Echo Bridge

by Kristen O'Toole

  “What happened?”

  “The ambulance is on its way,” said Horse as he slid his iPhone back into his pocket.

  “Was there an accident?” Farnsworth looked up at the ceiling, as if checking for falling debris, and then leaned over to inspect Hugh’s head for wounds. Hugh, denied his dirt, was now chewing on his pink striped tie.

  “Parker, what’d he take?” Farnsworth snapped.

  “I honestly don’t know, sir.” Ted’s face, which had been stern and stoic up to that moment, suddenly broke into worry. “I wish I did.”

  Coach Jessup was on the floor, trying to keep Hugh from rolling around. “Coacccchhhhhhsssssshhhhhhhhhhh,” said Hugh, pawing the air. The empty pint of Jack Daniels dropped out of his jacket pocket. Farnsworth picked it up and snorted out a big, angry breath.

  Lexi’s plan had worked.

  “Come on,” said Ted. “We’re going to the hospital.”

  Chapter 10

  Ted drove like a maniac. I had never seen him so upset—he seemed almost scared. He was silent on the ride to the hospital. I focused on getting into character: the worried but supportive girlfriend. I groped for inspiration in my mental archives but found they’d been erased by fear. I couldn’t give anything away, but I felt like there was no air in the car, my guilt filling it like gas. In the driver’s seat, Ted’s face was hard and grim. He stomped on the brakes for a red light, and they squealed as we lurched forward inside the Rover. Worried and supportive, I thought. I reached out and touched his right arm.

  “Ted,” I said softly. I had an irrational fear that he would shake me off, as if he might somehow know that I had had something to do with all of this.

  Instead, he lifted his left hand from the wheel and covered mine with it. “I just don’t understand what happened,” he said. “Why would he get wasted at school? Why not wait until the afterparty?” Ted closed his eyes, shook his head, and squeezed my hand. “And what the hell is he on?”

  “I don’t know. Acid maybe?” I said. “Special K? That thing from the ABC Afterschool Special where Helen Hunt jumps out the window?”

  “Jesus, Courtney, do you have to do your ‘encyclopedia of American cinema’ thing right now?” Ted dropped my hand in disgust and gunned the engine as the light turned green.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… I mean, I don’t know a lot about hard drugs, so I just…”

  “I didn’t mean to snap at you,” Ted said more calmly, rubbing his forehead. “I’m just freaked out.”

  “I know. Me, too.” I took his hand again.

  It was easier than I thought it would be to act worried. Hugh would be fine—probably, anyway—but I was genuinely upset to see the pain this was causing Ted. I wished there were some way to show him what a monster his best friend was without breaking his heart. But I didn’t know how to tell Ted, let alone make him believe, what Hugh had done to me, to Lexi, to Farah. At that moment, all I could think about was how he would hate himself when he found out the truth, for not seeing Hugh for what he was. If you found out your best friend, who’d always had your back, whom you’d spent every single day with for years, was a criminal—the sociopathic kind, not the pot-smoking kind—how could you not question yourself? What was wrong with you? Why didn’t you see it? And what was it about you that had attracted such a person?

  “This is just really bizarre,” Ted said, hitting the gas to slide through a yellow light.

  He gripped my hand as we walked through the automatic doors into the emergency room. Coach Jessup had ridden in the ambulance with Hugh, and when we saw him sitting next to a large potted plant (far less exotic or charming than the ferns in the conservatory we’d just left), I tensed up. Ted thought I was giving his hand a comforting squeeze and returned it. I swallowed hard; my mouth felt very dry. He’s no different from any audience, I told myself.

  “Coach.” Ted dropped my hand put his out to shake Coach Jessup’s. “What’s the news?”

  Coach Jessup was sitting in a molded plastic chair, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands folded in front of him. He’d probably been big and solid like Hugh, once, but now he was doughy and sagging and had an unfortunate comb-over. He studied Ted, glanced at me, and looked back at Ted. I could tell he was trying to gauge what to tell us. Ted wasn’t on the hockey team, so he and Jessup didn’t have much rapport, and I wasn’t sure the coach even knew who I was.

  “Hugh has been sedated,” he finally said. “They’re running tests. His parents and the headmaster are on their way.”

  “Can we see him?” Ted asked.

  The automatic doors slid open behind us, and the Marsdens and Farnsworth burst through them. I drew a breath. I was afraid if anyone asked me directly what had happened, I might crack.

  “Where’s the doctor?” demanded Mr. Marsden. “What happened to my son?”

  “I’ll get someone out here,” said Farnsworth. His long wool coat flapped as he hurried to the nurses’ station.

  Coach Jessup obviously knew the Marsdens quite well; he took Mrs. Marsden’s hands in his own. “They seem to think he’ll be all right, Pamela,” he said.

  “Thank God you were there, David,” she answered. Her eyes fell on Ted, and then me, standing a few steps behind the coach. Hugh’s mother was beautiful, tall and coolly blond like Kim Novak in Vertigo. Her gaze was sharp, though, and I actually shivered as she took us in and dropped Coach Jessup’s hands. “Edward, what can you tell us about all this? The headmaster implied Hugh might have…taken something.” She winced as if the idea caused her pain. She glanced at me on the last syllable, including me in the question. Think Oscar, I told myself. Emmy. Tony. Independent Spirit. SAG Award. My life depended on this performance.

  “If he did, Mrs. Marsden, I honestly don’t know anything about it.” Ted stepped forward, his hands gripped together in front of him.

  “That’s bullshit,” said Mr. Marsden. He was an imposing man, a few inches taller than Ted and a full head over Coach Jessup. He had wide shoulders but appeared more chiseled than his son. His hair was thick and dark, his eyes like steel: Pierce Brosnan as Thomas Crown. “If anyone knows what Hugh took, it’s you, Parker.”

  “I swear—” Ted had adopted a pleading tone, but he was interrupted by Farnsworth, returning to the group with a young doctor who had soap opera cheekbones and the standard white coat.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Marsden,” he said smoothly. “If you come with me, I can update you on your son’s condition and take you to see him.”

  “I expect to hear your account of events later,” Mr. Marsden said to Ted. He took his wife’s arm. “Tell me, doctor, will there be any permanent damage?” The three of them walked away through a set of swinging doors.

  The headmaster exhaled loudly and seemed to see Ted and me for the first time. “Parker. Go home. I have enough on my plate without being responsible for students running around the hospital.”

  Ted opened his mouth to protest. “But sir—”

  “I don’t think they’re going to let anyone in except his parents tonight,” said Coach Jessup more kindly. “Why don’t you take your date home and get some rest? I’ll make sure Hugh knows you were here.”

  I was so relieved I thought I might collapse.

  Ted nodded. “All right,” he said. “Please make sure he knows I came, and that if he’s still here tomorrow, I’ll be back.” He wrapped an arm around me. “Come on, Court.”

  * * *

  In the car, I didn’t realize Ted wasn’t taking me home until we were nearly to his house.

  “Didn’t you want to drop me off?” I asked.

  “I thought you were spending the night.”

  In all of the drama at Revelry, I had forgotten entirely about our romantic evening. And I’d been so relieved to escape the hospital, the headmaster, and Hugh’s parents that it hadn’t occurred to me to be nervous. I tried to give myself a one-line mental pep talk: Okay, Courtney, you’ve got to get back on the horse sometime. I snorted to myself over
the accidentally dirty metaphor.

  “What?” asked Ted. His eyes were shifting from puppyish to pouty.

  “Sorry. That was, um, a weird sneeze. Of course I’ll spend the night. I just wasn’t sure you were still in the mood after everything that happened.”

  “I need a distraction,” he said, dropping one hand onto my leg as we pulled into the garage. “And you’re the best kind.”

  We climbed out of the car and went into Ted’s house. I was more nervous than I’d been when I’d lost my virginity to him the previous spring, in the in-law apartment over Jake Hobart’s garage during his School’s Out for Summer party. At dawn, while Ted slept, I’d stood at the window and looked out over Jake’s backyard, which bordered a vast freshwater marsh. The party had been long over, and mist had curled from the marsh across the lawn, obscuring the beer cans and red plastic cups scattered there. There’d been a faint tingling in my temples, and I’d imagined that I was glowing faintly, too. Thinking of that moment as we walked into the house reminded me that I still didn’t know if Ted had lost his virginity that night, too, or if he and Elaine Winslow had gotten that far sophomore year. I could probably guess, based on how artfully he’d dodged that question in the past, but I didn’t want to think about it.

  In the kitchen, Ted made us White Russians—The Big Lebowski, Golden Aries, Russian Guild of Film Critics, 1998—which were secretly my favorite drink, even though it wasn’t very elegant or the type of thing we drank at parties. I wandered into the den, separated from the kitchen by a breakfast bar, and turned on the lights, adjusting the dimmer switch so the mood would be romantic—and so the shadows in the half-light would obscure my face if I betrayed my fear. Ted lived in an antique farmhouse, which had been gutted and renovated with top-of-the-line everything. I glanced at the broad windowpanes, entirely and flatly black, and thought how clearly visible we must be from outside, like figures on a movie screen, even with the lights low inside. But I shook the thought from my head; who could be watching? The backyard was surrounded by trees. I was being paranoid. I had been thinking in terms of my audience for too long. I knelt and turned on the stereo, tuning to the soul station on satellite radio, silently entreating Otis Redding to get me in the mood. He usually did; Dirty Dancing had instilled in me a sort of Pavlovian response to “These Arms of Mine.”

  “Hey.” Ted was right behind me. I started, but covered it well, I thought. I took my drink from his hand.

  “Hey,” I said quietly. He lowered his lips to my neck and put his arms around me. I pressed my left hand against his back, my right hand still holding the glass. I needed to find a way to slow this down, just a bit. “Let’s dance,” I said.

  Ted smiled. “All right, babe.”

  I took a sip of my drink and then set it down on a side table, holding out my right hand and sliding my left up to his shoulder. At school dances, we hugged and swayed during slow songs, but I wanted this to really feel like dancing, even if we didn’t know any steps. Ted set his big right hand on my waist, and closed his left around my right. I pressed my cheek against his chest, and we turned in slow circles, rocking in time to Otis and Carla Thomas singing about bringing it all back home.

  When the song was over, Ted took my face in his hands, kissed me long and deep, and sat down on the shabby, chic, over-stuffed couch. When I went to sit next to him, he put a hand on my hip to stop me. “Now,” he said, “I want you to dance for me.”

  I stood in front of him, aware of the way my silver Marilyn dress was reflected in the window glass, as if I had a second, ghostly self in the room. Apparently, Ted was in the mood for a performance. I wasn’t sure I had another one in me that night. But this was my chance to comfort Ted, to distract him like he said and remind him that he loved me. Perhaps, I thought, renewing our physical connection would bind him closer to me and make it easier for him to take my side, if I ever let the whole Hugh thing come out. I closed my eyes and squared my shoulders. “If I Can’t Have You” was on the radio, Etta James and some guy in a duet. The verses had a little va-va-voom rhythm. I moved my hips. I raised my hands to my hair. Rita Hayworth, I thought. Marlene Deitrich, Julie London, Lena Horne.

  “You are so gorgeous, baby,” Ted breathed on the couch. “Take off your dress. I want to see all of you.”

  I sipped my drink and tried to look sexy doing so. I let the thin straps of my dress slip off my shoulders and felt the silk slide down my body. I could barely hear the music over my own pounding heart.

  “Come here,” Ted said hoarsely. He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled me into his lap.

  He kissed me then, and I felt all the stress of the previous several weeks, all the waiting Ted had been doing for me, in that kiss. It was in the pressure of our lips and the taste of our tongues, and as our eyelashes tangled together and Ted’s palm slid up my back and his fingers twisted in my hair, I felt my fear float away. I can do this, I thought.

  I would have done anything for Ted.

  Chapter 11

  On Monday after the dance, Hugh wasn’t in school, though the grapevine was buzzing with news: he was fine and would have a hearing with the disciplinary committee on Tuesday. Those were closed-door meetings, with parents, Farnsworth, and the two senior faculty members (Mr. Churchill, who appropriately taught European history, and Ms. McGovern, who taught Latin). In Hugh’s case, Coach Jessup would probably be in attendance, but we didn’t have public disciplinary hearings like in Scent of a Woman (Al Pacino’s single Oscar win). Nonetheless, the tension was palpable in the halls between classes, and knots of students whispered on the landings of the stairwells. Everyone was dividing up loyalties among the various theories of what had happened, guessing at what the disciplinary committee’s ruling would be. By lunchtime I’d heard that a junior named Rory Swanson had started taking bets on whether Hugh’s sentence would be detention, suspension, or expulsion.

  I sat in Thistleton Hall, nibbling a bagel, listening to Melissa and Hilary chatter. They were high on all the drama. Ted sat next to me with an arm around my shoulders. I still felt a little strange when I thought about the strip tease in his living room—it wasn’t exactly how I’d have scripted the scene. But he’d been so gentle on the couch, as if he’d known that I needed him to be as different from Hugh as possible, and it was easy to forget my unsettled feelings about a little dance. And since that night, he’d been so affectionate, almost needy. It felt good. Even if I knew, deep down, that it was his concern for Hugh motherfucking Marsden that was causing Ted to cling to me.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Melissa said lightly, “if he had some ecstasy he was saving for later, and he just took it by accident, thinking it was a breath mint or something. I mean, Hugh has never been the sharpest guy.”

  “Shut up, Melissa,” Ted said. His arm tightened around my shoulders. “You’re not exactly a National Merit Scholar yourself.”

  “Suck it, Parker,” snapped Melissa.

  “God, both of you, chill. We’re all worried about him, okay?” Hilary snapped her gum.

  “Yeah, well,” Ted muttered. I saw his eyes lock onto something across the room. “Most of us, anyway. I’ll be right back.” He pushed up off the bench.

  In the sophomores’ alcove, I noticed Molly Winslow, who wore a grave expression and was surrounded by a flock of girls, the kind who act all concerned and sympathetic in order to worm their way into the center of whatever scandal is the most interesting that week. Molly was a natural drama queen, which, as an actress, actually made me like her more, in spite of the fact that Hugh was her current inspiration. I dropped my head back against the paneled wall behind me and wondered what we’d do if Molly kept dating him even after he got kicked out of Country Day.

  “Oh, crap, Court!” Melissa clutched my wrist. I snapped out of my reverie and followed her gaze to the juniors’ alcove: Ted had a guy pinned up against the side of the fireplace, with Jake Hobart standing behind him for back up. I assumed this was Rory, the bookie. Everyone in Thistleton Hall was cranin
g to watch the action, although the crowd didn’t press too close, and Ted was speaking quietly. Fights did not usually erupt in the halls of Belknap Country Day; our grudges were rarely settled physically, and if they were, it was at a party away from adult interference.

  “You’re kidding me.” I leapt off the bench and pushed through the crowd. “Ted,” I said quietly but firmly, stepping up beside Jake. “It’s not worth it. Let him go.”

  Ted had one forearm pressed against Rory’s throat, and as I watched, he shifted his muscles just slightly and Rory gasped, his eyes bulging. Rory was an art kid and more fine-boned than Ted, with shaggy black hair that was sticking to the wood paneling with static electricity. If you didn’t know the circumstances, the scene would have looked like the worst high school cliché: the big jock busting on the slightly effeminate painter. I cringed.

  “Ted,” I hissed. I reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “Think about Cornell. Put him down before someone gets Farnsworth.”

  “Cornell” turned out to be the release command. Ted stepped back and Rory slid down the wall, his feet hitting the floor. He rubbed his neck and shot Ted a glance mixed with anger and fear before picking up his backpack and booking it out of the room. Ted gave him a hard look, and then shook me off his arm.

  “Let’s go, Hobart,” he grunted, and turned to go without looking at me.

  “He just needs to blow off steam,” Jake said quietly to me. “I’ll take him off campus. Don’t worry, okay? He’ll be fine tomorrow.”

  “That depends,” I said, “on what happens with the disciplinary committee.”

  * * *

  Something happened at rehearsal for The Crucible that afternoon that changed my performance of Abigail Williams. It felt like a strange and sudden shift inside me, like a piece of machinery clicking into place, but I knew it had as much to do with the energy in the air around school than with any internal power of my own. With Grieves’ help, Lexi, Farah, and I had managed to indirectly accuse Hugh of a crime, which was rippling through the student body and roiling everyone up. For the first time, I felt like I understood Abigail Williams. I stalked across the stage, hearing the satisfying thump of my heels on the boards, speaking fiercely about pointy reckoning and reddish work, shaking Molly by the shoulders and nearly giving the freshman playing Betty Parris a real slap instead of an illusory one. When she went limp and Rodney Fairchild entered from stage right as John Proctor, I actually managed to get into it and flirt a little. I loathed Rodney, whose greatest ambition was to make it onto American Idol and who believed his admittedly pretty face was God’s gift to girls. We had played opposite each other plenty of times, though, and it was a relief to once again manage to answer his devilish smile with my own and forget the world outside of the play. This was what had drawn me to the theater in the first place: the sensation of disappearing into a role, the world of the play falling like a heavy curtain over the real world. I forgot about Rodney’s ego, about Molly’s mistrust. I forgot Rivalry Revelry and what had happened afterward in Ted’s living room. I even managed to forget about Hugh.