Echo Bridge (25 page)

Of course I thought of Melissa’s bathroom again, of Hugh again, of how this all began again. I stood frozen in the mirror, the mascara wand held up in front of me. I was sick of thinking about it. It was like pressing a bruise so hard and so often that it didn’t heal right and spread out, gray-purple and blobby under your skin. I stared at the girl in the mirror, perfectly put together—the same old armor I’d been wearing long before Hugh raped me. It had just gotten a lot heavier after that. But hadn’t I been wearing it since the night Ted brought me those roses, ivory edged in red like they’d been dipped in blood? I’d been guarding against all those eyes that tracked us every day through Thistleton Hall. Melissa and Hilary and the junior versions of them that appeared in every class below us, hiding forked tongues behind their expertly applied lipstick. The dopey freshman girls who’d been inflating Molly’s ego in that tree on Gallows Hill in Salem. The underclassmen were like a captive audience for the dramas of the senior class. Rory Swanson had been taking bets on Hugh’s expulsion like he was a dog. That Hugh was a dog, had been worse than a dog, was beside the point. It was the Panopticon at work, everyone watching other people like their personal lives were for everyone else’s personal entertainment. I may have been a theater kid before Ted, but it was he who had pulled me into the spotlight of Country Day.

And now, I realized, meeting my own eyes in the mirror, I wanted out. I could do what Rahim was suggesting. Suddenly, a clean slate had never been so appealing—perhaps because it had never been so real, or so totally clean. I could be a whole new person. I
would
be a whole new person. Miranda Wickendam, may she rest in peace. Who was she? I didn’t ask myself this the way Lexi did, who Miranda had been when she’d been alive, but I wanted to know who she would be. Who I would be. What did Miranda like? How did she wear her hair? I felt my mind reach out instinctively the way it did when I was trying to feel my way into a character. I finally put the mascara wand back in the tube, and went into Anna’s room.
What if…
. I pulled on her Doc Martens, brushing cobwebs off the thick brown and yellow laces.

As I clomped down the front walk to Melissa’s car, I wished it were Lexi’s Caddie waiting for me in the street. But we had agreed that getting out without raising any alarms meant acting normal. I’d had plenty of practice, but nothing was normal now. Melissa was still wearing her huge funeral sunglasses, and Hilary was still sullen and quiet in the passenger seat. I think she was angry at Hugh for dying and casting a pall over senior year.

“Why are you wearing those work boots?” Melissa didn’t bother waiting for a reply. “I just don’t understand how we’re supposed to go on. Everything’s different now.”

“Everything’s shitty,” Hilary agreed.

“I think everything will be back to normal by second semester,” I said. I doubted that was true, but it could have been, if Hugh really had been a nice, dumb jock who fell on his head. We would have mourned and moved on. Whatever happened now, with the cops on to Ted and me about to pull my disappearing act, would end any semblance of normal at Belknap Country Day. But I wouldn’t be around to see it.

“How can you say that?” asked Melissa. “It’s not like he just went away for a while and is going to come back.”

“Seriously, Courtney,” added Hilary. “That’s a ridiculous thing to say, especially coming from you.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

There was a pause, and Melissa even pulled down her sunglasses to exchange a look with Hilary.

“Sweetie,” Melissa said. “Everybody knows there was something going on with the two of you.”

“That is not true,” I said.

“Oh, please, Courtney. Even Ted told us he thought something was up. He asked if you’d said anything to us.”

“What?” I said.

“Well, you were asking all those questions the night of the party,” Melissa said matter-of-factly. “And then you just fainted dead away at the funeral.”

“Neither of you was holding up very well that day, either,” I said through gritted teeth.

There was another creepy, suspicious pause, and then Hilary said, “Look. We all saw Hugh and you have a little moment in the middle of the dance floor, and then ten minutes, later he’s sneaking off to the barn? I mean, what would make Hugh leave a party in the middle of it like that?”

“Sex,” Melissa answered.

I stared at the backs of their heads.

“I’ve never cheated on Ted,” I growled. Lexi flashed through my mind, and I shook her out, because that didn’t count. It was different; everything was different now. “And I wouldn’t have touched Hugh with a hundred-foot pole.”

“The lady doth protest too much,” Hilary snarked.

I rubbed my forehead. This was worse than being haunted by Hugh’s ghost.

“Look, everyone knows it was an accident, Courtney,” Melissa said, trying to be kind. “And I know Ted really needs you right now, and he feels like you’re a million miles away. So just be there for him, okay? Whatever’s going on.”

I wondered if I could just make a break for it when we stopped at Starbucks. Just run off and never come back, Miranda Wickendam and passports be damned. I didn’t think I could put up with another thirty seconds of this crap, let alone two weeks.

I had been dreading arriving at school, but once we did, I found it to be a relief. The teachers had apparently decided that keeping us busy was the best course of action, and each class felt more intense than usual, with a lot of talk about making up for the past couple of days of learning. I took frantic notes, and then realized that while it filled the time, I’d never actually need these notes. I’d be gone before finals.

I knew I’d see Ted at lunch. There was no way around it; everybody would find my absence weird. Then again, if they all thought I’d been sleeping with Hugh, maybe they’d think I was just grieving. But I knew I couldn’t avoid Ted forever without the video coming out, and I thought I’d be safer in a crowd.

I was wrong. I could see things were bad the minute I sat down with my cup of spinach and white bean soup, and it wasn’t just because Ted put his hand on my hip possessively as soon as I got within reach. Everybody else was a wreck. Jake had spiked his and Benji’s coffees with whiskey. Melissa was still wearing her sunglasses, even though the ref was in the basement and rather dimly lit, and was violently shredding a bagel into small pieces and only eating about half of them. Lindsay looked worse than she had at the funeral, her face pale and her eyes tiny and red, her hair matted and tangled, nibbling at a plate of cookies from the dessert buffet. Even Selena, who never looked bad, was gray and drawn around the eyes and was ignoring her salad in favor of a cup of tea. For a moment, I felt bad for them. As far as they were concerned, their hapless but loveable friend had died in a horrible accident. They were coping the best they could. But then I remembered who that hapless and loveable friend really was, and that they were all dupes and each a little awful in their own way, to boot. I sat down and scooted my chair as far away from Ted as I could without drawing attention to it. Which was impossible with the rumor mill churning invisibly around us and Melissa’s eyes eagle-sharp even behind her black shades.

“So how are you guys doing?” she asked, in a faux kind voice, like she knew how each of us was doing individually but she was really invested in how our relationship was being impacted by the circus of mourning going on around us.

I slurped some soup too hard in annoyance, and winced as it burned my throat, bringing tears to my eyes.

“Oh, Court. That’s okay,” Ted cupped my head with his hand and drew it down onto his shoulder. “We all miss him.” To Melissa, I heard him stage whisper, “She’s taking it really hard.” There was a silence while I’m sure they exchanged a meaningful glance of some kind. My face was half hidden by my hair and the other half was pressed against the woolly shoulder of Ted’s sweater. Being this close to him made me feel like a thousand insects were walking on my skin, but at the same time, I was grateful for the split second of privacy. The way I had so many times before, I struggled to find the role I was supposed to play in this scene. Empathetic girlfriend? Woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown? Affianced lady quietly grieving her dead lover? If I could no longer find the role to suit the scene, I’d find one to suit me. I was going to run away soon, what would precipitate that? All of this ran through my head in only a split second, and as soon as the idea came to me, I wriggled out and tossed my hair back.

“It just all seems so meaningless,” I said. “If it can end in an instant, in such a careless way…what’s the point of it all, you know?”

I would do suicidal teen. That way, when I left, they’d never be truly sure if I’d run or if I was dead. Not until I came back, at least.

I felt Ted glance at me sideways, a little surprised, trying to figure out what I was saying. Benji and Jake just stared at me, glum and numb, and Lindsay didn’t appear to have realized I had spoken. Melissa had pushed her glasses up on top of her head, and the shock on her face gave me a little pang.

“That’s a pretty bleak way of looking at it, Courtney,” said Selena, lifting her teacup with both hands.

“I guess I’m feeling pretty bleak these days,” I said.

Next to me, Ted shifted again. He wrapped one arm around my shoulders tightly, and stroked my hair with his other hand. “Court,” he said. “Let’s go talk.”

“I’m fine,” I said tightly.

“Well, I’m not,” he said, and gave a lock of my hair a quick, sharp tug that no one would notice. “Let’s go.”

“Where?” I whined as he hauled me to my feet.

“My car,” he said. And once again we were marching toward the senior parking lot, his hand on my arm.

The walk seemed to take forever as I struggled to keep my fears in check. I was desperately afraid that Ted would force me to do something physical, and I didn’t know what I’d do if he tried. I would have liked to kill him myself, but I didn’t know how. We got into the Rover and closed the doors. Ted started the ignition and turned on the radio, raising the volume loud enough to drown out any sound I might have made. I swallowed as he turned to face me and felt for my purse, wondering what among its contents I might be able to use as a weapon.

“I want you to tell the police I didn’t kill Hugh,” he said to me. “You did.”

I stared at him. Every time I thought I’d gotten the worst shock, another one followed.

“You saw Hugh go into the barn, and being the responsible gal you are, you followed him to remind him that it’s off limits and to drag his drunk ass back to the house. But he tried to force himself on you. You pushed him, and that’s how he fell. I saw the open barn door from the house, and when I came out to investigate, I got there right after it happened.”

I stared at him. “You want me to say I killed Hugh?”

“In self-defense. They won’t charge you.”

“They already think we’re lying,” I said. “And I…” I didn’t know what to say. And I knew it wouldn’t matter to him anyway. “Now you want me to say that he
did
rape me?”

Ted sighed and ran a hand over his hair. “That he attempted, because he was too wasted to know any better.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Courtney,” he held up his phone. “It’s your choice. You can be a hero to rape victims everywhere, or you can be the girl every guy in your dorm is jerking it to.”

I looked down into my lap. That somehow made it so much worse, as if his proposal wasn’t bad enough—how could I pass myself as a hero of self-defense when I hadn’t been able to defend myself, and I hadn’t acted heroic even for a minute, during or since? But there was no alternative. If I went to the cops, then Ted would post those videos. If they went viral, the media would be all over any trial that might ensue. I’d be a famous rape victim porn star. I put my head in my hands.

“The cops’ll bring us in again in a day or two,” Ted said. “I’m sure of it. You can go to them yourself or wait until they call you in, but when they do, if you don’t tell them what I told you”—he waggled the phone—“instant porn star. Now let’s get out of here before Farnsworth shows up to stop us from having funeral sex again.”

In the midst of all this,
The Crucible
was slated to open in two days. The show, Mr. Gillison clichéd at us that afternoon, must go on. It was tech rehearsal, which was traditionally a goof because the run-through was all about getting the lights, music and curtain cues right, and the performance didn’t matter. In every play I’d done at Country Day, we’d hammed it up during the tech run. Mr. G encouraged this; he thought it loosened us up before dress rehearsal and opening night. But Hugh’s death was reverberating beyond those of us who’d been close to him, and none of the cast seemed much in the mood to be silly. We moved through the scenes with a stiff grimness. As I traipsed the stage and sloppily hit my marks, I wondered if we’d be able to pull it off on opening night. I wondered if I’d be able to pull it off. I felt bad for Mr. G, sitting out there in the dark auditorium, watching us phone it in. I could barely remember my lines.

“Well, this sucks,” said Molly quietly, puffing her bangs out of her face. It was the middle of Act Two, and we were both backstage while Rodney banged around yelling about what a liar I was. As Abigail Williams, I mean.

“For real,” I said.

“Have they ever canceled a play?” she asked.

“There’s a first time for everything,” I said, as Elizabeth Proctor dropped the poppet with the needle in it onstage. It wasn’t even supposed to be in the scene.

“Just improvise!” Mr. G called from the audience. “What would you do if this place were full and you dropped it? Use your instinct! You can do it!”

I took a deep breath. “So how are you feeling? About Hugh, I mean.”

Molly was chewing a big wad of strawberry gum, her breath warm and moist with it as she blew a large bubble. She sucked it back into her mouth and said, “It’s weird. I mean, what happened between us before Thanksgiving didn’t really get around, at least not in my grade. So people keep coming up to me and acting all tragic, like we were in love or something. But I—I think I’m glad he’s dead. A little bit. And that makes me feel like I must be really messed up, you know?” She blew another bubble, and I saw that she was tearing up.