The Implosion of Aggie Winchester (15 page)

Chapter Twenty-seven

SATURDAY, APRIL 25 / 5:12 A.M.

When I got home,
I walked into the kitchen but no one was there.

“We’re in the living room,” my dad called out gruffly. I shuffled to where he and my mom were sitting. My mom was curled into a chair, her legs tucked underneath her. My dad was on the couch. The Saturday issue of the
St. Davis Letter
was spread out all around him.

Seeing them sitting there, I suddenly felt like I had one of those hoods over my head, the kind they put on prisoners at Guantánamo. The insides of my nostrils felt scratchy.

My mom wouldn’t meet my eyes, but my dad looked directly at me. “Aggie, we need to have a very serious talk with you,” he said.

I nodded, noticing his eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot.

“We received the paper this morning,” my dad said. He held up a section of it and shook it, the pages rattling. “Do you have any idea what it says?”

I shook my head no.

“It says Marissa Mendez isn’t the queen, but rather Sylvia Ness is. It says that there’s been complete inaction on the part of the administration, even though they’ve known about foul play since the vote on Monday. Mrs. Wagner alleges your mom told her to burn the ballots, and Rod Barris says he was able to confirm this information from”—here my dad snatched his glasses off the coffee table and peered at the text—“ ‘a source
close
to Gail Winchester.’ Now, who do you suppose that might be?”

The wave of nausea that had started rolling inside of me at Neil’s house suddenly came back with tsunami-like force. Shame and humiliation came heaving through my throat as I vomited all over the carpet.

My mom made a small strangled noise and got to her feet. She dashed out of the room, and I could hear her opening cabinets, grabbing cleaning supplies. When she came back in, I tried to take them from her, to clean up the mess myself, but she shrugged me off again and bent down.

I couldn’t look at her as she sopped up my mess, and I burst into tears. I hated crying like this, not to mention emptying my stomach in the family room, but I couldn’t hold it back. I’d been in trouble before, but this was different. The sheer disgrace of screwing up with Rod Barris, of Neil lying to me about getting back together, of Sylvia dumping me and then thinking I’d come crawling back to her—all of my emotions about it were now in a liquid mess in front of me that my mom was cleaning up.

“I—I’m s-sorry,” I managed to stammer, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. It was the only thing I could think of to say as I stood there watching my mom scrub.

The next thing I knew, my dad was standing next to me. I hadn’t even registered the fact that he’d gotten up from his chair.

“Okay, Ag, okay,” he said. His tone was totally different—it had gone from iron shavings to cotton balls in the space of one hurl. “Just come on over and sit down for a second, all right?”

I nodded and he led me over to the loveseat. My mom had finished cleaning but had left the spray bottle and towels on the floor when she resumed her position in the corner chair. Maybe in case I hadn’t gotten everything out of my system.

I sat facing them both, but I couldn’t meet their eyes. Instead, I busied myself with wiping my nose and tears with my sleeve until my mom handed me a tissue from her pocket. “Here.”

When my crying had stopped and I could breathe without hiccuping, I finally chanced a look across the room at them.

My mom stared at me with a mix of anger and concern. Her mouth hung open just slightly, and her eyebrows were somehow raised and pulled together at the same time. My dad just looked bone tired. His forehead was creased with weariness.

As if suddenly registering my staring, my mom cleared her throat and folded her hands together. “Are you well enough to have a discussion?” she asked.

I nodded.

She took a deep breath. “Then let me begin by saying that your behavior these past two days has been seriously disappointing. And not just disappointing, but dangerous. Both for me and my career, and also for your safety, since sneaking out in the middle of the night is hazardous, to say the least. You’ve jeopardized both my position at the school and our trust.”

I looked at the floor.

“There’s also,” she continued, leaning forward in her chair, “the very serious fact that you broke rules in the Bromeses’ house too.”

I nodded, picturing Mrs. Bromes waiting for me to sneak out of Neil’s room.

“Aggie,” my dad said, some of the iron shavings back in his voice, “we’re not opposed to you dating, but we can’t have you going out behind our backs to be with boys.”

“Especially when you looked me in the eye and told me Neil wasn’t your boyfriend,” my mom interjected.

“Neil’s
not
my boyfriend,” I said. I twisted my damp sleeves around my fingers.

My mom and dad exchanged glances.

“But you still . . .” My dad trailed off, fighting what I imagined was an enormous internal battle to find the right words. “You’re still clearly involved somehow.”

I didn’t even know how to begin to answer that. “It’s not what you think,” I said.

My mom cleared her throat. “Aggie, from our perspective, we’re very concerned. Especially in light of Sylvia. If you’re going to have sex, then we want you to be safe. We should probably get you to a gynecologist in the near future.”

My head jerked. “God, Mom,
no
. We’re not having sex. Why won’t you believe me?”

My mom didn’t look convinced. “Whatever you’re doing with Neil,” she continued, “we hope that you’ll take every precaution.”

“What’s more,” my dad interjected, “you need to be respectful of boundaries in other people’s homes. If you wouldn’t do something here, you shouldn’t do it elsewhere.”

I nodded, all too aware that I probably wouldn’t be doing
anything
in anyone else’s home for a long time. I figured I’d be grounded until college.

“The way you’ve behaved is unacceptable,” my mom said, as if reading my thoughts, “and you need to be punished for what you did. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“Your mom is going to have to face grave repercussions for Rod Barris’s story, in part because of the information you gave him.”

My brain felt like watered-down instant oatmeal. “I—I was just trying to help,” I managed to say. “I was trying to tell the truth, and I thought Rod Barris was too. But he lied to me. I’m—I’m really sorry.”

My mom closed her eyes but didn’t say anything.

I turned to my dad. “And I’m sorry about the tournament,” I said. I knew that my dad had been looking forward to today’s bass tournament since opening day. Because this was a pairs tournament, if he showed up alone, or with a different partner other than me, they’d disqualify him.

My dad glanced at my mom. Ever so slightly, she nodded.

“Aggie, your mom has very graciously agreed that I should be able to enjoy an event that I’ve been planning for months now,” my dad said. “While she doesn’t like the fact that your presence is required for me to compete, she’s willing to let it slide.”

My head felt light. “Please go to your room,” my dad said. “The tournament is starting soon, but your mom and I need a moment.”

I nodded and left, but the minute I shut my door, I didn’t flop on the bed like my whole body was telling me to. Instead, I paced, thinking about Neil, about my parents, about school, about
everything
.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and cringed. My makeup was smeared, my eyes red, my hair a mess.

I cracked open my door and heard my parents still talking. As stealthily as I could, I tiptoed to the bathroom and grabbed a washcloth. Once the water had steamed up the sink mirror, I scrubbed my face until every last trace of makeup was gone. I put my fingertips to my face and knew my skin was shiny and pink, but I didn’t dare check the mirror to look at it. I didn’t feel ready to face myself just yet.

My dad poked his head into my bedroom a few minutes later. He solemnly announced that my “punishment would commence after the bass tournament” and that “the terms would be very severe.”

He didn’t go into details about it, and I didn’t ask him to. The way his mouth turned down and the way he looked past me, not at me, I could see he was still completely pissed.

Before he left, I spotted the
St. Davis Letter
tucked under his left arm.

“Dad,” I said, “can I . . . um, can I see the
St. Davis Letter
?”

“This really upset your mother,” he said. “I want you to truly understand that.”

I folded my hands together. My dad, perhaps mistaking my silence for thoughtful penance, handed me the paper.

I had to read quickly—the tournament was calling, and already we were running behind—but I had to find out what Rod Barris had written.

ALLEGED PROM COVER-UP
SURFACES

AT ST. DAVIS HIGH by Rod Barris

More details, and more questions, have emerged regarding how administrators at St. Davis High School handled the election of prom queen this past Monday. Marissa Mendez was crowned queen, though a challenger, Sylvia Ness, has come forward, claiming administrators burned ballots with her name on them.

“This election has always been rigged,” Ness said, alleging that her “alternative looks” and current pregnancy kept high school officials from handing her the crown, even after the student body voted for her.

Amy Wagner, the high school cheerleading coach who counts the ballots every year, says that the votes cannot be retabulated because Principal Gail Winchester told her to burn them. “After we announced Marissa was the queen, she told me to torch them,” Wagner says.

St. Davis administration officials have declined to comment on the subject; however, a source close to Principal Winchester confirmed that the ballots had in fact been burned on Monday and that Winchester knew about it. Since Monday, Winchester has taken no action to rectify the prom situation, leading some in the school to believe a cover-up is in the works.

This same source also alleged that Ness wanted the title of prom queen only because she was carrying the baby of Ryan Rollings, the prom king.

District Superintendent Paul Swanson said that in the next few days the burning of the ballots and election procedures would be investigated carefully. “We will get to the bottom of what happened,” he said.

Until further information was available, he indicated that Marissa Mendez would keep her crown and that the prom schedule would move forward as planned.

For St. Davis community reaction to the unfolding prom situation, please see the Letters to the Editor section.

God, I’d been such a moron to believe that Rod would have changed anything in his story just because I told him who the father of Sylvia’s baby was. The only thing he’d done was add that information, which had made everything worse.

With trembling fingers, I turned to the Letters section to see what more was written there.

Dear Editor,

The mystery about St. Davis High’s prom queen is about much more than a prom queen. It’s about caring about the opinions of others, even if they’re “just kids.” The principal and others there are hiding something, and the sooner they come forward, the sooner we can put all this behind us.—Alex Bartlett

Dear Editor,

If recent presidential and Senate elections have taught us anything, it’s that voting matters and that each vote counts. Why should a prom election be any different just because it takes place in a high school? What are we teaching our kids about voting if we don’t count their ballots?—Sasha James

Dear Editor,

We forget sometimes that high school kids are just that: kids. They are impressionable and need guidance. How can any administrator put an out-ofwedlock pregnant girl who dresses like a vampire on the throne as a model for others to follow? That’s what the prom queen is, she’s a standard. And the more we let that standard slip, the more we’ll be doing a disservice to our children.—Janet Gilson

I took a deep breath.
At least the editor chose to print a variety of letters
, I thought. It could have been worse . . . I supposed.

“Aggie!” my dad shouted from the kitchen. “Come on! Let’s go!”

I folded the paper closed, then shoved it into the metal trash can next to my desk.
Enough for one day
, I thought, and gave it one extra push toward the bottom.

Chapter Twenty-eight

SATURDAY, APRIL 25 / 8:02 A.M.

At the start
of the tournament, fifty boats pushed off from the shore and roared through the water, racing for the hottest bass spots on the lake, their wakes tearing up the surface.

There was something about those first few minutes of takeoff that were so freeing, it almost rivaled the fishing part. It was the time in the boat when the stress of too few casts, or too few fish, or all the wrong conditions hadn’t seeped into your mind yet, and when all that was between you and a fivepound bass was a liquid crust teeming with life.

I knew my dad liked the takeoff, too, but he didn’t even look over and smile at me as we whipped past other boats. In fact, he’d hardly looked at me at all since we’d left home, and he’d spoken to me even less. It was as if the more time passed since the conversation in the living room, the madder at me he got. Or the more mortified he got. It was hard to tell.

I stared at the water, trying not to think about the way my dad was acting, or how I’d seen Fitz standing among a clump of fishermen before the tournament started. He’d been staring at me, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. I wished I could have said sorry to him right then for the way we’d left things about prom, but he was too far away. Instead, we locked gazes until his dad emerged from the side of their new Triton and clapped him on the back. It was only then that he broke the stare and climbed into his bass boat for the tournament.

As the boat slowed, I figured my dad could be as pissed as he wanted, but I was going to enjoy what I could of this day. Whatever it took. I had screwed up and broken the rules, but that didn’t mean I was out of the game.

When the boat was finally still, my dad killed the gas motor and flipped on the electric trolling motor.

I looked up from where I was switching lures on my pole. “Dad,” I said, “do you think we should troll? Don’t you think we should just cast and drift?”

My dad didn’t say anything right away.

“I mean, the wind’s taking us in the right direction,” I continued. “We can just float with it.”

“We’re fine,” my dad said. He grabbed his pole, turned his back to me, and began casting off the bow.

If I hadn’t been holding a two-hundred-dollar rod, I would have snapped it over my knee. I thought it was enormously unfair that I was supposed to be
so
grateful for my dad taking me on this trip when, really, I was just the warm body he needed to compete in the pairs tournament. Just like I’d been the warm body Neil wanted. It didn’t really matter that I was
me
.

I flung my first cast into the water so hard, it probably scattered any bass that were lurking underneath.
Dammit
, I cursed silently.

The tournament was off to a bad start. And we still had eight hours to go.

By lunchtime, things had eased up in the boat a bit. My dad had hauled in a three-pounder, and I had a nice four-pounder, both of which were splashing around in the live well. In a tournament like this one, you weighed in your five biggest fish, which meant you could keep swapping fish out of the live well until you had your five best.

My dad, a little breeze in his hair, was fishing off the bow like he was trying to make friends with all the bass. He cast slowly, languidly, taking his time with each movement. I watched him for a second, then shook my head.

By contrast, I was breathing hard, trying to get as many casts in per minute as I could. I was always on the go, adjusting my lures and positions as the wind changed or the surface of the lake changed.

“Aggie, for heaven’s sake, slow
down
,” my dad said, shooting an irritated glance my way as I dove into my tackle box.

I looked up.

“This is how I fish,” I answered. And it was true. My dad knew our styles were as different as night and day, but we always gave the other bass boats a run for their money.

I took a big swig of the bottled water resting on the boat seat, wiped my brow, and kept going. It was tiring for sure, but I wanted to win. I wanted to prove I was as good as anyone. On the water or off.

But when we drifted into a shadowy bay, I did slow down a tiny bit. As breezes ruffled the tops of the lily pads, I dragged my bait slowly across the bottom of the lake, closing my eyes and trying to picture the underwater world in my head. The bait moved with the direction of the water, following the sun. I started to picture how—

Wham!

I opened my eyes and grabbed onto the pole as the whole boat rocked with the force of a gigantic bite.

“Dad!”

“Aggie! What do you have?”

Even from the bow I could hear the excitement in his voice. And no wonder, since my pole was bent in a huge upside-down
U
.

“Six, maybe seven pounds!” I hollered back.

I wrestled and pulled, eased off the reel and then cranked it, to get the bass closer to the boat. My dad dropped his pole and ran for the net.

I strained and lifted for what seemed like hours, though it was probably only a few minutes. I heaved the pole upward, bending my legs and grunting, to get the bass up to the side of the boat. And when I finally did, the entire animal erupted out of the murky water like a brown Jaws. My dad whooped in a funny heehaw way, and I felt my whole body tighten at the sight of it.

It was
huge
.

My dad quickly netted the fish and then lifted it into the boat, and there it lay, flopping, as we stared. Its slick, coppery skin was like a golden glaze on an exquisite piece of pottery, and its tail thumped out a rhythm that sent water droplets into the air. They caught the light, shimmering.

“It’s at least ten pounds,” my dad whispered. “At least.”

However much it weighed, it was the biggest bass I’d ever seen. With a catch like this, we’d have the tournament in the bag.

I sat down on one of the boat seats and watched the fish for a moment more.

“We should get it into the live well, Ag,” my dad said.

I nodded, and together we heaved it into the aerated container. I held the lid open and stared.

I saw the great fish’s mouth open, saw its gills working, and thought for a second that I knew how it felt. I knew what it was like to get yanked out of the world you lived in and to find yourself in a strange place you didn’t recognize, where life just wasn’t what it used to be. Sylvia dumping me, my mom getting cancer, Neil being an asshole, and now prom—they’d all heaved me from below the surface of whatever life I was living and forced me to cope in a new world where I wasn’t sure what was next.

“Dad,” I said, looking from the fish out onto the lake, “I want to let him go.” The words were out before I realized I’d said them, but I knew I’d meant every one.

My dad dropped the lure he’d wrestled from the fish’s mouth. “What?”

“He doesn’t belong in a live well. He belongs in the lake.”

“Well, it’s not like we’re going to eat him. We’ll put him back after we weigh him. It’s catch and release, Ag.”

Like I didn’t know that.

I reached out and almost touched the fish’s golden skin. “No. I want to let him go now.”

“Aggie, you can’t.”

“Yes. I
can
.”

My dad stood up and made his way over to me, grabbing onto the boat seats for balance. “Is this an attempt to get back at me?” he asked.

“What?”

“Are you trying to punish me? For the punishment you’ll be getting regarding your behavior?”

I closed the live well. “No. I just don’t want to keep him. He should be in the lake.”

“I don’t believe you,” my dad replied. “If you let this fish go, it won’t prove anything. It won’t change anything. You’re still going to be in trouble. And you won’t be hurting me, either. You’ll be hurting your shot in the tournament. That’s it. So think about it, okay?”

I just don’t want the fish to have to go through this
, I wanted to say.
We should just let him go home.

I put my head in my hands. We were going to use the fish to win the tournament, then set him free again. Just like Neil had used me to get what he wanted, then let me go. Just like Rod had used me and then left. Just like my dad had used me for the tournament but didn’t really want to be around me.

“Come on,” my dad said. “We still have a few hours left in the tournament. Let’s keep going.”

I nodded, but for me it was over.

It was the end of the tournament and I was helping clean up our boat when I looked over and saw Fitz standing nearby. “Hey,” he said.

I nodded at him, surprised he’d sought me out. “Hey.”

“I hear you got a big one,” Fitz said. “That true?”

I tossed a coiled rope into the bow of the boat. “Yeah. Seems to be. Maybe eight or ten pounds.”

Fitz let out a low whistle. “That’s huge. Really big. Wow.”

We stood there for a second until Fitz cleared his throat. “I just, you know, wanted to make sure you were okay. I saw that article in the paper this morning. How you holding up?”

I blinked a few times to keep back the tears that were suddenly in my eyes. “I’m cool. It’s fine.”

Fitz nodded. “I read the piece, and I thought it was such crap. Your mom would never tell Mrs. Wagner to burn anything. And let me just say, if you need anything, you can—”

“How’s Becky?” I asked to shut him up. If Fitz kept standing there being nice, I was going to lose it completely. “I’m surprised she’s not here.”

Fitz crossed his arms. “Does that mean I should ask you about Neil? He couldn’t make it either?”

I shook my head. “He’s a dick,” I said.

Fitz rocked on his heels. “You finally figured that out, huh?”

I gave him a small smile. “Yeah. Well. I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed.”

“In case it matters, me and Becky never were anything. She liked me but . . .”

“You wouldn’t put out?”

Fitz smiled. “Pretty much. Also she smelled like onions. All the time. It totally grossed me out.” The laughter I snorted surprised me. “I think maybe it was the combination of her shampoo and lotion. But I’m not sure. She might have actually been part vampire slayer, and I never knew.”

I swallowed a giggle. “I think that requires garlic, not onions.”

“I like it when you smile,” Fitz said suddenly. “It’s like seeing a Discovery Channel special on Sasquatch. There are sightings, but you can’t be sure they’re true until you see it for yourself.”

“I don’t know, Fitz. You look like you might be part Sasquatch yourself. Is there something I should know?”

Fitz put a hand on his heart. “My father was a yeti. My mother was a mermaid.”

“Which makes you . . . ?”

Fitz’s expression grew serious. “To you? I have no idea.”

The tournament announcer’s voice suddenly came over the PA. “Will the team of Winchester and Winchester bring your catch to the weighing table, please. Winchester and Winchester, you’re up!”

Fitz reached out and grabbed my hand. I didn’t pull away. “I know you have to go, but I want to talk to you later. Is it okay if I call you?”

I nodded. “Yeah, that’d be cool.”

Fitz grinned. “All right. Go get your trophy,” he said. Then, of all things, he winked at me.

Feeling shaky, I went to go grab my bass from the live well to bring it to the judges’ table. But when I got to the tank and lifted the lid, all my limbs went numb. I would have screamed, but there was no way my voice was working. I poked at the bass, but it was arched and floating on its back, completely dead.

I stood up in the stern and started waving my hands. My screams of horror were still lodged somewhere deep in my throat, too buried to come out yet. The person closest to me was still Fitz, and my flailing caught his eye. Taking one look at my face, he sprinted back toward our boat and vaulted into the stern.

“Aggie,” he said, “what the hell?” I pointed to the live well, and Fitz fell to his knees and groaned. “Oh, shit,” he said, “what happened?”

I collapsed alongside him and reached out to touch the fish again.
Please wake up, please wake up
, I prayed silently.

Fitz was trying to check oxygen levels in the live well when my dad suddenly peeked into the boat. “Hey, Ag, I’ve been standing at the judges’ table—” His words were cut off when he saw the dead bass. He didn’t say anything for a moment, he just looked at me with what I’m sure was the same look of shock and sadness that was on my own face.

“The oxygen levels in the tank are solid,” Fitz mumbled, “so you must have lost him on the return.”

“The return” is the end of the tournament when all the boats speed toward shore to close out their entries and weigh their fish to determine the winner. With all the boats speeding across the water at once, it can get choppy and bumpy, and too many bumps can kill fish in a live well. My dad had been driving, and I didn’t
think
we’d endured more bumps than necessary. But the dead bass was proof to the contrary. The fish had been fine before the return, and now he was dead.

Dead fish didn’t qualify for the weigh-in, which meant my dad and I were no longer even close to being the tournament winners. Besides that, we’d killed probably the greatest fish in the lake. But the worst part about it all was that I knew I’d wanted to let him go in the first place, but I’d let my dad talk me out of it. I hadn’t listened to my gut, and I hadn’t spoken up. The fish was not only dead, he was dead because of
me.

My voice still hadn’t come back when I began crying. My tears plunked into the live well and hit the now-dead bass, which bobbed lifelessly, his tail hitting the side of the tank every now and again.

I sobbed silently for a few minutes, and when I felt an arm around me I leaned into it, thinking it was my dad. When I realized it was Fitz instead, I didn’t pull back.

“I’m sorry, Aggie, so sorry,” he said over and over. His words on top of words were like a lullaby. I never wanted them to stop.