This is Our Story

by Ashley Elston

Shep.

  Questions tumble one after another when I replay the conversation with Shep in my head. Why didn’t we talk like that weeks ago? Why did we hide behind all those text messages?

  I thought I knew him before, but now I realize we were just scratching the surface.

  TRANSCRIPT OF THE OCTOBER 8 INTERVIEW AT ST. BARTHOLOMEW HIGH SCHOOL OF JENNA RICHARDS BY DETECTIVE PIERCE, WITH BODY LANGUAGE COMMENTARY BY KATE MARINO

  DET. PIERCE: Jenna, according to your post, you were at a party at River Point the night before Grant Perkins died, is that correct?

  JENNA: Are you going to tell my parents?

  KATE: She’s very nervous. Fidgety. Keeps playing with the bracelets on her arm.

  DET. PIERCE: We had to ask your parents’ permission to speak with you today, so they already know you were there.

  KATE: She flings herself back in the chair.

  JENNA: That’s just great. My dad’s going to kill me when I get home. That’s the one place I’m forbidden to go.

  DET. PIERCE: Why was it forbidden?

  KATE: She leans in close.

  JENNA: Because it’s wild out there. He knows it. Everyone knows it. If you want a guaranteed good time, you go to River Point.

  DET. PIERCE: Tell me about that night. Were there a lot of people…? Was anyone fighting…? Were there any problems?

  KATE: Jenna shrugs, tosses her hair around.

  JENNA: The usual. Some fighting. Some girl puked in the bushes. Everyone was drunk.

  KATE: She sits up quickly. Tucks her hair behind her ear.

  JENNA: But not me. Or my friends.

  DET. PIERCE: Of course you weren’t. Who was fighting?

  JENNA: I don’t know. It was a crazy night. Just before we were leaving…We couldn’t stay long because my dad is a total tyrant. I mean, who has a curfew of ten thirty on a weekend? It’s so ridiculous. I mean, it’s embarrassing. None of my friends were ready to go, but I drove, so…

  KATE: Her hands are flying around and she’s probably rolled her eyes ten times in the last minute and a half. Lots of drama with this one.

  DET. PIERCE: Jenna, back to the party, please.

  JENNA: Oh yeah. Anyway, just before we were leaving, Grant was standing on the counter in the kitchen. He had filled up a couple of water guns with vodka, and he lined some girls up—each a little farther away from the next—and was trying to squirt shots in their mouths. Then he started spraying everyone. And it was going all over the floor and the furniture. John Michael and Grant had been arguing earlier, but now John Michael was really pissed. He told Grant to stop and clean up the mess, but Grant said, “Don’t forget, I’ve got the trump card.” Anyway…John Michael stopped and just looked at him. It was weird.

  DET. PIERCE: Why was it weird? I’d be mad if people were destroying my house.

  KATE: She puts both hands on the table, looks directly at the detective.

  JENNA: John Michael usually doesn’t care about that kind of stuff. I mean, he’s so totally cool with whatever is going on out there. Whatever you want—he has. Or he can get.

  DET. PIERCE: You mean, like alcohol and drugs. That’s the sort of stuff he can get if you need it?

  KATE: Okay, Jenna’s eyes get huge. She is legit freaking out right now.

  JENNA: No! Never. I don’t do drugs. I never said that. Please don’t tell my dad any of this.

  DET. PIERCE: What do you think Grant meant by “trump card”?

  JENNA: Who knows?

  KATE: She’s checking her watch. Looking at the door.

  JENNA: I think I should go back to class now. I have a test this period I shouldn’t miss.

  DET. PIERCE: One last question…What were John Michael and Grant arguing about earlier that night?

  KATE: Jenna tosses her hair around again.

  JENNA: I don’t know. I swear, I don’t know. Can I please go now?

  NOVEMBER 13, 11:32 P.M.

  SHEP: Can’t sleep

  PRIVATE NUMBER: Me either

  The next week crawls by and I’m just going through the motions at school and at work. By looking at us, no one would guess that Shep and I even know each other. It stings when he doesn’t search for me in the crowd, but it seems like the other three River Point Boys have lost some of their interest in me, too.

  I’ve been watching the other boys closer than ever. I see what Shep means when he says Henry is watching him. He does. Shep can’t walk across the room without Henry’s eyes on him at every step. But I think it’s a mistake to discount Logan or John Michael.

  At least Shep and I are back to being able to communicate by phone. And then there’s the notes he leaves me.

  Three days after we met at the tree house, he sent me a text early in the morning telling me to check inside the last volume of the untouched encyclopedias on a shelf in the back of the library.

  I raced over there the second I got on campus and pulled out a folded piece of paper in the shape of a triangle. There were words written on one side:

  One of my favorite things

  I smile now, just thinking about it. In the tree house, I had asked him to tell me something no one else knew. Something that would surprise me.

  And he told me he loved to draw. He was embarrassed to talk about it when I started asking questions. But before he left that night, I asked him to draw something for me, draw one of his favorite things.

  He drew a picture of me, lying on my side, one hand propped up under my head. My long hair is loose and falls over my shoulder. It was the exact position I was in that night in the tree house while we were talking—me lying on my side looking at him, and him lying on his side looking at me.

  Somehow, he was able to capture every detail, like the small scar on my forehead from when I tripped over a rug when I was four and split my head open on the corner of the coffee table.

  I left a picture for him that day, too. The close-up I’d taken of him at the football game last Friday night. With the stadium lights and the people behind him out of focus, Shep is framed by a blur of color and light. I wrote across the bottom of the image, One of my favorite things.

  I bury the one he left for me this morning in the bottom of my bag, just as Reagan pops her head into the media arts room.

  “Hey, what are you doing after work?” she asks. “Any plans?”

  “You have that look. I get a little twitchy when you get that look,” I say.

  “I’m headed to Breathe Yoga for Power Hour. Want to come? And then we can go eat after. I think Josh may meet us, too.”

  “Josh is going to yoga?”

  Reagan lets out a sharp laugh. “No. Dinner, but now I may have to talk him into trying yoga, too!”

  “How’s it going with him?” I ask as I pop open the back compartment of my main camera.

  “I think he got the message on Halloween. We’re going out this weekend.”

  She’s giddy, and I’m just about to tell her I’m glad he finally got a clue but stop. I look down to where my fingers had been groping in the back of my camera. The memory card is missing.

  I start digging around in my backpack, pulling out the contents and balancing them haphazardly on the desk.

  “What’s wrong?” Reagan asks.

  I push away from my desk and head to the computers and check the card slots of each one. “I can’t find my card.”

  “The one you use in your camera?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  I turn the room upside down but it’s nowhere to be found.

  “It’s gone,” I say as I sink into the closest chair.

  Reagan looks over the same area I just did. “Are you sure you checked everywhere? What was on the card?”

  My mind clicks through the recent images I’ve taken. “Some shots I took during the last pep rally, and the headshots for the class officers were on there, and…”

  Oh God. The pictures I took the last time I saw the River Point Boys at Pat’s.

  “So the headshots will be a pain to redo, but
I wouldn’t worry about the pep rally ones. I think Alexis got some great video, and we can use some stills from that,” Reagan says.

  I nod but don’t say anything else. Where was my bag? Could someone have taken the card out of my camera?

  I mentally retrace my steps from the morning. I’d left my bag in the hall when I went outside to take the group shot of the class officers. That was the only time it was out of my sight.

  “Kate!” Reagan says, and I jump. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, sorry. Just trying to figure out where I lost it.”

  “Maybe it will show up. But right now, we need to go or we’re going to be late for work.”

  • • •

  I’m almost done with work when I feel the now-familiar buzz from the burner phone in my coat pocket.

  SHEP: Hey

  PRIVATE NUMBER: Hey! What’s up?

  SHEP: Need to talk to you but not here.

  PRIVATE NUMBER: Ok

  I’m expecting him to text back, so I’m surprised when he calls instead. I duck into the hall so there’s no chance Stone can overhear me.

  “I really need to see you. Any chance I can come back to the tree house tonight?” he asks when I answer.

  “Okay. Midnight? Is everything okay?”

  “No. But I can’t talk about it right now. I’ll see you tonight.” And then he’s gone. Something’s wrong.

  I kill time until midnight searching through all of the images I’ve taken—the ones at River Point, the ones of the boys, the ones from the barbecue of Henry and his mystery girl. My eyes are blurry and tired from searching every frame, praying for some little detail that would shed any light on the case, but it’s like playing a rigged game of Where’s Waldo. There’s less than a week until the grand jury hearing, and we’re running out of time.

  When midnight finally approaches, I push my laptop aside. My hands are shaking as I shove pillows under my comforter in the vague shape of a sleeping body, then crawl out through my window. I don’t want to run into Mom in the kitchen again.

  When my head pops through the floor of the tree house, my heart drops at the sight of Shep inside. He’s wearing a dark sweater and jeans, sitting in the corner of my childhood playhouse, looking devastatingly handsome with only the moonlight illuminating his face.

  It only takes one second for me to see he looks just as tense as he sounded on the phone. “What happened?” I ask.

  He hands me something instead of answering. It’s two pictures—the first is a copy of the image I found in my coat pocket, minus the threat at the bottom, of Shep and me after he fixed my car. When I glance at the second one, I suck in a stunned breath. It’s an image I recognize. Because I took it.

  The picture shows that perfect frozen moment when Shep’s fist connected with Henry’s face, and was one of the shots on my memory card that turned up missing this morning. On the bottom of the image, written in the same handwriting as the message on the fire drill photo is:

  Make her stop

  “Oh, God,” I say and look up at him. He looks tired. And worried.

  Shep runs a hand across his face. “We had to go back to River Point. Our lawyers wanted us to walk them through what happened that morning. I didn’t want to go, but I had no choice. We went back into the woods. Walked through our steps that morning. Ran to the spot where we found Grant. Then they showed us where the shooter was. It was so close. I didn’t know it was so close. And I stood there and had to look at my friends and wonder which one of them did it and if it was really an accident. And I can tell they’re looking at me and thinking the same thing. I left as soon as they let us. It wasn’t until I was halfway home that I saw an envelope wedged between my seat and the center console.”

  “You don’t know which one of them gave this to you?” I ask. He shakes his head. “No. And it would suck if this got out—me beating up on Henry. Me looking like the violent one. And then it would come out that you took these, and then there’s this one of us together. How’d they get this picture?”

  I lean against the side of the tree house and hug my legs in front of me. Guilt swamps me. What if something I’ve done makes things worse for Shep? “I noticed the memory card was missing out of one of my cameras this morning. My bag was out of my sight for a few minutes while I was taking pictures for the yearbook.”

  “What time was that?” he asks.

  Staring off into space, I try to pinpoint exactly when that was. “We started during the break between first and second period and finished just a few minutes after the bell rang.”

  Shep says, “I don’t have any classes with them then. It could have been any one of them.”

  “I should have cleared that card.” I drop my forehead onto my knees. “That was stupid of me to leave them on it. I just never thought anyone else would see them.”

  Shep pulls me closer to him, hugging me close. “This is on him. Not you. We just need this to be over, because whoever is doing this isn’t going to go away. He didn’t get a reaction from the picture he left for you so he’s making a point by sending one to me.”

  I look up at him. “Do you still think it was an accident?”

  “I do,” he says. “But I also know the evidence makes it look like it’s not. Truthfully, I don’t know what the hell to believe anymore.”

  I lean against him. “Tell me what happened. Show me why you think it could have been an accident.”

  His fingertips skim up and down my back. “We never really went to sleep that night. After Grant and I got in the fight, I started drinking. I hadn’t had one until then, hoping you would be there any minute. I thought it would be pretty shitty to be drunk on our first date.”

  He pulls back and I turn to look up at him. “What?”

  “Now that I think about it, that was a pretty dick move—asking you to meet me at a party for our first date. I’m surprised you said yes.”

  Laughing, I say, “If you remember, I was supposed to be taking pictures until late, so I’m the one who offered to meet you there.”

  He settles back on the wall of the tree house. “Whatever. I should have done better.”

  I nudge him in the side and he squirms around. “Just finish the story. If we can get through this, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to make it up to me.”

  He squeezes his arm around me. “I will make it up to you.”

  “I know.”

  “So, like I was saying, I started drinking. A lot. I was pissed. Pissed at Grant. Pissed I was there. I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t drive home. Grant was on everyone’s shit list that night. He had it out with Logan and then with Henry. Hell, he even fought with John Michael.”

  “But all of you stayed that night anyway?”

  “Yeah, John Michael didn’t have a choice since it was his place, and I don’t think the rest of us really wanted to be there anymore, but none of us was in any condition to go home. Usually, there were always other people staying the night there, not just us. People passed out in bedrooms and on couches, but Grant ran them off. He said it needed to be just us. Said we needed to make things right between us.”

  “Why would he say that?” I ask.

  “Because our group was imploding. We were always fighting about something, and it was getting harder and harder to make things as easy as they had been.”

  Shep shifts around until we’re facing each other again. “So when everyone else cleared out, we grabbed some beer and sat around the fire pit on the back porch. Grant loved hanging out on the back porch, always wanted to party out there. They passed a joint around, but I didn’t take a hit. I was already drunk enough. And we just sat there, staring at the fire. For hours.”

  “Y’all didn’t talk?”

  “No, not really. Maybe someone would say something every now and then, but for the most part, we were just there.”

  Shep is quiet a moment, like he’s been sucked back into that night. And for the hundredth time, I wonder how different that night could have been i
f things hadn’t gone so wrong for us.

  “And then the sun started to come up. Normally, you should be in the woods, ready to hunt long before there’s any light. But we didn’t care. It’s like we all knew things between us were changing. We were all pulling in different directions and it was never going to be like it was before.”

  Shep paints the picture and it’s like I’m there, watching them sit around a dwindling fire, the early-October-morning light filtering in through the trees.

  He’s quiet, lost in that memory. “What happened next?” I ask.

  “We all got up, staggered inside. We each grabbed a gun and some ammo. There’s a big board in the main room that has a map of the property. There are nails stuck in the different sections. Before you go out to hunt, you hang a marker on the spot you’re going to so anybody coming in knows where the hunters are.”

  I remember seeing this and not knowing what it was.

  “We all picked a spot. We hunted there so often that we each had our own silver metal tags with our names engraved on them—a gift from John Michael’s dad last Christmas.”

  “So everyone knew where everyone else was going?”

  “Yep. I can remember thinking when I dropped my name tag on the nail marking my spot that it would probably be the last time I would ever do that. And then we all went outside through the garage. We could have taken a four-wheeler or a truck, but without even saying anything, we all walked to where we were going. For me, I had no plans to shoot anything. I shouldn’t even have had a gun on me. But somewhere deep down, I knew this was probably going to be my last time to hunt here, and I was looking forward to finding a tree to sit against so I could watch the sun come up. I wished I had brought my sketch pad and pencils instead of my shotgun. River Point is a beautiful place.”

  He runs his hands across his face before continuing. “I found my spot—a wide tree to lean against. Slid down the bark until I was sitting on the ground. It was quiet and a little cold. I remember seeing my breath puffing out in front of me. I was still a little drunk and very much in need of some sleep. My head fell back against the tree and my eyes closed. I was a moment from passing out when I heard the shot. It was so unexpected that it scared me. Made me jump. And just like that, my heart was racing and the adrenaline was pumping. I could tell the direction it came from, knew it had to have been Grant who shot something. So I started running that way. Before I got there, I saw everyone else, tearing in from every other direction. We all saw him at the same time.”