White Lies

by Jeremy Bates

  She had thrown the doll out with the rest of his gifts to her.

  Therapy that time, not cruelty.

  The remaining pictures were of her close friends. Martha McGee, a happy Mrs. Cleaver with two young boys. Pamela Doherty, a New York City publishing manager who was currently on maternity leave and whose baby shower Katrina would be attending in the near future. And her best friend, Bianca Silverstein, a marketing executive for a big Seattle-based advertising company. Bianca was single but had a nine-year-old girl from a previous marriage to her high school sweetheart. Katrina felt that nesting urge once more, stronger than ever.

  The last picture, larger than the rest and in a heavy silver frame, was of her parents, their arms around one another, happy, loving, the whole nine yards. Like Shawn, they had left her much too early. Unlike Shawn, they had not died peacefully but in an explosion of metal and glass. It happened two weeks before Christmas in 2002. Katrina had been working on her teacher certification degree at the University of Washington. She had been summoned from the lecture hall to the dean’s office, where the dean had explained that her parents had been driving along State Route 99 just outside of Everett that morning when they’d hit a Shiras moose. The collision killed them instantly. Katrina had never before or again experienced such a ruthless emotion as the one that had clubbed her that morning, not even when Shawn died, because she’d at least had time to prepare for his sad fate. The dean wouldn’t go into any more detail, but she later learned her parents’ sedan took out the adult bull’s legs, hurtling the seven-and-a-half-foot tall beast straight through the windshield. The impact crushed her mother’s rib cage and vital organs, as well as broke her neck and back. A tine from the velvet antlers pierced her father’s chest, going straight through his heart and pinning him to the seat.

  Katrina switched off the memory, banishing it for now, something she had become very good at over the years. She tried to bring up some pleasant ones of her parents, but she couldn’t focus on any for longer than a few seconds before they wavered and broke up, like mirages. Unfortunately, they seemed to be getting more and more vague and insubstantial with the passing of time. She feared one day they may disappear forever. It wasn’t fair, she’d always thought, at how the bad ones remained vivid while the good ones faded away.

  Bandit, ever attuned to her rollicking emotions, padded over from where he’d been lying next to the fireplace. He flopped down beside her. She scratched his head, grateful for his company.

  The shrill ring of the telephone made her jump.

  For a moment Katrina remained seated cross-legged on the floor, trying to make sense of what she’d just heard. She knew it was a phone—the old-fashioned clanging of a rotary phone, not the musical jib of her cell—only she hadn’t installed a landline.

  She stood, knowing she would have to answer it, even though she knew it couldn’t possibly be for her. Curiosity demanded it. A third ring. As she narrowed in on the source of the noise, she decided the call must be for the old couple from whom she rented, now sunning themselves in Sacramento. They’d simply forgotten to cancel their service and an uninformed friend was trying to reach them. Maybe a friend counting down the days in an old-age home who didn’t know Monday from Friday. Or maybe it was nothing but a wrong number.

  Five rings. Six.

  Finally she found the phone, a maroon thing sitting on a dusty shelf near the back door. The cord was stapled into the wall before it terminated in the jack located in the footing that ran along the floor. She snatched up the receiver and said hello.

  There was no response.

  “Hello?” she repeated.

  No reply.

  The obnoxious disconnect tone buzzed in her ear. Whoever it had been had hung up. She replaced the receiver on the cradle.

  Don’t overreact, she told herself. You simply missed the call. After all, it had rung—what? Six? Seven times? And don’t even start thinking about the hitchhiker. He’s not stalking you. He didn’t see you today. Even if he did, how the hell would he get this number?

  She was right, of course. But knowing that didn’t ease her nerves.

  Shaking her head, Katrina went to the kitchen to make something to eat but found she was no longer very hungry. She eyed a bottle of Australian Pinot Noir on the counter top. It was a 2001 reserve from Panorama Vineyard in Tasmania. Supposedly expensive, a gift from a close friend after Shawn had passed. She’d been saving it for—she didn’t know. For something special, at any rate.

  Oh, what the hell, she decided. It should probably be in a cellar anyway.

  She opened the wooden box it came in, lifted the bottle from the cushioned velvet, and filled a burgundy glass halfway to the rim. She returned to the living room, where she curled up with Bandit in the armchair and turned on the small TV that, along with the armchair and futon, had been one of the few furnishings left behind. She watched an episode of a syndicated sitcom, then flicked to Dateline, which was featuring a story about an allegedly dangerous fugitive on the run who was suspected to be in the Seattle area.

  Katrina only saw the first few minutes before her eyelids became heavy from the wine and she drifted off into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 3

  Tuesday morning. The first official day of school.

  Katrina arrived early to get settled in and to meet some of her coworkers. Walking from her car to the main office, she passed a few senior boys huddled in a circle, smoking cigarettes. They eyed her but didn’t say anything. Probably wondering who the hell she was. Her students—the younger ones at least—liked to tell her she was too young and pretty to be a teacher, which always both embarrassed and pleased her. She got more looks inside, from early-bird kids already sitting at their desks, looking out their classroom doors when they heard her heels ringing on the tiles. No one was at the office yet, so she made her way to the English Department. She had a so-so idea of the school layout from when she’d visited for her interview. Skype would have saved her the two-hour-plus trip, but apparently the principal was a little behind the times when it came to technology. Only one teacher was in the staffroom, a mustachioed twenty-one-year veteran named Steve who showed her how to use the very basic coffee machine, then gave her a lowdown on the troublesome students.

  At quarter past seven the teacher’s room began to fill up. A secretary stopped by and asked Katrina to come with her to the vice principal’s office. Yes, boss. The VP’s name was Diane Schnell. She was a tall, no-nonsense woman whose hair was pulled into a severe bun that tolerated absolutely no errant hairs. The kind of woman that terrified kids; the kind of woman that made a perfect VP. Katrina had met her during the interview in June.

  “Ah, good morning, Katrina,” Diane Schnell said, waving Katrina inside her small and cluttered office. She’d been standing behind her desk, looking out the window. One wall was taken up with a bookcase full of textbooks and three-ring binders. On the other walls hung several crudely done acrylic paintings by kindergarten students—at least Katrina hoped for the sake of the school’s Art Department they were done by kinder tots. “I trust you had a good summer. Have you found everything you need this morning?”

  “Yes, the other teachers have been very helpful. Thank you.”

  “Wonderful, wonderful,” she said, though it was the type of “wonderful” that really meant “Enough chitchat.” Katrina remained standing just inside the door; she hadn’t been offered a seat. “I have a bit of news for you. We have a new superintendent this year. He oversees a few schools in Chelan County. He’s young, you know.” She said this last bit in such a way it became clear she did not think young people should hold positions of importance on the school board. What sixty-something Diane Schnell thought as of young, Katrina could only guess. “Anyway, he’s come up with a few ideas he thinks, well, I don’t really know what he thinks. What concerns you is that, as a new teacher, you will be observing a few of your colleague’s classes this morning. To get a feel for how we do things around here. That means you an
d I will be sitting in on the first two periods. Since you’re teaching freshmen, and they’re in an assembly until ten o’clock, the scheduling will all work out fine. Do you have any problems with this?”

  Katrina was about to protest. She had nearly eight years of teaching experience under her belt. But she held her tongue. She knew better than to make a fuss on the first day of anything. Especially to someone like Diane Schnell, who likely kept a list of her enemies in a notebook and who wore Poison by Christian Dior simply because it was labeled “poison.” Besides, as she’d learned firsthand countless times before, teaching was full of this kind of idiotic bureaucracy. It was always easiest to simply take it all in stride. So she nodded, said something silly like “even teachers need to be taught,” then followed Diane to the classroom of a Mrs. Horton. They took empty seats at the back.

  Mrs. Horton, a history teacher, resembled a chubby swan with her almost nonexistent chin and long neck. She accepted Diane’s request to observe her lesson graciously, but Katrina could tell their unannounced arrival had flustered the woman—and with good reason. As it turned out, she didn’t have much planned for the first day back after summer vacation besides a general outline of the material the class was to cover over the first semester.

  Regardless, Diane took about a half page of notes. While the VP was scribbling away, Mrs. Horton caught Katrina’s eye and shook her head, as if to say, “Get used to it.” Indeed, Katrina began to wonder what Diane’s real motivations were for these impromptu visits: to give Katrina a feel for how other teachers ran their classrooms, or to give herself a Machiavellian excuse to appraise her staff, some of whom had probably been at this school for years and to whom a formal evaluation on the first day of class would be nothing but an outright insult.

  The bell rang at twenty past eight. Katrina and Diane were up and off, on their way to find their next victim. With barely a knock, the VP breezed into the second-period classroom they would be observing, stated their purpose, and proceeded to make introductions.

  Katrina was speechless.

  The teacher, a tall, young man dressed in jeans and a Detroit Red Wings hockey jersey, was staring at her with equal amazement.

  It was the hitchhiker.

  Katrina was sure Diane had noticed the uncomfortable introduction. But perhaps not wanting to ask any questions with twenty sets of eyes trained on them, she simply indicated for Katrina to follow her to the back of the classroom, where they both took a seat. Katrina sat there in a daze. She kept expecting someone to jump up and tell her it was all a joke. That didn’t happen, as she knew it wouldn’t, and slowly the reality began to sink in. She was in some serious hot water. Not because she had done anything wrong. She hadn’t. Only because there was now going to be some explaining that needed to be done—some very awkward explaining.

  Mr. Marshall—or Zach, as he’d called himself the previous evening (Zach’s back, baby, she thought stupidly)—seemed to have recovered from his shock at seeing her and began reading off the roll call. Lindsey? Here. Jacob? Here. John? Here. Frantic woman who kicked me out of her car? Here. More than once, when he was matching a student’s face with his or her name, he caught Katrina’s eye, hesitated briefly, then moved on. Katrina knew Diane, sharp as she seemed to be, was likely not missing any of these furtive glances, and she felt increasingly tense. What could she possible say? The truth? That she’d picked up a hitchhiker who’d turned out to be a drunken creep and who’d kept checking her out in such a way she was certain he was going to—

  To what? Rape her?

  No, she’d seen the look in his eyes when she’d yelled at him. He was a fool and a sleaze, yes. But a rapist? No. Nevertheless, he had harassed her. Goddamn right he had. And that was something that was going to have to be discussed.

  Katrina recalled a long-forgotten incident from her first year at Washington State, when she’d been living on campus in the student residences. Every dorm room had been equipped with computerized locks that required a keycard to open them. Each floor supervisor had a master keycard in case of an emergency in which access to the room became necessary, or in case a student returned from the bars smashed without his or her key. One night the supervisor who oversaw the second floor of the east wing, Charlie Reaver—aka “Chubby” or “Reefers” because he was overweight and smoked a lot of pot—used his keycard to gain entry to the room of a pretty, bookish girl named Suzy Limmick. To do what? Who knew for sure? Maybe he thought a big fat guy surprising a girl sleeping in her bra and panties would be romantic. Suzy apparently didn’t think so. She freaked. It was a big scene. Shouting. Accusations. People sticking their heads out of their dorm rooms to see what all the fuss was about. Others who came back late from the bar hanging out around Suzy’s door, everyone trying to figure out what had happened, gossiping, speculating. The next day Suzy told anyone who would listen to her version of events. Eventually the university performed a formal inquest into the matter. Chubby explained he’d simply gotten the rooms mixed up, as he’d wanted to get into a friend’s room to borrow a video game. He was cleared of any fault. Nobody Katrina knew believed the flimsy excuse, but because Charlie was a lot more popular than Suzy, she was the one who became ostracized. Similarly, Katrina knew if word of her and Zach’s late night encounter spread throughout the school, it would quickly become grossly exaggerated, fantasy would circulate as fact, and most of her coworkers would likely sympathize with Zach, someone they knew.

  And that was simply unacceptable. She would not become a Suzy Limmick.

  As a consequence, it seemed she only had one option. Somehow she would have to get Zach alone and convince him to keep a lid on what happened. Which shouldn’t be too hard. He was the Charlie Reaver here. He was the one who should want this kept quiet the most.

  With that settled, Katrina returned her attention to the classroom proceedings. Zach had finished checking the attendance and was now sitting on the corner of his desk, relaxed, looking almost like a real teacher, minus the requisite clashing dress shirt and tie. He was asking students what they knew about philosophy. Blank faces. No hands in the air. “Let’s start with the word itself then,” he said. “Sophia is Greek for ‘wisdom.’ Philein means ‘to love.’ So what have we got?” He pointed to a sleepy-eyed student in the front row. “Martin?”

  “Uh—wisdom love?”

  “If you’re a caveman, maybe. Most people put the verb before the object. Madeleine?”

  “The love of wisdom.”

  “Hello! Now we’re talking. You taking notes, Martin? Pick up your pen.”

  Mr. Zach Marshall went on to outline the specific philosophers the class would be covering this semester, which included Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre, both of whom reasoned freedom and identity were constituted by the decisions and choices people made. “We are what we do,” Zach expounded, pausing for dramatic effect. “Not what we say we are.” Katrina had a sinking sensation that last point was some sort of sly existential jab at her. Nevertheless, Zach continued blithely along, and she had to give credit where credit was due. He knew his stuff and had the students listening with more attention than those she’d observed during the last period. Diane, too, seemed to be taking fewer notes.

  All the while Katrina tried to form some evaluation of the odd, young Zach Marshall—or boy-man, as she continued to think of him as—who’d entered her life in such a bizarre and unexpected fashion. She’d been right when she’d guessed his age to be somewhere in the early twenties. In fact, it looked as though he didn’t shave, or if he did, no more than once a week. His hair was dark brown and shaggy, his face gaunt and pale, which accentuated the brilliance of his unusual green eyes. Like chips of jade on bone china, she thought. In sum, it was an exotic look, and if she hadn’t known better, she would have had a hard time deciding whether he was a code-writing computer geek or a speed-balling rock star. Get rid of the hockey jersey and she’d probably lean toward the latter. Maybe a young Rod Stewart or Ronnie Wood. Then again, maybe not.

&n
bsp; The bell finally rang. Talk about a long fifty minutes. She felt as if she’d been sitting there for hours. The students clambered to their feet and made a general exodus toward the door. Zach busied himself sorting the papers on his desk, doing a poor job of trying to appear nonplussed.

  Diane went to the front of the classroom. Katrina followed.

  “Do you two know each other?” the VP asked after the last of the students had left. It wasn’t a question, but it wasn’t a statement either. Somewhere in between.

  “No,” Katrina said quickly before Zach could say anything to the contrary.

  Diane’s calculating eyes kept calculating. “It’s just that both of you seemed, well, as if you’d seen each other before.”

  Silence, brief but intense. The hesitant silence that precedes a lie. Katrina’s mind reeled for an excuse. Zach beat her to it. “Ah!” he said. “I believe I did see you, Miss Burton. In town this weekend. You were shopping at—”

  “Victorian Simplicity,” she improvised, naming the first shop that popped into her head.

  Diane looked at Zach quizzically. “What were you doing in there?”

  Katrina realized her mistake. Victorian Simplicity specialized in women’s fashion and collectables along the lines of dishes, dolls, and tea sets. Stupid, stupid.

  But Zach recovered smoothly enough. “It’s my mother’s birthday next week,” he said. “I was getting her a present. Ended up with—what are those things called? Right. A mortar and pestle.”