“I don’t know,” Chloe sighed. “To be honest, I was so drunk, I don’t even feel like I knew what was going on. It seemed like they knew what they wanted and I was just…there.” She choked out the last part in a hoarse whisper.
I understood why she refused to say anything clearer. As long as there was ambiguity, as long as the night was a confusing gray smear in her mind instead of a crime, she didn’t have to see herself as a victim. A mistake could be forgotten, but anything more seemed to imply that victim status would be an irrevocable part of her identity. That it would contaminate other aspects of her personality and fester into ugly issues in later relationships.
I remembered how uncomfortable Devon looked outside the bedroom, like he didn’t want to be there. Did he feel guilty? Or was he just hoping to avoid a confrontation? I had never thought of high-school boys as dangerous before, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had witnessed something large and terrible.
Chloe had wrapped her arms around herself. The sleeve of my old soccer shirt had ridden up and I could see fingerprint bruises trailing up her biceps. Chloe used to have similar marks when she was with Liam. She always bruised easily, under even the most delicate of touches. But these particular bruises came from a much uglier place.
Seeing my best friend so vulnerable made me unspeakably sad. Chloe was a force of nature, the sort of person who went out and made things happen. Mornings like this weren’t supposed to happen to unstoppable girls.
“Are you going to tell someone?” I asked.
“No need. This is going to be all over the school,” Chloe said darkly. I watched her shoulders knot and roll as she tried to keep herself from crying.
“No—what they did to you, your side of the story,” I suggested. She shook her head.
“I don’t even know what my side of the story is. And I’m not going to accuse a couple of popular Creeker boys unless I’m sure,” Chloe said. I heard an unfamiliar grimness in her voice, as if she’d aged ten years overnight.
I nodded sadly. Mike and Devon had grown up in Thunder Creek—in fact, they were probably third-generation Creekers—and they were obvious choices for the communal inheritance of the Thunder Creek way of life. They spent their weekends hunting in the bush, playing hockey and drinking beers with their buddies. While they might go down south for university, it was a safe bet they’d move home afterward, marry a local girl, buy a boat and live a nice middle-class Northern life. Chloe wasn’t from town; moving here as a child wasn’t enough to make you a Creeker. She was intent on escaping Thunder Creek and everyone knew it.
“What should we do?” I whispered.
I felt Chloe shift her weight closer to me. The bed inched farther forward, the curl of our lower backs exposed in the air between the wall and the mattress. Still, I didn’t move; feeling Chloe lean against me, the weight of her legs next to mine, made me feel hopeful.
“I guess just carry on,” she said quietly.
I nodded and we sat there, staring out the window, dimly aware that we had just taken a great leap forward into adulthood. When you’re a kid, you think life is just one big fairytale. Then you become a teenager and everything seems a bit crappy, but you still believe that you’ll be the exception, the person whose dreams will come true someday. Maybe becoming an adult meant recognizing that life was something that just happened to you, and all you could do was try to adjust and carry on.
Of course, if I’d known what was going to happen next, I would have tried harder to get Chloe to speak out. I would have convinced her that it wasn’t her fault, and that while the truth may have interpretations, there were very few that absolved those boys of all blame. Instead, we saturated ourselves with secrets and passivity, convinced that it was safer not to point fingers. We were wrong.
Chapter Seven
February 24, 2006
That night was the beginning of something, an unhappy few months where the secrets I kept for Chloe grew every day. I had lied to the police and now I couldn’t back down; there were too many hidden things that shouldn’t come out. Weeks after she had disappeared, I was still keeping Chloe’s secrets. They were stopping me from making new friends, from feeling truly connected to anyone, even Tom.
I didn’t see Tom at all on Thursday or Friday morning. I felt stupid every time my eyes snagged on a tall guy in the hall. What did I think would happen? He’d wait by my locker and walk me to class, hand-in-hand? That might happen to other girls but it didn’t happen to me. I was the girl you hit on at the party when you were too drunk to charm anyone better. The girl at the school dance who patted your back as you threw up and then pretended she couldn’t smell your rancid breath during the slow songs.
Until eleventh grade, Chloe had actually been the kind of girl guys walked to class. That is, on the rare occasions that she would let them. When we were in ninth grade, Chloe went on a few dates with Jay Peterson, an eleventh grader who bought us bottles of raspberry SourPuss with his older brother’s ID. The first time he offered to walk her to class, Chloe laughed and flipped her hair. “What? You think I’m going to get lost, Jay?” she asked with a sneer and then strode away, looping her arm through mine. I knew that disdain had probably made Jay like Chloe even more—the exclusive trick of pretty girls who can afford to be harsh on boys. Until eleventh grade, Chloe was never short of guys who wanted to date her, although Liam had been her only serious boyfriend. But things changed, and even before Chloe went missing, no boy wanted to hold her hand.
In English class we were studying Lord of the Flies. I liked the book better than Macbeth, our last unit, but I still found it disturbing. I had thought the boys would act like a group of tropical castaways, making things out of coconut shells and playing on the beach. It wasn’t really turning out that way.
“Why did the boys attack Piggy?” Mr. Greene asked, gently tapping the desk of a guy who had his head down on his arms.
“Because they’ve gone insane. They’re acting so random,” Andrea Moore offered. That was always her answer, whether it was Macbeth or Catcher in the Rye. Andrea was the kind of girl who thought everything in life was random, mostly because she never seemed to completely understand what was happening.
“Well, you could argue that,” Mr. Greene said. “But did the island make them crazy?” He was still young enough that he came in every day brimming with new ways to inspire us. It was almost heartbreaking to watch his disappointment when he realized that most people had forgotten their books and weren’t really reading along anyway.
“I think it did,” Joseph Pitreault said at the front of the class. He glanced down at his book, which was open on his desk and stuffed with Post-it notes marking significant passages. Joseph was one of the only kids who always read the book. “They’ve been out there so long. And Simon is clearly hallucinating with that pig’s head. I think the stress is causing them to fall apart and that’s why they’re behaving so violently.” I stared out the window, watching the people below as Joseph continued talking. My attention was so shoddy these days. I couldn’t seem to focus anymore.
“Jenny? What do you think?” Mr. Greene asked. I jumped, snapped out of my reverie.
“Uh…,” I said, hoping he would move on. But he didn’t. “What was the question again?”
Mr. Greene smiled. “Do you think the stress of being on that island drove those boys to violence?” he asked. I looked outside, where the hockey team was heading to a school bus, probably to take them to a tournament down south. I could see Devon in the group, running away from a guy who was trying to push him into a snow bank. Devon was smiling and laughing; you could never imagine him hurting anyone. But suddenly I found that I knew the answer to Mr. Greene’s question.
“No. They were already violent deep down. The island just gave them permission,” I said, still staring out the window at the boys.
—
By second period it was snowing heavily. I stared out the window of my math class, the road in front of the school blotted out b
y falling clumps. My classmates began to glance cagily at the snow, distracted by the prospect of driving home in a blizzard. The journey would involve inching down clogged roads and staring grimly at the taillights ahead.
Snowstorms in late February could be brutal, the winter seeming to rally for one last onslaught. This storm was even more disheartening because it had been a hard winter. We had fixed the idea of spring in our heads already, determined that by sheer force of will, It Would Not Snow Anymore.
At the end of math class, the announcements began: “Due to the heavy snowfall predicted for the rest of the day, school buses have been canceled. Please make other arrangements.”
The other students cheered. It was an unwritten rule that teachers didn’t take attendance once buses were canceled. The number of students would slowly diminish until only the kids who had to wait for their parents remained.
Usually, I would have been just as happy for the news. But today it didn’t do me much good. I had missed a huge chemistry test a few days after Chloe disappeared. I’d been given a few weeks to study and today was the day I had to take it. I knew my disciplinarian teacher wouldn’t accept the snow as an excuse. I could almost hear Mr. Boyle’s voice now: “Miss Parker, I don’t see why you should be excused when I have to be here. You’re Canadian, you can handle a bit of snow.”
When I left the class for lunch, Tom was suddenly at my side. He touched my elbow to get my attention and I jumped.
“Whoa, sorry,” Tom said with a grin. “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”
“No, sorry,” I muttered, my heart beginning to pound as the prospect of talking to Tom again sunk in. “I was just…thinking.”
“Well, are you free now? Want to get out of here?” Tom asked. We started walking down the hallway past kids shrugging on jackets and jamming books into their bags as fast as they could.
“I can’t. I have this…thing I have to do here, after school,” I said.
I was cringing at the idea of telling him I had a science test. It sounded so lame, especially when Tom acted like he never had to be bothered with trivial things like tests and parents. But my grades were hovering around the pass line and missing the test would mean an automatic fail in chemistry.
“Well, come hang out now. I have something to tell you,” Tom said, winking at me conspiratorially.
“Okay,” I said. To my surprise, he looped his arm through mine and guided me smoothly down the hall. As we walked, I noticed people watching us with interest. Tom and I had never been seen together, and in Thunder Creek, the kids saw everything, or at least they thought they did. Walking down the hall like a couple was quite a statement. It was a new experience for me, feeling chosen by a boy. I already liked Tom more than I would have expected. He was warmer than his reputation had led me to believe.
We walked out to his truck and he drove to the parking lot of the hockey arena. The lot was empty, the snow rapidly filling up the crevices that the tires had etched into the ice. Tom parked at the far corner so we could see any cars approaching and then he sparked a joint.
When Tom turned off the truck, silence flooded into the space, punctuated only by the sound of him inhaling deeply. I waited for him to talk. He seemed more focused on getting high, though, so I shared his joint, hoping it would wear off by test time. Finally, with the joint done, Tom stared out the front window, his dark eyes reflecting the bright snow all around us.
“You know how you were talking about that dead girl the other day?” he asked. I nodded. He hesitated, and for one second, in a fit of stoned paranoia, I thought he was going to tell me he murdered her.
“Well, my dad’s girlfriend works at the police station. I heard her talking to him about the case last night. Apparently, the last time someone saw that girl, she was just outside Birch-Bark Village. She was at the road, so they’re assuming she was trying to hitch a ride back to the reserve,” he said. My stomach dropped.
“That’s where I live,” I whispered. Tom nodded.
“Yeah, I figured you had to live around there. Because you went to my middle school, remember?” he said. My cheeks flushed. Birch-Bark Village was the poorest area on the west end of town, which meant that Tom had assumed I didn’t live anywhere nice. That stung, but I tried to focus on the information he’d shared.
“Do they know why she was there?” I asked. He shrugged.
“Nope. I’d guess visiting someone, but that’s pretty far to travel if you have to hitch back.”
“No buses go out to the reserve?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” Tom said, shaking his head. “They’re not really part of the city, are they? Maybe school buses.”
“So, they think whoever picked her up killed her?” I asked.
“Yeah, I think so,” Tom said. “Maybe the guy who killed her lives in your neighborhood.”
“Thanks for telling me,” I said quietly.
“Be careful,” Tom said. I didn’t reply. It seemed like such an irrelevant comment. I wasn’t doing anything dangerous, and I couldn’t help the fact that I was a girl in Thunder Creek. I was just going to have to take my chances.
And then, slowly, he leaned over and kissed me on the lips. Something dropped inside of me and I kissed back harder. I could feel the contours of his full lips against mine. His hand slid down my face, past my neck and inside my jacket to my chest. I ran my hands through his hair as he kissed my neck. Some of the numbness that had crept into me after losing Chloe evaporated as I felt Tom’s warm hands under my sweater, just over my heart. Finally, we pulled away and Tom drove me back to school. I wondered if anyone would be able to tell how I had spent my lunch hour, if the unfamiliar smells of pot and boy would sit on my skin like a perfume borrowed from an older, worldlier cousin.
I felt exhilarated as I climbed out of Tom’s truck. I couldn’t believe that this was actually me kissing a good-looking boy at school. But as I watched him drive out of the parking lot, I didn’t forget what he said.
Be careful.
Chapter Eight
I spent most of the afternoon staring out the window, letting the lessons wash over me. The classes were all half full because so many people had gone home. But I still felt like a ghost haunting the classrooms. No one asked how I was or even tried to talk to me anymore. I wondered if people would have treated Chloe the same way if I’d been the one who disappeared. The thought seemed unimaginable, me anywhere but Thunder Creek. Chloe had always been poised at the doorway, while I was always the one begging her to come back inside.
The light was already fading by the time I wrote my test. My mind still felt slow and stuffy after the pot, and I regretted smoking it. I was starting to get the sense that Tom was the kind of heavy stoner who treated pot like a daily occurrence, a far cry from my limited experience. Still, I soldiered on under Mr. Boyle’s intense glare, and by the end I knew that I had passed. A pass was enough when so much else was happening in my life.
I walked down the main hallway to the exit. A gust of snow lifted my hair as I stepped outside, sending frozen air down the strands right to my scalp. I walked as quickly as I could to my car, curling stinging hands in my pockets as the snow battered my body. I couldn’t wait to be home, curled up in my room with a hot chocolate and my feet under the covers.
The road was empty. Anyone reasonable was already home, and no one was going out again tonight. I decided to take the highway that looped around town, because it was always better maintained than local streets. Northern Ontario tended to treat those who were passing through better than those who stayed.
I was almost to the set of lights where I would turn off the highway and drive west to my neighborhood when I saw the boy. The fluorescent orange of his jacket made him stand out in the kaleidoscope of grays and whites that filled my windshield. He was hunched over, walking into the snow with no hat. And he was clutching a musical instrument case with the name of my high school stamped in big letters on the side.
He was at the perimeter of tow
n, heading down the Trans-Canada Highway. The highway here had wedged itself between two towering rock faces dotted with scraggly evergreens. To make the road they’d had to blow right through the rock, and there was almost no shoulder for pedestrians. One car skidding was all it would have taken for the boy to be in serious trouble.
So I stopped my car. I didn’t normally offer rides to strangers, but this was bad weather and he was from my school. And maybe I had started to notice other people more lately, now that I wasn’t taking care of Chloe.
I rolled down the passenger-side window and honked my horn. He turned around and I motioned him to come over. The howling winds were so loud that I had to lean across the car and shout to be heard.
“Hey, you go to Thunder Creek High, right? Can I give you a ride?” I asked. The guy hesitated. His black hair was coated with snow and even his eyelashes were fringed with ice.
“Are you heading toward the reserve?” he asked.
“It’s no big deal, really. I don’t mind dropping you—the weather’s shit!” I said, trying not to look like the kind of person who regularly encouraged people to get into her car.
“Okay, thanks,” he said, opening the car door and climbing in. He wedged his instrument case between his legs and I rolled up the window.
I didn’t recognize him, but he looked pretty young. By eleventh grade you stopped noticing freshmen; it was the natural order of things. He was tall and skinny and had the gangly look of a junior basketball player. I knew he wasn’t, though, because there were no Natives on our basketball team. It occurred to me that he must have been desperately cold to accept a ride from a stranger. But I guess if you’re stuck in a storm you have to run the risk that the only person offering help may hurt you.
“I’m Jenny,” I said as he warmed his hands on the dashboard vent. He couldn’t have lasted much longer outside without getting serious frostbite. It was a scary prospect when the reserve was still over six miles away.
The Lives of Desperate Girls Page 5