Echo Bridge (17 page)

“So lucky,” agreed Molly. “I mean, forget suspension, what if whatever he got dosed with had caused, like, brain damage?” She shook her head.

“Sucks that you didn’t get to go to the afterparty, though. I would die to go to a senior party.”

I was close enough now to see Molly shrug between the branches. She was really overselling her casual attitude, and I guessed that she’d been pretty excited about the Revelry afterparty, too. I shuddered to think how her expectations would have been dashed if Hugh had taken her to the party instead of getting carted away in an ambulance. Even if we hadn’t gotten him expelled, at least we’d prevented him from hurting Molly.

“He promised to take me to the Parkers’ party this Friday to make up for it.”

Oh, no.

“If I tell you something else, you have to swear you’ll keep it a secret.”

“Obviously.”

“Totally swear.”

Molly lowered her voice. “I’m thinking about having sex with him.”

Oh, shit
.

“Ohmigod, really?!” squealed Mercy Lewis.

“He is pretty sexy,” said Betty Parris.

I bent over for a second and braced myself against a tree, trying not to throw up. As I righted myself, I stepped on a branch, and it snapped loudly.

“What was that?”

“Who’s there?” called Molly. “Remember,” I heard her hiss to the other girls. “If you repeat what I just said, I will murder you.”

“Hi, ladies,” I said, walking under the tree where they sat so they could see me. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you. It’s a little creepy up here, huh?” I was talking too loudly and too friendly to cover my nerves, and I saw Molly narrow her eyes at me just a little. “I mean, some poor innocent might have been hanged from that branch you’re sitting on,” I said.

“Ew!” squealed Mercy Lewis.

Molly rolled her eyes. “Elm trees don’t live for four hundred years.” She thumped the trunk of the tree. “This guy probably wasn’t even a sapling back then.”

“Still,” I said, “these were ‘once the Devil’s territories.’” I was quoting Cotton Mather, the jackass who’d made it so easy for everyone to believe that Massachusetts really was rife with witchcraft.

“I read Mr. G’s history handout, too,” said Molly. Mr. Gillison had handed out folders with various Xeroxed sources on the witch trials to all of us during the first week of rehearsal. “I think it was ergotism.”

“What’s that?” asked Betty Parris. Then she blushed. “I guess I didn’t read that part.”

“You know what LSD is?” asked Molly. Betty nodded. “So it comes from a fungus that grows on wheat. And, you know, back then they’d store wheat and stuff for the winter. So one of the theories on the witch trials is that when women would go to air out the root cellar or whatever, they’d start tripping. By accident, obviously. But they acted weird and talked about seeing things that weren’t there. So, people started thinking these were ‘the Devil’s territories.’” She said that last part sarcastically.

“That’s almost like what happened to Hugh,” piped up Mercy Lewis.

Molly and I both nearly snapped our necks looking at her. “What do you mean?” Molly asked, but I could tell she was really saying,
Shut your trap, you silly freshman
.

Mercy Lewis flinched under our gazes, and her cheeks got very red. “I just meant, the allergy medication. It’s sort of like the fungus, right? He didn’t mean to trip, but he got in trouble anyway.”

I saw Molly relax, now that she knew Mercy was referring to the “official” version of Hugh’s meltdown at Rivalry Revelry.

“I don’t think three days off school is quite the same as being pressed to death with giant rocks,” I said.

“Guess it’s a good thing people don’t still believe in the Devil,” said Molly. She looked at me darkly.

“Who says they don’t?” I asked.

It was the following day that I finally got Lexi alone. Classes had been dismissed early for Thanksgiving break, and the school was as empty as I’d ever seen it; everyone had scattered to visit family or celebrate the free afternoon, a rare gift at Country Day. So it seemed safe to call her name when I saw her down the hall, to catch up to her and stand close enough to speak softly.

“I’ve got to talk to you.”

“Um,” Lexi said, and bit her lower lip. She brushed a few strands of hair out of her eyes, and her many silver bracelets sang as they slid down her arm. “Hi?”

“Hi,” I said. “Sorry. We need to talk.”

“Sorry for not saying hi just now? Or sorry for blowing me off the last few days?” Lexi’s winter hat was a beret. She adjusted it to a jauntier angle and her bracelets rattled inside the cuff of her coat.

“Both,” I sighed and put a hand on her arm. “Listen.” I spoke as quietly as I could. “Hugh knows it was you. If Ted saw us talking—”

“Wait, what?” Lexi grabbed my hand on her arm and squeezed. She was surprisingly strong. We both jumped as a door slammed down the hallway, but no one appeared.

“Let’s get out of here,” I hissed.

“Okay, okay. Come on.”

I didn’t think anyone had seen us in the hall—the door we’d heard could easily have been closed by a teacher or janitor—but Lexi pushed me toward the front door before she ducked out the side door that was nearer to the juniors’ parking lot. I kept going down the hall to the lobby. When I got outside, I could see her Caddie idling down the drive where Lexi had pulled out of the lot. I ran down to it and pulled open the passenger door. She was slouched down behind the wheel, poking at her cell phone speedily with both thumbs.

“We’re crap at being stealthy,” I said. “Half the school would recognize this as your car whether they could see you behind the wheel or not.”

Lexi tossed her phone into my lap and steered the car out of the Country Day gates. “Sorry. The Volvo’s getting a tune up,” she said sarcastically.

“I’m kidding, kind of,” I said. “I don’t think anyone saw us just now.”

“It doesn’t matter to me if they did,” Lexi said sharply, and put a cigarette between her lips.

I blushed and looked down at my lap. “It’s not like I’m ashamed to be seen with you—”

“No, I get it. You need to act like everything’s the same as it ever was. Since you never ventured outside your social circle before, you can’t now—you might have to admit that something’s changed. That you’ve changed.” She smirked bitterly and tapped her cigarette in the ashtray. “You would be able to pretend it didn’t happen to you.”

“No. No, I can’t” I looked at Lexi’s face, but she kept her eyes on the road, “I think about it every minute of every day.” She dropped the smirk. “But look: if Hugh suspects you’re responsible for drugging him at Revelry, and he definitely thinks you and Farah have been messing with his phone and computer, then what’s he going to think if you and I are suddenly palling around? You know how school is. It’s not like he wouldn’t notice.”

“Then he’d come gunning for you?” she finally met my eyes, raising one brow. “Maybe if he did, old Teddy boy would wake up.”

I suppressed a shudder. “Well, I mean… If Hugh doesn’t know you and I have talked, and he thinks I’m just going to keep acting like nothing happened, then he won’t be on his guard around me. I might get another chance. Not to drug him, but something. We’ll think of something.” I said firmly.

“I don’t know about you,” Lexi said, drumming her perfect oval nails on the steering wheel, “but I need to work out some aggression.” I glanced across the gearshift at her, thinking she couldn’t possibly mean what I thought she meant. “You need to be home any time soon?”

“No. My parents work at a homeless shelter in Boston the day before Thanksgiving every year.”

“Such Samaritans,” said Lexi. “Good. I’ve got you all to myself for a few hours, then.”

When we pulled into her driveway, though, Lexi left the car running. “I’ll be back in one sec,” she said. I stared at the house while the car chugged beneath me, wondering what the hell Lexi was up to. When she came back, she was flushed and grinning, and she thrust something heavy and wrapped in one of her cashmere sweaters at me. “Check this out.”

It was one of the guns from the case in her grandfather’s library, clunky and oily and probably a thousand years old.

“It’s a Nagant M1895,” Lexi said proudly. “Used by the Russian military for decades. Max collects them. Something about reclaiming power from his family’s oppressors.”

“Whoa,” I said. “What are we going to do with it?” A little flicker of fear and adrenaline touched the back of my neck. I thought about the way Ted’s shotgun felt in my hands, about Lexi saying she was the kind of person who would punish people who hurt her that night at Mr. Grieves’ loft.

“Just a little target practice.” Lexi grinned at me and pushed a strand of gold hair behind her ear, reversing the car sharply down the driveway.

* * *

Lexi’s shooting range was the bare swath that cut through the woods below the power lines on the west edge of town. She parked in the cul-de-sac, dead-ended by three large cement blocks with a chain suspended above them from two metal poles, to keep kids from off-roading under the lines. We pulled the straps of our bags high on our shoulders and began to walk through the tall, dry yellow grass. We covered maybe two miles quickly and silently, our breath clouding the cold air around us.

“All right,” said Lexi. “We’re probably good here.”

“Are we even still in Belknap?” I asked.

“I’m not sure where the town line is back here,” said Lexi. “But the power lines go for another couple of miles and come out by the dump in Carlisle. There aren’t any houses around here for over a mile.”

She kicked the dead leaves on the ground at the edge of the trees until she found an empty gold beer can, which she propped in the crotch of a tree. I noted that the can rested at about the same height as my own head. I hoped Lexi’s aim was bad enough that, if she did ever get the chance to shoot Hugh, she’d get him non-fatally, in an arm or a leg.

“You go first,” Lexi said. She held the hunk of metal out to me butt first.

The path cleared through the woods for the power lines was about 30 feet across, and we stood on one side of it and eyed the beer can in the tree on the far side. I raised the gun with both hands, but I was used to bracing a shotgun on my shoulder to absorb the recoil, and I didn’t know how hard the revolver would kick. I got nervous and flinched as I pulled the trigger, the shot going embarrassingly wide of the target.

“Some soldier I’d make,” I said.

“I think it’s snowing,” Lexi said. We both stood still, listening for the hush of snow, trying to catch the movement of flakes out of the corner of our eyes. “First of the year.”

I tilted my face up to the white sky and closed my eyes. The snowflakes were tiny, some brushing quickly over my cheeks while others landed and melted, like little icy needles. I jumped when I heard the shot, but my eyes opened too late: the gold can was gone from the tree and all I saw was Lexi grinning, the gun dangling from one hand—Faye Dunaway in
Bonnie and Clyde
.

“Damn,” she said, studying the gun in her hand, still smiling. “That felt good.” Lexi turned the gun from side to side, admiring it. She raised it, aiming one-handed into the woods. She pulled the trigger and split a small sapling about ten feet from us.

“It’s messed up,” I sighed, thinking of the jar of hot sauce in the field behind Ted’s house. “But I know what you mean.”

“Seriously.” She held it out to me again, but I shook my head. I was too afraid of that surge of power I’d felt at Ted’s to try it again. She flipped the safety like an old pro, and put the gun inside her bag on the ground. The snow was falling more heavily now, and the sky was growing dark. Lexi stepped closer to me. “Courtney, it’s okay to be pissed off. You don’t have to be scared all the time.”

“Lexi…” I rested my hands on her shoulders. “I don’t think I could have gotten through this fall without you. I would have had a psychotic break in Thistleton Hall and gotten carted away in a straight jacket.”

Lexi choked back a laugh. “Not that I wish either of us were going through this alone, but maybe if the famous Courtney Valance had a public breakdown, someone, Farnsworth or whoever, would notice something is wrong.”

“They’d only think something was wrong with me.” I said. “And they wouldn’t be mistaken.”

“Impossible,” said Lexi.

Then she kissed me.

For a second I was too surprised to move, and then, even more surprisingly, I was kissing Lexi back. While my brain was blaring the word
WHAT?
over and over again like a siren, my body was registering soft lips and a gentle tongue, a warm hand on my cold cheek and an arm around my waist. My hands rested tentatively against her upper back, her hair silky where it lay over her shoulders. Lexi smelled amazing, in a completely different way than Ted had ever—

Ted
. What was I doing?

I stepped back, and we both took huge gulps of air. The snow was collecting in her hair like the crown of one of her grandfather’s wood nymphs. We just stared at each other for what must have been a second but felt like hours. Her cell phone began to ring, and we both about jumped out of our skin. Otherwise I might have stood there in the woods, stunned and silent, for who knows how long.

Lexi got to her phone first. “Farah?” She listened for only a moment. Her face got very still and empty. Then she hung up the phone and hoisted up her bag.

“We have to go.
Now.”

We sprinted under the power lines toward the cul-de-sac and Lexi’s Caddie. I didn’t even know what was wrong; she had just turned and started running. I pounded along after her, trying to keep up, the box of bullets rattling in my bag. I was terrified that the safety on the gun in Lexi’s bag might get flipped off. I was terrified of whatever had happened to make her run through the woods like a scared rabbit. I already felt like I wasn’t getting enough air. To distract myself from hyperventilating before we got back to the car, I willed my legs along and filled my mind with minutia.
I’m glad the two miles back are mostly downhill
, I chanted to myself.
I’m glad I’m wearing flat-heeled boots. Is that the start of a blister on my left baby toe? Think about that later. Jump the rock. Watch the branch
. The only sounds in the dim, snow-muted forest seemed to be my lungs and heart.