The Pact

by Jodi Picoult

  "No," Chris said. "I'm not."

  IT HAD BEEN EMILY'S IDEA to go to the carousel. In part, because she knew it was likely to be deserted at this time of year, and in part because she was making a conscious effort to take with her all the best things about the world she wanted to leave, just in case memories could be carried in one's pockets and used to plot out the course of whatever it was that came next.

  She had always loved the carousel. The past two summers, when Chris had run it, she'd met him here often. They had christened the horses: Tulip and Leroy; Sadie and Starlight and Buck. Sometimes she'd come during the day and help Chris hoist the thick, damp weights of toddlers onto the carved saddles; sometimes she'd arrive at dusk to help him clean up. She'd liked that best. There was something impossibly lovely about the big machine running itself down, horses moving in slow motion to the creak and whir of the gears.

  She didn't feel frightened. Now that she'd found a way out, even the thought of dying didn't scare her. She just wanted to end it before other people she loved were hurt as badly as she was.

  She looked at Chris, and at the small silver box that contained the mechanism that activated the carousel. "Do you still have your key?" she asked.

  The wind whipped her braid against her cheek, and her arms were crossed in an effort to keep warm. "Yeah," Chris said. "You want to go on?"

  "Please." She climbed onto the carousel, passing her hand against the noses of the sturdy horses. She picked the one she'd named Delilah, a white horse with a silver mane and paste rubies and emeralds set into her bridle. Chris stood by the silver box, his hand on the red button that started the machine. Emily felt the carousel rumble to life beneath her, the calliope jangling as the merry-go-round picked up speed. She slapped the cracked leather of the reins against the horse's neck and closed her eyes.

  She pictured herself and Chris, little children standing side by side on a backyard boulder, holding hands and leaping together into a high pile of autumn leaves. She remembered the jewel tones of the maples and oaks. She remembered the yank of her arm against Chris's as gravity tugged at them. But most of all she remembered that moment when they were both convinced they were flying.

  HE STOOD ON LEVEL GROUND and watched Emily. Her head was thrown back and the wind had pinked her cheeks. Tears were streaming from her eyes, but she was smiling.

  This, he realized, is it. Either he let Emily have what she wanted more than anything, or he let himself have what he wanted. It was the first time he could remember those two things not being the same.

  How could he stand by and watch her die? Then again, how could he stop her, if she was hurting so badly?

  Emily had trusted him, but he was going to betray her. And then the next time she tried to kill herself--because there would be a next time, he knew--he wouldn't find out until after the fact. Like everyone else.

  He felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. Was he really considering what he thought he was?

  He tried to clear his head the way he did before a meet, so that the only thing in his mind was the straightest, fastest path from here to there. But this time, it would not be that easy. There was no right way. There was no guarantee that both of them would make it to the other side.

  Shivering, he focused on the long, white line of her throat, the beat at its hollow. He kept his eyes on her pulse as she disappeared out of his range of vision to the far side of the carousel, holding his breath until he saw her coming back to him.

  THEY SAT ON THE CAROUSEL BENCH where mothers rode with the tiniest babies, the wood bubbly and thick beneath their hands from consecutive coats of paint. The bottle of Canadian Club rested between Chris's feet. He felt Emily shaking beside him, and preferred to think that she might be cold. Leaning over, he buttoned her jacket all the way. "You don't want to get sick," he said, and then, considering his words, felt queasy. "I love you," he whispered, and that was the moment he knew what he was going to do.

  When you loved someone, you put their needs before your own.

  No matter how inconceivable those needs were; no matter how fucked up; no matter how much it made you feel like you were ripping yourself into pieces.

  He did not realize he'd begun to cry, partly in shock and partly in acceptance, until he tasted himself, slick and salty, on Emily's lips. It was not supposed to be this way; oh, God, but how could he be a hero when saving Em would only make her hurt more? Out of comfort, Emily's hands began to stroke his back, and he wondered, Who is here for whom? Then suddenly he had to be inside her, and with an urgency that surprised him he found himself ripping at her jeans and shoving them down her thighs, wrapping her legs around him as he came.

  Take me with you, he thought.

  EMILY STRAIGHTENED HER CLOTHES, her cheeks flaming. Chris could not stop apologizing, as if the fact he'd forgotten a condom was something she'd hold against him for eternity. "It doesn't matter," she said, tucking in her shirt, thinking, If you only knew.

  He sat a few feet away from her, his hands clasped in his lap. His jeans were still unbuttoned, and the smell of sex carried on the wind. He felt unnaturally calm. "What do you want me to do," he said, "afterward?"

  They hadn't talked about it; in fact, until this moment Emily was not entirely sure that Chris wasn't going to do something completely stupid, like throw the bullets into the shrubbery when he went to load the chamber, or knock the gun out of her hand at the last minute. "I don't know," she said, and she didn't: She'd never gotten this far in her thoughts. There was the planning, and the organization, and even the act itself--but the truth of being dead was not something she'd pictured. She cleared her throat. "Do anything," she said. "Whatever you need to."

  Chris traced a pattern on the floorboards with his thumbnail, a sudden stranger. "Is there a time?" he asked stiffly.

  "Just not yet," Emily whispered, and at the reprieve Chris buttoned his jeans and pulled her onto his lap. His arms closed around her and she leaned into him, thinking, Forgive me.

  HIS HANDS WERE SHAKING as he snapped open the chamber of the gun. The Colt would hold six bullets. After one was fired, the shell remained in the revolver. He explained all this to Emily as he fumbled in his shirt pocket, as if reciting the sheer mechanics of the act would make it that much less painful.

  "Two bullets?" Emily said.

  Chris lifted a shoulder. "Just in case," he answered, daring her to ask him to explain something he did not really understand himself. Just in case one bullet didn't do the trick? Just in case he found that with Emily dead, he'd want to die, too?

  Then the gun lay between them, a living thing. Emily picked it up, its weight bending her wrist.

  There was so much Chris wanted to say. He wanted her to tell him what this horrible secret of hers was; he wanted to beg her to stop. He wanted to tell her she could still back out of this, although he felt things had gotten so far he did not quite believe it himself. So he pressed his lips against hers, hard--a brand--but then his mouth curled around a sob and he broke away before the kiss was finished, his body folding like he'd been punched. "I am doing this," he said, "because I love you."

  Emily's face was still and white with tears. "I am doing this because I love you, too." She gripped his hand. "I want you to hold me," she said.

  Chris moved her into his arms, her chin on his right shoulder. He committed to memory the solid weight of her, and the life that ran like a current, before pulling back slightly to give Emily room to place the gun to her head.

  NOW

  May 1998

  Randi Underwood apologized to the jury. "I work nights," she explained, "but they didn't want to keep all of you up during the time I'm usually most lucid." She'd just come off a thirty-six-hour stint at the hospital, where she was a physician's assistant in the emergency room. "Just let me know if I don't make any sense," she joked. "And if I try to intubate someone with a pen, slap me."

  Jordan smiled. "We certainly appreciate you being here, Ms. Underwood."

  "Hey," the
witness grinned. "What's a little sleep?"

  She was a large woman, still dressed in hospital scrubs that had small green snowflakes printed all over them. Jordan had already established her identity for the record. "Ms. Underwood," he continued, "were you on duty the night of November seventh, when Emily Gold was brought into the emergency room of Bainbridge Memorial?"

  "Yes, I was."

  "Do you remember her?"

  "I do. She was very young, and those are always the most terrible to see. There was a lot of activity around her at first--she was arresting as the medics brought her in--but apparently that was over in a matter of seconds, and she was pronounced dead by the time she was in the ER cubicle."

  "I see. What happened next?"

  "Well, standard procedure is to have someone identify the body before it's moved to the morgue. We had been told that the parents were on their way. So I started to clean her up."

  "Clean her up?"

  "It's customary," she said. "Especially when there's a great deal of blood; it's harder on the relatives to see that. Basically I wiped off her hands and her face. Nobody told us not to wash her."

  "What do you mean?"

  "In police investigations, evidence is evidence, and a corpse qualifies. But the officers who brought her in said it was a suicide. No one from the police told us to treat it differently; no one came in to do tests or anything."

  "You specifically washed her hands?"

  "Yes. I remember that she had on a pretty gold ring--one of those Celtic knots, you know?"

  "And when did you leave the cubicle?"

  "When the girl's father came in to ID the body," she said.

  Jordan smiled at the witness. "Thank you," he said, "nothing further."

  AS JORDAN HAD EXPECTED, Barrie Delaney declined to cross-examine the physician's assistant. There was very little she could ask without making her star witness, Detective Marrone, look like a bumbling fool. So Jordan put Dr. Linwood Karpagian on the stand, thinking as he watched the man that he owed Selena a dozen roses for finding him.

  The jury could not take their eyes off him. Dr. Karpagian looked like Cary Grant in his prime, with silvered hair waving off his temples and finely manicured hands that looked capable of holding your confidence, much less anything more conventionally substantial. He sat easily on the stand, accustomed to being the center of attention.

  "Your honor," Barrie said, "request permission to approach."

  Puckett waved the lawyers closer, and Jordan raised his brow, waiting to hear what Barrie had to say. "For the appellate record, we still have an objection to this witness."

  "Ms. Delaney," Judge Puckett said, "I already ruled on this in your pre-trial motion."

  As Barrie stomped back to her table, Jordan walked Dr. Karpagian through his credentials, further impressing the jury. "Doctor," he said, "how many teens have you worked with?"

  "Thousands," Dr. Karpagian said. "I couldn't begin to narrow that down."

  "And how many with suicidal natures?"

  "Oh, I've counseled upwards of four hundred teenagers who were suicidal. And that of course doesn't count the profiles of other suicidal teens who were featured in the three books I've written on the subject."

  "So you've published your findings?"

  "Yes. Beside the books, I've had studies published in the Journal of Counseling and Clinical Psychology, and the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychiatry."

  "Since we're not nearly as familiar as you are with the phenomenon of teen suicide, could you just give us a general overview of its characteristics?"

  "Certainly. Teen suicide is an alarming epidemic, increasing every year. To an adolescent, suicide is seen as a joint statement of strength and despair. Teenagers need, more than anything, to be taken seriously. And the world of a teenager revolves around himself. Now, imagine a troubled teenager with a problem. His parents brush him off, because they either don't want to accept that their child is upset or don't have time to listen. And in response, the teenager thinks, 'Oh, yeah? Well, watch what I can do.' And he kills himself. He's not thinking of being dead. He's thinking of suicide as a way to solve the problem, to end the pain, and to say, 'So there!' all at once."

  "Is there a percentage breakdown for male versus female suicides?"

  "Girls try to kill themselves three times more frequently than boys, but boys succeed far more often."

  "Really?" Jordan feigned amazement. In reality, he and Dr. Karpagian had fine-tuned this testimony for hours the previous week, and there was nothing the good doctor could say that was going to surprise him. "Why is that?"

  "Well, when girls try to commit suicide, they often use less decisive methods. Pills, or carbon monoxide poisoning--both of which require a long period of time to do their work, during which the victim is often found alive and taken to the hospital. Sometimes they slash their wrists, but most draw the razor across laterally, not realizing that the quickest way to die is to slash vertically, along the artery. On the other hand," he said, "boys tend to use guns, or to hang themselves. Both methods are fast, death occurring before someone can save them or stop them."

  "I see," Jordan said. "Is there a certain type of teenager that is more likely than another to kill him-or herself?"

  "That's the intriguing thing," Dr. Karpagian said, his eyes snapping with the interest of a scholar. "A poor teenager is just as likely to try as a wealthy one. There is no real socioeconomic profile to suicidal teens."

  "Are there any behaviors that just jump out and say, 'Whoa--this kid's about to kill himself!'"

  "Depression," Karpagian said bluntly. "It may be something that has been going on for years; it may happen rather quickly in a matter of several months. The actual suicide is often triggered by a certain event, which--coupled with the depression--seems too overwhelming to accept."

  "Would this depression be obvious to people who knew the teenager?"

  "Well, you know, Mr. McAfee, that's one of the problems. Depression can manifest itself in many different ways. It's not always noticeable to friends and family. There are certain signs of suicidal behavior that psychologists recognize and that should be taken seriously, if they occur. But some teens show none of them, and some show all of them."

  "What are these signs, Doctor?"

  "Sometimes we see a preoccupation with death. Or a change in eating or sleeping habits. Rebellious behavior. Withdrawal from people, or outright running away. Some suicidal teens act persistently bored, or have difficulty concentrating. There may be evidence of drug or alcohol abuse, falling grades. They may neglect their appearance, exhibit personality changes, or have psychosomatic complaints. Sometimes we see kids giving away prized possessions, or joking about killing themselves. But, as I said, sometimes we don't see any of this."

  "Sounds like some perfectly normal teens I know," Jordan said.

  "Exactly," the psychologist said. "That's what makes it so hard to diagnose beforehand."

  Jordan lifted a document, a collection of Emily Gold's medical information and interviews with neighbors, friends, and family by both Selena and the police. "Doctor, did you have a chance to look at Emily Gold's profile?"

  "I did."

  "And what did her friends and family say about her?"

  "For the most part, her parents were unaware of any depression. Likewise her friends. Her art teacher's comments suggested that although Emily wasn't talking about being upset, her artwork had taken a turn toward the macabre. It seems to me, reading between the lines, that Emily was withdrawing in the weeks before her death. She was spending quite a lot of time with Chris, which is also consistent with a suicide pact."

  "A suicide pact. What does that mean, exactly?"

  "Two or more deaths planned together. It's an extraordinary thought to an adult, actually--the idea of holding enough sway over someone to get them to take their life, too." He smiled sadly at the jury. "Most of you have forgotten--probably for good reason--what it was like when you were sixteen and seventeen; how crucially im
portant it was to have someone understand you and admire you. You grow up, and things get more relative. But when you're an adolescent, that one close relationship is all consuming. You are so bonded to that peer that you wear the same kinds of clothes, you listen to the same kinds of music, you do the same kinds of things for fun, and you think alike. It only takes one teenager to conjure up the idea of suicide. It takes a variety of psychological reasons for a second teen to decide it's a good idea."

  Dr. Karpagian looked at Chris, as if analyzing him now. "Teens who decide to commit suicide together are usually close. But once the decision to kill themselves is made, that small world grows even smaller. The only people they want to confide in is each other. The only people they want to see is each other. And everything narrows until the only thing that matters is the act of committing suicide: the planning, the event itself. They're going to make a collective statement to all the people who are on the outside of that very small world, the people who don't understand them."

  "Dr. Karpagian, based on Emily's profile, did she seem suicidal?"

  "Not having met her, the best I can say is that it is entirely possible she was depressed enough to commit suicide."

  Jordan nodded. "You're saying there doesn't have to be a blatant red flag on that profile? That a girl who looks like a pretty normal teen but is just a little bit withdrawn might be suicidal?"

  "It's happened before," Dr. Karpagian said.

  "I see." He turned toward his notes. "Did you have a chance to look at the profile of Chris?"

  It had been at Jordan's insistence that Selena created a profile, in much the same way one had been constructed for Emily, by talking to family and friends and eliciting comments. Knowing--albeit grudgingly--that Chris had never been suicidal, it wouldn't work to get him face-to-face with an expert, and then put that expert on the stand sworn to tell the truth.

  "I did look it over. And the most important thing I saw in Chris Harte's profile was his preoccupation with Emily Gold. I was a psychologist long before I was an expert on suicide, you know, and there's a specific term for the kind of relationship that had developed between Chris and Emily over the years."