The Princess Game (Faraway collection)

by Soman Chainani

  CHANG: Two alibis. Both ironclad.

  NAVEEN: Well, then it’s probably some old man, like my dad said. Explains why girls keep coming to school, even with a killer on the loose. It’s the one place they feel safe.

  PEDERSON: Thought you were buds with Adam.

  NAVEEN: I am. Just trying to do the right thing. You know . . . be a good guy.

  (Silence)

  CHANG: Girls at school are dying, Naveen. Five so far. You don’t seem rattled or freaked out. From where I sit, you don’t feel any way about it at all.

  NAVEEN: Don’t know if I feel much of anything these days.

  CHANG: What does that mean?

  NAVEEN: Feelings aren’t a thing. Not in Prince code. Ask Callum. He actually liked a girl at school, like for real, and Eric and Flynn basically forbid him from hanging out with us until he banged her. So yeah: show feelings, and they can only be used against you. Even with everything that’s happening.

  CHANG: Pederson, you liked a girl at school?

  PEDERSON: Hold up—Naveen, what would you and Kelly talk about during lab?

  NAVEEN: Shit talk, mostly. Kelly knew everyone’s secrets. Isn’t that why you hung around her? To dig up stuff on all of us? Kelly actually thought you were gay because you kept hounding her for dirt.

  PEDERSON: Ohhh, that’s why she tried to pair me up with Luke Stoeckel. But yeah, Kelly always had the 411.

  CHANG: The 411? Did you just beam back to 1992?

  NAVEEN: 411 doesn’t even exist anymore.

  PEDERSON: Chill. How did Kelly know everyone’s secrets to begin with?

  NAVEEN: All the “Princesses” felt safe talking to her. Since she wasn’t a threat.

  CHANG: Princesses?

  NAVEEN: It’s what we call hot girls at Chaminade. Just like the Chaminade “Princes” means the jocks. Every class has its Princesses. Ariana. Charlotte. Madelyn. Those were ours. Kelly wasn’t a Princess, to say the least. But she was part of the Princess Game. Whoever killed her probably knew that.

  CHANG: For the record, Charlotte Lawson was Victim Number Two. Impaled with glass slippers and bled out. Madelyn Mayberry, Victim Number Three. Suffocated in a glass box.

  PEDERSON: The Princess Game means scoring with one of the Princesses.

  NAVEEN: It means climbing the tower of in-betweens to get to one. Ari, Charlotte, and Madelyn were the hottest girls at school, but they weren’t friends. It isn’t like Mean Girls, where all the hot girls are in one clique. Each had her own domain. Especially at lunch. Ariana in the atrium, Charlotte in the courtyard, Madelyn in the cafeteria. And the point of the Princess Game is to scale through the leeches around them and make a Princess notice you. It’s easier for guys like Phillip and Adam and Eric, because they’re . . . them. But other guys have to deal with the girls in the way. We have names for them. The “maidens,” like Tessa Tunney or Kendra Jordan, who act like bodyguards. Then there are the “stewards,” who brownnose and suck up, desperate to get to the inner circle. And way, way down are the “wenches” like Kelly Blake, trading in drama and secrets, doing everything they can to hang onto a Princess’s attention. And for guys like me, who aren’t like Eric or Phillip or a “Prince,” you have to start with the wenches and work your way up. Just like you have to start on the bench in basketball, hoping to one day get in the game.

  CHANG: Doing well enough, aren’t you? Most Improved . . .

  NAVEEN: Everyone knows that means you’re worst on the team.

  CHANG: It didn’t mean that when I was young.

  PEDERSON: Yes, it did. Anika Gelt. She was a “wench,” wasn’t she?

  NAVEEN: Maybe? I’d better head out before my dad busts. Sorry I couldn’t help more.

  (Chair slides.)

  PEDERSON: Anika was Victim Number Four. Did you know her?

  NAVEEN: Nah.

  CHANG: Here’s the photo of her body. Someone faked a message from her prom date and sent her a cake that said “Eat Me.” Laced with cyanide. Pretty cowardly way to kill someone.

  NAVEEN: Yeah. Didn’t really know her.

  PEDERSON: You play Red Dead with the Princes?

  NAVEEN: Sometimes.

  PEDERSON: Your screen name is White Rabbit. Eric pointed it out on the scoreboard one night.

  CHANG: White Rabbit is a character from Alice in Wonderland. In the story, Alice finds a cake that says “Eat Me.”

  NAVEEN: So what?

  CHANG: You asked Anika Gelt to prom, and she said no. Must have hurt to have been rejected by a “wench.”

  NAVEEN: No, that’s not how it went.

  PEDERSON: Thought you said you didn’t know her.

  NAVEEN: She’s racist. Like a lot of other girls at school. Only into white guys.

  PEDERSON: She’s going to prom with Raymond Green. The boy the killer pretended to send the cake from. Raymond isn’t white.

  NAVEEN: I have to get to the shelter. Adoption day. Just thought I’d tell you about Adam.

  CHANG: When can we follow up?

  NAVEEN: Whenever. Might have to deal with my uncle Prabhu, though. But yeah, whenever you want.

  (Door closes.)

  CHANG: Hmm.

  PEDERSON: He didn’t kill Anika. We have confirmed eyewitnesses that he was at the animal shelter the evening the cake was left at her door.

  CHANG: When I was in high school, there was this kid. Pete Pauling. Total weirdo, always rambling about wizards and dragons and giving people bug-eyed stares. Used to eat eight pieces of pizza at lunch, slathered with peanut butter. Ninety percent of the school bullied the kid like no tomorrow. But not the prettiest girls. They protected him like their own brother.

  PEDERSON: Because they felt sorry for him.

  CHANG: No, because after school, he’d get them high on the weed he’d been smoking in order to survive the bullying from the rest of the kids. Circle of life. High school is an ecosystem of its own. Even when things don’t make sense.

  PEDERSON: And you think Naveen doesn’t make sense.

  CHANG: Humble, articulate, intelligent. Terrible athlete. Nothing in common with assholes like Eric and Adam and the “Princes.” So why’s he hanging out with them?

  PEDERSON: He wasn’t in the inner circle like I am. There’s a hierarchy to the Princes. Just like there is to the Princess Game.

  CHANG: You’re in the inner circle.

  PEDERSON: Yeah. I mean, I was. (pause) What?

  CHANG: These boys aren’t your buddies, Pederson.

  PEDERSON: I know that. I’m not an idiot. Want me to go harder? I’ll go harder. Don’t treat me like a baby, Chang. I’m trying to find the murderer, just like you. That’s why I got inside the Princes. That’s why I made friends with them.

  CHANG: You sure that’s why? (Chair slides.) Besides, if you’re a Prince, then everyone’s a Prince.

  PHILLIP

  COUNSEL: The time is 4:22 p.m. on Friday, May 1. Just confirming on the record that Phillip Aurora is neither a suspect nor a person of interest in the Princess Killer case, and this is purely a routine interview for background information that might be useful in finding the perpetrator.

  CHANG: He has alibis for the murders of Ariana Merced, Charlotte Lawson, and Kelly Blake, and given that the murders are serial in nature, yes, we can rule him out as the Princess Killer for now.

  COUNSEL: Then you may proceed with your questions.

  PEDERSON: Five girls dead, posed as fairy-tale princesses. Sleeping Beauty. Cinderella. Snow White. Alice in Wonderland. Little Mermaid. Who’s killing them?

  PHILLIP: How should I know?

  PEDERSON: You hooked up with all five.

  PHILLIP: I did not hook up with Kelly Blake.

  PEDERSON: She said you did. As long as she promised not to tell.

  PHILLIP: And you believed her?

  CHANG: It’s in her texts to you. April 21. A week before she was killed. “Thanks for the great time. Still thinking about the way you smell. I promise I won’t tell. Your secret’s safe with me.”

>   PHILLIP: (Snorts.)

  CHANG: What’s that about, then?

  PHILLIP: She’s Naveen’s lab partner. Came to watch his basketball practices, because he never got to play during games. Or at least, that’s why she said she came to watch. Real reason was so she could sneak into the locker room afterward and annoy me and all the other boys she was hot for. Tried to ban her, but one time she brought Madelyn Mayberry, who made out with Kristoff in front of all of us on a dare—and ever since, we let Kelly keep barging in, hoping she’d bring another one of the Princesses. Never did. So yeah . . . I probably accidentally gave her a smile or a nod or something in the locker room, and she turned it into whatever that message said.

  CHANG: “Still thinking about the way you smell.” That’s from an accidental nod?

  PHILLIP: How should I know? It’s a locker room. For all I know, she was stealing our jockstraps. Kelly was nasty.

  CHANG: You hook up with a lot of girls?

  PHILLIP: That any of your business?

  CHANG: All the girls you hook up with seem to end up dead.

  PHILLIP: Well, there’s a lot more who haven’t.

  CHANG: What’s your dad think about you getting around?

  PHILLIP: My dad?

  CHANG: He’s a church deacon.

  PHILLIP: Yeah, and he brags to his friends about how much play I get. And don’t bring up my dad again or this “interview” is over.

  COUNSEL: I’d say it’s over already.

  PEDERSON: Huh. Weird.

  PHILLIP: What?

  PEDERSON: The day she sent that text message . . . you didn’t have basketball practice.

  CHANG: Schedule says he did.

  PEDERSON: Yeah, but the gym lights short-circuited, and coach had to cancel practice.

  CHANG: How would you know?

  PEDERSON: Long story.

  COUNSEL: I’d like the answer on the record.

  CHANG: So would I.

  PEDERSON: I was hanging with someone in there. (pause) You know . . . ’cause it was dark.

  CHANG: Who?

  PEDERSON: Rebecca Walker.

  CHANG: Principal Walker’s daughter. (Snorts.) Yeah right.

  PEDERSON: Point is, there was no practice.

  PHILLIP: You finally scored with Becs? In the gym? Dude. Wait till Flynn hears.

  PEDERSON: No—I mean—don’t say anything.

  CHANG: Hold on. Let me get this straight. We went undercover investigating students, and you were “hanging” with the daughter of the principal, who let us into his school?

  PEDERSON: She’s eighteen! And she liked me! Said I’m the only good guy at Chaminade.

  CHANG: And you couldn’t say no?

  PEDERSON: To an awesome girl? I never got any play in high school.

  CHANG: You’re not in high school!

  PEDERSON: I got confused!

  CHANG: Jesus Christ.

  PEDERSON: Like I was saying, Phillip didn’t have basketball practice, so Kelly couldn’t have seen him there. Her text message had to have been about something else.

  COUNSEL: If I’d known we were coming to a clown show instead of a questioning, I would have told my client to stay home. Look, Phillip isn’t a suspect. What are we doing here? How is any of this relevant to finding the Princess Killer?

  CHANG: How is this relevant? Pederson’s right. We have a text message from a dead girl saying Phillip has a “secret” that only she knows, and Phillip’s explanation for it is a lie.

  PHILLIP: You think a guy like me would hook up with Kelly Blake?

  CHANG: Because a Prince wouldn’t, right? The Prince of Chaminade. Voted Best Looking three years and counting.

  PHILLIP: You said it. I don’t need action from wenches.

  PEDERSON: Can I see your phone?

  PHILLIP: Why?

  PEDERSON: To see what you replied to Kelly’s text.

  COUNSEL: Funny guy. Get a warrant.

  PHILLIP: Here. (sound of phone on table) I don’t care.

  CHANG: A dolphin emoji. That’s what you sent back to her text.

  PHILLIP: When dealing with girls, best response is a random emoji. They don’t know what to say back.

  PEDERSON: (Paper shuffles.) Huh.

  COUNSEL: Now what?

  PEDERSON: That day, the gym went dark. Sergeant reviewed footage from the camera positioned toward the south parking lot. It’s mounted on top of the rear door to the gym, so it can track everyone coming in or out. At 3:22 p.m., right as practice starts, the lights short-circuit in the gym. Basketball team exits, including Phillip, along with the school chorus that rehearses in the basement. Then at 3:31 p.m., the camera catches Phillip going back into the gym alone.

  PHILLIP: Forgot my bag.

  PEDERSON: Then at 3:34 p.m., Luke Stoeckel enters the gym. He doesn’t come back out until 4:42 p.m., with Phillip . . . and then it looks like they both run into Kelly Blake in the parking lot. Luke gets in his car, but Phillip keeps talking to Kelly, pretty animatedly. Then she and Phillip go into the dark gym and don’t leave until . . . 5:12 p.m.

  CHANG: Luke Stoeckel . . . Pederson, that’s the guy Kelly was trying to set you up with?

  PEDERSON: Wish I was into dudes. Stoeckel’s a catch. Well, not at Chaminade, though. Principal’s files say he’s had his locker vandalized, his car spray-painted, and he got beat up by Eric and Adam at Homecoming for “harassing” Phillip. Oh, and another fun fact: Luke used to be a parishioner at Phillip’s church before Phillip’s dad had him and his parents barred from services.

  CHANG: And that’s the guy Phillip was hanging out with in the gym?

  PEDERSON: Pretty weird to hang in the dark with a dude who “harassed” you.

  PHILLIP: Okay, genius. Luke’s in chorus. Like you said, they use the basement of the gym to rehearse. Probably crossed paths for a second when he finished rehearsal and I finished practice. So the camera must be from a different day. Otherwise you and Rebecca Walker would have seen us. You two were dogging in the gym, remember?

  PEDERSON: It was dark, remember? And we weren’t “dogging.” Plus, we heard someone come in.

  COUNSEL: Again, questioning the relevance of any of—

  PEDERSON: Sounds like Kelly caught Phil and Luke together. And then she and Phil . . . talked it out.

  PHILLIP: I don’t “talk things out” with Kelly Blake. And I’m not friends with Luke. Ask him. He’ll laugh in your face. And don’t call me Phil. You and I aren’t friends either.

  COUNSEL: I’m stopping this here. All you’re doing is using circumstantial evidence to cast aspersions against my client. When was Kelly Blake killed?

  CHANG: Coroner says April 28. Sometime between 6:00 and 8:00 p.m.

  COUNSEL: Phillip, Flynn, Adam, and Eric were volunteering at Mount Zion Church. Got there at five o’clock and didn’t leave until ten o’clock, at which point they went to GameStop to wait in line for the Modern Warfare release at midnight. We provided eyewitness confirmation from people at the church and the GameStop manager, as well as receipts for their purchases of the game and pizza from Tigerlily’s next door, plus a paper trail accounting for Phillip’s alibis for several of the other murders. This is the last time we submit to questions without a warrant, understood?

  PEDERSON: Can’t argue with that.

  PHILLIP: Are we done, then?

  CHANG: One last question.

  PHILLIP: Go for it.

  CHANG: Are you glad Kelly’s gone?

  COUNSEL: Don’t answer that. Good luck, gentlemen.

  PHILLIP: Actually . . . it’s funny. Even with her friends dead, Kelly wasn’t scared of the Princess Killer like other girls. Still was up to her usual tricks. Maybe because she was more Witch than Princess. Guess she got her fairy-tale ending anyway.

  PEDERSON: What do you mean?

  PHILLIP: You know, Cally Cal . . . Witches never win.

  (Door closes.)

  CHANG: What the hell was that?

  PEDERSON: He’s just being a douche. We need to tal
k to Luke. Who else is on our list? Kristoff, Flynn . . . Flynn’s lawyer is stonewalling.

  CHANG: No, I mean Rebecca Walker. You weren’t going to tell me?

  PEDERSON: Look, it’s not a big deal.

  CHANG: To you or to her? And what happens when her dad finds out? If you messed with my kid, I’d cut your nuts off.

  PEDERSON: Rebecca and I promised not to tell anyone.

  CHANG: Was this before or after she knew she was dating a cop?

  PEDERSON: “Dating” is a strong word. We were hanging out.

  CHANG: Not from what Naveen said. He said there were real feelings involved.

  PEDERSON: Calm down. She’s chill. It’s over, anyway. What? Why you looking at me like that?

  CHANG: The way you talk about her. “Not a big deal.” “Hanging out.” “She’s chill.” You sound like one of them.

  (Silence)

  PEDERSON: I’m calling Flynn’s lawyer. He can’t hide forever.

  CALLUM

  “Monday, May 4, 12:03 p.m. Driving to Chaminade to question Luke and Kristoff. Chang and I got word from the chief: no more bringing kids down to the precinct until we’re ready to make an arrest. We were front-page heroes when we started hunting whoever’s killing their girls; now that we’re after their boys, they want to run us out of town. Feds threatening to come in too. Can barely open my phone without a thousand more death threats and spam messages and virus links. My house got hit last night too. Chang says it was pig’s blood that they sprayed on the walls: ‘PIG BITCH.’ Fuck them. I’m not backing down. There’s a murderer at this school. Killed five girls. What’s next? Rapunzel—strangled with her own hair? Red Riding Hood—her stomach sewn full of stones? Beauty and the Beast—don’t even want to think about what that’ll look like . . . Been reading Grimms’ Fairy Tales at night. Messing with my dreams. We’re close. One of these Princes is the real Pig Bitch.”

  LUKE

  CHANG: What’s your relationship with Phillip?

  LUKE: That’s why you pulled me out of a test to the principal’s office? To ask about Phillip?

  CHANG: What’s your relationship with him?

  LUKE: None.

  PEDERSON: You’re not friends?