Drowning With Others

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Drowning With Others Page 9

by Linda Keir


  “So what was he really like, Mom? Dallas Walker. Did he seem depressed?”

  Another drink of wine, like Mom was somehow pissed about this whole conversation, even though she’d asked for updates. Tate shifted his position slowly, totally on purpose.

  She might have been imagining it, but Mom moved forward ever so slightly, as if she’d been nudged from behind.

  “I’m not sure how a student would really know that about her teacher,” she finally said. “I do remember something he once said in class, early in the year: the thing that scared him the most was the future. Not that he ever acted like it.”

  “Can you think of anyone who might know that about him?” Cassidy asked.

  “No,” Mom said flatly.

  Dad thought about it. “No. Although it kind of seemed like he lived a double life—or at least wanted to. When he took the Cue Sports Society to a roadhouse, which was totally inappropriate, I thought he seemed disappointed there weren’t more of his low-life friends around so he could introduce us.”

  Mom took another drink of wine while Cassidy pictured Dad as a teenager in a bar and tried to think of a follow-up question. But he saved her the trouble.

  “You know, I didn’t put this together until just recently, but there’s actually a guy on campus, a maintenance worker, who used to run with that crowd and was there that day. He clearly knew Dallas.”

  “What was his name?” asked Cassidy.

  “I can’t remember, but he does have a distinctive tattoo on his neck—a snake or something.”

  Mom turned around, looked at Dad, and said something the microphone didn’t pick up.

  “I was as surprised as anybody to see him working there,” Dad told her.

  Cassidy felt a tug on her right foot and glanced up. Tate was slowly pulling her sock off. She wanted to mouth no, to shake her head, but could only sit helplessly as the fibers slowly dragged across her extremely ticklish sole.

  “Is someone else in the room, Cassidy?” asked Mom. Of course.

  “Nope,” she lied quickly. “Dad, do you suspect this guy of anything?”

  “I think that’s a job for the sheriff’s department, not me,” said Dad, who had disappeared offscreen. The fridge door sucked shut as he returned with a bottle of beer that required him to then hunt for an opener.

  The sock was off. Quit it, she willed Tate telepathically, a message that obviously didn’t get through since he started slowly removing the sock from her left foot.

  She wasn’t going to be able to keep this up much longer.

  “Actually, most of the class thinks it’s murder,” she blurted, watching her parents carefully as Tate melodramatically mouthed the word MURDER!

  Dad swigged his beer, and Mom fingered the rim of her glass before saying, “That’s an awfully serious conclusion to jump to, isn’t it?”

  “God, Mom, it’s not like our opinions are legally binding or anything. Mr. Kelly’s just teaching us how to report and how to think critically.”

  “And what does Mr. Kelly think?”

  “He won’t tell us, but he says if the police are looking into it, it’s well worth a look by us, too.”

  “That sounds professional, at least,” said Dad.

  “He said you should never assume foul play. But he also said it’s okay to have a hypothesis. And if our hypothesis is that it’s murder, we should look for evidence to disprove it, not confirm it. If we can’t disprove it, that’s when we’ll know we’re onto something.”

  “Moving on from this sordid subject,” said Mom. “How are you coming with recommendation letters? Have you asked Mrs. Henry?”

  She really had to end the call. Tate was, ever so slowly, starting to rub her feet. It tickled and made her want to make out before her roommates came back and Mrs. Stout, the housemother, told him to clear out.

  “Great and yes, Mom,” Cassidy said. “Look, I gotta turn in. We’re running six miles in the morning.”

  She ended the call before Tate could hear their I love yous. After closing the laptop, she shoved it aside and climbed on top of him, kissing him hard and wondering just how many minutes they had alone.

  Being turned on didn’t stop her from making a mental note to type up her parents’ comments from the call. Or from looking forward to telling the class that they now had their first suspect in the case.

  Chapter Eleven

  ANDI BLOOM’S GLENLAKE JOURNAL

  Saturday, October 26, 1996

  The light on his front porch was off, but I could see him through the living room window as he sat on his couch, strumming his guitar. I could hear him singing Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne” while I stood in the cold dark, working up my courage to knock on his door.

  I was utterly silent, and he couldn’t possibly see me from where I stood, but he looked up and out the window.

  As if he knew I was there?

  Or was hoping I would be?

  My pounding heart froze as he leaned the guitar against the couch and stood up.

  As his footsteps approached, I raised my knuckles to the door.

  He opened it before I managed to knock.

  “You’re here,” he said.

  I nodded.

  He scanned the darkness I’d worn like a cloak as I rushed away from the dorm, telling Georgina I was going to the library for a physics study session so she wouldn’t offer to tag along. I’d made my way across campus to Evans Circle—and the six houses that made up the faculty cottages. I knew the writer-in-residence cottage was set off from the others, so I went through the woods toward a single light. The relief I felt at spotting his Dodge Charger in the driveway was quickly replaced by a much larger, all-encompassing panic.

  What the fuck was I doing?

  “No one saw me,” I said.

  “Cool,” he said, stepping aside and shutting the door behind me.

  The cottage smelled musty, and the furniture was way more old-fashioned than I’d imagined. I’d pictured something Spartan but strewn with piles of manuscripts and dog-eared poetry books. But there was no evidence of his work in the living room. An afghan was draped over the checked couch, and a framed cross-stitch proclaimed, HOME IS WHERE THE HEARTH IS.

  “It came furnished,” he said, reading my mind.

  “I broke up with Ian,” I blurted out.

  “I’m sorry for him,” he said. “But I’m afraid it was inevitable.”

  “I’m seventeen,” I said.

  “And more mature than almost anyone I know.”

  “Maybe so. But—”

  “But I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said. “Haven’t been able to since you first stepped into my classroom.”

  “We really shouldn’t . . .”

  “You’re here.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  And then I leaned in and kissed him.

  Andi felt dazed as she closed the laptop, drained her glass of wine, and crossed the kitchen for a refill. “A police investigation . . .”

  “They pulled a body out of a lake,” Ian said, reaching for his beer. “What do you expect?”

  “I don’t know, but does our daughter have to be part of it?”

  “Wayne Kelly’s journalism class has no legal standing.”

  “That’s not the point,” she said, noticing that her wine bottle, vacuum sealed to last several days, was down to the dregs. She grabbed a fresh chardonnay from the wine fridge and brought it to the sideboard. “I feel like she’s playing detective, not journalist.”

  She started removing the foil from the bottle with the tip of the corkscrew.

  “Use the foil cutter,” Ian said.

  “I’ll be fine. I don’t feel like looking for it.”

  “It’s in the drawer next to you.”

  She ignored him, stabbing upward, snagging the tip before changing direction, and wiggling the curly dagger through the red seal and pushing downward, toward the hand holding the bottle.

  “Andi—” he warned sharply.

 
Too late. She saw the corkscrew puncture the flesh between her thumb and forefinger a moment before she felt it.

  “Fuck!”

  She raised her left hand to her mouth before heading to the sink and running cold water over the wound. “Just don’t say anything.”

  He didn’t. Being careful to keep his expression neutral, Ian rose from his seat, wiped the tip of the corkscrew on a paper towel, located the foil cutter, and finished the job, opening the bottle with a muted pop. He gave her a careful pour and slid the glass over while she applied pressure with a paper towel.

  “Why did you have to bring up that guy with the tattoo?” Andi asked.

  “Is there some reason I shouldn’t have?”

  A reason she could never say.

  “It’s just that Dallas Walker is dead, and no amount of speculation is going to bring him back.” After examining her cut and throwing away the towel, Andi lifted the glass. “If we start dragging other people into it, who knows where it will end?”

  “How do you feel, knowing he’s dead?” Ian asked, watching her carefully.

  Another good question she couldn’t answer. She certainly didn’t feel closure. She’d achieved that as soon as Dallas was gone. There were few questions at the time, and no one out there looking for answers. Now that he’d been found, everyone seemed to want to know the whys and hows. Everyone, it seemed, but her.

  “It doesn’t matter whether I think Dallas was a genius or the world was better off the minute he disappeared. But we can’t encourage Cassidy.”

  “Andi, murder doesn’t happen—”

  “At a place like Glenlake?”

  “Well, what does happen at a place like Glenlake?” he asked.

  It was as if his eyes were asking a question of their own. But he couldn’t know, could he?

  “Nothing happens anywhere,” she said. “Until it does.”

  Chapter Twelve

  IAN COPELAND’S GLENLAKE JOURNAL

  Monday, October 28, 1996

  “I need some time to be me” isn’t much of a fucking reason.

  The trustee was panting when he picked up the phone, little gasps that reminded Ian of a terrier he’d had when he was a boy. It was weirdly intimate and made him wish he hadn’t called.

  “Gerald—” Pant. “Matheson.”

  “This is Ian Copeland. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

  A chuckle, interrupted by a pause for breath. “No, I’m sorry. Damn treadmill. Apparently five miles an hour at a slight incline is enough to redline me these days.”

  Ian made what he hoped were appropriately sympathetic noises and waited for Matheson to catch his breath. Finally, he did.

  “I think I was too tired to properly express my surprise: Ian Copeland! What a pleasure it is to hear from you.”

  Ian rotated slowly in his office chair, eyeing the partially open door and wondering whether he should have pushed it closed before starting the call. The last time he’d seen Andi, though, she’d been in the kitchen, eating a salad and scrolling on her phone.

  How to ease into it? He had no idea, so he went for the abrupt transition: “The past suddenly seems to be very present at Glenlake.”

  Too oblique. The moment’s silence on Matheson’s end confirmed it, but the former assistant head of the school picked up the thread.

  “Oh, you mean the unfortunate . . . discovery . . . of Dallas Walker.”

  “I’m guessing there have been some interesting conversations between the administration and the board.”

  Matheson barked a laugh. “You always were a sharp pupil.”

  “You’re remembering my wife,” said Ian before he could think better of it.

  “I remember both of you very well.”

  Ian turned back to the window and watched the wind shake the bare branches of the big elm tree at the side of the house. A few withered leaves gusted up while sparse, dry-looking snowflakes whirled down.

  “Our daughter Cassidy is in the writer in residence’s journalism seminar.”

  There was another, longer pause, and when Matheson resumed, his voice had a cadence that made Ian think he’d been fiddling with the controls on his treadmill and was now striding along. Three miles per hour, no incline.

  “Wayne Kelly is every bit as brilliant as advertised. The subject of his course caught the entire school by surprise. The lesson plans he shared said nothing about investigating a death.”

  “To be fair, he couldn’t have known.”

  “To be fair, he didn’t have to take it upon himself to involve his students. What does your daughter think of all this?”

  “She loves it. Feels like she’s a real-life journalist. Kelly struck me as charismatic, so I’m guessing her classmates feel similarly.”

  Matheson was definitely walking again. His words came almost on the downbeat. “Well, between you and me, Ian, the headmaster—with the full support of the board—asked Kelly to put an end to this ridiculous investigation. Everyone on the board believes the death was surely a suicide or some kind of freak accident, and the detective assigned to the case, Gavras, has indicated he feels the same way.”

  “And how did Kelly take it?”

  “He refused. Refused!”

  “Can he do that?”

  “Well, the school could certainly fire him, but—”

  “But then you’d have double the headlines.”

  Had he heard a creak in the hall? Seen movement reflected in the window? Ian turned in the chair, but the doorway was empty.

  “Kelly assured us he isn’t trying to stir things up and that he personally believes there was no foul play. He says he’s using this incident to teach proper techniques of investigative journalism because ‘it has the students’ full attention.’”

  “It certainly does.”

  “And with phones and screens and everything else, I suppose attention is harder to come by these days,” said Matheson, panting between words.

  Slowly, so his chair wouldn’t creak, Ian stood and crossed the rug to the doorway and looked out. He didn’t see Andi or anyone else. He quietly closed the door.

  “You’ve been worried about this, too?” asked Matheson.

  “I just wouldn’t want Glenlake’s name to be dragged through the mud,” said Ian.

  “With all the Copelands have given the school, financially and otherwise, I imagine that name must feel synonymous with yours.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Ian murmured, even if his motivation had little to do with his family’s name. All he wanted—all he had ever wanted—was to protect Andi.

  “Well, don’t worry,” said Matheson. “I know you realize everything I’ve said is in confidence, but we’re keeping a close eye on the situation, believe me. I wouldn’t want you or your lovely wife to worry. The last thing we need is a character like Dallas Walker coming back to haunt us.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  ANDI BLOOM’S GLENLAKE JOURNAL

  Thursday, October 31, 1996

  Well, Halloween was awkward.

  Ian won’t speak to me. Even if he would, I can’t answer the only question he really wants answered. The question in his eyes: Why?

  Despite the agony of pretending everything’s normal when my whole world’s been overturned, my only question is, When? When will Dallas and I be alone together again? It’s been nearly a week. A week of watching him teach without hearing a single word he says. A week of reliving every second of kissing and touching. Not knowing what’s going on between us is killing me.

  I think Ian expected me to wear my half of the Winona Ryder–Johnny Depp costume we’d planned together. He showed up at dinner sporting the gelled hair and fake tattoos. He looked disappointed, at least for the split second he deigned to look at me, when he saw me dressed as Sylvia Plath instead. Not that he or anyone seemed to know who I was. Since I didn’t have the time or inclination to fashion an oven out of a cardboard box and wear it over my head, I basically looked like a typical 1950s coed.

  When
people guessed, “Glenlake class of ’52?” I just smiled and nodded.

  Costume aside, I was mortified at participating in the Glenlake “tradition” of trick-or-treating our way across campus, but no one skips Halloween unless they’re on their deathbed. We—as in me, Crystal Thomas, Georgina, and Tommy Harkins (they got together two weeks ago and are now not only inseparable but dressed as Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson)—started at the headmaster’s mansion, where tacky Mrs. Darrow, dressed as a sexy nurse (big surprise!), gave out Hershey’s Kisses. We went on to the apartments of the various dorm parents. With every ring of a doorbell, my heart began to thump harder. By the time we reached Evans Circle and the faculty cottages, I could hardly breathe.

  Luckily, the others were oblivious to the fact that my legs were shaking as we trudged down the driveway to cottage number three. Tommy rang the tinny bell before I could catch my breath, much less gird myself for feeling like an idiot girl trick-or-treating at . . .

  “Happy Halloween,” Crystal, Georgina, and Tommy said in unison.

  I couldn’t get the words out.

  Dallas looked us over and smiled wryly. “Interesting juxtaposition.”

  “We’re Tommy and Pamela,” Georgina said with a wink, like she had at practically every other teacher’s door.

  “Accompanied by the Cowardly Lion and their best pal, the literary lioness Sylvia Plath. Tragically deceased.”

  “You recognized the costume,” I said, my body relaxing ever so slightly.

  “I bet she submitted a hell of a poem on her Smith application,” he said, setting the bowl in his hand on the table by the door. “Hang on. This crap is for the regular students.”

  Dallas stepped away and returned with four full-size European candy bars.

  “Awesome,” Tommy said as Dallas dropped a Caramilk into Crystal’s bag and Cadbury Flakes into both his and Georgina’s.

  “Only the best for Glenlake’s best,” he said.

 

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