by Elise Juska
Again, Bill paused, a silence that stretched so long Maggie wondered if he’d lost his train of thought. But when he spoke again, his tone was considered. “It will probably amount to nothing,” he said. “But with something like this—you never can tell. It could get picked up by media outlets. It could blow up and go viral. You know how these things online can go.”
In fact, Maggie didn’t know. She had managed to keep her life largely and deliberately unburdened by technology. Eight basic cable channels, an answering machine, a flip phone her daughter decried as prehistoric. Go viral—the very phrase struck her as both menacing and silly.
“You know,” she said, “lots of students write ‘really weird’ stuff, Bill.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Bill said. “But they don’t kill innocent people.”
Maggie said nothing. The hum was rising. “My apologies again for calling so late,” Bill said, then confirmed the details for the next afternoon and wished her good night. For several minutes Maggie continued to sit there, receiver pressed to shoulder, then stood and hung up the phone. It was now almost midnight, but she was fully awake. Her heart was pounding, though she couldn’t quite say why. In the window above the sink, she studied the reflection of the kitchen, moth-speckled, the lamp behind her like a bright moon. Really weird. That could mean anything. Not to mention these students were eighteen. Eighteen, and encouraged to write freely. It was frankly impossible that some of what they wrote wouldn’t be really weird. And Luke Finch, with his shy bearing and benign doodles, might have had an especially low tolerance for weirdness. He might be overreacting to something he remembered, or merely thought that he did. Memory is always subjective.
Tomorrow, Maggie would ease her mind, confirm her instincts. For now, she peered into the darkness of the yard, but with the light on inside, she could see only her own reflection staring back.
Two
The party tonight was at Gavin’s house, which was unfortunate but not surprising. For party purposes, Gavin’s was ideal. It was isolated (even for Stafford), the last house on a dead-end road, where the noise wouldn’t draw attention from the neighbors. Gavin lived with his dad, who traveled sometimes for work and had the added bonus of being largely oblivious, the kind of parent who wouldn’t notice a new water ring on the coffee table or a bottle of watered-down rum in the liquor cabinet. Over the past two years, Anna and Gavin had been able to have sex in his basement without worrying that his dad would ever notice or care. It was a place she had thought she’d never see again; it felt strange, going back.
Kim and Janie had insisted it was fine, possibly obligatory, that Anna come to Gavin’s party. It had been almost three months since graduation, when Anna had broken up with him on the football field. It might be insulting if you don’t go, Janie had said, which made a kind of sense at the time.
Tonight, the prospect of going to a party of any kind felt wrong, even disrespectful, though Anna was grateful to have something to distract her racing mind. She’d spent all afternoon online. Prayers for all the victims, she’d seen repeatedly on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. So glad Laura is OK!! Just before she’d left for Kim’s, where the three of them were convening before the party, she’d gotten a voicemail from her dad—call me back right away, Anna—and been startled by the panic in his voice. When she returned the call, he answered, already choked up. Even his girlfriend had gotten on the line. Are you doing okay, sweetie? We’ll see you Sunday, okay? Felicia was always overly affectionate with Anna (the opposite of her mother, who had never once called Anna sweetie), and while Anna often found her cloying, tonight she didn’t mind.
Now, as they sat in Kim’s room drinking orange juice and vodka, Janie read her text exchange with Laura. She’d been locked in the dressing room at the Gap. Oh my God, Kim said. Poor Laura. Anna didn’t say anything. All afternoon she’d been thinking about what Laura must have gone through, how the gunshots must have sounded, like the hollow bangs she sometimes heard echo deep in the woods behind her house. How fearful she must have been knowing the shooter was still loose in the mall, that she might be his next target. Knowing that people were dying, that she was hearing the sounds of their lives ending—how Laura would carry around that memory, be traumatized by it, for the rest of her life. Now she imagined the Gap dressing room: Laura trapped inside, frightened face in the mirror, music playing, clothes heaped on the floor, the collision of the ordinary and the end of the world. Anna had always been afraid of things happening—stupid things, freak things, fears that in her rational mind she knew were (basically) unrealistic—but tonight, what she felt most of all was the not-impossibility of terrifying things.
She forced herself to focus on the rest of Kim and Janie’s conversation—who else might be at this party and the implications of his/her presence—and then the three of them finished their drinks and approved one another’s not-trying-too-hard outfits (jeans and T-shirts, minimal makeup) and drove to Gavin’s house, arriving a strategic forty-five minutes late.
As Anna walked down Gavin’s driveway, being there had an unexpectedly calming effect. His blue truck, his house where she’d spent so many nights in high school, the sounds of rowdy shouts and laughter rising into the night sky—the sameness reassured her. In the backyard, a comfortable cushion of about fifteen classmates was gathered loosely around a keg. As soon as she spotted Gavin, though, Anna felt guilty. She hadn’t seen him since the breakup. It wasn’t like she’d been deliberately hurtful—I just think we’re too different. She hadn’t meant to say it that way. She had assumed, abstractly, they would part ways before they left for college, but it had just come out, a blurt of feeling. She wished she’d done it differently. She noticed him notice her—he gave a short nod in her direction, she returned a quick smile—then, in a single motion, sweep his hair off his face with one hand and take a deep drink from his red cup.
“Ladies,” said Brian Tucker, approaching them with three keg cups clasped in one thick-fingered hand. Tucker (they hadn’t called him Brian since seventh grade) was a meathead who practically lived at the cheap gym on Standish Road. Right now, though, Anna was glad to see him. At some point, talk would turn to more serious things, but for the moment, the epitome of unserious: Brian Tucker. “About time you got here,” he said. And then, to her surprise, he went up to each of them and hugged them. With uncharacteristic solemnity, he handed around the cups, saying, “Drink to your health, girls.”
“What the hell is that?” Janie said skeptically, peering into her cup. It looked like windshield wiper fluid.
“Are you trying to get us drunk or something?” Kim added, trying to be flirty. She and Tucker had hooked up at the “morp”—the after-prom breakfast, which translated to pancakes served in the school cafeteria at two a.m. and took its name, ingeniously, from prom spelled backward—and though they’d had no contact since then, Janie and Anna had signed off on Kim hooking up with him again tonight if the opportunity arose.
“You guys are no fun,” Tucker said, but conceded, “Tequila and Hawaiian Punch. But mostly tequila.” He handed the last cup to Anna. “Hey, D-B. We weren’t sure you’d come.”
Anna tried her best to look unbothered. “Really? I was invited,” she replied, even though it was Janie whom Gavin had texted about the party. But surely he’d known the invite would make its way to her.
“She’s my date,” Kim said.
“I thought I was your date,” Tucker said, and Kim laughed wincingly hard. Anna took a swallow of the blue drink. It was too sweet, way too strong. She was suddenly regretting having come. We weren’t sure, Tucker had said—did the we refer to Gavin? Had Gavin explicitly told Tucker he didn’t want her there? Maybe Gavin hated her now; maybe everyone did. Anna’s mind turned to the worst-case scenario, a technique she’d learned from her therapist, Theresa, to reassure herself she could survive any stressful situation. Tonight, in fact, the worst-case scenario was eminently survivable. The party was miserable, everybody despised her, and she left—left
Gavin’s, left Stafford. She was leaving anyway. She’d be gone, thank God, in two days.
Now Tucker and Kim were talking, angling toward each other pointedly. Janie, naturally, was recruited for a flip-cup game—her basketball skill translated to beer and quarters—but Anna declined. Janie raised an eyebrow—you okay?—and Anna nodded back, with more confidence than she was feeling. She watched Janie jog off toward the picnic table, where the players were gathering, then stole a look at Gavin, manning the keg. She reminded herself of Janie’s assessment after the breakup—he’s fun but he was never on your level, which had felt unkind but sort of true. Now, though, as if to spite her, Gavin was talking to Mindy Reddy. A cotton candy—this was the term Anna and her friends had coined for shallow, airy girls like her. Candy, for short. Mindy looked skinny, Anna thought, skinnier even than at graduation, and she dwelled briefly, anxiously, on the twelve pounds she herself had gained since May—then felt a blast of remorse for worrying about Gavin, or Mindy Reddy, or twelve pounds, on a day like this, a day when three people had died. Been murdered.
She forced herself to look away from Gavin and Mindy, take another swallow. The drink was revolting—it really was tequila, mostly—but the more she consumed, the less offensive it became. She glanced at the flip-cup game, where Janie was positioned between Claudia Jones and Tara Abram, both of them unmitigated candies, wearing those stupid shorts with words across the butts. Behind her, Gavin’s iPod was blasting out the open window. A thin haze of gnats hovered above the scene. By next week, Anna reminded herself, this would all feel small, faraway. She imagined her future self, reflecting on nights like this with the same feeling she had reading her old journals: detached and forgiving, even a touch pitying. For in college, she knew, everything would change. She would have a smart, serious boyfriend with whom she had meaningful conversations. She would finally spend time on her own writing, get inspired. She would be a person who enjoyed parties, laughed easily. She would leave her old, panicky, calorie-counting self behind her. It was one of the promises of college: You could become someone else.
Kim appeared by her side, frowning. “What are you doing over here?”
“Nothing.” Anna shook her head. “Getting drunk enough to deal.”
“Got it,” Kim said, and transferred the rest of her drink into Anna’s cup. She’d come to check on Anna’s drink but also, Anna knew, to check on Anna herself; Kim had many amazing qualities, but subtle she was not.
“Thanks,” Anna said as Kim sank her head onto her shoulder. Sometimes her friends’ continued vigilance made Anna feel pathetic, even a tiny bit resentful, but she understood: Being her friend had not always been easy. She’d made them worry. She suspected that, in some way, her constant state of crisis had actually made Kim and Janie closer with each other; she tried not to resent that either, just be grateful that they cared.
They stood quietly, watching the scene. “I think Tucker’s into me,” Kim said finally.
Anna smiled. “Of course Tucker’s into you.”
“Do you think it’s a bad idea to hook up with him?”
“Didn’t we decide this already?”
“I know, but it’s not like we won’t see each other—”
“There are like a million people on that campus,” Anna told her, taking a swallow. “You can avoid him for four years if you need to. Go for it.”
“Right,” Kim said, then lifted her head and looked at Anna with eyes suddenly teary, smudging her eyeliner, which was applied in the usual quirky Kim way: little flourishes, like commas, at the outer edge of each eye. “This is going to be so weird.”
“I know,” Anna said, and it would be—she had not yet begun to wrap her mind around life without Kim and Janie—though for Kim, it was different. Anna was going to Boston. Janie would be in Maine, but at Bates, on a scholarship. Kim was stuck going to Central Maine State. Anna felt bad for her. Unlike Tucker, who was no doubt going because of his ridiculously low GPA, Kim ending up there was financial—her father had been laid off from the paper mill last winter, and the school was offering aid. It was ironic: The kids whose parents were Central Maine professors would basically never go there (to Anna’s mom’s credit, she had never even suggested it), while others’ parents, like Kim’s, didn’t make enough money to send them anywhere else.
“How is it with Gavin?”
Anna shrugged. “It isn’t.”
“He keeps looking over here,” Kim observed. “Maybe you should consider a nostalgia fuck.”
“Um, no.”
“Why not? You’ve already had sex with him, like, a hundred times, so once more doesn’t really count.”
“Thanks,” Anna laughed, taking a sip, tucking her hair behind one ear. “In any case, I don’t exactly see the opportunity presenting herself. He probably hates my guts.”
“You never know,” Kim said, glancing into her empty cup. “I need a refill. Be right back.” She kissed Anna’s cheek then made her way to the keg, where Tucker happened to be standing. Gavin was still there, wearing his bruised yellow-and-black Bruins cap, Mindy nestled in the crook of his arm. Anna took a prolonged drink of the blue stuff, trying not to care about all the calories she was consuming. Then Mindy abruptly detached herself from Gavin and ran over to throw herself at the person walking through the back door: Leo Blunt. Mindy gave him a long hug, and Leo patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. Leo was a nice guy, quieter than most of Gavin’s friends, the starting pitcher on the baseball team—he also worked at the mall, Anna realized with a start. At the Verizon store. She felt a splash of nerves. She recalled seeing Leo there a few times this summer, his lanky pitcher’s body awkward in khaki pants and a red collared shirt. The store bordered the food court. He might have been inside—waiting on a customer, bored—when the shots started firing. He might have tried to hide behind a display case, make himself as small as possible, believing those were the last moments of his life. He might have seen the whole thing.
Suddenly it registered that the entire party had gone quiet. The flip-cup game had paused. A hush had fallen over the group. Everybody was turned toward the patio, where Mindy had the floor. “It just doesn’t feel real.”
At first, nobody spoke. People held still, staring into the middle distance or wiping at their eyes. Anna located her friends. Kim was still standing next to Tucker, who had his arm around her. Janie was on a picnic bench, wedged between Claudia and Tara, her blue-jeaned knees pressed against their bare ones.
“I know,” someone said. “I can’t believe it.”
“I was just there last night.”
People nodded, commenting about when they’d last been at the mall, who they knew who had been there, or almost been there, that morning.
“Did anybody see the video?” Tucker said.
Anna shuddered. She’d heard about the video Nathan Dugan put on YouTube that morning but hadn’t watched it. She couldn’t imagine wanting to.
“It was down in, like, ten seconds,” Gavin said. “But I read about it. The guy was seriously fucked up.”
“I heard he took a mental leave of absence.”
“My sister was in the same class as him,” Tara said. “She’s a senior.”
“He was a loser,” Tucker said heatedly. “End of story.” He was rubbing Kim’s shoulder, and Anna wondered if this was especially upsetting for the two of them, knowing they’d be at Central Maine next week. “He killed three people because he got fired. From fucking Walmart.”
“It wasn’t just because he was fired,” Tara said quietly. “He’d obviously been planning it. It didn’t come out of nowhere.”
Meg Crowley spoke up. “My cousin works at the Walmart. She knew him. I mean, she didn’t hang out with him, but she worked with him. She said he was unfriendly and whatever. But nobody knew he was this messed up.”
Anna stared into the remaining inch of her drink. A dead bug was floating on top. This, she thought, was the most terrifying part: that Nathan Dugan had been plotting, roaming around t
he periphery of their lives—the mall, the campus—just waiting for the moment to explode, and nobody had seen it coming. That these killers walked the world, invisible and unstoppable, and your only hope was that you didn’t cross their paths. Even her mother, so obsessed with her students, hadn’t caught on to how disturbed he was. He could just as easily have snapped in her class—shot his classmates. Shot her. Anna shut her eyes, squeezing the image into black.
“Leo, man, were you there?”
Anna tried to refocus. Her pulse was skittering. All eyes were now on Leo, whose head was hanging, as if he couldn’t bear to meet their eyes. “I usually open on Fridays,” he said. His voice was faint, almost apologetic. “But I didn’t today,” he said. “Because of college. Yesterday was my last shift.”
The group murmured in Leo’s direction, and a few other girls ran over to hug him. Anna’s heart beat just beneath her breastbone, light and quick, a trapped bird. She thought about what would happen if she spoke up about the connection to her mother, how the entire party would angle toward her—Anna didn’t like drawing attention to herself but, perversely, when she got anxious, that sometimes made her want to do it. According to Theresa, it helped her feel a measure of control. She thought she understood, at least a little, those stand-up comedians who were really deeply unhappy or actors who were shy.
Then Leo continued, “I talked to this guy I work with.” He looked pale. “The guy who picked up my shift. He said that one of the guards was hit. He was still alive when the police came.”
It took a minute for Anna to process what he was saying. The victims’ names hadn’t been released yet, but the information was online everywhere: one person in critical condition, three dead.
“Which guard?” someone said.
“The nice one,” Leo said. “Joe.”
They all knew which one he meant; he had worked at the mall since Anna was little. Every December, he wore a string of colored lights around his neck, and he played Santa in the Christmas display. Once, when she and Gavin had been caught in the mall after closing—they’d been out on the fire escape behind the Foot Locker, where Gavin was working—he’d raised a conspiratorial finger to his lips and let them slip out an emergency exit without a word.
