Luckiest Girl Alive

by Jessica Knoll

  “My client is exhausted,” Dan said. “Maybe you ought to let her go home and get some rest. She’s fourteen, don’t forget.”

  “So was Olivia Kaplan,” Detective Vencino said.

  The sound of Olivia’s name straightened me out. I rubbed my arms, prickly with goose bumps. “How is Hilary?”

  “She’s an amputee,” Vencino said, and nothing else.

  I took a shaky sip of water. The room had chilled it even colder, and I winced when I swallowed, when the liquid skated by my lungs. “But will she be okay? Will she come back to Bradley?” I looked to Dixon to ask the question that I had been carrying around since I left the hospital. Maybe he actually had an answer. “Will Bradley, I mean, the school won’t shut down or anything, will it?”

  “Do you want it to?” Vencino replied, behind Dixon.

  I didn’t know how to make Detective Vencino understand just how much I didn’t want that to happen. I couldn’t return to my life just a few miles shy of the Main Line. Those few miles made the difference between Yale and West Chester University, moving to New York when you grew up and breaking ground for your own mini McMansion, hand stroking your belly, swollen like an overfed tick, as the baby kicked and kicked. I turned my hands up on the table. “I just want everything to go back to normal.”

  “Ah,” Vencino said, holding up his pointer finger like he understood. “Well it can now, can’t it? That you’re rid of all the people who caused you so much distress?” A cyanide smile crawled onto his face, and he gestured at me with a sarcastic flourish, Vanna White presenting the shiny new Toyota Camry only the winner would take home. “Take her in, folks! Right here in our midst! The luckiest girl alive.”

  Dan glared at Vencino. “That’s a little out of line, Detective.”

  Detective Vencino folded his arms across his chest. “Sorry,” he spat, “I’ve got bigger fish to fry than worrying about TifAni FaNelli’s feelings.”

  Dan sniffed at him, turning to address Dixon. “Do you have everything you need?” He patted my back. “Because I think it’s in my client’s best interest to go home and get some rest.”

  Rest. That would never come easy, even when it was supposed to come easy, ever again.

  Out in the hallway, Dan asked for a moment alone with me. He told me he would be by the house in the morning, to have that “conversation” with my parents that I couldn’t be the one to have. The following morning was Friday, and I would have preferred he wait until Monday, so I wouldn’t have to spend the whole weekend cooped up with both Mom and Dad, who would no doubt be disgusted by me. But Dan said if we waited until Monday there was a chance the story could leak, and I wouldn’t want my parents to find out from The Philadelphia Inquirer, would I? “Let’s not delay the inevitable.” Dan put his hand on my shoulder, and I stared at the floor, at his shoes made of such bad fake leather they looked rubber.

  “You did good in there,” Dan said. “Vencino is a bully. He’s just trying to get under your skin. But you didn’t rise to the occasion. That was good.”

  “But they think I planned this with Arthur or something,” I said. “How could they think that?”

  “They don’t,” Dan said. “Like your mother said, they’re just covering all their bases.”

  “Am I going to have to come back here?”

  “You might.” Dan gave me that heartening smile people give you when the truth is something you don’t want to hear, and you need to be brave.

  Mom made me take one of those Anita pills, to help me sleep. I wanted to save it for later, after Mom and Dad had gone to bed and I could flip through all of the news channels, on mute, the captions setting on, but Mom insisted I take it right in front of her. Like it was a fucking vitamin instead of a sleeping pill that they later found out is as addictive as heroin.

  Within fifteen minutes, sleep started with those weird dreams that you jump awake from, thinking, Well, that was strange. I had what looked like a raspberry, a beautiful one, plump and jewel ripe, growing out of the crown of my head. I kept trying to cover it with my hair, but every time I passed by a mirror, I’d see its large bubble body in profile. Soon, more sprouted—one along my hairline, another by my ear. I’m going to have get these removed, and it’s going to be very painful, I thought. This is the point at which I’d normally leap awake, but that Anita pill blunted the instinct, so I just twitched, once, and then deep into the rabbit hole of the bizarre and terrifying I went.

  I was in a crowd of people. They were my classmates, that much I knew, only I didn’t recognize any of them. We were standing at the edge of a dock, and the colors were dull brown and yellow, old timey, as though from an illustration of New York at the turn of the twentieth century. It started as a whisper, “Arthur is alive,” and grew to an excited hush, making its way over to me. “Arthur is alive?” I demanded of no one in particular.

  There was a push in the crowd, all of us on the move, trying to find Arthur. I struggled to elbow my way out, but I was part of a formidable unit. I knew if I could just break free, I’d be able to find him. We weren’t going to find him like this.

  And then I was out, and Arthur was in front of me, laughing. A sweet laugh, like he was watching Friends and something Chandler said had amused him. Chandler had always been his favorite.

  “You’re alive?” I gasped, and Arthur kept laughing.

  “Hey!” I pounded my fists on his chest. “You’re alive? How come you didn’t tell me?” I pounded harder, anything to make the delirious laughter stop. This wasn’t funny. “How could you not tell me?”

  “Don’t be mad.” Arthur held my fists still, smiling at me. “I’m here. Don’t be mad.”

  I woke with the bad feeling first. The disorientation followed—I just woke up, how could something bad have already happened? For a split second, giddiness took over, like it does on a Saturday morning, when you think you have to get ready for school and then you realize, ahhhh, it’s the weekend. Weekends would lose their magic for a while. Everything did.

  There was the sound of food cracking on the stove and the time on the TV box read 12:49 P.M. Dan had said he was coming by this morning. Had he? Did he share all the lurid details with Mom and Dad while I writhed and sweat, just a few feet away?

  The blanket had bunched around my torso, leaving my legs and feet exposed. I rolled onto my side, and the warm, starchy stench of an overheated and immobile body rose up in the air. “Mom?” I called out, anxious for her response. It would tell me how angry she was.

  I heard Mom’s bare feet on the kitchen floor, and then nothing as she crossed over into the carpeted living room. “You’re up!” She clasped her hands together. “That pill really knocked you out, huh?”

  There was no way she knew. “Did Dan come by?”

  “He called, but I told him it would probably be better to come this afternoon, since you were still sleeping.”

  I swallowed, and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth for a beat too long. I swallowed again, panicked, trying to get it to unstick. “Where’s Dad?”

  “Oh, honey,” Mom said. “He went into the office. Something big is going on. He might even have to work this weekend.”

  “He will?” I’d never known Dad to go into work on the weekends. Not ever.

  Mom misinterpreted my relief for yearning. “I’m sure he’ll be home early.”

  “What time is Dan coming over?”

  “Soon,” Mom said. “Maybe you should shower?” She held her nose and and waved her hand back and forth, teasingly. “You smell a little ripe.”

  I could smell like Olivia right now, I almost said. Rotting. I came this close.

  I’ve never been able to take fast showers. “What are you doing in there?” Dad would pound on the door and ask on school mornings. I don’t know what I “do” in there—what everyone else does, I guess, it just takes me longer.

  I’d taken two showers since Tuesday, and combined they were shorter than my usual one. I kept hearing noises, kept pushing the curtain as
ide, so sure I was going to see Arthur’s ghost standing there, a strapping angry puff of air.

  I turned off the water before I even rinsed off all the foamy suds on my back. “Mom?” I called, loudly. Whenever I spooked myself, sometimes the best remedy was just hearing Mom’s annoyed cry back. “Don’t yell, TifAni.”

  I called for Mom again, really bellowed this time. Still nothing. I wrapped myself in a towel and dripped my way across the bathroom floor, pulling the door open and shouting, “Mooooom!”

  “Jesus Christ I’m on the phone!” Her voice told me everything.

  I crept into my room, the carpet turning a shade darker with each soggy footstep. I picked up the phone from the receiver and pressed it against my ear. I’d begged for my own phone. When I got it, I’d covered the handle in pink glittery stickers like Rayanne from My So-Called Life.

  I picked up to Dan, in the middle of saying “. . . indication she’d been on the outs at school?”

  “No.” Mom sniffed. “She’d had a sleepover at Olivia’s recently.”

  “I think that was the night Dean attacked her,” Dan said. “She slept at Andrew Larson’s house.”

  “Her cross-country coach?” Mom wailed. Dan and I listened to her blow her nose. “I don’t even know who this girl is anymore.” I gripped the fold of my towel tighter. This girl. “How could she do this?”

  “Teenagers don’t always make the smartest decisions, Dina. Try not to be too hard on her.”

  “Oh please,” Mom snapped. “I was in high school once. You don’t have a body like TifAni’s and go to a party with all boys and drink too much and not know exactly what you’re doing there. TifAni knew better. She knows what this family’s values are.”

  “Even so,” Dan replied. “Kids make mistakes. TifAni has had to make up for hers in the worst way imaginable.”

  “And so the police know all about this?” Mom was beside herself, no doubt thinking, laughably, how humiliating this was for a family such as ours, with all our values.

  “TifAni told them last night.”

  “And so, what do they think? That TifAni planned this, this massacre with the other school outcasts to exact her revenge?” Mom released a single “Ha!” As though this were the most preposterous thing in the world.

  “I think that is one possibility,” Dan said, and I could picture the impact that had on Mom’s face. That Dan didn’t find this preposterous at all. “The problem is, they don’t have a single piece of evidence to prove that theory.”

  “What about that gun? The one TifAni touched.”

  “I haven’t heard anything about that,” Dan said. “Let’s hope that never comes to fruition.”

  “But what if it does?”

  “Even if it does, it’s hardly enough evidence to charge TifAni with a crime. And if Arthur showed that gun around, it’s plausible there would be other kids’ fingerprints on it, and I’m sure, with that, a story to corroborate TifAni’s.”

  Mom exhaled loudly into the phone. “Well, I appreciate your calling me,” she said. “Hopefully this ridiculous speculation all dies down soon.”

  “I’m sure it will,” Dan said. “They’re just dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s.”

  Mom thanked Dan again and said good-bye. I didn’t hang up until I was sure I was the last one on the line, and the phone made a wet popping noise as I pulled it away from my ear. I wiped it on my towel before placing it back in the receiver with a careful click.

  “TifAniiiiii!” Mom’s voice went ragged as my name wrapped the house in her call. I didn’t answer, just let the water droplets gather around me on the carpet in my bedroom—turquoise colored, Mom had let me pick that. It would get mildewy—she always nagged me about leaving damp towels on the floor—and it would be just one more reason for her to hate me.

  Mom told me I was not the daughter she raised. I cried, but her mouth never stepped out of its tight line. After that, we settled into a seething silence. There was still no word about when school would resume, and I spent my days on the couch, TV dazed, getting up only to eat or shower or go to the bathroom. Being the recipient of the silent treatment meant there was no one to tell me to turn off the news.

  Seven days after the shooting, Bradley was no longer the top news story, and when it was mentioned, there weren’t any new developments, just tearful interviews with parents and classmates who had been close to the blast in the cafeteria—but not so close that they weren’t alive and well for the camera, gesturing wildly with their still intact limbs. Occasionally, a news reporter would mention that police were investigating the possibility of others being involved, but no names or further details were given.

  So on Monday afternoon, when Detective Dixon called and told Mom we needed to come back down to the station immediately, and to bring our lawyer, I was angry that Katie Couric hadn’t prepared me for the development that was about to come next.

  Dan met us at the station, wearing his same limp suit. If Mom and I had been on speaking terms, I would have asked her why Dan dressed so poorly when he was a lawyer and probably made a lot of money. My little knowledge about lawyers came from the movie Hook, Robin Williams as the overworked, well-paid attorney who never had time for his children.

  Dad was still on his way to the station when Dan and I were ushered into the interrogation room by Detective Dixon and Detective Vencino. This time, Vencino was holding a thick file folder and sporting a sly, knowing smile.

  “TifAni,” Detective Dixon said, as we sat down across from one another. “How have you been?”

  “Fine, I guess.”

  “Well, that’s good to hear,” Vencino snipped. Everyone ignored him.

  “We understand you’ve been under a lot of duress over the last few days,” Dixon said, his tone, his body language, his bizarre eyebrows, everything about him amicable. “And we’d like to give you the opportunity to come forward with any important information that maybe, just, slipped your mind the last time we spoke.” He brought his fingers to his head and demonstrated how this important information could disappear from one’s head in a poof of smoke.

  I looked at Dan, the meanly lit room highlighting how vulnerable we both were. Whatever was in that manila folder matched Vencino’s agenda. “Let’s not be coy, Detectives,” Dan said. “TifAni has been honest with you. I’d say you owe her the same courtesy.”

  I frowned at my lap, frantically searching my mind, unsure if that was the truth.

  Dixon stuck out his lower lip and nodded, like this was a possibility, but he had to be convinced first. “Let’s let TifAni answer,” he said, and all three of them looked at me, expectantly.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I did tell you everything I thought was important.”

  “You sure about that?” Vencino asked. He waved the manila envelope at me like I should know what was inside of it.

  “Yes. Honestly, if I left something out I didn’t mean to leave it out.”

  Dan gave my hand a reassuring little pat. “Why don’t you just tell us what we’re doing here?”

  Vencino brought the file down on the table with a loud thwack. The force flung the front flap open, and a pile of colored Xeroxes reminded me. Slowly, with intent, Dixon spread the copies of the Bradley yearbook pages out on the table for Dan and me to see.

  Vencino pinned each picture to the table with a yellow, ragged fingernail and read the things Arthur and I had written. “Chop my cock off.” “Choke me with it.” “RIP HOs.” I wrote that last one. Mr. Larson had told us to compose a Halloween haiku on an illustration of a grave, beneath the words “RIP Farmer Ted.” It had seemed like such a kiddie assignment at the time, but it had stuck in my head. Later, I’d jotted it down on Olivia’s picture and Arthur had giggled, insidiously, when he read it.

  “This is your handwriting, is it not?” Dixon asked.

  Dan regarded me sharply. “Don’t answer that, TifAni.”

  “We don’t really need her to,” Vencino said and nodded at Dixon. Anoth
er file had materialized in his hands.

  Notes. The ones Arthur and I used to pass all the time, even when we weren’t in class and could have just said whatever it was we were writing out loud. Some were about nothing . . . what a lemming Headmaster Mah was and what a slut Elisa White had become. I’d left my prints in the color of the ink, the same shamrock green as in the pages of the yearbook, my intent, laughable now, to proclaim my allegiance to Bradley. Not that they needed the green to even know it was me. I’d attended a Catholic middle school with nuns who didn’t know how to explain the sexual overtones in literature, and so it was eschewed year after year in favor of grammar and cursive classes. My perfect penmanship slanted and rolled across the pages of the yearbook, my DNA in every graceful loop.

  Did you see Hilary’s hair today?

  It’s so gross. Take a shower, sweetie pie. Her pussy must smell so rank. If she even has one. There were all these rumors in middle school that she was really a man. A hermaphrodite at the very least. I can’t believe Dean banged her.

  Dean and Hilary? When? I’m pretty sure she’s a virgin.

  Oh, come on. Everyone knows about that. Dean will put it anywhere. (No offense.) He’s going to be one of those guys who marries an ex–Ms. America but bangs the fat waitresses at T.G.I. Friday’s on the side. The world would really be better off without him. Raise your hand and ask to go to the bathroom if you agree.

  You are never going to believe what just happened in the bathroom right now.

  You better tell me fast, we have three minutes until the bell rings.

  Paige Patrick was taking a pregnancy test.

  And another note. A different day. This one dated at the top, because I started it and I was taught to put the date in the upper-right-hand corner of everything, even a stupid, hastily scribbled note.

  October 29, 2001

  Today Dean bumped into me in the hallway and called me a wide load. I’m seriously thinking about transferring. (I wasn’t! I just liked to say this to get Arthur to remind me of all the reasons why Bradley was superior to Mt. St. Theresa’s, which he would, happily: “Oh, you miss soccer mom training camp?”).