Innocent Mistakes

by Melissa F. Miller

  She reads along as Hunter tells Mallory all about his harrowing experience. If she’s being honest, the kid’s laying it on a bit thick, making the most of his moment in the spotlight. Just like his mother. Then he moves on to a play-by-play recount of his television interviews, forwarding Mallory a flurry of links in case she somehow missed the coverage. Lainey pays particular attention to her daughter’s responses, reading between the lines for some emotion, some clue as to what’s going on in her head. But she finds none. Mallory might as well be a girlfriend bot, programmed to murmur encouragement and support in a tone just this side of fawning.

  She reads on, and her heart pounds painfully in her tight chest:

  HD: Send nudes.

  * * *

  [Science Grl has left the chat]

  * * *

  HD: Mall? You there?

  Good girl. Don’t give in.

  Lainey tries to close the chat window. But her fingers are clumsy, shaky. She finally exits out of the blasted thing and makes her way back to Mallory’s bedroom. Her pulse hammers wildly, and her mouth is dry. She coughs, works up some saliva, and raps on the door before she can second guess herself.

  “What?” Mallory calls. A drawer slams shut from inside the room.

  She pushes the door open and pokes her head into the room. “How’s it going?”

  Mallory sits at her chalk gray desk, her head bent over her Chemistry textbook, the laptop screen on the desk lit up with what looks like a lab sheet. The cell phone is nowhere in sight. Mallory probably shoved it in the desk drawer when she heard Lainey’s knock.

  She doesn’t turn to look at her mother. “Fine. Studying.”

  Lainey waits a beat. Her heart races on, wild and scared, but she forces herself to speak in a calm, measured tone. She doesn’t want to spook her daughter. Or alienate her. Or, heaven forbid, stir any suspicions that she’s been spying on her.

  “Mallory, look at me when I’m talking to you, please.”

  Mallory sighs a big, chest-heaving, dramatic sigh and swivels around in the chair. “Yes, Mother. What can I do for you?”

  Lainey chooses to ignore the put-upon, sarcastic tone. She reminds herself that Mallory’s swimming in the immense bubbling hormone stew of puberty, heated to a boiling point by the fires of social media and text messages. It’s a hotter, thicker stew than the one Lainey navigated all those years ago.

  She wants to scream ‘don’t give that Dalton boy naked pictures, whatever you do.’ But obviously, she can’t. She can’t let Mallory know she’s keeping tabs on her. She wants to wrap her daughter in a tight hug, rock her like a baby, then brush her silky hair, coax it into two long braids, and tuck her into bed. But she can’t do that either.

  “I want to make sure you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine. Studying.” She jabs a thumb over her shoulder to the desk.

  “Right. I mean, today was a pretty crazy day. All that stuff with Hunter … and Colin.”

  She searches Mallory’s face, but it’s closed, expressionless. Finally, after an eon, her daughter manages a shrug.

  “I guess. It doesn’t have anything to do with me, Mom. I haven’t been paying any attention to it.”

  That can’t be true. The entire high school’s abuzz, and ninety-nine point nine percent of the kids probably don’t even know the players.

  “Really? That’s surprising.”

  “Why?”

  “Aren’t you dating Hunter?”

  A shrug.

  She presses on. “And you and Colin used to be an item.”

  “An item? Jeez, mom, what is this—1950?”

  Lainey flushes but doesn’t take the bait. “Don’t you think you might have something to do with it? Maybe Colin still has feelings for you, and that’s why he went after Hunter?”

  Mallory’s eye roll is one for the ages. It’s slow, and exaggerated, and eloquent. “No, Mom. This isn’t some teen drama on basic cable. We used to be together. Now we’re not. Get over it. We have.”

  That stings. Lainey retorts before she can stop herself, “I don’t know what you see in Hunter. You can do better.”

  “You’re one to talk.”

  Lainey’s not touching that. She changes the subject. “I heard someone threw a brick through Colin’s living room window.”

  Mallory’s eyes widen. Finally, a spark of life.

  “I have to check on Siobhan. Make sure she’s okay.”

  She reaches for the desk drawer, then freezes. She doesn’t want Lainey to know where she hides her phone. If Lainey were sixteen, she’d roll her own eyes, but she restrains herself.

  “That’s a good idea. Although it might be awkward, talking to Colin’s sister right now.”

  Mallory shakes her head, rejecting the idea. “No. We’re friends. No matter what. Besides, Colin told her he didn’t even write that post.”

  “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? But think about it, Mall. The message came from his school account.”

  “Someone could’ve hacked him.”

  Lainey shrugs. “Maybe. But the police are involved now. I’m sure they’ll be able to figure out what device was used to post the message. They have computer forensic experts, you know.”

  Uncertainty flickers in Mallory’s blue eyes. “I guess. But it’s not the police, it’s some special federal investigator. Siobhan heard her aunt telling her parents.”

  Lainey wonders what else Siobhan overheard, but she knows not to press her luck. The more questions she asks, the fewer answers Mallory gives. It’s like a dance, a push and a pull. Better to let Mallory come to her with information. Still, she has to say something to counteract Hunter’s vile, disgusting text. But what? How to tell Mallory she’s strong and beautiful and far too precious to give into Hunter’s request without divulging that she knows about it?

  She studies her daughter. The shiny blonde hair, the brilliant blue eyes, the clear skin. She’s conventionally beautiful, like an ad executive’s idea of a carefree all-American teenager. But she knows Mallory longs to be unconventional. Serious. Science Grl.

  “I saw there’s a STEM camp over spring break. At the museum. Want me to sign you up?”

  Mallory’s eyes widen, her expression opens for a second. “Yeah, sure.”

  Lainey hides a smile. “Okay. Don’t stay up too late.”

  Mallory’s already returned to her book and her lab report. She waves a hand over her shoulder, dismissing Lainey. Lainey pulls the door closed behind her but leaves it open a crack.

  7

  “Leigh? Where the devil is that woman?” Hunter’s dad grouses and grumbles.

  Hunter shrugs, his head bent over his phone. “I dunno. Are we done here yet? I want to play Criminal Enterprises for a few hours before it gets too late.”

  His dad narrows his eyes. “Don’t you have a meet tomorrow? You need to sleep.”

  Mom hurries into the room with a reusable bag in one hand and heads for the refrigerator. “Sorry, I had to run to the grocery store. Let him play, Paul. He’s had a stressful day. He needs to blow off steam. He doesn’t only have a track meet tomorrow. He also has an interview with Dawn on the Dawn Break Morning Show.”

  Hunter groans. “What time?”

  “Ten after seven. I’ll run you over to the studio before school. You’ll miss homeroom, but I’ll get you an excuse for a late arrival.”

  “Another interview? Don’t you think that’s going overboard?” Dad asks.

  “No, Paul, I don’t. We need to take control of the public perception. Make sure our message is the one that takes hold.”

  “And what exactly is our message?”

  “Colin McCandless is jealous and bitter. Hunter’s accomplishments—in sports, socially, academically—gnaw at him. He can’t stand it. And when Hunter started dating that lovely Mallory Fuller, well, that was the proverbial straw.”

  Hunter makes a face. “That saying doesn’t even make sense. Do camels’ backs even break?”

  Dad chuckles, but Mom
whirls around from the fridge. She clenches her hands, not into fists, but pulls her fingers half down so that they’re rigid and curved. Like claws. Or talons.

  “I don’t know, Hunter. What I do know is we are not going to waste this opportunity. Do you hear me?”

  Over her shoulder, Dad opens his mouth and cups his hands around it, then exhales. It looks like he’s about to yodel, but he doesn’t. It’s their sign for ‘Mom’s breathing fire.’

  “Yeah, yeah, I hear you.”

  “Good.”

  “Just out of curiosity, Leigh, what exactly are we going to do with the opportunity?”

  She sighs heavily, as if Dad is this giant burden she has to bear. Hunter wonders who’ll be the straw that eventually breaks her back—him or Dad? She lines up her little terracotta pots of French yogurt in two neat rows on the shelf before she answers.

  “I don’t know what you two are going to do, but I plan to announce my campaign for the school board. Cyberbullying will be my platform issue. I’m meeting with a political consultant tomorrow afternoon to get a strategy in place.”

  “Nice, Mom. Really nice. You’re going to use me to get elected to the stupid school board.”

  She slams the refrigerator door closed and turns to stare at him. Her eyes are narrow and her back is stiff. “School board director is the best launchpad for a career in local politics, Hunter Dalton. It’s not stupid. And I’m not using you. I’m leveraging your tragedy to make sure it doesn’t happen to any other kids.”

  Dad shakes his head, a warning splashed all over his face. Yeah, he knows. He needs to worm his way out of this before she winds herself up even more.

  “Sorry, Mom. I shouldn’t have said that. You’ll make a great school board member.”

  Her expression softens into a smile. “Thank you. Now, go down to the basement and play your video game. I want you in bed by eleven. And wear your green and gold shirt tomorrow. It brings out your eyes.”

  He jumps to his feet before she can change her mind. As he passes her, she reaches out and ruffles his hair. “Good night, baby.”

  “Night, Mom.”

  He’s halfway out of the room when Mom stage whispers to Dad, “Did you hear? Someone put a brick through the McCandlesses’ window.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Terrible, isn’t it? I certainly hope they don’t think we had anything to do with it.”

  “Why would they?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know, Paul. But these things have a tendency to escalate. It could get ugly.”

  Hunter pauses and almost turns around, but he doesn’t. He’d rather play his game than hang around and gossip with his parents.

  Hunter splits his attention between the in-game action—he’s in the middle of hijacking a truck full of televisions—and the chat window.

  CRIMINAL ENTERPRISES 21 IN-GAME CHAT MESSAGING SYSTEM:

  * * *

  Tiger4Life789: Yo, nice hit.

  * * *

  TheHunter: It’s standard game play to kill the judge, bro.

  * * *

  Tiger4Life789: Not the judge. The way you lit up Colin’s window.

  * * *

  TheHunter: What? That wasn’t me.

  * * *

  Tiger4Life789: C’mon, man. Everybody knows.

  * * *

  TheHunter: I’m telling you. It wasn’t me

  Tiger4Life789, who’s Roshi Argot, from his homeroom, goes dark for a moment, then pops back up with a jpeg. It’s an image of the McCandless family’s wide living room window, all smashed up.

  He laughs at the damage, then rapid-fires at the driver of the tractor trailer until he falls in a spray of red pixels. After his character hops into the cab to take control of the stolen shipment of TVs, he turns back to the chat.

  TheHunter: Sick. Wish it was me, but it wasn’t.

  * * *

  Tiger4Life789: Whatever you say, dude. But Siobhan said whoever did it was driving a lime green Jeep.

  * * *

  TheHunter: You talked to Siobhan?

  * * *

  Tiger4Life789: We’re lab partners. I posted the picture in the classroom thread and she got pissy. Told me to take it down.

  Hunter grins, imagining the stuck-up, little freckled redhead steaming. Then a thought strikes him.

  TheHunter: Where’d you get the pic?

  * * *

  Tiger4Life789: You live under a rock or what? Somebody’s mom posted it to the PTA page on the intranet.

  * * *

  TheHunter: Whose mom?

  * * *

  Tiger4Life789: Dunno. You saying it was some other neon green Jeep?

  * * *

  TheHunter: I’m saying it wasn’t me.

  * * *

  Tiger4Life789: Ok. Cool. Whatevs.

  * * *

  TheHunter: Gotta go.

  Hunter closes the chat window. Roshi is an okay guy for a science dork. But he needs to unload these hot TVs and launder the money before eleven o’clock. If he oversleeps for the interview on the Dawn Break Show, the dragon lady will have his hide. He negotiates the transaction with the fence, haggling over the price, but part of his mind is still on the broken window at Colin and Siobhan’s house.

  Why would Siobhan lie and say she saw his car? The Jeep is—well, not one of a kind—but distinctive. Like him. That’s what his dad said when he’d protested the highlighter bright color. And how did someone’s mom get a picture of the damage? He’ll have to remember to tell that Merriweather dude to check out the PTA chat. That’s where all the gossip starts. Well, there and on Emmaline’s dumb Tattler.

  Thinking of the Tattler makes him wonder what Emmaline has to say about all this. He opens another tab and pulls up the Tattler site. A hit of dopamine courses through him when he sees he’s the main item. Tiger Track Star Threatened: Alpha Challenge or Love Triangle to Blame? He snorts at the out-of-focus picture of Siobhan and Mallory by the lockers. Siobhan is steaming, her eyes blaze hot even in the blurry picture, and Mallory’s heart-shaped lips are all twisted—almost like she she’s about to kiss someone. But her forehead’s wrinkled. She looks worried.

  She’s worried about me, he thinks. Pop. Another burst of dopamine rushes through him. Maybe this stupid thing with Colin will pay off after all.

  8

  Sasha scrolls through the Tiger Intranet boards with her sister-in-law’s borrowed login until she’s bleary-eyed. She’s only scraped the surface, but she reminds herself that sleep is a weapon and powers down her laptop. She rolls her neck from side to side, then stands and stretches her back. She pads across the quiet room to peer out into the night. It’s still drizzling. The clouds hide the moon and rain smears the glow of the streetlights, making the cars and trees below look like an impressionist painting, blurred and watery.

  Petty rivalries, heated arguments, banal bake sale sign-ups, breathless recaps of victories on the football field, and lofty announcements of national academic prizes, scholarships, and test scores roll around in her brain. The crush of information threatens to drown her, but none of it explains why someone would threaten Hunter Dalton and pin it on Colin.

  “Live to fight another day,” she whispers in the darkness.

  She crosses the hallway and peeks in, first on Fiona, then on Finn. Both are deep asleep, heavy and still. The cat is curled up in the crook of Finn’s knees; the dog is draped across Fiona’s bed. Sasha tucks the images away in her heart and creeps down the hall to her own bedroom. The illuminated face of Connelly’s alarm clock tells her it’s just past one o’clock. She does the math while brushing her teeth. If she falls asleep the moment her head hits the pillow, she can get almost five hours—if she skips her workout.

  Once upon a time, she wouldn’t dream of skipping her workout. But she’s tired, bone tired, and tomorrow promises to be a long day. She bargains with her reflection as she dabs the latest anti-aging promise in a bottle on the lines around her eyes and along the furrows in her brow. I’ll set up a private sparri
ng session with Daniel during lunch.

  Her tired face looks back at her, apparently satisfied with her concession. She plugs her phone in to charge on the vanity overnight and flips off the light. Then her text notification chimes.

  Leave it until morning.

  She steps across the threshold, vacillates, then turns around and grabs the phone. The text is from Siobhan:

  Thot u shd c this.

  Is this an anagram? She stares at the cryptic collection of letters, her dull and fuzzy brain trying to rearrange them into recognizable words. Then, slowly, understanding dawns: ‘Thought you should see this.’ Does her niece have to pay by the letter to text?

  She pushes aside her wonderment at the invented language and clicks the link, hoping she hasn’t forfeited precious minutes of sleep only to be Rick Rolled or whatever the Gen Z equivalent is. But the link doesn’t forward her to the infamous music video. Instead, she’s looking at a photograph of her brother and sister-in-law’s shattered window.

  She scrolls up. The image seems to have been posted in Siobhan’s on-line chemistry classroom. There’s a lively if grammatically challenged discussion about the photo, and Siobhan unloads on Roshi, the classmate who posted it. It’s mildly interesting, but she’s not sure what she’s supposed to do with it.