by Richard Peck
The pajamas were a senior thing, a cross between some fund raiser and a protest against first period. Natalie was in shortie pajamas with a body stocking underneath and heels, black patent leather. She looked sensational. Like a French movie or something. Tanya was wearing her father’s pajamas, rolled up: maroon stripes, and over that a floaty dressing gown you could see through. It was perfect. She’d tied up her blond hair in hanks with flannel strips and cold-creamed her face. A hoot.
The floaty gown settled around her as she settled next to me. “Do you love it?” Tanya said, holding out a see-through sleeve. “It’s Joanne’s. Her sleepwear and undies are very Victoria’s Secret. She has garter belts. Did you get home all right?”
Did I get home all right? I couldn’t believe my ears.
“Don’t sulk,” she said. “It makes you even younger.”
“It really does,” Natalie said. “I’m thinking training bra and braces.”
Tanya couldn’t get the lid off her water and handed it to Natalie to unscrew. “Honestly, when the light went on in Alyssa’s bedroom, we had to leave,” Natalie said, nearly looking at me. “You were so busted, Kerry. I mean, you walked right into it. And it was bound to be Mrs. Stark, so how did we know she wouldn’t go psycho and dial 911? Police? Please.”
They all three looked at me. I was the center of attention.
“It was Mrs. Stark all right,” I mumbled. “She had a cold or something. And she knows my mother.”
Makenzie’s big eyes got bigger. She needed glasses, but they were almost always parked up in her hair. She wasn’t in pajamas, not being a senior. She was in one of her kilt type outfits. A touch of tartan.
Tanya hardly missed a beat. “Well of course she knows your mother. Why wouldn’t she?”
Why would she?
“Mrs. Stark works in the admissions office at the Crossland Hospital ER. She checks people’s health coverage.”
Oh. But so what?
Tanya waited for me to figure it out, then gave up. “Your mother used to do volunteer work at Crossland Hospital, before the divorce.” Tanya always had adults so nailed. “Kerry, adults have their networks too. Don’t you know that?”
“I know that,” I said. Actually, I didn’t. I tried to keep my parents in these little boxes, separate from me and everything. Now I was getting confused and not as mad as I’d meant to be.
“She wanted to know where I got the key,” I said. “Mrs. Stark did.”
Natalie sighed one of her sighs.
Tanya was working the wrapper off of two little rounds of melba toast. “Alyssa needs to be more careful about where she leaves her backpack.”
She and Natalie both skimmed a glance over Makenzie. But Makenzie was gazing away at some other table, with her glasses on now.
And I saw right then. Makenzie had stolen the house key out of Alyssa’s backpack. The drama people leave their stuff backstage in the theater area. I could picture Makenzie, small and quick, kilted. She’d have been in and out before anyone saw, with Alyssa’s key pressed in the palm of her hand. She could have pulled off the whole thing on a restroom pass.
Maybe it had been Makenzie’s initiation. Maybe there was no end to the initiations.
It had to be Makenzie. Tanya didn’t steal things. She delegated.
“Mrs. Stark wanted to know what the doll was about,” I said. “She made me hand it to her.”
“Oh dear, I hope she doesn’t keep it from Alyssa.” Tanya balled up her napkin. “I hope Alyssa sees it.” Natalie was taking her tray back, so Tanya pushed hers across to her.
“Why does Alyssa have to see it?” I was trying not to whine. I didn’t want to be a whiner.
Makenzie was still drifting, still staring off somewhere. Natalie was taking the trays back.
Tanya held me in this small space of the two of us. Like we were both in a little drawstring bag, pulled tight. “Kerry, Alyssa was absent from school for a couple of days early last month. Two consecutive days. Liam Buckley knows how to hack into the school’s records. Okay? So we have hard copy on this. Documentation.”
People are absent all the time. Especially seniors.
“What does her attendance record matter?” I said. Or should I be able to work this out for myself?
“It’s why she was absent,” Tanya said, very low, very quiet. It was just the two of us in this deafening, traybanging room.
“Why was she absent?” I asked because I was supposed to ask.
“She had a . . . procedure, Kerry. An outpatient procedure. Not at Crossland Hospital, of course. Somewhere else. Maybe in the city. Maybe Jersey. It doesn’t matter where. It really doesn’t.”
I didn’t get it.
“Kerry, do I have to spell it out for you? When Alyssa went in for the procedure, she was going to have a baby. When she came out of the procedure, she wasn’t. Okay?”
I knew what she was talking about. It wasn’t a word I was used to, but suddenly I saw the slick little pink doll with the slit—
“Is that what it said on her absence excuse? Did Liam Buckley find—”
“No, of course it didn’t, Kerry.” Tanya sighed one of Natalie’s sighs. “The excuse was totally something else. Totally bogus. Outrageously bogus. It doesn’t even matter.”
“Why does it matter to—us?” I asked her.
“Kerry, think. Alyssa did something very wrong; she needs to be reminded of it everywhere she turns. Even her pillow. You know, people really have their heads in the sand about Alyssa. And if we have to get the word out about her, we will.”
The bell was about to ring, and I didn’t know what to think. And I ought to be bright enough to know all there was to know about Alyssa Stark. Somehow I’d made her my business. How had I done that?
“What will she do now?”
Tanya brought up her silken shoulders, turned up her manicured hands. “Who knows? But if everybody finds out what she is, I doubt if she’d want to stay in school. Would you? The best thing for her is if she just graduates at the end of this semester. It’ll be better for the school. According to her transcript, she has enough credits to graduate early. Liam has hard copy on it.”
One more jump of the clock, and the bell would ring. Except it didn’t. Tanya could stop time, letting me think, except I couldn’t.
“And of course there’s more to the story,” Tanya said. “Isn’t there?”
More?
I could feel her arm, smooth against mine. We were that close. “Like who’s the father?” she said, softly.
“Who is?” I said.
Tanya shrugged him off, whoever he was. “Could have been a lot of people. But I think it’s pretty obvious.”
Not to me it wasn’t. But Tanya left me hanging. She was good at that. Awesome.
The clock was one jump from the bell. “How are you dealing with your mother?” Tanya asked.
My mother? Oh.
“Her light was on when I got home. But she didn’t say anything this morning.” And I’d skipped breakfast. She’d been at her computer before I left for school. “I think she went to sleep before I got back.”
“I think she was awake,” Tanya said, “waiting.”
“Why?”
“Because Mrs. Stark would have called her. She wouldn’t just send you off into the night. I’m surprised she didn’t call your mother to come and get you.”
My flesh crept. My spine tingled.
Yes, Mrs. Stark probably did call my mother. That’s why the light was on in her room. She was waiting for me to come home.
“Don’t let her make an issue out of this,” Tanya said. “Be as firm as you need to be. Remember, she has no say in what you do and who you are. Why should she? Your mother couldn’t even hold her own marriage together.”
By now we’d forgotten all about why I was in Alyssa Stark’s bedroom to begin with. The clock jumped, and the bell rang. I needed to take my tray back.
“Kerry, have you forgotten something?” Tanya said.
N
o. Maybe. “What?”
“My sweater?”
Oh yes, her sweater. I had planned to throw it at her, right in her face. But then I forgot to give it to her.
SO WE WERE lunching again, and I needed to get over myself. I zoomed back into their zone. In fact I’d never left. And the main thing people remembered about Halloween was the Halloween Hotties award business. There was a lot of buzz about that: who had made the cut, who hadn’t. Liam and Sandy wore the black and orange ribbons on their shirts at school, like medals, making the point but keeping it light.
Then people moved on to homecoming, which was late that year. Since Natalie hadn’t wanted to be Homecoming Queen, Shannon Grady was, with her cheerleaders as the court, plus Arlene Armistead, who was a baton twirler. Shannon’s attendant from my class was Caitlin Hardesty. I’d sort of known her in ninth grade. So that was the homecoming court. As Tanya said, “Let Shannon have her moment. Why not?”
It turned out too cold to go to the game, and we didn’t know anybody who went to the dance, which was in the gym.
“Imagine getting dressed up for the gym,” Tanya said.
Caitlin Hardesty went because she was in the court. Some junior took her. I didn’t know who. You can’t know everybody.
The semester picked up speed from there. With winter on the way we had our first trip into the city. Tanya and Natalie and Makenzie and me. It was to see the Radio City Christmas show, just for a laugh. With all the Rockettes as toy soldiers and the bogus cannon that knocks them all down. And 3-D Santa Claus.
We went into town on an early Saturday train and shopped all morning. Then we left our packages at Tanya’s aunt’s and went across town to Radio City for the matinee. My mother gave me some grief about going. But I arranged to be with my dad in White Plains that weekend and went into the city from there. It was great.
THEN IT WAS the new year. The juniors were working up their committees for the prom they’d give the seniors in May. Makenzie didn’t seem to notice. But Tanya gave her a little nudge. “Go for it, Makenzie,” Tanya said. “Get on one of the committees by all means, if you want to give it the time.”
But Makenzie didn’t. “Too American, the prom,” she said. Which is what she always said about something she didn’t want to do. Reminding us she was English.
We were into a new semester by now. Alyssa Stark had graduated early, midyear. Tanya said she would.
I didn’t know if they’d e-mailed everybody with that picture of the pink baby. So I didn’t know if that had anything to do with it. And Tanya didn’t mention Alyssa anymore. It was like she had pushed DELETE, and Alyssa went into the trash.
Then it was sparkly winter, and Presidents’ Day sales at the mall. Then it was spring with the campus carpeted in white and purple crocuses, and I still lived for lunch. Everything was fine. It was fun. Then it was over.
PART TWO
This Spring
TANYA TEXTED ME, and I thought she must be in her Contemporary Crisis class because it was second period.
I was sitting there in the outdoor courtyard of school. I didn’t go to second period these days. And in third period I saw my counselor. I could do pretty much anything I wanted to. People backed off and gave me all the room in the world. I could drift through the day. The endless day. I was in this separate space now, separate from everyone and even me.
Then Tanya texted.
We’re all 3 here at my aunt’s in the city. Take the 3:50 train. Tell your mom you’re at your dad’s and vice versa. B there.
The sun glared on the screen, and the message melted. I hadn’t been keeping my phone charged. But the important thing is that Tanya texted.
The bell went, and the courtyard filled up with classes changing. Not a big bunch. It was the Friday before prom, and a lot of people had manicure appointments.
It was warm now, way past crocuses, and people were looking ahead to summer. The guys were in Lacoste and long shorts, and the girls were less layered. Everybody back in flip-flops. Their quick glances bounced off me. I was back to being invisible these days. I wanted to be.
But I was there, more or less. On the bench with the phone in my lap, thinking about the first train into the city after seventh period. The crowd flowed on like I was gone already.
Then I remembered. Tanya was dead.
CHAPTER FOUR
Third Period
ALMOST A MONTH ago on a Saturday afternoon without a cloud in the blue sky, my three best friends forever, Tanya and Natalie and Makenzie, were killed. Their SUV went off the Country Club Road and hit a tree. An apple tree in full bloom. Tanya was at the wheel, on her phone . . . with me.
I’d wanted to think my mother wouldn’t let me go with them that afternoon, to the mall. But actually they hadn’t asked me. They hadn’t gotten around to it. Anyway, the whole trip was about prom dresses—that day they’d been planning since Halloween at least. The day they’d make their basic decision. Then Tanya would take Joanne back.
But then halfway to Nordstrom, Tanya called me. She started to. Just a few words: “Kerry, we’re all—” Was she going to ask me to join them at Nordstrom? Or was she just monitoring me? She monitored a lot of people. She’d monitored Alyssa Stark to the day she graduated.
I thought maybe Tanya had hit the wrong button or dropped the phone or something. But in that moment the SUV must have been in the air. Over a ditch. And then the tree. They weren’t wearing seat belts. They never did. We didn’t. Remember Halloween? We were in and out of the car, so we didn’t.
I tried to call Tanya right back, and got nothing. But by then they were gone, all of them. All the friends I had. Just like that. How can you exist in one moment and then not in the next? It wasn’t real. None of it. It wasn’t right, or what anybody wanted.
The school didn’t have a grief counselor. Nothing as bad as grief was supposed to happen at a school like Pondfield. They had to bring one in. Then they held an all-school assembly to introduce her to us. It was like sophomore orientation in September, but for everybody. Then they got into a lot of talk about driver safety and seat belts and phoning from behind the steering wheel. Two phones went off during the assembly.
In that first week a lot of people got appointments with the grief counselor. It was a free period for a bunch of people. Shannon Grady and half her cheerleaders went. I pictured them there in the counseling wing, in uniform, doing one of their pyramids for our game against Ridgefield.
Sophomores went. It was like an orgy of grief before it was over. There were pictures on every phone of the car wreckage. The BMW wrapped around the apple tree, with the apple blossoms fallen on it like spring snow. Even pictures of the BMW after it had been towed.
That was the week of the memorial service, and the shrine. The shrine sort of happened against the apple tree. Loads of flowers and ribbons in school colors, blue and silver. Stuffed animals. Downloaded pictures of Tanya and Natalie and Makenzie, laminated to weatherproof them. A rosette of orange and black ribbon that must have been somebody’s Halloween Hottie award. Somebody had left a vintage cell phone at the shrine. Which a few people said was in poor taste. But it just meant that Tanya died as she’d lived. She always networked and multitasked and kept her lines of communication open. She always had a finger on whatever was happening.
Anyway, Country Club Road wasn’t particularly safe. There’d been talk about widening it.
But the flowers on the shrine were still fresh when people started scrambling. The senior girls did. Tanya and Natalie had been the top of the heap. Makenzie could have ruled the juniors if she’d felt like it. A ton of people wanted to be who they’d been, including some people nobody had especially noticed. Like Emma Bentley and Jocelyn What’s-her-name. It wasn’t going to work for them, but they scrambled.
And people moved on.
The seniors had heard from their colleges, so there was buzz and Twitter about that. Graduation too, coming up. And after that, summer and summer plans. Endless summer.
AND NOW IT was May, the Friday of prom week. The prom posters were everywhere, and the juniors’ committees were down to the wire. I personally thought they might call off the prom, out of respect. Nobody else seemed to think so. They had their dresses.
Nobody left that to the last minute. I was hearing a lot about dresses. You’d be surprised what you can hear when there’s all this space around you.
I remembered last September and eating lunch alone and hearing every word from the conversation at the other end of the table. But back in September I hadn’t known what alone was.
The other thing about this year’s prom was that Tanya and Natalie had begun planning an after-prom party. The after-prom party. It was going to be—it would have been at Natalie’s house, on the terrace and around the pool. Tanya didn’t want the party at her house because of Joanne.
“She’d get off her StairMaster and be all over us,” Tanya said. “She’d be everywhere we turned. She’d hack in.”
So it was to have been at Natalie’s, and they had ordered blue and silver T-shirts that read:
THE ONLY AFTER-PROM PARTY
They’d had forty of them silk-screened and handed out to let everybody know who was invited, and who wasn’t.
The days moved on, and somebody put a couple of The Only After-Prom Party T-shirts on eBay. Now the buzz was all about the after-prom party at Chase Haverkamp’s. And it was going to be given by guys. This was pretty outrageous because it was supposed to be girls who made the social rules. But what girl would dare? Emma Bentley? Jocelyn? Please.
So there was a lot of after-prom party buzz, which had zero to do with me.
The earth turned, but I didn’t budge. I pretty much just logged off of life. There was still some hallway crying from various people. But I was probably the only one still seeing the grief counselor. I’d lost the most.
