Red Hood

by Elana K. Arnold

  The gym teachers are already there, pulling out the bleachers. Coach Arthur, the assistant basketball coach, wipes his face against his sleeve after he pulls out the last set on the left. James lets go of your hand and heads over to where the basketball players are clustering.

  “Don’t just stand around, gentlemen, help us with the bleachers,” Coach Arthur barks, his voice rough with emotion.

  So it is that those closest to Tucker—his teammates—arrange the seating for the rest of the students, who file, quieter than usual and with a sobriety that leaves the gym echoey and hollow, into the stands, one by one, as they accordion out from the walls.

  You consider saving a spot for James, but it looks like he’s going to stay with his team, so you angle into the bleachers along with the herd, sitting on the hard silver bench and tucking your backpack between your feet. It’s cold in the gym.

  The basketball team sits in the front two rows of the last set of bleachers. Other than the football players, they’re the school’s biggest guys, some of the most grown-up looking, most of them taller than the teachers; but sitting together in the wake of the news about Tucker’s death, they look like very large children, faces stricken with uncertainty, sadness, fear. More than one of them is crying, and they put their arms around each other’s shoulders, teammates even in grief . . . though, if you’re being totally honest, you don’t recall that many of them actually liked Tucker. James could hardly stand him.

  Keisha and Maggie come in through the far door and end up next to you on the bleachers, Keisha on your left, with Maggie on her left. On your right is Graham Keller, who you haven’t spoken a word to in at least a year. Keisha is holding Maggie’s hand, and she offers you her other, and you take it. Because it seems like the right thing to do, you offer your other hand to Graham, but instead of cupping it, he laces his fingers through yours.

  Freshman year, you said yes to Graham when he asked you to be his date to a dance, even though you didn’t want to. Mémé, who was driving you to the school to meet him, kept looking at you out of the corner of her eye, until at last she said, “Dear one, why did you agree to go out with this boy when you are so clearly unhappy about it?”

  “Because,” you said, “I felt sorry for him, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  Mémé had pulled the car into the next parking lot and turned off the engine. She turned in her seat to face you. “Darling,” she said, and her hazel eyes were electric, her mouth a straight flat line, “it is not your job to make boys happy.”

  You were already mad at yourself for saying yes, and the last thing you wanted was a lecture from Mémé, who always had some feminist axiom at the ready but didn’t seem to understand how the world really worked.

  “It’s no big deal,” you told her. “It’s just a school dance.”

  Mémé had wanted to turn the car around and take you home. “Making one mistake does not oblige you to make another in the same direction,” she had said, which made no sense to you at all. You had said yes, and you would go, you insisted, and so, reluctantly, Mémé had driven you the rest of the way to the school.

  “I will be waiting for you right here at ten o’clock,” she had said, and three hours later, when ten o’clock arrived, you had never been so grateful for a night to end.

  When Graham had asked you to go see a movie with him a week later, you said that your grandmother had decided you were too young to date, that she was just old-fashioned that way, and you’d shrugged and feigned annoyance. He’d followed you like a puppy until the end of the semester, when he suddenly decided you were a bitch and moved on to adoring some other girl. But in this moment, your fingers meshed with his, you feel like that freshman girl again, with Graham nudging, pushing, nosing his way in.

  “Listen up, people.” Principal Evans steps forward, looking, as ever, too important for his position. He’s handsome like a movie star, tall and dark skinned, dressed in a navy suit with a pink pocket square and neatly knotted tie. His shoes, black and pointed, gleam. “Quiet down,” he says, but everyone is already nearly perfectly still, no one has their phone out, everyone leans forward, listening.

  “This is what we know,” Principal Evans continues. He’s speaking into a microphone, and so his voice comes from all around you. “Tucker Jackson was found dead this morning in the woods off Claiborne Avenue at 6:05 a.m. by a runner and his dog. You’ve probably heard rumors, so I’m just going to give it to you straight. Tucker was found naked. Based on various injuries to his body, it appears as though he’d been running, and the working theory is that he couldn’t see the path clearly, because it appears he suffered a blow to the head, most likely from hitting a tree, and broke his neck.”

  Maggie sucks air in, high and sharp, and buries her face in Keisha’s shoulder. Keisha lets go of your hand so that she can wrap her arms around Maggie, and that leaves you sitting there in the bleachers, fingers entwined with Graham’s.

  Naked. A broken neck. Alone in the woods.

  The tingling feeling you felt earlier, in the classroom, is back, stronger. It’s accompanied now by a high-pitched ringing in your head. You swallow hard, as if you can swallow it away.

  “His parents have been alerted, of course, and there will be an investigation,” Principal Evans continues. “Tucker, like all of our students, was an important and beloved member of our community.”

  You hear the words, you hear the murmurs that begin to swell up around you, but the electric buzz and sharp ring inside your own head seem stronger, louder.

  It was a wolf, you tell yourself, a wolf, not a boy, that attacked you in the forest. It was a wolf you threw into that tree.

  “Quiet down,” Principal Evans says, and everyone does. “Counselors will be available this afternoon and for the rest of the week if you’d like to speak with someone; the library will be open to accommodate you.” He glances at his watch. “We’ll resume classes in . . . fifteen minutes, when second period begins. Are there any questions?”

  “Will there be an autopsy?” Maggie says, not raising her hand. “Are they going to have to cut him open?”

  The students’ voices break into discussion, their words indecipherable. You pull your hand away from Graham, who doesn’t want to let go right away, but finally does.

  “Quiet!” Principal Evans booms, and this time he sounds angry.

  When the gym is silent again, he says, “I don’t have that information, Maggie. I’m sorry. We will do our best to give you updates as they come in.” Then he says, “Last night, you all know, was the homecoming dance, and Tucker was there, as were many of you. Somebody in this room likely knows something that will help the investigation, something that could help Tucker’s family understand what happened. Any information you might have about what may have occurred—at the dance, and after—we need to hear it, guys. Things you might not think are important could be of interest to the police. We’re not saying anyone is in trouble. But if there was a dare, or a prank, or anything like that—any reason Tucker would have been alone, without clothes, in the middle of the night—well, we need to know about it. Understood?”

  All around, people begin to murmur, to whisper to one another.

  “He came to the dance alone,” you hear from a voice behind you. “But I saw him leave with Maggie.”

  “He was drunk off his ass,” says someone else.

  You remember seeing Tucker, the way he grasped Maggie’s arm. And later—when he’d stumbled onto the crowded dance floor. You remember the last words you ever exchanged with Tucker, and now he is dead.

  Naked, with a broken neck, in the woods.

  “Quiet down,” says the principal again, and his deep voice booms through the gym. He keeps the microphone just under his chin and waits a beat until the room is still again. Then he nods. “Okay. Gather your things. Make your way to the library if you’d like to talk to a counselor. Investigators are on campus, and they may have questions for some of you throughout the day.” People start to r
ustle around, gathering their things, but then Principal Evans says, “Tucker’s friends from the basketball team, hang back. The investigators would like to interview you first. Please head to my office.”

  And then he switches off the microphone, and the assembly is over, and you are free to leave. James looks up and finds you in the stands, gives you that sweet, kind smile you love, and then follows Principal Evans and his teammates.

  Ahead of you, Keisha leads Maggie out of the gym. It seems that everyone wants to stop Maggie—ask her a question, give her a hug, say something about Tucker. Maggie cries and nods and wipes her face.

  In a flash, you remember a day last spring, not long after you and James had gotten together. You had walked halfway home before realizing you’d left your history textbook behind and turning back toward school.

  The hallway that late afternoon seemed particularly empty; it was an unusually fine day and everyone—the students and the adults too, it seemed—had left as soon as the final bell tolled, in search of sun. You turned a corner toward your locker and there they were—Maggie and Tucker, her pushed up against the row of lockers, him pinning her there, his mouth on her throat and one hand disappeared up under her skirt. Maggie squirmed like maybe she wanted him to stop, or maybe she was just embarrassed to be found there by you like that, so undone.

  But Tucker didn’t pull away; he kept his hand where it was, up under Maggie’s skirt, buried between her thighs, as you walked past them, as you turned the dial of your padlock, as you extracted your book, as you relocked your locker, as you passed them again on your way back up the hallway.

  He kept his hand where it was, but his eyes followed you. You had felt them on your face, your neck, your back. And no one—not Tucker, not Maggie, not you—said a single word. And a few days later, when you saw Maggie at a party, she didn’t say anything about it, and you didn’t either.

  “Tucker was such a good guy,” Graham says to Maggie, his hand touching her shoulder, just for a moment, as he passes.

  Maggie nods again.

  In the hallway, groups break off from the herd and head in separate directions. Three girls from French are making plans to go to a coffee shop at lunch, and another cluster of kids is talking about heading over to Tran’s house after school. Both groups invite you to join, but both times you shake your head. You suspect it’s the fact that you’re James’s girlfriend—just one degree of separation from Tucker—that’s eliciting the invitations. You have no stomach for the gossip. Finally, the hallway clears when the bell rings, signaling the beginning of second period. You hesitate, alone, for a moment. You should be going to British lit, but you can’t head that way, not today. Instead, you push out through the purple doors and head down the steps.

  You’re not the kind to ditch class; you’ve never skipped before, actually. School is fine, and you wouldn’t want to worry Mémé like that. But you can’t be in that building, not a moment longer. Not today. Not now.

  It’s strange to be out on the street in front of the school on a Monday, midmorning. The sun seems like it’s in the wrong place in the sky. The air is cold and wet, and a sharp wind blows your hair, opens your undone jacket. You zip and button against the wind the best you can. You hoist your backpack onto both shoulders. You pocket your hands.

  You walk.

  Not home.

  You know where you must go. Of course you do.

  It was a wolf you killed in the woods last night—a wolf, not a boy. Not Tucker.

  All you need to do is go back to the woods, back to the path of pins and needles, and find the wolf’s body. You will see the wolf there, beneath the tree, his neck bent at that life-ending angle, and then you will unclench. You will soften, your pulse will slow, and you will laugh at yourself for being so ridiculous. You will shake your head and maybe even you will kneel beside the broken wolf and lay your hand upon his pelt, wet now from the morning’s rain. And then you’ll go back to school. If you’re lucky, no one will even notice that you’ve been gone.

  Except that when you make your way to the forest, to the place you faced the wolf, you are not alone. And there is no wolf.

  Yellow caution tape winds around tree trunks to form a rough rectangle. Three officers—two of them uniformed, a man and a woman, and another man, this one in a jacket and tie, a badge strung around his neck—stand inside the taped-off perimeter.

  You see them before they see you, and you take the moment to rearrange your face and then your story. Were you quick enough? What do they see, when they sense you there, when their heads pivot and their eyes pin you? The Latina officer—midthirties, low ponytail, sharp and tight in her uniform—sees you first. She’s standing with another uniformed officer—Asian, maybe forty, a camera in his hands—looking down at writing in a notebook, when she seems to feel your presence. She looks up, then around, before her gaze finds you.

  You step out from behind the tree that half hides you. You make yourself conspicuous.

  Now the third cop—this one plain-clothed, soft bellied, thinning red hair, in his early fifties—sees you, too. He has been walking the perimeter, slowly, slowly, eyes on the ground, scanning.

  “Oh no,” you say. It wouldn’t do any good to feign ignorance about Tucker’s death. Too easy for them to check, later, if you were in school today, if you had been in the assembly. “Is this where you found him?”

  “What are you doing here, young lady?” the plain-clothed cop asks. His voice is slow, but not stupid. It’s careful, that’s what it is. “Why aren’t you in school?”

  “I’m not feeling well,” you say. “I’m going home sick.” You pause, and then you say, “They told us—they said that Tucker was found in the woods. But not here?” It sounds convincing to your ears—your tone. It sounds surprised, a little scared.

  “It isn’t safe for a girl to be alone in the woods,” the female officer says gently, with concern. “You should stay on the street.”

  At this, you bristle, despite your precarious situation. Why should you be denied the pleasure of a solitary walk in the woods, just because you are a girl? What about Thoreau? Did anyone warn him away from the forest?

  But you know enough to keep your tongue. There is no good way to answer this rebuff. And the cops’ lack of surprise at your question gave you your answer. You clench your fists inside your pockets, tuck your chin, and turn in the direction of Mémé’s house.

  “Not so fast,” calls the plain-clothed officer. “We’ll need your name. In case we have questions later.”

  You stop. You feel your nails form moons in the flesh of your palms. Do they have the right to ask for your name? Must you give it?

  It would, of course, be terribly suspicious if you were to refuse. “Bisou Martel.” Then you turn your back to them.

  “Martel?” It’s the same officer. “You related to Sybil?”

  You turn back. Another question you are not necessarily required to answer, but again, you know better than to refuse. “She’s my grandmother.”

  “No shit,” he says, and now he’s looking at you, really looking—assessing your hair, your face, the push of your breasts against your jacket, the way you stand.

  This is not a question, and so you say nothing. You bear the weight of his gaze. Then he says, “You’re sick, huh? What’s wrong with you?”

  “I have cramps,” you say. “My period.” This causes him to shift his eyes, and so you turn away again, and this time, no one stops you.

  There was no wolf at the base of the tree. There was no boy, either, and you wonder where they have taken it. Tucker’s body. To the hospital? To the morgue? Your city must have a morgue—maybe it has several, Seattle is a big place—but you have never thought of it before.

  You’re walking away from the officers, away from the caution tape, away from the tree, as if nothing has changed for you, holding yourself carefully, so no one can see that everything has changed.

  Boys do not become wolves. Wolves do not become boys. These things do n
ot—cannot—happen. And that leads you to one ineffable conclusion: you have killed a person. Somehow, you murdered Tucker.

  Maybe you had been hallucinating because you were so upset about what had happened in James’s car. Maybe you thought you saw a wolf when really it was Tucker, and maybe he had been in the woods for some entirely innocent reason. Maybe he hadn’t been following you, no one had been. Maybe it was all in your head, and you are a stupid girl, and you misread the entire situation and now Tucker is dead.

  It must have been a dare, you tell yourself, walking faster, suddenly needing to get home, to be home. Someone must have dared Tucker to run through the woods naked. And maybe he was drunk, or maybe he’d taken something—what was it that made people act so crazy and aggressive? Bath salts. That was it. Maybe Tucker had taken bath salts, and he’d gone a little crazy last night, too.

  You reach the tree line and then you are back in civilization. There is the pizza place and there is the bus stop and not far beyond is your own curvy little street. You take a deep, cold breath, taste the coming rain.

  Maybe you are not a murderer. Maybe it was manslaughter. Or, if Tucker was high, maybe it was self-defense, or just a terrible accident.

  But now you’ve lied to those officers back there. You should have told them what happened—not the wolf part, that would just make you seem crazy (are you crazy?), but the rest of it—about Tucker running at you, naked, about him lunging for you, about how you stabbed him in the eye, but how even that didn’t stop him, how he turned and attacked you again. How he hit the tree. How his neck snapped.

  You dig your house key out of your backpack and turn it in the lock. Home embraces you—warmth, the smell of rising bread, the particular light that comes into the hall through the stained-glass panels that flank the front door. Your eyes burn with tears. You drop your backpack to the bench and sit to loosen your boots.

  “Bisou?” Mémé calls from the far back room, her little library, where she writes. You hear the scrape of her chair pushing back, the gentle steps of her stockinged feet. She comes into the front hall. Her hair is loose, damp from the shower. “What are you doing home?”