The Boy Who Killed Grant Parker (17 page)

“Why are you here?” I asked again. “Don't you think I'm in enough trouble already?”

“I brought you a shit-ton of crystal meth,” she said. “Figured you'd want to off yourself.”

“You have no idea,” I said. I collapsed back onto my bed with a weary sigh. “Is that why you came? To help me kill myself?”

“No,” she said, her voice softening with something that sounded almost like compassion. “I figured you would need a friend.”

The night in the meadow when she told me about her brother was the only other time I had ever heard genuine emotion in her voice. It surprised me to hear it there now.

“I don't have any friends,” I said bitterly. “I hate this fucking place.”

Even though Delilah said plenty of crazy shit, like all girls, she was one of the few who knew how to be quiet too. On the nights when she had sat in the driveway watching me work on the Camaro, we often sat in silence. And neither of us ever asked what the other was thinking. I hated it when girls did that, since most of the time I was either thinking about sex or whether I had a skid mark in my underwear left over from a really potent fart.

Delilah came to sit on the edge of my bed and kicked off her shoes. She fought with my arm until I realized what she wanted and put it out so she could nestle under my armpit. We lay there with her head on my shoulder, her hand on the side of my chest, her hair tickling my chin. I had to admit that the warmth of her body comforted me and I felt less alone than I had in weeks.

“Did you go to the prayer vigil?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she murmured into my armpit.

“I can't ever leave the house again,” I said. “What if he dies?”

“Then it won't be your fault,” Delilah said, her voice sleepy. “There's a big world outside of Ashland. You can get out, one way or another. Like Jeremy. He just came back sooner than he expected.”

At the mention of her brother I felt a pang of sympathy and stroked her hair a few times.

“It will be okay,” she said, and now I was slipping toward sleep.

When I woke in the morning, Delilah was gone. Her side of the bed was cold, and I ran my hand along the bedspread to find some evidence she had really been there the night before. The whole thing had felt like a dream. And maybe it was. I couldn't tell what was real anymore.

 

26

By Wednesday night I had started to succumb to the anxiety of cabin fever. I hadn't showered or changed my clothes, had barely left my room since Roger brought me home from the police station on Monday night. I wondered if Delilah would come to see me again after Dad and Doris went to bed. I was surprised to find myself hoping that she would.

Though I had not discussed it with Dad, I had skipped school again Wednesday. In fact, I had no intention of ever going back. There had been another vigil held to pray for Grant's recovery that afternoon during school. I would never have survived it.

I waited, hoping Delilah would come to bring me news of the world beyond my window.

Close to midnight I heard the familiar scratching of the azaleas against my window and rolled out of bed to open the sash. I was dressed in sweatpants and no shirt, my eyes clotted with sleep, though I felt as if I had only dozed for a minute.

When I opened the window I got the shock of my life. More shocking even than Grant's swan dive into the grease pit. Penny Olson stood below my window, her eyes bright even in the dim glow from the streetlight.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, realizing as I did that this was a recurring question I had about the two girls in my life.

“Let me in,” Penny said softly.

She moved toward the front door without waiting for an answer from me. Delilah was a girl who climbed through windows. Penny walked through doorways.

I crept quietly out to the foyer to let her in, every pop of the hardwood floors sounding as loud as gunshot in the quiet house.

Penny followed me to my bedroom and didn't speak until I shut the door behind us and pressed in the button lock on the doorknob.

“I'm so sorry this has happened,” Penny said as she threw herself into my arms. “I've been so upset, knowing what you did to Grant … and all because of me.”

“Wait.… no … what?”

“It's okay,” she said as she took a small step back and picked up my hand to hold it against her chest. Even though I was pretty sure Penny had on a bra that maximized the appearance and feel of her breasts, it didn't really matter. They looked amazing and felt even better against my hand. “I know you were just doing what you had to do. To protect yourself. To protect what we have.”

“Uh…” Anything Penny and I had together was news to me. We hadn't even spoken since the night Chief Perry all but accused me of sexual assault.

“I don't think any less of you as a person,” she continued without a pause for me to reply. “In fact, I think more of you. Grant was a bully. He needed someone to put him in his place.” Her expression turned sharp as she said this, her nails digging into my arm.

“He's not dead,” I said.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You said Grant
was
a bully. Past tense. He's not dead.”

“Oh,” she said with a flutter of her hand. “I just meant that Grant always got away with bullying whoever he wanted. Including me. He won't be doing that anymore.” She cocked her head as her eyes searched my face in a practiced way. “Because of you.”

“Look, Penny,” I said as I held her by the arms just above her elbows. “About what happened … it's not what you think.”

“Shh,” she said, and put a finger to my lips to silence me. “I know. You were just defending yourself. It wasn't intentional. You don't have to tell me what I already know. Grant came looking for the fight. He just didn't count on someone getting the better of him.”

“Is that what you think?” I asked. “Is that what everyone thinks?”

She shrugged one shoulder, and as she did, managed to sidle in closer to me. “Pretty much.”

I took a moment to think. Maybe Penny's interpretation of what happened wasn't so terrible after all. Maybe I had been looking at the whole thing wrong.

“But everyone was at the prayer vigil. People were really upset. If they think I'm the one who's responsible for Grant's condition, everyone is going to hate me.” I wasn't really saying any of this for Penny's benefit. I was just voicing the thoughts I had struggled with for the past two days. Grant was Ashland's answer to Superman. Which made me a villain. Not just a villain, but a supervillain.

“I mean, Grant was popular, but only because he was rich and good-looking and a great football player.…” Penny trailed off while I waited for her to finish cataloging all of Grant's assets. “We didn't have a choice but to like him,” she said, giving me a pointed look, wanting me to understand her side of things. I just gave her a noncommittal nod as I waited for her to continue. “But Grant was also a bully. He was used to getting his way.” She paused. “But not anymore. You proved that to me. To everyone. You showed everyone that Grant can't treat people any way he wants to and get away with it. You're, like, a hero.”

Maybe just a slight overstatement.

But, no—Penny was right. I had to stop casting myself as the bad guy. I was the underdog. Not a loser but an unlikely hero. I was David to Grant's Goliath.

The truth? The truth didn't matter. It was what everyone believed that mattered. Truth had nothing to do with faith.

The whole school—hell, the entire town—knew Grant was an entitled prick. If people wanted to believe I was a hero, or at the very least not a complete coward, then that was fine with me.

“Do you like me, Luke?” Penny asked, interrupting my thoughts with her sudden change in trajectory. She sounded hopeful.

“Of course I like you,” I said with some surprise. After all, Penny was beautiful. She was nice to me. She treated me like I was smart and strong. She treated me like I was somebody.

Not like Delilah, who would, more often than not, point out my faults, and never let me forget them. Penny knew how to talk to a guy. To make him feel like he was the man.

Maybe that was part of Grant's secret—how he was able to keep everyone convinced that despite being an asshole and not a nice person, they somehow had to like him, had to treat him like he was something special. He expected to be treated like a god … and so he was.

And now, here Penny was, telling me I was her champion, practically asking me to kiss her. Standing so close to me, in fact, I was surprised she couldn't feel exactly how much I liked her. “I'm just … not sure what's going to happen now that everyone thinks I'm an attempted murderer,” I said. “Maybe nobody really liked Grant, were just afraid of him. But I did just single-handedly take out the captain of the football team and the student council president.”

Okay, now who's overstating things?

Penny ran her delicate hand up my arm, up under the sleeve, and squeezed my triceps. I suppressed a shudder as my stomach went cold, and I felt my dick pressing against my sweats with interest. The top of her head came to just below my chin, and I had to admit, I liked the fact that she was so much smaller than I was. It made me feel strong and powerful, like I could kill a wolf with my bare hands to protect her while she cowered behind me.

Though I was not a virgin, the one time I'd had sex the whole thing was over so quickly I'm not even really sure what happened. Since then I had been afraid to attempt it again, afraid to let go and lose myself completely with another human being present to bear witness.

Penny was clearly experienced. I knew she had been sleeping with Grant. She had told me that much.

So, there we were, in my room, Dad and Doris asleep upstairs on the other side of the house, and Penny looking up at me with those big green eyes, her head tipped back and her full, luscious lips parted slightly.

“Tomorrow we can worry about it,” she said. “Let's just forget about it tonight.”

 

27

The better part of valor prevents me from telling you everything that Penny and I did with and to each other in my bedroom that night while Dad and Doris slept. But the next morning I felt like a new man, humming to myself as I stood under the shower.

Truth be told, I was still terrified of the prospect of facing anyone at school or on the street, still a prisoner in Dad's house, but there were people who believed I was innocent or, as in Penny's case, even noble. I felt a momentary twinge of guilt that I had not disclosed the full truth to Penny. I should have interrupted her, made her sit down and listen to the full story.

Somehow, the right moment just never presented itself. There was no graceful way to launch into the story, and with the way she thought of me now, I couldn't risk disappointing her. Penny could love a bully like Grant. She could even love a murderer-in-self-defense. But she could never love a coward.

I had fooled around with her under false pretenses. I
was
a coward, not the murderer-in-self-defense she wanted me to be. It would be impossible to tell the truth now without making myself the bad guy.

And, as much as I wanted to, I couldn't bring myself to regret any of it. Having sex with Penny was the best thing that had ever happened to me.

*   *   *

With my new status as suspected attempted murderer I became completely isolated, alone in a way I had never felt before. Not just lonely, but without any allies. Despite what Delilah or Penny or anybody thought, no one understood the humiliation and loneliness I had felt those first two months in Ashland.

That first Friday after the accident, the football game was canceled as a show of deference to Grant's grieving family. The whole community was in mourning, maybe as much for the impact Grant's absence would have on the football program as anything else.

Dad was feeling the strain of our sudden celebrity. Attendance numbers rivaled those of a Christmas or Easter service at his church that Sunday. I was forced to attend and hated every minute of being on display in a front pew. I felt the gaze from hundreds of eyes boring into the back of my neck and hid in the bathroom for most of the coffee hour after the service.

Neighbors and busybodies from his church were relentless in their badgering phone calls and drop-by visits. The veil of concern was smothering. Doris stayed in bed to avoid everyone, and I only left my room when absolutely necessary for survival, so Dad faced them all on his own.

A reporter from the local paper had stopped by soon after the accident, wanting a statement from me about Grant and his condition. I stood with the door to my bedroom cracked to overhear as Dad tried to get rid of the reporter politely. Then I watched from my window as the guy stood in the driveway and took a few pictures of the house. The pictures showed up in the Sunday paper attached to an in-depth article about Grant. The story was still first-page news since nothing else had happened in Ashland and national news didn't seem to generate much interest in Ashland's isolated community. The article mentioned the Wildcats 4–0 season record and speculated about the upcoming homecoming game against the Benton Bulldogs, rivals from the neighboring county.

Grant smiled out at me from the sidebar of the article. Though grainy and dark, Grant's senior portrait was still clear enough to show off his charismatic smile and perfectly coiffed hair, his chiseled jaw perched on his fist in a casual way. The picture had been taken only a week before the accident, when Grant was still on top of the world—his future rosy and his place at the top of the pyramid still intact.

The latest article wasn't very long. There wasn't much to say about Grant's condition. He was still in a coma, still in stable condition, but there was no mention of his long-term prognosis, whether he would be in a wheelchair or would be a quadriplegic. There was no speculation about whether he would be confined to bed for the rest of his life, or to one of those electric wheelchairs that had to be controlled by a joystick. A shudder passed through me as I pictured Grant, years from now, sitting at the diner in his wheelchair alongside the other regulars talking about old football glories over a cup of coffee and a piece of pie.