The Blackbird Season

by Kate Moretti

  “This is Mt. Oanoke.” He shrugged like this explained everything. “They found Nate’s coach hat in the woods where Lucia ran. Do you think he went after her? Have you talked to him? Did he go after her?” Dale was practically panting, his breath hot and warm, the odor of cafeteria gravy. Bridget stepped back, turned her head away, and took a breath.

  “I don’t know, Dale. I really don’t know anything.”

  “Then where is she, Bridget? Where?” Dale’s eyes blinked, rapid-fire, his lips twitching.

  “I don’t know, Dale. No one does.” Bridget shook herself, moved away from him, under the guise of talking to a student, holding her index finger up like she’d be right back, which of course they both knew was a lie.

  The cafeteria at Mt. Oanoke operated like a social command center, but not in the typical way, Bridget didn’t think. There were cliques, sure, but less so maybe than other schools. There was bullying, sure, but less so than other schools. Bridget had always really believed this, defended it even when Nate had called her a Pollyanna. He was further inside than her, the wolf watching the henhouse, and now Bridget wondered if he was right.

  Josh, Riana, Porter, Andrew, and Kelsey sat at the center table, holding court. Taylor sat on the end across from Kelsey. Bridget watched them from the vending machines, laughing, throwing napkins at each other, a single unified, ew, Josh, you’re disgusting, from Kelsey and Riana. Taylor was quiet, smiling naïvely and head bobbing, in a haphazard and random way. She was mostly ignored except for a periodic whisper from Kelsey. Riana paid her no attention. Andrew held the middle, the king on his throne, tall and lanky, and remained a bit dazed, would chime in once every few minutes and the table would laugh, riotously, overacting, like no one had ever said something so new, so funny before. Kelsey picked at a salad and reapplied lip gloss. Riana ate a cheeseburger, fast, with both hands, while Kelsey watched, her mouth hanging open, her cheeks candy pinked like conversation hearts.

  Bridget had never really watched them before, the way they interacted, how different they were from each other. She remembered knowing her previous students so much better than this bunch, all their nuances and kindnesses, cruelties and insecurities. But this crew confounded her. Their allegiances seemed to change with the wind. Maybe it was just her energy level this year. But it was May, the year almost over, the students sliding past her almost liquidly, her only knowledge of them what they wrote in their notebooks and turned in, half-truths and scribbled confessions. She hardly ever knew what to believe, and she’d been skimming more than reading.

  Bridget walked past their table, saw their heads bent together, whispering. Suddenly, Kelsey’s voice, high and shaky, “Witches get hanged.” And then Riana broke up laughing, followed by Josh. Andrew looked around like he lost the thread, a dopey smile stretched between his cheeks. Taylor got up and threw her trash away, left the cafeteria.

  Right before the bell, Bridget went to the bathroom. In the stall, she caught her breath, her cheeks pressed between her knees, heels balancing on the lid of the toilet, her skirt lifted up to her thighs and tucked, gathered, between her legs as she drew big, lung-expanding breaths. This had been happening a lot lately, this light-headedness, like she could just drift off to sleep and never wake up.

  The doors burst open and Bridget kept her feet up, held her breath. Two giggling girls, loud, swearing, fucking Jesus, what the fuck was that shit?

  Kelsey and Riana.

  “God, Josh’s been pissing me off lately. I’m gonna dump him before next year”: Kelsey.

  “You’ve been saying that since tenth”: Riana. Then, “Dude, Andrew needs to erase that shit before he gets in trouble.”

  “He’s such a whore. Did you see his face?”

  “No, I can’t look at his face, that big-ass nose.” Laughter. Deeper voice, mimicking. “Uh, what?”

  “I meant in the video. Like he’s gonna jizz by just looking at her.” Kelsey giggled, high and honking.

  “It’s his dream come true.” They both laughed. Then Riana: “Don’t let T hear that.”

  “Oh, like I care? She don’t belong with us.”

  “Watch yourself. I like her”: Riana.

  “Oh, now don’t go lightin’ me on fire.” Kelsey’s voice went high, singsong, and there was a smack, hand against the bare skin. Bridget held her breath, waiting. Then a laugh.

  “Come on, you know Andrew wrote that note. That was some kind of joke.”

  “Nah, he’s too thick for that. I don’t know who did it, but it was someone smarter than Evans,” Kelsey said. Then, “But you lit it up, right? She did not do that shit with her eyes.”

  The click of a purse, the smack of lips. Bridget leaned forward, almost touching the metal beige door. Everything you touch.

  Then, Riana. “Cat or scope?”

  “Scope, I think.” There was a rustling, and the garbled sound of a video, then a deep, slow voice, dreamlike. Say you want it, honey. Say yes. Look here and say it. Male laughing, several of them. A garbled hoot.

  “Shhh!” Kelsey said, cutting off the video. “I heard something. Is someone in here?”

  “The bell’s about to ring, just go. I’ll catch you later. If you see him, tell him to take that shit down.” Riana, the boss.

  “I don’t know if you can. It’s streamed. I don’t have the app, I wouldn’t touch that shit with a ten-foot pole. People are crazy.” Kelsey, giggling again.

  Their feet clattered on the tile, high-heeled wedges and short shorts; Bridget could see their long legs through the crack in the door. They weren’t supposed to wear things like that but only the teachers like Dale ever tried to enforce it.

  The bell clanged, echoing in the cavernous bathroom, and the door slammed shut. Bridget waited a moment until she was certain she was alone and then left the stall. She had a sixth-period class, Lucia’s class, but stood in the empty hallway, uncertain of what she’d heard and what it meant. She couldn’t stop hearing Kelsey’s voice in her mind, you lit it up, right? What did Riana say? Nothing as far as Bridget could hear.

  She stopped in the faculty lounge and found a one-sided flyer for this weekend’s battle of the bands and a pen. She scribbled some of the things she’d heard: streaming app? cat, scope, look here, and say it.

  She folded the flyer into her palm, and rushed to class.

  • • •

  After the eighth-period bell, she followed the kids out and rushed to the math wing. Dale was packing up his bag and she knocked a beat—shave and a haircut—on the doorjamb.

  “Hey, can I ask you a question? I know you’re into tech.”

  Dale gave her a weary look. A now you want to talk because you want something look. After a second, he shrugged, his pointed shoulders lifted up to elfin ears, a sullen gesture.

  “What’s streaming?” Bridget felt stupid; she should know this by now. He made an incredulous face.

  “Like for TV? Netflix, Amazon, YouTube?”

  “No,” Bridget faltered, because she really didn’t know. It could be YouTube. “Like if you were going to stream something yourself?”

  “Hmmm, YouTube is static content, mostly. You make a video, you upload it. There are streaming apps, is that what you mean? You can upload a live feed to the Net.”

  “Yes, I think that’s it.”

  “Okay, right now there’s Periscope, which is connected to Twitter and Meerkat.”

  Cat or scope? Scope, I think.

  “Bridget, why, what’s up?” Dale cocked his head, legitimately concerned.

  “Nothing it’s just a conversation I overheard. Thanks, Dale.”

  She waved and left, the back of her neck tingling. He called after her, wait Bridget! But she pretended not to hear him. She grabbed her coat from her classroom and bolted out the front door.

  The spring sun beat down, relentlessly cheerful. Kids in the parking lot whooped and hollered, like it was the last day of school. The senioritis was setting in; every day had a jailbreak feel to it.

 
Bridget climbed into her car and let the heat bake her. She liked this feeling, the greenhouse of her Toyota, heating her from the inside out, warming her blood. She pulled her phone out of her purse and called Tripp.

  “Hey, are you working?” She bit her pinkie nail. “Is Nate there?”

  He seemed surprised to hear from her. “Uh, no I think he went to the gym. Why?”

  “Can I come over?” Her cheeks warmed and she rushed on. “I have a reason, I mean. I think I heard something and I don’t know if it’s something or nothing.”

  “You don’t really need a reason.” She could hear his smile.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.” She studied the nail, jagged and ripped at the corner. “I’ll be over.”

  When she hung up, she was smiling.

  • • •

  Bridget parked in front of Tripp’s townhouse, the front plain and tan, all the way down the line. Some of them had bright flower pots outside, lining the three cement steps up. Window boxes. Welcome mats. Not Tripp’s. Aunt Nadine would have clicked her tongue and said it needed a woman’s touch. She rang the bell and Tripp answered the door in shorts and bare feet, his smile so wide and happy it caught her by surprise. His ankle was encircled by a black, swooping tribal tattoo, the hair on his legs tapering down to smoothness at midcalf. It felt too intimate, his nakedness, that she should know how the hair on his legs grows.

  She followed him into the living room and sat on one end of the couch, while he sat on the other.

  “What’s up now?” he asked after a moment, the silence thick like a fog.

  She told him about the conversation in the bathroom, leaving out the most vulgar parts, because while she wasn’t a prude, saying the word jizz was a bit too fast of an advancement of their friendship.

  “Dale said there’s an app called Periscope. Riana said, ‘Cat or scope?’ and Kelsey said ‘Scope.’ ” She pulled her phone out of her purse.

  “There’s only one way to figure it out,” Tripp said, leaning close to look over her shoulder. She navigated to the app store and downloaded Periscope. She created an account and logged in. On the main page, hundreds of broadcasts streamed by and she realized too late that she had no way of finding what the girls were looking at. She clicked the friends icons and tried to look for Josh Tempest, Andrew Evans, but no luck.

  “Oh,” she said dumbly. “I need their usernames.” They wouldn’t use their real names, most likely.

  “Nate would know,” Tripp said as he sat back against the cushion, closer now, his knee on the couch almost touching hers.

  She texted Nate, Do you know Josh or Andrew’s Twitter handles?

  She waited for his reply and crossed and uncrossed her legs, her skirt suddenly feeling dowdy, its bright paisley marmish. She pulled at the gauzy sleeves of her peasant blouse.

  “I’m out of my element at the school more and more each year,” Bridget said. “The technology, it’s so . . . invasive.”

  Tripp ran a palm through his hair. “We had to take a class in it last year. A training on social media. It’s probably already out of date.”

  “This Periscope, this is scary,” Bridget said. “I mean, with YouTube at least you have a second to think, is this a good idea, should I upload this? This is like, real time.” She remembered Dale’s words. “A live feed.”

  Her phone binged in her hand: @TheKingEvans, @JTemp007.

  The king? She almost laughed. They all thought of him that way, but to think of that yourself? Sitting in the middle of his crew, his arms out like Jesus at the last supper.

  Bridget motioned Tripp over and she typed in @TheKingEvans into Periscope. It popped up with ten recent broadcasts. She clicked them and his profile opened. She scrolled through the list until she hit the second one from the bottom, close to three weeks ago: Temp’s party. She clicked it.

  “It’s over thirty minutes long,” Tripp said, his shoulder touching hers.

  “I’ll skip a lot of it. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but they said he was going to get in trouble.”

  Say you want it, honey. Say yes.

  A shaky, wobbling, pixelated stream of Josh’s house, the gourmet kitchen, the fifty-foot foyer, up the steps to the darkened hallway. A bedroom with a mahogany bed, thick carpeting, and clothing strewn everywhere. Still nicer than Bridget’s room at home, though. Wide, flat dresser, piled with soda bottles and notebooks.

  In the background, Josh’s laughter and Andrew’s loud commentary, his voice deep and cracking in the background. The camera shaking and then black, a girlish screech from behind, followed by a lot of giggling.

  The camera settled on the bed, a girl, half lidded and mouth half open. Her shirt off, a lacy red bra and flat, pale stomach dipping into low-cut jeans. Cascading blond hair. The camera jangled and got closer. White hair. Lucia.

  “Heyyyyyy, baby. Wake up, babbbbyyyyyy.” A guy’s voice. Porter’s wide mouth, long bulbous nose cut into the frame. “Yo, dude, she’s out. Maybe? What’d you give her?”

  “Me? Nothing. That’s all on her, bro. That’s the jungle juice in her veins. Cause she’s wild like that.”

  The camera shuffled and dropped, with a deep fuck in the background. When it was picked back up, Andrew’s face flashed for a moment. The camera angle was even with Lucia’s face, her eyes half open. She mumbled something and waved her hand around, laughing, but she looked asleep.

  “Come on, baby, you wanted me up here, now I’m up here.”

  A girlish voice in the background. La lalalalalwooooooooooolalalalala.

  “Is she up?”

  “She will be. She told me to come up here. She ain’t playin’ like this.”

  A hand reached out, a thick scar across the top, and jostled her chin with his fingertip, gently like a lover.

  Bridget knew the scar. In tenth grade, Andrew had sliced his hand with a meat slicer at his father’s deli. He wrote about it in his journal.

  “Say you want it, honey. Say yes.”

  Lucia for one second opened her eyes, saw Andrew, and smiled. Her eyes, clear and white-blue, the lightest part of the morning sky. Her teeth white, her lips red stained like Kool-Aid. She laughed, a hysterical hiccup, just once. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she said okay, yes.

  The girl in the background again, singing, high and tight, wooooooooooooowooooooolalalalalwoooooooo.

  The camera stayed on Lucia’s face. Porter’s voice in the background, she said yes, dog. Followed by laughter. Andrew’s hand on her breast, shook it twice, and Lucia didn’t open her eyes. The broadcast ended.

  Bridget felt sick. She looked over at Tripp, white and stricken.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  “Tripp, oh my God, she was raped.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “By one or both of them.”

  “That’s the most messed-up thing I’ve ever seen.” Tripp sat back against the couch, deflated.

  “Can I take this to the police? Can I report them?” Bridget’s hands were shaking, her voice squeaked. She felt tears gathering in her eyes. God, she hated teenagers.

  “I don’t know. She said yes, but this is clearly not consent. Not in any meaningful way. I have no idea what the law would say about this. I mean, yeah, we should. At least Harper should see it.” He grabbed his phone from the side table. “Play it again, this is a low-tech way, but right now it’s all we got, unless you have a recording app on your phone?” Bridget shook her head. He held his phone above hers. She played the video again, the haunting woooooooollaaaaaalallaaa, the say you want it, honey. Say yes. The deep, cracking laughter, the shaky camera. Andrew’s hand jiggling Lucia’s breast. Bridget couldn’t watch it a second time.

  She didn’t even want to know what happened after the camera was turned off.

  CHAPTER 28

  Alecia, Monday, May 11, 2015

  “Gabe, hi Gabe, Gabey, Gabe.” Then, “What’s this?”

  Alecia, from the kitchen, could hear Gabe’s therapist, Linda, but not Gabe.
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br />   Alecia shoved the remnants of a gooey bagel into her mouth and chased it with cold, stale coffee. She listened to Linda, plastic farm animals lined up in front of Gabe at the wooden table in the living room. They’d had to move the living room around to accommodate; Alecia remembered mainly the fight about the television. Gabe couldn’t be next to a window, he was too distracted. In the kitchen, he’d wander to Alecia’s side. In his bedroom, the shades pulled shut, he’d get sleepy. When she and Linda moved the living room around, relocating furniture, adjusting the cable wires, Alecia had been proud of her prowess. Gabe, surprisingly, cared very little about the new furniture placement. They celebrated Gabe’s flexibility with Skittles.

  Nate had whined about the windows being opposite the flat screen because of the glare.

  Alecia had initially been furious, but later, pleaded with him. You’ll see so many improvements in him after this, I swear. I know it’s a lot. It’s a miracle cure, they say. He stopped grumbling about the glare on the television after that, and even for a short while got on board. He’d ask her daily about his son’s progress, but quickly it became underwhelming.

  When the therapy didn’t prove to make the kind of strides Nate expected, he went back to grumbling about the television. Gabe was still fundamentally Gabe, and to Nate, this implied some kind of suspicious cash diversion. Besides, he’d insisted, Gabe was fine.

  Applied behavior analysis, Nate had scoffed. It sounds like the pamphlets the religious nuts bring you on Sunday mornings.

  So, research it. It’s not. It’s proven scientifically to work. Some people even say their autistic children have been cured. Alecia had pushed the brochure across the table at him.

  Maybe he doesn’t need a cure. Maybe he’s fine the way he is? But all this meant was that Nate didn’t really know his son. That he didn’t really see him the way Alecia did.

  It seemed to Alecia at the time like a dream within reach. A cure! For a brief few months, she allowed herself the indulgence. She kept a private Pinterest board that she filled with teachers’ gift ideas, fun rewards systems for good behavior, mom hacks, educational field trips. She visited dozens of websites on how to sneak vegetables into macaroni and cheese and homemade ice cream, how to bake the perfect brownie, 101 Valentine’s ideas for kids, twenty April Fool’s Day jokes. She bought a single plastic sticker: a soccer ball. For the minivan that didn’t exist, and the sport Gabe didn’t play. She tucked it underneath the lacy underwear in her top drawer.