How It Happened

by Michael Koryta

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2018 by Michael Koryta

  Cover design by Allison J. Warner

  Cover photographs: leaves on water by Ildiko Neer / Arcangel Images; face by Stephen Carroll / Arcangel Images

  Author photograph by Jonathan Mehring

  Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  Little, Brown and Company

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  First ebook edition: May 2018

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  Excerpt from “Nobody Wins” (here) by Brian Fallon (2016), used with permission. Excerpts from “Sparks Fly” (here) by Waxahatchee (2017), used with permission.

  ISBN 978-0-316-29392-1

  E3-20180410-DA-PC

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One: Along for the Ride 1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  Part Two: Storytellers 20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  Part Three: Clean Tragedy 44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Michael Koryta

  Newsletters

  For Christine

  Part One

  Along for the Ride

  And it would make a great story

  If I ever could remember it right.

  —Jason Isbell,

  “Super 8”

  1

  I’d never seen him before the day we killed him.

  Now, Jackie, I knew her. I’d known her forever, really. We were never friends or anything, but it’s a small town, so all the girls know each other. We were in the same classes, at least until high school. Then she was in the smart classes. She didn’t party much either. What I remember most about her is from fifth grade, when her mom died. What made you ask me about that, anyhow? That was a long time ago, and it doesn’t have anything to do with this. But up until we killed her, that’s probably what I remember best, sure.

  Her mom died in a car wreck. I think she slid across the center line in the snow or something. Jackie missed a few days of school, and we all had to make her cards, you know, draw pictures and write notes about how sad we were for her. She came back to school the next week and her dad walked her into the room, and he was holding her hand so tight. Like he just couldn’t let her go. I watched that, and I was thinking of the cards we’d all made her, and…this will make me sound bad, but I was kind of pissed off about that. Because, sure, it was sad that her mom was dead, but she still had her dad, right? Well, I was living with my grandmother, and neither of my parents were dead, but they might as well have been. I mean, my dad never held my hand the way Howard Pelletier held Jackie’s hand. Nobody ever did. So I felt bad for her, but…nobody was having the whole class write me cards, you know? Nobody gave a shit what was going on in my life. I wasn’t one of the girls people cared about, I was always just…overlooked.

  I can’t believe she kept that card. Did she keep them all? Whatever, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. I don’t understand why you brought that up, Barrett. It’s got nothing to do with anything that happened last summer.

  Okay, so the day that does matter was the last really hot day of the summer. It got hotter in the beginning of September than it had been all of August. I think that had something to do with it. I mean, I’m not making excuses, but I keep thinking about how it started and where we went and I just feel, like, positive we would never have been out that way if it hadn’t been for the heat. And for the way the heat made everybody feel, especially Mathias. Am I supposed to say his full name in this one, like we don’t all know it? Mathias Burke. You know what’s funny? Your eyes get tight at the corners when you hear his full name. That’s really weird. Every time I say it, I can see you tighten up. Like you’re bracing for a punch. Or want to throw one. Which is it? Hey, you said to tell it in my own words, right? Careful what you wish for, Barrett.

  All right…it was the first weekend that the tourists were gone, or most of them, the ones with kids were all gone and so it was a little quieter, and Mathias had gotten stir-crazy or something. That night—Friday night—he was jacked up, buzzing. He was just waiting to pop off. Like there was something living underneath his skin, looking for a way out. And he kept bitching about the heat. Cass, she was the same way about the heat, but that’s because she didn’t want to sweat, she had to stay just right. She always looked like a whore when she put on makeup, didn’t understand how to do anything subtle, you know? Always a lot where a little would do. I know I’m not supposed to say anything mean about her because she’s dead, but it’s just the truth.

  Oh, let me back up—I was working the day shift at the liquor store​. I was off at six, and Cass was walking over to meet me and then we were just going to go into town or whatever. Maybe back to her trailer, just hang out. We didn’t really have a plan. If we’d had anywhere to go, we wouldn’t have ended up with him that night. But we were free.

  Mathias came in at…I want to say it was five thirty? A little before quitting time for me. I’ve known him for years, but we never dated or anything. We didn’t really hang out, even. So I was surprised when he asked what I was doing that night. I never knew Mathias to party much. He was always working, it seemed like. If you saw him drinking, it was in the winter. In the summer, he was, like, twenty-hours-a-day working. I told him Cass and I were supposed to go out to the bars, and he seemed kind of disappointed, and for a moment there, I wondered if he actually was hitting on me. But then he just shifted gears when Cass
showed up.

  He was telling us about this client’s house he had access to. Some rich bitch who used the place only two weeks a year or something, but it was a real special spot and he wanted to go out there and drink and swim. I was kind of interested, but then he said he knew he could get a score too, and that put me off because I’d been trying to get clean. But Cass was all about it.

  We went out into the parking lot because I’d finished my shift. We drank some booze out there—I think it was like a six-pack of Twisted Tea and a couple forties of beer, and Cass had some vodka. One of the flavored kinds, apple or raspberry or something. We sat on the tailgate of his truck and smoked cigarettes and drank. Oh, this was his work truck. Not the one we were in when we killed them.

  Mostly we were talking about the heat. That’s why I remember that it seemed to bother him. Because he was looking up at the sun and talking about it like it was personal. As if the sun had come up hot that day looking only for him, like somebody picking a fight.

  We chilled for a little while and then he said he had a good place to party and that he’d made a score, and he’d share it if I gave him a ride back to his truck. I was like, You’re sitting on your truck, genius. But he said the truck he wanted was at a client’s house, so he needed a ride out there. You know he’s a caretaker, so he has all these summerhouses he’s always working on.

  Now, I hadn’t done much all summer but drink. Maybe a little weed, but that was about it. I mean, I guess a few pills. But nothing serious, because, you know, people kept dying last summer, even before Cass. It was all over the news. There was bad heroin somebody brought up from Washington, DC. A black guy, I think. Or maybe he was Mexican. But I know it was from DC, because people kept calling it that. It was moving around like a fever that summer. People were dying without even OD’ing because of what it was cut with, some chemical thing I never really understood. I just knew it was bad shit and people were dying, more people that single summer than had died in Maine the entire year before from drugs, I think. Maybe that’s not a fact, but it’s what I heard.

  So, like I said, I was trying to get clean, but if Cass and Mathias left together, it would’ve been just me, right? Just me and a friggin’ six-pack of Twisted Tea on a Friday night. Who wants that? So I just…you know how it goes. You give in. You never think anything bad is going to happen. I said I’d go along but I didn’t want to do any drugs, and Mathias just kind of winked and said, We’ll see.

  We left, and I was driving and he was shotgun and Cass should’ve been in the backseat but she crawled up into the middle, and she was basically sitting on his lap. Annoying, but that was just Cass. Only thing that surprised me was that Mathias seemed to be going along with it. He’d never struck me as the type who’d…how do I say this? He was just a more serious type of dude, right? Always kind of locked into his own thing, so it was strange to see him act like that.

  That’s when I figured he was riding something more than a beer buzz.

  Anyhow, I was driving and focused on his directions, because I didn’t want to get pulled over. He was telling us that once we got to his truck, he’d take us down to this summer person’s house that he had access to, telling us how great it was, really hyping it. I was picturing something different than where we ended up, something fancier.

  His truck was at a house somewhere on the Archer’s Mill Road. I honestly don’t remember the spot all that well. He just told me to pull into a driveway, and I did. His truck was parked down at the bottom of the driveway, and you couldn’t see it from the road. There was a tarp over the hood, and I asked what that was about, and he gave this big grin and was like, Check this shit out, and pulled the tarp off.

  He’d painted the hood real bright white, and then in the center there was this black cat, a bad drawing of one, like a little kid would do of a Halloween cat, you know? Fur sticking out, back arched, tail up. All these black squiggles.

  It was getting dark by then, and he was using his cell phone to light it up for us, and when I got closer, I saw that he’d painted the cat’s eyes red. The whole thing was strange, but there was something about the eyes that didn’t match the rest. It sounds dumb, but for some reason the eyes bothered me.

  I didn’t understand why he was proud of that truck. It was just…dumb. This cartoon black cat with red eyes painted in the middle of the friggin’ hood against that white paint that was so bright it was kind of hard to look at. The paint job was dumb and the truck was pretty shitty.

  He got the drugs out then. First time anyone shot up was down there where he’d left his truck, and it was just him and Cass. I said no, thanks, I was good with beer. I don’t know how long we stayed down there. They shot up and drank and I just had a couple cigarettes and a beer or two. Maybe a hit of vodka. I was still sober when Mathias said it was time to go to the pond, and he was going to drive us in that dumb truck.

  There was no extended cab, only a bench seat in front. I usually get stuck in the middle because I’m small, right? But Cass took the middle that night. She wanted to be close to Mathias.

  But, hey, before I keep going, I want to make one thing clear, okay?

  I was just along for the ride.

  You know what the Archer’s Mill Road is like, all those curves. Mathias was drunk and messed up and driving too fast, and it seemed like something could go wrong easy. He was playing some sort of bad rock-country music. Not like Nickelback-bad, but still pretty awful. I looked over and saw Cass had her hand on his crotch, and then I wished I hadn’t gone along. It’s better to be alone than third-wheeling it in a truck with crap like that going on right next to you. But that’s how she would get when she was using. When Cass was messed up, she was easy. You don’t need to take my word for that; ask around.

  When we got out to the camp, though, I felt better. It was just like he’d said—there was a dock and a raft and it was warm and there were a million stars. I remember the stars real well, because after Mathias and Cass got in the water and swam out to the raft, I just lay on my back on the dock so I didn’t have to listen to them out there. That was the first time I hit any of the heroin. Only reason I did that was because I didn’t want to listen to them doing whatever they did out there, and it was just…it was just so pretty out. All those stars.

  I might have passed out for a while. I guess I must have, because I don’t remember much between the stars and the sun. Cass and Mathias were out of the water and dressed again. She came down to the dock and had a beer with me—the beers were all warm by then—and I told her I’d like to have a place like that camp someday. It wasn’t so much, you know, but it was real pretty and peaceful and I’ve never felt like I needed all that much. There was a lot of room for my animals. My dogs, Sparky and Bama, they’d have loved a place like that. I think Cass wanted me to ask about her and Mathias, but I wasn’t going to. I didn’t give a shit what they’d done. I figured I’d find out about it when I took her to the clinic at some point down the road.

  Everything was pretty chill but then Mathias was rushing all of a sudden, and he couldn’t find his keys. He said he’d lost them when he and Cass swam out to the raft. So he’s cussing like crazy and blaming her and splashing around in the water like he’s actually going to find his damn keys, and she was shouting back, and I was just trying to get away from it all, so I went to sit in the truck. That was when I saw the keys were still in the ignition.

  I thought that was funny, you know? He’s losing his mind out in the pond, and the keys are in the friggin’ ignition. I told Cass, and I was laughing, but by then her temper was up, and so she got the keys and held them up and shouted at him, telling him what a dumb son of a bitch he was. Then she got in the truck and started it, so I got in too. Mathias came running up, soaked, and that was the first time I saw the knife.

  Cass was behind the wheel. She could’ve just driven off. But he was holding the knife up and punching the truck and saying how he’d kill her, and he—well, this is the thing—I was going to say he scared h
er. But I’m not positive about that. For whatever part of her he scared, he excited some other part. Because the thing to do would be to get out, but she just slid over and opened the door.

  I’ve thought about that a lot. What if she gets out? What if we both get out?

  Instead, she stayed, and she told me not to leave. I didn’t know what to do. I just wanted him to keep focused on her, I guess. He opened the door and told us to get out, that we were walking home. Cass told him to go to hell, she wasn’t getting out of the truck and neither was I. I never spoke for myself. It was so intense right then…she was almost like a shield, you know? I didn’t want to call attention to myself. And I was scared for what he’d do to her if I left them alone. I was scared, period.

  So he gets in and says, Fine, you bitches will get what you want. And right then I’m thinking I’ve got to get out of the truck with or without her, but he peeled out. After that, there was no getting out.

  We were going way too fast by then.

  He came out of the camp and turned right instead of left, and I thought he’d turned in the wrong direction, but I wasn’t going to say that to him, not the way he was. He kept punching the dashboard and saying how we’d get what we wanted now. He was driving fast, crazy fast. We were all over the road. The worse the curves, the faster he took them. I was afraid he was going to lose control. Considering what happened, pretty dumb thought, right? But that memory is crystal to me. What I was afraid of, back then, was that he’d roll the truck.

  Mostly what I remember from that ride is staring at the cat. It started to look a little crazier to me on that ride. The night before it had been dumb, right? But when we were flying down the road that morning, it looked…mean.

  There’s that orchard on the Archer’s Mill Road, and we passed that doing, I don’t know, maybe seventy. Felt like a hundred. We passed the orchard and then there’s the cemetery. The old one. Nobody goes out there except at Halloween or maybe tourists to take pictures. Cass and Mathias were screaming at each other and all of a sudden he says something like, If you want to die, I’ll take you to the right place. Then he drove right—well, to me, it felt like he drove right off the road. But there’s actually this old dirt path that goes through that cemetery, goes all the way down to the water almost. We bounced through the ditch and ended up on that path, and the tombstones were flying right by us. I was sure he was planning on driving us into the biggest one. What do they call those things, the ones that look like forts for ghosts or something? Not museums but a word like that. Museums for the dead. There’s a big one in there, about halfway back, up on this little rise with a view of the water. I think he was aiming for that. Crash into it and kill us all, just because he had a bad high and the sun had been too hot for him the day before. There was no reason for anything that was happening.