I accept a water. I’m still a little buzzy from the beer, and I need to clear my head, need to focus. As soon as she sits down again, I get right to the point. “I’d like to talk to your daughter about what happened to her before you left IDEM,” I say, and she freezes with her water bottle halfway to her mouth. “I need to ask her about the messages she received, and about whether she knows of anyone else—any other girls—who were targeted.”
She lowers her water without drinking. For a moment she sits there in silence, and I’m worried she’ll say no. But she simply says, “You believe me, then? You think she was targeted deliberately?”
“I think Optimal has been using girls. I think they’ve been using them for entertainment. For bribes. They’ve been trading pictures, for sure. But I’ve heard rumors of parties, too, that some of the girls attended as part of the scholarship program.” I can’t think about what might have happened to them when the camera lens was turned away. “That’s how Optimal got so many people to protect them. It wasn’t just money. It was girls. Everyone is implicated. Not bribery.” I swallow. “Blackmail.”
For a long time, Lilian sits in silence, gripping her water tightly. And now, in the silence, I can hear my heart beating. I’m worried she won’t believe me.
“How?” she asks finally.
“I think Misha Jennings, the vice principal, got the idea from her friend Kaycee Mitchell, ten years ago,” I say. “It was a game she and her friends played when they were in high school—a very sick game they invented. They preyed on younger girls, underclassmen, people who wanted to belong. Invited them to parties, got them drunk, convinced them to pose. Then they ransomed the photos back, or threatened to release them.”
I can hardly stand to look at Lilian. Her face is cold and tight and furious, and I can’t help but feel she’s blaming me—for bringing the news, for failing to stop it. “But the photos were never returned. I understand that it might sound crazy, but I think that through Kaycee’s father, they found a revenue stream and exploited it. Some Optimal execs were hunting around for young girls.”
If Misha proposed selling the photos through Mitchell’s store, Kaycee might have tried to stop it. Not out of moral duty, but because that was like her: to change her mind, to want something one day and then stop wanting it as soon as other people agreed. Plus, she hated her father; maybe she saw this as a chance to stand up to him. Or she was simply afraid of getting caught. But I can’t remember that Kaycee was ever afraid.
And if Condor is right about Frank Mitchell, that leaves only Misha with a strong enough motive to kill her: Misha, who always had a thing for Kaycee’s boyfriend; Misha, the crueler, coarser, uglier version of her best friend; Misha, who lied to Brent about speaking to Kaycee on the phone; Misha, who tried to focus my attention on Kaycee’s dad by hinting to me in the community center; Misha, who only plays dumb.
Misha, who might be the smartest of all of us.
I wonder if Annie Baum and Cora Allen suspected what happened, or whether they even helped. It might explain why they’ve spent the past decade trying to drink or drug themselves into forgetting.
That leaves the question of whether Brent knows, too. But I just can’t believe it. No matter what he says now, he must have loved Kaycee once. He’s been trying to help me, even though it must pain him. He’s been trying to help Misha, too. And I can’t believe he would help her if he knew she was a monster.
“I think Misha kept the Game going all this time,” I continue, “changing the rules, using the scholarship money as incentive—and insurance.” I remember the day I visited, how her secretary was collecting phones, turning them over to Misha as punishment for texting in class. Likely targets for a much bigger operation.
Lilian stands abruptly and moves to the window. There’s no view to speak of: just a half-empty parking lot.
“We transferred Amy to a private school after it happened,” Lilian says. “She doesn’t know anything.”
“She might know more than you think.”
“She put all that behind her.” Lilian’s voice breaks. “It nearly killed her. She’s finally happy…”
“This is bigger than just her,” I say, as gently as I can.
To her credit, Lilian doesn’t cry. I see the urge move through her, bucking her spine and shoulders. But when she speaks again, she sounds calm.
“Should we call her together?” she asks. “Or would you prefer to speak to her alone?”
—
In the end I opt not to speak to her by phone at all. Culver Boarding School, where Amy has stayed on for a summer arts immersion course, is two hours north of Indianapolis; it’s early evening when I arrive and though I haven’t been sleeping I feel more alert than I have in weeks.
It takes me fifteen minutes to locate the student center where she has agreed to meet me for coffee. I worry she’ll have lost her nerve in the time it took me to drive up here.
But she’s there. She stands and shakes my hand firmly, making me feel a little like she’s the adult and I’m the kid who just arrived for an interview. Even as I’m working out how to explain why I’ve come, she beats me to it.
“My mom said you wanted to talk about what happened sophomore year?”
“Not exactly. I’m here about the photos,” I say. “Not just yours. Other photos of girls your age. Circulated. Sold, too.”
She looks away. “None of my friends did that kind of stuff.”
“But did you ever hear about it?” I ask her. “Did you know other girls who did?”
“People tell stories,” Amy says slowly. “I don’t listen. Half of what people say is a lie, and everyone would rather believe the lies sometimes. Like, how come if a guy has sex he’s a hero, but if a girl does everyone says she’s a slut? It’s not fair.”
“It isn’t,” I say, hoping that will prompt her. But she just picks at the corner of the table with a chipped nail, avoiding my eyes. “So you never heard about something called the Game?”
Amy looks up. “Sure, I heard about it,” she says. She sounds genuinely confused. “But that had nothing to do with the pictures.”
I stare at her.
“The Game was about the scholarships,” she says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“What do you mean?”
“Mrs. Jennings is the one who recommends students for the scholarships.” Misha. “But everyone knew it didn’t always work that way.” She looks embarrassed. “There were…parties. Events for the girls who wanted to be considered.”
Tatum Klauss’s words in the hospital come back to me. The parties were only for the girls.
“There were always people from Optimal there. You know. Older people.” Her eyes briefly lift to mine.
“Older men,” I say, and she nods.
“So that was the Game,” she finishes. She chips at the edge of the table with her fingernail. “To try and get selected.”
“How?” My throat is so dry I can barely get the words out. “What do the girls do to get chosen?”
“I never went,” she says. “I wasn’t pretty enough.” A sad smile skates briefly across her face. “I guess that’s why when the whole online thing happened, I was flattered.”
“So the Optimal Scholarships aren’t about grades,” I say, trying to keep my voice neutral.
This makes her bark a laugh. “Are you kidding? Half the girls who get scholarships are barely passing until they get special tutoring through the program.”
I can picture it now: Misha and the parade of girls in trouble, girls who see this as their only chance. I close my eyes, gripping my chair, finally understanding: how she might then have controlled them, used proof of these past mistakes to manipulate and intimidate.
“Besides, have you seen them? They’re always the prettiest girls in school.” Amy shakes her head. “You know how they call the scholarship kids the Optimal Stars? Some of the guys in school had a different name for them.”
“What?” I ask, even though half of me wan
ts to cover my ears, to beg her not to say anything more.
She smiles grimly. “The Optimal Skanks,” she says.
Chapter Forty-One
As I drive home, the road starts to blur. I’m so dizzy with disgust that I have to pull over.
I’m now convinced that Misha knows exactly where Kaycee is. Sheriff Kahn might even be in on it, or at least have been persuaded by Optimal to look the other way.
It all makes terrible sense: Kaycee’s game, and the chance to make some real money. It likely started with a single buyer; one of the head guys at Optimal might have told Mitchell what he was looking for. One buyer became two, and then three, and then more than that. At some point, the demand for photos morphed into a desire for the real thing, and grew into its own kind of culture, into its own economy. Optimal executives could use this special kind of sexual entertainment—deeply forbidden, deeply illegal, and, to a certain kind of person, doubly appealing—to keep the regulatory agencies and government higher-ups happy while they did whatever they wanted.
But however things began, Misha—and her contacts at Optimal—are clearly the ones now running the show. The Optimal Scholarship is bait. It’s how they fish for targets.
What would someone like Misha, the vice principal, the person in charge of doling out scholarship money to at-risk students, be able to convince the girls to do? How easily might they confuse what was happening for friendship, for attention, the way Amy had online?
I can’t imagine. I won’t.
It’s small comfort to think that Kaycee died—must have died—because she refused to keep participating.
I can’t call Joe; he’ll just say that I’m grieving or that I’ve finally lost it. I can’t go to the cops because Sheriff Kahn is in Optimal’s pocket—he must be. Who knows how long he’s been covering for them, or how many others in the sheriff’s department are in the know? I trust Condor, but I don’t know whether he’ll trust me. He freaked out when I suggested Kaycee hadn’t left town, and practically accused me of being a conspiracy theorist—what will he think if I tell him I’ve exposed an actual conspiracy?
Still, I pull up Condor’s number before I can second-guess myself. The phone rings six times and then rolls over to voicemail. I hang up, then wish I hadn’t. I redial, hang up after one ring when I realize he’ll think I want to see him.
I send him a text instead. I decide on the truth, or something close to it.
There are enough lies in this town.
You said I was chasing a conspiracy. I found one. I don’t know who else to talk to. Call me back. I add please, then delete it. Too desperate.
I press Send.
Is it possible that Kaycee pretended to be sick because she was trying to communicate a message about Optimal? Was she not so much pretending as signaling? A way of making Optimal the focus of attention without implicating herself directly?
As soon as I think it, I know it must be true. It fits. Kaycee loved that—secret messages, cryptic ways of communicating. The summer after fifth grade she tried to make up a whole new language that only we would be able to understand, and was so frustrated when I couldn’t learn it fast enough that she threatened to stop being my friend, only relenting when I burst into tears. She was always all tricks and codes and clues. The kind of girl you could only get close to the way you have to creep sideways toward a wild animal, not making eye contact, so it won’t run away.
However screwed up she was, however much to blame for starting the Game in the first place, she regretted it. Maybe for the first time in her life, she was trying to do the right thing.
And she died for it.
My phone rings.
I catch it on the first ring and don’t even have time to glance at the name before I answer.
“Condor?” My voice is still croaky.
There’s a slight pause. “It’s Brent,” Brent says. He doesn’t bother keeping the hurt from his voice. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“Brent. Hi. Sorry.” My chest tightens. Does he know? Could he possibly know? I think of what he told me at the football game: I’m beginning to think you’re right about Optimal…there’s something funny going on in accounting.
“I’ve called every day. I’ve been worried about you.”
“I know. I’ve been…busy.” An obvious lie. By now, Brent must know I’m off the Optimal case. “I’m okay, though.”
“You don’t sound okay,” Brent says matter-of-factly. “You sound like you’ve been crying.”
I hesitate. Brent works for Optimal. He’s friends with Misha. He dated Kaycee for years—and yet, he kissed me.
On the other hand, he’s never blamed or punished me for investigating Optimal, or tried to warn me away. He admitted Misha always had a thing for him. Misha is an expert liar. Why wouldn’t she be lying to Brent?
“Abby?” Brent sounds as if he’s pressing his mouth into the phone, trying to reach his way through it. “Are you still there?”
“I’m here,” I say. Can I trust him? Yes or no. Heads or tails.
I count seven crows on a telephone wire. Seven for a secret, never to be told.
“Talk to me,” he says. Warm. Concerned.
“You’re right. I’m not okay.” Then, before I can regret it: “How much do you know about the Optimal Scholarships?”
“The…?” Now Brent sounds bewildered. This definitely wasn’t what he expected me to say.
“The scholarships,” I repeat. “What do you know about them?”
Brent clears his throat. “Not much, honestly. I know Misha manages the program and our CFO oversees the financing. But why on earth…?”
And I’m sure, now, he isn’t faking his confusion. He can’t be.
“I need to know I can trust you.” My phone is hot in my hand. “I need you to promise.”
“Promise what? What is this about, Abby?”
And finally I can’t bear to hold it in anymore, can’t bear the weight of it alone. “They’re using the girls, Brent.” My voice cracks. “They’re using them as—as collateral. Currency. Bribes. It’s been going on for years. I think—I think Kaycee knew about it. I think she was killed. I think that’s why she was killed.”
There’s a long silence. “What you’re saying,” he says finally, “it doesn’t make any sense. It’s…” He sucks in a breath. “I can’t believe it.”
It’s the first time I’ve ever felt sorry for him. I think again of the time I caught him with Misha in the woods behind the school. What lies was she feeding him then?
“I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s true.”
More silence. When he speaks again, he can hardly manage a whisper.
“I always wanted to believe…” His voice breaks. “I always wanted to think she was okay.” He clears his throat. “Jesus. Can we meet up? Can we talk in person?”
He doesn’t think I’m crazy.
“Okay,” I say, “I’m at my dad’s house.” I guess it’s my house now.
“I’ll come as soon as I can. Don’t—don’t tell anyone else, okay? If you’re right…” His voice cracks again. “We can’t trust anyone.”
That word, we, lights up my insides. I’m not alone anymore. Brent is on my side.
“I won’t,” I tell him, and hang up.
—
My father’s house is cool and quiet. It smells like Pine-Sol and Windex. I’ve almost cleaned away the past.
I’ve tucked my mother’s jewelry box on the top shelf of my father’s closet, behind the few items of his that I intended, only a few days ago, to keep. Now I see there’s no point. There is no meaning attached to his belt, or his tie, or the two-dollar bill he kept folded in his wallet, just as my mother’s ghost has not imprinted on her jewelry, just as Kaycee cannot be resurrected through her fingerprints on Chestnut’s collar.
I loosen the collar from the tangle of cheap necklaces—junk, all of it. The past is a trick of the mind. It’s a story we misunderstand over and over.
I find a shovel in my d
ad’s shed and set out for the reservoir with Chestnut’s collar coiled around my wrist. Years ago I set out to bury it; instead, I let Brent kiss me, and from that moment on, without knowing it, I’ve been stuck in place.
I remember burying Chestnut close to the shore—I insisted on it, because he loved the water—and my dad marked the grave with a pile of rocks he pulled from the underbrush. But I can’t find the grave anywhere. The rocks must have been moved—used to line a fire pit, maybe, or as part of another kid’s imagined fairy world.
In the end I just pick a spot that seems nice, a place where the dirt hasn’t quite given out to mud, and I start to dig. A small hole will do it, but I shovel until my arms ache, until my hands blister and I’m suddenly aware of the sun kissing the tree line.
The hole is absurdly large. Grave-sized. I’m not just burying the collar. I’m burying Kaycee.
I drop the collar into the dirt. And then I cover it, tamping down the earth until you would never know it had been disturbed.
I’ve only just returned to the house when I hear the distant sound of tires crunching up the studded dirt road. Brent. I have just enough time to tuck the shovel back in the shed before he comes around the side of the house, looking out of place in his work clothes, his shiny shoes covered with mud and grass.
“Abby. Thank God.” He practically runs to hug me. “I was banging on the front door. You weren’t home. No one answered. I thought—” He doesn’t have to tell me what he thought.
“I’m okay.” I mean it this time. “Just doing something I should have done a long time ago.”
“Your phone call…I can hardly think straight.” He shakes his head.
“Inside,” I tell him. He nods and follows me.
The living room is mostly empty, now stripped of everything but the furniture that was too heavy to move to the Dumpster. Brent waits while I splash water on my face. I’m surprised by my reflection. I look pale and wild, my eyes sunken from too much booze and not enough sleep.
When I return to the living room, Brent has poured two tall glasses of scotch.
“Macallan,” he says, gesturing at the bottle. “I had it in my desk. I was saving it for a special occasion…” He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Well. This is an occasion.”
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