The Letting Go
Page 5
Never live this close to closeness again.
And for what?
So the police can continue to fail?
So I can enter solitary confinement a year early?
And, anyway, how can I know this has anything to do with me? Stephen James is a stranger. This could just be some ghastly coincidence.
It can’t be just a coincidence.
And even if it isn’t, I’m not going to destroy the little bit of peace I’ve found here on the off chance that the truth might be able to be of help now when it’s never been before.
I heard a Fly buzz—when
I died—
We’re all in the lounge again. We could be in our rooms, but nobody wants to be alone just now.
Outside, helicopters are circling.
My Life had stood—a
Loaded Gun—
In Corners—till a Day
The Owner passed—identified—
And carried Me away—
“Vultures,” M said, looking up at the ceiling with a disgusted expression, as if she could glare the helicopters down. “There isn’t even anything to see.”
She thought about it a minute, then added, “I’m almost tempted to give them something. How good are those news cameras, do you think? Would they see exactly which finger I was pointing at them?”
“If they see anything interesting, they’ll just stay longer,” Lucy said in a pale echo of her bossy tone from earlier. “And more will come.”
“I am pretty interesting,” M conceded.
“Ms. Lurie wouldn’t like it,” an anxious girl added.
Ms. Lurie was still in her office, where she had been pretty much since the catastrophe struck, and where it seemed she might be stuck forever. The mentors were keeping a considered, considerate distance from us: close enough to be available if anyone showed signs of wanting them, not so close as to intrude. Bianca Young seemed to want to join our tight circle at one point—either to offer comfort or to take it, I couldn’t tell—but Vera whispered something to her and she turned away, looking wistful.
I would have gone back to my room, but it would have looked odd being the only one and of course I couldn’t afford to draw attention to myself now.
Yes, all right. I wanted to stay. I wanted to be with the group. It felt good to be part of a group, for once. Just once. To be human-adjacent.
And it couldn’t do any harm, could it—not when everyone was there?
Anyway, maybe Stephen James means it doesn’t matter what I do anymore.
I don’t really believe that. Of course I don’t.
I stayed, but I pretended to read, or scribbled the occasional meaningless note.
“What did you think of the detective?” one girl asked nobody and everybody.
“Scary,” the anxious girl said promptly.
“I thought he’d be scary, but he was actually really nice.” That was Natasha. Her last name is something Russian. I remember being surprised that a Natasha could be small and round and timid-looking. She’s a playwright, so that part fits her name pretty well, at least.
“Speak for yourself.” Anxious again.
“Why? What did he do to you? He just asked me if I knew anything about the guy or had heard anything last night. Stuff like that. Pretty basic.” Natasha looked around, as did I. Everyone else was nodding and shrugging. Apparently only Anxious Girl and I had been alarmed by the detective, and only I had any reason to be.
“Did anyone hear anything?” Lucy Holmes, girl detective.
There was a murmur of negatives, almost too low to be heard over the vultures’ buzz. I accidentally caught M’s eye, and she quirked an inquisitive eyebrow at me: Well? I looked down at my book again.
“I mean, I wasn’t even awake,” a girl said defensively, as if we’d accused her of the murder.
“Of course not. Nobody was.”
“Except Ms. Lurie,” Anxious Girl said, in little more than a whisper.
We were all quiet again for a minute. Then:
“What’s going to happen now?”
No one had an answer to that.
M looked at me, gravely this time, and I thought about what she’d said about cakes and ale and Hawthorne closing.
“I want to go home.”
This voice was so nakedly childish that a few of the girls glanced uneasily at me. I felt a little insulted. Yes, I’m nasty, but I only use it defensively. I don’t shoot fish in a barrel.
I wished I could tell that to Madison, who was glaring at me almost eagerly, daring me to give her an excuse to slap me down.
“I don’t.” That was a girl named Alyssa, speaking in a determined tone.
Alyssa is small and blonde and likes photography. I know her voice because she asked to take my picture once and I asked her if she liked to focus on other people’s faces because her own was such a disappointment.
That one got me in trouble. I even had to apologize. She didn’t forgive me, though, so it was all right.
“I’m not scared to be here,” Alyssa went on. “I mean, sure, this is freaky. But that’s just it. It’s a freak accident, right?”
“Accident?” Madison’s tone was scornful. “You do know the guy was shot, right?”
“Yes, I know that,” Alyssa said quietly. “I know as much about this as you do, unless you really did see or hear something you should be telling the police.”
“I didn’t—”
“Then don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot,” Alyssa said. “I know he was murdered. But he wasn’t one of us. He didn’t have anything to do with us.”
“And he was here!”
“Exactly. That’s completely random. I’ll bet that’s even why he was brought here. To throw the police off the scent. To make them try to find some connection that isn’t there.”
Or to make me try to find a connection that was?
Maybe I’d gotten too comfortable. Too simplistic.
Or maybe my assumptions about the rules had been wrong all along.
But why tell me now? It had been almost a decade since Zoë and the beginning of my boarding school career. Not exactly pleasant, but at least uneventful. Enough to convince anyone they had gotten the rules down, surely.
Maybe this wasn’t meant for me at all.
“But how do you know?” Madison asked. She didn’t sound angry now. She sounded almost pleading. “How do you know this was just … some freaky coincidence?”
“I don’t,” Alyssa said. “But I don’t see any reason to feel any worse about this than I’d feel just knowing a murder had taken place in town. Anywhere in town. Because that’s all this is. Awful things happen sometimes. Today something awful happened near us. But not to us. This is still our school, and I still love it here. I’m in the middle of a great project. I don’t want to have to stop. They’d better not make me stop just because of some lunatic.”
There was a heavy, unconvinced silence. I stared at the floor, not even trying to pretend I was looking at the open book in my lap.
Then M said brightly, “It’s a shame no one cares about our opinion, isn’t it?”
Pain—has an Element
of Blank—
It cannot recollect
When it begun—Or if
there were
A Day when it was not—
Would someone please tell me what sense it makes for the helicopters to be here the day after the day after the night a murder was committed? Hanging in the sky, loud and sullen, making sure we can’t think of anything but a man none of us knew?
His life was neighbor to ours and his death was inflicted on us and of course we’d still be thinking about him anyway—it’s only been a day since his body turned up and we’re not terrible people—but yes, it would be nice if our minds were allowed to wander even for a second.
The police are long gone. We’re only significant in the past tense. Why keep staring at us?
Poke your own open wounds if you like, but stop clawing at ours.
As things are now, though, what can Ms. Lurie or any of the mentors say? Never mind all the noise, girls—learn and grow and think and create!
So far as I can tell, none of us are even pretending to try to work. We’re gathering in silent little groups in the lounge or the library, and going to the dining room long before meal times.
We’re quieter than the helicopters, but we’re doing the same thing: waiting to see what happens next.
Waiting for another body.
Waiting for the police to solve something.
Waiting for the damned helicopters to get bored and go make someone else miserable.
Waiting to see if Hawthorne lives or dies.
Waiting for all of this to make some kind of sense.
Hawthorne appalls—entices.
Alyssa is gone. For good, it sounds like.
She alternated between crying and shouting—on the phone, and then to Ms. Lurie, and then to anyone who would listen—but her parents live not too far away from Hawthorne and they’re shaken up, so they came for her and that was that.
“They’d better let me homeschool,” she said fiercely when it became clear even to her that she couldn’t stay. “I’m not going back to one of those stupid conformity mills and spending all day reading made-up shit about Columbus and the ocean blue. I’m not going to be cooped up in some stupid classroom. I’ll run away. I mean it.”
I should write her an apology and leave it with my will. TO BE SENT AFTER MY DEATH.
That only works if I don’t outlive her, though, and I seem to outlive everyone.
Dare you see a soul at The
“White Heat”?
At breakfast this morning, a round, redheaded, glaringly white girl named Abby said her parents are making her go home tomorrow. “But it’s just for a few days,” she insisted.
“Why?” M asked bluntly.
“Why what?”
“Why go at all if it’s only for a little while? Either they want you out of here or they don’t. Tell them to make up their minds.”
Everyone was staring at M. She didn’t seem to mind. M never seems to mind anything.
“Is that how you talk to your parents?” That was Brianna. She’s skinny and black and as blunt as M is. Well, almost.
“Yes, actually,” M said. “They called me the day it happened and said they were pulling me out of Hawthorne, and I said if they didn’t let me stay I’d smash all their windows and then get myself expelled from the next five schools they sent me to.”
Even Brianna was impressed by that. “Did they believe you?”
“They know me well enough to take me seriously when I say something like that,” M said. “Especially when I started going into detail about exactly what kind of personal best I was looking to set.”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Brianna said.
M laughed. “I just said if they didn’t like me going to a school that made the papers for the wrong reasons, they should try to imagine how they’d feel if the wrong reason was me.”
There was an uneasy silence at our table.
“That’s a pretty creepy thing to say, all things considered,” Brianna remarked at last.
“To my parents, you mean? Or just in general?”
“At all !” Abby burst in. “God, what is wrong with you? How can you joke about something like this?”
M gave her a puzzled look that was, so far as I could tell, sincere. “I wasn’t joking. They really were going to pull me out, so I had to bring out the big guns.”
“Again with the tactful language,” Brianna murmured.
“Excuse me for assuming you’d understand a metaphor,” said M.
Abby looked about ready to haul out an actual gun herself. Brianna put a hand over hers. “I’m just saying, maybe now isn’t a great time to sound flippant about weapons in general and guns in particular.”
“Um, yeah,” Abby said. “And maybe it’s not a great time to talk like you don’t care a man was killed.”
“Is that what I was talking like?” M said in a dangerously pleasant voice.
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Abby said, voice rising. “It’s exactly what you were talking like. And it really makes me wonder—”
“Wonder what?” M said, setting her fork down with care. “Wonder if I had anything to do with what happened?”
“Well, now that you mention it—”
“Girls?” Ms. Lurie was standing next to our table now. “Is everything all right?”
Abby pushed herself away from our table, knocking her chair over in the process, and ran toward the bedrooms. Maybe if Hawthorne doesn’t work out for her, she can enroll in drama queen school.
Ms. Lurie sighed and started to go after her. “I’ll go,” Brianna said quickly, standing up. “I was going to help her pack, anyway.”
Ms. Lurie nodded. “Thank you, dear,” she said. “And tell her—well, never mind. I’ll be talking to her soon.”
She watched as Brianna caught up with Abby, and then she turned back to the rest of us. Everyone else was staring down at the table except M, who was looking at Ms. Lurie with an expression I couldn’t quite read. Ms. Lurie looked back at her expectantly.
“Would anyone care to tell me what just happened?” she asked.
Nobody said anything.
“M?” Ms. Lurie prompted.
M smiled, and I realized she was furious.
“Oh, we were just chatting about current events,” she said.
“Meaning?”
“Well, apparently since I’m not curled up in a corner somewhere crying my eyes out, I must be a murderer,” M said.
Ms. Lurie looked stern. “Someone said that?”
“Someone was about to.”
“I see.” Ms. Lurie hesitated for a moment. Then: “I’m sorry, girls,” she said. “I haven’t managed this situation as well as I should have. There have been so many practical matters to deal with, I haven’t given enough thought and time to how you must be feeling about what happened.”
No one said anything.
I looked at M. She looked serious, almost fierce. She looked a lot like Violet.
Or maybe I was just imagining that.
“I had hoped to speak to each of you about this later, in more detail, but it can’t be said often enough. So let me make it very clear right now,” Ms. Lurie said. “We don’t yet know why this tragedy was brought to our door, and that uncertainty is every bit as frightening as the fact that a man was murdered. We’re all shocked and frightened. It’s natural to feel that way. It’s also natural to want to point the finger of blame at someone. Feeling that way is perfectly valid.”
She waited until all of us were looking at her. The dining room was silent, so even though she was supposedly only speaking to our small table, no one could help hearing her.
“Feelings are valid,” she reiterated. “Acting on them isn’t. At least not if those actions take the form of lashing out at the innocent.”
Ms. Lurie looked at M and smiled fondly.
“For the record,” she said, “being what’s popularly known as a smart-ass is not a sign of guilt. At least not when the girl in question has, by all accounts, always been headstrong and as stubborn as the proverbial mule.”
A muted giggle crossed the room, and Ms. Lurie looked serious again.
“My point is, we need to be pulling together now. Not pushing others away and picking fights. No more unfounded accusations, please. From everything the police have told me, I see no reason to believe that what happened has anything to do with anyone here.”
I was glad I’d already eaten enough to get by on for a while, because I wasn’t going to be able to take another bite any time soon.
“No matter what I’m doin
g, I always have time to talk to anyone who needs me,” Ms. Lurie said. “You girls have always been my top priority, and that’s true now more than ever. Knock on my door. Interrupt me at anything and everything. Wake me up at night—or in the morning, if anyone can get up that early.” Another giggle, this one more convincing. “The only thing I absolutely will not tolerate is another scene like this one. I understand that feelings are running high, but that’s no excuse for a witch hunt. Understood?”
Ms. Lurie looked around the room. It was a quick glance, but somehow she managed to make it feel as if she’d spared a careful moment for everyone.
I was probably imagining that.
“Thank you, girls,” she said. “I’ll let you finish breakfast now.”
Ms. Lurie sat back down. Bianca Young put a hand on her arm and gave her a soulful glance, and I wondered if she was already thinking up a poem about the morning’s events.
M waited until the room’s noise level had risen to a subdued chatter, and then she looked around at the diminished population of our table.
“Anyone want to finish the question Abby was asking when she was so rudely interrupted?”
If you offered M the choice between ending world hunger and snarking even once, our world would be a loud and hungry place.
“M, do you even know how to shut up?” I said.
For once, no one looked shocked or disapproving at my reflexive rudeness. Instead, they all burst out laughing, M the loudest and longest of the bunch.
Ms. Lurie looked over at our table, startled at the noise. Then she smiled, most of all at me.
I wish I’d been imagining that.
It dropped so low—in My
Regard—
I heard it hit the Ground—
And go to pieces on the
Stones in the Ditch—
At bottom of My Mind—
Another girl left Hawthorne. Hannah. The one who said she wanted to go home.
She got her wish and I guess I don’t blame her, but my God that girl can shriek. I was in my room when her parents came and from all the noise she was making you’d think she’d just learned she was going to be the next corpse.