by Alison Grey
Amanda sauntered up, swaying to the Britney song the DJ was playing. “Hey, Olivia.”
We were all together again. Close enough so that when the bomb detonated, we’d all be raked with shrapnel.
Sixty-Two
HOLLIS
“Amanda. Three guesses why our little friend stopped by to say hello.” I rubbed my first two fingers together with my thumb, the universal sign for money. It took Amanda a moment to register. In the interim, I downed two shots of awful tequila.
“Shit,” Amanda said quietly.
I nodded solemnly.
When Amanda and I decided not to tell Sheridan and Brooke about the initial transaction with Olivia, about the pictures, we assumed that would be the end and we’d take that secret with us together to our graves.
Now, with a pause in our conversation more pregnant than Kimber Falk, it seemed there was no way out but to spill the entire story.
But not here, not in front of the entire class.
“Sheridan, Amanda, get whatever bottles of booze you can charm out of the guys working the bar. We’re taking this party upstairs. All the way up.” The rest of the group knew where I meant – the roof of The Brentmore, six stories above the streets of downtown Staunton.
I had a key I’d been given by a bellboy at the hotel who I used to hook up with from time to time. We kept a blanket stashed up there, and I’d go up to the roof to read or listen to music, though it had been a while. When he could get away from work for a little while, we’d have sex under the stars.
He’d managed to get himself fired for showing up to work high too many times, and then he got a girl from Fishersville pregnant and he shacked up with her.
I kept the key though.
Brooke looked lost. She shrugged, and we gathered our things and headed for the lobby.
Olivia, Brooke, and I took the elevator to the sixth floor, went to the stairwell in the corner, and I used my key to open the inconspicuous door that led to the roof. I propped it open with a wedge of wood so Sheridan and Amanda could join us, and we proceeded up.
The evening had cooled a bit, and the stars began to fill the sky.
Brooke sat down on one of the folding chairs kept up there for the Martha Jefferson astronomy club.
“Who’s going to tell me what’s going on?” Brooke asked.
I paced back and forth. Olivia leaned against the wall by the door to the stairwell.
“Go ahead, bitch,” I fumed at Olivia. I wished I had a cigarette. Or something stronger.
“Ok, it’s like this. Remember the night at the cabin? After the SMI formal?”
“Yeah, I think I recall that night, sure,” Brooke chuckled. After her morning-after shock wore off, she’d come to wear that night like a badge of honor. She had been wild, had a whopper of a story, and witnesses to prove it. What she didn’t know was that there was also photographic evidence of the debauchery.
“I had my camera with me, and everything was so wild I kinda got caught up in the moment and took some pictures.”
Brooke’s eyes grew wild. She didn’t know the half of it.
“I hope and expect that anything compromising was burned, right?”
Olivia stifled a giggle.
When she started to speak again, the door behind me opened.
Rather than Sheridan and Amanda, however, out stepped Wendi and Caroline.
“Party in the penthouse! This is what I’m talking about!” Wendi was very drunk. “Hello, Staunton!” She shouted at the top of her lungs.
“We’re having sort of a private conversation, Wendi,” I said.
Just then, out stepped Sheridan and Amanda, lugging half-empty bottles of various adult beverages.
“Hollis, you have to blow the bartender with the spiky blonde hair. Part of the deal to get all this,” Sheridan explained. When I gave her a stone face, she dropped the joke. “Ok, sorry. I meant Wendi. He’ll be waiting in the last stall in the men’s room past the ballroom.”
Everybody laughed except Caroline and Wendi. Caroline because she took her cues in life from Wendi, and Wendi because she was perfectly fine with the arrangement, farcical or otherwise. “Sure, he’s cute. Hopefully his friend with the long hair will come too.”
“Slut,” Amanda hissed.
That, Wendi laughed at. She was completely shameless.
I didn’t love the idea of Wendi being privy to the deal with Olivia and the pictures, but since she was just as big a part of the whole evening as any of us, I continued with the explanation for Brooke.
“Where were we… oh, right. Wendi, the night of the party after the ring formal…”
“The orgy! Hell yeah! What, are we doing a repeat tonight?”
“The defense rests,” Amanda muttered.
Sheridan started passing bottles around and we set up the folding chairs in a crude circle. Caroline remained standing, in the shadows near the door. It was easy to forget she was even there. Like I said, sideways, she was invisible but for her nose.
“No. We’re certainly not having a repeat performance,” I said, and Wendi scrunched up her face. “But that night, Ms. Olivia here had her camera and took bunches and bunches of pictures. To make a long story short, she used them to blackmail me into giving her $10,000 to pay her tuition so she could graduate with us. Shocker, she fucked up her scholarship, so the school was going to hold her transcripts if she didn’t pay.”
There was silence as everybody looked at Olivia like she was a three-headed alien with green skin.
As much as we all knew her to be completely counterfeit, this was a whole different level. I hadn’t even lowered the boom yet.
“When did this happen, and why are we just now hearing about it?” Sheridan asked.
I looked at Amanda, she closed her eyes and nodded, and I turned back to Sheridan and Brooke.
“Amanda and I decided to keep it to ourselves because of what Olivia threatened us with if I didn’t pay.”
Brooke took a long drag on a bottle of vodka and made a face as it went down. “What could she possibly threaten you with, Hollis?” she asked.
“Not me,” I explained. “You, Brooke. She was going to send the pictures to your parents. Your pastor. Professors. She was going to ruin you. That’s why I paid. And now she’s threatening the same thing and she wants more money.”
Brooke looked at the bottle in her hand like she’d never seen one before, like it was some sort of strange, ancient artifact. Then her gaze rose slowly toward Olivia.
An inch to the right, and the bottle Brooke throw would have detonated on Olivia’s face. When it missed, she jumped out of her chair and lunged toward her enemy with pure rage on her face.
Sixty-Three
BROOKE
If Sheridan and Amanda hadn’t intervened, I would have killed Olivia with my bare hands, I’d be in prison, and the story would end here.
But before I could get my hands on Olivia, my friends leapt between me and my prey, and they held me in their arms as I choked back sobs and tried to speak.
“Olivia… WHY?… How… I hate you… I… Oh my God…”
All I could do was cry. I didn’t like the fact that Amanda and Hollis had kept the whole thing from me, but over time I understood their reasoning. At that moment all of my frustration, anger, and disappointment were wrapped up in Olivia, who sat motionless, looking as if she might burst into tears. Real tears, which would be a first for her.
“Wow, that is some next level, fucked up shit, Olivia,” Wendi said. “I almost have to admire your deceitful creativity. But that’s downright evil.”
Hollis knelt and wrapped her arms around me. “I’m sorry, Brooke. So, so sorry. We wanted to protect you, but you deserved to know that stuff was out there.” Hollis started to cry, which was almost as much a rarity as Olivia crying.
None of us noticed what Olivia was doing until it was almost too late.
“Wendi…” It was Caroline’s nasally voice.
“Olivia, no!” Wendi shout
ed. Caroline had alerted her to what Olivia was doing.
She’d climbed up onto the ledge and stood there, arms spread wide. A gust of wind would send her six stories down, right into the valet parking pickup area outside the main entrance. Her eyes were shut.
“Everyone stay where you are or I’ll jump,” she said in an emotionless voice. Her tone didn’t match her words, and if we couldn’t see that she was an inch from death, what she said would have been laughable.
We stood up as a group and looked at each other, trying to figure out what to do.
“All I’ve done since I got to Martha Jefferson is hurt you and betray you, and nothing good has come from me being here. I don’t deserve any of you.” She turned around so she was facing the street, and she leaned into the wind.
“Stop!” Amanda screamed. She regained her composure first among us, and she strode over toward Olivia, stopping five feet from the ledge when Olivia coldly delivered another warning.
“Brooke, you and Wendi can stay. I want everyone else to go inside or back downstairs. I don’t care. But I can’t face all of you like this.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t you who burned down The Badger Mart on 9/11?” Sheridan asked. “I mean, would it really be such a stretch?”
“Sher, stop,” Hollis said quietly. “We should go downstairs, if that’s what Olivia wants. Amanda and Sheridan looked unconvinced, but Olivia held all the cards.
“We’ll walk over to the stairwell, but we’re not leaving until we’re sure you’ve come down,” I said.
Olivia started walking the concrete tightrope of the ledge, stopping now and then to bend at the waist and extend a leg behind her so she was in a figure skating pose.
“If I jump now, Brooke’s parents still get the pictures, Hollis,” Olivia reminded her. “You’ll have won nothing. Nothing except bullying a girl until she killed herself. I bet that’ll make mommy and daddy very, very proud.”
“Brooke, the night manager at your parents’ hotel has the pictures. He’s going to slide them under their door tonight if she doesn’t call and tell him different,” Hollis explained before the three of them departed.
“We love you, Brooke,” Sheridan shouted. Amanda was crying and Hollis hugged her. My three best friends in the world disappeared through the door, leaving me face-to-face with someone who clearly didn’t give a shit about me or my family.
“Why me, Olivia?” I asked.
“I knew Hollis would want to protect you. And you were the most vulnerable. I took pictures of everyone that night, but yours were the only ones that I kept.”
“Why should any of us believe you?” Wendi asked.
Olivia sat down on the ledge with her back to the street. She’d surely tip right over if anybody touched her.
“Is it true?” I asked. “About the hotel? Really?”
Olivia had been looking at the ground, dragging the toe of her shoe in a circle. Wendi and I had inched closer. She stopped and looked up.
“One-hundred percent. They’re going to wake up to quite a shock. I think the one on top of the stack is you with one guy in your mouth and ano-”
“Shut up, you horrible, miserable witch!” I shouted. “I hate you! You are so sick!” Words were pouring out of me, probably not making a great deal of sense.
“O, it’s over. It’s all over.” Wendi walked forward slowly, holding out her hand. “You have to stop. Stop now and we can fix everything. I promise. We can fix it, right Brooke? Right?”
I was seething, but I saw where Wendi was going. We had to convince Olivia to move away from the ledge, or to let us get close enough to grab her. She was a tiny little thing, and I had no doubt we could restrain her.
I nodded. “Yes, we can figure it all out. Just come down. The pictures can go away, and everything can go away, okay? College is over. It’s fucked up, but this will all be behind us one day. Come on, Olivia.”
Wendi and I were both close enough that we might lunge and grab her, but she could also just roll back and be gone. We had to play it just right.
Olivia looked at me with her puppy dog eyes, still bone dry despite the tears shed by everyone else, and she nodded, almost imperceptibly.
I put a hand up toward Wendi for her to stop. I was closer, almost there, and I didn’t want to startle Olivia into jumping.
I extended my right hand and shuffled a few inches closer. Olivia gave me sort of a half-smile, mouth closed, and she stood up. Both feet on the roof, not the ledge. I advanced tentatively, and we joined hands. I squeezed her hand, but I could barely hang on, my palms were so sweaty.
“Come on, Olivia. It’s okay. I promise. Walk with me. Let’s go downstairs.”
She took half a step with me.
“Don’t worry, Brooke. Terry probably only showed them to a few friends. It’s no big deal.”
My blood turned to ice. “What?”
“My friend Terry. From the Econo Lodge. I couldn’t just give him a sealed envelope, you know? He has the picture. But I told him they were private. He wouldn’t make copies or anything.”
She said it so matter-of-factly. Like she wasn’t actually telling me my whole life and relationship with my family wasn’t on the line.
“You CUNT!” I don’t think I’ve ever said that word aloud, before or since. But I was drunk and enraged and…
And I shoved her. As hard as I could. Without realizing she was still within spitting distance of the ledge.
She staggered back, her legs hit the brickwork, and over she went. Her hand clawed and scrambled at the ledge, but it was too late.
If my whole life hadn’t flashed before my eyes when Hollis told me about the pictures it was doing so now.
I collapsed to my knees and promptly vomited everywhere. Projectile-style.
“She’s fallen!” Wendi screamed. “Brooke! What did you do?”
I turned away from the mess and crawled, my eyes blinded by tears. I wept, bitterly. I pounded my fists against the roof.
What was supposed to be the happiest night of my twenty-two years had turned into something beyond my worst nightmares.
Wendi knelt by me and pulled me away from the steaming puddle I’d left there.
“Brooke, we have to say she jumped,” Wendi whispered in my ear. “To protect you. They’ll never believe it was an accident.”
“But it was... I swear…” I was sobbing, my heart pounding. “I would never really want to hurt her. She was my friend.”
“But you did.” Wendi kept saying over and over and over again.
“You did this, Brooke. You pushed Olivia Barron. You killed her.”
Sixty-Four
SHERIDAN
Brooke was the religious one of our group, but in the elevator down to the lobby, I held hands with Hollis and Amanda, and we prayed as hard we could, to whomever was listening.
We prayed for everything to work out, somehow. For Brooke to make it through unscathed. Even for Olivia.
Heath was in the lobby, and I ran to him and melted into him. I needed to feel safe somehow.
Hollis paced and fumed. Some drunk asshole walked up to her in a way that you just knew he was going to try to run some game, and she held up her hand like a stop sign. “If you utter even a single syllable, I’ll kick you so hard in the balls that you’ll never have children.” He stood there with his mouth hanging open and then realized the error of his ways, turned on his heel, and spotted Amanda. He took one step toward her and Hollis repeated her threat. He threw up his hands and walked away with his head down.
Amanda walked toward the front doors to see if there was anything to see or hear outside. I tried to give Heath an abbreviated version of what was happening, but the words kept tripping over themselves and wouldn’t come out clearly.
Amanda screamed so loud I was surprised every pane of glass in Staunton didn’t shatter.
The lobby and valet area became a whirlwind of chaos.
Olivia’s body lay just beyond the stately entrance to The Brentmore.
While everyone rushed to satisfy their morbid curiosity, Hollis walked purposefully directly to Heath.
“Are any of your classmates here? At the hotel?” she asked.
“Yeah, a couple guys, sure, what’s going on?”
“Round them up and hightail it to the Econo Lodge. Right now. The night manager is a guy named Terry. He has an envelope with a bunch of pictures in it. Do anything and everything you have to do to get that envelope. Put the fear of God in him. Treat him like the lowliest knob if that’s what it takes. There will be a reward. Go now, time is critical.”
You had to hand it to Hollis. She had nerves of steel, and without her everything would have wound up going very differently.
Heath and two buddies, full of the kind of testosterone only SMI breeds, dragged Terry out of the Econo Lodge lobby, kicked the shit out of him, and recovered the package.
When they returned, the police were everywhere, questioning everyone.
Hollis, Amanda, and I took the envelope into the bathroom and burned it. Fortunately, the fire alarms at The Brentmore weren’t exactly state of the art.
She was psychotic and suicidal. She threatened to jump, in front of everyone.
And she did. Of course, she did.
As long as we kept repeating that mantra, we had a chance.
PART SIX: REUNION WEEKEND
Sixty-Five
AMANDA
Ever since I’d seen that infamous invite back in January, I’d had this impending feeling of doom.
I’d known, deep down, it couldn’t be just some bizarre coincidence. Especially when I’d learned about Wendi and her husband being the new owners of The Brentmore.
Wendi had been there that night. She’d been on the rooftop when it had happened— when Olivia had supposedly jumped after being confronted about her extortion and blackmail. Somehow, she’d avoided the scrutiny and attention the rest of us had received because she hadn’t been all that close to Olivia, nor had she been one of her roommates.