Prom Date

by Diane Hoh

  Caroline turned her back to the water and began crying quietly. “We shouldn’t leave her there, it’s not right.”

  Mitch nodded grimly. “I don’t like leaving her there any more than you do, but she’s already dead, Caroline. You and Scott go and make the call. Margaret and I will stay here. Where’s your friend? Lacey?”

  Caroline waved backwards. “Up there. She wouldn’t come.”

  When Caroline and Scott had hurried away, Margaret said quietly, “I’m sorry, Mitch, but I can’t stay and watch what’s happening to her out there. She keeps slamming up against those rocks. It’s making me sick. It’s horrible!” Margaret’s voice broke. “But I don’t want to leave her, either. What if we left and her foot slid loose? She’d float out to sea.” She shuddered again, this time at the thought of Stephanie lost forever to a deep, dark, watery grave.

  “You go sit up at the lighthouse,” Mitch offered. “I’ll stay here. Go on. When Caroline and Scott come back, they’ll bring everyone from the picnic with them. Then it’ll be your job to keep Michael from going off the deep end. If he hasn’t already been told what’s happened, break it to him gently, okay? He and Stephanie had their problems, but they’ve been dating since ninth grade.”

  Margaret sat on the stone steps at the bottom of the lighthouse with Lacey, both of them trembling with cold and shock, trying to take in the horrible thing that had happened. Margaret was praying that Caroline and Scott would tell Michael. Please, please, she prayed, let someone else tell Michael so I don’t have to. Please!

  “I couldn’t tell him,” Caroline whispered hastily to Margaret as she and Scott, breathless and red-faced, arrived back at the lighthouse, followed by a throng of picnickers curious about what was happening. “I don’t even know Michael Danz, Margaret. Let Mitch tell him. They’re friends.”

  But there was no way that Margaret could lead Michael down to Mitch, at the water’s edge, and let Stephanie’s boyfriend see what they had seen. Instead, she pulled him over to the side, away from the others, and broke the news as gently as she could. Then, when the awful news finally sank in and he tried to break away from her, she clutched at his left elbow and shouted to David, Kiki’s boyfriend, and Beth’s boyfriend, Lucas, to help her keep Michael away from the water.

  When they had quieted him down, Margaret said gently, “You mustn’t go down there, Michael. You can’t help Stephanie now. I’m sorry. I am really sorry. She must have fallen from the lighthouse deck. There’s a piece of the railing missing.”

  Michael snapped out of his shock enough to shout, “No! She wouldn’t have gone up there! She hated that lighthouse, and she would never, never have gone up there alone! Why would she?”

  Exactly what Mitch had said.

  No one had an answer to Michael’s question.

  Little by little, the dreadful news made its way through the crowd. Margaret told Jeannine. She, too, was intent on joining Mitch at the water’s edge. Margaret stopped her. “You don’t want to see,” she said.

  It seemed to her, as word circulated through the crowd, that everyone wanted to see. It took every ounce of her persuasive powers to keep all of them, especially Stephanie’s closest friends, from hurrying down to the water. She and Lucas kept repeating that there was nothing they could do, but more important, they’d be in the way when the ambulance arrived. “Caroline and Scott will go down and stay with Mitch,” she concluded. “Could the rest of you please stay here with Michael?” She was afraid that if anyone left, Michael would follow.

  “I’m not going back down there,” Caroline protested. Her face was as white as Michael’s, and she was trembling. “I can’t. It’s … it’s too awful.”

  Scott went by himself.

  Michael’s friends rallied around him then, leading him to the stone steps and sitting with him while they waited for help to arrive. “She wouldn’t have gone up there alone,” he kept repeating. “She wouldn’t have.”

  He said it so often, sometimes crying it out loudly, other times shaking his head and muttering the words to himself, that Margaret became convinced that he and Mitch were right. Both knew Stephanie well. Could they be that wrong about what she would or wouldn’t do? They seemed so certain.

  On an impulse, she got up from the steps she’d been sitting on with Jeannine, Sarah, and Lacey, and moved to one side of the lighthouse, signaling to Liza and Beth to join her. They looked dazed, their faces stony-white, their eyes blank.

  “Margaret?” Liza asked dully as they arrived at her side. “Michael needs us now. What do you want?”

  “You were Stephanie’s best friends. Both of you. Is Michael right about how she hated the lighthouse?”

  “Oh. Yes, he’s right.” Salt spray had completely undone Liza’s makeup and her blond waves. Her hair hung limply along her shoulders like a wet scarf.

  “Then what was she doing up there?”

  Beth answered first. “I’ve been thinking about that.” Her voice was husky with tears. “And I agree with Michael. I can’t figure it out. This isn’t the first time we’ve all been out here on the Point. We’ve been coming out here for years, having picnics and bonfires.”

  Margaret nodded. “Us, too. I mean, my friends and I.”

  “Well, in all that time, Stephanie only went up into the lighthouse once. She hated it, said she would never go inside again. And as far as I know, she never did.” Fresh tears shone in her blue eyes. “Until now.”

  Kiki, seeing them gathered together, left the steps to join them. She caught enough of the conversation to say to Margaret, “Why are you so interested?” Her tone was hostile. “You’re not a friend of hers. We are. We’re her best friends, have been practically forever. Stephanie and Liza and Beth and I. But not you. You hardly knew her.”

  “Kiki, Margaret’s just trying to help,” Liza said.

  But Margaret thought the question was fair. She just didn’t know how to answer it. She couldn’t say, I’m interested because I’ve had this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since I came across those slaughtered dresses at Quartet, and what’s happened to Stephanie has made that feeling much worse. She couldn’t say that, because her mother didn’t want Liza and Beth to know what had happened to their prom apparel.

  Not that there could be any connection between the two disasters. How could there be? It would be stupid to compare the ruination of clothing to the brutal death of a real, live human being. It was just that the feeling she had now, right this minute, was like the feeling she’d had in the alley at Quartet, only magnified a million times because that corpse out there in the ocean, and she knew it was a corpse, had been a real, living, breathing human being, not something made out of fabric.

  When Margaret didn’t answer, Liza turned and went back to the lighthouse steps to console Michael. Beth, pressing a tissue to her eyes, followed.

  Just because I didn’t know the girl, Margaret thought, turning to look down the slope toward Mitch and Scott, doesn’t mean I’m not every bit as horrified as everyone else who did know her. Michael’s face was ashen and his teeth were chattering with shock, and Beth was crying quietly. Liza and Kiki seemed intent on comforting Michael. David and Lucas, their faces somber, waited silently for help to arrive, keeping their eyes on Michael.

  Only Lacey said stubbornly, “Don’t expect me to burst into tears, Margaret, because it’s not going to happen.” She was clearly remembering Stephanie’s cruel remarks at Quartet. Her own remarks were almost a whisper, which Margaret was grateful for. “I couldn’t stand that girl and I’m not going to pretend I’m shattered. She was mean, you know she was.”

  “Not mean enough to die like that,” Margaret whispered back, seeing that grotesque, ruined face again. Ruined … like the dresses in the alley. But … this was a life ruined. Gone. Destroyed.

  Not something Adrienne could fix with a needle and thread. Not this time.

  Chapter 8

  THE AMBULANCE CAME FIRST, stopping with a startling shriek of brakes. Paramedics o
n board donned wet suits to retrieve the victim from the cold, rough waters. A police car arrived almost simultaneously. Two officers got out and made their way down the slope to where Mitch and Scott were still standing.

  Margaret gave Lucas and David a lot of credit for their ability to hold Michael back. He wanted desperately to run down to the water, but the two boys wouldn’t let him. They had to physically restrain him, talking to him in urgent tones, until he sank down on the top step in defeat, all the fight drained out of him. Once, Margaret thought she heard him murmur, “It’s my fault, it’s all my fault,” but she knew she must have misunderstood. Michael had been playing ball when that scream sounded. He hadn’t been anywhere near the lighthouse.

  The wait seemed to stretch on forever. Only the sun poking in and out among the clouds provided a smattering of warmth from time to time. They had inadvertently divided into two slightly separate groups, the larger group Michael surrounded by his friends, the other Margaret and her friends. They huddled there, trying to keep warm, anxiously awaiting some sound, some signal that Stephanie Markham was no longer being brutally battered against the rocks.

  The tension was broken first by the sound of voices approaching from behind the lighthouse.

  The group on the steps stood up, all faces filled with dread except Michael’s. Margaret could tell, when she glanced at him, that he was still holding out hope. Because he hasn’t seen what I saw, she realized. He still doesn’t believe she’s dead.

  The two policemen appeared around the corner of the lighthouse first, immediately followed by a rubber-suited EMS worker carrying a stretcher. On it lay a black plastic body bag, carefully zipped completely shut. A second wet-suited man was holding the other end of the stretcher.

  It was a sight no one standing on the lighthouse steps would ever forget. The black zippered bag told the whole story. Stephanie Markham had not survived that cold, battering surf. It wasn’t even likely that she had survived the fall from the deck.

  Michael let out a sound and dropped to the steps, his head in his hands. Beth and Kiki burst into tears. Liza muttered something and leaned against the building, her hands over her mouth. Lucas and David stared silently at the gruesome body bag, as did Jeannine and Lacey.

  Mitch and Scott trailed behind the stretcher, their faces grim. While the stretcher was loaded into the ambulance, the two officers approached the group frozen on the steps. One policeman whipped out a small notebook and a pen. He was kind enough to wait until the ambulance departed before saying, “Sorry, folks, but I’m going to have to ask a few questions here. Anyone see what happened to that girl?”

  The second officer made his way through the group, yanked open the lighthouse door, and disappeared inside. His heavy footsteps clanking up the metal stairs echoed in the cool air.

  The officer still outside took names, telephone numbers, asking for photo ID’s, then asked each person if they had seen or heard anything.

  Only Mitch and Margaret had heard the scream.

  The officer asked what time they had heard it, and then jotted down the time. Then he asked each of them where they had been at that time.

  Margaret wasn’t really listening to the answers. She couldn’t get the sight of that black rubber body bag out of her mind. She was vaguely aware of answers like, “Picking flowers in the woods,” “hiking along the north shore,” “playing volleyball,” “in the rest room,” “in the parking lot,” even, “I dunno, just sitting, I guess,” but wasn’t aware of which person gave which answer. It didn’t really seem to matter.

  Unashamed tears slid down Michael’s face. “You the boyfriend?” the officer asked, moving to stand in front of Michael. “You up there with her when she fell?”

  “No. If I had been, I wouldn’t have let her fall.” Michael sounded angry.

  “How come you weren’t with her?”

  Margaret stared at the policeman. Good question. She would never have thought of asking it. But she had never, ever seen Stephanie Markham alone. If she hadn’t been with her three best friends, she’d been with Michael. At school, at the mall, at the movies, at dances, and parties. There were rumors that he wasn’t the most faithful person in the world, but they’d never ended the relationship. So why wasn’t he with her when she climbed those lighthouse steps?

  Michael didn’t answer right away. The officer had to ask the question a second time. “I … we … we had a fight. I mean,” Michael added hastily, “not a real fight. Just a little argument, really. I wanted to play softball and she didn’t. Said she’d get all sweaty. She got mad and took off. I played, and when the game was over, I went looking for her. Couldn’t find her. Then that girl,” pointing to Caroline, “came running into the park saying something terrible had happened. I knew right away she meant Stephanie. Because Steph hadn’t come back.”

  “A fight?” It struck Margaret that the officer hadn’t heard a single word after that first sentence. “You fought with the dead girl?”

  At the phrase “dead girl,” everyone in the group shuddered. They were nowhere near ready to think of Stephanie Markham as “the dead girl.”

  “It wasn’t a fight,” Michael persisted. Margaret thought she heard fear in his voice. She’d be scared, too, the way that policeman pressed for answers.

  Everyone knew Stephanie and Michael had argued a lot. Big deal. That didn’t mean he’d pushed her off the top of a lighthouse.

  Pushed? The thought stunned Margaret. No one had said that Stephanie was pushed. The railing had broken while she was leaning on it, and she’d fallen to the rocks below, that was all. Wasn’t it?

  Oh, Margaret, her inner voice said, you don’t believe that for a second. You never did. Not after Mitch and Michael told you Stephanie wouldn’t have gone up to the lighthouse alone. Isn’t that why your stomach is in such an uproar?

  No, Margaret argued with herself, no! That’s not true. I don’t want that to be true, any of it. It’s too horrible.

  But she hadn’t convinced her stomach. It continued to churn like the waters that had trapped Stephanie.

  The second officer emerged from the lighthouse, holding something up in the air for his partner to see.

  Margaret couldn’t see what it was. It didn’t look very big. It seemed, in the dim light, to be shiny and small. An earring? Something of Stephanie’s?

  She took a step closer. Her eyes, like everyone else’s, were on the object in the officer’s hand.

  It was a pin. A small, silver pin, four musical instruments joined together to create a quartet. Quartet. It was one of the pins Adrienne gave away as souvenirs at the store so that “our customers won’t forget us.”

  “Anyone know whose this is?” the officer asked. “Found it up there on the floor, right next to the railing.”

  Margaret frowned. She had never, not once, seen Stephanie Markham wearing one of the Quartet pins. She wore only gold jewelry. Very expensive gold jewelry. She might have taken one of the souvenirs, just because they were there, but she would never have been caught dead … she would never have worn it.

  “Oh, we all have those,” Beth said, her voice still choked with tears. “They give them away at Quartet. Everyone in town has one.”

  Yes, Margaret thought, but not everyone wears them. Stephanie wouldn’t have.

  She said so then, aloud. “Stephanie wouldn’t have worn one of those pins. She only wore gold jewelry. Right, Michael?”

  He looked blank for a moment, and then his expression cleared, and he nodded. “Right. Gold. She didn’t like the cheap stuff. Wouldn’t wear it.”

  “So that’s not hers,” Margaret told the officer. “It’s someone else’s. And …” She hesitated. When she spoke again, she was really only thinking aloud. “The first time I was up on the deck this afternoon,” she mused slowly, thoughtfully, “that pin wasn’t on the deck. I would have noticed it. My mother runs the store that gives them away, and I work there, so the pins mean a little bit more to me than they would to someone else. If one had bee
n lying on the deck, I would have noticed.”

  The officer looked skeptical. “Maybe you’re so used to seeing these pins all the time, one could have been right under your nose and you wouldn’t have paid any attention.”

  “That’s probably true when someone’s wearing one,” Margaret agreed. “I guess I don’t always notice when a pin is on a blouse or sweater or blazer. But if one had been lying at my feet when we were up on that observation deck, I would have bent and picked it up, the same way I would in the store. It wasn’t there, officer.”

  One gray, bushy eyebrow lifted. “We? I thought you said you were up there. Sounded like you meant alone.”

  Margaret felt her cheeks redden. “I was alone, at first. But then, he came up,” pointing halfheartedly to Mitch, wondering if he’d be mad that she’d brought him into the discussion, “so I wasn’t alone when I came back down.”

  “You and Mitch?” Beth asked, astonishment in her voice. “At the lighthouse?”

  Margaret felt all eyes on her. She knew her face was flushing, and felt defensive. Since when was it a crime to run into someone on the observation deck?

  The officer turned his attention to Mitch. “You see anything?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Didn’t notice the pin lying on the deck?”

  “No. But it could have been there. It’s pretty small. Probably wouldn’t have caught my eye. I wasn’t looking at the floor.”

  “There must have been a lot of people up there today,” Scott interjected. “What with the picnic and all. That pin could belong to anyone, like Beth said.”

  A tearful Beth nodded. So did the police officer.

  End of story, Margaret thought. And he was probably right. The pins were so common-place. Anyone could have dropped one. But she was still convinced that it had been dropped sometime between her first trip up there and her second.

  “You kids aren’t supposed to come near this place,” the officer said sternly. “Can’t you read that sign? It’s there for a reason.” He shook his head. “Takes a terrible tragedy like this, a fatal accident, before you people take warnings seriously. Think you’re invincible, but you’re not. I guess you know that now, right?”