Life Is Short and Then You Die

by Kelley Armstrong

  “She knows you’re with me.” I shouldn’t have dragged him into this.

  Then Ethan’s phone chimes, and he snatches it up. But as he reads the message, his brows draw together and his lips twist down. He slides the phone to me.

  Stay out of it E

  Ethan spins a pen on the kitchen table. We both watch it with the intensity of gamblers at the roulette wheel. Nib toward him, we drop the subject. Nib toward me, we what? I’ve already ruined a friendship. What more damage can I do?

  When the pen stops, the nib points halfway between us.

  He’s about to bail on me, and the thought makes me panicky. I’m on my own three or four nights a week, depending on Mom’s schedule at the hospital. It never bothers me. But tonight, I don’t want to be alone.

  To my surprise and eternal gratitude, he doesn’t walk out. Instead, he breaks the silence with a question that catches me off guard, even though it’s been flitting around the edges of my thoughts since I saw Celeste’s pregnancy test.

  “Who’s the father?”

  “She didn’t talk to me this summer. I didn’t even know she was dating anyone.”

  “You didn’t talk at all?”

  I spin the pen and hope for a different result.

  That wasn’t all on me, you know, she said. Much as I hate to admit it, maybe there was a kernel of truth in that. I told Ethan nothing had changed, but that wasn’t right, was it?

  “I was pretty busy, too. I pulled extra shifts at the diner and both days each weekend at the library. I only saw her once, when she came into the diner with her theater friends.”

  “Did she seem especially close to anyone that night?”

  I shake my head.

  “Separate checks?”

  “Mr. Kendall picked up the tab for everyone.”

  “He was there? Hanging with students?”

  I drop my head back and roll my eyes in the most exaggerated and melodramatic way possible. “That’s what I tried to tell you and Ms. Compton. State teacher of the year or not, he doesn’t … didn’t have good boundaries.”

  “Let me see your photos again.”

  He swipes through the shots of the prop room and drama students holding each other up. Every time Celeste appears, he scrutinizes the photo as if in the crush of students he’ll find a neon sign proclaiming “he’s the one” over Celeste’s boyfriend’s head. At the last photo of Celeste, he stops and cocks his head sideways. He rotates the phone so I can see. “Tell me about this night.”

  Celeste leans on her open car door and waves to Mr. Kendall. She’s alone in the student parking lot. The picture is dark and grainy at the edges, but pools of light illuminate her car and Mr. Kendall at the PAC door. She had lingered after everyone else left that night, long enough for me to finish reading a novel and scan new Washington Post articles online.

  A moment later, I see what Ethan recognized in the photo. “Oh my god.”

  He swipes the screen to blow up the photo, centered on Mr. Kendall. Last year’s state teacher of the year had fingers pressed to pursed lips, a gesture universally recognized as the first step in blowing a kiss.

  * * *

  Police cars jam the parking lot when I drag myself to school the next morning. Inside, students cluster in the hall minutes before the first bell, all eyes trained on the cops who have taken over the main office. They lean against desks and doorjambs or stand with their thumbs hooked in their belts. They’ve displaced both secretaries, who now try to break up the knots of students and shoo us toward our classrooms.

  Ethan emerges from Principal West’s private office, his eyes downcast. He tugs at a lock of hair, the way he does when he’s deep in thought or deeply distressed. Halfway across the outer office, he stops abruptly and returns to shake hands with a cop who sticks his head out Principal West’s door. I feel sick. Ethan and I had talked until near light, and we agreed to keep our conclusion to ourselves. What has he done?

  He spots me and hurries over, then shoves me down the hall and away from the office windows.

  “Hey!” I don’t like being handled, and he owes me an explanation.

  “Not now,” he says. “We have to find Celeste and get out of here.”

  I balk. “You find Celeste. I’m going back to find out what’s going on.”

  He rubs his hair, then drags his hands down his cheeks. “This is as much about you as her. Please please please, just this once, believe I’m on your side.”

  He’s more agitated than I’ve ever seen him, more serious. I narrow my eyes and search his face for deception, but all I see is fear, and it is contagious. I nod, and we set out in search of our friend. It’s a sign of how far the three of us have drifted apart that neither of us knows Celeste’s schedule.

  It takes a while, but we find her in the PAC, sitting in the last row in the dark.

  She sighs, long and loud, when she sees us. “Leave me alone.”

  Ethan reaches for her hand with both of his, and in that moment, I’m on the outside again. A third wheel. “We can’t do that. You’re in trouble, and when one of us is in trouble, we all are.”

  It’s a silly thing we used to say when we were kids, but it’s the right thing. It breaks the barricades we’ve constructed between us, and suddenly I’m free to ask the question that haunts me. “What happened to you, Celeste? You abandoned everything this summer”—including me—“and for what?”

  She’s been crying. Her tears left dark streaks like twin scars on her cheeks. “Haven’t you ever wanted to do something crazy, Livvie? Just once. Just … be?”

  “He was a teacher.” God, I sound prim and judgmental.

  She spares a pity-filled glance for me, then shakes her head, as if I couldn’t possibly understand. “At first, it was flirting. Only flirting. He’d catch my eye at practice, smile like we had a secret. Take me to coffee to discuss my one-act script.”

  She makes it sound like a role she’s played. The secret girlfriend. The forbidden love. My anger flares. How could she be so dumb? Maybe Mr. Kendall encouraged her to see him as an equal, a friend, but the word any right-thinking person would use was predator. He separated her from her friends, her passions. And now he’s dead, Celeste is pregnant with his child, and someone’s framing her for his murder.

  “He took advantage of you.”

  “He chose me. He got me. We had a connection.”

  “There’s a difference between being adventurous and ruining your life.”

  Ethan has been quiet so far, but now he wriggles into the space between us and hugs us both hard. “I’m glad we’re talking again, I really am. But we don’t have time for this. We need to figure out who’s setting up Celeste.”

  “Setting me up?” She’s equal parts confused and outraged, or maybe that’s the new role she’s settled into.

  In tag-team fashion, we tell her about the flip-flops from her props bag, the one on Suicide Hill and the other now buried in the creek. “Someone wanted the cops to look hard at you, Celeste,” I say.

  Ethan tags in. “Which means someone knew about you and Mr. Kendall.”

  “Someone who has access to the prop room. Did anyone hang around this summer? Anyone not connected with summer theater?”

  She draws her lips back and bares her teeth. “Besides you?”

  Not helpful, but I deserve it.

  Someone hits the main switch, and light floods the PAC.

  “Olivia Smith?” It’s the cop who shook Ethan’s hand when he left Principal West’s office, and he’s coming our way. Our time’s up. “Olivia? I need you to come with me.”

  Why is he looking at me like that? My stomach turns over again. “What did you tell him, Ethan?”

  He’s stricken. He shakes his head and raises upturned palms in an “I didn’t do anything” gesture. “They knew about the props room and the alcohol. They knew you have pictures.”

  “You told them about the pictures?”

  “I didn’t tell them anything!”

  Only
one other person knew about the photos, and as if on cue, she appears in the PAC door behind the cop. Ms. Compton’s wrapped her arms tight across her chest as if that’s all that holds her together. “That’s her,” she says, pointing at me. “She has the photos. And that’s your suspect beside her. Once you see the photos you’ll understand.”

  The connection I’ve been chasing since I confronted Celeste in the girls’ bathroom clicks. I squeeze her hand. “How did you know about Ms. Compton’s past?”

  She looks from me to Ms. Compton, confused, and Ethan shoots me a deep scowl.

  I nudge Celeste, but don’t take my eyes off the teacher. “Mr. Kendall told you, didn’t he?”

  The cop’s eyes dart from Ms. Compton, to me, to Celeste, and back again, unsure how this drama will play out.

  “He did,” Celeste struggles to find her voice. “Greg … Mr. Kendall told me about how you lost your last job.”

  Ms. Compton blanches. “That’s a lie. He wouldn’t. It’s too late, Celeste. I told them how Greg tried to mentor you, but you willfully misunderstood his intentions. I’m sure you didn’t mean to kill him.”

  “I didn’t kill him. How can you think that?”

  Ms. Compton’s fingernails bite into her biceps and remind me of the first day of class, when she couldn’t stop rubbing her calves, her forearms. I attributed it then to the same shock everyone felt over Mr. Kendall’s death. But her arms are covered with scabs, like she’s scratched them raw. Like a rash, the kind caused by poison ivy. No one could have dragged Mr. Kendall’s body into the weeds without getting covered in it.

  “She knows you didn’t kill him, Celeste, because she knows who actually did.” I rise from my seat. “Your anger problem got you fired from your last job, and Mr. Kendall knew it. He told Celeste. Did he threaten to tell someone else? You really lost it this time, didn’t you?”

  She doesn’t seem to hear me. Hatred burns in Ms. Compton’s eyes, but it’s directed at Celeste, not me. I recall the accusation Celeste hurled at me in the girls’ bathroom. You’re so naïve, Livvie. Another click. “Wait. He didn’t threaten to reveal your secrets. He betrayed you, cheated on you. And you couldn’t let him get away with that. But you knew his secrets, too, and you used them to frame Celeste.”

  “I don’t have to listen to this.” Ms. Compton pivots and loses her footing when she sees her way out blocked by one of the cops. She recovers and jags sideways to get around him, but he cuts her off again.

  No one moves. No one speaks. It’s as if we’ve collectively hit the PAUSE button.

  Then, like an actress taking her final bow, Ms. Compton slowly turns back to face us, her ivory skin now mottled. When she speaks, her voice is low and measured.

  “I’ll say this once. I did not kill Greg. He tripped. He hit his head. We were friends. End. Of. Story.”

  Beside me, Celeste suppresses a sob. Her whole body shakes with the effort.

  “You were more than friends,” I say as I link hands with my best friend again.

  * * *

  Monday morning. Journalism. School goes on, almost as if the last week never happened.

  Ms. Compton’s in jail, charges pending. She’s held fast to her story that Mr. Kendall tripped and hit his head when they went for a run together up Suicide Hill. So far, though, she can’t explain why she pulled his body off the trail into the weeds or why she tried to implicate Celeste. She also can’t explain why she didn’t call for help. The justice system does not like these loose ends.

  I think she recognized long before Ethan and I did the significance of the photos of Celeste leaving the PAC. I recall how pale she was that day. I put it down to her inexperience as a teacher, but now I think what I saw was anger that she’d been betrayed.

  I take my seat, and Ethan slides in across from me just under the bell.

  Mr. Ornelas—dragged out of retirement as a long-term sub while the district searches for a replacement for Ms. Compton—welcomes us to class and talks about the adventures we’ll have together this year. Standard teacher bullshit, but it’s comforting coming from him.

  Ethan nudges a piece of paper across the table. False alarm. When I don’t react, he worries that I’ve missed the point and leans across to whisper in my ear. “Celeste’s test was negative.”

  I let a smile touch one corner of my mouth. I wish Celeste had told me herself. Despite our stand together in the PAC, I’m afraid our friendship is broken beyond repair. My calls and texts have gone unanswered beyond a single devastating line: I thought we were friends. We’re awkward with each other at school. Ethan feels it, too, but he’s determined to make things right. Some days, I hope he can. Other days, I think those eight weeks we were apart this summer didn’t change us so much as break a habit of togetherness. Whether it was a good habit or bad is still to be determined.

  Celeste’s news is definitely good, though. Ethan’s grin widens. He’s ready to forget everything that happened, but the tightness around his eyes means that he, too, recognizes it isn’t over.

  Mr. Kendall’s role in buying alcohol for students, confirmed by several drama kids after the story broke in the city paper (not, unfortunately, in The Beat), is all anyone can talk about. So far, Celeste’s mom has managed to squelch the bigger, more sinister part of the scandal. We had a predator in our midst. He likely victimized others before Celeste. That kind of ugly won’t stay buried.

  The story will come out eventually. Enraging. Sad. Absolutely true. Journalism gold.

  And I will write it.

  GNAT

  By Joseph S. Walker

  His father’s truck wasn’t in the driveway when he got home from school, so Grant was spared having to explain why he was still wearing his gym clothes, or why there was a reeking plastic bag dangling from the passenger-side mirror of his battered old Ford Escort. He carried the bag at arm’s length into the house and dumped the contents into the washing machine, along with an extra cup of detergent. The bag went into the garbage can behind the house while the machine was running through its hottest heavy-duty cycle. As soon as it was done, he poured in more detergent and started it again.

  If Dad came home now, Grant could say that he’d fallen in a puddle or something. He wouldn’t have to confess that during PE someone had broken into his locker and put his clothes into one of the toilets. And then used it. He wouldn’t have to see the look that would flicker across his dad’s face for a moment before he remembered to be supportive and kind, the look that said that having a son with a perpetual target on his back was just one more in an endless series of humiliations and defeats. He wouldn’t have to worry about Dad calling school, which would only invite more problems.

  Grant sat on the floor with his back against the whirring machine. He’d like to just throw the clothes away, but Dad might notice them missing. Even more, he’d like to wrap them around Henry Spears’s throat and pull until his eyes bugged out of his ugly, blotched face. If Henry hadn’t done this, he’d heard about it by now and laughed his ass off.

  There were only a few weeks left in Grant’s junior year. Only a few more weeks of being the shortest kid in school, with scrawny, awkward limbs that seemed all elbow and knee. A few weeks of boys’ viciousness and girls’ indifference and teachers’ pity and his own pent-up, roiling bile. A few weeks of sitting in the back of every classroom with red visions of baseball bats and tire irons and his own fists putting out teeth. A few weeks of being Gnat, the nickname Henry had given him in the third grade that had never gone away. Get through a few weeks, and he’d have the whole summer to help out around the cabins and otherwise be left to himself. Then just one more year. He couldn’t imagine what was after that. Something different.

  * * *

  The clothes were in the dryer when there was a knock, almost a pounding, at the front door. Grant opened it and found Mr. Becker leaning against the railing, looking out over the lake.

  “Hey, kid,” Becker said. “Your dad around?”

  “No, sir,” Grant
said. “He’s got a lot to do to get ready for the summer.”

  Grant’s father was the caretaker at Silver Waters, a vacation property high in the Ozarks. There were fifty cabins on the grounds, scattered around a large central lake. By late April they would all be occupied and stay that way through late September. Right now only a few were taken, two of the prime locations right on the water by Becker and his partner, Mr. Riddell. The two men had arrived a couple of days ago and taken the cabins for a week. Grant had only seen them a few times since then, sitting on the dock or puttering around town in a big blue SUV with Illinois plates.

  “Fridge in my cabin’s on the fritz,” Becker said.

  “I’ll tell him,” Grant said. “Do you want him to come look at it tonight?”

  “No rush,” Becker said. “I’ll just keep my beer at Riddell’s place for the moment.” He grinned at Grant. “Hey, I’ll bet this place is something in the summer,” he said. “Lots of women in bikinis and tight shorts, right?”

  Grant flushed. He backed into the house and started to ease the door shut. “I’ve got to do homework, sir,” he said. “I’ll tell my dad about the fridge.”

  “Sure, kid,” Becker managed before the door closed. Grant leaned against it and listened to the familiar creak of the steps as Becker headed off the porch. He could feel his face burning. He was under strict instructions to be polite to the guests at all times, but he didn’t need them riding him, too. Becker’s leer had made Grant feel exposed, made him feel like Becker had been there during PE, watching Grant struggle to get just a few feet up the rope, listening to the mocking calls of “Gnat sucks!” disguised by coughing fits.

  His father didn’t get home until past eight, having spent most of the day replacing rotted floorboards in a cabin where a pipe had burst over the winter. Grant heated a frozen pizza, and the two of them ate on the porch, saying little. In a normal family he would have been asked how school went. His own father had learned not to ask.