Dr. Henry continues. His voice is not his usual loudspeaker drone, but weighty with his own disbelief at what he has to say. “These are the officers who are working to find Hannah Scott. It is thought by all of us here that you, Marcelle, Robert, Charles, and Andrew, might, in the company of staff and parents, help in this initial meeting with the police. Especially you, Marcelle, as Hannah communicated with you shortly before she went missing.”
Everyone turns and looks my way. I flush and begin to sweat. But they look at me without anger. They are all wide-eyed with what seems like hope, like somehow I, Marcelle Cousins, teen fuck-up, might have some important knowledge, some information that will save the day. I squirm guiltily beneath their collective gaze.
The room is quiet as the door to the conference room opens once more and in walks Mrs. Glasser, looking very thin in a black skirt and top, and Andy’s mom, a small, attractive Indian woman, with red lipstick and a glossy ponytail. The only one without a parent at the meeting is Senna, which hardly comes as a surprise, since his parents never show up anywhere. I watch as Andy gives his mother a slight wave.
I think back on Sunday night. Have I forgotten anything? What do I have to add to the story? Hannah often stayed out late. But something felt different this time. There was something strange about her texting me—something uncharacteristic about her asking me to lie. Usually, when Hannah does something wild, she doesn’t draw me in; she doesn’t need to. Like with the webcam for Alex—she said nothing until the thing was done. The wig and the other sex-toy crap she got—she did that on her own, or with Senna. She didn’t ask me what I thought. She never asked for my help.
“This is an opening of an investigation, a collection of facts that we as a staff, together with friends and family, must supply to the police,” Dr. Henry continues. Everyone at the table nods, including the cops.
Dr. Henry looks down at some imaginary papers, pauses, and says, “Elise, if you could please . . .” But then he stops and stares at Elise Scott and her bulgy eyes, as though doubting the woman’s ability to speak. I almost cry just looking at her, but she swallows once or twice and then starts speaking in a surprisingly clear voice. I glance at Chuck, Senna, and Andy. Chuck and Senna both stare into their laps, but Andy sits up very straight and looks directly at me. His eyes are round with fear.
“Thanks, everyone,” Elise starts. “Well, I guess I should say what needs to be said. That is, we have been extremely worried about Hannah, not since Sunday, but for a long time.” My mother stares at Elise, nodding her agreement.
Hannah’s mom continues. “I have been very concerned since Sunday night, but the police have made a discovery that has made us . . .” She breaks off, and Alan reaches across the table for the hand he can’t touch. “. . . a discovery that has placed us in a situation no parents—no one, really—should ever be in.” She pauses and wipes her eyes with a tissue she holds crumpled in her hand. She takes a deep breath.
“As many of you already know, the police have found Hannah’s cell phone. The last time her phone was used was Sunday and this was to text Marcelle. The police are now ready to release the information that the phone was found near Playland Amusement Park, in the nature preserve. It was found in some reeds off the path by a dog walker.” Elise Scott stops at the word walker, as though somehow this is too much. She drops her head and continues. “The police have now ascertained that the phone has more than one set of fingerprints on it. One set is obviously Hannah’s. But it appears that someone else also used her phone. It appears from preliminary tests on the prints that the person had been using drugs. There are trace amounts of cocaine on Hannah’s phone.”
At first Elise’s body shakes and no sound comes out. When the sound comes, it’s terrible. I’m so startled by the fact that a woman can make a sound like Elise Scott makes that I have no reaction to the news, and no thought about what it could mean.
I try to focus on something other than Elise Scott’s inhuman wail. But then I see my mom staring at me from across the table. She, too, is shocked. She stares, it seems, without comprehension, as though I’m not her daughter but some new frightening piece of a story that has just become a thousand times more horrible than it was. I absorb the fact that something terrible is happening and the people in this room think that I might know why. An abyss has opened up and taken Hannah. I’m halfway engulfed in that abyss myself. I glance around the table. They watch me dangle. Both Senna and Chuck meet my gaze. I can never tell what Senna is thinking. But Chuck is clearly falling apart. I remember back when Chuck and Hannah were together. I remember how she would sometimes grab him by the strap of his book bag, and lead him wherever she wanted to go.
Dr. Henry interrupts Elise Scott. “What we and Hannah’s family would like from all of you,” he says, eyeing each of the kids at the table, “is for you to know that any information you can give the police is critical at this time. If any of you know who Hannah was with last Sunday night, you must come forward immediately. You need to tell Detective Perez what you know.”
The room is silent, except for the sound of Elise Scott crying. I don’t know who Hannah was with or where she went. I can’t answer the question. She told me nothing. They don’t understand. I lost Hannah. I don’t know when. But we all lost each other. Everybody did. At Senna’s, we were all alone.
My mom’s face has turned pale. Her lips quiver. Her brow is a network of deep creases. I want to tell her to stop looking that way, but they are all doing it. Every adult in the room has crumpled. The air is thick with their misery. The only people who resemble normal human beings are the cops, and they scan our faces stonily, waiting for one of us to start talking.
I slow my breath, breathing deeply, but I can’t slow my racing mind. I struggle to piece together the facts. I already knew that Hannah’s cell phone was found. Elise told me and my parents that Monday night. Andy knew basically where it was found. But now the cops have revealed something about a set of fingerprints. What are they saying? Someone had Hannah’s phone? Do they think one of us knows who?
“Marcelle?” my mom begins, her voice thin and raspy. “Marcelle, do you know any reason Hannah might be out there? Anywhere near that place? Was this a hangout of yours? A place people were getting high?” My mom falters on the word high. Facts are stacking up for Mom, too—facts like This could have been you, Marcelle.
I shoot my mom a look. I want to tell her I’m not to blame. What happened to Hannah could not have happened to me. That much I do know. I wasn’t her.
But Hannah’s problems are mine now. That’s what this meeting is about—the school and the cops telling all of us to get our acts together, and tell them everything we know. I glance toward the guys. Chuck gazes blankly at the white tabletop. Senna stares at the ceiling. Andy looks down at his lap. Will he spill about Jonas? Where will that lead?
My heart beats out of my chest. My palms sweat. I don’t know where to turn. I keep losing my train of thought, my sense of time, where I am.
“No, no,” I say, but my voice comes out strange, and I shake my head rapidly for emphasis. I try to think about this place, the nature preserve, near Playland. I know it well. You can see the Dragon Coaster from there, and the old flume ride they had to close after some stoned kid climbed out of the fake-log thing and drowned. When had I been there last? It was early in the summer, but I was drunk. Shit-faced. Puking out the window of a car. Jonas’s car. Or was that somewhere else? Some other night? They want to know what I know, not what I don’t know, not what I can’t remember.
I shake my head again. “I don’t know why she would be there,” I finally say, and my voice is clear, recognizable. I need more air. Yes, I tell myself. Breathe. I try to think of how to say what I know. How do I tell a story that will make sense to these people? But this is not my story. I am only Marcelle. I’m not that important.
“But the young lady texted you, did she not?” the detective asks. My mom shoots him a look, then glances back at me, and I can tell she i
s not okay with this; she does not like the cop addressing me directly, no matter how furious she is with me, no matter how disappointing I am.
It doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve been found out. I’m a bad person, not the kind of bad person who hurts people on purpose, but some other kind of bad—careless bad, apathetic bad, weak bad. There is nothing left to do but admit this fact.
“Yes, I got a text Sunday. I told my mom. I told her mom.” I nod toward Elise Scott. I did that one small thing right.
The detective looks at my mom. He clears his throat and purses his lips. “We’re going to need to see your daughter’s phone, and to ask her some additional questions.” He glances my way and then holds Mom’s gaze steadily. My mom doesn’t miss a beat. She hands the guy her business card. She’s switched gears into Professional Lawyer Mom mode.
“You can be in touch with me later today,” she says. The detective looks back at me now, not unkindly, but with the sort of penetrating interest that makes me feel like it would be wrong not to talk to him.
Mom is an estate lawyer, not a criminal lawyer, but I know she won’t let the cop ask me anything more. Just the other day she read an article in the Times about some kids in the nineties who had given false confessions to the police and ended up in prison for ten years for crimes they didn’t commit. That’s insanity, she had said. It’s insanity to let a child speak to the police. She had shaken her head in disbelief. Children, she kept saying, though it was clear from the article they were teenagers, and not little kids.
My chest hurts and my head throbs. Everyone around me looks odd, almost frozen in place. I’m too scared not to say anything. If Mom only cares about protecting me, if all anybody cares about is protecting their own kids, who will protect Hannah? Elise and Alan surely can’t help her on their own.
The sound of my own voice surprises me. It’s like a recording or something I’m listening to on TV.
“Hannah was involved with people,” I say, and pause. I have their attention now; everyone leans forward. I can hear Alan Scott breathing next to me, his mouth open wide, like the mouth of a baby in the face of a grown man. Senna continues to stare at the ceiling.
“Drug people. From White Plains,” I say. The adults look at me blankly, as though I were speaking a foreign language. All around me are unblinking eyes, eyes that tell you nothing but that you are in big shit. No mercy. No understanding. “Cocaine people,” I add, trying to sound more technical. Then, suddenly, the silence around the table feels less cold, less empty. I sit up taller. Deep down, in my gut, I know I’m doing the right thing, at last.
“I actually don’t know any of them well. Just this one guy, Alex. I don’t even know his last name.” I add this probably too quickly, since it sounds even to me like I’m covering my own ass. I pause and shut my eyes for a millisecond. I try to remember how it is you can tell when someone is telling the truth. What is that special sound the truth has?
I can feel the tension at the table. There is an electricity that flows from Andy to Chuck to Senna and on to me.
I go on. “I wasn’t into that scene,” I say. “Coke isn’t my drug of choice. I only know what Hannah told me about it.” I want them to understand that even what I know might not be the truth, but if it isn’t, these aren’t my lies—they’re Hannah’s lies. So far, I’ve said nothing about any of the guys, but they all watch me, silently. Senna is no doubt an enemy. I’ve given a name. I’ve given the cops something to go on.
The adults look shocked and suspicious. My heart misses a beat and I try to think fast. I should not have said anything right here in front of all of them, but it’s too late.
Elise widens her swollen eyes, and makes a small croaking sound. I glance at her but it’s too painful and I have to look away. Elise’s face is the face of someone whose life as she knew it is over. It’s the face of someone whose mind is playing a tape, a simple loop, in which all they can think is No.
My mom, I can tell, is asking herself what the hell will I say next.
Alan Scott finally breaks the silence. His voice is rough and deep. “So Marcelle, you knew Hannah was in trouble with these people, this drug dealer, and you didn’t say anything about this until now?” He looks around the table, disbelieving. I am one of those terrible people, like the Germans during the Holocaust, who knows everything and does nothing. Mom starts to speak, and so do both of Hannah’s parents. That’s when the detective stands and holds up his hand.
“Dr. Henry, I think the young lady and her mother should take a break at this point?” There’s crying coming from somewhere. I think it’s Elise, but maybe Alan, too, and then I start—hot tears run down my cheeks. I bawl too hard to speak, although a part of me wants to say so much more.
I don’t remember leaving the room, but suddenly we are outside in the sunshine. The clouds that seemed to be gathering have blown away, and the wind has calmed.
Mom walks next to me, and occasionally pats my back, her touch light and indecisive, like she can’t quite commit to comforting me. The detective meets us on the walkway in front of the glass side doors no one ever uses. He puts his hand on my shoulder and peers at me with his light eyes, the lashes surprisingly long and thickly blond at the edges. I can’t remember his name, and since he’s plainclothes there’s no tag. Was it Pedro? Pablo?
“You did good in there, kid, you hear? You did good.” He nods sharply at me, then at Mom. I’m crying too hard to say anything. I feel grateful to the detective. At least he seems like he’s doing something, like he’s in his element and not, like everyone else, too stunned to think. He thinks I did good. He knows what it means in this situation to be good, I tell myself.
Then the detective turns to my mom, “Take care of her. We’ll line something up for an interview? I can come by the house and interview her. No patrol car. No uniforms. Just me.” My mom nods. I know there is something terrible in these words, something I still can’t get my brain to take in. He’s a cop. A real cop, and he wants to talk to me about Hannah.
“I don’t believe my daughter knows much more than she has stated, but I will have an attorney present at any meeting. I’ll call with times.” My mom is sticking it to the guy, and I feel unnerved by this. I want to talk to him and no one else, not some lawyer who will confuse me. I want to tell the truth. I want to help—help Hannah.
But then again I know Mom is right and there are other people involved, not only me. There’s Jonas, and there’s Andy. Everyone I’m friends with had something to do with Hannah’s deal with Alex.
“As you wish,” he says. “If it were my kid, I’d do the same.” The detective is maybe late thirties, early forties. I wonder for an instant about his kids. Are they good, or were they like me? Probably too young to tell.
Mom and I walk together to our car. There’s not even any question of my going to class, even though this means missing math, and I usually freak if I have to miss math. I can bear not being supersmart, but I can’t bear dropping AP math. It’s bad enough being Rehab Girl. I need something in my life to be okay, and school has always been this for me—proof that I’m not a total piece of shit.
I let out a cough-like sob, and Mom grabs my shoulder. I try to pull myself together, to stop being a spectacle.
I climb into the car and fold myself in half, with my face in my hands. I picture Mr. Hellman, my math teacher, asking the class where I am, and people exchanging glances and saying nothing.
Silently, Mom starts driving.
I’m afraid to talk to Andy and afraid not to. I feel for my phone in my pocket. I want to text Andy to meet me at Michiko’s tonight, but who knows if my parents will let me out of the house. I don’t know if my parents will even let me go to the Center, or if I’ll be under some sort of house arrest, on lockdown, for knowing just enough to scare half the town shitless.
I have no idea what Senna will do now that I have outed him to the cops. I’m a snitch. Maybe most people who rat out their friends feel like they have no choice; they have to ra
t, or they’ll be blamed themselves. Or maybe they’re like me, and something inside them has broken free—like one of those old-fashioned wind-up toys, where you turn the handle until, finally, something pops out on a spring—an animal head or a clown. I’ve been holding something inside myself since that night we went to Alex’s, and he shut the door behind him—since he trapped me and touched me.
Maybe he thought I was like Hannah. I could never stop Hannah from doing whatever she wanted. I still don’t know where she is, or if she’s coming back. But I did something today I never expected to do—I stopped Alex. I still feel shaky from that moment when I said his name. I know I shocked everyone. I know nobody thought I had it in me.
Mom drives slowly down our street. People have their Halloween decorations up, but for a minute I can’t remember whether Halloween has passed or not. I feel a tightness in my stomach as we pull in our driveway. What if it’s really true—that something terrible has happened, and that this isn’t some Hannah stunt—some craziness she’s pulled everyone into?
People are saying Hannah Scott is missing. But missing is not a terrible-sounding word. I think of how a glove is missing, or a piece of some thousand-piece puzzle. Missing is for things that you can replace, or that hardly matter in the first place.
I miss Hannah. But I missed her before she disappeared, too. There was always something missing. Maybe that’s why she could stand there in front of the camera, in front of strangers, and feel like nothing was real.
The First True Thing Page 11