For the first time, I think I see the appeal of the job to a person like Misha. It must make her feel powerful to mete out punishments and rewards. And for that part of the gig, at least, she’s a natural.
An ear-splitting bell signals the end of first period, a pitch identical to the one that used to hack up my days into periods of forty-five minutes.
When Misha remains on her feet, I realize the meeting is over.
“So good to see you, Abby,” she says, embracing me again. While her lips are still very close to my ear, she whispers, “It’s just like old times, isn’t it?”
I half expect to feel her teeth sink into my jugular, vampire-style.
But she just releases me and laughs. “Next time, I say we meet for a drink.”
—
As I weave my way through the hall, navigating the throngs of students pouring out of classrooms, a memory needles in the back of my mind, begging for attention. We had our own version of bullying, back in the early days of Facebook, before Snapchat, Instagram, and trolls. I haven’t thought about the Game in years, or the rumors that spread like a toxic fume, the girls who were targeted moving through the halls, white-faced, humiliated, trailed by a faint snake-hiss. Slut. Slut. Slut.
There was Kelsey Waters, in the blue light of a basement, with her underwear around her knees and mascara ringed around her eyes. There was Riley Simmons, passed out drunk on the bathroom floor during a party. Jonathan Elders took off her bra and photographed her. The next day at school all the boys were huddled around looking at the photos and laughing. He told everyone she was too ugly to have sex with and she cried in the lunchroom when she heard.
And then there was what happened to Becky Sarinelli. That was even worse.
Chapter Twelve
It started at a pep rally, early senior year, just before the sickness, the hysteria, the allegations, the confessions—or at least that’s when I became aware of it, of the Game.
High school rallies were mandatory. Never mind the kids who didn’t have a group to sit with, who didn’t care about the rally—or the bonfire that would come later—because no one would ask us to go or notice if we were there. Still we were forced into the football stadium bleachers, to cheer for the players and watch the cheerleaders shimmy in their short skirts, while the boys shouted pussy from behind cupped hands.
Bradley Roberts, the class VP, droned on at the microphone about school pride, the importance of unity, the Barrens Tigers, rah-rah-rah.
And then: a shout, high-pitched and strangled. The crowd shifted, and for a second I imagined flames racing up the bleachers, consuming us all. A real bonfire.
Some of my classmates rose from their seats. Their excitement was thick; it made my stomach curl. Still, I turned with the rest of them.
I saw Becky Sarinelli moving through the bleachers, tripping over book bags and risers, desperate, obviously panicked. She was reaching for pieces of paper—they looked like flyers. Snatching them wildly and hurrying on to the next. But there were too many: dozens, floating hand to hand as though drawn on an invisible current. Some people were laughing; some looked sick.
Bradley cleared his throat a couple of times, but no one cared anymore what he had to say about school spirit. Mr. Davis was heading toward the podium.
“Quiet!” he said. “Everyone, be quiet. Sit down.” But no one listened.
The flyers were making their way toward me. One floated to the floor in the aisle, faceup. Only then did I see it wasn’t a flyer at all.
It was a photograph, blown up and pixelated. Clear enough, though, to see what it was.
Becky.
My heart went still.
She was lying on a bed. Her eyes were half-mast, her makeup smeary. Her skirt had been pushed above her waist, and her large white thighs glared bright in the flash, so bright she looked like a plastic doll. Her shirt was unbuttoned and she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her underwear was twisted somewhere around her knees. The murmurs came together, gelling in the same way our school song might have, if things had gone the right way.
Slut. Slut. Slut, they said.
Stop, I wanted to scream. Stop. It wasn’t her fault. But I couldn’t open my mouth, couldn’t say a word.
Slut. Slut. Slut.
Eight days later, her father found her in the toolshed.
She didn’t leave a note to tell us why. She didn’t need to.
Chapter Thirteen
For the rest of the week I avoid both Brent and Condor: Brent, because I’m not sure I actually do want to see him again, even though I said I would; Condor, because I want nothing more.
Even as a kid I was drawn to the animals that bit. I once tried to save a raccoon that had somehow made its way into our basement, and it nearly took off a pinkie—I still have the scar. But even then I cried not for the blood or the rabies shots that came afterward, but when my dad, hearing me shout, came running downstairs with a rifle and plugged the raccoon between the eyes.
I always want the things that hurt most.
Instead, I throw myself wholeheartedly into the case. What we really need are Optimal’s books. Everything always boils down to money: corners cut, pipes improperly cared for, testing fudged once the results start coming in wonky, and people paid to keep quiet about it. Because it gets incentives from the state to keep business in Indiana, Optimal’s quarterly reports are available to the public. But we need to go deeper. We need their General Ledger, checks received and dispatched.
Some people pay. Other people collect.
I do what I do best: paperwork, numbers, patterns and disruptions that might mean everything or nothing at all. Barrens Township has had the water tested every year—the results are filed according to the Indiana Access to Public Records Act—and that surprises me, given the fact that much of the infrastructure is seventy-five years old.
They’re trying too hard to seem clean.
—
Friday night, Indiana, dusk: the sky is blue and pink, and the rains earlier in the week have left the fields looking fresh. The crows silhouetted on the telephone wires are too numerous to count.
I’m only half a mile away from my rental behind the beauty salon when my cell phone rings: Indiana area code, a number I don’t recognize. I nearly silence it but at the last second decide to pick up.
“Yeah?”
“Is this Abigail Williams?” The voice is male and unfamiliar.
“Speaking,” I say, already pulling over, reaching for my notebook and a pen. “Who’s this?”
“It’s Sheriff Kahn. We’ve got your father down here at the station—”
My stomach drops.
“—Picked him up on Main Street. Seems he was confused, kept insisting there should be a honky-tonk there. He had your number written down in his wallet. I heard you were in town?”
I close my eyes and see, in the darkness behind my eyelids, the old Dusty Chap line-dancing hall. The loud country music, the smell of fries and beer, my mom tush-pushing to Wynonna or Travis Tritt beside me with her cowboy boots and her hair piled high on top of her head in a scrunchie. It was one of the most fun things I would do with my mother before she died. It went out of business years ago, when I was in middle school.
“Yes, I am. I’ll be right there,” I say, wheeling the car around.
—
My father has calmed down by the time I get there and doesn’t seem to understand why he’s sitting in the sheriff’s office at all.