We marched out a side door into the junior parking lot, daring someone to stop us, but the administrative offices were up by the front lobby, and this time, no one did. When Lexi’s car slid through the campus gates, I felt like I’d been holding my breath since we’d left the refectory. I leaned forward and braced myself on the dashboard.
“Courtney, please tell me what’s going on.” Lexi’s voice broke as she accelerated on the ramp to Route 2. I heard Farah’s sharp intake of breath as Lexi merged onto the highway without looking. Lexi shook two cigarettes from her pack, lit them both at the same time, and held one out to me.
“Hey, Lex,” Farah said mildly. “Think you can slow down a bit? We’re not being chased.”
Lexi eased off the gas and the speedometer dropped to a slightly more reasonable number.
“Thank you,” said Farah. “Now, Courtney, will you please tell us what the hell happened?”
“Ted,” I croaked. I had taken the cigarette from Lexi and was staring at it dumbly instead of smoking it. “He… he knew everything. He killed Hugh because he was afraid Hugh was getting dumb and might expose him.”
“What do you mean, expose him?”
“Ted knew,” I said. “They did it together. There were other girls, he said. Dumb sluts who wanted to, I guess, and others they blackmailed to keep quiet. He probably knows what happened on every date on that list.” I threw the cigarette out the window and dropped my head into my hands. I told them everything, shuddering. “He owns me now.”
“Wait,” said Farah. “Isn’t he in these videos, too? Do you think he’s really willing to put sex tapes of himself on the Internet?”
“His face was blurred out in the one he showed me. I mean, obviously, plenty of people would know it’s him, but not outside of Belknap.”
“Besides, Farah,” said Lexi. “Do you really think it would be the same for him as it would be for Courtney even if the whole world knew?”
“I guess not.” Farah frowned. “This is strictly digital, right? No way he’s got you on film?”
“How should I know?” I wailed. “My boyfriend is a rapist and a murderer! I don’t know anything!”
“Ted Parker doesn’t strike me as a film type,” said Lexi. “What are you thinking, Farah?”
“We can wipe the files from his phone and his computer, easy. But if he’s got backups elsewhere, or already uploaded them and just hadn’t put the site live yet…” Farah trailed off, and I saw her chewing her lip and reaching for the spikes of her hair. “Or if Hugh had backups…”
“I hadn’t even thought of that!” I began to cry. “If the police think he was murdered, won’t they look at his computer?”
“Who knows?” said Farah.
“Well, if they do, and they find videos,” Lexi said, glancing over at me, “then Ted doesn’t have anything on you, right?”
“He could post them anyway. Or they’d get leaked somehow. And then there would be videos of me on the Internet. Naked,” I cried. “That will be my whole life, forever.”
“That’s probably true,” Lexi conceded. “Let’s see if Mr. Grieves has any bright ideas.” She parked the car, and we got out and walked toward Athenaeum Lofts.
* * *
“What now?” Rahim asked when he opened the door to 18D.
We trouped inside and sat down on the cubic sectional sofa around the glass coffee table.
“Hugh is dead,” Lexi announced unceremoniously.
“Holy shit, did you kill him?” Rahim asked, in the middle of sitting down in his big leather desk chair.
“No!” I said. “My boyfriend did.”
“Don’t tell me this!” Rahim covered his ears. “How many times do I have to say it? Go to the police.”
“The police are idiots,” I said. “They know Ted killed Hugh, but they think it was because Hugh and I were fooling around.”
“Ugh, really?” asked Lexi. She made a face.
“We would go to the police,” said Farah, glaring at both of us. “That was the plan.” She crossed the room and put a hand on Rahim’s arm. “But he has Courtney on video.”
“Screwing,” I said, in answer to Rahim’s questioning glance.
“How graphic are we talking?” he frowned pensively.
“What I saw was graphic enough,” I said. “And he says there’s a lot more.” I cringed. “He said it like he secretly recorded us every time.”
Lexi scooted closer to me and put a protective arm around my shoulders. Rahim turned away from us and stared out the window. It had begun to rain again. Farah stood next to him and pressed a hand against his back.
“I’m going to make coffees, okay?”
Rahim gave a small nod of his head, and Farah went into the kitchen and fired up the espresso machine. Lexi and I shared a look. The hand on his back, the silent communication, the way Farah was intimately acquainted with the espresso machine—all were tell-tale signs that these two were spending a lot of time together.
“I was thinking,” Farah yelled over the gurgle of steaming milk. “We can easily delete the files from his computer and his phone. And if he’s already uploaded it to a private server, we might be able to track it down. He may not even have it backed up anywhere.”
“That’s awfully optimistic,” mused Rahim. He looked like he was turning over the problem in his mind now. I thought that was what kept him on our side more than anything else—we presented unusual challenges, little obstacle courses for him to run through with his genius IQ and technical wizardry.
“Yeah,” said Lexi. “What happened to Hugh having copies?”
“There’s almost no way for us to know for sure,” Rahim kept his gaze on the window. “We can scan his email history, but that will take a few days. And if we don’t find anything, we can’t be conclusively sure that there aren’t copies somewhere. And if we do find something, we’ll never know if that’s the only copy.”
“This is why I like film,” Lexi said. “It feels much more one-of-a-kind. Even if you print the same negative a thousand times, eventually the chemicals in the emulsion on the film and the print will break down, and disappear. It might not happen in our lifetime, but it’s still organic, you know?” She shot me an apologetic glance. “Not like a digital file that takes two seconds to copy identically.”
I exhaled slowly and leaned back on the couch. I tried to imagine my life if Ted posted those videos. Everyone would look at me differently: My parents, my brothers, my sister. Everyone in Belknap. My new roommate in New York—if I even got into Tisch. Everyone in the entire dorm, in the entire freshman class would know. Strangers might recognize me on the street. It was the kind of news that got around. But it wasn’t just my public image I was worried about. I hated seeing myself like I was in the video, and I hated the idea of the people I cared about seeing me like that. My family, yes, but also Lexi. It wasn’t until I admitted to myself that I was afraid she wouldn’t like me anymore if she saw the video that I could admit that I thought she might be attracted to me in the first place. And that I might be attracted to her.
“Are you done?” Rahim finally turned toward us and gave Lexi a sardonic smile. “With the sermon, you hippie?”
“Dick,” said Lexi, and tossed one of the tiny horsehair throw pillows at him.
Rahim caught it easily. “What if you told the police they were right?” he asked me. “If Ted’s locked up, then he can’t post the video. And even if he manages to do it before they take him in, then the server would be shut down as evidence, and you’d be the victim of a heinous crime and not an internet porn star.”
“She already is the victim of a heinous crime,” Lexi cracked. “Like, several heinous crimes.” She looked over at me and reached out and stroked my hair. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw this register on Rahim’s face, briefly, as if he wasn’t sure if we were being normal teenage girl affectionate or something more. I wasn’t sure, either.
“Did you ever wish that you could be someone different?” I asked
her. “I mean, after Hugh. Didn’t you just want to be someone it hadn’t happened to?”
Lexi’s eyes widened. She pressed her hand against my cheek. “Courtney,” she breathed. “That’s it.”
“What do you mean?” Her hand was soft.
“You can be someone different. Someone who never met Hugh Marsden or Ted Parker.”
“She’s right,” said Rahim. “I mean, you’d have to leave the state, probably the country. And we need to find you a birth certificate. Preferably someone dead, who was born within a year or two of you. Not easy to find, and not cheap either.” He sat down on an ottoman across the coffee table and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.
“You’re joking.” I looked from Lexi to Rahim and back. “What about my parents? College? Graduation?”
“Come on.” Lexi said. “You’re not wed to the path everyone expects you to take. You can travel. You can get your GED. You’ll be a non-traditional but impressive candidate for the artsy college of your choice in a year or eighteen months.”
“You make it sound like a Teen Tour.” Farah was skeptical as she served us soy milk cappuccinos.
“About the birth certificate,” said Lexi. “I’ve always wondered. What if you, like, run into the family of the person whose life you stole? That’s messed up.”
“It’s not like you become a ghost,” Rahim scoffed. “If you ever did meet that person’s relatives, they’d probably just think it was an odd coincidence that you had the same name. You’re not the same person; you’re just borrowing the legal shell they left behind. Name, date of birth, social security number.”
“Wow,” Farah was in awe.
“You’ve always wondered?” I asked. “What does that mean?”
“Well,” Lexi said. “I have one. A birth certificate.”
“Oh, right there in your back pocket?” quipped Rahim.
“Lex, you’re not serious,” said Farah, but I could tell by the way she said it that she thought Lexi was telling the truth.
“I am,” she said.
“But why?” I asked.
“It’s Max’s insurance policy. You have to understand; it makes sense to him. His parents were killed by the NKVD, and he was smuggled out of Russia and across Europe by their friends. He’d had more than a dozen names before he was fifteen. He has black market birth certificates for both of us, just in case the United States ever turns into Soviet Russia and we have to get out quick.” Lexi shrugged. “Don’t think it doesn’t freak me out. I have nightmares that we have to assume new identities and live them for years, and then Miranda Wickendam’s parents show up and insist I’m their daughter and they want to reconnect. They hug me and cry on me.” Lexi shuddered.
“What would I tell my parents?” I don’t even know why I said that, because I wasn’t seriously considering this. It was impossible.
“You’d have to run away,” Rahim looked at me, steadily and seriously. “You’d have to disappear for a little while. Let whatever’s going on with this murder and this boyfriend happen without you here to get dragged into it.”
“Are you serious? I… I’m not sure I could do that to them.” I tried to picture how my parents would handle my disappearing, but it felt impossible and narcissistic, like imagining your own funeral. But what was the alternative? Confessing to murder? Trademarking my name before Ted made me a sex tape superstar? How would my parents handle that?
“Are you an only child?” asked Rahim.
“No,” I said. “I’m the baby.” It occurred to me then, for the first time: I could run away. My brothers and sister had each made a few youthful transgressions—the boys flipped their Wrangler in high school and walked away without a scratch, and I was pretty sure they’d been stoned, although they’d never admitted it—but these had faded with time, and were simply a part of the family story. If I came back, went to college, had a regular life, then my parents might forgive me for disappearing for several months—I wouldn’t need to stay away longer than a year, right?
“What about money?” asked Lexi.
“Well,” Rahim spread his hands over his knees. “Is there anyone you feel comfortable stealing from? This headmaster, maybe? Or the school? It’s gotta be someone who has a lot, because we’ll need a lot.”
“Hugh Marsden’s parents,” answered Lexi.
“And Ted’s,” I added. “The Parkers.”
“Not the school,” said Farah. “I’m on scholarship.”
“Okay.” Rahim chuckled. “It will take me a week or two to get together a social security card and a passport, even with expedited processing. It could be longer, depending on the Parker and Marsden finances and the time I’ll need to siphon off what we’ll need to get started…” He lifted his eyebrows.
All three of them stared at me, waiting for me to pull the trigger on this absurd plan. I looked at them and closed my eyes. I thought about faking my way through the next two weeks, Ted grinning and The Crucible opening and being questioned again and again about Hugh’s death. I didn’t think I could do it. But I knew I couldn’t fake my way through the rest of the senior year. And if Ted posted the videos online, the last shreds of life as I knew it—which had become increasingly frayed and tattered in the previous few months—would disappear. This was like a sabbatical, I told myself. I’d give my family a shock at first, sure, but it wouldn’t be worse than the shock they’d get if Ted went live. I could get a job in a pub or a hostel, maybe work on one of those farms in France when spring came. Then I’d come back and settle down, and The Time Courtney Ran Away would become a great family legend that would almost blot out all the reasons why I ran away. Which of course would have crumbled to dust by the time I returned.
I know it wasn’t the most clear-headed plan. But you’ll have to forgive me for not being clear-headed after that long, dark autumn.
“Prague,” I said.
“Good choice.” Rahim nodded at his monitor. “Large ex-pat population, centrally located if you want to city-hop.” Farah walked up beside him, and he pulled her into his lap while the other kept hitting keys. “You want to learn how to frame someone for embezzlement?”
She leaned into the screen, and Rahim began typing, putting the rest of my life in motion.
Chapter 23
When we left Athenaeum Lofts that day with strict orders to get passport photos immediately and bring them and Miranda Wickendam’s haunted birth certificate back to Rahim as soon as possible, I didn’t really believe that I would go through with it.
It hadn’t really sunk in that Ted was a psychopath, then. If I thought of him directly, I felt sick to my stomach. But at the same time, I kept catching a picture at the back of my mind: the next day at school, both of us sitting in Thistleton with everyone else, the way it had been for so long. It was like my unconscious mind hadn’t caught up with reality yet. But it didn’t take long, and when I woke up the next day, I realized that in an eerie way, I wasn’t surprised. Little things I’d been trying to ignore suddenly fell into place: his casual dismissal of me that night at the poker table; the way he’d been so hot and cold afterward, when I’d been trying to pretend I was okay; the way his face had been empty the night I danced for him. I hated myself a little bit for not having seen Ted for what he was.
It was Wednesday, only a week since Lexi and I had shot her grandfather’s gun in the woods. Our kiss, the warmth of her cheeks and neck in the cold afternoon, the snow falling all around us—it wasn’t just a lifetime ago, it was another life all together. A scene from a different movie spliced accidentally into mine. I got ready for school, struggling to gather my wits in order to keep Ted at a distance without letting anyone else know something was wrong. I wished I were starring in that other movie instead of this one. I dressed carefully: black, fine-gauge cashmere tights; a knee-length, gray wool pencil skirt; and a cream silk shell under a chunky navy sweater, belted in black leather at the waist. I leaned into the mirror and applied my makeup, heavier than usual, like a mask. I took my
time and made sure it was perfect. My hand had never been steadier with the eyeliner. As I leaned into the mirror to make sure the mascara brush was getting every single lash, my hip ground into the edge of the sink.
Of course I thought of Melissa’s bathroom again, of Hugh again, of how this all began again. I stood frozen in the mirror, the mascara wand held up in front of me. I was sick of thinking about it. It was like pressing a bruise so hard and so often that it didn’t heal right and spread out, gray-purple and blobby under your skin. I stared at the girl in the mirror, perfectly put together—the same old armor I’d been wearing long before Hugh raped me. It had just gotten a lot heavier after that. But hadn’t I been wearing it since the night Ted brought me those roses, ivory edged in red like they’d been dipped in blood? I’d been guarding against all those eyes that tracked us every day through Thistleton Hall. Melissa and Hilary and the junior versions of them that appeared in every class below us, hiding forked tongues behind their expertly applied lipstick. The dopey freshman girls who’d been inflating Molly’s ego in that tree on Gallows Hill in Salem. The underclassmen were like a captive audience for the dramas of the senior class. Rory Swanson had been taking bets on Hugh’s expulsion like he was a dog. That Hugh was a dog, had been worse than a dog, was beside the point. It was the Panopticon at work, everyone watching other people like their personal lives were for everyone else’s personal entertainment. I may have been a theater kid before Ted, but it was he who had pulled me into the spotlight of Country Day.
And now, I realized, meeting my own eyes in the mirror, I wanted out. I could do what Rahim was suggesting. Suddenly, a clean slate had never been so appealing—perhaps because it had never been so real, or so totally clean. I could be a whole new person. I would be a whole new person. Miranda Wickendam, may she rest in peace. Who was she? I didn’t ask myself this the way Lexi did, who Miranda had been when she’d been alive, but I wanted to know who she would be. Who I would be. What did Miranda like? How did she wear her hair? I felt my mind reach out instinctively the way it did when I was trying to feel my way into a character. I finally put the mascara wand back in the tube, and went into Anna’s room. What if…. I pulled on her Doc Martens, brushing cobwebs off the thick brown and yellow laces.
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