Most Likely to Die

by Lisa Jackson

  “You can’t tell me what to do, okay?” Lissa said, still trying her best to push his buttons.

  “No, it’s not okay.”

  “So now you’re going all authoritarian on me?” She sighed loudly, tipped her chin down, and glared at him.

  “I’m your father.”

  “Big effin’ deal.”

  “It is.”

  “Hey. Don’t be that guy.”

  “What guy?”

  “The father guy. I’m not one of those kids that you have to…I don’t know, throw a baseball to, or take hiking, or spend”—she made quote marks with her fingers—“‘quality time’ with or even relate to. I’m fine. And I’m fine with Zeke.” She grabbed her soft drink and chewed on the straw. “You don’t even know him.”

  “I know he doesn’t have the respect to walk you to the door, that he’s got his hands all over you, and that I haven’t heard you’ve even gone on a real date together.”

  “A ‘real date’? You want me to go on a ‘real date’? What? Like where he comes to the door in a suit and tie and smiles at you and Mom and brings me home by ten. That kind of date?”

  “Sounds about right,” Ross said equably.

  “Dad, that was fifty years ago, and even you and Mom didn’t do anything so stupid. If you haven’t noticed, our family is not exactly Aussie and Harriet.”

  “You mean Ozzie.”

  “I mean we’re more like the Osbournes than the Neil-sons.”

  “Nelsons…Oh, I get it. You’re putting me on.” Beneath her act of boredom, the crazy-colored hair and make-up, was the little girl who had often run to him, her arms in the air, the ribbon in her dark hair always falling out, bandages on her knees. She’d been thrilled to see him and had always announced wildly, “Daddy’s home…Daddy, put me on your shoulders…Daddy!” That girl was still there, just buried in anger, sadness, and too much make-up. “Should I be flattered that you think I’m like Ozzy Osbourne?”

  “Why are you doing all this now?” she asked on a huge sigh. “Acting like you care or something.”

  “I do care.”

  She snorted her disbelief.

  “I mean it, Lissa, and I’ve missed you.”

  “Save me,” she whispered, arms folding over her chest, chin jutted forward in rebellion.

  “Okay, I screwed up. Is that what you want to hear?”

  She didn’t reply, and he shoved his uneaten food to one side and turned to look her squarely in the eye. “I think we should get something straight, okay? No one in our family is perfect. We’ve all made mistakes. But I am your father and the adult here. So we’re going to figure out why a smart girl like you lets her grades slide into the toilet and hooks up with a guy who hasn’t shown me that he has an ounce of respect for her or anyone else.”

  “You don’t even know him!”

  “You’re right. I don’t.” He found his cell phone and slid it across the table. “Call him. I think it’s time we met.”

  “What?”

  “You know his number, right? Dial him up, tell him I want to meet him.”

  “Now?”

  “No time like the present.”

  She glanced away. Thinking. “He’s probably busy.”

  “Thought you said he was coming over to your house to watch television. Call him.”

  “To have him come here?” she asked, pointing at the floor.

  “Yeah.”

  “With you?” She was shaking her head. “He won’t do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “It would be too weird. With you. You already don’t like him.”

  “So this is his chance to change my mind.”

  She eyed the phone, then stood up and walked to the couch, where she flopped down. Picking up the remote control, she started flipping through the channels. “You’re so lame,” she accused.

  “Probably. So, since we’re not entertaining Zeke, let’s figure out what the problem is in chemistry. I can’t help you much on the German, but I’m a chemistry ace.”

  “Lucky for me,” she mumbled with more than a touch of sarcasm.

  “That’s right. This is without a doubt your lucky night.” He sat beside her on the couch and cracked open the huge textbook before taking the remote from her reluctant fingers and turning the television off.

  “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

  He grinned. “Come on Lissa, how much fun would that be? I figure I’ve made a mistake, not being around so much, but I’m changing my ways, turning over a new leaf. So you’d better get used to it.”

  She probably should have gone straight home.

  That would have been the smart thing to do.

  It was getting late and she was tired and there was still the issue with Lissa. But after all the talk about St. Elizabeth’s and its imminent closure, after seeing a smattering of her classmates and remembering what they were like in high school, after being dragged kicking and screaming to the past, Kristen couldn’t help herself.

  Maybe it was the reporter in her.

  Maybe it was just curiosity.

  Or maybe it was because it was time to put to rest some old ghosts.

  Whatever the reason, she headed out of town and toward Beaverton. Though her old alma mater and her current home were less than five miles apart as the crow flies, they were separated by hills and canyons and winding roads. She’d never felt any need to visit the old campus. In fact, if she thought about it, she’d studiously avoided returning to St. Elizabeth’s.

  Until tonight.

  The beams from her headlights cut through the night, shimmering against pavement growing wet with new rain. She wound through the steep hills of Douglas fir, oak, and cedar, her wipers slapping slowly. She wasn’t completely alone on the county road that ran past the school. Taillights glowed red in the road ahead when she crested small hills, and she met a broken line of oncoming headlights.

  How many times had she driven this route during her four years at St. Elizabeth’s? At first her mother, a devout Catholic and a widow who owned a bakery/café on Twenty-third Street, had hauled her to school in the Sweet Nothings delivery van. Kristen had been mortified to be dropped off in the rattletrap of a vehicle when Lindsay Farrell arrived in her father’s Porsche and even Rachel Alsace alighted from her mom’s vintage, but cool, Jeep.

  Kristen had saved all the money she’d earned at the bakery, and the minute she turned sixteen and passed her driver’s license test, she bought a 1976 Volkswagen Super Beetle convertible with a dent in one fender and ninety thousand miles under its fan belt. Not in the same class as the Mercedes and BMWs that were parked in the school lot, but better than the stupid van. She’d been in heaven. Innocently unaware of what was to come.

  Now, as the buildings of St. Elizabeth’s campus came into view, she felt a chill as cold as winter. The church was there, a massive stone structure with a high bell tower, and set back a bit, the attached convent, where once the nuns who had taught at the school had lived.

  Kristen wondered if any of the sisters still resided beyond the thick gates. What had happened to Sister Clarice with her weak chin, rimless glasses, and bloodless lips? Or Sister Maureen with her apple cheeks and tittery laugh? She’d filled the classroom with flowers and always smelled of lilacs. What about the Reverend Mother, Sister Neva, who had been in her seventies twenty years earlier and had walked with a cane and thankfully had never been able to remember Kristen’s name? Were any of them alive? Did they still dwell behind the thick rock walls?

  The rain began in earnest, covering the windshield and fogging its interior. Kristen turned the wipers higher and stared through the glass at the school. In the gloom, it seemed miraculously unchanged. Its broad portico, supported by stone pillars, still protected the heavy double doors leading to the main reception area. The building was two stories, faced with the same rock, brick and mortar as the church.

  Kristen eased on the gas and inched closer, fighting the sensation that she shouldn’t be there, that s
he was trespassing into a faraway time and place that was no longer hers.

  Her car crept forward and she recognized the gym, set back from the rest of the classrooms, its high, domed roof dwarfing the cafeteria next to it.

  The gym. Venue to the doomed Valentine’s Day dance. She tapped her fingers against the steering wheel and wondered about the maze separating the gymnasium from the cloister. Was it still intact? Or hopelessly overgrown? Had the order had the hedges removed, hacked down to stumps after the tragedy, or had the laurel and arborvitae been shaped and manicured, the topiary sculptured as if nothing horrible had ever happened within the garden walls?

  “This is nuts,” she told herself as she flipped up the hood of her jacket and grabbed a flashlight from the glove box. She cut the engine and stepped out of the car into the puddles and drizzle of the night, then walked toward the back of the school, stepping over a chain that barricaded the unused gym lot from the delivery alley. The pavement was pockmarked and rutted, but she followed it unerringly to the back of the gym, across a parking lot to the gardens.

  The hedge was as she remembered…maybe a little less groomed, a few more weeds surrounding it, but it was there. It didn’t take too much imagination to remember that night, the music in the background, the smell of cigarette smoke, the horrifying sound of Lindsay’s scream and then the sight of Jake, his lifeless body slumped over the heavy arrow pinning him to the tree, the blood everywhere, dark against the trunk of the tree, pooling on the wet grass, staining the front of Jake’s tuxedo and smearing over Lindsay’s dress.

  Oh, God, what was she thinking, coming back here to this dark place? She glanced up at the nunnery and saw a few lights glowing in the tracery windows. She swallowed hard as she saw a silhouette in one window, a movement of the blinds.

  So what, Kristen?

  Someone lives in that room, probably one of the old nuns. She was just walking past the window, lingering there with her Bible and rosary in hand, for crying out loud!

  Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to freak yourself out?

  She had no answer to that one, but she cut the beam of her flashlight and looked up at the window where the shadow passed and the lights were suddenly extinguished.

  Either the person inside was going to bed, had left the room, or had decided to use the darkness to hide him or herself.

  Now you’re really getting paranoid. Turn around and go home. Sit by the fire, have a glass of wine or decaf coffee with a shot of Kahlua and a dollop of whipped cream. Treat yourself, you’re alone tonight. No motherly responsibilities.

  And still she walked forward, switching the flashlight back on, heading through the entrance to the maze where the walls of shrubbery closed in more tightly, the untended branches brushing against her shoulders, the oddly shaped topiary untrimmed and grotesque. The beam of her flashlight bobbed ahead, offering weak illumination.

  What’re you doing out here? she asked herself, understanding subconsciously that this was simply something she had to do, an urge she couldn’t ignore, a driving force that made her squint against the rain and darkness. She caught sight of an old bench, then a fountain, and with each step in the squishy grass, she felt another drip of fear in her blood, an eerie feeling she tried to ignore.

  You’re just on edge because you know you’re trespassing, that someone at the convent could see your light and put in a call to the police. What would you tell them, hmm? That you wanted to visit the place where the boy you loved in high school was murdered?

  Turning one corner, she stopped short, a wall of branches cutting off her progress.

  Odd, she thought, wondering at her misstep. She was certain she’d followed the correct path. A cold blast of wind cut through the heavy shrubbery and touched the back of her neck.

  Turn around and go back to the car. For God’s sake, what’re you trying to prove?

  Her skin was chilled, but she was going to finish this, whatever the hell it was. Shining the light on the ground, she did an about-face, following her own footprints where the grass was mashed down until she came to another forty-five-degree corner that she didn’t expect. Walking briskly, she found another dead end, another wall of foliage.

  “Crap.” She must be more tense than she realized, and now she was more determined than ever. She backtracked again, retracing her steps. At the entrance, she shined her light on the edge of the maze and, seeing slightly smaller, less dense bushes interspersed with the older arborvitae and laurel, realized that the hedge had changed. The maze she’d known by heart had been restructured, and in the darkness, the newer shrubs changing the pathway were already nearly twenty years old and hard to distinguish from the older vegetation.

  Perhaps the old tree where Jake had been killed had been cut down. There had been talk of making it a memorial, but Mother Superior had refused the suggestion, not wanting the tragic incident to mar the reputation of the campus or become a destination for the morbidly curious.

  “We need to downplay this painful situation and pray for God’s understanding,” Mother Superior had told the student body on the Monday after Jake’s death. “The police have finished their investigation of the grounds and there is no need to sensationalize what happened, nor should we encourage those who are obsessed or curious about the tragedy. Those who want to pay their respects to the poor boy can do so at his grave site…”

  It all came back to Kristen now as she walked along the hedgerows, trying to second-guess the new pathways. It took her nearly half an hour before she made the right succession of turns. Suddenly, she was in the center of the maze, the old oak tree still standing, branches naked and spreading in the gloomy night.

  Kristen’s heart squeezed as she shined her light over the ground littered by branches. The statue of the Madonna was unscathed, bleached white as ever, hands lifted as if in supplication to God.

  An unworldly chill ran through Kristen’s blood as clouds blocked the moon and rain peppered the ground. “Dear God,” she whispered, her hands clenching tight. Her throat closed and she felt hot tears mingle with the cold rain sliding down her cheeks. She imagined Jake as she’d last seen him, slumped and dead, dressed in his rented tuxedo, shot through the heart with an arrow, for God’s sake.

  Cupid’s Killer. The newspapers had run that one into the ground.

  In her mind’s eye, Kristen once again witnessed Lindsay at Jake’s feet, her ice blue dress dark with the stain of Jake’s blood, her face white with fear, mascara running in black rivulets from her eyes. And then the accusation.

  “Why, Kristen? Why did you kill him?”

  What had possessed Lindsay that night? Why had she thought Kristen had anything to do with Jake’s death?

  Lindsay had never given her a straight answer, not even the next week at school when Kristen had asked her about it.

  It had been in the senior hallway, a short first-floor and locker-lined corridor that was wedged between the library and the business offices.

  Kristen had found Lindsay struggling to open her locker. “Why did you accuse me of having something to do with Jake’s death?” When Lindsay didn’t immediately respond, she pressed, “Lindsay?”

  Lindsay yanked on the combination lock, but the locker held fast. “I…I didn’t know what I was saying. I was in shock. Crazy.” She rattled the locker door more furiously, trying to force the combination lock to spring open. It didn’t budge. “I was upset.”

  “We all were. But that doesn’t explain why you blamed me.”

  “Okay, I know. I’m sorry!” She was twirling the combination wildly again, her fingers trembling. “What do you want from me? I found Jake there in the middle of the maze, an arrow though his heart. And blood everywhere. I knew…I mean, I knew he was dead. It was like”—she stopped tugging at the lock long enough to stare at Kristen with round, panicked eyes—“it was like I saw his soul leave, Kris. Swear to God, the life went out of his eyes as I got to him and…and I knew his soul had escaped, right in front of me…Oh, God…I
was so freaked, so scared, so out of my damned mind and you were the next one who showed up and…and…and he was your date that night. You were supposed to be with him! At the dance. When you knew I was still in love with him!”

  “You were broken up,” Kristen fought back, feeling a little niggle of guilt. “Jake and I had always been friends.”

  Lindsay made a disparaging sound, then calmed a little. “Apparently you wanted more than that, but…Oh, crap, what does it matter? He’s dead, isn’t he? Nothing’s going to change that.”

  “I had nothing to do with his murder.”

  Lindsay sighed. Blinked back tears. “As I said, Kris, I went nuts. That’s all. I was crazy. Sorry!” Her chin trembled as she turned back to her locker and added in a whisper, “I don’t know what more I can say.”

  Lindsay finally managed to work the combination, the lock sprang, and the door opened. She grabbed her English textbook, but not before Kristen got a glimpse of the inside of the locker door where pictures of Jake Marcott were plastered: snapshots, yearbook photos, his senior picture decorated with ticket stubs and red hearts cut out of shiny red paper.

  Shocked, Kristen took a step backward, and the sounds of the normal noises in the hallway between classes, the clatter of shoes on the shiny floors, the clang of slamming lockers, the rumble of laughter and conversation, the buzzing of the tardy bell all were muted, as if those familiar noises came from a very long distance.

  Only when Sister Clarice touched her on the shoulder, her black habit rustling with her quick strides, and told her to “get to class, chop-chop,” had Kristen snapped back to the present and hustled up the stairs at the end of the hall, hurrying to slide into her seat in the physics lab before cranky old Mrs. Crandall took roll.

  Now, years later, standing in the rain, staring at the tree, she felt chilled to the bone. Alone. With no more answers than she had twenty years earlier. She walked to the tree and shined a light on the gnarled trunk.

  “Oh, Jake,” she whispered when she found the mark in the rough bark and ran her fingers in the groove. “Who did this to you?”

  And why?