by Barry Lyga
During his soliloquy, Antoine had taken Dean’s hands in his own and ended up partly crouched on the roof before him. It almost looked as though he were ready to propose, and the very thought caused bubbles of amusement to burble up from his gut, bubbles that quickly burst into drizzles of acid when he thought one step further.
Proposing.
Marriage.
He could never marry Antoine. They could never have a life together.
Gay people couldn’t get married. Or have kids. And he wanted those things.
He was pretty sure he wanted those things.
“I don’t… I don’t know.”
“Then forget college. Forget it all,” Antoine said, his voice rising in excitement, his breath coming fast. “We could go to Mexico.”
“Mexico?” Dean shook his head like a swimmer rising up from the water. “Mexico?” Antoine might as well have suggested the moon or Mars. They all started with M, and they were all equally reasonable.
“Sure.” Antoine tightened his grip on Dean’s hands, his excitement mounting with each syllable out of his mouth. “No one knows us there. No one cares who we are. What we are. We’d just be two American dudes showing up. I have some money saved up. You do, too, right?”
Dean, in fact, had money in a bank account that he had never touched. As well as a stack of savings bonds from his grandparents, birthday gifts given reliably and predictably every year since his birth. For college expenses.
“American money goes real far down there,” Antoine said with the confidence of someone who had researched it. “We could coast for a while, get the lay of the land.”
“And then what? When the money runs out?”
Antoine shrugged. “We’d get jobs doing translation or something at a resort. We both speak Spanish pretty well.”
“Un poco,” Dean hedged. They both had straight As in Spanish, but what did that really mean? Other than ordering in the language when his parents had taken him to Tio Pepe’s for his birthday, he’d never tested his Spanish in any sort of real-life environment.
And besides… why was he even thinking of this? He wasn’t moving to Mexico!
“Antoine, this isn’t happening.”
“You could write.” Antoine said it in a sly tone of voice that Dean usually associated with his twin, and the combination was jarring, unsettling. “Think about it—you go down there with your American bankroll, and we get a little place, and you have something like a year to do nothing but work on your writing. It would be an adventure,” Antoine went on, his speech accelerating, as though velocity counted as much as logic in the game of persuasion. “Like Hemingway, right? American expatriate. Teen author in a foreign land… think about it.”
Dean had thought about it. He’d often considered just skipping college entirely and knuckling down on his writing, but the reaction from his family would be devastating. Whenever he brought up writing as a career, the response typically ran to something like this: Well, you’re very talented, honey, but that’s not a surefire way to make a living. You should have a fallback position, just to be practical.
College would put off for four years the need to decide on that fallback position. College would give him four years of security while he tried to get something published.
“Every suggestion you make,” he said slowly, “involves me following you somewhere.”
Antoine opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. Then drew in a deep breath and tried to speak again before finally scrubbing his hands up and down his face and saying, “No. No, man. I’m trying… I’m trying to work out a scenario where you’re happy. You don’t want to go to college. You don’t want to keep going out with her, right?”
Dean bristled. “She has a name, man. You know that.”
“She has tits, too,” Antoine shot back. “So what?”
Dean’s jaw locked into place at an angle. For a hard moment, he couldn’t speak. Words foamed at the back of his throat like hot soda bubbles. They’d never argued before. Never raised their voices to each other. He couldn’t believe this was happening.
“It’s not about that,” he managed to spit out, his voice strangled and raw.
“Then what’s it about? You know what she’s called? You know what gay people call the girl you go out with so everyone thinks you’re straight? A beard. She’s not your girlfriend, Dean—she’s just your beard.”
Beard. It was such a reductive, insulting term. It made Kim seem like a disguise he slapped on when he needed to go out, unsuspected and surreptitious in the bright, straight world. But she was more than that. Kim was his friend, his good friend. They’d told each other secrets. They knew each other in ways no one else did.
Except…
Maybe…
Antoine.
“It’s not that simple,” Dean said. His throat had opened up; the bubbles gurgled and burned his throat on their journey down. “I can’t just…” Abandon her lingered on his tongue and refused to emerge. He knew Antoine’s rejoinder without hearing it: Abandon? So what are you going to do? Stay with her? Marry her? Live a lie just so that you don’t hurt her feelings?
And yes, damn it, that had been the plan. That had been the plan, and he’d been fine with it until the moment in Jay’s garage; until the kiss, he’d done a good job of suppressing and ignoring that other part of himself. He’d pretended not to feel his blood rise during Conan the Barbarian when Arnold Schwarzenegger rippled and flexed his way across the screen. He’d convinced himself that he wanted to be Sonny Crockett, rather than the truth, which was that he wanted to dive into Don Johnson like a cool pond on a hot day, swim in the man’s stubbled, chiseled body, run his tongue and the tips of his fingers along every inch of him, sink his teeth into his shoulder, his thigh.
He wanted nothing more than to be with Antoine. But he also needed…
Safety?
Security?
He needed to fit in. To belong.
He couldn’t figure out how to have both.
“I can’t just make these big decisions right now. Be patient. Please.”
Antoine, still hunkered down before him, gazed steadily into Dean’s eyes, the moment distended and protracted. There was nothing but the warm brown of Antoine’s eyes, the wide black discs at the center. And then Antoine smiled softly and cupped Dean’s face with his hands.
“Of course,” Antoine said. “Of course.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Dean told him, even though he wasn’t sure how.
They kissed under the waxing gibbous moon. Everything was okay when they kissed. When they kissed, nothing else mattered in the world.
THE PRESENT: ELAYAH
Mom was working late, catching up on everything she’d missed out on while babysitting Elayah. So as bedtime approached, it was just Dad and Elayah in the house.
It was time. They’d all agreed—it was time to talk directly to their parents about what had and hadn’t happened. No more It was a long time ago. No more Don’t worry about it.
In the morning, they would question Jorja’s dad. And track down Liam’s dad and Kim, both working nights. Come the weekend, they’d go down to Finn’s Landing to talk to Marcie’s dad.
But in the meantime, here was her dad.
They ate warmed-up leftovers—chicken tortilla soup, always better the second night—and watched a little TV. She turned off her brain, let the screen flash and babble before her, interrupted by Dad’s occasional grunt or guffaw, and before she knew it, he was yawning his way toward the stairs.
Perfect timing. Catch him off guard.
“Dad, can you tell me about Keygate?”
Dad startled, one hand on the banister. He turned to her, his eyes wide. “Keygate? Holy… where’d you hear that?”
“It’s mentioned in your yearbook.”
And it was. Now that she had the word to home in on, Elayah found references to it scattered throughout the yearbook. Nothing in any bios or official text, but on some collage pages, the words key and ga
te had been placed in proximity, as had pictures of keys and gates, or combinations of the words and images. Elayah had worked the yearbook staff long enough to read between the lines: Word had come down from the administration that there was to be no mention of what would have been a scandal. So the yearbook staff in 1987 had made as many oblique references as humanly possible. It was practically a moral imperative to slip such things past the watchful eyes of the school administrators.
Dad grimaced. “It’s late. I’m too tired for stupidity. Maybe tomorrow.”
She’d had a feeling he might say that. “Okay. I’ll just wait up for Mom, then.”
Dad was three steps up before he twigged to the subtext of her comment. “Oh, hell no!” he said. “Don’t go bothering your mother with that nonsense.”
Sprawled out on the sofa with her phone, Elayah pretended to be intimately involved in something on Instagram. “I’m sure she remembers everything.”
Dad groaned and made a show of stomping down the three steps. He stood before her and planted his fists on his hips. “Fine. You win. What do you want to know?”
She spent another half second scrolling, then locked her phone and slid it into her pocket. “Just everything.”
They sat across from each other at the kitchen table, and he told her exactly that. Or at least as much as he could remember. One of them—he couldn’t remember which—had access to a key grinder. Another was trusted by the teachers to borrow keys. And so they’d copied the keys to the building.
Elayah was in something like shock. Based on Kathleen Rourke’s admittedly faded recollection, she’d expected a story of homecoming night. A prank gone awry, maybe. She hadn’t expected to hear about multiple break-ins, a plan to change grades, a search for a swimming pool, of all things.
“I don’t understand how you got away with it for so long,” she told him. “What about alarms? Cameras? Security systems?”
Dad snorted as though he’d inhaled a peanut while watching something hilarious. “In 1986? In a school? Elayah,” he said with great restraint and patience, “we are the reason schools now have cameras and alarms and security systems.”
“Peej,” she said. “That’s Jorja’s dad, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Started going by his initials back in law school, I guess. Maybe college. Not sure.”
“What about Katie?”
“Katie?” He seemed puzzled.
You said her name your own damn self the other night! she wanted to scream. But she also didn’t want to admit that she’d been eavesdropping.
“You knew someone named Katie back then. Who was she?”
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”
“But what happened? How did all this lead to the knife and someone getting killed?”
Dad reached across the table and took her hands in his own. She flinched at his touch and he withdrew, his expression aggrieved and dazed. “Baby girl… nothing. Nothing at all. You’re chasing shadows. Worse yet, you’re chasing old shadows. We broke in and we did stupid things and we got caught and it ended. But none of us killed anyone. None of us died.”
Elayah pulled her hand away and stroked one finger lightly along the path of stitches on her throat. “But something happened, Dad. You either don’t remember or you’re not telling me. Something happened.”
Sagging in his chair, Dad contemplated his hands, empty on the table before him. “I don’t know what to tell you. I’m not lying. Nothing happened. I swear it.”
More than anything, she wanted to believe him. It’s not that she didn’t. Or couldn’t.
It wasn’t even that the yearbook entries and the handwriting match made her suspect every last thing she knew about her own father.
It was that the knife in the sheriff’s custody and the line across her throat and the memory of the blade at her neck didn’t allow her to believe.
She made one last attempt: “What about Jorja’s dad? Why was he in Sheppard Pratt?”
Her father steepled his fingers before him and sighed deeply. “Baby… that’s not for me to say. You’ll have to ask him.”
Elayah nodded. “I will.”
LIAM
They went to Jorja’s dad’s office the next day during lunch period. The county public defenders had a small storefront in Finn’s Landing, a two-block walk from the courthouse. Jorja’s dad had seniority, so he actually had a tiny office of his own, and he sat at a smallish desk behind an older model iMac. His desk blotter bristled with Post-its. Other than his nameplate—P. J. DEARBORN—the desk was clear. Almost too neat.
“Hey, gang!” he said brightly as they entered. “A little off-campus lunch trip? Short a few ducats, sweetheart? Let me see.…” He delved into his pocket for his wallet and started riffling through bills.
“We’re not here for lunch, Dad.” Jorja’s voice was dull but resolved.
There was no point in dragging it out. Jorja slapped the committal papers down on her father’s desk and stood there holding Marcie’s hand. Liam wondered what that felt like, holding the hand of someone who meant something to you? Would he ever get there with El?
He shook an imaginary Magic 8 Ball. Outlook not so good.
Jorja’s dad slipped his wallet away and glanced at the paper as though it were a lunch menu and he’d eaten a big breakfast. Then, seeming to realize exactly what it was, he froze. His expression locked into place, still that goofy Dad grin. As the moments passed, the grin corroded into a sickly grimace. He covered the paper with his hand and stood up abruptly and shouted, “Where did you get this?”
Bruce Banner turning into the Hulk caught all of them off guard. Jorja and Marcie took a united step back from the desk. El, standing next to Liam, gasped loudly.
Liam’s fists clenched. Some instinct deep inside his bone marrow was ready. And it was ridiculous because this was Jorja’s dad, the Cub Scout S’more King and the worst Little League coach in the county.
“Where did you get this?” he roared, now holding up the crumpled paper in his fist. “Where were you poking around? Who the hell do you think you are? All of you!” As he said this last, he finally directed his attention away from his daughter, firing a scathing glare at the other three.
“Dad, I just want to know—”
“You have no right to go through my things!” Mr. Dearborn yelled. “These things are private!”
Jorja yanked her hand away from Marcie and folded her arms over her chest, refusing to budge again. “I want to know what happened. I deserve to know. I’m your daughter.”
Jorja’s dad crushed the paper into a ball and hurled it angrily at the wastebasket in the corner of his office. His rage threw off his aim; the wadded-up sheet hit a windowsill, bounced off, and landed in the middle of the floor.
“Get back to school now,” he seethed. “And we’ll talk about respecting people’s privacy tonight when I get home. Believe me.”
“Who’s Katie?” Jorja asked. Liam’s estimation of Jorja rose a notch. At this point, with Peej’s seething anger clouding the room, Liam would have just left, had it been his dad. But Jorja gamely took another shot. “Who’s Katie, and what did you do to her?”
Peej went purple. Liam thought it very possible that he would do a real-life reenactment of the exploding-head emoji. No joke.
“Go. Now.”
Two generations glared at each other. Jorja had no choice—with no cards to play, she folded.
“Fine, Dad,” she muttered, and turned around. “Come on, guys, let’s go.”
ELAYAH
Since they were in Finn’s Landing, they had lunch at Wally’s restaurant. The hostess recognized Liam, sat them immediately and brought out free off-menu appetizers: Liam’s favorite potato skins and boneless “nuclear wings.”
“We still don’t know if he’s the criminal or the victim,” Jorja said, licking nuclear sauce from her fingers. Elayah couldn’t even look at the wings without her eyes watering. “If he did something or if something was done to him.”
“You think he knew Lisa De Nardo back when she was Lisa McKenzie?” Marcie asked.
“I don’t think either one of them would answer that question right now.” Liam dipped a wing in ranch, then plopped it atop a potato skin before eating both.
“There’s no way we’re gonna make it back before lunch is over,” Elayah warned them.
Liam shrugged. Jorja and Marcie did, too. Well, as long as everyone was on the same page.
Her phone rang as their server brought out bowls of chili.
“Lisa De Nardo,” Indira announced without salutation. “Born Lisa McKenzie. Graduated 1987 with your parents.”
“This is stuff we know.” She mouthed Indira to the others, who perked up immediately.
“Married in 1996 to Edward De Nardo. Divorced in 2007. Three sons—”
“No, two sons. We found them on Facebook.”
She could almost hear the smile in the pause on the other end of the line. “No. Three sons. You found the two named De Nardo. But there’s a third son. Peter McKenzie, born in December 1987.”
“Peter McKenzie,” she told the group. Liam and Jorja held up hands slick with sauce. With a knowing sigh, Marcie dived into her purse for her phone.
Elayah did some quick mental math. That made Peter McKenzie ten years older than the older of Lisa De Nardo’s other two sons. And she would have been only eighteen or so when he was born. Right out of high school.
Wait. If he was born in December, then she would have gotten pregnant back in—do the math—March. Right?
She thanked Indira, promised to get back to her with the photo of the knife. This new information seemed significant. Lisa McKenzie would have gotten pregnant while still in high school. Which was hardly unique in this town, but still… that first son had been born out of wedlock and had his mother’s last name. So there’d been no father as far as the paperwork was concerned.
