A Good Idea

by Cristina Moracho

  “Don’t move,” I breathed into her ear.

  She nodded. Whatever this guy was, she sensed it, too.

  Finally, one of the others stuck his head out the flap. “Silas, are you coming back in here or what?”

  Silas turned in a slow circle, surveying the entirety of the darkness beyond the clearing, while Serena and I hid behind the trunk of a Douglas fir, pressed against its rough, sticky bark. After a long moment, he seemed satisfied at last.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m coming.”

  We waited until he was back in the lodge and the chanting had started again before we crept away, and only when we were certain we were out of earshot did we break into a run, Serena’s hand in mine, fleeing through the woods, not stopping for cramps or stitches this time. Just running.

  “Finley,” Serena said finally. “Finley, it’s okay. I think I know where we are. We can walk from here.”

  She was panting hard, and I relented, relieved to catch my breath. Above us, the clouds were breaking up to reveal a half moon, split neatly down the middle like a black-and-white cookie.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said, leaning against a tree for support. “What were we thinking?”

  “It’s okay,” Serena repeated.

  “Caroline saw us, we let the dog out, we were almost caught by some crazy hippie in the woods, it was a total debacle and for what? We don’t know anything we didn’t know before, except that Calder has bad dreams and his little sister could probably use a trip to rehab. And what the fuck is Owen doing selling that girl drugs?”

  She put her hands on my shoulders. “Calm. Down.”

  “Is he your connection?”

  “He’s not. I swear.”

  “So where did you get it?”

  “My uncle died of pancreatic cancer last year.”

  I paused awkwardly, not sure how to respond. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s dead, but my suffering goes on and on. So. I stole all his painkillers after the wake.”

  She loosened her grip on my shoulders but let her hands linger there, her face only inches from mine. I shook my head sadly.

  “We’re never going to know,” I said. “We’re never going to find out what happened to her. You were right, Serena. Nobody cares. Nobody cares but us.”

  “They will care. We’re just getting started. It’s the Fourth of July and we’ve already set fire to the high school, broken into Calder’s house, and interrogated his sister. Think of what we can accomplish by Labor Day. Just hold it together.” She smiled.

  I managed to force a weak smile back. She smoothed my damp, matted hair with one hand and slid the other from my shoulder to my cheek. The wet chill that had seeped into my bones suddenly vanished. I traced the gold chain encircling her neck with one finger, pale soft skin beneath the gleaming metal, and kept my eyes trained on the crucifix. I could see the pulse at her throat and I rested my thumb there, felt the blood racing through her arteries, propelled by a heart as dark and furious as mine. Finally I met her gaze, and she kissed me. What the fuck, I figured. I’d already done so many stupid things today, what was one more potential disaster? I kissed her back.

  It shouldn’t have surprised me that kissing Serena was as intense as any conversation with her, her mouth as forceful and unrelenting as her gaze, as if the whole world had been reduced to the space around our bodies and that world was shrinking fast, forcing us closer and closer together, until I was pressed up against a tree so hard the bark scratched me through the thick fabric of my sweatshirt. Owen was all I really had for comparison; his attention always seemed like it might wander away at any moment, and him along with it. Serena’s intensity almost frightened me, like I was a thing she could devour, like she could consume me until there was nothing left, and I wouldn’t even care.

  • • •

  I laid low. The break in the weather was brief, and before long the clouds had returned and cloaked Williston in a perpetual grim, salty mist. I used it as an excuse to stay home, where I established a comforting routine—coffee and a cigarette on the front porch when I woke up, usually long after Dad had left for work, then a couple of hours on the couch in the living room, flipping back and forth between MTV and TCM, until I felt restless enough to move to the screened-in back porch, where I’d listen to the rain pocking on the roof and try to read until my thoughts inevitably drifted to Serena and I fell asleep. Eventually Dad would come home and rouse me so we could eat dinner together.

  As the days passed, I watched him struggle between relief that I was spending my time contained safely in the house, and anxiety that I showed interest in absolutely nothing. At night, when I couldn’t sleep, I’d look over Dad’s notes in my room and feel the same hopelessness I’d felt right before Serena had kissed me.

  The time finally came when I ran out of cigarettes and was forced to drive into town to the trader. I sat in the Subaru for a minute, trying to summon the requisite energy for brief, casual human interaction. Main Street, which should have been flooded with tourists by now, was empty; even the locals seemed to have been driven inside by the weather, except for a handful of people eating lunch at the Halyard and the Charlie’s diehards lined up on their stools, hunched over their drinks and looking even more disconsolate than usual.

  I went into the trader to conduct my business. There were no other customers. I recognized the guy behind the counter. It was Danny, the kid who had taken Rebecca’s virginity in the woods the year before. I didn’t know him well, but I had one vague memory of him from elementary school, poking at a dead raccoon on the playground, not to be creepy but out of a genuine fascination with the animal’s corpse and the various flies and maggots that had come to inhabit it. He’d expressed concern to a teacher that the animal wouldn’t decompose properly on cement, and asked if he could take it home and bury it in the woods behind his house. He was denied this request, and the raccoon was swiftly removed by a janitor. Danny had sulked for the rest of the day.

  “Hey, Finley,” he said.

  “Hey, Danny. Can I get a carton of Marlboros, please? Reds.”

  “You got ID?”

  I stared at him. “Are you serious? You know how old I am.”

  “Sorry. It’s the rules. We got busted a few months back for not carding. Now we have to ask everybody. I get in big trouble if I don’t.”

  I looked around the empty store. “There’s no one else here.”

  He nodded toward the security cameras mounted on the wall behind him.

  “Where is everyone, anyway?” I asked as I opened my wallet and flashed my New York license. “Has it been this quiet all week?”

  He dutifully pulled the Marlboros out from below the counter and rang them up. “Must be the weather. Hope it picks up soon though. Everybody’s hurting except Charlie’s.”

  “The more everyone hurts,” I said, handing over the cash, “the better Charlie’s does.”

  “Yeah,” he said, smiling vaguely.

  I took my smokes. “Thanks.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “About Betty. I know you guys were really close.”

  I stared at him, shocked yet grateful. “Thank you.”

  “I miss seeing her around in those dresses, trying to give this town a little class.”

  “She was wasting her fucking time,” I said sharply.

  He shrugged. “Maybe. But it was nice to watch her try.”

  “I thought everyone in Williston hated her?”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “I didn’t hate her at all.”

  “What do you think happened to her?”

  “I think she’s dead. Come on, you know it, I know it.”

  “I know that she’s dead, Danny. What I mean is, how did she get that way?”

  “You’ve already got your mind made up. I can tell just by looking at you.”

  “If
I’m wrong, convince me.”

  He looked at me for a long minute, long enough for me to wonder if he actually did know something, but finally he just shook his head dismissively. “Christ, man, do you ask this many questions every time you go to buy cigarettes?”

  “Maybe it’s not the weather keeping all the tourists away,” I said as I left. “Maybe it’s the bad vibes.”

  On my way out I passed a flyer taped to the door. Have you seen this dog? it asked me. Below the text was a grainy picture of Cassie and the Millers’ phone number. I tore it down and stuffed it angrily into my pocket.

  Owen was standing in the alley beside the diner smoking as I walked back to my car. I kept going.

  “Jesus, Finley,” he shouted. “Are you gonna stay pissed at me forever?”

  “Try apologizing, motherfucker, and then I guess we’ll see.”

  I was strangely invigorated by all these encounters. Instead of driving home, I went straight to Serena’s. She must have heard me in the driveway—maybe my parking brake gave me away, like it always had with Betty—because she came out before I had even left the car. I leaned over and opened the passenger door for her.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “You think the master key to the high school will still work?” I asked her.

  “Yeah, unless they’ve changed the locks. Why?”

  “Because,” I said, throwing the Subaru in reverse and tearing back down the driveway, “I have this really fucked-up idea, and I think you’re going to love it. But we’re going to need a copier.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN.

  WE WERE UP all night working on our little project. When we finished, we went to the beach, the same rocky cove where Betty had died, to watch the sunrise.

  “You want a blue?” she asked me.

  “Why not?” I said. “I think we’ve earned it.”

  She took her wallet out of the back pocket of her jeans, unzipped the change purse, and fished out a couple of the tiny pills, giving me a whole one this time. We looked out at the water while the sky slowly lightened, the remainder of the clouds turning pink and the sun reluctantly creeping over the horizon, the orange flare reminding me how close Caroline had come to self-immolating in her bed.

  “Think they’ll know it was us?” I asked.

  “Maybe. Do you care?”

  “Not really.”

  “Still, we should probably stay out of town today,” she said.

  “Okay by me.” My fingers crept toward hers in the sand, and then our hands were locked together. “I don’t have anywhere to be.”

  “She did kiss me once,” Serena said, looking me in the eye. “Betty did. Just once. To get a reaction, I think. Maybe she wanted to try it so she’d know what it felt like. Is that what that was, the other night?”

  “No,” I said. “It wasn’t. I swear.”

  She grinned crookedly and pulled me closer. “Prove it, then.”

  • • •

  Owen was waiting on the front porch when I got home. I could tell he was angry by the way he was sitting, perfectly still and tensed, eyes following me as I got out of the car and climbed the steps. A muscle in his forearm twitched as he took the final drag of his cigarette.

  “So did you come to apologize?” I asked.

  He pitched the butt over the railing onto the lawn, leaped out of his chair, and pushed me up against the side of the house in one fluid motion, so fast it was surreal. His fingers dug painfully into my shoulders, and I fought to keep my expression blank; I would never let him know he was hurting me.

  “What the fuck were you thinking?” he snapped. “What in Christ’s name is wrong with you?”

  “What’s wrong with you?” I said, trying to shove him away.

  He gave me a rough shake for good measure and backed off. “Don’t try that with me, Finley. You’re a good liar, but you’re not that good.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a crumpled copy of the flyer Serena and I had posted all over town.

  We’d both been pleased with how it came out. Have you seen this girl? it read, and then there was a picture of Betty, the headshot that never made it into the yearbook, a list of her stats, and the date she’d last been seen. At the very bottom, we’d added the phone number for the Williston Sheriff’s Department. Please call with any information. In the middle of the night, long after even the most committed alcoholics had left Charlie’s, we’d taken down all the posters of Cassie and replaced them with ours.

  “You’re lucky I open the diner as early as I do,” he said. “I think I got them all before anybody saw them.”

  “You took them down?” I shouted, shoving him away. “The whole point was for people to see them.”

  “How much shit do you need to stir up, goddammit? The police are still investigating the fire at the school.”

  “Funny how they’re still investigating that, but not somebody’s murder.”

  “You’ve been asking questions all over town, and now this? You’re not being subtle, Finley, and you’re not being clever. Do you have any idea how much attention you’re calling to yourself?”

  “I don’t care, as long as it draws the same attention back to him, and what he did to Betty.”

  “You’re so certain he killed Betty.”

  “You know it as well as I do, don’t act like you don’t.”

  “Then what makes you think he wouldn’t do it again?”

  Owen reached into his cargo pants for his cigarettes; he took one out of the pack and his hand shook as he lit it.

  “Oh my God,” I said softly, finally understanding. “You’re worried about me.”

  “You’ve seen how easy it is for a girl to go missing in this town. You think it can’t happen to you, too? You want me to say he’s a murderer? Fine, you’re right, I think he drowned Betty and got away with it. So maybe antagonizing him with shit like this isn’t a great idea.”

  He sat back down, his anger replaced by the same weary expression he always seemed to get when I was around.

  I sank into the chair beside his, took the cigarette from him, and inhaled. “I’m not scared of Calder.”

  “I wish you were scared of something,” he said.

  I decided to let Owen think he’d gotten all the flyers. I didn’t tell him about the ones we’d put in the mailboxes all over town.

  • • •

  After Owen left, I went upstairs and passed out on my bed, on top of the covers, in all my clothes, falling into a sleep so deep and dreamless I woke up completely disoriented; the clock on the nightstand said it was four, and with my shades drawn I didn’t know if that meant late afternoon or early morning. I didn’t care. I buried my face in my pillow, hoping I could go back to sleep, but I was suddenly, hopelessly alert. I rolled over onto my back and stared at the ceiling, bewildered at how I was supposed to fill the endless hours between now and I didn’t know when. Nighttime? College? The same empty ache that had propelled me around the five boroughs last winter forced me out of bed; I didn’t know why I could spend nearly a week inside the house and never feel restless, and then suddenly be overwhelmed by the need to be in motion, but I felt that need now.

  A quick peek out the kitchen curtains confirmed it was afternoon. I checked the mail, and among my father’s bills and the catalogs addressed to “Resident” was a thick envelope with my name in my mother’s familiar hand. It was my welcome package to NYU, all glossy pictures of Bobst Library and course descriptions that overused words like pedagogy and ideology. I’d received my room assignment, a one-room double in Brittany Hall; according to the paperwork, I’d be sharing it with a girl named Kate Shields, a student from the dance department whom I immediately hated. My mother had included a note imploring me to call her. I threw it all in the garbage.

  I didn’t bother changing, just went outside and got into my car. The skies were clearing, but the
asphalt was still slick and glossy with rainwater. I drove without a destination at first, my only goal to get out of Williston for a while. Without realizing what I was doing at first, I found myself scanning the side of the road for Cassie’s body. I did feel bad about letting her out. I hoped she was okay, that she’d find her way home, even if that home was the Millers’.

  I drove south, following the water. There was nothing stopping me from driving all the way back to New York, to my mother’s apartment and my friends, forties on stoops in the West Village and shows at punk clubs in the East. I was sick of the rain, sick of the Halyard’s shitty coffee, sick of seeing the same faces, sick of all those faces being white. I missed the crowds of New York, the anonymity of the subway, the ability to walk down the street without having to stop and make small talk with nearly everyone I saw.

  I could feel the city hundreds of miles away like a giant pulsating heart, and the highway was a vein drawing me in. I could have kept going, it would have been so easy, but instead I got off the exit at Pullman, the town whose softball team had trounced ours.

  Pullman was bigger than Williston, its downtown a square mile of wide, crooked streets that zigzagged toward the water; they were filled with brightly painted stores and buildings, art galleries and antique shops and clothing boutiques. Tourists strolled along, holding hands and window-shopping. Boats were pulling in and out of the marina; the whole town bustled with more activity than Williston had seen all summer.

  The Emersons owned a roofing and remodeling business with an office in a strip mall a couple of miles past Pullman’s center, sandwiched between a Rite Aid and a dry cleaner’s. A bell jingled overhead as I walked through the door. Behind a beige Formica counter, a receptionist was on the phone. She was around my mom’s age, her brown hair streaked with silver, and the lines around her mouth betrayed several decades of smoking. She eyed me warily as I waited for her to finish, standing awkwardly with my thumbs in my back pockets. I guess it was obvious I didn’t need the siding on my house redone.