What Happened to Cass McBride? (7 page)

“First, can I say his name?” Good girl, Cass—get permission, make him think he's in charge. I licked my lips. So dry.

“Bitch, I
want
you to say his name.
David.
He's not a nobody you scrape off the bottom of your shoe. That's why you're here. He's a person and you treated him like dirt and now he's dead.”

The sudden flash of his hatred startled me. I knew he was crazy, but his brand of crazy had seemed—cold and calculating. This was instability and that was a lot more dangerous. I gulped in the air again. Slow.

Slow.

Slow.

“I hear you…and there's no reason to mess around with anything but the truth. And I know that I must be responsible for David.” Kyle was quiet. I seized the moment and went on. “And I'm as self-centered as you say I am, but I didn't know David.”

“You didn't
want
to know him.”

I waited a few seconds and mellowed my voice to smooth and conciliatory. “He asked me out, I told him that I was busy. I wrote a crappy note. He found it and I'm sorry that happened. But I didn't know I was anything but a blip on his radar. I didn't know I could be that important to anyone.”

“Don't feed me this Miss Innocent shit.”

I gave Kyle another cooldown moment.

“I want you to tell me about David.”

I waited. He wasn't talking. I breathed a little deeper. Calmed down. “I don't believe you would do something like…
this.
You've got to think I deserve it. If I did that kind of…damage, then I…well, I don't know what to think. I need to know something about David before I can understand how I did this to him. Can you explain it for me?”

He punched on the radio but didn't talk. Static. The white noise told me a lot.

Finally. “I won't tell you to help you feel better. I'll do it to make you suffer.”

I didn't care why the bastard talked. As long as he kept it up.

And I'll keep agreeing with you, Kyle, as long as you give me something to use. I know what my fear is. I need to know yours.

He didn't speak for a long time. Too long. He needed a nudge.

“I don't want to pry into anything that's just between you and David, okay?”

Nothing.

“But I heard he left a note.”

“David left a note all right. And the note is all about why you're in that box.”

The anger had flashed and was cold now.

“The cops took it, but left us a copy. To see if we could make sense of it.

“They didn't need to leave a copy. I'll never forget a word. See what
you
think David meant.”

The radio clicked off. Was he crying now?

Or struggling not to?

The walkie came back on.

“It wasn't addressed to anyone. He wrote it on copy paper with a marker. Black. Medium tip. Neat block letters. Easy to read. Nothing all drama queen—like, scrawled in messy letters in his own blood. He even used a safety pin—a
safety
pin—to attach it to a hunk of his chest. Went right through the skin and some fatty tissue with the prong and back out and clipped the point into the capped end. That's David, orderly and precise. Didn't want to let that note flap away in the wind.”

The radio clicked off again.

Why? Kyle
was
struggling. His emotions were frayed and close to the surface. He didn't want me to know.

Weakness.

My enemy's weakness is my advantage.

But, I had underestimated him before. If I pushed too hard or too fast, he might just walk away.

The walkie popped to life:

W
ORDS ARE TEETH
.

A
ND THEY EAT ME ALIVE
.

F
EED ON MY CORPSE INSTEAD
.

BEN

“Tyrell, you get anything…?” Ben wiggled his ringers in the air like spider feet.

Tyrell shook his head. “Nah, no weird vibes. Talk to Roger about insects.”

“Arachnids,” Roger said.

“Gesundheit. Anyway, all I got are guys that got shot down. Girls who were jealous. Girls who wished they could be her. That's it. That whole school's a mess. Remember the suicide Tuesday? Then a kidnapping on Friday.”

“Right, I got that too,” Roger said. “The whole heebie-jeebies thing. Nobody sees a connection, though.”

“We'll come back to that.” Ben jabbed a finger at Roger. “Go.”

“I talked to the teachers. I've got a good tape from an English teacher I want you to hear. For the rest of Cass's teachers, they all see her the same. Driven. Say she smiles and compliments and says the right things. But the smart ones say they feel manipulated, hmmm, ‘worked,’ one of them put it. But she's a good student, organized, assignments prepared and on time. No discipline problems. Well dressed and turned out. Pleasant. Yada yada. The kind you recommend to universities, but never feel close to. But the history teacher…” He trailed off.

“What?”

“History teacher was a mess. Said this was the second time in a week the cops had been to see him. The kid that killed himself had been in one of his classes too.”

Ben sat forward. “Did she—”

“Know him?” Roger finished. “In class with him, but the teacher, a coach, said they didn't travel in the same circles. Said the boy flew too low for her radar. For anybody's radar, really. He didn't think Cass would know his name except for when they had a moment of silence in class for him the day his death was announced.”

“We need to—”

“I already checked into the kid. David Kirby. Death officially suicide. No hint of foul play. Note pinned to the kid's body. Talked to the investigating officer. Said the mother was the one that needed hanging. A piece of work. I called McBride and asked if Cass knew the Kirby kid. He said no. He didn't even know about the kid's death. Said Cass didn't go to a funeral. Doesn't look like we've got any connection.”

Ben and Roger eyed one another. “But,” Ben said.

“But, it feels wrong somehow,” Roger answered. “Or maybe right.”

Ben looked at the clock. “It's two in the morning. Let's get some sleep and be back here at seven and listen to the teacher's tape.”

KYLE

“She didn't want much to do with him. Except when she was ranting at him. He was like a little puppy. Sweet, but I had to watch him all the time. He couldn't take care of himself. Anybody could have killed him with a good kick. I liked taking care of him when we were little.

“But when he got in school he got picked on. He didn't know how to make his way. There's something about a kid who wants too much. Wants people to like him, I mean. School kids whiff that stink of desperation on you and they turn into sharks in a feeding frenzy.

“I wanted to be a cool guy. Stay low, deep, background kind of guy, but I constantly had to rescue David. I was used to it at home, but now he couldn't handle frickin’ first graders. I got tired. Always the noise and the crying and talking, and the bitching. I loved David. I loved him. And he needed me. But god help me, he was the cause of all my problems. Well, that's how I saw it then.

“I thought it would get better when I went away to college. But, it didn't. It got so much worse.”

CASS

Those words took me right down the rabbit hole.

“Words are teeth…eat me alive…feed on my corpse
”

Tears stung my eyes. How far past bottom does a person have to be to write that? To feel it? David Kirby felt like he was eaten alive? He'd rather be dead than feasted on by people—like me?

For the first time I could remember, I felt sorry for someone other than myself.

“Nothing to say?”

I didn't want to respond but I thought about dirt coming down the air hose. “No,” I whispered.

“No?” He whispered too. He seemed next to me in the dark. “No smart remarks? Nothing about the food chain? Don't want to call anyone gay?”

How do you work your way out of something that might actually be your fault?

I felt cold again. From the inside this time. That fleeting feeling that I couldn't handle this, that I wouldn't be able to achieve my goal, was getting less fleeting.

But I wanted to survive.

I still had to try.

It was who I was.

Dad always says that people expect an argument. Anything else catches them unprepared.

“So this is all about two notes. I wrote one that made David write his.”

Silence.

“I never thought David would see that note. It wasn't meant to hurt him,” I said.

“Don't even start that shit with me.”

“I'm not. I know it hurt David and it is my fault. I'm not trying to get off the hook. I'm looking back at that day, and you know, with all the stuff that's happened, it changes things.”

“Yeah, a few
little
things.” It was sarcasm, but it was sadness too. Kyle was doing a piss-poor job of hiding pain. “I have some questions,” he said.

“Okay.”

“Don't try to mess with me.” He sounded like a dog snarling.

“Like you said, you have the edge.”

“When did he ask you out?”

“Tuesday. No, Monday. I heard about…him on Tuesday.”

“How'd he do it?”

I didn't know what he meant. God, Kyle knew what David had done. He'd just told me in horrifying detail.

“I don't understand…”

“Ask you out, bitch. How did he do it? Where?

What did he say?”

“Oh.” I closed my eyes and got a visual of David. “It was in the hall, next to a class we have…had together.” I told him what I could remember of the conversation. I left out the part about the big ears and the lobe pulling.

“What did you say to him?”

“I was nice. Because I wanted him to vote for me for Prom Queen mostly. I told him I was super busy and I'd get back to him. I smiled at him like it was a real possibility.”

“So then what?”

The dark and the cold closed around me. Once I told Kyle, was he going to rip the air tube out and leave?

“Glass started.”

“Is that when you wrote the note?”

“Yes,” I said. “That's when I did it.”

I felt and heard something pound above me then. On me.
Slam! Slam! Slam!
I jumped and scrabbled at the top of my coffin with my shredded fingertips. The pounding continued. Faster. Harder.

“What is that? What are you doing?”

One more hard slam.

Kyle's voice was tense and hard. “Why? You told him no. You left him standing there. Why did you write that note? Why did you have to cut him up in pieces like that?”

“I don't know! I don't!” I was screaming. “Stop doing that. What are you doing?” The vibration and the noise, I couldn't…

“I'm hitting your grave with the shovel. I wish it was your skull. Tell me. You tell me why you wrote that note.”

“I…”

I started sobbing. Not fake. Gut-deep kind. Because I had to think about Kyle's question. I saw Dad's face across his desk from me, knocking over my king with his own. And how I'd felt betrayed and…insignificant.

“It's twisted, but it's like I can't feel good about me until I put somebody else down. I don't know why I do it. I never thought David would read the note. So, I could feel bigger and it would never touch him.”

“You're a piece of shit.”

I sighed as more realization swam over me. “Why else would I have to chop everyone else up to feel whole?” Saying it calmed me down. The truth will set you free? Was this as free as I was going to get? Fuck that.

“How did David get the note?” Kyle asked.

I told him.

I expected a stream of cursing. Something, anything but what I got.

A sigh. Of disgust?

“Well, isn't that classic David? As if there's not enough hurt out there with his name on it? No, he's got to go digging to see if he can't find a little more.” He sounded sad and tired, but there were feathers of frustration around the edges.

Could I work that?

I wiped my nose and tried to clear my throat with the walkie off, then pressed the button.

“But there's something I don't get…,” I said.

Nothing.

“I expected David to show the note to someone. Show people what a shit I was. It's what I would do. If somebody hurts me, I take it back to them, you know?”

“Not everybody is like you.”

“But you are,” I said, keeping the words as soft and easy as I could. “I hurt your brother and you came after me. You took me down. I get that. I do.”

Footsteps. He paced across my body.

“But, David, he didn't hurt me. He hurt himself. That's what I can't understand. How does anyone do that? And why over a note I wrote? That alone proved I'm a snobby bitch. David had to be smart enough to know that.”

He kept pacing.

I kept talking.

“I didn't know David. For you to do—this—then he had to be special. He can't have been a loser. You said he wasn't a nobody. So he had to see me for what I am. You do.”

“Shut up!”

There.

There it was.

Kyle lost control.

This time it wasn't
at
me. It was
to
me. All the difference in the world.

I knew it was momentary. He was still up there and I was down here, but it was the first skirmish where I had taken the edge. Now I had to hold it.

“Sure,” I said. “Shutting up.”

“Give it a rest. You're just like her, you know. You never shut up. Yammering in our heads and there's no…” He trailed off.

What the hell was he talking about? Her who?

“You want to know about David? Let me tell you about my little brother.”

BEN

Ben scrawled David Kirby's name on the board. Scowled. “Roger?”

Roger set up a tape recorder. “This is the best of the interviews I taped. English teacher. Because of scheduling changes this woman taught Cass freshman and sophomore years.”

“Let's have a listen,” Ben said.

“For the record, this is Cynthia Forman. She teaches at Sterling Valley High School and is speaking for the record with me, Officer Roger Oakley.
”

“Cass McBride. Yes. You wanted to know about her. Was she popular? That's a word that's not used like we used it when I was in school. Cass and her friends are what are referred to now as ‘resume packers.’ She's wealthy and attractive and, thankfully, quite intelligent These RP kids run for Student Council offices so it looks good for their extracurriculars. They can't get into a top university with just good grades anymore. A girl like Cass wants to be Prom Queen and Homecoming Queen and Student Council President to pad out that high school file and show herself in every possible good light.