The Herd (ARC)

by Andrea Bartz

  Because I kept hearing it, over and over in my mind, as though it were still playing out, a loop broadcast across this tiny little neighborhood.

  Because the scream.

  It sounded like Hana.

  PART IV

  CHAPTER 20

  IF STEVE WERE EVE: LANDMARK MOMENTS FROM

  THE CAREER OF APPLE FOUNDER EVE JOBS

  By Katie Bradley

  Published to Gleam On June 24, 2017

  Ed. note: On June 19, a New Yorker profile of Gleam founder Eleanor Walsh called her “Steve Jobs if Steve were Eve—young, pretty, and obsessed with makeup.”

  1985: As Apple’s retail spaces were gaining steam, Eve Jobs remembered an especially beautiful stone sidewalk she’d seen on a trip to Florence, Italy. She calmly insisted that her stores line their floors with authentic Pietra Serena sandstone from a particular quarry in Firenzuola, Italy. Some reasonable (male) VPs pointed out that concrete could mimic the stone’s texture and color, but Eve could not be swayed, citing her own exceptional taste. Due to her frivolity and poor financial instincts, she was promptly removed from the company.

  2003: Eve Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. For the following nine months, she refused her clinicians’ orders to undergo radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery, instead pursuing such alternative therapies as juice fasts, acupuncture, herbal remedies, and veganism. She reportedly even visited a psychic. Due to her unbecoming stubbornness and silly, girlish devotion to the oft-mocked Church of Wellness, she was promptly removed from the company.

  2005: Speaking of juices, Eve Jobs ordered a fruit smoothie in a Whole Foods in California, and when the elderly barista didn’t make it to her specifications, she flew into a rage, screaming about the employee’s “incompetence.” The event was captured on film and ruined her career immediately. Due to her nasty, entitled disposition, she was promptly removed from the company.

  2008: Apple’s much-anticipated MobileMe system, meant to sync mobile devices with users’ computers, was a disaster from the start. After a Wall Street Journal article tore it to pieces, Eve called a town hall meeting on Apple’s campus. With shrillness, an ugly shade of lipstick, and tremendous hate in her heart, she publicly berated the team for more than thirty minutes, noting, “You should hate each other for having let each other down.” Due to her out-of-control temperament, she was promptly removed from the company.

  2010: At a conference, Eve Jobs for the first time presented a tablet called “the iPad.” The announcement was met with shock, disgust, and mockery thanks to the name’s obvious ties with female menstruation. The product launch was quickly canceled, and due to Eve’s poor judgment and female sexual organs, she was promptly removed from the company.

  CHAPTER 21

  Hana

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 23, 5:37 P.M.

  Cold had descended on everything again, bitter wind and puffs of feathery snow rolling across the street like tumbleweeds. The road hadn’t been plowed yet, so I walked carefully along a track carved by car tires. My toes felt frozen inside my winter boots, and I couldn’t tell if moisture had seeped through or just coldness.

  Katie … and Ted. Ted … and Katie. When … what? I knew she’d met him the night he’d come to reset the router—the night before our Christmas Lights outing, which felt like a century ago—but she hadn’t mentioned him since. So what the hell was that? Yes, people seek comfort in others in grief. Yes, some people turn to sex the way others (e.g., Karen) turn to alcohol. But I couldn’t stem the outrage: It wasn’t even six o’clock, their friend had been found dead less than three days ago, and those two couldn’t keep their hands off each other?

  A car flashed its high beams and I shuffled onto the slush-covered curb. There were no sidewalks here, just hulking old mansions with neat front lawns abutting the street. I hurried the last few yards and turned into the Corrigans’ driveway. Icicle lights hung from the roof, in front of the pillars, but all of the windows were dark. I curved around to the brick-and-white cottage out back and rang the doorbell. Finally the door swung open, belching heat into the night.

  “Hi.” His hair was back in a little ponytail, his cheeks flushed.

  “Hey, Cameron.” I stuck my hands in my pockets. “Can I come in?”

  He held the door open and I took a few steps forward before another voice made me jump.

  “Hiii, Hana!” Mikki, leaning back from the living room sofa at the end of the hall, her voice a singsong. “What’s up?”

  “Oh, hey! Didn’t know you were over here!” Cameron followed me down the hallway. I’d matched Mikki’s cheery tone, but something was off about this whole diorama. And not just the mess, although that was apparent: the movie cliché of a thirtysomething’s bachelor pad, with dishes piled in the sink, mounds of dirty laundry dotting the hallway, and several bags of snacks yawning open on the coffee table.

  “Just needed a break from Gary and Karen,” she said. “Er, I guess I should say I wanted to give them a break from me. They seem exhausted.”

  “Totally.”

  “You want a soda?” Cameron called from the kitchen.

  “Got anything stronger?” I asked, then cringed as he said no: former addict, zero substances, that’s right. “Whatever you’ve got is fine.” I dropped into a recliner and turned to Mikki: “I was thinking the same thing. About Gary and Karen? They were so insistent about us coming but looked like they regretted it immediately.”

  “Yeah, they’re not doing great.” Cameron handed me a Sprite and then crashed onto the couch, and as he did I watched Mikki’s eyes float to the floor under the coffee table. I followed her gaze and saw it—a little purple cotton bralette, the kind flat-chested Mikki favored. I looked up at her and for a second, we were like bad actors in a telenovela: My expression read WTF, Mikki stared at Cameron with desperate, help-me eyes, and Cameron looked back at her in confusion, his brows and head slightly askew.

  It went through me like a gunshot, and for a second I considered pretending I hadn’t seen anything. Instead I laughed and said, “Didn’t realize this trip was gonna be such a fuckfest.” It felt good, the brashness. I saw why Katie must like it.

  Cameron coughed. “No, we were just—”

  “Cameron, stop,” Mikki said. “Yeah, we have been … hanging out, when we see each other. For a few months. Sorry I didn’t mention it, but I know you …”

  She hesitated and I thought she was about to say have a crush on Cameron, which would of course require that I kill myself or her or all three of us on the spot. Cameron looked at her curiously and she continued, “You have a lot of loyalty toward Eleanor and might think it was weird I was hooking up with her ex.”

  “Huh.” I leaned into the seat’s leather back. I knew this changed something, the social web I’d mentally spun around Eleanor, but I wasn’t yet sure how. Katie and Ted, Mikki and Cameron—I’d somehow become a fifth wheel. “Did Eleanor know?”

  “No way. She’d be weird about it.” Mikki shrugged. “I didn’t want to make her jealous or anything. Cam and I just … hit it off, that’s all.”

  Would Eleanor have been jealous? She never mentioned Cameron. “When?”

  “I went down to visit Ted in October,” Cameron said, gesturing with his can. “We ran into each other.” They didn’t exchange looks, besotted or otherwise. None of this felt particularly romantic.

  “And it’s been on since then?”

  “No, we haven’t—”

  “We’ve barely seen each other since then,” Mikki finished. “Sorry to … keep a secret, or whatever. But.”

  “It’s fine.” I took a long sip of pop. The revelation was like a branding iron on my chest, and I fought not to let it show. “Hey, you know what’s weird? I just walked in on Ted and Katie hooking up.”

  “Just now?” Mikki yelped, at the same time Cameron said, “Wait, Ted and who?”

  “Yeah, just now. With my sister. I thought they’d barely said two words to each other.”

  “Whoa.” Mikki
shook her head, amazed. “Okay, now your fuckfest comment makes more sense. Were they embarrassed?”

  “They hadn’t closed the stupid door properly. We were all equally mortified.” I started to giggle and it turned into a choking noise.

  “Aw, Hana.” Mikki shot me a sympathetic look. “I keep doing that. Starting to feel normal and then bursting into tears, because, shit.” I nodded, pulled myself together. “So you’re done being mad at Katie?”

  “Well, I’m still mad, obviously, but I wanted to talk to her because …” I strained to remember—my memories were floating around like snowflakes, Ted’s creepy stalker file, Karen robotically pouring wine. Then I remembered: “I found out the strangest thing about Eleanor. It all started ’cause I spotted her yearbooks, and it reminded me that she skipped over seventh and eighth grade.…”

  I recounted the story, my gaze bouncing between the hallway, the ceiling, my Sprite, before settling back on Mikki just as I finished. I leaned forward. “What, what is it?”

  She opened her mouth, then stopped herself with a little snap of laughter. “I haven’t told anyone this and I can’t believe you’re the first to catch it,” she said. “None of that happened to Eleanor—it happened to me. In middle school. And I told her about it at some point, maybe like sophomore year, and then she brought it up years later when she was starting the Herd.” She swept her hair together, then tugged it over her shoulder. “She asked if she could, quote, ‘borrow’ it, because it worked so well with the brand narrative. But she also said the post and press release and everything else were already written and approved and about to go up.” She looked away. “It kinda felt like she was announcing, not asking. Letting me know as a courtesy, like, ‘Oh, by the way.’ ”

  The hairs along my biceps and back were standing tall, buzzing beneath my sweater. “And you didn’t … have a discussion or tell her you felt uncomfortable?”

  She shook her head.

  “That’s fucked up,” Cameron contributed.

  Mikki was gazing out the window, her expression inscrutable, so I fumbled on: “Did she ever do anything else like that to you?”

  “She was pretty bratty when she was little,” Cameron offered. “Pissed a lot of people off. Would just break your toy or smash your sand castle for no reason.”

  “Jesus, maybe don’t speak ill of the dead, Cameron.” Mikki tucked her feet beneath her.

  I pointed with my can. “Her parents said she was just really bored. And that it got better after she skipped grades.”

  “Yeah, maybe. She fell in with the cool crowd in high school,” Cameron said.

  “And stopped smashing sand castles?” Mikki finished.

  “And started dating you,” I added. “The first time.” He winced a little and I noticed it, pressed at it like a crack in a pane, some small and childish part of me perhaps eager to volley back the hurt: “Why did you and Eleanor break up? The first time?”

  He flicked his eyes toward Mikki, then ran his fingers over his jaw. “Oh, you know. I remembered what freshman year of college was like. I thought she should be free to explore.”

  Liar. Covering his mouth, avoiding our eyes—he hadn’t magnanimously set Eleanor free, and I knew it. Of course she’d told us about her ex, how she’d waited until her last week at home to tell him it was over.

  And then they’d given it another go our last year at Harvard; as Eleanor told it, “it just happened” while she was home for the summer. But she had seemed increasingly frustrated with Cameron that time around: rolling her eyes when they were together, complaining about him when they were apart. From what we could tell, raw animal attraction had brought them together again, but practicality—her big plans for Gleam, excitement from early investors, her shiny new life in New York City in stark contrast to Cameron’s life in Beverly—had pushed them apart for good.

  “Can we talk about something else?” Mikki pulled her hands inside her sleeves.

  “Right. Sorry.” I shook my head. “That was … a weird thing to bring up.”

  We gulped at our drinks for a few seconds. The moment grew almost unbearable.

  “It’s weird she married Daniel,” Mikki announced. Cameron and I reared back, and she shrugged. “I mean, I was never allowed to say it. But he’s weird. He always gave me the creeps.”

  I gawped at her. “Well you certainly haven’t mentioned that before.”

  “No, he’s just …” She shrugged. “He was so perfect. And boring. Aren’t boring people usually the ones who turn out to be psychopaths? I mean, I’ve seen a lot of Criminal Minds.” Cameron looked up from his phone sharply and we both stared at Mikki for a moment before she added, “The show.”

  I shook my head. Did Mikki really not see how generous Daniel had been in keeping the blackmail a secret? How he’d protected us out of his love for Eleanor? “He worshiped her. I don’t think he even wanted to open up their marriage, but he did it for her.”

  “And you buy that? You don’t think he resented her?” Mikki tucked her hair behind her ear. “I always thought it was weird she didn’t have any pictures of him in her office.”

  “No, she had that photo of them on vacation. And that same picture was the background on her phone.”

  “Was it? Huh.” Cameron looked around, then leaned askew to slip his own cell back into his pocket.

  The doorbell chimed, making all of us jump. Cameron rose and clomped down the hall.

  “It’s some girl,” he called, and then we heard dead bolts unlocking, the door opening with a swoosh.

  With my head cocked, I could just make her out: “Is Hana here?”

  “Katie?” I yelled, struggling to get out of the La-Z-Boy. I hurried down the hallway with Mikki right behind me.

  “Hana!” Her relief confused me; she pushed past Cameron and grabbed for me. “Oh my God. It must have been a coyote or something.”

  “What’s going on? Why aren’t you wearing a coat?”

  “I need to talk to you.” She lifted her brow and leaned forward. “Confidentially. Like, now.”

  “Wait, where’s Ted?” Mikki grabbed the front door Cameron was attempting to close and peered out. More snow was falling, thick, wet flakes.

  “I thought he came back here. But I need to—” Katie’s eyes did something desperate, an ocular ahem.

  “When did Ted leave?” Mikki pushed the door closed, then wrapped her arms around her chest.

  “I don’t know, ten minutes ago?” Katie jerked a thumb toward the columned main house. “Is he in there?”

  “I’ll check.” Cameron pulled his coat from a peg and scooped keys off a hook. “He can’t have gone far.”

  “Wait—we should—” Katie’s shoulders slumped as he pulled the door closed. She turned back to us. “I just learned something crazy. Cameron was there. His car was parked a block from the Herd on that Monday—the night Eleanor was killed.”

  “What?” Mikki took a step toward her. “Why?”

  “I don’t know, but he’s been trying to hide it. Which seems pretty freaking suspicious.” Her teeth began to chatter. “And there’s something else. I think he was posting in the Antiherd. That hate group? He put up an old photo of her and wrote some other … awful things.”

  Headlights crashed through the nearest window, blinding us. We all turned, squinting, in time to see Cameron’s SUV tearing out of the driveway, wriggling in the snow through a wild three-point turn. It gunned down the street, kicking up a rooster tail of snow and slush, then whipped around a corner as its back wheels spun out of control. And then Cameron disappeared from sight.

  CHAPTER 22

  Katie

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 23, 5:58 P.M.

  Mikki spoke first: “Did he just make a run for it?”

  “Maybe he’s looking for Ted?” Hana said, and then she looked around as if she, too, was shocked by how stupid it sounded.

  “Why did he leave, what happened before I got here?” They looked back at me with doll eyes. I flung out my hands. “
Something had to make him take off in a blizzard.”

  “He was looking at his phone right before you rang the doorbell,” Hana said, scrunching her mouth. “But I didn’t see what was on it.”

  “We should call Ratliff. Right?” I listened hard, expecting someone to confirm, and then realized—no, I was waiting for Hana to jump in, to handle things. Like she had the night of the Herd event. “I’ll do it.” My voice was clear and steady. I was proud of myself for exactly 0.3 seconds. “Fuck, I didn’t bring my phone.”

  “I’ve got it,” Hana said, hurrying back into the living room. We heard her voice, high and official-sounding, from what I assumed was the living room: “It’s Hana Bradley—sorry to bother you so close to the holidays. We’re in Beverly with Eleanor’s parents, and her childhood friend here, we think he might have had something to do with her death.…”

  They spoke for a few minutes and then Hana plopped onto the couch. “She’s gonna contact the local precinct,” she said. “She’ll keep us posted.”

  “Are they gonna put out an APB?” I demanded. Using the cop-show term gave me a little thrill. “Because he’s looking shady as shit.”

  “I don’t think so. She said she can’t immediately put a red flag on someone, quote, ‘driving away in their own car.’ ”

  “Well, great. We all saw how concerned they were about Eleanor, quote, ‘leaving of her own accord.’ ” I crossed my arms and Mikki snorted.

  Hana stared into the distance for a second, then sprung up and marched down the hall. Mikki and I followed and found Hana in Cameron’s bedroom rifling around under the mattress, running her fingers against the box spring and then crouching to look under the bed.

  “Uh, what the fuck are you doing?” Mikki asked.

  “Looking for Eleanor’s phone.”

  “What?” Mikki took a few stumbling steps back.

  Hana sat back on her haunches. “Her phone went missing a few weeks ago. The same morning that graffiti appeared. They think whoever stole it had something to do with the spray-painting.”