And sometimes, wishes actually come true.
It was like striking gold in a potato patch. I’d dug down expecting clods of dirt, maybe a worm or two, some spuds. Instead I hit upon a gleaming, glittering nugget.
“She was an ugly duckling, turned swan, turned ugly duckling,” Nancy McCraig philosophized as we sat on her creaky back porch, overlooking a yard of well-tended flower beds.
The small-town principal had the look of a good teacher at the end of a long, tough school year. The haggardness, earned from ten months of worry, devotion to students, scraps with parents, hard-won battles and demoralizing losses, was just beginning to smooth out beneath a layer of fresh summer tan. After a visit to Hobart Town Hall where I’d learned that any remnants of the Edwards family had long ago disappeared from town, I turned to Katie’s high school for information. It didn’t take long to track down McCraig. It took even less to bring a frown to her face. All I had to do was mention Katie Edwards’ name.
“How do you mean?” I responded to her surprisingly maligning statement.
She chuckled. “I’m sorry. I know it sounds dramatic. I shouldn’t be telling tales out of school, literally. But you caught me at a good time, Mr. Wills. School’s out, it’s a sunny day, I’ve got my cats, a jug of iced tea, and a handsome, world-famous author in my backyard. I’ll tell you anything!”
I gave her a TV-ready smile. “Call me Jaspar,” I buttered the other side of my bread. “I’m sure you watch the news, so you know I’m not so much famous anymore as infamous.”
Her laugh petered out. “I suppose that’s true. But don’t they say in your business: any publicity is good publicity?”
I picked up the laughter. “I suppose so. But from where I’m sitting today, I don’t know if I quite agree with the adage.”
“I know who Katie’s become,” McCraig admitted. “Everyone in town does. We’ve watched her career with…interest.” She sipped her drink slowly, taking time to think about what to say next. “And I know who she is to you. Everybody does. That last interview? Ooo-eee, that was a doozy, wasn’t it? I hear she’s planning to write a book about all that business now—about you mostly.”
“Is she?” I’d heard the news.
“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You’re doing the same in reverse.”
“I know it doesn’t sound…”
She stopped me short with a ‘don’t say another word’ kind of gesture. “You’ve come to the right place, Mr. Wills…Jaspar. I don’t know how long you’ve been here or who you’ve all talked to, but I can tell you right now, nobody in this town is going to take her side over yours. Not after what she did to Hobart.”
One by one, the hairs on the back of my neck began to stand up.
“You’re looking for dirt, isn’t that right?”
God, I hate that term. But—petty and cheap as it was—it was also entirely accurate.
“You’re hoping to find something shady in her past, something you can use against her. You don’t have to admit or deny it, sugar. But I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. Why else would you be here, in her hometown? Especially now.”
The best I could do was a nudge of my chin.
“What she did to you, Jaspar,” she said, eyes burning into mine, “well, let me tell you, it’s not the first time.”
If my ears could have exploded into flames and shot out fireworks, this would have been the moment. Was this woman saying what I thought she was saying? It’s what, in my wildest dreams, I’d hoped to hear. But expected? No way. “What do you mean, it’s not the first time? Are you telling me she did the same thing to someone else? Who else did she…” How to describe it? “…lethally embarrass?”
McCraig nodded her appreciation of the term, her worn face elegiac. “Take your pick. Katie Edwards…she pretty much screwed every single person in Hobart. That girl destroyed this town. So believe me when I tell you, Jaspar, you are among friends here.”
Chapter 48
“Katie was born here. Everyone in Hobart knew her and her family. They were nothing special. Her dad, Vern, was an accountant. He had a small office downtown; he did pretty much everyone’s taxes. Liz, Katie’s mom, was a nice woman, quiet, never saw her out too much.” Nancy McCraig tittered. “I heard she started the first Weight Watchers club in town. She never lost any weight, almost no one did because of the snacks she’d serve, and coffee with cream. But she just kept having the damn meetings anyway.
“Katie was their only child. About what I said earlier, funny thing is, I don’t think anyone thought of her as an ugly duckling, until the swan appeared. I mean, she wasn’t an overly pretty little girl, but certainly not what you would call ugly. She was quiet like her mom. Skinny as a rail though, smart, and a bit of a loner. I don’t think I ever saw her with any other girls, or really anyone, except her parents. She wasn’t disliked or bullied or anything like that, but she never seemed to quite fit in. More than anything, she was ignored. The other kids—most people actually—just didn’t really notice her.
“It was in her grade ten year that she took over the school newspaper.” McCraig chuckled. “I suppose ‘newspaper’ is a bit of an exaggeration. It was really nothing more than a photocopied one-sheet that someone sent around whenever there was a bake sale or school dance. But Katie liked to write. She wasn’t part of any extracurricular groups so she had the time. I think it was Helen—her homeroom teacher that year—who encouraged her. It was the best thing to ever happen to that girl. And to the newspaper. Within three months, she turned that bird-cage liner into something that was actually interesting to read.”
This didn’t surprise me. “How did she do it?” I asked.
“First off, she got rid of the bake sale and recital announcements. She redesigned it so it looked more like a graphic novel than a cheap flyer. It was flashy, modern, young. She started writing short pieces that were aimed more at students instead of teachers and parents. She was smart about it. She knew exactly where the line was, where she could appeal to kids without pissing off the adults. It was, frankly, a shock to most of us teachers. This kid who we barely noticed not only had book smarts, but a savvy awareness of youth culture, loads of creative talent, and a darn sharp sense of humor.”
“So what happened? It sounds to me as if everything was turning out okay for her.”
“Well, I can only guess at this,” McCraig said with a thoughtful look. “But after all the years I’ve been doing this, I’m pretty good at reading kids. Deep down, I think Katie thought that if her paper was popular, so would she be. Of course, that never happened. The students liked what she was putting out there, but they were too busy with their own teenage shenanigans and petty dramas to care about who was behind it. Katie pretended it didn’t bother her, that she didn’t want a bunch of girlfriends to hang out with, or a boyfriend to take her out on weekends. She was all about that paper. ‘Who has time for friends?’ was her attitude. The paper got bigger and more popular, and she got busier and lonelier.
“It was the summer between her grade eleven and twelve years when the transformation happened. It happens to every girl, every kid actually. But the change in Katie seemed more abrupt and dramatic. She was tall and gangly and physically awkward before, but come the fall of her final year, everything was exactly where it needed to be. Breasts, waist, hips, hair—all of it was working.”
“And people took notice,” I made the easy deduction.
McCraig refilled our iced tea. “Uh-huh. Everyone either wanted to be her friend or get in her pants.”
“And did they?” I cringed as I asked the predictable follow-up question, not sure I wanted the answer. Is this what I’d really come all this way for? A story about how the toast of Boston’s airwaves had once been a small town Lolita. Nothing about that appealed to me.
McCraig carefully considered her reply before continuing. “Well, sort of. It would have been a heady experience for anyone. But Katie was smarter than that. She didn’t go overboard. I think
she did her time with the bimbo Barbies and dumbbell dickheads…” She stopped there and nearly choked on a chortle. “Oh dear! Sorry about that. Believe me, I love those kids, all of them. Thoughts like that never cross my mind when I’m at school. But here, at home on a summer day...”
“Don’t worry about it,” I quickly assured her with a smile. “I understand. That was just between you and me.”
“Thank you.” She fanned a hand across her face. “I’ll admit to you though, Jaspar, if I was her, oooooh, boy, I would have dropped that paper like a hot potato! I’d have accepted every one of those invitations to go shopping and join clubs and make out at the movie theater. But Katie was judicious about what she did and with whom. Aside from class, I rarely saw her. She never loitered in the hallways or outdoors like other students. She mostly hung out in the closet-sized office we let her use. That’s when it must have started.”
“When what started?”
The principal shifted in her seat, an uncomfortable look clouding her face. “Turns out, a few weeks of basting did not a juicy turkey make of our little Miss Edwards. All those kids who were suddenly being nice to her or trying to feel her up? Well, she played their game, but not because it felt good. No sirree. She was using those kids.”
I didn’t get it. “Using them how?”
“That’s just it. None of us knew it was happening. Until we all found out at the same time. On the last day of classes. And then: KABOOM!”
Chapter 49
Note to self: stay clear of teachers in the heady, first throes of summer holidays. I suspected Nancy McCraig, Hobart High School Principal, was getting a kick out of entertaining the renowned author sitting in her back yard. She was doing a good job of it too. I was literally on the edge of my seat.
“What happened on the last day of classes?” I wanted to know.
“Katie’s final edition of the school newspaper was circulated.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “It contained a message to the student body telling them exactly what she thought of them?”
McCraig sucked in her cheeks and shook her head. “Oh no. Not a message. This was a full blown report. Unbeknownst to everyone, at the same time as she was enjoying her newfound popularity, Katie was also collecting information…no, not information…secrets about her classmates. Dark secrets. Dirty secrets.
“Katie had the skinny on every girl who’d lost her virginity but claimed she hadn’t, she knew every boy whose penis was under five inches long, she knew about same-sex dalliances behind the gym, kids who’d had sexual relations—consensual or otherwise—with adults. She knew the identity of every peeping tom, bed-wetter, and kid who’d cheated on an exam or was strung out on meth. All of it was fodder for her swan song edition. She exposed pretty much every student embarrassment, every illegality, every moral weakness, every clandestine assignation, every sweet, innocent indiscretion.
“And this wasn’t just a quick hit-and-run. Quite obviously she’d been working on it for months. This was her own hideous version of the school yearbook, complete with photographs and snarky captions. Mary Beth Garner: Most Likely to Swallow. Allen Dalhousie: Most Likely to Wear Women’s Panties.” McCraig shuddered as she uttered the distasteful words. “It was, quite honestly, the most disgusting thing I’d ever laid eyes upon. In part, I blame myself.”
Reeling with the revelations of teenage Katie Edwards’ destructive, journalistic sledgehammer, millions of questions popped into my head, topmost being: do you have a copy? Instead I went with: “Why blame yourself?”
“By then Katie had been running the paper on her own for three years. None of us were paying attention. She’d been doing a good job. The kids liked it. The teachers and parents were amused by it. Everything seemed to be okay. I had no idea she was creating this, this, scathing scandal sheet. In my school. Using school resources. No one was watching her. No one was monitoring her activities or acting as an editorial board. The other students weren’t the only ones who’d ignored Katie Edwards for all those years. The staff, me—we were guilty of it too. And we came to regret it. As adults, as teachers, we failed her. Me most of all. This was my school. I was the leader. The responsibility fell on me to protect my students and my teachers. I didn’t do that.”
All I could do was shake my head. The story was fantastical, epic even. If it was a movie, who would the audience cheer for? The besieged student body who’d had their grungiest laundry hung out for all to see? Or the long-suffering mouse of a girl, who’d finally gotten revenge for how she’d been treated?
“That day,” McCraig remembered, a grimace distorting her face, “I’ll never forget it. My first indication that something was wrong was when a teacher came rushing into my office to tell me a student had collapsed in the hallway. A girl named Lilly Kemper. Katie’s paper had included before and after photographs of her nose job. And that was it. That was the last moment of normalcy any of us would know for a very long time. After that, everything happened fast, like a blur. It was like a bomb went off. The school exploded, and kids came crashing out of classrooms screaming or crying or just trying to get away so they didn’t have to face anyone. Bedlam is not a word I use lightly. But, Jaspar, let me tell you: that day was bedlam.”
“What happened to Katie?”
“Before anyone came to their senses and put two and two together, we barricaded her in my office. We worried that once students stopped thinking about themselves and realized who’d done this, they’d start thinking about how to get back at her. And while all this hell was breaking loose on the other side of my door, she just sat there, hands folded on her lap, completely calm. It was really strange. Once we fully understood what had happened, we asked her why she’d done it. All she would say was: ‘Everything I wrote was true.’
“I sent teachers and administration staff to scour the school top to bottom to collect every copy of that paper. But we were too late. It was a lost cause. Pretty much every student had already read it. Even worse, copies had left school grounds. It spread throughout the community faster than a brush fire on a windy day. Everybody knew about it. Everybody had either read it or heard the stories.
“Of course, there were those who thought it was funny, or harmless. Some thought it was nothing more than titillating gossip. Most saw it for what it was: pure poison. You cannot even begin to imagine the anger and frustration and accusations and threats and even fear that began to spread throughout Hobart. It tore this town apart. Everyone was affected in one way or another.”
“That’s why the Edwards family left town,” I stated flatly, beginning to comprehend the widespread and shattering implications of Katie’s actions.
“Yes,” McCraig confirmed. “Vern’s accounting office, those Weight Watcher meetings, the family house—all of it was gone by summer’s end. And so was Katie.”
Chapter 50
I spent four days in Hobart, Indiana, documenting the trail of destruction left by hurricane Katie: divorce, mental break down, incarceration, drug busts, firings, and a fifteen-year-old boy whose outing as homosexual led to unspeakable consequences—at home, at school, and finally, eighteen months later, at the end of a noose.
There were some who couldn’t quite remember the name of “that girl” who’d started it all. A few even defended her, saying it was nothing more than an innocent teenage prank gone too far. But everyone remembered the long, devastating aftermath. It was like talking to survivors of a particularly ruinous tornado, who, years later, were still picking up the pieces. But instead of recovering from physical destruction, they were rebuilding broken relationships, pulling together destroyed families, healing emotional annihilation. The experience left me shaken, and I couldn’t wait to go home.
I was grateful for the long bus ride back to Boston. I used the trip’s monotony to focus on a single burning question: now that I had this dirt on Katie Edwards, what was I going to do with it? I’d had no idea what I was looking for when I’d first begun this crusade. All I knew was that I ne
eded to get away from the venomous atmosphere of Boston. I needed to revive myself through writing. That Katie Edwards’ obliteration of her entire hometown by the prick of her poison pen would end up being my antidote, was a surprising but much-needed boost to my spirit. As I traveled those long miles home, I felt that familiar fire-in-the-belly sensation I’ve always gotten when I know I’ve hit upon a winning topic for a new book.
Deep down, I never once truly believed I would actually write this book. It’s like when a therapist tells you to compose a letter to an ex-lover, ex-best-friend, ex-boss—whoever it is who’s betrayed or hurt you. You write it, get out all of your frustrations, recriminations, blame and pain, on paper. But never, ever, under any circumstance, do you send it.
As the bus rolled across the country, I was oblivious to alternating instances of great beauty and tedium on the other side of the window. I furiously scribbled notes. I organized, re-organized, and categorized fact, fiction, rumor and supposition. I gathered and structured my thoughts about what to do next. I read, then re-read, what I’d written, in the hopes of coming to a rational, intelligent, professional conclusion about whether or not there was a story here to tell, and if I was the one to tell it.
While still in Hobart, I’d made scores of inquiries, called in favors, and let my fingers do the walking until they were limping, all without finding a single lead to tell me where Katie Edwards’ family had gone. No one would admit whether they’d left of their own volition or been run out of town. When I put my mind to it, my ability to dig up evidence—even the kind that’s been deeply buried for years and never meant to resurface—is not inconsiderable. Still, I found nothing. Except for Katie, the Edwards clan had simply disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. Had they left the country? Taken on new identities? Both options seemed excessive to me. But who can say what drives people to extremes? The answer is different for each one of us. My only move was to return to Boston. I hoped to pick up Katie’s trail from when she first arrived in the city, following her graduation from journalism school. I knew exactly where to start sniffing.
Set Free Page 20
