“Priscilla and Willow were two underaged girls who were fed a potentially lethal amount of alcohol by an adult with a previous drunk driving conviction.”
“Oh, I’m sure he held them down and forced it down their throats.”
“Ms. Davis, the law is very clear on the issue of serving alcohol to minors. Both Tigue Anderson and his parents displayed a significant amount of irresponsibility and we only need to show a jury that—”
“Your brilliant defense strategy is to go after the Andersons? Honey, their attorney makes more in an hour than you do in a week.”
Killdaire took a deep breath. She looked over at me, the faintest hint of a smile curling up the ends of her mouth as if we shared some sort of secret. I didn’t smile back.
“Priscilla may have made some bad decisions in her life,” she said calmly, “but it’s going to take some big guns to convince a jury that an innocent sixteen-year-old girl is single-handedly responsible for the tragic accident that occurred last summer.”
“Innocent, my ass,” my mother said.
I cleared my throat. Killdaire and my mother both turned to me.
“Look,” I said, “isn’t it possible that this might never go before a jury?”
“Priscilla, are you saying you want to look into the possibility of settling with the prosecution?” Killdaire used a different voice when she talked to me. She spoke softly and gently, as if I were an animal or maybe a child.
“Well, I mean, what if there was another way of avoiding a trial, another sort of deal I could cut?”
“Honey, I’m not sure what you mean,” Killdaire said.
“I mean … ” I began. I looked over at my mother, who seemed simultaneously annoyed and expectant. I looked at Killdaire. At any second, she might fall right off the edge of her seat.
Sherman, like a popularity-obsessed high school student, spent a lot of time worrying about what other people thought of him. Most of all, he wanted his wife and his kids to be proud of him. In letters written to them he begged them to accept his actions as the best he could do in the circumstances. He wanted them to know he’d always tried to do the right thing. Of course, in one letter to his wife he wrote, “I begin to regard the death and mangling of a couple thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash—and it may be well that we become so hardened.”
I thought of those sitting in judgment of me. Not the not-yet-seated jury, but those who’d judged me my whole life: my mother, my peers, the Andersons, the S. Louise Killdaires of the world. A part of me wanted to explain about Christian Calambeaux, to somehow prove to them that I wasn’t completely helpless, but no matter what I said, I was going to make myself look even worse than I already did.
“Never mind,” I said.
“No, Priscilla, it’s okay,” Killdaire replied in her baby-animal voice. “What is it? What’s your idea?”
“Yeah,” my mother said. “Out with it. What is your brilliant plan?”
How could I even begin to explain that I was working for the FBI and it might give me a ticket out of the trial? It all seemed so ridiculous. What was Christian going to do for me? What could he do for me?
That glimmer of hope was starting to look more and more like a mirage. I was kidding myself. I didn’t have a chance. I’d misread the strength of the enemy, and now found myself surrounded.
“They’re going to make me look really bad, aren’t they?” I asked. “At the trial, they’re going to make me look like some kind of monster.”
“It won’t be that bad,” Killdaire said. “I promise.” She said this in her special voice, though, so I didn’t believe her.
Last Summer
Rain washed down my face. I opened my eyes. I’d dozed off. I wasn’t sure for how long. The rain had begun to come down hard in big, angry drops. They pelted my bare skin. I was freezing. I felt around for something to pull over myself. I found a damp towel and pulled it over my shoulders. It didn’t warm me up, but it kept the rain from hitting so hard.
I had the feeling I hadn’t been out for too long. Things were pretty much the same—Tigue was still a lump at the front of the boat. Randy was still passed out, and Willow was piloting the craft through the rough water at a snail’s pace.
“Are we there yet?” I asked.
“Frodo lives,” Willow muttered. “Come up here and help me, dammit.”
I pushed myself onto my feet and a sharp pain turned my insides to burning fire. I’d eaten only a cheese Danish that morning, then washed it down with far too much alcohol while baking in the summer sun. I didn’t need a bathroom, I needed a hospital.
Still, I shuffled toward Willow. We weren’t moving fast at all—Willow was driving cautiously. It was the practical thing to do, but I was in no shape to think practically. I had to get off that boat. We could afford to speed it up. No one else would be out on the lake in this weather, and as I made my way to the steering wheel, this seemed true. I didn’t see a single boat.
Willow was crying. Tears slid quietly down her face. I still don’t know what she was crying about. She probably didn’t know either. It could have just been the alcohol, or maybe she was desperate to get back to shore and unable to find the way. Later, some time in the dim hours of early morning as I lay in bed trying to sleep, all I could see in my head was Willow’s face with the tears running down it.
“I can’t see shit,” Willow said. “And I don’t know where the fuck we are.”
The darkness obscured everything. I imagined I’d have to use some long-buried instinct to navigate my way back to the marina, any marina. It didn’t really matter at this point which one. Then I realized that the darkness was more than darkness. A layer of fog hung over the lake, making it impossible to see even a few feet in front of the boat.
Later, I knew exactly what we should have done. We should have stopped the boat, dug out the air horn that every boater keeps stored under the seat cushions for just such an occasion, and blasted away on it until someone came to our aid. They would have towed us back to shore or at least led the way. We would have gone back to Tigue’s, slept off our drunk, awoke in the morning with vicious hangovers, and laughed halfheartedly about the whole thing on Sunday afternoon. Ha, ha, ha. End of story. Amen. This is the rationality that hindsight and sobriety produces.
My logical mind, however, was fuzzed over by booze and the raging wildfire that engulfed my insides. Desperation fueled my thinking. I needed to get back to shore. I needed to get back to shore now.
So I pushed up the speed of the boat, going from leisurely to quicker to fast to really fast. We pounded along the water. The breeze numbed our damp bodies. Rain thrashed us. Beside me, Willow clung to the boat as we headed in a direction that I could only hope was where we had come from, more or less. Maybe if Willow had told me to slow down, I would have, but she didn’t. She too was desperate to get back too.
The water was rougher than it had been earlier. The boat was thrown up and down. The bouncing woke Randy, who came to with some confused mumbling.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. Then, “I don’t feel so good.”
“Shut up!” Willow snapped, and he did.
Instinct, or maybe some form of luck, had helped me guide the boat in the direction of the shore. I still had no idea where we were, and squinted into the fog. I saw it dead on—just floating harmlessly in the water, waiting for us, it seemed. In the fog, in my drunkenness, I thought it was a rowboat. I imagined it to be a rowboat, its prow facing us, its two passengers staring at us with startled expressions on their faces. I saw all this. I really did. I jerked the wheel hard to the right. The speedboat responded slowly, then turned at last and sent up a spray of water that landed on what turned out to be nothing but a buoy. I was trembling and having trouble breathing. Fear held me tightly in its grasp. More than ever, I wanted to be back home asleep in my cozy bed instead of here.
“Slow down,” someone said. I’m still not sure who. I couldn’t remember how to slow down. I clung to the whee
l tight enough to make my fingers numb.
Willow saw it before I did. She said something, swore, and reached for the wheel. I was holding on so tightly that her feeble attempt to jerk it toward her did nothing.
“I don’t feel good,” Randy said again. Willow didn’t tell him to shut up, but it didn’t matter.
Tigue picked that moment to awaken from his comatose state. He rose to a sitting position and said, “Jesus Christ! We’re all going to die!” He was wrong.
When I saw the boat, it was no more than a body’s length away. I jerked the wheel, but it made no difference at that point. I couldn’t slow down because I couldn’t remember how to. The prow of our boat was aimed directly at the mid-section of the other boat’s port side. Someone on the other boat screamed.
That scream still rings in my ears when I wake from my nightmares. They, too, had not seen us until it was too late. Our boat crashed into theirs at full speed.
Chaos.
Willow and I were thrown to the front of the boat, where Tigue had been only moments before. Randy and Tigue were thrown totally off the boat by the force of the impact. We were rocking in the choppy water but no longer racing forward. The boat’s racing days were over.
I looked behind me to find the other boat, but I couldn’t see it. Then I realized that the two white things sinking below the water line were the two halves of it. I could see this, but I refused to comprehend it. It hadn’t happened. It couldn’t have happened.
Around me, I heard shouts, cries.
A man kept shouting, “Mary! Mary!” over and over again.
An air horn blew.
We were near the marina, and the sound of the impact had carried across the water. Other boats moved in to help. The passengers from the other boat were pulled from the water, as were Randy and Tigue. Someone came aboard our boat and found Willow and me. A man with fireman arms carried us onto another boat and drove us to the dock. On the shore, emergency medical technicians lined up like vultures. I saw Randy strapped to a stretcher. Tigue stood in the shadows, running a finger ceaselessly through his overgrown locks. Someone handed Willow a wool blanket, and we draped it over ourselves as we sat on the ground.
The man still yelled for Mary, but she would never answer him.
This Summer
Christian’s Town Car sat waiting for me in the far corner of the park-and-ride lot. I felt like a total skeezoid. I didn’t need to do this. I mean, Christian hadn’t even promised me anything yet. I could walk away, but I couldn’t. Right now, Christian was the only hope I had. All my plans, everything I hoped for, hinged entirely on Christian’s aid, and he wasn’t going to help me unless I helped him first. I opened the passenger door and got in.
“You’re looking resplendent today,” Christian said.
I shifted in the seat and tried to pull the hem of my sundress down further, but it didn’t work. It rode up too high when I sat down. I wondered if it had shrunk in the wash or if I’d experienced some sort of growth spurt. I made a mental note to dispose of it immediately.
“I found out stuff for you,” I said.
“That’s great,” he said. I didn’t like the goofy smile plastered across his face.
“What did you find out about the strings you can pull?” I asked.
“It’s complicated,” he said.
“Meaning, too complicated to work?”
“No. Not necessarily.”
I waited, but he didn’t say anything else. The windows were only rolled down a crack and it was hot in the car. I felt sweat oozing out of my pores, a combination of the heat and my nerves.
“So, can you get me out of the trial or not?”
“We don’t have much of a time frame to work with, and of course, you’ve already been charged. The district attorney might be willing to play ball, provided you’re able to serve them Randy Jenkins’ head on a platter.”
The heat made me lightheaded. I tried to focus, but my vision grew fuzzy, and Christian sounded further and further away. I reached out and braced myself against the dashboard even though I wasn’t actually in motion. I looked over at Christian to see if he felt the heat, but it was as if he didn’t notice it. How could he stand it?
“If I tell them Randy is a drug dealer, then I’m free?” I asked.
“You’d need to testify,” Christian said. “You’d need to testify at the trial about Randy’s culpability in the accident.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. I threw open the door and stumbled outside.
I’d gotten up too fast. Sparkles crowded my vision. I reached out for the car, but I’d never shut the door. It wasn’t where I expected it to be. I felt everything slipping away. I tried to prepare my body for impact, but I never touched the ground. Christian had run around the car in time to catch me. He held me in a firm embrace.
“Priscilla?” he said. “Priscilla, are you all right?”
My head started to clear. My vision and my strength returned. The sweat that coated my body now cooled in the faint breeze and gave me the briefest chill.
“Just too hot,” I said. Christian didn’t let me go. “It’s okay. I’m fine now.”
He looked at me with those little-boy eyes. Thankfully, he’d lost that goofy smile, but then I saw him leaning toward me and felt his lips lock onto mine.
I didn’t know what to do. I froze. Millions of thoughts raced through my mind. Was this whole thing about narcing out Randy bullshit? Was this all some clever ruse Christian had come up with to get me? Had I played right into it? Would he still help me with the trial?
I pulled away from him, and Christian released me from his grasp. What was that look on his face? Hurt? Confusion? Lust?
“What’s going on?” I demanded.
“Oh, God,” Christian said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean … I don’t know what … I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Forget it,” I said, but I took a couple of steps away from him. “I’ll tell you what I know, okay, and you do your thing with the district attorney or whatever. Make sure he knows I’m an informant and all, all right?”
“Okay,” Christian said, so softly that he still sounded really far away. I didn’t know what this meant. Did it mean I was in the clear? Did it mean I wouldn’t have to stand trial? Was I still supposed to blame Randy for the boat accident? I just wanted to be free of this whole mess.
So I spilled my guts to him, giving him all kinds of juicy tidbits about the drug trade as I knew it. Afterwards, I felt like shit. I felt worse than if I’d just gone and had sex with him in exchange for his helping me out. I went home, and took a long, hot shower.
Last Summer
I never felt closer to death than I did the night of the accident. I don’t mean because of the death of that faceless woman aboard the other boat, but because of the fact that I’d forced my mom to be present for an ugly encounter. I’d dared to publicly humiliate her in front of the worst sort of people out there.
My mother hated the Jenkinses, with their upper-middle-class virtues and their somewhat snobbish attitude. She bitched about them and never even pretended to tolerate them, but this deep-seated resentment of hers was just evidence of her inferiority complex. Secretly, my mother was always worried about how she looked; she wanted to be socially acceptable in the eyes of others, and of course Willow’s parents were minnows compared to the big-fish Andersons.
Of all the events of that fateful evening, none was more sobering than the ride home with my mother. I sat in the passenger seat with a beach towel wrapped around my legs and a torn windbreaker over my still-wet clothing. I shivered as the cool air from the car’s vents blew on me. For five straight minutes, she said nothing. With her lips set in a straight line and her eyes staring straight ahead, she drove. Watching her, waiting for the storm that had to be coming, I half imagined, half hoped that this silent treatment would be worse than any fury she could unleash on me. Of course I was wrong.
“Goddammit, Priscilla. Why
the hell did you have to go and fuck up on such a grand scale?”
I didn’t answer, but this wasn’t my version of the silent treatment. Her question was clearly rhetorical.
“Teenagers rebel. I know that. And drinking, well, I’m not supposed to say this, but I expected that. I mean, it’s what kids do. Not saying I’m happy about it, but there was no way I could try and stop you without making things worse. That’s the whole problem with being a parent. Our fucking hands are tied. But for Christ’s fucking sakes, couldn’t you have done your rebellious drinking with someone who didn’t own a fucking speedboat ?”
“It’s his parents’ speedboat,” I said quietly. I couldn’t bear to look at her, so I didn’t know if her eyes were on the road.
“Don’t get smart with me. Couldn’t you have just walked down the street and gotten drunk with that pimply faced kid who lives on the corner? Or, Jesus, I don’t know, sneaked beers out of the fridge while I was at work?”
I wanted, masochistically, to apologize for not sneaking beers out of the refrigerator, but based on her previous command not to get smart and a half-hearted desire to make it through the night without dying, I kept my mouth shut.
“No, you’ve always got to go overboard, don’t you?”
If only I had gone overboard. If only I was at the bottom of the lake. If only I was anywhere else but here.
“You can’t get shitfaced in your own neighborhood, you’ve got to go and do it on some rich shit’s boat. You’ve got to go and learn your lesson by getting someone killed.”
“I’m sorry, okay,” I said. “I didn’t want any of this to happen.”
“I’m not done. I’m gonna give you a little lesson in how the world works. It’s all fine and good for your rich little friends to go crashing speedboats, because they’ve got the money and the power to clean up their messes. Well, I don’t have the money or the power to clean up your mess, which means you’re just going to have to sit in it.”
Ferocity Summer Page 13