I was resting next to him at the viewpoint, watching this ship make the turn from the Strait into the passage that leads toward the refineries, and thinking about Kristen and Corey sitting in the same place and about how different they are, or were, from each other, though they both dressed preppy, and wondering what they talked about that day they came up here and what she saw in him that would make her come here with him. The realization that I would probably never get to ask her hit me, and this powerful sadness came over me. Without thinking about it, I put my hand on Brad’s and leaned my head on his shoulder, and it felt comfortable, which surprised me and didn’t surprise me at the same time.
Then I heard people coming up the trail, kids’ voices, a family, and as they got near, I started thinking about how we would look to them, Brad and I sitting there. It made me think about my hair and piercings. I hardly ever think about them anymore because they’ve become like part of me now.
I could tell, without looking, when the family came out of the woods to a place where they could see us, because the kids’ voices changed. They didn’t stop talking, but they got quieter, more subdued. They were probably disappointed that we were there, and it was nice that they sensed our moment enough to let us keep it when they could have just as easily barged right up and joined us. It made me think about people and human nature and how Brad and I were both feeling the big sadness, he for his own reason and me for mine, and each reason was because someone else didn’t care enough about how what he or she did would make someone else feel.
Our sadness was bringing us together, which was nice and maybe could make it bearable, and this family, even the kids, felt something, though they likely couldn’t have said what it was, and without saying anything, pulled back and went on, allowing us to hang on to the feeling a little longer and maybe let the part that was connecting us take root. So for a little longer, we watched the ship, tiny in the distance, make its way north between the islands, and then we followed the trail up to the main viewpoint at the top.
Kristen told me she had seen vultures from up there, which surprised me because I didn’t think there were birds like that around here, so I told Brad about them. The family that had passed us wasn’t at the top, but there was a couple talking and pointing at landmarks. We looked for the vultures. Kristen said they saw them to the right of Mount Eerie in the distance beyond the little lake that’s right at the base of the mountain, and I had this memory from Greek mythology. I do that, as you may have noticed, have memories from things I’ve read. This one was about birds and came from the Trojan War story, which wasn’t about who won the war but about how war sucks and how kings can be wise and good and still lose, or be assholes and win.
Anyway, near the end of the story, the Trojan king, alone except for a servant, is heading across enemy lines to get his son’s body back so it can have a proper burial. His wife thinks he’s crazy and that he will become a hostage, or be tortured, and will definitely make an already bad situation worse. He says the gods have told him to go and he prayed for a bird of omen, which means a sign from the gods, to show his wife that he’s right in going. If the bird comes from the right, it’s a good sign, kind of a thumbs-up. If it comes from the left, it’s not so good. Where Kristen said she saw the vultures is on the right. An eagle came for the Trojan king. It was on the right and he got to bring his son’s body back, but later Troy was defeated and burned to the ground.
So, were Kristen’s vultures a good sign or a bad one? Is she out there alive somewhere, or not?
I told Brad the omen story and we looked for birds. There were some robins flitting around in the brush, but there were several and they were on both sides of us. We didn’t see the vultures, and decided they were keeping themselves to San Juan Island, which is where Brad said he had heard they lived. He has a friend whose family has a house there. We heard some crows behind us and turned to look but didn’t know if that meant anything, and finally we did see two eagles, but they came over the top of Mount Eerie, so I guess the gods weren’t ready to tell us anything. But it was a good day anyway, even with feeling the big sadness, because nothing spoiled the way that sharing it with Brad makes grief bearable.
Corey
It was still pretty early when I woke up. There were a bunch of goddamn crows in a big maple tree above the tent making a huge racket. Their squawking is annoying, like they’re always scolding something or bitching about life. My head was throbbing and I had to pee, so I climbed out and watered a bush away from the tent. The leaves were out, it being spring and all. Brightness filtered through to the ground and made blotches on the tree trunks. When I looked up at the crows, who didn’t seem a bit afraid of me, the green of the leaves had this yellowness to it from the sun shining through them, and it was a nice morning, in spite of how I felt.
The MacNaughton’s bottle had just one good swallow left in it, so I downed it, hoping that it would clear my head. Then I took down the tent and packed the gear back in the buckets. I left everything, including the empty bottle, hidden under the usual log. I have a thing about littering and always carry out in my pack any garbage that won’t rot, but since the decision to come was spur-of-the-moment, I didn’t have the pack with me.
I nearly made it to town before they picked me up. The sheriff’s car came from behind so I didn’t hear it until it was close. I looked back and it was clear right away that the cop’s attention was focused on me, not on the road or the intersection coming up at the edge of town. He had the radio mike in his hand. Then he put it down and pulled up next to me with the window down.
“Good morning,” he said.
I just said “Hi” without looking directly at him. I had whiskey on my breath and didn’t want him to smell it. I didn’t know what else to say. The last thing I wanted was to get in the car with him, which is what eventually happened. He asked me how I was doing, then started in about what a nice morning it was in that fake polite way public-authority people are supposed to use before they get the Harold look in their eye and grab you or point a gun at you and put the cuffs on. Okay, you should know I’ve had my run-ins with officers of the law, mostly town cops or Shelter Bay security guys who thought I was suspicious for various reasons at different times. None of it ever came to much. The only thing that stuck was an MIP which means Minor in Possession, and drinking is something everyone does, even cops. In fact, one of the cops that cuffed me got busted later for giving beer to an underage girl who just happened to be sitting in his car up in the park. I wonder what he was after. I had to go to court and pay a fine, but so have half the other people at school. That’s a big part of why I can’t drive.
It was obvious that something weird was going on, so I’m standing there in the road trying to come up with a strategy, and this other cop car pulls up. The new guys get out of their car. They had pulled off the road in this open area near the sewer treatment plant, and they’re standing there with their hands on their guns. The first cop tells me to walk toward them, keeping my hands visible at my sides. By now, it’s clear I’m screwed somehow, and I start thinking about how I look, what a mess I am. I’m short, but I’ve been shaving since I was fifteen and I grow a pretty good crop of stubble over night. I combed my hair by the river but I didn’t have a mirror and it gets greasy when I sleep, especially if I’ve been drinking, which makes me sweat. I’d slept in my clothes. Not a good picture.
As I walk toward the second cop car, my mind is flashing all over the place, looking for options and not finding any. Even though they are acting polite and wording their orders like suggestions, it doesn’t take much imagination to see how quick the pretend politeness will disappear and guns will come out if I start running or even just try to ignore them and keep walking. So when they ask if I would mind getting in the car, I cooperate, and when they want to frisk me before I get in, I make a show of assuming the spread-eagle position with my hands on top of the car to let them know I think maybe they’re in the wrong movie, and I’ve got nothing to be afr
aid of.
They took me straight into Mount Vernon. From the radio talk, I can tell the cop in the other car went by the house and told Harold and my mom where I was, and I was imagining Harold’s face at the door and how pissed he’d be. But at the same time he’d be sort of self-satisfied because he thinks I’m scum and this would help him confirm it. I still didn’t know what was going on. All they said was that they wanted to ask me some questions. They were still playing the polite game and hadn’t cuffed me or told me my rights like they would if they were arresting me.
At the courthouse, which is also the police station, with the big new county jail across the street, they put me in this room like you’d see on a TV cop show where they question suspects. There was nothing there but a video camera mounted in a corner from the ceiling, a crappy-looking table, and some of those plastic chairs like they have in the library at school that are indestructible. The walls were, you guessed it, puke green, and there was the mirror that’s really a panel of one-way glass built into the wall.
I needed to take a dump because it was morning and I hadn’t yet. I know it’s gross and you probably don’t want to read about it and I won’t go into detail or anything, but I’m including it because it was memorable. They sent a cop with me. Luckily I wasn’t cuffed to him, so he didn’t have to come into the stall, but he hovered just outside like he was afraid I would escape down the toilet. I could see his feet under the door, which made it hard to go even though I really had to, and that was when it hit me that this was the real thing, and whatever it was they thought I’d done last night, it was a bigger deal than smashing mail boxes in Shelter Bay or even having Sascha Miller sneak out at night back when we were in eighth grade to roll around in a sleeping bag with me. After I made the mistake of bragging it up to some guys at school, she said I tricked her into it and tried to rape her, which wasn’t true, but it got all public and I was questioned first by the principal, then by some detective.
It was Sascha’s idea to sneak out, and she talked like she’d done it before and seemed to have this big crush on me. I didn’t like her all that much, but she wasn’t bad-looking. I mean, who doesn’t fantasize about doing it? I hadn’t done it and it seemed too good to pass up. She even brought a water bottle with some gin in it that she stole from her parents. It tasted awful but we drank it anyway. I probably drank most of it. I stole one of Harold’s condoms from the nightstand drawer in their bedroom, but didn’t use it because it never got that far. It was close but I stopped, because all of a sudden she tensed up like she had changed her mind, so I didn’t go through with it and she was crying and it got real awkward. I’m sure she was lying about having done it, which I understand since it’s the kind of lie I would tell and have told, and my mistake was bragging about it, but I sort of got trapped into that.
I did brag. I even said more happened than did. I’m not trying to duck out of that part. But it wasn’t the way they tried to make it look, like she was all innocent and I had plotted it out and tricked her. We met in the park and Rebecca Swanson was with her. Rebecca was going out with this guy who has since moved but who met us there too. They went off and left us alone, which at the time I thought was good, but it sure ended up a mess because Rebecca told these two guys who go to our school and who I thought were my friends that Sascha and I had snuck out and were now a couple. They called up all buddy-like and said, “We hear you’re going out with Sascha now.” I said no, we weren’t going out or anything, and they said they heard about last night and how we were in the park together. They acted like they envied me, like I was the luckiest guy in the world and said, “You guys did it, didn’t you?”
I didn’t deny it. I would have felt stupid saying what really happened and, looking back, I don’t think the truth would have helped much anyway because there still would have been a rumor and her parents probably would have heard it and Sascha would likely have made up a similar lie because that’s the way she is, so I should have just said nothing happened, but I wanted to be cool and let those guys think we did it and that’s part of why I’m still stuck in here. There are a few other messes I’ve been in that aren’t helping much either.
When I got back into that puke-green room with the camera, these two cops came in and made me tell them every little detail about how I spent all the time from when Harold went to Bellingham, leaving me home alone, until the cop spotted me that morning. I’ve already described that time to you, so I won’t bore you by repeating it here. I could tell they knew a lot of it already, at least up until I got dropped off at the Shell a little before midnight. But I didn’t want to tell them about the campsite because for some reason I still had this sense that I would get to walk out of here pretty soon, and I wanted to protect that place so that Harold’s house wasn’t my only option. I ended up telling them, but they had already found out from someone else, so it didn’t matter.
As I said before, I have trouble with authority and I get this tight thing in my chest. In fact, I tighten up all over and it gets hard for me to breathe. Whenever I’m put on the spot, my voice cracks, and I probably look all desperate or something, and I sort of am. I can never think straight and I end up doing one of two things. Sometimes I clown, like when they asked if they could frisk me, and sort of make a big show of overdoing whatever it is I have to do. The other thing I do is get angry and belligerent and try to push the situation over the edge and get it done with. When I can make Harold or Koenings lose it, even when I end up getting thrown around or Harold hits me like he used to do, I feel better. When I make them lose it, I feel less crappy, because I know I’m not the only dumb shit in the world.
That day was no different. The tight-chest thing came as soon as the first cop pulled up beside me. As you may recall, I looked like a mess, with face stubble and dirty, slept-in clothes. The clown bit didn’t seem to work at all. Those guys had some serious faces that wouldn’t crack even the start of a smile, and now that I know what they think I did, I understand, but I didn’t know that yet, so I acted pretty unstable. In fact, I was a mess when I got back from the bathroom where I’d realized that this was no game. My mouth was dry and my voice was cracking when I told them about mowing the lawn and reading a book before I headed for the mall.
So I didn’t come off as very believable. I mean, looking back over it, since I’ve got all this contemplation time on my hands, remembering how I said what I said, knowing now what they must have been thinking and how crazy angry I feel towards anyone who might have hurt her when I let myself imagine it, I can understand why they’re keeping me here, even though all their evidence is circumstantial. I don’t have any way to prove she wasn’t there that night. What I told them sounds like a lame story, even to me. I act guilty and look guilty because I’m used to being the one who caused the trouble, and even though I don’t have a long police record, in this valley everyone knows everything about you. If you started stacking up the stories about me and believed the worst of them, it wouldn’t be hard to believe I did it.
Since I’m only seventeen, they can use the fact that I’m a minor to keep me locked up without charging me. My mom and Harold aren’t going to do anything to get me out, and my dad is probably just drinking more, if that’s possible. The worst thing is that when they get their case together, they’ll probably try me as an adult.
Kristen
Being here has changed me. Now, instead of fighting the urge to run Bonnie’s Taurus into a tree, I’m trying to figure out how to stay alive. But I haven’t cut myself once since I got here. After you’ve seriously thought about killing yourself, life starts to seem like a game you can get out of anytime you’re brave enough to move the steering wheel half an inch.
“Give me liberty or give me death.” Another quote out of a textbook. For me, instead of liberty, it’s give me honesty and some kind of warm connection. Until I met Grant and he got weird, I was starting to feel okay about myself, in spite of my fabricated life here. Sometimes jogging, or sitting on the beach, I would
realize that what I was feeling at that moment might be happiness.
Now I’m scared. It’s a toss-up whether being depressed all the time or being scared is worse. The phone is on the table, and I could pick it up right now and go back to being depressed, but I’m trying to be adult. I could call Natalie. If she felt this way, I would want her to call me. But I can’t go back to being Kristen again, and Sterling and Bonnie would never allow me to be anything else.
Grant is scaring the shit out of me. Natalie might know what to do, but I can’t make myself call her yet, because I know it would bring this to an end, and bad as it has become, I’m not ready for that.
So I live here day to day, moment to moment.
It started out as a game, coming here. It gave me a kind of hope. The scheming was fun and a good distraction. I mean plotting my escape, buying the hair coloring, the clothes and make up, pretending to spend money that I was really stashing away in a book in my room. It was like the little-girl fantasy games I used to play with my stuffed animals, and until I ended up across the border here, with no one to recognize me or get in the way, it could have stayed a game.
Natalie is really pretty and has a nice figure, but she covers her looks by dying her hair that maroon color and wearing it short. Sometimes she uses gel to shape it. One night we were messing around at her house with some of that spray dye that you can wash out and I did my hair half her maroon color and half orange, and I put on make-up just to see, and it was truly weird how much the dye and the eyeliner changed my appearance. Looking in the mirror, I imagined what I would look like wearing clothes like Natalie’s, my hair dyed a different color and cut short, or even done up with gel. Most of her clothes didn’t fit me, but we found an outfit that did. It was startling. I really did look different.
North Fork Page 6