The Ghosts of Lovely Women (24 page)

“Dave likes you,” Derek said. “I can tell.”

“Great.” I yawned hugely. “Remember when I came to your house and we just slept together — without sleeping together?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Can we do that tonight?”

He hugged me. “That sounds really good.”

P.G. rubbed his head on my calf, as though he thought it sounded good, too.

* * *

I lay in bed later, listening to the sound of Derek’s breathing, comforting as a clock.

Sleep eluded me; I was thinking of what Will said about the women in the Underworld, chased away without being allowed to voice their thoughts. I thought of the Underworld in general — how a dead person, once she had crossed the River Styx, became a Shade, and could go among the living no longer. The dead existed in a shadow world, knowing but not living, being but not known.

Not known
. Like the figure behind my clouded door: a man, surely? Had it been a man I knew, or a stranger, a vagrant in search of money? I doubted the latter theory, but the former was almost too frightening to contemplate. Why would someone I knew be unwilling to reveal himself?

I lay with my eyes closed, but they persisted in showing me an unwelcome image, over and over: the same hulking form, carrying Jessica Halliday to her own car, placing her inside, and driving her to the alley where she would be found dead, voiceless forever, unable to name her murderer; a shade who had crossed the river with no chance of returning.

“My father’s of a better nature, Sir, than he appears by speech.”

—Miranda,
The Tempest,
Act I

Thursday morning I had an e-mail from Dr. Janice Foster. I happened to click on it during period one, and I read it while they did their notebook grammar drill. It said,

“Dear Ms. Thurber,

I do remember Jessica Halliday. She and I had a nice talk at my Chicago signing, but we kept in touch after that because she e-mailed me several times with ideas and questions. I believe that she was a very special young woman with remarkable abilities and a strong lifeforce. I was shocked to hear that she had died. I took the liberty of searching the internet and finding the mention of her murder in the Chicago
Tribune
. I must tell you that I will be contacting the police, because I think that Jessica inadvertently left information with me. I won’t go into it in great detail here, but suffice it to say that I believe she was feeling threatened by a man — a man much older than herself — because of her last e-mail to me. Jessica had, perhaps, gone beyond the boundaries of what was appropriate, but I believe that she did it because of a strong sense of justice. Whoever did this was, I think, someone Jessica believed should not be in a position of power.”

She wrote some sort of closing which I didn’t really read, then her name. I stared at the computer. Why did she tell me all of that? Because I asked? Because she felt guilty and wanted to justify the fact that she didn’t prevent Jessica from being hurt by the man who had “threatened” her? Who was that man? Her father? Someone in her college? But she hadn’t been at her college. She had been here.

What if Kathy had found something out, that last day? What had she said to me in the office? She’d said it had been a crazy day. She had seemed nervous about Jessica’s parents being in Fred’s office. She had asked…
if Jessica had been president of the Drama Club
. And Josh had asked if Jessica’s parents had asked about him. Josh — who, it seemed to me, had been acting strangely ever since Jessica’s death; who had been curious about my meeting with the Hallidays; and who suddenly wanted to leave the job he had always claimed to love.

I thought about that through periods one and two, then made my way to Josh’s room. We shared the morning free period, and I found him grading papers at his desk. He had little efficient stamps that said things like “Revise and Return” and “Impressive Work.” There he sat, stamping away, just as I’d known him to do for years, his brown hair impeccably combed, his shirt and tie meticulously aligned.

“Hey, Josh.”

“Hey, Teddy Bear.”

“Got a minute?”

“Sure.” He stamped one final paper and looked up at me with a smile.

“What happened between you and Jessica while she was home?”

His smile vanished. “What did you hear?”

“I didn’t hear anything. I know you. I know you’re being weird about it. I thought you might want to talk to me.”

He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know if I want to talk about it, Teddy.” He opened one of his drawers and contemplated something inside.

I edged closer to the door. Then Josh pulled out a bag of carrots and shut the drawer.

I breathed a sigh of relief. He offered me a carrot, which I declined. “Here’s the thing:

These stupid girls are always gossiping. Especially the girls in the play. They have hours and hours after school to drag out their stupid nuggets of non-news and try to make it into something. Last year, while I was helping out with the play, the standard number of girls developed crushes on me.”

This was entirely believable; Josh was handsome, and his sexual preference was no one’s business. “So?”

“So some of them went so far as to practically make passes at me.”

“Jessica?”

“No. Not Jess. But someone who was, shall we say, rejected — or I assumed it was her — began a most horrible rumor that I had slept with one of the girls.”

“Oh, Josh!”

“It got as far as the Main Office, this rumor, and I was called in, along with several young women. I had it out with Anthony and then with Fred, and finally they believed that I was the brunt of revenge.”

“This happened last year?”

“Yes. As you can imagine, this is not the happiest place to be these days.”

“But hasn’t it died down?”

“It has. But I saw the distrust in people’s eyes, Teddy. That’s a hard thing to live with. If you had heard the rumor, I don’t even know if you would have trusted me. Fred, I swear, thought it was more likely that I was a molester because I was gay. Which if you think about it makes no sense at all.” He gave one of his short, sarcastic laughs, but I saw misery in his eyes.

I was feeling weighed down by guilt. How could I assure him that I would never suspect him of molesting a teenager when I had halfway suspected him of murdering one?

I sat in one of the student desks. “So what happened with Jessica?”

“Well, over the summer and into the fall, which I shall term my recovery period, I started thinking back about where that rumor might have originated. Because try as they might, the powers that be were never able to pinpoint that vicious little nugget of false info to one person. I remembered that Jessica, my best bud, had been rather dismayed when I mentioned once, in a rather offhand way, that I was gay.”

“Oh.”

“And I wondered if she’d been unable to handle it. Maybe had decided to start a rumor as a way of punishing me for that information.”

“So you had lunch with her this spring and asked her.”

“And hurt her feelings. She said that Andrea Waxman had started the rumor, although Jessica hadn’t found that out until she was off at college, and didn’t think there was anything she could do at that point.”

“So did you part on good terms?”

“We did — except I realized I’d crossed a boundary with her. She was never going to trust me the way she had, because I hadn’t trusted her. It’s sad.” And he did look sad — Josh, who made a joke of everything, had been going through some terrible things and had never even asked me to share his pain.

“I’m sorry. You should have told me.”

“I wasn’t willing to lose you, Teddy. I wasn’t going to risk seeing that look in your eyes.”

“You wouldn’t have. And I intend to trip Andrea Waxman when I see her in the hall.”

He laughed gleefully. “I’ll kneel behind her first. That should get her airborne.”

“Josh, you should tell the administrators.”

“And get things all riled up again? No thanks. We’ll let sleeping dogs lie.”

I nodded. “Well, I have to make some copies. Quiz on
Macbeth
, Act IV.”

“No matter what happens, we must do our duty,” Josh said with a smirk, picking up one of his stamps.

“Will you and Tim come for dinner next week? I know Tim says my building smells musty, which it does, but I think I’ve removed the offending odor from my apartment.”

Josh looked embarrassed. “He doesn’t mean to be a jerk. He just is sometimes.”

“Well, ask him about dinner. And there would be one other person there, too.”

His eyebrows shot up. “The new guy?”

“The new guy.”

“I knew it! You were thick as thieves after one day. And you were always blushing in that pretty way when he was around. Like a little Elizabeth Barrett Browning. How do you love Derek Jonas? Let me count the ways.”

“Shut up, Josh.”

I left him, stamping more cheerfully now, still murmuring that I loved Derek with “a love I seemed to lose with my lost saints,” and went down to the copy room, where the sign on the first machine said “USE AT YOUR OWN RISK — I’M GOING TO KINKOS.” I sighed and moved to the next one, which was at present signless. The third one said “SERVICE CALLED.” I copied my quizzes on the working machine, feeling distracted.

Sheryl Danson, junior with ambition, appeared at the faculty room door. She was the Editor-in-Chief of our school paper, and she wasn’t allowed in this room. She looked a bit put out with me. “Ms. Thurber, can you come out here for a minute?”

Trying not to roll my eyes, I went into the hall. “Why aren’t you in class, Sheryl?”

“Miss Katz let me out.”

“To find me in the teacher’s lounge, or to go to the bathroom?”

She looked at her toes. “I just happened to be going past, and I saw you, and I wanted to ask if we can have our meeting soon. The one where we pick next year’s editors. I’ve looked at my calendar and we’re running out of time. The seniors are only here for three more weeks, and the last two will be filled with events—”

She was right; she was actually a very organized person, and this year she’d basically run the newspaper meetings by herself while I sat and graded the never-ending stream of papers. “I’ll look at my calendar. Come see me after school. Just this once I won’t tell Miss Katz that you are abusing her hall pass.”

Unhappy with my scolding, she went on her way. Now that she’d reminded me of the newspaper, though, I realized I hadn’t checked the club mailbox in a long time. I went into the main office, where Rosa, currently on the phone, waved at me. I went to the Journalism box, which contained only a memo reminding students to wear proper uniform and a suggestion from Anthony Fairchild that we should cover the honors assembly in this year’s paper because, he suggested in his gentle way, it hadn’t been covered last year.

Yuck. The problem with trying to run a student newspaper was that you had to rely on students. Last year’s honors story had been assigned to Jim Rickert, who had told us on deadline day that he had nothing — not even a rough draft — and had interviewed no one. We scrapped the story, and I couldn’t even give Jim the F he deserved, because the journalism program was entirely extracurricular. That was something I’d been trying to change for a few years now. So far Anthony’s assessment was that it was “going just fine” as it was.

At lunchtime Josh was outrageously friendly to Derek, who raised his eyebrows at me but placidly ate his sandwich (which I had made for him, with lettuce this time, and tomatoes in a little baggie on the side).

I leaned toward Derek at one point when no one was listening. “I wonder if you could walk P.G. again today. I know I’m taking you for granted.”

“Walking your dog has had its rewards,” he said.

“Stop leering at me. I just want to run an errand.”

“Which is?”

“I’m going to the Hallidays one more time. Just to check something out.”

“Teddy,” he said in a warning tone.

“Oops! There’s the bell. Gotta run. I’ll be home by four,” I said. I had forgotten to say that quietly, and I realized that several heads had turned in my direction before I escaped out the door.

* * *

When I pulled into the lovely circular drive the scent of flowers assailed me— beautiful spring scents that I hadn’t had leisure to notice in the rainstorm. I breathed them in and walked toward the porch, where Sam sat with his arm around what looked like a black horse with a drooping face.

“Hey, Sam.”

“Hi, Ms. Thurber.”

“Exactly what sort of dog is that?”

“He’s a bull mastiff. That’s the biggest kind of dog in the world.”

“Wow. Is he going to bite my head off?”

“No. Go ahead and pet him.”

I did, tentatively, and the giant animal closed his eyes and leaned on me slightly, almost knocking me off the steps. “Geez.”

“He’s like a big baby,” Sam said, grinning. “I have a theory about that. The bigger the dog, the more they want babying. Einstein actually wants to sit in our laps sometimes. It’s hilarious. He sat on my mom last night and we couldn’t see her at all.”

“Oh my gosh, Einstein. You must weigh a thousand pounds.”

“He weighs one hundred and twenty,” Sam said proudly. “And he’s not even fully grown.”

“Wow.”

“Did you want my mom? She’s inside — I can get her.”

He started to stand up, but I held out a hand. “I would in a minute. But I also wanted to talk to you, Sam.”

“Oh?” He looked surprised and understandably cornered.

“Yeah. How are you feeling today?” I sat down on the step below Einstein’s, hoping he wouldn’t try to sit on me.

“I’m better. I went to school and everything.” Sam brushed a blond hair off of his nose and smiled at me, and I realized that, like his sister, he was a lovely and charismatic child.

“That’s good. You really did seem under the weather the other day. And I noticed that you were shocked by Jessica’s note. The one in her locket.”

He looked away, down his elegant street. “It was weird. Her writing a poem like that.”