“What’s wrong?” she says, coming back to my bedroom.
I mouth, January.
“Who?” Melissa says. I ignore her.
Dizzy is so excited, she can barely form words. It takes a minute until she can pull herself together enough to talk. “She’s alive. But she was beaten pretty badly. She’s in the hospital.”
“What happened?” I ask, sitting at the edge of the bed.
Melissa crouches next to me, pushing her ear into the receiver. “What?” she whispers to me. I shake my head but move closer to let her hear.
“They don’t know who attacked her.”
“She was attacked? What does that mean?”
“Yes. Attacked. Beaten half to death.”
“But Jesse took her home.”
“She didn’t get home.” And then Dizzy erupts into dramatic sobs, which only sound about one percent genuine.
Melissa takes the phone from me. “Dizzy?” she says kindly and patiently. “Dizzy, what’s going on?” She sounds far more tolerant than she ever does with me.
Melissa listens a long time, nodding her head periodically. Then she turns to me. “January is sedated now. There’s nothing we can do except wait.”
“Dizzy, let me talk to your mom.” Melissa stands up and moves to my desk chair.
I stay sitting on the edge of my bed, my face in my hands, trying to take it all in. January? Attacked? I think of those scummy frat boys, hanging around outside of the room. Drunk slut in that room, they’d said, as if they’d found an old sofa in someone’s garbage heap—free for the taking. You can have it if you can carry it. She was beaten badly, Dizzy said. What else happened to her? I wonder. And then I think about Jesse. Was he hurt too? He was with her when she left.
I hear the soothing hum of Melissa’s voice on the phone, talking to Dizzy’s mother. She lets out an endless string of um-hums and eh-hehs, until she thanks Dizzy’s mom and I hear this: “No, I have never been to a home candle party. Sounds fun.” She makes a face at me. “I’ll be sure to do that. Thank you…No, thank you…Okay, now…Take care of Dizzy. Bye.” She hangs up.
“I think we should go to the hospital,” I say.
***
“I didn’t realize that you were so close to January,” Melissa says in the car.
I’m not, I want to reply, but I don’t, because I can’t even explain to myself what I am feeling and why. Sure, it’s normal to feel bad and scared when someone has been attacked and beaten badly enough to be in the hospital. But there’s something else—something else nagging at me that I’m not ready to name or even admit. The terror I feel radiating to the ends of all my limbs is intensifying, and all I know is that something is terribly wrong. All I want to do is see January.
Melissa drops me off at the double doors while she finds parking. I’m too distracted to appreciate the fact that she agreed to drive rather than walk the three miles to Quiet Regional Medical Center. The person at the front desk won’t tell me which room January is in, but I must look pitiful, because she reaches across her desk to pat my forearm and tells me that I can find family and friends in the third-floor waiting room. I take the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator, feeling more worried as I climb each step.
Jesse is in the waiting room, sitting alone in a chair, staring at a blank television screen. He looks up and sees me, motioning for me to sit next to him. “I’m glad you’re here.” He grabs both of my hands. I let him, though my initial urge is to move away from him. “This is all just so surreal,” he says.
“What happened?”
He swallows hard and shakes his head back and forth, his eyes fixed on a point just to the right of my head. It feels like he is signaling, No, no, no, no to a phantom person standing behind me. “You guys left the party,” he finally says. I nod. We had. We’d all left together—Dizzy and me and Josh. We’d walked to my car, and I’d driven us all to Pizza Hut, where we split a large pepperoni—a greasy lump that I can still feel in the bottom of my stomach.
“I left her in the kitchen. She was sitting in a chair, drinking a glass of water. And she looked better. She looked alert, and she was talking. And I asked this girl to keep an eye on her while I ran to get my car.” I nod again. Parking is impossible in that neighborhood, with all the narrow one-way streets and college kids who leave their old junkers in any available space. Jesse would’ve had to park in the library lot, blocks away, just like we did. “I got the car, pulled up front, and ran inside—not five minutes after I left her—and she was gone. The girl—the girl who was watching her—was still there, and she said January went to the bathroom. I looked all over that house, but she was gone. I drove around looking for her. I couldn’t find her.”
“Maybe she was in someone’s room.” I’m thinking of shirtless Cody. “Has anyone talked to that snake Cody? Did you go upstairs?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone she was missing?”
“I should have,” he says, dropping my hands and punching his palm with his fist. “I should have, but after I drove all over town half the night, I just figured, you know, that she’d turn up. That she was probably off with some guy she met.”
“And you’re sick of being her babysitter?”
He doesn’t answer. He just leans back heavily in his chair, pushing it away from me. “I just decided, you know, to let her be. Let her take care of herself for once. But I should’ve done something.” He lowers his head. I get up and lean over him, toying with the idea of putting my arms around him. “I didn’t dare call the house and risk getting her mom. Her mom freaks out over everything.”
“Did anybody see her leave? At the party, while you were getting your car?”
“By the time I got back, the kitchen was pretty much empty. Everybody was probably in the hot tub or something. I don’t know. I checked rooms upstairs.”
“I thought you said you didn’t check rooms.”
“No, I did check,” he says sharply. I drop the subject. He’s probably confused. Why would he lie about something like that?
“Do they know what happened? Do you know?”
“Nobody knows,” he says. “They found her out by the abandoned train car. Somebody beat her with a baseball bat or a piece of wood or something. They just left her there.”
I gasp in spite of myself. I just can’t fathom someone attacking another human being like that, no matter how many times I hear that it actually happens. “Was she…?” I don’t know how to say the word raped. It’s too awful to even say.
Jesse shakes his head. “No.”
“Is she going to be okay? Did she see who did it?”
Jesse shakes his head. “That’s the thing. She doesn’t remember anything at all. The last thing she remembers is the frat party. She’s going to be okay, but it’s going to take a while. She has a lot of bruises and a couple broken bones, but nothing that won’t heal. Fortunately, the bastard who did this was either really weak, or he lost his nerve. It could’ve been worse. She’s going to be fine. Physically fine.”
“Good,” I say, but it doesn’t feel so good. “It had to be someone who was predicted,” I add hopefully. “That’s how they’ll find the guy. They just need to look at the predicteds.” My voice rises. “That’s what they’ll do, I bet. Don’t worry,” I tell Jesse, “this will be over as soon as they look at that list, right? It could very well be someone who has been PROFILEd. Melissa says they have a lot of names on file. They’ll get the guy, right?”
He nods at me, giving me a weak smile. “Right,” he says.
He wraps his arms around me, holding me tight. I let him. I squeeze my eyes shut against his shoulder, the cotton of his red T-shirt rubbing soft on my cheek. I inhale spring-rain scented fabric softener.
“I’m going to get a coffee,” Melissa says loudly, to no one in particular. She apparently came into the waiting room after parking the car.
When we can no longer hear her footsteps, Jesse pulls away and looks me in the eyes. “There
’s something more I need to tell you—something I need to explain. Before you hear it from someone else.”
“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” I say quickly. But he does. Once and for all, I want to know what’s going between him and January. I reach up and touch his face, his cool, smooth skin sending electric shocks through my fingertips. But I don’t want to know right now. “Don’t talk,” I tell him, moving my lips to his.
He sighs intensely as soon as we touch. We kiss deeply and tenderly for what seems like a long time. I forget that we are in the middle of a hospital waiting room until he speaks and I come crashing back to reality. “Daphne,” he says, his lips fluttering against mine, “I can’t.” He pulls away from me and raises his hands to either side of my head, smoothing my undoubtedly un-smooth hair. “You’re going to hear things about me.”
“No,” I say, trying to shake my head, but Jesse holds his hands firmly.
“Listen to me,” he says quietly. “By tomorrow, everyone will know. Everyone will be talking about me. And about—about what happened to…” He’s stuttering and stopping, completely stripped of the cool confidence that he usually has. “…about what…happened to January.”
I know with sudden certainty—a certainty I’ve never felt about anything before—what he is telling me. It explains why he acted that way in the cafeteria. He wasn’t reacting to Dizzy’s rant about January. He’s not in love with January. He meant it when he said that nothing happened between them. Why didn’t I see this before? This isn’t about how he feels about her. It’s about how he feels about himself. I raise my hand to my mouth, my fingers touching my raw lips, all the lip gloss long kissed off.
Jesse is predicted.
“I got the letter in the mail last week.”
“No,” I reply, because I don’t know what else to say.
Jesse casts his eyes downward. “It’s true. I wish it weren’t.” He meets my gaze, his dark eyes glazing over as if he is retreating far into himself. “Daphne, you have to be ready for what people are going to be saying about me.
I say nothing, but I must look stricken. “Honey,” a passing nurse says to me, part concerned mother, part nosy health care professional, “are you okay?” she asks, her drawn-on eyebrows, red like clay, making an alarmed arch on her forehead. She rubs my back. “What’s going on?”
What am I supposed to say ? Sorry, I’ve just found out that this guy right here has a negative PROFILE, which means he may have brutally attacked someone, this utter mess of a girl who I was honestly jealous of. Because, you see, I thought I was in love with him.
I say none of that. Instead, I say to the nurse, in a voice that sounds foreign to me, “I’m totally fine, thanks.” I say it brightly and cheerfully, a friendly answer better suited to a different question. Do you want a coffee? I’m totally fine, thanks. Do you need a tissue, dear? I’m totally fine, thanks.
For a second, I think I’m going to cry while six eyes watch: Jesse’s, the concerned nurse’s, and another nurse’s—the younger one, with moles all down her neck. She stands off to the side, stage right, watching me with her head cocked in curiosity. I rub at my eyes experimentally. Nothing happens. There are no tears. A tidal wave runs through my stomach, the aftershocks worse than the initial disaster. I want to scream—to freak out—but I’m strangely frozen, a version of myself I didn’t know existed. “Good-bye,” says the voice of this other Daphne. “Good luck,” she says without a trace of emotion.
“I’m sorry,” Jesse whispers. “I’m so sorry.”
chapter 16
Jesse wouldn’t hurt anyone. I’m sure of it. I’d bet my life on it.
—January Morrison, police interview
Things are crazy at school. It feels like the aftermath following the shooting. Only worse. At least after the shooting, we were out of classes for a whole week—enough time for everyone to realize that thinking about it doesn’t make it go away. Not thinking about it does that. So everyone talked about the next lake party and who won the baseball tournament and whether or not someone was hooking up with someone else’s boyfriend. And little by little, it faded, disappearing like the bullet holes in the walls. A little plaster of Paris in our minds and everything was peachy.
But today, after January’s attack, the general feeling is almost gleeful. It’s far less terrifying than after the shooting. This time, there’s pity for January, but it’s tempered with smugness—a sure feeling that this would never happen to someone who didn’t deserve it. Dizzy even said that out loud. Practically. This is a story that has a plot everyone can understand: bad girl behaves badly, gets what she deserves. The shooter was random in his aim. But whoever attacked January chose her. And the fact that January is genetically flawed gives the story a nice moral: everybody gets what she deserves. Sad but true. Or is it?
Dizzy is the first person I see in the hallway. Her face is flushed, and her eyes are glinting with excitement. “This is crazy!” she exclaims. And then she says, “Gee, Daph—are you, like, sick? You look awful.”
Between the news cameras and the hysterical parents who want to pull their kids out of school, I can hardly hear her. “Thanks,” I say, reaching out to touch my swollen eyes. I sniff stridently. Melissa forced me to pull myself together and go to school in spite of spending most of the night awake worrying. Early this morning, all the tears I’d been holding in started to slip out of my eyes. The first one landed with a heavy plop on the ugly quilt my grandma made me when I was a baby. The second and third landed on my chest, just below my neck. The rest came shooting out in all directions until I felt like I was going to drown myself. Melissa came and sat with me and then helped me wash my face and apply a vat of cover-up before school.
“They’re going to arrest Jesse,” Dizzy tells me now, completely oblivious to how wrecked I am. “He’s predicted. It had to be him. He was the last one to see her. And his whole story about looking all over the house—total lie. Nobody saw him do that. Cuteny’s dad told us everything.” I remember that Cuteny’s dad is a detective with the Quiet Police Department—he’s on the news all the time. He’s fat and has a scraggly mustache that hangs over his lips. I hate him, even though I’ve never met him. I fight the leftover tears back. Dizzy doesn’t seem to notice that I’m upset. “Gosh, Daph, I feel kind of guilty. We left her with him. The police are probably going to be contacting you too, you know. And Jesse’s stepmom and dad said he didn’t come home until well after three, which is after the time that the doctors think January was attacked.”
“What are they doing here?” I ask, pointing at a cameraman who is moving closer and closer to us.
“Can you girls stop moving so much?” he asks.
“This,” Dizzy says, waving her hand around, “is just the biggest news story to ever hit Quiet High. Outside of the shooting.”
“Where’s Jesse?” I ask.
“Not here, if he’s smart. Josh wants to kill him. He’s extremely chivalrous. Poor January,” Dizzy says, sniffling into her hand.
“I thought you didn’t like her,” I say sharply, hoping that being mean will make me feel better.
“Well, I don’t. But of course I feel sorry for her. And it just proves what I suspected about Jesse all along.” She spits out Jesse’s name like a rotten piece of broccoli. “I knew he was a bad penny, what with stalking that girl. Someone should’ve stopped him before he really did something bad. Like this.”
“Dizzy, you said yourself that the stalking thing was just a rumor. Besides, you were psyched when we first started going out.”
She ignores this fact. “We all should’ve known better. It was hotness hypnosis.” She shakes her head. “We were blinded by his ridiculous body.”
Before I can answer, Sam and Brooklyn appear. Josh is hovering behind them. He’s wearing his gym shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and I wonder if he’s trying to get his biceps on the evening news.
Dizzy throws her arms around Josh. When she lets him go, Josh puts his arm protective
ly around her. “How is she?” I ask. “Does anyone know?”
Sam takes over. He’s one of those guys who has to take charge, who has to know all about what’s happening. “Everything is under control,” he says. His hair is wet—fresh from a shower—hanging in lank pieces across his forehead. He looks different, small somehow, like one of those dogs that ends up being the size of a squirrel after it has a bath.
“And Jesse?” I ask.
“Fuck him,” Sam says. The words are toxic. He catches himself, though, and puts on the Boy-Next-Door persona. “Gee,” he says. “Oh, my gosh, I’m sorry! I’m just so…darn mad!” He lightly kicks the wall in front of him. “I hate when women are mistreated. It just gets to me.”
“We should’ve known he’d do something like this,” Josh says. He balls his fist and punches the wall hard. “I’m just glad it wasn’t you, baby.” He squeezes Dizzy tightly. What’s this? Is Josh actually being nice?
Not to be outdone, Brooklyn pats Sam’s arm. “Just think if it had been me, honey.”
“I just hate to see people taken advantage of,” Sam says.
“It wasn’t Jesse.” It’s the first time I’ve said these words out loud, and I suddenly feel like a huge weight has been lifted from me. I say it again. “It wasn’t him.” If I say it a few more times, it will be true.
Josh turns around. “Don’t you get it? Jesse is predicted to be a violent criminal. You can’t act like that’s no big deal. He needs to be stopped. Daphne, he can’t be allowed to hurt someone else.” He sounds calm. And reasonable. And sincere. This has to be Bizarro World.
Dizzy speaks next. “Listen, Daph: Jesse is predicted.”
Josh steps in. “We all should’ve suspected. We are stupid if we pretend that it doesn’t matter, that somehow those stupid tests are wrong. The tests aren’t wrong. Jesse was predicted for violent crime. Jesse will never be anything but a lousy criminal. That’s what he always has been, and it’s what he’ll always be. He’s a loser, a felon, lower than dirt. And the sooner we all accept that, the better.”
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