bad wrist.

Detective Vencino shook his head in the corner, shadows darkening his face like a bruise. Muttered, “Little fucking punk.”

“Did Arthur ever joke”—Dixon bunny-eared that word—“about hurting anyone else?”

“No. I thought he wanted to hurt me.”

“See”—Vencino tapped his grimy fingernail against his chin—“that’s funny because Dean is saying just the opposite.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but Dan jumped in. “What is Dean saying?”

“That Arthur offered the gun to TifAni. Told her now was the chance to shoot this—and excuse my language, but these are the types of kids we’re dealing with here—cocksucker’s cock off.” Vencino scratched a patch of skin under his eye and grimaced. “He says TifAni reached for the gun.”

“I never said I didn’t!” I exploded. “I was going to use it on him, not Dean.”

Dan warned, “TifAni—” at the same time Dixon slammed his fist down on the table, sending a few copies of the yearbook pages into the air, where they hovered, still as a picture, before slicing back and forth through space, not even hitting the floor for some time after Dixon shouted “You’re a liar!” His face was heart-attack red, the way only a natural blond’s can get. “You’ve been lying to us from the moment we met you.” He had been lying too, fooling me with his friendly mask.

By the end of it all I just assumed no one ever told the truth, and that was when I started lying too.

The news informed me that Liam’s funeral was the first, a full ten days after the fact. A few hours later, an e-mail went out to the Bradley “family.” That’s what they started calling us after this. The “Bradley Family.” And even I, black sheep that I was, received the message.

Mom received it too, and she asked me if I needed to go shopping for a black dress. My laugh was my way of calling her demented. “I’m not going to that.”

“Oh, yes you are.” Her lips pulled in thin as a slice of grass.

“I am not going,” I repeated, more fiercely this time. I was sitting on the couch, my stockinged feet on the coffee table, hair and lint stuck all over them. It had been three days since the interrogation, and I hadn’t showered, hadn’t put on a bra. This skank stank.

“TifAni!” Mom cried. She took a deep breath and brought her hands to her face. In a reasonable tone she said, “We did not raise you like this. This is the decent thing to do.”

“I am not going to the funeral of the guy who raped me.”

Mom gasped. “Don’t you speak like that.”

“Like what?” I laughed.

“He’s dead, TifAni. He died a horrible death, and while he may have made some mistakes in his life he was just a child.” Mom pinched her nose, sniffed back the snot. “He did not deserve that.” Her voice went up high and weepy on the last word.

“You never even met him.” I pointed the controller at the TV and turned it off, the grandest statement I could make. I kicked off the throw covering my hairy legs and glared at Mom as I passed her on my way up the stairs, to my bedroom, which I hadn’t stepped foot in for the last two days.

“You are going or I won’t pay for you to go back to Bradley!” Mom called behind me.

The morning of Liam’s funeral the phone rang. I snatched it off the hook. “Hello?”

“TifAni!” My name was spoken with surprise.

I twirled my finger in the cord. “Mr. Larson?”

“I’ve been trying to call,” he said, hurriedly. “How are you? Are you okay?”

The line clicked and Mom said, “Hello?”

“Mom,” I snapped. I’ve got it.”

All three of us were silent for a moment. “Who is this?” Mom asked.

There was the unmistakable sound of a man clearing his throat. “It’s Andrew Larson, Mrs. FaNelli.”

“TifAni,” Mom hissed. “Hang up the phone.”

I hooked my finger in the cord tighter. “Why?”

“I said, hang up the—”

“It’s okay,” Mr. Larson said. “I was just calling to see if TifAni was okay. Good-bye, TifAni.”

“Mr. Larson!” I shrieked, but it was only Mom there, raging over the dial tone. “I told you to stop calling! She is fourteen years old!”

I screamed right back. “Nothing happened! I told you nothing happened!”

You know what the sick part is? Even though I was dreading Liam’s funeral, even though I was so mad at Mom for making me go, I still wanted to look pretty for it.

I spent an hour getting ready. I curled my eyelashes for forty seconds each, so that they stuck straight up in wide-awake surprise. Dad had to work (sometimes I think he was just sitting in an empty office, scowling at his powered-off computer), so it was just Mom and me, not speaking in her bright cherry BMW with the heat that worked only when her foot pumped the gas pedal, so that we shivered in unison every time we stopped in front of a red light.

“I want you to know,” Mom said, as she released the brake along with a plume of deliciously warm air, “that I don’t condone what Liam did. Of course I don’t. But you have to take responsibility for your part in this too.”

“Just stop,” I pleaded.

“I’m just saying. When you drink you put yourself into situations where—”

“I know!” We merged onto the highway, and the car was silent and warm after that.

The church I used to attend at Mt. St. Theresa’s was beautiful, if you’re into that sort of thing. But we weren’t going to a church for Liam’s “memorial service” (no funerals, everyone had a memorial service). Liam was a Quaker, and we were going to a meeting-house.

My confusion was so great it actually dulled my irritation with Mom long enough to muse, “I thought Quakers lived in their own communities and didn’t believe in, like, modern medicine or whatever?”

Mom bit into a smile, despite everything. “That’s Amish.”

The Quaker meetinghouse was a single-level clapboard home, a faded, somber shade of white behind the oak arms that flapped around it, red and orange leaves clinging to random bark veins. Even though we were forty-five minutes early, there was a long line of shiny black sedans waiting in the muddy grass, and Mom was forced to park at the top of the hill. She tried to hold my arm as we climbed down, but I pulled away from her and stormed ahead, the rhythm of her high heels behind me unsteady and satisfying.

But as we neared the entrance, I saw the crowd of people, the TV cameras, and my classmates, in groups hugging and comforting each other. It was enough to make me lose my nerve and slow down so that Mom could catch up with me.

“What a scene,” Mom breathed. Faced with the women in chic black pantsuits, gumball-size pearls around their necks, Mom clasped her large cross pendant self-consciously. The fake diamonds were dull, despite the bold blast of the late morning sun.

“Come on,” Mom said, forging ahead. Her high heel stuck in the grass, and she boomeranged backward. A few frosted hairs caught in her pink lip gloss, and she spat them away. “Goddamnit,” she muttered, working her shoe out of the mud.

As we came up on the edge of the crowd, a few classmates paused, eyes wet and wide on me. A few even stepped away, and what gutted me most was that they didn’t do it meanly. They did it nervously.

The meetinghouse wasn’t even half full yet. It would be packed to capacity and then some, but for now, there was a spectacle to be made outside, in front of the cameras. Mom and I hurried inside and found seats in the back of the meetinghouse. Right away Mom hunched over, searching beneath the pew ahead of her for a kneeler. When she didn’t find one, she slid forward in her seat, making a swift sign of the cross and pressing her palms together. She squeezed her eyes shut, and her plastic-looking eyelashes crunched on her cheeks.

A family of four—the daughter, Riley, a junior at Bradley—entered the pew to the left, and I had to nudge Mom to open her eyes. She was blocking their way.

“Oh!” Mom slid back into the pew, turned her knees to the side to give the family room to make their way in.

They sat down, Riley nearest to me, and I nodded solemnly at her. She was a member of school council, always up at the podium at Monday’s morning assembly, talking about how much money the car wash raised over the weekend. Her mouth was the largest feature on her face, and, when she smiled, her eyes retracted, like they were hiding from her lips.

Riley nodded back, the corners of her big mouth poking into the sides of her face. In my peripheral vision, I saw her lean toward her father, mumble something in his ear. There was a domino effect: now the father slanting toward the mother, and the mother toward the younger sister, who whined, “Why?” The mother whispered something else, a warning, a bribe, however their family operated, and the girl stood, eyes rolling and legs still slightly bent at the knees, and she shuffled out of the pew, her family following.

This happened a few more times. Classmates either recognizing the Judas in the back pew and not even bothering to stop, or getting up and moving when they noticed me. The pews were filling in fast, and like in a crowded movie theater, families and cliques of friends were having to split up in order to get a seat. I studied every person who entered, worried it could be Hilary or Dean. I knew they were in the hospital, that they would be for a long time, but still I looked for them.