Truth (3 page)

“I'm not following him around.”

I give her my “you're not fooling anyone” look.

“Listen, Nate's one of those guys who doesn't say much. But when he does, the whole room tunes in because it's important.”

That's true. Especially when I think about how Nate took control at the party. Before I can tell Georgia that, he's walked by and
she's left me in the dust to skip along beside him. Waiting for his next words of wisdom, I guess.

8:25 a.m.

It's a relief to be alone for a few minutes. I've been up late the last two nights writing my news script. It turned out to be a basic summary of facts — the usual who, what, when and where. Except the “who” is only who was murdered, not who did the murdering.

I slide down to sit on the floor, leaning back to rest against my locker. With each sentence I've written, this whole situation has become more real. A man died. Was killed. Is dead. The stomach ache I had the night of the party has come back on a permanent basis.

As the murder gets more real, school gets more surreal. Everyone's back to chatting and laughing and, in Georgia's case, boy chasing, like nothing ever happened.

I close my eyes for a minute. When I open them, it's because I can feel someone standing over me.

“Hey, Jen.”

It's Ross, his hair still damp from the shower. He squats in front of me, his knees on either side of mine, his hand pressed against the locker above my shoulder for balance. I'm caged by his body, and he's close enough that I can smell his deodorant.

“What happened at Ian's blows, huh?”

I nod, though this is the understatement of the century. The bell rings, and people start to sort themselves into their homerooms.

“Poor Ian's grounded for life. Might be allowed out when he's forty.”

This time I give him an obligatory smile, but I'm feeling weird. Ross and I are friendly, but we don't talk a lot. He's Jerome's friend more than mine. And he's suffocating me. “I should get to class.”

“Lots of time. Relax,” he says and leans even closer. “Jerome tells me you're doing a news report about the situation.”

“For the school show, yeah.”

“Anything I should know about?”

“That depends. Are you the news police?
A journalist never gives up her sources, you know.” I'm joking. Ross is starting to bug me, but I'm one hundred percent joking. The look he gives me is completely serious.

“Let's just say I'm an interested member of your audience.”

“It's just the official facts from the police. Were you even there? I don't remember seeing you afterwards.”

He shakes his head. “Booked out early. Heard there was another party.”

“So what's the big deal then?”

“Just don't want trouble. I gotta go.”

He unfolds himself and lopes off down the hall, long legs disappearing around the corner. So much for social graces. The final bell rings and I'm still sitting in the hallway. Sighing, I pull myself up and head to the office for a late slip.

Noon

The day is getting progressively worse. I have no friends at lunch. Georgia goes off with Nate. Jerome says he has to talk to Ross about something and disappears. I don't even
get a chance to tell him how weird Ross was this morning. With nothing else to do, I head to the media lab, where Ms. Chan asks if we can talk about my piece.

“It's good, Jen. All the facts are there. But I think you're missing some of the human element. What did Ted Granville's neighbors think of him? Is he well-known in Fairfield? What about comments from the partygoers?

“I'm not saying this story isn't worth running,” she continues. “It is. But let's follow it up next week with both a factual update and some people's reactions. Sound okay?”

I nod, mostly to get her to go away. She's great, but this day has Murphy's Law written all over it.

2:30 p.m.

I forgot to do my reading last night, so I flunk the pop quiz Mr. Johnson gives us on
Macbeth
. In retaliation, he makes me read part of Act V.

Mr. Johnson reads the part of a doctor, who has come to watch Lady Macbeth sleepwalk.
I'm supposed to read Lady Macbeth's lines. It seems that after plotting and scheming with her husband, she's finally feeling a bit of post-murder guilt. Stumbling around in her sleep, she sees blood on her hands. Out, out, damned spot, etc. After the first couple of minutes, I start to get into it. I'm rubbing my hands together in front of me, pretending they smell bad.

And here's where my day gets really putrid. All of a sudden I'm convinced that the whole class thinks I killed Ted Granville. Which is ridiculous. Completely unfounded. Half of them don't even know I was at the party. I tell myself to calm down, but someone coughs in the back, then I see two girls in the front look at each other. I'm convinced they're all thinking the same thing. Guilty. Guilty. I can't get the thought out of my head and I trash the rest of my lines. Then I say I have to go to the bathroom, grab my books and run out of the class.

I am such a freak.

3:30 p.m.

The final announcements, over the P.A.:
“There are messages in the office for blah blah, blah blah, blah blah, Jen Forester, blah blah…”

My message is from the school counselor. It says I should come to her office if I ever want to talk.

4:00 p.m.

At least the counselor gave me a choice. The police — Officer Wells and the investigator I saw at the crime scene — knock on the door almost as soon as I get home. They want me to come to the station to talk to them. I don't seem to have any say in the matter.

I feel like a criminal in the back of the police car, with its glass shield in front of me and its doors that don't open from the inside. At least I'm not handcuffed. When we get to the station, they leave me in a grungy room. My dad's on his way to meet us apparently.

After a long wait, all three of them file in. My dad gives me a worried look, but he squeezes my hand as he sits beside me. Officer Wells sits across from us. The other officer — Behnson turns out to be his name
— paces around the room. He's the one who asks questions. After a while it starts to make me dizzy to watch him as I answer.

I tell them the same things I told Officer Wells when he came to my house. I was in the kitchen all night. I never saw Ted Granville come in. Jerome drove me home.

When we've gone through it once, Behnson starts asking the same questions in different order. “Just to clarify,” he says. Really I think he's trying to confuse me. He even gets some of the things wrong, which I'm sure is on purpose.

“So you were in the living room for most of the night?” he asks.

“The kitchen.”

“And the body was upstairs?”

“I guess so.”

“You never saw it?”

“No.”

“Miss Forester, would it surprise you that other witnesses say that you were in the room with them when they discovered the body?”

It does surprise me. Although it shouldn't.
Of course they're interviewing everyone else who was there. We should have worked out a story so we all gave the same information. I can't think with everyone staring so hard at me. I rest my forehead on the table for a minute.

“Jen, did you lie to the police that night?” That's my dad questioning me now.

I lift my head up and shrug. “I didn't know he was dead. I just gave the simplest story I could. I expected this to all blow over.”

“So you lied,” Behnson says.

I nod.

“What made you go upstairs?”

“Candi ran down screaming. A bunch of us rushed up to see what was going on.”

“Who was there?”

“Me, Georgia, Jerome, Nate… other people too, but I don't remember.”

“Where was Ross Reed at this point?”

“I saw him earlier that night, but I don't think he was still there.”

“Ian Klassen?”

“He was there.”

“And where was the body when you found it?”

“On the floor in Ian's parents' bedroom. Kind of to the left of the bed.”

“Who called the police?”

“Ian did. Nate told him to.”

My dad starts to get impatient. “Look, Jen got scared and she lied. But she clearly wasn't involved in the attack.”

“Just a few more questions, Dr. Forester. Jen, what did Candi tell you she'd seen upstairs?”

“She didn't tell me anything. She just screamed, and we ran up.”

It goes on like this for another half an hour. Finally, when I feel my head is going to explode, they stop.

“We'll be in touch if we need any more information.”

My dad leaves the room ahead of me, talking to Officer Wells about something. Officer Behnson grabs my arm as I head for the door. “You could be in a lot of trouble, young lady. If I find out you've lied again,
we're going to go a lot further towards seeing
exactly
how you were involved in this.”

I stumble out in a daze. My dad looks half worried and half angry, but I'm too tired to ask whether he's mad at me or at the cops. We drive home in silence.

I get my usual morning kiss from Jerome at my locker, but he only stays a second.

“Gotta run,” he says. “Didn't finish my math, and Nate promised to let me copy the last few questions before homeroom.”

“Sure,” I say, even though we've barely seen each other all week. “Are we still on for tonight?”

Jerome and I have a standing Friday
night date. Sometimes we go to a party or spend time with Ross and Nate and whatever bimbos they happen to be into that week. (The bimbo designation doesn't apply to Georgia, obviously.) Sometimes we just hang around one of our living rooms and watch movies.

“Oh, I meant to tell you, I can't make it.” Jerome's already backing down the hall.

“What?”

“I have to run. Sorry. Listen, I'll call you on the weekend.”

“Dick.” I swear at him under my breath. Then I turn around to open my locker and bump into Georgia, who's standing behind me.

“Dick,” she agrees. “Nate, too.”

“What's happened now?”

“Same old thing. Yesterday he meets me for lunch, today he says he's busy all weekend and he'll catch me next week.”

We give boys-are-stupid shakes of our heads.

“Georgia, you know how, when you do
something totally humiliating, it helps to tell everyone you know?” I ask her. “You give them the gory details, they agree that you're a nutbar, but they still love you?”

She nods.

“Well, I told you about my Lady Macbeth freak-out on Wednesday, but who else am I supposed to tell? Jerome's turned into a freak himself. Anyone else would probably send me off to the mental ward. My dad would have me to a shrink so fast you'd have to put up missing person posters.”

“There's only one solution,” she says.

“Drop English and don't graduate?”

“Nope. Fashion police. We've got ten minutes before the bell rings.”

This is a mean game. But it's the best mood-improver since shopping, and there's no mall in Fairfield.

It started when Georgia and I met the first day of grade ten. She was obviously a new kid. First, because I've gone to school here since kindergarten and I didn't recognize her. And it's not just that I recognize everyone
else in school. I know everything about them. I know that Ian Klassen peed on the teeter-totter at lunchtime in grade one. I know Nate is the youngest of three kids and the other two are practically geniuses. I know who's related and I know the complete dating history of every student. That's what happens when you go to school with the same people for thirteen years — you absorb their entire lives by osmosis. A few of us even went to preschool together.

So I knew Georgia had just moved here. The other thing that made me notice her was an amazing pair of high, black, leather boots. Something you can't buy within a five-hour shopping radius of Fairfield.

She was leaning against the locker beside mine when I walked up. (It turned out her last name was Findley, so we were alphabetically destined to be beside each other.)

“Great boots,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said, “but I was thinking of trading them in for a pair of those.” She nodded towards a guy down the hall.

I turned around, and there was some poor
little grade eight kid who must have been sent to school in his sister's hand-me-down running shoes. They were covered in mud — probably a disguise strategy — but they were still an unmistakable pastel pink.

“Ouch,” I said.

“Call the fashion police. Code red emergency.”

And that's how the game started. As I said, it's not exactly a nice game. I'm sure it wasn't the poor kid's fault he had to wear pink shoes to school.

Today, Georgia looks like she stepped out of
Cosmo
. She grew up in the city and didn't want to move when her dad got a job here a couple of years ago. That, combined with the new baby last year (which still weirds us out), has somehow guilted her mom into giving Georgia her credit card number for internet shopping. Some people are blessed at birth. I complained to my dad once about not having enough clothes, and he suggested I take a sewing course. Ach!

“Code red! Code red!” Georgia whispers
from the corner of her mouth. We're both leaning back against the lockers, trying to act casual. “Look at that girl's shirt.”

“It looks like it used to be her bedroom curtains,” I giggle. “Hey, code blue on the acid wash jean jacket. Circa 1980.”

Within five minutes I'm feeling way better.

“Speaking of code reds,” Georgia says, “have you seen the shoes Ross has been wearing?”

“No, why?”

“He used to have these wicked Australian leather boots that his aunt sent him. Remember?”