Balding, in his mid-sixties, Gunther projected the world-weary acerbity of one who had been disciplining teenagers for over three decades. Phoebe had always been a little afraid of him. He tended to be gruff, and his humor had a sarcastic edge. He made a point of reminding his students that he wasn’t afraid to “tell it like it is.” So Phoebe was surprised and relieved when, in a gentle tone, he suggested she take a seat.
“I understand you’ve been going through a pretty tough time,” he said. “I’m sorry to hear about it. And I just wanted you to know that all of us here in the administration stand behind you and your family one hundred percent.” He took her in over his bifocals, but the look seemed kind and a little sad.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Now, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to say a few words at the student assembly this afternoon about the situation—and your courage.”
“Oh!” Phoebe said, her face reddening. She was getting better and better at repressing the fact that she hadn’t told the truth about what had happened that night. But when caught off guard, as she found herself to be at that moment, she realized how ashamed she actually felt deep down—and trapped by a situation that was only getting more complicated every day. It frightened her how quickly her one stupid lie had spawned other lies and then spread seemingly overnight into the overheated reality of law offices, courtrooms, and the media.
“No, don’t worry,” Gunther said, misinterpreting her expression. “I won’t mention you by name. I plan to keep my remarks very general. But I do think it’s important to address the issue directly, as well as make it clear that Deer Mountain has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to physical abuse of any kind.”
The principal was true to his word. He didn’t single out Phoebe or any one person or incident. But, for those who already knew what had happened over the holidays, there could be no doubt whom Gunther had in mind when he talked to the special assembly about underage drinking and aggressive behavior.
“Never be afraid to do the right thing. There are going to be times in your life when people will try to make you do what they want. What they say is right. Sometimes they’ll be bigger, older, or more powerful than you. You could very well be tempted to give in—and be a victim. But don’t! The first step in becoming a great human being is learning that you have to fight for what you know is right. You have to learn to stand up for yourself. No matter what the circumstances.”
Word spread quickly. Immediately after the assembly, students who had previously looked right through Phoebe in the hallways now started nodding and smiling at her when she and Lacey passed by. After a year and a half of blending in to the point of total camouflage, Phoebe Lansing was becoming visible.
“Hey, Phoebe.”
“How you doing, Phoebe?”
“Yo.” A few days after Gunther’s talk, she actually got a high five from Tommy Redmile, Deer Mountain’s star basketball forward.
Lacey would lower her head and scurry past when these relative strangers greeted her friend. But Phoebe began to nod and smile back.
“Hey!” she said. “How’s it going?”
“What are you doing?” Lacey asked after Tommy Redmile sauntered away down the hall.
“What do you mean?” Phoebe asked, her smile fading.
“It’s almost as if you really like all this attention.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Phoebe asked. She was beginning to resent Lacey’s increasingly judgmental tone and the way her friend seemed to assume that Phoebe shouldn’t want to be more a part of things at school. “People are just being nice.”
“Is that what you think?”
“Yes,” Phoebe said. “I think people are trying to show their support.”
“You didn’t see the way Tommy was looking at you?”
“Why don’t you just come out and say whatever it is you’re trying to say.”
“He was looking at your boobs when he talked to you, Phoebe. These guys look at you and all they’re thinking about is how you somehow put yourself in a position where—”
“Where what? Are you saying I was asking for what . . . for what Liam did?”
“No! Of course not,” Lacey replied. But in the brief silence that followed, Phoebe couldn’t help but remember how she’d told Lacey she was borrowing her mom’s lavender cashmere sweater the night Liam was coming home. How she was going to force him to make a move.
“Then . . . what?” Phoebe asked when Lacey just stood there biting her bottom lip.
“I’m just . . . I just know what a hard time you’ve been having,” Lacey replied. “I just want you to think about who you should be trusting right now. Who really knows you—and cares about you. That’s all.”
But it wasn’t all. In fact, it was just the beginning of Lacey’s little asides and complaints about Phoebe’s behavior. She suggested that Phoebe was “friending” way too many people on Facebook.
“Do you even know half these guys?”
“What’s your problem?”
“I’m just saying . . . there are a lot of creeps out there. And you’re kind of in the spotlight right now.”
Lacey also didn’t like having to wait for Phoebe in the school bus while Phoebe lingered after drama club. Lately, Phoebe had been sticking around to chat with Mara Junge, a senior who was in charge of the drama club’s winter production of As You Like It.
“Sorry,” Phoebe said, sliding into the seat Lacey had saved for her. In the past, they were usually two of the first students on the bus and always sat together on the right, fifth row back. Recently, though, Phoebe had to run to make the bus at all. “You know how Mara is when she gets talking.”
“Actually, I don’t. But I guess you do. The two of you seem to have an awful lot to say to each other these days.”
Phoebe tried to ignore her friend’s hurt tone. She tried to tell herself that Lacey would be as thrilled as Phoebe was when she told her what Mara had just suggested. In fact, Phoebe was so excited by the news there was no way she couldn’t share it with her best friend:
“Mara has this kind of crazy idea I should try out for the role of Phebe in the play!”
“What? The shepherdess? Why? Because your names sound alike? That’s kind of lame, don’t you think?”
“No,” Phoebe said. “Actually, I think it’s pretty cool.”
“Well, good for you,” Lacey replied, turning her face to the window as the bus shifted into gear. “Break a leg.”
• • •
Lacey was just jealous. Lacey was way too shy and self-conscious. She didn’t know how to get beyond her own insecurities. But that wasn’t Phoebe’s fault, was it? In fact, Phoebe felt sorry for Lacey when she dropped out of drama club the following week. Rehearsals kept Phoebe at school until late afternoon, so they were no longer taking the bus home together—and they avoided each other on the morning route. But wasn’t it really for the best? Lacey had always been a little too needy. And kind of controlling. Besides, Phoebe was busy now with the play, her fellow thespians, and a couple of boys who had started to show an interest in her.
One, Neil Steinbeck, was on varsity wrestling and had dark hair like Liam. Though he had a spray of acne scars across his cheeks and a prominent Adam’s apple, something about him reminded her a little of Liam. Or maybe it was just that she compared him to Liam so often in her mind that bits of Liam couldn’t help but rub off on him. Neil began to wait for her after school when he wasn’t at practice or a match. He invited her to hang out with his friends at the Harringdale mall one Saturday. She tried hard to concentrate on the good things about him—varsity sports, a short, compact build that could be described as muscle-bound, the dark hair. It wasn’t until he kissed her at the movies that she realized she was kidding herself. His tongue felt as thick and slippery as a frog in her throat. She almost gagged.
She began to let herself dream about Liam again. She started to build the same kind of elaborate scenarios she used to construct involving the tw
o of them. Only now she had real story lines to work with, as well as serious, dramatic plot points. She’d lie awake in the dark, long after her mother had turned out the downstairs light and gone to bed, acting out both their parts in her imagination. Over and over again, Liam would beg her forgiveness for what had happened.
“I want to kill Brandon,” he’d tell her. “I should never have brought him home—or let him anywhere near you. You’re so beautiful, guys just can’t help themselves. You know that, don’t you?”
These late-night fantasies were once again becoming the high point of her day. She didn’t want her mom to know, but between the rehearsals for As You Like It and the time she was spending with Neil and her other new friends, her grades were beginning to suffer. And Lacey wasn’t around anymore to help out with her algebra assignments. Though she now had dozens of new numbers on her cell phone, there was no one she really wanted to call. Even the play was turning out to be something of a letdown. She’d been fitted for the shepherdess costume. It had bell sleeves and an elaborate hoop skirt. She felt like an idiot wearing it. So many people seemed to think they knew her now. But she was having a hard time recognizing herself.
One Sunday at the end of February when Wanda and Phoebe arrived home from church, they found Troy waiting for them in his pickup truck. He followed them into the house.
“How about a day trip to Boston next weekend, sunshine?” he asked Phoebe, helping himself to one of the bagels Wanda had left out on the kitchen counter.
“What’s going on?” Phoebe’s mother asked.
“Cranston and Cranston want to interview Phoebe,” Troy said.
“I can’t go,” Phoebe said. “I think I have rehearsal.”
“Well, you’ll just have to skip it,” Troy said. “They need to get this done. They’ve hired a PI to do some of the legwork and they need your full statement ASAP.”
“PI?” Wanda asked. “Why don’t you just say private investigator? Do you have any idea how full of yourself you—”
“Could you please cut me a little slack?” Troy said. “I’m juggling a lot of balls right now and the last thing I need is—”
“Mom?” Phoebe said. “Can I talk to Daddy by myself for a minute?”
Wanda crossed her arms on her chest. She looked from Phoebe to Troy and then back to Phoebe again.
“Don’t let this big deal here try to push you around,” she said as she walked out of the kitchen.
“Well?” Troy said, leaning against the kitchen counter
“Daddy?” Phoebe said, her eyes welling. Ever since the hearing, she’d been feeling awful whenever she thought about Liam. The prospect of repeating her lies to a roomful of lawyers made her sick to her stomach. Phoebe’s anxiety had been building for days—no—for weeks. It had been building from the moment Troy had put the words into her mouth. And now she needed to spit them back out.
“Hey, don’t worry about this meeting, okay?” Troy told her. “I’ll be right there. You’ve already met Henry Cranston. It’s no big deal.”
“It’s not that,” Phoebe said. “I have to tell you something: it wasn’t Liam. It was Brandon—Liam’s friend from school.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“It wasn’t Liam who attacked me.”
“I’m sorry—but I’m not getting this. What’s going on?”
“I’m trying to tell you, Daddy, it wasn’t Liam—”
“Did he get to you somehow? Has he been texting you?”
“No!” The fact that she hadn’t heard a word from Liam since New Year’s actually weighed heavily on her heart.
“Then why are you changing your story?”
“I’m not. I’m telling you the truth. You made me say it was Liam, remember? You were the one who blamed him right away. I was so upset I just—I just went along. It was Brandon who—”
“Wait, hold on!” Troy said, holding up both hands. He stared out the window for a long moment, obviously turning something over in his mind. Then, in a lowered voice, he asked Phoebe: “Does your mom know about this?”
“No. I haven’t told anybody.”
“Nobody? You sure? None of your friends at school? Not even Lacey?”
“No.”
“Then listen to me and listen good: you’re going to keep this to yourself. Your statement is already on record, Phoebe. Cranston took the case based on what you claimed. You start accusing someone else now—someone nobody around here has ever even heard of—and you know what’s going to happen? Do you have any idea?”
“No,” Phoebe said shakily.
“People are going to stop believing in you! They’re going to start to question the whole thing. They’ll wonder, what’s she going to say tomorrow? That maybe it was all three of those boys together? You start to backtrack now and you’ll lose everyone’s sympathy. You’ll look like a liar and an idiot—and worse. And this is not the optimum moment to put our credibility in doubt, do you understand me?”
“But I will be a liar,” Phoebe said, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Oh, sunshine,” Troy said, crouching down beside her. “Don’t forget that the Bostocks’ lawyer felt it was perfectly okay to claim you’d had sex with Liam. That was the ugliest lie I’ve ever heard. You sticking to your story is nothing compared to that as far as I’m concerned.”
“So you don’t think it’s wrong, Daddy?”
“No,” Troy said, looking into his daughter’s eyes. “What that boy did to you was wrong. And if Liam wants to protect him, that’s his problem. What you’re doing is standing up for yourself. What you’re doing is right. And I couldn’t be more proud of you.”
18
Michael turned the windshield wipers to their fastest speed, but the sleet had frozen solid to the outside glass, and the wipers slid uselessly over an icy patch that was obscuring his view. When he reached a flat, straight stretch of Route 99, he slowed the pickup to a crawl, wound down the window, and tried to scrape the sleet off with his gloved left hand while steering with his right. No deal. He pulled to the side of the road and turned off the engine.
Darkness had fallen during the drive back from his workshop, and the view to the west was a study in black and white: the snow-covered cornfields and hills set against the starless backdrop of oncoming night. For a while he just sat there, listening to the sleet tapping against the windows and the slow tick-tick of the engine as it cooled down. He should have left the shop an hour earlier. But just as he was getting ready to head home, his foreman, Terry Lonnegan, had knocked on the open door of his office.
“Got a sec?” Terry asked, stepping into the cramped room. It had once been a horse stall in an old barn that Michael had converted into the beamed, open-plan workshop where a crew of eight now turned out Michael’s line of custom chairs, tables, and lamps. Since he conducted most of his business from his studio at home, this office had become something of a repository for promotional brochures and catalogs for Michael Bostock Fine Wood Designs.
“Sure, take a seat,” Michael said.
Terry had been Michael’s first hire nearly twenty years ago when Michael finally faced the fact that he had more business coming in than he could handle on his own. Terry was over a decade older than Michael and lived in nearby Covington, but they shared a hard-nosed work ethic that bordered on perfectionism. It was Terry who’d advised Michael on finding local talent as the business continued to grow—and Terry who now oversaw the seasoned team of woodworkers. Michael paid a good wage and offered benefits. Like Terry, Michael’s employees tended to stay put.
“What’s up?” Michael asked when Terry just stood there.
“Don’t want to butt in where I don’t belong,” Terry said, looking past Michael out the window.
“Doubt you could.”
“I’ve been hearing some stuff. Thought I better pass it on to you.”
“Okay.”
“This is from a niece of mine who’s at Deer Mountain. Claims Liam used to drink and smoke dope a
lot when he was going to school there.”
It took Michael a moment or two to absorb this information. Then he asked, “Did she say if she ever actually saw him doing any of this?”
“No—and I asked her that question. As far I’m concerned, it’s just the usual ‘everybody knows’ kind of bullshit. But it’s out there.”
“Thanks for telling me.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “You guys are going to fight this thing, right?”
“I believe that’s the plan, if we have to,” Michael said. “We’re lawyering up. We’re going to have a meeting next week with some Boston firm that’s handled this kind of deal before.”
“Good,” Terry said. “I know what a lot of people are saying, but not everybody thinks Troy Lansing’s in this for the right reasons. Me included.”
“Thanks, Terry.”
“And I told my niece to put a sock in it.”
As Michael sat in the darkness, he thought back on Terry’s aside: I know what a lot of people are saying. But what were they saying exactly? That he and Brook were negligent parents? That Liam had real problems? That Troy was right to stick it to those entitled Bostocks? Though Michael had been making a concerted effort lately not to let the case bring him down, Terry’s little heads-up had done a number on him. He felt both empty and exhausted. It was the same reaction he’d had the week before when Brook first suggested they meet with a law firm her brother-in-law Staff had lined up.
“What happened to our decision to stick with Freston? He did pretty damn well by us last time. And I thought we agreed that it looked better to have someone from the community.”
“Troy’s lawyers are from Boston,” Brook pointed out. “And Staff made a pretty persuasive argument for dealing with people who know this area of the law. But I’m not saying we’ve got to go with them. I see this as a kind of information-gathering session.”
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