Echo Bridge (16 page)

“It was creepy,” I said. “It flew full-force at the window, and the noise it made when it hit was awful.”

“Well, closing the shade during the day on the window the bird is targeting usually puts a stop to it. No reflection, nothing to attack.” Apparently done with his clamp, Dad reached below the workbench and into one of the bins of nesting material he kept there. There was one of yard waste—small twigs and dried grass clippings—and one of household waste: lengths of thread and yarn, the spare mending bits that came in tiny envelopes attached to new sweaters, small scraps of fabric and dryer lint. He scattered a few handfuls on the floor of the partially deconstructed birdcage.

I didn’t mention that it was too late for the Parkers to close their curtains on the bird. I’d always downplayed Ted’s gun hobby at home; my father didn’t share Mr. Parker’s enthusiasm for hunting. He’d rather watch birds than shoot at them.

“Now, listen. About this disagreement with your mother.” Dad finally stopped fussing with his project and turned to me. I squirmed a little. It was usually more satisfying to draw out fights with Mom than to have Dad play peacemaker. That way it felt more like I was winning. “I know you’re disappointed that Anna’s not coming home this year, but your mother is crushed. She takes it very hard that the boys don’t come back for Thanksgiving anymore. And next year you’ll be away, too. Pretty soon you’ll have a job or will want to spend the holiday with your friends, or maybe even the Parkers…?”

This last remark was something of a question, and his voice went up just slightly as he eyed me for some kind of confirmation or dismissal. When I didn’t give him one, Dad gestured toward the birdcage. “Won’t be long before one of your brothers is hosting the holiday. Your mom’s just suffering from a little empty nest syndrome. You’re her baby. You’re going to leave her soon for the big bad city. Try to go a little easy on her.”

I made a noncommittal noise. I wasn’t yet willing to concede the standoff, but I was also distracted. What had struck me about my father’s words didn’t have much to do with my mother; it had to do with coming back to Belknap after graduation. I had been thinking that I only had to make it to June, as if Hugh Marsden would drop off the face of the earth on graduation day. But of course that wasn’t true. Of course I’d come home for Thanksgiving freshman year of college and go to the big Country Day party Ted and Tom threw every year over the break for current juniors, seniors, and recent graduates. Their parents got a room at the Boston Harbor Hotel for the weekend, and as long as they didn’t get any calls about drunk driving and the house was clean when they came back on Sunday, they didn’t care what happened. I wondered if my parents might move after I graduated. Maybe I could talk them into buying a nice condo in Florida or North Carolina so I’d never have to set foot in Belknap again.

Ted was a different matter; we still hadn’t really talked about staying together after graduation, and I hadn’t even been accepted into NYU yet. If that didn’t happen, I could very well wind up on the other side of the country at the University of Southern California. For the first time, I realized that even if I did go to USC, even if my parents did move to some pleasant Southern retirement community once I moved out of the house, if I stayed with Ted, Hugh would always be there. I’d have to hear about how well his hockey career was going, hang out with him at high school reunions, maybe even attend his wedding one day. Ted would probably be his best man.

I had to find a way to tell Ted what Hugh had done, to show him that his best friend was no friend at all.

“Court?” My dad asked. “You still with me?”

“Yeah, Dad,” I said. “I got it.”

“So you’ll apologize to your mother, let her have one last nice Thanksgiving at her own table?”

“She doesn’t even cook, really,” I mumbled.

“Courtney,” said my father in his warning tone.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll apologize. Consider it done.” I slipped off the stool and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks for the talk, Dad.”

* * *

There were three days of school left before Thanksgiving, and they were excruciating. I was terrified Hugh would do something to Lexi, invent some trumped up disciplinary infraction and sic Farnsworth on her, or catch her alone in an empty classroom. But I hadn’t had a chance to warn her that he knew she was responsible for his little trip. Lexi hadn’t picked up the phone when I’d called her on Sunday, but I couldn’t tell her over the phone anyway. Mr. Grieves had warned us against committing anything related to 2C-I to any kind of bandwidth: no emails, no texts, no phones—not even land lines.
You never know who’s listening
was his mantra.

I’d caught glimpses of Lexi around school, but it seemed more important than ever to keep our friendship a secret. Crossing the refectory on Tuesday with Selena and Melissa, I realized we were going to walk right past Lexi, sitting alone at one of the heavy oak tables. Her face was lifting toward me, impossibly slowly, expectant.

“So,” I said, my voice too loud, bouncing off the vaulted, tiled ceilings even over the din of fourth period lunch. Melissa and Selena turned to me. I grasped desperately for something to say, anything that might hold their attention long enough for me to get past Lexi’s table
in medias res
and avoid greeting her. “What’s Gavin’s status this week?”

“Shit list,” groaned Selena. “He may or may not have spent more or less than eighteen full minutes in a bedroom behind a closed door with Lacey Stewart at some junior’s party last weekend. Hilary wasn’t there, of course, but the reports are incriminating.”

We were almost at Lexi’s table. I could see the smile breaking across her face.

“God, it’s all so tedious,” Melissa said. “Hilary has no self-respect.”

“You’re such a bitch,” Selena said, admiration in her voice.

We were at Lexi’s table now, and just out of the corner of my eye, I could see her watching us, her shining hair falling across her cheek as she tilted her head toward her lunch, as if she hadn’t been about to speak to me at all.

“Ew!” squealed Melissa. She had her wool coat draped over her shoulder, and one sleeve had trailed across the table as we passed, barely grazing Lexi’s sandwich but nonetheless becoming smeared with something gooey and white.

“Who eats mayonnaise?” Selena whined, loud enough for Lexi to hear, while Melissa swiped at her coat with a wad of napkins.

I followed them out of the refectory. I could feel her eyes on my back. The shame made my stomach twist and my cheeks burn.

* * *

Hugh was still the prodigal son returned, strolling the halls in a golden cloud. Some of his celebrity had rubbed off on Molly, and she lorded it over the two girls who played Betty Parris and Mercy Lewis and who had taken to mimicking her worshipfully. That afternoon, on the cast field trip to Salem, the three of them sprawled in the back seat of the bus, sipping the same brand of iced tea and tying their skinny scarves into Windsor knots.

I had lobbied Mr. Gillison to take us to Choate Island in Ipswich Bay, where the movie of
The Crucible
had been filmed. It was a wildlife refuge and was relatively barren except for a historic farm, which I thought was a better representation of Old Salem than the modern-day town that, although still quaint, had paved streets and a Starbucks. On Choate Island, Daniel Day Lewis had built the house where he and Joan Allen lived in the film, and he’d lived there until the film wrapped. I admired his commitment to the Method, even if the thought of not bathing for over a month was totally disgusting.

Despite my arguments for authenticity of atmosphere, Mr. G dragged us to Salem, which cashed in on its heritage every fall with a slew of Halloween-themed events, as if it actually had been a locus of black magic and not a depressing colonial outpost where a bunch of Puritans turned their repressed sexual desires and silly political machinations on each other. We were a month late for Halloween, and the whole town looked like a hangover. There were logos of witches on broomsticks everywhere even without decorations, and people wandered the street in period costume. We took a tour of the Witch House, which was totally misnamed—it was actually the house of the judge who put the so-called witches to death. But it was the only building that still stood that had any connection to the trials, and it had been restored to all its 17
^th
-Century glory.

None of us paid much attention. We’d all been to the Old Manse; the House of Seven Gables; the homes of Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Paul Revere, and various Cabots, Quincys, and Adams’s dozens of times. If you’ve seen one spinning wheel, butter churn, or bundling board, you’ve seen them all. The tour was followed by a pathetic excuse for a trial reenactment. The actors were abysmal and the “jury” was comprised entirely of mannequins. I was disappointed. Mr. Gillison was no Nicholas Hytner, but I expected better of him.

Afterward, Mr. G herded us to Gallows Hill Park and set us free to wander. The park was supposed to be a memorial for those who’d been hanged as witches, but nobody knew where they’d actually been hanged. There was a baseball field and a few benches. All in all, it was a pretty lame memorial, and nobody cared. The two prim, high-strung junior girls playing Rebecca Nurse and Elizabeth Proctor sat down on a bench and reviewed vocab flashcards for the SATs. Rodney Fairchild led most of the male cast members in the direction of a small flock of Salem High girls sprawled in the grass smoking cigarettes and reading magazines. Susan Dashiel, who was Tituba the voodoo priestess (or innocent housemaid depending on your interpretation of the play), sat down alone on a rock and pulled out a notebook. She was one of those people who used “journal” as a verb.

I decided to walk to the top of the hill, which, while it might not have been the actual site of the hangings, was supposed to have a nice view. I needed a quiet spot to sit and work on my statement of purpose for NYU, and flanking either side of the granite slab commemorating our grim history were two green park benches. I sat down and pulled a notebook, a fountain pen, and a printout from the Tisch website out of my bag.

In practical terms, my approach to acting for the past two months had been trying to be my old self. I was playing the role of the girl who had stood on the balcony that warm night in September, who’d teased her best friend for playing dress up and gossiped idly about the school slut.

But philosophically?

I wrote the words
what if
on a blank page. I had read a little Constantin Stanislavski my sophomore year, when I thought that performing Shakespeare meant I ought to take a very rigid and dogmatic approach to the theater. I got bored with that really quickly, but this I remembered:
what if
were supposed to be magic words to an actor. Stanislavski’s idea was that the actor was supposed to supply the answer:
What if
I were the spurned teenage lover of a pillar of a Puritan village?
What if
I lived in a community where witches were real? But to me, the words had always been magic for all the possibility they contained. Just asking
what if
was like opening a door and becoming a different person.
What if
I were Abigail Williams?
What if
I were Elizabeth Proctor?
What if
I were Desdemona, Gila, Holly Golightly, Lorelei Lee, Deanie Loomis, Alex Forrest, Veronica Sawyer, Iris “Easy” Steensma?
What if
I hadn’t had so much vodka at Melissa’s house that night?
What if
I hadn’t run into the darkroom the day I met Lexi?

Whatifwhatifwhatif
. The words pounded in my head like white noise. Maybe I had thought they were magic once, that I really could open a cardboard door in a paper wall and cross from the wings to the stage, a whole new girl, but now they were cruel, ringing with things that might have been.

Suddenly I heard voices, and I was pretty sure they weren’t in my head. The giggles and murmurs of teenage girls echoed across the hilltop, and yet I was alone. Goose bumps rose on my left arm, where they always started when I got genuinely spooked. Then I caught sight of something moving in a tree at the edge of the woods that circled one side of the hill—flashes of green and purple among the golden fall leaves—and realized that a few of my cast mates had climbed onto the low-hanging branches. I shook my head and smirked at myself, embarrassed in front of no one that I’d managed to scare myself on a historically inaccurate hill in a kitschy town. I walked closer to the trees, trying to make out what the voices were saying. Molly Winslow wore a purple wool coat, so I guessed it was she perched up there, along with the two freshmen who played Betty Parris and Mercy Lewis.

“—last week,” Molly was saying.

“What did he take?” asked Betty Parris.

“We won’t tell anyone!” added Mercy Lewis.

“Absolutely nothing, and you’d better tell that to anyone who asks,” Molly replied with authority. “And the Jack Daniels wasn’t even his; he was holding the bottle for Jake Hobart. His parents think it was a bad reaction to some allergy medication, but Hugh thinks someone might have slipped him something.”

“No way!”

Molly did her best to sound jaded and worldly. “Pro hockey recruiting is very competitive. There were a few girls there whose dates went to other schools, so it is totally possible that Mike Wilson or Robbie Jaffe paid one of them to drug Hugh and get him expelled. Those are his main rivals within our school league.”

“Wow, that is so creepy,” said Mercy.

“Well, what’s even creepier is that he thinks someone’s been messing with his computer. All the drafts of his college essays got erased, like, at once.”

“Couldn’t that have been a virus or something?” asked Betty skeptically.

“Maybe. I hope so! I mean, I would be wicked embarrassed if someone read the emails I sent him.”

More giggling. I shivered.

“Still, he’s lucky that he was only suspended.”