Nine Inches (27 page)

Th
e cop had his head down — he was watching something on his iPhone — but Liz recognized him right away as the meathead who’d written her a ticket a few years ago for rolling through a stop sign on Whitetail Way. Just a glimpse of his
Jersey Shore
physique brought it all back to her: the way he’d ignored her when she tried to explain that her daughter was late for practice, and then his crazy overreaction when Dana attempted to get out and walk the rest of the way to the
fi
eld, which was only a couple of blocks away.

Remain in the vehicle!
he’d barked, placing his hand on the butt of his holstered gun. Dana was only thirteen at the time and barely weighed a hundred pounds.
If you exit the vehicle, you will be placed under arrest!

And then, out of spite, knowing they were in a hurry, he’d made them wait in the car for what felt like an eternity while he checked Liz’s license and registration, a routine task that should have taken a minute or two at most. By the time he
fi
nally strutted over to deliver the ticket — along with a condescending lecture about driving more carefully in the future — Liz had had enough.

Just so you know,
she told him,
I’m going to be writing a formal letter of complaint to the police department about your rude and unprofessional behavior. And I’ll make sure the mayor gets a copy.

Go right ahead,
he shot back, his face
fl
ushing pink beneath the bronze of his permanent tan.
My name’s Brian Yanuzzi. With two
z
’s.

Liz never wrote the letter — Tony convinced her it was a bad idea, feuding with the cops in a town as small as Gi
ff
ord — but she had cultivated a lively private grudge against O
ffi
cer Yanuzzi in the intervening years, cursing under her breath whenever she caught a glimpse of him directing tra
ffi
c around a construction site, or sitting in his cruiser in the center of town, monitoring the pedestrian crossings. He was such a vivid
fi
gure in her mental universe that she was surprised, and even a bit disappointed, by the bland friendliness on his face when he looked up from the phone, as if she were any other well-meaning taxpayer.

“Evening,” he said.

“Hi.” She made a point of not returning his smile. “I’m a volunteer?”

“Too bad,” he said with a chuckle. “Looks like you got the short straw.”

“Looks like we both did.”

“Least I’m getting paid.”

Liz nodded, conceding the point. She could hear music leaking through the closed double doors, the mu
ffl
ed
whump, wah-whump
of the beat, a girlish voice
fl
oating on top. She wondered if she might be able to get in a little dancing later on, if adults were allowed to join the fun. She hadn’t danced in a long time.

“So how’s it going?” she asked, not quite sure why she was prolonging this encounter with a man she actively disliked. It was almost as if she were giving him a second chance, holding out for a sign of belated recognition —
Hey, wait a minute, aren’t you that lady . . . ?
— some scrap of proof that she wasn’t as completely forgettable as she seemed to be. “Everyone behaving themselves?”

“
Th
ey’re good kids.” Yanuzzi’s face seemed so
ft
er than she remembered, a little more boyish. “Not like when I was in high school.”

“Tell me about it. My graduation night was insane.
Th
e little of it I can remember.”

“Oh, yeah?”
Th
e cop looked intrigued, as if he were seeing her in a new light. “You were a party girl, huh?”

“Not quite,” Liz told him, making a conscious decision to leave it at that, to spare him the details of that disastrous evening, the Southern Comfort and the tears, the fact that she’d made out with three di
ff
erent guys, none of whom she’d even liked, and then thrown up in Sandy Deaver’s kidney-shaped pool, thereby ensuring that her classmates would have at least one thing to remember her by at their upcoming twenty-
fift
h reunion. “I was just young and stupid.”

Yanuzzi nodded slowly, as though she’d said something profound.

“So were those kids who died,” he observed. “
Th
ey were just young and stupid, too.”

THOSE KIDS
who died.

Liz had been hearing about those kids for the past twelve years, ever since she’d moved to Gi
ff
ord.
Th
e accident was fresh in everyone’s mind back then,
fi
ve friends speeding in a Jeep on graduation night, open containers, no seatbelts. Good-looking, popular, three boys and two girls, never in any kind of trouble, just a terrible mistake, the kind kids make when they’re drunk and happy.

Th
e memory of those kids was a dark cloud hanging over the town. You’d see people having a hushed conversation on a street corner, or a woman touching another woman’s arm in the Stop & Shop, or a man wiping away a tear while he pumped his gas, and you’d think,
Th
ose kids who died.

Th
ere were memorial services in the fall, the football season dedicated to the memory of the victims. Everywhere you went you saw their names soaped on the rear windows of cars, usually listed in alphabetical order, along with the date of their deaths, and the phrase
IN
LOVING
MEMORY
.
Th
e school district increased funding for drug and alcohol education; the cops cracked down hard on underage drinking. And on graduation night the following June, Gi
ff
ord High held the
fi
rst annual All-Night Party, a heavily supervised a
ff
air at which the graduates could celebrate in a safe, substance-free, vehicle-free environment. Parents loved the idea, and it turned out the kids liked it, too.

Over the past decade the All-Night Party had outgrown its sad origins, maturing into a beloved institution that was the source of genuine local pride. Each year’s cohort of junior parents vied to outdo their predecessors in the lavishness of the decorations and the novelty of the o
ff
erings — a Nerf-gun war, a circus trapeze, a climbing wall, sumo-wrestling suits, and, memorably, an enormous Moonwalk castle that had to be de
fl
ated well before dawn, due to highly credible reports of sexual shenanigans unfolding within remote inner chambers. More recently, the party had gone thematic — last year was
Twilight
and vampires, and the year before
Harry Potter,
complete with lightning-bolt face tattoos, a Sorting Hat, and a Quidditch tournament in the gym. For this year’s theme, the Committee had given serious thought to
Th
e Hunger Games
— too depressing, they’d decided — before settling on Gi
ff
ord Goes Hollywood, a more open-ended concept that accounted for both the red carpet outside and the lifelike Oscar statue that greeted Liz when she entered the building, an eight-foot, three-dimensional replica of the trophy with a sign taped to its base:
FOR
BEST
PER
FOR
MANCE
BY
A
GRADUATING
CLASS
.

SALLY WAS
manning the Volunteer Sign-In table along with Je
ff
Hammer, the presidente-for-life of the Gi
ff
ord Youth Hockey Association, and a ubiquitous
fi
gure at local athletic and charitable events. Hammer didn’t bother to acknowledge Liz’s arrival — he’d been cold to her for the past several years, ever since Dana had quit a promising hockey career to focus on indoor soccer during the winter season — but Sally’s greeting was so warm Liz barely registered his snub.

“
Th
ank you so much for coming,” she said, rising from her chair with a wan but sincere smile. She looked washed-out, as if she hadn’t slept for days. “You’re my hero.”

“Not a problem.” Liz leaned across the table for a quick hug and kiss. “How’s it going?”

“Great.”

Sally glanced at Hammer for con
fi
rmation, and he responded with a grudging nod. He was an unpleasantly handsome man with a mustache he couldn’t keep his
fi
ngers o
ff
.

“Kids are having a blast,” he admitted.

With the indi
ff
erence of a clerk at the DMV, Hammer slid a blank name tag and a Sharpie in Liz’s direction. A
ft
er a moment’s hesitation, she scrawled her married name —
LIZ
MERCATTO
— and a
ffi
xed the white rectangle to her shirt. At least this way everyone would know she was Dana’s mom, instead of some random adult who’d wandered in o
ff
the street.

“Ready?” Sally circled the table and took Liz by the arm. “
Th
ey’re waiting for you at the Chilling Station.”

“
Th
e what?”

“It’s a place to relax and hang out, kind of away from it all. You know, if the kids need a little downtime. I think you’ll like it.”

Th
ey set o
ff
toward the distant clamor of the party, turning right at the library, heading down a long hallway paved with a galaxy of construction-paper stars, each one bearing the name of a graduate.

“
Th
is is our Walk of Fame,” Sally explained. “We stayed up until two-thirty cutting out the stars and writing the names. And then it took us all a
ft
ernoon to arrange them on the
fl
oor.”

“How many are there?”

“Two hundred forty-three.” Liz could hear the pride in Sally’s voice. “But who’s counting, right?”

Th
ey veered apart, making way for a pack of pretty girls charging by in short skirts and high heels, each one taller and skinnier than the next, glammed up as if they were heading to a nightclub. Not a single member of the posse bothered to glance at Liz or Sally as they passed, let alone say,
Hi
or
Excuse me.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” Sally watched with a wistful expression as the girls clattered down the hallway, talking in loud, theatrical voices. “
Th
ey have no idea how beautiful they are.”

Oh, they know,
Liz thought.
Th
e world only reminds them every day.

“
Th
ey probably think their butts are too big or their boobs are too small,” Sally continued. “
Th
at’s how I felt when I was their age. Like I could never measure up.”

“Me, too.” Liz decided not to mention that the feeling had never gone away. “All through high school I tried to be the last person out of the classroom a
ft
er the bell rang. I didn’t want any boys walking behind me, snickering at my ass.”

Th
e girls stopped midway down the hall to take cell-phone pictures of a star that must have belonged to one of them, or maybe to a boy they liked.

“
Th
ey’re probably on some ridiculous carrot-stick diet,” Sally said. “But they’re perfect just the way they are, you know?
Th
at’s what I keep telling Jamie, but I can’t seem to get through to her.”

Liz nodded, not quite sure how they’d segued from the high-heeled hotties to the entirely di
ff
erent subject of Jamie, an Amazonian three-sport athlete who only ever seemed at home in sweats or a team uniform. Tony always referred to her as a “bruiser,” insisting that he meant it as a compliment.

“It’s hard being a girl,” Liz observed. “Doesn’t matter what you look like.”

“What about Dana? She have any issues like that? You know, body image or whatever?”

“Not really.” Liz
fl
inched as two boys barreled past, one of them trying to bash the other in the head with a pink
fl
otation noodle.
Th
ey looked sweaty and slightly crazed. “She’s been lucky like that. Never had to worry about her weight or her complexion, none of it.”

Sally nodded, as if she’d
fi
gured as much. “She’s always been such a pretty girl. Ever since she was little.”

“It’s a
fl
uke.” Liz added the obligatory disclaimer: “God knows she didn’t get it from her mother.”

Th
ey stopped to peek into the cafeteria, half of which had been cleared to make a dance
fl
oor. A mob of kids were out there, most of them moving with a con
fi
dence Liz could only have dreamed about at their age. A few looked like trained professionals, or at least like they’d spent a lot of time practicing in front of their bedroom mirror.

“I’m glad it’s
fi
nally picking up,” Sally said. “When the DJ started, the boys were hiding out in the gym, shooting hoops and beating up on one another.
Th
e girls had to drag them over here.”

“Well, it looks like they’re having fun.”

Liz would have liked to stick around, but Sally was in no mood to linger. Her shi
ft
was over; she just wanted to get Liz settled, then go home and get some sleep.

“I saw Dana’s prom pictures on Facebook,” Sally said, as they rounded the corner onto a corridor lined with cardboard cutouts of Hollywood stars, Meryl Streep sandwiched by Dirty Harry and Homer Simpson, Je
ff
Bridges with an eyepatch. “She and Chris looked really happy together. Such a perfect couple.”

“I guess,” Liz agreed without enthusiasm. “I just wish they weren’t so serious.”

“
Th
ey’ve been together for a while, right?”

“Ever since freshman year.”

Sally hesitated, shooting Liz an apologetic sidelong glance before venturing the inevitable question.