by Megan Abbott
“Maybe they’re there now,” Deenie said, laughing.
And Lise wondered about it, her stomach doing that funny kind of thing, like when Ryan Denning helped her with her fetal-pig dissection, seated on high stools and him reaching for the blunt probe, his hand brushing her lap.
“Let’s stop and go in,” she suggested, jumping forward in her seat, pressing against the steering wheel. “Let’s go now.”
So they did, hopping the orange safety fences. The guys with the car and the tattoo weren’t there, except it almost felt like they were, the lake glittering with borrowed glamour.
“Maybe they’ll show up later,” Lise said, running down the bank, nearly sliding on the mud, which spattered up her legs. “Maybe they’ll see us from the road.”
Gabby and Skye were so quiet. Skye lit a clove cigarette and squinted down at Lise. She was saying something to Gabby, but Lise couldn’t hear. They were always whispering to each other.
They were no fun and Lise felt high on all the sugar and soda and was trying to rouse Gabby and she tugged off her tights.
The water looked eerily lovely, like the kind of sparkling lake you’d see in a picture book, unicorns dipping their heads and cloudbursts overhead.
Waving up at the others lined up on the shore, she promised the water felt almost warm and like velvet under your feet and they had to come. It was true. Except it was freezing.
She pulled her skirt higher and spun.
“What’s that?” Skye asked, pointing her cigarette at Lise, at her legs.
“Nothing,” Lise said, and felt her face go hot.
She knew what Skye meant, the mark on her thigh, a pink crescent. It was from losing all that weight, a tiny stretch mark she put cocoa butter on every night, wishing it away.
“You’re just stalling,” Deenie shouted at Skye, and Lise smiled. “You’re scared.”
Deenie hated Skye.
And soon enough Deenie was yanking her jeans up to her knees and wading in too. And Lise was so grateful. Deenie was still hers.
“C’mon, Gabby,” Deenie shouted, her jeans already soaked to the thigh. “It only hurts for a second.”
And finally Gabby reached down and pulled off her tights, and then of course Skye did too, cigarette somehow still between her fingers, thin as a burnt match.
The water felt soft and globby, like sherbet, but smelled strongly of something Lise had never smelled before.
It was only a minute before Gabby said she was catching hypothermia and the lake was dirty and was making her head hurt. And then Skye said her head hurt too and the lake had a bad aura and you were asking for trouble being in it.
The boy who drowned here, she said, can’t you feel him? He was in the water for days. Do you know what happens? Your body turns to soap.
And they all looked down in the water as if they would see the boy.
But Deenie said that was kid’s stuff, and she scooped up a handful, foam bubbling, and flicked it toward them. That was when Lise knew Deenie was annoyed, or even mad, like she always was when Gabby was being secretive with Skye, which was all the time lately.
It never mattered much to Lise because she’d never felt as close to Gabby as Deenie did. Deenie, who’d never really gotten over the surprise that someone as cool as Gabby Bishop wanted to be her friend. For her part, Lise had realized a long time ago that the way to keep Deenie would be to let her love Gabby just this much.
Skye was the weirdest girl Lise had ever known. Once, a long time ago, in middle school, they’d been to the same sleepaway camp and Skye had the bunk above her. One night she came down the ladder, her legs snaking around it, and asked Lise if she wanted to see something.
Taking a deep breath, she lifted her nightshirt and showed Lise all these marks, like rosy ridges, on her arms all the way up to her shoulder. She said she’d made them herself, with a Bic lighter, and it had taken a long time. And now they were like the husk, the hard shell. Like finding a beetle or a mollusk shell at the lake, the rattle pods in Binnorie Woods. You shake and it’s hollow. The thing inside died. You couldn’t do anything to it anymore.
The cabin quiet and dark and Skye breathing hard, her arms outstretched, Lise hadn’t known what to say, barely knew this girl. What did you say to something like that? And the next day, Skye wouldn’t look at her, and then after that they never talked about it again.
She wondered if Skye remembered it.
“I can’t do this,” Gabby said suddenly. Her face looked green from the water.
Nodding to Skye, she began walking back to shore, her sweater heavy with water, trailing behind her.
“Come on, Gabby,” Deenie said, calling out after her.
Lise bent over and lifted a long stretch of seaweed, draping it around Deenie’s neck, like a mermaid’s boa.
And Deenie smiled and flicked its edges up and pushed Lise, but when they both turned around again, Gabby and Skye were walking up the bank, their legs stained green.
“Are they going?” Lise asked, looking at Deenie.
Her long sweater sleeves weeping lake water, Skye offered a slow wave.
Gabby didn’t even turn around, walking slowly up the slope, the damp edges of her skirt in her hands like petticoats.
“But Lise drove us,” Deenie called out.
Except they kept walking, their heavy hair and long-legged elegance, and it was hard not to feel five years old.
So she said, “Swim with me, Deenie,” backing up so the frigid water reached the bottom of her pelvis, the green water swimming between her thighs. “Let’s do it, huh?”
After a moment, Deenie stopped looking back for Gabby and they stripped off their sweaters and waded in their tank tops and bras, Lise’s skirt billowing like a white flower and Deenie’s jeans accordioned on the shore.
And then Deenie even put her head under, came up with her hair black and inky.
At first, Lise wouldn’t do it. She didn’t want to and kept picturing that drowned boy, under the pearling water. Was he there now? Would he curl his tiny fingers around her toe?
But then Deenie grabbed her neck from behind and dunked her, and the icy water came so fast she almost couldn’t breathe.
Under the surface, her ears hurt so bad she felt like someone had punched an iron rod in them.
But then the pressure broke and it was incredible, her head rushing with the feeling.
And while she was under, she knew it was time to tell Deenie, her best friend.
About the boy, almost as handsome as Eli Nash himself, but without the faraway eyes. The boy who’d looked right at her, rolling her tights down over her legs.
To whisper in Deenie’s ear the wonderful thing that was happening and how it felt. She wanted to share it with her.
18
Monday
Sitting in his car in the school parking lot, Tom couldn’t quite bring himself to go inside.
His gaze fixed on the breezeway beyond. All the hedges had been torn away, shorn stumps remaining, a stray evidence bag, a twirl of police tape. The orange streaks of herbicide dye.
He’d spent the day before driving Deenie the three hours to Merrivale, then turning around and driving home. It was the first time he’d seen Georgia’s place, which was cozy and filled with light and fresh air. Deenie insisted on staying only two days, had a history test on Wednesday, had forgotten to bring her books. In fact, maybe she’d stay just overnight.
Eli had come too, had helped with the driving. Deenie kept watching him from the corner of her eye.
At the hospital, they’d tested his blood, even his hair, used enormous machines and tested the electrical activity of his heart. But whatever Eli had smoked with Skye Osbourne, they couldn’t find anything dangerous in his body.
“There’s nothing inside him,” the doctor said. “Whatever it was, it’s gone.”
Eli told them the smoke had been for something called lucid dreaming.
“Did it work?” Tom asked.
Eli had pau
sed, then said no.
The sharp bark of an engine stirred him to life. Looking out his car window, he saw the French teacher hopping off her Vespa and smiling at him, red-lipped.
“Open that window,” she said. “Or invite me in.”
He clicked the power locks and watched her glide around the car and climb inside.
Rubbing her hands together, she told him she couldn’t take her eyes off the news.
“Gabby Bishop, Jesus,” she said. “I never even had her in a class, but I knew about her. The way she’d walk down the hall, girls circling her like little magpies. All that hair and drama.”
“Yeah,” he said, just to say something.
Her hands dropping to her lap, she sighed. “It’s all so freaky. All the other ones who got sick—I sent two to the nurse myself. So they must have gotten some of that jimson stuff, right? They must have smoked it too, like at a party?”
“I don’t think so,” Tom said. “I don’t think they took anything.”
She nodded and they sat silently for a moment.
“I remember when I was a sophomore in high school,” she said. “There was this girl, the coolest girl in school. Laia Noone. Even her name was cool. She had a tattoo on her stomach: I’ve seen love die. In tenth grade!” She laughed. “All I wanted was to be like her.”
“And now you’re the coolest girl in school.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” she said. Then she lowered her jacket zipper and, using two fingers, separated the space between a pair of blouse buttons, baring the smallest triangle of flesh. He could see only the middle words—seen love—but was sure the rest was there too.
“And so,” Tom said, “marked for life.”
“That’s what high school does.”
“And everything else,” he said, smiling.
She smiled back, like he knew she would.
“It’s funny the things you think of now,” she said, yanking the zipper back up. “I remember last year once, Jaymie Hurwich crying in my classroom after school. She said there was something wrong with her mom’s brain and it’d started when her mom was sixteen and now she was sixteen and what if something happened to her. She said her dad was always looking at her, like he was watching for signs.”
Tom was surprised, but then everything surprised him now.
A hundred thoughts started floating in and out of his head, but none cohered.
“It’s going to be hard for all of them,” she said. “Everyone’ll be looking at them. Like they’re these damaged girls.”
They sat for a minute.
“But not Deenie,” she said, smiling. “Thank goodness. No one will be looking at her.”
Tom looked at her. Nodded.
19
June
Troubling Questions Linger after Mystery Illness
Six weeks after Dryden High School faced a seeming health crisis among female students following the poisoning of a classmate, local health officials are still struggling to identify the cause.
At least 18 students were treated for symptoms ranging from facial and body tics to hallucinations and even temporary paralysis, but the case began with Lise Daniels, 16, who experienced a seizure following ingestion of dangerous jimsonweed placed in her thermos by a fellow student (see sidebar, “Student Faces Sentence after Plea Deal”).
No jimsonweed was detected in any of the other afflicted girls, and health department officials have been unable to find any organic causes for individual cases or any connections among them.
Reports emerged this week that the department is now consulting with experts who specialize in “mass psychogenic illness,” a condition in which physical symptoms that are psychological in origin emerge in a group, spreading from one person to the next. “It’s not a copycat situation and no one’s faking anything,” clarified Dr. Robert Murray from the State Psychiatric Institute. “These girls had no control over their symptoms. Which can be terrifying.”
Such outbreaks tend to occur within groups experiencing emotional stress and anxiety. “That’s likely the scenario here,” Dr. Murray said, adding he hadn’t interviewed any of the girls so could not speak to their individual circumstances.
At least one parent, David Hurwich, 42, does not accept the diagnosis, and he may not be alone. Last night at a school-board meeting, several parents noted, off the record, that they continue to believe that the real cause is being ignored or covered up, citing ongoing concerns about air and water safety. “Time will tell,” said Mr. Hurwich. “But I know my daughter. And that was not her.”
Questions also remain for Miss Daniels, who was released from the hospital two weeks ago. Dr. April Fine, chair of psychiatry at Mercy-Starr Clark, warns that what the long-term side effects will be are unclear.
“This girl not only suffered significant physical trauma, she is also the victim of a crime,” Dr. Fine said. “The real impact may not be felt for some time, and may emerge when least expected. In some ways, she’s a ticking time bomb.”
It was one of those painfully lovely late-spring mornings, the kind only Dryden could conjure.
The same obscure meteorology that produced the awesome ferocity of winters kept the lake unusually warm and made for cloudless skies. Only a few popcorn cumuli broke up the brilliant blue that hurt your eyes. It was called the oasis effect.
Waiting for the coffeemaker, or Deenie’s sneakers on the stairs, Tom didn’t know what to do with himself. He’d stopped reading the newspaper, listening to the news. None of it seemed to explain anything. That morning, though, he hadn’t been able to stop himself. Mass psychogenic illness. There was a term for it, or so the article claimed.
The main story was about Gabby, who would be sentenced on Friday.
Every day, he thought about calling Lara Bishop, but she hadn’t returned his other calls.
That night with her had come to feel like a murky dream, erotic and strange—the enigmatic beauty of it, her scar pulling from her neck, her voice in his ear—and best tucked in a far corner.
It was still hard to imagine. Gabby, the girl he was used to seeing at his kitchen table or nestled on his sofa with Deenie, their hands crackling in potato chip bags. The sushi-pattern pajamas she wore when she slept over. Hair hanging in her face over a morning cereal bowl.
Some days, he felt like she could almost be his own daughter.
Except that wasn’t really true. She’d always felt grander, graver. Embossed with the gold stamp of Experience. Something adultlike about her, different. But in the end she was both different and not, burdened by both a girl’s crush and a dense gnarl over her heart.
Or maybe he was wrong.
The coffee was ready.
“Deenie,” he called out. “Let’s go.”
The second pot, and stronger. He’d been up awhile, had been lying awake in bed when he heard the click-click of Eli’s hockey stick on the kitchen floor as he left the house for practice.
It was strange to think of his son now, after all this. The object of such intense feeling. Lady-killer. Heartbreaker. This was the boy for whom a girl had nearly killed, nearly died. Little Eli, who watched six consecutive hours of ESPN Classic, ate over the kitchen sink, and, despite having had at least one female visitor to his bedroom, never seemed to quite lock eyes with any girl, any woman. Except Deenie, and sometimes Georgia, though Tom hadn’t seen them together in so long.
Whenever he looked at Eli now, he tried to find it, as if the answer might lie in some deeper enchantment a father couldn’t see.
The skittering on the stairs startled him.
“We’ll be late,” Deenie said, running in, her hair brushed hard into a tight ponytail. “We better go.”
In the car, she was quiet, folding and unfolding a new scarf, pale green like a lily pad. She’d brought it back after visiting Georgia, another visit cut short.
The day she returned, he found her in the basement, holding her pizza shirt up to the light, an errant grease stain still lurking.
“Deenie, she offered to come and get you. That’s the same thing,” he said, even though he knew it wasn’t, exactly.
Dropping the shirt into the dryer, she looked at him, the longest look he could remember her ever giving.
“You would have come,” she said at last.
“Yeah,” he said, “but I wouldn’t have known what to say. I would have—”
“But you would have come,” she repeated.
And it was true, and it was something.
The car rattled as he made the turn onto the lake route, the trees giving way to a swath of cloudless sky.
And then he remembered what today was. Lise Daniels’s first day back at school.
“Dad,” Deenie said, turning the radio up as she spoke, rising a little in her seat. “The sky hurts my eyes.”
* * *
Lying in bed before dawn, Deenie had heard Eli slip down the hall, the hushed drag of his stick bag against the carpet.
She wondered if Lise was up too. Maybe, over on Easter Way, Lise was nervously combing her hair, covering the violet zag in the center of her forehead, like a lightning bolt.
Or maybe she was doing what Deenie was doing, reading the news article on her phone:
The 16-year-old girl at the center of Dryden’s poisoning case faces sentencing today.
They never printed her name, always called her “the girl.” It made it seem like it could be anybody, any girl who was sixteen, in their midst.
The article said it would probably be probation, some community service. But it would remain on her record forever, just like they always say about everything you’re never supposed to do.
A few weeks ago, Deenie had gotten a long letter from Gabby. It wasn’t about Lise or Skye or even Eli. It was about the things she was learning, and how different she felt. She was changing, she said. But she didn’t say what the changes were. Only that they were big and important.