To the Power of Three

by Laura Lippman

  “Perri’s crazy,” Kat said. “There’s no talking to her. She’s probably still pissed that I got the part she wanted in the school musical.”

  “Kat’s the one who won’t talk to me,” Perri said. “Ask her why. Make her tell why I’ve been banished from her life.”

  But Josie did not dare ask, fearful that Kat would freeze her out in the same way she had exiled Perri. And while neither girl pressed Josie to take sides, it was natural for her to gravitate toward Kat. They were on the cheerleading squad together. Kat picked her up for school each day. Perri’s silences grew colder, more noticeable. If Josie had believed she could put the three of them back together again, she would have interceded. But if Kat could drop Perri, then she could drop Josie, too.

  On the morning of June 4, Kat had picked up Josie for school as usual. They needed to be there early, for a run-through of a cheer routine that would be performed at the last-day-for-seniors rally. They were in Kat’s car—a used Mercedes that her father had justified on the grounds that it was safe—when her cell phone buzzed. Dutiful Kat, however, had promised her father she would never dial and drive, so she asked Josie to grab it.

  “It’s a text message,” Josie said. “From Perri. She wants us to meet her in the north wing girls, second floor.”

  The “us” was a little presumptuous. The text message had been for Kat alone. Josie tried to rationalize that Perri had to know that Josie and Kat would arrive at school together.

  “Perri,” Kat said, “can go fuck herself.”

  Josie had never heard Kat say anything so blunt, so naked. Oh, sometimes late at night—sitting by the reservoir, allowing themselves a beer or two just to be companionable with their jock friends—Kat might have let a profanity fly. But it was unusual.

  “What if it’s important?”

  “Believe me, it’s not. Just more drama from the drama queen.”

  “Please, Kat.” Josie seldom argued with Kat, but she missed Perri, missed the three of them. It would be so sweet if they could reconcile before graduation. “Please go see her?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll go. I want to hear what she has to say.”

  “No.” Kat sounded almost panicky at the thought. “Okay, we’ll both go. But I’m telling you, she’s crazy. You can’t believe anything she says.”

  The bathroom was empty when they arrived, with no sign of Perri.

  “See?” Kat said, brushing her hair and then applying lipstick. “Just more Perri drama.”

  Josie tried one of the stalls. The door was locked, but when she glanced beneath the door, she didn’t see any feet. The one next to it had an out-of-service sign taped to it. She was moving down the row, to the third and final stall, when Perri came into the bathroom.

  This part happened just as Josie had said. Perri locked the door and removed a gun from her knapsack, an orange-and-black JanSport she hadn’t carried all year. And yes, Josie knew what knapsack Perri carried, noticed what she wore, even what she had for lunch as she hunkered in a corner of the cafeteria with Dannon Estes. Her eyes had been following Perri all year, she realized. Perri came in, and she locked the door. This much was true.

  But she never pointed the gun at Kat, not on purpose. She held it to her own head.

  “I’m going to kill myself, Kat. If you won’t admit what you did, I’m going to kill myself right here in front of you and Josie and leave you to explain it. I’ve decided I’m willing to sacrifice myself rather than let you go on pretending you’re so innocent and pure.”

  Kat had tried, for a moment, to keep her back to Perri, to maintain eye contact only with her own reflection. But when Perri placed the gun against her own temple, Kat turned and faced her.

  “Perri…” Her voice was—But Josie could not put her finger on what Kat’s voice conveyed. Concern? Yes. Fear? No. Kat was never scared. Perhaps she thought it was a prop gun, stolen from the drama department. The thought had occurred to Josie, too. This was not real. It could not be. Perri was playacting.

  “Go ahead. Tell Josie. Tell her how you tried, for once, to concoct your own scheme. You told Seth Raskin to go to the Snyders’ farm. You told him to do something that would scare Binnie, but in an indirect way so no one could ever connect you to it. You took what I said about Binnie having a nervous breakdown and you tried to make it happen.”

  “I didn’t. I told you that I had nothing to do with it.”

  Perri had been carrying her knapsack over her left shoulder. She put it down now but continued to hold the gun to her temple. “No, I can’t prove anything. Which is why you need to confess once and for all.”

  “I never asked them to do anything. Seth asked me why I was upset one day, and I told him. That was all. I didn’t ask him to do anything about it.”

  “You never ask anyone for anything. You don’t have to. You never did. Ever since we were kids, people have tried to guess what you wanted and do it before you asked. Everyone thinks it’s such a goddamn privilege, taking care of Kat Hartigan.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  Josie, almost without noticing, had backed herself against the stall in the corner. She was at once fascinated and repelled, incapable of breaking her gaze, desperate to disappear.

  “If crazy is being willing to die for something you believe in, for a principle, then I’m that crazy, Kat. Agree to apologize to Binnie, or I’ll shoot myself, right here. Explain yourself to Binnie—or explain my death to everyone else.”

  “I didn’t do anything to Binnie,” Kat said. “Her parents sent her away to spend the summer with relatives after the pigs were killed, so she didn’t take the summer course. But she still got into MIT, with practically a free ride.”

  “It’s a good thing she got financial aid, given that those pigs were going to be auctioned for her college fund. Who was the anonymous donor who stepped forward and made restitution for the animals anyway? Your father?”

  “Leave my father out of this.” Kat had always been hard to anger, but any mention of her parents brought this edge to her voice.

  “Why? Your father’s always inserting himself into your life. Making sure you don’t get zoned into the bad middle school. Practically bribing Mrs. Paulson to change the class-ranking system for your benefit. Mr. Delacorte even offered Binnie an internship last summer, out of the blue, but she turned it down. Mr. Delacorte, your father’s friend, offering Binnie a job that would keep her from going to summer school—was that a coincidence?”

  “Shut up,” Kat said. “My dad didn’t do anything.”

  “Your dad didn’t do anything. You didn’t do anything. No one in your family ever does anything. Unless it’s noble and visionary, of course. Well, I’m going to do something, Kat. I’m going to pull this trigger and leave you and Josie to answer all the questions. Do you think Josie will take your side now, now that she knows? Let’s see.”

  Perri and Kat turned to Josie, who was struck dumb. She did not want to be the referee in this ugly fight. She did not want to believe what Perri said, yet she could see that it explained so much. The Delacortes—Perri had gone to work for them this fall, and it was this fall that she had become so cold and odd toward Kat.

  Even as she tried to process all Perri had said, the third stall banged open and Binnie Snyder emerged, face paler than ever, red hair bristling. Had Binnie been there all the time? She must have been, yet Josie had not seen her feet when she checked under the stalls. Binnie had been there waiting for them, part of Perri’s last big production at Glendale High School. Who needed Our Town when you could stage your own drama?

  “Stop it,” Binnie screamed at Perri. “This is insane. You didn’t say anything about a gun. You could get us all expelled. You told me that Kat wanted to come here today to confess and apologize. This is stupid.”

  She had a cell phone in one hand, which she threw to the tiled floor with such force that its battery pack fell off. The body of the phone skidded on the bathroom’s slick tiles, and Binnie, her long, pale arms
windmilling wildly, reached for the gun in Perri’s hand even as Josie thought, but could not find the voice to say, No, Binnie. It’s a game, a play, an act. Don’t, Binnie. Perri is just staging a big moment. It’s probably not even a real gun. Where would Perri get a real gun? No one we know has guns.

  Perri tried to hold the gun away from Binnie, but Binnie managed to grab her wrist and then the gun itself, her hand closing over Perri’s as they struggled. Josie could tell that Perri was trying to hold the weapon as far away from her own body as possible, and that was the only reason her arm was pointing straight out, toward Kat, when the gun went off. A second or two passed, seconds in which hope abounded, for Kat looked more puzzled and surprised than anything else. Then she sank to the floor and, in her very Kat-like way—polite, silent, asking for nothing—died.

  Was there a scream? If so, whose was it? All Josie could remember was feeling as if her green-and-yellow sandals were made out of concrete, or stuck to the floor with some invisible glue. Just a few feet away, Perri was making odd, strangled moans, quite unlike any sound that Josie had ever heard. Josie knew she should go to her, help her, but she was frozen. Perri pressed the gun against her temple, even as Binnie swatted at it, screaming “No.” But all Binnie achieved was moving the gun a few inches, so the bullet entered closer to Perri’s cheekbone, transforming that dear, sharp face into something horrible.

  Through all of this, from the moment that Perri had entered the room, Josie had not moved, had not spoken.

  “We were never here,” Binnie said, breathing so hard her chest heaved up and down, as if she had just been in a race, and her features were tight and ugly. Her thinking face.

  “But—”

  “We have to leave now. They’ll find them, and it will look like what it is. Perri shot Kat, then killed herself. That’s all anyone needs to know.”

  “But—”

  “Josie, there’s no time. Let’s go.” Binnie gathered up the cell phones—the broken one she had dropped, the one that Kat had placed next to her lipstick, the one from Perri’s knapsack.

  “We don’t want them to see the call logs. Now, let’s go.”

  “I can’t go,” Josie said. “They’re hurt.”

  “They’re dead, Josie. And if you’re smart, you’ll leave yourself out of it. As for me, I was never here. You owe me that much.”

  She left with her armful of cell phones, running in her strange, loping style, and it was only when she was gone that Josie thought of objections, arguments, counterpoints. She owed Binnie no loyalty. She wasn’t going to lie for Binnie. But if she told why Binnie was there, she would have to tell the other whys, and Kat would never want that. Even with Perri holding a gun, Kat had tried to hold on to this secret.

  So what should Josie tell the police when they arrived? Why was she here? Why hadn’t she left and gone to get help for her friends? Binnie was right; she should have run, but it was too late now. Rescuers could arrive at any moment, catch her trying to slip away. But if they found her here, then there should be a reason she couldn’t leave, right? She should be injured, too. If she were injured, she would not be questioned. And no one would have to know that she had simply stood there, incapable of doing anything, as her friends died.

  The gun had fallen next to Perri’s body. Josie picked it up, examined it. How hard could it be to fire a gun? This one had gone off by accident, after all, and gone off again even as Binnie tried to prevent Perri from firing it. She hadn’t wanted to live, Josie realized. With Kat dead, Perri didn’t want to live. Should she make the same choice? Did she owe her friends that much? She placed the gun to her head, as Perri had. But the fact was, she did not want to die. Stranger still was the shame she felt at this thought. A good person, a true friend, should want to die.

  Instead Josie sat, extended her legs, and braced her feet against the wall, aiming the gun at the place where the thong, topped off with a lovely tulle flower, separated her big toe from the others. The sandals cost $125, an amazing extravagance for Josie, but her mother had agreed they went so beautifully with her graduation dress that they were worth the splurge. She took them off, put them in her knapsack. Then she aimed again, and fired.

  Fuck. It hurt, it really hurt. And there was more blood than she thought there would be. Kat had hardly bled at all, although Perri’s blood was still flowing, terrifyingly constant. Shit, it hurt, it hurt, it hurt.

  The door. She had forgotten to lock the door. Perri had locked the door, so the door should be locked, right? She did not stop to think this through but forced herself to hop to the door, turn the lock, and then hop back again. And the gun. She had touched the gun. What if they took fingerprints? She would explain that she tried to take the gun away from Perri, tried to keep her from shooting herself. Shooting herself or Kat. And Perri shot Josie in the foot, then shot herself. Yes, that was it. Josie had grabbed for the gun, trying to take it away from Perri, but Perri had shot Kat, then shot Josie and shot herself. That all worked. That would make everyone happy. Binnie wouldn’t be here. And Josie wouldn’t be a coward who had failed to save one friend, then failed to die with another.

  If she had to do it over again, she would have told the truth from the very beginning. She wouldn’t have let Binnie leave. She wouldn’t have gotten up to lock that bathroom door, leaving those drips of blood that had showed she was lying almost the very start. She wouldn’t have removed her sandals and hidden them in her knapsack, much less arranged for Binnie to come get them later on, hiding them wherever she had tossed the cell phones. If she had to do it over again—but she did, Josie realized. That was the epiphany that had come to her onstage at graduation. She had to tell the truth, because Perri wasn’t going to do it for her. Until the moment she had heard of Perri’s death, she had been counting on just that. Perri was the talker. Perri was the one who was supposed to explain things. Let Perri tell.

  “And you wouldn’t have shot yourself,” the sergeant put in.

  “No,” Josie said. “I think I still might have done that.” Then she flushed, as if she hadn’t meant to say that last part out loud.

  “How can you say such a thing?” her father demanded. “The risk you took, picking up a gun, shooting yourself. You could have hit a major artery in your leg and ended up bleeding to death. How can you not see how foolish it was?”

  “We made a vow,” Josie said. “I told you—we made a vow.”

  august

  38

  Every August in Maryland, there comes a moment when the wind shifts and, although the days remain hot and the nights humid, it is clear that something has changed. Summer is giving up, preparing to leave. It may linger for another few weeks, but its back has been broken, and everyone knows it. People suddenly have more energy, and only the youngest children mourn the passing of summer and the coming of school. Everyone else is eager for fall to arrive.

  It was on such a day that Sergeant Harold Lenhardt asked Vik and Susie Patel if he could talk to their daughter, just one more time. They gave their permission reluctantly. They knew, intellectually, that the homicide sergeant had not caused them any harm; he was nothing more than a messenger, one who had no way of knowing what he was delivering. Still, they didn’t like him much and couldn’t help feeling he was somehow at fault for what they had been through.

  Josie, however, didn’t mind Lenhardt at all. Her only grudge against him was that he had provoked her into ruining her best sandals, the very ones that she had been trying to save. She had given them to Binnie, who arranged for them to follow the cell phones—into the Muhlys’ compost pile.

  “We’re releasing all the evidence, since the grand jury wrapped up,” he told Josie. They were in her room, at her insistence. Even when her parents were at work, she preferred the privacy of her room. “We don’t really have much of your stuff, but I thought you might want to see this.”

  He handed her a piece of paper with just two lines: “I ask only that the truth be told. Love, Perri.” The word “only” had been
crossed out. Josie studied the familiar handwriting, unsure what was expected of her.

  “What does this have to do with me?”

  “Well, nothing.” The sergeant perched on Josie’s bed almost gingerly, as if he feared mussing the spread. “We didn’t even present it to the grand jury, because it didn’t seem to have any bearing on anything. The thing is, Josie—why would Perri write something like this? It was addressed to Kat Hartigan, mailed that morning. But what was the point? She was already planning on confronting her at school. Why mail the letter?”

  “Could there be more to it, another page?” Josie asked. “It seems kind of…truncated for Perri.”

  “If there was another page, it never surfaced. Her parents looked, even checked her computer, but as you can see, she wrote it by hand, and there’s no evidence of an earlier draft. And, well, I can’t help wondering—what if this was a suicide note? What if Perri really did mean to kill herself and sent this just to torment Kat?”

  “No.” Josie shook her head, resolute. “You’d have to know her. To have known her.” She was still having trouble with tenses.

  “I’ll have to take your word for it. I’m just glad that Binnie Snyder’s testimony cleared up that locked stall door. That never did stop nagging at me.”

  “Well, she was hiding, right? She was standing on the toilet and waiting for us to come in, because Perri had promised her she was going to get Kat to confess.”

  “Right, but she unlocked the door to her stall. And I understand why the out-of-order stall was locked. It was the other one, the one that wasn’t in use—the one where I found—Anyway, I never did understand that. Binnie explained that Perri told her to lock all three and hide in one, so that if anyone came in, they would end up leaving.”

  “See, that was Perri,” Josie said. “She had it all planned out.”

  “Yeah, Binnie went into the first stall and…um, used it but realized she didn’t have a good sight line from there. So she crawled under the partitions to the one on the end. And when you and Kat came in, she text-messaged Perri. That’s why she had to take the phones. She didn’t know we could have gotten the transcripts, in time.”