“That’s it? She was just disappointed?” Trudeau asked skeptically. I shrugged.
“Yeah. Maybe embarrassed too, because she’d thought it was a date,” I said. I wished I could tell them the truth, but the lies I’d told in the first interview had trapped me, and I was scared to change my story now.
“Did she seem upset about anything else?” Bragg asked, clearly unable to believe that anyone, even a teenage girl, could get that flustered about being put in the friend-zone.
“Not that I know of,” I said.
“Did you notice any recent changes in her? Was she acting differently? Or hanging out with new people?” Trudeau asked, glaring at me. She knew I was lying about everything, and the fact that she had to keep up this charade really pissed her off. I was pretty sure she would have hit me with a telephone book if she thought she could get away with it.
“Nope,” I said, my face stony.
“So, your story is that Chloe was totally fine, just a bit disappointed, and you don’t know what might have happened to her?” Trudeau asked.
I nodded.
“Well, we’ll have to have you back in here again soon, Jenny, just in case you remember anything else,” she said sourly, moving to stand up. It was a shorter interview than usual, but maybe I’d just caught her on a bad day. Trudeau would likely be back to the marathon interview sessions after a nap and a good long scream into her rage pillow.
“Hey, are you guys investigating that murder? Of that girl Helen?” I asked suddenly. Trudeau shook her head.
“No, we’re focusing on Chloe,” she said, leaning by the door.
“But I’m sure there’s a lot of people working on that, right? I mean, I bet you guys already have some leads, like on who did it?” I asked. Trudeau smirked.
“Why, are you confessing, Jenny? Did you do it?” she asked. I rolled my eyes.
“No. I was just wondering, that’s all,” I said.
“Don’t worry, an officer’s going to look into it. Besides, why are you so worried about that victim? I would have thought you’d be wanting us to devote all our time to finding Chloe,” Trudeau said, arching an eyebrow. She was examining me like I was a lab specimen.
“I can worry about them both,” I said. “I’m good at worrying.”
Chapter Six
September 16, 2005
It was only the third weekend of September and already the first big house party of the year was upon us. Classes had started and I was deeply regretting the end of summer. It wasn’t just because eleventh grade seemed a lot more serious and academic than the year before. It wasn’t even because I was worried about time passing and the end of high school getting nearer and nearer. The real reason was that over the summer I had grown really close to Chloe again because she had broken up with Liam.
When Chloe had begun dating Liam the summer before tenth grade, I had sensed a distance in our friendship. He was her first serious boyfriend, and this disconnection had only widened when Chloe and Liam started having sex. I felt like Chloe was surging over some major milestones and I was being left behind. Sex and love had somehow made Chloe much more worldly and adult than me. I had secretly fretted about my deficits, running through lists of potential boys in my head, ones who I could tolerate and who might actually consider dating me. The list wasn’t very long.
But over our summer of singlehood, Chloe and I had reconnected. We spent our time tanning on the beach at Fisher Lake and drinking strawberry Bacardi Breezers in Chloe’s backyard. The distance of the year before was erased by August. And yet, I couldn’t help worrying that a new school year would upset the balance, and that Chloe would find new boys to date and friends who were as experienced.
Still, there was something exhilarating about a house party, especially the first one of the school year. Everyone would whisper fervently about it in class, hashing out plans of where they would sleep, who had booze and where they would meet beforehand, because it simply wasn’t possible to show up alone. The air felt electrified on Friday afternoon as everyone hurried home to get ready.
By the time Chloe and I arrived, the house was packed and we were buzzed. We had shared a water bottle filled with iced tea and her father’s whiskey on the walk over. The two of us shuffled into the heaving house, the stairway lined with piles of Converse and ballerina flats with the toes worn down. The noise was incredible, a mixture of pounding bass and screamed conversations that packed my ears with sound. I could feel the stereo sound waves reverberate across my eyeballs, and I knew that the only way to endure such a huge party was to drink more, to apply a muffling layer of alcohol between me and everything else.
I spent the next few hours in the dining room, having insipid conversations with girls who were only interesting when you were smashed. I let guys tell me dumb stories about how they and their “buddies” drank obscene amounts of alcohol and did stupid stunts on their four-wheelers. I played a terrible game of beer pong, cracking under the pressure of my partner’s expectations. The crowd moaned with every air ball as if they were spectators at Wimbledon.
The party swirled around me as the alcohol simmered in my stomach. I could feel it bringing color to my cheeks and matting my hairline with sweat. I was so drunk that a delay appeared between the utterance of words and my comprehension. In that hazy, churning world, I finally realized that I hadn’t seen Chloe in hours.
When we arrived, we had filled tall plastic cups with vodka and Sprite before going our separate ways. We had spent so much time together recently that both of us must have felt secretly relieved to hang out with other people. Later, I’d spotted Chloe on the back porch smoking pot with some older boys. I considered joining them, but I wanted to prove to Chloe that I wasn’t the kind of clingy friend who would be abandoned when the main character falls in love again.
But that had been hours ago. And regardless of what happened at the party, Chloe was sleeping at my house tonight. My mom was working the night shift, and as long as we were back before 5 a.m. she would never know we’d been gone. It was 3 a.m. now, which meant I had to find Chloe soon.
I pushed myself off the couch and chugged my drink before trudging off on my mission. After a look around the main floor, I staggered down to the basement, bracing my hands against the wall and teetering precariously on the slick pile of the carpet. I could smell pot smoke seeping up the stairs. I rounded the corner, assuming that the first thing I would see was Chloe passing a pipe. I would tell her it was time to go and she would make me feel lame in front of everyone by telling me to calm down. Then we would leave, Chloe acting as if I was arbitrarily dragging her away even though she knew we had a deadline.
I turned the corner and saw five guys and girls passing around a glass bong swirled with shades of blue. My heart sank when I realized that Chloe wasn’t among them.
I turned back to the stairs and began to pull myself up with the bannister. I could feel the rail strain, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to climb unassisted.
If Chloe wasn’t there, and Chloe wasn’t on the ground floor, that only left upstairs. For some reason, the idea sent a chill down my spine. I dismissed it as the kind of drunk paranoia that convinced you there was a rapist lurking behind every car on the walk home. I was sure I would find Chloe in a brightly lit room, leaning back in a computer chair and shouting over everyone. Either that, or she was even more hammered than I was and had found a quiet room to grab a nap. If that were the case, she’d be okay once she was outside in the fresh air.
The living room on the ground floor hung in a surreal stillness. It was the fancy living room, with plush carpet and couches all in muted beiges. We had been warned away from this room because the pale colors would show every spill and swipe of a Doritos-dusted hand.
I took a deep breath and began to toddle up the stairs. Once again I found myself clutching the bannister like a lifeline. I was halfway up when Taylor Sullivan started walking down. It was obvious that she had been in the bathroom fixing her makeup. Nobody’s
lipstick was that pink at 3 a.m. without a recent retouch.
“Hey,” she said, her eyes flicking over me. I self-consciously smoothed my hair down and smiled. Taylor always made me feel uncomfortable.
“Hi, Taylor. Having fun?” I asked. I had seen her earlier, shamelessly flirting with Drew Saunders by the air-hockey table.
“Yeah, but, uh…,” Taylor began, leaning toward me with the devilish smile she always wore when she knew something about someone. She was the kind of girl who thrived on secrets, whose self-esteem swelled as everyone around her succumbed to moments of weakness. “Jenny, have you seen Chloe recently?”
“No. I’m actually looking for her. Why?” I said. Taylor tried to look concerned but her furrowed brow was no match for the smile spreading across her face.
“Don’t tell her I told you this, but she’s been a total whore tonight.”
“Like, a bitch?” I asked, still clutching the bannister for balance and wishing this conversation had happened three shots earlier. Whore could entail all manner of female misconduct, from hitting on a taken boy to making pointed comments in a game of “Never Have I Ever.”
“No, like…a slut. She slept with Devon and Mike tonight! It’s pretty pathetic,” Taylor announced. She looked like a little kid telling on her older sibling.
“Which Mike?” I asked dumbly. Even in that moment, I knew it didn’t matter.
“Mike Doucette,” Taylor said. I nodded slowly.
Mike and Devon were a grade above us and on the hockey team, the kind of guys who dressed up as women for the hockey pep rally every year. As if the sight of their muscular legs and broad shoulders filling out a thrift-store dress was so decidedly hilarious that it needed to be repeated annually. Mike and Devon weren’t Chloe’s type. She had never wanted the kind of guy who saw hockey as their only viable career plan. Her ex, Liam, was also a year older and on the team, but his success in sports was matched with the kind of easy intelligence that saw him aiming for medical school in the future, not the NHL. Chloe had complained that Liam was always worrying about what other people expected of him, but I couldn’t imagine her doing a 180 and going for Mike or Devon.
“What? Both of them?” I said, shaking my head. “There’s no way she’d have a threesome.”
“No, Mike was like an hour ago. Devon’s in there now,” Taylor said, glowing with the knowledge that a girl had debased herself at the party.
Before she could say anything else, I hurried up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Chloe had clearly lost her mind. I needed to stop her from making any more detrimental decisions.
Of all the doors leading off of the landing, only one was closed. I knew that Chloe was in there, knew it with the startling prescience that can only happen when you brush up against something truly bad in life.
Just as I touched the doorknob it turned beneath my fingers. I stepped back as Devon slipped out of the room. He closed the door so quietly it was as if he were laying it down to rest. His eyes met mine, and I could tell by the flush that appeared on his cheeks that he hadn’t wanted an audience. It occurred to me that I had gone to school with him for my entire life. We had never said a word to each other, and yet I knew all about his life and he probably knew a fair bit about mine. Small cities may call that sensation a feeling of “community,” but Thunder Creek really just fostered an artificial intimacy with strangers.
“Hey,” I said. “Is Chloe in there?”
“Uh, yeah,” Devon said. He wasn’t looking at me; his eyes were fixed on the hallway behind me, like he was watching for a bus.
“Is she okay?” I asked. I noticed that Devon was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, but he was holding his belt in his hand, as if he had dressed in a hurry.
“She’s fine,” he muttered, pushing past me and walking down the hall. “Just a bit drunk.”
I wanted to stop him. I wanted to grab his shirt in my fists and shake the answers out of him. I wanted to force him to look at me and to explain what was going on. But I knew he wouldn’t.
The only thing I could do was to see Chloe for myself. I took a deep breath and pushed the door open. The sliver of light from the hallway caught the pale flesh of Chloe’s legs, tangled in a faded sheet. I had seen her bare legs all summer, but they somehow seemed more exposed in the uncomfortable intimacy of the bedroom. Her jeans lay crumpled at the foot of the bed, and I noticed that her underwear, an old pair of rainbow briefs, were on backward—the word Superstar wrapping around her pelvis instead of across her butt. Chloe was wearing her bra and her top, but the shirt was hiked up to her collarbone. She was a still form sprawled across the bed, and for a brief moment I thought she was dead.
I felt a wave of nausea pass over me and I gripped the doorframe, wishing desperately that I could close the door and leave this for someone else. I saw myself walking down to the party and drinking enough to black out. Chloe could put herself together and I could pretend that I had never found her. It was an appealing thought, but I knew I could never do that to her. Not to Chloe. She was my best friend, and in that moment I was the only one who could help her.
I pulled her jeans up her legs, shocked by how hard it was to maneuver limp limbs into clothing. My eyes lingered on the backward underwear. They were so old that the elastic waistband had separated from the cotton, framing the skin beneath. I remembered how, when Chloe decided she was ready to lose her virginity, she had bought brand-new underwear. It was a matching bra-and-panties set, blue and white with frilly lace. It wasn’t overtly sexy and bore no resemblance to the terrifyingly mature G-strings and mesh panels of Victoria’s Secret lingerie. But there was something undeniably adult about a matching set. It hinted that a person might linger in their underwear, that the eyes of others might fall on such an outfit, maybe even remove it.
But this underwear? It wasn’t the kind of thing one wore if they thought someone else would see it. Underwear like this was only pulled out when a girl was on her period or had gone too long without doing the laundry. This underwear was the final stop before a lazy girl had to wear bikini bottoms under her jeans. I couldn’t imagine Chloe ever choosing to show them to a boy. No, not someone as carefully constructed as she was.
I managed to shake Chloe awake, rousing her out of bed as she slurred incomprehensible questions. I was terrified that even if I had understood what she was asking, I wouldn’t have been able to answer.
I looped her arm over my shoulder and begged her to help me get us down the stairs. I promised her that I was taking her home and that we had to leave as soon as possible because this wasn’t a good place. In a way, I still believed that if we slipped away from the party without being seen then the events of the night wouldn’t become a concrete reality. Chloe seemed to understand what I was asking, because although she leaned heavily on me, she stiffened her back and surged down the stairs. Her drunken focus made me feel strangely proud of my best friend.
Outside, I kept my arm wrapped around Chloe, gently guiding her forward. She was so drunk that she wasn’t exactly walking but rather fixing her eyes on the horizon and staggering toward it. Neither of us said a word.
As I walked home with Chloe that night, I felt the autumn winds conjure goose bumps on my skin. I could hear the dry rasp of fallen leaves like bones rattling in graves. Summer was over, and I knew that this night would be a major turning point. In that moment, I felt afraid of what autumn would bring.
I woke up early the next morning, the house completely still. I almost wished for noise to distract me from my pounding heart. My head felt leaden and tender, the consequences of a drunken evening and a near sleepless night.
I tipped my head to the left and was surprised to see Chloe sitting upright in bed, staring out the window. The gray light of morning mercilessly illuminated the particles of mascara ground into her skin, the knots in her red-brown hair and the hickeys on her neck. I knew that when I showered, I would discover bruises blooming across my knees and thighs, the inevitable consequence of a night spent sl
amming my legs into kitchen tables and catching my hips on doorframes. Still, as I stared at Chloe, I knew that my discomfort was insignificant compared to what she must be feeling.
Even looking at Chloe made my heart ache. A hangover can strip you of your affectations, leaving you unvarnished and vulnerable. You feel inarticulately plain, and you just want your friends to accept you even when you can’t be charming. But there was something else in Chloe’s blank stare and bite-swollen lip. Beneath the quietness of this moment, I could feel her pain bubbling into a furious boil.
“Hey,” I whispered, unsure of how to begin the first conversation after the night before.
“Hey,” she muttered back, glancing down at me and trying to smile. It was more of a grimace, but I knew she had tried for my sake.
I pulled myself up and leaned my back against the wall next to her. I could feel the bed coast forward a few inches, but we both ignored the precariousness of our perch.
“So…last night…,” I said, staring straight ahead. The window illuminated the dust motes floating around my cramped bedroom.
“Yeah,” Chloe said quietly. “Last night seems pretty bad today.”
“What do…what do you remember?” I asked. It was cowardly to admit that I hoped she remembered everything, that I wouldn’t have to be the one to tell her.
“I remember lying in bed…,” Chloe whispered, keeping her gaze forward. It was easier to share uncomfortable secrets without the intimacy of eye contact. “Just super-drunk, and I remember Mike kissing me, and, you know, I kissed back I think, and then I guess it kept going.”
“Oh,” I whispered.
“And then, I was asleep, and then Devon was there, and then, uh, I guess sex happened,” Chloe said, using a passive tense, as if sex was a phenomenon that spontaneously occurred, like lightning storms.
“Did you…want to?” I asked, unsure of how to ask the unspoken questions hanging in the stagnant morning air.
The Lives of Desperate Girls Page 4
