The Boy Who Killed Grant Parker (25 page)

Penny's mother greeted me at the door dressed in a long evening gown, the color and shimmer of the fabric garish in the fading afternoon light. I kept my distance in case the smell of beer lingered on my breath.

“Well,” she breathed as she opened the door and pressed a hand to her impressive bosom, “don't you look handsome, Luke.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Olson,” I said, knowing that I should find something complimentary to say to her, too. Grant would have had the charm to carry off this moment, but I was still lacking compared to almost any boy raised in the south. “You look … nice,” I finally said, since she was clearly waiting for her return compliment.

“Well, I didn't keep the dress I wore to homecoming, but I did wear this to the prom too many years ago for me to want to tell you,” she said as she lifted her skirt and gave it a small shake. “Penny looks really lovely. She's a vision.”

“I'll bet,” I said as I stepped inside.

And when Penny appeared on the stairs, she really did look beautiful. Her hair was swept back from her face and fell in buttery curls down her back, her arms and shoulders bare.

“Hi, Luke,” Penny said, her smile radiant.

Penny's dad sat at the dining room table reading the paper while her mother fussed over us, making us stand by the fireplace for a dozen or more pictures. There were photos of me pinning Penny's corsage to her dress, pictures of us both standing with our hands at our sides, with my arm around her waist, and with us both facing the same direction with my hands on Penny's shoulders. Mrs. Olson would show us the photos after every few she took, and I hoped I was the only one who noticed how fake and forced my smile was. By the end of the ordeal a film of sweat covered my forehead and my hands felt clammy.

Penny's parents took us out to dinner at the Italian restaurant on Main Street. Penny and I rode in the Camaro, following her dad's Buick at a safe distance. At dinner I tried to make polite conversation but spent most of the meal staring enviously at the carafe of wine the Olsons shared with their veal piccata and salad. When Mr. Olson put down cash for the bill, I was the first one out of my seat.

*   *   *

By the time we reached the Elks Lodge I was ready to experience a full-blown anxiety attack. We were among the first to arrive, since Penny was running the homecoming committee.

Miss Mitze and Miss Tucker were working the main entrance as greeters, both in evening gowns yellowed with age and wearing heavy white corsages on their wrists. Reflected light on her glasses obscured Miss Tucker's expression, but Miss Mitze was watching me with the spark of anticipated drama. “Hello, Luke,” Miss Mitze said eagerly.

He's the boy who almost killed Grant Parker. What will he do next?

“Hello, Miss Mitze, Miss Tucker. How are you?” I said with nods to both of them.

“It's such a lovely night for the dance,” Miss Mitze gushed. “Isn't it lovely, Tucker? Tucker and I were just saying how lovely it is.”

“It is nice,” I said.

“And we're really enjoying the theme for this year's dance,” Miss Mitze said, her eyes wide with genuine delight. “Old school. People have started to arrive and have been coming in the gowns they wore for their own past homecoming dances or proms. Such a delightful idea.”

“Of course,” Miss Tucker continued, an extension of her sister's commentary, “not everyone can fit into the dress or suit they wore to their own homecoming, even with the aid of a good tailor.” She said this with a pointed look in the direction of a woman who was handing off her coat to the attendant in the coatroom and who wore a sheath dress that was obviously designed for a figure slimmer than hers.

“Just between you, us, and the lamppost,” Miss Mitze said in what was supposed to be a whisper but was still audible from twenty paces, “that's Mrs. Brenner of Brenner's Bakery. I think he feeds her extra éclairs because he likes roomy women. And that seems perfectly natural, of course. If anyone, a baker would be the kind to appreciate a woman with a fuller figure.”

“I suppose he would have to,” agreed Miss Tucker. “Perhaps it's an acquired taste.”

I immediately cut off the conversation with a few pleasantries before Miss Mitze or Miss Tucker could make any additional commentary about bakers and their fetishes.

The activity hall at the Elks Lodge had been transformed by the homecoming committee into a bewildering accumulation of balloons and streamers and tinsel. The walls were lined with blown-up images from homecoming dances of Ashland's past.

Within thirty minutes the party was in full swing, a crush of people arriving at the same time. Penny was flitting around the room, overseeing the refilling of the punch bowl or greeting people.

The homecoming committee had managed to find a band out of Chattanooga that would play cover songs from the seventies and eighties, not all of them country hits, thank God. I had a terrible feeling I was going to be expected to dance, and I had no idea how to even begin dancing to a country song. I would have preferred a wallflower position, but people kept singling me out for conversation.

A lot of country songs seemed to have choreographed line-dancing steps that everyone knew but me. I took frequent trips to the bathroom to avoid the embarrassment of dancing, but in actual fact I was making trips to my car to shotgun one of the beers in my trunk. The drunker I got, the better I felt. Or maybe the drunker I got, the less I felt. Feeling less was feeling better, as far as I was concerned.

As I walked back into the building on my last trip to the car, the faux-lantern lights along the walkway to the entrance burned trails of light as I passed them, letting me know that maybe I was too drunk. I took a few deep breaths before opening the door to the side entrance and tried to slow the beating of my heart. “Almost over, almost over,” I muttered to myself. “You can do it.”

I have my doubts.

 

41

This was what I had been dreading the most. The presentation of the homecoming court. Now I was drunk, and nervous to the point that my hands trembled and my pulse boomed in my ears.

The last thing I wanted to do was climb onto the stage and be put in the spotlight. I had spent the past month with a glaring spotlight following me everywhere. My accidental-hero status had left me exhausted and suffering all the symptoms of overstress. My acne had started to return along my jawline, and I had not slept through the night in weeks.

As acting student council president, David Green took the stage to welcome everyone and thank the homecoming committee, the faculty, the school administration, the local businesses that had contributed to the event, and God. God was almost mentioned as an afterthought, and I hoped that wouldn't piss him off.

After what seemed like an eternity, David finally got down to the business of announcing the members of the homecoming court, beginning with the royal representative from each underclass. There were squeals of delight and applause from the crowd as each member of the royal court was announced.

Penny was announced as queen, and she did a great job of feigning absolute surprise and amazement. She pressed one delicate hand to her chest, her eyes and mouth wide with delight as she climbed the short staircase to the stage.

Penny's acceptance speech included a lot of “oh, my God”s and “thank you guys so much,” and there were even real tears at the corners of her eyes as David placed the tiara on her hair.

And then, the moment we'd all been waiting for … my turn.

This is going to suck.

*   *   *

“Your new homecoming king!” David was shouting into the mic over the murmurs of the crowd. “Luke Grayson!” He flung out an arm in my direction, and the spotlight shifted to track my ascent to the stage.

As I climbed the stairs, David gave me an encouraging nod and I tried to force a smile onto my face. He was holding the cheap plastic crown in both hands as if it were made of actual gold. I was going to look ridiculous wearing it. Somebody else, Grant Parker, maybe, could wear the plastic crown and not look or feel foolish, but there was no way I could carry it off.

I looked out into the crowd, remembering that I should give them a wave and a smile the way I had seen Grant do at the opening pep rally, but when I looked out at the sea of faces, Delilah's grim expression was the only thing I saw, so I quickly trained my eyes back on David. The walk across the stage seemed to take an eternity, and then, when I reached the podium, things got super awkward.

As David turned to greet me, I started to dip my head to accept the crown. He had placed the tiara on Penny's head, so I just assumed he would do the same to me. But that wasn't his intent, so at the same time I was lowering my head to be crowned, he held it up for me to take it from his hand. He ended up whacking me in the nose with the plastic band, and a murmur of giggles swelled from the crowd.

Our second attempt was worse as David realized his mistake and tried to put the crown on my head, just as I realized my mistake and went to reach for it. The result was that I had to hold my hand up near my forehead to snatch the crown from his grasp. The applause had long since diminished and I coronated myself in front of a silent room.

Then there was a standoff between David and me as he was clearly waiting for something, but I had no idea what he wanted me to do.

After a silence that was broken by only a few coughs and one or two uncomfortable snickers from the audience, David leaned in to murmur to me, “Don't you want to say something?”

“Like what?” I whispered.

“Whatever you want. You're the king.”

“I don't want to say anything,” I said, like a ventriloquist, barely moving my lips.

David turned back to the mic and said—an unnecessary repeat of his previous announcement—“So, this year's homecoming king, ladies and gentleman, Luke Grayson.” He took a step back from the podium and started to clap, and soon everyone, with palpable relief that the uncomfortable moment had passed, joined in to clap politely.

David had left the podium for me to take his place, but I just stood there with a wooden grin plastered on my face.

The room became a kaleidoscope of light and sound as my gaze traveled quickly around the room. I didn't want to see any recognizable faces in the crowd. Didn't want to see Delilah's silent judgment or Don's sense of betrayal or Principal Sherman's look of disapproval.

For a fleeting moment, I thought I caught a glimpse of Grant's face in the audience. One second, I was looking at his face. The next, I saw only a gap in the crowd between two girls in dueling pink and sea-foam satin. Between the girls, I could just make out the retreating sandy brown head of hair atop a pair of broad athletic shoulders as Grant turned his back on the room and was leaving.

Holy shit.

It was Grant.

He was here.

By some miracle, or epic cosmic tragedy, Grant Parker … was alive.

And maybe more importantly … he's here.

I dropped the mic, and David fumbled to catch it before it hit the floor with a bang. The speakers coughed with the sound of his hands and sleeves scraping across the mesh of the microphone, and a few people covered their ears against the offending sound. But I didn't care and hopped off the front of the stage to follow Grant's retreating figure. I crossed the open dance floor just as Grant pushed through the fire doors into the entrance hall. He turned his head to one side as he exited the room, and I could make out his features clearly now, in profile, as the brighter light from the lobby cast him in silhouette.

People watched me in silence as I roughly pushed my way through the throng. I threw myself against the heavy fire door that had just shut behind Grant, and then stumbled into the vacant entrance hall.

Mrs. Schnabel had replaced Mitze and Tucker at the greeting table and sat in the metal folding chair with her hands folded primly in her lap. She was eighty-five and sometimes thought that Eisenhower was still president. The fluorescent lights cast half-moons on the lenses of her thick glasses as she watched me twirl first one way, then the other, looking for Grant.

“Did you see…?” I started to ask her if she had seen Grant Parker pass through the lobby. But the question suddenly seemed so absurd that I bit off the rest of the sentence. “Did you just see someone pass through here?” I asked, trying to mask the hysteria in my voice.

She looked around the room, her head bobbing like a bird of prey, then turned back to me and just shrugged. I could hear through the door the muffled sound of David talking into the microphone, and then there was subdued applause from the crowd.

I wasn't sure what was happening, but the one thing I did know, there was no way I could go back inside to the dance. Wakefield High School was going to have to make do without a king.

The alcohol had entered my bloodstream completely now and was putting me over the edge. I was having trouble walking straight. I lurched toward the exit doors, hit the crash bar with my hip, and fled into the night.

I didn't think I could drive in my condition. Or maybe I could, but shouldn't.

The cold night air lifted the sweat from my face and made me shiver as I dug in my pocket for my keys.

I looked forward to the relief I would feel once I was within the safety of the Camaro, the only place in the world I ever felt any solace now. I promised myself that once I was in the car, the stereo on, I would allow myself to forget everyone in the Elks Lodge. They would melt away like sand under my feet at the beach.

When I saw the Camaro waiting, she wasn't alone. I stopped in my tracks. If I hadn't been so drunk, my heart might have reacted more, might have started to pound in my chest from fear. But the alcohol formed a hazy buffer, coated my brain so that it slid from one thought to the next without focus.

Waiting for me, leaning against the side of the Camaro with no regard for the original cherry finish I had buffed lovingly with Turtle Wax, was Grant Parker.