by Amy Jo Burns
On one of my first nights at the lake, I’d been invited to an eighth-grade boy’s birthday party. A friend and I attended together, and her parents dropped us off. We stood in front of the house, the lake at our backs. Though we entered together, that was the last I saw of my friend until we left. She disappeared into some unseen back room with a boy. No matter how many of my friends started to test their limits, I wasn’t the kind of girl who would go into a dark room with a boy I’d seen at a party. The reward wasn’t worth the risk. Everyone would see, everyone would know, everyone would talk.
For most of the evening, I sat in a chair by the window. I didn’t mind that no one seemed to notice me. The whole house was dark and packed with kids. The window gave a clear view of the lake in the distance; I watched it glimmer in the night, the lights from the surrounding houses shining across it. The place, not the company, arrested me for the first time, and it would many times after. Though I’d lived in Mercury all my life, I still found moments where I clasped the tragic beauty of this place around my neck like an heirloom necklace.
“There it is,” my sister said, leaning forward in the passenger seat. “Turn left here.”
We turned onto a gravel road and traveled up a low-grade hill. As we crested it, the glow from Mrs. Todd’s new house cast shadows on the litter of cars already crowding her front lawn. About fifty yards away, woods abutted the property. The house beamed against the night. Even in the car, we could hear the dull noises of our cast mates laughing and shouting. The front door was open, revealing a thin glass door that allowed us to see into the foyer. The house exuded warmth, every hue cream and gold. We jumped out of the car and sped toward the door.
Inside, we stepped onto a landing halfway between the upper level and the basement. The house glimmered with ivory walls and gilded accents. Every floor teemed with teenagers, even the stairs. I followed Julia to the basement where we found Mercury’s typical party totems: baskets of chips cradled in greasy napkins. Mini-pretzels. A sheet cake with frosting thicker than the cake itself. A stack of red plastic cups. Hot wings from Coyote’s Pizza.
A recording of the musical looped on the television, and I sat down against the wall to watch it. A couple of kids behind me goofed off with the “Chinamen’s” hats from the play. The hats were so big that only their chins stuck out from beneath the brim. The two began to spar with plastic butter knives until one of them ran into the food table and knocked over the cups.
The sound on the video was spotty and much of the tape was fuzzy. Even so, a bunch of us sat and watched. Join us for our favorite pastime, become part of the spectacle: sit down and watch us watching ourselves.
I hadn’t realized during the performance that Pete was chewing gum, but I could see his jaw bouncing up and down every time he came on stage. I watched the final bows, the leads point to the pit band and clap. A blurry finger appeared up close in the lens, hunting for the “off” button on the video camera. Then the screen flickered to neon blue for a few seconds before the beginning of the tape started to roll again.
I sat with my knees to my chest, eyes glazing over. The silhouettes of latecomers shuffled into empty seats. I felt sleepy. The other cast members chatted and goofed off around me. I had never minded being alone in a crowd, seeing the hazy shadow of my own profile cast against the wall from the light on the television screen.
I didn’t notice when the chatting and teasing died down to murmurs. I didn’t notice when the murmurs faded to whispers. But I did notice when five or six pairs of eyes gawked at me instead of the screen. I had that sick feeling of being watched, of my name slipping from someone else’s lips. It was a sensation I’d learned to divine and sought to avoid. When I turned my head, the gawkers looked away.
I stood up. “What?” They ignored me. “What?”
I felt hot. I hadn’t seen Pete since I arrived.
I crept toward the stairs. A clump of stifled giggles resounded from the second floor. On the stairwell, I passed the play’s vicar, the steward, and the newspaperman who still wore his floppy fedora. Their blank expressions—still caked in stage makeup—looked maudlin and past their prime.
I spied the floor of the living room before I reached the top of the stairs. My head, level with the carpeted floor, appeared between two stakes of cast-iron railing that bordered the living room. About ten feet from me, a blanket had been suspended from the chimney, the corners splayed out on the ground into a makeshift tent. It was just large enough for two people to fit inside. A few of the Angels and sailors stood by. None of them saw me.
This was the best way to expose the truth in Mercury. Not what was told to you but overheard, not what was witnessed but spied. Two people lay entwined beneath the blanket. I recognized Pete’s socks attached to the legs that sprouted out of the tent. They were white, cuffing just below the ankle. Those were the feet that were often propped on the coffee table in my parents’ basement, the feet that tucked behind me when we watched scary movies and sipped from the same can of orange pop.
Every light in the living room had been switched on, and the space radiated. This charade had an audience. When Pete’s head finally wound its way out of the tent, there was no mistaking it. He knew that I’d seen him, and seeing was everything in Mercury.
The following day during seventh-period chorus, we started to dismantle the musical set. When I arrived, some of the students were tearing out nails, unscrewing screws, and making a heap out of the wood that used to be the deck of the SS American just the day before. The crates where Pete and I kissed in the dark had been toppled and swept into the pile. Someone handed me a broom and I started to sweep the stage. A few people asked if everything was all right between Pete and me. I told them it was.
Earlier that morning, I tried to hide myself in the shadow of my locker door when I heard the laces of Pete’s basketball shoes slapping the ground as he hurried toward me. I stared at the picture of him in his soccer uniform that I had taped to the inside of my locker. It made me angry with him, angry with myself.
“I’m sorry,” he said when he reached me. His voice cracked.
“Everyone saw you, Pete. Everyone.”
“I’m sorry. I was just being stupid. That’s all. Just stupid.” He swallowed and took a deep breath. “I am so, so sorry.”
I looked at him and felt my anger melting to hurt. I hated that I’d given him the ability to hurt me. I felt like that girl who couldn’t catch her breath so long ago, trapped beneath the inner tube in Carly’s pool. Pete’s eyes were wide and the corners of his mouth turned down. His face looked pale.
I’d promised myself at the beginning of last summer that he wouldn’t get any second chances. For Pete, I’d break one rule, but no more. My reputation—my survival—depended on it. I blamed Virtue, just as I was taught. Boys will be boys, and girls ought to know better.
“Let’s just forget it,” I said, retrieving my book. “Just forget it.”
Later that afternoon, the auditorium air filled with dust and glitter as we swept up the debris.
On the left-hand side of the backstage area, there was a gray cement wall. Some of the older kids who had leads in the play were signing their names on it in permanent marker. They didn’t sign their formal names, but the names they were known by. Rudy. Chappy. Wilp. Meatball. Some listed their characters’ names as well. Moon-face Martin. Evangeline Harcourt. Elisha J. Whitney. Anything Goes, 1996.
Pete and I signed our names side by side along the edge of the wall. Permanent marker felt definitive. Lasting. We didn’t know then that the building would be renovated in a few years, and at that time, the whole wall would be demolished and all the names with it.
Despite my good intentions, my heart would not be roused. I was a girl Pete wanted only in the dark, and I couldn’t remain there. If I lingered in the darkness too long, it threatened to snuff me out.
The evening of the cast party just confirmed what I already knew—there was no privacy in this town. If a girl gave a guy a blo
w job, everybody knew. If he unhooked her bra, everybody knew. If they pulled over on a dirt road to do it in the backseat, everybody knew. If he cheated, everybody knew.
After the school year ended, I told Pete I needed a break, and we both cried. It didn’t matter how much I loved him. That need paled in comparison with my need to wash my hands clean of rumor, to pry my name out of the abyss of other people’s mouths. My heart obeyed one commandment and served one master: I refused to be the girl everybody knew.
As the fall of 1991 draws to a close and the weather grows cold, a chorus of voices gives sound to the wind. Whispers. Accusations. Denials. Could it be true? Could Howard Lotte really do such unspeakable things? The gossip travels to the grocery store, the post office, the library, the school. To football games and pep rallies and mailboxes.
This is a witch hunt!
Just horrible rumors.
Don’t believe everything you hear.
And Mr. Lotte?
People are treating him to lunch.
You know, for support.
And so and so?
Yeah, she’s definitely one. And so and so?
Yeah, she’s another.
She’s always seemed like a snitch.
A tattle.
A liar. It’s definitely not true.
Maybe it’s true.
These girls and their imaginations.
Blown out of proportion.
Is it worth ruining his life?
He’s a nice man.
Everyone thinks so. Why all the fuss?
While those of us who are Lotte’s most obedient students do our best to appear naïve, some of the townsfolk take it upon themselves to inform the judge assigned to Lotte’s case about the true nature of the conflict at hand. Oh, we’ve got trouble right here in Mercury, they say. Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with G and that stands for GIRLS.
In the months before Lotte takes his oath on the stand and the letters are made public, his supporters pen their treatises, their missives, their pointed accusations. One concerned couple writes in a letter to the judge that “as far as the charges which have been brought against Howard, we refuse to believe them. We find it a bit too coincidental that all of the accusers are associated with the Pure Heart Presbyterian church.” Never mind that this statement is untrue. Many of the girls attend Pure Heart, but not all.
Someone else finds it “impossible to believe that a minor group of childish persons have been able to influence the judicial system to issue these charges.” Another impassioned patriot claims Mr. Lotte is a “victim of perceived impropriety and parental hysteria.” It goes on and on, the letters insisting the charges were “prefabricated by the students involved” and “a result of conspiracy.” When all else fails, be assured that the people of Mercury know what’s what.
Our town starts to get a reputation for falling apart at the seams, and for the first time, the cracks can’t be blamed on the fall of the steel industry. On June 3, 1992, a local paper documents the results of the spinning rumor mill: “Since the investigation began last October, the town has been divided among those who are horrified by the thought of a teacher, who worked so closely with so many children, having this problem and those who believe Lotte was ‘set up’ by the young students who ranged in age from 9 to 13.”
This phenomenon is what Lotte’s lawyer will dub “an unfortunate turn” when he addresses the judge in late summer of 1992. He’ll say that the case has “taken an unfortunate turn in that the children victims in this case somehow turned out to be the defendants in the eyes of many people.” How unfortunate, indeed, as if a day of rain has spoiled our summer picnic.
Can you picture it? Half a dozen girls gather in an empty school yard after the day’s final bell. In between the time slots scheduled for afternoon snacks and evening homework, the girls hatch a plan to take down one of Mercury’s most untouchable men. Maybe one of them steps to the center of the circle. I’ve got an idea, perhaps she says as the other girls lean in. An idea that will really get him good. Before the sun sets, the girls—none of whom are trouble makers, all of whom get straight A’s—make a pact and corroborate their stories, while any conceivable motive remains absent. Everyone knows girls in Mercury don’t need a reason to misbehave.
Though we’ve separated ourselves from these seven witnesses who are braver than we can stomach, one thing binds us together after the investigation ends and we grow from children into young women. Every encounter we have with an adoring boy—every kiss, every spare glance, every love note slipped from hand to pocket—becomes some kind of proxy by which the town devises to turn us into fools. Though perhaps we are foolish for falling so deep in love with this place and these boys that we can no longer distinguish the difference, we can’t help ourselves from returning to them. Besides, it’s not love we’re known for anyway. We are known only by what others have done to us.
Around here, a girl can’t escape her reputation.
Breaking and Entering
A WEEK AFTER I BROKE PETE’S HEART, Nora and I broke into an abandoned house. It was the Fourth of July, just days after I told the only boy who’d ever loved me that I wanted to be alone. The summer already felt too long, and I was looking for a way to celebrate my new independence, which didn’t feel as liberating as I thought it would. As usual, Nora came to the rescue.
We went to see a movie. The closest theater was thirty minutes away in Juniper, the old steel town where I used to take ballet lessons. I hadn’t been back to see Martine since before the musical auditions. I was just about to turn fifteen and I had started to abandon things I’d once desired without much understanding of my own actions. Out of my self-spun cocoon, I was emerging as a girl-moth whose flight pattern was determined by events she could no longer remember.
The road out of town was a wayward one, headed toward mills that had stood empty for years now. They’d worked their way into the rest of our sagging landscape, and people barely noticed them anymore. On our way out, we wound through rows of corn and crowds of trees. Rusty trailers and double-wides, warning signs for leaping deer and turns sharp as bent elbows. “Too many accidents on this road,” my mother always said. Makeshift crosses and matted flowers dotted the roadside, marking the spots where cars had collided.
I shuddered as we passed a cluster of shabby memorials. These poster-board signs were eerie with their elegies scrawled in Magic Marker. From a distance, you could mistake them for yard sale advertisements. The signs had a way of lasting too long, after rainwater muddled the ink and the white crosses faded to gray.
About five minutes outside of Juniper’s city limits, Nora’s mother yanked on her husband’s sleeve.
“Ted,” she said. “Pull into that driveway.”
“What driveway?” he asked.
“That one,” Nora’s mother answered, jabbing her thumb against the window. “By the ‘for sale’ sign.”
“I don’t see any ‘for sale’ sign,” he said.
“Just turn.”
The minivan slowed. In the roadside ditch, a sickly “for sale” sign slouched among a thicket of weeds. Its stake was bowed, the black lettering weakened by the sun. The van crunched down a slender strip of gravel, and I pressed my face to the window to see what had provoked Mrs. Stark.
The house was set back, withdrawn from the highway. From the backseat I examined it, a house I’d passed innumerable times but never noticed. A colonial constructed from blanched, orange brick, two pairs of dowdy white shutters clung to the façade, and one tiny window popped out of the shingled roof.
Because there was nothing but cornfields in Mercury, I was used to long car rides spent passing time and houses. Rumors flew back and forth about them, and the more withdrawn the house, the more spectacular the stories. I’d heard of houses with indoor swimming pools, rooftop staircases, and even one with a carousel horse. I’d never considered going inside one before. No house around here could ever live up to the stories told about it.
Though it wasn’t much different from the others on Route 44, this house had an attitude like a pretty teenage girl caught admiring herself in a mirror. The anticipation mounted; the farther we traveled down the drive, the deeper the house seemed to sit. Beside me, Nora sat up on her knees, her gaze trained on the orange brick. As we neared it, the house ballooned in size.
“It’s huge,” Nora whispered, her hazel eyes squinting at the sunlight streaming through the window.
“I’ve heard about this house,” Mrs. Stark said, as if the place had a reputation of sleeping around.
“Do you think anyone’s home?” I asked, but soon I knew the answer. Dandelions overran the patched, dry lawn. The rusty basketball hoop had lost its net. Torn plastic bags with dated circulars smothered the front stoop. No one had been here in a long time.
The van jerked to a stop, and we hopped out. My eyes darted back and forth along the perimeter of pine trees. Surely someone would come and tell us trespassers weren’t welcome on such an expensive property, even if it was neglected. It has to be expensive, I thought. Just look how far it is from the road. The owner must have forked over some real cash to pay for such pretty seclusion. I watched the tree line. No one showed. The cars breezing down the highway buzzed like passing flies.
The five of us—Nora and I, her parents, and her younger sister Nell—stood in a clump, gawking at the giant house. Closer now, I could see the aged siding: chipped bricks, some missing. From where we stood, the parched yard sloped down to the right, framed by dense trees.
