by Chris Beakey
She squinted slightly, and found just the right words. “I think her brother wants to give you a blow job.”
“What?”
“I’m serious. You should have heard him working on that display outside the Art League yesterday, talking to one of the other freaks about the aesthetic symmetry or some shit. But of course he got distracted when you walked by.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He said you had a nice ass Marco.”
She heard him gasp.
“And I wasn’t the only one who caught it,” she said. “Tyrone Nichols and Jerome what’s-his-name were walking by and I could tell by the way they glanced at each other they heard it too.”
She waited a moment, for effect.
“I hope they don’t jump you in the locker room or whatever. You know, once word gets around—”
“Holy shit.”
His voice was breathless, as if he’d been punched in the stomach.
“You really shouldn’t be surprised Marco. You already knew Kenneth Porter is that way.”
She heard the squeal of brakes, and imagined him pulling off of the road and overcome with anger. A flighty sensation coincided with the quickening of her heart as she saw Sara Porter’s beat-up Jeep heading toward her, with Kenneth in the passenger seat. Kenneth met her eyes with a shy smile and a tentative wave. She felt a fleeting moment of guilt over the lies she had just told, but decided that in essence they were pretty much true.
“Marco, are you okay?”
“No, Madison, I’m not okay.”
She thought of her mother and the soothing voice she sometimes used after a couple of hours with her “life-coach;” the post-orgasm moodiness that usually precipitated a night of boozy psychobabble.
“It’s really bad for your karma to be angry, Marco.”
She gave Kenneth Porter an exaggeratedly sweet smile as the Jeep rolled by, and then glanced at a group of fellow cheerleaders who had gathered on the sidewalk; all of them waiting for her to step out and accompany them so they could proceed, as a group, into the school.
“But you need to find a way to deal with it if you are.”
Sara had a bad feeling in the brief moment of eye contact with Madison in the parking lot and tried to ignore it as she dropped Kenneth off and watched him head into school. He hadn’t said a word to her in the car, and had been noticeably nervous, gripping his black leather portfolio as if he was terrified someone was going to suddenly rip it away. She felt badly about the way she had talked to him at breakfast, knowing that she had only added to the anxiety of another day at a new school without a single friend to count on.
The sense of doom stayed with her all the way into the afternoon, and spiked with the text message from Madison that arrived during the last class of the day.
fuck u
It was a clear escalation from the one-word text—FREAK—from the morning. The message had stunned her when she had read it in the kitchen, in front of her father and Kenneth. It was cruel, even for Madison, and she could only hope that eventually her former friend would get bored and find someone else to torture.
She glanced at the clock over the door and was relieved to see the hour ending. She closed her laptop and slipped it into her shoulder bag just as the bell began to ring. On the way to the door she had to walk past a girl who was part of the clique that followed Madison’s every move. She made a feeble effort to offer the girl a distant smile. Over the past few days she had attempted to adapt an attitude—or at least an appearance—of indifference to her lack of friends, but she knew that her emotions were betraying her. She was almost certain that Madison and her crew knew she spent much of every day on the very edge of tears.
Just get past her, she told herself. Don’t give her another thought.
Langford Secondary combined grades seven-through-twelve and sprawled over acres and acres of what had once been a big farm. Sometimes it took a full five minutes to get from one class to the next. Fortunately, her next period was in the immediately adjacent wing, and designated as her tutoring time for Aidan O’Shea, a sweet, sensitive, autistic eighth grader who probably wouldn’t have even been at Langford without the guidance of Kieran, his beloved older brother.
As always her mood lifted with the certainty that Kieran would come by the tutoring center at the end of the session. After so many weeks of “friendship” she still felt as if she was under some kind of spell every time she looked into his beautiful pale blue eyes or ran her fingers through his wavy, black hair, or simply gazed at him as he walked the hallways, a teacher who somehow got away with wearing jeans and steel-toed boots and silver studs in his ear, projecting an almost forbidding sense of authority and a mysterious, irresistible vibe.
The happy feeling stayed with her as she passed the Art Wall, a large cinder block space at the interior of the building that had skylights instead of windows and a long wall that had been turned into a display space for the most creative and least popular oddballs in the entire school.
As expected, Kenneth was there, sitting on the tile floor, his attention focused on the sketchpad on his knees. Last week he had told her that his art teacher had given him his first “commission”—a large collage for the wall that would combine photography, graffiti art, and picture frames placed in what Kenneth had called “a deliberately random way along the whole piece.” She had rolled her eyes and called him “pretentious” but had actually been interested in what he came up with. So far the wall was blank but there were two large leather satchels leaning up against it, most likely containing some of the photographs Kenneth had either taken or gathered from the innumerable places in the cyberspace where he spent most of his time.
Even from a distance she could tell he was completely absorbed in whatever he was drawing. She glanced at her watch, told herself don’t worry, he’s fine, and turned around to head to her class.
Everything that happened next occurred very quickly. At the far end of the hall, amid the dense crowd of students in motion, she caught sight of Kieran, standing with his arms folded across his chest, playing the role of hall monitor but somehow finding her, focusing on her across the vast space. The connection between them felt like an electric current, a hum that vibrated through her whole body as she gazed back. She stood completely still but she felt him touching her from a distance; felt a tingle in her breasts and the feather-light brush of his lips, his hands stroking her neck and running through her hair…
She wanted to walk toward him but found that she couldn’t move. Even so her knees were vibrating as if an electrical current bad become trapped within her. She stayed that way for an infinite moment before a loud smack made her turn around. She saw Kenneth standing, and then walking backwards, his eyes wide with terror at the sight of Marco Niles advancing. There was a forward hunch in Marco’s broad shoulders and his fists were balled at his sides. She had a brief view of the tile floor as the crowd parted around them, saw the scattered photos and realized that the smacking sound had come from the leather portfolio, upended by Marco and then tossed back down.
Marco shouted “Faggot!” the word cutting like a firecracker through the air.
Panic flooded her thoughts but she remembered what she had told herself she would do when this finally happened.
A witness; a teacher; you need a teacher to witness—
She spun around; searched frantically for Kieran; saw nothing but the blur of teenagers; turned back toward Kenneth, hidden now, hemmed in by a tight circle of football players—Marco’s friends—blocking the view. But then Kenneth’s head rose briefly above the crowd. She realized then that he was being lifted off his feet by Marco Niles and heard a sickening umph as he was slammed backward against the wall; heard it again as she rushed toward her brother and screamed “GET AWAY FROM HIM” just as a fist flew backward, hitting her hard in the stomach and knocking her to her knees.
<
br /> Bright white light flashed in her vision as Marco stepped aside and gave her a full-on view of Kenneth, his eyes half-open and dazed, the blood streaming from his nose as he slid down the pale yellow cinder block wall.
“They’re ruling it as a suicide, Stephen. I’m really, really sorry.”
Denise Wong’s voice sounded as if it was coming from the end of a long tunnel, her tone as surreal as the message she was conveying. Unable to respond, Stephen pinched the space between his eyebrows and shut his eyes. In quick, flickering images he saw his wife coming briskly down the stairs and pulling her jacket and umbrella out of the hall closet; recalled her drawn, anxious expression during the mysteriously awkward conversation in the foyer; his mind capturing in freeze-frame the downward tilt of her head as she stepped out the door and into the rain.
Her last-minute appointment with the decorator they had hired for the new house had been scheduled for 9 p.m. At 8:45, according to the official police report, a driver had rounded a bend and seen her Lexus at the bottom of Brighton Gorge, filling with water from a flooded stream. The man had called 911 and then climbed down the embankment, and had nearly been swept away by the fast-moving current as he tried to reach her.
“The investigators are wrong,” he said. “Lori would never…”
He looked at the closed door of his office and fought to hold back the tears.
“I honestly don’t believe it either,” Denise told him. “Unfortunately the lead investigator said he can only look at the physical evidence.”
The evidence. No seat belt despite the fact that Lori always buckled up. No sign that she ever touched the brakes. No way to challenge the investigator’s estimates that his wife had hit a speed of 70 mph as the car struck the guard rail, then flipped and tumbled down the gorge.
“They’re only seeing what they want to see,” he said.
Denise was silent. In the weeks leading up to this moment she had advised him of his right to contest the decision that would be made by the insurance company’s claims department if it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. She had assured him there would be “due recourse,” but not without expensive lawyer fees, and depositions, and arguments that would dredge up the details of Lori’s death again and again.
He had also endured numerous conversations with the Frederick Sheriff’s Department Detective, which had been repetitive and draining.
Something’s not right, Mr. Porter.
Call me Stephen.
All right, Stephen. I think we need to go over this again.
He turned his attention back to Denise. “Did the committee look at Detective Caruso’s statement?”
He heard the click of her fingers on a keyboard and a sense of resignation in her voice as she responded.
“They looked at everything, including the report that came in last week.”
Stephen sat up straighter. “Last week?”
“There was an addendum from Detective Caruso. Basically just saying that the investigation would be ongoing, which means, I think, that he also still has questions. But he reiterated the medical examiner’s determination of the cause of death.”
Stephen pressed his fist against his lips and thought once again about the circumstances that had been in the initial report:
The malfunctioning airbag.
Her head hitting the windshield.
The water rushing in.
“He also conveyed his concerns about the note,” Denise said.
The note had been addressed to “My Wonderful Family.” Stephen had found it underneath the hand mirror on Lori’s chest of drawers the day after she died. It was typewritten, and printed out on plain white paper, and unsigned. Just a simple short letter describing her “deep sadness” and desire to end her life. It had been dated the day of her death, but Stephen had found no trace of it on the computer he and Lori shared, nor on those used by Sara and Kenneth.
“I told Detective Caruso, Lori did not write that note.”
“Well I’m here for you if you have any other questions,” Denise told him. Her voice sounded more grounded now, more in tune with her professional persona as a representative of the insurance company that went by the slogan, “Agents for Life.” Stephen remembered her office walls were covered with Asian art conveying various symbols of luck and fortune.
The thought of those images only made him feel more worn-out as he whispered the question that had been at the front of his mind for five months.
“What am I gonna tell my kids?”
Your mother loved you, he thought. She would never leave you.
“Stephen, I’m so sorry. If you need to talk to someone—”
He set the receiver down on the desk, disconnected the line, and felt a hollow, scraping sensation at the back of his throat as the receptionist buzzed him.
He hit the speaker button. “I’m not taking any calls, Carole. I need to be left alone.”
“It’s Sara calling. From school. She said it’s urgent, Stephen. I think she’s crying.”
Sara made the call to her father in the hallway outside the school clinic where Kenneth sat in a chair while the nurse tried to stop the bleeding from his nose. He had cried for a couple of minutes after the fight, his face bright red with rage and humiliation. She had tried to hug him; he had abruptly pushed her away. By the time the nurse came in she was shaking uncontrollably and feeling her brother’s embarrassment as if it was her own.
Her stomach was still tender from the blow that had knocked her down. She tilted her head away from anyone who might have been walking by, and told her father just a few details about what had happened. She regretted making the call as soon as she started talking—knowing it would have been better to say nothing and just hope the incident went unreported. So she did her best to minimize it by telling him you’ll only make it worse for us by getting involved and hoping he didn’t march out to the school and demand that someone do something. Because in truth there was nothing that could be done. Langford Secondary had strict rules about fighting and every incident that she knew of had resulted in both students being suspended.
She also knew that any punishment directed toward Marco Niles would only make him angrier, and more determined to hurt her brother again.
“It was just an argument, dad. Kenneth has a bloody nose and a bump on his head. The nurse wants him to rest awhile and then I’ll drive him home.”
Her father demanded more information but she begged off, claiming that she had to get to class. She headed toward the school’s back wing as she hung up, feeling lightheaded and disconnected from reality as she moved down two flights of stairs in a hallway filled with the sharp smell of industrial cleaner. She went through two sets of heavy double doors and stepped into another hallway where she heard the squeal of mechanized saws and the pounding of hammers and competing tracks of country and rap music as she moved past the various workshops where the vo-tech kids spent their time.
It was 2:15, the beginning of Kieran O’Shea’s forty-five-minute break; a special benefit, he had told her, granted because of the unique demands of his day. Her knees were still shaking from nerves and she felt as if she might actually faint as she stepped into his office. He caught her with one arm behind the small of her back and quickly shut the door. She heard the faint click of the lock sliding into place. Then he had her in his arms, in the corner of the room, carefully out of sight from anyone who might have looked through the frosted glass window.
She rested her head on his chest and let the tears roll down her face. Kieran said nothing. He didn’t need to. He just let her cry, in his office, behind the safety of the locked door. She felt his fingers gently kneading the back of her neck and the firmness of his muscles as he held her—
And realized something was wrong.
His eyes were bloodshot, and there were dark circles underneath them. She felt a slight quiver in hi
s upper body as he held her.
“Kieran, are you all right?”
He still looked distracted, and she wasn’t even sure he heard her, until he nodded slightly. When he licked his lips she thought he might kiss her. Instead he used his fingertips to wipe away her tears, and then slowly released her.
She looked at the computer screen on his desk. He was logged onto one of the local TV stations. The words BREAKING NEWS flashed in bright red letters across the screen. She remembered how the same TV station had covered her mother’s death, with stories that showed the smiling photo they had taken from her Facebook page and descriptions of the winding mountain roads and references to “unanswered questions” that swirled around the mechanics of what had happened.
Kieran took her hands in his own, drawing her back to him.
“What’s wrong, Sara?”
“Didn’t you see?” Her mind flashed on the instant before the attack, the connection that had drawn her to him across the crowd. “Kenneth—by the Art Wall?”
He frowned, and slowly shook his head.
“It was just a second after I saw you in the hallway, during the class change. My brother got beat up. Marco Niles threw him against the wall and knocked him out. I tried to help him but one of Marco’s friends elbowed me in the stomach before I could reach him.”
“That’s really terrible.” He gave her a cautious look, as if he knew she was about to cry again. “You think that slut girlfriend of his put him up to it?”
She flinched, surprised by the intensity of his reaction. She had talked with him at length about Madison Reidy and the problems between them, which seemed inextricably linked to the problems of her life in general. Kieran had never offered much of a response; nothing more than a few words of acknowledgment or a question here and there.
Yet the hard look in his eyes made it obvious that he hated Madison too. She felt her tension easing, because she knew that she could talk with him about absolutely anything.