Saving Phoebe Murrow: A Novel (27 page)

Using the hands-free mechanism in her car, Isabel quickly phoned half a dozen parents, including Amanda Thomas, to let them know what was going on at the Littleton's party. Phoebe gave her a blistering look the entire time, until she suddenly shouted at her mother to stop. Isabel was about to yell back until she realized it wasn't what she thought. No, her daughter was about to throw up. She barely had time to pull over before Phoebe yanked open the door, and leaning half her body over the threshold of the car, retched into the street.

When they got home, Isabel was going to give Ron a piece of her mind.

Around ten o'clock the following morning, a bedraggled Sandy and Bill had barely stepped inside their home when Sandy called out, “Jess, hon'? You home?”

Bill's sister, Cynthia, shouted, “In here. In the kitchen.” She'd picked Jessie up from the police station in the middle of the night.

Sandy tossed her coat and purse on the tufted ivory leather bench in the hallway and made for the kitchen. Bill followed her, grumbling about needing a strong “cup of jo'.” The hours they'd spent at the police station wrangling with the cops until their lawyer had shown up had put them both in a foul mood.

Though still a mess, thanks to Cynthia, the kitchen was a little neater than when they'd left at midnight, handcuffed and marched outside by the police, neighbors gawking at them.

Jessie jumped up from the counter, where she'd been eating a bowl of cereal beside her cousin Carson, and ran to greet them. “Mom, Dad, you guys okay?” She peered at them through bloodshot eyes, as her aunt and Carson looked on.

“We're okay, honey,” Bill said. “How about you?” To his sister, he mouthed the words, “Thank you” and “maybe you'd better go.”

Before Jessie could answer, her mother released a stream of curses about Phoebe and Isabel, ending with, “That little witch, wouldn't you know it…just like her mother,” her features contorted in frustrated anger.

Bill fixed his wife with a stare that said,
Cool it
, and nodded his head in the direction of Carson, who, with some prodding from his mother, was getting off the barstool to leave.

“I will not!” Sandy shrieked. “I've had it. I've tried everything. Being nice to Isabel, inviting her over, driving her daughter all over town, trying to be her friend.” Of course, she was conveniently forgetting her own recent behavior, but then Isabel didn't know about that. “And all for what? No, I'm done with them! Phoebe getting sauced right along with her friends, then tattles to her goddamn mother, that holier than thou, stuck-up bitch.”

“Mom, I don't think…well, Phoebe wouldn't do that,” Jessie said, though her tone suggested uncertainty.

“Phoebe told her mother; why else did that freaking Isabel show up?”

“How do you even know Isabel called?” Bill said, trying to be the voice of reason. “It could've been somebody else…or the police just got wind of it.”

Her lip curled in a look of disgust. “Like I said, Phoebe told, then Isabel called the cops. Right, Jess?”

Jessie stared at the Froot Loops in her bowl as if they might give her the answer. “Come on, Mom, there's lots of ways. All she had to do was come in the house, which she did. She was even in the kitchen. I told you not to—”

“Not to what?”

“Be so obvious,” she mumbled, adding, “never mind.” Jessie stared at a handful of Froot Loops on the table and arranged them into two eyes and a frown. Then she ate them one by one as her mother continued to vent. The sound of her fury rose and fell. Such outbursts were actually rare, but when they happened Jessie wanted to hide, much the way she used to curl up under her bed out of the reach of thunderstorms.

“The nerve of her, to call the police on the parents of her daughter's best friend.” She gave Jessie a hard stare. “Oh, don't you go all soft on me. I know what you're thinking. ‘Used to be best friends,' right?” She practically spat the words as Jessie studied the terra cotta-tiled floor. “I wouldn't do that to people I hate,” Sandy shouted. She hadn't been this angry since Shane's betrayal.

Jessie eyed her mother with a flash of disbelief, though she had to admit that calling the police was pretty bad. What if Phoebe
had
told her mom? But no, Feebs had been having fun. She'd played beer pong, had a few drinks, or at least she'd been carrying a beer around. And she'd been talking to Noah, had even made out with him.

Without saying anything, Jessie quietly left the table and went upstairs to her room. There she pulled out her cell phone and typed a message to Phoebe.
You there?

She waited for a reply. Her head was hurting; the whole night had gotten to her, so she lay down on her bed and grabbed the fuzzy bunny Phoebe had given her during the summer. She rubbed a finger over the bunny's heart, which Phoebe had embroidered in rainbow colors, Jessie's favorite.

At once her phone buzzed. She grabbed it. A text message from Phoebe:
Don't call me
, it said.
I don't want to talk
.

Tears sprang to Jessie's eyes. What? How could she?

She threw the rabbit aside and bolted out of bed and down the stairs, two at a time. “I think you're right, Mom. About Phoebe.”

Sandy was thrusting beer cans into the trash with wild energy. She didn't stop until she'd finished. “What makes you say that?” She peered at Jessie intently.

Jessie didn't want to tell her that she'd tried to contact Phoebe, not after what her mother had said earlier, but she told her anyway. “Then she texted me a message, saying not to call her.” Despite her efforts not to, she burst out crying. “I was her friend, Mom.”

Sandy came to her daughter and wrapped her arms around her. It felt good to hold her. “It's okay, sweetie puss. What comes around goes around.”

A frightening glint lit up Sandy's eyes.

Jessie pulled away. “What are you going to do?”

“Me?
I'm
not going to do anything,” she said, her mouth twisted into a wry smile.

At school on Monday morning, Phoebe got a series of looks and a few sniggers. It didn't take long before she caught a whiff of the buzz circulating the hallways: that either the cops had heard about the party or someone had called the police on the Littletons. The consensus, still unknown to Phoebe, was that most likely
someone
(and many fingers were pointing at Phoebe's mom) had called.

Until Emma filled her in, between second and third period, about everything but Phoebe's mom, Phoebe also hadn't known that the cops had dragged the Littletons down to the Montgomery County police station in Bethesda and that at least twenty kids, including Jessie and Emma, had been cited for underage drinking and assigned court dates. Phoebe stared at Emma and gave her friend a forlorn look. “I'm sorry,” she said. And she was, though she didn't know that worse was yet to come.

Skyla had been spared, along with Dylan, Noah and several others, all of them picked up by Skyla's mother. When Emma mentioned Noah's name, the memory of their kiss returned to Phoebe, but she brushed it from her mind. If Shane had been there that kiss would not have happened. What should have been the most wonderful party had morphed into a nightmare.

Phoebe'd been isolated after arriving home that night. No phone, no computer, no TV. No electronic devices of any kind. Though her parents had spared her the humiliation of cancelling her birthday party, Isabel had heaped other demands on her. Community service hours (just as the kids who'd been caught would have to serve), a short research paper on teen drinking, additional chores, and other things TBD – to be determined. She'd wept pitiful tears and apologized for drinking – “I used poor judgment, I'm sorry,” she'd said – but her mother had little sympathy for her. “One day without electronics, Phoebe, surely you'll survive.”

On the way up to her room, Phoebe had muttered loud enough for her parents to hear: “Solitary confinement without privileges. My life ruined. AGAIN. I should just kill myself.” In reality, she knew things could have been worse. She hadn't gotten grounded again, except for Sunday. And that was behind her now. And that meant she would see Shane in five days. She clung to his long ago promise that he'd come to her party, despite his no-show at Jessie's. She was sure he had a good excuse. Probably football related. She'd checked his football schedule for her birthday weekend and there were no games on Saturday to keep him away.

Over the course of the morning, she'd gotten a few nasty stares from those who'd received citations. Jessie passed by once and refused to speak to her. Phoebe, dreading any sort of confrontation, was actually grateful. Shortly before lunch, however, Jessie stopped her and, with a look that could drill holes into the wall, accused her mother of having called the police.

“My mom? No.” She squared her shoulders and met Jessie's glowering stare. “Why would you even think that?”

“Because she hates my mom.”

“What are you talking about?” Phoebe asked, though this time her ignorance was feigned.

“Oh, as if you don't know. I bet your mom called the cops. Why don't you ask her and see what she says.” Jessie glared at her. “And what's with that text you sent me on Sunday?
Don't call me, I don't wanna talk?
!”

Then, pivoting on one foot, she turned and left Phoebe gaping after her. What?! She hadn't texted that message! Which meant what? That her mother had? Worse yet,
had
she called the police on the Littletons? No, she couldn't have. She'd been with her the entire time after they'd left the party. Nevertheless, the thought burrowed its way into her mind. Please, don't let it be true, she said to herself.

The rest of the day she made herself very small and avoided contact with just about everyone; even Skyla had shown little interest in sitting with her at lunch. When Phoebe told her about the exchange with Jessie, Skyla peered intently at her and asked, “Do you think your mom really did it?”

“No! I don't,” Phoebe said in a defiant whisper.

Barely taking note of Phoebe's distress, she said, “I sure hope this doesn't affect our party. You don't think it will, do you?”

“Of course not, why would it?” Phoebe snapped, though she too worried something bad might happen. Like Shane not coming. Like kids hating her again. She couldn't handle that.

In the pit of her stomach she got the same roller coaster feeling she'd had on and off all fall. How could things be so good one day and so awful the next? Why was life so unpredictable? She almost ran into the bathroom, the urge to cut was overwhelming.

On the five o'clock bus home from school, she gazed emptily out the window, buildings and traffic passing by in a blur. She clung to the idea that she would talk to Shane after school. No one would be home to stop her from using Facebook, except maybe Milly, and she would never interfere. At last she'd find out what had happened on Saturday, why Shane hadn't come to Jessie's, and he'd reassure her that he
would
show up at her party. He just had to. Then everything would be okay.

Late afternoon, at home in her well-appointed kitchen, Sandy paced. Thirty feet one direction, thirty feet back. Her rage from the previous day hadn't subsided; no, it had increased in intensity, like one of those tropical storms that gathers force off the Florida coast.

Muttering, she continued past white-painted French doors, past cabinets Bill had custom-built for her, past a crowded granite-topped island, past the handsome, carved wooden table, where she now stopped to take a bite of chocolate cake. She slid the morsel into her mouth, chewed thoughtfully, took a sip of coffee, then angled her fork and sliced off another piece.

As she stared outside into the darkness, all she could think of was the grief and humiliation that Isabel had heaped on her. Calling the cops on her and Bill was the last straw.

In the backyard, the tall branches of the leafless trees thrashed and bent beneath the fury of an invisible wind. Sandy stopped eating. She watched the wild towering oaks. Something raw and savage was taking place out there and it appealed to Sandy, though she couldn't say exactly why. She simply liked it. Just as she liked this cup of coffee and the last sliver of Chocolate Decadence awaiting her fork. She speared the cake, sank her teeth into it, then drained the coffee, fully savoring the taste of both.

A faint smile appeared on her perfectly heart-shaped lips. Another bite. Yum, so delicious. As she swallowed, an unbidden memory of Mrs. Eddinger arose.

A furrowed brow replaced Sandy's brief smile; her mouth, when not chewing, grew pursed, and her eyes narrowed. She wanted to tell her, “Mrs. E, I've been wronged, Bill has been wronged, Jessie's been wronged. It's not fair! Something has to be done.”

If Mrs. E had been there, she might have said, “Now, Sandy, don't you think you're over-reacting, a little?” Tilting her head she often added, “Be careful. Remember, some things you can never take back. Right, honey?”

Occasionally, when Mrs. E said such things, Sandy had reconsidered and exercised self-restraint. She had often followed Mrs. E's suggestions, especially her time-honored edict:
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
. Today, however, she only heard that strange, mocking voice turn the phrase on its head:
Do unto others as they do unto you!
and recalled that long ago unforgiving look on her mother's face when she'd ordered her out of the house. And the police, those awful police, as they'd barged into her home.

The wind blew. Sandy almost thought she could hear the trees scratching the dark heavens and the faint whisper of Mrs. E. Sandy reviewed the many good deeds she'd done over the past year, with which she'd hoped to gain entry into the tightly knit group of mothers. So how was it that despite all her efforts she'd been rebuffed? Painfully so. Especially by Isabel.

She ticked off the slights one by one: Isabel had rejected her attempts at friendship, embarrassed her before the entire school, forbidden Phoebe to see Jessie. And now a call to the police. The entire mom population would be texting and gossiping about her. Isabel's insults mounted until she felt kicked around like someone's unwanted mutt.

The whispering ended, and, strangely, so did the roaring wind. A kind of quiet crowded around her large, extravagant house as if waiting to see what she might do. Tonight her resolve to spread goodwill failed to gain purchase. The time had come to “disappear” Shane. And on his way out, thought Sandy, he'll wreak a little havoc, a mess that Isabel will have to mop up.

So, what to write to Phoebe to end
Shane's
online courtship?

As she poured herself more coffee she noticed the time. A little after five o'clock. Phoebe would be home soon, if she wasn't already. Over the past month, Sandy had become intimately acquainted with the girl's habits.

She climbed two stories to her home office. By the time she reached the messy room, a little short of breath, she knew she had to lay off the cake and get back on her diet.
Slenderella
for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Otherwise she wouldn't fit into her holiday outfits, and she'd worked so hard all summer to get into a size six. Which these days, even she knew, meant a size eight. She couldn't bear to think she might need a size ten.

What she wouldn't give for a cigarette, it made dieting so much easier, but no, she'd kicked the habit with Bill, and for Jessie, formerly Phoebe's best friend.
Formerly
. That word unfolded another series of painful memories, hardening Sandy's resolve to punish Isabel.

Sitting at her computer, she tapped her acrylic turquoise nails against the keys:
I don't want to see you
. She stared at the words for several seconds, added
Ever
, and reread the private message to Phoebe. She stuck a finger in her mouth and chewed on the cuticle, trying to imagine the look on Phoebe's face when she saw that Shane had dumped her.

“Poor Phoebe!” she said aloud, and for an instant she actually meant it. Then she pressed “enter” and sent the seven-word message through cyberspace, unleashing her venom into the world.

She turned the radio on low and settled into her chair to wait, keeping half an ear on the front door for Jessie's arrival from school. Jess couldn't know what she was doing. She sat before Shane's Facebook page, eyeing the little symbol beside Phoebe's name, waiting patiently for it to light up, not unlike a cat waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting creature. She turned up the radio and tapped her fingers in rhythm to a Bob Marley song.

Then, finally, the first message from Phoebe appeared:
You're joking, right?

Sandy's lips curled into a tight smile as her fingers skipped across the keys.
Not joking
.

Phoebe:
Shane, what are you talking about?

Now Sandy's mind raced, rat-a-tat like a machine gun. “What am I talking about?” Sandy said aloud. “
This
is what I'm talking about.” She wrote,
Your mother called the police on Jessie's parents…you tattled about the booze at the party! And then the Littletons were arrested!
And that's only the half of it, she thought.

Phoebe:
How do you know that stuff when you weren't even there?

Sandy froze. What could she say? The cursor hovered over the little red button. Ready to close Facebook. She sat up straighter and took a breath.
Don't you worry how; I just do
, she wrote.

A few seconds later, Phoebe wrote:
Why didn't you come to Jessie's? You promised
.

Hmm…Sandy thought Why? And then it came to her:
Because I heard you've been messing around with Dylan
.

Phoebe:
Who told you that?
Sandy stared at the words before realizing the obvious. The time had come to write on Phoebe's Facebook wall, where everyone could see what
Shane
was saying and join in the fun.
I don't tell on my friends
, Sandy wrote with smug satisfaction.

Phoebe, still private messaging, wrote back:
It has to be Jessie, but if it is, she's lying
.

Sandy couldn't believe how easy Phoebe was making this. Again she posted her response on Phoebe's wall:
You're calling Jessie a liar?

Sandy saw that in a pathetic attempt to defend herself, Phoebe had finally switched to making her responses public:
No, I meant if she said that about me, she's not telling the truth. Why don't you believe me?

Let me count the ways, Sandy thought. How about this:
I don't trust you. I heard you said Jessie was fat and no boy wants her, especially Dylan. That's bitchy. Nobody likes bitchy girls
.

This provoked a slew of jeering posts from Phoebe's
friends
just as Sandy had anticipated. She pumped her fist into the air with glee.

That's not true
, Phoebe wrote and then begged for a chance to talk on the phone.

Sandy could almost hear the pleading in her voice. “Not happening, girl. Never happen! You got that?” She could imagine the tears and the wailing, while outside the trees tossed about.

Again waiting for Phoebe to respond, Sandy imagined, as she had many times before, being invited by Gail, or Jane, or Liz, or even Amanda to one of their girl dinners or lunches. Perhaps being married to Ron, not Bill, would increase her chances of such an invitation. She had no intention of leaving Bill – she loved him, she did – but she enjoyed the fantasy nevertheless.

Maybe I'll give old Ron a call, she thought. She hadn't spoken to Isabel's husband in a few days, and she loved titillating him, which also genuinely turned her on. She touched Ron's number and waited to hear his slightly Bostonian accent.

The women she envied swam through her mind. Maybe she'd organize a luncheon. But she knew they wouldn't come, not after what Isabel had done, tarnishing her reputation yet again. Sandy felt like a pariah, a bit of flotsam floating downstream, never quite reaching the riverbank, never gaining access to all the action. It seemed as if history were repeating itself.

Shane, shocked by her admission that she'd failed to use contraceptives, and looking at her as if she were crazy, had said, “You think the prom king should go to the prom with a pregnant girl?” He smirked. “I don't think so.”

She'd made the additional mistake early on of having confided in him about Les – not that she'd had sex with him, but that he lusted after her – because Shane's final comment to her had been: “How do I even know it's mine? Could be his.” She wanted to slap him. The comment had frightened her, though, because she realized it could be true.

A voice startled her. It was coming through the cell phone. Someone had answered her call. For a fleeting moment she saw Shane's image. It took her a second to gather her wits. Then she said, “Hi, Ron,” in her most alluring tone. “How ya been?”