Becky agreed. “We should come back in a few weeks. The leaves will be brilliant by then.” She noticed me, tilted her head. “You look kind of green, Elle.”
I forced a smile. “No, I’m fine.”
Shane rubbed chalk onto his hands. Spoke quickly, vigorously, explaining what we were going to do. First, we were going to learn to take off. “When you’re ready to swing off the platform, you say, ‘Hup.’ It’s the signal that you’re about to go.”
“Hup,” Jen and Susan echoed, grinning.
“Hup.” Becky tugged my arm. Urging me to be more enthusiastic.
“Hup.” My belly did a flip turn.
Shane took the trapeze off a hook, held it up. “This is your fly bar. You’re going to chalk your hands and grip it like this.” He demonstrated. “For the takeoff, you’ll use three movements, just like Velda did. First, the force out. That’s when you kick your legs forward to gain height. Next is the hollow. That’s a neutral position, and it’s followed by the sweep, which is when you kick your legs backwards. So. You move from force out to the hollow, the hollow to the sweep, and then you reverse. Sweep to hollow to force out. They’re kind of the same moves as swinging in the playground.”
“How do we stop?” The question came from me.
Everyone looked at me. Was it a stupid question?
Shane paused, as if the answer were obvious. “You slow down the moves and release into the net. Velda will help you climb out.” He watched me. “Any more questions?”
No. Nobody else had questions. The four of us exchanged glances, chalked our hands. The others were pumped, ready to go. Jen asked if she could go first.
And she did. Graceful as a high diver, Jen cried out, “Hup,” and swung off the platform, legs propelling her forward and back. Becky and Susan cheered. Even I managed to shout, “Go, Jen!”
Finally, the arc of her swing decreased and she let go of the bar, falling gracefully into the net. No smashed boobs. We clapped and hooted as Velda helped her to the ground.
Becky went next. She wasn’t as lithe as Jen, but her movements were crisp and efficient. She swung high, didn’t seem to want to stop. When she dropped to the net, my stomach leaped, heart fluttered. I looked at the ladder, considered climbing down.
“You go next, Elle,” Susan offered.
She must have seen the panic in my eyes.
“If you feel well enough,” she added. “Do you?”
She’d given me an out. I could claim to be sick. But I wasn’t sick; I was scared.
I stalled. “Go ahead, Susan. I can wait.”
“No, no,” she insisted. “I want to go last.”
She did? Shane held the bar out to me. I could still back out. But the ladder was steep. And I’d be descending alone. Oh God. I looked from the ladder to the trapeze, back to the ladder. Finally, I let go of the fence and took a wobbly step toward Shane. Grabbed his arm to steady myself. Shane took my hand off his arm and placed it on the trapeze. When I’d grabbed it with both hands, he nudged me to the edge of the platform. “Ready?” he asked.
Was he serious? Had he never witnessed raw terror before? Would I be the first student to have a heart attack midair? I could still back out.
But Shane had his hand on my back. “Got your grip?”
I nodded.
And when I didn’t say, “Hup,” he did.
In a heartbeat, I was off the platform, hanging on by my arms.
“Force out,” Shane yelled.
My legs froze, refused to move. I dangled, swaying in the breeze. The ground beneath me zoomed away. Oh God.
“Kick,” Susan shouted.
“Swing your legs!”
Voices screamed, telling me what to do.
My body became rigid, refused to move. How long had I been hanging there? Okay, okay. I closed my eyes. Told my legs to swing.
Nothing. They were stiff.
I dangled, tried again.
Swing. I concentrated. Bent my knees an inch or two, then relaxed them. The trapeze wiggled a little bit forward, a little bit back. I repeated the movement, trembling from head to toe.
Shane yelled again. “Raise your legs. Force out.”
My shoulder joints burned. Fingers ached. Oh God. I couldn’t hold on, was going to fall.
“Force out!” Shane repeated.
I couldn’t hang on much longer. Damn it, Elle, I told myself. Just do it. I took a breath, closed my eyes, locked my knees, and shoved my feet up, then down. Bent my knees and kicked backwards. The trapeze responded. Swung forward and back. I repeated the movements, lifted my legs higher, felt the pressure shift in my shoulders. Susan and Shane, Jen and Becky—maybe Velda—everyone was yelling, cheering. Air swirled in my face and the ground blurred. My body flew back and forth, up and down, the arc of my swing increasing.
Until, at the peak of a force out, my grip loosened, and I slipped off the bar. I lost hold and soared, swimming through air, trying to position myself to hit the net. Limbs flailing, I noticed a dog-shaped cloud in the sky, silence. And speed.
When I landed, I didn’t feel pain right away. In fact, I didn’t feel my left arm at all. Velda was there, tugging at me, working to free my arm from the netting. Shouting to Shane to call an ambulance. As she helped me off the net, I looked down at my shoulder, saw a bone-shaped lump jutting out below it, dislodged, in the wrong spot. Confused, I tried to move it back where it belonged. And white-hot pain exploded.
The doctor’s name tag said Singh. “You’re lucky,” Dr. Singh told me.
Lucky? I clenched my jaw, trying not to wail, almost unable to hear her through the screaming of my shoulder. By what standard did she consider me lucky? If she’d said I was stupid, I’d have understood. After all, I’d jumped off a platform thirty-odd feet off the ground. That was stupid. But lucky?
She was explaining what she meant, but the pain screeched and hollered, and all I understood of her message was that my X-ray showed no fracture and no need for surgery. At that point I didn’t care. Surgery would have been fine. Anything, even amputation. I just wanted the infernal pain to stop.
“I’m going to help you relax.” Dr. Singh stuck me with a needle. Great way to relax somebody, jabbing them with sharp objects. But I was in no position to object, unable to move my arm, unable to think for the pain. Where were my friends? Shouldn’t they be here, advocating for me? Then again, Susan hadn’t taken her turn yet. Maybe they were still at circus school.
I leaned back, watched Dr. Singh’s face. Her eyes were huge and warm, and they smiled at me, reassuring me while her hands reached out for my shoulder.
“I’m going to be as gentle as I can,” she promised. “When I finish, you’ll feel much better.”
She manipulated my shoulder, maneuvering cartilage and bone. I winced. I gnashed my teeth.
“Take deep breaths.” She spoke softly. “It won’t be much longer.”
And it wasn’t. With a sharp actual pop, the bone slid back into the socket. Instantly, the pain subsided. I almost cried.
Dr. Singh smiled. “Better?”
I wanted to hug her, but she told me not to move my arm. To rest it in place with a sling and ice it for a few days, then gradually exercise it. She prescribed pain medication. A nurse placed my arm in a sling. And that was it. Presto. I was done.
Becky, Susan, and Jen were waiting in the lobby. When I walked in, they surrounded me, clucking and fussing.
“I’m so sorry.” Becky grabbed my good arm. “It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have suggested something so dangerous.”
“I knew someone would get hurt,” Jen said. “I thought it was going to be me.”
“No, Jen. You were a natural,” Becky told her. “Totally graceful.”
Jen smiled. “I did look fucking hot up there, didn’t I.” It wasn’t a question.
Susan started for the door. “I wonder how often stuff like this happens. They made us sign a liability waiver, but still, if they have a significant number of injuries—”
“Still. I’m just saying.”
“Susan’s right, though. The circus school should offer you some kind of compensation.” Becky held onto my uninjured arm as we walked to the car. “I bet they’ll at least offer us free lessons. Plus they owe us a makeup session.”
Was she serious?
“I’m in,” Jen agreed. “How about you, Elle? Want to try for the other shoulder?”
“I thought it was fun.” Becky pouted. “Didn’t anyone else? I mean, Elle, except for falling, didn’t you like it?”
I opened my mouth. Remembered hanging in the air while the earth spun away.
“I liked it,” Susan said. “And if I hadn’t been so worried about Elle, I’d have liked it a lot more.”
Wait. Had Susan gone ahead with her lesson after I’d been hurt? “So you guys finished the class while I was in the hospital?”
Susan unlocked the car, tossed her bag in. “Elle, think about it. I was up on the platform. To get to you, I could either climb down that rickety ladder or swing on the trapeze and drop. So guess which one I chose?”
They went on about how Shane had promised to show us four skills, but we’d been able to try one. How swinging had felt like flying. Their voices became a buzz of chatter as my pain medicine kicked in. Nothing hurt anymore. I floated among friends, mellow and relieved, lulled by the motion of the car. I’d dozed on the way to circus school, and I dozed on the way home.
Everyone came back to my house.
Jen went straight to the kitchen and opened the fridge. “WTF, Elle? How the hell do you live? There’s nothing in here. No, I lied. You have old cheese, mustard, and mayo. A perfect feast.” She was always hungry, and hadn’t eaten in hours.
I came into the kitchen, sat at the table. Told her there was peanut butter in the cupboard, bagels in the freezer.
She squinted as if she didn’t understand.
I explained that I’d planned to go to the supermarket the other day after work but hadn’t because of finding Mrs. Marshall. And it hit me that I hadn’t thought about Mrs. Marshall or her murder for almost the whole day. Fear of heights and pain from a dislocated shoulder had completely absorbed my attention. Now that we were home, the murder shoved its way to the front of my mind again, upstaging all other topics.
“What about you?” Susan asked. She held a pencil and notepad, waiting.
What? Damn. Evidently, I’d missed something. I scrambled to cover my lapse. Um, what did she mean? Oh. They must have been talking about going back again to circus school, finishing the class. “No way I’m going anywhere near the place,” I said. “But you guys go ahead.”
Susan blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“She pulled an effing Elle,” Jen said. “She has no idea what we’re talking about.”
“Well, who can blame her?” Becky took a seat beside me. “She’s been through hell in the last couple days.”
“Yes, and we all feel awful about it.” Jen pushed her bangs aside. I noticed she’d broken a fingernail, probably on the trapeze. “But I need food.”
Food? Oh. They hadn’t been talking about circus school.
“Elle?” Jen pulled a box of graham crackers out of my cupboard. “How old are these?”
“Old.” I’d bought them at the beginning of the summer, hoping to make s’mores.
“We’re ordering Chinese.” Susan hadn’t moved. She waited, her pencil at the ready. “So far, we’re getting General Tso’s chicken, shrimp with broccoli, hot and sour soup.” She watched me.
I added Moo Shu pork. She wrote it down and began to call in the order.
Now that I thought about it, I was hungry. Hadn’t eaten much all day, and it was—I looked at the oven clock to check the time. Susan stood in the way, talking to the restaurant. Never mind, I’d check the time on my cell phone. But where was my bag? I’d had it in the hospital—had taken my insurance card out of it. Then what had I done with it? I had no idea.
“Where’s my bag?”
“Shrimp and broccoli,” Susan said. She pointed toward the hallway. Becky wouldn’t let me get up, insisted on going for me.
I asked Jen what time it was.
She munched a graham cracker, glanced at the clock. “Almost five.”
Five? Wow. The whole day was gone. Becky came back with my bag, and even though I already knew the time, I used my right arm to dig out my cell phone. I’d turned it off before circus school, as Shane had wanted no distracting ringtones.
“Anyone want one?” Jen offered graham crackers smeared with peanut butter.
Nobody did.
“How about some wine?” I suggested.
“Good idea.” Susan headed to the wine rack in the study, Becky got glasses. Jen licked peanut butter off her fingers. I watched my phone screen come back to life. Telling me that I had nineteen messages and twenty-three missed calls. In one day.
I checked the messages, scanned names and numbers. Joyce. Detective Stiles. The assistant principal, Mr. Royal. Lots of numbers I didn’t recognize. And Jerry. A whole bunch from Jerry.
I wished I hadn’t turned the phone on. I considered turning it off again, pretending I hadn’t seen the messages. But what if Detective Stiles had something important to tell me? And Jerry might have arranged more showings. I hadn’t spoken to him yet about boundaries, needed to take care of that.
Susan opened a bottle of Pinot Noir. Talked about red not being right for chicken and fish, but who cared.
I turned my phone off. The messages could wait.
We drank wine until the food arrived. Talked about the day, began to laugh about it. About how it had at least been a memorable experience, even more than hot yoga. We talked about what we’d do next month, when it would be my turn to choose the adventure. Skydiving? Bungee jumping? We named activities we’d never want to try, argued about which would be the worst. And somehow, the conversation shifted, became not about the worst experiences we might have, but the worst we’d already had. And that morphed into the worst things we’d ever done.
Jen went first. “In high school, I was a regular little klepto.”
“We know,” Becky said. “You used to give us sweaters and lip gloss.”
“I didn’t know,” Susan said. “Holy hell, Jen.”
“I know. It’s amazing I never got caught. If I saw it, I took it. I didn’t even want half the stuff I grabbed. I guess it was just the thrill of getting away with it.”
Susan ate with chopsticks. “You were an adolescent. Research shows that adolescents don’t have the capacity to understand the effects of their actions.”
“Bullshit.” Jen swallowed shrimp. “I knew full well I could get caught.”
“But you didn’t really realize the full impact of that. You didn’t grasp that what you were doing might change the course of your life, get you a criminal record, keep you out of college, erase your chance of meeting let alone marrying a guy like Norm, and so on. Teenagers’ brains aren’t fully developed.”
“She’s right,” Becky said. “We learned about that in Child Development classes, remember, Elle?”
“Of course I’m right. I have full-fledged teenagers at home. Their cerebral cortexes work about a tenth of the time. Plus they’re full of hormones that trigger the brain. Bottom line, they can’t control their impulses or think out the potential consequences of risky behavior. That’s why kids binge drink, have unprotected sex, do drugs, drive like maniacs, shoplift—whatever. They do stuff that only seems like a good idea if they don’t think it through. And they can’t think it through.”
Like Ty? He’d been a teenager when he’d killed his father. “So when Ty committed murder, his brain wasn’t developed yet?”
“Oh, shit, here we go,” Jen moaned. “After what a bitch today was, I thought we’d for once have a nice pleasant dinner conversation—”
“But that would be like pretending there’s no elephant on the table,” Becky said.
Jen blinked at her. “What?”
“A pleasant conversation won’t undo what’s happened. The elephant’s still on the table.”
“Not the table,” I said. “The room. I think the expression is ‘there’s an elephant in the room.’”
“Whatever,” Becky said. “He’s still here and we can’t pretend he isn’t.”
“Who?” Jen asked. “The elephant?”
“The murder. Or Ty Evans.” Becky put her chopsticks down. “Choose your elephant. We’ve been pretending all day that everything’s just peachy. But it isn’t. Mrs. Marshall was murdered. And Ty Evans is back, and he might have killed her.”
“I don’t think he did.” I wasn’t sure why I didn’t. I just didn’t. “But if he did kill her, he can’t blame it on being a teenager. He’s twenty-one now.”
Susan had a wad of General Tso’s in her mouth. “Technically, he’s still an adolescent. The brain isn’t developed until about age twenty-five.” She swallowed some wine.
“Oh, bullshit,” Jen said. “It wasn’t his age that made him kill anyone. He killed his father because he effing hated him. And if he killed Mrs. Marshall, he must have effing hated her, too. Given the right motive, anyone can do something awful no matter what their age.”
“You think everyone would cross any line?” Becky asked. “Including committing murder?”
“Hell yes. Any one of us, in certain situations, would commit murder.”
“I wouldn’t.” Becky bristled.
I thought about it. “Of course you would, Becky,” I said. “To defend your life? Your friends? Your students?”
“That’s different,” Becky said. “That’s not murder. That’s justified homicide, something like that.”
“Not necessarily,” Susan said. “Let’s say you do it preemptively.”
“Like Ty did,” I added.
“Besides, don’t act so above it, Becky. We’ve all, each one of us already crossed lines. Like I did with shoplifting. Not just lines of law. Sometimes just right and wrong. Remember what a bully I was in middle school? I was effing cruel. I kept that kid Melissa out of cheerleading squad. I wouldn’t let anybody sit with her at lunch.”
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