“Huh?” he says.
Annie snorts. “Never mind.”
“So what’s the deal with Erika Tenzar?” I ask him. “Are you getting laid this weekend, or did you kill your chances this morning?”
“She’s going to hang out after school and watch football practice,” he says.
“Uh huh,” says Annie. “And after?”
“Who knows?” Newie says. “Depends on how horny I am.”
Annie rolls her eyes, but I feel him loud and clear. I change the subject. “What happened with you and Mr. Colton?” I ask him.
Newie shifts the way he’s sitting and straddles the long bench sideways. “I kept expecting him to croak right in front of me,” he says. “He’s like seriously older than dirt.”
“And?”
“And nothing.” He shrugs. “He asked me if I was okay and shit. I told him I was used to stuff like that because, you know, Asshole’s my dad and everything. Then he let me go.”
I turn to Annie. “What about you?”
She shrugs. “I saw Ms. Hutch,” she says. “I didn’t tell her much. There wasn’t much to tell.” Then she says, “Oh,” and pulls out a handful of lollipops from her knapsack and drops them on the table. “She gave me these.”
Newie grumbles, “I didn’t get candy.” He stares at the jumble of oranges, purples, and greens. “Where’s the chocolate?”
I reach into my pocket—not the one with Mark Zebrowski’s joint in it—but the other one, and pull out the two chocolate suckers that I got from Ms. Hutch. “Ta da,” I say and add the brown wrappers to the growing collection on the table.
“Wow,” says Newie, then stretches out his arms and looks to the ceiling. “Where’s a hot babe?” Annie giggles. It’s a genuine laugh, and I realize that we’re going to be back to normal soon. We all will.
By the time the bell rings at 2:15, I’m more than ready to leave the brick prison.
I catch Newie as he’s going into the locker room to get ready for football practice.
“Hey,” I say to him. “Annie’s starting at the BD Mart tonight. I’m going to hang there for a little bit, you know? At least to make sure she gets home okay. You in?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know yet. Erika has a car, so we might be doing something.” My eyebrows rise slightly, and he smirks because he knows exactly why. “But if I can, I’ll try to be there for closing time. When does she get out?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him in all honesty. “I guess eleven.”
“You got it, bro,” he says, then pushes through the door into the gym.
Annie is waiting for me outside the front of the school. As soon as I see her face, I know what she’s going to say.
“I’m not walking through the woods,” she blurts out as she looks across the parking lot toward the entrance to the path between the high school and the middle school. My shoulders slump. It’s a far walk down Glendale Road if we don’t cut through the woods, and I still have to go buy something for dinner before my dad gets home. I’ve already started compiling a list of other things I have to do, all unpleasant, before the sun sets.
“Come on,” I say. “There’s nothing there anymore, except maybe the tape where the police blocked off the area.” I look at her, with her new blond hair and her sweet smile and her gray, oversized sweater and can’t help thinking that I want to kiss her.
“Can’t we please go around?” she pleads one more time, but I already know that she’s resigned herself to walking the gauntlet with me. I grab her hand, pull her close, and kiss her softly.
“It’ll be fine,” I whisper. “Honest.”
I only hope I’m right.
21
IT’S STILL WARM out, which is weird for Massachusetts, but not too weird. We’re the only state where you have to put the heater and the air conditioner on in the same day. I’m sure it will be nippy by sundown, and tonight I’ll be breaking out the freaking flannel.
I guess dealing with menopausal weather is all part of being a Masshole.
I hold Annie’s hand as we cross the parking lot to the path and ready ourselves to dive into the woods. Leaves are falling off the trees in front of us and whispering against the ground.
Die. Die. Die.
I’ll always think of this small stretch of woods as death now—death and murder. I don’t suppose I’ll ever feel comfortable walking through here again, but the alternative, which is almost a three mile hike, pushes me forward. I squeeze Annie’s hand, and she squeezes mine.
“Yo, wait up,” we hear and turn to see Mark Zebrowski crossing the parking lot toward us.
“What does he want?” grumbles Annie. She doesn’t like Mark very much. Last year he puked on her shoes during a keg party at Stephanie Martini’s house. Her parents were away, so her older brother bought the keg and invited a bunch of waste cases to help him tap it. Probably half the school ended up there. To call the party epic would be an understatement—until Newie’s dad showed up, and we snuck out the back, more than a little wasted.
We had to weave our way through town, over the stone wall at High Garden, and down the Giant Steps, to get home without getting caught.
“He gave me a joint,” I whisper to her. She just rolls her eyes.
“Did you take a whiff of that weed?” Mark asks as he trots up to us. “It’s primo shit.”
“I didn’t whip it out in the middle of class, if that’s what you’re asking.”
His face clouds over. “Oh,” he says, like I’ve genuinely hurt his feelings. “Well, if you guys are cutting through, can you at least show me where you found her?”
Annie grumbles, “That’s gross, Mark.”
“Aw, come on,” he whines. “I’ve never seen an actual crime scene before.” He pushes past us and enters the path. “I promise I won’t hurl on your shoes again. Honest.”
Annie shoots me a wicked glance and I shrug, but we both follow Mark into the woods. As he walks, he pulls another joint out of his pocket and lights it, stopping for a second to shield his lighter with his hand. He takes a deep drag, holds it, and lets out a cloud before handing it to me.
“No, thanks,” I tell him, although I really want to. “I got a lot of stuff to do.”
“Your loss,” he says. “Annie?”
She shakes her head. “I’m starting a new job in a couple of hours. I can’t.”
Mark looks at her like he has absolutely no idea what she means. He stands there, holding the joint, waiting for one of us to take it, but we don’t. “Pussies,” he says and takes another hit. Even though Mark Zebrowski lives on the hill where all the rich people live, I don’t think he’s ever going to make it out of Apple. Some of the rich kids’ parents actually send them to one of the state schools out in Westfield or North Adams, but most of them flunk out and end up right back where they started.
Mark’s like that. He’s too entrenched in our way of life here—numbing himself to forget how screwed up we all are.
A noise slices through the woods—maybe an animal—maybe people. We’re not quite sure. Mark looks down the path and catches the unmistakable light-blue flash of a policeman’s uniform.
“Shit,” he squeals and drops the joint into the leaf litter at our feet, stomping on it hard until it’s completely destroyed. He cups his hand over his mouth and breathes. His eyes widen. “Do you have any gum or something? My breath reeks.” Annie sighs, unzips the pocket of her backpack, and hands him a lollipop, courtesy of Ms. Hutch. He takes it from her, un-wraps it, and pops it in his mouth. “Thanks,” he says. “You’re a lifesaver.”
“Whatever,” Annie mutters.
We continue on the path, the faint stench of pot dissipating the further away from where Mark lit up that we get. The trail of dead leaves eventually curves to the right, and we see the police-tape marking o
ff the area in the woods where we found Claudia Fish.
Officer Randy is there, along with two other cops, but I don’t know their names. One of them has plastic gloves on and is examining a tree like he’s performing a delicate operation. Something about them being in the woods right when school lets out seems a little too convenient, but then I realize that they’re probably there by design.
Loads of kids use the path as a cut-through. They certainly don’t need a tourist attraction, and they sure as hell don’t need anyone messing up the crime scene.
As we get closer, I hear the cop with the gloves say, “Here’s another L,” then after a moment, “And an E.”
An L and an E? What does that mean? I notice Mark starting to hang back, first a couple of steps, then farther and farther behind.
“What’s with you?” I snap at him, but I know what’s with him. His brain cells are being saturated by the weed, and he’s starting to freak out. He’s practically quivering out of his skin.
“I . . . I gotta go,” he blurts out, then turns around and scampers off the other way, just loud enough for the cops in the woods to hear.
Annie and I continue walking with our hands glued together, like paper-doll cutouts that have been scissored out of a piece of construction paper.
“Pick up the pace. There’s nothing to see,” says one of the cops as we get close. I recognize him from around town, but I don’t know his name. He’s one of the younger guys, but he has a full head of white hair, which makes him look old.
“Hey, Joe,” says Officer Randy. “They’re fine. They were the two with Anderson’s kid when the body was found.”
“It’s the only way to get home,” Annie stammers. “We have to cut through here or go all the way around to the middle school. It’s too far.”
“Are the woods closed?” I ask. I don’t mean to be a smartass, but I think it comes out that way. The officer with the white hair looks over at Officer Randy like he wants permission to shoot me.
The other one with the gloves says, “And an F. Add that to the V and W and . . . um . . . what were the other letters?” The three cops momentarily forget about me and Annie and gather around the tree that the cop with the gloves is crouched in front of.
While they’re all distracted, we take the opportunity to quickly walk past them with our eyes straight ahead. Maybe if we don’t look at them, they won’t look at us, and we’ll be home free—but nothing’s ever that easy.
“Hey,” Officer Randy calls after us. “Hold up, will ya.”
“Shit,” I whisper under my breath. I can feel the three officers’ heads swivel, their eyes on us like crawling bugs
Officer Randy, with his stubby body squeezed into his uniform, comes over to us. He’s smiling, like he does in his lectures about sexual predators—like he’s trying to make the subject as palatable as possible, pretending it’s not so gross. “I have a couple of questions, if you don’t mind.”
We both bob our heads a little too vigorously.
“Sure,” I manage. Annie squeezes my hand even tighter.
“You were both with Newton Anderson yesterday, when Claudia Fish’s body was found, right?”
I don’t know why he has to ask, because he already knows. Still, our heads nod.
“Did you happen to notice anything strange in the woods before you found her? Maybe someone walking around off the path?”
“No,” says Annie. “I mean there could have been, but everyone uses the woods as a cut-through.”
“Right,” says Officer Randy, all long and drawn out. He rubs his chin with one hand and gives us both a slow once-over. Finally he says, “Hey, do you mind if I show you something?” We look at each other and shrug. It’s not as though he’s going to present us with another dead body. Claudia’s long gone. This is just one of those “day too late” crime scene sweeps that the cops are required to do but never find anything.
At least not in Apple.
Officer Randy brings us over to the tree where the other officers are looking. He puts his hands on his hips and says, “See that?”
Annie and I squint. “See what?” we both say at the same time.
“There.” He points.
“Here,” says the gloved guy and puts his finger right on the bark. Annie and I step a little closer. There’s a little V carved into the tree. It’s very small and precise, like someone actually rolled the gnarly bark into an old-fashioned typewriter and hit the shift button and the V key at the same time.
That familiar burning starts—this time at the base of my spine. It races up my back before fanning out, making my skin feel as though fire ants are crawling right beneath the surface. I can feel the heat and the sweat curl around my neck, and I swallow hard.
In my mind, I hear the officer with the gloves saying that he found other letters in the trees, and a laundry list of them dances through my head—a W and an E, an F, a V, and an I.
A long time ago, before I knew there were murders in Apple, while my grandmother was alive and my grandfather wasn’t so senile, Becky and I used to have Sunday morning breakfast with them before we all went to church.
My grandfather would read the newspaper and sometimes cut things out with a pair of big black scissors that I couldn’t even wrap my hands around. My grandmother would make waffles and eggs, or sometimes she would bake apple pie with cinnamon and nuts and let us eat some for breakfast while it was still warm.
After, when we were more stuffed than we had a right to be, I would sit on my grandfather’s lap, and we would do the word puzzles in the back of the newspaper. They were next to the colored comics, and my eyes would flit back and forth between the funnies and the word games.
“You’re a smart boy,” my grandfather would say to me, then let me figure out the easy crossword clues, like the four letter word for something that lives in a bowl of water.
“Fish,” I would exclaim after way too long.
Claudia Fish.
“Excellent,” he would tell me, then write the answer in the crossword with blue pen. Pen was important, because only the words that were absolutely right were written in pen. The rest were in pencil—until he was sure.
After the crossword puzzle was done, and my grandmother had washed the dishes and put them away, we would all gather around the paper together and work out the anagrams—shifting the letters around in our heads until we got them right.
Then we would all go to church and see creepy Father Tim, because even back then I thought that Father Tim was freaky.
“Is this part of some sort of game the kids are playing these days?” asks the officer with the gloves. “You know, like Dungeons and Dragons or some sort of scavenger hunt?”
I shake my head, because I don’t know. Annie does the same thing, but deep inside, my mind is making anagrams like mad. It’s rearranging the letters and leaving openings where the blanks are—but it doesn’t matter.
“You’re a smart boy,” my grandfather would say.
I know what the letters are going to spell out. The burning creeps up my cheeks to my ears. It might take the cops a little bit to find them all, and when they do, it might take a couple gallons of coffee and a box of stereotypical doughnuts for them to put the pieces together.
Still, I know what the letters will spell out, and I want to puke.
They’ll spell FIVE WILL DIE on the trees, just like the words welted up on Becky’s milky white skin.
Five will die.
Five will die.
Five will die.
22
ANNIE AND I DON’T talk as we make our way through High Garden and down the Giant Steps. We don’t hold hands either. Mine are shoved in my pockets, and I’m trying not to think at all. Thinking will only make my head hurt and my brain more confused than it already is.
How doe
s Becky know about the trees? It doesn’t make any sense. How did she know to scratch FIVE WILL DIE into her skin last night? For that matter, how did she know about Claudia Fish?
I’m confused, and I can’t think about this right now, so I start humming “La Cucaracha” in my head, because it’s sure to give me an ear worm. There’s nothing worse than an ear worm to totally consume your thoughts. The only way to get rid of an ear worm is to find an equally annoying song like “It’s a Small World” to replace it.
Annie’s not talking either. She’s lost in her own thoughts, and I’m positive they’re totally different from mine. She’s probably hoping that, when she gets home, her dad is passed out. If he’s not, who knows what could happen? I’m sure all she wants is a couple hours of peace before she has to report to work at the BD Mart, but sometimes the monster inside Mr. Berg won’t let her have peace.
She never talks about him—her father—but she doesn’t have to say a thing. I can see it in her eyes—the hatred and self-loathing. I can feel her tense when we’re blessedly alone, and she lets me explore her body.
I know about human scum like Mr. Berg—or Ralphie Delessio, who liked to hit girls. They’re the ones with mothers that never taught them to keep their hands to themselves—to not touch what isn’t theirs.
What was it that Newie said to me yesterday? “Don’t you want to fucking pound that guy’s head into the ground?”
The truth is I do. I want to grab a hunk of his graying hair and twist my fingers into it until it gets all tangled—and when I have a really good hold, I want to drag him to his knees and drive his head into the floor, over and over again. I don’t want to stop when his nose cracks and drives splinters into his brain, and I don’t want to stop when the ground becomes slick with blood and his mouth can only make a sopping, gurgling cry.
I want to pound his head into the ground over and over again until his hair falls away from my grip, because there’s nothing left for it to be rooted to but a bag of mashed pulp.
Bloody Bloody Apple Page 10
