This Is How It Ends

by Jen Nadol

  “You are?” I asked, surprised. “So the police . . .” I hesitated, not sure if Nat realized she’d been a suspect.

  “Yeah,” she said darkly. “They’ve finally realized I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Idiots,” Trip spat.

  She looked at him gratefully and almost smiled. “Thanks, Trip. I couldn’t agree more.”

  “Natalie,” Sarah said. “What happened? That night . . .”

  Nat’s eyes shifted to her handler, standing discreetly to the side. “I don’t know,” she said simply. “That’s what I kept telling them. My dad was wasted. Worse than at the mountain. Much worse,” she said quietly. “I went to my room, locked the door, and put on my headphones, the ones Lu gave me?” We all nodded. Lu was her coach, and the headphones were noise-canceling, to help her concentrate before races. Trip had seen them in her bag one day at school, and we’d taken turns wearing them at lunch, trying to read each other’s lips. Tannis had made these ridiculous faces at me, mouthing something I couldn’t understand. The others had been cracking up, and later I’d found out it was I want you.

  Nat continued, “I woke up just after three in the morning, my lights and headphones still on. I got up to brush my teeth and was going to get a glass of water from the kitchen.” Nat stopped and took a few quick breaths. I could feel my heart beating hard and fast. “I knew something was wrong right away,” she said. “There was a funny smell, and I had the weirdest déjà vu, walking down that hallway.” My skin was prickling. I saw Sarah’s hand slide involuntarily to clutch the other one. “Instead of turning into the kitchen, I kept going. Into the living room. And it was—” Natalie stopped, brought her fingers to her mouth, bit hard like she was holding something in.

  “You found him,” Trip finished softly.

  Natalie nodded, fingers between her teeth for another second. Then she dropped her hand. “It was exactly what I saw in those binoculars,” she whispered in a rush. Her eyes darted to Trip, then Tannis, then me. “Exactly.”

  My insides felt cold.

  “No.” Tannis was shaking her head. “Impossible. We went back and looked. There’s nothing there, Nat.”

  “Nothing where?”

  “In the binoculars,” Trip said. “We went back up to the cave,” he explained quietly, glancing toward Nat’s handler. “Monday night. We were worried about you and that you’d . . . you know . . . seen this. We didn’t know what it meant. But it’s like Tannis said: There’s nothing in them. It’s just a kaleidoscope. They didn’t have anything to do with this.”

  “So what happened that night?” Nat demanded. “I’m telling you I saw it. Exactly what happened.”

  “Hallucinations,” Tannis said firmly. “If anything.”

  I looked at her, the tight set of her jaw and eyes, clearly ready to challenge anyone who disagreed. I was struck by how completely she’d latched on to the idea that the binoculars were nothing more than a fancy toy. There’s no way I’d have believed Trip without looking for myself. Maybe I’d have felt differently if I’d seen something I didn’t want.

  Natalie’s handler came over then. “I’m sorry, kids,” she said, actually looking like she meant it, “but I have to ask you to move on.”

  The four of us closed in on Nat again, a football huddle with Natalie safe in the center. “We’re here for you, Nat,” Sarah whispered, hugging her tight. Natalie hugged back, each of us with an arm around her and Nat holding on like we could somehow whisk her away from everything.

  We stood at the edge of the crowd for a little, watching people. I could feel the others studying faces too. Watching how Natalie greeted them, how they mixed and mingled and talked among themselves. I wondered if the same question was on all of our minds:

  If Nat hadn’t done it, who had?

  CHAPTER 12

  I HAD DINNER WITH MY mom and told her all about the funeral.

  Well, not all.

  I didn’t mention all the seedy characters who’d been there, or how Bill Winston hadn’t been and what had happened between him and Mr. Cleary at the Dash, or any of the other things I’m sure she’d hear or already had heard through the grapevine.

  I also didn’t talk about all the reporters. I didn’t want to remind her of when my dad had died.

  “There were a lot of cops there,” I said. “And Nat was a mess.”

  She nodded. “That poor girl.”

  “The police finally cleared her,” I said.

  “She was a suspect?” Maybe my mom’s link to the grapevine was broken.

  “Yeah.”

  “So who do they think did it?”

  “Dunno,” I said. “The police have been asking around about who Mr. Cleary’s enemies were.”

  My mom snorted. “Anyone on the tourism board, after the stunt he pulled at the Dash.”

  “You heard?”

  “Who didn’t?’ She tapped her lips thoughtfully. “Or what about the family of that girl who died last year?”

  “The one who OD’d?” My mom nodded. “What does she have to do with it?”

  “Where do you think she got the drugs? Sally at the Manor knows them, said the dad was out of his head when it happened.”

  “Huh.” I wondered if maybe my link to the grapevine was broken. My mom started clearing dishes, and I flipped absently through the mail. Bill, bill, junk, bill.

  “They live up that way too, I think,” she added.

  A postcard about the SATs, “FINAL REMINDER” in bold red letters.

  I stared at it for a minute, my hand stalled between the stacks I’d been sorting envelopes into. Not a bill. But I couldn’t bring myself to call it junk, either.

  “What’s that?” My mom peered at the postcard as she collected my dishes.

  “Nothing,” I said, wishing I’d tossed it into trash pile, where it belonged. “Just came with the mail.”

  But her face told me she got it. It wasn’t nothing, just nothing we could use. The SAT notices had started coming last year, sandwiched between glossy flyers and fancy college booklets I’d never sent for. I’d paged through them, imagining myself on those campus paths or in the lecture halls. Then I’d read the tuition and swept them into the trash can, along with the local paper and whatever other crap had come that day. Each notice about the SATs had gone with them. Why waste forty-three dollars to take the test? There was no way I could go to college. Believe me, I’d racked my brains.

  Community college? The closest was over an hour away, and we only had one car.

  Living and working on campus? I’d never make enough for tuition, dorm, books, food, and sending money home.

  Financial aid? We didn’t qualify for enough government aid, and our credit was too shaky for anything else.

  Scholarships? No one was giving out free rides these days, and even if I won half a ride, it wasn’t enough.

  And the biggest unknown, always looming—what if things with my mom got worse?

  But I wanted to go. So bad I could taste it.

  We finished our dessert in silence. My mom stood to rinse her dish, then turned to me. “I’ve gotta run,” she said. She came closer, smoothed my hair the way she had since I was a kid. “You’re a good boy, Riley.” She kissed my head lightly, the smell of bleach and her perfume surrounding me. “Somehow we’ll work things out.”

  I listened to the car crunch out of the driveway, then shoved the postcard into my jeans pocket and headed upstairs to start on my homework.

  CHAPTER 13

  NATALIE CAME BACK TO SCHOOL Friday. We all walked in together, me on one side and Trip on the other. A hush fell over the hallway as everyone turned to stare.

  “You okay?” Sarah asked Natalie softly when we paused outside the office. Her voice carried in the silence.

  Natalie nodded, tense and uncomfortable. “See you at lunch.” She pulled open the glass
door and slipped inside.

  As soon as it closed, Trip whirled to face the eyes of at least twenty of our classmates. “Give her a break, people, you know?”

  A few people nodded, shuffling off. The rest stayed, apparently transfixed by the prospect of watching Natalie Cleary fill out paperwork. Everyone knew by now that the police had cleared her. Forensics and all. But having one of your classmates orphaned by a murder in a town of twelve hundred was still a big effing deal. Trip shook his head in disgust, muttering “Losers,” and stalked off.

  Behind the glass Principal Miller ushered Natalie and some other people, including Lu Kresbol, Nat’s coach and head of the ski program, into his office. Technically Natalie was a ward of the state until she turned eighteen. But that was two months away, much sooner than anyone would get through the paperwork needed to assign her somewhere. So, untechnically, the local Social Services staff—including Matty’s mom—had signed off on her staying with Lu. By the time anyone from the state figured out what was going on, Natalie would be legal to be on her own anyhow.

  ***

  We stayed in the cafeteria for lunch. It felt like we were in a bubble, the silence surrounding us palpable, but it was just too damn cold to go outside.

  “How’s it going?” Sarah asked Nat after we, too, had sat in silence for a while. “You hanging in?”

  Nat nodded. “It’s exhausting, honestly,” she said. “I can see everyone thinking about it and no one talking about it. Like they’re afraid I’ll break if they bring it up, even though watching them think about it is worse.”

  We nodded, none of us sure how to handle her either, and we were her closest friends.

  “You don’t remember anything at all, Nat?” Trip asked softly. “Other than . . . you know, what you told us before? You didn’t hear anyone come in?”

  Her jaw tightened, and I thought Trip had been wrong to ask that. She shook her head. “No.” Her voice was hoarse.

  “Do you know who usually came by?” he pressed.

  Natalie looked up. “You mean who his customers were?” He nodded. “Not all of them.” Her eyes darted away from us, taking in some of the nearby tables, filled with our classmates. “But you’d be surprised who I’ve seen at the house.”

  I definitely would be, I thought. Nat never talked about it, but I’d sensed it a couple times, the weird dynamic between Nat and people she’d never cross paths with otherwise. Kids like Moose gave her an extra wide berth, treating her a little differently from how he treated the rest of us. Not like they were friends or co-conspirators but like she had them by the balls. Which she did.

  “Do they know?” Trip asked.

  “Some do,” Nat said cryptically. “Some probably don’t.”

  “Did you tell the cops?”

  “Of course.”

  He hesitated a second, then asked, “Did you ever see Galen Riddock?”

  “Yes.”

  “How about that night?”

  She stared at him. “Why?”

  Trip hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said. “Just . . . he was asking. About stuff. At John Peters’s party. I just wondered if he . . . you know, followed up on it.”

  ***

  But of course there was more. Trip called me around five thirty. I was in my room doing homework, and he’d just finished practice. I could hear him breathing hard, imagined him crossing the lot to his car.

  “I’ve been hearing things,” he said.

  “Maybe you should see a doctor.”

  “Not that,” Trip said. “I like the voices in my head. This stuff is about Nat’s dad. And that night.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “I’ll tell you when I get there.”

  Great. Like I could concentrate on physics now. And I’d already finished all my mindless homework.

  I gazed at the textbook for another five minutes or so, but after reading the same paragraph for the third nonsensical time, I gave up, tossing it onto the floor beside my bed.

  It was quiet in the house with my mom asleep. I could hear the hum of the boiler, the tick of the clock in the living room.

  I thought of the binoculars in my drawer, where they’d been since the night we’d gone back to the cave. I hadn’t wanted them here but definitely hadn’t wanted to leave them there, either. And no one else would take them. Not that I could have let them anyhow. Now I got the strongest urge to take them out, remembering Nat’s words: It was exactly what I saw.

  What would I see if I looked again?

  I had my hand on the knob of my top dresser drawer when the SAT postcard caught my eye. FINAL REMINDER.

  I picked it up instead, turned it over absently. Seventy-three dollars. It would have been forty-three a month ago, but this was a final warning, rush reminder. The only time they were offered locally. My last chance. I knew without looking that we didn’t have the money, couldn’t remember the last time we’d had that much to spare.

  But you couldn’t get into college without taking them. How could that be my future if I didn’t take the test?

  Maybe I was wrong about the money. Maybe I could somehow squeeze out enough.

  I took the postcard to the living room, searched out the checkbook and the overdue bills to be paid this week. Then I called the bank. My paycheck was in, bringing our available funds to $133.12.

  It was enough for the SATs or the bills. But not both.

  So unfair.

  I studied the payment slips, wishing they would morph into different dates or amounts. They aren’t that overdue, I thought. There are grace periods. Payment plans.

  I walked up to my room, dug through the stack of papers beside my bed, and finally spotted the one I wanted. I’d gotten the SAT registration forms from the guidance counselor a few months back when I’d planned to sign up.

  Before I could second-guess myself, I wrote it all out. The registration, the check. I put the stamp on the envelope just as Trip beeped outside.

  CHAPTER 14

  I SLID INTO THE PASSENGER seat, still holding the envelope.

  Trip glanced at it. “Need to drop that off?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Writing to Justin Bieber again?”

  “Something like that.” Trip pulled away from the curb, turning toward town, and I asked, “Where are we going?”

  “To see Galen Riddock.”

  I wasn’t surprised. I’d suspected Trip’s questions at lunch hadn’t been random. “What’s the deal?”

  “Remember at the Dash party when he was looking to score something?” I nodded, and Trip continued, “One of the guys told me he did. Late night.”

  I whistled, low. “So he’d have been the last person to see Nat’s dad alive.”

  “Maybe the very last,” Trip said grimly. “He was drinking when we saw him. I could smell it. And he’s kind of an asshole when he’s drunk.”

  “And when he’s sober.”

  Trip pulled over by the post office. I hopped out, hesitating only a second before tossing the envelope into the black slot. No turning back. I climbed into the car, asking, “Do the cops know?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “So tell me again what we’re doing?”

  “We’re going to go ask him about it.”

  I stared, incredulous. “And you think he’s just going to tell us?”

  “I don’t know,” Trip said. “I guess I thought we’d just . . . figure something out from how he reacts.”

  “Maybe,” I said doubtfully. “But I think you’ll do better on your own. Galen and I aren’t exactly pals.”

  Understatement of the year, but Trip didn’t know how much I really hated Galen Riddock. I’d never told him about the day in eighth grade when I’d overheard them by the lockers. My parents had had a humongous blowout fight over the weekend, and when I’d gotten up
Sunday morning, it had been just me and my dad, one of the last times we were together, I realized later.

  “Where’s Mom?” I asked softly.

  “Beats me,” he said, barely stirring on the couch.

  “Did she go to the store?” I knew she hadn’t.

  “No,” he said, not looking at me.

  She still wasn’t back Monday, and I needed to find Trip. Maybe she’d gone to his house. Or told his mom where she was. I heard Galen’s voice just before I rounded the corner.

  “. . . follows you around. Tell us the truth, Trip. Is he your boyfriend?”

  I froze, heard Trip say, “C’mon, guys—”

  “No, really,” Galen persisted. “I think there’s something going on. Do you guys have sleepovers? Stay up late reading, like, science magazines and shit? Share a sleeping bag, maybe?”

  Then I heard Trip, angry, “Look, it’s not like I have a choice. Our parents are friends, so I have to be nice to him or my mom’ll flip out.”

  I turned, walked quickly and quietly away, the sting of his words sharp. They weren’t true, I knew. Galen had backed Trip into a corner. Hadn’t he?

  It had been football and high school and my dad’s death and our parents’ drifting apart that had made Trip and me drift apart too. But in my mind Galen Riddock had always been wrapped up in it.

  Now Trip considered what I’d said about us confronting him. “Yeah, okay,” he agreed. “But come anyhow. Wait in the car.”

  “In case he admits it and whacks you, too?”

  “Something like that,” Trip said, only half-kidding.

  ***

  The Riddocks lived in an old clapboard house about a mile from school. I saw Galen’s blue Toyota parked in the gravel driveway but no other cars. There was an assortment of crap on the porch. A spare tire, an old high chair, a few boxes. It was a bad habit shared by a lot of people in Buford, the public display of accumulated junk, half hoarding, half laziness.

  Trip pulled up across from the house. “Get down,” he instructed, “just in case he looks out the window.”