Chapter 2- Just Like They Say, Nothing Good Ever Lasts

For a while, she could do no more but stare stupidly at her grisly prize, feel the odd slickness of the brittle fiber in her gloved hands. The daisy stems were strong, tightly woven together. She could almost appreciate the art of it: you had to have a real good sense to get them linked so finely, so that the stems wouldn’t snap, scattering crusty remnants of chlorophyll like so much dried blood.

She’d known how to make daisy chains, once. Make crowns of them, bangles, necklaces like a pagan princess. Every day is May Day when you’re a bored as hell suburban girl with a big yard and too much free time.

They were beautiful things, for a while. A very short while, before they faded, drying and withering on their braid.

Her hands were shaking, stained red and black, from the tips of her gloved hands to her white jacketed elbows. She may as well have gutted the poor kid and shoved her arm in, like she was drawing a raffle winner from a grab bag.

The thought of the boy brought her to her senses, forced her to look past the ill-won token to the cold corpse of Brock Carmichael on the table below. The jaw hung open, distended and crusted with the same vile scales that now clung to her arms. She must have broken his jaw in her efforts.

She thought again of the boy’s little sister and a soundless scream escaped her, as she whirled around on her heels.

She had a job to do. She wasn’t just some dopey bystander happening upon an ugly scene. It wasn’t on her to retch in disgust or recoil in horror. There was action to take, people to inform…

People. And what the hell people would, could do, was a mystery at present. Nobody alive could slow the runaway train knifing through her head. But she could take steps. Small steps. Steps out of this morgue, for starters.

Maggie’s feet squeaked against the waxy floor as she shut the door behind her. Her hands, freed from their gloves but slick with sweat from their long confinement, clutched desperately to her phone, fingers slipping and sliding absurdly against the screen.

You’re a doctor, for God’s sake, she reminded herself, slapping her hand desperately against the elevator call-button, And a modern goddamn woman.

“Call Clark!” she commanded the useless brick of hi-tech plastic in her brittle mortal palm.

“Calling Clark,” affirmed the robot voice animating aforesaid brick. Maggie didn’t have the capacity to congratulate herself for remembering she had access to previously undreamed of technological convenience. The elevator was trundling up and, from the swish of her insides, she must’ve left her stomach in the basement.

“Come on, come on…” she whispered urgently, futilely, gripping the balance bar with her free hand. The line kept ringing, the droning hum of the dial tone filling her tomb-like confines.

The doors opened with a clinical bell tone. She spilled unthinkingly out into the ground floor passage, wedged between the commissary on one side and the Emergency Room on the other. Signature scents wafted from both, which did nothing for her roiling nerves.

“Mag,” Clark intoned from the other line, tired but unsurprised, “I was just about to call you…”

His next words were swallowed by a swell of activity from Maggie’s right. Accustomed to the chaos of the hospital, she instinctively crossed to press her back to the opposite wall, to better accommodate the small army rolling a stretcher from the E.R. to the elevator.

“Clark,” she spoke over the noise, over him, her voice strained, “Clark, this is important. It’s the autopsy. I…I don’t know how I can say it over the phone…”

The stretcher trundled abreast to her, the oxygen tank traveling with it rattling cumbersomely against the metal struts. She didn’t feel her phone fall from her hand, but she heard it thud against the floor, such a small sound in such a big place. Clark kept speaking: she could hear his concern, but not his words, and listened properly to neither.

“Oh my God,” she breathed bloodlessly, running to the stretcher only to be repelled by one of the nurses.

“Doctor, please,” one of the nurses told her as she ran forward, “We’ve got to get to ICU…”

“You don’t understand…”

The sympathetic cast to his eye suggested he seemed to, “You can follow us. But we have to move her…”

“She’s my daughter!” she exclaimed, as if this was news to him, to any of them, as if the mere fact of saying so could miraculously render it false.

The elevator opened with its cool clean ring: a bell tone without a bell to make it.

“You can meet us there,” the nurse told her again, as if she were hard of hearing, pushing the stretcher past her. They turned it 90 degrees, to better accommodate the space, giving Maggie a prize view of Emma, prone and pale on the thin sheet, her hair swept over the side like a fairytale princess, and her front stained as red as the daisies Maggie had just pulled from her dead classmate’s mouth.

---

The lift was nowhere near as big in person as it was in her dreams. Big enough to most, she supposed; the kind of thing you had the good sense to stay away from, if you didn’t know how to use it. But she’d known how to use it. Had dragged herself under it every day for a month and change, and more than that, if you counted the times she wasn’t paid for the privilege.

Two thick metal pillars supported the platform, lifting it up with a good-natured mechanical grunting, punctuated by little beeps, at regular intervals until its cargo reached working height…about three feet, usually, for most of the cars that came through.

She had a creeper: a flat board mounted on wheels. This gave her a few inches off the ground, and enough space for her hands to work on the heavy machinery above.

So it was in her dreams: the solid board comfortingly beneath her, the machine above, and nothing around or below. Nothing at all, in fact. She had a cold, matter-of-fact certainty that she was suspended in open space, no differently than the car. If this should alarm her, it didn’t. She could lose herself in machinery which, for all its nuts and bolts (ba-dum tiss), was predictable in a way people were not.

But predictability isn’t immortality. And machines can fail as easily as people do. It’s only usually…usually…they’re more obvious about it. Usually, there’s time to diagnose, time to fix…

Time to get out of the way.

In her dreams, she hears the failure: the screech of the metal, the crash of the vehicle against the suspension. She never sees it, though. Her memory, perhaps, trying to protect what remains of her peace. If her eyes had been open at the fateful moment, she couldn’t remember it. Even the sensation of it had only lasted for a horrible half second before she’d blacked out, the world falling away beneath her, leaving her, not to fall, but to sink aimlessly into oblivion.

Amanda opened her eyes with a ragged gasp. There was, predictably, no lift above her, and no rusty lemon either. Just an idle fan, its white blades casting knife-like shadows on the ceiling around it.

She was in no danger. Hell, she didn’t even need to pee. As far as her new normal was concerned, this rude awakening was damn ideal.

She wiped at her sweaty brow with the heel of her hair, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. With a small grunt, she forced herself upright, making use of the elevated metal bars at either side of her bed. The action required a brief inhale, and she got a lungful of some acrid, sour-sweet stink while she was at it.

She’d left the window open before turning in. Rookie mistake. If it were a few months later in the year, she’d have caught cold. As it was, now she’d have to fumigate the place.

Gripping the bars, Amanda turned herself around and grabbed her prosthetics from their place at the bedside. In the last few months, she’d gotten quite practiced at it, and could now do the whole turn in one fluid motion. Fastening her legs was still more routine, even if thinking of the cold metal struts as “legs” yet brought a bitter taste to her mouth.

As she worked, her eyes alighted on the nightstand clock. She’d been asleep barely half an hour, and with her luck, it would be thrice that time to get back to bed.

The slime-green glow-in-the-dark digits on the clock illuminated the framed Scripture beside it which bade, in looping red and black script, the words of St. Paul:

Fret not about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.

And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

A gift from Pastor Jensen, after the accident. A year out, and her understanding hadn’t improved much.

Grunting softly, Amanda lifted herself upright and crossed to the window. They lived on the first floor of a co-op in what had once been a very nice neighborhood and which now compensated by being a very affordable one. Amanda’s window looked out on the street: a roundabout ringed with little co-ops like theirs, streets branching off at regular intervals, like spokes on a wagon wheel.

The stink was overpowering outside, tinging the evening cool with its heady musk. If she strained her eyes, she could just make out a hooded figure darting off one of the side streets, vanishing beyond the scope of ill-maintained streetlights.

The back of her neck prickled with recognition as she pushed the window down to the sill…

“Still awake?”

“Je-sus!” she whirled to the open door, and the light spilling in from the passage, “You want to lose me my fingers too?”

Her brother didn’t smile…that Iraqi IED had robbed him of the privilege. But the eye that remained to him took on a sort of mild twinkle, the only remnant of the boyish smile that had, once upon a time, had their mother wrapped around his finger and their father convinced he’d be a granddaddy before the big 5-0.

“Sleeping with the window open?” he switched the light on, “There’s a killer on the loose.”

“So I’ve heard,” she granted, taking a cautious step forward. More than anyone else, Richard had seen the worst of her. Still, she couldn’t entirely suppress a self-conscious shrinking. She slept in her shorts, and there was nothing to hide the sharp demarcation where the legs she was born with ended and the ones she’d earned began.

“But if he wants to climb into a double amputee’s bedroom window, he’s welcome to try,” she shrugged, “Can’t be good for his street cred.”

Richard didn’t find this amusing, but this wasn’t unusual. She indicated his uniform: the deputy’s badge glinting in the lamp light, “Just got back?”

He nodded curtly, “And about to go back out.”

She folded her arms, “Something else happen?”

“You know I can’t tell you that,” he said firmly, “Just keep everything locked up. And remember…” his eye darted past her, to the nightstand. Amanda inclined her head in understanding, “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

“Good, since it hurts like hell saying it once,” the ravaged, scar-stiff side of his neck had a leathery sheen in the light. His nose wrinkled up, “The hell’s that smell?”

“Outside,” she smirked, jerking her thumb to the window. Richard grimaced, crossing over and looking out, “Goddamn potheads,” not spotting a likely suspect, he sighed resignedly, “Got bigger problems, I guess,” he patted her on the shoulder, “’Night, ’Manda.”

“Goodnight,” she bade him and, as he closed the door behind him, “Be careful.”

As if he knew another way to be. He’d been perfectly careful every day of his deployment, for all the good it had done.

She’d been careful too.

Amanda listened to the purr of her brother’s patrol car peel out of the drive and off to the scene of the crime, wherever that may be. Alone, she turned back to the nightstand, opened the drawer and retrieved the 9 millimeter Glock semiautomatic holstered between hair ties and Midol, and right below her erstwhile buddy Paul’s well wishes.

Not quite the peace that surpasseth understanding. But in times like this, you couldn’t go wrong with peace of mind.

---

“Well, isn’t this a purebred son of a bitch, Gregory?” Eliza intoned into the rearview mirror.

“Yeah,” Greg concurred, performing technical arcana beyond her ken on his camera, “Looks like they’ve got the fire department out too…”

“It’s the same blazer from the press conference,” her words partially overlapped his, and she gave him a second look, “Huh?”

“Huh?” he repeated, “Oh,” ears pinking, “I didn’t notice.”

“Well, if you don’t, neither will the median viewer,” with another half-hearted pluck at the lapel of her pearl-tone blazer (a Marshall’s Unoriginal: only the best for the local vox populi), Eliza unlocked the driver’s side door. Greg, hearing the mechanical click, jarred to attention, “Rolling?”

“Give it half a second,” Liz cautioned, sweeping a carton of Pall Malls off the dash before giving Greg the thumbs up, fisting her microphone, and setting her Jimmy Choos (Nordstrom Markdown; see above notations) to the pavement.

Aware of Greg pattering after her, Eliza marched determinedly toward the pulsing red and blue glow of the police (and, indeed, fire) vehicles clustered at the intersection of Crescent and Powell, mic to her lips and eyes alternating with breakneck rapidity between the source of the news ahead of her and its incoming recipients on the other end of Greg’s camera.

“This is Eliza Taylor, coming to you live from West Lakewood where, for the second night in a row, a quiet residential street has been rocked by violence,” she gestured demonstrably to the knot of neighbors clogging up her progress to gawk over the police cordon that had been hastily erected around the Duval house, some of whom indeed were displaying tertiary signs of distress, if not at potential foul play upon a neighbor, than by being woken up on a work night.

“The anxiety is palpable,” Eliza insisted emphatically, “And beneath the murmured questions and hushed sobs, we feel the universal question: ‘Is this our suburban idyll? Has our American Dream become an American Night…’”

“They got poets working at the station now?”

“Sheriff Hudson!” Eliza greeted her favorite totem pole with her most disarming smile, “We’ve really got to stop meeting up like this.”

“If you’re that sick of me, you can always change careers.”

“We’re live, sheriff,” Liz took great pleasure in informing him.

“And this is an active crime scene,” he indicated the pair of firemen currently emerging from the Duval house. Some windows to the left of the door had been opened, letting a plume of gray smoke escape into the night.

“Any comment?”

“You’re leaning on the barricade.”

Eliza removed her free hand from the blue-painted plank that served as a flimsy demarcation between street and sidewalk, “Any comment on the case? For the people at home.”

“We’ll have a press conference once we’re wrapped up here.”

Eliza felt her smile succumb to rigor mortis; her fist closed like a vice around the mic, “We’re here now.”

“And I’ve got work to do, so…”

“This is Maggie Duval’s house, right? The medical examiner?”

Hudson stiffened, the stone cast of his face betraying perhaps a tincture’s worth of hot blood, “It is that.”

“Was she in the house at the time of the attack?”

A muscle in Hudson’s throat twitched, “I don’t recall saying there was an attack.”

“What about her daughter?”

“As I say, there’ll be a press con…”

“So her daughter was in the house at the time?”

His eyes blazed, “Look…”

“This is understandably difficult, sheriff, given your relationship with Dr. Duval, but…”

“Okay, that’s enough!” with sudden vehemence, he grabbed her wrist, and wrenched the mic away from his face. Eliza, who had anticipated (but certainly not calculated, and she’d defy anybody’s lawyer to claim otherwise) such aggression action, drew back sharply, pulling Clark with her so that the noble lawman’s justice of the peace crashed headlong with the police barricade, shocking him into releasing her.

“Sorry about that, Sheriff, but the pain should fade faster than you can say ‘police brutality’,” she twirled her mic around like a Wild West gunslinger with his piece, turning back to the camera, “And sorry about that, folks, but these are the regular perils that come with pursuing the news…why is the camera off, Greg?”

For, indeed, her second had lowered his equipment. Wincing sheepishly, Greg cleared his throat, “Er, sorry, Liz. Al had us pulled off the air.”

“He what? When?”

“About 15 seconds in.”

“Before ‘American Nightmare’?”

“How will the public survive?” intoned Hudson dryly.

“Said it was ‘inappropriate’,” Greg continued.

“What the Christ was ‘inappropriate’ about it?” she demanded.

“Well, just that, um, he’d told you not to go live and, um…we went live.”

“It’s news!” Eliza forewent her newscaster voice, only dimly aware of the peanut gallery hoisting their own home video equipment high to capture their local roving reporter in a moment of personal distress, which she’d have to worry about later, “It’s my job!”

“Might want to confirm with your station first,” Hudson continued, “Before you get too sure.”

Eliza glowered at him, “Don’t quit your day job, Cowboy.”

Hudson’s expression remained inscrutable as he pointedly refrained from giving her the same advice. With a dismissive scoff, Eliza turned on her heel, snapping her fingers to urge the shellacked Greg to get to getting.

“I can’t believe him,” she muttered.

“I dunno, Liz,” said Greg querolously, “You did talk smack about his girlfriend.”

“I didn’t talk smack! I acknowledged they’re in a relationship. If he wants to get sensitive about it, maybe he should look inward,” she paused, “And that’s not what I’m talking about! Jesus, Greg.”

“What? About Al? He did say…”

“I know what he said! Why he said it is a different story. Cowardice, I can understand. I can even respect it, to a point. You can get pretty far in this life being a coward.”

“You think he’s afraid?”

“Oh, no,” she shook her head decisively, “I think he’s greedy.”

“Greedy? I don’t get it.”

“We have advertisers to think of, Gregory. How can we possibly hawk life insurance and mail-your-poop colon tests between upsetting news? Surely, there’s another kindergarten recital that needs the three camera treatment?”

“That was a children’s cancer ward, Liz.”

“And a lot of good being on TV did them, right? I swear, Greg, sometimes I don’t even know what I’m doing in this…”

“Holy sausageballs, I’m sorry!”

For Liz, in her high temper, had collided headlong with a citizen. Swallowing several unchristian epithets at the inconvenience, Eliza straightened out her lapels with a fixed smile, “That’s alright,” though she was pretty sure the incident was her fault, she wasn’t about to correct the notion.

The stranger, a bony brunette with a beak nose and a logo tee straight out of a police procedural about the Corpse in the Convention Center, blinked owlishly through her glasses, “Do you know what all the commotion is?” she was turning her phone around in her hands; the case was made up to look like an audio cassette, and was peppered with stickers, “Is anybody dead?”

“Yes,” Eliza said flatly, “The First Amendment.”

“Oh, there’s a cop!” declared the woman, pointing her phone like a royal scepter to indicate a fresh-faced Black deputy Liz knew from prior visits to the station as Dwayne Farrison, the newest putz to don the LSD colors.

“Don’t get your hopes up, honey,” Liz cautioned warily, “They’re trained to clam up at the first sight of a citizen’s opinion.”

“Hello!” she greeted with a sort of wide-eyed vivacity Eliza thought had gone extinct with the advent of hi-speed Internet, “Are you one of the officers on duty?”

“I am, ma’am,” Dwayne Farrison affirmed, indicating his badge, as if she hadn’t noticed it.

“Oh, good!”

“But I’m a deputy, not an officer. We’re a sheriff’s department, not a police force.”

“Oh, fun! Does that mean you’re elected?”

“No, just Sheriff Hudson. We deputies get hired on.”

“That’s so interesting. Lots of people think the sheriff model is old-fashioned, you know.”

“Well, it seems to work out for us just fine, ma’am,” Dwayne declared, holding up his sleeve to defend against the smoke from his boss’s girlfriend’s home, “You must be new in town.”

“Affirmative. Is it a very bad fire?”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Dwayne declared, “Just that there was a lasagna left in the oven. It burned.”

“A lasagna? From scratch.”

“No, ma’am. From the box.”

“I’ve always liked the Stouffer’s kind myself. That On-corr lasagna gives me the bubbles.”

“You’re not the only one, ma’am,” Dwayne Farrison assured this complete stranger with complete earnestness.

“But I guess trips to the Porcelain Throne are the least of these folks problems?”

Dwayne nodded agreement, “Well, Dr. Duval’s girl will come through.”

“Dr. Duval?”

“She’s our Medical Examiner. Her daughter was in the house.”

“Oh, no! The poor kid. But she’ll be alright?”

“That’s what it looks like. Paramedics got there in double time. She’s at Lakewood General now.”

“That’s that big hospital out past the community college?”

“Sure. Down the end of Post Road.”

“I’m mapping the town out in my head,” she put her fingers to her temple, “Map downloaded. Wouldn’t that be a nice trick to do someday? Download info from the web right into our brains.”

“Oh, I’m not so sure about that, ma’am. That sounds like the Mark of the Beast to me. Gotta be careful who you give your information too.”

“Oh, deffo. I never accept cookies on websites anymore…”

“Liz?” Greg tugged at her sleeve, jarring her from a near trance-like state of bemused disbelief, “Eliza? You okay?”

“Oh, sure,” Liz answered in an alarmingly reminiscent cadence that shocked her back to reality, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Greg didn’t argue and they abandoned Deputy Dwayne to the mercy of the Woman on the Street.

As they returned to the news van, Eliza was stopped one more time by an approaching neighbor: a young man, walking up the street in the stupefied daze which attended some (but, demonstrably, not all) onlookers at crime scenes.

“Hey,” he held his hand out, but stopped short of touching her, which was remarkable restraint for a guy his age, “Do you…” he cast bright blue eyes up toward the Duval home; she got the impression he’d recently been crying.

“Do you know what happened?” he looked at her appealingly, almost desperately. He was barefoot, she noticed, and wearing checked flannel pajama pants, as if he’d run out of his house without dressing.

Eliza felt a brief twinge she couldn’t quite diagnose before putting her hand on the van door, “Sorry, kid. Catch it on the morning news.”

---

Brooke sat in her car for a while after returning home, staring at her distorted image in the windshield, taken with the merry glistering of her flapper costume. The ensemble, which had seemed perfectly sexy when she first donned it, had mutated to whimsical upon her arrival at the motel and, after her jilting, was nothing less than ridiculous.

The lights of the great house were all off, with the exception of the solitary white lantern over the front door. Knowing her father, he’d retired T-minus 5 seconds after that dust bunny of a press conference and had had his knees up for the last two hours.

Suffice to say, no risk of being caught by the old man. Terrie would be long gone by now, off on her own nocturnal adventures. Brooke was in the clear.

“Lucky me,” she whispered, not realizing at first that she was speaking aloud.

Slinging her bag over her shoulder, Brooke stepped out of her Porsche and into a fresh turd.

“Eeugh!” she yelped, instinctively drawing her foot back, which only smeared the mess over the flagstones of the courtyard.

“Ooh, sorry, Brooke,” intoned a silky voice too contemptuous to be robotic, “But you really should be careful what you step in.”

Brooke lifted her eyes to the merrily yapping caramel-colored Pomeranian sniffing its own sphincter in the shadow of the long-disused fountain at the center of the forecourt.

“Nina,” she addressed, not the dog, but the leggy trespasser at the other side of the fountain, “Ever considered taking your own advice? This being private property.”

Nina smiled coolly, indicating the Pomeranian with a careless wave of her hand, “Sage is a free spirit.”

“Then what’s the leash for?” Brooke nodded to the hot pink dog leash currently coiled over Nina’s forearm.

“Don’t quote me, Brooke, but there is such a thing as too much freedom,” she cocked her head to her side, “Wouldn’t you agree?”

Brooke’s expression curdled at Nina’s persistent habit of talking like she was rehearsing to be the most cutting society dame at a cocktail party circa 1937 and slammed the car door behind her, futilely scraping her shoe against the tiles in an attempt to rid her heel of Sage’s little present, “All I know, Nina, is if Sage likes her freedom so much, she should do her doodoo elsewhere. Auntie Brooke’s in the market for a new hat.”

Sage barked merrily at the threat.

“Nice costume,” Nina observed, “Dress rehearsal for Halloween?”

Brooke readjusted her fascinator self-consciously, “I’ve been practicing my Charleston.”

“Funny time for dance practice,” Nina made a show of retrieving her phone from her clutch and ogling the time on her lock screen, “You have a private tutor?”

Brooke pressed her lips together, “What about you, Nina?”

“Oh, I did a bit of ballroom when I was a kid…my Mom’s idea. But I’m more of a contemporary girl…”

“What are you doing out so late?” she challenged.

“Sage needed a walk,” Nina explained as if Brooke had gone stupid.

“No rest for the wicked, huh?”

This did provoke a reaction, somewhat to Brooke’s surprise. Nina rolled her eyes, laughing dryly, “What, is it your turn?”

“Well, I’m not gonna poo on your lawn, if that’s what you’re worried about…”

“I’ve taken my share of condescending moralizing, Brooke, and I’ll probably take a lot more before this place is through with me. But from you?” she held up her hand, “Don’t kid yourself.”

Brooke folded her arms, lips curling mirthfully at this rare glimpse of sincere irritation in Nina’s manner, “So Emma gave you a peace of her mind, huh?”

Nina’s eyes darkened, which was all the confirmation Brooke needed.

“Not to pick sides, Nina, but you’ve gotta hand it to Em. I didn’t think she had it in her.”

“Emma’s having a little personal crisis as she decides whether to commit to becoming a Real Girl,” Nina said flatly, “Surely, you know what that’s like?”

Brooke winced, fingers tightening around the strap of her bag. She walked part of the way around the fountain, valiantly attempting to ignore Sage dogging her heels, which must be the etymology of that expression. Something she could inform Seth once she’d finished ripping his bits off.

“I dunno, Nina. I’m feeling pretty real.”

“That’s pretty comforting, given all the plastic baubles,” she indicated the bead work on Brooke’s costume, “Live your truth, babe.”

It was stupid to let Nina get under your skin. How many times had Brooke given Emma and Riley the same maxim? Still, it was late and she was tired and there was dog shit on her shoe and these beads were plastic and she’d paid more than they were worth to get them shipped out so she could look thematically appropriate for a date that had never happened.

So forget good advice.

“What about you, Nina?” she challenged, “How’s living your truth going for you?”

“You want the abridged answer?”

“Whichever one you told Tyler will be fine.”

Nina balked, “Tyler?”

“Have you admitted you’ve honeytrapped Jake, or are you just gonna let him squirm on the line for a while?”

“For God’s sake…”

“Found religion, have we?”

“I’m not ‘trapping’ Jake into anything!”

“Only that you had no problem using him to make Tyler jealous before…”

“You can accuse me of a lot, Brooke, but I don’t make the same mistake twice,” she took a few steps forward, strappy heels clunking hollowly against the flagstones, “And Jake was a mistake.”

Brooke raised her eyebrows, “That’s a lot of words that aren’t ‘no’. You really are a lawyer’s daughter.”

“Why do you care so much about it, Brooke? Really?”

She shifted, “I’ve known Jake a long time. It would be nice to see him find his forever home,” she gestured to Sage, who had returned to her mistress’s side and was now staring up at Nina, tiny pink tongue hanging out like a bum zipper on a knockoff cocktail dress.

Nina, by contrast, pursed her own mouth into a sour pucker, “I think I’ve picked up enough strays.”

She pivoted on her heel as if to go and Brooke probably should’ve let her, given this tête-à-tête had gone on long enough already, but some other impulse won out.

“So why’s Tyler so strung out?”

Nina froze, turning slowly back to face her, “Excuse me?”

“Tyler,” Brooke repeated the name, as if Nina may have forgotten it which, God knows, wasn’t as unlikely as you’d think, “You know he got into Jake’s face at lunch, right?” she cocked an eyebrow, “All hot under the collar.”

Nina’s face was stone, “News to me.”

“Well, whatever it was, it had Tyler really upset. And, given his life pretty much revolves around you these days, it’s not hard to guess why…”

“Tyler’s a big boy,” Nina interrupted, “Sometimes, miraculously, he acts of his own free will.”

“Well,” Brooke nodded, “That’s good to know,” she stepped back, “But you probably should clear things up with him, just in case. Don’t want to track someone else’s mess where it shouldn’t be.”

Nina’s eyes drifted to Sage’s droppings on the other side of the fountain basin. Before she could offer a retort, if she even intended to, the night was disturbed by twin dings. Nina got to her phone before Brooke got to hers, by which time she’d gotten two more rapid notifications.

It was Riley, messaging their group chat at breakneck pace: ‘Did you guys hear?’, ‘It’s awful’ and, hard on its heels, ‘It’s Emma.’

Brooke lifted her eyes to Nina, for the first time feeling cold in her skimpy outfit. Nina looked up from her phone too, but not at Brooke, whose fingers were working overtime, urging Riley to maybe attempt complete sentences please, as opposed to ominous fragments signifying nothing.

The result of which was Brooke got an eyeful of the little ‘in-progress’ elipsis as Riley attempted to gather her thoughts.

“Emma,” Brooke said the name aloud, an uncomfortable chill going through her as she did, “Nina, did you see her bef…”

But Nina was already gone, and her Pomeranian with her. Brooke sighed hollowly, looking across the courtyard and confirming, indeed, that Nina hadn’t cleaned up after herself on the way out.

---

There wasn’t as much pain as she’d expected. No white hot burning, no bone crunching agony. The only real indication anything had happened was a sort of low buzzing, almost electrical in its constancy. She had an odd image of being immersed in a bath, the water humming with electric current.

It must feel pretty good to be an electrocuted fish.

So she must be on drugs, then. There. That explained it: she’d been attacked and was on drugs now, for the pain, and now she was Thinking Creatively in ways she never would have thought possible before.

“That’s the spirit!” cheered the smug, cruel voice in the back of her mind, heard without hearing, as if he’d embedded his spiel directly into her forebrain.

The voice, or the memory of it, jarred her into motion. She shifted sharply and quickly realized, drugs or no, she was in pain. A sharp hiss of air escaped her and she opened or eyes, or tried to, finding her eyelids heavy and sluggish, and more so in response to the harsh fluorescent light of her surroundings.

“Easy, easy…” cautioned the shapeless shadowy lump looming in her distorted vision. In the near distance, she could hear a mechanical beeping, the mechanical padding of footsteps moving at an efficient clip, and a mechanical voice announcing, “Pulmonary Team to 5D,” against a backdrop of static.

“Take it a bit at a time,” the lump continued, gradually gaining human proportion, “Push yourself too hard, you’ll just black out again.”

She opened her mouth to say something to this, and found her throat sandpaper dry.

“Have some juices,” the lump shoved a smaller, bright red lump, under her nose, “You’ll feel better.”

She tried to repeat “Juices?” and felt phantom claws on the inside of her throat.

“I’d take Maxine’s advice,” a familiar voice from just out of her line of sight, “She knows what she’s talking about.”

Emma blinked, her surroundings gradually, blearily, coming into harsh focus. Her mother was standing at the foot of the bed, still clad in her scrubs. Her face was wan and pale and, without her glasses, it was plain to see she’d been crying.

Maxine who, it turned out, was a middle-aged Black woman in pristine turquoise scrubs and a lanyard bearing what looked like a metric ton of keys, wiggled the red (not quite lumpy at all, in fact) juice box beneath her nose with a pointed expression.

Emma smiled and winced at the effort, accepting the juice box and discovering that Nurse Maxine had already stuck a straw in it. As she took a tentative sip, her mother continued, “Maxine was assigned to me during my residency. She taught me a lot.”

Maxine had already crossed to the other side of the bed to retrieve a pen light, which she proceeded to shine into Emma’s eyes, one by one, “Kept you out of trouble more than once.”

“She’s head nurse on the ICU now, but when she heard you’d been brought it, she insisted on being in charge of your care.”

Maxine made a dismissive sound in the back of her throat, “Slow night and I was bored,” she cocked an eyebrow, “Keep drinking.”

Emma wasn’t about to argue. Maxine fussed about with the light a little more, entreating Emma to follow the white beam as she moved it. When she wasn’t engaged in this task, she took in her surroundings.

It was a small, one bed hospital room. Through the open door, she could make out a bit of the nurse’s station on the Lakewood General ICU.

She’d spent a day here when she was a kid, after she’d broken her arm. Curiously, she couldn’t remember feeling much pain then either. Her memories, such as they were, comprised raised voices, angry, not at her, but at each other.

“Oh, sure, put it on me!”

“You were supposed to watch her!”

“I was watching her!”

“Four of her, by the smell of your breath…”

“What happened?” she asked, her voice still hoarse and scratchy, but capable enough.

Maxine cast a look across the bed to Maggie, who lowered her head with a sigh, dragging over a blue-upholstered chair and sitting, “You were attacked, honey.”

She turned the drained juicebox around in her hands, aware for the first time of the little cuts all along her arms. There were some on the palms of her hands too: tiny crescent moons, most no bigger than the curve of a fingernail.

“The paramedics found you in the backyard, surrounded by broken glass,” her mother’s voice was strained, “The…”

“The back door,” Emma finished for her, “I remember.”

Maggie’s shoulders sank as if in relief. She returned Maxine’s questioning look and the nurse adjourned, with a reminder to “Ring, if anything,” indicating the little remote rigged to the bed, dotted with call buttons for ‘nurse’, ‘emergency’ and ‘bathroom’.

With Maxine gone, Maggie breathed another heavy breath, lowering her brow to her knuckles.

“Oh, Emma…” she lifted her eyes, now sparkling with tears, “God, Emma, I was so…”

“It’s okay,” she heard herself say in this weird, remote sort of voice, and found she was crying too. Maggie took her hand in hers, gingerly at first and, when Emma didn’t wince or pull away, broke down entirely, her shoulders heaving with quiet sobs.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Emma tried to say, her words distorted by her own tears, “Really, I’m…I’m okay…”

They remained this way for a while, hand in hand, crying quietly. In the passage outside, the PA system put out a call for “Radiology to 6A”.

She hadn’t often seen her mother crying. Every once in a while she might enter a room and find her wiping her eyes, her nose pink as if from a cold; and of course she’d gotten misty eyed at the end of An Officer and a Gentleman, and that was the end of it as far as parental sorrow.

It was different before the divorce. Emma understood this, even if her memories were as fragmentary and sense-diffused as her recollections of her broken arm.

“Do you remember?”

Emma turned slowly, meeting her mother’s red eyes, “I…left the lasagna in the oven.”

Maggie let out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, “It’s fine. They, um…they got there in time.”

“They,” Emma repeated, “The fire department?”

“And the police. They’re going over the house now. Clark’s there, doing his job.”

She imagined her mother’s boyfriend and his deputies, their boots crunching on the broken glass of the patio door, emptying the burnt remains of her frozen dinner from the charred womb of the stove, running gloved fingers through the gauge the knife had left in the front door…

The thought wasn’t a comforting one. She felt exposed, cold, small.

“Did they find anything?”

“Not that they’ve told me. Everybody’s very…” she hesitated on the word, “excited. Given what happened last night…”

“Stacy and Brock,” Emma pronounced the names carefully, aware of the dried blood on Maggie’s scrubs. She was lucid enough now to realize it couldn’t be her blood…her mother had been working late.

“Are they sure?” she asked quietly, “That it was the same person?”

“They aren’t confident,” Maggie acknowledged.

But I am, she thought in an odd, detached sort of way, I know for sure. He told me. I guessed and he told me.

“There are going to be questions, Emma,” her mother continued, “Once you’re well enough to answer them.”

“Questions,” she echoed, and immediately felt stupid for it.

“Made you look.”

“I promise, I’ll be there every step of the way. And nobody’s going to harass you or get in your face. You’re…”

“The victim,” Emma supplied the word hollowly, “Right.”

“No,” she shook her head, “You’re a survivor.”

Her first thought was to respond she didn’t feel much like a survivor, but she thought of Stacy and Brock and suppressed the notion as self-pitying.

“I remember…” she began faintly.

“Honey, you don’t have to go into it now…”

“No,” she interrupted, “No, I want to. Before I forget.”

Her mother looked doubtful at the notion but must have agreed with its sense and didn’t protest further.

“The police figure he entered through the back door.”

She nodded, “He threw a chair. One of the ones from the patio set.”

“God.”

“And I ran but the front door was locked and I wasn’t fast enough. So I-I doubled back and, he caught me…”

He didn’t stab me, she realized with a kind of dull surprise. If she’d had any doubt about this before, it had been dispelled by her mother’s attitude. The only visible injuries on her body she’d gotten from the broken glass.

She remembered the figure looming over her, that grotesque white face in its black shroud, watching it reach down, not to plunge its knife into her prone breast, but to pick up her phone.

He called the ambulance.

At the time, she wasn’t sure how much she was seeing was real or how much a fevered hallucination caused by shock or head trauma or blood loss or what have you.

But here she was, in the hospital, with only minor injuries. Hell, would she even be in the ICU if she wasn’t the Medical Examiner’s daughter? If this wasn’t the local headline topper of the moment?

He could’ve killed her. He didn’t. All that trouble, and…for what?

Her mother was saying her name. Emma shook herself back to the present, “Sorry?”

“You said ‘he’. Did you get a good look at him? Your, um…your attacker?”

She knew a strange, creeping sensation: a goose walking over her grave, it may have said it an old book. Again, she heard that smug, slimy voice: “It’s so important to have someone you can rely on when the chips are down…”

She looked at her mother’s tear-streaked, careworn face, and felt a sudden panic, a sense of things slipping away, through her prone survivors’ fingers.

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” he’d urged her.

“N-no,” she answered finally, “Not really. He was wearing a mask.”

“A mask,” she expelled a frustrated huff of air, “I guess he would’ve been. Anything special about it? Any marks or…”

“No,” the word escaped her: decisive, firm, and stronger than anything she’d said since coming around, “No. It was just a black ski mask.”

“Oh,” Maggie frowned, “Well. That’s something to go on,” she squeezed Emma’s hand, “Try and get some rest, sweetheart. I’m just going to hunt down the attending; let him know you’re up. Knowing Maxine, though, she’s probably beaten me to it.”

Emma smiled faintly and watched her mother leave. The thought occurred to her as she met the doorway.

“Mom?” and, once she’d stopped, “My phone. What happened to it?”

Maggie’s brow, briefly furrowed in confusion, relaxed, “It’s in one piece, if that’s what you mean. It’s at the station for now: it’s been taken as evidence,” Emma had no idea what her face must be communicating, but Maggie was quick to reassure her, “Don’t worry. You’ll get it back once they’re done with it,” she hesitated, smiling sympathetically, “You’ve gotten through a lot tonight. I’m sure you can go a few hours without your phone,” she pressed two fingers to her lips and blew a kiss, “I believe in you.”

Emma smiled patiently, as if reluctantly agreeing to put her silly teenage hangups aside. She watched her mother go, her eyes still brightened with relief at her daughter’s survival, and felt guilt dig its claws deep in her heart.

The voice on the other end of the PA ordered the “Yellow Team to Surgery”. Remote and distorted, it almost sounded like her new ‘friend’, congratulating her, praising her level-headedness, warning her about people and pedestals.

“That’s just part of growing up, isn’t it?”

She shut her eyes and forced a sleep that would not come as the goose seeking her grave hopped methodically from one tiny, freshly cleaned cut to another.

---

On arrival at his father’s house, the would-be Prodigal Son had observed the family’s larder and found it bountiful with the ovoid offspring of the farmhouse fowl. Observing that this was the full extent of his gastronomic inheritance, he had suppressed the urge to fall at his feet weeping and raised his voice to High Heaven to put forth the question “Egg recipes breakfast” in hopes of sage guidance.

And there was evening and there was morning. The second day.

And the Prodigal Son forgot to do a grocery run, so here he was again but with fewer eggs.

Kieran figured he’d make do. Deanna likely wouldn’t notice if breakfast was lacking, and he’d gotten through worse days on leaner rations, but the feeling persisted that he was coming up short.

The eggs sizzled brightly in the skillet: the snapping and popping of grease competing with the triumphal sorrow of Whitney Houston from his phone.

“Didn’t we almost have it all? When love was all we had worth giving…”

It was maybe too much for this early in the morning, but Kieran couldn’t imagine ditching the habit.

Whitney had been their Mom’s go-to girl, her ballads the backdrop to so many of their happier domestic moments…and a few of the unhappy ones as well. And while Kieran had made a conscious decision to leave sentiment by the wayside for the sake of what remained of his sanity, it felt wrong to cut Deanna’s last tethers to their mother so abruptly. Dee, after all, having a bigger share of those happier domestic memories than he had, by virtue of her shorter memory if nothing else.

Kieran piled up a small heap of scrambled eggs on a platter, setting it aside under a dish cover. There were barely enough for the two of them. Clark would have to pick up extra donuts before heading back from the office, if he ever did.

Turning the stove off, Kieran retrieved his phone from just out of the blast radius of the cooking grease and noted the time. Feeling exceptionally housewifely, he sighed, pushing his hair behind his ear and starting up the stairs.

“Dee?” he called, brightly as the hour allowed it, “Breakfast,” and, belatedly, “It’s Tuesday,” in case she’d forgotten it was a school day. It would be a willful forgetting, of course. Whatever was going on in his sister’s head these days, she hadn’t taken leave of her senses.

But given her first day had been more HBO than Disney Channel, Kieran figured she’d benefit from some persuasion. His feet thudded lightly on the steps, a neat staccato against Whitney’s tuneful wailing.

“Didn’t we almost have it all? The night we held on ’til the morning…”

There were five doors along the second floor passage: three bedrooms, a bathroom, and one bearing a diamond-shaped yellow and black roadsign proclaiming ‘CAUTION MAN CAVE AHEAD’, which was about as much personality as the old man had allowed to seep into his quarters.

Deanna’s room was the first on the right side. Kieran wasn’t sure if Clark had made this move out of gallantry or if he thought he’d be winning the first born over by giving him less of a trek to the shitter.

“Deanna?” he rapped his knuckles lightly on the door and, receiving no answer, bit back a sigh and went for the handle, “Dee, like it or not, you’re gonna have to…”

The door was locked.

For a moment he just stood there, in a tepid daze, staring at his knuckles. He opened his mouth to call her name again but no sound came out.

With a steadier hand than he’d been expecting, he grabbed his phone and dialed Dee.

“You know you’ll never love that way again…”

The song was interrupted by the dial tone. Kieran leaned against the door, pressing the phone hard against his ear.

It wasn’t the other ringing he could hear. There was another tone, behind Deanna’s door, unheeded.

Heart in his mouth, Kieran hung up, and Whitney picked up where she’d left off.

“Didn’t we almost have it all…”

“Deanna!” he threw himself into the door, which hurt like a son of a bitch and produced no immediate effect, “Dee!”

He was just telling himself he’d have to break another lock when his phone buzzed back to life in his hand. Unthinkingly, he picked up, relief turning into ashes in his mouth at the greeting from the other side.

“Kieran.”

“Oh,” he tried to check his disappoint, but Clark evidently had been expecting nothing less, “Yeah?”

“Just wanted to apologize.”

“That’s great,” said Kieran automatically which, again, Clark took in stride.

“For not being back yet. Things have been pretty busy.”

“Yeah?” his voice caught on the word, wrestling with the handle with his other hand, “Something happen?”

“Another attack,” Clark wasn’t bullshitting about the all-nighter; he sounded bone tired, “Non-fatal, thank God, but the perp’s still at large.”

The door rattled on its hinges, stubbornly unrelenting. Kieran felt a hollow sinking in the pit of his stomach.

“Sounds bad.”

“It is. Not gonna lie, son: I’m sorry.”

“You said that,” Kieran remarked, though Clark hadn’t, in as many words, though he didn’t seem to notice.

“Of all the times for you to move in,” a husky, weary sigh, “Hey, check my desk, will ya?”

“Your desk,” he looked across the hall, “In the man cave?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” he let out a humorless chuckle, “That was a bit of DIY.”

“Putting up the sign?” Kieran couldn’t help but ask, crossing to the door and finding that, despite the placard’s warning, the door was unlocked.

“Well, it used to be a bedroom. I put in some shelves.”

“And a battlefield,” Kieran commented, his attention at once alighting on the four-legged table propping up a hilly felt-and-plaster desert dotted with tanks, jeeps, and helmeted olive-green men charging into the Valley of Death.

“That’s El Alamein,” he sounded somewhat embarrassed, “You know, your Granddad was air support in that.”

“Your desk,” Kieran found it due east of the Egyptian desert, dominated by a clunky black computer monitor.

“Right, yeah. There’s a bowl next to the thing with the pens.”

A quick comb of the desktop located the bowl quick enough. It was a shallow dish, cream-colored, with a pattern of blue diamonds around the edge. In it, Kieran found a pair of tweezers, a stopped wristwatch with a badly-abused leather strap, approximately three dollars in assorted filthy change, and…

“My spare keys,” Clark said casually, “So you don’t have to keep scratching the paint on the door.”

“Right,” Kieran said flatly.

“I was gonna have a set made special for you. There’s a 24 hour place on Market Street. But with things being so busy…”

“I get it,” he picked the keyring up, absently tracing the grooves with his fingers, “Thanks.”

“Everything going okay, there? Ready for school?”

“Yeah,” he said flatly, “Just waking Deanna up.”

“I know it’s a big adjustment for her. For you too,” there was a protracted silence. Kieran could hear chatter in the background, and the intermittent hum of radio feedback. He must be at the station.

“Listen, Kieran,” his manner became stiff and awkward, “I know we didn’t exactly make the best start of things…”

Kieran stifled a terse sigh, flipping the keys anxiously in his palm, starring off across the desert to a black monolith due east of the battlefield: a hefty locker, about floor-to-ceiling. A sticker on the front bore the warning: ‘DANGER- BLACK POWDER ENCLOSED. CUTTING OR TORCHING SAFE MAY CAUSE SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH’. In case this message wasn’t communicative enough, the sign also featured a heavy black illustration of a handgun in profile.

“…just want to make this place a home for you, and your sister too,” Clark was saying, evidently oblivious to his brief foray into rhymed verse, “And if I scared her last night…”

“She’s fine,” he interrupted shortly and probably disingenuously, turning his back on the gun safe with an unpleasant lurch, “Tougher than she looks.”

“Okay. Good. Like…like her mother in that way.”

Kieran thought of his mother, bone-thin and holl0w-eyed, laughing hysterically at How I Met Your Mother, those same hearty whoops melting precipitously into bloodcurdling, soul deep sobs.

“It’s so unfair!” addressed to Kieran or Dee or Dan or God or Neil Patrick Harris, who even fucking knew, “It’s s-s-so unfaaaair!”

“Sure,” Kieran granted, “Like Mom.”

This seemed to be enough for Clark, who let this linger for an agonizing three seconds more before finally conceding, “Well. You have a good day, son.”

Kieran grunted an acknowledgment, if not an agreement, to the sentiment, hanging up the phone.

“The way you used to touch me felt so fine…” Whitney continued, unbothered, “We kept our hearts together down the line…”

He silenced the music and returned to his task, pocketed his new keys as he went.

“Deanna!” he tried again, knowing by now he would get no answer, “Jesus Christ.”

Should he have said something to Clark? He considered the thought and as quickly stifled it. Clark could be as well meaning as he wanted, but bringing him in on this could do nothing good, no matter how bad things were.

For all his posturing on the porch last night, there was damn little he could do to stop the System (capital ‘S’, historically pronounced in the Wilcox household with a serpentine hiss and a concealed middle finger) from sticking its beak in if it decided to take an interest. And Clark, being a well-respected Member of the Community, would no doubt be inclined to bow to the System’s dictates, up to and including surrendering his dubiously gained parental rights to its cold embrace.

The door gave with an anticlimactic thud, Kieran staggering across the threshold shoulder first, and having to catch himself on the bed to keep from faceplanting on the mattress.

All this to say that the bed was empty. Unmade, yes, but empty. The room was cool and drafty, courtesy of the opened window. Kieran crossed to it mutely, looking down into the empty backyard, and then back to his sister’s neglected phone on the nightstand.

It was maybe a testament to his general outlook on things that Kieran felt relief at this discovery. Better Deanna be unresponsive because she was missing than unresponsive because she was gone.

But was that a real concern? He thought of her strange, cheeky smile on the school roof yesterday, the odd knowing in her eyes, as if she knew exactly what he’d feared as she assured him she was never going to jump.

And of course he’d pretended he believed her. That he’d never even considered it.

A year ago, it would have been an insane thing to think.

A year ago, their lives were very different. A year ago, he was lucky to speak to her once a week over the phone and, more rarely, through a grimy pane of glass in an overcrowded visitors’ wing.

A year ago, he’d been the one in trouble.

That…surrender, weakness, abdication of all responsibility, inundation with pity and contempt. That was hard.

This he could handle.

This he had to handle.

Slamming the window shut, Kieran pocketed his sister’s phone and started down the stairs, putting his new house keys to use as he went.

---

A man’s home was his castle, or so he’d heard it said…or, at least, seen it written. If ever a man is master of anything, it is his own domain.

True this maxim may be, it loses a lot of its pomp when a man is twice divorced and the chickens have fled the coop for the habit, the husband, and the hoosegow respectively.

Thankfully for Edward Teague, the school came complete with 100 chickens, most of whom weren’t going anywhere.

In the wee small hours of the morning, however, the building was quiet as the empty nest where he was supposed to pass his non-billable hours. But in its immensity, the quiet felt larger and, paradoxically, more personal.

He’d compare it to being in church, if his own churchgoing hadn’t long since become habitual. And certainly, this was no temple being, in the first place, property of the state and thereby subject to the good old Establishment Clause and, in the second place, full of amoral adolescents motivated by base hedonism.

Still, he was more home here than anywhere else. And in the quiet hours before the start of the day, there was something approaching sacred in the red and white hallways and desolate classrooms.

Or maybe he was getting sentimental, now that he’d gone over the hill.

Teague’s footsteps made a steady rhythm against the tiled floors of the hallway. He’d attempted braving his Inbox first thing, but the “Mayor’s Community Affairs Newsletter- Special Edition” (“Dear Fellow Lakewooder, As Our Community comes together in mourning…”) had topped out his BS gage for the day.

As an alternative, he’d made a pilgrimage to the trophy case. Standing opposite the gymnasium, the case was three glass columns, one eight foot tall flanked by two of six each. It was a finely made case, if somewhat lacking in tenants these days.

Not particularly nostalgic as a rule, Teague nonetheless got a certain something out of the ritual, if not to remember those halcyon days when Lancer Athletics hadn’t been a district wide punchline, but to note the shield-shaped plaque at the top of the case’s middle column which proclaimed, in fine brass letters, “For our Lancer brothers who made the ultimate sacrifice defending our freedom.”

The verbiage was a little dated. There were one or two Lancer sisters on the list, God bless them. But it felt wrong to have the plaque redone as long as there remained room on it for more names in two of the four neat pillars.

As far as Teague was concerned, if he made it to his dying day with the thing unfilled, it would be an achievement of its own.

His eyes, well accustomed to their task, took no time to spot the name, seventh down in the first column: Captain James Teague, Class of ’54 and, beneath, in slightly smaller print, KIA- Vietnam, 1970.

Mechanically, Teague lifted his hand in silent salute.

In the row below was a smaller plaque, memorializing Our Beloved Friends, dedicated by the Class of 1995. The names of the five dead were arranged in a circle, beneath their yearbook pictures. Five names, though six had died that night.

There were no plaques for him. Instead, in the bottom of the plaque, where a sixth name may have appeared to create some symmetry, the Class of 1995 had inscribed the words, “And I’ll remember the strength that you gave me, now that I’m standing on my own.”

Teague stared at the names through his own reflection and wondered if it may be time for another plaque.

With a final salute to those other honored dead, he turned away from the trophy case and continued on his progress. It wouldn’t be much longer now until the place came to life, and his temple was filled with the noise and confusion of its own moneychangers.

A clinking sound echoed down the passage to him. He froze in his tracks, staring down the still shadowy artery. He kept the lights off during his all-nighters, out of consideration to the taxpayer.

Easy as anything to see the white glow knifing from the faculty lounge. Steeling himself, Teague advanced down the hall, instinctively on the offensive. His footsteps, previously stentorian in his temple (or tomb) like environs, became shadow-silent, his breath a subzero hush.

There were some tricks you never forgot.

With such stealthy tread, he stole upon the door in a matter of seconds and, pressing himself against the wall, swung his way a full 90 degrees into the lounge.

“Good Lord!” Theodora Kellerman gasped, spilling water down her front.

“Oh,” Teague paused, “I thought it might be you.”

“What would you have done if it wasn’t?” she asked archly, grabbing a cheap brown paper towel from the roll beside the sink and dabbing at her soaked violet blazer.

“Gotten my story straight.”

His Vice Principal smiled wryly, “I was refilling the machine,” with a jut of her chin, she indicated the Keurig to the right of the sink, “I’d ask if you’d like a cup, but you seem plenty awake already.”

“That stuff’s poison,” Teague noted, crossing to the long, conference style table where teachers ideally were meant to eat as a community, though they more often took lunch at their desks, “I’ll take it black.”

Theodora nodded her understanding, conducting her ablutions with her usual efficiency, “America the Beautiful or Grumpy the Dwarf?”

They kept their ‘community mugs’ in a rack by the sink. Grumpy was an industrial-sized brown mug featuring the scowling Disney character who, presumably, wouldn’t live up to his name so often if only he had his caffeine fix.

“You can keep Grumpy,” Teague allowed, appreciating that she at least asked.

“Have you been here all night?” she asked as the old dinosaur coughed up their necessary beverage.

“Where else am I going to go?”

“Your bed, for starters.”

He shrugged, “I’ve made up a cot in the AV room.”

“It’s true, then?” she asked, “You’re the one showering in the boys’ locker room?”

He grunted noncommittally and Theodora sighed, “Well, at least you’re keeping clean.”

“There’s precious little for me at the house.”

“I guess I can’t blame you there,” she granted, “But I’m an old hand at it. You do get used to the quiet eventually.”

“Maybe,” Teague granted, “But think of what I save on gas.”

She made a sound not quite like laughter, passing him a steaming cup of America the Beautiful, the stars and stripes scalding in his hands.

They sipped in quiet for a few minutes before Theodora spoke up again, “I take it you’ve heard?”

He nodded, “Emma Duval.”

She sighed, “There was a write-up in the news, but something tells me you have better sources.”

Teague, who had an alumnus or three at Lakewood General, shrugged, “She’s in the ICU. Not sure how bad it is, but she’s expected to come through.”

“A cold relief,” Theodora acknowledged, “Her mother must be reeling.”

Teague followed her wandering eye to the table and walked over to it. There was a yellow legal pad at the table’s head, “You’ve always had a good hand for cursive.”

“I never embarrassed myself.”

“My wrist always cramped,” he sighed, eyes flicking along the pad, “In times like this, when we mourn a friend…we ask questions…” he lifted his eyes, “This is nice.”

“It’s boilerplate. Almost tawdry,” she paused, “And, I guess, out of date now.”

“Not necessarily. Duval’s still alive.”

Theodora sighed, “It felt like we should say something. Going through the day yesterday, as if nothing had happened…” she shuddered, “There was something dirty about it. But I studied the natural sciences,” she sighed, “I was never one for speeches.”

“Tell that to the kids in detention.”

“That’s different,” she waved a hand, “I can inspire fear just fine. But how do you tell kids about…grief? Loss? It’s utterly beyond me.”

“You’re not alone there,” he sat opposite the legal pad, taking another bitter swig. Theodora turned the pad toward her, sniffing dismissively at her own words before taking her own seat.

“It doesn’t matter, I suppose,” she said at length, “Ego-tripping in my middle-age. I’m lucky if I can get these girls to leave those Juicy Jeans at home.”

Teague opted not to comment about the Juicy Jeans and they drank companionably for a while more. Theodora was gazing beyond him, toward the tall windows, through which the milky gray of dawn was slowly transforming into the first blush of sunrise.

They wouldn’t be alone much longer.

“They were friends, weren’t they?” Theodora asked quietly. Teague eyed her through the thinning steam from his nearly drained mug and she cleared her throat apologetically, “Emma Duval and Audrey Jensen. They were very close. At least, they were last year.”

Teague considered, “You making a statement or a conjecture?”

“Thinking by free association, I’m afraid. A dirty habit.”

“There was some kind of falling out, I guess,” Teague volunteered, “Howard never said one way or another. And Jamie was always more Audrey’s friend, so I don’t think she ever knew anything,” he swirled the dregs of his coffee around, “Friendships do end. Part of growing up.”

“It is,” she agreed, “But with girls, it’s…” she chuckled humorlessly, “It’s different with girls.”

“Not very PC of you, Vice Principal.”

“Well, I don’t suggest it’s a biological imperative,” she scoffed, “Environment over hereditary. Maybe one day, things will change, but in my experience…”

“Boys make friends easy,” Teague shrugged, “Some of them. Or maybe we just trust too fast. Always on the lookout for some sorry son-of-a-bitch to share a foxhole with.”

She waved a hand, “With girls, friendship is harder won. And when a friendship ends…” she closed her fingers into a fist, “There’s usually a pretty clear reason.”

“I’m the last person to speculate,” Teague speculated, “But I figure there were hard feelings over the company Duval kept.”

“‘Company’?” Theodora repeated wryly. Teague sighed, leaning back in his chair, “Any reason you’re bringing this up, Vice Principal?”

She shrugged, “It may be I’ve read too many Agatha Christies…”

“I’ve always been a Harlan Ellison man myself.”

“…coincidences are omnipresent in nature, Principal, but rarely in high school. Nobody nurses a grudge like a teenager whose accumulated too much emotion and not enough life.”

Teague chuckled quietly, “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

“There’s the matter of that video. The Jensen girl and her…friend from St. Mary’s.”

“The police don’t think there’s a connection,” Teague observed, “Not with the Winters and Carmichael killings, anyway, short of Carmichael’s last little missive to the world of the living.”

“But there is a connection between Audrey Jensen on one side of that camera and Emma Duval on the other,” her lips twitched, “The ‘company’ Emma’s kept.”

Teague grimaced, “Patterson’s got a mean streak a mile wide.”

“And no love lost between her and Audrey,” Theodora noted, “Not since…” she cleared her throat, “Well, not since Jamie.”

Teague lowered his eyes at the mention of his youngest, “Remember when bullies acted out in the open?”

“Pretty well.”

“Not to wax nostalgic for the heyday of the schoolyard mouthbreather, but there used to be a certain integrity to it. Now, all this smoke and mirrors…hiding behind aliases. Kicking up a fit and crying victim when the little guy’s had enough…”

“You don’t understand, Dad!” Jamie had insisted, tears in her eyes and blood on her knuckles.

“I understand that you’re angry,” he’d told her, angry himself but keeping his fury cool, “I understand that you attacked someone in broad daylight in front of witnesses.”

“She had it coming!” she was shaking in his arms and, furious as he wanted to be, disappointed as he was, she had never felt more his daughter, “She had it coming.”

“…it’s a special breed,” he said finally, tapping his fingers against the tabletop, “I tell you, I’d love to get my hands on…” but he stopped himself, aware of Theodora’s caustic eye on him.

She put up with a lot from him, but she was a professional through and through. No use putting her in an uncomfortable position.

“…on the person,” he nodded, “Behind that video. Whoever it may be.”

Her eyes glimmered, “You’re not the only one. And the sooner the better,” she leaned back in her seat, “Any more word from our friends at St. Mary’s?”

Teague grimaced, “A 4:00 AM email with ‘expectations’, ‘assessments’, and more axes to grind than a busload of ex-altar boys.”

Theodora coughed politely, “They’re coming to us, then?”

“After school today. The girl, her parents, and…” he let out a puff of air, “The Principal.”

Theodora smiled darkly, “An interesting woman, that Sister Alice-Marie. A will of iron.”

“That’s not the only iron bit on her.”

Theodora eyed him caustically, “Really, Principal,” but she smiled, lifting her Grumpy mug in a halfway toast and draining the last of it.

---

She woke up, for starters. Bold choice. Way to defy expectations. The bastards hadn’t gotten to her yet. #girlboss #womanstrong #firststopcoffee

Sure, she’d gotten charitably 30 minutes of sleep, but these were extraordinary times.

Audrey sat at the edge of her bed for a while after getting up, facing away from the brightening view outside her curtained window. On the far wall of her room was a cork board marked up with strips of film, each one covered in layers of paint.

The idea was to emulate Stan Brakhage, who she’d gotten interested in recently. During a low period, she’d been fucking around on the Internet, as you do, and through that unique rabbit hole free-association that was only possible for the very alone and very online, had discovered his ‘hand-painted films’ on YouTube.

These short features, usually no more than a minute, were just what they sounded like: hand-painted film run through a camera, creating a disorienting visual soup equally repellent and hypnotic. There was one film, Rage Net, which looked like nothing less than a series of green and orange supernovas: whole creations birthing and dying in rapid succession. Millions of years passing in the winking of an eye.

Audrey didn’t consider herself much of an artist, not with paint and brushes anyway, but she’d made an attempt. The film strips swayed gently from their perch on the wall, whorls of blue and gold and alarming, vulgar red.

Near the end, she’d used lots of red.

She hadn’t yet fed the film into a camera yet. It seemed like a lot of work and she wasn’t even sure if it was finished, or if she’d like the effect when it came out. Side-effect of her generation, maybe: so used to instant gratification that the idea of her work not coming out perfect the first time and needing to be laboriously, agonizingly redone was repellent.

But that was bullshit. She knew what the paintings looked like: she could see them every day. She just wasn’t sure she could face them in motion, larger than life, flashing before her eyes.

Rachel might think they were cool, if she knew they existed.

But thinking of Rachel just made her guilty.

Audrey dressed in silence, lacing up her combats with all the solemnity of a girl going to war, or perhaps marching to the gallows. It was supposed to get easier, so the hacks said, and you’d think the added seasoning of a Real American Tragedy in their midst may have expedited the news cycle somewhat, but she didn’t have high hopes in that regard.

But the world did move in, in its way. And if the world could, so could she.

She took the stairs two at a time, her bag swinging clumsily against the railing as she went. It wasn’t the gentlest approach, but she was prioritizing speed over subtlety…

“Audrey!”

…for all the good that did.

“Good morning,” her father was standing at the critical juncture separating the bottom of the stairs from the front door, smiling in his most patient ‘paternalistic churchman’ manner, “I’ve made some oatmeal.”

“It smells like it,” Audrey observed evenly.

“You weren’t going to leave without breakfast?” he was wearing his bathrobe: a threadbare confection of blue and white terrycloth that made him look like he’d wandered out of a soft-focus family drama. 7th Heaven, perhaps.

“I wasn’t hungry.”

His well-lined mouth twisted into a small frown, “Audrey, you came home at 1:00 in the morning.”

Her grip on the railing tightened, “I guess I did.”

“One night I could understand, but two in a row is pushing the envelope, isn’t it?” his eyes, which Audrey’s Mom had always lovingly described as “hopelessly dewy” glimmered with a heartrending earnestness that was much too much for this early on a Tuesday, of all days.

“At a certain point, I get the impression you’re avoiding me. And, Audrey, I…” he turned his mug around in his hands: a big blue and white dish of a thing filled almost to the brim with a mealy gray mash that must be some of the aforesaid oatmeal.

“I think we’re overdo for a talk, aren’t we?”

Audrey slowly raised her eyes to his, “I have school, Dad.”

“Going to school with three hours’ sleep and no food in you? Please, Audrey…”

“I don’t see what we have to talk about,” she said as forcefully as she could manage, descending the last few steps determinedly…

“Principal Teague called me last night.”

She froze, her hand on the door handle as he explained, “There’s a meeting today, after school.”

“A meeting,” Audrey repeated.

“He arranged it with the Principal of St. Mary’s and, er…” he flushed hot pink, “This girl’s family…”

“Rachel.”

“Rachel,” he seized on the name with a quiet desperation, “Yes. Right. Her parents requested a meeting and the principals will be mediating…”

For obvious reasons, Audrey had never meet Mother and Father Murray, no more than Rachel had met the venerable Pastor Howard Jensen. But she knew enough, from what Rachel said and didn’t say.

“She didn’t do anything,” she said finally, “We didn’t do anything.”

“Well, Audrey, you aren’t in trouble…”

“Then why have a meeting?” she snapped, “What is there to talk about? We did nothing wrong! We’re…” but she stopped, thinking of Amanda’s well-intentioned pablum that night at the lake.

“I am not a victim,” she’d insisted, and she wasn’t.

What, then, was she?

“The fact is, Audrey, I think there’s a lot to talk about,” her father said, not angrily, which somehow made it worse, but with a sort of hangdog resignation, as if he’d long ago accepted that he was the bad guy there but, oh shucks, there wasn’t much to do about it now, “Obviously, there’s a lot that’s been happening to you, a lot you’ve been doing…”

“That I’ve been doing. And what’s that mean, Dad?” she looked at him, “What have I been up to? What’s so bad that we need to call in reinforcements from the Grown-ups? What needs talking out?”

There was a long silence. Howard stared into his oatmeal, as if looking for proof that there were worse things in his God’s creation than a girl’s unquiet rage.

“That wasn’t what I meant to talk about,” he said finally.

“Well, I’ve done my homework, if that’s what the hangup is, so you can call off that meeting while you’re at it…”

“Emma was attacked last night.”

Audrey stopped short. Her father was very white; indeed, more or less the color of his cooling morning slop. She knew an odd sense of displacement as he continued, “Her mother called me this morning. I never heard her so upset. I thought…” he cleared his throat hoarsely, “I know how fast news travels now…especially, bad news. I thought it best if you heard it from me first.”

Her phone was a dead weight in her pocket. For the second night in a row, she’d kept it silent and missed out on the fun because of it. Knowing Noah, he’d have been firing on all cylinders to be one degree of separation from a…

“What happened to her?” she asked huskily, “I mean, is she…”

“She’s alive, thank God,” he was quick to assure her, “The ambulance got there in time. She’s in the hospital. They think…well, I don’t know what they think, but with this happening so soon after the Winters family and the Carmichael boy…”

He took on a particularly haggard cast and the invocation of the victims. The Winters and Carmichaels were part of the congregation. He’d baptized Stacy and Brock, and Brock’s little sister to boot. The news must have come as an awful shock to him.

“I thought, maybe, if you wanted to visit the hospital after school…well, after this meeting business is done, then…”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she interrupted, thinking of Emma’s pleading, plaintive expression at Brooke Maddox’s swimming pool and feeling her stomach twist.

“Audrey, I know you and Emma haven’t been on the friendliest of terms lately, but I don’t need a long memory to remember how close you two…”

“It won’t be good, Dad,” she insisted, turning back to the door, “For either of us.”

“You don’t know that!”

“I know more than you think!” she snapped, “And I can take care of myself. I’ve done pretty okay so far.”

He stood there, struck, seeming to wrestle with whether or not to contest this assertion. With a hot huff, she turned on her heel and wrenched the door open.

Howard’s oatmeal dropped to the floor with a shatter and a splash. Audrey remained rooted in place, eyes fixed in cold comprehension at the blood red graffiti scrawled on the outside of the door.

‘DYKE’

---

Charlie got to school maybe 15 minutes before the average normie. An inconvenience, but a man had to defend his primo parking spot.

He lay down for a while after parking, the driver’s seat lowered all the way down, the van’s engine vibrating around him, and Today’s Popular Music oozing out of the radio.

“Ugh, fuck the Weeknd, man,” he grimaced, thinking of getting up to change the channel but not wanting to compromise his blissful bonelessness.

Maybe the Weeknd was an object lesson. You didn’t have to be hot to be successful. Or talented, even. You didn’t even have to employ useful people, unless he’d written this crap himself, in which case refer back to Point Talent.

Taking all of this into consideration, then, Charlie should be Emperor of the Hemisphere before he turned 20.

With a lazy ease, he flicked through his phone as he reclined, feeling something like a Medieval Baron assessing his fiefdom (“Vine is particularly bountiful this morn, milord!” chortles the winsome fat fuck in the cassock, aware that if Vine is not bountiful, it will be thirty lashings from Old Asmodeus), which mostly comprised memes and mirror selfies.

He’d been tagged in an Insta post: a bunch of them sitting around a booth at Cici’s diner. The foreground was dominated by a bright brown eye in a copper complected face, half of a brilliantly white smile dominating the frame. The rest of them were ranked up behind him, staring with a golden-haired beauty with a smile out of a painting, strikingly angular cheek leaned lovingly into his beard.

Charlie was several heads to the back, hood up, flashing lazy deuces at the camera. The skinny Black kid next to him was rolling his eyes with a grudging affection, sticking his own deuces…rabbit ears…up over Charlie’s hooded head.

“You’re not high now, are you?” he’d asked.

“On what? My own supply? I have some standards, man.”

The caption on the post read “One last Homecoming with the fam.” Followed by song lyrics:

“We’re captive on the carousel of time/We can’t return we can only look behind from where we came/And go round and round and round in the circle game”

“Fancy fuck,” Charlie smiled fondly, hearting the post and scrolling on.

What was it about senior year that made everyone so goddamn existential? Charlie supposed it may have something to do with the dead kids, though homecoming had, to be fair, come first.

With a more businesslike air, he checked the CCD chat, where Second C had posted ‘I was so high last night’ followed by a picture of Hi-C, which D (the one and only) noted he liked but hadn’t had in a long time.

‘You can only get it in McDonald’s now.’

Well, if they kept going like this, they’d be fucking the world into submission in no time.

Charlie looked up from his study at a sharp tap on the driver’s side window. Sighing laboriously, he hoisted his seat up, nearly faceplanting into the steering wheel as he did, and rolled the window down about half-way. The decal in the corner (a rainbow-bearing emblazoned with the word ‘BREATHE’ in memeish script) squeaked pleasantly as it retreated from view, giving Charlie a full view of his visitor.

“Well, well, if it isn’t my favorite Cybernetic Woman. What can I do ya for, Steele Stilts?”

Amanda looked warily into the van, wrinkling her nose up, “Were you hotboxing in here?”

“Nah. The smell just gets sucked into everything after a while,” he shrugged, “You get used to it.”

“I bet,” she folded her arms, “They’re not steel, by the way. My legs.”

“You won’t deny a man a good pun?”

“You know any?”

“Ha,” he let out a short, desultory cough of laugher, “No, seriously, what do you want?”

“That’s what I was gonna ask you,” she folded her arms, cocking an eyebrow, “See, not that I don’t appreciate the solicitation, Hawkins, but I’m gonna have to opt out of further messages.”

He smiled lazily, getting her gist, “Caught me, did you?”

“Smelled you, as a matter of fact. Tonight. And the night before. And last week, now that I think about it, but at the time I thought it was a skunk…”

“A common mistake, but to the true conosisseur, the scents are very different…”

 “I’ll admit, Charlie, you’re braver than I thought.”

“That’s a new one.”

“You do know I live with my brother? Who is a cop. And a veteran. And very cranky.”

“I’ve got no beef with your brother. Or you.”

“So why are you hanging around my place?” she frowned, “Seriously, I’m not gonna rat you out or anything…”

“That’s very generous of you.”

“…unless you give me a reason.”

He grinned, “At ease, Steele. I know you’re a good church girl. I’m not interested in corrupting you. Though I will admit, I’m surprised you never tried holistic medicine for the…” he gestured awkwardly at his legs, “You know. The therapy.”

Amanda’s smile became quite fixed, “I’m trying to go straightedge.”

“Hey, to each their own.”

“I’m also not on the dating market,” she added pointedly, “Just so you know.”

“Never crossed my mind. Unless I crossed yours first?”

“Somehow, Hawkins, I never pegged you for a sexual creature.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say no to a good pegging. If the opportunity presented itself,” he allowed dim disgust to flicker across Amanda’s face for a glorious 10 seconds, in which he opened the driver’s side door and stepped out onto the pavement beside her, forcing her to take a half step back to accommodate him, “But, no, I’m not interested.”

“So what are you doing hanging out around my…”

“Not that you shouldn’t get back into the dating pool,” Charlie pointed out, “I mean, I know most of us may seem like toddlers to you, what with you repeating the year and everything, but there’s some primo man meat out there.”

“You don’t say,” her expression was flat, but her eyes twinkled with the exasperated mirth Charlie prided himself on inspiring in the finer sex, “Are you gonna answer my question or…”

She trailed off, her gaze drifting over Charlie’s shoulder. Charlie hesitated, turning to look and seeing what Amanda saw.

“Huh,” his lips curled, “I am popular this morning.”

Nina Patterson was marching across the steadily filling lot, chicly overdressed as usual in a pristine white minidress cinched with a thin scarlet belt and topped with a matching beret, beneath which her gingery hair flowed with practiced waviness around silvery hoop earrings.

She slowed down as she neared, likewise looking past Charlie to the girl on his other side. Her inscrutable marble expression cracked.

Charlie couldn’t help himself, “Who would’ve thought of all the things you ladies have in common, little old me would be one of them.”

Nina’s eyes blazed, “Really tanking your standards, aren’t you, Amanda?”

Amanda scoffed humorlessly, stepping back and throwing her hands up, “Help yourself, Patterson. My regards to Tyler.”

She stalked off, the flapping of her battered jean jacket not quite muffling the metallic clanking of her footsteps. It was, Charlie had to admit, kind of hot.

“Ah, I love a good bitch gripe in the morning,” he sighed contentedly, turning back to Nina, who closed the distance between them in two strides, greeting him with a, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Well, Neener my dearer, if you don’t know by now, I don’t know where I could even begin…”

“What are you talking to her for?”

“We’re in the same class,” he put on his best doofus jock voice, intoning, “See-NIEEERS…”

“Telling her we have things in common!”

“Well, if that’s news to Miss ’Manda at this point, she musta lost a chunk of brain along with her footsies…”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

Charlie pressed his lips together, “I guess I could have just said ‘dudes’. Dudes in common.”

She rolled her eyes, “You’re disgusting.”

“It’s old gossip, Nina,” he rocked on the balls of his feet, “I mean, I know it must be bad for your pride, but what’s it matter if she got her hands on someone before you could…”

“That’s just a rumor,” Nina spoke over him, emphasizing, “An old rumor,” as if to get an extra dig at him.

“Sure it is, and the point being that nobody gives a shit, and if you didn’t want Amanda to see me chitchatting with you, you could’ve marched right on up those steps and gone about your school day like a good citizen.”

She huffed shortly, knuckles white around the straps of her bag, “I’m not breathing your musk for the fun of it, Chuck.”

“Chuck. That’s cute. Very rustic. Very homey,” he leaned against his van, arms folded casually, “Not to smother a sale before it’s started, Nina, but I don’t think if I have anything that can take that edge off…”

“Don’t play dumb,” she met his eyes, “I don’t want your drugs.”

“It’s not a drug,” he said languidly, “And even if it was, pronouncing it like it’s a racial slur is a touch prejudicial, isn’t it, and maybe more than a little hypo…”

“Emma Duval was attacked last night,” she said it matter-of-factly, as if Emma was just some girl on the street and not part of her carefully cultivated Aryan Sisterhood.

Charlie nodded slowly, “Heard about it. And maybe it’s just my skewed male-centric way of thinking but, uh, when I heard the news, it registered a bit different…” he raised his eyebrows, “Will Belmont’s girlfriend was attacked last night.”

Nina drew in breath, “Is this funny to you?”

“If it was funny, I’d be laughing. I’m a real chuckler, ask my friends.”

“I might,” remarkably, even in extremis, she retained a remarkable ability to find a weak spot and stick an oyster fork in it. Charlie ground his teeth together, fingering the cuffs on his hoodie, “You need a favor.”

“You owe me a few.”

“You get what you’re asking for. Without, of course, asking for it…”

“You’re a smart boy.”

“They’re bound to notice some day,” he smirked, “Cash on delivery.”

“I’m not gonna write you a check,” she snapped.

“As soon as possible, I take it?”

“Today.”

“That’s a quick turnaround.”

“I’ve managed quicker.”

Charlie snorted and, at Nina’s look, “Sorry, sorry, that was…that was a layup. I’m only human…” he considered, “I guess so are you, after all.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means, Nina Bobina…” his lips parted, “That you’re scared.”

She didn’t say anything at first, looking around the parking lot, watching their clueless peers trooping off for another day in the funhouse.

“Today, Charlie,” she said finally, pronouncing his name like the crack of a whip, “Or I’ll give you something to be scared of.”

He watched her march off, his van rumbling behind him. On the radio, the Weeknd had long since been conquered by Taylor Swift promising to write your name in her eponymous Blank Space.

Charlie imagined his own name, written on a scrap of paper…a pink slip, maybe, or one of those yellow vouchers they give you at the hospital when you have to reclaim whatever the paramedics didn’t steal from you on the ride to the ER…rolled into a nice, compact little tube and set aflame.

Smelled just like chicken.

He wondered how white meat paired with Hi-C.

---

Not that Riley was a big believer in ‘energy’ outside of the kind accepted by physicists, but there was something off about the energy at school today.

More specifically, there was something off about how decidedly not off everybody seemed. Having spent a restless night staring listlessly at her phone, futilely refreshing Instagram, Twitter, and even the community Facebook group for news, it was a shock to the system to show up at school and find everything, for lack of a better word, normal.

It would be different, she told herself, if Emma hadn’t survived. The thought was an ugly one but she couldn’t find fault with it. The sickly atmosphere that had hung over the school yesterday, a roughly equal combination of stunned grief and guilty excitement, simply wasn’t in evidence.

And the best she could do was hope that was a good thing.

“Tyler!” she waved a hand at the jet black Mazda hatchback pulling into the lot, knowing the driver couldn’t hear her but figuring she was visible enough, in a lime green blouse and maroon skirt, to be eye-catching.

“’Morning, Riles,” Tyler greeted absently, opening the driver’s side door and putting one leg out.

She craned her neck theatrically as she drew closer. Tyler leaned back with a start, eyes widening in alarm as he yelped sharply enough to startle her.

“Jesus!”

“Sorry,” she apologized sheepishly, “I was looking for the towel,” at his blank expression, she clarified, “The one you took from Brooke’s pool. She’s still talking about it.”

“Oh,” his shoulders relaxed, but not by much, “She can get a new one.”

He got to his feet, wincing as he did. Riley noticed his hand go automatically to his side, knuckles bunching over the soft camel-brown fabric of his henley. Riley frowned, “You okay?”

He looked at her with a start, “Pulled a muscle.”

“Doing what?”

“Exercise bike,” he shouldered his backpack, only bothering with the left strap, and slammed his car door behind him, “Trying to keep in shape.”

“That’s admirable,” said Riley cautiously. Tyler met her eyes and must have seen the unasked question there, “Just leave it, Riley. Alright?”

“Is it so hard to believe I’m genuinely curious?”

“I’m fine,” he insisted, “You don’t need to worry.”

“I never said I was worried,” she held up a finger, “That’s you saying that.”

“Putting words in a girl’s mouth, Tyler?” asked an irksomely bright voice, “I figured Nina would’ve trained you out of that by now.”

“She must be slipping,” he said flatly, paying Brooke an impressively microscopic measure of mind.

“Hi, Brooke,” Riley greeted her with a small smile as they started, as a set, across the lot to school. Brooke wrapped one petite arm around Riley’s middle, pulling her into a half hug, which Riley interpreted as an invitation to Get Real.

“Have you heard anything new?” she asked as Brooke loosened her hold.

“Who would I have heard it from?”

“I figured maybe your Dad…”

“He doesn’t talk to me about work, and if he did, it would be 90% foam. He’s addicted to the spin. Occupational hazard.”

“It’s awful,” she wrapped her arms around herself, “And Emma’s so nice! Which, okay, I know that’s stupid to say. Bad things happen to nice people all the time…”

“Those freshmen were probably nice too,” Brooke intoned.

“It’s got to be the same person, right?” Riley asked, “I mean, it’s too much of a coincidence not to be connected…”

“Maybe Emma’s been leading a double life,” said Brooke wistfully, “I’ve always thought she could benefit from a dirty secret or two.”

“Brooke!” Riley chided.

“I’m being serious! She has some teeth on her,” she smirked, “Ask Nina.”

At Riley’s other side, Tyler stiffened predictably, but didn’t say anything. Brooke eyed him, “What about you?”

“You wanna count my teeth, Brooke?”

“Emma,” she clarified, “You live on her block, don’t you? Did you see anything?”

“I live up the street,” he clarified at length, “Not on the block.”

“Same thing,” Brooke waved a hand dismissively, “You must’ve seen something?”

“What do you want me to say, Brooke? I caught the Lakewood Strangler climbing in her window?”

Riley shuddered as Brooke rolled her eyes, “Nobody’s been strangled, Tyler. Fix your metaphors.”

“That’s not what a metaphor is!” he snapped, “I thought you were getting tutoring.”

“Testy,” Brooke intoned as they started up the front steps to the entrance.

“I saw the cops,” he said eventually, “And the fire department. After. Nothing sexy,” he cut his eyes at her, “Sorry.”

He made a sharp left as they crossed the threshold into school, stalking up the stairs. Riley watched him go, attention arrested by the odd gait he assumed as he ascended: he was favoring his right side, a not quite pronounced but still visible limp.

“I’m worried about him,” she heard herself say as he rounded the landing and vanished from sight.

“Tyler?” Brooke asked, as if Riley had declared deep concerns about the health of the Pillsbury Doughboy.

“Don’t you think he’s been acting weird lately? That thing with Jake at lunch yesterday, and…” she began to mention the odd flinch, the hobbled gait, but stopped herself, instead supplanting it with, “He’s not shaving,” not very convincingly.

“Tyler’s got a serious case of buyers’ remorse,” Brooke diagnosed confidently, “It’s just catching up to him.”

“Why do you think?” Riley asked, “Because of Nina and Jake?”

Brooke shrugged, “Maybe he needed a rude awakening. Not that Nina’s admitting to anything, and I guess we do have to consider the source…”

Speak of the devil.

“Noah!” Riley waved as the lanky, flannel-clad figure came up the hall behind them, laboring under an impressively swollen backpack, “Hi.”

He stopped short at the greeting, staggering slightly under his burden, “Oh. Hey. ’Sup?” he looked owlishly from Riley to Brooke, “My condolences.”

“Thanks,” said Riley, “Yeah, it’s a real shock. And nobody knows anything…”

“Oh, I’m sure somebody knows something,” said Noah, “The guy that did it, for one…”

Brooke’s eyes bored into him with passionate disfavor as he continued, oblivious, “The police, maybe, but that might be too optimistic…”

“You, on the other hand, have all the answers?” Brooke prompted icily.

Noah looked past Riley to her, as if he’d only just realized she was there which, Riley had to admit, was a novel switcheroo and not entirely unwelcome, “Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but I do have some good questions and I’m not 100% convinced anyone else is asking them…”

“Which questions?” asked Riley, choosing to ignore Brooke’s flagrant eye roll in hopes Noah wouldn’t notice it himself.

“Well, for starters, I think everyone’s first impulse is to look at what may link Emma with Stacy and Brock.”

“Well, assuming it was the same person…”

“…and everyone can compare all they want. That’s fine. But what about contrast?”

“Contrast?” asked Brooke icily. Noah looked at her, with due sincerity, “What makes things different.”

“I know what it means!” Brooke snapped and, somewhat defensively, “It’s comparison’s antonym.”

Noah gave her a thumbs’ up, like she was a partially trained puppy, and returned his attention to Riley, which was probably for the best given Brooke’s expression had become radioactive.

“So, there’s this podcast I listen to…”

“You listen to podcasts?” Riley interrupted, not so much for the sake of the asinine question but, again, to keep him from catching wind of Brooke’s energy (maybe it did exist, selectively).

“You’re surprised?”

“Well, after you put down audiobooks in class…”

“I never put them down,” Noah amended.

“Don’t point,” Brooke said flatly and was ignored.

“…I said they’re a symptom of our attention-addled, distraction hungry generation. Which I am a part of.”

“Fair. Do you listen to the Lore podcast?”

“I love the Lore podcast,” he gushed, eyes wide as saucers, “Who can resist a good scary story, amirite?”

“As long as you don’t play it at half-speed,” Riley smiled coyly.

Noah reddened and did not confirm nor deny the indulgence, instead huskily changing the subject, “But, yeah, this podcast I listen to, it’s true crime…but it’s real true crime. Not one of those things where some ladies guzzle white wine and gush about Manson…”

“No, that’s only cute when a man is doing the gushing, isn’t it?” asked Brooke acidly.

“Actually, the host is a girl,” Noah interrupted, somewhat smugly, “But she’s not like the other…huh?”

A small crowd had assembled around the block of lockers between Homerooms 203 and 204. A few of these gawkers looked back at their approach, snickering audibly. Brooke grimaced, “The social syphilis must be catching.”

“At ease,” Noah grimaced, “You’re immune,” he pushed his way through the crowd.

Alone at Brooke’s side, Riley gave her a look, which she returned, mouthing, “What?”

As Riley assessed whether this ignorance was affected or genuine, Noah continued his progress,  “Excuse me, coming through, thank you very…” the gawkers finally parted enough to deposit him at his locker which had been decorated with…

“Oh, holy hentai.”

A print-out had been taped to the locker, bearing a brightly colored illustration of what Riley could only assume was a purple alien lifeform using its many probing tentacles to explore the recesses of a nubile anime girl, atop whose slender shoulders someone had taped a cut out of Noah’s pleasantly smiling face, presumably taken from last year’s yearbook.

“Oh my God,” Riley grimaced as Brooke lifted a dainty hand to her mouth, turning her head in a quaintly aristocratic expression of disgust.

Noah stared into his own smiling, pleasantly vacant face, not acknowledging the snickering of his peers. Finally, he heaved a mighty sigh, moving as if to yank the paper down…

“COMING TO YOU LIVE FROM 20 HUNDRED LEAGUES UNDER THE DWEEB!” with a triumphal bellow, the door to the opposite-facing boy’s room burst open, admitting The Jake in all his Nike-clad glory, wielding his phone like a holy talisman as he zeroed in on Noah, roughly pushing Colin Gable’s curly-headed figure out of the way of his lens, “Yo, it’s the guy with all the answers. I never saw him so quiet in my life…”

“Is he serious?” Riley asked, beginning it as a rhetorical question and promptly finding a target for it in the form of Zach, who shuffled out of the boys’ room with his eyes on his sneakers, looking like he expected to be whacked with a ruler.

“I tried to stop him,” Zach explained, “He’s just really upset about the Nina thing…”

“That’s just a stupid rumor!”

“Those are the only kinds that stick,” Brooke acknowledged, “It’s okay, Johnny. Jake’s a dog with a bone. Nothing you could’ve done…”

“So, c’mon, Foster, what’s it like being Squidward’s bitch?” Jake pressed, “C’mon, the world’s waiting…”

“This is awful…” Riley stepped forward.

“Oh, girl, don’t join the circus…” Brooke began as Noah leaned into the camera and spoke.

“Well, for starters, Jake, this is really…really ingenious work here. By the artist. Who I guess wishes to remain anonymous. But he must’ve been very dedicated. I can only imagine the amount of tentacle porn he had to search, and then print, in full color. Really, what a labor this must have been. Of course, the artist’s scissor skills are a bit lacking…unless I’m supposed to be missing a chunk of my right temple, possibly a statement on the erosion of creative thinking in an increasingly automated world…”

“Is this funny to you, Foster?” Jake demanded.

“As a gag, not particularly. As a metatextual statement on the empty cycle of revenge…”

Jake grabbed Noah by his flannel and slammed him into the locker.

“Whoa!” Zach cried over a chorus of similar “Ooohs”, “Aaaahs”, and a muted “Worldstar! Worldstar!” chant started by Colin and taken up by nobody.

“Man, c’mon,” Zach pleaded, “he’s learned his lesson…”

“Have I?” Noah asked, “What am I supposed to be learning?”

“Dude!” Zach chided haplessly.

“For starters, Foster, how about ‘talk shit, get hit’?”

“Good lesson.”

No sooner had Jake turned to see who’d spoken was his slack grin split by a fist. He reeled back with a muffled cry (further “ooohing” and “aaahing” from the onlookers), gripping the sore spot as he glowered at his attacker.

Audrey Jensen rubbed her rough knuckles with businesslike solemnity, glaring evenly at Jake, “You should give it a shot sometime.”

An electric hush had descended on them, broken only when Jake lifted his eyes back to Audrey, “Fucking dyke!” and threw himself at her.

“No!” Riley cried stupidly, stepping forward, only to fall backward into Brooke, who let out a deflated “Jesus!” as she caught herself.

Zach had pushed past Riley in his haste to come between the grappling figures. Jake, tall and leanly muscled, nonetheless couldn’t match Audrey for pure anger. Through the mass of thrashing limbs, Riley could see Noah, up against the lockers, his impish grin a distant memory.

It was difficult to be sure, but she thought he was shaking.

“This is so stupid,” Brooke chirped irately at Riley’s side and, while she wanted to agree, she couldn’t find the words or, indeed, the proper feeling.

It was stupid. It was truly, undeniably stupid. But there was something else about it as well, and the thought of it filled her with a sick, hollow disgust as she’d never known before.

Ultimately, it wasn’t poor Zach who ended up breaking up the scuffle, despite his best efforts.

“Hey, hey, enough!” Mr. Branson had darted from his classroom, charging up the hall like a khaki-clad cavalry to separate Audrey and Jake, “Back off. Both of you.”

Jake didn’t need to be told twice. He reeled back, picking at the rapidly forming red welt on his face, “She punched first.”

Audrey neither confirmed nor denied, stepping back and stalking off. The crowd parted for her as she passed. Mr. B sighed laboriously, running a hand through his hair, “You guys know it’s not even 8:00 AM, right?” he swept his arm in a sharp arc, “Okay, show’s over. Come on, get to homeroom.”

The tired command had the desired effect, and the masses dispersed, chattering amongst themselves, attention on each other or their phones and the next shiny thing.

“Jake, do you need to see the nurse?” Mr. B asked with something like reluctance. Jake eyed him, “I don’t,” in such a tone as to suggest somebody would before he was done. He lumbered off, tearing the print-out from Noah’s locker as he went and shoving it crudely into the pocket of his sweats.

“Jake!” Zach called after him, “C’mon, man…” with a final apologetic look Riley’s way, he was next to go. Riley sighed, turning to Brooke and finding she’d already gone.

Just like that, she was alone. Or almost alone.

“Noah…”” she began awkwardly, going over to him, “Are you okay?” something else rose to her lips but didn’t pass them: an apology.

But what did she have to apologize for? She hadn’t pulled any prank. She hadn’t thrown a punch. She hadn’t attacked his best friend.

She hadn’t stopped her friends from making that video.

She hadn’t done a lot of things.

“Fine,” he nodded, “Takes more than that to shake me up.”

“Noah…”

“Really,” he put on a smile, “I’m used to it. I should…” he began and didn’t finish. His face had gone from bone white to a violent, butcher’s red. With a final nod in her general direction, he hastened off and left her alone in earnest with nothing but her silly, selfish guilt.

---

He’d had a professor once who’d begun the semester by asking them to look within themselves. To probe the deepest recesses of their hearts, minds and, if they believed in that sort of thing, souls and ask that deepest, most personal question: Why are you doing this?

Because, the sage old professor had clarified, there’s sure as hell no money in this.

In that, he’d certainly been proved correct. There was no money in education. As for the answer to the bigger question, Seth really wished he could remember what he’d said. His life might’ve turned out differently.

But he’d made his bed and now had to die in it. Or words to that effect.

Not a bad turn of phrase, he considered sardonically. That next poetry collection should be ready by 2020 at this rate.

With this cheery thought, Seth completed the handful of necessary strides and swung himself fluidly into homebase, Room 201, still mercifully empty…

With one exception.

“Way to take out the trash, Mr. B,” Brooke leaned against his desk, propping herself up at a 70 degree angle, “Who says they don’t make heroes anymore?”

“The postmodernists,” Seth said tautly, closing the door behind him, “And even they’ve mostly shut up about it. It’s just that the textbook stops at 1999.”

Brooke offered one of those enigmatic feline smirks of hers. She’d put her bag, a plus size Hermes tote the color of sea foam, which couldn’t possibly contain all the books she needed for a seven hour school day, down on his desk, where it leaned ponderously against his bust of Poe, who’d certainly had worse views.

“Well, you don’t have to stop some dopey jock from getting his nose reset to be a hero, Mr. B. There’s little acts of service too!” she began counting on her fingers, “Helping old ladies cross the street, volunteering at your local soup kitchen…” she met his eyes, “Keeping your appointments.”

Seth sighed heavily, “It’s almost homeroom. I’ll have kids in a minute.”

“This will be quick. Your speciality.”

“Jesus,” he turned back to the frosted glass panel in the classroom door and lowered the crinkly blackout curtain over it. The classrooms were fitted with these, ostensibly to deter mass shooters. This was at least as dire an emergency. If he got lucky, any freshmen reporting for homeroom would assume he was just wacking it to porn at his desk, which would surely make him relatable.

“I’m sorry, alright?”

“See, I’d almost believe that, if it wasn’t for the ‘alright’. Who was it who said “remove needless words”…”

“E.B. White,” he said tersely.

“And are you really gonna argue with the man who brought us Stuart Little?”

He entertained a brief vision of E.B. White rolling in stacks of greenbacks and drowning in Lit. Major pussy. Somehow, this didn’t lighten his spirits.

“I am sorry, Brooke. I should have told you…”

“That you were wussing out, yes? Preferably, before I rented the room and made myself thematically beautiful…”

“Thematically beautiful?” he couldn’t resist a smile.

“It was really something. Shame you missed it.”

“Brooke, not to repeat myself…”

“That would be a lot of unnecessary words.”

“There are cops everywhere. If I’m getting my facts straight, your best friend is in the hospital right now.”

The smile evaporated from Brooke’s face, “What are you trying to say, Seth? That I should be careful? Because, not to be crass, that would be pretty fricking rich coming from you…”

He winced at the barb, blinking and finding himself on a sundrenched shore. Well, not so much as a shore as the silty, pebbly stretch that hugged the north shore of Wren Lake.

It was summer’s end and he’d been in town no more than a month. Enough time to shake off the nebulous, nameless apprehensions that attended his fresh start and to develop more practical apprehensions attending his new job.

He got his first look at her in a sun chair at the water’s edge, reclining in a rich peach-colored bathing suit that bared every inch of her legs, and probably her navel too, though this was partially concealed by the (much unopened, from the look of it) paperback in her hands.

He’d cautiously sat in the next chair, one of a few standing unattended some distance from the ramshackle boathouse. For a while, he sat there, arms folded behind his head, feeling like an asshole. He’d brought his laptop, tucked into a tote bag from Borders’ that had been through the wars. The idea was to do some lesson planning, to get himself ready for his class, whatever they turned out to be like.

Needless to say, he got distracted.

She kept peering over the top of her book, eyes glinting over the brims of her shades. She had on a hat too: a smart white sunhat with a snappy brim and a patterned ribbon around its crown.

Her eyes communicated silky-edged dispassion. He felt like he was being studied under a microscope. Somehow, he got the idea he didn’t make that bad a specimen.

“Good book,” he commented finally, indicating the black and white photo on the cover, of a spiky-haired greaser with his head bowed down.

“Oh,” she seemed surprised to hear him speak, as if she wasn’t convinced he had the ability, “It’s okay, I guess. A little dated.”

“It’s not that old,” he leaned forward, unable to help himself. He was wearing shorts that day: white chinos that crinkled as he moved. Her eyes traced the line of his thighs, from the hem to the top his boat shoes.

“I just don’t see what the big deal is,” she continued somewhat more animatedly, “These guys write these books and it’s all about a bunch of other guys who’d be way better off just making out with each other…”

“So you think Ponyboy would have had a better time of it if he’d…what, made out with Johnny?”

“Well, I think Dally’s a better fit for Johnny. But that’s just me.”

“As long as you get something out of it.”

“It’s whatever,” she shrugged, happily putting the book aside. She lowered the sunglasses down the bridge of her nose, giving him a first glimpse of her honey brown eyes. They’d been startling at first; maybe it was a testament to his puerility, but he’d assumed they’d be blue.

“I put off reading it, so I don’t have anybody to blame but myself.”

“School assignment?”

She nodded,“And something tells me the mummy who assigned this thing won’t approve if I handed in an essay about how they all should’ve been gay with each other.”

Unable to ride out the game any longer, Seth smirked, “Try me.”

And she’d lit up, equal parts girlish surprise and an irrepressible womanly delight. He’d spent the better part of the last two months trying to inspire that expression again, before the one in his memory faded completely into the hazy mires of myth.

Judging by current circumstances, it would take a while.

“I’m only saying, Brooke, that it may be smart…for now…” he placed a careful emphasis on the words, to forestall her immediate objection, “To take a step back.”

Brooke made a sound like a laugh, “A step back?”

“For now,” he repeated.

“Like you’re doing me a favor.”

“For both our sakes,” he shrugged, “You’ve got a life, Brooke. You’re very popular. You have friends…”

“Like poor Emma, wasting away in the hospital while I distract myself with my little love affair, is that it?” she scoffed, “Heartless Brooke needs to get her priorities straight…”

“I never said a thing about priorities. And I’m not saying I don’t want to see you. Last night…”

She held up a hand, “If you were so wound up, Seth, you could’ve done something about it then. I don’t need to hear the war stories…” she pushed herself away from the desk, shouldering her bag, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I should probably my sure The Jake doesn’t get himself done for assault. Kudos, by the way, not having him hauled to the office. I can’t tell if that’s incompetence or you doing me a favor.”

He grimaced at the thought, “I probably should have. He was out of line.”

“I know, he’s usually all talk.”

“I held back at first,” he commented, “Figured maybe Thing 1 might come over to bail his other half out.”

“Well, Zach tried, but there’s only so much…” she trailed off, though, realizing his meaning, “Oh. Will,” she shrugged, “He has plenty of experience with livestock.”

“I haven’t seen him this morning. Or yesterday. What, is he playing hooky?”

Brooke cut her eyes at him, “You looking for a Plan B, Mr. B?”

“You don’t know.”

“It’s none of your business what I know, and this cute little game you’re playing isn’t doing what you think it’s doing…”

“You know why I didn’t bring Jake upstairs?” he interrupted.

“Because you love me so much,” she said dryly, “In which case, you’re misguided, because a little humbling could only help Jake at this poi…”

“I heard what he called Audrey Jensen,” he spoke over her, “And I happen to know about a certain video that went viral on the weekend.”

He studied Brooke carefully. Little sophisticate she may have been, her face was no less readable for it. Her eyes went downcast, and she drew her lower lip between her teeth, “I didn’t think girl on girl was your jam, Seth.”

“Brooke, you know they’re looking for the person who filmed that video,” he paused, “Or people.”

“They?” she repeated.

“Principal Teague,” he paused, “For starters. We got a nice multi-paragraph email about it after school yesterday. Asking us to come forward if we knew anything.”

“Well,” Brooke paused, “It’s a good thing you don’t know anything.”

“Brooke, if you’re protecting somebody…”

“That’s a funny thing to say. I thought I was too self-absorbed to protect anybody. My priorities being all screwed up…”

“I don’t want you to get dragged into something you can’t control.”

“That’s nice, Seth,” she stepped back, “But I can control enough. I’d say you might be surprised, but to be honest…you shouldn’t be,” she turned on her heel, “You know what to do if you need a reminder.”

She let the door swing shut behind her, the blackout curtain swaying back and forth as it did, rustling like canned thunder. Seth pressed his eyes shut with a sigh, and repeated the age-old question to himself, not expecting an answer.

---

Amanda found her quarry in an out of way corner of the third floor. The spot, too small to be a class and too big to be a closet had, until this year, been the AV Room. Budget cuts, Amanda understood.

In true Lancer fashion, the room hadn’t yet been repurposed, and remained as it had been in June: an undistinguished graveyard, collecting dust in the dark.

The light wasn’t on, but the door was hanging partially open, which was all the clue Amanda needed. Inside, the air was close and musty, a combination of yellowed paper and the very specific stale sweetness Amanda recognized from the garage as attending old electronics.

There was barely space to walk. The radio and film equipment that had been the room’s raison d’être were lumped up against one wall, dwarfed by cardboard boxes and plastic crates with only occasionally helpful labels in black marker: Prom 1983 – 1990, Lancer FBall 96, and Graduation- 80s. Surely, there must be a better cataloging system, but it wasn’t any of Amanda’s business.

She supposed it wasn’t anybody’s anymore.

“Figured I’d find you here,” she remarked by way of greeting.

Audrey was sitting on nothing less than a camper bed up against the far wall, between towering columns of yearbooks, one of which she was flipping through idly when she looked up to find Amanda in the doorway.

“Noah sent you?”

“I haven’t seen him. Is he okay?”

“Probably not. You should go check.”

Amanda folded her arms, pressing her lips together, “I saw the video.”

Audrey looked up sharply, “He posted it?”

“No, I’m pretty sure even Jake’s self-aware enough to know how he comes off. But he got filmed filming you from I guess three or four different angles,” she cocked an eyebrow, “Nice right hook, by the way.”

Audrey laughed humorlessly, opening and closing her fist. Amanda narrowed her eyes at the raw, red spots on her knuckles and sat beside her. The mattress creaked with the extra weight.

“This isn’t your bed, is it?”

“Nope,” Audrey declared dryly, “I figure whoever put it here is worse off than me. So that’s something.”

Amanda thought of saying something about Audrey’s knuckles but if she knew her at all, it was a moot point. They’d be festering before Audrey noticed anything amiss, and even then it wasn’t certain she’d do anything about it.

“Which year?” she asked with affected arbitrariness, indicating the yearbook on Audrey’s knee.

“The latest,” she flipped it around so Amanda could see the gold embossed ‘2015’, the third digit of which was pulling double duty as the lance of the mounted knight beneath. Across the top of the cover, similar shiny lettering proclaimed ‘LEGEND’.

“I’ve always thought that was a lot to promise, for a title,” Amanda remarked, accepting the book, “Not that I didn’t have a more legendary year than usual.”

Audrey made a soft noise, not quite approaching a laugh as Amanda set to flipping through it. She’d never actually seen the yearbook, contending as she’d been with physical therapy, medical bills, and the implosion of her parents’ marriage.

Legendary indeed.

The glossy pages turned easily between her fingers, as she pored over the portraits of the Class of 2015. Her class, if things had worked out differently.

“Weird,” she observed quietly, “It hasn’t been that long but it feels…” she rolled her eyes at one face, “And, you know, I didn’t even like some of these people, but I’m missing them anyway. But I guess it’s not really them I’m missing, is it?”

Her thumb alighted on a portrait of a dark-skinned boy with almond-shaped eyes. The GW High Yearbook, never particularly kind to students darker than a paper bag, rendered him little more than beaming teeth and bright eyes. Beneath the portrait was printed his senior quote: “If you can make it through the night, there’s a brighter day.”

She’d remarked once that she couldn’t tell a Tupac song from Biggie or DMX or anyone else and he’d looked at her patiently, “You’re saying this like I’m supposed to be surprised.”

“I didn’t choose to be raised on Christian rock.”

“Nah,” his arm had closed around her, “Victim of circumstance.”

Not for the last time, evidently.

She flipped to the back of the book, and noted the page Audrey had been on when she’d come in: This book brought to you by… and a list of names from the Yearbook committee, last but not least of which was Emma Duval, ’18.

“I heard about Emma,” Amanda said carefully.

“So did I,” Audrey shrugged, “She’ll be okay. Apparently.”

“Did you…get a chance to talk?” she paused, “I mean, after Brooke’s party?”

“But before she got attacked by an anonymous maniac?” Audrey snorted, “No. We don’t exactly run in the same circles anymore, do we?”

“Look, it’s not really my business. Emma was always more your friend, but…”

“Amanda, if you hunted me down just to give me the ‘Love and Understanding’ speech…”

“You’re obviously feeling some type of way about it,” she pointed out, “And if there is something left unsaid…”

“Somebody vandalized the house this morning,” Audrey interrupted, “Or last night. Graffitied the door. One word.”

Amanda frowned, “What word?”

Audrey sniffed, providing, “Rewatch Jake’s highlight reel,” by way of answer.

“Shit,” she gritted her teeth, “I never should’ve said anything about Nina and Jake. He has no business taking it out on Noah, anyway. If he had a spine, he’d try me. But this…” she shook her head, “You don’t think Jake…”

“What does it matter?” Audrey snapped, getting to her feet, “Maybe he did. Probably, he didn’t. But nobody would’ve written anything on my door if he and his friends hadn’t made that goddamn video! If they’d just minded their own business instead of getting their sick voyeuristic kicks humiliating people for…for…”

She kicked a box (Lancers Cheer Squad- ’90 – 93; a much abused collection), breathing raggedly. Amanda sighed, setting the yearbook aside, “What did your Dad say?”

“What?”

“Well, he saw it, didn’t he?”

“Oh,” she leaned against a stack of boxes, “He strangled his own hands and stared into the middle distance like he was having a war flashback. Nothing new,” she twisted her own hands in a rough approximation of Pastor Jensen’s habit, “I didn’t stick around for more of the same.”

“What about…” Amanda began, “I mean, did you talk about you?”

Audrey gave her a look, “Not in so many words.”

“He didn’t give you any idea what he was feeling? What he thought about it?”

“He told me we have a meeting today,” she declared airily, “Here, after school. Us and Rachel’s family.”

“What for?”

“If God knows, He didn’t send Dad a head’s up,” Audrey said bitterly, “It sounds like Rachel’s parents strongarmed Teague into it.”

“Teague’s a hard guy to strongarm,” remarked Amanda, who’d grown up hip-to-hip with their principal’s youngest and could testify to the fact.

“Yeah, well, Rachel’s parents are no joke themselves. Or at least her mother isn’t.”

Amanda thought of the mysterious Rachel, of the almost guilty fondness with which Audrey had spoken of her that night at the lake.

“What’s Rachel think?”

Audrey shrugged, “I don’t know. We haven’t talked. But it’s probably nothing good. And she…” she looked up at the dust-coated dome-shaped light fixture, “She’s been through so much shit already. She can’t take it. I can barely take it. And to have to sit in front of some fucking tribunal, like we did something…”

“It’s fucked up,” Amanda said evenly.

“It’s the fucking hypocrisy of it,” Audrey spat, “And even saying the word I feel like some pompous fucking blowhard. Like, there should be a YouTube thumbnail of me all righteous angry: EPIC SJW FAIL COMPILATION.”

“They’d have to ’Shop your hair blue,” Amanda smiled bitterly.

Audrey patted her raven locks absently, “I keep going over it in my head, preparing my statement like I’m going up in front of the cops.”

“There’s an advantage to that, though.”

Audrey gave her a look, “As what? A character building exercise?”

“If they want to hear from you, let them. Don’t let them forget that you were hurt here. Somebody filmed that video and put it online and, Aud, you know who it is.”

“Amanda,” Audrey smiled patiently, “You’re very optimistic.”

“I haven’t heard that one before,” she commented dryly.

“What am I supposed to tell them? That Nina filmed us and put it online for shits and gigs?”

“That’s what happened, isn’t it?”

“You know that and I know that, but it doesn’t matter. There’s no evidence. It’s my word against hers. And knowing her, she’ll get her lawyer Daddy to sue for defamation and I’ll end up sharing a cell with Jamie.”

“Her Dad is a pretty good lawyer,” Amanda admitted reluctantly, “He won the settlement for me.”

Which had come with its own headaches. Sometimes, Amanda wished the garage had prevailed in the suit, open and shut case though it had been. The money had saved her from most of the crushing debt, but it had become an albatross around her parents’ necks.

But maybe some things are just inevitable in this life. Little system shocks like money and injury just speed them along.

“But Jamie was guilty,” Amanda pointed out.

“Please.”

“I don’t like what happened! I’m just saying: she did the crime and she got time. Nina did the crime…”

“The rules don’t apply to people like Nina!” Audrey snapped, “You know that. No matter what she does, who she hurts, she’ll always be pretty, perfect and untouchable: ordained by WASP Jesus to look down on the rest of us. And I can raise as much hell as I want. I can make my accusations and state my case and stand up for myself, but I’ll always be an angry, ornery dyke with a bone to pick.”

She broke off, breathing raggedly.

“Aud…” Amanda said softly, stepping forward, but Audrey wrenched away, shaking her head shortly: Don’t, she seemed to say, don’t bother, lifting her red, wounded hand in warning.

She wasn’t much different from the scrappy elementary schooler she’d found crying in a corner of the playground one day, a lifetime ago.

“You shouldn’t let them push you around like that,” she remembered telling her, full of heady adolescent confidence.

Audrey, no more than 11, had lifted her eyes to her, “I never thought of that,” tear-reddened eyes brightening for just a moment.

“Look,” Amanda attempted, “It may be a while since I’ve been to church, but I can remember my Scripture pretty well.”

“So do I,” muttered Audrey, in a tone suggesting she found these recollections less than soul-affirming.

“For by thy words thou shalt be justified,” she quoted, “And by thy words thou shalt be condemned.”

At Audrey’s questioning expression, Amanda added, “Or, if you prefer the Old Testament: Be sure thy sin will find thee out.”

Audrey met her eyes, “That’s a nice thought, Amanda. But who’s defining the sins?”

---

Part of the terms of Rachel’s imprisonment was she could, under no circumstances, be more than five paces from a responsible adult. For which reason her Dad was driving her to school now.

“This is nice,” he remarked at one point, smiling as if to communicate ‘Nice’, in case she’d forgotten, “Can you remember the last time we drove anywhere together?”

Rachel absolutely could: eight months ago, when he’d ridden in the back of the ambulance with her as she hovered in a blood-loss induced coma. But presumably that wasn’t what he was thinking of.

She smiled at him, so as not to disabuse him of his comforting thoughts.

“One of these days, we have to get out to the club,” he continued, “Rig a sail, like old times.”

He was born for the water, her Dad. It was a shame he’d spent his entire life next to a landlocked lake, but he’d made the best of it. Sometimes, Rachel imagined he’d be better off if he just kissed the bank goodbye and took the paycut to teach his fellow blue bloods the cut of their jib, or what have you.

As it was, he clocked in enough hours at the Lake Club in the summertime that he may as well be paying them rent on top of the usual Gentlemen’s Dues.

Rachel couldn’t say she blamed him.

“And we could pack a picnic lunch. You remember?”

“I remember,” Rachel’s stomach turned at the thought. This, he must have remembered, however, because he added, “I’m sure you’re stomach’s gotten sturdier with time. You’d be surprised how easily you can get used to things.”

So she’d heard.

St. Mary’s loomed ahead of them: a white and blue monument on a white and blue morning, Wren Lake spread out behind it like a glittering sapphire mantle. It was objectively beautiful and, quite frankly, impossible. A place like that should be taking up space on the French Riviera or in the Hamptons, not sitting pretty on some third-rate suburb in the Louisiana Disappointments.

But, as it’s name suggested, St. Mary’s Academy put a lot of stock on belief. And she supposed it couldn’t be that hard to imagine Lakewood was some chintzy enclave, suitable for the champagne and cashmere set.

People believed a whole passel of less probable things with less evidence.

But that was a touch too r/Atheist even for her. It didn’t do to get religiously existential when she was already in a grim mood.

“Here we are,” her father declared, gliding the family Dodge Caravan (a sleek tealish green that turned Rachel’s mother’s stomach, not that she didn’t have her own Mercedes in the garage) into the school parking lot, “And no sore knees for you.”

Rachel self-consciously patted down her skirt, smiling faintly as the sentiment deserved. He sat at the wheel for a bit more, looking passively at the other girls queuing up toward the building.

“You took your medicine this morning, right?”

Rachel nodded silently. Jason smiled, quipping, “So did I,” by which he meant his Vitamin D tablets. Rachel supposed he thought he was being equimanable, finding some common ground with her on their daily dose. Nevermind there’s a slight difference between taking capsules to promote better bone-density over 40 and taking “mild” antidepressants to silence the voices telling you to do the world a favor and walk into traffic.

Not that Rachel’s voices had ever had such a flare for the dramatic. She’d gotten the budget suicidal ideation.

She stepped out onto  the pavement, her backpack swinging pendulously behind her. Unbidden, she traced her peers with her eyes: blurs of white, blue and gray, often traveling in packs of three or more. The air was full of high, twittering laughter and easy chatter.

A nice sound, in theory.

“Now, I will be along at 3:30 on the dot,” her father had stepped out as well, walking around the side of the van to her, “To collect you. We’ll be at George Washington with time to spare.”

Their meeting was at 4:00, presumably giving each school enough time to close up on regular operations for the day. The half-hour window loomed absurdly large in Rachel’s mind, however, with the Meeting (a proper noun whenever Rachel thought of it, like a looming natural disaster on a radar screen: immutable and inevitable) hunkered behind it in an amorphous cloud of latent judgment.

She expected Audrey felt similarly, but she couldn’t say for sure. Her plaintive, whining texts from last night had been read but not responded to and, at this point, Rachel couldn’t even blame her.

She had her own shit to deal with, especially if she was correct in her convictions that the person responsible for their film debut was at her school.

And, anyway, Rachel didn’t know what she wanted Audrey to say. To agree with her that this all sucked? Revolutionary. What a great use of mobile data. Love to burn my corneas out at 1:00 in the morning typing out Byronic screeds about how Unfair everything is so the girl on the other end can go ‘exactly’.

“You’ll be waiting here?” her father was asking, “Or maybe inside…”

“No,” Rachel interrupted, “No, you won’t have to come in. I’ll just…” she cleared her throat, indicating the white and blue gazebo on the green off the parking lot, “I’ll be there. Doing homework.”

“Mphm,” he nodded, “Rachel…”

Oh Jesus.

“I trust you,” he said this in a weighty fashion, as if intending reams of subtext to be immediately understandable to her. Rachel didn’t much feel like mindreading at present.

“I do,” he repeated this, nodding as if to affirm the fact of it to himself. One of those little battles we fight every day: sometimes against others, usually against ourselves, often against our ideas of what others will say or do.

“It isn’t a long way to GW High.”

“No,” Rachel said, “I mean. I guess not,” in case he had the misbegotten impression she’d been there before for illicit lesbian hookups.

“It’s at the top of Post Road,” he nodded, “Straight as an arrow,” he knifed his arm through the air, and self-consciously added, “In a manner of speaking,” going pink about the ears.

“And it’s a nice day,” he continued, “And you aren’t in trouble.”

“Dad…”

“Oh,” he interrupted, popping the trunk of the van, “What the heck?”

‘What the heck’ was his new verbal indulgence. For several months, he’d been a “What the devil” guy, remarking “It’s the devil of the thing!” when he couldn’t find his keys or, “Oh, go to the devil!” when his racquetball team lost at the club, like a PG Wodehouse character. Rachel could only assume he’d pivoted to heckery after a talking to from the lady of the house.

He grabbed a cerulean two-seater bicycle from the trunk (the back seats had been lowered to accommodate it) and set it down on the pavement, “Here you go.”

Rachel eyed her bike skeptically, “Dad…”

“By 4:00,” he likewise retrieved the bike’s chain, handing it with due casualness, “I assume they’ll have a bike rack. We pay enough in taxes.”

“Yeah, I’m sure they have a bike rack, Dad, but…”

“Rachel,” nobody could ever accuse Jason Murray of having a commanding voice, which must be where she’d gotten it from; still, he had a way of stopping you cold with only a word…a trick Rachel hadn’t yet learned.

“Like I said. I trust you. And you aren’t in any trouble…”

“Does Mom know?”

He cleared his throat loudly, “Given I made up my mind just this minute…”

“I don’t want to cause any trouble. It’s fine. You can pick me up…”

“It’s no trouble,” he insisted, “And your mother will understand,” she must have been making a remarkable face, because he immediately added, “Everything we do is for your sake, Rachel. It may not always be crystal clear, but there’s a logic to it. And if your mother and I disagree over some things…they’re small disagreements, to a bigger end.”

She felt her mother’s phantom fingers in the flesh of her arm and winced, “If you say so, Dad,” she eyed her bike, lips curling into a reluctant smile, “And I’m not gonna say no to a nice thing.”

There not having been many nice things, but that went without saying and she was really trying not to be super pathetic.

“Some quiet with your thoughts can be good for you,” Jason decided, “I know I’m never more at peace than when I’m out on the water. A bit of productive loneliness.”

As opposed, she assumed, to the vegatative loneliness with which she’d passed most of the last 24 hours.

“Thank you, Dad. I’ll…” she put on a smile, “I’ll be there at 4:00.”

She didn’t know if he sincerely believed she wasn’t harboring any teenage temptations toward disobedience, but she wasn’t. After all, where else could she go?

But she wasn’t in trouble. She wasn’t a prisoner. Nobody was blaming her for anything. It was all only a tiny disagreement in service to a greater end.

“Be there or be square,” her father looked quite pleased with himself, “Love you lots,” he went in as if for a kiss and then hesitated, a brief flicker of worry in his eyes, “Um. That is…”

“It’s okay, Dad,” and she pecked him on the cheek, endeavoring not to think too much about the train of thought he’d been running on, “Thanks again.”

He made a hasty escape after that, off to another day among his spreadsheets. Rachel wheeled her bike to the rack and set to chaining it. It was a beauty of a thing: an old-school Scwhinn Admiral her folks had gotten her for her 13th birthday. Her mother, in a smiling mood that day, had declared it would help her “with the babyfat”.

Close to three years on, Rachel had accepted she was gonna be round-faced to the grave, no matter how much she pedaled, and her mother had banked up on other things to complain about.

Rachel got the idea there was some social syphilis associated with the bike too. Most St. Mary’s girls already had their permits, and some of them didn’t but were still cruising around in jewel-tone Sweet 16 presents. You just couldn’t win.

Her bike secured, Rachel crossed the courtyard and marched on to the sausage factory.

The grand white and glass doors of St. Mary’s Academy opened into a round lobby, brilliantly lit courtesy of giant tombstone-shaped windows like the ones in Sister Alice-Marie’s office. It was a very open sort of place: the rooms were all done in shades of white and blue (wains all scoted, of course), the lights were warm and yellow instead of cool flourescent, and there was always a faint smell of flowers in the air, courtesy of omnipresent plug-in scent thingies.

Rachel was given to understand the local public option was a harder, more austere place: no wainscoting there, and the only adornment on their windows were bars.

A more sinister place, and more honest for it.

Rachel opened her locker (also pleasantly periwinkle) and proceeded to stock up for the day. The little space was only lightly personalized: no glitter glue and origami flowers for her. She’d balanced a pair of LEGO minifigures on either end of the locker: one of her movie’s walking revenants (she enjoyed coming up with increasingly stupid words for her plastic undead, knowing that they’d just be called ‘zombies’ in the movie itself) and the golden haired ingenue he wanted to take to (or, for, as the case may be) dinner. The zombie would be forever foiled in his goals, however, by the plataeu of textbooks between him and his quarry, ensuring the distressed damsel didn’t have to move an inch (lucky for her!) since, of course, zombies can’t climb, no more than they can swim, talk, or procreate.

There’d been something very funny about this setup when Rachel had first done it, but it eluded her now.

On the inside of the locker door was a photo Rachel had taken with one of Audrey’s Polaroids. What a stupid thing to do, one might think, but it was hardly incriminating. Rachel had been fooling around with the camera, looking through it like an old Viewmaster, watching the play of the late afternoon sun against the tiny glass panel.

Audrey, laughing off to the side, had begun to tell her she was holding it wrong, and had moved to adjust her finger, which slipped.

The resulting snapshot was a gauzy grid of light and shadow: their fingers, briefly tangled over the aperture, nothing between them but the stubborn sun.

There were better pictures of the two of them together, but this was Rachel’s favorite.

She ran her fingers along the sharp corner of the Polaroid, thinking wistfully of the last time she’d seen Audrey in person. That day, of course, in the truck, at the Overlook.

Not a coincidence, obviously. And they would see each other again. Today, at the ‘meeting’, Audrey with her father behind her and Rachel with her parents.

And after…?

It was funny. As happy as she’d been that day, as relaxed and contented as she’d felt in Audrey’s arms, she’d still had the sense that it wouldn’t last, because nice things don’t.

But she hadn’t realized just how brief, how fleeting her peace would be for all that. And now that it was spent…

“Hey, Rach,” Nicolette Prince had a voice like acrylics on a champagne glass. She leaned against the adjacent locker, chestnut curls bobbing tightly around her smoothly angled heart-shaped face, “I was worried we were getting an earthquake, so this is a nice surprise.”

Try as she might to keep from looking down at herself, Rachel couldn’t resist. She was not, surprise-surprise, obese. She was barely fat notthattherewasanythingwrongwiththat.

But Nicolette (never Nicole; certainly not Nikki) had her Gospel and she wasn’t editing it.

Rachel kept her face impassive, which meant unintelligent and vacant, which wasn’t great but preferable to the alternative.

“Yanno, I’m surprised to see you,” Casey Colazzo materialized at her other side, star-shaped earrings swaying tweely as her eyes twinkled.

“Where else would I be?” Rachel asked flatly, closing the locker properly and hearing the sad sorrowful collapse of one or both of her plastic prisoners in the process.

“Dead,” Nicolette remarked from the opposite side, “No vaccine for rabies, yanno.”

“Litch-rally,” slurred Rosalie D’Armetta at the point of this pernicious triad, hot pink lips snaggling the word in characteristic fashion.

“You know, Rach, I never would’ve thought a girl like you had such an adventurous lifestyle,” Nicolette continued, “You know, clymydia’s spread through saliva. And herpes.”

“And AIDS!” added Rosalie helpfully.

“I’m actually surprised they let you walk in the door, to be honest,” said Nicolette, “I mean, personally, I’m thinking of boycotting gym…”

“Why?” Rachel interrupted in that same vacant, unfocused way. Nicolette stopped like a stalled motor, her waxy face (she subscribed to some version of the ‘natural look’ that meant her various beauty products had to be in neutral tones) fixed in an expression of sour incomprehension.

“What?” she asked finally.

“Why would you have to boycott gym?” Rachel asked, feeling very much like a cornered animal, backed into the dark by snarling, yellow-eyed predators, and she wanted to run, she wanted to bolt but she was cornered and she knew what she was supposed to do, she had to keep quiet, keep her head down, let them have their fun…

Audrey wouldn’t do that. Audrey knew how to bite back.

“Oh, this is cute,” Casey giggled, “You’re playing dumb.”

“And it’s not very fun, so if it’s alright with you, I think I’ll stop…”

She attempted to go, but Nicolette moved to block her way, “You don’t think I haven’t noticed, Rachel?”

“Noticed what?”

“All those little droopey-dog stares. In class, here in the hall…in gym. Now, listen, I don’t mind being checked out…”

“Litch-rally,” supplied Rosalie.

“But a girl’s got to draw the line somewhere…”

“I’ve never checked you out,” and she didn’t mean it to sound bitchy, though she probably could’ve afforded to load it up with nice, hot, green venom: a hot slice of contempt, with a side of haughty pride (“The idea I’d ever lower myself so! Go to the Devil, I say! The Devil!”)…

That would’ve been good. That would’ve been better. But she didn’t know how. It was hard enough mounting this moronic back and forth. She couldn’t be mean, she’d never been taught how…

Or maybe she’d just never been a good student.

The smile vanished from Nicolette’s face, “Oh, you didn’t, huh?”

“Nope,” Rachel said tautly, “Not once.”

Nicolette let out a short, shrill laugh, as if aghast at the audacity and, before she closed her mouth, spat on her.

Rachel winced, her practiced mask cracking from the feeling: cold and slimy against her face. She staggered back, right into Casey, who pushed her roughly forward, “Nice try, sweetheart.”

Rachel staggered wildly, her bag weighing her down. Nicolette piroutted elegantly away, leaving nothing to separate Rachel from the pretty, blue solid tile floor…

“Girls!”

The triad scattered like birds after a shot. Rachel heard Rosalie whining “Seriously…” which melted into a further phrase below the human register.

She’d braced herself against the floor, and the heels of her hands had suffered for it. She hissed softly at the burning pain and preemptively winced to inspect the damage, though no skin had been broken.

“Rachel,” her rescuer, appearing as little more than a black cone from her current vantage, approached, skirts rustling as she moved, “Rachel, are you alright?”

Sister Anne Teague was the youngest crow in the St. Mary’s flock. That being said, the habit had a way of anonymizing the women underneath. She could be anywhere between 25 and 40 and was differentiated from the other nuns, less because of her youth as for her willingness to work her face into more than two expressions.

She was wearing one of those expressions now: careworn concern, her brown eyes wide with consternation as she bent down as if to help Rachel up.

“I’m okay,” she said curtly, getting unsteadily to her feet, “Really, I…I’m fine, Sister.”

The nun frowned, “Those girls took off pretty quick, but not quick enough. Nicolette’s in our homeroom. I don’t know where she thinks she can hide…”

“No!” Rachel blurted.

Sister Anne frowned, “I’m sorry?”

“Please, Sister…” her voice was heavy and sluggish, “I mean it: I’m okay. They didn’t really do anything…”

“A stiff wind blew you over, huh?” her tone was light but her face was deadly serious, “Rachel, I know you’re going through a lot…”

“Sister…” her voice was already shaking and she turned away, not trusting herself not to break down sobbing like a kid, as if she hadn’t made a big enough idiot of herself already.

“You don’t have to take everything that’s thrown at you…”

“Maybe not,” Rachel smiled wanly, “But I’m not up to throwing anything back. Please, Sister…don’t make a big deal about it. Please?”

The delicate lines at the corner’s of Sister Anne’s pale lips deepened in consternation. Finally, she nodded with a sigh, squeezing Rachel’s shoulder lightly, “Alright, Rachel. But…”

“It’s not forever,” Rachel interrupted, “It’ll all blow over eventually.”

Saying it, she willed herself to believe it and looked in Sister Anne’s kind eyes for that same belief.

“If you do need anything,” Anne said ultimately, “You know where to find me.”

Rachel nodded and smiled her off, watching her head back toward her homeroom, where Rachel was surely expected to be herself in a minute. Nicolette Prince would be there too, of course, and the whole terrible trio and more would be lurking about all day, always just out of her peripheral vision, watching and snickering and casting their judgments.

And Rachel, who had a muted bark and a dulled bite, would have to take it. And then there’d be evening, and then morning: the third day.

Eventually, it would end. And, on the way, she’d get used to it. She was a fast learner.

---

Noah had gone into homeroom preemptively armored in his usual plate-and-mail of precocious irony. Word of the Tournament of Tentacles had spread quick as a candid lesbian makeout video, though Noah doubted the three-man comedy would have as much staying power.

Imagine his vindication, then, when the main event of the period proved to be The Card.

The Card was a 24×36 slab of lavender-colored poster board, folded severely to create the impression of a greeting card. On its front the words ‘Get Better, Emma!’ had been rendered in a loopy violet script spackled with silver glitter.

The Card had been handed down by the indomitable Mrs. Hayward who, in her ageless wisdom, had determined they should all sign it, to show their wounded comrade that she was not alone in her suffering.

Since this was Emma’s homeroom, the Card came down to them first, where it was passed from desk to desk like a cross between a solemn rite and a party game. The Jake, when it came his time, stared uncomprehendingly as if cowed by the sudden responsibility thrust upon his shoulders. Or possibly Audrey had whacked his brains so out of joint that he couldn’t remember how many tentacles an octopus had hey-oh!

Needless to say, Noah was avoiding even breathing in Jake’s direction, and was glad to be several desks removed.

“Gotta say, I’m impressed.”

Noah turned a wary eye to the next desk, where Colin Gable was poring over the Card, eyebrows raised in appraisal, “No dicks,” he tapped his pen against the cardstock, “Not a one. I’m not sure whether to be inspired or alarmed.”

“Oh, that’s not surprising,” Noah declared.

“Because we’re all so nice.”

“Because this r0om’s gender ratio is skewed against the chromosome that gets their kicks out of dicks,” he thought of Audrey, presumably cooling her heels (and her knuckles) in the homeroom next door, and cleared his throat self-consciously, “In a manner of speaking.”

Colin looked around the room to confirm this was so and made a low, approving noise in the back of his throat, “Nice catch, Foster.”

“That’s me,” Noah intoned, accepting the Card, “Multi-talented. Did you give her your phone number?” he indicated the spot where Colin had scrawled ‘For a good time’ over a row of digits.

“Nah,” he shook his head, “That’s the direct line to Disney World.”

“Disney World,” Noah repeated.

“Sometimes I call them and plan a vacation like I’m a bigshot with six kids and three bank accounts.”

“And then, what…hang up before they ask for your credit card?”

“You can milk it pretty far first,” he grinned lazily and Noah couldn’t suppress a sympathetic smile.

“It doesn’t take much for you, huh?”

Colin shrugged, “Nothing wrong with living in the fantasy.”

Noah didn’t argue with this, writing a quick message to his best friend’s ex-best friend (“And RUBBER BATH TOYS!!!!” SpongeBob SquarePants screeched in his ear, forcing an unbidden giggle) and passing the Card on.

“So that was pretty kickass, by the way,” Colin was saying.

“Huh?”

“Yanno. Turning the tables on Jake ’N Bake,” he showed his teeth, “Score for facts and logic, amirite?”

“Yeah,” Noah scoffed, “I’m sure he’s learned his lesson.”

If Jake took anything away from that little spectacle, it was that Audrey Jensen wasn’t disproving any stereotypes about angry lesbians. Noah, meanwhile, had defied gender expectations by swooning in the background, like a Girl of the Week on Batman ’66.

From the sound of it, however, Colin was being sincere, or as close to it as he ever got.

“Eh, he hasn’t learned shit since tying his shoes,” he declared breezily, “But everyone watching?”

“My adoring public,” Noah intoned.

“I’m tellin’ ya, man, the Revolution’s in the wind. I can smell it.”

“And here I thought that was natural medicine,” Noah smirked.

“That’s no small part, my man. Yanno, not to evangelize…”

“Are you trying to kill my mother?”

“Hey, I can probably hook her up too. I’ve got mates’ rates…”

Noah folded his arms, studying Colin skeptically. The scrappy skater was fun and everything, and he was amiable enough by Noah’s admittedly starved standards, but he was rarely ever friendly.

“Mr. Gable, you’re trying to seduce me.”

“Hey,” Colin pointed, “Psycho. Great movie.”

“Wrong on both counts,” Noah corrected flatly. “It’s from The Graduate, and Peeping Tom did Psycho better first.”

“You’re so smart.”

“You’re angling for something,” Noah leaned forward.

“Love and affection.”

“Mates’ rates,” he pointed, “In your own words. Sorry, no can do.”

Colin’s dopey smirk slipped, “…huh?”

“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, Colin, I do not set the prices at Level Down. My manager does that, and he is a calcified boil on the buttcheek of our capitalist utopia. So if you don’t like our boutique offerings, get thee to GameStop…”

“Which doesn’t stock PS2-era classics,” he spread his arms, “And a man’s got to round out his Tekken collection,” sighing theatrically, he threw his arms up, “I am your slave!”

“What a beautiful notion,” Noah smiled politely, “Please never repeat it again.”

“Yes, honorable master.”

“That’s slightly better,” he leaned back in his seat, eyebrow cocked in appraisal, “Yanno, I don’t see you in the shop as much these days.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I still have all the same degenerate habits. It’s just I’ve been collecting new ones.”

Noah snorted, “And what about that, uh…” he snapped his fingers rapidly, still not too old to relish the sense of achievement that came with the skill (take that, early childhood diagnosticians!), “That kid you used to hang around with,” he looked around the room as if to search, though he knew there was no point in it, “Danny?”

“Dylan,” Colin’s smile had become merely suggestive, “Yeah, no, he left town.”

“Right,” Noah paused, “That sucks.”

“It sure does,” he drummed his fingers against the desk; his nails were bitten almost to the quick, “It fucking…” he shook his head, curly locks shaking about his head, “…sucks.”

Noah experienced a strange, limbo-like sensation: a sick cocktail of sympathy and relief that he couldn’t quite understand and didn’t quite like himself for feeling.

“You’re lucky, Foster,” Colin said eventually, in a different voice than he’d been using.

“Lucky?”

Colin lifted his eyes back to him, “You’ve still got your partner in crime in your corner.”

He thought of Audrey materializing like an avenging angel solely to slug his Biff of the Minute in the jaw. Not for the first time. If he was honest, probably not for the last.

Odd that, of everything he’d felt watching that whole clusterfudge play out, gratitude hadn’t made the cut.

Was he that used to Audrey? More specifically, was he that used to being saved?

Way to stick it to Normative Gender Roles. Viva la Revolution.

“The sidekick’s life isn’t a glamorous one,” he offered at length, which seemed the safest thing to say, “But someone’s gotta do it.”

“Someone,” Colin repeated, still unsmiling, though his eyes remained bright as ever, “But there’s gotta be something fighting your own fights too, right?”

Noah’s first thought was that Colin was being bitchy and accusatory: speaking aloud what Noah was feeling himself. But he looked at the other kid’s eyes and saw none of that characteristic easy, half-faded out mockery.

For the first time in their admittedly shallow acquaintance, Colin was dead serious.

---

“How are we doing on time, Jackie?”

Quinn’s faithful assistant had mastered the art of appearing to walk very fast while always being exactly two strides behind him. He chalked it up to her Louboutins.

“You have a budget meeting at 12:00,” she informed him in her usual cadence of breathless dispassion, as if she’d long since expended all her hysteria but knew no other setting than to burn off the reserves.

On a man, it would be grating, but Jackie was, alas, every inch a woman. Quinn respected a person who knew their strengths.

“And sanitation at 1:15.”

“You can cancel that.”

“But if the garbagemen go on strike…”

“While teenage girls are menaced in their homes by masked marauders. Sure, let Trashcan Tom wave his pecker around. See who comes out looking the jackass.”

“Mr. Mayor…”

“What is that?” he stopped in the middle of the hospital lobby, craning his neck at a cluster of decorative glass orbs suspended from the ceiling.

“It’s an Art Installation.”

“I know what it is. What is it supposed to be?”

Jackie peeked over the top of the lavish flower display she was hauling, “It reminds me of soap bubbles.”

Quinn, who had been thinking of Technicolor tumors, grimaced, “It’s damn upsetting. They should just put in a landscape.”

“Hanging from the ceiling?”

“Use your imagination!” he snapped, crossing over to the elevator.

“The ICU’s the third floor,” Jackie said helpfully.

“I know,” Quinn assured her. Slim chance of his forgetting that. They’d pumped his wife’s stomach there. Not the darkest episode of their marriage.

“This will be quick,” Quinn declared, as if willing it to be true, “We go in, we do our diligence, we go out.”

“Poor kid,” Jackie mused, “It must be rough on her.”

“Well, she’s alive,” he continued, “So not as bad as it could be.”

Jackie gave him a look and Quinn clarified, “She’ll be able to point out who did the dirty work and then this three-ring circus can pick up stakes.”

“You should give her a medal,” it was a testament to Jackie’s professionalism that he didn’t know whether she was being bitchy or stupid. Quinn decided to let it rest, for his health.

The elevator dinged its way to them in due course, the silvery doors parting to reveal another of Quinn’s pet ulcers.

“Ms. Taylor,” he greeted the reporter with his coolest smile, “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Mayor Maddox,” Eliza Taylor’s resting scowl transformed in half a blink at the sight of him, “Ministering to the sick?”

“No camera today?” he looked around theatrically, as if she may have hidden her little stooge in the folds of her blazer, “Smart idea. Wouldn’t want you get pulled again. That’d be…what is it…the third time in two days? Must be a peacetime record, and that’s not counting that little incident at the Independence Day barbecue…”

“A fly flew in my mouth!” she interrupted, eyes flaring, “It was a natural reaction. It could’ve happened to anybody…”

“Anderson Cooper reported from Katrina,” interjected Jackie, “And he was cool a cucumber,” she paused as if to impress the notion, “People died.”

“Thank you, Jacquelyn,” Eliza smiled tautly, “For the comparison. I strive to be a little more like old Andy every day,” she folded her arms, “I don’t have to ask why you’re here. But I don’t think you’ll have much luck.”

“I’m visiting a family friend in her hour of need,” Quinn answered smoothly, “I’ll be sure to check her neck for the Mark of the Vampire.”

“Oh, I wish I could give you a full report on the latest victim…”

“Latest, very lovely. I almost missed the note of hope…”

“…but I got the boot,” she lifted her hand in an approximation either of ‘Oh well’ or ‘Up yours’.

“And you’re so tenacious! No hiding under the bed?”

“I guess I’m too honest.”

“Now, you’ve been called a lot in your career, Ms. Taylor…”

“And a lot of that from your office. Now, is Jackie here also your speechwriter, or do I have somebody else to thank for ‘opportunistic ambulance chaser with an empty head and a full blouse’.”

“Did I say that?”

“In full view of half the town council and most of the small business bureau.”

“There mustn’t have been a camera in the room. At any rate, Ms. Taylor, it has been nice catching up, but there are places to go and people to see…”

“No comment?” Eliza asked incredulously, “Really, Mayor Maddox?”

“I wasn’t aware this was an interview,” Quinn said smoothly as he could manage.

“Well, why not make it one? Just to take advantage.”

“Your favorite sport.”

“I’ve never reported an untruth in my entire career.”

“With such verbal gymnastics, you ought to have gone into politics.”

“Them’s fighting words, Mayor,” Eliza said coolly, stepping back, “But, alright, if you’d rather not give a statement on the tragedy gripping our town…”

“Do you beg for soundbites from everyone you run into at elevators?”

“Only elected officials.”

Quinn made a soft sound in the back of his throat, “You can tell the people the mayor swears he’ll get to the bottom of this. Presuming, of course, they let you on the air to spread the word.”

She simpered at him, catlike, and hustled off. Quinn watched her go, grinding his jaw, “Jackie, I have told a lie.”

“What this time?”

“That woman would make a pisspoor politician,” he decided, calling the elevator anew,  “She doesn’t care to be liked.”

“I never liked her,” Jackie announced.

“You wouldn’t,” he ushered her in and tapped the button for the third floor.

“All that noise she kicked up over the midterms last year…”

“Ix-nay,” Quinn said automatically.

“…I’m just sayin’, she couldn’t stick anything to ya then…” her accent became more pronounced when she was griping,

“That kind of woman doesn’t give up easy,” Quinn muttered.

“She needs a good lay,” she smirked indulgentky.

“Jackie,” Quinn cautioned, “I have a daughter.”

“And I’m a woman!”

Jackie certainly was, and she was doing a great job at it too, so Quinn held his tongue as they arrived.

The elevator opened out right opposite Unit 3B, the ICU. Quinn presented himself at the nurses’ station, leaning chummily against the polished white desk, “Hello. I’m here to visit Emma Duval.”

The unit clerk, a wizened Filipino woman with a face narrower than the gate of heaven, sized him up, “Are you immediate family, sir?”

“No,” Quinn answered, striving not to appear deflated, “I’m the mayor.”

“I know that, sir.”

“It’s only a few minutes. Some well-wishes. You understand.”

“The patient needs rest and recovery. I can tell you what I told that reporter…”

“Well, I’m not here to cross examine her! It’s just a visit. I…I brought flowers!” he gestured to the display, which Jackie twiddled her fingers over.

“No fresh flowers in patient rooms,” the clerk said acidly.

“Why not?” Quinn demanded.

“Sir…”

“Really, it’s just a friendly visit. I’ve known her a while. She’s always at my house!”

The clerk blinked at him.

“For sleepovers,” Quinn clarified, “With my daughter.”

The sentinel remained unmoved. Quinn pushed away from the desk with an aggrieved grunt, his eye alighting on a familiar face a little along the U-shaped unit.

“Hey!” he waved, crossing over to the uniformed youth posted outside Room 8, “My main man!”

Deputy Dwayne, he of the Down Syndrome nephew or cousin, smiled broadly, as if to impress he absolutely had not been watching Quinn’s entrance like dinner theater, “Mayor Maddox! Good to see you.”

“Good to see you too. How’s the family? Not up here, I hope,” he crossed to him in two strides, speaking a mile a minute and aware of the clerk’s eyes boring holes into his skull all the while.

“Oh, no. Praise God.”

“Praise God. You’re working, then? Of course you are.”

Dwayne nodded to the little placard next to Room 8, on which a nurse had written ‘E- DUVAL’ in block letters, “Sheriff Hudson put her on watch. Just as a precaution.”

“Smart idea and no better man for the job.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“So, I’m paying a little visit to our Miss Duval. Strictly friendly affair. She and my daughter are best pals. You know how girls are.”

Dwayne’s expression suggested he did not, which was fine; Quinn had been in possession of a “girl” for 16 years and was regularly dumbfounded even now.

“That’s very nice of you, Mr. Mayor,” said Dwayne in a pitying cadence Quinn didn’t appreciate, “But the doctor’s orders are…”

“Close family, yes, of course. Thoroughly understood, and obviously you have to do your duty, but when I tell you, my daughter is fit to be tied over this tragedy.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes,” Quinn said vehemently, suppressing the mental image of the Kool-Aid man at the ejaculation, “She’s been disconsolate. She wanted to skip school! But, of course, with exams and…” he gestured demonstratively, “…studies, I had to put my foot down..and directly into my mouth.”

“So you put your foot up, then?” Dwayne clearly thought he was a magician of words.

“Yes, of course,” Quinn conceded, thinking up your happy ass, you smug pillock, “So I came here to put her mind at ease, as it were. Let her know her friend’s okay. You understand?”

Brooke had told him nothing of the kind. In fact, given he’d been sweating his balls off at city hall all day, they hadn’t exchanged as much as a breath on the subject of Emma’s predicament, nor was Brooke likely to make him an ambassador for her in any event, but he’d come this far.

“You’re a good Dad, Mayor Maddox,” Dwayne declared.

“I try to be.”

“I guess a few minutes won’t hurt,” he looked searchingly past Quinn to the unit clerk, who had been observing all of this with the caustic displeasure of the perennially unloved.

“No fresh flowers,” she said at last.

“Fine,” Quinn surrendered, “Jackie, you wait here.”

Jackie made a nasal whine of protest but he didn’t stick around to hear it, instead stepping past Dwayne and into Room 8.

“Emma!” he greeted bracingly, “Hello.”

Emma Duval was sitting upright in bed, her hair loose around her shoulders. On the face of it, she looked pretty hearty, the only indication of her recent distress being the tiny suture bandages on her arms.

“Mr. Maddox,” she smiled awkwardly, “Hi.”

“I’m just paying a friendly visit.”

“Yeah,” she nodded, “I heard.”

“Oh,” he looked out toward the nurses’ station, clearing his throat.

“Did Brooke really send you here?” and, in her bald-faced skepticism he allowed himself to appreciate she really must be one of his Princess’s nearest and dearest.

“Not in so many words, but I doubt she’ll begrudge me.”

“Well, it’s very nice of you,” this said with some finality as if she really had no idea what else she could say and no inclination to probe the possibilities.

“But you’re feeling alright? Better, anyway? When I heard you’d been brought to the ICU, I…”

She shook her head, though the motion caused her to go a little glassy-eyed. She lifted her hand to the back of her head and let out a short, self-deprecating laugh, “I think they panicked,” she paused, “Or they know who my Mom is.”

“It doesn’t hurt to have someone on the inside,” he chuckled chummily. Emma didn’t seem to find this funny.

“I’m on concussion protocol,” she continued, “So they’re keeping me overnight but otherwise…” she shrugged, “I’m fine.”

“Well, look at that,” Quinn nodded approvingly, “Tangoed with a maniac and you’re waving the whole thing off as no big deal. You’re made of strong stuff, Emma, and that’ll carry you a ways.”

“That’s nice of you to say,” but she didn’t sound like she believed it herself.

“I suppose,” he continued cautiously, smothering a guilty flare-up of self-awareness, “You’ve been kept talking a while?”

“Hm?” she blinked, “Oh. Yeah, the Sheriff was in here a little while ago.”

She quite clearly didn’t feel comfortable saying anymore. And why should she? He could count the number of one-on-ones they’d had on his pinkie. What did he really expect?

Besides to be photographed proferring a fine bouquet to the courageous survivor, with his compliments and assurances that the Madman Who’d Done This would not be long at large.

And he couldn’t even have that. But he could still walk away with more dignity than Eliza Taylor.

“Well, we’re all pulling for you, Emma,” he said at length, “I promise, we’re going to get this character. He must’ve thought himself a big man, but he didn’t count on you stymieing him, and that’ll be a difference.”

“Didn’t he?” she asked so quietly he at first thought he’d imagined it.

“I’m sorry?”

“No. Just…I was just thinking aloud,” she twisted her hands together over the thin coverlet, “What if he did count on me stymieing him?”

They looked at each other blankly for a minute. Quinn cleared his throat, “I don’t see what you mean.”

And Emma shook her head, “It’s nothing. I’m just climbing the walls in here,” another little chuckle. Quinn eyed the dull white walls, “Not the liveliest place. No glass tumors, at least, so that’s something.”

“What?”

“I brought you flowers, but I think the nurses are hoarding them for themselves. But you didn’t hear that from me. Their union’s got a lot of clout,” he rooted around in his jacket pocket, “Let me see…ah! This will have to do!”

He set a handful of gaily colored toffees in wax paper down on the nightstand. Emma picked one up gingerly, running her finger over the twin calligraphed S’s printed on either side of the wrapping.

“Smith’s Sweeties?”

“Mr. Smith’s a friend of mine, yanno” and still friendlier to his campaign’s expense account, “I’ve got more of these things lying around than I know what to do with.”

“Thank you, Mr. Maddox,” Emma smiled, setting the Sweetie back down, for which he couldn’t blame her, “For visiting.”

“Sorry about the flowers.”

“I’m sure they’re very nice. I’ll let my Mom know you were here to visit.”

“Very nice,” dammit shit, “Always love catching up with the good doctor.”

“You can tell Brooke I’ll be home soon,” she smiled, “And I’m okay,” she hesitated there for a bit, as if weighing adding something else to the message, but whatever the sentiment was, she swallowed it.

Girls.

“Will do,” he assured her, turning and hustling out of their like the devil was on him.

“Have a good day, Mr. Mayor!” Dwayne waved him off like a parent seeing their tyke off at pre-k. Quinn grimaced in salute and snapped for Jackie, who reported at once to his heels.

“What about the flowers?” she asked as they left 3B behind them.

“Gift to the nurses,” he replied bluntly, calling the elevator, “You can write up the bill as a charitable expense.”

---

Emma listened to Mayor Maddox hector his assistant until the automatic doors of the ICU slid shut behind them, leaving her alone again with that most reliable of companions: her thoughts.

A sorry state of affairs.

Maxine Miller had popped in and out with mechanical regularity throughout the morning, though she’d eventually weaned her off the juice boxes. She was remarkably efficient and presumably well-intentioned, but Emma didn’t quite feel comfortable opening up around her. She had the idea that anything she said would end up in her mother’s ear.

And why should that idea bother her so much? It wasn’t like she was in the habit of keeping things from her mother. If her friends’ observations were anything to go by, she was freakishly the opposite.

“Seriously, Em,” Brooke had remarked loftily ahead of one post-game night out, “You don’t have to tell her everything, all the time. You’re a big girl.”

“Not legally,” offered Riley, taking a side without quite taking one.

“If I don’t tell her, she’ll worry,” Emma pointed out, “and then she might get curious. And then she might…” she shrugged, “Think things.”

“And that goes nowhere good,” Nina smirked, “Nothing’s worse than a big imagination to make a mess.”

Nina hadn’t often agreed with Emma on anything. It was weird to think about now.

In theory, it made perfect sense: if you don’t tell people the truth, they’ll imagine alternatives, and people usually think up explanations much worse than reality. It’s just how people are.

But Emma wasn’t trying to keep people from thinking the worst. She was trying to keep them from thinking too much at all.

Hadn’t she been warned? Hadn’t her mother been threatened?

And if this person, whoever they were, could just cold call her out of the blue, if they could break into her house and vanish into the night without a trace, who’s to say they wouldn’t find out if she said too much to the wrong person?

The whole thing was crazy. People were dead. Certainly, there was no reason to believe her friend in the Brandon James mask wasn’t the same person who’d wiped out the Winters family and shoved that bike wheel around Brock Carmichael’s neck.

But what connection did any of those people have with Emma? And the mask…had he been wearing it then, too? Why? The Winterses had no connection with their local ghost story. Not like Emma did.

A question for the police. She hadn’t needed much time with Clark Hudson to see how the question was wearying him. He’d been sleepless and bedraggled, and his hand had moved listlessly as it jotted notes in his little pad.

She’d felt wretched for lying to him. Not lying, she’d told herself; just careful editing: selecting out incriminating…harmful?…information, because…

She hadn’t been told too. She hadn’t been ordered to say or not say anything.

She’d chosen to withhold facts.

And here she was, laid up in bed, and all she could think of was how to withhold more. Because she could say whatever she wanted, but whatever blind she threw over her mother, over Clark Hudson, over Brooke’s father, even…they’d all be proved worthless once the police got into her phone.

“Hey, girl, hey”

“Wanna play a game?”

Irrefutable proof she’d been communicating with a mysterious stranger at the vital time.

But would that be so bad? They could trace the call, couldn’t they? Find out who was responsible and put an end to it for good and all.

“Just offering a helping hand”, her friend had told her. So helpful that, when he had her laid up and bleeding in a pile of broken glass, he hadn’t used that knife of his to finish her off…and called the ambulance instead.

In a decisive burst of energy, Emma threw the sheets aside and swung her legs down to the floor. She’d been given a pair of garish, mustard-yellow socks to wear. These were suitable for protection from the cold tile floor and awful for traction. Her legs wobbled a bit as she got upright, and she had to steady herself on the bed rail just to get her bearings.

“Miss Duval!” Deputy Farrison turned at his post, eyes wide with surprise, “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

“I can walk a few steps,” she said, demonstratively letting go of the railing and doing all in her power to keep from swooning, “Actually, I thought I might do a little walk up and down the unit.”

Farrison frowned, “Miss Duval, you know you’re under my watch.”

“I won’t leave your sight!” she declared, at the same time realizing that there was nothing she could do. Her phone was in the bowels of the sheriff’s station, way in the town center. Even if she could get there, there was no saying how she could get to her phone, and that’s even assuming it hadn’t already been gotten into…

The last time she’d been here, to visit her mother at work, there’d been clunky payphones next to some of the elevators. Presuming they hadn’t been relegated to the dustbin of history yet, she could call a friend and…

And what? Ask them to break into police evidence on flimsy pretexts? She couldn’t think of anybody stupid enough, except maybe Jake, who’d do anything for a laugh; or daring enough, except maybe Nina, who’d be sure to extract a price for the service…

And would no doubt have some words to say about Emma’s hypocrisy, given how they’d left off with each other.

“I’m not sure…” Deputy Farrison was saying, brow furrowed in consternation, “You’re supposed to stay in your room. So if you don’t want to be in bed, you can…walk around in there,” he looked around the room as if only now realizing it was slightly larger than a handicapped shower, “And stretch your legs.”

“But…” Emma began, not sure what she was going to follow that up with.

“Hey! A familiar face!”

Farrison turned away from Emma to the nurses station, where a visitor was standing opposite the taciturn clerk, “Lasagna lady!”

“In town one day, and I’m making friends everywhere I go,” the visitor was a young woman with thick brown hair and glasses, in hi-top Converse, boot-cut jeans, and a hoodie featuring a green UFO and the accompanying legend “I’ve got friends in high places.”

She crossed over to them, paying the clerk’s scornful gaze no further heed, “Hey, Deputy Dwayne! Oh!” she peered behind him, “Well, if it isn’t the droid I’m looking for.”

“…excuse me?” Emma asked perplexedy.

“Oh, I’m sorry, ma’am,” said Dwayne, “Miss Duval can’t have visitors. Only close family.”

“Eh, that sucks. These hospitals, they have more rules than the TSA, and they’ve probably saved as many people. But that’s a whole other screed. Don’t even get me started on vaccines…”

“Oh, yanno, my nephew never got his shot. My sister-in-law, she read this book…”

“You must be Emma,” the stranger grinned toothily.

“Um. Yes?” realizing she’d phrased that as a question, she cleared her throat, “I am, but…”

“She really can’t have visitors,” said Dwayne apologetically.

“Does it count as a visit if she’s on that side of the door and I’m on this side?” she turned back to Emma, winking, “I’m like a vampire…you gotta invite me in!” she giggled, snorting mightily in the process.

“I’m sorry. Who are you?”

“Oh, sorry, totes forgotto. I know you and you don’t know me. Allow me to proscribe a remedy.”

With this verse, she held out a black tote bag practically bulging at the seams, “For you.”

Emma eyed it dubiously, at which point Dwayne swept in in his capacity as an officer of the law for what wasn’t the first time today but felt like it, “Oh, I’ve got to search that, ma’am. Sorry. You understand.”

“No fresh flowers!” the clerk barked.

“Oh, that’s okay,” the stranger assured them all in a general sense as Dwayne began rooting around in the bag, “The only thing fresh in there is…”

“Whoa!” Dwayne gasped.

“Fresh fits!” she cheered as Dwayne held aloft a black hoodie bearing the legend ‘Autopsy of a Crime’, the words of which were printed in alternating white and red letters, crisscrossed with a pattern of red stitches.

“I didn’t know your size, but I figure you’re probably around a medium…”

“A small.”

“…but with hoodies, usually, people like a size bigger.”

“That’s how I like them,” said Dwayne helpfully.

“Making a note of it,” she tapped her temple and made a ‘Bzzz” sound, “#cozycrew! We should have a selfie…”

“Oh, sorry, no photography,” said Dwayne.

“Rats. Maybe later. But yeah, there’s a hoodie in there and a tee shirt and a stress ball…”

“A stress ball?”

“Thanks CustomInk!” she fist-pumped, “Seriously, it’s amazing what you can do as a small shop these days. Everyone keeps saying ‘Piper, why don’t you get an assistant’ but, like…why would I need one? The whole world is at my fingertips, and I don’t even have to strain my credit.”

“This is all very nice…” Dwayne had passed the bag back to Emma, who could see now that it, and everything else in it, was branded similarly to the hoodie, “But who are you?”

“Piper Shaw, at your service,” Piper Shaw produced a square of cardstock: black with red trim, featuring the same stitches-pattern and the words- Autopsy of a Crime- Piper Shaw, Host, Producer, Writer, etc. Tips, press and ‘corrections’: pshaw@autopsyofacrime.com’

“You’re a…TV host?”

“Podcast,” Piper explained, “Fastest growing true crime pod in the Southeast!”

“My brother likes podcasts,” said Dwayne, “Have you met Joe Rogan?”

“He’s met me,” Piper said brightly, turning back to Emma.

“So you’re a reporter?”

“I’m a storyteller, specializing in mysteries and the macabre. It’s all on the website…”

“Autopsyofacrime.com, yeah. I’m not sure if I can be any help to you. I’m not even sure what happened to me, really…”

Which was mostly true, even if not her primary motive.

“Well, it’s all up to you. I’m here for a few days at least, until they catch your local Grim Reaper, and the situation, as they say at the news desks, is fluid. But word of advice?” she cocked an eyebrow, “If you don’t tell your story, someone else might tell it for you, and they won’t show you the edit first.”

She stepped back, “Give me a buzz once you’ve blown this Popsicle stand! You won’t regret it!”

She waved energetically and flounced off the unit. Emma looked down into the tote, running her fingers along the soft fabric of the hoodie.

“I didn’t know she had a podcast,” said Dwayne with a sort of respectful awe, “She seemed so normal.”

Emma gave him a patient smile, returning to her bed and setting the tote down on it.

 The stress ball Piper had mentioned was shaped like a skull. The name of the podcast was printed over the top of the cranium, which was removable, revealing a transluscent red brain covered in a black fishnet.

Emma gave the skull an experimental squeeze and watched the brains puff out in dozens of crimson lumps, segmented by the fibers of the net.

Peculiarly, she felt a bit better.

---

The daisy chain had been laid out next to corpse, for scale. Clark, who had gone without breakfast and had just minutes ago made the prescient decision to delay lunch, had nothing to expel by a low whistle.

“That’s a bitch of a trick.”

At the opposite side of the slab, Maggie nodded somberly, “And, unfortunately for us, a good magician never reveals his secrets.”

“No DNA?”

“We’ll have to send it to forensics to make sure, but I doubt it. This thing was marinated for hours in bile and stomach acid, pre and post-mortem. Any traces the killer may have left…fingerprints, hair, skin…it would’ve been worn away by the exposure.”

“Right,” Clark sighed, “And when you say ‘pre-mortem’…we’re sure this didn’t kill him?”

“It might have, if it had been allowed to, but no. It was the wheel cutting into his neck that did it,” she indicated the nasty grooves in the Carmichael kid’s ruined neck, not that Clark needed the visual aid.

“But he would’ve been choking the whole time. A few more minutes and he would’ve asphyxiated, either from lack of air or because of the build-up of…” she indicated the ugly, rusty splotches dotting the slab and the flowers, “Fluids.”

“Jesus Christ,” he palmed his temples.

“I know. Seems like overkill, doesn’t it?”

“Definitely, for a 14-year-old kid.”

The thought brought to mind his own 14-year-old kid, and the already sour feeling in his gut sprouted a whole new Lemonhead. He’d attempted to consume himself in his work during this long night-into-day shift, but try as he might, he couldn’t banish the thought of Deanna’s face from his mind: of her expression, frightened and shrinking, like a stunned deer who’d errantly wandered onto a country road that, for one moment, wasn’t as lonely as she was accustomed to it.

She did look too, too much like her mother.

“Only if it was personal,” Maggie said softly.

Clark looked up, “What was that?”

Maggie blinked, and he got the impression she had been weighing whether or not to say anything, that she may as well have been thinking aloud. She’d kept a cool head during this little demonstration. Aside from a quick embrace on his arrival, she’d been her usual professional self, focused utterly on the slimy matter at hand.

To her credit, sure. Medical Examiner she may be, but they weren’t processing scenes like this on the regular. She was a tough cookie, his Mag. Still, he had to wonder just how she could do it, and if it was really fair of her that she should, given…

“It occurred to me when I found it, but I didn’t think more of it until later, once…” she gestured upward, as if toward the ICU, “Brock was gagged when we found him, meaning he was gagged when Stacy found him. The…” she grimaced over the word, “The insertion must have taken a long time and a lot of strength. It would’ve been messy and it would’ve been a fight.”

“We searched his bike route,” Clark commented, “The likeliest one he would’ve taken, from his place to hers. Nothing.”

But then, at the time, they hadn’t been looking for stray gobs of spittle and slime. And the pretty lawns along those pretty streets would’ve been treated to two morning drenches by now, from so many suburban sprinklers.

“And he was gagged. Yes, to stifle his screams; yes, to make his suffering worse, but…” she paused, “But also to hide what had happened to him. That wheel was put where it was to bait Stacy into trying to help him. Nobody was supposed to find the flowers. Not until after he was dead. Not until…” she smiled grimly, “Not until the autopsy.”

Clark frowned, “You think he wanted the ME to find it?”

“I think he wanted me to find it,” she let out a hoarse bark of laughter, as if disgusted at her own turn of phrase, “Is it that crazy? With Emma…” she broke off, turning away from him with a sigh. For a minute, there was no noise but the quiet hum of the morgue’s freezers.

“How was she?” she asked finally.

“Pretty good,” Clark answered automatically, “Decent spirits. I chatted a bit to the nurses, they said she should come through fine…”

“I know that much, Clark,” she turned to him fully, regarding him from the opposite end of the slab, “I meant in your professional opinion.”

“Ah,” he sighed shortly, recalling his brief interview with the girl of the hour, “She’s lucid. Held up well. She sounded kind of embarrassed about the whole thing, I think she felt bad she couldn’t…”

“Couldn’t?” Maggie repeated.

“Well,” he cleared his throat, “I think she realized she wasn’t being very helpful.”

At one point, she’d even apologized to him: “I’m sorry,” smiling prettily, looking for all the world like a photo portrait from an old Cars-4-Kids billboard, “I know this is probably disappointing…”

“No, no,” Clark had assured her, lying through his teeth, “Every little bit helps, Emma. The important thing is you’re alright.”

She’d seemed as convinced as he was.

“Did she tell you anything?” Clark asked.

“You’re suggesting she told different stories?”

“No. Just…she may have said something to you that didn’t seem important enough to tell me.”

Maggie shook her head, “Just that he was wearing a mask. She tried to run out the way he’d come in and she fell. Which would be when she hit her head, so I guess it’s no surprise her memory’s not great after that.”

Clark pressed his lips together, “The thing that bugs me about it is how different it was, from…” he looked down at Brock, “This was a production: a stunt. Taking out the parents, torturing this kid, duping the girl into finishing him off before taking her out herself…it was damned sophisticated. This…” he folded his arms, “It looks like Baby’s First Home Invasion. And I might buy that if it wasn’t for…”

They regarded the sticky, floral chain that remained their sole link between one crime scene and the other.

“Mag, I don’t want to put you in an uncomfortable position…”

“It couldn’t be the most uncomfortable today.”

“Is there anybody you can think of? Anyone in Emma’s life who…”

“Who would want to break into our house and chase her around with a knife?” she was smiling, but her eyes were dead serious.

He cleared his throat noisily, “I know it’s not a fair question…”

“It would be fairer if you said the quiet part out loud.”

He sighed, feeling like a chastised kid, “When did you last hear from Kevin?”

Maggie folded her arms, “A very long time ago.”

“He sends money, doesn’t he?”

They had a tacit agreement not to expend energy discussing each others’ exes. Indeed, Clark couldn’t remember mentioning Eileen to Maggie once until he’d gotten news of her death. He couldn’t say whether that was the ‘right’ thing to do, but it had seemed natural. Anyway, Maggie had never known Eileen. And, while Clark had never been buddies with Kevin Duval, he’d gotten to know the man while he was still in town…mostly from the outside of the drunk tank.

“His last check came in a couple months back.”

“And him already more than a couple months behind.”

“I take it work’s been tough,” she shrugged, “It’s not like I can’t handle my own expenses, Clark. At this point, the child support’s a gesture…”

“I don’t like it.”

“I’m not thrilled either, but I can tell you that if Kevin did decide he wanted to see his daughter again, he’d bring a different present than a knife. He didn’t do this.”

Clark nodded, “Sorry, Mag.”

She shook her head as if to impart no hard feelings, though Clark still felt chastised. It was a stupid thing to think, but the notion had still lingered in his mind, tinged with a sort of perverse hope. How much easier it would be, if it really was something as simple as a disgruntled, dispossessed father. What a neat, ordinary explanation for something so terrible. And what a notch for the sheriff’s cap, to put away his girlfriend’s deadbeat ex for being a menace to society. What a stand-up credit he’d be to his community, to his kids, who surely wouldn’t look at him as a deadbeat fuckup now, would they, now that they had a prime example of the Real Thing…

What a joke.

“What about that boy?” he asked next.

“What boy?”

“That boy Emma’s been seeing. The basketball player?”

“Will,” Maggie supplied, brow furrowing, “Will Belmont.”

“Great clutch player,” Clark couldn’t help but saying, “Snagged us the playoffs.”

“No, he’s very good,” Maggie nodded, assuming the usual fuzzy tone she gained whenever the subject turned to sports, “I don’t think you have to worry about…” but she trailed off.

Clark raised an eyebrow, “What’s up?”

“Nothing,” she answered promptly, “Just, yesterday, when Emma was leaving, I asked if Will was picking her up and she said he wasn’t.”

“Oh,” this didn’t seem particularly revolutionary, “Well, she drives.”

“She does. Probably it’s nothing. I don’t think they’ve been having problems or anything. And I know she was very happy when they won on Friday…”

“Kid must be on Cloud 9,” Clark allowed, “Playmaker like that will go a long way.”

And Belmont being a farmboy from the sticks. A sweet slice of victory had a way of rocketing to a young man’s head; Clark didn’t need to be an analyst to know.

“I guess she didn’t say anything about Will,” Maggie said cautiously.

“If she did, Mag, I couldn’t tell you.”

“We’ve gotten this far,” she pointed out cannily.

“So it’s a good thing she didn’t tell me,” he sighed, “I dunno. I didn’t want to discourage her, but I came out of there with as much as I’d gone in, save a bit of hope. Her phone might get us somewhere…”

“Her phone?” her eyes brightened.

“Just to see what she’s been up to. Who she’s been talking to, texting, things like that. Just in case…”

“In case there’s something she hasn’t been telling you?” she didn’t attempt to disguise the note of accusation.

Clark’s shoulders slumped, “Or something she didn’t think was important.”

There was a short silence. Maggie looked down at the dead boy, her face impassive, “Have you looked at it yet?”

“We’d need a warrant. And cause. At the moment, it’s just being swabbed for DNA, same as everything else we picked up. But if we wanted to get into it…”

“There are rules,” he attempted to read into this, whether she sounded disappointed or relieved, but ultimately couldn’t tell and wasn’t really disappointed for that.

“And with Ed Teague already breathing down my neck over the lockers, I’m not trying my luck. If Quinn Maddox wants to throw a fit, he’s welcome to it, but as far as I figure, we don’t harass victims…”

“Survivors,” Maggie corrected automatically.

“Oh. Right,” he cleared his throat, “Do you think it’d be worthwhile? Looking at her phone?”

Maggie was quiet, “You’re the sheriff, Clark,” and left it at that.

The fact of the matter was, Emma was the only victim (and, yes, the only survivor; nobody else had earned that promotion) to have been left with her phone. Which could be a point against this being the same perp. If there was some other meaning behind it, Clark couldn’t imagine what. Indeed, her being left with her phone seemed a point against the thing being important.

“How’s the house?” she asked next. It was a patently obvious attempt at changing the subject, and Clark seized it.

“You’ll need a new stove.”

“But not a new kitchen?” she smiled wryly.

“I mean, if you’ve been looking for an excuse…”

She laughed shortly, “New kitchen, new backdoor…new moat, complete with drawbridge, just for peace of mind.”

“You could always swim a moat.”

“Throw in some alligators, then,” she shook her head, “It’s stupid. I’ve been so caught up worrying about Emma I somehow forgot how much this is all gonna cost me,” she peeled off her gloves, discarding them haplessly into a little bin in the corner, “It’s the most immediate problem, but somehow it didn’t register.”

She was an independent woman, Clark knew, and proud of her security. It was unfair to compare her to Eileen, so he didn’t very often. Eileen had practically been a child when they were married, and not in a position to stand on her own two feet.

And wouldn’t have needed to, if he hadn’t been so confident he was as grown up as he thought.

“You can shut this down if it seems too, uh, opportunistic…”

“You moonlighting as a contractor now, Clark?”

He thought his home DIY project and suppressed a smile, “If you and Emma need a place to stay. Until the boys are finished with yours, and, um, while the repairs are being made, I mean,” he stopped himself, realizing he was heating up about the ears like a girlstruck kid, or a drunken uncle.

Maggie’s lips curled, “That’s a very nice gesture, Clark.”

“I figure, it’s been a year, you and me…”

“11 months.”

“…near enough,” he smiled, “Just until you can get back to yours.”

They’d taken things slowly, by unspoken common accord. Both divorced and closer to 40 than 35, there’d seemed no point playacting the first blush of romance. Certainly, Maggie had stayed over before. But any other steps…what their parents’ generation might have called ‘going steady’ and what their own blighted Generation X might’ve called ‘shacking up’…had stayed doggedly undefined.

“That’s very kind of you, Clark, but I wouldn’t want to crowd you.”

“It wouldn’t be any…” but he stopped himself, realizing, “Ah.”

“You’re not quite living the bachelor life anymore,” she reminded him, “How are they taking to it?”

“Huh,” he said evenly, “Well, it’s an adjustment.”

“That sounds loaded.”

“Well, it’s hard rolling out the welcome wagon when this is the day job,” he nodded to the slab, “I was supposed to take them to dinner that night, but…”

“Right,” Maggie frowned, “But…how are they?”

“Oh,” he shrugged, “Well, Kieran’s pretty grown,” he nodded, thinking of the stiff assurance in his voice on the phone this morning, so much like the tone he’d taken outside the house yesterday, but without…so Clark thought…the belligerent hostility, “He’s had to do a lot of growing up. But he seems to have a good head on. A practical young man.”

“Wonder where he got that from?”

He thought of his raised voice, the flare of alarm in Deanna’s eyes, and cleared his throat.

“And what about his sister? Diana?”

“Deanna. Eileen’s little girl. She’s quiet. And he’s very…protective of her.”

“That’s a blessing,” Maggie nodded, “I’m sure she leans on him.”

“Oh, yeah. And he’s solid for her. I could see that straight off.”

And just like that, he was seized by this wild vision of all of them…Kieran, Deanna, Emma, Maggie, himself…sitting around a dining table too big for his little kitchenette, carving up a Thanksgiving turkey. Football was on in the next room, the room was warm and suffuse with comforting scents, and everyone was happy and content.

Take that to the bank, Courier & Ives.

“You’ll think about it, Maggie, won’t you?” he asked quietly, sensing a note of pleading in his voice and attempting to quash it, “I’d feel better about it.”

“Well,” Maggie considered, “We’d save on hotel bills.”

“I won’t even charge for room service.”

“Oh, you won’t be cooking for us,” she held up a hand with a smile, “Once was more than enough…”

“Excuse me, but that bean dip was the talk of the station…”

“We should make a field trip upstairs to check. I’m pretty sure it was the talk of the E.R. too…” she turned as if to go and Clark grabbed her by the arm, staying her. She turned to him, eyes bright with laughter.

No, he reminded himself. She was nothing like Eileen.

“Shall I take that as a yes?”

“I’d have to check with Emma. And you should probably check with your kids…”

“They’ll be fine,” he said, thinking of the knife gauge in the paint job, the hot contempt in his son’s voice, the cold terror in his stepdaughter’s eyes, and thinking they would be, they’d be more than fine, because he was a good man, a hardworking man, with the love of a good woman, and once they saw, really, how good he was, how good this life was, how he may have run away but look how good he’d made it where he was…

Well, hadn’t it all been worth it? For all of them, hadn’t it all been worth it?

“It’ll be good for all of us,” he nodded, “Like a big family.”

“Very cozy,” she agreed, laughing, “If you forget the circumstances.”

She let him tighten his arms around her, just for a moment, and relaxed into his embrace, hours of sleepless, tear-stained tension melting away.

Over her shoulder, Clark met the dead boy’s eyes and hastily looked away.

---

Operation Save your Sister (SYS, if you would), now verging on its sixth hour, was returning mixed results. Mixed because Kieran figured if Deanna was dead, he’d have found her by now, so things couldn’t be that bad.

This thought was only comforting in theory.

Kieran had been pounding his new home’s pavement like a man possessed. He’d popped into every small business, cut across every public green, and generally loitered in what must have been a dozen neighborhoods. He supposed he was lucky to look older than his age or else one of the plasticine matrons he walked past would surely have called him in for truancy. As it was, the average Lakewood resident’s reaction to seeing him coming was to cross the street.

Hell, he’d take it.

By now, his grid-by-grid search (he called it a grid, but operating without a map and less than a day’s knowledge of the town rendered this definition charitable) had taken him to the east end of town which, from Kieran’s initial assessment, must be Lakewood’s answer to the ghetto.

The neat green lawns and identical, boxy houses gradually gave way, first to clusters of cramped co-ops with negligible yard space, then to stout apartment buildings that wouldn’t have been out of place south of the BeltLine back in Atlanta.

It was vaguely amusing: even the suburban idyll needs its working poor to keep the gears turning. Same shit, different pile. Only, back home, you had to hoof it much farther from Point A to Point B for a glimpse of how the other half lives.

The streets here remained relatively untrafficked. Grimier though the neighborhood may be, it was still Lakewood: he encountered few people, less trouble, and not a sister anywhere.

As if she’d have gone this far, he thought, stopping at a corner outside a dingy establishment whose dimmed neon signage claimed was “Lucky Lem’s”.

“Fucking Disneyland ass town,” Kieran muttered, looking away from the big lemon in the grimy window with disgust.

The day was getting on. School let out in…what? Three hours? Three and a half? Even if Clark had given up the chaperone routine, he’d surely be hanging around the house to welcome Kieran and Deanna back.

And when they didn’t come back? Because Kieran had no intention of presenting himself without his sister…

…and answering for not stopping her from vanishing.

“If you want to be a big man, you have to face hard truths.”

This was a pretty damn hard truth. Clark would be well in his rights to look smug as he called in the banners and threw Deanna’s fate to the winds.

Many years ago, when Deanna was about three, their mother had vanished for four days. Kieran, six at the time, remembered waking in the wee hours of the morning, to her narrow face and bright eyes hovering over him. He’d opened his mouth and she’d shushed him, gently pressing her finger to the seam of his lips.

“It’s okay, baby. I just want to look at you.”

And she’d looked at him, and for a few ageless moments he’d known nothing but her face: white and hopeless and full of unrefined love.

And then she was gone. The details eluded Kieran, and the whole ordeal was preserved in his memory as a chaotic jumble. Dan, Deanna’s father, had ripped their poky little apartment apart, as if to find a clue secreted away in the couch cushions or under a mattress. Later, Kieran would understand he was looking for cash, his anger growing with each dollar that didn’t turn up.

“Where’d she go?” Dan had demanded of Kieran’s aunt Tina, harsh and accusatory. She’d laughed in his face, harsh and unfeeling, “Like I’d tell you if I knew!”

“Bullshit you know nothing!”

“She doesn’t talk to me! She won’t, because she’ll know what I’ll say. And if she’s decided to hit the streets for a fix, you got nobody to blame but yourself…”

More shouting, crashing. Tina hadn’t hung around long after that, leaving them to Dan’s mercy. Good old Aunt TeeTee.

When Eileen finally turned up, it was pale, shaken and used, with an air of such disarming casualness about her that only made it more apparent she was unwell. Kieran remembered waking to the doorknob turning. Dan, sleepless, had opened the door to find his wife, bone thin as always, her face drawn and her eyes bloodshot.

Kieran watched from the little room he shared with Dee as his stepfather grabbed his mother by the shoulders with a cry of mingled relief and shock, his hands tracing her arms, not from tenderness, but to seek and find needlemarks.

“What have you done to yourself?”

“Stop it, Dan…”

“Yeah? Stop it? Got me scared to death, leaving me with the kids…”

“I wasn’t gone long…”

“Shit, you are messed up. And not alone, huh?”

“Don’t be disgusting…”

“Don’t lie to me!” a hiss of breath as he grabbed at her shoulder, attention arrested by a mark out of Kieran’s view…probably bigger than a needlepoint, and more tender, “Or you want to tell me you bit yourself?”

“Like you’ve never stepped out for a piece before…”

“With my own money!”

“Go to hell!”

A hollow retort, of course, from someone who’d just wandered back into it, not having anyplace else to go.

Kieran wondered if Deanna remembered any of that time. Surely, she would’ve been too young. But some things have a way of creeping under the skin, of making their impressions in the body without rooting in the memory.

The thought turned his stomach.

With a disgusted grunt, mostly directed at himself, he lifted himself off the streetlamp he’d been leaning on and started across the street to continue his plodding.

The curt wail of a siren from up the block stopped him in his tracks. He froze, hackles rising as a slew of familiar thoughts marathoned through his mind.

Stand straight, hands out of pockets, look straight ahead, don’t think about the knife, they can’t search you, they’ve got no reason, you haven’t done anything, you haven’t…

He was out of school, in a place he didn’t belong, in a town where things didn’t often leave their places.

The patrol car that had whined its siren at him rolled up to the crosswalk, the driver’s side window lowered, revealing an austere profile and a sharp brown eye, so dark it was nearly black. Kieran had been around enough to know when he was being sized up.

“There a problem, officer?” he asked evenly.

“Deputy,” the deputy corrected, his voice harsh and gravely, “Need a lift?”

This was patently an offer he couldn’t refuse, so Kieran didn’t, “Sure.”

He crossed stiffly to the patrol car and, after the deputy jerked his thumb demonstratively, walked around to the passenger side, finding the door unlocked and the other half of his new friend’s face missing.

Kieran startled visibly, which didn’t seem to endear the deputy to him overmuch.

“Well?” he prompted, the one eyebrow that remained him lifting toward his buzzed hairline.

Kieran didn’t argue, sliding into the shotgun seat. The patrol car had a certain official smell to it: a lived-in leatheriness that didn’t quite meet the threshold of musty.

The deputy revved the engine and got them moving in due course. Kieran folded his arms, watching the street roll by outside, not wanting to make the wrong move which, at present, would be any move.

They reached a stoplight and the deputy’s eye alighted on him, or rather on his unfastened seatbelt. Kieran grunted apologetically and fastened it.

“So,” he began tentatively, and wasn’t sure how to finish.

“Looked into a hot oven too fast,” the answer came matter-of-factly. Kieran couldn’t suppress a smirk, but the deputy was unsmiling.

“I’m not under arrest, am I?”

“You wanna be?”

“Kinda lost my taste for it, to be honest.”

The deputy’s ragged, leathery throat worked like an old bellows, the ghost of a laugh eking through his mangled lips, “By rights, I should be dragging you by the ear to the high school for playing hooky.”

“How do you know I’m playing hooky?”

“You wanna say you’re not?” he huffed, “You’ve got Hudson’s look.”

Kieran grimaced involuntarily, “That’s great.”

“He was telling us you were coming to live with him. You and your sister, that right?”

“We were the talk of the water cooler, huh?” Kieran asked gruffly.

“You were the talk of the station,” he paused, “Until this week.”

“Upstaged again.”

They rounded a corner, “Sorry about your mother.”

He pointedly didn’t mention his stepfather, and Kieran found himself wondering how Dan Wilcox had figured in Clark’s workplace reminisces. Not often, he hoped. Scumfuck Dan may have been, it felt wrong for Clark to be opining about him, as if he’d been there to see the worst of him, as if he wasn’t the whole reason Dan had been haunting Kieran’s life in the first place.

“Thanks.”

“Now, about your sister…”

“Look, Deputy…”

“Steele.”

Kieran blinked, “Really?” but Steele was patently not possessed of a sense of humor, so he dropped it.

“That’s why you’re walking the streets, isn’t it? You’ve lost her?”

“I didn’t lose her, I…” he opened and closed his fist in his lap.

“But she is lost?” Steele pointed out, “And you haven’t told Hudson?”

“He hasn’t called out an All Points, has he?”

“And you don’t want him to, is that it?”

Kieran sighed, trapped, “Look, man…”

“Deputy.”

“…you’re trying to do your job, and I respect that, right? Go and get your Brownie points. But I don’t need some complete stranger turning on the Bob Saget…”

They came to a screeching halt that had Kieran choking on his words.

“You want to look for her on your own?”

Kieran hesitated, brushing aside a lock of hair that had fallen into his face at their stop, “No thank you. Sir.”

Steele nodded curtly and they proceeded.

“It’s not like I don’t appreciate the help,” Kieran said at length.

“You like to do things your own way,” phrased, not as a deduction, but as a diagnosis.

“I’ve been looking after her her whole life. If I don’t understand anything, I understand her, and if I can’t find her…”

“Nobody can?”

Kieran blinked, “I never said that. If Clark wants to call in all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, he’s welcome. But no guarantees if they could put her all together again, though.”

Steele drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, “You 18?”

“17.”

“And your sister?”

“14,” he answered shortly, “Going on 15.”

“And she’s had a bad time of it.”

“Anyone would,” but, saying it, he realized the hollowness of it. Anyone might, but he wasn’t. Not like Deanna was.

“My sister’s had a rough go of it,” Steele said conversationally, “Came out the bad end of an accident.”

What might have been a naked attempt at ingratiation came off more like a clinical diagnosis. Kieran shifted in his seat, “How old?”

“’Bout your age. It was last year. Threw her for a loop, and for a while she didn’t know up from down.”

“So you helped get her on her feet?”

Steele looked at him severely, “She’s her own person. And not the kind keen on asking for help,” he shrugged, “But not too proud to refuse it either.”

Kieran watched the uninspiring scenery roll by, “Deanna’s not proud either.”

“Sensitive type?”

His eyes hardened, “Is that a bad thing?”

“You think it is?”

“That isn’t…” but he broke off. The deputy was infuriatingly exact, and the scars rendered him infuriatingly inscrutable.

“She hasn’t been the same,” he barked humorlessly, “Thrown for a loop. She wasn’t always…” he winced, “It wasn’t always this bad.”

A row of garbage bags were heaped up against the curb as they passed, drawing flies. Steele’s eye passed over it appraisingly.

“And it’s not like I don’t know what’s wrong. That’s not hard. It’s just…” he gestured, “What am I supposed to do about it?” he didn’t expect an answer and didn’t get one, “But I’ve got to do something about it, because if I don’t, if I can’t be there, if I can’t be on top of it, if I let her slip through my fingers…”

He gripped his knee.

“Then she’s gone.”

The buildings to either side of the road had given way to long, low warehouses. Kieran watched passively, wondering if they were even used for anything, or if they were mere sound stage illusions, there to give the impression that there was a real industry beneath all the freshly-irrigated lawns and flagstone driveways, that this shiny little town was kept alive by labor and not pure spite.

“And you haven’t told Hudson,” Steele said at length, “Because he can’t help her like you can?”

Kieran tensed, “You’ve got a lot of lip for a complete stranger picking me up off the street.”

“I’ve got less lip than most,” which was a biological fact, so he couldn’t argue.

“Half a lip,” Kieran pointed out, “And half right,” he sighed, “What if he isn’t full of shit?”

“Hudson?”

“What if he ends up being good with her? What if he doesn’t blow his shit and get Dee taken off by ACS? What if he knows what to do when I don’t? What if he’s…” and, saying the words, he felt like the stupid, ingrate child he’d thought long gone, “What if he’s good for her?”

He turned to Steele, searching for something, anything, in his scarred features: contempt, or judgment or even some sort of rote sympathy. It seemed the least the bastard could do for picking him up off the street and subjecting him to this little ride-along.

“So, what’s she look like?” he asked at length and, at Kieran’s blank expression, “Build, hair, eyes…any identifying marks? Any idea what she’s wearing?”

The moment of madness passed, and Kieran found himself relieved for questions with easy answers.

---

The defendant sauntered into the courtroom, hands shoved improbably deep into the pockets of baggy black sweatpants, “You summoned, VPK?”

Theodora pressed her lips together, not rising from her desk, “Close the door behind you, Mr. Hawkins.”

Charlie Hawkins beamed, “I love our one-on-ones,” gently heeling the door to the outer office shut with his heel. The new barrier did nothing to mask Mrs. Hayward’s short gasp of surprised disapproval.

“Please, sit,” Theodora gestured to the chairs before her desk. Charlie sat gainfully, sighing relievedly as he did, “Ah, that boosts the bottom nicely. You know, I was chafing in those lab desks…”

“In AP Biology,” Theodora tried not to look at him and not the dabbing skateboarding skeleton on his hoodie, “Which, in fact, brings us to the point of this meeting.”

“What’s Pikeman say I did now? Because whatever it is, I’m innocent and he deserves worse.”

“Mr. Pikeman has said nothing,” she assured him, “Except to admit, however grudgingly, that you remain in the top fifth percentile for his class this quarter.”

Charlie grinned lazily, “Sweet.”

“Not wanting to keep you from your studies much longer…”

“No worries, VPK. I need to get my fix in,” he folded his arms, “We’re four years on and there won’t be much more of these chats, will there?”

“No, I suppose not,” try as she might, Theodora couldn’t suppress a smile, “As a matter of fact, Mr. Hawkins, you are but a mere seven months from defying the expectations of every single one of your 9th grade teachers by graduating.”

With Honors, she may have added, but that would’ve muddled her meaning. Three years ago, it had been unanimous opinion that Charlie Hawkins would never don his cap and gown at all.

Well, almost unanimous.

“You know me,” Charlie shrugged, “I’m all about that hustle. And nothing helps a guy’s hustle like proving a guy with an Excel sheet wrong.”

“You needn’t evangelize me on that point, Mr. Hawkins,” Theodora assured him, “I say all this, yes, to remind you of how far you’ve come…and of how little there is left for you to go. Now, your SAT results, I understand, were more than satisfactory…”

“That thing’s a scam.”

“Be that as it may. You should have the pick of colleges. Yet I am aware you haven’t been applying. Mr. Frey tells me you haven’t completed a financial aid application…”

“Also a scam.”

“You have no plans for your higher education?”

“Oh, I’ve plenty of plans, VPK. But in them, my wallet gets heavier. You get it?”

“I believe I do,” she said evenly, “Regardless, your brains have gotten you quite far. And I think it’s safe to say you are not one who should be underestimated. Whatever it is you do plan to do in the adult world, you are closer than ever to doing it…” she opened her hands, which had been clasped before her on the desk, “Barring unforeseen circumstances, that is.”

Charlie rolled his neck. His hood, usually lifted even in class, to the regular dismay of his teachers, had been lowered, revealing his buzzed head. The general look was of a boy older than he really was, even as he seemed inclined to act perennially 13.

“Like if I got hit by a bus?”

“That’s hardly in good taste, Mr. Hawkins.”

“Well, those freshmen weren’t hit by a bus, were they? Cops would’ve solved it by now, if they had been.”

“There are tragic accidents,” Theodora granted, “And then there are premeditated acts of violence…”

“Have you put out a hit on me, Vice Principal? And after all the good times we’ve had together…”

“…that have triggered a higher police presence here at school. A presence that may have…” she flicked her wrist in a series of tight half-turns, “Ripple effects in our community.”

“Riiiiight…” he nodded langurously, “Like some of the cops might touch some kids.”

“No!” Theodora snapped.

“It could happen.”

“With our luck,” she grumbled, but shook her head, “Charlie, let us be adults here.”

“Holy heck, VPK, but this is moving so fast. I’m flattered, mind you, but…”

“You are intelligent,” she interrupted, “Believe it or not, I am too.”

“I’ve never thought otherwise,” and, while his tone remained light and flighty as ever, his shit-eating grin had faded.

“Then you know that I have eyes, ears, a nose, and a brain to pilot them with. Mind, I doubt I’d have needed more than a nose in this particular case, but be that as it may.”

“You have an accusation, Vice Principal?”

“It can hardly be an accusation, can it, when it’s been an open secret for four years?” she cocked an eyebrow, “I will say, Mr. Hawkins, for all your shrewdness, you’ve perhaps gotten a little too cocky in your maturity.”

“That is the thing about cocks.”

“The parking lot, the boys’ room, the locker rooms…the football field,” she indicated her view from the window, “In full view of my office?”

Charlie’s shoulders slumped, “All perfectly public places.”

“Perfect for conducting private business?”

Charlie sighed heavily, “So the jig’s up? Just like that?”

“As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Hawkins, it was never on to begin with.”

“If it means, anything VPK, I’d be happy to cut you in for a professional discount. 15% for public servants, and an extra 5% because we’re cool like that…”

Theodora blinked, “Mr. Hawkins, you aren’t in a position to offer me discounts.”

“I mean, I could do a freebie.”

“Charlie,” she interrupted, “You are not understanding me.”

For the first time, he seemed uncomfortable. He shrank in his seat, eyes narrowing suspiciously, “You have me right where you want me. I mean, you don’t have evidence but, to be honest, you could probably find that pretty easy. There’s no loyalty anymore…”

“If I wanted to expose your little ‘business’, Charlie, I could have done it years ago. I did not.”

Charlie nodded slowly, “And…not because you want freebies?”

“Somehow, that motivation has not occurred to me.”

“So…why?”

“Because, Charlie,” she sighed, “You are a brilliant young man.”

“Thanks,” but he still looked confused.

“Do you know when I grew up, Charlie?”

He considered, “…in the war.”

Theodora pressed her eyes shut with a sigh, “I came of age on the South Side of Chicago.”

“Where Obama’s from,” he was somehow not the first Caucasian who’d observed this since she moved here, but he’d said it more neutrally than most.

“Our paths did not cross,” she informed him dryly, “In that time, both when I was a girl and later, when I started out in my career, I got to know a lot of Charlies. Some had two parents, some had none; some ate well, many didn’t. They didn’t all do well in school, but they were all brilliant in their own way. They were quick…they knew how to hustle.”

“Dora, I don’t know how you’re not gray yet,” her mother had told her after her first week teaching Chicago public schools, 30-odd years ago and between Theodora’s wars, “The kids were bad enough when you were one of ’em and they’re not getting any better.”

“Not better, maybe,” she’d smiled, so much younger then, and still beautiful…beautiful enough for one man, at least, even if for only a little while, “But the same.”

Yes. The same.

“Some of them were lucky. They made it through school, sometimes with a night or two in a lockup but not much more. Most of them, however…” she sighed, “It didn’t always take much. In fact, very often, it takes very little: a bag in a backpack, or in a locker. One or two were put away just because they smelled funny…it was enough cause to start an investigation, you understand.

“These were not, by and large, bad boys and, like I say, they were all very smart. They didn’t quite look like you, Charlie…” her lips twitched, “But in other ways, you were all quite alike. And I remember those boys. I remember policemen coming into my classroom to search their desks or their lockers. I remember having to stand by and watch as the boy I was just teaching Introductory Biology to was cuffed in front of all his friends, and his enemies too, and nothing I could do about it.”

She leaned forward, “I can do something about it now.”

Charlie didn’t say anything for a while, and his face was curiously blank. He was tapping his feet beneath the desk: a quick, antsy rat-a-tat-tat.

“Vice Principal…” he dropped the nickname, his voice unusually small, “You don’t need…”

“It’s not a matter of what I need. Charlie, I have turned a blind eye to your dope dealing, not of special deference to you, and not out of some great duty. Lord knows, I’ve been derelict in my duty by doing this. Heaven knows how many young people you’ve gotten hooked…”

“Well, it’s better than crack.”

Theodora held up a hand, “You are a brilliant young man. You can and should go far in this life and, while I may disagree with some aspects of how you live, I don’t think anything you have done makes you a criminal. It certainly isn’t worth ruining your life over, the same as all those other boys I’ve known in my life,” she sighed, “But, unfortunately, I don’t write the laws. And while my eye may be blind as it comes to you, the same can’t be said for the police.”

“…the police,” Charlie repeated tersely.

“We already have patrol cars at the perimeter,” she pointed out, “And I’ll have you know that the Sheriff is securing a warrant to search lockers.”

“Because of those freshmen who got killed?”

Theodora nodded, “They’re determined to leave no stone unturned.”

“And I’m a pretty mossy stone,” he sighed, slouching in his seat, “I guess you’re supposed to rat me out?”

“I could. I probably should.”

“Well, it’s been a good run, VPK. And I wouldn’t want you to lose your job so close to retirement.”

“Don’t presume to know my retirement age, young man.”

“What a country.”

“And you can quit your grandstanding. The fact remains, I’ve put my neck out for you, yes, and that’s because I stubbornly believe in you. There have been no questions about you yet…your name has not come up, but as long as this mystery maniac remains uncaught, I expect we’re going to have more eyes on us than usual. I may be a long way from retirement, Charlie, but you only have seven months,” she leaned back, “And surely…surely, you’ve made enough? Surely, you’ve collected enough money from your dirty work? You don’t want to go to college…fine. It’s not for everyone. But if you’ve been saving, you can start up for yourself, and not just here in Lakewood.”

“Oh, girl…” he showed his teeth, “I’m not sticking around here, I can tell ya that much.”

“Just so,” she granted, “You are a decent young man. You do well in school, yes, and more importantly, I know how loved you are by your friends.”

He hesitated, “…you do?”

“I may be getting sentimental, but it played a part in my silence. You have a lot in your corner. Why not put it aside now?”

“You mean cash out?”

“If you’d like to use a crass term.”

“They’re the only ones I know,” he shrugged, “But that’s it, VPK. I’m way ahead of you.”

She cocked an eyebrow, “You mean to say you are…cashing out?”

“IT’s been in the works,” he beamed, “Listen, I may not be great at karaoke, but I know my Kenny Rogers.”

“…what?”

“I know when to fold ’em,” he spread his arms wide, “And when to walk away. This is a sensitive line of work, Vice Principal.”

“And I’d appreciate you spare the sordid details, for both our sakes.”

“You can’t just go cold turkey. You need an exit strategy.”

Theodora cocked an eyebrow, “And you have an…exit strategy?”

Charlie grinned, “Underway, baby. Um, respectfully.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“That’s cool. To be honest, if you understood any better, I might just have a coronary episode. Like, I love that we’re cool, VPK, but…”

“What do you have to exit? It isn’t as though you have business partners, or a supervi…”

Charlie’s expression became positively impish.

“Charlie,” she interrupted frostily, “Are there others?”

“Like I said, VPK,” he shrugged, “I’ve got it handled.”

“Charlie…”

“It’s cool,” he held up both hands, “Trust me. I’m not new to this.”

She leaned back in her chair, suddenly reminded of him as a freshman, in flannels instead of hoodies, his head crowned by chestnut curls.

They changed so fast at this age, from children to adults. At no other stage of life does four years mean so much.

“I know,” she said at length, “That’s what worries me.”

---

“Um, maybe lean your head back a little, man? Yeah, just…just a bit more…no, no, that’s too much…”

With an impatient huff, Jake snatched his phone back from Zach, “Forget it, I’ll do it myself.”

“I almost had it!” Zach protested, lifting himself from against his locker as they joined the tide heading out to lunch.

Jake flipped through the six different headshots Zach had taken with his phone, each one displaying the welt Audrey Jensen had left him from a slightly different angle, “You should’ve used the front-facing camera.”

“But that would’ve taken a picture of me.”

“You turn the front camera to me, so it takes me, Zach.”

“I don’t get you.”

“The front camera makes everything look bug-ass stupid. It would’ve been…” he gestured broadly, “…emphasis.”

“Oh. You mean it would’ve made it look worse than it is?”

“It already looks bad!” Jake snapped, “I got my face fucked up by an angry lesbian.”

“Okay, but, dude, you kind of started it,” Zach lifted his hands in surrender, “But she was out of line! But so were you, man.”

“It wasn’t her fight.”

“Yeah, but you called her a…” he cleared his throat, “Bike.”

“A slut?” Jake frowned.

“I’m not gonna say it, dude,” he reddened, “I kind of like being on the roster. Even if we’re losing.”

“They’re not gonna kick you off the team for saying a word,” said Jake, “They’re not gonna kick me,” his voice cracked on that last word and he cleared his throat, “Unless they’re retarded.”

“Well, you’re in the playoffs, that’s different,” Zach pointed out, “Anyway, Audrey was sticking up for her boy. You’d do the same, wouldn’t you?”

“I…” Jake opened his mouth, thinking unbidden of Will, “Foster had it coming. You run your mouth, you get run up on,” the latter half of this statement tripped him up and he averted his eyes, hoping Zach would just drop the whole stupid thing.

They emerged onto the green in a flood of humanity, the hot afternoon sun a refreshing balm after the sterile stuffiness of the school building. Zach let out a hearty sigh, rolling his shoulders with a smile, “Whatever you say, dude. But if that’s all you’ve got for Riley…”

“What’s Riley care about it?” Jake asked.

“I dunno,” Zach shrugged, “Let’s ask.”

“Wait, no…”

“Yo, Riles!” Zach waved as they reached their usual table, finding the girls had beaten them to it, “Brooke.”

“Johnny,” Brooke smiled, nodding at him, her eyes moving to Jake or, more specifically, his bruise, “Rocky.”

Jake let out a flat laugh to demonstrate how unfunny he thought Brooke was being, but it came out more like a psychotic monotone bellow. He sank into his seat with a grunt, working with the cap of his Fanta.

“So, Jake, how’s it feel being reversed gay-bashed?” Brooke asked sunnily.

Jake’s hand slipped and the cap soared from the soda bottle, bright orange fizz spraying every which way. Riley let out a cry of alarm as she and Brooke threw herself protectively over a purple slab of bedazzled construction paper Jake recognized from homeroom.

“Jake!” Riley chided.

“For God’s sake, Fitzgerald,” Brooke grumbled, “If I’d known how sensitive you were to girls-who-love girls, I’d hold my tongue. One mention and you go spraying…”

“I don’t have a problem with lesbians!” Jake spat loudly, “Jensen would be a bitch even if she was normal.”

“Normal?” Riley repeated.

“Is the corner wet?” Brooke was fussing over the card, “It looks wet, is it? Zach…”

“Nah, you’re good,” Zach assured her, “Good reflexes.”

“Oh, I’ve got years of experience,” she cut her eyes at Jake, “Where certain wild animals are concerned.”

“Isn’t that Emma’s card?” Zach asked in a naked attempt to change the subject.

“It is,” Brooke smiled, “Lovingly signed by her peers. Riley and I were going to deliver it after school. Brighten her spirits in her hour of need.”

“It felt like the right thing to do,” added Riley, “She must be so lonely.”

“It would be nicer if it wasn’t incomplete,” Brooke added, looking imploringly at Jake, “Seriously, where’s Farmboy? I’m half tempted to march down and drag him to Em by the ear, but I’ll settle for a squiggly signature and an ‘xoxo’ at this point.”

Jake tensed, taking a swig of his orange soda. If he weren’t at the verge of getting the Scary Shits over, himself, he’d love to see Brooke take the piss out of him. She’d been pretty equal opportunity about it back in the day, during all those long summers at the Belmont farm, and hadn’t quit much even now that she was half their size.

But Brooke had by and large laid off picking on Will once he and Emma had got together, out of girl code or whatever voodoo. Girl loved to speak her mind, but Jake had been around her long enough to know there was a shit ton more she thought but never said.

He guessed they weren’t that different like that.

“I dunno,” he shrugged, setting the bottle down, “He’s home, I guess.”

“I figured that,” said Brooke, “What, did a cow fall on him?”

“That can happen,” said Zach, “I saw this video. If a cow falls over, it can be, like, days before he gets up.”

There was a short silence.

“She,” said Jake, “A cow’s a she. There’s no man cows.”

“A man cow is a bull,” said Riley patiently.

“What, really? Like with the horns?”

“Zach,” Brooke said at length, “I loved that little puppy you drew with your message.”

“You read Emma’s card?” asked Jake as Zach blushed, “It’s supposed to be a picture of Emma.”

“Of course, I read the card,” said Brooke, “I had to screen it for upsetting content. She’s just been through a terrible trauma. Speaking of, Jake, what kind of ‘get well’ message is a Cool S?”

“It’s cool,” said Jake defensively, “And you shouldn’t be reading that shit, Brooke! It’s private…”

“Oh, now we care about people’s privacy?”

Riley’s outburst cast a pall on the table. Brooke pursed her lips together determinedly, becoming very fascinated in the tacky residue the glitter glue had left on Emma’s card. Next to Jake, Zach reached into his sweats and produced a little plastic bag.

“I got Sour Patch kids. If anybody wants…”

“What you trying to say, Riley?” Jake demanded, “Foster and fuckin’ I Was a Teenage Robot started this shit, making like Nina and I were screwing behind Tyler’s back…”

“It’s My Life,” said Zach, “My Life as a Teenage Robot. The cartoon.”

“And we’re certain they were making that up, are we?” asked Brooke.

“For the last time, Brooke!” he raised his voice and was aware of it at once. Brooke’s eyes hardened and she looked away.

“If they did lie,” Riley ignored his aghast mouthing of ‘If?’, “They did it to get back at you, and Nina and Tyler and the rest of us.”

“To get back…”

“For violating their friend’s privacy,” Riley leaned back, “It’s a war of attrition, and we started it.”

“Well,” said Brooke airily, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

Riley rounded on her, “So they should just sit down and take it when people are terrible to them?” she leaned over the table, “You didn’t pick on Noah because he’d hurt your reputation or anything, Jake. You picked on him because it was easy.”

“It couldn’t have been that easy,” muttered Zach, “He printed, like, 20 copies…”

“And what do you care about Foster, Riley?” asked Jake, “He’s a frickin’ creep.”

“He’s nice!” Riley retorted, “He’s never done anything to anybody. He minds his own business…”

“Okay, I get the sentiment, Riles,” interjected Brooke, “But that one is totally not true.”

“Well, if he minds other peoples’ business, he’s no worse than you, isn’t he?” Riley rounded on her.

Brooke balked, “Um. Whoa.”

“Or maybe not, Brooke,” Riley continued, “You’re actually very good at keeping out of the circus if you want to…”

“What circus?” asked Zach blankly, but the words must have meant something to Brooke.

“Okay, that’s so not fair…”

“…it’s all fun and games in the bigtop, isn’t it, until the elephants get sick of peanuts and start acting out. Well, maybe I’m tired of the circus!” Riley stood, “Maybe I want to free the elephants.”

With this pronouncement, she shouldered her bag and marched off, back inside.

“Riley!” Brooke called after her, “Riles!” she stood, pouting, “That was a real good allegory, too.”

She started off after her, giving Jake a heated look as she went.

“Wait, what did I do?”

Brooke quickly turned around but, instead of answering him, snatched up Emma’s card and, with the great burden awkwardly tucked under her arm, went running, “Riley! Wait, babe…”

Jake watched them go, swishing his Fanta around in the bottle, “These girls, man…”

“So, wait,” Zach interrupted, “Are we hurting the elephants?”

Jake gave him a look, snatched his Sour Patch Kids from him and popped one into his mouth, washing it down with another swig.

---

Audrey watched the female exodus from the Cool Kids table with blunted detachment. Somehow, Brooke Maddox had mastered the ability to yell without raising her voice. Probably learned it from her father.

Audrey’s father, by contrast, knew very well how to raise his voice without yelling, which was a different type of occupational hazard.

“So what’s going on with that?”

“Hm?” across the table, Noah looked up from his phone, “Well, Mr. Satan is way overmatched against Dan Hibiki, and while I think logically this is correct, I feel like Death Battle is going more off, like, stats than thinking of the heart of things, but what else is new, right, especially when it comes to the anime match-ups…”

“Noah!”

“Right, of course, Street Fighter is not an anime. Sorry.”

Audrey blinked at him, “I meant what’s going on with her?” she indicated the school entrance, through which Nina’s Mini-Me and Token Minority had long since vanished.

“Who? Brooke? If I had to guess, probably some sort of deep-seated inferiority complex: kind of a crooked vizier situation…”

“With Riley Marra.”

“Riley?” as if he’d never heard the name before, “Well, nothing’s wrong with Riley. Riley’s normal.”

Audrey scoffed, “And how do you come by that diagnosis, professor?”

Noah got that deer-in-headlights look he lapsed into when he didn’t have a zinger in the barrel.

“So it’s that bad, huh?”

“There’s nothing bad!” Noah insisted, by now a fine butcher block red, “We’ve just been talking. She escorted me out of Brooke’s party the other night.”

“She escorted you.”

“Well, yeah. After Jake and Tyler dunked themselves, I had to make a hasty escape, didn’t I? She gave me safe passage while…” but he stopped himself self-consciously. Audrey could guess why: Noah may not have needed ‘safe passage’ if Amanda hadn’t had to leave his side to track Audrey down at the lake.

“And it turns out we have stuff in common.”

“Is that right?” Audrey intoned.

“We both want to go to MIT. We both like memeing.”

“Ugh.”

“No, it’s true, we send memes now. We have a chat…”

“You’ve been texting her?”

“Well, yeah,” he paused, “Is that…I’m sorry, is that bad?”

“No, Noah, you can text whoever you want, but you might want to remember that anything you say can and will be used against you.”

“Riley isn’t like that, Audrey.”

“She’s one of Nina’s best friends! She was literally just yukking it up with the guy who slapped tentacle porn on your locker!”

“I mean, I don’t think she and Jake are, like, best friends…”

“She was there, with him, at the Overlook,” she interrupted, “You know that right?”

Noah blinked, “…do you?”

Audrey balked, “Excuse me?”

“I mean, okay, granted, you know that Nina was there, and where Nina goes, so too is Tyler. But you don’t really know the rest of the Beautiful People were hanging out up there too.”

“Emma was there,” said Audrey, “So was she just third wheeling O’Neilerson, or…”

“Emma admitted it?” Noah asked in a slightly smaller voice. Audrey thought back to Emma’s almost plaintive expression that night at Brooke’s party, “Not in so many words, but yes.”

“Well. I mean…”

“Look, Noah, you believe what you want to believe, but when you get burned…and you will…don’t say nobody warned you.”

Noah spun his phone around on the tabletop, staring morosely at the paused Death Battle video, “Did you sign the Card?”

“Card? What card?”

“The Card,” he cocked his head to the side, “Yanno, for Emma.”

“Oh,” Audrey grimaced at the th0ught of the big purple confection, “No.”

“Aud…”

“She has to get better, doesn’t she?” she prompted, “And nothing I say to her will help that along.”

“I’m just saying, Audrey, she just had a life-altering experience. She’s probably lying in that hospital now, soul searching…”

“Soul searching?”

“You were friends a long time,” Noah pointed out, “Before me, even,” he let out a paltry half-chuckle at that, as if to concede what an impressive feat that must be, “That’s not cheap.”

“So…what, Noah? She’s had a near death experience, and now she’s ready to renounce the Dark Side for good and all?”

“Well, there have been worse starts to Redemption Arcs.”

“Even if she is rethinking things, Noah, she still couldn’t bring herself to apologize when it happened. If she has a come to Jesus, good for her, but I’ve got more immediate concerns.”

“Right,” Noah paused, “The Meeting.”

Audrey gritted her teeth, ruining Noah’s irritating habit of making random words into proper nouns, conferring unnecessary and unearned emphasis onto them for unclear reasons.

“I’ve got to get my story straight,” she said bitterly.

“In a manner of speaking,” Noah interjected and looked immediately regretful for it, “Sorry. Have you talked to Rachel about it?”

She winced. Amanda had asked the same thing, more or less, this morning, and of course the answer hadn’t changed since then.

“We haven’t talked much since it all happened,” she paused, “Once. And…obviously, I haven’t seen her. Her folks are…”

“Catholic? Like more Carrie-Catholic than Christmas-Catholic?”

“For starters.”

“Oof,” Noah was very proud of being raised without religion, though he’d at least stopped dropping the word ‘agnostic’ into conversations solely to provoke questions.

“But I’ll see her today. And her parents. And my Dad. And her fricking principal.”

“Are they bringing an exorcist too?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” she looked down at her reddened knuckles, “So, yeah, I’m sorry, Noah, but I’m having trouble tapping the cool, clean waters of forgiveness, what with the Meeting, and the all-caps slur on my front door, and stopping you from getting your ass kicked by your new friend’s pet CTE case…”

“Okay, I didn’t ask you to do that,” he said this very quietly, not meeting her eyes as he spoke.

Audrey raised her eyebrows, “You didn’t have to.”

“No, it’s not…it’s not that I don’t appreciate it, Audrey. You came through for me…like you always do, but…”

“But?”

“But I had him,” his phone was a dizzy blur beneath his flashing fingers now, whirling like a board game spinner.

“He had you!” she snapped, “Up against the lockers.”

“I embarrassed him. People were laughing at him. I turned the tables…”

“He would’ve turned your face inside out!”

“But the damage was done! The minute I had them laughing at him, his little tough guy bit was over. He was just a dumb jock having a tantrum…”

“And you were…what? The unlikely but plucky hero owning him with facts and logic?”

He flinched, stopping his phone between his fingers.

“And I took that away from you? Showed up and snatched your spotlight right before the big paradigm shift?” she got to her feet, waving her red knuckles in his face, “Sorry about that.”

“No, Audrey, that’s…” Noah protested, getting up and hitting his knee against the bench, suppressing a high-pitched shriek at the impact, “N-not what I…”

“Better luck next time, Noah,” she shouldered her bag, starting off for school, “Catch you on Death Battle.”

---

Add to the ever-growing list of side-effects to being sucker punched in the solar plexus: wind instruments were torture devices now.

Not that Tyler was that great on the clarinet to begin with, but Gemma’s tender ministrations the night before had rendered Music class even more painful than usual. Not that anybody was inclined to notice.

All 11th graders were required to take Music, in a skimpy but presumably earnestly intended attempt at exposing them to the humanities against their will. Exposed they may have been, but you could be exposed to measles too and were hardly likely to become friendly with it.

Tyler’s attempts, never particularly musical even in healthy times, were reduced to sharp, halting frames of sound, barely audible despite the strain it took to produce them. Which was probably better on the audience, if worse on the musician.

If their resident virtuoso Ms. Atler noticed Tyler’s handicap, however, she gave no sign, instead presiding over them from the very edge of her piano bench, iPhone balanced atop the grand old Steinway, blasting a karaoke backing track of The Band Perry’s If I Die Young, which they were all meant to accompany.

Tyler figured he could start choking violently on the spot and Atler wouldn’t stop her Zenned out lipsyncing to notice.

Must be a nice way to live.

“You should fix your posture.”

He promptly did start choking, a gob of spittle lodging in an inconvenient recess at the top of the throat.

“Sorry!” squeaked his would-be Samaritan, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

He blinked hot tears from his eyes, his vision resolving around the tall, lanky figure who’d moved to the seat next to him.

“Oh,” he breathed shakily, “Dennis.”

The kid frowned, “You should sit back.”

“…huh?”

“It’s more comfortable, for wind instruments” he indicated his trombone, “And brass. Otherwise, you get short of breath faster.”

As if to impress the truth of this, he assumed orchestra-perfect posture himself, bleating a few notes to the tune of “Lord, make me a rainbow, I’ll shine down on my mother/She’ll know I’m safe with you when she stands under my colors”.

He lowered the trombone, red faced but not out of breath, “Like that.”

Tyler nodded, “That’s nice,”

But Dennis was inclined to be a menace about this, nodding pointedly, “Try it.”

Tyler wanted to tell this gawky bastard that it really didn’t matter to him how well he could emulate the soundtrack of Miss Atler’s maiden days, marching band style, but the kid wasn’t gonna quit.

Kid, he thought derisively, when he was nearly of a height with him, give or take an inch. He wasn’t even that lanky…leave out a thin layer of muscle from his days on the basketball team, and they’d be the same build. Dennis just dressed in baggy clothes: a flannel that hung off him like a drape, and straight-leg jeans that hung stiffly around his feet.

If Tyler knew anything, it was how to dress.

He put the clarinet back to his lips, and forced himself back into the song.

“Oh, and life ain’t always what you think it ought to be, no/Ain’t even gray, but she buries her baby…”

Dennis joined in on the trombone, his doleful tooting providing dreary compliment to Tyler’s hi-tone wheezes.

“The sharp knife of a short life…” a pretty unforgiving note, “Well, I’ve had just enough time…”

Tyler lowered the clarinet, reflexively gripping the sore spot on his chest.

“Pretty good, right?” Dennis was smiling, as if surprised, “I mean, the harmony isn’t perfect, but it feels better, doesn’t…” he trailed off, “Are you okay?”

Tyler realized he was breathing heavily. He’d taken great care not to be obvious today, but he knew he was walking funny. The place where Gemma had struck him had bruised fully by now, taking on an ugly blue tint. A lot of punch for such a small package, he thought bitterly.

Dennis was still looking at him, round brown eyes wide with a concern that ought to be patronizing but which seemed improbably sincere.

“I’m fine,” he insisted, “Just…pulled a muscle.”

“Oh,” he nodded, “Playing sports?”

He tensed, “I guess I’m out of practice.”

“You were pretty good in the play,” he offered abruptly, “Last year.”

He didn’t want to think about the play. Of the anger and resentment, the half-joking audition, his uncontrolled tantrum after being taken off the line for basketball, being upstaged by some bright eyed farmboy, and a freshman to boot.

Little problems. Kid’s stuff.

“I guess you’re used to getting your own way.”

The words scraped against his ear, silk smooth and knife sharp.

“Thanks,” he said shortly.

“Ice baths help,” Dennis continued, all stubborn earnestness, “With the bruising.”

“I…” he began to say he knew, of course he knew, he’d been playing sports since he was seven. Little League, Peewee Basketball, that stupid Lawn Hockey league the dads had started up and abandoned after half a season.

He’d never seen Dennis on any teams.

“Thanks,” he said finally, bluntly, “I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Hey, um…” Dennis blurted, suddenly very interested in the poster diagram of music genres on the far wall, “Have you heard from Erin lately?”

Tyler started, looking over to the poster too, as if he might find Erin’s name on a limb of the genealogy, between Bowie and the Butthole Surfers.

“Erin?”

“I figured, since she and Nina were friends and everything…” he looked around the room as if to confirm Nina hadn’t spontaneously sprouted up from the tiles. Tyler could’ve told him not to bother. She was supposed to be suffering in this class with the rest of them, but she hadn’t showed, despite being around through the morning.

He didn’t expect an explanation and, so far, hadn’t gotten one.

“She and Nina were friends,” Tyler repeated, emphasizing the word, “She left town.”

“Oh, I know that,” he said emphatically, “I know she left. I just thought, maybe, you might’ve kept in touch or…”

Tyler laughed, and felt sorry for it, partially for the kick in the ribs he got out of it, and partially because of the hangdog look on Dennis’s face, which probably justified the kick.

“She was Nina’s friend,” he emphasized, “We weren’t exactly swapping socials.”

Though something told him Erin Littleton wasn’t sending Nina any selfies from whichever corner of the world she’d drifted to after cutting the cord on this place. For all her vaunted social powers, Nina was handier at burning bridges than building them.

“Right,” Dennis frowned, “That’s okay. I just wonder about her sometimes…”

“I didn’t think you were friends.”

“We were in band together!” he smiled awkwardly, “She played bassoon.”

“Look, Dennis!” Tyler snapped, leaning forward and seizing at the latest jolt of pain.

“Whoa…” he put his hands on as if to brace him, not that he needed it, “Tyler…” this kid had never said his name once, not to his face, “Are you sure you’re…”

“Fine,” he insisted, “I am fine. And I’m sorry Erin Littleton isn’t scoping you out on the ’Gram, or whatever, but there’s shit I can do about it. If you ask me, you dodged a bullet.”

“My name’s Derek,” he said evenly, “You know that.”

Of course Tyler knew that. They’d been in the same class since junior high. He’d always been tall, too, and lanky, drowning in his clothes.

And with hair. Longish, wavy hair, like a girl’s. Something which no self-respecting middle school chud could ignore.

A girly, nerdy kid. An easy target.

“Yeah,” Tyler was barely aware of his own voice, “Yeah, I do.”

“I-I know we don’t talk a lot, but…”

“Nice hair, Derika.”

“No tears, Derek, your balls are bound to drop one day.”

“What’re you staring at, Jackson? See something you like?”

“I dunno,” Derek Jackson shrugged, “I had this funny thought lately, we have stuff in common, don’t we?”

Around them, the class kept on with their halfhearted recital, bleats and booms and bangs and honks vaguely spelling out Ms. Atler’s shitty turn-of-the-decade white girl ballad.

“If I die young, bury me in satin/Lay me down on a bed of roses…”

When he was 13 years old, he and a couple of his friends had cornered Derek in the locker room at gym, back at Garfield Middle. He’d been looking at them funny, or at least they…at least Tyler had convinced himself he was.

“Sink me in the river at dawn/Send me away with the words of a love song…”

He was such a scrawny kid, despite his height. His whole body shook when Tyler had pushed him against the wall.

“The sharp knife of a short life…”

He could remember the sound Derek had made when Tyler had knocked the wind out of him. How could he forget? He’d heard it again just last night.

“No,” he blurted, instead of “Yes,” or “Sorry” or “Help” and got to his feet.

Ms. Atler opened her eyes, dewy from whatever spiritual sojourn she’d been letting the beautiful noise take her on, “Wazzat?”

“Bathroom!” Tyler insisted in a tone that brooked no argument, and did not linger to be argued with. Atler waved him off without comment and he didn’t look back to see how much of a stir he’d caused by his outburst.

He didn’t need to look back to feel Derek Jackson’s eyes on the back of his neck, earnest and concerned and strikingly, painfully pitiable.

His sneakers squeaked against the hallway floor, nails against his eardrums.

“Shit!” he hissed, seizing a stitch in his side, his bruise burning from the exertion, “Shit, shit…”

“I didn’t mean…” Derek had told him, so sincerely, so seriously, like he really believed that anything he said made a difference, “Really, Tyler, I wasn’t even thinking…”

“Of what?” Tyler prompted, “Thinking of what? C’mon, Dericka…let’s hear the juicy details…”

But Derek Jackson wasn’t going to sing for his supper. Too innocent, maybe. Possibly too brave, in a way Tyler couldn’t appreciate then and would never be able to replicate now.

He’d kept his mouth shut. And no self-respecting middle school choad was going to take that lying down.

“Lost your voice?” he’d been so confident, so proud of himself, sure he would be strong and unshakeable his whole life long, “Don’t keep me in suspense, faggot.”

“Bastard,” he said quietly, digging his fingers into the grooves of some anonymous freshman’s locker, “You fucking bastard…” he rapped his knuckles against the locker, imagining his own vapid, pre-teen smirk splitting at the impact.

“Such language!” drawled a frostbitten voice, “And during school hours. I’d say I’m disappointed…” an affected, overly produced sigh, “But I can’t even be surprised.”

Tyler looked up, heart in his mouth and blood in his ears, “What are you doing here?”

His sister had dressed up for the occasion. The leather jacket and boot cut jeans she’d been wearing since she showed up at the house the night of Brooke’s party had been traded for a neat camel-colored ensemble: flared slacks and a knee-length beige peacoat over a cream turtleneck. Her wavy dark hair was tied up for what must be the first time in Tyler’s experience of her, piled into an elegant twist at the crown of her head. She was even carrying a chunky leather handbag, fresh from the rack by the look of it.

“What do you think, dummy?” Gemma grinned, “I’m here for you.”

“How’d you get in?” he demanded, “There’s cops at the entrance!”

She cocked her head to the side, “I waved,” and did a little wave herself.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“You’re telling me? One second back in this shithole and I’m having war flashbacks,” she wrinkled her nose up a nearby billboard celebrating ‘Homecoming Highlights!’, “The chicken fingers still have teeth in ’em?”

“Why, you wanna make a donation?”

“That’s cute, Tyler,” she grinned, “Now come on, before the nostalgia goes to my head…” she took a step forward, the toe of her sensible brown pump anvil-loud on the tiles, “We’ve got work to do, and time’s a-wastin’.”

Tyler felt the harsh edges of the lockers dig into the small of his back. He was cornered, trapped, and utterly without friends.

Turnabout is fair play, O’Neil. Play shitty games, get shitty hands…

He turned on his heel and bolted, not away from Gemma, but toward her. His sister, who’d clearly been expecting him to try the other way, staggered back with a surprised yelp, momentarily thwarted.

“I’m not fucking around, Tyler!” she snapped, pumps click-clacking after him in earnest.

He ran anyway, knowing he couldn’t get far, knowing there was nowhere to go, and understanding, in a hollow, miserable, years’ late way why Derek Jackson had taken whatever Tyler had to dish out.

---

The words of the prophets were written on the bathroom walls.

“Rita sux men!”

“Beth Bachman is a BITCH/WITCH!”

“Audrey muffdives for Jesus!”

The ink on that last one still had that sweetly narcotic Sharpie scent. What a feeling, to be living in history.

Nina was given to understand the boys’ bathroom was worse. At the very least, she was sure it was less creative.

But Nina hadn’t come here for the scenery.

Her fingers flashed over her phone, doubling back to correct typos as she made them. She had a pet peeve about spelling errors; the persistent idea that people would take her less seriously if she didn’t come off as someone who proofread her messages.

That they would take her for an airhead: a pretty face in a designer ensemble, full of words and free of meaning.

It was a well-ingrained habit, and no point breaking it now, though her current correspondent sure as hell didn’t need to be convinced of anything.

“I hope you’re happy. You had a point to prove and you proved it. Whatever happens to you, to me, to ALL of us, it’s on you.”

Her screen was filled with texts, piling one on top of the other as quick as she could type them.

“I told you I would take care of everything. I promised. I never break promises. YOU know that.”

She looked down at the display, breathing sharply through her nostrils as she repeated, “You know that.”

None of the texts in her screed had been read, no more than the similarly accusatory ones from last night. By now, she didn’t expect they would be.

She looked at the little icon above the chat: a surprisingly serious portrait, taken on the bleachers after one of his basketball games. He’d been staring out at her from under an uncombed blond fringe, his fair face flushed pink from his on-court exertions.

His bright blue, Boy Next Door eyes held none of the easygoing farmboy innocence that by all rights was supposed to be there. Directed to Nina, they were cold, businesslike.

Accusatory.

“I hope you’re happy,” she typed again and, realizing she’d be repeating herself twice for no reason, deleted it.

She could yell into the void all she wanted. It wouldn’t change anything. She’d always been a woman of action: it wasn’t hers to wait for things to resolve themselves, and she’d spent a pretty chunk of time ensuring that, when the shit finally hit, she’d have no choice but to resolve things herself.

Having ensured, of course, that there was nobody else who could.

Somebody knocked on the stall door: short and impatient. Nina swallowed a gasp of surprised irritation, fingers tightening around her phone, “There’s another stall.”

“Yeah, but only one handicapped one.”

When it rains…

She unlatched the stall door, swinging it open, “I like the legroom.”

Amanda Steele smiled thinly, “So do I.”

“Educate me, Amanda,” Nina continued, looking her over, “Do you have a wheelchair hidden in those cargos, or…”

“Do you want a step-by-step of how I pee, Patterson? I can link a WikiHow on the subject. It even has pictures.”

“I can do without,” she stepped out out of the stall, “By all means.”

But Amanda didn’t move, “I’m actually glad I ran into you.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

“I don’t know. Seems I’m seeing more of you than’s good for either us lately,” she folded her arms, “Is Charlie hanging around your house too?”

Nina narrowed her eyes, a sharp, iron taste in the back of her throat, “What?”

“Just that he seemed pretty familiar with you this morning. But I guess he’s just full of shit, isn’t he?”

Nina entertained a vivid short subject of Charlie’s smoky shit-eating grin being lowered tenderly into a sausage maker.

“That’s his reputation,” said Nina lightly.

“But you were going to see him,” Amanda pointed out, “In the parking lot.”

“I was walking. Past him. You are familiar with walking, Amanda?”

“Very. I had to take a crash course in the subject not too long ago. Passed with flying colors.”

“Mhm,” Nina smiled noncommittally, catching an errant glance at their reflection in the adjacent mirror: her white dress and jaunty red beret a stark contrast to Amanda’s baggy Rosie the Riveter chic.

Not for the first time, Nina wondered if she was trying too hard. Not that she really had to try much anymore.

Amanda began to move past her, her elbow lightly jostling Nina’s bag as she paused in the stall entrance, “Oh, that’s nice.”

Nina followed her gaze to the most recent graffiti on the wall, “No points for style. I don’t think ‘muffdives’ is a compound word.”

“Someone else wrote something today,” Amanda turned back to her, “On Audrey’s front door. All caps.”

“No punctuation?”

“Oh, it spoke for itself pretty well,” her expression hardened, “She’s pretty upset.”

“I guess she must be, judging by poor Jake’s face,” her lips curled, “He has so few marketable skills, he’s got to be protective of what’s left to him.”

“You’re really incredible, you know that?”

“I am well aware, but it’s great that you think so too.”

“They were just minding their business, sharing a moment together, in private, because it was all they could do, because they knew it wasn’t safe for them here…”

Nina suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. She really didn’t have the time or the capacity for this sanctimonious soapboxing, from Amanda Steele, of all people.

But she was tired. She was so tired.

“You’re a big girl, Amanda, you know there’s no such thing as ‘privacy’ anymore.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“And, anyway, if I’m getting my facts straight, their lip-locking happened on public property where there is no expectation of privacy, so we can wring our hands and cry about the evil Internets stealing all our hard won freedoms, but I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” she paused, “Or with me.”

“It has nothing to do with you?” Amanda guffawed, “God, you’re…”

“Incredible. I said.”

“Shameless.”

“Look, if somebody wrote something impolite on Audrey’s door, that’s too bad. Probably her Dad should call the cops about it. Make it a five alarm emergency, even: forget about those dead freshmen. What’s really important is we make sure a baby lesbian with KD Lang’s haircut and Hillary Clinton’s chip on the shoulder can sleep at night…”

Amanda held up a finger, “Don’t you talk about her.”

Nina clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, “Don’t you point.”

“I’ve only got so many limbs, left, Nina. If I don’t work them out, they’ll fall into disrepair.”

Nina exhaled, long and low, “You may have a problem, Amanda, but it isn’t with me.”

“Isn’t it?” she shook her head, laughing huskily, “You recorded that video, Nina. You put it online. The only reason anybody is doing anything to Audrey and her girlfriend now is because you chose to broadcast their business and throw it to the mercy of the algorithm!”

“I didn’t make anybody do anything!” she spat, “Who the hell do you think I am, Amanda? Athena and Kali the Destroyer and the Virgin Mary?”

“I don’t get it…” he’d looked so earnestly, absurdly confused, “How do you do it?”

And, despite herself, she’d smiled, reassured by his boyish surprise and, oddly, affirmed that he was everything that he’d seemed to her from the beginning.

What a refreshing change.

“That’s the fun part,” she’d propped her chin up on her knuckles, watching his perplexed, outturned lips slowly morph into a smile, “At the end of the day, I barely have to do anything.”

It had never, ever been a lie.

“If people are going to be mean, Amanda, they’re going to be mean. If people are going to write homophobic graffiti on the pastor’s door, they’re going to do it. If people were gonna picket the church waving rainbow flags and chanting ‘Love Wins’, they’ll do that too! There’s a social contract, and I didn’t write it, but I’m a signatory just as much as you and Audrey and her moon-faced Catholic schoolgirl.”

“You really take no responsibility?” Amanda sounded honestly surprised, “Like if you hadn’t filmed them, this wouldn’t have happened…”

“If I hadn’t filmed them, somebody else would’ve. Or they would’ve been spotted necking by some lookie-lou at the Overlook, or outside the Gulp ’N Go, or a hundred other places. They knew what they were doing and, no matter how much you want to act like everyone’s a brainless lemming following Big Mama around, so does everyone who chooses to have a problem with their lovefest.”

“So why do it at all?” she asked, not harshly, “If this really isn’t about hurting people? Because you can make whatever big fancy speech you want, Nina, but you did film that video. You put it online. And Audrey got hurt. Why?”

“Because…” Nina blinked, and found somehow that she wanted to answer.

Why not? Why the hell not?

Because they’d all been there, high up on the hill with their whole little world spread out below them.

Because Tyler was sitting there on the ground, showing Riley some inparsable compsci afterbirth on his tablet, grinning like a kid when she diagnosed the problem in no time flat.

Because Zach and Jake were goofing off like the boys they both were but only one was contented to be.

Because Brooke was sunning herself like a Riviera tourist, eyes hidden behind designer sunglasses, her rarely-read copy of Gatsby lying over her bare midriff.

Because Will had his hands in Emma’s hair, the sun in his own burnished locks, and a soft smile on his face such as Nina hadn’t seen in a year and change.

Because everyone was content and at peace. Because, even as she could feel the walls closing in on her, her flock’s feathers were utterly unruffled.

Because, surrounded by allies, she was nonetheless utterly without friends.

“Because,” she told Amanda finally, “I could.”

Because she wouldn’t say anything else.

Amanda nodded slowly, “Well. Okay,” she stepped out of the stall with a sigh, “Thank you, Nina, for your honesty…” the door swung slowly shut behind her, “And for your confession.”

Nina stiffened, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Well, you confessed. To making that video,” Amanda nodded, “And putting it online. And, as a fellow signatory to the social contract…” she pulled her phone out of her pocket, turning the screen to reveal a recording in progress, “I decided to document for posterity,” she pressed the big red button to end the recording, smiling, “So thanks.”

Nina’s heart was in a vice, pumping hot blood even as she felt as though she’d been dunked in ice water.

Inexplicably, absurdly, she began to laugh, “Oh my,” she shook her head, “Oh my God.”

“I know,” Amanda nodded, “I don’t even have to use the bathroom.”

“You followed me!” Nina giggled, “Of course you did. You followed me so you pull off this little Law & Order skit. And of course…” she nodded, “Of course it would be you, Amanda.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Nina ignored her, “So, you’re…what? You’re gonna march away with that little recording of yours and then it’s curtains for me, right?”

“Well, it is a confession, straight from the horse’s mouth…not that I’m calling you a horse, Nina; you’re not that hardworking…”

“Oh, Amanda,” Nina interrupted, keeping her voice controlled, “You have no idea how hard a worker I am.”

Without a second thought, she lunged. Amanda anticipated this, taking a big step back and swinging around toward the door.

“You peg-legged bitch!” Nina screeched, running after her, half-falling through the bathroom door and right into Amanda.

They fell into the lockers opposite the bathrooms…the same lockers where, just this morning, Jake had gotten his own taste of humble pie. Nina’s beret went flying as Amanda grunted at the impact, her hand fanning out against the locker as her phone shot into the air, like a cartoon banana squeezed from its peel.

Nina watched in a kind of out-of-body stupor as the phone shot like a bullet down the hall, striking a running body center mass.

“Fuck!” Tyler staggered back at the impact, grabbing onto a nearby locker to steady himself.

“Tyler!” Nina snapped, not really expecting Sir Galahad shit and not getting it as Tyler let the phone clatter to the floor and slide between his legs…

Where it was scooped up by a slender, alabaster hand, “Ooh!”

Nina felt her heart drop in her chest as Gemma O’Neil, kitted out in her Pumpkin Spice Insta Model best, grinned from the phone to her, “You must be Tyler’s Nina!” in a tone so unctuous she couldn’t possibly expect anybody to believe this was their first meeting, “I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Oh my God,” Nina blurted. Amanda slackened her grip on her, “Wait, who…”

“Tyler!” Nina cried again, “The phone!”

The winded Tyler turned to his sister just in time to witness Gemma simper, “Kobe!” and spiked the damn thing.

“The hell is wrong with you, lady?” demanded Amanda.

“Don’t bother,” Nina advised, pushing past her and just catching the phone before it could crash for the second time.

“Please, Riles…” chirped a familiar voice as two sets up footsteps came pattering up the hall, “I’m sorry about the circus thing, really! You’re not supposed to take it literally…”

Aware of Amanda lunging again, Nina cried out, “Riley!” and threw the phone.

Riley staggered to a sharp stop in the hall, eyes widening at the projectile soaring toward her. Nina didn’t have high expectations, and Riley was for once inclined to underachieve, ducking with a yelp.

Brooke, a few paces behind her, let out a pretty scream, lifting a garish slab of purple cardboard to shield herself. The phone, naturally, struck this thing like a brick and Brooke, weighing about as much as a wet napkin and having less discipline, fell backward with an undignified, “The Caaaaard!”

The purple construction paper spun wildly, carrying Amanda’s phone with it, farther up the hall…

“Audrey!” Amanda called, “Stop it!”

Audrey Jensen (who else?) delayed her morose march at the sight of the purple slab skidding over to her, “The card?” she asked confusedly, stepping on a corner and pinning it under her boot.

“The phone!” Amanda amended, competing with Brooke’s shout of protest at Audrey’s desecration of the cardstock.

All of them, from Audrey down the line to Gemma dumbly traced the progress of Amanda’s phone which, with the card yoinked out from under it, managed a few more inches before being scooped up in none other than Nina’s fallen beret.

“Well!” Noah Foster grinned, holding it up like an orphan boy’s collection plate, “Caught red-hatted.”

“Noah,” Amanda breathed.

“Hey, Amanda, your phone screen’s cracked. I mean, like, wow is it cracked. I’ve been saying, you have to get a screen protector. It’s only a frivolous expense until it isn…”

Nina ran for him. Noah blanched and threw his arms up, but any further slapstick action was curtailed as a horrible, droning wail ripped through the hallway.

They all froze in their tracks, some of them with their hands over their ears, as they turned as one to the gargantuan figure standing just past Noah.

Principal Teague surveyed them with cold dispassion, lowering his still vibrating air horn with due casualness as he lifted his free hand in a beckoning gesture, “With me,” his eyes passed over all of them, betraying nothing, “All of you.”

---

Teague led his ill-assorted procession upstairs in soldierly silence, expecting the same of them and mostly getting it.

Another point for the air horn, then. The naysayers could stuff it.

Not that the horn was entirely without its faults, one of which being the scores of prying eyes from every classroom they passed on their way. Teague steeled himself for the inevitable flood of complaints from teachers over the ‘distraction’ cutting into their undeniably otherwise judicious use of class time. As far as he was concerned, if proceedings stopped for a minute or two so everyone could see Consequence in action, so be it.

Anyway, it was drawing to the end of fifth period. Any moment now, the halls would be flooded anyway, Teague’s clarion rendered into grist for the ever-churning mill of juvenile gossip that kept the place running in and, whatever his teachers claimed, out of class hours.

The thought of lunch inspired a tiny spurt of protest from his gut, at the thought of the cooling Rice-a-roni abomination he’d just been taking out of the faculty lounge microwave when he’d heard the fracas in the hall outside.

Probably for the best. Never a maven in the kitchen, he’d all but thrown his hands up in surrender with Jamie out of the house. Sarah had been the homemaker in the family, which was in no small part why she wasn’t around anymore, off making nice sit-down meals for her new husband.

Teague, suffice to say, was left with his own cooking. Not to put too fine a point on it, but he’d eaten better in the Gulf. In a cave.

He didn’t check behind him to make sure his prisoners were keeping in step. He didn’t need to…they knew the score.

Well, all but one of them. Fittingly, the one who had the best reason not to test him.

“So Principal Teague!” Gemma O’Neil hadn’t changed much in the last decade, though he supposed the high heels were new. She sort of swayed back and forth in them, her arms spread out like ballasts, her capacious handbag dangling dangerously off her right elbow. She may have learned the strut from watching Zsa Zsa Gabor go for it on Green Acres reruns.

“Why am I not surprised you’re still here?” Gemma continued, hoofing her way up to him.

“One arm’s length back, O’Neil,” Teague reminded her curtly. Gemma responded by lagging about half a pace, which was close enough and about as good an understanding as the kids had.

“I don’t know why I thought you’d have retired by now. I guess when you’re their age…” she jerked her thumb over her shoulder, making a wet farting noise with her tongue, “Everybody over 30 is a senior citizen. And you must have been over 30, then…not that you’ve aged a day!”

“Must be all the clean living.”

“Must be. I’m trying to be more natural, too. Eating more green vegetables. Walking. They don’t tell us this, but after 25, things start happening. For women, at least. Maybe men have a bigger window…”

“You weren’t counting on my not being here, O’Neil?” Teague prompted, “Not that it’d have made a difference.”

“Oh…” she nodded ponderously, “The restraining order.”

“It wasn’t my name on it, but the building’s.”

“I guess it was too much to expect bygones to stay bygones…”

Teague gave her a look, finding her shameless as ever, “I’m cursed with a long memory.”

“I totally get it. This is as awkward for me as it is for you. Believe me, if it was up to me, school would’ve stayed out and I’d have stayed away…” she sighed heavily, “But duty calls.”

Teague spared a look to the train of teenagers in their wake. Gemma’s ‘duty’ was hanging to the back of the march, looking for all the world like a man condemned. Tyler O’Neil, while not so naked a hellraiser as his sister had been in her time, was no shrinking violet either. In his sister’s presence, however, he visibly wilted, his head down but his eyes ever on Gemma.

The others were slightly more animated. Brooke Maddox, who had picked herself up from her pratfall with all the tragic gravitas of Judi Dench, looked forlornly at the trampled cardstock in her hands…Mrs. Hayward’s bright idea, for Emma Duval’s swift recovery.

In a carrying stage whisper, Brooke whispered to her friends on either side of her, “What’s she mean? About things happening to women after 25?”

“That’s when our horns come in,” Nina answered flatly, as fixated on Gemma as her other half was.

“You’re gonna need a bigger hat,” Audrey Jensen commented acidly from behind the trio.

Nina drew in a breath at this, but otherwise paid her no mind.

The hat was currently in Teague’s position, having been requisitioned from Noah Foster with the aid of a single look and an outstretched hand. Foster had helpfully begun informing him that, “Oh, you wanna be careful with that, there’s a phone inside…” but had laid off the advice with a gulp, presumably after gathering Teague had the sense God gave a slug.

Patterson’s hat, Steele’s phone, O’Neil’s sister. A funny bit of algebra, and Teague had never been much for functions. His line, when he’d been in the classroom, was History.

That, he could read well enough.

Theodora met them in the office doorway, “Principal! What’s happened? I heard the horn.”

“That’s what it’s for,” he commented matter-of-factly, aware of the faint note of reproach in her tone. Behind her, Mrs. Hayward got up and sat down three times in quick succession at the sight of them, muttering, “Principal Teague! Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness!” in prayerful cadence.

Teague opened his mouth to explain, but Theodora had already looked past him, eyes bugging out of her head, “You?”

“You!” Gemma waved at her, “Wow, you’re still here too. And you look exactly the same,” she didn’t say this as if it were a compliment.

“How…” Theodora began, “There’s a restraining order…all the police at the entrance!”

“She waved,” explained Tyler huskily.

Teague exchanged a look with Theodora and decided neither of them were surprised at the efficacy of their community’s sworn protectors.

“Can somebody please explain to me what’s going on?” Brooke demanded. Theodora turned back to him, eyebrows raised with the same question.

“It’s a three part problem,” he decided, “At least.”

“Well, well…” none other than Charlie Hawkins stuck his head out of Theodora’s open office door. His pink lips split into a grin as he looked over the party, his attention seeming to linger particularly on Nina and Amanda.

“How the seasons go ’round and ’round, and the painted ponies go up and down.”

“That’ll be enough, Hawkins,” Theodora said curtly, nodding toward the hallway.

Charlie didn’t need to be told twice, bowing grandly and flashing a pair of deuces at them as he sauntered out into the hall. Nina tetched audibly, turning away. Around them, the bell rang for the end of fifth period, inspiring another, “Oh, my goodness!” from Mrs. Hayward, at the passage of linear time.

“Now…” Theodora began.

“I’m sorry,” Gemma stepped forward, seemingly oblivious to the coal-black inferno in Theodora’s eyes, “I’m the last person to stop you from laying down the law,” she looked over at Nina, “Believe me, from all I’ve heard about Tyler’s honey, nobody needs laying more.”

“Good Lord.”

“But there really is a family emergency I have to deal with. That’s why I’m here,” she batted her eyelashes in emphasis of the wholesomeness of her errand.

“I’ll handle this,” Teague decided, handing Nina’s beret to Theodora, “Divide and conquer, yes?”

“Yes,” Theodora echoed dubiously, retrieving the phone from inside the hat, “What exactly is…”

“You’ll want to ask them that,” he indicated Nina and Amanda, the latter of whom stepped forward.

“It’s my phone, VP…” the nickname curdled on her lips, as she remembered herself, “Ma’am. I can explain.”

“Steele, that was nonnegotiable. But thank you,” Theodora sighed, “Alright, then, you two with me,” she indicated her office, looking at the rest of the group, “The rest of you, sit here for now.”

“But wait a second,” said Brooke, indicating Riley Marra beside her, “We didn’t even do any…”

“Sit down,”

Teague’s reproach was sufficient and Brooke sank into one of the red-upholstered chairs ranked to either side of the office. Riley sat beside her, muttering “Sorry,” for no apparent reason, which was the most sensible thing anybody had done yet.

“With me,” Theodora repeated, heading left into her office. Amanda followed, sharing a lingering smile with Noah and Audrey, who were sitting in the row of chairs opposite Brooke and Riley.

“Tyler…” Nina looked at him with strained urgency, her hair a crimson blur around her face as she turned her body, looking for all the world like Botticelli’s Venus, the goddess’s beatific expression supplanted by one of hot panic.

Was she afraid?

Whatever the source of her emotion, Tyler was unmoved by it, and did not meet her eyes as Teague ushered him through into his office.

He heard Theodora close her door behind the girls and imagined Jamie’s eyes, red and empty, the day of her conviction.

“Trouble in paradise,” Gemma looked at him knowingly as he closed his own door. The bell rang again: sixth period.

Teague, not quite liking the notion of sharing anything with Gemma O’Neil, much less a joke, silently indicated for the siblings to sit opposite his desk. Tyler eyed the chair warily and ultimately sank into it as if his trim, athlete’s shoulders had been burdened by stones.

Gemma, predictably, made more of a show out of it, “The place does look nice. You repainted in the same color.”

“I’m a traditionalist,” Teague said bluntly.

“You sure are,” she nodded, pointing out the flag case on the file cabinet, “Hey, it’s still there! Same spot.”

“New cabinet,” Teague commented, “The other one didn’t survive the fire.”

“No, I guess it wouldn’t have,” she folded her arms, “They must’ve made those flags from stronger stuff back then. But I guess they still had asbestos in everything back in the day…”

“Might be it was just lucky,” Teague interrupted, not bothering to add that she was lucky too that, of all the things that had been destroyed when this office burned, the flag his father had gone to glory in wasn’t one of them.

Gemma laid off, her sense of self-preservation seemingly still intact, whatever her other deficiencies. She took the seat to Tyler’s right, crossing her legs prettily, “Now, like I was saying, the only reason I’m here is so I can pick up my brother from school.”

Teague looked from one sibling to the other, “Came a pretty long way for it. It’s my understanding you left town after you served your time.”

“I did,” she answered primly, “Once I’d paid my debt to society, I figured I’d see the world. Get some of that Eat, Pray, Love going on.”

“Green vegetables,” Teague remarked.

“And fruit,” she nodded, “Lots of fruit.”

“And you’re back…”

“Oh, totally against my will,” she held up a hand, “Believe me, I was kicking and screaming the whole way. But, like I said, duty calls. The folks asked me if I could drop in and handle things here, with them being away…”

Teague, who had a distinct memory of Eloise O’Neil’s broad Irish-face collapsing in ruddy paroxyms of angry tears during her daughter’s creative courtroom testimony, frowned, “They asked you to come back?”

“Well, extenuating circumstances. They’ve gone east, Old Man. And while they’re gone, they want me to…look after things.”

Teague blinked, looking over at Tyler, “Where out east?”

Tyler remained stone-faced as he answered, “Singapore.”

Teague slowly turned back to Gemma, “Well, that’s a kettle of fish.”

“Bowl of rice, really,” commented Gemma.

“I would’ve assumed you’d know this, O’Neil, but there’s an expression about assumptions and I guess I have to count myself guilty this time: you can’t just waltz in here and pull a student out of school. You need parental consent.”

“Like I said, Dad called me and…”

“I need parental consent.”

Gemma looked toward his father’s flag.

“From the boy’s parents.”

“Oh, right,” Gemma sighed, looking down at her lap before shrugging, “That’s why you’re being weird.”

“Was I?”

“I thought you would’ve seen it already. Oh well…” she leaned back, her chair rocking abruptly with the motion as she yanked the door open.

“Mrs. Hayward!” she called, over Foster’s shrill cry of surprise as she poked her head out beside his, “By any chance, have you received a fax from the far off land of Singapore today?”

“Sing a Pour?” Mrs. Hayward frowned quaintly. If this were Rodgers & Hammerstein, the orchestra would start playing at this moment, girly dancers closing in on either side of the embattled receptionist’s desk.

“Singapore, yes, where our parents are. Can you check?”

Mrs. Hayward leaned precariously to meet Teague’s eyes. He waved his hand to suggest she get on with it, his attention arrested by Tyler.

The kid was breathing funny, Teague could see. Steele’s phone had caught him square in the chest from the look of it, winding him. It would explain the hobble in his walk on the way up here.

Or, rather, it could explain it.

Mrs. Hayward was rifling through the shallow pile next to the copy machine, “It’s mostly just those solicitations, from the insulation companies. I’m sure I would have oh!” as she held aloft a crisp page.

Teague got to his feet and met her at the doorway. Mrs. Hayward proferred the fax, head inclined at her dishonor, “I must not have noticed when I came in! The time on it says 5:30. In the morning!”

“Which is nighttime in Singapore,” Gemma interjected helpfully.

“Evening,” Teague amended, admittedly pedantically. Aware of four pairs of prying eyes too many, he nodded his silent thanks to Mrs. Hayward, returning to his office and the O’Neils, closing the door anew.

Sitting down, he read the fax which, indeed, was printed on the letterhead of Patrick O’Neil, O’Neil Landscaping Solutions. He noted the little cartoon leprechaun (much abused by the limitations of fax technology) leaning against the L in landscaping, over the slogan: ‘We make the grass greener!’

No mocking that up.

“To whom it may concern,” Teague read softly, darting his eyes intermittently from the page to the siblings, “Being that my wife and I have chosen to extend our stay in Singapore as we continue exploring investment options for our retirement…” he cleared his throat at this, unable to help himself, “Consequently, we have asked our daughter, Gemma, to return to Lakewood to make provisions for our son, Tyler who…”

Teague looked up, “…we intend to fly out to join us for a few days.”

Tyler’s eyes widened, barely perceptibly. His breathing was shallow.

“I am well aware of the court order in place prohibiting Gemma from being within a certain distance of GW High. I apologize in advance for any difficulty and ask that lenience be granted in these extenuating circumstances.”

The letter was capped off with Patrick O’Neil’s characteristic hardass ‘With all due respect’, followed by his signature, in cramped cursive.

Teague set the fax down on the desk, leaning forward. Gemma was smiling, “And if you think this is short notice, imagine how I felt.”

He didn’t say anything to this at once, tapping his fingers against the desktop. Tyler had listened to his reading with a sort of grim resignation.

It didn’t take an exterminator to suss out that something stank here.

Holding up a finger for silence, he stood and peered in the outer office, “Mrs. Hayward, could you ring up Pat O’Neil for me, please?”

On the opposite end of the room, Riley and Brooke looked up, having had their heads together in conference. Mrs. Hayward sat up at her desk, “Oh! His cellphone, Principal Teague?”

He suppressed a sigh, “He’s in another hemisphere at present, so yes.”

“But it’s very late in Singapore!” she held up a hot pink Post-It on which she had apparently been working sums for the last five minutes, perhaps in penance for not noticing the fax this morning/last evening, “It’s two in the morning for them!”

“If he decides to be cranky, he can take it out on me. Patch it to my phone, will ya?”

The faithful Mrs. Hayward asked no further questions. Entrusting her to her work, Teague closed the door anew, catching a glimpse of Riley’s searching eyes as the gap was sealed. He looked around and saw that Tyler had been looking at her too. His leg was shaking, sparking with nervous energy.

Gemma was bobbing her ankle up and down, her heels completing dainty little arcs through the air. The patient, dimly condescending smile remained on her lips.

She’d worn a very different smile, that day in court.

The phone on Teague’s desk began to ring, the red light for Mrs. Hayward’s extension blinking. With a significant look at the O’Neils, he picked up the receiver with one hand and, with the other, pressed the button for speaker phone.

“Hello?” he greeted curtly.

There was a short silence. He heard the crinkle of upholstery as Tyler leaned forward, and the catch in his breath when he realized he’d leaned too far.

“Hello?” a vaguely familiar voice, weary but relatively clear, at the other end, “Is this the school?”

“It is that, Mr. O’Neil. Principal Teague, in fact. Sorry to ring so late…”

“Oh no, it’s…it’s alright. You didn’t wake me,” a short pause, “Ellie and I, we’re burning the midnight oil out here.”

Teague suppressed a wince, “Interesting country, is it?”

“No other place like it. Inclined to spend the rest of my days here.”

“So your fax said.”

“So you received that, did you?” Teague detected a faint not of reproach, as if questioning why he should be bothering with a telephone call at all, in light of that oh-so comprehensive missive.

“I did indeed. And, as it happens, I have your kids right here, in front of me.”

“Hi, Daddy!” Gemma twiddled her fingers.

There was a short, terse pause before Patrick O’Neil said, “Well, Ed, it’s just as it says in the fax. Ellie and I are gonna be staying down here for a bit longer…”

“Looking at retirement options?”

“Oh, sure. You’d be surprised at the property values! And great places too, just fine places. Not for a few years, mind. I’ve still got some juice in me, yanno,” there may have been a laugh tacked to that, but it didn’t register. Teague had close to a decade on O’Neil. Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to him to start speculating in antipodal real estate.

“And we figured it’d do to have Tyler out here. For a bit of time.”

“A bit of time,” Teague repeated.

“So he can see the country. Get a taste of it.”

Tyler was gripping the arms of the chair.

“Mr. O’Neil…” Teague began.

“To tell you the truth, Ed, I’ve got ulterior motives here.”

Teague blinked, “…yeah?”

“We figured, Ellie and I, that it might do the boy some good,” this said in the sort of gruff, confidential tones Teague was accustomed to hearing from fathers at parent-teacher conferences and disciplinary sit-downs.

O’Neil would not know he was on speaker phone.

“He’s been acting out lately…this last year especially, ever since he quit the team.”

Tyler’s breaths were ragged, urgent, his bright blue eyes transfixed by the red light on the phone as if he could stare hard enough to conjure up his father’s face.

“So we thought, some time in a new place, different culture, different people…it could do some good. Straighten him out some.”

“Dad!” the word burst from Tyler like an artillery shell. He shot forward in his seat, practically colliding with Teague’s desk.

“Dad, I’m sorry! Please, you have to believe me, I am sorry…for all of it. I-I was wrong, I know it. I fucked up. But…but you can’t, please, you can’t do this, you…” his hair, typically elegantly swept to the side in a devil-may-care picture of upper middle class indolence, hung limply into his face, obscuring those characteristic blue eyes of his that were most peoples’ first clue that he wasn’t as a much a preppy airhead as he appeared.

That this boy was, in fact, an Honors Student. Whatever else he may get up to in his spare time.

“I will change. I will do whatever you want. Whatever you and Mom need, I will do it. But…you don’t understand. You can’t send me away,” his voice cracked and Teague appreciated a pang of disgust, for the whole sorry situation and for himself for allowing this twisted little father-son-chat to transpire.

Though, perhaps, it was to the good that it did.

Not for the first time today, Teague considered he made a very good witness.

“Tyler,” O’Neil said at some length, “I understand perfectly well. That’s why this is happening. Now, don’t argue. We’ll talk when we see each other.”

“Dad! Dad, wait…”

“If you need anything else, Ed, you know how to reach me.”

Teague might have said something, but didn’t. In the next half-second, there was no sound on the line but the dial tone, filling the office with its monotone drone.

Slowly, he lowered the receiver, looking up with a short sigh.

Gemma spread her hands in a sort of ‘Ta-da!’ gesture, “There you have it.”

Beside her, Tyler sat back in his chair, hands pressed together with the fingers splayed. Teague felt himself an actor in the wrong play, wandering into a scene where no lines had been written for him.

“You’ll have to grab a form before you go,” he said finally, “A discharge letter.”

“You people and your forms,” Gemma sighed theatrically, getting to her feet, “C’mon, Tyler…” she looked at him expectantly and then, as if on an afterthought, turning back to Teague, “I know Dad might seem harsh. I guess he’s learned a thing or two from dealing with me,” she grinned, sashaying out of the office. He could hear her asking Mrs. Hayward to “Discharge me, Mama,” occasioning a bushel of “Oh my goodnesses” to accompany what Teague knew would be impeccable service.

Tyler was standing but not moving, watching his sister in the outer office. Riley had gotten up, shaking off Brooke’s saying hand.

“Tyler!” she started forward, but stopped short of the threshold, repelled by the talismanic power of the principal’s office.

Good for scaring kids and dispensing forms, he thought bitterly, Good work, Marine.

“Tyler, it’s not true, is it?” Riley asked, “You’re not leaving?”

He didn’t answer at once and, when he did, it was in a low, husky voice, “Looks like it.”

“I don’t get it. Why now? What’s happened?”

“It’s fine, Riles,” he lowered his voice, “I’ll be okay. It’s only for a little.”

“Singapore’s on the other side of the world,” Riley pointed out.

“I’ll keep in touch, alright?” there was a faint note of pithy, almost childlike desperation in his voice, as if by saying it, he could will it true, “Send you more code to proofread?”

She laughed wetly, stepping back with her hand over her mouth, as if to stifle a sob. Brooke came up beside her, “Wait, I am so confused. Tyler, what the hell did you even do that…”

“Brooke!” Riley snapped censoriously as Gemma turned from Mrs. Hayward’s desk, “And we’re off! Said your goodbyes, Tyler?”

He stepped back from Riley as though scalded, not deigning to meet his sister’s eyes. Gemma shouldered her bag, starting toward the door.

“O’Neil,” Teague said before he could think better of it. Tyler turned to him, surprise flickering on his features. He and Gemma had the same eyes, Teague realized: aquamarine, preternaturally bright.

“I’m sorry,” the words felt sour on his lips, empty, flaccid and, for all that, the best he could do.

Tyler shrugged, “Nothing you could do,” and followed his sister out of the office.

“I filed the form,” Mrs. Hayward informed him once the door had swung shut behind the O’Neils, “The discharge form.”

“Well,” Teague remarked evenly, not turning to look at her, “That’s great.”

---

“Thank you, Nina, for your honesty…and for your confession.”

The playback ended. Hearing it over, Amanda found herself satisfied with the effort if unimpressed with the artistic effect. Noah would’ve suggested an editor, had he heard.

Fortunately, his wasn’t the critique she needed.

Vice Principal Kellerman had listened to the recording in silence, her lips pressed tightly together and her brow furrowed in a characteristic authoritative expression belying no judgment beyond general disapproval, for which Amanda couldn’t really blame her.

Throughout the proceeding, Amanda had pointedly avoided turning to Nina in the chair beside her. In the renewed silence, however, she couldn’t help herself. Patterson’s feathers had been more than ruffled, though at this point, Amanda couldn’t be sure how much of that was on their little scuffle and how much was owed to the random appearance of Tyler’s formerly estranged sister. At various points during the playback, Amanda had heard her sucking her teeth and making little exasperated noises by way of commentary.

She had to give it to her: she was a quick thinker, Nina Patterson, and creative.

But every artist has their limits.

“Well,” Kellerman said finally, looking down at the fresh spiderweb cracks on Amanda’s already pretty abused phone screen, “That does paint quite a picture.”

Nina chuckled in the back of her throat, raising her eyebrows. Amanda gave her a look, wondering whether she was going to rocket to her feet and declare that, despite everything, she was still the fairest in the land.

“I wonder if you’ll be surprised to know we are aware of this…” Kellerman waved her hand demonstratively, “…video,” evidently gathering that they were sufficiently surprised, she added, “We may not have been weaned on social media, but we’re not dinosaurs. Yet,” she sighed, “It was brought to our attention yesterday,” she paused significantly, “By the Sheriff.”

Again, her eyes glimmered intelligently, looking for cracks or tells. Nina’s face was marble: white, angular, austere.

“The details needn’t concern you, but suffice to say there was a brief question that the video may have some connection to the events of Sunday night,” she shrugged, “My understanding is that this question, while not answered, has not been aggressively pursued.”

“Why would they think there was a connection?” asked Amanda, “I mean…to the freshmen that were killed?”

There was a brief pause in which Kellerman seemed to weigh the merits of explaining. Finally, she inclined her head, “I suppose there’s no point keeping you wriggling in suspense over it. Brock Carmichael ‘liked’ a comment on the video. From all appearances, it was one of his last acts on this earth,” her eyes narrowed, and a certain sharpness crept into her tone, “It’s no secret, and it’s visible to anybody who cares to look for as long as this wretched thing is online, but I would thank both of you not to go flapping your lips about it. Lapse in judgment it may have been, but he was 14-years-old. The time may have come when he would’ve matured, but unfortunately for himself and his family, that choice was taken from him.”

She cocked her head, “For the person behind this video, however…the finger on the trigger, as it were…that choice is still on the table.”

Her eyes passed over Amanda, coming to rest on Nina who, not oblivious, raised her own eyebrows, “Am I supposed to say something?”

“I think, Miss Patterson, it would be well if you did.”

“Silence is a virtue, Vice Principal.”

“You don’t have to tell me. It can also, of course, be a mark of idiocy. In your position…”

“So, for starters, you’re ignoring something pretty major about all this.”

Kellerman blinked, “Do tell.”

“That recording was made without my consent,” Nina began counting off on her fingers, “Or my knowledge, mind you…”

“For God’s sake,” Amanda scoffed.

“Now, I know Louisiana isn’t winning any blue ribbons in the civil rights sweepstakes…”

“I daresay,” intoned Kellerman.

“…but there is a statute on the books about recording people without consent. Mind you, I can’t pull it out off the top of my head, but I’m sure my father could tell you right off, if you wanted to get in touch…”

“This is ridiculous,” said Amanda.

“He is ridiculous,” Nina smiled, “Ridiculously good. Amanda should know: he won her that nice settlement after that terrible tragedy…”

“Yeah, I’m dancing with joy over it.”

“Arguably, Vice Principal, she can dance because the garage paid her medical bills. Because of my father. Actually, I think he was so moved by the magnitude of the pain Amanda was in over their negligence that he worked for free, didn’t he?”

Amanda scowled, “…that has nothing to do with this.”

“Girls.”

“I’m only saying that it’s a nice way to repay him, playing Kim Possible and recording his daughter in a public bathroom…”

“Girls!”

This time, they turned to Kellerman, who had interrupted sharply. Amanda shrank in her seat, her heart pounding.

She had never asked for charity.

“I don’t understand you, Amanda,” her father had fumed over her hospital bed; never the hardiest under pressure, since the accident he rarely passed a conversation without irrigating his audience with fresh spittle, “The man is offering to take us on pro bono. Pro bono! Do you know what that means?”

Of course she knew what it meant, and had told him so.

“The trouble with you is your pride. It’s always been that way…”

In the far corner of the room, her mother sat on the fringes of the conversation, rocking back and forth in her seat, eyes closed, mouth moving in rapid, breathy prayer, beneath the ken of human hearing.

“Well, I hate to give you a rude awakening, sweetheart, but you’re in no position to be proud anymore!”

She wasn’t going to argue with him. It was exhausting even at the best of times and, anyway, she wasn’t stupid. There was money to be made, and money saved in the making of it.

And they would need a lot of money, if she were to come out the other side. Not that she’d been thinking much about what she would do when she got there.

“So if he wants to do a good deed so he can show off his halo to his buddies at the Lake Club, more power to him! All I know is that your little mishaps put us at the doorstep of the poorhouse and I, for one, am not too proud to call a spade a spade!”

“It’s true,” Kellerman was saying, “That this recording likely wouldn’t be admissible in a court of law…”

Nina smiled in smug cognizance of this fact.

“But this is not a court of law,” Kellerman wound up, “And, what I lack in prosecuting power, I make up for in powers of observation,” her eyes blazed, “I observe, for example, that the video discussed in this recording depicts two underage persons in an intimate moment, captured…” she locked eyes with Nina, “Without their knowledge or consent.”

Nina’s smile curdled.

“I can infer from this observation that the video may indeed be submitted as evidence in a court of law. If, for example, the parents of one of the involved parties sought to press charges over the violation of their daughter’s privacy,” she shifted in her seat, “And, if I may offer some conjecture, I’d add that one of those involved families is sufficiently provoked by this matter that they have arrange a sit-down here, at this office, after school today, to determine from us just what we can tell them about the person or persons responsible for this video.”

She leaned forward, “And while this recording may not be admissible in court, I expect they will nonetheless find it pertinent to their own inquiries and, given that they send their daughter to St. Mary’s Academy, I can deduce that they’ll have no problem finding a lawyer at least as competent as your father, Miss Patterson.”

Nina pushed her hair over her shoulder, her hoop earrings swaying with the motion.

“But you wouldn’t do that, Vice Principal,” she smiled coolly.

“Wouldn’t I?”

“It’s not a real confession. You’d be siccing this girl’s parents on me based on…what? A coerced statement from a disgruntled third party?”

“Coerced?” Amanda repeated, “You were practically singing by the end of it!”

“You had me cornered in a bathroom stall like a bitch with a scent.”

“Classy, Nina.”

“What was I supposed to do? With you in my face and no way out? I played along. It’s that or get one of those telescopes you’re balanced on up my…”

“Enough!”

Kellerman’s exclamation halted them both, fixing their eyes on her. The Vice Principal rarely raised her voice below a censorious snap. Now, her one-word command seemed to ring off the metal fixings of the window and the radiator. Amanda imagined her own legs shaking from the force, and felt curiously unmoored.

“You are young women,” Kellerman said, “Audrey Jensen is a young woman, and her friend as well. You’re not children anymore, and heaven knows you’re witness to more of the goings’ on in the world than girls your age used to be. I do not have to tell you all the ways you will be underestimated, mocked, judged, and humiliated in your life. I don’t have to preach to you all the ways the world will try to ridicule your efforts, diminish your work, and shove you out of every doorway you have the audacity to darken.

“I certainly do not have to tell you about the silk-thin tightrope you will be made to walk just to be taken seriously, not just by men but by other women; how every image, every video of you, at a party or at a friend’s house or in someone’s car will be scrutinized by everyone from the girl at the next locker to the dean of some ivy league university. How the slightest misstep could send you plummeting down to earth and nobody to catch you because they’ll all have moved on to the next girl on the wire.

“I know I don’t have to tell you this. Because you know it, because you’ve lived it. You will not have had much choice. And, seeing the weapons turned against you…you decided there was nothing else for it but in pick up a pitchfork and join in on the side of the mob.”

Her voice was solid and strident, her eyes blazing with a cold fire. Amanda felt oddly like an intruder in a situation she’d instigated.

“It’s funny you say that, Vice Principal,” Nina said eventually.

“I’m not feeling particularly giggly at the moment.”

“Well, you’re right, obviously, about all the pressures that are on us…all of us…” smiling beatifically as if she had just had the good grace to notice Theodora Kellerman was, in fact, a woman, “From society. And it’s interesting you say that, about women turning against each other because that is exactly what Miss Amanda over here is doing…”

“Oh please!”

“Now, I know Amanda has lots of grievances against the world, and maybe some of them are justified. But I just think it’s sad how far you’ll go to a put girl down.”

“And you’re a real champion of women, is that it?” Amanda abandoned.

“I uplift my girls,” Nina smiled, “And they uplift me. Now, I know sisterhood is a hot commodity and it doesn’t come cheap, and to be honest, Amanda, I can only imagine how hard it is to cultivate strong female friendships working in a male-dominated industry, but you know what they say: nothing ventured, nothing gained. But I guess it’s easier to scapegoat other women for all your problems with the world. I understand! I’d lash out too if I had to give up minidresses for life…”

“That’s quite enough,” said Kellerman tartly, “As sure as I am that you’d benefit from an old fashioned Woman-to-Woman round table, that’s hardly the point of our business here. As it stands, you’re already looking at a week’s suspension…”

“Excuse me?” Nina demanded shrilly. Try as she might to hold her tongue, Amanda couldn’t help but let out with a, “Wait, what did I do?”

“You were fighting in the hallway,” as if it were quite obvious, “There’s no legalese about it.”

“She was going for my phone!” Amanda protested, “Kellerman…” in her haste, she forgot the honorific and winced, “…ma’am, I can’t be suspended. I’m already…” she faltered, “I have to graduate on time.”

She was already repeating her senior year. She was already behind in so much. Her life could have been so different already, if it wasn’t for a minute’s mischance. Months in the hospital, months more of therapy. An entire life derailed forever…

Her father had once told her to give up her pride, and she thought she had, enough. Somehow, life kept contriving new ways to scrape off whatever last layer of it remained crusted at the bottom.

“A week won’t make much difference,” Kellerman said, not unsympathetically, “So long as you keep up with your schoolwork. Rules are rules, Miss Steele, and…” she hesitated, worrying the silver cross charm around her neck between two fingers, “They must be enforced equally, if they are to mean anything at all.”

Her strange lapse passed in a second and she lowered her hand with new resolve, “And just as I am obliged to see you two face proper consequences for fighting, so too am I obliged to share everything I know with those girls’ parents when they arrive here later,” she tapped Amanda’s phone screen, “I would obliged if you would share this with…yes, Miss Patterson?”

For Nina had raised her hand. At Kellerman’s acknowledgment, she parted her lips, “When do we say that video was uploaded?”

Amanda frowned as Kellerman answered, “Sunday.”

“And when is it supposed to have been filmed?”

“Well, I can’t say as I…”

“Saturday afternoon,” Amanda interrupted, figuring there was no point concealing this information, “Audrey was on the Overlook Saturday. Which you know…”

“That’s very funny, isn’t it, because I was at home that day.”

Amanda guffawed, “That’s very cute, Nina. Is that an exact words defense? Because I’m sure you weren’t sleeping on the street so, yes, you probably were at home at some point…”

“I was there that afternoon. And most of the morning,” she cocked her head to the side, “Homecoming was a long night.”

Kellerman made a sour sound in the back of her throat, “I’m sure it must have been.”

“We all headed to my place after. Spent the night, woke up at brunchtime and had a day of it,” her eyes glimmered, “Yanno. Girl stuff,” she looked Amanda over, “Or I guess you may not, but I don’t want to talk in circles…”

Amanda began to stand, but Kellerman lifted a hand in warning, “You’re claiming,” she began carefully, “Not only that you didn’t film the video, but you were nowhere near the scene when it was filmed?”

“Who needs alibis when you have a packed social calendar?”

Amanda rounded on Kellerman, “Look, I’m sorry, but this is bullshit…”

“I will decide what it is,” said Kellerman evenly, turning back to Nina, “Need I remind you this isn’t a courtroom.”

“It isn’t,” Nina agreed, “But I figured you’d want to know before you go showing that recording to that poor Catholic schoolgirl’s parents,” she shrugged, “Wouldn’t want those poor people jumping to conclusions. Like you said, once lawyers get involved, things can get messy. For everyone.”

Kellerman bit her lip, “And the girls concerned in this ‘girl stuff’?”

“Brooke, Riley…” she ticked them off her fingers, “Emma. If you don’t believe me, you can always ask them. I mean, Emma’s indisposed, I guess and, frankly, I think it’s a little insensitive to bother her with stuff like this…but thankfully, Brooke and Riles are right out there!”

Without further ado, she sprang to her feet, lithe and leggy. The momentary discomfiture caused by her suspension had passed like a storm cloud on a fresh wind…somewhat disappointing, Amanda had to admit, especially since she was pretty sure it was the first academic consequence Nina had ever faced in her career of tyranny, but she figured she could wade as deep as she wanted into the weeds of Nina Patterson’s psyche and come away with nothing to show for it but the scars of stinging nettles.

Kellerman was quick to stand as well, crossing the office in two strides to open the door before Nina could.

Outside, civilization was abiding as normal.

“So probably the best episode to start with is Superman vs. Goku…” Noah was leaning at an obtuse angle to meet Riley, also leaning pretty precariously (perhaps standing up would be viewed as an attempt to escape) to get a look at his phone.

“Goku’s the guy from Dragon Ball Z, right?” Riley asked, her voice a little hoarse but evidently engaged.

“And Dragon Ball, which came first.”

“I remember the cartoon,” Riley nodded absently, presumably oblivious to Noah purpling at the c-word, “He throws the sun at people, right?”

“Something like that.”

“So Superman’s probably no match for him…”

“You’d think that, wouldn’t you…”

“Oh, good, it’s the firing squad,” Brooke announced from beside Riley, looking up at their entrance. Kellerman looked across the room to Teague, who was standing by Mrs. Hayward’s desk. The door to his office was open, and there was no sign of the O’Neil siblings.

Beside her, Nina must have also noticed the absence. Again, Amanda noted a strange flicker of worry in her eyes, though the rest of her expression was unchanged.

“Brooke…”

“I will ask the questions, thank you, Miss Patterson,” Kellerman said sharply, locking eyes with Teague significantly. Audrey stood from her seat, frowning, “Is anybody going to explain what’s going on here? Because, no offense, I’m pretty tired of being treated like a criminal.”

Kellerman fixed her eyes on Brooke and Riley, “If you girls would please come in…”

“Where were you Saturday afternoon?” Nina spoke over her, moving ahead of the older woman.

“Oh,” Brooke’s mouth formed a perfect circle, “Well, that’s easy,” she looked at Riley, “We were together.”

Nina smiled, satisfied.

“…me, Riles, and Emma.”

The smile faded, “…what?”

“Oh, sorry,” Brooke held up a hand, “Riley, Emma, and I. I’m always forgetting.”

Nina’s eyes were sparking, “What is this?”

“You asked! The three of us were at my place, planning my party!” she looked past her to Kellerman, “Brooke’s Big Beautiful Bash. Maybe you saw it trending?”

Kellerman narrowed her eyes, “I wasn’t aware.”

“Well, it was. Trending, I mean, at least until, yanno…” she stage whispered, “The killings. And I have the girls to thank for it!” she turned to Riley, smiling invitingly.

Riley stiffened at the attention, eyes darting from Brooke to Kellerman and, for the barest moment, to Nina, “Yeah,” she said finally, “But I’m not sure I was much help.”

“She’s always saying stuff like that,” Brooke waved dismissively, “Keeps me grounded! Emma too, of course. And Nina…” she smiled sympathetically, “Well, honey, I did ask you if you wanted to help, but no hard feelings if you weren’t up to it,” again, in that faux-confidential tone, “Nina has her big end-of-summer party Labor Day weekend.”

“Does she,” Kellerman remarked.

“And I wanted to do a party around that time, and there was a little push back and forth, which I get, obviously, Nina was there first…so I pushed my party ahead a month and that’s what happened.”

She looked around, smiling pleasantly, “Honestly, Nina, it’s totally fine you couldn’t make it, but I really don’t know why you’re being salty about it now,” she cocked her head to the side, “You okay, babe? You’re looking like you stepped in something.”

“You little bitch!” Nina flung herself at Brooke so sharply Amanda nearly fell backward herself. There was a chorus of startled commotion (Mrs. Hayward: “Oh my goodness!”) as Brooke leaned back sharply, the chair tipping beneath her, spilling the purple card to the floor again.

Riley, who was between Nina and Brooke, barely escaped, her hair a black silk veil as she darted to the other end of the room, leaving Brooke to their mutual friend’s mercy.

“That’s enough!” Teague barked, moving swiftly between them. Brooke, on her feet, had her back to the office door, her hair tuslled but none the worse for wear.

“You’ve said more than enough, Maddox,” he said summarily. Brooke wasn’t arguing.

He turned to Nina, “And if you think you can lay hands on someone in my office, Patterson, you’ve another thing coming.”

She stepped away, throwing her own hair out of her face.

“That suspension still stands,” Kellerman remarked, perhaps oblivious to the short “Ooh!” of surprise issuing from Brooke, “I can always tack another week on, if tempted.”

There was a short silence. Nina surveyed them all, running a hand through her disheveled hair.

“That won’t be necessary,” she said finally, readjusting her bag on her arm and walking out.

“Patterson!” Kellerman called after her, “Nina!”

She stopped at the doorway, catching the door before it could swing shut in her wake. They could hear Nina’s footsteps clacking down to the hall toward the stairs.

“Hm,” Brooke picked up the card, “Draaaa-ma.”

Kellerman gave her an inscrutable look, “That’ll be all,” and, after a pause, “All of you. Head back to class. You’re dismissed.”

Brooke didn’t need to be told twice, vanishing with the card in hand. Audrey didn’t linger much longer, though she met Amanda’s eyes first.

She didn’t know what she expected to find there: confusion, understanding, gratitude…even without a full understanding of what had just happened, Nina Patterson had just been suspended.

And she’d been caught. Whatever else happened, wherever else this went next, she’d been confronted for her ill doing and, however incomplete, had faced a consequence for it.

“By thy words thou shalt be condemned.”

But there was no vindication in Audrey’s eyes, no satisfaction. Amanda may have been projecting…but if she saw anything in her friend’s face, it was resentment.

---

Riley couldn’t get out of there fast enough, and she wasn’t the only one.

“Noah!” she called after him in the mad dash to clear out of the office, “Noah, hey…”

Whatever hyperbolic claims he may attach to himself, he had a terrible poker face, and couldn’t help but look over his shoulder at her. His ears turned pink as he lifted his hand in an awkward wave, lips framing a soundless “Hey” of his own before he turned, the great weight of his bag propelling him an extra half-step forward after the resolute Audrey, who had herself stalked out of the room, leaving a palpable cold front in her wake.

Riley was glad for it. She didn’t want to think what may have happened if Audrey had deigned to take notice of her. As it was, Noah’s quick look at her seemed almost embarrassed, wounded…

Betrayed?

And why shouldn’t he be?

She found Brooke one flight of stairs down, on the tiny landing at the juncture between the third and second floors, Emma’s card leaning against the wall beside her. The others must have had to pass her in their exodus, but if anything had happened between them, Brooke gave no sign.

“What’re you doing?” she asked, surprised at the hollowness of her voice.

Brooke lifted her eye, fingers not slowing in their riverdance over her phone, “Oh. Hey,” and, realizing she’d been asked a question, clarified, “Oh, I’m reminding the boys they were together Saturday, throwing a ball back and forth or comparing burps. The details don’t matter as long as they match…”

“As long as they have their stories straight, you mean?” she asked bitingly.

“Mhhm,” Brooke agreed, absent irony, “I’ve texted Will too, but maybe I’d be better off checking with the cow he’s trapped under,” she smiled at her own wit, or possibly this recollection of her earlier attempt at it, “And I guess there’s no point buzzing Tyler in. It’s not like he’s gonna be put to the question anytime soon…”

“Brooke!”

She looked up, frowning, “Oh, sorry, Riles. I didn’t mean to joke about Tyler. It’s really screwed up…”

“I know it’s screwed up!” Riley snapped, more harshly than she intended. But she couldn’t think about Tyler…about the strange, haunted look in his eyes, and the stiff way he followed his sister out of the office, like a death row inmate on his final march…without feeling her gorge rise in her throat, tears pricking at her eyes.

Better to focus on the problems right in front of her. She might even say the problems she could solve, if only she were feeling more confident.

“You know what else is screwed up, Brooke? Roping all your friends into a conspiracy to cover you for lying…”

“Riley!” Brooke made a sharp shushing sound, “There’s an echo.”

Indeed, their words were slightly magnified in the stairwell. Riley folded her arms, “You shouldn’t have done that.”

Brooke made a face, “What else was I supposed to do?”

Riley raised her eyebrows, “Do you want me to answer that honestly, or is this one of those times when you’re fascetious for the fun of it?”

“Oh, okay, because I didn’t call up a vote in the microsecond available to me, I’m Hitler. Thank you, Riley, really appreciate it…”

Riley frowned, “Facetious. And, you know, I bet you know that and you’re just playing dumb to get me off your case.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence, but…”

“You are not a moron, Brooke!”

“I know I’m not,” Brooke smiled coolly, “And since you know that, I’m kind of confused why you’re getting mad…”’

Riley guffawed, “You lied! You threw Nina under the bus…”

“Babe, she was already hitched to the exhaust. All I did was keep her from dragging us down there with her. And before you start,” she held up a hand preemptively, “You know Nina wouldn’t have lifted a finger for any of us if the roles were switched.”

Riley had no delusions about Nina. While she still wasn’t 100% sure what this afternoon’s three ring circus (to borrow a tortured metaphor/analogy/allegory) had been about to begin with, it was clear Amanda Steele had somehow gotten her hands on evidence implicating Nina in the video.

Presumably, this evidence didn’t directly implicate the rest of them who’d been on the Overlook that day, or else Nina wouldn’t have felt so brazen as to march out and ask Brooke to corroborate her whereabouts as she had.

“I know why you lied, Brooke,” Riley said tersely, “But maybe you shouldn’t have.”

“Is that a moral I sense coming on?”

“We were all there that day,” said Riley, “On the Overlook. We all saw what happened. We were part of it…”

“This again. First Emma, now you…”

“Sounds like a majority to me, and since we are supposedly better than Hitler…”

“Not a majority,” Brooke interrupted, “Jake agrees with me.”

“First time for everything.”

“And Zach agrees too!”

“Have you asked him?” she cocked her head, “In exact words?”

Brooke made a face, “What do you want me to do, Riley? Host an assembly? Maybe have little buttons made? Lezgate 2015: Their Spit, Your Choice? It was an emergency and I had to make a call.”

“And that call was every woman for herself?”

Brooke’s eyes blazed, “Nina’s been flying too close to the sun for a long time. I don’t know what was going through her head when she decided to make her little softcore home movie…probably some psychosexual tug-of-war with Emma that I do not want to think about. The point is, it was Nina’s brain coming up with the idea, and her manicure pushing the necessary buttons. I made an executive decision to protect us from the fallout.”

“An executive decision…are you hearing yourself?”

“That and the residual humming from Teague’s horn,” she pursed her lips, “Look, Riley, I’m not justifying myself to you.”

“You can barely justify it to yourself. Acting like you’re taking one for the team, protecting us…”

“From being caught in the crossfire? Abso-frickin-lutely, babe. And I’ll do it again. Love her or leave her, but there’s one guilty party here and she rhymes with See Ya. This guilt by association thing may seem noble at first, but it’s a losing game and I’m not a loser,” she paused, “Neither are you.”

She didn’t say it meanly, that was the thing, and Riley didn’t think it was meant meanly either. With Nina, you always had to be mindful of the dance: what to say and not to say, how to guard your face, how to move…

“I know she’s a lot,” Brooke had told her many months ago, when Riley’s conception of ‘a lot’ was much more conservative, “That’s the point, and it’s worth it.”

“For her?”

“For us!” she’d grinned, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, “Babe, she has everything.”

Riley, young and unschooled in the ways of life, had frowned rather obviously at this, aware her new bestie was, to put it politely, loaded, “Don’t you also have everything?”

Brooke’s smile had become somewhat fixed at this and Riley had understood that, while Brooke may have a sprawling waterfront mansion and a closet full of designer bags, not a scrap of it had been purchased in her name.

But Nina Patterson’s clout was entirely self-financed. No putting a price on that.

All this to say that Nina, whatever else she was, was predictable. Brooke, however…

“But now that Nina’s been suspended…” Riley continued pointedly, “She’s the loser. Which makes you…”

Brooke stiffened, “That’s a leap.”

“A climb,” Riley clarified, “One rung up the ladder. And you were already pretty high up.”

Brooke reddened, shoving her phone into her bag, “What do you want me to do, Riley?”

“Get your priorities straight!” Riley insisted, “For starters.”

Her face darkened, “That’s a fun word. Speaking of priorities, I hope I haven’t scared you off visiting Emma later,” she picked up the card, awkwardly shifting it under her arm.

“Of course not,” said Riley stiffly, “We’ve got to get our stories straight, don’t we?”

Brooke winced, “Yanno, Riley, I may have said something you didn’t like back there, but I didn’t make you go along with it,” she shrugged as the stairwell shook with the bell for the end of the sixth period, “Just something to think about.”

She continued down the stair, into the rising tide of humanity filling the halls. Riley watched her go, grip tight on the straps of her own bag, not sure if she was angrier at her friend or herself.

---

The tube was dark and damp, the air suffused with the sickly sweet odor of mildew, seasoned with the ashy scent of cigarettes and the more pungent legacy of leafier smokables.

For all that, it was pretty cozy.

It was a good place to sit and think, safely removed from the rumble of traffic, in a neighborhood already bereft of the intrusions of pedestrians. She could lose herself here for hours and had, without at first meaning to.

Her hiding place wasn’t strictly a tube, more of a tunnel, about 12 feet high and six wide. The utility wasn’t obvious to her but, then, Atlanta hadn’t had much of a skating scene or, if there was one, it had never been hers.

The skate park was closed when she found it, the wire fencing sealed with a heavy chain and a comically prominent padlock. That being said, she couldn’t tell if it was out of business or just out of season, though the weather was still fresh and sunny this time of year. The sign over the gate had once been a glossy, neon bright slab of sheet metal but had been weathered by the elements and vandals to the point the only part of it legible were the words ‘Get your wings’, rendered in punk-adjacent, spiky silver letters.

Out of business or not, the gate wasn’t so tightly chained that she couldn’t part it enough to slip through the gap.

Her sneakers had plodded softly on the concrete floor, echoing off the half-pipes and ramps with a strange solemnity. She imagined it might sound like church, though she’d never been much and couldn’t say for sure.

The inner-tube wasn’t a long way from the entrance. Aware of the sun beating down on the concrete, she’d ducked inside in the hope of some shade and had ended up staying, lost in the lengthening shadows spreading inch by inch over the unforgiving gray plain beyond her little sanctuary.

Some people good tell the time just from looking at shadows. Once upon a time, people hadn’t had a choice about it, if they cared about the time at all. She wasn’t inclined to care  much, except she knew that once there was more shadow than light outside her porthole, she’d have to face the music.

The thought was a frightening one, best kept safely remote, even as the shadows pressed it closer in with every minute that passed.

She’d become so lost in the play of the shadows that she barely noticed one of them moving faster than the others, with an unmistakably human intentionality. It wasn’t until the scuffed up workboots appeared in the opening that she realized the footsteps hadn’t been conjured by her wandering imagination, and drew in breath.

The boots were attached to a pair of jeans, which bent at the knees, filling her sanctuary with shadow.

“Expecting someone else?” her brother cocked an eyebrow, his expression unreadable.

Deanna bowed her head, her hair, lanky from her long walk, hanging limply into her eyes, “Is there someone else?”

Kieran shrugged, “There’s one ornery cop.”

She blanched, “A cop?”

“Deputy,” he corrected them both dismissively, “Not the friendliest guy, but he gave me a lift. Drew the line at trespassing, though, but I suggested nobody could blame him if he looked the other way.”

He said this like it was meant to be funny, but Deanna didn’t have the will to parse it, “Will he tell Clark? I mean…” she paused, “Does Clark know? That I…”

“Not yet. I mean, there’s nothing stopping that guy from radioing him now, but I think we’re cool enough that he’ll give me a head start,” he drummed his fingers against his knees, “So can I come in, or is this a secret knock kinda deal?”

“A knock wouldn’t keep you out anyway,” she smirked knowingly.

“A pillow fort isn’t a very strategic barirer,” he pointed out, “But maybe I should’ve taken one for the team and started sleeping on the couch once…” he trailed off, and she could glimpse a tinge of pink creep into his ears, as if the idea of his little sister becoming a woman was scandalous to him, who’d spent a chunk of that time behind bars.

“I didn’t mind much,” she allowed, “Anyway, I have my own room now.”

“And look what happened?” he smiled and she couldn’t help but smile back, even as she felt her throat tightening from the effort.

“Well, come on,” she said finally, scooting aside to permit him entry.

Kieran obliged, bending with a soft grunt and crouching opposite her, the tips of their shoes touching each other.

“People are supposed to skate in here?” he asked, looking around the tunnel which, indeed, was only a little taller than he was.

“I think you’re supposed to skate on top of it.”

“Hmph,” he ran a finger down the grimy wall, “Good place to get killed.”

“Kieran!”

“Yanno they still haven’t caught the guy that killed those kids,” he said evenly, “Some other girl got attacked last night. Clark told me.”

She raised her eyebrows at this, “I’m alone. Or I was.”

“That’s what worries me,” he knotted his fingers together, hands bouncing between his knees, “Dee, what’s going on?”

She’d been anticipating this question all day and yet, finally prompted, felt her words curdle on her tongue, “I…”

Stupid, selfish little kid.

“Nothing. Really, I…” she shook her head, “I didn’t mean anything, Kieran, I…”

“You locked your door and went out the window. Didn’t even take your phone with you. Dee, when I went to wake you, I…” he broke off, letting his inability speak for itself.

The thought was a knife in her gut. Her brother, the only person she had in her corner, the only one she could trust to stick out his neck for her, and she had him running around town thinking the worse while she…

“It wasn’t like that, Kieran, really,” she said, “I was just…”

Her throat was tight, but her eyes were dry. She thought again of what she’d said to him on the roof yesterday, and wondered if it was true…if she really was all cried out. Or possibly some sensible part of her knew this particular self-inflicted misery was nothing to cry about.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she admitted, “It was so quiet and so…”

“Alone?” he prompted, not unsympathetically.

She nodded, “And it’s not like I’m not used to it. To…” but she looked at him and felt bad finishing the thought: “To not having you in the next bed.”

“But all the noises,” she shrugged, “Cars in the streets and sirens and people talking down in the alley or upstairs…”

“Or downstairs,” Kieran pointed out evenly, “Tina cussing at the TV, right through the wall.”

She smiled faintly, “I just stared at the ceiling all night and, when I realized it wasn’t nighttime anymore…” she looked out at the grid of shadows on the concrete, “I decided I’d go for a walk.”

“Out the window?”

“I didn’t want to wake anyone,” she paused, realizing that Clark had never come home in the night, or else this whole drama might have played out very differently, “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Would I have stopped you?”

Deanna met his eyes and Kieran sighed, “I’d have told you to bring your freaking phone.”

“Freaking?” she repeated, smiling at this flaccid attempt at self-censorship.

“I’m not gonna apologize for being worried, Deanna.”

“But you didn’t tell Clark,” she pointed out.

Kieran sighed, “Clark would…” one of his hands balled into a fist, “I don’t know what Clark would’ve done. And there’s a chance things would’ve gotten out of hand. Out of our hands,” he waved his other hand above his hand, as if to illustrate nameless, faceless higher powers.

She didn’t need him to spell out the rest.

“I wasn’t trying to be gone for long. Just…take a walk.”

“A walk?”

“Around,” she shrugged, “And think. But by the time I came back…”

“I was gone.”

“And I was stuck. I couldn’t go to school, because what if you hadn’t gone, because you were looking for me…”

He nodded unnecessarily to affirm this was so.

“And that would cause even more trouble and so I…” she sighed, “I panicked. And I hid.”

“To wait it out?”

“I don’t know. I guess.”

In truth, she couldn’t really explain it, except that it came from fear. The type of desperate, fearful self-preservation that dictated so many of her spontaneous decisions lately. The same fear that had driven her from her quiet, peaceful utterly unremarkable suburban bedroom and into her quiet, peaceful, utterly unremarkable suburban neighborhood.

“He’s going to be mad.”

Kieran nodded, “Probably.”

“But not at you,” she said with a sudden vehemence, “You tried to find me.”

“Yeah, and it took eight hours. I doubt he’s gonna be pinning a badge on me.”

“Well he can’t cuff you either,” she turned up her chin in a sudden surge of defiance that brought a smile to his lips, “You had a good reason for not telling him.”

His eyes darkened and she wondered what he was thinking. Before, back home, he’d never talked about his father. There’d never seemed a need to. Deanna knew he’d visited them once, when she was too little to have any real recollection.

If there had ever been anything, any real feeling between Clark and Kieran, he kept it to himself. Seeing what she had of their rapport since they’d been here, she figured they were starting from the ground up.

“You’re not gonna defend me, Dee,” Kieran instructed softly, but firmly, “Not your job.”

“But it’s your job to defend me?” she challenged.

“I…” he opened his mouth and, apparently unable to find a neat rebuttal, ran his hands down his legs, palms scraping against the denim of his jeans, “It’s my job to get you home. For starters.”

He didn’t seem to expect an argument and she didn’t give one, “Do you think he’s back yet?”

“Depends,” he answered shortly, rising with a soft grunt at the effort, and headed out without explaining what it depended on. Deanna followed him out into the late afternoon blaze, squinting at the sudden brightness after so long in the dark and damp.

He kept his arm around her shoulders, loose and casual, as they walked the short distance back to the fence, where Deanna had just enough time to glimpse a police squad car taking off down the otherwise desolate street.

“And there’s my ride,” Kieran said equimanibly, not seeming at all surprised.

“You’re still sure about that head start?”

He shrugged, “He waited long enough to make sure I’d found you. And he did give a lift to an unaccompanied minor who should’ve been in school.”

“So…yes?”

“Who knows,” he sighed, leaning against the gate, slightly widening the gap for Deanna to squeeze through ahead of him, “Out of our hands. Our are you gonna tell me you can’t walk it?”

Deanna smiled sheepishly, coming out the other side and watching him squeeze his broader frame through, “I would’ve liked a ride.”

“Pick somewhere more convenient next time,” he smiled as he said it, and wider when she showed no signs of offense, “Now, c’mon. Faster we’re back, faster I can get started on dinner. Might distract him for a minute.”

“Dinner?” she frowned, “You need the kitchen for dinner.”

“Sure,” he patted his jacket pocket, “Good thing I’ve got keys.”

---

The last bell may have rung, but there was always something going on at St. Mary’s. Some of it even made it into the brochures. Take, for example, the delicate tones of that vaunted school tradition, the Hand Chime Choir.

The stalwart sisters pledged to this sacred rite stood single-file before the altar of the school chapel, waving their peculiar, club-shaped instruments in alternating groups of two, or three (with one or two much coveted solos per hymn), producing a series of bell-like tones aspiring toward ‘angelic harp’ but landing more on ‘haunted music box’.

This afternoon, Chimes were assiduously working their way through “By all your saints still striving”, a fact Rachel would not have been able to divine from the tune, but had picked up from Francesca Bellocchio’s accompanying falsetto.

“By all your saints still striving, for all your saints at rest…” Francesca wailed in the manner of a bloodied witness calling on first responders, mouth frozen in a perfect circle of strained anguish, “Your holy name, O Jesus, Forevermore be blest!”

Chimes were not an instrument much improved by singing. Still, Rachel had taken refuge in the back-most pew of the chapel, just to steal a glance at her phone.

Nothing new from her mother, which wasn’t a surprise. If she heard from her at all, it would be a phonecall…she wasn’t one to exhaust her fingers when she was in a temper.

Was she not in a temper? Presumably, Rachel’s father had told her he was letting her go to the meeting alone. Possibly, Pamela had reserved all her anger for him, sparing Rachel.

Or maybe everything was fine. What a concept!

No, she wasn’t that interested in the latest from home. She’d get that one way or another, whether she liked it or not.

But Audrey…

Nothing. Not a peep. And maybe it was normal. Maybe she was acting like a stupid tweenager grappling with her first crush.

But she was getting worried. What if Audrey’s father had taken it badly? What if she was in worse trouble than Rachel was? It was hard to imagine it. Not that she knew much about Pastor Jensen, besides the plain fact that he was a Reformist heretic etc., but what if?

What if the whole ordeal had soured Audrey on her?

It didn’t seem that farfetched. If Audrey was dealing with even a fraction of the BS Rachel had been served up these last two days, she couldn’t even say she blamed her.

But that was a stupidly self-centered thing to think. Audrey had made it very clear when they last spoke who she blamed for this mess.

Or so she’d said.

Sufficiently discomfited, Rachel shoved her phone into the pocket of her uniform cardigan, shouldered her bookbag and readied to face the music.

“Then let us praise the Father and worship God the Son and sing to God the Spirit, Eternal Three in One…”

In a manner of speaking.

The chapel had two exits: one by the altar, that opened on the school lobby, and another  at the foot of the aisle, heading out to the grounds. Not confident in the choir’s angelic disposition, Rachel beelined for the main exit, trading the incense-infused shadows of the chapel with the bright sunshine of the afternoon.

“Ooh, who let the dog out?” Nicolette Prince was leaning against the wall slap against the chapel doors, her hip cocked at an outrageously effete angle, “Chasing kitty cat again, Rach?”

“No offense, Rachel,” Casey Colazzo was similarly poised at the opposite end of the door, “But they really should’ve had you spayed. Or neutered.”

“Litch-rally,” concurred Rosanne D’Armetta, at the apex of the Trinity, blocking Rachel’s way forward.

Rachel pressed her lips together, less to be intimidating and more to keep from projectile vomiting which, while impressive, likely wouldn’t save her, “Look. I don’t want any trouble and, to be honest, I have somewhere to be, so maybe we can save this for tomorrow…” she tried to step forward, but the trio closed ranks around her, fencing her in yet again.

“It’s funny you say that, Rach,” said Nicolette, all sickly-sweet, “I didn’t want any trouble either.”

“Cut it right out of my diet,” agreed Casey.

“Try it,” rhymed Rosanne improbably, casting a disparaging look at Rachel’s thighs.

“But guess where we ended up at lunch today?” Nicolette asked, reptilian lips glossed to a bubblegum sheen.

“The principal’s office, Rachel,” Casey seasoned the term as she might ‘the gas chamber’, “With the old lady herself.”

Rosanne clacked her nails together for emphasis.

“I was surprised as you, Rach,” said Nicolette, “Nice, law abiding citizens like us. I mean, I don’t think I’ve gotten chewed out since first grade.”

“By an adult,” added Casey, earning an acidic look from Nicolette for, apparently, deviating from the script to snatch the low-hanging fruit.

“Embarrassing,” rounded out Rosanne.

Rachel tensed, thinking of Sister Alice-Marie’s knife-sharp nose and cold, intent stare, her dispassionate self-assurance as she reminded her mother that St. Mary’s certainly doesn’t tolerate bullying.

Nice words, but Rachel couldn’t remember a time when the wizened old cemetery ornament had intervened on her behalf. Unless her mother had really put the fear of God in her yesterday…

“Looks like someone tattled on us,” Nicolette turned her lip out into a picture perfect pout, “Talk about first grade.”

Sister Anne.

Her solicitous attitude this morning, that sad, dewy look to her eyes as Rachel promised her not to tell anybody what had happened.

“You don’t have to take everything that’s thrown on you,” Anne had said, thoroughly well-meaning, perfectly saintlike, as Rachel pleaded with her not to make a big deal, not to tell.

Rachel wished she carried around a Bible: she might’ve made Anne swear on it.

“I didn’t,” she said, her voice tight and strained, “Really. I didn’t tell anyone about this morning…” but, saying it, she realized there was no use.

“Sure you didn’t,” Nicolette’s face was unchanging, “The voices in the old lady’s habit were just louder than usual.”

“There’s no point lying, Rachel,” said Casey, “It’s written all over your face, with bright pink exclamation points,” she poked a spot on her chin to allude to the spray of acne afflicting Rachel in the same spot.

It didn’t matter. Even if they knew it hadn’t been Rachel, there was no one else worth the blame. Whatever chewing out they’d gotten (and Rachel did wonder about that, given they were hanging around out here and not undergoing St. Mary’s idea of corrective justice), they’d only gotten it because of Rachel.

Rachel, as usual, didn’t have to do anything to get their attention. What a regular Forrest Gump she was turning out to be.

And, while Rachel typically preferred neo-noir European horror, she was up and up on the classics. If Forrest she was, Forrest she would be.

“Fine,” she said finally.

Nicolette raised her eyebrows, “Fine?”

“Fine,” Rachel repeated, and ran for it, barreling headlong into Rosanne, who careened into Casey with a disaffected, “Cow!”

Rachel nearly hit the ground herself, unable to grasp she hadn’t crashed. But, realizing there was room to run, she took it and didn’t dare look back. Her backpack swayed dangerously as she moved, striking her roughly with every step, like a taskmaster’s lash, urging her on and on.

She dared not look back, even as she heard the girls recover themselves, Nicolette shouting shrilly, “Go on, Rach! Run as far as those pork thighs will get you!” her words oddly in accord with the faint harmony of the chimes choir behind them.

She practically collapsed into the bike rack, hand shaking as she loosed her bike chain. Were people chasing her? Footsteps on the asphalt? She didn’t know, but she could feel the stares, crawling over her like living things, skittering insects on her neck and her arms and her stupid, stubby legs.

And what would running do, she wondered as she mounted her bike, realizing too late that her father, in his moment of charity, had forgotten to return her helmet to her too.

Running was an animal response: a deer sees a mountain lion and doesn’t think twice before booking it, which was all very well for the deer.

But the Catholic Schoolgirl Cerberus wasn’t going to run Rachel down and rend the flesh from her bones. Running from them wouldn’t protect Rachel any: it would only make a spectacle, only draw those horrible, searching, staring eyes.

Stay or go, Nicolette had won the day the second she’d opened her mouth.

She pedaled desperately, shaking her hair from her eyes, winded already from the short sprint across the parking lot. Her hands were hot and sticky against the handlebars.

Disgusting. She was disgusting and pathetic and had earned herself nothing but another day sweltering in the spotlight.

The road ahead of her blurred from her tears, and she lifted a hand to beat them away, her bike rocking steadily beneath her as she moved. Her face was burning and she knew she must be frightfully red. It was an inborn characteristic, requisite to her fair skin, but rendered more unsightly since puberty rendered her face a minefield of similarly colored protrusions.

The pills made the acne worse, or so Rachel had good reason to believe, after Googling the symptoms. Had she already been breaking out this badly a year ago? She didn’t think so but couldn’t say for sure. So much of that time was a garbled jumble, a confused mess of suffused, diluted sensation stripped of feeling.

Not that she’d ever considered quitting the meds for her skin’s sake. No, when she considered changing her dosage, her thoughts fell squarely in other quarters.

She took a hard left turn, away from the waterfront, heading on into town proper. Her destination was present, if unfocused in her mind. Just the latest stop on the revival tour: this time, performing for the 35 – 45 demographic! And who else could claim to have such solid multi-generational appeal in our polarized society? Forget Forrest Gump, she was a regular Kermit the Frog, uniting people far and wide by just being herse…

The bike shook again, and Rachel lurched roughly in the seat as the front wheel jerked sharply. She readjusted herself, catching her breath. In the absence of her labored panting, she could hear a soft hissing.

Her foot slipped on the pedals, thrown off balance as the wheel jerked again. Rachel realized it didn’t look as it should, that it was scraping unevenly against the pavement.

“Go on, Rach!” Nicolette had invited her, not lifting a finger to pursue because, of course, she didn’t need to.

Because, in every way, the damage was already done.

She’d been heading up Post Road…up, as in “uphill”. The road loomed ahead, an impenetrable curtain wall, and she rooted in the middle. Her bike squeaked and protested at  the loss of momentum, teetering under her. Someone honked behind her, and she realized she was in for it, she was stuck, pinned. If she could just budge to the side, get enough give to inch to the shoulder…

She wrenched the handlebars to the right, only for the rapidly deflating tire to swivel to the left, pitching her to the side…

Into the other lane.

The car that had been gaining on her zoomed past, hoisting a one-finger salute as it passed, but she barely had time to regard this before another horn bleated a warning. She lifted her eyes, made out headlights like the eyes of some fearsome animal, and let loose with a soundless scream, pulling to the side.

The bike fell away from her, and she knew the raw burn of asphalt on her legs and elbows. There was a screech of tires, a smell of burnt exhaust, and a taste like tar on her tongue, but Rachel’s attention belonged solely to the little black rectangle spinning wildly from her cardigan across the pavement to the grimy metal grid of the gutter grate, where it promptly vanished between the slats.

Momentarily oblivious to the hunk of metal humming bare inches from her, Rachel watched her phone disappear into the sewer with an anticlimactic ‘plop’.

She lay at her awkward angle, half on her side and half on her chest, the sounds of the street little more than a muted soundtrack to the blood rushing in her ears. She was dimly aware of her bike, leaning uselessly against her lower body, a strangely anchoring feeling. It wouldn’t take much to lift it off her, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the grate, or her mind off her phone.

Her thoughts were a fevered flip book: Mom will rip my head off, how do we cancel the bill, do you cancel the bill…

What if Audrey texts back?

And, following this blunt recall, a still more rapid marathon. All those pictures of the two of them, the ones that hadn’t been captured analog style. The ones that only lived on her phone, ephemeral and now lost forever, beyond her reach as surely as if they’d never existed in the first place. Never seen by any eyes but hers and Audrey’s and now never to be seen again.

Lost. Consigned to the dark, to the garbage.

She laughed. It was a startling sound, wheezy and strained, at first barely different from a hiccup but building in intensity. She could feel the eyes again: passerby who’d stopped on the sidewalk to gawk.

Face it, Rach: you sure know how to draw an audience.

And she laughed and laughed, shoulders shaking from it. She kept feeling her face for tears, certain she must be making a hysterical mess of herself, but only found the faint traces of old ones.

No use crying over spilled milk, no matter how big a cow you are.

She didn’t lift her eyes from the road and the awkward, cupped motions her hands had reflexively made as they’d reached, futilely for her already lost phone. Her attention so diverted, she didn’t notice someone come up around her until they lowered themselves to a crouch directly opposite.

“Hey,” a girl’s voice, “Hey, are you okay? Hey, kid…”

Kid, she thought, and laughed some more. That’s her, a helpless little kid, utterly at the mercy of circumstance. What plucky adventures will our adorable protagonist get into next? Tune in next time on…

“Oh God,” this said with neither frustration nor distress, “Can you try to catch your breath? Kid…”

Rachel breathed, an action approximating a deflating balloon, which only made her laugh more, her ribs aching with the effort.

The Good Samaritan slapped her, lightly, but enough to shut her up.

Rachel gulped, and said, “Um,” intelligently.

“Sorry,” the charitable stranger was a young woman, maybe only a couple of years older than her. Her brow was furrowed, big blue eyes narrowed in consternation, “Take a couple of breaths. Slow.”

Rachel nodded at the wisdom of this advice and suited the action to the task, in the meantime taking stock of her savior.

The girl was a blonde too, but with bushier hair than Rachel had ever aspired to. The great curly mass of it was tied in a struggling ponytail that spilled at odd ends over her shoulders. Her hair was the only jumbled thing about her, though: her manner was otherwise almost comically composed in comparison to whatever contortions Rachel was moving through.

“I-I’m okay,” Rachel said once she’d recovered the faculty for words, “T-thanks.”

The girl shook her head, “Don’t thank me. I almost pancaked you.”

At which prompting, Rachel took notice of the aforementioned juggernaut idling a hair’s breadth from her prone form. Another inch downhill and Rachel would’ve been a novelty hood ornament on this girl’s truck.

“Oh,” she said in a dreamlike sort of cadence, before being assailed by a mental image of the pancaking that wasn’t and shuddering, “Oh God. I…” her mouth was dry, “I’m sorry,” she said again.

The driver frowned, “No. I’m sorry.”

“Well,” Rachel paused, looking around, “I was in the wrong lane.”

The girl smiled slyly, “I wasn’t going to say anything, but…” she sighed, eyes searching curiously, “Let me help you with your bike.”

Rachel realized the bike was still heaped against her where it had fallen. Feeling boneless and spent, she’d quite forgotten it. Nodding, she began to pull her legs back from under it, and hissed in pain at the effort. The girl frowned, sweeping upright and, lifting one hand to still her, lifting the bike up and promptly dislodging the handlebars.

“Shit,” she observed.

“I-it’s okay,” Rachel assured her quickly, “I mean. It wasn’t all you. I mean, me. I mean…” she shook her head, “It was already busted.”

The girl didn’t appear to find this enlightening, and pressed her lips together. Rachel lifted herself to her knees, grimacing again. Her stockings had been well shredded when she’d hit the street: her knees visible through parralel slashes along her knees and calves exposing red, raw skin, and a few token splotches of blood. The presentation was almost elegant: like the poster for an obscure direct-to-video creature feature circa 30 years ago.

Attack of the 5 foot Papist Pussyhound.

She’d have to start outsourcing material to Nicolette at this rate. She never knew she had this many zingers in her.

A minivan lurched around the stalled truck, honking irately at the impediment to its progress.

“You want us gone, come out and help!” the girl called after it, “Goddamn rubberneckers,” at this remark, she looked around at the handful of civilians gathered on the sidewalk to either side of the street, some of whom did indeed scuttle off with their tails between their legs.

“Can you stand?”

Rachel eyed her outstretched hand, nodding preemptively, “Y-yeah. I’m…I’m fine,” she stood and gritted her teeth at a renewed sting, “Just a scrape.”

The girl didn’t look convinced, “You’re pretty banged up.”

“Oh, I’m okay,” she assured her, “I’m a real trooper. People are always surprised…”

“Well, your bike is pretty banged up even if you aren’t.”

Which, yes, it was. Even disregarding the sleight of hand Nicolette and her acolytes had performed on the front tire, the fall had bent it worse than a kid’s pipe cleaner art. She felt a pang at the mangling of her faithful Schwinn and feared she would start bawling, but steadied herself.

“It’s okay…”

“I can fix it,” the girl spoke over her, “Shouldn’t take long.”

Rachel blinked, “…fix it?”

“Maybe not good as new, but I can make it road worthy,” she shrugged, “Won’t cost you a penny.”

“That’s very nice of you,” Rachel managed, “But you really don’t have to go out of your way…”

“Listen, it’s the least I can do. If I hadn’t been quicker on the brakes, we’d both have bigger problems, wouldn’t we?” she was smiling as she said it but her eyes were serious, searching still.

The morbid joke unsettled her. It was just an accident of chance that Rachel hadn’t been hit, that this random girl wasn’t looking down a manslaughter charge.

A lot of trouble over a lesbian kissing video.

“I work at the garage,” the girl was saying, “I won’t make a hackjob of it. Promise.”

Rachel smiled faintly, “Okay. Sure. Um…thanks…?”

The girl seized on the prompt, “Amanda.”

“Rachel,” she introduced herself, “Um…pleased to meet you.”

Amanda smirked, “If you say so,” and hefted Rachel’s bike into the bed of her truck as easily as a sack of groceries.

“I’ve had worse introductions,” Rachel offered as Amanda held open the shotgun door for her.

Amanda’s attention lingered on her briefly, again with that searching manner, “Sorry about that, kid,” she paused, settling behind the wheel, before correcting, “Rachel.”

Rachel adjusted herself in the passenger seat. The truck’s cab had an earthy, leathery sort of smell, like a workman’s closet; Rachel’s shoulders relaxed, uncoiling for the first time since her tumble.

“I’m 16, for what it’s worth,” Rachel commented, “But I do apparently have a baby face that just won’t quit.”

Amanda reddened, bowing her head, “Sorry. About the ‘kid’ thing,” she shut the door behind her and gunned the engine, “But I’ll admit, when I saw you lurching into my lane on your bike, my first thought was I was about to pulverize a 10-year-old.”

“Ouch,” but she laughed, a real, short laugh, “That’s gotta be a life sentence.”

“Probably would be for a 16-year-old too.”

“A good lawyer might work something out,” Rachel commented, “Juries will go nuts for a kid, but a teenager?” she shrugged, miming disgust, “But I guess I probably did look like a kid. I promise, I’m not totally clueless with my bike, it’s just…”

“You had no air in the front tire,” not a question.

Rachel hesitated, “You are a good mechanic.”

“Not much mystery about it,” said Amanda tautly, “There was a hole the size of my thumb.”

“Oh,” Rachel paused, “Guess I should’ve checked.”

Amanda frowned, “Not to overstep…”

Rachel gave her a look to communicate she was already riding in this near stranger’s truck and, therefore, had skipped a few steps already. Amanda let out a short laugh, “You could press charges,” putting forth that someone, of course, was behind the puncture, without saying in so many words.

Rachel laughed hollowly, “I could. And end up with bees in my locker.”

Amanda’s face flickered, her attention alighting on Rachel’s uniform, “You go to St. Mary’s?”

“Girl’s of Mary Magdalene,” Rachel singsonged tunelessly, “Staunch and true…”

“Staunch?” Amanda repeated incredulously.

“Like how you stanch someone’s blood after they’ve been stabbed,” Rachel explained, “Or that’s how I always thought about it. Never asked, though.”

There was a short silence. Amanda’s truck handled well, humming gently as they navigated away from Post Road and onto the skinnier byways of east Lakewood.

“I guess you’ve had a rough couple of days, huh?” Amanda’s voice was soft, almost guilty.

Rachel’s hackles went up and she tensed, allowing herself to feel profoundly stupid for getting into a truck with a complete stranger who, details aside, had almost killed her.

“Saw my movie, huh?” she asked hollowly.

“Sorry,” Amanda’s fingers tightened on the wheel, “That was so inappropriate. It’s not…” she laughed humorlessly, “Jesus Christ. I just meant…”

“It’s okay,” she shook her head, “I figure everyone’s seen it now, whether they want to or not.”

Amanda relaxed somewhat, “It’s gotten pretty inescapable. At school. I’m pretty sure adult professionals aren’t watching it.”

Rachel gave her a second look, not wanting to admit that, while she may have seemed too young to Amanda’s eyes, Amanda had certainly not struck her as a high schooler.

“I make much better movies,” Rachel said finally with a short smile.

“Oh yeah?”

“Just a hobby,” she shrugs, “I can at least hold a camera steadier.”

Amanda laughed huskily, “I believe it.”

They drove in companionable silence for a few minutes. Rachel thought of asking Amanda about school, what GW High was like. Inane, mundane questions, but interesting in their way. Audrey didn’t talk much of school or her friends, such as they were.

But thinking of Audrey only brought her mind back to her phone, and she desisted, opting for the blank yet comforting shield of quiet.

There was a little ribbon affixed to Amanda’s rearview mirror: one of the neat cinches used for commemorations. The glossy, if slightly tatty fabric was red. Which one was that? One of the cancers? AIDS?

“Burn victims,” Amanda must have noticed her attention, “It’s from a…church fundraiser. A long time ago.”

“Oh,” Rachel commented and said no more.

Curiously, she felt no fear. You might call her stupid for this…certainly, she spent most of her time these days in a constant state of anxious anticipation, always waiting for the final fissures to open in the firmament and send the sky hurtling down.

But here she was, riding in a truck with a complete stranger who’d admitted she’d seen the viral video of her making out with her girlfriend. She had no phone, no way of letting anybody know where she was or what was happening to her…

And she wasn’t afraid.

Cynically, she might wonder if she’d just given up. If her near miss on the road had forced her to surrender whatever ounce of self-preservation that remained to her.

But she’d tried to stop the bike. She’d tried to get out of the way.

No, Rachel didn’t think she’d completely abandoned her senses yet.

They turned onto a street Rachel’s father would have described as “off-beat” and Rachel’s mother would’ve described more honestly.

“Here we are,” Amanda declared, pulling up before BIG MIKE’S MECHANIX and cutting the engine, “Looks like Mike’s already booked it for the day,” she opened the door and, at Rachel’s inquiring glance, explained, “Management stays clear of me these days,” in a tone that indicated she was neither pleased nor distressed at this development.

Rachel dismounted from her side and errantly glimpsed Amanda’s own descent. The cuff of her jeans rode up slightly as she reached the driveway, revealing a flash of silver between denim and boot.

“You’re that girl,” she said quietly, “You were in the news.”

Amanda inclined her head with a faint smile, slamming her truck shut behind her, “Guess we’re both famous against our will.”

Rachel began to offer to bring her bike inside, but Amanda was quicker, heaving her beat-up baby out of the truck bed with the same ease employed to put it there, inviting Rachel to follow with a nod of her head.

Rachel obliged, at the same time thinking over all she knew of last year’s feel good hero. Amanda had never been on the news herself, Rachel knew, or else she’d surely have remembered her quicker, but for a time, the ordeal of the honest, churchgoing girl who’d had her life irrevocably changed by the negligence of her colleagues had been inescapable. St. George’s had hosted an ecumenical collection, in partnership with Lakewood First Lutheran, to help cover the family’s medical expenses. The ensuing lawsuit had been regular cocktail chat at the Lake Club for months.

Fascination hadn’t escaped the Staunch and True gals of St. Mary’s either: Rachel recalled sitting on the outskirts of uncountable conversations about how awful it must be to lose your legs, and what even would you do and, oh my God, would you need to be walked to the bathroom?

Rosanne D’Armetta had memorably declared she wouldn’t be able to have kids, because they might be born limbless and, oh, how they had laughed at their compatriot’s well-intentioned bird-brained stupidity. Oh, what a lark, what a life.

Rachel, not invited to such consultations, had nonetheless not thought much about it, grappling with her own questions about life’s return on investment.

Big Mike’s had a similar fusty, well-worn aura to Amanda’s truck. The walls were peppered with posters of old cars: sporty, muscle, utilitarian. Here and there, she caught a glimpse of naughtier spreads: bikini models with teased hair, looking like they’d just stepped out of Baywatch. The casual lechery was oddly comforting.

Her attention was drawn, however, to the slab-shaped lift in the middle of the garage, conspicuously newer than the surrounding equipment.

“How do you do it?” she asked unthinkingly. At Amanda’s curious expression, she explained, “Um, sorry…but I mean…to keep coming into work at the same place where…” she gestured to the lift, “It’s really brave.”

Amanda smiled thinly, “I’m not sure bravery has much to do with it,” she shrugged, “What else am I gonna do?”

She propped the bike against the wall and crouched over it, sizing it up.

“It’s gonna be a year soon,” she continued faintly, as if the thought was only now occurring to her, “Halloween,” she whispered the word, “Funny, how things just keep going on.”

“Yeah,” Rachel murmured, and wondered how that might be so for someone who’d been near sliced in half but not so for one consigned to no worse horror than the cruelties of teenage girls.

“I’ll get right to work on this,” Amanda was saying, “There’s a first aid kit in the office,” she gestured to a door in the back, “You can wash out your knees.”

Rachel had quite forgotten her scrapes. A little more like this, though, and she wouldn’t be able to ignore them if she tried. Nodding, she made her way but was stayed just short of the door.

“Do you need to call someone?”

“Huh?” she froze, hand on the doorknob.

“There’s a land line in there,” Amanda cocked her head, “You…lost your phone, right?”

“Right,” she repeated, “I did.”

“If there’s someone you want to call. Like, for a lift or something.”

Rachel opened her mouth to answer, her eyes at the same time landing on a clock mounted on the opposite wall: a blue neon job proclaiming “It’s Miller Time!” and also that it was three past 4:00.

She was late.

“It’s okay,” she said at length, “I’ll just clean myself up first.”

Amanda’s brow furrowed, but she didn’t question her, returning to her work.

Rachel headed into the office, found the first aid kit and the phone, went for one and ignored the other.

---

“I can’t believe it,” Howard said mutely, fingers steepled together, “I just can’t believe it.”

“Not to step on your toes,” the principal said patiently, “But you’ve believed more incredible things. Occupational hazard.”

Howard smiled, though Ed Teague’s expression remained solemn as ever. A solid man, Ed, and dependable. He wouldn’t have doubted his counsel in any event, even without the hard evidence before him.

He tapped the desk between them, and the stalled recording on Ed’s phone, “This is yours now?”

“Steele sent it on to me and Theodora, to do with as we please. For now, that’s where the buck stops.”

Howard looked over his shoulder, to the frosted glass pane separating them from the outer office, where his daughter was waiting, still as a stone and dark as a thundercloud. After this morning, he hadn’t expected a warm reception, but still her frostiness had come as a surprise.

Though this surprise had been mitigated somewhat by Ed’s telling.

“You say she’s been suspended?” Howard prompted, “Nina Patterson.”

“For a start. Theodora’s handling the bureaucratic bit.”

“And you get to swing the hammer?”

Ed shrugged, “There’s a tool for every job.”

“How did her father take the news?”

“Hard to say over the phone, but he sounded like he’d just swallowed a week old lemon, so I’d say a little worse than usual.”

“They won’t take it lying down.”

“He wants a fight, he’ll get one,” Ed said promptly, “He can argue the school handbook to death in court. It’s stood up to worse.”

Howard considered pointing out the satisfaction in his old friend’s voice could hardly be called selfless. Nina Patterson wasn’t only a thorn in his daughter’s side, and Jamie Teague had certainly been slapped with more than public humiliation on Nina’s account.

But no point raking up old news.

“Nina is…what, 16?”

“Going on 17.”

“And if she’s anything, she’s not naive,” Howard muttered, “I may be showing my own naivete, but I still can’t wrap my mind around it. Such cruelty in a girl that age…”

“Kids have always been cruel,” Ed pointed out.

“Cold cruelty,” Howard amended, “And to what end?” he shook his head, “I tell you, Ed, I thought I’d have reached 50 before throwing out impassioned missives on the sorry state of the world…”

“Fatherhood has a way of speeding that along.”

“And the pulpit doesn’t hurt either,” he sighed, “How did Audrey take the news?”

Ed was quiet for a while, “Quietly,” he considered, “With everyone else shouting the odds, she was the only tight-lipped one in the room.”

“Quiet,” he repeated, “She’s been taking a lot quietly lately,” he rubbed his chin, “Not to be trite, but times like this, I miss Helen more than usual.”

“She was a rare woman,” Ed commented.

“And a fantastic mother,” he nodded, “She had a sense for Audrey that…”

He almost said “that I don’t” but swallowed the thought as hopeless. For surely, Helen had had to work on her own sense of their daughter. God knew, he’d spent long enough thinking on it since she passed.

Time and again, these last few days, he’d found himself thinking of Helen: the warmth in her patient smile, the gentle creases at the corner of her lips and eyes, the luster of her auburn curls.

She’d saved a lock of it, when they’d begun the chemo, and pressed it, like a flower in an old fashioned scrapbook, “Just in case.”

A strong woman, and wise. Wise enough to confront the unchangeable with grace.

Howard could claim no such wisdom, not for lack of trying.

“It’s not on me to tell you what to do, Howard…” Ed continued, “And if I’m stepping too far, by all means tell me where to stuff it…”

“And compromise my Christian patience?”

“It’s me. He’ll understand,” he paused, “I did a bit of reading and, while I’m no lawyer and Theodora can tell you fine print drives me up the walls, but I’ve got the sense of it,” he leaned forward, “This recording isn’t 100% proof of anything. Yes, Patterson confesses, but worse lawyers than her father will call it coerced. Nothing done about that. But it’s a place to start.”

“To start…” Howard repeated, “What, an interrogation?”

“An investigation. She’s got no alibi. If you ask me, Brooke Maddox is trying some kind of tinpot power play, but whether she’s lying or not, the fact is, nobody can account for Patterson’s whereabouts when the thing was filmed. That’s more cause. Take it a step farther, and some official egghead at the station can trace the video…the IP Address and all of that. Then it’s done and dusted.”

Howard thought of Emma Duval, her mother’s exhausted, tear-soaked message to him on the phone this morning…the first he’d heard from her in many months.

“I should think Clark Hudson has more to trouble himself with.”

“He can spare a man. His department collects enough of our taxes for it. And I don’t need one of the district’s froufrou PowerPoints to hammer in the damage this kind of thing can do. Hell, at a certain point, it’s psychological warfare…”

“Ed,” Howard interrupted, but he knew not to press his friend when he alluded to his military service, “You don’t have to tell me this is bad for Audrey.”

“Right,” he sighed, “Sorry,” he rallied, shaking his head, “What I’m getting at, Howard, is this recording is the ticket. I can’t do anything about it, but you can,” he paused, “Or this other girl’s parents.”

“Rachel,” Howard supplied, thinking of the short, nearly guilty way Audrey had divulged her name this morning.

“Something to talk over with them anyway,” said Ed, “Once they’re all here. If they want to raise hell, they’re welcome to do it.”

“You’re saying we should…what? Press charges?”

“You don’t want to?”

“It’s not a matter of ‘wanting’.”

“Howard,” Ed said tersely, “This girl filmed your daughter without her knowledge. Hell, with the right jury, you could probably get her done in for child pornography…”

“Ed!” his name was a shot in the quiet of the office. The quiet hum of Mrs. Hayward’s typing outside stopped momentarily before resuming.

Howard’s hands were clammy as he rubbed his temples, “They were kissing, Ed. Only…” the word caught in his throat, “Kissing.”

“Their privacy was violated one way or the other. There should be consequences. You can preach about turning the other cheek, Howard, but we’re both fathers. And I know if it was one of my girls…”

“Somebody wrote something,” Howard interrupted, “On our door. This morning. A…” he sighed, “An ugly word. About Audrey…” he pressed his knuckles to his chin, “She took one look at it and went about her way.”

Teague leaned back in his chair, “And you?”

“My first thought was to call the police,” he paused, “Report it. Make it official. Find whoever it was…what if it was a neighbor? What if it was someone from the parish? Someone I’ve looked in the eyes during Sunday service? The thought of it…”

“But you didn’t call the police.”

He met his friend’s eyes, “For Audrey’s sake. I know how it sounds, Ed, I do, but…when I told her about this meeting, she looked…”

Irritated. Angry. Betrayed.

“She’s barely spoken a word since it happened. Not about the video, not about this girl, not how she feels or why she feels it. And I may not know her as well as I used to, as well as I should, but I know when she’s retreating. It was the same with Helen.”

Ed looked at him pointedly and Howard sighed. Audrey hadn’t been alone in her retreat, and Howard had, of course, played his own part in it.

“I want her to be alright. And, for that to happen, she needs time, Ed. And prolonging this fracas, dragging her private business into the open so it can be argued about by lawyers and dissected by a jury…that can’t be good for her!”

“And letting the person responsible walk free? That’s justice, is it?”

Howard shifted in his seat, “Vengeance is mine, saieth the Lord.”

“Maybe you’ve been nominated Avenger in Chief?”

“That’s blasphemy.”

“Sure. And 1,000 people do it every day.”

“You and I can argue for hours about what God wants me to do, Ed. Believe me, I have the stamina for it, if nothing else. But it’s not just God, there’s Audrey too, and I don’t have to check my Scripture to know what she wants.”

“You don’t,” Ed noted, “Have you asked her?”

Howard opened his mouth but was spared offering one of the admittedly inadequate responses he had queued up for this by the ringing of the phone. Teague stared at the red blinking light on the console as if it were a carbon monoxide detector.

“It’s St. Mary’s!” Mrs. Hayward bellowed from the next room, “The principal.”

“Glory, glory,” Ed intoned, answering, “Teague.”

His expression, already stone, darkened still further, “Hello. Yes, it’s me,” a short silence, “So do you,” his brow knit together, “Really. Well then,” an even shorter silence, “I’ll be in touch.”

He hung up, “They’re not coming.”

Howard blinked, “I’m sorry?”

“Rachel,” he said bluntly, “And her parents. They’ve canceled.”

“Did they say why?”

“If they did, Mother Superior didn’t see it fit to tell me,” he scoffed dismissively, “Left it pretty short notice too.”

“I hope nothing’s happened,” Howard said faintly. Ed met his eyes, “Your lips to God’s ear,” he stood, “You’ll think about it, won’t ya?”

Howard again prepared to answer, something noncommittal that he knew Ed wouldn’t find satisfactory, but he was again beaten by the redoubtable Mrs. Hayward, “Now, Audrey…Audrey, wait! Your father is…”

“Audrey,” Howard stood, opening the door and emerging into the outer office just in time to see his daughter’s bag vanish into the hallway.

“I’m so sorry, Pastor Jensen!” Mrs. Hayward was standing awkwardly, bent at an acute angle from the effort of hoisting herself upright, “I was going to go after her, but…” she pressed the heels of her hands into the small of her back as if to indicate her lumbago, about which Howard had heard very much many a Sunday past.

“It’s alright,” Howard sighed, refusing to meet Ed’s eyes, “She’s not in any trouble.”

Which was patently a lie. Whatever else Audrey was, she was certainly in trouble, and God only knew what he was to do about it.

Vengeance is mine, and so the Lord could have it. But where did that leave him?

---

The rendezvous occurred in the waning hours of the afternoon, when the park came alive with the chorus of the woodthrushes, heralding the coming sunset, closer and closer as the autumn deepened.

Also deepening was the soreness in Charlie’s ass. Christ, was this Type A Mussolini going to show up, or had she already been blackbagged by one of her many carefully cultivated enemies?

He amused himself by twirling around on the swings. The playground, like most of Lejeune Park, was a neglected patch of weeds long ago abandoned to urban blight as the wealthy families that had once surrounded it moved their palaces closer to the water.

The result, then, wasn’t an ideal place to take little Timmy for a game of catch, but it did make a perfect spot for LARPing The Wire. Charlie assumed, having never quite gotten around to watching.

The chain links of the swing set squeaked merrily as he pivoted, the toes of his Converse scraping gently against the spiderweb cracks of the concrete as his heels routinely pawed either end of the lumpy black duffel where he kept the tools of his trade, both ordinary and extraordinary.

His fingers moved at a still more dizzying clip against his phone screen, navigating the latest edicts of the CCD.

‘yo ds onto something’ which message Second C chased with emojis lightbulb, clapping hands (Caucasian), and smiling purple devil face.

‘He means me’ added D, ‘not the Nintendo DS’

‘we need code names’

‘No point. If this chat was intercepted, they could just trace our info.’

‘Maybe we write in code?’

‘That wouldn’t fix anything’

‘U coming though right?’

First C, realizing that he now had no choice but to step into the enclosure, tapped out a response, ‘sorry boys duty calls’

Three dots: D was typing.

Second C typed faster: emojis ‘herb’, ‘cigarette’, and ‘red face’.

‘Srs biz gents’, Charlie was quick to assure him, ‘big time stuff’

‘Learn something?’ D’s grasp on proper punctuation remained admirable.

‘Ill show u mine when you show me yours,’ wink emoji, ‘vaya con dios compadres’ salute emoji.

Part of him felt bad for not tagging along for Derek’s show-and-tell, but this lifestyle was unpredictable and it was better that the young’uns learned it now.

‘Ok’ D replied with characteristic businesslike aplomb, ‘My thing might be nothing. Just so you know.’

‘he’s being modest’, Second C, ‘he’s been hustling’

‘I haven’t told you yet!’

To which Second C responded with a GIF of Spongebob and Patrick retreating from the Flying Dutchman, ponderously flapping their wrists as they chanted: “It’s still a mystery…”

Which pivoted to a cadet conversation on how, surely, this must be the best SpongeBob episode of all time. Charlie, who had his own opinions, put them aside to focus on the matter at hand, not without some difficulty.

How many afternoons had he whiled away with his guys, arguing about the relative merits of cartoons, Sponged and otherwise?

“You think everything’s funny when you’re high,” their resident songster comments, plucking out the frame of a song on his beat-up Gibson 6-string.

“Wrong!” Charlie pointed through their mutual haze, “Everything’s high when I’m funny.”

The resulting “Shut the fuck up, man” delivered with nothing but affection.

His client announced herself with a clip-clopping of high heels, her habitual stride somewhat hobbled by the sorry state of the playground paths.

“Not gonna lie,” Charlie stopped mid-twirl, facing her sideways, “I figured you’d have been shaved and shame-walked out of there like the queen on Game of Thrones.”

Nina, typically, didn’t find this funny, “Sorry to disappoint you,” she brushed her hair over her shoulder with an affected too-careless sweep of her hand.

“They even let you keep the hat,” he indicated her beret which, “Last I saw it, the Teaguester was handling it like contraband.”

“Careful, Chuck, you get any giddier you’ll bust those sweats.”

“They’ve got through worse,” he gave the chains enough slack so he revolved to face her properly, “You really got suspended?”

“I always knew you were a bottomfeeder, Charlie, but a gossip…”

“By the time you crashed my sit-down with VPK, you’d been perpwalked in front of half the school. C’mon, Neener, if anyone knows how people talk, it’s you.”

Nina rolled her eyes, “I couldn’t care less what people are saying about me.”

“That’s new.”

“Tell me, Charlie, if I gave a shit what the peanut gallery’s giggling about at their lockers, would I be standing in this piss stained landfill talking to you?”

“Well, yeah,” he shrugged, “if you were desperate enough. But I did wonder if you were gonna cancel on me…what with all the extra attention on you. I mean, at this point, I should be wondering about my own reputation…” he leaned forward, “It’s a slippery slope, Nina.”

Nina folded her arms, her handbag swaying against her waist, “Every once in a while, Charlie, that big mouth of yours opens up and something intelligent comes out. It is a slippery slope.”

“Right on. At this rate, how long ’til it’s the boys in blue perpwalking you? Though, I admit, Teague’s scarier than the average cop, but you don’t have to be scary when you’ve got the power of the state at your…”

“And what was Kellerman talking to you about?” she asked smoothly, “Since we’re trading work stories?”

Charlie smiled faintly, thinking of Theodora “Virtuous Pantsuited Killer” Kellerman with no small fondness.

“Oh, nothing special. Just letting me know what a dear young man I am.”

“And you have…an exit strategy?” the lovable old battleaxe had asked him from across her desk.

Goddammit, the old bitch really believed in him. The thought was oddly comforting, even if not in the way she probably meant it to be.

“What was the Bionic Woman talking to you about?” he continued, “And, uh…how much did she get on the record?”

Nina showed a brief flicker of discomfiture. Charlie, of course, wouldn’t know about Amanda Steele’s recording just from watching her get marched into the office, no more than anyone who’d watched the procession from their classroom.

One of her fellow marchers had leaked. Judging from the firm set of Nina’s lips, it wasn’t a great leap who.

“You’ve gotta admit, there’s something in Steele being the one to bring you down. Some real cosmic justice shit.”

“Is that why you’ve been panting around Amanda lately?” Nina wondered, “Writing poetry between puffs?”

“Maybe I’m just tryna score in the Special Olympics.”

“You don’t need her help for that. But I guess you’ve always been more comfortable on a team.”

An ugly prickle ran up Charlie’s neck, but he kept his pokerface.

“But I guess none of that matters anymore,” he said with a determined ease, “With you putting this whole high school soap opera behind you. Unless your little request this morning was just for funzies?”

Nina betrayed nothing and Charlie bent down to unzip his duffel, feeling her eyes boring into him all the while.

It would be, unfortunately, very fucking hilarious if this Strawberry Shortcake meets Ivanka Trump looking bitch whipped a gun out of her designer bag and potted him right on the spot, but he contented himself that Nina didn’t have much of a sense of humor.

He rifled through his bag, past about $500 worth of leafy greens and a couple more bucks in finer amusements to come upon the skinny manila envelope he had acquired at no small effort earlier this afternoon.

“You don’t make it easy, Neener,” Charlie assured her, hoisting it up, “But you ask and I deliver,” he handed the envelope out. Nina, in kind, reached out to take it, only for Charlie to snatch it away, with a gleeful grin.

“Uh-uh!” he waggled his free finger, “Three magic words.”

Nina rolled her eyes, “Have I screwed you before?”

“Not for lack of trying.”

With a glottal noise of disgust, Nina produced a considerably fatter envelope of her own from her bag and proffered it, “Cash on delivery.”

Charlie eyed the envelope, “Three more words, Nina.”

She scoffed, “Go fuck yourself.”

His smile broadened as he inched the swing closer to her, leering up into her face, “Hand. It. Over.”

Nina frowned, waving her envelope insistently, like she was jangling keys for a baby.

“You know what I mean.”

“Are you high?”

“I’m on a level with you, for starters,” he pointed out, “Isn’t that fun?”

She didn’t say anything immediately, but gradually regained herself, “This is a fun time to play this game.”

“What? You weren’t seriously planning to call on me again where you’re going? Or am I wrong?” he waggled his envelope in her face, “Because this, Nina, looks like a clean break. And whatever help you need where you end up, you won’t be getting it from me. Out of my jurisdiction.”

“So that’s it? I just…hand over what I have so you can trash it?”

“Seems fair enough to me.”

“Fair,” she repeated, “That’s a fun word.”

“Not my favorite four-letter F, but it has its uses.”

“You are a lowlife, sniveling drug dealer.”

“And you’re doing handshake deals with me,” he smiled, “Not so different, you and I.”

“Aren’t we?” Nina prompted icily, “I don’t know, Chuck, I can think of one pretty big difference.”

“They are pretty big,” Charlie admitted, eyes dipping to her neckline, but she ignored him.

“Our friends.”

Charlie’s smile twitched, “…huh?”

“See, I can’t say I’m surprised the whole school knows about Amanda’s one-woman revolution. I wish I could, but I’m not an idiot and I know people. I know my people best of all. Am I shocked that my so-called best friends hung me out to dry when the going got tough? Of course not. I’d be surprised if they didn’t. I wasn’t selecting for loyalty when I picked them.”

Charlie entertained an image of Nina picking her cadet Mean Girls out of grocery store produce bins, rapping her knuckles against the head of a watermelon-sized Brooke Maddox, to test for freshness.

“What were you selecting for?” Charlie asked and, again, was ignored.

“But you, Charlie…you have some pretty good friends, don’t you?” she asked airily, threading her fingers through the links of the swing chain, “Your little bros in arms…and somehow, not all of them degenerate burnouts.”

He thought of Homecoming, of Cici’s Diner and the Circle Game.

“You getting to a point, Nina?” he asked stiffly.

“It’s different for guys. You don’t have to pretend. You can be as gross and pathetic and venal as you like. You can smoke your brains out and pay for dinner with dirty money and the boys will laugh it off as a fun little quirk.”

“Maybe it’s just my force of personality,” he said easily, “Or I could just have better taste in friends.”

“Everybody’s got limits, Charlie,” she assured him, “It’s easy to turn a blind eye until someone’s sticking a tuning fork into your retinas.”

“What a colorful expression,” he smiled, “You calling me a hypocrite, Nina?”

“I’m just wondering what your boson buddies would say if they knew about a certain perscription you filled out?” she cocked her head, “To a certain football player? Not for him, of course…but on behalf of a certain girl? To take with her dinner? Or I guess three cocktails…”

“You bitch!” he began to rise but his legs were jelly.

In his mind’s eye, he saw Rafe’s Homecoming post: his friend’s smiling face, and that beautiful blonde head leaning on his shoulder. They’d been like that the whole night, hip to hip, utterly lost in each other.

“Jesus Christ, Raffy, save some room for Jesus.”

To which Rafe’s golden-haired other half had made a face over his shoulder, “Sorry, Charlie: I’m Jewish.”

“Save some for Moses then,” as they rolled their eyes at him and locked lips, perfectly, sickeningly content.

“I didn’t know who it was for,” he told Nina, as if he hadn’t said this before, as if it mattered, “If I’d known what he was gonna do with it…”

“You wouldn’t have taken his money? Let him roofie some random girl at some random party? Out of sight, out of mind. The only clincher is now she’s your best buddy’s life partner…”

“They’re happy now,” he said tersely, “She’s okay. That prick who hurt her got what was coming to him and now…”

“And now why shouldn’t you?” Nina challenged, “His accomplice.”

“I never…” he paused, “I didn’t mean…”

“You meant. You didn’t care. And there, Charlie, is the difference. I don’t do anything without caring about it. Without thinking about it. Without preparing for it. You want to play big boy games, you have to be ready for big boy consequences. You want to give a meathead rapist a cheap ticket to a good time…”

“I didn’t!”

“You did,” she said it evenly, almost pleasantly, “But don’t worry, Chuck: your secret’s safe with me. Unless you decide to unburden yourself…” she sighed, “…and let your friends know how good their taste really is?”

They looked at each other for a while, seething in silence. Charlie was aware of the blood rushing in his ears, and a sick, sour taste in his mouth.

Inexplicably, he found himself thinking, not of his friends or even of Nina, but of Theodora Kellerman.

“I got to know a lot of Charlies.”

Somehow, he doubted any of her Charlies had a resume quite like his.

“Not a nice thought, is it?” Nina prompted, “It’s okay, Charlie. I can keep a secret,” she held out her free hand again, expecting. Charlie eyed it and, avoiding her eyes, thrust his envelope into it.

Nina smiled approvingly, “Pleasure doing business with you,” and dropped her envelope, bulging with bills, into his lap.

Charlie had just begun to run his fingers along it when Nina swept her arm carelessly around the swing’s chains and spun. The world dissolved into a frentic, green and brown blur and he swallowed an instinctive curse.

By the time he’d lurched free onto his knees, she was gone, though he only noticed after he’d bent to recollect the envelope of cash and catch the one $100 bill that had fallen free.

He remained there, staring down at the envelope, the rusty chains of the swing creaking ponderously behind him as the thrushes resumed their song.

Homecoming night, they’d filled up half the diner, not just with their bodies but with their voices, singing one of Rafe’s dusty old folkies: a tune called “Our Town” from a girl name of Iris DeMent.

“And you know the sun’s settin’ fast, and just like they say nothing good ever lasts…” she had a voice like an angel, Rafe’s Jewish American Princess: tall and stunning and graceful and absolutely not the kind of person he’d ever expect to look down the table at him and ask him to pass the fries.

A good person.

They were all such fucking good people. And they thought he was too, despite everything.

“Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye, but hold on to your lover, ’cause your heart’s bound to die…”

Charlie shoved his blood money into his duffel and beat a retreat. He considered checking the CCD chat but didn’t have the stomach for it.

“Go on now and say goodbye to our town/Can’t you see the sun’s settin’ down on our town…”

---

Maggie knocked gently against the frosted glass, consciously avoiding the stenciled letters denoting the office of SHERIFF CLARK HUDSON.

“Take a message,” SHERIFF CLARK HUDSON answered curtly.

“Since when did you have a secretary?”

“Mag?” an immediate sound of movement, mostly the shuffling of papers, before the door opened, revealing a red-eyed, bedraggled Clark, “Oh, thank Christ. Come on in.”

“Rough day, huh?” she asked sympathetically, moving past him into the office which, indeed, was a rare sight.

Clark’s desk was barely visible beneath three layers of file folders, binders, and general loose paper, most of which appeared only lately to have been unearthed from their respective hiding places. Adding to the sense of confinement, Clark had neglected to lift the shade over the office’s one window, giving the already cozy room an especially cramped aspect.

“Haven’t had a dull minute. If it’s not one of the boys, it’s some roving reporter looking for a comment.”

“Eliza Taylor again?”

“I think she’s learned her lesson for now,” he smiled briefly, but didn’t elaborate, “But she’s not the only one of her breed.”

“No, I guess not,” she watched as Clark shut the door behind her and crossed to the desk. Most of the papers had been turned away, obscuring identifying markers. Under pressure he might be, but Clark was still a good cop.

“It’s mostly junk,” he must have divined her thoughts, shaking his head in casual dismissal, “I’ve got Maddox chewing my ear off how nothing like this has happened in 20 years, as if I wasn’t here for half of that.”

“So this is…”

“Old cases,” he shrugged, “Thought I might dig through the archives, see if I can’t find some connecting thread.”

Maggie hesitated, running her fingers along the back of a chair, “Any luck?”

He pressed his lips together, “Just chasing my own tail,” he sighed, “But I’m keeping you.”

She shook her head, “I’ve been cooped up in the hospital all day. I appreciate the excuse,” she paused, “And I, uh…had to step out anyway.”

“Grabbing Emma’s dinner?”

“And if you say anything to Maxine Miller, you’ll be sorry,” she pointed, “But I figured two straight hospitals meals was more than enough. And, um…” she shrugged, “I was going to stop home. Pick up some things. For myself and for Emma. Just enough for a few days.”

Clark considered, “…at the Crescent Palms?”

She shoved him lightly on the shoulder, “Don’t push it, officer.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he lifted his hands in mock surrender, “But, really, we’ll be glad to have you.”

“Are you sure it won’t put the kids out?”

“Hell, if anything, it’ll put ’em on!” he paused, as if trying to parse his own words, “Help them settle in.”

She couldn’t hide a girlish smile at his enthusiasm. Clark’s romantic moments were halting and unstudied as a rule, but she could never fault him for earnestness.

And she could grandstand all she wanted, but she had not been keen on booking a motel room.

“I’ll let the guys at your place know you’re coming. They can take you around…”

Without interfering with the crime scene, not that he had to finish the statement. Maggie hadn’t been planning to snoop anyway. The mere thought of walking into her house, seeing the burnt out stove and the shattered patio door, was stomach turning.

Yes, she decided, some time at Clark’s would be good for her. For them.

“So, not to hold you up, then…” Clark opened a desk drawer and produced a phone, which he handed to her, “Here you go.”

Maggie cocked an eyebrow, accepting it, “Emma’s?”

He nodded, “Got it out of evidence myself. It’s been swabbed. No physical traces, besides Emma’s. No use us holding onto it.”

She thought of their last conversation, at the morgue, with some trepidation, “No bothering with that warrant, then?”

“I don’t see the use of it. Like I said, seems to me if there was anything incriminating on there, it would’ve been taken as well as the others,” there was a short, charged pause. She noted his eyes go to the door, as if to scope out listening shadows behind the glass.

“You’re a good mother, Mag.”

She blinked, “Thank you. But…”

“You’ve done a good job on your own for more years than you’ve had to. I know it can’t have been easy. Hell, I’ve been doing it for a day and change and I’m already up the wall.”

“Clark…”

“What you said before,” he interrupted urgently, as if to keep from losing courage, “About the flowers that’d been put into the Carmichael kid. About it maybe being left for you…”

“Yes?” her hands twisted around Emma’s phone.

“I haven’t been able to turn up anything connecting what happened at your place last night with what happened at the Winters house Sunday. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a connection. And I figured…” he cleared his throat noisily, “Nobody knows a kid more than her mother, yeah?”

Her lips curled, “I think that depends on the mother.”

“And you’re a good one,” he repeated, “If something’s wrong…you’ll know it,” he indicated the phone, “I trust you.”

With such enigmatic phrase, he kissed her lightly and patted her on the shoulder, “I’m out of here before long. Won’t do to miss dinner twice in a row, they’ll think I’m a caveman. You’re heading back to the hospital after your place?”

She nodded absently and again at Clark’s adjuration she text him “if anything”. She wasn’t even aware she’d left the office until she heard the dispatcher wish her a “Good night” and a “Home safe”, presumably forgetting she, for the moment, didn’t have a home to go back to.

It was only once she was in her car in the station lot that Maggie breathed. She looked around furtively, thinking of Clark’s own shifty eyes back in the office, like a little kid getting ready to make a run for the cookie jar.

His meaning wasn’t lost on her. She was a good mother, ergo she would be able to tell if something was wrong with Emma.

Ergo-ergo, she would know if there was something Emma wasn’t saying.

Ergo-cubed…if Emma’s phone did indeed contain a clue that would crack the case open.

It was hardly characteristic of Clark. She could imagine him hunched at his desk now, huffing into a paper bag. While not strictly malpractice, this kind of sleight of hand was absolutely crummy. If Maggie were so inclined, she could ring up the likes of Eliza Taylor and tell her the sheriff was inviting his girlfriend to crack her daughter’s phone so he didn’t have to…

…so that people like Eliza Taylor, people like his own department, could be removed from potentially damaging truths.

She could not be angry at Clark, even if she couldn’t quite be thankful for his trust in her.

She wasn’t sure she trusted herself.

For a while, she just sat at the wheel, watching cars enter and leave the lot. A few deputies recognized her through the tint of her windshield and waved. She waved back.

“This is ridiculous,” she said finally, her whisper crisp and clear in the stillness of the car, “You’re being ridiculous.”

This whole ethical question relied on the dubious prospect that she’d be able to get into Emma’s phone in the first place. She could sit here fussing about breaching the bond of trust until kingdom come, but the fact remained, she couldn’t do anything in the first…

She turned the phone on. The lock screen was a picture of Emma and her friends at the Grindhouse. She’d glimpsed it sometimes, over Emma’s shoulder, and would always turn away automatically, perfectly conscious of her daughter’s privacy.

It was the right thing to do. The kind of thing she’d have wanted her own mother to do.

Maggie was most emphatically not her mother.

“You’re sure about that, are you?”

“Shut up,” she snapped, “You can haunt me once you’re dead.”

She was proud of her restraint. It was very easy to spy on children now. Forget hanging around on the party line while she was talking to her crush; at least three of the PTA Moms could pull up their child’s location with nothing more than a few clicks. Paula Henderson had tried it for a week before having a crisis of conscience and breaking down in hysterics.

But Paula’s son hadn’t just been attacked by a masked murderer.

The phone needed a four digit passcode. She didn’t need to be a mathematician to know the odds were stacked against her.

‘0323’ didn’t work. That was Emma’s birthday, and much too easy…

When they’d installed the security system at the house (wonderfully disabled at the time of crisis last night, but Maggie would be a hypocrite if she took Emma to task for forgetting the one time it mattered), Maggie had picked the code: ‘6210’.

Her birthday, but backwards.

“Almost obvious,” she’d explained at the time, “Something you won’t forget but no one else will guess.”

Emma hadn’t seemed receptive to this wisdom at the time but…

‘3230’.

The phone opened before her, a grid of apps appearing like a 21st century treasure trove before Maggie’s guilty eyes.

“Oh, Emma,” she said with a short pang, seized by a wild notion to drive back to the hospital and spend the rest of the night at her daughter’s bedside, to just be content with her nearness, with the bare fact of her survival and let the whole thing rest.

But there was the daisy chain, and the dead boy she’d pulled it from. Emma wasn’t the only person endangered here. Nor may she be the last.

Her fingers hovered tentatively over the screen. Figuring she may as well pick her poison before she lost courage completely, Maggie did the most practical thing and checked her daughter’s texts.

A chain of names: Will, Riley, Brooke, Paula’s son Zach. Her eyes lost focus as they ran down the list, however, arrested by the name at the top. Rather, the lack of a name.

A pair of texts from an Unknown Number: ‘Hey, girl, hey’ and ‘Wanna play a game?’, sent at 6:37 last night.

Her blood iced in her veins.

There was a recent phone call from the same number, immediately after. It was the last call before 911, and the time stamps…

The phone call hadn’t preceded the attack. It overlapped with it.

These thoughts passed through Maggie’s mind with a frigid logic, all eclipsed by a more emotional realization: Emma hadn’t said anything about a phone call.

The responsible thing to do would be to go out right now, back into the station and show Clark. He’d told her he trusted her and, surely, this was the trustworthy thing to do.

Telling herself this, Maggie dialed the Unknown Number.

She sat, her phone pressed awkwardly to her ear, listening to the ring tone. Just when she was about to decide the whole thing was a moot point, a woman’s voice sounded at the other end, so suddenly Maggie jumped in her seat.

“You say…I only hear what I want to…”

She got over her shock enough to realize it was music. A recording.

“You say I talk so all the time. So?”

She sat in her place, hand vice-tight on her daughter’s phone, listening to Lisa Loeb’s triumphant, mocking screed.

“And I thought what I felt was simple, and I thought that I don’t belong, and now that I am leaving…now I know that I did something wrong…’cause I missed you.”

She hung up, hand shaking, and set the phone down on the dashboard, as carefully as if it were rigged to explode.

---

Upon extricating herself at long last from the limbo that was the GW High office, Audrey sent three texts.

To her father: “I’m fine”

To Rachel: “are you ok?”

To Noah: “you doing anything?”

She didn’t expect a response from her father, who was intimidated by texts and would probably place a phone call which she would be obligated to ignore and respond to with another text and an excuse. No doubt, he viewed her hasty departure with concern and, though he would not admit it, suspicion.

Oh well.

Rachel…she didn’t know what to expect. Maybe if she’d lingered long enough after overhearing that the Meeting (scare chord) had been canceled by the very people who’d called it in the first place, she may have a better idea, but she doubted it.

Had something happened to Rachel? It seemed the likeliest explanation and, because of this, the worst. Writing to her, Audrey was confronted with the number of messages Rachel had sent over the last day, each one willfully ignored by her.

It would serve Rachel right to ignore her now, but Audrey didn’t think that was her way. So she tossed around a few grim fucking possibilities and, sufficiently sickened, went on to point three, who always came when summoned, with a smile on his face and a spring in his step.

“I mean, I was offered OT if I worked the counter today,” Noah was quick to assure her on his arrival, “But what’s minimum wage compared to maximum rage?”

“I wouldn’t have held it against you,” Audrey said flatly.

“No, but I might have, if you were loosed on the world in the state I left you in,” he grinned in that cheeky court jester way that he seemed to think would protect him from violence.

She thought of Jake Fitzgerald and bitterly conceded he may not be wrong.

They walked the short distance up Post Road from the school to Lakewood General. Noah may claim he’d arrived to save Audrey from herself, but he was a fiend for gossip and had clearly been starved for a chance to talk about the afternoon’s developments.

“Not that I spend much time fantasizing about Nina Patterson’s downfall, but I always imagined it with a higher production value. Return of the Jedi meets West Side Story,” he looked at her, evidently expecting her to request to elaborate. She did not.

“Props to Amanda, though,” he rallied, “Stone cold killer. She’s going to get the legs sued off her, but still, that was some samurai shit…”

“You think so?”

Noah gave her a look, surprised, “You don’t?”

Audrey gritted her teeth, “So Nina got suspended.”

“And publicly humiliated. Which, considering high school, is more damaging.”

“Did she look humiliated to you?”

“Well, I try to avoid looking her in the eye if I can help it, so…”

“She’s a smug, frigid sociopath with no concept of shame. She can’t be humiliated, Noah. And even if she were…even if Amanda played the recording in the town square while Kellerman put her in the stockade, it still wouldn’t be complete.”

“Without Teague as the hangman?”

“Without the others,” Audrey said bluntly, “She wasn’t alone up there,” she fixed him with a stare, “Don’t tell me you believe Brooke’s Girls’ Night BS?”

Noah hesitated, “Well, I can believe she spent 14 hours planning a party for an astroniomical event that already passed, but…” he sighed uncomfortably, “Can I believe Nina willingly spent that long away from her minions? No.”

They hadn’t talked much about Brooke and Riley’s shattering of Nina’s flimsy alibi. She figured it would come off as gloating if she lingered too much on it and, anyway, there was no sport feeling vindicated about Riley caving in the name of self-preservation. Noah couldn’t possibly claim he was surprised.

But, again, she wasn’t going to ask.

“Is that why we’re here?” he asked in a determinedly breezy tone as they passed through the automatic doors into the hospital lobby, “Put the squeeze on the lone witness before she gets roped into the cover-up?”

He also had held his tongue on the reasons for this visit up to now. Audrey had to wonder how much of it was caution.

“Emma as good as admitted she was there already,” she pointed out.

“Pity you weren’t recording it.”

Audrey glared and he shrugged, hustling on ahead to the reception desk to announce they were here for a visit.

“Visiting hours are almost up,” he said casually, returning to her, “We’d better make it snappy.”

“This shouldn’t take long,” she called the elevator.

“But…” Noah broached as they ascended, eyes fixed on the electric indicator dinging each floor they passed, “You aren’t just gonna squeeze her?”

She must have been making a pretty terrifying face, because he cleared his throat hastily, “I mean, this isn’t just a Good Cop/Bad Cop thing? Because while I am probably spirtually aligned with the ‘Good Cop’ persona, I generally prefer to inhabit the realm of the lovable scamp for, like, karma purposes…”

“I’m not gonna waterboard her, Noah,” she said bluntly, “She’s in the ICU.”

“There are worse places for torture,” Noah conceded, terminally addicted to the argument as ever, before remembering what side he was on, “But this isn’t just about that, right?”

Audrey folded her arms tightly, “Of course not.”

“Oh,” Noah didn’t bother to hide his surprise, “That’s good,” he could well have left it at that, but such restraint had never been in his wheelhouse, “I get it, Audrey.”

“Get what?”

“You didn’t ask Amanda to do all that,” he said carefully, “She thought she was doing the right thing but now…” he shrugged, “Now, the bad guy’s got egg on her face but you’re no better off than you were before,” he sighed, “There’s a big difference in scope between a candid kissing video and coffee table book quality tentacle porn, but…”

The elevator opened and he was mercifully prevented from finishing his thought, so Audrey didn’t acknowledge it, even as she couldn’t keep from thinking on it.

It wasn’t the same at all. Was it? She’d decked Jake because he’d been one more smart-ass comment from busting Noah’s jaw. Amanda…

“And by thy words thou shalt be condemned.”

It wasn’t Amanda’s fight. But, then, Amanda had a habit of swooping in to save the day.

“You shouldn’t let them push you around like that,” she’d told her, and meant it. She couldn’t be ungrateful but, at the same time…

“Don’t look now, Bad Cop,” Noah intoned as they stopped in the entrance to the ICU, “But we’ve got a couple femme fatales here to tamper with the witness.”

Brooke and Riley were at the nurse’s station, engaged in voluble discourse with the unit clerk. Or, rather, Brooke was engaged in voluble discourse while Riley made cramped expressions at the floor.

“You’re making this up. I’ve never heard anything so stupid in my life…”

“No fresh flowers.”

“Yeah, I heard you the first five times,” Brooke slapped the side of an impressively tropical bouquet, “You think I just dropped by the Gulp ’N Go and put down a dollar-fifty? This is a thoughtful gift. It has an inscribed card.”

“So did your father’s.”

“My father…” Brooke repeated incredulously, “Wait, is that it? Is this some kind of political thing? Because I’m not trying to influence elections or whatever. She’s my friend, she’s met my father, and between you and me, she’s too young to vote and her Mom’s a Democrat…”

“No. Fresh. Flowers.”

Brooke’s face sucked in on itself in readiness for some truly unspeakable violence.

“It’s not politics,” said Noah casually, “Germs are bipartisan.”

Brooke turned to them disbelievingly, “No shaking you two off today, is there?”

“Worse than fleas,” said Audrey bluntly.

“Speaking of parasites,” continued Noah, “You wouldn’t believe the microbes in flower water. And the dirt too! Standing water is a breeding ground for infectious bacteria. It’s actually really dangerous…

“Must help to have acquired immunity,” Audrey said evenly. Brooke’s eyes blazed and Riley piped in, “It’s an easy mistake. People are always bringing flowers to hospitals on TV.”

“They don’t show how catheters work on Grey’s Anatomy either,” Noah grinned before presumably remembering he wasn’t supposed to be chummy with Riley at the moment and clearing his throat noisily, mumbling something about “comforting fantasies” which fair wiped the pained smile from Riley’s face.

“So, wait, am I supposed to just throw these out?” Brooke asked, gesturing to the flowers, “Because I’m not returning them. That’s…”

“Dwayne can find a vase.”

They all turned with a start to Room 8, the occupant of which was standing in the doorway looking out at them with an exasperated smile.

“Em!” Brooke declared, crossing the unit at a quick clip, arms quivering from the weight of her forbidden flowers, which were promptly requisitioned by a fresh-faced deputy standing at the door.

“I’ll put them with the others, don’t worry, Miss Maddox,” he said amiably, peering out from behind the tiger lilies, “You don’t look much like your father,” said with perfectly conversational politeness.

“So the g0ssip rags say,” she smiled tersely as Riley stepped forward and embraced Emma.

“Oh, I was so worried! Are you okay? How are you feeling…”

“I’m much better, really. It, um…it looks way worse than it…”

“Immediate family only!” snapped the clerk.

“Then why did they let us up here in the first place?” snapped Brooke in turn.

“It’s fine, Brooke. I’m out of here tomorrow, I can bring them with me. And Dwayne has a place for them,” she looked at him, “You don’t mind showing them, do you, Dwayne?”

“Oh, sure! It’s not far,” he hefted the vase, “Right by urology.”

“Fun,” said Brooke, “But Emma…”

“I’ll be here when you get back!” she gave Brooke a quick hug as a consolation.

“Visiting hours end at 5:00!”

Brooke glared at the clerk, “Is that when she regains human form?”

“I’ll see you soon. Thanks so much for checking up on me…”

“Wait,” Brooke declared resignedly, “I can at least give you this,” and detached a tattered slab of poster board that had been affixed to the flowers with the aid of shimmering pink ribbon.

“The Card,” observed Noah unnecessarily.

“From everyone,” Brooke offered, offering the Card with a smile, “We’ll talk, okay?”

“Yeah,” Emma nodded, squeezing Riley’s arm lightly as she and Brooke went after Deputy Dwayne, who was conversationally informing them that he was keeping the mayor’s flowers in an out of order bathroom previously used for drug tests.

Brooke looked over her shoulder at them with something like sugared venom. Riley looked over at Noah with something else. Audrey didn’t bother to see if Noah looked back.

“Not to agree with Brooke,” observed Noah, “But why did they let us up here if we aren’t allowed in?”

Emma shrugged warily, looking down at the card, “This is nice.”

Noah beamed proudly, “Inside cover, upper right corner.”

Emma opened the card and read, “Keep your chin up and think of the film rights! Best wishes, Noah.”

“And I didn’t even mention streaming!” he continued, “You’d play really well on podcasts.”

Emma laughed darkly, “Huh. So I’ve been told,” before they could interrogate this statement, she turned to Audrey, “Did, um…did you sign, Audrey?”

“No, but I stepped on it,” she indicated the mark her boot had left on the card, “By accident, for what it’s worth.”

Emma frowned, running her thumb on the print, “Very artistic.”

“Nina’s been suspended,” she couldn’t keep it back anymore and had the strange feeling she was doing them both a disservice by not talking about it, “You wouldn’t have heard yet, but I’m sure Brooke was just about to tell you.”

“Nina?” she repeated uncomprehendingly and Audrey had the peculiar thought she’d gone the whole day without thinking of her erstwhile friend.

After all, why should she?

“Don’t be surprised if someone asks you where you were Saturday afternoon,” beside her, Noah minced uneasily from foot to foot. On the hospital PA, a voice ordered “Respiratory to 4B.”

Emma paid no mind to anyone but Audrey, though, her knuckles white against the card, “About last night, Audrey…Nina and I, at the Grindhouse…”

She’d almost forgotten about walking in on them and, for a moment, she felt a strange guilty pang she couldn’t diagnose, as if it was on her account Emma was troubling herself about it at all.

It may be. Emma wasn’t as readable as people thought, though Audrey had once been able to divine her motives pretty well.

Once.

“You can save your breath, Emma,” she said, not harshly, “You’ve got bigger problems, don’t you?”

Her shoulders tensed but she didn’t deny it, “I’m glad you’re here,” she didn’t sound as if she expected them to believe this, “Both of you.”

“First time for everything,” Noah grinned.

“You’re really getting out of here tomorrow?” Audrey asked. Emma nodded, “They’re just keeping me for observation. Concussion stuff.”

“No burnt toast?” Noah offered.

“Just the usual food,” her lips twitched, “I’m really alright,” she went shifty-eyed at this, peering over their shoulders at the nurses’ station, where the clerk was typing aggressively, seemingly oblivious to them.

“That’s good, then,” said Audrey stiffly.

“What’d he look like?” blurted Noah in the manner of a little kid who could no longer contain himself.

Audrey gave him a look but Emma was solemn, “Well…” she sighed, looking again at the nurses’ station.

“You can ignore him, Emma,” said Audrey evenly, “Trust me, he can take it in stride.”

“It’s true, I’m a real trooper.”

“No,” she interrupted, “No, it’s not that. It…” she sighed, and repeated, “It is good you’re here.”

Audrey considered Emma had swiftly dispatched her friends, and her police watchdog too. She frowned, “Why?”

Emma met her eyes, “I lied.”

I know you lied. Everyone with sense knows you lied. That’s the whole point. You want to be upstanding now? Near death experience bought you a bit of clarity? Come on, what have you got to lose?

But this wasn’t about the video.

“I told them I was attacked by someone in a ski mask. He broke in and chased me around and left.”

Noah giggled nervously and, when they looked at him, bowed his head, “Sorry. Funny image.”

“He was wearing a mask,” Emma continued, so low they had to lean in to hear her, “Brandon James’s mask.”

There was a short silence. Audrey was conscious of a strange hollow sensation in her stomach.

“You know, that white face with the big black eyes…”

“I know,” Audrey interrupted shortly.

“What else was he wearing?” Noah asked intently.

“What?”

“What else did he have on? Was he wearing a cloak?”

“A cloak?” Audrey reproved.

“Or a shroud. Like the Grim Reaper.”

“He had a hood on. I think it may have been a raincoat…”

“A raincoat!” Noah snapped his fingers so sharply Emma gasped, “Knows his stuff,” at her expression, he explained, “That’s exactly what Brandon James wore to the 1994 Halloween dance. They were poor and his Mom believed Halloween was of the devil, so his costume was just some old raincoat he’d grabbed from the closet.”

“It is good you’re here,” Emma said reluctantly.

“Did you see anything else about him?” asked Audrey, “I mean, how tall or how thin…did the hood ever slip?”

“If it did, I didn’t see. I heard his voice, though.”

“He spoke to you?” she repeated incredulously.

“On the phone,” she looked at the floor, “He…called me.”

Beside her, Noah let out a strangled cry, shoving his knuckles into the mouth to stifle it.

“Noah!” Audrey snapped.

“Sorry. Got excited. You’re saying the Brandon James impersonator called you?”

“I was still on the phone when he got into the house,” she sighed.

“What’d he sound like” asked Audrey.

“I dunno…male.”

“That makes sense,” said Noah without elaborating.

“Kind of like…” she hesitated, “Kind of an asshole.”

“That doesn’t narrow it down,” Audrey observed.

“This is unbelievable,” Noah was saying, “Absolutely unbelievable.”

“I know,” Emma sounded relieved, “I still can’t wrap my head around it…”

“He’s a year late.”

Emma blinked, “Excuse me?”

“Well, for the 20th anniversary,” he explained, looking at them as if they’d gone stupid, “Of the Brandon James killings. The copycat’s a year late. But it’s still coming up on an anniversary, and maybe he figured people would’ve had their guard up last year…”

“Well, my guard’s up now!” Emma hissed, “I never would’ve thought…but I guess I should have. Because of my Dad,” she met Audrey’s eyes and she found herself thinking on what she’d said before, why she’d been so quick to shoo Brooke and Riley off.

They hadn’t been there before Emma’s father left town. They wouldn’t remember him dragging himself home in the middle of the afternoon, interrupting their playdates with the reek of booze stale and sour on him as he collapsed into the recliner. They wouldn’t know about the harsh arguments Emma would report in barely remembered phrases at school the next day, of the sound of a grown man sobbing as he battled nameless terrors his daughter could only grasp the bare outline of, being generally accepted as too young to understand such a thing.

Why shouldn’t Emma be glad Audrey was here?

“I’ve been thinking it over,” Emma was saying, “I know there are people who get all hung up on serial killers…”

“Brandon is a mass murderer,” Noah corrected patiently, “And you don’t have to look at me like that. Just because I’m the main editor on the murders’ Wikipedia page…”

“You are?”

“I was just teaching myself how to Wiki!” he said defensively, “And it’s a piece of local history. If we had a famous child molester, I’d have edited his page too…” he stopped himself for his own good.

“Serial killer or mass murderer or whatever he is,” Emma said and stopped herself, “Was…I didn’t think he was the type to have…”

“Admirers?” Noah prompted, “You never know. It could be a hipster copycat deliberately looking for someone off the beaten path…either way, you’d be the ideal target. You’re the daughter of the only survivor.”

“Wait,” Audrey held up a hand, “Just so I understand. You were attacked by a Brandon James copycat. Fine. But what about the freshmen who were killed? Stacy and Brock?”

“Also Stacy’s parents,” Noah interjected automatically.

Emma was quiet for a while, worrying the edge of the Card, crimping the paper between her fingers, “It was him. He told me.”

“He admitted it?”

“Not in so many words, but yes. And he could’ve been lying to scare me, but I was plenty scared enough so…”

“So, wait,” Audrey held up a hand, “The murderer called you on the phone. You talked to him. He admitted he’d killed four people. You have reason to believe he’s targeting you because of your connection to Brandon James…”

“While we’re on that,” said Noah, “Do the other victims have a connection with Brandon Ja…”

“…and you didn’t tell anyone?”

“I’m telling you now, aren’t I?” but she clearly saw the weakness of this defense, “I didn’t call the ambulance. He did.”

Audrey leaned back, raising her eyebrows. Emma continued, “I was lying on the floor. And, yes, I hit my head but I can remember him looking down at me. He took the phone and he dialed and he just…left. And I know he could’ve killed me,” this last hit said with vehemence, as if she anticipated a challenge, “But be didn’t. He wanted me alive for…” she shrugged, “For the game.”

“Game,” Noah repeated, “What, like Saw?”

“He said things on the phone. About me and my mother and the people I hang out with, my friends…” she hesitated, “The older you get, the more you learn about people,” she sighed, “It felt like a threat.”

“It probably is,” said Audrey, “So why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because…” she winced, “Because it is a threat, Audrey.”

“So the solution is to…what? Negotiate with the murderer?”

“I’m not negotiating…”

“No, you’re sitting on your hands and whistling the odds,” she shook her head, “You’ve become a real expert, Emma.”

“That’s not fair.”

“No, maybe not. Enabling Nina’s one thing, but enabling a murderer…”

“Visiting hours are up!” the clerk snapped censoriously. Audrey broke off, realizing she was breathing heavily. Emma didn’t look much better: winded and shaken.

She stepped back, “Good night, Em.”

Noah followed her to the elevator, quite clearly buzzing with things to say, though he kept every one of them to himself.

---

“So, I love this enthusiasm, Der,” Colin panted raggedly, “I’m all for it, man, really, but can I get an over/under on whether I should’ve left a sticky note on the fridge with some final instructions for Mom?”

“What?” Derek looked over at him, “No. Of course not. Curb.”

“Shit,” they reached a cross street and Colin, caught by surprise, had to brace himself as his skateboard clattered into the gutter. Derek, keeping pace on his scooter, maneuvered into the road and across with the ease borne of long experience.

“It’s not that serious,” he was quick to assure Colin once he’d regained himself, “I don’t think.”

“You don’t think it’s that serious or you don’t think it’s not that serious?” but Colin was smiling, despite his unease, “What did he tell you anyway?”

“Tyler?” Derek considered, readjusting his grip on the handlebars, “It’s more about what he didn’t say.”

“It’s true his sister pulled him out? I didn’t even know he had a sister.”

Derek nodded, “She left. When we were kids. She got in some kind of trouble and…” he shrugged, “I dunno. But she’s back now.”

“For a limited time only,” Colin muttered ruminatively.

“I just wish I’d gotten more out of Tyler. If he’s really on his way out…”

“Hey, at least you talked to him,” Colin pointed out, “I took one look at Audrey Jensen and got cramps. I do think I can get a free PS2 exclusive out of Noah, though, so not a complete bust…”

“Something’s happening to him.”

“Noah? Well, he’s probably a little wound up his best buddy doesn’t watch Xena for the plot…”

“With Tyler,” Derek emphasized, “Today, he was…different. Different from how I’ve ever see him. And I know I don’t know him like that, but…”

But he knew other things.

He knew how a guy walks when he’s got a busted rib, or a raw bruise. He knew about layering up so nobody will notice an unhealed mark. He knew the torture that came from playing a brass instrument…or, he supposed, a woodwind…when your lungs are still sore from a well-placed pounding.

And he knew better than most that ‘family’ wasn’t always synonymous with ‘protector’.

“You’re worried about him,” the last twilight blaze of day crowned Colin’s curls with fire.

“I know it’s stupid. Tyler’s always been indifferent to me at best and…” he cleared his throat, figuring there was no point spelling out what he was at his worst.

“But I guess if it were me…”

“You’re an effing weakling, boy. Turns my stomach just looking at you. You don’t want to be taken to bits on the schoolyard, do the damn work, because there’s jack else I can do to toughen you up.”

“I wouldn’t care who was looking out for me. As long as somebody was.”

Colin furrowed his brow thoughtfully. Derek looked down at their shadows stretched out across Crescent Street.

“It’s okay, you know,” Derek said carefully, “If you don’t want to wade into this. It’s probably gonna be a mess and Tyler’s even less to you than he is to me. I don’t want to drag you into anything…”

“Hey,” Colin skated on ahead of him, blocking his way as he turned to face him, “I’m not your sidekick, Der, and you’re not mine.”

“I sort of figured we were Charlie’s.”

“And I don’t see him here. Do you?” Colin grinned, “I’m in it for the long haul, Der, and not because anyone’s got me by the ear,” he held out his fist, “I’ve got your back.”

Derek smiled, “I’ve got yours.”

Their knuckles met and, inexplicably, they both laughed, the bursts of mirth guiltily if reluctantly suppressed.

So renewed in their mission, they continued the short way up the block, past the Duval house (still cordoned off with a squad car double parked outside) to the coffee-colored siding and white covered porch of the O’Neil home.

The wheels of Derek’s scooter squeaked to a stop.

“Driveway’s empty,” Colin observed.

“His parents are away,” Derek observed, “But Tyler drives.”

“And his sister?”

Derek shrugged as Colin stepped off his board, kicking it up into his hand with a put-upon casualness thwarted somewhat by his cheeky grin that he’d managed it.

They headed up the walkway, Colin looking around.

“So…what, exactly, is the gameplan? Like, is this a wellness check or do we need cover stories?”

“I haven’t thought that far ahead,” he ran his finger along a round black mark on the patio railing: a burn.

“Sweet.”

Derek stepped up to the front door and, steeling himself, knocked.

It swung open at the touch.

They looked at each other. Colin’s red-rimmed eyes had gone white. Still, he pressed close behind Derek as he eased the door open with his shoulder.

The lights were off, but the blinds were open and the front room was bronzed from sunlight.

“Whoa,” Colin breathed.

The place was a shambles. An armchair lay on its side, surrounded by the ruins of a side table it must have collapsed into. One of the sofa cushions had been ripped from its perch and flung, scattering white stuffing over the place. A handsome table lamp with a fluted brass stand was sticking out of the TV in a starburst of shattered glass.

“Je-zus…” Colin muttered, taking a step forward. Derek grabbed him by the sleeve, nodding toward the foot of the stairs, “Look.”

The steps were carpeted: red over rich teak wood. That said, the splotches were plain to see against the fabric and rendered more obvious by the towel carelessly lumped at the foot of the staircase, its natural white color nearly obscured by violent red.

“Shit,” Colin crouched down, “We shouldn’t touch it, right?”

“Probably not.”

Nodding, Colin retrieved his phone from his jeans and, flashlight on, ran the beam along the bloodstained towel. The white light stopped over the lower corner, where it seemed whoever had been trying to wipe up the mess on the stairs had gripped.

There was a monogram there: the letter ‘M’ in fine black thread.

“So…for the record,” Colin said softly, “I’ve still got your back. 100%. That being said, this looks like a great time for a tactical retreat…”

“Wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“Tyler!” he started up the stairs, stepping carefully around the stains he could see and squelching into the ones he couldn’t. His rational mind considered evidence tampering, trespassing onto a crime scene, drawing the attention of a violent, possibly homicidal maniac…after all, wasn’t someone attacked just down the street just last night…

But Derek surrendered completely to emotion. He could neither explain it nor help it.

Because he’d sat by Tyler today and tried to get through to him, yes, for selfish ends, yes as part of a gambit to bring down his girlfriend but Tyler did need help. And if he could still give it…

There was more blood at the top of the stairs, and thickest in the nearest doorway which, Derek knew at once, must be Tyler’s room.

Again, no signs of life, but no clear evidence of death either. The room was a mess, even more than the living room. The mattress had been flung away with bodily force, and leaned now against the far wall, blocking the window and leaving the place in shadow. Derek deployed his own phone flashlight and shone the beam over a gutted desk, a shattered PC, and what had once been a PS4.

The blood here was mostly concentrated around the doorway. Derek wasn’t a detective and, indeed, the sight of the stain was enough to turn his stomach, but he figured it didn’t take a forensic team to determine first blood had been drawn here. Who’d been drawing from whom was another question.

“Derek!” Colin called from below, “Oh God. Oh fuck. Oh shit. Derek!”

Derek made a soft glottal noise of comprehension, bending down to better examine a layer of detritus scattered over the floor, partially beneath the stripped bedstead.

Below, Colin let out an incomprehensible whining expletive, followed by a series of uneven thumps on the stairs, punctuated with, “Fuck. Ew. Shit. It’s wet,” and so on before his shadow fell over the doorway.

Derek’s fingers had just closed around one of the bits on the floor. The mysterious object was still in his hand when he turned to his friend and caught the brunt of his flashlight in his face.

“Dude,” Colin greeted breathlessly, “Not an emergency, but I think I just pissed myself a lit…” he saw what Derek was holding and the color that remained him fled.

“Dude!”

---

“I’ve got to hand it to you, Nina: you don’t do things small.”

“I learned from the best,” Nina said flatly, grabbing a halter top from her dresser, considering it, and deciding not to bother.

“I don’t mind telling you your principal sounded pretty damn pleased with himself on the phone.”

“Maybe he was imagining you naked,” she selected a cashmere sweater, much too heavy for this time of year in these parts, and consigned it to the open suitcase on the bed, “Great confidence booster.”

Her father, piped in through the house’s Bluetooth speakers, was characteristically unamused.

“Suspended. He said something about a recording…”

“Secondhand evidence produced under duress.”

“You’ll have to tell your attorney.”

“Oh, I don’t think it’ll go that far,” Nina said carelessly, moving on to the closet to inventory shoes.

“I was being facetious, but I guess it shouldn’t surprise me if it comes to that.”

To hear him tell it, Chet Patterson hadn’t been surprised a day in his life. His general attitude to all of life’s misadventures was to stare down his nose at them and frown disapprovingly. Still, Nina had seen him shaken to the pillars once or twice, and every time on her account.

“I hope you don’t think I’m picking up stakes to get you out of this.”

“And leave Austria in the thick of skiing season? I’d never dream of it.”

“This isn’t a vacation,” he said shortly, “Pounding the pavement here for months on end while you play jailbait Prima Donna…”

“Mom chose to leave,” Nina interrupted, tossing a pair of tennis shoes she’d normally never be caught dead in into her case, “You chose to go chasing after her.”

His sardonic laughter echoed from a dozen speakers in half as many rooms, ringing off the big windows of the main room.

“You could make a real run for the bar, Nina, if you were happier eating shit.”

“Gee, thanks, Dad,” Nina rifled through her jewelry box.

“Nothing’s ever your fault. You say what you want, do what you want; out peoples’ secrets, bust up their reputations…but it’s never your fault. You’re just a force of nature: a hurricane. Blameless as the sunrise but God and Jesus help the bastard stuck in your way.”

Nina’s lips closed around a velvet sachet containing a rope of seed pearls. Her mother’s gift to her, for her Sweet 16. In a vague way, she was surprised neither of the old bastards had filched it when her back was turned.

“Whatever mess you’ve gotten yourself into now…”

“I’ll get out of it myself,” she assured him, “But thanks for calling.”

There was a short, charged pause. She could hear laughter in the background: couples in their cups at whatever Alpine chalet his quest had taken him to. Then the call cut out, and her Spotify kicked in again, trading in her father for One Direction.

For a final conversation, it was pretty anticlimactic. But then, she hadn’t expected him to call at all. It would’ve been just as well if she never heard from him again. And if he thought anything, after…

Well, why should it matter? Plenty of people thought plenty about her as it was, and would think more now.

In the end, these things really only mattered if you let them. Some bad news or a poorly-timed revelation can materially change your life, obviously, but gossip was just stale air. If it got to your head, just go where the breathing’s fresher.

A sharp yapping heralded the arrival of Sage. The Pomeranian darted across the threshold, taking a running jump onto the bed, where she sniffed the open suitcase experimentally, nosing at the lining of the lid.

“Watch it, you,” she chided, moving to intercept Sage’s probing nose and retrieving the sensitive article before it could be dampened by it.

Charlie hadn’t been lying: it was a rough job, but she wasn’t in a place to demand a refund.

The new passport, and the associated ID, identified her as ‘Chelsea Hollander’, 27 years old, from Shreveport. Nina personally would’ve settled for 23.

“But beggars and choosers, huh?” she scratched Sage between the ears. The dog’s little pink tongue hung out of her mouth; Nina supposed it was about the size of her brain.

“And what am I going to do with you?”

It was an odd thought and she had the guilty sense she ought to have considered it earlier. Her father would be Carmen Sandiego’ing it across Europe for the foreseeable future, and it wasn’t as though any of her loving disciples were going to be paying wellness calls after today.

Sage’s dark eyes were fixed on her with the sort of stupid, vacant adoration common only in animals, babies, and a certain kind of drunk old man at the far end of the bar. There was reverence in it, but you’d be an idiot to mistake it for love.

Not, perhaps, for lack of trying.

“Fine,” she said finally, “You can ride shotgun.”

Sage yipped merrily, gamely oblivious to her near brush with death by neglect. Nina had no idea how she was going to keep the damn animal, but she was similarly fuzzy on how she’d be keeping herself at the moment. The important thing now was just to get on with it. They could deal with the particulars later.

Zipping the passport up again, Nina turned to her desk: a neat confection of shiny faux-spruce adorned with white tea lights. There were a few personal adornments: pictures strung up with pink string…herself, Sage, friends recent and removed. Not very many, though. Most of her precious moments lived on the cloud.

Ignoring the pictures, she considered her laptop: a hot pink MacBook, the apple logo obscured by a sticker depicting a set of scarlet lips, puckered for a kiss.

Nina briefly considered the merits of taking the laptop and chucking it out the window. Tempting though the fantasy was, she ruled it out. The thing had brought her an epic saga’s worth of trouble, but it’d bought her ticket out of it too. She wouldn’t part with it. Not yet.

With the laptop zipped up in her bag, neatly shielded beneath a layer of feminine products, Nina hefted the suitcase upright and, Sage at her heels, headed down.

It was just on 6:00, and the sunset had flooded through her mother’s huge display windows, touching every corner of the house. They kept things modern here, in direct contrast to the more rusticated piles they shared the waterfront with. There were no nooks and crannies in the Patterson home: no place to hide.

So what else to do but hit the hills?

She idled by the front door, casting her eyes over the place. The speakers kept on pumping: the 1D boys were crooning about just how fast the night changes.

Sighing shortly, she disconnected her phone from the Bluetooth. The house was silent.

“Good riddance,” Nina told the hollowed husk that had raised her. Sage echoed her, she must assume.

Her Benz was already prepped and ready to go. She hefted her suitcase into the trunk and deposited Sage over the tartan blanket draped over the backseat for her use. Sage, quite delighted at the prospect of absconding from the only life she had ever known, proceeded to roll around in demented paroxyms of glee, shedding everywhere.

Oh fucking well.

Getting behind the wheel, Nina gave the house one last look from behind her sunglasses and hit the road.

She headed west, into the setting sun, keeping the lake to her left. On her right, the lavish mansions that comprised her neighbors flashed by, one by one before giving way to the sprawling campuses of the Catholic prep schools: St. George and St. Mary, and the Lake Club where her father had quaffed many a Manhattan as he swapped tort stories with the other suits.

She wondered if he’d ever come back to resume the habit, and felt a strange satisfaction in not having the answer.

Beyond the Club, the waterside road dipped, morphing into a less trafficked byway, water on one side and a steadily thickening treeline to the other. Nina had made up her mind on the path…it wouldn’t do to go through town, up Post Road to the interstate. She knew too well Lakewood was infested with prying eyes. If she wanted out, she’d have to take the scenic route.

Another strange thought, that she wouldn’t see the place again. GW High, the Grindhouse, Cici’s Diner and Lejeune Park. It was a comically unremarkable place, and she’d outgrown it long ago.

But if she’d ever had a home, Lakewood was it. And now…

Her phone was vibrating, rattling obnoxiously against the dash. In the backseat, the reclining Sage barked to show she could also be obnoxious.

Nina glimpsed the screen out of the corner of her eye, saw it was an unfamiliar number, and swiped to ignore it. Sage passed gas, her stubby tail briefly standing to attention at the effort.

“You do that again, you’re out,” Nina scolded halfheartedly once the odor made itself clear, “You can walk behind until a bird of prey tries its lu…”

Her phone shook again, with a text this time, from the same number: ‘I’ve got my ~eye emoji~ on you.’

Unconsciously, she eased up on the accelerator. She was the only car on the road, and the nearest point of interest was the Smith’s Sweeties plant a half mile on. If anyone was watching her, they weren’t doing it with the eyes they were born with.

“This fucking place,” she muttered bitterly, grabbing her phone and calling the mysterious number back.

She was answered in half-a-second,“Hello, Nina,” a sardonic, slimy kind of voice, purportedly male, “Bad time?”

“For me or you?”

“Oh, I make my own time, you know how it is.”

“Cutting it close,” she pointed out, “Which one are you, anyway?”

“Ooh, a game! Guess.”

She rolled her eyes, “My first thought was Tyler, but I figure he’s probably drinking Draino now if he’s lucky.”

“No love lost, huh?”

“He made his bed,” she considered, ignoring the steady thrumming of her heart, “Maybe you know about that?”

“I know a bit. Like you, I’m something of a sucker for current events.”

“Am I supposed to choke on that bait?”

“Yanno, I always figured that was the difference between you and Tyler.”

“Really? Hate to disappoint you, but I think he’s the better sucker of the two of us…”

“When the walls close in on you, Nina, you start searching the ceiling for cracks.”

“That’s me,” she said tightly, “The prettiest little cockroach you ever did meet.”

Her headlights cut through the growing dark, swallowing up the white dividing lines of the road with ruthless efficiency.

“I have met you, right?” she prompted.

“We’ve done business. But I guess that’s a big umbrella I’m under. You’re a busy little bee, aren’t you? A Queen Bee, if you will.”

“You’re behind the times. I resigned my commission.”

“Is that so?”

“Sorry about it.”

“Pressures of the fast line, huh?”

“One too many mouthy sickos with opinions.”

“Oh, I get it.”

She was seized by a morbid curiosity and debated indulging it.

“Who did you get it from?” she asked, keeping her voice level as she could manage.

“A mutual friend.”

Her hands were sweating on the wheel, “Gave you a hard time?”

“I give as good as I get,” a short, deliberate pause.

“Why don’t you cut the shit?” she snapped, “Whichever one you are. You can drop the song and dance. You want something, so stop yanking your dick and tell me.”

“Nina! How positively unladylike!” a dry cackle, “I always knew you were a ten-buck bitch in $10k couture.”

“What do you want?”

“Okay, okay! What I get for trying to make conversation…” a put upon sigh, “Not you, for starters. On your own, you’re pretty uninspiring. I don’t know if anyone’s told you yet.”

She had an uncomfortable recollection of a hazy dive, bright green eyes piercing through a miasma of cheap cigarettes and cheaper beer.

“You think you’re some badass power player and the rest of us are toy soldiers with heads full of plastic. And I don’t want to rock your world, Nina, but this isn’t that deep. None of it is that deep. I’m as smart as you,” a soft rap of knuckles on the bar top, “And as stupid.”

“So?” she prompted huskily, “What,  then?”

“Why don’t you pull over and we can talk about it?”

She looked to either side of the road: out at the shimmering slate surface of the lake and the dun autumnal void of the woods.

“This a stickup, cowboy?” she asked, “You crouching in the trees like Robin Hood? Gonna jump down into the backseat and have your way with me?”

“You wanna pull your roof up, just in case?”

She eyed the switch for the convertible on the dashboard, “Wouldn’t want to cheat the guard dog out of a meal.”

“I think I’m too tough for her refined tastes.”

“How are you watching me?”

“What a funny question. How’s it feel to be on the other side of it?” a short laugh, “Seriously, Nina. Pull over.”

She laughed, “Suck your father’s cock in hell,” and accelerated.

“I’ll save you a table,” he promised as she rounded a bend and her headlights fell on him.

He was standing stock still in the road: a lumpy black figure with a white, twisted face, like something out of a ghost story. If he were talking on a phone, Nina couldn’t see. She knew only that terrible, frozen face, blasted by the light yet frozen, unflinching.

Sage barked and Nina screamed, wrenching the wheel and watching the figure melt into a black and white blur as the car tore off the road and into the bracken. There was a scraping and thudding as they careened downhill, through a curtain of weeds and bramble, slapping at the sides of the car, reaching over to strike her in the face and catch in her hair.

The slide ended abruptly, a wheel catching in a cleft in the earth. Nina fell forward sharply, and might have flown through the windshield had she not been wearing her seatbelt.

What a model fucking citizen she was, she thought absently as she wondered what the hell airbags were supposed to be for anyway.

There was blood on her brow, though she felt no pain. A quick inspection in the miraculously still intact rearview mirror suggested she’d been scraped by some gnarly branch or another on the way down. The upholstery was littered with bits of weed and leaf gathered on the descent.

Sage was gone. Nina felt a strange contraction in her breast at the thought. She’d had the dog’s furious chorus playing in her head the whole way down…she must have bailed, she told herself. Jumped out when the getting was good.

Sage wouldn’t know an unpaved floor from the surface of the moon.

The car was still running, the headlights beaming on and down. She’d carved a pretty neat trench in the slope, a good six feet down before stopping. The light illuminated the water, another two feet on. Midway, there was a grimy yellow and black sign advising: “CAUTION: MUD”.

And here she was, in open-toed shoes.

Before she could weigh the merits of popping open her suitcase to retrieve the sneakers she’d grabbed from her closet, she heard a rustle of motion above and behind. Footfall, too heavy for Sage.

Instinctively, she darted for her phone, finger slipping on the lockscreen as she did…

“We’re only gettin’ older, baby, and I’ve been thinkin’ about you lately…”

“Shit!” she cursed, dropping her phone like dynamite. The footfall stopped briefly, but quickened.

Nina didn’t wait, vaulting over the side of the car bolting as the soundtrack of her lost girlhood drew the means of her destruction to her.

“Does it ever drive you crazy just how fast the night changes?”

The sign wasn’t kidding: she lost her shoes to the mud within five steps and had no recourse but to trudge on barefoot. Thinking of footprints, she beelined for the water and, after a moment’s hesitation, waded in.

The water was tepid and stank of algae. Every step she took, she imagined piercing her foot on a broken beer bottle or a discarded needle. Constantly, she darted back to the water’s edge. She had not gone so far…she should still be able to make out the glow of her headlights.

Unless someone had cut the engine.

There was a boathouse a little way up the shore: a ramshackle, rundown old thing, a relic from the days before the Lake Club and the regatta, when people had gone onto the water to eke a living rather than show off how well their living treated them.

It was a gamble: the only shelter in reasonable distance. But would he expect her to approach from the water? He clearly expected a lot, to have anticipated her coming down the road.

Someone must have told him but, then, she hadn’t exactly made her escape plans a point of gossip.

Shaking these thoughts from her mind, Nina drew in breath and dove.

The water was harsh and silty, stinging to the eye, but she pushed on. Her minidress was a slog in the water, and she again cursed her decision to throw on something more suitable for traveling.

Least of her problems, she supposed.

She kept the lake shelf as near as she possibly could, pushing on so that the worn wooden pylons of the boathouse’s supports were always visible. There were ghost stories about Wren Lake, speculation that it was a bottomless pit. How else could it be that Incel Proto School Shooter Brandon James’s body was never found after he’d fallen into the drink?

She thought of the stricken, ghost-white face in the middle of the road and hesitated. Not a bad choice for a disguise, if you were going for a bit of local color. But…

She reached the pylons just in time. Her limbs were weighty from the effort, and her eyes were burning from the filthy water. Grabbing onto a post for purchase, she propelled herself upright and broke the surface, drinking in lungfuls of, if not perfectly clean, than genuine air.

The boathouse stank of mildew but, neglected though it may be, it was plainly not abandoned. The rotting smell was accented with the sweeter tang of hops, the legacy of drained bottles and crumbled cans lying on the crates and barrels on the landing platform that encircled the place. A quiet, out of the way spot for kids to fuck around, Nina thought.

But kids, as a rule, aren’t as cognizant of their privacy as their elders who, after all, remember a time before constant surveillance.

Pulling herself up onto the landing, she grabbed onto a barrel for purchase. Her finger came away tacky with a greasy, white residue.

No, she decided grimly. Not kids.

Footsteps outside. Nina froze, heart in her mouth. The big double doors were already partially open, courtesy of a busted hinge. There was no way out besides the opening out onto the water, and she was already bedraggled, soaked and winded.

Cocksucker, she thought eloquently, and returned to the water.

Slowly, that was important, slowly. If she dove, there’d be noise, and ripples and fuck there would be ripples anyway, but maybe that demented goddamn mask had poor vision and he wouldn’t notice if she was subtle about it.

She had her destination in mind from the start. There were a few boats…raggedy old skiffs…turned over in the water, bobbing freely on the surface. It would take two to turn one upright, and as far as she could ascertain she was being menaced by one (1) solitary psychopath.

Nina reached her hiding place and surfaced beneath the boat. Her head and shoulders fit comfortably between the slats of the seats. The rest of the structure arched above her, like the inside of a seedpod. The mottled wood was dotted irregularly with pockmarks and hairline cracks, enough to afford tiny glimpses of outside.

She saw the mask at once, though she hadn’t heard the door open over the noise of her own heart. He moved around the landing, appearing to step consciously around the litter. Nina followed his progress, tracking him through what peepholes she could find. He went down to the end, out to the edge. Nina held her breath, fingers digging into the slats.

There was a soft pattering, not of two heavy feet but four light ones. She turned, to the opposite end of the boat, and saw Sage standing in the doorway, twigs and dirt tangled in her coat, but otherwise quite spry.

She barked merrily. Nina didn’t have to watch to feel the other’s attention shift.

No, she thought strangely, hysterically, No, don’t you goddamn dare.

She couldn’t explain it. For once, she didn’t care whether she could. She only had the fearsome, disembodied notion that that was her goddamn dog and there was no goddamn way some disgruntled demented death’s head cosplayer was going to get his hands on her.

Nina kicked in the water, not hard, but enough to stir up a noise.

Sage stopped barking. When Nina looked out again, the dog was gone.

She felt a broad, sweeping relief, looking up just in time to see the blade thrust through the wood and right into her staring eye.

The sensation was immediate: white hot and then nothing. She didn’t even feel it when the knife was withdrawn, and felt less when it went in again, for the other eye.

Saw it coming! Nina had maybe half a second to think as the blood filled her mouth and nose, as her fingers spasmed against her rotting prison, as the world vanished in an instant, collapsing in on itself like one of the discarded beer cans lying outside.

She didn’t scream, she realized, as the water pressed in. He got her, but he didn’t hear her scream.

Hell. She’d take it.