by Abigail Haas
I nod again. I used to give the lawyer messages to pass along, words of love, little in-jokes, but he never brought any word back from Tate, so I quit even trying. I was so used to texting back and forth with him every hour I was awake, I still hear phantom rings; a low buzz that makes me leap up, searching around the cell for the phone. But of course, there are none in there, even if Tate were free to call. He’s been locked up, like me, somewhere on the other side of this sprawling compound. The longest we’ve been apart in five months.
It’s the longest I’ve been apart from Elise, too, but I can’t think about that.
• • •
They transport me in the back of an unmarked van, with another two guards sitting on each side as if I’m still planning an escape. I want to laugh and tell them I can’t even make it through cross-country trials in phys ed, let alone flee police custody. Besides, where would I go? The island is less than seventy square miles: nothing but beaches and high-rise hotels and cacti growing wild in the dusty swathes of land not overtaken by fast-food outlets and Caribbean beach bars. Paradise, all the tourism websites called it. Ellingham is traveling separately in his rented luxury sedan. The driver up front in the van plays a local Aruba radio station, the DJ babbling in Dutch between American pop and rap hits. I remember that first night on the island. Elise and Melanie and Chelsea and me, dancing together in the club. We took photos on our cell phones, uploading them to all our profiles right away with the title “Best Spring Break Ever.” We tagged and commented and reposted, just to make sure everybody back home would see it and know what a fabulous time we were all having. Know that they weren’t invited.
I wonder how long it’ll take the tabloids to find the photos. Or maybe they already have, and they’re printed on some front page somewhere.
A cautionary tale.
• • •
“Tate!”
I know what the lawyer said, but I can’t help it—he’s already sitting at the defendant’s table when the guard leads me in, his head bowed and staring at the floor. “Tate!” I all but sprint down the aisle toward him.
“Miss!” The guard yanks me to a stop, “No running. Don’t make me get the leg shackles.”
I stop. “No, please, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
He glares at me for a moment, then loosens his grip on my arm and shoves me toward one of the empty chairs.
I sink into it, my eyes still on Tate. He doesn’t look up, just sits there, head bowed beside me. “Hey,” I can’t resist whispering. “Are you okay?”
The lawyer hushes me, but I don’t care. “Tate?” I whisper again. “Look at me.”
He does, and the defeated expression on his face moves me more than the blunt metal on my wrists, or the bruise on my ribs from where an unseen passerby shoved me on my first night in jail. His blue eyes are glazed; red from crying, and everything about him seems hunched and broken down.
Tate, the golden one; future president, king of Hillcrest Prep. Tate, who was always so confident, safe in his world of privilege and success, who could charm even our principal’s cranky secretary into smiling submission. Tate, my boyfriend, my love, looking like a lost boy: scared and alone, his right leg trembling uncontrollably.
“What did they do to you?” I gasp, my own sleepless nights forgotten. His eyes just slide away from me, back to the floor.
I feel a hand on my shoulder, and turn to see my father. He reaches out, as if to touch me, but that’s against the rules, and when the lawyer quickly clears his throat, my dad’s hands drop to his lap. “Everything’s going to be okay,” he tells me in a voice that almost makes me believe he’s right. But his face is pale, and there are dark shadows smudged under his eyes. He forces a smile, placing one hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. This’ll all be straightened out.”
“Mr. Chevalier.” Ellingham’s tone is a warning. Dad pulls his hand away.
“Of course. I’m sorry.” He smiles at me again: forced and so upbeat, I have to match it with my own.
“Thanks, Dad,” I murmur back as he takes his seat again.
Tate’s parents are sitting in the row behind us too: poker-faced and immaculate in tailored suits and carefully styled hair. There are others with them, their heads bent in whispered consultation, brandishing briefcases and notepads and frowns of careful concern. More lawyers, local advisors, assistants, maybe. Mr. Dempsey runs a hedge fund back home, and Mrs. Dempsey runs the Boston social scene; whenever I saw either of them, it was always with some secretary or junior associate scurrying along behind. Now, the numbers make me calm, just a little. I’m not alone in this. They’ll make sure this is okay.
“Rise for the Honorable Judge von Koppel.”
Ellingham stands in place between us, and we line up to watch the judge walk in. The room isn’t a chambers or courthouse, just a regular conference room in a squat, whitewashed building, with tables and folding chairs set out, like the kind you find in hotels for business conventions. Our table is on one side, with our parents and their entourage behind, and the police investigators sit at another table across the aisle. In front, the judge takes a seat behind her table and stares through her wire-rimmed glasses at the papers already waiting for her. She’s in her forties maybe, a cool blonde in a navy suit.
“State your names and plea for the record,” she tells us. Her Dutch accent is lilting, almost sing song. Tate and I do it in turn. Tate Dempsey. Anna Chevalier. Not guilty. Not guilty.
The judge scribbles something. “You are seeking bail for the defendants?”
Ellingham leaps up. “Yes, Your Honor. Given that both are minors, and have been held on only circumstantial evidence—”
“Objection!” There’s a cry from the other table. Ellingham doesn’t pause.
“We ask that the courts release them into the custody of their parents as they await trial.”
The judge looks curiously at both me and Tate in turn. I stare back, unblinking, trying to show her I have nothing to hide. She looks away, toward the prosecution.
“And you object?”
“Yes, your honor.” The police investigator is a short brute of a man, lights gleaming off his bald head. I’ve spent hours locked in small rooms with that reflection, as he yelled and cajoled and yelled some more, demanding a confession to crimes too awful to contemplate.
I hate him.
“Given the serious nature of the crime, and the defendants’ status as foreign nationals, we urge the court to remand them into custody and avoid a flight situation. These people are a risk to the public.” He turns to glare at me, and again, I try to stare him down, unflinching.
“Do you have anything to counter these concerns?” The judge asks Ellingham.
One of the associates from behind us leans forward, and he and Ellingham confer, their voices low. After a moment, Ellingham pulls away. “May I approach?”
She nods, and Ellingham and the police investigator move forward to talk with her at the front of the room.
“Hey,” I whisper again, using the distraction to reach over to Tate. I touch his arm lightly, and he flinches. “Tay, are you okay?”
He looks up and swallows. “I will be,” he replies softly, his eyes on mine. “When we get out of here.”
“Everything’s going to be okay.” I repeat what my dad told me. He nods. “We just have to be strong, and stick together.”
Tate manages a faint smile, and my panic ebbs. We’ll be okay. We have to be.
Ellingham finishes talking up front, and returns to stand between us. The judge shuffles some papers around.
“I’ve been informed that the Dempsey family has rented a house on the island and will be remaining here with their son until trial. Given those assurances, I am setting Mr. Dempsey’s bond at five million dollars, and releasing him to the custody of his parents.”
Tate deflates in a great gasp of relief, and there’s a sob from his mother behind us. My heartbeat thunders. Thank God.
“However, m
y concern for Miss Chevalier remains.” The judge peers at me, her eyes like ice. “Her family can offer no such assurances, and so I agree with the investigator. The defendant is a flight risk, charged with a violent crime of the highest degree, and will therefore be remanded to the Aruba Correctional Institute awaiting trial for the murder of Elise Warren. Hearing adjourned.” She bangs her gavel.
I don’t understand.
As the guard pulls me to my feet again, Tate is embraced by his parents. He doesn’t turn, not once, as I’m led away, stunned. I catch a glimpse of my father’s face staring after me, hollow and slack-jawed.
I open my mouth to call for him, but I can’t make a sound.
THE BEGINNING
I meet Elise three weeks into spring semester, junior year. Dad’s company is taking off—new clients flooding in, and talks of buyouts and share offerings—so he moves me from the local public high school to Hillcrest Prep, across the bay. If you’ve ever been the new kid, you know: the meat-market looks and razor-quick judgments are bad enough that first day in September; switching midyear is so much worse. I beg to stay where I am, or wait until senior year, but Dad doesn’t listen. He talks about the new opportunities for me: art, and dance, and drama, and how if I switch now, I’m practically guaranteed an Ivy League spot when I apply to colleges, but we both know the move is as much for his benefit as mine. Hillcrest is the home of Boston’s elite, and Dad’s eyes are fixed on their investment funds. They aren’t the parents of my future friends, they’re potential clients.
So I switch. And for two weeks, I stay blissfully unnoticed in the crowds of garnet blazers, preppy boys, and perfect girls. I keep my head down, answer only when called on, and eat my lunch alone in the solitude of a study carrel, stationed between Ancient Latin and Anthropology in the huge, wood-beamed library. Nobody notices me, nobody cares.
Not that I mind. The less high school bullshit I have to deal with, the better: the endless popularity contests, the inane gossip. I don’t know what happened—if I was out that one time in elementary school, when everyone learned how to talk about nothing all day and think that it matters, or at least, fake that way—but somehow I never learned the trick. The girls are the worst, acting like empires will rise and fall because someone wore last year’s colored denim, or someone else hooked up with a guy behind his girlfriend’s back. I want to tell them all: The world is bigger than high school.
Sometimes, I get this strange urge, a fierce scream bubbling in my chest; I fantasize about pushing back my chair and howling until my lungs ache and every head turns in my direction. Just to cut through the babble of white noise.
But of course, I never do, and for those first weeks at Hillcrest, I make it my mission to blend into the background. Better unnoticed than the center of all their curious stares, I decide. I have my routine, my escape routes, my non descript A–/B+ average, and soon, it looks like I can make it to the end of the year without anyone even noticing I’m there at all.
Until I open my gym locker Monday morning and find a heap of rancid clothing.
“Eww!” “Gross!” The cries go up from the locker room as I lift out my shirt, dripping with what looks like curdled milkshake. It’s been left to sit and mold for two days at least over the weekend, and the smell is sour even through the fog of scented body sprays and pink-flowered deodorant. “What is that?” The other girls shriek, gagging and retching like it’s the plague.
My cheeks burn as I search the crowd for the loudest voice; the most wide-eyed look of disgust. There. Lindsay Shaw. I should have guessed. Of all the Hillcrest girls with their perfect ponytails and straight-A grades and shark like stares, Lindsay’s is the most perfect; straightest. Deadly. I’d been called on to debate her in civics the previous week, and had reluctantly offered my arguments as if I was facing a mountain lion: Don’t look it in the eye, no sudden movements, and keep your body language submissive.
Clearly I wasn’t submissive enough.
Lindsay holds my gaze a moment, smug. “You should get that cleaned up,” she tells me in a fake-helpful tone. “Coach Keller is really big on hygiene.”
“Thanks,” I manage. For a moment, I feel that scream bubble up, but I would have to be crazy to take Lindsay on—in front of everyone this time—so I swallow back my anger and the hot flush of shame, and set about cleaning the mess into the trash with damp paper towels so that by the time Coach arrives to usher us off to volleyball, there’s no sign of my ruined gym clothes.
“You.” Coach finds me skulking at the back of the crowd, still in my regular uniform. “What’s your name?”
“Anna,” I mutter, my eyes fixed on the blue linoleum. “Anna Chevalier.”
Coach looks me up and down. “Is there a reason you’re not dressed yet?”
I look around, catching Lindsay’s eye. The challenge in her expression is clear. “I . . . forgot my clothes,” I say, my shoulders hunched in defeat.
Coach tuts impatiently. “Don’t think you’re getting a free study pass. I want an essay on the importance of preparation on my desk by the end of the period.”
I nod, trying to ignore Lindsay’s victorious grin as the rest of the girls file out, leaving me alone in the locker room with a faintly rancid scent in the air.
• • •
The essay is easy enough. I settle into a plastic chair in the Coach’s office down the hall, and soon I’m back to scribbling lyrics in my battered red journal and wondering what other fresh hells Lindsay has in store for me this semester.
“Hey.”
I turn. A blond girl is in the doorway, pressed and precise in her polo shirt and sports skirt. Elise, I remember from French class. She looks around cautiously at the mess of lacrosse sticks and yoga mats. “Are we supposed to wait in here till the end of class?”
I nod, quickly tucking my notebook away. Not quickly enough.
“ ‘You want a revelation’ . . . That’s Florence and the Machine, right?” Elise asks, seeing the lyrics scribbled on the cover.
I don’t answer. She’s friends with Lindsay, or at least part of that clique—I’ve seen them around school, their ponytails swishing in unison. Elise is one of the quiet ones. She didn’t join their teasing in the locker room before, but she didn’t stand up for me either.
“She played a show here last month, but nobody else likes them, and my parents wouldn’t let me go alone.” Elise looks rueful.
“I went,” I tell her, remembering the night I snuck out for hours and nobody even noticed I was gone. “She played two hours, it was amazing.”
“No way!” Elise’s reply is the sound of pure longing. She wanders closer. “You’re Anna, right? Did you just move here?”
“No,” I answer, still careful. “Transferred. From Quincy.”
“Oh.” Elise looks at me curiously, and I feel myself tense up, waiting for a cutting remark or some bitchy fake advice, but instead she looks almost sympathetic. “You’re lucky,” she finally offers. “A girl last year, Lindsay, used tuna fish. Stunk out the whole place. Guys were saying . . . Well, you know.” Elise shrugs. “I think she transferred in the end.”
“Sure,” I agree, sarcastic. “I’m lucky.”
“Seriously, don’t worry about it.” Elise looks quickly toward the door before adding, “She’s a bitch.”
I don’t take the bait. I know how this works: Anything I say now could be used against me later, spun and filtered through the high school gossip chain until I’m the one attacking poor, innocent Lindsay.
“It’s okay,” Elise adds, as if reading my mind. “We’re not friends. I mean, we hang out, but . . . you know.”
I give another vague shrug. “What about you?” I change the subject. “Why are you sitting out?”
“I have a midterm after lunch.” Elise wanders restlessly over to the window. She pulls herself up to sit on the wide ledge, looking out over the neat lawn. “I figured, if I lay the groundwork now, it looks more convincing when I get out sick.”
“Smar
t.”
She shrugs, swinging her legs to tap out a staccato rhythm against the wall. “If I don’t get an A, my parents will send me back into tutoring.” She sighs, looking out the window again. “Because a B in American Lit will really wreck my entire life.”
I don’t reply, and pull out my math textbook, but after a few moments, I can still feel Elise’s stare burning into me. I look up. “What?”
“Nothing, I just . . .” Elise bites her lip and glances again toward the door before asking, “You want to get out of here?”
“Where to?”
“Downtown, maybe? We could take the T, get a coffee. We’d be back by the end of lunch.”
“I thought only seniors were allowed off-campus.”
“We wouldn’t get caught,” Elise promises, her eyes bright now. “Everyone does it.”
“Have you?” I ask.
There’s a pause, then she shakes her head. “Not yet. But that’s only because they won’t go with me,” she adds quickly. “Lindsay never breaks the rules. Except, you know, the ones about being a decent human being,” she says with a slight grin.
“I don’t know. . . .” I’m still suspicious, looking for her angle, but Elise hops down from the window ledge.
“Come on, it’ll be fun. And if they ask where you were, just say you were helping me. The teachers here love me, I never do anything wrong.” Her voice twists on the last words, something almost like regret, and the familiar sound is enough to make me pause. I never do anything wrong either—I’ve never taken the chance. Other girls skip out for shopping trips, and birthdays at the beach, loudly planning their exploits right beside my locker without a second glance. But me? I’m too careful for that. I’ve never skipped so much as a study period in my life.
I’m still wavering when another girl bursts in, breathless and flushed. “Elise, oh my god, are you okay? Coach wouldn’t let me check on you until we’d run laps.”
Elise laughs. “Relax, Mel, I’m fine. It’s nothing.”
