The Window

by Amelia Brunskill

  Sarah frowned. “I don’t remember hearing about that.” She turned to me. “Do you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, I don’t think she was quite caught in the act,” Sarah’s father said, “but the teacher who mentioned it was pretty sure.” Then he paused and laughed. “I mean, usually there might be other interesting reasons why a girl would be in the boys’ bathroom, but apparently she was alone and the ink was still wet when she came out.”

  Wet ink. Boys’ bathroom. A clicking noise started in my brain.

  “Wow,” Sarah’s mom said with a laugh. “I swear, I let you go to one PTA meeting in my stead and you get all the dish. So what happened—did the girl get off scot-free? Or did the teacher report her?”

  “Report her?” He paused. “I don’t know,” he said, turning his attention back to his food, his shoulders suddenly hunched under his shirt. “That was the last— I don’t know what happened after that.”

  The clicking continued, getting louder and louder.

  Girl.

  Ink. Bathroom.

  “Jess?” I wasn’t sure who said it or even if it was the first time. I blinked and found that I was frozen, my water glass halfway to my mouth. The three of them were staring at me, looking worried.

  “Are you okay?” Sarah asked.

  Slowly, deliberately, I put down my glass.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, pushing back from the table. “I don’t feel good.”

  “Is there anything we can get you?” Sarah’s mom asked. “Maybe some Advil? Or maybe you need to lie down?”

  “No,” I said. “I think I need to go home. I think I need to go home right now.”

  Nick is a good guy and he likes you, he said. I’ll delete the photo. You can leave the rest behind you.

  It felt like a path. A way to get back into the light, a way back to resembling the person I used to be.

  A way back to you.

  WHEN WE GOT BACK TO my house, I let Sarah explain to my parents why I was back early as I brushed past them, their faces anxious and concerned. I heard her suggest something about food poisoning or maybe a migraine as I jogged up the stairs. “I’m not sure,” I heard her say. “She seemed fine, until suddenly she wasn’t.”

  “There’s migraine medicine in the bathroom if you need it, sweetheart,” Mom called up the stairs. I paused and nodded down at her before I kept going. A migraine was as good an excuse as anything. Plus, a migraine meant being left alone.

  When I reached the top of the stairs, I didn’t head to the bathroom, didn’t head for my room either. Instead, I went to Anna’s room.

  I pulled her backpack onto the bed and went through her notebooks until I found the right one.

  I flipped through it until I came across what I was looking for. The notes between Anna and Lily.

  I stared at Lily’s handwriting. Particularly the phrase she’d written in all capitals: SO CUTE.

  I looked at the letters carefully. I thought I was right, but it had been a while, and I needed to be sure. Sure that this wasn’t another wrong direction. Another misinterpretation of the facts.

  I tucked Anna’s notebook under my arm.

  I turned off the light.

  Closed the door.

  And opened the window.

  Don’t think about it, I told myself as I put one foot and then the other over the ledge. This isn’t what happened. This isn’t where it happened.

  And so I let go.

  And I hit the ground running.

  * * *

  —

  AS I ENTERED THE SCHOOL’S lit but empty hallway, I heard cheers from the gym, followed by the herdlike sound of feet pounding back and forth.

  This time I didn’t knock before entering the bathroom. This time I didn’t care if I startled some guy into hastily buttoning his fly, didn’t care if someone saw me enter.

  It was empty, though, and that did make it easier, not having to deal with someone asking me questions, asking me to explain. Running here, I’d worried that Mrs. Hayes might have arranged to have another layer or two of paint applied after our conversation, rendering the graffiti invisible. Fortunately, that had not happened. It was still there, obvious when you knew where to look.

  ANNA CUTTER IS A WHORE.

  This time, it felt different. Seeing it. The whole room, in fact, felt different, although nothing had changed—the same musty air, the same red brick that this time I left along the side of the wall. It felt different because this time I didn’t feel like I was alone. This time, in my mind, Mr. Matthews stood beside me, his arms folded. I saw him reach out and lightly touch the ink, still drying. And then I heard him say it again: I don’t think by the end the two of them were that close.

  I’d thought those words were nothing more than an attempt to make me feel better, but when I compared the writing to the letters in the notebook, I knew he’d been right. By the end, they weren’t close at all.

  Because now I knew who Anna had sent the second selfie to.

  And I suspected that I also knew why someone might have two flasks, why there’d been no toxicology report.

  Because, like the police chief said, parents protect their children.

  So on my way out, I stooped down and picked up the brick.

  I’m buttoning my dress now. Dabbing on some lavender perfume. It’s overkill, maybe, but it feels right somehow, treating this like a first date. A new beginning.

  Lily should be arriving soon. She’ll drop me off before she heads to the party at the quarry.

  I wonder if I should tell her. Not tonight, but soon.

  I don’t know. Maybe it’s too late for me to try to be a good friend.

  THE BRICK WENT THROUGH THE car window more easily than I expected.

  I braced myself for an alarm to start blaring, for someone to rush over and ask what the hell I was doing.

  No alarm went off. There were no footsteps. Perhaps, for once, things would go my way.

  I extracted the brick and set it down on the asphalt. Then, belatedly, I wrapped my sleeve around my hand as I reached back inside to unlock the door, grazing the glass. Blood began to seep from my knuckles.

  I found the first flask almost immediately, nestled inside the glove box. The second proved much harder to locate. It took me a good few minutes before I managed to find it, shoved elbow-deep beneath the front seat. I set it beside the other one on the hood of the car. They were almost identical, distinguished only by a large red dot on the side of the one from beneath the seat. I uncapped them both and put them, one at a time, up to my nose. One of them smelled like alcohol. The other, the flask with the red dot, smelled like nothing at all. Mixed with a drink, there would have been no way for Anna to detect it.

  Nick was her destination, I thought, but this happened before she got there.

  I recapped both flasks, holding them tightly in the crook of my arm.

  “What are you doing?”

  I swung around, hoping it might be anyone other than who it sounded like. But my luck had run out. Because there he was. Charlie. Staring at his shattered car window.

  I didn’t really know what to say, so I looked around the parking lot. It was dark and quiet and we appeared to be very much alone.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be on the court?” I asked.

  “I got fouled out,” he said. “Asshole coach had it in for me. Then I checked my phone and found an alert about someone breaking into my car. Thought I should check it out. Definitely didn’t expect to find you.” His tone was curiously neutral, and I noticed that his posture was looser than normal, almost like he was swaying. He may not have been drunk, exactly, but he certainly wasn’t sober.

  “I thought you didn’t drink before games.”

  “The game is over. Over for me, anyway. So I helped myself to some of Trent’s water
bottle o’ vodka—made sitting on the bench a little easier.” He took a step closer, and the hoodie he’d pulled over his basketball jersey swung open. Right in the center of his jersey was a huge number five. Another piece slotted in.

  “Power forward, number five,” I said. “PF5.”

  His eyebrows flicked up before he managed to pull them down again.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “It’s how you entered your number in Anna’s phone.”

  He frowned. “I thought her phone was broken. That’s what my da—” Then he stopped short. But not short enough.

  “That’s what your dad told you?” I filled in.

  He looked at me for a moment, then shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance. “It’s a small town, and people talk, Jess. I’m sure I’m not the only person who heard about the dead girl’s crushed phone.”

  The dead girl.

  “You were sleeping with her,” I said. “The least you could do is use her name.”

  He began to shake his head, but I cut him off.

  “Don’t deny it. I know you guys were together.”

  “How?” he asked. Not like he was admitting it—more like he was testing me, preparing to disprove my claim.

  All the threads, all the things that got me here felt too convoluted, too tenuous. So I decided to make it simple, to say what I wished had been the truth.

  “She had a diary. She wrote it all down. Everything.”

  I thought he might challenge me. Instead, to my surprise, he laughed. “You know, I wondered about that. She seemed like she might be the diary type.”

  “So you admit it, then?”

  “Fine, we hooked up a couple times. She came on to me, and I went along with it. It was no big deal. I was planning on breaking it off anyway—wasn’t worth the hassle.”

  It all came out so easily, his casting himself in the role of the beleaguered love interest, more than ready to pull the plug. I thought back to the bartender, of how he’d described Anna urging Lily not to tell anyone about her plans, her “date.”

  “If she was so into you, and you couldn’t care less about her, then why was it a secret that Anna was going to see Nick that night? Why would it matter if you knew?” I felt myself tensing with anger. “Why would you even want to be with someone who so obviously didn’t want to be with you?”

  I must have hit home with that, because his face tightened, as though a screw had turned, rearranging his features so they were hard, ugly.

  “Why? Because it wasn’t her call,” he said. “She didn’t get to be the one to end things.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I made that very clear. Because I told her. But then she goes slinking around, trying to get together with someone else? Dragging my best friend into it?”

  His best friend. “Brian?”

  “Oh, Lily told me all about that. How Brian was trying to help pair off Nick and Anna. God, Lily actually thought the four of us would hang out or some shit. That’s why I showed her the photo. So she could see what her friend was really like.”

  I blinked, confused. I’d assumed Lily had found out about him and Anna by accident. “Why did you do that? Why would you have wanted Lily to know you were having sex with Anna?”

  He laughed at that, low and mean. “I didn’t. I told her Anna had been embarrassing herself, throwing herself at me. That I hadn’t wanted to say anything before, what with them being friends and all, but that the four of us hanging out wasn’t going to happen. Said it seemed like a shame for Nick to get involved with someone like Anna. That maybe it would be good for him—Mr. Straight-Edge—to realize she wasn’t as sweet as he thought. Lily agreed. She was so angry I think she would’ve have agreed with anything I said.” He paused, his face tightening again. “Of course, it turned out she wanted everyone, or at least all the boys, to know right away.”

  I put my arm out to steady myself against the car, trying to put it all together.

  “So you drugged Anna to humiliate her in front of Nick? Because you were jealous?”

  “Jealous?” His face flushed, and his voice rose. “No, I wasn’t jealous; I didn’t care about her. She just needed to understand she couldn’t get away with going behind my back, acting like none of it had happened.”

  It hurt to keep on going, but I knew this might be my only chance, so I pressed forward.

  “So you were going to, what, just leave her at Nick’s house? Drugged? That was the plan?”

  “Pretty much. He was supposed to come out and find her all messed up. And if he tried to help her and people thought he had something to do with it, that wasn’t exactly any skin off my back. Or if he decided to help himself instead, if he wasn’t as nice as she thought—well, it didn’t matter to me how it played out.” He paused. “Of course, we’ll never know what he would’ve done, because when we got to his house, his light was on but he wasn’t picking up his phone.”

  Nick was already gone by then, I thought, already driving to the party. He just hadn’t turned off his light.

  Charlie shook his head. “I thought maybe I’d have to call it quits—head on to the party and leave her to sleep it off in the car. And then I saw her look at his window with the light on and then to the tree across from it. The window was way too far away for her to make it, but she was high as a kite, so maybe I nudged her a little. Told her she should climb the tree, try to get to his window. Told her she could make it if she wanted to. Told her it was time she took a bit of a risk, time she tried to fly. And she smiled at me like I’d found the perfect answer, and then she opened the car door.”

  He paused, deliberate, thoughtful—as if he was still working something out. “Lily could have stopped her, I think. Brian couldn’t have reached her in time, but for Lily, sitting right next to her, it should’ve been easy. I even saw her start to reach for Anna’s arm. But then she hesitated. And then we all just watched as she got out of the car, as she ran to the tree. Watched as she fell.”

  His voice took on almost a dreamy quality. “Her fingers did graze the sill, you know. For a moment, I thought she might make it—thought maybe she could fly after all.” Then he shrugged, his voice returning to its normal state. “So there it is: the truth about that night. You’re the only one who wanted it, and now you have it. And that’s that.”

  That’s that. Like there would be no consequences. Like he’d return to the gym and watch the rest of the game from the bench, and I’d simply go home and never say a word.

  “No, I’m going to tell everyone,” I said. “You drugged her, you told her to jump. You’re responsible.”

  He shook his head like he felt sorry for me. “You really think the truth matters, don’t you? But it doesn’t. All that matters is what people believe happened, not what actually did. That’s the beauty of it—me versus you? I’ll always win.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Everyone knows you’re messed up. Even before Anna died, you creeped people out. And you’ve just kept picking at this, while everyone else wants to let the wound heal and move on.”

  “But the tox screen—”

  “It could be passed off as an administrative mistake—a miscommunication, at most. Those happen all the time.”

  “But I’ll tell them everything you told me—”

  He shook his head. “And I’ll tell them that I made the mistake of being nice to you once and you developed some big crush on me—got upset when I kept turning you down, started making up weird stories. Maybe I’ll show them that picture you sent me.”

  “What?” I’d never sent him a picture. Only Anna had….Oh. I shook my head. “It’s not even me.”

  “That doesn’t really matter,” he said, like I was a small child denying some fundamental truth. “Nothing matters other than the fact that I have it and i
t looks just like you.”

  “No, but—” I forced myself to breathe, to calm down. Then I thought about the phone in the quarry and how he’d said he didn’t have Lily’s number because he’d gotten a new phone—one without his old contacts. So I gambled a little. “You couldn’t. You lost your phone that night.”

  “That didn’t matter. I’d backed it up weeks earlier. I mean, a picture like that? I’m not stupid. Come on, Jess. Think about it. Think about how it looks. The photo. You smashing my car window—making wild accusations? Claiming I drugged your sister? And what good would it do for anyone to hear the truth anyway? Hear about her slutting around with her friend’s boyfriend? What good would it do your parents to think about her like that?”

  “Shut up, Charlie. Just shut up.”

  The words were low and steady, and they did not come from my mouth.

  I turned.

  And there was Mona. Her face was pale and tense, and her eyes were fixed on Charlie.

  “Mona.” He paused and collected himself. “Hey, I don’t know what you heard, but Jess is pretty confused—”

  “Shut up,” she repeated. “I heard more than enough.”

  She took a long deep breath and then let it out slowly. There was a ragged edge to it, like the air had cut into her throat as it left her body.

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” she asked, still staring at him.

  And at first I didn’t understand. Because if she’d listened, she knew what he’d done.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Charlie told her. Except there was something about the way he was looking at her that made me think that, unlike me, he did know.

  “I should have realized a long time ago,” she said. “But I thought it was wishful thinking to believe it might have been anyone other than Brian.” She shook her head. “You offered me a ride, didn’t you? Probably minutes after you handed me a drink. My boyfriend’s best friend. I wanted you to like me. I wanted to go home. Of course I said yes.”