“
Oh, oh, oh
,” she said, and she was crying. She stepped back, one step farther. Two steps. “
Oh, oh, oh
,” she said, perfect syllables of grief, well formed and grammatically, morally, academically, athletically, socially, correct.
“Mrs.–,” I heard myself say. The class, safe behind closed doors, laughed again. The hallway was echoing with her funny run and she was gone from me, like a dear lost item, a single pearl clatter- ing forever down stairs.
And you know the rest of the day. When the police made an official statement about suspected teenage Satanic cults the na- tional news picked it up, so when Mr. State and other men screeched their cars to a halt and ran down the street and kicked in the windows and lit the gasoline all the cameras arrived in time to see Ron’s house not yet extinguished. “Fucking devil faggot killed my son,” said the hysterical State when the micro- phones reached him, before the police grabbed him, before the lawyer got him off. No charges were pressed. He was hysterical and Ron wasn’t even home, the house was well insured and the dogs ran out the puppy door into the crowded street yipping at the blaze. The flames rose bright on everyone’s screens, flickering lipstick red and traffic-cone orange and Lord knows what else, depending on how your television’s color was. It was probably on in those electronics stores, where rows and rows of the same broadcast glare at you so you can compare reception. You can compare the ruddiness of Mr. State’s face, or the darkness of the angry silhouettes, still waving fists even as the police dragged them away. The tint of the flowers on the neighbor’s robe. He was a
good man. This is a quiet neighborhood. We never knew he was a cultist. The exact shades of brown on the suit Dr. Tert wore to the studio that night, giving her commentary. The black hue of the charred remains, providing a background the next morning for the newscaster to purse her lips disapprovingly but sympath- etically. An America hungry for justice and tired of the way children are getting gunned down even in good neighborhoods, or stabbed, by Satanists, in a stolen car. An angry father. A known homosexual. It is true he hasn’t been charged with anything but he did admit to being at what was now being called the Fatal Party. The call for a National Youth Curfew. Why people don’t go to church anymore, and what that is doing to the next genera- tion. What inside sources say. What neighbors say. What Dr. Tert says. More after this. We are interrupting this program. We regret to inform you. We are going live at the site. Live at the school. More after this. More after this. More, they promise me, there’s more, there’s plenty more after this.
Thursday November 4th
When I woke up the television was still on and my neck was noose-stiff. I was still in yesterday’s clothes. I stumbled out of the chair and turned off the morning hosts who were chatting in clean suits and scrubbed faces. The door was knocking–I mean, someone was knocking on the door.
“Nice outfit,” Natasha said when I opened the door. “Some- thing about it seems familiar, though. Get in the car, Flan.”
I moved the flask so I could sit down, took a swig, and stared down at my sleep-wrinkled clothes thinking suddenly of that smooth white shirt with the embroidered flower in the center, unruffled in my
drawer. “You know,” I said, “speaking of nice outfits, why is the white shirt you–”
Natasha reached over and pulled out the cigarette lighter from the dashboard. Its tip glowed lava-hot. “We
weren’t
,” she said, “speaking of that.”
OK. “Where are we going?”
“The lake.” Kate, Jenn, Douglas and Gabriel were already there, standing around looking cold and cross, and Lily was already throwing up.
“Top of the morning to you,” Natasha said. “Shut up,” Douglas said.
“Sounds like things are starting off well,” Jennifer Rose Milton said. She’d clearly been crying.
“What’s wrong?” Kate asked. “What’s
wrong
?”
“Besides, you know, the obvious. Everything.”
“Nothing.
Maman
and I had a fight this morning. She–I can’t–” “Let’s all sit down,” Kate said, soothingly and sternly. “This feels like a cocktail party, and besides, we don’t necessarily want
to be spotted meeting together secretly before school, do we?”
We all sat down. Jenn wiped her eyes. “Kate, I can’t go on like this much longer. Millie is just
grilling
me, and I don’t know what to say. I have
never
had a real fight with
Maman
until last night.” She was crying. “
Never
.”
Natasha lit a cigarette and passed the pack around. “Then it was about time. Can we get started, Kate?”
Kate lit her cigarette; everybody,
everybody
was smoking. Even Lily had wiped her mouth so she could light up.
“We have to wait until V gets here,” she said.
“I bet she doesn’t show,” Douglas said. “She’s really seemed a wreck lately.”
“Not like the rest of us.” “She’ll show,” Kate said.
Jennifer Rose Milton took a long drag, still heaving from sobs and smoke. “What is going to happen?” she asked.
“You just
never know
,” Kate said, “what’s going to happen.” “That’s for sure,” Gabriel said, sitting next to me and smiling
oddly. “I mean, just maybe a month ago–”
“Can we
please
skip the clever conversation until all of this is over?” Lily said. “I’m sorry, I just don’t have the stomach for it.”
“What
do
you have the stomach for?” Natasha asked. “
Natasha
–” Douglas sputtered. “If it weren’t for
you
–”
“Stop, stop,” Kate said, clapping her hands. “Can we start this?” “You said we’d wait for V ,” I said. “And Flora’s missing
too.”
“Shut
up
!” Gabriel yelled, “
Shut up
! We are all trying to get
out of this
, and all you can do is make jokes!”
“I wasn’t joking,” I said, astonished. “Forget it,” Kate said. “Let’s start.”
“
No
!” Gabriel said, and stood up. “I want to say this! We’ve never had a chance to really
say
this! Flan–”
“
Sit down
!” Kate said. “And
shut up
, Gabriel. We can’t do this if everybody’s going to be joking or arguing or crying or
throwing up
”–she pointed dramatically at Lily–“we can only do this if everybody just
sits down
and
shuts up
and listens to
me, me, me
.” Natasha opened her mouth and started to say something, but Kate met her gaze and topped it and even Natasha, my brave Natasha, shook her head, took back her cigarettes and didn’t say
anything anymore.
“Now,” Kate said, “so far I think things are going as well as can be. They found Adam in the car, of course, but nobody’s talked to any of us, right? So they must have believed Ron when he–”
“Does everybody
know
what happened to Ron last night?” Douglas asked. “His
house burned down
, Kate.”
Kate blinked. “So?” she said.
“So I think we might be fucked,” Douglas said. “No, no,” Kate said.
“What Douglas means,” Jennifer Rose Milton said gently, “is that Ron might not be as–what’s the word I’m looking for?–unim- peachable a witness as we had first thought. I believe I mentioned that yester–”
“Ron’s house means nothing,” Kate said. “I mean, of course it means something to
Ron
, but it doesn’t mean anything to us. What should matter to us–the
only thing
that should matter to us–is–”
“V ’s still not here,” Lily said, suddenly. “We shouldn’t have started without her.”
“Hi,” V said, and we all jumped. “Um, hi,” Gabriel said. “Sit by me.”
“I have something to say,” she said, and sat by Gabriel. I looked around the clearing: Gabriel, V , Douglas, Kate, Lily, Jennifer Rose Milton, Natasha. Remember that. That’s how we sat. Gabriel, V , Douglas, Kate, Lily, Jenn, Natasha, me.
“Then
say
it,” Kate said, “because we have a lot to–” “I want out,” V said, “of this life.”
We all looked at one another: Gabriel, V , Douglas, Kate, Lily, Jenn, Natasha, me.
What
did she say?
“I can’t do this anymore,” she said. She was fiddling with her long-gone pearls, which weren’t there. She was fiddling with imaginary pearls. “I’m a wreck, and it isn’t worth it. It would be better if the curtain just
came down on this and we all got whatever we deserved or–” “You think we’d get what we
deserved
?” Kate said.
V ’s hands were shaking. “I can’t do it,” she said. “I can’t. I’m going to tell.”
“I don’t think that’s your decision to make,” Kate said. “
What
?” V said. “What do you–
I just can’t
, Kate! Don’t make
me.”
“She can do it if she wants,” Gabriel said. “
No
,” Kate said. “No she can’t.”
“I agree with Kate,” I said.
“Well of course you do,” Gabriel said, actually moving a few inches away from me. But we stayed in the same order, though: Gabriel, V , Douglas, Kate, Lily, Jenn, Natasha, me.
“No,” I said. “I
do
. We all got into this, and–”
“No no no no no no,” Lily cried, putting her hands over her ears. “
No
! V is right, we
can’t
do this. We have to–”
“We most
certainly can
do this,” Kate said. “Everybody needs to
calm down
. We’re not just doing this for Flan anymore. We’re doing it for
all
of us. We’re
all
–”
“For
me
?” I said. A white pillar of fury streamed through me. Everything was on
my
shoulders again, here in this important semester. Everyone
expecting
. Everyone
awaiting
. I was sick of it. “For
me
?”
“
Yes
,” Jennifer Rose Milton said, and I saw that even she was angry, her beautiful skin coloring and her pretty-girl eyes hooded like she was taking aim. “
Yes
, Flan. Like Gabriel was saying–
trying
to say–just a few minutes ago. Nobody’s had a chance to just
say
it. Nobody’s been able to just
say
–”
“
We can
do
this
!” Kate shouted. She had the look in her eye when you kick and kick at the door and it
doesn’t open, when you write a boy letters and letters and he never loves you, not ’til the day he dies. Not even then. The fucking handkerchief. “
We can
do
this
!
We can
do
this
!”
“
Nobody here
,” Jennifer Rose Milton said, “has just been able to just say what the deal is! That we–”
“Why don’t we just say it, then?” I asked. “Why don’t we just–” “So
say it
!” Gabriel said, and pushed me
hard
, on the shoulder. “Why don’t you just tell us why exactly we’re all here, what ex- actly went on? Why don’t you just explain it to us, tell us
why
,
Flan?”
“I will,” I said. “I’ll say it. There’s nothing so complicated about it. One of our friends committed a murder. Killed somebody we all knew, killed somebody I was in love with, beat him to death right there at one of our parties.” I found myself giggling a little bit, the audacity of everything hitting me for the first time. The black marble in my head was bursting wetly, like it was never a marble at all but a bulging bubble in tar. Popping at its own pace, at its own time. Easy as that. “We didn’t want her to go to
jail
, remember? We all
love
her, and we know it was, at least partially, an
accident
. That’s why we are here, is that what you want to hear? We’re all in this together, and that’s why! Just face it: Mr. Adam State, handsome senior, big man on campus, adjunct member of the Basic Eight was killed by our glamorous friend Natasha, and now we’re all–”
“Who?” Douglas asked simply, blinking.
Simply. The planet turned
over
, and the light shone in such a way as it hadn’t for a long time, not since I don’t know when. There’s a point, every Saturday morning, where the cartoon character keeps running until the land ends and he’s suspended in the air. He
looks at the camera, suddenly suspicious of what he’s been walking on. Sometimes he waves. Then gravity takes over and the joke finishes in a burst of dust on the canyon floor, the char- acter crushed into whatever geometric shape the writer thought would get the biggest laugh. I looked around at my friends and a little figment in my head just melted away. There they all were. There wasn’t Natasha. Never had been. Just a few minutes earlier I had been running, and although I didn’t know where I’d end up I thought I knew what I was running on, but now I looked around at my friends and saw that the joke was reaching punch line. The line where you punch. The rest of it you know–the trial, the television and all that tiresome, tiresome speculation, digging under rocks we never noticed, much less put anything under–but a small sliver of the story is still mine to tell. Gravity took over and I saw that Gabriel was there, and V , and Douglas was there next to Kate, and Lily was there, and Jennifer Rose Milton had always, always been there. But next to her was someone else. Always had been. The Basic Eight, after all, had always been the Basic Eight, and now Flora Habstat was looking right at me as easy as counting on your fingers. And perhaps even more surpris- ingly, she spoke.
“I’m going,” she said, and she got up and started walking back toward Roewer High School. “I’m going to–”
From across the street, in some athletic field, somebody blew a whistle.
LATER
You’re surprised?
You’re
surprised? How do you think I felt? Even now, flipping through the rest of my journal here in my pod, trying to find anything left worth typing
for you, even now I’m still surprised. In the TV movie, I think, this revelation will be immediately followed by a montage, with pop ballad accompaniment: Natasha and I at a café, at the movies, in her car, on the beach, switching clothes, and finally Natasha beating Adam to death while I looked on, cowering by the tree and covering my ears as blood and teeth flung from his head and landed in the grass beside me.
Ohhhh
, the viewing audience will say. She was alone the whole time. We’ve been lied to. We want a refund.