“Okay. You have the color list?”
Vivian flipped her notebook, pulled off a sticky note, and handed it over.
Five colors and their serial numbers were listed. And the aisle and shelf.
“Jesus, Vivian. This isn’t a school project,” Beck said, but there was no bite in her teasing. Secretly, it made Beck feel better, to see a little bit of the old Vivian shining through. The version of her that was excited and driven and always had a project or a plan or some other annoying thing going on. Then Cassie died, and that version of Vivian disappeared; Beck couldn’t even be around her. She felt like she didn’t know the new Vivian, who was withdrawn, exhausted, aimless. But today Beck could see glimpses of that old Vivian again. Only now she was motivated almost exclusively by anger.
Welcome to the club, thought Beck.
The anger had been there for Beck all along, like water running over her, again and again, eroding her, shaping her into something new all the time.
This was new to Vivian, being shaped by anger. It was easy to let it take over everything.
“You okay?” Beck asked, standing at her open driver’s side door, watching Vivian type away on her phone, getting ready to post the Ariadne mural on their account.
“Great,” Vivian said, not looking up.
Beck rolled her eyes and shut the door. The sun was starting to set—Cassie would probably be there by the time Beck got back.
She hurried into the store, waved to Ruth behind the counter.
“Beck, honey, can I help you find something?”
Ruth had been a bona-fide hippie in the ’60s, and you could still tell that there was something wild about her even now. She left her gray hair to grow and wore it long and loose around her shoulders. She was always brushing a hand through it and leaving some paint behind. She often painted behind the counter while she waited for customers. When she called out to Beck, she didn’t even look up from her canvas.
“No!” Beck called as she turned down an aisle. “Thank you, Ruth.”
“You here for more paint, honey? Are you finally covering that big wall of your grandpa’s barn?”
“Yeah, finally,” Beck said. Her heart rate ticked up.
Ruth had already noticed her buying more spray paint than usual.
“Oh, Beck, don’t forget to check those new brushes that came in.”
“Thank you, I see them,” Beck said. “They’re beautiful. But I’m broke, Ruth. I get paid Thursday. I’ll be back for them.”
She tried to take her time, browsing like she always did. Rushing in and out in five minutes would be even more suspicious. Eventually she made her way to the spray cans, checked Vivian’s list, and pulled the paint canisters off the shelf.
It was fine. Beck was always painting. This wasn’t that unusual.
The bell over the door rang as Beck turned the corner. She was walking back up to the register and stopped short.
There was a Bell police officer right there, talking to Ruth.
“. . . murals popping up. Thought it was a fluke, a one-time thing. But we just found another. Has anyone been buying up a ton of paint suddenly? It’s a small town. You’re the only art supplies store.”
Ruth didn’t look at Beck. But she must have known that Beck was standing there, arms full of cans of paint.
“I haven’t noticed anything unusual,” Ruth answered.
Beck ducked back into the paint aisle.
She hurriedly put the cans down and made her way back to the front of the shop.
“Bye, Ruth!” she called out, like she always did. Trying to not look like she was running even though the urge was there.
“Beck, dear. Your pre-order came in,” Ruth said. “If you head around to the back door, I’ll bring the box out of my office for you.”
“My pre-order?” Beck asked.
“Just head around back. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Beck didn’t understand, but she circled around the building anyway. She stood there and waited, her eyes finding the security camera fixed on the wall outside.
A minute later, Ruth popped open the back door of the shop that led into an alleyway. She held out a box for Beck.
“Give them hell, honey,” was all she said, and let the door swing shut again.
Beck opened the box. All the paint cans she’d been holding were in there, plus some extra ones. Ruth had also dropped in a set of those fancy brushes. She had all the paint she needed, without so much as a credit card receipt linking her to it.
Beck would send Ruth cash for the supplies. And she’d paint something just for her, as a thank you.
When Beck came back around the shop, the police were still out front.
Beck kept moving, willing herself not to hurry, until she climbed back into the van parked down the street.
“Hey,” Cassie said from her now-usual spot in the middle seat.
She was lying down across it. Beck could make out all of Cassie’s individual curls of hair tonight, though the wispy ends turned invisible before they reached the floor of the van.
Probably better, since that floor was covered in T-shirts and empty paint cans and trash.
“That go okay?” Vivian asked, and frowned at Beck’s face. “You weren’t acting conspicuous, were you? I knew I should have gone in.”
“It was fine,” Beck said, dropping the box between the seats and starting to drive. “No big deal.”
Cassie sat up a bit.
“You sure you’re okay?” Cassie asked, leaning forward, studying Beck’s profile.
“Yes, why?” Beck snapped.
“Because you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Cassie said, and for a second she held the serious look on her face.
Then Vivian snorted from the passenger seat, and the two of them burst out laughing.
When Beck first moved in with her grandfather, she was eight years old and obsessed with death—much to the horror of her third-grade teacher and the parents of the few friends she had made and just as quickly lost. The only people who didn’t mind her morbid preoccupation with mortality were Cassie and Grandpa.
Beck was searching for answers, and there were none to be found. So instead she clawed her way through every idea of the afterlife she could find, scouring religions from ancient times until now for a better understanding. But somehow Grandpa understood what Beck was looking for. She wanted to know where her mother was, if not there with her.
When she first came to live with him, Beck never left the shop while Grandpa worked. She liked to be where he was all the time. She would hand him tools when he asked for them, and he’d ask her to repeat the correct names of them. And she would sit at his workbench and draw dead things.
When Beck drew dead things in school, they would call Grandpa. But when she drew them at home, he never told her to stop.
“Heaven isn’t for perfection, Beck,” Grandpa said one day, not looking up from his work under the hood of the car.
Beck remembered her mom’s soft blond hair. Her skin was so fair it was almost translucent, and Beck could follow the veins up and down her arms. Blue road maps that didn’t frighten Beck, because she knew they meant her mom was alive. Her mother wasn’t perfect, but she was human, and she tried. She tried to stop drinking.
But Beck didn’t know if that was enough for heaven.
“Why isn’t heaven for perfect?” Grandpa asked that day.
Beck had shrugged. “I dunno.”
The hood of the car slammed down, and Grandpa was looking at Beck. “Because nobody is perfect, Beck. Nobody. And if heaven was for perfect it would be empty. If you ever meet a person who acts like they think they’re perfect, well, you’ve probably just met the biggest sinner of us all.”
He shuffled over to the workbench and studied Beck’s drawing, a bird lying on its back, eyes open and unseeing. He didn’t comment on it.
“It isn’t for the perfect. It’s for the repentant. It’s for the people who say ‘I’m not always good, but I�
��m trying. I’m sorry for my mistakes. I repent.’”
And that was it. The magic word that eight-year-old Beck had needed to hear.
Trying.
Because Beck knew her mom had tried as hard as anyone ever had.
After that, Beck’s obsession with death faded away. She had a best friend. Two, if you counted Vivian. A stable home. Security. But every night before she went to bed, even long after she stopped believing in heaven and everything else, Beck would whisper fiercely, “I repent. I repent.”
When Beck got home from their art supplies run, she laid out the new brushes and the cans of precious paint that they needed to keep making murals for Cassie. All of it had been handed over to her on a system of trust. Someone showing her a bit of grace when she needed it the most. And the memory of that day in the barn with Grandpa and those words came back to her again.
I repent. I repent.
Beck just wanted the universe to know.
This was her trying.
We Can Be Heroes
Season 2: Episode 15
“The Deputy”
MERIT LOGAN: Before we get into the issues, a bit of breaking news. Earlier today, a second mural of Cassie Queen was discovered in the town of Bell, this time on the side of the high school auditorium, depicting another Greek legend—Ariadne and the Minotaur, trapped in the labyrinth.
What’s interesting about these murals, other than the way they are mysteriously appearing overnight in the small town, is the social media account that is posting photos of the murals, all in Cassie Queen’s name. Listen to this caption from the second mural:
“Cassie was trapped in a labyrinth, too. And Nico Bell was in there, stalking her. Cassie was scared. She knew Nico was dangerous, and she tried to get help. But the system wasn’t built to keep Cassie safe. It was built to protect Nico from the accusation—God forbid we hold abusers accountable for their actions. Who else knew Cassie was in danger? Who do you think, @BellPoliceOfficial and @BellFirearms? #CassieKnew #TheyAllKnew.”
You can find a link to it in today’s show notes. Sheriff Thomas wasn’t able to join us again, so today we’ve asked one of his deputies, Officer Daniel Everett, to talk to us about this strange pattern of—What do we even call this? Vigilante art?—emerging in the town of Bell this last week.
MERIT: Officer Everett, I’m so glad you could make it today.
EVERETT: Well, Sheriff Thomas asked me to hop on to this call and clear up what seemed to be some . . . misunderstandings you had last time. We value transparency in Bell and want to set the record straight.
MERIT: I appreciate that. So let’s dive in. Bell has been the site of some controversial vandalism this last week. What can you tell us about the murals?
EVERETT: Not too much beyond what the Bell Review has printed so far. This is an open investigation. But I can say we have a pretty good idea we are looking for some local kids.
MERIT: Why do you think that?
EVERETT: Looking at the social media posts, this is a very specific, aimed message. The posts include tags for local places where teens hang out, like the Loft, a café in town, and the high school itself. It seems they want that message to reach teens directly in addition to some big gun control organizations. And the language is worded in a way that feels juvenile.
MERIT: What makes you think that the muralists are the same people posting to the media accounts? Isn’t it possible someone is painting and someone else is taking these photographs and posting online?
EVERETT: Well, we’ve found—hang on a sec.
[Indistinct shuffling sounds]
EVERETT: Sorry, ma’am, no comment.
MERIT: Can you confirm if you have any suspects at this time?
EVERETT: . . . No comment.
MERIT: You know what? Let’s move on to something else. Officer Everett, I have a copy here of Cassie Queen’s request for a protection order, filed on March thirteenth of this year.
EVERETT: I believe Sheriff Thomas filed that request.
MERIT: That’s right. Is it typical for the sheriff himself to fill out paperwork like this? Requests for protection orders?
EVERETT: Not sure if it’s typical, but I know he made a point to go see Cassie Queen in the hospital that day.
MERIT: It seems he did. I have a question about the form. There is a box here that needs to be checked to request that any firearms are removed from the abuser’s home.
EVERETT: A judge needs to make that determination; it’s just a request. The judge has to decide if there is enough indication of a threat to temporarily surrender firearms for a temporary protection order—at least until a formal hearing takes place. A judge can only order someone to permanently surrender all their firearms in a final protection order.
MERIT: But the box wasn’t even checked on Cassie’s form. Do you know why this wasn’t requested?
EVERETT: No, ma’am, I do not. And like I said, it wasn’t my paperwork.
MERIT: I actually went ahead and pulled the last fifty requests for protection orders in the county. Nineteen of those requests were from Bell. Do you want to guess how many of these requests for temporary protection orders—again, just for the interim time it takes to schedule a formal hearing and secure a permanent protection order—do you want to guess how many of those fifty requests have that box checked?
EVERETT: I really can’t say.
MERIT: All of them. All fifty. Including the nineteen from Bell. Except for Cassie’s.
EVERETT: Well, you’ll have to ask the sheriff about the form.
MERIT: I had planned to. But he changed our interview last-minute. I’m just wondering why Cassie’s case against Nico Bell was treated any differently from other cases. The sheriff himself went to the hospital. Filed the form. Didn’t check that box.
EVERETT: And I can’t comment on that.
MERIT: Officer Everett, you said you were here because you value transparency. Is there anything you can comment on about this case?
EVERETT: No. But I would like to say something to the vandals, if that’s all right by you.
MERIT: So you can’t answer my questions, but you want to use my platform to get a message out?
EVERETT: Ms. Logan, I don’t know about where you’re from—
MERIT: Actually, I grew up in—
EVERETT: —but we take property destruction extremely seriously in Bell—
MERIT: —as opposed to the violence that Cassie Queen experienced—
EVERETT: —and they ought to know we won’t stop until we have someone to hold responsible.
MERIT: —at the hands of her ex-boyfriend, Nico Bell. You didn’t take that extremely seriously, did you? Who do we hold responsible for that?
EVERETT: I don’t like what you’re implying, Ms. Logan.
MERIT: I’m not implying anything, Officer Everett. I’m outright saying it. You let Cassie Queen slip between the cracks, and I’m trying to find out what happened. Now you are putting all your efforts into tracking down a couple of teens trying to honor her memory.
EVERETT: From where I’m sitting, they just want to create division. They’re criminals.
MERIT: Was Nico Bell a criminal?
EVERETT: Not until he pulled that trigger.
MERIT: Don’t you think something could have been done before that—
EVERETT: Ms. Logan, we can stop some criminals right now if you’d let me talk. The last thing this town needs is more chaos, divisiveness—
MERIT: I think the word you are looking for is justice.
EVERETT: And I think this interview is over, Ms. Logan.
Vivian
VIVIAN HAD ALWAYS LOVED MAPS. SHE’D asked for a globe for her fourth birthday. She used to spin it, put a finger on it, and then she and her mom would look up that place together. They’d imagine traveling there one day. When she decided she wanted to be a doctor, she’d gotten a world map for her wall. She researched organizations that sent doctors all over the world. Doing real good. Changing people’s li
ves.
Vivian wanted that future, and the moment she’d decided on it, there had been nothing else for her. She used pins, marking the places she’d want to travel one day to work. After Cassie died, she took that map down. She’d left the wall blank, empty. She didn’t have anything that she wanted in its place.
Until now.
Now Vivian put up a new map. One of Bell. They didn’t actually sell maps of Bell, so she’d asked Beck to make one for her, to track their vengeance plan, to see all of the places they were putting the murals. It was her new obsession.
There was a winding gray line that ran off the side of the page—Route 90. And a little square where the billboard stood. Vivian scribbled a little heart under it on the map and filled in the number of likes that mural now had online: 8,998.
Almost nine thousand people, more than the entire population of Bell, reading Cassie’s name. Learning her story. Agreeing that something more must be done.
And then she added the second mural. An X marks the spot, this time on the western side of the high school, where a block of red showed where the auditorium was. Beck said they’d found it. It was good she’d swung by after her shift to get a good photo of the mural in the daylight.
The high school had been empty, not just for the summer, but since the shooting. The other kids had been moved among the middle and elementary schools, so they wouldn’t have to face the trauma of walking those hallways again so soon. It amazed Vivian, really, how far the adults were willing to bend to the shape of that trauma. Acknowledge it enough to reorganize the last quarter of the school year, but not enough to start advocating for change. Not enough to hold the assholes who had let this happen to Cassie responsible.
That was the thought that drove Vivian this time. Her fingers shook with anger. She posted the mural of Ariadne on the account. Ariadne, trapped in her maze, with a monster on her heels. She tagged the same gun control organizations, and the congresswoman who had shared the last post, and the podcast, which she now listened to every new episode of.
Then she sat down and opened her laptop for the first time in months and did what she knew best.
We Can Be Heroes Page 6