Echo Bridge

by Kristen O'Toole

  Chapter 4

  Our moment of mutual recognition was a little overwhelming. We both opened our mouths to speak at the same time and were both cut off by the sound of the bells signaling the end of fifth period. Belknap Country Day had an actual bell tower, and instead of the usual institutional buzzer, a series of large bells chimed out one set of notes to signal the end of a period and another set exactly seven minutes later to indicate the start of the next class. I had calculus, but I’d left my bag in Thistleton. Lexi and I stared at each other.

  “After school,” she said. “Meet me in the junior parking lot?”

  “Okay,” I said. I looked down at her bleeding hand. “Are you going to be all right?”

  “Yeah, I’ll go to the nurse instead of physics.” Lexi looked at me intently. “Are you?”

  I hesitated for a moment. “I’ll see you at three,” I said finally. I squeezed her hand and left. I wanted to go straight to calculus and avoid Thistleton, but I needed my books. I cursed under my breath and hoped I’d miss Hugh and everyone else in the traffic between classes.

  I was almost successful. My friends were in the process of scattering for their next classes as I walked in, but when I bent over to grab my bag, a hand clamped down on my elbow. Instinctively, I yanked my arm away before I turned to see who had grabbed me.

  “Oh, Ted. Sorry, you scared me.”

  “You got a minute?”

  “I have calc,” I said.

  “Mr. Alden won’t care if you’re late,” he said. “And I want to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “In private.” Ted latched onto my elbow again and rather forcefully guided me down the stairs to the deserted music hall. He didn’t release me until we were inside one of the practice rooms.

  “Ted, is everything okay?”

  “You tell me, Courtney.” Ted folded his arms over his chest. “You’ve been jumpy as hell lately. What was that scene with Hugh upstairs? And you stink.” He made a face. “I hate smoking. How can you do that to yourself?”

  Panic began to flutter its wings in my chest. “It’s not a big deal, Ted. It helps my nerves. I have a lot on my mind, with college applications and the play—”

  “Babe, we’re all stressed about college stuff, and you’ve never acted like this because of a play before. What happened to your nerves of steel?” A smile played over his lips. That was a joke of mine about being immune to stage fright.

  I swallowed. This was my opportunity. To tell Ted why Hugh wasn’t my friend, why he never would be again, why he shouldn’t be Ted’s friend either. He’d believe me. He’d take my side. He’d go with me to Farnsworth’s office; between Lexi and me, Farnsworth would have to punish Hugh somehow. He couldn’t overlook both of us. Ted would hold my hand—

  Ted and Hugh, their shoulders pressed together, laughing, as they had been a little while before, upstairs in Thistleton, flashed in front of my eyes. They’d been friends longer than I’d been Ted’s girlfriend.

  I looked down. “I guess my nerves aren’t as steely as I thought.”

  “What about me, Courtney? What about us? Maybe you don’t love me as much as you thought, either.”

  I was stunned. “Ted! I know I’ve been moody the past few days, but of course I love you.” I reached out and wrapped my fingers in the front of his sweater.

  He put his hands lightly on my shoulders and looked down into my face. “I wish I could really believe that. But I know what a good actress you are.”

  “Ted, please. You’re the only good thing I have right now.”

  “I just feel like you’re pulling away from me.”

  “I know, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll snap out of it, I promise. I do love you. You have to know that.”

  Ted sighed and wrapped his arms around me. “I hope so. Because I want you in my life.” He released me and kissed my forehead. “But right now I have to go to English. Give you a ride home after practice?”

  “Oh. Um… My mom is going to pick me up early, actually.” I couldn’t look at him. I hated myself for lying. I looked at his right shoulder. “No rehearsal today.” That part was true, at least.

  Ted cupped my face with one hand. “Call you later, then.” And he was gone.

  For the first time since I’d unlocked the door of the guest bathroom at Melissa’s house and stepped outside, I fell apart. I dropped my bag and coat and sank slowly to my knees on the floor. I was sobbing forcefully, as if someone was reaching inside my chest and yanking the sounds out. I even tore at my hair a little, though not hard enough to pull it out. I curled up in the fetal position with my arms over my face and just cried. Several minutes passed before I heard a sound other than the ones I was making.

  “Courtney?”

  I flinched and looked toward the door. Someone had come in without my noticing. Elaine Winslow stood leaning against the closed door, cool and calm, her face unreadable. I just stared at her, my cheeks striped with tears.

  “Are you okay?”

  I hiccupped.

  “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I was in the next room.” She held up a golf club. “They let me practice putting down here in the winter.” She bit her lip. “Did you and Ted have a fight?”

  “I, um…” I didn’t know what to say. I began to pull myself together, smoothing my hair and wiping my face, gasping as I tried to regulate my breathing.

  Elaine leaned her golf club against the door and felt in her pockets. She produced a small packet of tissues from her skirt pocket and held it out to me. “I heard something about Hugh? I realize this is none of my business, but in my humble opinion, Ted and Hugh are real assholes.”

  “Ted’s not being an asshole,” I said. I fumbled with the tissues, managed to free one, and tried to hand the pack back to her. She waved me off. “He’s just worried about me. I have been acting weird lately—I mean, I can see how he thinks that,” I said, swiping at the tears dripping off my chin with the tissue. “You know how it is. Senior fall stress.” I tried to smile, but it felt more like a manic, skull-like grin.

  “Oh,” I saw something close in Elaine’s face, something that I hadn’t even recognized until it was gone. Hope, maybe, that we were going to dish together over Ted.

  “You’re right about Hugh, though,” I said. “I tried to tell that to your sister.”

  One corner of Elaine’s mouth went up, and she knelt down on the floor next to me. “Yeah, I heard about that.”

  “I wasn’t just bitching out on her.” I blew my nose. I was finally breathing normally. “I really like Molly. But Hugh is…dangerous.”

  “I know,” said Elaine. “I tried to tell her the same thing.”

  “You did?” I eyed Elaine. My friends had been hers first, back when she and Ted had dated. Maybe she even knew what it was like to spend a night in Melissa Lewis’s guest bathroom. But I’d always felt weird and competitive around her, on account of Ted. Her face was still and had no expression. I was too afraid to ask what Hugh had done to make her form this opinion. It didn’t occur to me to wonder what Ted had done to earn the same label, other than dump Elaine almost two years earlier.

  “Yeah. Molly didn’t listen to me, either.” Elaine gazed off into the middle distance. “I think it just makes him more appealing to her. It’s all very ‘us against the world.’ She used to love Marshall, but all of a sudden she thinks he’s boring. She keeps telling me we’re like an old married couple. I say I’d rather be old and married than young and stupid. That’s about the point in the conversation when she stops talking to me. She thinks I just don’t want to let her grow up.” Elaine looked at me. “Are you feeling better?”

  “A little. I mean, I think I can handle going out in public.” I wiped a few stray tears from my eyelashes. “Crap, I have completely cut calculus.”

  “Alden might not write you up. He’s cool like that,” said Elaine. “Listen. I kind of have a favor to ask you.”

  “Okay.” I narrowed my eyes a little. One measly pa
ck of tissues and now she wanted a favor?

  “As long as Molly’s dating Hugh—and I will find a way to break them up—but in the meantime, maybe you could sort of keep an eye on her? At parties and stuff?”

  “I’m not sure she needs a babysitter,” I said. More like a bodyguard. And how could I protect Molly when I couldn’t even protect myself? “Or that I am, like, suited for that task.”

  “It’s just that I know Ted and Hugh hang out a lot. So I kind of figure that if she’s with them, you’ll be there, too. I don’t really go to those parties anymore. I know she can be a huge brat, but Molly really looks up to you.”

  “Well, thanks. But if she were my sister, I’d be more concerned about the times when they’re alone, not with Ted and me. I mean, Hugh doesn’t spend all his time with us.” Lucky for me. But not, I realized, for Molly.

  Elaine twisted her mouth up ruefully. “I know. Whatever Molly thinks, she is a little naïve, and, well,” she looked me dead in the eye for the first time, “you know Hugh.”

  “I won’t let him, or anyone else, mess with her while I’m around,” I said. “But I can’t be with her every second.” I didn’t want Hugh to hurt Molly, but I also didn’t know how to protect her without admitting what he’d done to me.

  “I don’t suppose you’re going with them to the Martindale game Friday night,” Elaine said. It was common for Country Day students to go to the football team’s away-games on Friday nights, though I only went with Ted occasionally. I found football boring, and game nights usually ended in a lot of driving around, hoping for a party to materialize that never did.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I wasn’t really planning on it.” The thought of being stuck in a car with Hugh all night made me feel sick, even if Ted was going to be there and it was for the express purpose of protecting Molly.

  “Well, whatever you can do, I’d appreciate it.” Elaine stood up, grabbed her golf club, and left.

  It was the longest conversation we’d ever had.

  Chapter 5

  That afternoon, I met Lexi in the juniors’ parking lot, as promised. She drove an ancient Cadillac convertible of which I was a little jealous—it was straight out of La Dolce Vita (Palme d’Or, Cannes, 1960). We took the long way to her house, and she told me her story in a flat, frank voice while the two of us chain-smoked.

  Just after school had started, a couple of weeks before the party at Melissa’s house, Lexi went down to Echo Bridge with her camera. It had been a dry summer, and the Souhegan had shrunk down between its banks, allowing Lexi new vantage points for shots of the pilasters and arches. She was doing a photo essay on abandoned spaces.

  Hugh had called down to her from the top of the bridge.

  “He said he was on his way to play video games at Ted’s house,” she told me, shooting me a quick glance as she dragged heavily on a cigarette.

  For the first time it occurred to me that Ted might know about the things Hugh had done. But that was impossible. Ted was a Boy Scout (metaphorically and literally—he claimed Eagle Scout was a pretty useful resume bullet, although I was skeptical); he never would have let anything like this happen to anybody, never mind me. It was true they were best friends, but it wasn’t hard to imagine that Hugh had been hiding his proclivities from everyone. After all, I’d known Hugh for over three years, and though I had always thought he was kind of a dick, I never thought he was a monster. Before, anyway. So I just motioned for Lexi to go on.

  Hugh had a joint on him and offered to share it with her. I knew this to be a part of Hugh’s and Ted’s Sunday video game routine, for Hugh, at least—Ted had never smoked pot in his life. Lexi had done all her homework the day before; her entire plan for the day was to wander around in the early fall sunshine and take pictures, an activity that she felt would be drastically improved by being stoned. So she took Hugh up on his offer and climbed the stone steps to join him.

  “When we’d burned it halfway down,” she said, “he put his hand on my back. I told him it wasn’t going to happen. But he just looked at me and said, ‘Yeah, it is.’” She shuddered against the car door.

  Unlike me, Lexi had not been trying to hold her shattered self together in silence.

  “I went to Farnsworth,” she said. “He wouldn’t do anything. Marian and I had already gotten caught in the dark room. He just sat back in his big leather chair and said, ‘You see, Alexandra, reputation is everything. I hope you’ll take that into consideration when you get a fresh start in college.’” She punched the steering wheel, hitting the horn accidentally, and the driver of the car up ahead flipped us off. “What a jackmonkey. I should screw every undergrad at Harvard and graduate summa cum laude just to prove him wrong.”

  “Harvard?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I have to get in first. But my grandfather is a classics professor there, which means it would be tuition-free.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Yeah, well. Not likely, with my being on Farnsworth’s shit list now. Marian was so not worth it. But the worst part is, my supposed reputation has nothing to do with it. He just didn’t want to bring disciplinary action against Hugh because he’d wind up having to kick him off the hockey team, if not out of school. Turns out alumni donations have a direct relationship to the hockey team’s performance.” She dug her nails into the steering wheel. “Which means he’d back Hugh if I went to the cops, probably.”

  The cops. Legal charges. These were scenes I had not yet staged in my head. Ted’s possible reaction blotted out everything beyond the question of whether or not to tell him. But I had seen The Accused, for which Jodie Foster won her first Best Actress Oscar. I could imagine what would happen if Lexi came forward on her own. But if there were two of us…

  I heard Hugh’s voice: “You dragged me up here after he blew you off in front of everyone at the poker table.” And if Farnsworth, as proxy for Belknap Country Day’s powerful alumni, was willing to brush Lexi’s accusations aside in favor of keeping Hugh on the ice, who knew how he’d manipulate our files, our character references from schools, anything?

  Maybe I was wrong. Maybe if I’d told Lexi right then that I’d back her, if we’d driven to the Belknap Police Department instead of to her grandfather’s house, it all would have been different. But I didn’t. And in spite of everything, I’m not sorry.

  “Wait, did he actually say all that stuff about the hockey team to you?” I asked. We were turning into Lexi’s driveway. Maple trees shaded the drive and the house sat back on a wide lawn, one of the very few Victorians in town, with a wide porch, a lot of intricate white trim, and a small tower with stained glass windows jutting off one side.

  “No, just the reputation thing. I found out about the rest…” she trailed off, and we both looked at Farah Zarin, sitting on the porch steps with her bike lying on the lawn. “I’ll explain in a minute, okay? But let me handle this. Farah’s cool, but she can be kind of cagey at first.”

  We climbed out of her car and slammed the doors. Lexi brushed cigarette ash off her sweater. Farah stood up and looked from me to Lexi, then back to me.

  “What’s up, Lex,” she said.

  “Hey, Farah. You know Courtney.”

  “Sure.” She gripped the strap of her messenger bag and eyed me. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” I said. I looked at Lexi. I had no idea what was going on.

  “Come on, you guys.” Lexi led the way onto the porch and through the front door, which was a light-colored wood with intricate flowers etched on the windows. “Max—my grandfather—has office hours today, so he won’t be home for a while.” We followed her down a hall lined with old, sepia-shaded photographs and brightly colored snapshots, all in thick wooden frames.

  “You call your grandfather ‘Max’?” I asked.

  Lexi shrugged. “It’s what his students call him. I think he sees me more like one of them than as his granddaughter. It’s okay, though. He’s interesting.”

  “What happened to your parents, if you don’
t mind me asking?” I said, pausing by a photograph of a laughing blond child who could only be Lexi, and two adults decorating a Christmas tree.

  “Swissair flight 111,” she said. When I gave her a blank look, she explained: “Famous plane crash in 1998. New York to Geneva. It went down off the coast of Nova Scotia, supposedly because of faulty wiring in the entertainment system. The investigation is credited with initiating major redesigns in that kind of thing on planes. But the flight was called the UN Shuttle because it was carrying a bunch of important dignitaries, so there are many conspiracy theories.”

  She opened a pair of pocket doors into what was obviously a library, although I’d never thought of Belknap as the kind of place where people had libraries in their homes. The creamy walls were lined with bookshelves, the books on them large and heavy and stamped with gold lettering. A huge painting hung on the wall, of a pale, naked woman fondling a swan suggestively, with four fat babies rolling in broken eggshells at her feet. There was a vast Oriental rug on the floor, and a globe at least four feet in diameter in an ornate wooden stand in one corner. In another, a glass case with a gilded edge displayed a series of revolvers, all with similar characteristics but slightly different, like an evolutionary spectrum of firearms. Four tall leather wingback chairs faced each other, with several mismatched side tables in between them. Lexi sat down in one and curled her legs under her.

  “Max is an orphan, too, so he didn’t think twice about taking me in. He bought this house for me, basically; otherwise he’d still live in a faculty apartment in Cambridge.”

  Farah and I each sat down as well, though with decidedly less relaxed postures than Lexi. She looked from one of us to the other and back gain.

  “Farah,” Lexi said. “I want to tell Courtney about the Belknet.”

  Farah sucked her breath through her teeth. “Lexi, it is really uncool to just spring this on me. Isn’t she friends with him?”

  Lexi glanced at me. “You can trust Farah,” she said. Then she looked at Farah and added, “You can trust her, too.”