The Telling (15 page)

“What did you tell her?” Josh asks.

Carolynn coils the end of her fishtail braid around her finger and rolls her eyes. She's much more herself than she was last night. “That I have nothing to do with the vomit in anyone's stomach.” She lifts her chin at me. “What about you, weak link?”

“Don't start.” Josh rubs at the worry lines creasing his forehead. I don't remember the marks on his face before yesterday.

“What?” Carolynn shrugs a thin shoulder. “She is the weak link.
Good little Lana McBrook only comes out to play after she has a grief-fueled revelation that she's wasted her life sucking up to teachers.” I squirm. Carolynn's reduced me to one sentence, and it isn't entirely off base. Her fingers brush Josh's hand, and she runs her other hand along Duncan's arm, staking claim to them both, naming me the outsider—as if I'd forgotten. “Lana and her wonder-scout BFF could tell the police it was the five of us just to protect their perfect attendance trophies.”

I bite the inside of my cheek. Swearing on my vintage copy of
A Wrinkle in Time
isn't going to work with Carolynn like it does with Willa. I need to respond. Duncan's eyeing me like I'm a cobra that might strike at any moment and he's contemplating beheading me preemptively.

“Why would I lie to the police, when there are more of you who could accuse me in return? I'm the only one with reason to despise Maggie,” I say.

Her nostrils flare delicately, and her diamond stud twinkles. Josh claps a hand on both our shoulders. Carolynn reluctantly breaks eye contact with me. “No one's throwing anyone under the bus,” Josh says. “We told the truth. It'll be enough. We need to stick together until then.”

Carolynn pops a hip. “That's just it, Josh.” She sighs at being surrounded by idiots. “We weren't supposed to be out at the spring past dusk. We were drinking; there were beer bottles everywhere. Rusty and Duncan were all scraped up from a fight. We pulled Maggie Lewis from the water, and they can prove that she died while we were there. They're sure we're lying. Do you get how shady this looks? And for kicks and giggles, let's say I buy that Lana 2.0 has my back. No way does Willa.
Not if it comes down to her or us. Will they believe her? Maybe not, but it definitely won't help exonerate us if she points the finger.”

I look from Josh to Duncan. Doubt is splashed all over their faces. “I promise you that Willa would never tell the police something that wasn't true.” Willa said she couldn't be friends with me, sure. I don't believe that she would lie to escape suspicion herself. “Sticking together may not be enough,” I state. “What's to stop them from arresting everyone? If no one lies and points fingers, won't they assume it's a conspiracy to commit murder?”

Duncan snorts. “She's effing right. They'll blame us all. Maybe . . . maybe we say it was Skitzy-Fitzy?” He bobs his head enthusiastically like it's a genius idea. “I mean, they're practically leading us in his direction.”

Josh's eyes narrow. “What are you talking about?”

“They kept asking if I saw anyone else at the spring and if I think that bum could be involved. What if we tell them it was Skitzy-Fitzy who killed Maggie? We saw him do it and were afraid he was going to go all medieval on us if we told. Maybe we just tell them what they want to hear?”

Carolynn steps back as if she's been pushed. Josh rushes forward. He's red, grabbing for Duncan. “Are you joking, man? Do you hear yourself?” Josh is a couple of inches shorter than Duncan, but he winds his hands in the fabric of Duncan's shirt collar and yanks him to eye level. “You want to blame an innocent guy?”

“Bro, it was a suggestion.” Duncan works to loosen Josh's grip. “And we don't know that he's innocent. We didn't see who hurt Maggie.”

“You're a coward, a fucking dickless coward,” Josh shouts. He
tightens his grip and a button from Duncan's collar pops off and ricochets on the asphalt.

Duncan pushes forward, his skin turning violet with the insult. “Say that again. You try saying that again.”

“You're a dickless coward,” Josh shouts louder.

Carolynn thrusts her elbows into the boys' sides as she squeezes between their torsos. “Someone's going to hear you,” she whispers urgently. “Please let him go, Josh.”

“I should go in there right now, man. I should tell them it was you,” Josh growls. He's shaking with anger.

“Duncan, tell him you weren't serious,” Carolynn says, her expression fixed and furious. “Tell us
both
that you would never do that.”

“I wouldn't do it,” Duncan says between his teeth, looking only at Carolynn, and then to Josh. “Dude, let go.” Duncan rears back. Josh keeps hold as he's jerked forward. Carolynn is sandwiched in the middle. Another button breaks off, pinging against a police car. Windows made of privacy glass cover the face of the building, which cops—
which Detective Ward
—could be watching us from.

“We go to the spring,” I blurt. “We search for . . . for something to support our story.”

“Evidence?” Carolynn asks, squirming out from the boys. The waist of her jumper is twisted and one of its straps is off her tan shoulder. “Aren't the, oh I don't know,
cops
supposed to have that covered?”

Josh's arms fall away from clutching Duncan.

“Not necessarily,” I say. Josh is breathing hard, eyeing Duncan, who's rubbing his neck where his collar chafed the skin. “Think about it. They're focused on the seven of us as suspects and using the body
and timeline to prove our guilt. They're probably not collecting more evidence at the crime scene. They're trying to track down where we got the poison.”

“Lemme get this straight,” Carolynn says, righting her jumper and glaring at a smudge on the suede of her right sandal. “
You
want
us
to hike back to the spring, where a girl was murdered, to look for evidence of who did it? And what if we find it? What if we figure out the identity of who offed Maggie? What if it is Skitzy-Fitzy and he's looking for his next victim?”

“I'll take a run-in with some prick who drowns girls before I take prison,” Duncan says. Josh grinds his teeth at his voice.

My hands hook at the back of my neck and I give a helpless shrug. “We don't have a choice. If we wait to do something and they come to arrest us, we won't have a shot. We told the truth about Maggie, and maybe it's going to be enough—
maybe
—but we do this
just in case
.” Just in case.

W
e agree to meet at Josh's house at six tomorrow morning, putting us at the spring before anyone else will likely be there. It falls to me to handle Willa. To recruit her for the mission. To make certain that she isn't contemplating throwing more suspicion in our direction to escape it herself.

I'm in Dad's car and he's taking me home. He huffs into the rush of wind from his wide-open window. He's indignant. He can't grasp how anyone with half a brain would dare to suggest that his precious, bright, well-behaved daughter had anything to do with such a sordid business as Maggie Lewis, dead or alive.

“To think,” Dad says, “I heard what people said about that girl, and I know most of that gossip was small-town-mindedness, because she was a girl who apparently enjoyed dating a lot of boys before Ben, and remember, I let her date my stepson and welcomed her into our home, but for God's sake, you are my sweet little Bumblebee and that girl took your big brother from you, and you
still
tried to save her life.”

Blood-warm shame washes over me. Indignation too that Dad says
Bumblebee
like I'm a doll he's kept in her box, all neat and innocent.
I think that, silent and clear, and I hear Ben's laugh in response. It comes from behind me. I eye the rear seat. Why do I anticipate Ben's silhouette cocked against the window, his freckled knuckles obstinately rapping the glass?

Ben hated the way Dad called me Bumblebee. Before Ben and Diane came to live with us, it was just me and Dad. I spent the most time with a circulating cast of foreign nannies and teenage babysitters, who were mostly good at playing DVDs and ordering takeout and who didn't bother with pet names. But there were a couple of afternoons a week with the slightly more attentive and way bossier Mariella. She was fond of telling me that I should act like a lady, which as far as I could tell meant playing inside and washing my hands a lot. Dad didn't mind if she brought her sons over when she worked, so she did whenever they weren't in school. They played on the terrace and the dock in
my
dinghy. Mariella set me to work cutting the crusts from sandwiches and sent me for the boys when it was time for lunch.

Then Ben came along, and he thought the situation was weird and insisted I play outside with the boys. Ben wasn't afraid to get into it with Mariella; he wasn't intimidated by the way she'd strike the wooden spoon she cooked with on the counter in anger. She'd throw up her hands and give Ben whatever he asked for, because there was no winning with him once he wanted something.

We were on the dock near the dinghy one of those afternoons, soon after Ben and Diane moved in, and Mariella's oldest son—a pushy boy who was constantly sticking his tongue out at me—told me that I was just a stupid girl who should be playing with dolls inside.

Lightning fast, Ben shoved him into the water. I guess Ben figured that wasn't
punishment enough, since he dunked the boy's head under as he tried to bob up. The boy howled and made a big deal. Mariella was furious. Dad was angry until Ben explained, and then Dad told Mariella that her boys weren't welcome anymore. Dad said to Ben, “We can't always talk with our fists, but good for you. You took care of our girl,
our little Bumblebee
.” Ben frowned. Dad had missed the point.

Even though Ben had “taken care” of me, he didn't do it because I needed him to. He didn't do it because I was a girl and he was a boy. And he knew that Dad calling me
our girl
wasn't that far off from Mariella's kid calling me a
stupid girl
.

“Bumblebees buzz and make sickeningly sweet honey,” Ben said after the incident, when we were the two of us. “You swat them away from your sandwiches on picnics. You aren't a bumblebee.”

“I'm a shark,” I said. He grinned. “And you're an alligator,” I added, gnashing my teeth as a snapping beast. When I thought about it later, what he said made sense. Not just sense, it expressed what I had been thinking but was too young to know how to explain. I didn't want to be a bumblebee, or a kitten, or a sweetheart, or the million other babyish, trifling, fuzzy-animal names people call girls. I wanted to be Lana, brave and of consequence.

I watch the harbor flash between tree trunks. Its blues diminish and then richen. Memories like these aren't enough. I want my brain to draw Ben everywhere. In addition to feeling that a part of Ben is left, I want to see proof of it.

The dead bird is gone, dragged away by whatever killed it, probably. The big house manages to feel claustrophobic. Dad's filling it up with anxiety as he paces the kitchen. His cell chirps as I'm sitting at the island and Dad's
at the sink, staring out of the bay window with an intensity that I'm surprised doesn't burn the fog away. I rest my head on the marble as Dad circles, drilling the lawyer. “Of course there were minor discrepancies in their accounts, they're children. . . . Adults give differing witness accounts. . . . What the hell is Willa Owen's mother telling the police? . . . Yes, I think it's possible that she'd pressure her daughter to lie if it meant clearing Willa's name. Would it be enough? If the six others stick to their story?”

I bite my tongue to keep from whining that it isn't a
story
. It's the truth and that should mean something, but all of a sudden the truth as a concept seems wispy. In my head the truth blows away as Dad pounds a fist on the island's marble. That's the way the truth is, you know.

The truth is a vindictive fuck.

“How can they be considering arresting all of them? Lana's answered their questions, and we're done speaking with them voluntarily. If they want to show up with an arrest warrant, that's what they'll need to do.” Dad lowers his voice as he retreats, rounding hall corners. A few more seconds and the door to his office closes, ending what I can hear of his conversation.

I head down the stairs that run from our upper terrace to the waterfront one hundred feet below. On the dock I draw our wooden dinghy in from where it floats, climb aboard, and push off. I drift until there's a gentle tug as the rope tethering the boat to the dock goes taut. A blanket of fog fuzzes the borders of the harbor, giving it the look of a bathtub overflowing with steam. I recline on my back, my spine taking the shape of the bowed wooden floor. It's solid under me, slightly wet with rain from the previous night.

The water slaps the siding lazily. There's only blue sky, and rather than bearing down on me, the color is distant and faint. A pinprick of blue diffused in a vat of white icing. A thin strip of green-and-black mountains peek at me as the boat dips at the bottom of each crest. I can vaguely hear the rustling of papers, the clink of Dad's cup on its saucer, the periodic hiss of the espresso maker as he froths milk, and the click of his laptop keys on the upper terrace.

I let the sounds of land fade and pretend that I'm lost at sea. I am adrift in the Pacific, aimlessly sailing. Or not aimlessly. The current is washing me to where Ben waits on a golden beach, and we'll scavenge for driftwood and build a bonfire and toast marshmallows like we used to. I allow the make-believe to go on and on. It lulls me into a kind of spellbound state where I trace the halo shape of clouds.