by Paul Griffin
Bendix: “Him too.”
Barrone: “This is what happens when you cut class. Why hang in the cutout, with nothing to do? Why not the cafeteria?”
Bendix: “Why not the cafeteria?”
Barrone: “I asked you first.”
Bendix (exasperated): “I don’t know what to say.”
Barrone: “I know you don’t. Okay, if you were at the water fountain, who threw the acid?”
Dave: “I told you, it happened out of my line of sight, just past the corner where the hallway splits.”
Barrone: “No, David. No. I checked the acid marks on the floor. I stood where Nicole was standing when she was hit, and I could see the water fountain fine.”
Bendix: “My head was down. I was drinking from the water fountain. I, was, there. She, Nicole couldn’t see me. Maybe the glare in the windows-”
Barrone: “Nuh-uh. Nope. No glare that day. Rainy that day. Torrential. Besides, the sun never falls on that side of the building. Where were you, Dave?”
Bendix: “You keep asking me the same question, Detective.”
Barrone: “And I’ll keep asking until I get the right answer. Look at me. What are you hiding? I said look at me. Breathe. Listen. I don’t have you pegged as the thrower. I don’t. But you’re lying to me. I can tell. I’m doing this a good while now. You know what? I’m going to do you a favor. I’m gonna tip you off to the two things a liar does when he’s stringing one. Here they are, for the next time a cop taps you for questioning.”
Bendix: “The next time?”
Barrone: “How do you really feel about Nicole?”
Bendix: “How do I feel about Nicole?”
Barrone: “See, right there. That’s the first tell. I ask a question, you repeat it. You need time to think, and you try to fill the silence by repeating the question. Here’s the second tell: A liar looks right. What’s your name?”
Bendix: “Da-David Bend-”
Barrone: “You’re looking me in the eye. You’re telling me the truth. If I replay this video for you, you’ll see that every time you tell the truth, you’re either looking at me or to the left. When you lie, your eyes tick right. I ask where you live, you tell me Haasbruck Estates: eyes left. DOB, parents’ names for the record, kid brother’s grade in school: eyes left. But when I ask you about Nicole? Eyes right, every time.”
Dave folded his arms on the tabletop and dropped his head into them. “I’m telling you the truth. I swear.”
Barrone: “I get that a lot. Where, David? Where were you when Nicole was hit?”
Bendix’s lawyer: “That’s more than enough, Detective.”
Dave Bendix wiped his eyes and looked directly into Jessica Barrone’s. “Nicole either didn’t see me, or for some unimaginable reason she’s lying to you, Detective. I don’t know why. I really don’t. I was there. I was in the cutout, at the water fountain.”
Barrone squinted as she studied Bendix. She shook her head and muttered, “Shit.”
I watched the interview again, and then again.
Dave Bendix came into Schmidt’s office that day to beg Nicole Castro to testify that she saw him in the cutout. But she wouldn’t, because she hadn’t. So then where was Dave when Nicole was hit?
Coach used to make us do sidestep drills to keep us light on our feet, light enough to tail somebody in silence. When Nicole turned to blow Dave a kiss, he could have sidestepped around her. When she spun back for B-wing, he could have been there with the squirt bottle. This was if Dave was lying. What if he was telling the truth? I replayed the end of the interview. He seemed absolutely sincere.
Maybe Nicole really didn’t see him. The alternative was horrifying, especially after spending time with her that afternoon, seeing how awesome she was with the kids in the hospital: Nicole was lying.
I dug through my closet for my own Volta-Shock bottle. I was going to fill it with water to see if I could accurately squirt just one part of my face. Then I remembered I’d put it with my wrestling crap into the Goodwill bag my father was getting together.
I was checking out the Volta-Shock site to see if I could order the exact same bottle online when my email popped a notification that I had a new message. The sender line was N CSATRO with a Brandywine Hollows High School domain, and the subject line was SOMEBODY HAS A CRUSH ON ME. I realized too late something was very wrong, clicking as I reread the sender line. No way the real Nicole would misspell her own name. There wasn’t any attachment, but just clicking the email was enough. A video overtook my screen, piercing strobe lights. My Nokia buzzed, caller ID “Angela Sammick.” My brain couldn’t coordinate my hands to pick up the phone. I just stared at it as it buzzed away, the strobe flashes popping at me from my computer screen. Angela tried a text, too late: DID YOU GET CRUSH EMAIL? DO NOT OPEN! Lightning flashed inside my bedroom. Everything went fish-eye.
I woke an hour later in the hallway, on the floor. My sweatpants were wet. I lay there for a long time, gasping, and then I sat up. I stayed like that for a while longer, trying to figure out who hated me enough to send me that seizure trigger. I was almost hoping it was one of the Kerns brothers or some other bully from school, knowing it wasn’t. Eventually I was able to stagger to my laptop and the phone. I called Angela. She picked up with, “Tell me you got my messages.”
“Yup.”
“Glad I caught you in time.”
“You didn’t, but thanks for having my back.”
“Sorry, Jay. Was it bad?”
“Nah. Did you get a backtrack on the source?”
“He scrubbed the machine ID when he ran the email through the school server, but I got the address, for what it’s worth.” She emailed it to me. I stared at it:
swdidpibwdipvbigoigiwubpi@brandywine_hollows_hs.edu.
“What’s it mean?”
“Randomly tickle the keyboard, and you’ll get the same sort of mess. Not that we needed any more proof of this, but this dude’s a dick. He’s just having a ball with himself. What’d you turn up last night?”
I gave her everything I had and instructions on what to do with it, then I headed for the shower, lay down in the tub and let the water burn me.
THIRTY-ONE
From Nicole’s journal:
What day is it? What night? I’m burning, burning, burning blue.
THIRTY-TWO
Thursday morning I woke late. No way I’d make it to second period on time. I forged myself a note from my father and headed off for school, stopping in at the Clarion on the way. “Do I look as bad as you do?” Pete said.
“Do you feel as crappy as I do?” I said. I asked him if he could talk to his boss about killing the Burned Beauty’s Beau storyline. He said he knew nothing about it. I flipped the paper to the gossip page.
“You think I read this rag?” he said. “I just work here.”
“Can you get Puglisi to back off Nicole?”
“He’s not one of ours. We don’t have the budget anymore to do stakeouts.”
“He’s on your payroll.”
Pete frowned. “Now Jay, I’m not going to ask how you know that. Anyway, if we are cutting him checks, it’s on a freelance basis. I’m sure we pick up his pictures from the syndication pool. And even if he was in-house, the chances of my being able to freeze this story are zero.” He circled the cap line over the picture: BURNED BEAUTY BEHIND THE UMBRELLA. “This kind of trash is the only thing selling papers these days. Her best bet is to stop running. The story dies when the mark comes forward and sits for an interview.”
“The mark?”
“The object of attention. Nicole. Gossip junkies love the chase. End that, you end the story.”
“She’ll never sit for an interview. The only alternative is to nab him.”
“Say again?”
“The perp. Catching him would kill the story.”
Pete shook no way. “That’s when it begins. They’ll be running columns and talking-head interviews with so-called experts until the trial ends and they march the unr
epentant nutcase to the psych ward. Your friend is going to be living with this for a long time, and the more she hides, the worse it’ll be.” Pete studied the picture of Nicole, her mother and me in the diner parking lot, doing our best to hide behind Mrs. Castro’s umbrella and only half succeeding. “My advice?” he said. “Stay the hell away from her.”
My phone had been buzzing with a text. Starbucks Cherry: Hey, have you been getting my texts? Swing in for a free coffee sometime. Don’t. Be. Scared. I don’t bite, promise. I merely gnaw.
THIRTY-FIVE
The seizure the night before left me feeling punked. I felt a lot better after two cups of cafeteria coffee. Toward the end of the school day, I got a text from Nicole: Need help please call soon as you can.
I called her after sixth period, from a stairwell. Schmidt had emailed her to tell her that due to an emergency faculty meeting, she couldn’t do her 3:30 session. The only slot she had open was two p.m. This meant Nicole would have to enter Brandywine Hollows High School during school hours.
“Skip it,” I said.
“That’s what Mom said too, but Dr. Schmidt said it’ll be good for me,” Nicole said. “Being in the building when other students are around. You know, a first step toward coming back to school. Do you have class seventh?”
“Free.” I’d petitioned the registrar to have seventh and eighth periods open in case BJ’s had extra hours available.
“Can you walk me?”
I’d skipped lunch, and I was starting to crash. No food, no sleep, no meds: Perfect recipe for a seizure. I headed to the cafeteria for a Coke. On my way out of the vending machine alcove, this dude accidentally bumped into me. One of Rick Kerns’s crew. As he drove his shoulder into mine, he whispered, “You’re gonna burn.”
Nicole parked right up front, in the handicap spot. A blue tag hung from her rearview. She wasn’t in the Subaru but a black Saab.
“Yours?” I said.
“I know, I’m spoiled.”
The bell had rung a few minutes earlier, but a straggler clipped us. The phone double-flashed hot pink light. The girl might as well have punched a nail into my visual cortex. The picture was MMS’d by the time we were halfway to Schmidt’s office. People leaned out of classroom doors. Nicole smiled, waved once to the hall monitor, but mostly she kept her head down.
“Yo, Spaceman.” Rick Kerns was up in my face before I’d turned all the way around. “Are you insane?”
“And are you serious, Rick?” Nicole said. “You need to chill.”
He ignored her. “Sneaking around out and about is one thing, but parading through school like this, disrespecting Dave?”
“You need to back up, Rick,” Nicole said.
“You need to shut up, Nicole.”
She hit his chest with the heel of her hand. It did nothing to push him back, and she hurt her wrist. She winced as she rubbed it, but she stood her ground between Kerns and me. I kept trying to step between them, but she wouldn’t let me. “Look, you don’t speak for David, okay? We’re cool, he and I. David knows about Jay and me.”
“No shit. You guys are flaunting it everywhere.”
“That we’re friends, idiot.”
“Not what I hear,” Kerns said.
“You know what, I really don’t care what you hear,” Nicole said. She hooked my arm and marched us toward Schmidt’s.
Kerns called out, “Faithless bitch.”
“Dick,” Nicole muttered.
We were at Schmidt’s office twenty minutes before Nicole’s appointment. We sat. Her new sunglasses were the kind that lightened indoors. She looked out the window, to the empty soccer field. The grass needed cutting. Schmidt’s waiting room was stifling. I was taking off my jacket when the alarm went off. Nicole jumped.
“It’s just a fire drill,” I said, but I knew that somebody pulled the alarm to flush Nicole outside and get a look at her.
“Let’s stay here,” she said.
Or did he want to keep her inside while everybody else was outside?
Schmidt’s door opened. She was on her cell with a headset. “Right, yes, but do we really want to do that?” She motioned for us to follow her into the hall. As we went through the doors, most people were nice, smiling, saying hi. Then somebody in the murmuring crowd said, “Did you see her? Dude, she’s right there.”
Outside, a teacher did a double take on her and came over to give her a hug. “We need you, Nicole,” the teacher said. “When are you coming back?”
“Soon.”
They both pretended she was telling the truth.
Nicole put on a brave face, but I could see she was halfway to freaked, too many people coming up to her at once. They all said the same thing: “You look great.” They too wanted to know when she was coming back. Didn’t she know the tennis team sucked this year without her? That the student council was in open revolt against Mr. Davies, the moderator, without Nicole around. Nicole smiled and laughed and took them all in, until she couldn’t anymore. Her hands shook as she pulled her phone. She checked the screen and said, “Guys, I’m sorry, I have to take this.” She hooked her arm through mine, and we rounded the corner to the back parking lot and hunkered behind a Dumpster.
“Nice fake,” I said.
“I wasn’t faking.” She handed me her phone. The text said: Enjoying all the attention? Caller ID: UNKNOWN.
I forwarded the text to my phone and worked it up for a trace.
“Just how much of a hacker are you?”
“You should know I rarely do this in front of people. This is akin to show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.”
“And what exactly are you expecting me to show you?”
“You’ve already shown it. Your vulnerability.”
Another siren. A police car flew into the parking lot to meet the security guards escorting this idiot from my year, Dennis Biers. I remembered him from freshman fall, class clown wannabe, emphasis on wannabe. He was exactly the type to pull the alarm.
My phone pinged with a hit on the number trace. “You know Brittany Keyes?”
“She’s on the tennis team,” Nicole said.
“She’s the one who sent you the text.”
“No, it was Chrissie.”
“Vratos?”
“She used Brit’s phone. When we were at matches, we watched each other’s racquet bags. You’d come back to check your phone and find a WTF text from somebody. You’d check your Sent folder and see you’d just zipped the dude an invitation to give him a blow job. Then you’d hear Chrissie cracking up.” Nicole scanned the yard. The teachers were waving everybody back inside. “There.” Nicole pointed to the B-wing entrance. Chrissie was waving to us.
Schmidt’s door opened. “Wait, Jay, we’re not on today. Did you get my email?”
“Just keeping my friend here company.”
“We’re quite the gentleman, aren’t we?”
“We try,” I said.
“I’ll see you after, okay?” Nicole said as she went in.
I texted Angela to see where she was on our suspect list, particularly Chrissie Vratos. Angela had stayed home sick, apparently something she did at least five days a month, the maximum number of days you can be out before they make you repeat the semester. She got back to me with: Chrissie V very dirty girl.
Dirty hands? I texted back.
Dirty mind. No connection to Recluse. Yet. Will keep digging.
I headed off to grab a candy bar from my locker, a bottom row job. The thickening puddle at the foot of it suggested at least five guys had urinated into it. A mosquito circled. Somebody had stuck gum in my padlock keyhole.
“Tough luck, Spaceman,” Kerns’s little brother said. He took a break from stuffing books into his own locker to take a picture of me. “I guess that’s why they tell us to use a combo lock, d’oh.”
“Except people keep the combo in their phones,” I said. “Phones get hacked. Can you imagine if somebody knew your combo was 36-24-36?”
“Spaceman?�
�
“Douche bag?”
“You have no idea what’s coming.” He slammed his locker and stormed off.
I hadn’t actually hacked his phone. The genius had written the numbers on a piece of tape and hung it in plain view-where else-inside his locker.
I went to the office and asked the secretary for a paper clip.
“Gummed again?” she said, handing it to me.
I stopped off in the bathroom, slicked the clip with soap, headed back to my locker and dug at the gum. Somebody tapped my shoulder and said, “You bone her yet?”
I turned around, into the nozzle of a Volta-Shock bottle pointed at my eyes.
THIRTY-FOUR
I fell to the floor and clawed my eyes. “Please,” I said. “No more.”
“It’s water, idiot,” Rick Kerns said. He sucked the squirt bottle and spit the water at me. “That’s for snaking Dave’s girl, bitch. What’s it like, getting blown by Half Face?”
I drove him into a wall of lockers. I headlocked him and didn’t let go. I picked him up and swung him feet-over-head, over my shoulder, and I body slammed him to the polished stone floor, and even then I didn’t let him out of the headlock. He tried to poke my eyes, but I had seen him do that in matches back in freshman year, and I grabbed his hand and bent it back. I heard a pop and a crack. He would have screamed, except he had no air in him. All he could do was grunt. He clawed my arm, gasping. His head was bright red. His boys drop-kicked me. “Dude, let go, man!”
“You’re crushing his throat, Jay! Stop!”
A voice cut through all the screaming. She didn’t even yell. “Mr. Nazzaro,” Mrs. Marks said. “Let go.”
I got in one last shot, a right cross to Rick Kerns’s thick-boned head.
“Brush your hair back,” Marks said. “So I can see your eyes.”
“He squirted-”
“I know what he did.” She looked to the cop texting in the corner of her office. Back to me: “I called your father. He’s not picking up, work, cell, home-”
