The Telling (9 page)

I go rigid at the ugly word.

“B, you can't say the F word, not even to repeat,” Carolynn says.

I give in and scratch Twinkie's head. He wears a pink collar, and Winkie wears purple, both encrusted with crystals. “I know, I know”—Becca's hand flaps—“I call pass since most people never have to see a dead person, let alone find one who's been
murdered
.” She pauses, angular brown eyebrows knitting until she gives a little nod. “I get passes all night.” Her arm is outstretched and her hand opens and closes spasmodically until I put the flask into it. She tips it to her lips.

Her inebriated smile has returned as she offers the schnapps to Carolynn, who waves it away. “Carolynn has her serious face on tonight,” Becca says in a pouty baby voice.

Carolynn doesn't respond.

“Willa didn't answer my calls,” I say, unnerved. Carolynn and Becca are always in sync, finishing each other's sentences and laughing before the punch lines of jokes. This tension makes me feel more like a third wheel than their closeness does.

Becca yawns into her hand and goes for a fifth cup that's half-full with what was probably iced coffee earlier. “I need caffeine,” she says. She slurps the liquid. “No worries 'bout Willa. I called to say the party's still on.”

I lean forward, seat belt scraping along my neckline. “What did she say?”

“She was quiet
forever
.” Becca pauses to return the coffee cup to the holder. “Blah, coffee mouth,” she groans aside, and goes for a sip from the flask. She hiccups, giggles, and wipes her mouth on her bronze, bare arm before continuing. “She said she'd try to convince her mom to let her come.”

I don't say that I wonder if Willa was just aiming to hang up and knew she needed to appease Becca to do so. She hasn't come out at night with the core for a couple of weeks. “I tried calling her cell and she didn't answer,” I say.

“I had to call the landline. Talked my way past P.O. Told her I needed a summer tutor and wanted to talk to Willa. I'm something else, huh?” Becca smiles triumphantly.

I bob my head in agreement. I stop. I am a traitor. I shouldn't be talking about Willa with anyone other than Willa. I should have had the guts to call the landline. I could have braved Principal Owen.

Carolynn cracks a window. “I'm getting contact drunk huffing all that schnapps, B,” she complains.

Becca drops back on her butt with a flounce and faces forward like a naughty child who's been scolded. After not too long she fiddles with the stereo, hitting next on ten songs before she finds one she approves of. “This is my anthem,” she shouts happily. Her window is rolled down and her arm hangs out. It flaps uncontrollably against the wind as we
go. It reminds me of how Ben's limbs were buffeted against the asphalt of the road as he was dragged and stabbed. I look away.

Josh's house is halfway between mine and Swisher Spring. Up until a month ago I bet I was the only upperclassman who'd never been inside. Even Willa had gone when she was paired with Josh for an AP biology assignment in ninth grade.

Beginning sophomore year, Josh hosted parties when his moms went out of town. Josh and I had third-period chemistry together, and I'd hear people asking him what time to show up and if there'd be Jell-O shots or pizza. Once he invited Jamie Nanderbosh, who sat at the desk to my right. Maybe it was because Jamie and I talked a decent amount that I felt bold enough to stare as Josh invited him to a party. Josh saw me drop my eyes as he caught me listening and added, “You're invited Friday too.” I bobbed my head, sensing his gaze on me. I stared at my class notes and hid my shaking hands in my sleeves until he ambled up two rows to his seat.

I reenacted the invite for Willa: in pajamas, standing at the foot of my bed, Willa humoring the performance; before the first warning bell rang, sitting in Willa's car, as she wolfed down a marionberry scone and I paused to take sips of kale smoothie. Privately, I imagined all the ways it could play out. In the rosier scenarios, Josh pulled me aside and told me how happy he was I came. Or I did something amazing, like talked the police out of breaking the party up. Then Josh would apologize to me for not recognizing how great I was before. It was pathetic.
I
was pathetic.

Friday night rolled around and after all that, I didn't go. I told Willa I'd be happier eating Rice Krispies Treats while finishing my English lit paper. The invite was a fluke. If Josh saw me there, he'd
be polite. Carolynn would spill a beer on me, everyone would laugh. Or worse, Carolynn would spill the beer and Josh would tell me to leave. Or worst, Ben would be there to witness all of the above. Ben would observe just how unlike that ferocious little girl with the knitting needle I had become. See, Ben could have solved all my problems in school. He had that same radioactive effect that the core has. I only needed to repeat what those cruel girls had said and Ben would have stopped it. My problem: This would have meant admitting what I was. How unlike my braver, fictional self I'd grown to be. I couldn't bear Ben knowing. Instead I acted like I wanted to eat lunch in the library. I pretended that parties and dances didn't appeal to me and that I wasn't interested in making new friends. I lied.

Josh's street is lined with cars. His two-story house is putting out amber light from its floor-to-ceiling windows. Becca drums her palms on the dashboard. “Gah,” she says as a happy gasp, “it looks like half the school is here.” She flips the vanity mirror open. “I think my lips are too skank red and not enough vixen.” She purses her lips to Carolynn. Carolynn grunts. Becca twists and blows me a kiss before returning to her reflection.

We park in the driveway behind Duncan's SUV. “C'mere, babies,” Becca coos. “Your fans await.” Twinkie and Winkie leap from the backseat, scramble over the center console, and land in a squirming heap on Becca's thighs. They scale the walls of Becca's oversize quilted leather tote and perch expertly inside, so their little front paws are hooked and their heads poke out. They've been to more of Josh's parties than I have.

Outside, the crisp air nips only at my nose, the schnapps spreading over me like a flannel blanket dulling the cold. Surrounding trees
bow gently, their triangular tops bending with the look of flexi-straws in the wind. Becca's arm loops mine. “The schnapps is sneaky like that,” she whispers. Her face is close, and she smells of candy canes and spiked coffee. I grin. She's as intoxicating as the schnapps.

“I didn't know there were going to be so many people,” I say as we follow the semicircular driveway.

Becca's arm tightens around mine, the dogs and the purse bouncing at her back. “Tons of people aren't even home from vacation yet,” she laments.

“I bet less than half who showed up actually know Josh,” Carolynn says sourly.

I frown. “
Everyone
at school knows Josh Parker. Every single person.” I sound too impressed.

She eyes me. “You mean knows
of
Josh and his parties, right? They don't know him. Not like me or even you do.” There's a difference between what we choose to show people and who we are. I'm surprised that Carolynn knows about the line separating the two. “Schnapps me,” she says.

We pause on the front lawn. The flask is passed; she drains it. Carolynn dabs her fingertips at the corners of her mouth and gives a decided nod like she's just resolved an internal argument.

“Grin, grin, grin until you feel it in your belly,” she says, an ironic twist to her voice. She gives what I'm sure she thinks is a devil-may-care smile. Her eyes are too big. She uses a mantra that I hadn't realized was one of our mothers' shared idioms. There's an invisible thread tying Carolynn to me, and in a glimmer of moonlight, I see the proof of it. I have this shared history with her, and it means crap to Carolynn because she's only ever hurt me. It strikes me as insanely
unfair that this awful, exquisite girl is my oldest acquaintance. I've spent most of four weeks trying to pretend she doesn't exist as I've gotten closer with her friends. Both these truths make me want to reach out and snap the thread right here.

But Becca and the schnapps are warming me, and I don't feel anything for Carolynn other than curiosity. I just let all the hurt go and leave it on that velvety green grass to sprout as weeds. “Perception is nine-tenths of everything, and you only need to appear okay for them to think you are,” I say. Carolynn's stare darts to me, and I swear she actually smiles.

J
osh's house is what a home should be. It's usually warm, smelling of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies and brewed coffee, and decorated with vintage chessboards that make me wish I was good at playing and oil landscapes that remind me of my grandmother's study. The Parkers keep extra slippers in their entryway closet for guests to wear after they've shed their shoes. There's always a fire burning and a pie under the glass bell jar on the kitchen counter. It's a difficult place to leave.

Tonight Josh's house is as inviting as a fraternity during rush week—at least those I've seen in movies. A group of senior boys are posted outside, scowling up and down the street that disappears into the dark.

“Ladies,” one boy calls from where he's perched on the railing. His heels drill the house's siding as he swings his legs.

Becca waves. “Hey, Rob. Is the party that weak?”

He pats a baseball bat slanted at his side, and I realize all the boys on the porch are Rusty's teammates. “Nah, we're just keeping a lookout. Rusty Pipe said Maggie was offed by somebody, and you know, we can't
have druggie pervs from the city thinking they can pick us off. First Ben, now Maggie—even if she got what she deserved and wasn't an islander.” The guys behind him bark in agreement.

“Oh my God, Maggie could have been living in one of those tents near Capitol Hill, where all the runaways and hookers are,” Becca says.

“Nu-uh,” Carolynn says offhandedly, her attention directed at the kids visible through the window. “Why would Maggie have ended up dead on our island and not there?”

“True. A city douche over the ferry wouldn't have known about Swisher,” Rob says, flipping his cap backward and winking at Becca. “Catch up with you inside.” His teammates lift their cups in salute.

My pulse is too loud in my ears as we file in through the front door. The baseball team is standing watch for a killer on the front porch. Gant's had two murders in as many months. With her hair like that and haunted blue eyes, Carolynn is a vision of my mother's ghost. She's giving me sideways looks like she can hear my thoughts. And I have the sense that I'm not all the way awake.

Inside, the amber sconces and the fireplace cast distorted shadows that twist and turn to have their look at us as we enter. They linger on us too long. The space is packed with partyers. Red plastic cups cascade down the staircase. A group plays beer pong in the dining room, celebrating with whoops and hollers. I get glimpses of the kitchen as the swinging door opens and closes. The mob of bodies pressed inside chants, “Chug! Chug! Chug!” Duncan stands at their center, the ringmaster of a circus in his skipper hat. A tight cluster of kids hang out an open dining room window, a cigarette traded between fingers.

A stilted melody, interrupted by a drilling rendition of “Chopsticks,” comes from the grand piano in the adjacent family room. The piano's keys shriek in pain. A competing stereo plays the summer's hip-hop, what amounts to a bizarre soundtrack for the muted, overexposed-looking film on the flat screen above the fireplace. Josh's moms, Karen and Lily, put together the video montage for the party, and because Josh is the kind of boy who isn't embarrassed by his parents and defies gravity, it's playing and kids are crowded around, watching a clip featuring a cast of children wearing white bedsheets over their heads with eyeholes. One of the ghosts has scarlet corduroy pants peeking out from under the sheet. The next sequence shows our first-grade class singing “Happy Birthday” over cupcakes to Josh. The camera pans over the class.

“Look, there we are,” Becca squeals, pointing. The camera glides over Becca and me, huddled and laughing over our frosting mustaches, before it moves on to other kids. I'd almost forgotten that we shared a desk. “We've been friends for ages,” she says, half hugging me. I want to point out that we were friends back then, until the first day of middle school, when I asked her if Willa and I could eat with her at lunch. She stared at her new, grown-up heeled sandals and mumbled, “There isn't room. Sorry.” There wasn't room at the twenty-foot-long cafeteria table she shared with ten other girls. It was a see-through lie.

Jamie Nanderbosh, with his T-shirt wrapped around his head like a pirate, whoops loudly and slides down the banister, kicking the red cups, sending them tumbling to the landing. Becca bounces forward with the dogs and purse swinging against her hip.

Kristie Riggio and Liddy Smyth, both cheerleaders, are standing with Rusty and Ford Holland. Kristie and Liddy are inexplicably
wearing their cheer uniforms. They have glossy buttons pinned to their chests, showing a smiling Josh with the words
BIRTHDAY BOY
arced over. I spot a few more kids in the crowd with buttons secured to their jeans and collars.

After hugging Becca hello, Ford says, “Carolynn, looking tasty.”

“Flirt with someone you have a shot with,” she says bitingly as she cuts through the circle, gives Rusty a peck on the cheek, and makes a beeline for the kitchen. It's hard not to watch her fierce, dazzling figure go.

Ford laughs softly, bitterly. Ford is a sometimes companion of the core. We have a long, bad history. Before freshman year he was a boy who made snide remarks about anyone who spoke up in class. But once we got to Gant High, Ford singled me out. He sat behind me in freshman English and he'd knee me through the gap in my chair or slide forward in his seat and breathe heavy on my neck. We were in astronomy together sophomore year, but after a semester of his harassment, I moved to journalism. Since then, he's had plenty of opportunities to go out of his way to knock his shoulder against mine in the halls. We crossed paths earlier this summer at a cookout with the core. I overheard Ford asking Becca why I was there. Why was everyone
still
kissing Ben's ass?