by Linda Keir
Cassidy tried to think back to Mr. Kelly’s principles of investigative journalism: Ask hard questions. Repeat the questions with slight variations. Look for inconsistencies. Think of yourself as a cop investigating a suspect—even innocent people hide details that could be helpful.
Inconsistencies: Mom liked Dallas Walker. Dad didn’t. Dad was doing most of the talking.
“Mom, what did you think happened to him? What did the kids in the poetry seminar think?” Dig deepest.
Mom gave her a penetrating look. Cassidy knew she was a little disappointed that her daughter wasn’t a total Literary Person like she was. Cassidy enjoyed the writing program but didn’t live for it or anything. In a way, she was a balanced mix of her parents, because she wanted to be outside doing sports—lately running, mostly—just as much as she wanted to be inside learning.
“To be honest? I don’t know about the other kids, but I thought he just got bored with us and left,” said Mom. “Now, I hope we’re allowed to ask you a few questions. Seeing any cute boys this year?”
“Mom,” she said, in what they called her Teenager Tone, before she could stop herself.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” said Mom, smiling and ready to launch her own interrogation.
Cassidy stood up. “I need more coffee.”
Truth was, after four years of barely dating (because her parents seemed to eye every guy as a potential life partner), she had a real crush on Tate Holland. Mr. Kelly had asked him to join their class, even though he’d been suspended for a week and was on probation for the semester, because he was the one who’d found the car. It wasn’t like he was destined to be some crack investigative journalist, either, but he was funny, self-deprecating, and cool enough to nearly get himself kicked out of school trying to revive the Freshman Plunge. Besides, he’d gotten hot over the summer. After making sure that his rumored relationship with a freshman yearbook photographer was only a rumor, she’d started sitting in the desk next to his so she could flirt a little. It took him a while to realize what she was doing, but when she saw him kick Noah out of the desk one day while she was entering the room, she realized she was on the right track.
They were now, in other words, an item. Not that she was ready to subject him to parental interrogation.
When she got back from refilling her cup, her diversionary tactic had worked: her parents were talking to each other, and Mom had decided not to hound her for details.
“We can tell you’re excited about this journalism project,” said Dad, breaking off abruptly. “Just remember you have five other classes, plus your college applications, that all need your attention, too.”
“Duh, Dad,” she said, thinking that Tate was in only one of those classes. Between him, the teacher, and the class project, it was bound to be the most interesting.
Mom piled her silverware onto her uneaten food and pushed the plate aside. “Still, we’ll be curious to know what Mr. Kelly’s class finds out. We’re just as curious as you are.”
“Oh, I’ll keep you in the loop, all right,” she promised. “And if you remember anything that would help our investigation, you’ll let me know. Right?”
Chapter Four
Andi left brunch feeling more rattled than she’d felt in, well, twenty-two years. While Cassidy bounced off to cross-country practice and Ian headed back to the hotel for a hangover-curing nap before the annual all-Glenlake stickball game, she walked aimlessly toward the forested edge of campus.
From the moment Cassidy’s journalism teacher projected the first photo on the whiteboard (installed over the very chalkboard where Dallas once left new stanzas of his poems), her thoughts had been all over the place.
And not anyplace she wanted to go.
What would Dallas have said about ending up entombed in his beloved Dodge Charger at the bottom of Lake Loomis?
More than a little clichéd, don’t you think? It’s like Bruce Springsteen meets Virginia Woolf.
She thought about a line from one of her favorite poems he’d written: Would you rather be drowning with others, or swimming alone?
With the revelation of his whereabouts, Andi felt like a little mole she’d had forever had suddenly risen and turned black.
In the distance, the dark water of the lake glittered.
She and Ian had both expressed how shocking it was that Dallas had been found after all this time. They’d briefly discussed texting Georgina, but she decided to wait since Georgina was picking her up from the airport on Sunday anyway. During some evening bar chatter with Tom Harkins and a few other parents, Tom had reminisced about how disruptive the disappearance had been, even though everyone had seemed to adjust to the long-term substitute teacher and move on as graduation approached.
Seemed being the key word.
For her, Dallas’s disappearance had been the same as his appearance on campus.
Fraught with possibility.
When a set of new parents joined the conversation and wondered aloud if they should be worried about foul play, Ian assuaged them by spouting the most popular theory—Dallas had gotten drunk and committed suicide.
Ian then proceeded to drink too much himself.
One too many cocktails and her husband was generally snoring the moment his head hit the pillow. Last night, however, the mixture of alcohol, the unsettling nudge of mortality, and the anticipation of hotel sex had made Ian not only alert and horny but insistent in a way he hadn’t been for years.
Andi liked that he was all over her as they’d walked home from the Limelight Lounge, the only bar in town. As he nuzzled her neck, working his way down into her cleavage, it reminded her of freshman year, when they’d steal away to make out in the wooded area behind her dorm or the Halcott Field bleachers—really anywhere they could get a few minutes alone.
Their lovemaking last night had had a frantic energy that harkened back to when they’d first started doing it in mid-tenth grade. Were she not feeling so unsettled, she’d have been excited by his drunken vigor. Instead, she found herself wondering what Ian could possibly be thinking but not saying. She could always read his reactions, especially when they were out socially and he was least likely to express his true thoughts: the tilt of his shoulders when he was engaged in a conversation, the slight raise of an eyebrow that meant he thought someone was full of shit, the way he unconsciously jingled the change in the pocket of his chinos when he was bored. Other than twisting his watch around his wrist once (and not multiple times, which he did when he was worried), he didn’t seem to be thinking much of anything. It had been more than two decades, and he’d really known Dallas only in the context of that faux-macho pool club that became such a thing among the twelfth-grade boys.
Right?
He’d never known her secret, and he couldn’t know. Even the strongest marriages hid tiny cracks that, if widened, could cause the whole foundation to crumble.
In the morning, Andi woke up planning to tell Ian how much she’d enjoyed last night. To begin again the process of plastering over the crack. She’d changed her mind after watching him wake up grumpy and hungover, fumbling through his shower and shave before they were due at brunch.
Brunch with their cub-reporter daughter, who was now investigating how and why Dallas Walker had met his end.
Andi’s stomach roiled and her head throbbed at the thought of Cassidy unearthing even the smallest scrap of information about Dallas’s presence at Glenlake.
The reason for his sudden absence.
At the empty shoreline, the floating dock bobbed gently in the tiny swells, leading the way to the lifeguard tower, which was actually built on the lake’s bottom. Nearby was a bike rack with several of the bright-red Glenlake Academy cruisers that dotted the campus. It took a moment to adjust to the weight and balance of the clunky one-size-fits-all dimensions, but she was soon rolling along on Lake Loomis Road.
Ironically, it was the most poetic day she could possibly imagine. The sky was a deep azure dotted with impossibly puff
y clouds. The warm air held the cool warning of winter’s encroachment. The dead leaves crunched under her tires, while those still clinging to the shady canopy of trees above shouted their impending demise in a riot of color.
Anthropomorphize nature, Dallas once said. It brings human understanding to that which is beyond our comprehension.
Dallas, who’d been hiding right here in the landscape all along.
At the time, most of the rumors had sounded believable, although violent death at the hands of a modern-day outlaw was clearly a stretch. The rest of the theories centered around Dallas taking off and living under an assumed name somewhere: Mexico, Central America, even the Australian outback. Of course, there was a woman involved—and not just any woman, mind you, but someone so alluring he had no choice but to follow her siren song.
Andi had googled his name over the years. But she’d never found anything beyond the short story collection that had put him on the literary map, the book of poems that had won him a Los Angeles Times Book Prize and solidified his reputation, and a few poems he’d published in literary journals before coming to Glenlake.
As Andi made her way around the lake road, she spotted a grouping of white oak trees. Taller now, they stood together in their familiar ascending order like papa, mama, and baby. She veered off the road, located the large flat rock that served as a trail marker, and set down her bike in the brush so a passerby wouldn’t assume it was up for grabs and ride it back to campus. She plucked one of the sweet, edible green acorns from a low-hanging bough of a white oak and nibbled it as she made her way along the abandoned road overgrown with familiar memories.
Saturday, September 28, 1996
Today, instead of going on the weekend outing to the Field Museum in Chicago or hanging out and watching a movie with Ian, I went on a nature walk. A fucking nature walk. It wasn’t like I had a lot of choice. Dallas assigned us to go outside, walk around, and then write a “kick-ass” poem.
Due on Monday.
Georgina invited me to walk with her tomorrow, but Ian’s parents are in town for a trustees’ meeting, and I’m invited to join the family for lunch before they head back home. In other words, today was the day.
I’ve been in the class long enough to know that “kick-ass” means Dallas wants a poem that somehow encompasses everything about Robert Frost we’ve been studying all week: reality, clarity, simplicity, metaphysical elements, etc., etc.
If that’s possible. I mean, there’s only one Robert Frost for a reason.
I started by walking around campus, looking at the trees and the birds and the grass, blah, blah, blah. Instead of feeling inspired, I felt like marching into Holmes Library, locating the oldest, dustiest poetry book I could find, and exhuming a ripe verse or two. Too bad there was no risking Dallas’s encyclopedic knowledge of every poem ever written. I don’t think Tori Miller (or anyone else in the class) will ever plagiarize anything ever again, not after having to write fifty original poems on honesty and integrity. That or get reported and (per Glenlake’s strict code of ethics) expelled.
Instead, I headed down toward Lake Loomis, drinking plasticky-tasting water from my Nalgene bottle and begging nature to sing to me.
All I heard was the sound of a muffler.
I turned and saw a squat, squared-off blue muscle car with a grille that looked like an open mouth.
As the car slowed and pulled up beside me, I spotted the devil himself behind the wheel.
“As Mr. Frost reputedly said, ‘The middle of the road is where the white line is—and that’s the worst place to drive,’” I quoted.
Dallas laughed. “I wonder how far down the road he’s got. He’s watching from the woods as like as not.”
“Maybe because he, meaning me, isn’t quite feeling dramatic or lyrical on my nature walk yet.”
“Perhaps it’s time for office hours in the great outdoors.” Dallas reached across the passenger seat and opened the door. “Hop in.”
The next thing I knew, we’d spun halfway around the lake and were parking by a stand of white oak trees.
As we got out of the car, Dallas plucked an acorn from a low-hanging bough.
“Taste it,” he said.
“I’m not a squirrel.”
“Pretend you are,” he said. “They’re only truly in season once every four years.”
“Aren’t they poisonous?”
He shook his head, took a bite, and looked off into the trees.
I took a tiny taste. The acorn meat was oddly sweet.
“Now, follow me,” he said.
“Where?”
“To a place I just found but that I’ve been looking for forever.”
We started out on a deeply rutted dirt road that Dallas said he wouldn’t risk driving with his “cherry ’69 Charger.” I probably should have felt a little weird to be hiking alone with a teacher, but somehow I just didn’t. I mean, he was basically giving a lecture while we walked about the native trees and plants of Illinois and nature symbolism in poetry.
“See this?” he asked, pointing out a big gray mushroom that looked like an elephant ear and had to be poisonous. “It makes me think of the primary theme of ‘Two Tramps in Mud Time.’”
“The bright and dark aspects of nature,” I said, remembering yesterday’s lecture.
“Bravo to the brilliant Ms. Bloom,” he said. Did I imagine a slight emphasis on the word brilliant?
Meaning he actually thought that about me?
“I definitely feel the danger and the beauty with my feet in the sand, looking out at waves crashing onto shore,” I said. “But nature here feels sort of . . . bland.”
“You can take the girl out of California . . .” He shook his head but chuckled softly. “How did you end up at the very best boarding school that isn’t on the West or East Coast, anyway?”
“It’s kind of a long story.”
“We’ve still got a bit of a walk,” he said. “And you can skip the whole business about coming here for the school’s esteemed writing program. I know you came in as some kind of literary prodigy and still managed to wow everyone with your talent and winning personality.”
I felt flattered beyond belief but completely exposed at the same time.
“That’s pretty much it,” I managed to say.
“Bullshit,” he said. “Which seems to work on everyone else around here . . .”
“But not on you?”
“You and me,” he said, stopping and turning so quickly I almost bumped into him. “We’re different from everyone else, aren’t we?”
“I suppose we are,” I said, noting that up close he smelled not only of cigarettes but something warm and fragrant. Like a man, or at least someone who wasn’t wearing his blue button-down shirt one time too many to avoid doing his laundry.
We walked in silence that wasn’t silent at all. Leaves rustled in the breeze, and the air was alive with the buzz of cicadas, birds practicing for their upcoming journey south, and even a plane crossing overhead.
“My dad created a myth for me that I’ve spent the last three years trying to live up to,” I finally admitted.
For the first time. To anyone. Even Ian.
“By all accounts you’ve succeeded,” Dallas said.
“I mean, I love Glenlake and the writing program,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t see how plum red my cheeks had to be. “But coming here wasn’t really a choice.”
“Shipped off to boarding school in the prime of your young Beverly Hills life?”
“More like the prime of my dad’s busy career and new life playing adoring husband and doting father to my stepmom and the bouncing baby half sisters they keep popping out, saying they’re for me.”
“Yikes,” Dallas said.
“Honestly, I spent this whole summer listening to Sesame Street blare on the TV and missing Glenlake.”
“What about your mom?” he asked.
“Dead,” I said with a finality I’d learned would end the conversation.
&
nbsp; “I’m sorry,” Dallas said, taking the hint.
I tried not to think about Mom, mostly because it always hurt when I did. But sometimes I avoided thinking about her because I was half convinced she was now everywhere and all-seeing.
Stupid, I know.
We walked in silence again until the trees began to thin and the rutted road came to an abrupt end. Suddenly, we were in a grassy clearing overlooking the lake.
Dallas took my hand and led me to the rocky ledge.
I told myself the butterflies in my stomach were from looking over the sheer cliff and down to the shimmering water below. But that didn’t explain why my fingers suddenly seemed so sensitive. It was hard to think about anything except the fact that my teacher was touching me and I was touching him. It felt almost intimate. I hoped my palm wasn’t sweaty.
I stepped back quickly. “I don’t like heights.”
“You’re safe,” he whispered, gently leading me back toward the edge. “I promise.”
I willed myself to relax the trembling in my legs.
“Beneath the beautiful calm, turmoil and storms lurk,” he said. He let go of my hand and gently but firmly grasped my shoulders instead. “Now close your eyes.”
I did.
“When you open them, I want you to tell me everything you see. And feel.”
I stood there, eyes squeezed shut, for a long time before I did.
“The sharp, rocky edge of the earth falling away to . . .”
“To?”
“Chilled, wind-dappled quicksilver.”
“Not bad. You can do better.”
“The certainty of what fall and winter will bring—the cold embrace. Everything unknowable that lies below the surface.”
“Beautiful,” he said, pulling me back from the edge. He looked into my eyes. “Truly.”
Andi looked over the edge of the cliff with an entirely different sense of trepidation from the first time she’d been to this spot, so long ago.
Instead of unspoiled nature, as in the sharp, rocky edge of the earth falling away to chilled, wind-dappled quicksilver, there was churned-up shoreline cordoned off with tattered lengths of yellow evidence tape.
