“You said it,” Brooklyn chimes in. And then she laughs. Like this is all a big joke.
I’m too angry to stick around.
chapter 17
The girl was discovered in the early hours of Sunday, April 24. The victim is a female, 16 years old. Found in a field near an abandoned car at the train tracks. It appears she was beaten with a baseball bat.
—Quiet Police Chief David Witt
Criminal justice was the only elective with openings when I started at QH. Now I’m stuck in a class taught by a former prison guard who has a bad habit of calling everyone by some abbreviation of their last name. Mr. Victor (“Call me Vic!”) spends most of our class periods showing recorded episodes of Dateline about really sickeningly twisted murders. He notices me today, because I walk in late after having spent a ton of time in the bathroom with Dizzy, who insisted on redoing my makeup. She’s put so much eye makeup on me that I’m probably mascary. I don’t even care. “Hey, Wri,” Call-Me-Vic says as I step through the door. “I need your help.” Everyone turns to look at me.
“What?” I ask warily, sitting down in a chair in the back row.
“I’m in major trouble with the higher-ups.” Everyone groans in sympathy. “Apparently, I’m not giving enough ‘exams.’” He puts exams in quotation marks to underscore his belief that exams are actually flimsily costumed versions of something else—something sinister. “We gotta do a test next week. I need everyone to get above a seventy percent. And it’s gotta be a book test. Nothing from Dateline.” People groan again.
“I can handle it,” I say, knowing that if I don’t think about school, I’ll just obsess about Jesse. I pull a frayed textbook from my backpack. I’m probably the only person in the room who has read it. The book is kind of interesting, actually. I never knew that one out of ten men is a psychopath. That explains a lot.
Call-Me-Vic laughs an obnoxious bray, his seemingly seven-foot body bending oddly as he manages his convulsive laughter. “I know you’ll ace it.” He rolls his eyes, and everyone giggles. “I need you to tutor some of your classmates who aren’t as, ah, bookish as you are.” More snickers. “So today, while I run one of my favorite episodes, ‘The Cannibals Next Door,’ I’m going to need you to do some hard-core tutoring.” Call-Me-Vic points at Nate Gormley, the tiny, rat-like boy that I first saw at the lake smoking with January. Today, he wears an old windbreaker with the sleeves rolled up and sweatbands on his wrists. “Gorm, dude, you’re never going to make it. Go with Wri right now. Chop-chop.” Call-Me-Vic claps loudly. I mutter under my breath and stuff my book in my bag as Nate Gormley makes his way toward me. “Library,” Call-Me-Vic yells after us. “Go to the library.”
“I’m not a retard,” he tells me in the hallway.
“I never said you were. And you shouldn’t use that word.”
“I got suspended last week, and then I kinda got behind.”
“Huh,” I say, still thinking about Jesse, the tears pooling in my eyes again. I swipe at my face. We walk past the few reporters who are still milling about in the hallways. They’re obviously convinced that there’s some story here, something to air on a program that Call-Me-Vic will probably show in class tomorrow.
“You hear about Jesse Kable?” Nate asks me.
I don’t answer, but I do hold the library door open for Nate, who punches the library metal detectors on his way in, as if they’d offended him in some way. I look over at the empty chairs by the paperbacks, where January was sitting that day. It seems so long ago.
“Jesse Kable,” he repeats. “He’s one of them predicted. Which is no big surprise.”
“Let’s get started,” I say sharply, slamming my backpack hard against a table.
“Chill,” Nate says. “Nothing to get worked up about.” He sits on a chair and leans way back on it, his freakishly long arms almost dragging on the nasty library carpet.
“Why is Jesse being predicted no big surprise?”
Nate shrugs. I pull the arm of his chair forward and bring the legs smashing down on the floor. “Come on,” I say.
“Why you so interested?”
“It might be on Vic’s test,” I say sarcastically. “Tell me.”
“Jesse stalked a girl—his ex. Her name is Brit. Totally freaked her out. She wouldn’t even answer her phone after a while. She had to move to get away from him.” I think about what Dizzy told me at the mall a couple of weeks ago, about Jesse having an older girlfriend who went away to college in Texas.
“Yeah, right,” I say, calling his bluff. “You’re just making this up. That’s all a big rumor.”
Nate leans on his chair again. “Suit yourself.”
I throw a notebook on the table and then toss a pencil at Nate’s face. He doesn’t even try to catch it.
“Let’s get started,” I say, flipping the book open to the chapter on mass murderers of the twentieth century.
“You wanna know how I know about Mr. Perfect?”
“Not really.”
“’Cause Brit’s my sister.”
“That’s not exactly Jesse’s version of the story.” That night in the car, he told me there was no older girl. Dizzy’s story was just a rumor.
“And you believe what that guy says?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Well, for one thing, he’s lying to you. He went out with Brit for a long time. They were a Quiet High item.” He makes a face at the word item, like he’s above that kind of thing. Nate flips his hat around backward and scratches underneath. His hair is kind of mangy. I wrinkle my nose. “And I suppose he also didn’t tell you about her face.”
“What about her face?”
“The two black eyes and a split lip. I’ll give you three guesses, genius—who do you think done that to her?”
I tap my pencil on my notebook faster and louder. “How do I know you aren’t lying?”
He rolls his shoulders. “Mmmaoh,” he says without opening his lips. The lazy person’s way of saying I don’t know. Melissa would sooner have her fingernails pulled out than listen to me butcher the English language that way. “Maybe I am lying. But your boyfriend just happens to be around a lot of girls who end up with their heads bashed in. Don’t cha think?”
***
Melissa goes to bed at 10:23, just before the sportscast on the local news show. I stay up in the covered porch off my room, pretending to read, even though I can’t concentrate on individual letters long enough to let them form words. I keep thinking of Jesse’s lips on mine Sunday night at the hospital. I can’t concentrate on anything else.
Before Melissa retreated to her bedroom, we watched the ten o’clock news together, but there was nothing new about January. It was all the same information we’d read earlier online. A Quiet High junior—no name being released yet—was found severely beaten near Perry. She is in good condition at the local hospital. Police are pursuing leads but have not yet named a suspect. I had to turn off the TV.
I am sitting in the dark when I hear a car in the driveway. Turning off the lights, I peer around the curtains. Then I take stock of myself. I am wearing my flannel PJ’s with pictures of vegetables on them.
Not cute.
Hideous, actually. I’ve had these pajamas since I was twelve, back when I didn’t realize that vegetables should never adorn clothing. I make a mental note to put them in the thrift store donation pile. With my luck, Melissa will buy them back for me.
He’s sitting in the car with his headlights off while I contemplate whether or not I have time to run and put on jeans. Ultimately, I opt against changing clothes because I don’t want him to knock on the door and wake Melissa. I check through the curtains again—he’s still just sitting there, although now he’s gripping the steering wheel with both hands as if he’s about to drive away.
I quietly open the front door and step onto the front steps—the cement is grimy underneath my bare feet. Jesse opens his door and starts to get out, but I wave him back into the car and tiptoe across the cold
grass to the passenger’s side door. I open it and slide into the seat next to him.
“Hi,” he says, closing his driver’s side door so gently that it barely makes a click. “Hope I didn’t wake you.” I pull my door even more gently. He’s in his dad’s car again, the black Eclipse. It smells like breath mints.
I shake my head. “It’s okay.” I pull down the visor out of habit—it’s something I always do when I get into a car. I flip it back up right away.
“Are those eggplants?”
I look at him. “What?”
He points to my PJ’s. “Eggplants. Corn cobs. And are those tomatoes?”
“Radishes.”
He raises his eyebrows and smiles.
“Stupid, I know.” I pull my legs up to my chest. My knees almost touch the dashboard.
He reaches across to the bar under the seat and moves me back a bit. “No,” he says. “They look very…healthy.”
He turns the key forward until the radio goes on. It’s on the Hair Nation satellite station. I reach across and turn it up. He turns it down after a minute.
“I needed to see you.”
“How’s January?” I ask.
“I can’t see Jan anymore. Her mom won’t let me in…” He trails off. “January is a pretty strong girl. Actually, the doctor says she looks worse than she really is because of all the swelling. There could be brain damage. Nobody knows for sure yet, but I—”
“Jesse.” I put my hand on his wrist. He’s clutching the wheel so tightly that I can feel his muscles and tendons straining. He’s wearing cargo shorts, a QH T-shirt, and a baseball hat. He looks younger tonight than he did at the frat party.
He turns his body sideways to look at me. “I didn’t do it, you know.”
“I never thought that you—I mean, I assumed that you would never—” I can’t quite figure out what to say. I don’t sound convincing at all. I want to believe that he wouldn’t do it, that he couldn’t be capable of beating a girl with a baseball bat, leaving her all alone, bloody and broken, behind an abandoned train car covered in graffiti and littered with empty beer bottles and cigarette butts. “I wouldn’t be here if I thought that you could…do something…like that.” Nate’s sister had to move out of state to get away from him. I think about that now. Maybe that’s a lie. Maybe it isn’t. But why would Nate lie to me?
“I know about Brit Gormley,” I say.
He nods, tapping his fingers in time to the music that I can barely hear. He says nothing.
“Quiet is so small,” I say. A vision of the phantom girl—Nate’s sister, a rat-esque girl with a faint mustache like Nate’s—pops into my mind. If he would stalk her, maybe even hit her, then…I can’t take it past there.
“Why didn’t you tell me about her? You said there was no older girl. But there was. I know there was. Why hide her? Are you still with her?”
It takes him a long time to answer, and I’m tempted to just leave. Why spend time with someone who lies to me? But then he speaks. “I thought you would think less of me.”
“I don’t buy it. Besides, if that’s true, I do think less of you. Do you love her?”
“No. We hung out for a while. But things didn’t work out. Then all the rumors started about me stalking her or whatever. That’s all false, but I didn’t want to bring it up. I didn’t want you to know that. I was afraid you might not believe me.”
“And I’m supposed to believe that now you are telling me the truth?”
He doesn’t answer.
I try again. “Where did you go that night? Where were you looking for her? You can only drive around for so long, right? And how come nobody at that party saw January leave by herself? Why are they saying she left with you? Nobody saw you searching for her around the house. How could anyone not see that? ” It dawns on both of us at the same time what I am truly saying: I doubt him. I am asking him to defend himself, which can only mean one thing: I believe that maybe he is capable of doing this. I need him to deny it. To answer every question I’ve asked.
“You don’t believe me,” Jesse says. He isn’t mad. He is resigned. “I’ve answered all of the questions the police have asked me. I’m telling the truth, Daphne, I swear. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Brit. That whole relationship was a mistake. There was nothing to talk about.”
“We’re talking about January now. People at the party saw you leave with her.”
“No, they saw me with January. Nobody saw her leave. Nobody. And almost everyone there was drunk. Of course they can’t answer any questions about me. Some of them hardly know where they there that night.”
I nod. I am not supposed to ask any more questions. This should be enough to convince me. But I am too quiet. Jesse moves closer to the driver door, as if he’s trying to get as far away from me as possible. “I think I understand, Daphne. You don’t trust me.”
I don’t know what to say. Because the answer is that I don’t trust him. People don’t lie unless they have something to hide, right? It occurs to me for a millisecond that I’m making a bigger deal out of the Brit thing than is absolutely necessary. Isn’t it possible he didn’t want to talk about her? It’s not like I was jumping out of my seat to tell him about the time I was madly in love for three minutes with a guy named Donald who had halitosis and an unhealthy obsession with model airplanes. There are things we do that we don’t necessarily want to be judged for later. But in light of everything with January, my saner side argues, isn’t it right to be suspicious of someone who is just so damn hard to figure out? And then there are the PROFILE results…
“I just need you to know that I would never, ever hurt anyone. You know that, right?”
I don’t answer because I can’t.
“Right?” he demands. “Daphne, are you listening? You know, right?”
I feel like my lips are glued together. I cannot speak.
“You better go in,” he finally tells me.
I take a long time getting out of the car—plenty of time for him to stop me, plenty of time for me to say something.
But he doesn’t stop me. And I don’t say anything.
chapter 18
Dear Mark,
Glad to know you miss me at the lab, but frankly, it’s kind of a relief not dealing with the PROFILE results. My heart dropped to my knees every time I saw the data on another kid sentenced to life as a predicted.
You know my position on this, but let me repeat it: it’s not that I think PROFILE is wrong, as in factually wrong—I think it’s morally wrong. I don’t care if the results are accurate. It’s wrong to do this. They’re just kids, Mark. Doesn’t that bother you?
Hoping you come to your senses,
Melissa
—Email from Dr. Melissa Wright to Mark Miliken, senior researcher at Utopia Laboratories
I lean over to Hannah Cramer, this girl whose hair always looks wet even when it’s dry. She’s pretty much the only person in the room who is listening to Madame Ada, our French teacher. I stick my foot out in the aisle and gently nudge the side of her shoe. I note that she is wearing pink socks that perfectly match her pale pink T-shirt—she always matches her socks to her shirts. I imagine for a minute what it would be like to sneak into her sock drawer and mismatch all of those cute pairs. After a few nudges, she half-turns and looks at me out of the corner of her eye. Hannah Wet/Dry hates to be interrupted when she’s learning. “Quoi?” she says in a hiss loud enough that Madame Ada pauses.
“Not in French,” I hiss back. Madame Ada has selective hearing: French words always get her attention, but as soon as she hears the obnoxious sounds of English, she moves right along in her lecture. Right now, it’s something about Pierre and a cadeau. At Academy, I was taking Russian, a language they don’t offer at QH. I jumped into French II without any prior knowledge. Whenever I hear French words now, my brain doubles over in pain and resists—and not just because Madame Ada’s Oklahoma pronunciation would be enough to make anyone cringe. You don’t have to know French to know
that oui doesn’t sound like “wee-ah.”
“What’s going on?” I ask Hannah Wet/Dry.
She turns from me and tears a sheet of paper from her spiral notebook before flipping back to her class notes. She carefully writes on the free page, pausing periodically to etch French words in her notebook. I wait patiently for her to pass me the note, but first, she pauses to rip all the rough edges from the paper where it was attached to the spiral binding. She carefully stacks up the little pieces of paper on the corner of her desk. Finally, she hands the note across to me. I unfold it.
Mrs. Temple announced that we will have an assembly during third period. Didn’t you see the reporters outside? They are here because Mrs. Temple has something really big to announce. Did you do your French homework? We had a quiz this morning. You missed it.
I smack my hand on my forehead. I’d forgotten about the quiz. And, no, I didn’t do my French homework, although I had carried the book home with me and cracked it open once last night before I decided that I really didn’t feel like doing French homework. A brief stab of panic infiltrates my chest. I may be looking at my first grade lower than an A since I began my education in preschool. Melissa forced me to get out of bed today, but I still missed chemistry for the second time this week—and it’s only Tuesday. And now a French quiz. I put my head on my desk and zone out. Why bother trying?
I find Dizzy after class, and we head to the bathroom so she can touch up her makeup—just in case one of the reporters wants to interview her. By the time we get to the gym, it’s full. The reporters have been cordoned off into the space behind the basketball hoop near the east doors. Their cameras are scanning the crowds, and we all stare back at them from the rows of hard bleachers. I feel like I’m in a zoo.
“Shhh,” Hannah Wet/Dry says to everyone behind her as Mr. A.—the gym teacher, who has never worn anything but shorts in his life, as far as I can tell—tries to get everyone to quiet down. “Mr. A. is trying to start the assembly, and I can’t hear anything.” Hannah Wet/Dry puts her finger to her lips.
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