Drowning With Others

by Linda Keir

  “So what’s up?” I asked.

  “I just wanted to see how you’re doing,” she said. “We can still talk, right?”

  Here’s how stupid I am: it took me five more minutes to realize we weren’t getting back together. She said a lot of stuff about how we were practically adults, so we could be grown-up about things, but really I think she wanted to see if she’d broken me too badly to put back together. Maybe so she didn’t have to feel guilty.

  “Why?” I asked, interrupting something she was saying about how she was concerned about me.

  “Why do I still care about you?” she asked.

  “Why don’t you want to be with me?”

  “You have to admit, we’ve been ‘Ian and Andi’ for a long time,” she said. “Three years—don’t you want to try just being Ian?”

  “Looks like I don’t have a choice.”

  For the first time, she looked like she might actually be a little bit sorry.

  “Are you seeing someone else?” I asked.

  She took way too long to answer, and when she did, she looked over my shoulder and said, “There’s no one else who could make me feel the way you did”—which isn’t exactly NO, now is it?

  I almost told her about Sylvie and Sarah Ann, and that there’s three other girls who would have sex with me in a minute if I asked. But then she might think those other girls mattered, so I didn’t.

  When the waitress finally came over to take my order, I told her I wasn’t staying.

  “Whoever he is, I hope you’re happy,” I told Andi. I didn’t recognize my voice. I might have been crying a little bit.

  Andi definitely was.

  Good.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  A week later, as they kissed goodbye, Ian still seemed perturbed, if not pissed.

  Maybe it was the sex they’d never gotten around to.

  Maybe he was picking up on her jangled nerves and sensing there was more to Dallas Walker’s resurfacing than he could possibly know. Maybe recent events had made him suspicious.

  Or maybe it really was the weather.

  Ian was right about the bad conditions, a combination of blowing snow and black ice that put her Volvo’s famed Swedish stability to the test. She didn’t dare admit to him that she nearly slid off the shoulder as she merged onto the highway after getting gas. Worse, she’d come within inches of rear-ending the car in front of her on Lake Street as she scanned for a parking spot near the offices of Chi Town Publishing.

  The meeting with the husband and wife copublishers turned out to be even more cursory than she’d anticipated, consisting of a quick coffee, a guarded discussion of their financial woes, and a vague agreement to consider a purchase offer or partnership proposal in the new year.

  As a result, Andi reached Glenlake well ahead of the 4:00 p.m. Thanksgiving Feast—a tradition for kids and any parents who happened to be on campus to fetch their offspring. After rounding the woods by Copeland Hall, she pulled into the visitor parking lot in front of McCormick Mansion. Grabbing her hat, gloves, scarf, and coat from the passenger seat for later, she then quick-walked into the building, shoes crunching on the heavily salted sidewalk.

  She traded hellos with Mrs. Hodges in reception, inhaling the pleasant smell of a fresh mug of herbal tea on the desk.

  “I got here too early to check in at the inn,” Andi told her. “So I thought I might try to catch Cassidy for a quick hello, if possible, before the feast.”

  “Let’s have a look,” said Mrs. Hodges, consulting a computerized program that enabled her to locate the schedule of anyone on campus, student or faculty.

  Along with attending to loose ends, Andi had been planning to pop into Cassidy’s journalism class, which she knew was at the end of the day. While she really wanted to stay as far away as possible, she needed to have a friendly word with Wayne Kelly to remind him that parents were watching and real people were involved.

  “Her physics class just started,” Mrs. Hodges said, eyeing Andi over her readers. “You might try to catch her during the passing period before she heads to her journalism seminar at three o’clock.”

  “Perfect,” Andi said. “In the meantime, I think I’ll head to the student union and warm up with a cup of something hot.”

  After accepting a visitor’s pass, Andi bundled up before going back outside and walking in the general direction of the union. Instead of stopping there, however, she veered off toward her actual destination, a small freestanding house in which she hadn’t set foot since early March of her senior year.

  Back then, the infirmary had been manned by a certain Nurse Ratched (the not-so-clever nickname given to the short-tempered RN with the steel-gray hair and matching stare), whose treatment for all but the most serious medical concerns consisted of a grunt, a thermometer, and two aspirin.

  Over her four years, Andi experienced more than a few of those mundane visits. There was also one appointment that she’d never chronicled in her journal and had done her best to block from memory.

  It was early spring of senior year. The ground had started to thaw. Students were instructed to stay on the paved pathways to protect the newly sprouting grass and avoid tracking mud throughout the school. Birds were chirping again, and daffodils had popped up in the flower beds around campus. Mostly, the smell of spring filled the air, fresher and more fecund than Andi could remember, making her feel oddly emotional and, strangely, a little nauseated.

  After a week of Andi’s feeling alternately okay and downright ill, Mrs. Henry insisted she go to the infirmary.

  Flu, Andi had written on the sign-in sheet.

  “No fever,” Nurse Ratched pronounced, brandishing her trusty thermometer.

  “I think it’s a stomach flu,” Andi said. “And it’s kind of weird because one minute I’m hungry and the next I’m trying not to throw up.”

  The nurse made a note on Andi’s chart and proceeded to press on her lower abdomen.

  “Any pain?” the nurse asked.

  “Just a little crampy when you push.”

  “Have you been having diarrhea?”

  Andi shook her head.

  “When are you due for your period?”

  “Anytime now.”

  Nurse Ratched narrowed her eyes. “Meaning you’re late?”

  Andi’s heart began to pound in her chest. “I . . . don’t get it on exactly the same day every month.”

  “So you could be overdue?”

  “No,” Andi said quickly, as much to convince herself that what Nurse Ratched was implying was wrong . . . there was no way. “It has to be either PMS or a stomach bug.”

  “We can do a test,” the nurse said pointedly.

  “No, it’s fine,” Andi replied, trying to remember the date of her last period. Thinking about the night they’d done it in Dallas’s car.

  He’d pulled out, so everything was okay.

  Right?

  There was no admitting that she’d been sexually active, even to the nurse. Given the way rumors traveled in the cloistered confines of Glenlake, privacy was never guaranteed. She couldn’t risk it with the secret she’d been keeping.

  “Very well,” intoned Nurse Ratched before rolling her chair over to the glass medicine cabinet.

  Andi had to stop herself from sighing with relief when the nurse handed her a bottle of Pepto-Bismol and began to recite the dosing instructions. Her solace morphed into a fresh bout of nausea when Nurse Ratched reached into a nearby drawer, pulled out a pamphlet, and thrust it toward her.

  “If you don’t get your period in a day or two, you’ll want to give these folks a call,” the nurse said. “They’re the ones to help you from here on out.”

  The memory was still fresh as she breathed into her scarf to shield her face against the frigid wind. Andi reached the infirmary, now known as the Roth Wellness Center. Even though the waiting area had been updated and was painted a muted pastel blue instead of a bright, clinical white, Andi swore she could still hear the scratch of
Nurse Ratched’s pen as she scrawled in Andi’s file on that day a lifetime ago.

  Andi needed to find out if there was a record of what she’d written.

  If so, she needed to eliminate the evidence.

  “Sorry! I didn’t realize anyone was here,” said a young, pleasingly plump nurse who appeared from the exam rooms. She had a welcoming smile and bore no resemblance whatsoever to Nurse Ratched.

  “No problem,” Andi said. “I’m Andi Copeland.”

  “Cassidy’s mom! Of course! I totally see the resemblance.”

  “I’m hoping you can answer a question for me.”

  “Sure,” the nurse said. “But Cassidy hasn’t been in for quite a while.”

  “Good to know, but I’m wondering how long you keep health records on students?”

  “They’re computerized, so indefinitely. At least theoretically.”

  Indefinitely.

  “If you want to see Cassidy’s records, I need you to fill out a parent/guardian request form,” she continued.

  “Actually, I’m not looking for Cassidy’s health history,” Andi said in a warm tone she hoped would put at ease the nurse, who’d clearly dealt with an overprotective parent or two. “I’m trying to see if I can get ahold of my own.”

  “Yours?”

  “I was a student here,” Andi said, moving on to her excuse. “I’ve been dealing with some digestive issues that started during my senior year, and my doctor thinks that if we can trace them back to their start it may be helpful.”

  “Got it,” the nurse said, looking relieved that she wasn’t about to embark on an awkward struggle between a nosy parent and her reluctant daughter in the last hours before Thanksgiving break. “But I wouldn’t have anything in my computer older than ten years.”

  “But you do keep them?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “Check with Mrs. Franti in Records.”

  “What can I do you for, dear?” asked Mrs. Franti, a mole-like woman Andi had never seen before, but who may well have been at Glenlake for as long as Mrs. Hodges had been working the front desk.

  “I’m told you’re the person to talk to about archived files,” Andi said as casually as she could.

  “So it would seem,” she said.

  “I’m wondering if you still have my health records from when I was a student here.”

  Mrs. Franti looked at her like she was crazy.

  “I’m trying to diagnose a digestive issue that’s been troubling me since my teens, and I’m hoping the records could give my doctor some insight.” Like any decent white lie, the story rolled off her tongue more easily the second time. “I’m here a little early to get my daughter for Thanksgiving, so I thought I’d come check.”

  “Did you graduate before or after the year 2000?”

  “Before.” Andi hesitated to add 1997, the exact year in question.

  “We started computerizing files right after that Y2K hoax,” Mrs. Franti told her. “So there’d be nothing in the computer archives.”

  “What about paper files?” Andi asked, hoping the question had masked any outward expression of relief.

  “We keep employee records forever, but all the handwritten health records from before 2000 were purged at that time.”

  Andi pretended to look disappointed. “I see.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help,” Mrs. Franti said.

  “At least it’s one less thing for you to do right before break,” Andi added.

  “I’m counting the hours,” said Mrs. Franti with a shake of her head. “It’s been like Grand Central Station around here since they found that car in the lake.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s bad enough I’m running around, digging up class rosters, club memberships, and staff lists for the students in that journalism class. I make a set for one of the kids, put the file away, and the next thing I know I have to go right back and pull the same files—and a heck of a lot more, too—for the detectives in the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.”

  Hearing those words, Andi’s momentary sense of relief evaporated, only to be replaced by something even worse than what she’d felt before.

  Andi waited for the passing period to end before she entered Copeland Hall and started up the stairs. She paused on the landing leading to the all-too-familiar third-floor classroom and took a deep breath, trying to stave off a sense of dread that brought to mind how she’d felt before she’d entered that very room on the first day of senior year.

  How different might everything have turned out had she listened to her gut and simply not taken that poetry class in the first place?

  Willing her legs to move, she turned the corner at the top of the stairs and spotted a note written in big black letters and taped to the closed classroom door.

  RADIATORS NOT WORKING. CLASS CANCELED!

  HAVE A GREAT HOLIDAY BREAK!

  An overwhelming sense of déjà vu was tempered by muffled voices coming from inside the room.

  Laughter.

  She stepped closer and peered through the wavy glass pane in the door. The room appeared to be empty, but craning her neck to the right, she spotted the back of Wayne Kelly’s head. Putting her ear to the door, Andi heard the squeal of marker as someone wrote on the whiteboard just out of her view.

  “Attagirl!” said Kelly, before stepping in closer to the student and reaching around her to add to whatever it was she had written.

  They both disappeared from view.

  “I love the way you think,” he said.

  The response was achingly familiar. “You and me both.”

  A rush of ice-cold adrenaline coursed through Andi with the distinctive giggle that followed. She pulled the door open before she knew what she was doing.

  “Mom?” Cassidy asked as she stepped into the room.

  Wayne Kelly moved away from Cassidy a bit too quickly for Andi’s taste. Then again, he was crossing the room to greet her.

  “Mrs. Copeland, I presume?” he asked.

  “Call me Andi,” she said, extending her hand and looking him directly in the eye. “I got here earlier than I expected, so I thought I’d stop by and sit in on the class.”

  “Of all the days to cancel class,” Kelly said. It was cold in the room, as evidenced by Cassidy’s sweater and scarf and her teacher’s thick tweed sport coat. “I wish I’d known you were coming.”

  I’ll bet you did, she couldn’t help but think. Andi scanned the side whiteboard, a jumble of notes and details about the investigation, organized in crooked columns and connected by arrows, displaying varying penmanship and hues of dry-erase marker.

  School Records, Faculty, and Extracurriculars / Hannah, Davis, Fletcher, Avi

  Interview Students in Walker’s Class / Tate, Liz, Ryan, Quinn

  First-semester grades vs. colleges attended?

  Employment records?

  Group Four: Librarians / Felicia, Aidan, Nicole, Finn

  “Double Life” & Non-Glenlake Friends:

  Curtis Royal (Roy)

  Others?

  “There’s an impressive amount of work here,” Andi said, trying to ignore the heartburn she felt upon reading the word others.

  “Not too bad for a three-day-a-week class,” Wayne said, with pride in his voice. “Actually, this is just a running recap of some of the latest developments. We keep everything on Google Drive so the class can access it at any time.”

  “And it doesn’t accidentally get erased,” Cassidy added.

  “We lost a bit of info yesterday when someone, probably a janitor, rubbed against the board while cleaning.”

  “Innocently, I’m sure,” added Cassidy, à la Nancy Drew.

  “Luckily, your daughter was able to fill in the missing information,” Wayne said. “By the way, her interviewing skills are first-rate. She’s our go-to investigator when it comes to the tough questions. I’m giving her nothing but the highest praise in my recommendation letter.”

  Cassidy smiled a littl
e too broadly. Or maybe that was just Andi’s perception, given what she said next.

  “Speaking of which,” Cassidy said, “did you and Dad really have a ‘spectacular’ breakup during senior year?”

  “Wow,” Andi said, feeling suddenly unsteady but resisting the urge to sink into a nearby desk. “You guys really are leaving no stone unturned. Sounds like someone’s been talking to my hyperbolic friend Georgina.”

  Whom, right now, she wanted to kill.

  Cassidy, her beautiful but right now annoyingly smug daughter, waited for the answer with arms folded across her chest.

  “I’d use a different adjective: predictable,” Andi heard herself say. “We were both stressed out about college and leaving Glenlake, so we took a break for a little while.”

  “It’s weird that it never came up in all your Glenlake stories,” said Cassidy.

  Andi forced a laugh. “It all seems so silly now. I honestly think the fear of being apart drove a wedge between us.” She’d never actually thought of it that way, but as she said it, she couldn’t help but feel it rang true. “Luckily, we came to our senses.”

  “First-semester senior psychosis,” Wayne said with a smile. “We haven’t seen any of that around here lately. Have we, Cassidy?”

  Cassidy responded with a conspiratorial giggle that bothered Andi almost as much as the jarring question she’d posed.

  “If memory serves, we need to get in line early, before the Thanksgiving feast gets underway,” Andi said, eager to escape further questioning. Her eyes drifted back to the whiteboard as she wondered what else they’d uncovered. “It’s a shame I didn’t get to hear your discussion.”

  “Agreed. Hopefully, you’ll stop in next time you’re on campus.”

  “It’s a plan,” Andi said.

  Andi was relieved to say goodbye. She would have been even more relieved if either Cassidy or Wayne made a move to follow her.

  “Cassidy,” Andi said. “Ready to stuff your face with me?”

  “We aren’t quite finished here,” Cassidy said, with more exasperation than was strictly necessary.

  “They’ll run out of dark meat if we don’t get seated early.”