A Good Idea

by Cristina Moracho

  Somewhere along the line, I had fucked up.

  What if I could choose? Would I have Caroline die, if that would be Calder’s punishment? Could I live with my part in it if he knew it had all started with him? If she died, there’d be a body to bury, and a proper funeral, and the whole town would mourn her. No one would pretend she’d never existed, no one would say she had been asking for it. They’d plant a tree for her in the middle of town, they’d name the library after her. Next year, they’d dedicate the yearbook to her and sing a song for her at graduation. And Leroy would make sure that someone paid for it, whether that person deserved it or not.

  I wanted her to live. The last thing I wanted was to watch the whole town console Calder and Leroy. I had to believe there was still a way for Calder to get what he deserved.

  These were not feelings I particularly wanted to feel. Luckily, I had a couple of blues Serena had given me for a rainy day. It rained every day in Williston now, but I decided this was the day I’d been saving them for. Dad wasn’t home yet—I thought about the conversation we’d had on the deck at Charlie’s; Christ, wasn’t I supposed to be packing and calling Mom?—so I went up to my room, leaving my door ajar so I could hear if he came in, and cleared a space on my desk. I laid a crisp twenty-dollar bill over the pills and pounded them with my lighter until they were fine enough to be carved into lines with my driver’s license. Then I rolled up the bill and bent over the desk, resolutely snorting everything in sight.

  I took my cigarettes to the screened-in porch at the back of the house and lay there, waiting. A few minutes later, I felt the familiar warmth starting at the base of my spine, spreading over me like a soft blanket. It worked. I stopped picturing Caroline in her hospital bed; I stopped imagining Owen in a prison jumpsuit; I stopped seeing Betty’s dead body floating toward the open sea. I stopped thinking much of anything coherent and lost myself in a blank, pleasant numbness.

  Dad must have just followed the smell of cigarette smoke to the back porch; by then I was lying in complete darkness. He sat down beside me. I could sense him weighing his options, trying to decide how to begin.

  “You know I wish you wouldn’t smoke in the house,” he said.

  “Technically, this isn’t the house.”

  “You know I wish you wouldn’t smoke at all.”

  “You smoked for twenty years. It’s in the blood.”

  He sighed. “Are you okay?”

  “You’ve been to the hospital? Talked to the cops?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is she going to die?”

  “They still don’t know.”

  “It’s my fault.” I could say it out loud now without feeling anything.

  “No, it isn’t, Fin. Don’t say that.”

  “Do you still want me to leave?”

  My father surprised me then. He shook one of my cigarettes loose from the pack and lit it with the deftness that comes from muscle memory. It amazed me sometimes, the way the body remembered things. He stretched out on the chaise lounge next to mine.

  “Do you think you can handle being here?” he asked after a moment. “Because so far it doesn’t seem like it.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I really don’t know.”

  He took a deep drag and exhaled. “That is the first thing you’ve said, since you’ve come back, that sounds like the truth to me.”

  The doorbell rang. Dad looked up, startled. I didn’t move.

  “You expecting someone?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  He sighed, handed me his cigarette, and went inside the house. I heard him open the front door, the faint murmur of voices. My eyes kept closing without my permission, but I was vaguely aware of footsteps coming in my direction. I sat up and tried to quell the nausea that rippled through me. Looking down at the cigarette in my hand, I somehow knew that even one more drag would push me over the edge and make me sick. I stubbed it out reluctantly and smoothed my hair, hoping I could pass for sober.

  Dad flicked on the porch light, and I winced.

  “Your friend’s here,” he said.

  Behind him was Danny, who I hadn’t seen since he’d sold me cigarettes at the trader. He looked pale and sallow, damp T-shirt sticking to his skin. I stared at him blankly, not sure what he was doing at my house.

  “Hey, Finley,” he said.

  “Hey, Danny,” I replied, trying to pull myself out of my stupor.

  Dad excused himself as gracefully as he could. “I’m going to make some dinner.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I said.

  “Suit yourself,” he called over his shoulder.

  Danny didn’t move. He just stood dripping on the floor and staring at me nervously.

  “Have a seat,” I told him, and he obediently sat on the edge of the chaise Dad had vacated. “What’s up?”

  “I need to talk to you. Can I have one of those?” He gestured to my Marlboros.

  “Sure.” I handed him the pack and lighter, waited for him to take a couple of drags. He coughed the way I had when I’d first learned how to smoke; this was a new habit for him, it was obvious.

  “Sorry,” he said, covering his mouth with his fist.

  “It’s okay. It takes practice.”

  “You always make it look so easy.”

  “You don’t have any news about Caroline, do you?”

  He shook his head. “This isn’t about Caroline. Well, maybe it sort of is. Mostly, it’s about Betty.”

  I sat up straighter on my chaise. “What’s going on?”

  “You know how Janet Payne says she saw Betty, on the side of the highway? I don’t know when it was exactly, a few nights ago.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that.”

  “When she first started telling people, I thought she was full of it. Making it up, I don’t know, so she’d have an excuse to sit around Charlie’s and collect free drinks. I liked Betty, you know I did. I even asked her out a couple of times but she always said no because she was so hung up on Calder. But I don’t think she’s out there wandering around Williston at night. I don’t think she’s out there at all.” The ash on his cigarette had grown perilously long; I handed him the empty Diet Coke can I’d been using as an ashtray. Oblivious, he started to raise it to his lips.

  I managed to stop him in time. “Christ, Danny, that’s an ashtray. Are you okay?”

  “No, I’m not okay,” he said. “And I’m trying to explain why.”

  I fought off another wave of nausea. “I’m listening.”

  “I was working at the trader last night. It was dead, everyone was in Pullman for the game, but I had to stay open until ten, because I knew everyone would stop in when they got back, buy smokes or chips or whatever before they went over to Charlie’s. I was alone in there for hours. You know how the counter faces away from the windows?”

  “Yeah,” I said, wishing he’d get to the point.

  “Well, I was at the counter, doing a crossword puzzle, listening to the radio, just trying to kill time. And I started getting this weird feeling, like someone was watching me. But I knew there was nobody in the store. So I looked outside, and Main Street was totally deserted, but I swear, across the street, under one of the lampposts, I saw her.” He tried taking another drag from his cigarette but it only turned him green. Defeated, he dropped the rest of it in the can, where the remains of my soda extinguished it with a soft, final hiss.

  “Saw who, Danny?”

  He looked up at me for the first time since he’d started talking and wiped his matted hair out of his eyes. “Betty. I swear to God, I saw Betty standing there. She waved at me. I just froze. And then she turned away. I came tearing out from behind the counter, ran out the front door, but by the time I got outside, she was gone.”

  “Look, Danny,” I said. “I don’t know who you saw, but it wasn’t Betty. B
etty’s dead.”

  “I know that!” he cried. “Don’t you think I know that? Why the fuck do you think I’m so freaked out? She’s dead and I saw her standing around on Main Street. I saw Betty, I swear, and then I heard about Caroline, and I thought maybe, I don’t know, Betty had something to do with it. Maybe Betty scared her off the road somehow, caused the accident—”

  “Betty would never do something like that.”

  “Maybe not when she was alive, but now—”

  “Are you being serious? You think my dead best friend is going around Williston terrorizing people?”

  “I don’t know what to think, okay? But I haven’t slept since it happened, and I’m scared.”

  “Why would you have any reason to be scared of Betty?” Something that had nagged at me ever since my visit to the trader was beginning to surface in my mind. I leaned in, so close our knees were almost touching. “Why are you so sure she’s dead?”

  Danny was nearly in tears now. “I just am.”

  Nobody can read a liar like another liar. I grabbed him by the shoulders and gave him a good shake. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Nothing, I swear,” he said, cowering.

  “Bullshit. Whatever it is, I’m going to find out one way or another, and when I do, you really will have something to be afraid of. Do you think I came back here this summer for the fucking lobster rolls?”

  “I know why you’re here,” he said, taking a deep, quivering breath and wiping his eyes. He sniffled and collected himself until he could look me in the face again. “You’re here for revenge. I get it. But I think that’s why she’s here, too.”

  “What does that have to do with you? Why would Betty be angry at you?”

  “Because,” he said, standing up, “she asked me to do something and I wouldn’t do it.”

  “What?” I asked impatiently. “What was it?”

  “If you want to know the rest, talk to Owen.”

  “Owen? Why Owen?”

  “Because she asked him first.” He turned to go.

  “Danny, wait.”

  He paused in the doorway. “Yeah?”

  “Do you still think she killed herself?”

  “I wish it were that simple,” he said, and left.

  • • •

  When he was gone, I tried calling Serena and then Owen, but there was no answer. I guessed Serena was still at Charlie’s gathering intelligence, and Owen was undoubtedly still sleeping off the booze. I did not for one second believe that Danny had seen Betty’s ghost, and the timing meant that he hadn’t seen Caroline dressed in Betty’s clothing either—Caroline had been on her way back from Pullman then, but of course she’d never made it.

  There were myriad explanations for Danny’s story—he’d fallen asleep at work and dreamt the whole thing, he was a blossoming schizophrenic experiencing his first psychotic break, or it had just been some girl with a passing resemblance to Betty who’d skipped the game and was waving hello to the only other soul on Main Street. But what I couldn’t dismiss was the obvious admission that Danny knew more about Betty’s death, and his intimation that Owen did, too, left me deeply, deeply shaken. I would have driven to the cabin to confront Owen, but I was in no shape to drive, and Owen was in no shape to answer. I had no choice but to wait until morning.

  Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t sleep. I thought about my short-lived moment of near triumph at Charlie’s, when I thought the police had come to arrest Calder. I imagined them handcuffing him and reading him his rights and taking him away, but even then the dark thoughts crept in and ruined my fantasy. Leroy would get him a sharp, cunning lawyer, a shark in a five-thousand-dollar suit, and Calder would get off by pleading temporary insanity; even if Calder were convicted, he could be out in just a few years. Was there any outcome that might actually satisfy me?

  And when I had worn myself out thinking about Calder and justice and revenge, and whether I could even distinguish between those last two anymore, my weary, addled brain settled on the one subject I had painstakingly avoided as much as possible—Betty herself. Not dead Betty, not ghost Betty, not Betty the murder victim, but the girl she had been.

  I remembered her with all her flaws intact; her huge-heartedness had always made up for her insecurities and her exhausting, mercurial nature, but there had still been times I wanted to fling myself out of whatever car we were trapped in together rather than endure another recursive conversation about why a certain boy might or might not like her. The endless analyses of looks exchanged across the hallway at school, the mind-numbing decodings of notes slipped into her locker. And all this when we were still in middle school.

  Part of me knew that if I’d stayed in Williston, if we’d gone to high school together, we would have drifted apart in a particularly painful way, Betty clinging ever tighter while I desperately tried to shake her off. But my moving to New York had somehow cemented us together: joining me there became her hope for the future, while she was the main thing that kept me tethered to Williston, besides Dad. Our separation meant that I got all the good parts of Betty without having to weather the daily storms of her moods and heartbreaks, without having to constantly face that abyss of need I knew she’d never fill.

  But I had loved her, whether it was a love left over from our childhood together, or a blind love based on my own uncharacteristically optimistic idea of the person she might someday become. Or maybe it was all of her—that honeyed voice on the other end of the phone, the return address written on her letters in that all-too-familiar cursive, having one person who knew me best and having that person be her. Never in all our years as friends, no matter how long we were apart or how frustrating she became, had that proprietary feeling left me, that she was mine, and that meant I was the only one who could roll my eyes at her when she gave in to the histrionics, or comfort her when she was battling the unlights. Me, and nobody else. She’d been mine, and she’d been stolen from me. Taken.

  I seized on that word—taken—as I lay in bed watching my room slowly brighten as the sun rose, and, like a CD set on repeat, my mind went back to the beginning and started playing track one again, and track one was Calder.

  • • •

  I fell asleep around eight A.M. and woke up at ten. Every part of me that had been so deliciously hollowed out by the pills the night before was now filled with dread as hard and sharp as a diamond in my chest. I was pretty sure Serena’s blues had depleted my brain of some essential neurotransmitters; perhaps it was time to take a break. The sleep deprivation didn’t help either.

  The Halyard was locked, the Closed sign hanging on the inside of the door. All the lights were off. I went into the alley, expecting to find Owen smoking a cigarette, ready with some explanation about how he was too hungover to deal with people today so he was going to do inventory in the basement and the customers could go fuck themselves. But there was nobody there, either, and the back door was locked, too.

  “What the shit?” I muttered. Maybe Owen had rallied last night after all, gone on a tear at Charlie’s and was too sick to come to work. But Owen was never too sick to come to work. I tried to remember if I’d laid him on his stomach when I put him to bed, or if there was a chance he’d choked to death on his own vomit.

  “Finley.”

  I snapped to attention at the sound of my name. It was Serena, standing at the far end of the alley, by the sidewalk. She was nervously worrying her crucifix on its chain, and her pale face, glowing brightly beneath her shaggy black bob, was tight and anxious.

  “What is it?” I said, hurrying to meet her. “What happened?”

  “I called your house and nobody answered, and then I remembered you were supposed to be working at the diner, so I got here as soon as I could. I wanted to make sure you heard it from me.”

  “Heard what? What the fuck is it now?”

  “It’s Owen,” she said c
almly, raising her hand when I tried to interrupt. “He’s okay. But he was arrested this morning.”

  “For what? They couldn’t find anything, they had nothing. What could they arrest him for?”

  “Come with me. I can’t tell you the rest here.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re screaming.”

  I followed her to her car. I didn’t protest or demand more information; I just stared out the window and wondered when it would start raining and if Owen’s parents knew yet and who would bail him out. I waited until we were on the beach, the same beach as always, the place where Betty and I used to picnic with Calder, the place where he’d killed her, and where Serena and I had gone on what I sort of considered our first date, the place where my morbid curiosity had almost bested my will to live. Serena led me to the same log where we’d sat that first night and put her arm around me.

  “Now will you tell me what happened?” I said.

  “I don’t know all the details. My mom was at the Halyard when it happened.”

  “They arrested him at the diner?” I said, horrified, picturing Owen led away in front of all his patrons. I started to cry.

  “It’s going to be okay.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “They’re not going to be able to make it stick.”

  “He’s a fucking drug dealer. Everybody knows. And what about Silas?”

  “They didn’t arrest him for drugs, Finley.”

  “Then what?”

  “They arrested him for arson. For the fire at the high school.”