Never Tell eh-4

by Alafair Burke

  I choose not to delete those heinous comments because they are a badge of honor. Those words constitute evidence that I am speaking truth-not to power, but to those who crave it, no matter what the cost.

  I will not delete the words because I recognize they are an attempt to silence me, no different from that man’s words so many years ago, threatening to kill my mother and me if I spoke the truth.

  The title of this post is “Never Tell” because that is the lesson I was taught by my abuser all those years ago. In my particular case, he made the threat explicit, but he didn’t need to. Never Tell is the universal, underlying rule that all survivors intuit and then internalize.

  The phrase is beautiful in its efficiency, isn’t it? Two little words, but they convey so much more. Never tell. Or else.

  But here’s the thing. When does it happen? When do we actually read in the news about women who are killed for daring to speak of the harms committed against them? It doesn’t happen, at least not here, where we are privileged to live in a modern society. Words have been used by these abusers to silence us for too long, but the cowards never follow through on their threats. They are the ones who are weak. We are the ones with strength.

  They choose to threaten. I choose to call their bluff. I will not be silenced.

  B ack at the downtown gym with complacent staff and a public computer, those words were inducing their own kind of threat. This endeavor was proving more difficult than previously envisioned. She had not only continued to blog, she had defiantly kept the threats visible in the comments section. Now she was raising the possibility of a police investigation.

  Although it was tempting to reconsider strategy, there seemed to be no other option but to leave another response.

  “I look forward to proving you wrong. I know your name. I’ve seen your family. And I know where you live.”

  I n his rented room at the Tonawanda Motor Inn, Jimmy Grisco finished reading the last of the letters. He hadn’t thought about these things for fifteen years, but seeing the yellowed pages now had him remembering how he’d felt back then.

  It was ironic. He’d been out for two months. He’d searched as well as he could-asking around, checking the phone book, that sort of thing-but had gotten nowhere. Then, yesterday, the prosecutor had hauled him into her office. Why is this person calling the prison? she wanted to know. Keep your nose clean. You got a second chance, James. Don’t be causing yourself any trouble.

  And then he’d seen that note next to the lawyer’s computer. The name and phone number just sitting there for him, better than if he had planned it himself. He pretended not to see, but, man, how he’d started repeating those numbers in his head over and over and over again. Picturing the layout on a phone’s touch pad. Imagining the shape. Anything to keep that number locked up in his mind.

  Finally he’d ended up in the courthouse elevator with that guy scribbling file notes with his left hand. He asked to borrow the pen, using his own forearm as a scratchpad. Fifteen years ago, when he’d gone in, a phone number could only do so much. These days? On the Internet a phone number could get you everything.

  He packed the letters away into the same Adidas shoe box he’d stored them in all those years ago. He still couldn’t believe the police hadn’t paid more attention to them when they searched his apartment back then. Goes to show they didn’t really care about the whole story.

  He’d found the shoe box in his uncle’s basement last month, when he’d finally gone through all the crap that had been stored there since his arrest. He had almost thrown it out. Now he was glad he hadn’t.

  Chapter Nineteen

  As Ellie was walking to her car, she spotted a kid in a Casden uniform on the corner of Seventy-fourth Street. He was smoking a cigarette. She recognized him from Julia’s Facebook page as her on-and-off boyfriend, Marcus Graze.

  “You didn’t get the news flash? The mayor doesn’t want people smoking near schools.”

  If the kid was fazed by Julia’s death or a police detective’s harangue, he didn’t show it.

  Marcus Graze was only sixteen years old but carried himself like the thirty-eight-year-old investment banker Ellie had briefly lived with a few years back. Chest out. Shoulders down. Chin forward. The collar of the crested navy-blue blazer was turned up, just grazing his shaggy blond hair. If posture reflected self-confidence, this kid had it in spades.

  He took a deep drag on his filtered Camel. “Don’t give me that Officer Healthy routine. I noticed you breathing it in. Go ahead. I won’t tell anyone.”

  He leaned his body toward Ellie’s as he extended the cigarette toward her. She suddenly understood all those songs by men about teenage girls as temptresses.

  “You’re sweet but half my age.”

  “Older women know what they’re doing.”

  “And Julia Whitmire didn’t?”

  “Julia was cool.”

  “All the money your parents are dropping on Casden and the best you can do is cool?”

  “I can get fancy if you want. She was sophisticated. Tolerant. Inquisitive. Adventurous. Nonconformist. How about that? Sometimes simple’s better, though. If you knew her, you’d know what I mean. She was… cool.”

  “Were you dating?”

  He smiled, but with his downcast gaze and the accompanying sigh, the overall effect was more sad than cocky. “I don’t date. Julia didn’t date. We were fuck buddies. Oops, there I go again with the simple words.”

  “It’s a strange way to talk about a girl you were intimate with, just a day after her death.”

  “Julia would have said the same about me. We weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend, if that’s what you were hoping to find.”

  “Too conformist for you?”

  “Yeah, if you must know.”

  “Regardless of the terminology, don’t most teenagers still couple up?”

  “Our crowd isn’t most teenagers. We’re not from that segment of society that becomes police officers or bookkeepers or teachers.”

  “I’m afraid I’m missing your point.”

  Marcus spoke with the kind of practiced assuredness that revealed he’d delivered this lecture to others without challenge. He was used to pontificating to a deferential audience, most likely other kids eager to soak in even an ounce of what they perceived as profound wisdom. “We are told from day one that we are special. That we’re not like the other, little, people. That we have to excel. That we have to be the best of the best of the best. What was your summer job in high school, Detective?”

  “I sold clothes at the mall.” She lied. He didn’t need to know that she’d flipped burgers at Orange Julius when she wasn’t trying to score scholarship money on the Kansas beauty pageant circuit.

  “See? The girls I know? If they’re interested in fashion, they’re supposed to have internships with Marc Jacobs or, better yet, Anna Wintour. Me? I like nightlife. Entertainment. The creation of a lifestyle. I lined up an internship with the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group.”

  She recognized the name of a high-end restaurateur.

  “Impressive.”

  He stomped out his cigarette butt, then immediately lit another smoke. “Not if you’re Simon Graze.”

  “I take it that’s your father?”

  “He says the restaurant business is for gays and immigrants, whatever the hell that means. He finally compromised by getting me an internship with a hotel group his friend runs instead. Even that he sees as slumming. People like Julia Whitmire and I don’t date or go steady or whatever you want to call it, because we’ve got enough pressure on us as it is. It’s more like we work hard, so we party hard.”

  “And does a drug like Adderall help with that?”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes. I’ve pulled a couple of all-nighters with a little bump. Ritalin makes a good combo. I’ve got to be careful, though, because that plus the Xanax throws me off a little.”

  She started to laugh but realized he was serious. She was starting to understand why that
psychologist in the video debate had been so weary of these prescriptions for children.

  “Where do kids get the Adderall?”

  He stifled a laugh. “Sorry. Kids. It sounds funny, is all. Some kids get prescriptions for ADHD, and most of those kids take some for themselves and dole out the rest. It’s easier to buy prescription drugs than alcohol, really. Adderall, Ritalin, Oxi, Valium. No problemo. Xanax is my fifth antidepressant since I was thirteen. I’ve got friends on Paxil, Prozac, Lexapro-you name it. What’s any of it got to do with Julia slitting her wrists?”

  “I never said she slit her wrists.”

  “Come on. Every kid north of Fifty-eighth Street knows about it by now. And I’m trying to save you some time by telling you how it is. Julia was truly a fantastic girl. But if you want to understand her, you can’t look at it through the eyes of your inner sixteen-year-old Jersey City mall girl. A girl like Julia’s been giving head since she was twelve. She started calling her mother Katherine when she was thirteen, around the time she tried her first blow. I’m sad she’s gone, but shit happens. A couple months ago, a guy in my class shot himself up with enough heroin to kill a herd of elephants. It was on Valentine’s Day. Very romantic, right?”

  That would account for the “second time in a semester” comment she’d overheard at the headmistress’s office.

  “So you’re saying some people just can’t handle the pressure?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “According to some of her other friends, Julia had been distracted lately. Busy, like she had a pretty serious relationship going with someone.”

  “Well, it wasn’t me.”

  “But did you also notice a change in Julia’s schedule? Was she around less recently?”

  He took a drag from his cigarette. When he shrugged as he exhaled, it was as if a part of the chip on his shoulder slipped off. “Yeah, now that you mention it. Usually she was the one who’d call me to hook up-almost always when she was feeling kind of shitty about herself or her family or whatever.”

  “So you helped her out by sleeping with her when she was low?”

  “We’re both fucked up. What do you want? But I hadn’t heard from her for at least a couple of months. And the last few times I buzzed her, she basically blew me off.”

  “Did you ask her why?”

  “To what end? Not like we were great loves or anything. I figured she wasn’t interested anymore. No big deal.”

  “If she was seeing someone seriously, do you have any thoughts about who it would have been?”

  “No one on the prep scene, that’s for sure.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I would have heard about it. And Julia wasn’t the type to get all googly-eyed for some high school kid.”

  “I hear she had a thing for older guys.”

  “Anyone she couldn’t have. Ooh, you know who you should talk to?” He sounded excited by the prospect. “Mr. Wallace.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The forty-year-old physics teacher all the girls pine for. Julia was totally hot for him, and she’s not one to take no for an answer. Maybe dreamy Kenneth Wallace is your mystery man. Now, wouldn’t that be scandalous? Margaret Carter will stroke out on the front steps.”

  “The headmistress?”

  “She’s in full-on bunker mode. If she could shut down the school without losing her job, she would have done it hours ago. She visited all the morning classes personally to make sure we all knew that talking to the press would be strictly frowned upon-meaning one less gold star for our college admission letters.”

  Ellie pictured all those online profiles for Casden students that had suddenly been “unavailable.”

  “Is that why I couldn’t see some of the students’ Facebook pages this morning?”

  Suddenly he didn’t want to answer. “Bill Whitmire’s kid offs herself? The second Casden student this semester? The media will be all over this. We’re hunkered in the bunker.”

  As if on cue, a NewsOne truck pulled in front of the school. “Told you so.”

  Ellie was heading back to her car when she heard the boy’s voice again behind her.

  “You should tell her parents a hundred grand’s not enough. At least not in Julia’s circle.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, you didn’t even know? That is classic. Mommy and Daddy dearest announced a hundred-thousand-dollar reward for info. Might make a difference if she’d been killed by some gangbanger in the Bronx. But the people who knew Julia best know there’s nothing to tell: Life sucks and then you die. Besides, that kind of money’s only-what? Like a few months’ splurge for a kid who’s already got a trust fund? They’re wasting their time.”

  H er cell phone rang as she unlocked the car door. It was Rogan.

  “Hey. I just talked to one of Julia’s friends and want to scrub my brain out. You can’t possibly be done already.” Judges insisted on promptness from everyone but themselves. By Ellie’s estimation, Rogan’s testimony on the pretrial motions in the Washington case should have started only minutes earlier.

  “The defense withdrew the motion. They reached a plea agreement before I even hit the stand. Guess I scared them that much.” Despite the bravado behind his words, he sounded disappointed.

  “I’m afraid to ask.” She knew how much Rogan cared about that case. She had watched him adjust Thelma Washington’s threadbare housedress before they’d zipped the body bag around her corpse.

  “Life with possibility of parole at twenty. I can live with it. Better than some jury feeling sorry for the crackhead and coming back with a Man One verdict. What’s up on your end?”

  “Have you heard anything from the Whitmires? A kid at the Casden School says they announced a reward.”

  “Hold on a second.” She heard Rogan asking someone in the background to pull up the New York Post ’s website. “Yep, got it right here. A hundred grand.”

  Just as Marcus Graze had said. “I figure we only have a couple of hours before we get hammered by all the money-sniffing whack-jobs coming out of the woodwork. Very helpful of them to mention it to us, huh?”

  “Great. The phone number listed here’s not even a city number. If they’d coordinated with us, we could have at least used the tip line and staffed it with our own people. Now we have no idea what kind of airhead will be manning the incoming calls. Rich people got their own way of doing stuff.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” she said, recalling the bizarre atmosphere at Casden.

  “I’m heading your way. Where you at?”

  She gave him the location of her parked car. She wasn’t planning on heading out yet. She sat in the driver’s seat, but did not turn on the engine, watching the entrance to the Casden School. “Do me a favor before you leave? See if you can find a picture online of a Casden teacher named Kenneth Wallace. Supposedly teaches physics.”

  Margaret Carter might be in bunker mode, but for the first time, Ellie was starting to think that Julia’s story might be more complicated than she’d first thought-and that somehow the answers would be found inside that building.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ramona sat on the bench next to the playground south of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Though a sign labeled it the Pat Hoffman Friedman Playground, everyone in the neighborhood called this the Three Bears Playground because of the bronze statue of three bears-one sitting, one standing, one walking. She watched two little boys climbing on top of the sitting and walking bears, just as she had as a toddler. One of Ramona’s favorite childhood pictures showed her standing on the back of the walking bear, her hands held in front of her like paws to emulate the standing bear beside her, her mother hovering behind, waiting to catch her in case of a fall.

  Today, she chose this bench more for its view of her own apartment building than for the bears. She stole another glance across Fifth Avenue. Nothing. She took a lick of the whipped cream on top of her Frappuccino.

  She hadn’t
planned to cut school. Her parents had offered to let her stay home, but honestly, the thought of staying in the apartment all day with her mom was unbearable. Her mother kept trying to convince her to talk about her feelings.

  How are you feeling? How are you feeling? Tell me all about your feelings.

  If she heard that word one more time, she was going to throw something. So she had put on her uniform with every intention of making it to classes. Then, on her way to Casden, she realized everyone would be talking smack about Julia-either pretending they were better friends with her than they were, or knew more about it than they possibly could, or saying she was the fucked-up head case who killed herself.

  Before she knew it, she was calling the school from her cell phone, telling the headmistress’s secretary she was Adrienne Langston and that Ramona wouldn’t be coming to school today. No school. No home. Just walking through Central Park, thinking about that last phone call to Julia on Friday night.

  Julia had picked up after half a ring: “Hey.”

  “It happened again.”

  “Your little visitor? How many times have I told you there’s a book about that you should read. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. And then one day, when you meet a man you love and are ready to be married and have a baby-”

  “Very cute. It’s my mom again. She’s acting weird.”

  “Your mom’s not weird. Mine, on the other hand? Mindblow.”

  “Seriously, she hasn’t been herself. If I ask her about it, she snaps at me.”

  “You realize that no one else in the world would find this unusual, don’t you? Leave it alone, and consider yourself lucky.”

  Ramona absorbed what Julia was trying to say, but she and her mom had always been more like best friends than mother and daughter-or stepmother and stepdaughter. That was exactly why the recent distance between them had been bothering her. She should have listened to Julia right then and there. She should have let it drop. But instead she’d gone on and on about how she and her mom were different from other relationships. What if the entire conversation had only served to remind Julia of how screwed up her own parents were?