Justin gestures for the check. “It’s on me. On DROP, I should say.”
She smiles, but his gesture only makes her feel more awkward. The gulf between them is bigger than she realized. Age. Expertise. Money. Never mind all the details to whatever story he’s about to publish. A story she’d thought she had to herself, that she may have none of whatsoever.
“You’re still holding something back,” she says randomly.
“I’m holding a ton back.”
She sighs. “It’s such a crazy story.”
He stares at her. “I’m so soft. Okay, tomorrow, come with me.”
“Where? When?”
“Eight a.m., Denny’s. It’s right down the street.”
“I know where the Denny’s is.”
“I’m meeting the girl. For a follow-up. At the very least you’ll get an introduction. Once my story’s up, as far as I’m concerned it’s all yours. At least until everybody else gets in town.”
“Seriously? That would be great, Justin. I really appreciate it.”
“No problem.”
“So you think people will?”
“Will what?”
“Show up.”
Justin stares at her for a moment, as if he’d misjudged her. He says, “This town is going to be overrun within a week.”
* * *
White people. White culture. Memories of a mostly white childhood. The Whitehall quarry, perpetual hangout of local kids as white as snow. Antique off-white houses triumphed by oak trees, bark fading to flax. White pines. White mountains. White trucks with beige camper shells. Plus any and all Anglo-Saxon seagulls, Styrofoam cups in puddles, wishy-washy bodies on the sand. Seashell collections. Cream poured into coffee. Toddlers in bone-colored Synchilla. Not to mention all the Caucasian retirees who sit around town in folding chairs, with faces like so much yellowed lace.
Early the next morning, Leela drives around Claymore and sees the town with fresh eyes, New York eyes. It’s surreal to be home but not of home anymore. The old houses, the barns, the clipped lawns that are disproportionately green compared to other colors in sight. It all now looks editorial, like a New England postcard, or is that just her?
Then the layers begin to flake away. By the ocean are portions of embankments where storms for years had cut away ground and carried off land. She drives by the dollar-beer bars near the ocean—the Harbor, Dave’s Dockside—that seemed so dangerous when she was sixteen, and now they just look seedy. The Sundial’s still standing, the site of her first real kiss, the summer before junior year.
She stops at a stoplight. Tourists cross the road. She parks in the public lot and walks down to the beach. On the way a skinny homeless kid tries to sell her weed, no matter the hour. His hands are tattooed with elephant heads. She turns him down. He whispers, “Bitch,” then to his dog, “Gronk, move,” and sidles on.
Low tide. She takes off her sneakers. She stands in the water until her ankles sting from cold. She smiles. She feels a tiny surge of trouble, but in a good way. Nerves she can use.
There’s a story here, she knows it. And she’s the perfect person to write it.
The day before, with Justin, she’d been careful not to give any noticeable indication that she could tell him one specific thing that she did know about the story: the fact that she’d already met Emily Portis, on the morning before their lunch. Thanks to a post she’d found during a late dumpster dive into social media: a girl at CHS had been mocking an “Emily” over some high school incident, then another kid pointed out that this Emily was the known girlfriend of the kid wanted for those murders. In reply, someone else said that such an Emily happened to work in a shop downtown, a fabric boutique. So Leela had stopped by on her way to the lunch with Justin. She’d had an idea of which store to try; in the same shopping plaza was a used-books store her father loved. She made sure to park on the other side of the lot. Inside the fabric shop were sewing machines, bolts of colored fabric, quilts, and there, behind the register: the girl in question, name-tagged Emily. Leela took a deep breath and introduced herself, explained who she was. She gave her one of the Village Voice business cards to establish legitimacy. The girl was forthcoming, noncommittal, obviously confused. She said she’d talked to one other reporter, a black guy in a tie, Justin something. Leela kept it brief, though she did explain her background, the fact that she, too, was from the area, had even gone to Claymore High. And so, if Emily ever wanted to chat, wanted a chance to tell her story, then perhaps a young woman from Claymore would better understand what a young woman from Claymore was going through.
Leela leaves the beach, drives to Denny’s, the breakfast crowd of retirees. Justin and Emily are just sitting down when she arrives. “Thanks for meeting me again,” Justin says to Emily as she joins them. “I have a few follow-up questions. I hope you don’t mind, this is Leela, another journalist.”
“I know,” Emily says. “We met yesterday.”
“That’s right,” Leela says. “Sorry I’m late.”
“Wait a second, what?” says Justin. He looks at her, for her to explain.
She’s saved by the girl leaning across the table.
“I want to set the record straight,” Emily says. “That’s why I came.”
“Well, yeah,” Justin says, recovering, coolly. “That’s why we’re here.”
Leela’s impression from the day before, now confirmed in the restaurant, is that Emily Portis is basically an American Girl doll come to life. Outdoorsy, confident, attentive, though braced by watchfulness, with an edge of agitation and too much need behind her face. The girl’s only sixteen, Leela remembers; it’s easy to forget. She seems a lot older than her years.
“So I was hoping we could run over a few of the questions I asked you the other day,” Justin says. “To see if you had any further thoughts.”
“Okay.”
“Some of these questions may get a little delicate.”
“I understand.”
Leela butts in, “Can I ask? Why are you talking to us?”
“Leela—”
“Like I told him,” Emily says quickly. “I don’t want any rumors out there. And he said,” indicating Justin, “that this will help Nick’s case.”
“I said it might,” Justin says. Glancing at Leela: What the hell?
“Well, I’ll do anything,” says Emily. “For the truth to come out.”
“Do you think you’ve been misrepresented?” Leela asks.
“What do you mean?”
“In the press. I mean, have you been represented at all? You said you don’t want any rumors out there.”
The girl looks at Justin, then back at Leela, animated by her confusion.
“I just mean,” Leela says, “have you seen something out there that’s untrue?”
“But no one’s asked me anything,” the girl says rigidly. “Besides you guys. Do you mean like stuff on the internet? That’s just gossip.”
“If we can change tack,” Justin says brusquely. “You said the pictures you took were meant for Nick.”
“Of course. Why else would I take them?”
Leela looks at Justin quickly, trying to mask her confusion. What pictures?
“I understand,” he says. “Again, I’m sorry, this is going to be a little tough. I spoke to a young man yesterday, Michael. I believe he goes by Jersey Mike.”
The girl stops dead, staring. “How do you know about that?”
“From what he tells me, his story is pretty different. Which doesn’t mean anything on the surface.”
“He stole them,” says Emily angrily. “I asked you, how do you even know about that?”
“I understand you’re upset. Here’s the thing,” Justin says softly. “Mike says he didn’t steal them. He denies stealing them. I spoke with him last night.”
“That’s crazy.”
“I know, but it’s what he said. So we have to look into it.”
“But it’s a lie. He’s lying. You have to believe me.”
“We do believe you,” Leela says, but she barely gets it out before Justin adds, “He says he saw them just like anybody else has seen them.”
“What ‘anybody else’? That’s not true.”
“He says that you posted them, Emily. For attention. That you wanted them to be seen. I’m sorry, but that’s what he said—it’s right here in my notes. So I have to ask, for the record, do you have any comment on that?”
Leela has no idea what’s being discussed, only that the girl in front of her is starting to crumble. She looks right and left for an exit, she fidgets in her seat. And either Justin doesn’t notice, or he does and wants to push anyway, to some investigative end that Leela can’t fathom.
“Emily,” he says, “I can’t imagine how hard this must be to hear.”
“He stole them,” the girl says. Her voice catches. People around the restaurant turn to watch. She shifts quickly in the vinyl booth, and her voice starts to rise. “Go ahead and ask anybody.” She leans hard across the table. “Alex told me what happened. He saw them on her sister’s computer and stole them and sent them out, that’s how they got online.”
“I’m sure we can trace who posted them,” Leela says, without really knowing what she’s talking about. “It shouldn’t be that hard.”
“Actually, it is hard,” says Justin. “Leela, why don’t you and I talk about this later?” He turns back to the girl. “We’ve got a request in for assistance. I haven’t heard back yet but I’m sure we will soon. In the meantime—”
The girl says, “I’m going to go now.”
“Emily, wait. I understand it’s tough. But it’s your word against his.”
“I’m sixteen. Sixteen.”
Then she’s gone, hurling herself toward the bathrooms.
“What was that?”
“You could have handled that better,” she says.
“Honestly, you went around behind my back? After all I’ve done for you?”
Leela ignores him, gets up, finds the girl in the women’s restroom. She’s drying her cheeks, red and damp, with a paper towel.
“You said you wanted to be my friend.”
“I’m so sorry. Justin and I don’t even work together. We used to work in the same office, that’s it.”
“All of that is lies, what he said.”
“I believe you.”
Leela hands her a tissue packet from her bag.
The girl blows her nose.
“What’s your name again?”
“Leela.”
“I didn’t post those photos.”
“Of course you didn’t. Why would you?”
* * *
It’s been five years since she was eleven, the year she made Father a wreck, turned him into a cave animal who overslept and slouched around the house. It began on the night of her refusal, when she attacked him, when her feelings expanded like flammable gas. Once again, he’d lain down in her bed, the wrinkled sheets, for their Sunday games, and she’d been filled with the normal paralysis, fear, intense shame, and tolerance. But that night, she couldn’t contain it anymore. The feeling surprised her: a full-on stop. He pulled her body onto his. She resisted. He pulled harder. She lunged like a bobcat—and sank her teeth into his arm. At the same time, a horrible fear split her in two. She felt a wild satisfaction, and she was full of guilt and regret and terror, plus an acute sense of betrayal, and badness. What a horrible girl she was! A wild animal.
But instead of killing her, he’d lurched backward and burst into tears, then tossed himself out, into the upstairs hallway, without a word.
Then came the period, several weeks, of dejected looks and disturbed atmosphere. A broken barn window. A coffee table overturned. Even Mother, in the house, in her stupor, seemed to notice something wrong. At the dinner table Emily was made to feel stupid, vain, and callous. He wanted to win the war, to hurt her, and of course he did. Though he didn’t come near her at night ever again.
The next year, she turned twelve. Father was not only back at work, he was elected sheriff after his boss retired, and was constantly out of the house.
Emily drives home from the Denny’s, eyes on fire. Fate locked forward, with her heart galloping alongside. The empty road is lined with sumacs, flowering red and sharp. There’s a large rock on the seat beside her. She squeezes it in her hand. Every inch of muscle in her body clenches with conviction around how much she hates this town, everyone in it, everyone in the county, a twenty-mile radius, for everything they know about her, or think they know.
At a red light, she bashes the rock against the inside of the windshield until it makes a starburst.
Just the other day, a short round woman, dressed like a laundry pile, came into the store to buy yarn and said she wanted to know if she, Emily, and her boyfriend, were aware of the negative impact they’d had on the local economy.
The light changes. The truck roars. Her emotions darken with each passing driveway. Each driveway that leads to a house, inside of which is a computer, a phone, and inside every computer or phone were pictures of her, pictures stared at by someone she didn’t know, someone she’d on no account want to know. But what Emily Portis wants never seems to matter.
Except on two counts.
Two staggering, amazing things.
The first: her father’s in jail. It’s almost impossible to contemplate. She’s been dying to know more ever since she found out. The images stretch and twist in her mind. What he’s saying and doing, how he looks, what he eats.
The second: Nick is free. His attorney got bail approved, somehow payment was made; no one knows by whom. Everything’s mysterious, without explanation. But it doesn’t matter. Suzanne had phoned, said that Emily should be the one to pick him up. She’d gone to the courthouse at the proper hour. The door opened slightly, at the top of the stairs. Suddenly there was Nick, wearing normal clothes as if nothing had happened. He looked up and down the block. He smiled when he saw her and his smile cut her to the heart. She ran, flung forward by need, defenseless and so happy, even a little hurt by the intensity of all the feelings.
For at least a week she’d feared the feelings wouldn’t come back, physically. That she’d become too comfortable writing letters and not needing more. But then he kissed her. No one watched, no one cared. For a moment they were immersed. It felt as good as it ever had. She wanted it to last forever. They pulled back from each other, and the look in his eyes squashed all of her fears.
In the crazy depths of that moment, she’d vowed to care for nothing else ever again. Anything else in the world was just noise, like a television, and she could choose whether or not to watch it, and she chose not.
Before Denny’s, she’d really thought everything was changed for the better.
* * *
A week before the sheriff was arrested, before the media shit hit the fan, everything that went wrong with Nick’s mom started on the night that Martin drove her up to Maine, to the cheap motel, and the screen door on his cabin sprang off its hinges when she knocked.
She was wondering, Suzanne had said a moment later, through the empty doorway, if Martin wouldn’t enjoy getting a drink. The screen door lay to the side like hurricane debris.
It would be a week of surprises. Not all of them bad.
“I don’t drink,” Martin said.
“Who cares? We’ll order wine.”
Tall and dark. Hair wet from a shower, messily put up. Black jeans. Blue top. Darkish lipstick, like raspberry juice.
“No wine either, I’m afraid.”
“You know, you’re a really bleak sort of guy.”
“I can see why you’d think that.”
He’d grabbed his jacket, followed her out into the evening. What else to do? It was dark, testily cold. His back ached from the drive. A fish restaurant was open across the street. Ragged old picnic tables, and a cozy bar inside the entrance. He caught himself in a window’s reflection: craggy, beleaguered, with cheeks like pork chops. People inside were clinki
ng beer bottles. He had an acidic ambivalence toward whatever happened next.
Nick’s mother pulled out a stool and ordered herself a martini. Above their heads was a rack of harpoons. He stood instead of sitting, he asked for a large tonic with lemon. A TV played CNN. The newscaster had Lillian’s hairstyle.
“So you think my son’s guilty,” Suzanne said.
“I wouldn’t be here if I did.”
“What if he is?”
Bitterness welled up inside him, staring at the television, the newscaster’s hair.
“He’s not.”
“It would be ironic.”
“Do you ever think that sort of thing’s genetic?” she said darkly, after a pause.
“That’s a weird thing to say.”
“I’m a mother,” she said. Swallowing nearly half her drink. “Mothers always know the truth.”
His phone rang. The screen displayed a picture of his daughter, on a beach near Los Angeles. He’d been in the city for a conference. She was going through a bad breakup at the time. She got pulled over in the hills, doing seventy in a forty-five. He’d called in a favor to get the ticket bumped—but she didn’t want his help. She said it was deserved, implying: like so much else. They’d argued old arguments. Little things became big things. Camille knew every little way to twist him around. He’d flown back east feeling like he’d done nothing whatsoever, and probably made things worse.
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