“Of course I remember you,” I say quickly.
“What’s my name, then?” She staggers a bit, regains her balance, and smiles at me hazily.
Brent breaks in before I have to reply. “Come on, Annie. Let’s get you some water.”
Now, at last, I recognize Annie Baum. The former head cheerleader, once miniature and muscled, is soft from drinking, prematurely old.
She pulls away from Brent as soon as he takes her arm. “Don’t touch me,” she says sharply. But when Brent holds up both hands, a wordless apology, she turns cheerful again. “It’s a party, isn’t it? So let’s party.”
She wastes more alcohol than she lands in her cup. Before I can stop her, she has pressed a shot into my hand. The liquid is already sweating through the flimsy paper cup, like the kind you see in dentists’ offices.
“How about you, Brent? A drink, for old times’ sake?” Annie seems to find this idea hilarious, and says, “Old friends, old memories, old. We’re old, now.”
Before she can drink, Misha materializes, neatly snatching the cup from Annie’s hand.
“You need to slow down,” she says lightly. For a second, Annie looks like she might argue.
But in the end, she only shrugs and turns back to me. “She always could tell me what to do,” she says. “Both of them.” I assume she means Kaycee, too. Then she wheels off abruptly into the crowd.
“Three times in one week! How did I get so lucky?” Misha manages to level off directly between sincere and sarcastic. She touches her cup to mine. “Cheers. Go on. You deserve it.”
Deserve—maybe. I need it, for sure. I almost never take shots and am thankful, at least, that Annie poured out whiskey and not rum. Still, it’s cheap liquor, and it burns going down.
Brent must notice my grimace, because he laughs.
“Let me make you a real drink. No—don’t tell me.” He pretends to size me up. “Now let me see. Vodka cran? No. Too sweet. Definitely not gin. Too suburban.”
“You think you can guess?”
“I don’t think. I know.” He holds my gaze for just a beat longer than necessary before turning to Misha. “You want something? Gin and tonic?”
Her smile tightens. “Gin and soda,” she corrects him.
“Coming up. Don’t go head to head with this one,” he says, turning back to me and jerking his head in Misha’s direction. “She’ll drink you under the table. Or under the reservoir, as the case may be.”
He says it lightly, but for some reason, Misha flinches. Once, I told my mother I wanted to be a mermaid, and she told me that real mermaids were the drowned souls of broken-hearted women; I don’t know why I remember that now. I blink as if it will help clear out the memory.
Brent turns and shoves his way toward the makeshift bar: a litter of alcohol bottles and mixers spread out on a blanket. Already, I can feel the whiskey doing its work, spreading warmth to my chest, softening the glow of the fire. Misha tonight looks more like the Misha I remember, in jeans and a Barrens Tigers T-shirt.
“Brent was so worried you wouldn’t come,” she says brightly, without preamble. “I told him you wouldn’t miss the chance to relive the glory days. Isn’t that what going home is all about?”
I can feel her watching me for a reaction—but what kind of reaction, I’m not sure. It occurs to me that Misha never had a boyfriend in high school. She had plenty of boys—but no boyfriend. I wonder if she was jealous of what Kaycee had. Another question I’ll never ask her.
“Maybe for some. In my glory days, I would never have been invited. And they weren’t so glorious. But I’m sure you remember.”
It’s a cheap shot, but hey, at least now we’re even.
But when Misha says, “I deserve that,” it makes me wish I hadn’t said anything.
As I scan the crowd, it occurs to me that I don’t see Cora Allen. She used to stick to Misha like a shadow. “Do you ever see Cora anymore?” I ask, partly to change the topic.
Misha tries to arrange her face into a look of concern. But somehow it doesn’t quite land. “She doesn’t come around,” she says shortly. Then: “She got all messed up, honestly. Drugs.”
Before I can ask her anything else, Brent returns, balancing three cups. He passes one to Misha and presents mine with a flourish. “Cheers.”
I take an experimental sniff. “Vodka soda?”
“Did I guess right?”
“Trick question.” I can’t help but smile. He looks so damn pleased with himself. “I drink it all.”
“Even better. That way, I’m always right.” He touches his cup to mine and holds my eyes while we drink. By the time I think to include Misha, she has vanished.
Things are blurring, and my body feels warm and loose, as if the coil that keeps it responding to my brain has slowly begun to unwind.
“Whoa, there. Easy,” Brent says, and catches me when I stumble on a log half-buried in the grass.
“I’m not drunk,” I say.
“I’m not judging,” he replies, and pulls me closer. I feel his belt against my stomach. I pull away because the world is turning now.
“Do you remember Dave Condor?” I ask, before I can think better of it.
“Sure,” Brent says, but looks away. “He’s still around. Works at the liquor store. Once a burnout, always a burnout.” He tugs on the collar of his shirt. “Why?”
“Just curious,” I downplay. “I ran into him, that’s all.”
“Keep your distance.” Brent’s voice sounds as if it’s coming from far away. “He’s not the guy you want to keep running into.”
“What happened with him in high school?” I ask. “Why did you and your friends jump him?”
His blue eyes lock with mine again, hard to read in the darkness. “You remember Becky Sarinelli?” he asks. “That’s why.”
Of all the things he could have said, this might be the least expected of all. “Condor was the one who passed around her photos?”
Brent shakes his head. “He was the one who took them.”
—
Time shreds into ribbons. Hours fracture into quick-cut images:
I’m sitting on the ground with Brent’s arms around me in front of the fire, laughing without knowing why.
“You’re going hard tonight.” Brent’s voice meanders through my fog. “I like it.”
“I like it,” I repeat, and laugh. I’m fucked up. Too far gone to hide it. I lean against Brent’s chest. He’s so solid and warm. He is comfortable. Brent tilts my chin back toward his to ask me something; and then we are leaning into each other. Kissing. But I’m too drunk to know whether I like it or not.
I pull away. Brent’s eyes hold a look I can’t read.
“Isn’t this funny?” I ask. “We’re kissing. I thought we kissed in high school, and this whole time I haven’t been sure, and we’re kissing now, and I don’t even know whether I made it up.”
“I wanted to. I wanted so badly to kiss you in high school,” Brent whispers. Does this mean he did or he didn’t?
My mind slides to Dave Condor, his mouth hot on my skin…
Dark. Light. Dark. Light.
Becky Sarinelli’s thighs, blazing in the glare of the flash.
The laughter of the crowd in the stands. Her photo fluttering up toward me.
Then:
The faces around the fire are no longer familiar: they are huge, bloated like balloons. Brent’s voice is somewhere in the background, talking incessantly. He won’t be quiet.
I’m sleeping. This is a dream. I lie down, but the ground won’t stop moving. It feels as if I’m on a boat. I try to open my eyes.
“You’re okay,” says Brent’s voice. “You’re okay.” His voice is a separate thing. Listening to it makes me feel tired. And sleepy.
No. Wait. Something is wrong.
I try to sit up. Time is thick and slow, like a clear gel. I wonder if I’ve been drugged, but the idea itself feels unreal, like something I’ve only dreamed. Then I remember: the Valium, and mo
re drinks than I can count. I never even checked to see how much was in each pill.
The beach is empty. The bonfire has vanished. Not burned out—vanished. There is no trace of it on the beach, no mound of charred logs, no smoke.
And then: a scream. I look around. There’s a dark shape on the water. A rowboat. I know that voice.
Kaycee.
I stumble to my feet. My head feels like a bowling ball about to roll off my neck.
She’s under, she’s under.
She won’t stay down.
Flashlight beams crisscross the water and I see Kaycee, her beautiful hair fanned out over the water, her mouth distorted in a scream.
No. Wait. Not Kaycee. Kaycee ran away.
But someone is in the water. A girl. No—more than one girl. One of them is screaming for help…
I try and shout but I can’t. My vision splits and re-forms like a kaleidoscope.
We have to make sure…
She’s not breathing…
We have to make sure she’s not breathing…
Confusion and horror war within me. I sway on my feet. My arms and legs feel leaden. I try and shout but my voice splinters through my skull. I’m on my knees again.
The girl’s screams echo over the reservoir. She’s going to drown.
They’re going to drown her.
Darkness bubbles up around me, and when I open my mouth to scream again, a wet terror rushes into my lungs like water, and pulls me under.
Chapter Fourteen
Sleep is a heavy blanket I peel back slowly, climbing out beneath a suffocating fog. I stay like that for a moment, suspended between sleeping and waking. For a second, I don’t know where I am. Everything is unfamiliar, down to the suitcase spilling its guts in the corner.
I sit up and a raging headache comes to life; my body is stiff, my heart is palpitating, my mouth feels like cotton, and I’m so nauseous I have to close my eyes and wait for the room to stop swinging. I’ve been hungover before but this feels different: like the hangover is everywhere, in my skin, even.
Finally, the world clicks into place: the suitcase is mine, the stained carpet and wobbly furniture redraw themselves into the silhouette of my rental house. Sun slants hard through the windows—it must be ten or later. My feet are killing me; they’re bleeding. I must have cut them on something, maybe gravel or broken glass. Sweeps of red in the sheets show me running in my sleep.
I try to climb back through the hours, retrace my moves, but all I get is a kind of panic that overwhelms my memories. What happened?
Think.
My shirt is wrinkled, and damp, and smells like sweat. My jeans—the same ones I wore last night—pinch in a thousand places and are caked in dirt and sand. My boots are gone. Next to the bed is a pair of dirty pink flats that I don’t recognize.
Think. Breathe. Try to remember.
A jump cut; Brent cradling my foot in his lap, asking if it hurts, and splinters of broken beer bottles glowing emerald in a dying fire.
The beach. The bonfire. Did Brent take me home last night?
A sudden punch of nausea, and I hobble into the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet in time, to throw up mostly bile. I feel a little better, but just a little and it’s fleeting. It was the Valium that did it—that, and drinking too quickly, continuing to drink even after things turned watery and warped.
Why did I do that? I’ve never been big on pills, not since a flirtation with Adderall in my first year at CEAW that landed me in therapy and nearly lost me the job. Still, I’ve taken Valium before, but it never worked like it did last night: like a saw to the brain, cutting out everything important.
Why can’t I remember?
Think.
The shower water runs freezing at first while I strip down to my underwear, throwing my dirty clothes in a ball on the floor. I gasp in the cold, and the shock dislodges another memory: Brent’s lips, cold and mossy-tasting, like the reservoir. Shouting.
Hold her down. Hold her down. I’m pinning her wrists…
No. That can’t be right. That’s an old memory—a memory of my father trying to get my mother to swallow the pills she was refusing. Hold her, he told me. Hold her down. I grabbed her wrists and felt all the way down to her bones, as he forced open her jaw, shoved his fingers down her throat so far she couldn’t do anything but swallow.
I scrub hard with soap everywhere—in between my toes, under my fingernails, between my legs. I shampoo my hair, and rinse, and shampoo again.
Still, the anxiety and panic stay.
I turn the water as cold as it will go, close my eyes, and stand shivering as long as I can bear it. Images bob like ice cubes to the surface: the lullaby sway of a boat on the water; someone saying, “You shouldn’t have come,” beer bottles arcing into the water, hurled by hands that belong to no one I can see.
No. Someone is definitely screaming. No. Stop. No.
—
Saturday. One P.M.
Without the rest of the team, our makeshift headquarters more closely resembles its former life as a functional barn. The smells of hay, old wood that’s been wet and dried a million times, and corn feed waft through the open air. Outside, crows caw in the fields, and a tractor revs to life.
I was hoping that work would help me focus and would pull me back to whatever it is I’ve forgotten—about Kaycee, about what happened last night, about the reservoir. But memories of Brent, pulling me close as the smoke curled around us, keep interfering. Brent pressing his lips against mine. Voices laughing and joking in the background and the gentle sloshing of lake water against the pebbled shore.
After my third cup of coffee and seventh Advil, my headache eases, finally, and so does my hangover—chased back to hell, or wherever bad hangovers come from.
Work has always centered me, especially the early stages, the research, the reading, the note-taking. Like unwinding a braid made out of a thousand strings, and tacking each one down into place.
When Optimal was called Associated Polymer and headquartered in Tennessee, the company settled a complaint against them by a group of two hundred plaintiffs claiming runoff from their plant was causing bad smells, skin irritations, headaches. Unfortunately, because the case didn’t ever make it to court, public information is limited. But it stands to reason that they settled because they knew the claims were valid. Why else?
Even if Kaycee, Misha, Cora, and Annie did pretend to be poisoned, pretend to have the same symptoms as the complainants in Tennessee because they were hoping for a payout, it also stands to reason that they may have unconsciously hit on the truth. If you throw a dart enough times, eventually you’ll hit the bull’s-eye.
But five years of safety audits and public records yield nothing: Optimal has never even gotten a ticket. From the very beginning, the mayor and eight-person city council all but showed up for Optimal greased up and naked with a bow.
Before Optimal Plastics, the town was on the verge of collapse. The vast majority of the residents were over the age of seventy-five, not working, on disability, or just not in a position to move. Optimal has brought jobs, and young people, back to Barrens. They helped reconstruct the high school after it was damaged in a bad storm. They’ve poured money into roads and infrastructure. They’ve inspired new businesses, new house construction, new life.
But it’s possible they’ve done it at the expense of the poorest people, the ones who always suffer the most: the people who live closest to the reservoir, or farmers like Gallagher who depend on public water supply for their livelihoods.
Even if we do find something on Optimal, litigation will be a nightmare—like going after the most popular boy in school for stealing money from the church donation box. Optimal has been busy courting locals and state politicians up the chain. The contributions, if not the amounts, are listed proudly on the company’s Corporate Sponsorship page, beneath Barrens Little League and the Veterans Health Fund.
I dig up an old interview with a guy named Aaron Pulaski
, the old Monroe County prosecuting attorney. The interview, published by a regional newspaper with a circulation of maybe a few thousand, if they’re lucky, focuses on Pulaski’s determination to clean up corrupt business interests in the county, and to make sure that Indiana tax dollars were flowing back to homegrown businesses.
He mentions Optimal by name—not for environmental violations, but for skirting labor union laws and hiring mostly foreign workers in its distribution centers throughout the Northeast.
Still, it’s something.
But if his office conducted an investigation, it has disappeared down an online sinkhole. That bothers me. It’s standard practice for the county prosecutor’s office to announce criminal investigations against major public figures—or against corporations. And announce it big.
An idea takes shape.
Weak spots.
After a little more digging, I learn that only six months ago, Aaron Pulaski hopped from the county prosecutor’s office to a state congressional seat, running on an anticorruption, antiestablishment platform that easily handed him the vote. And though Pulaski doesn’t appear on Optimal’s list of corporate donations, a quick visit to the financial disclosure section of the Indiana state legislature confirms my suspicion.
Only a few months after Pulaski was quoted in a newspaper saying he would investigate Optimal for labor violations, and a few short months before he landed his congressional seat, Associated Polymer, Optimal’s parent company, wrote a $100,000 check to his campaign.
A bribe.
Has to be.
But more important: a way in. We’ll need help, and luck, and a really friendly circuit court. But Optimal might turn over their finances to us even before we’ve filed if the alternative is turning them over in a criminal case.
It’s a long shot—but at least it’s a shot. Finally. Something.
My whole body is humming with something something something by the time Joe throws open the door with his shoulder. I’ve almost forgotten the nagging doubt that tailed me all morning, that something terrible happened at the bonfire.
Bonfire: A Novel Page 8
