When I accused her she barely blinked.
He’s so dumb, he probably got into the rat poison all on his own, she said.
Except, she had stolen his collar. So I would know it wasn’t an accident. Even way back then, she liked to turn the truth inside out, to make it look like a lie and vice versa, until you couldn’t know the difference.
The craziest part was that she actually blamed me when I said I would never speak to her again. She actually seemed hurt, like she couldn’t understand why I was being so mean to her.
For the next six years, after she’d grown, after she’d gathered all the subjects she had ever imagined for herself, she never once admitted to touching Chestnut.
And then, on the last day of school, I went to clean out my locker and found Chestnut’s collar hanging neatly from a hook.
She kept it.
All those years, she kept it.
A few hours later, she asked Misha for a ride to Indianapolis, saying she wanted to scout for bartending jobs and would take a bus home later. But she never took the bus home. She never came home at all.
Why did she do it? Why was it the last thing she did?
I drop the collar back into my mom’s jewelry box and latch the whole thing shut.
Sometimes, I think, in her crazy way, Kaycee left me that collar because she knew it would hurt, and hurt was how she knew that I would never forget her.
Other times, I think that maybe she was just saying good-bye.
Chapter Twenty-One
The next day, Thursday, I’m up at an hour even my father couldn’t criticize.
I make my coffee so strong it tastes like mud. I might have gotten four or five hours of sleep max, even though I was home before eight o’clock. I spent the night sweating out cheap alcohol, staring at the ceiling, and twisting between different memories and half-formed ideas.
I slug my mud-coffee and watch Barrens shake off its nighttime mist. I try to see Barrens as a stranger might, and in the early light it looks beautiful. Maybe Brent was right and I am on some kind of witch-hunt. Maybe I want Optimal to be crooked, just so I have something, anything, to straighten out.
Maybe my obsession is all a fantasy.
Or maybe not. But this morning, I’m going to follow Brent’s advice: it’s time for a tour of some of Optimal’s good works.
—
The Barrens-OPI Community Center is halfway between the high school and the gates of the Optimal Plastics Complex, directly across the road from the Westlink Fertilizer & Feed store. The theater that Brent mentioned is complete; it’s a modern, steel-and-glass exterior completely at odds with the squat brick shoeboxes that otherwise define architecture in Barrens. It’s not even nine A.M. and there are already cars in the newly poured lot, and though the doors are locked, when I press my face to the glass I can make out a blur of movement inside. I’m surprised to see Misha in the lobby, pacing, phone pressed between shoulder and cheek.
When she spots me, she hangs up without saying good-bye and slips the phone into a pocket. She hesitates for a fraction of a second before unlocking the door.
“Abby.” Today, she is dressed the part of vice principal, in a cheap pantsuit and a lavender blouse. “You pop up everywhere, don’t you? I’m starting to think you might be following me.”
“Small town. You said it yourself—there’s nothing else to do but be in everybody’s business. Besides, it isn’t every day Barrens gets a community center.”
“True enough. But we’re not actually open yet. Can I help you with something?”
Last night, Brent told me that after Kaycee left, Misha had told him that she’d wanted a clean break. But if Kaycee confessed her desire to disappear, she might have confessed other things.
“I was supposed to meet somebody from Optimal for a tour before opening,” I lie, seizing the opportunity to talk to her. “I made an appointment, but I’m afraid she thought I said yesterday. No wonder she’s not picking up my phone calls.”
She hesitates again, then bumps the door open a little wider with her hip. “Come on,” she says. “Although there isn’t much to see. Only the first phase is complete.”
“I was so curious. What an ambitious project.”
“Oh, this isn’t half of it. Eventually, we’ll have a reception venue, plus a gym for after-school sports programs. Classrooms for alternative education, too.”
The building is expansive, open, and airy, and sunlight filters through the skylights.
“Wow. It’s…” Ugly. The kind of ugliness only a shit ton of money can produce. But of course I won’t say that. “Ambitious. Doesn’t even feel like Barrens in here, does it? Must be costing a fortune,” I say brightly.
Her eyes slide to mine only briefly. “Optimal is financing most of the project,” she says. “We’ve got government grants as well. Taxes pay for the rest.”
“You seem very…passionate.” What I actually mean is: very involved.
“Principal Andrews and I both pushed for it. Before, our students had nowhere to go and nothing to do after school,” she says. “Often their home lives are a big part of the problem. When there’s nothing else to do…Idle hands find trouble.” She reaches a door that points the way to the theater stage, and again she holds the door open for me.
“Have you ever thought it might be a problem that so many people depend on one company?” I keep my voice casual, as if I’m just thinking the question myself.
She glances at me. “Why would it be a problem?”
“For years Optimal has been dogged by rumors of pollution, of corruption, cover-ups.”
“Rumors aren’t facts, Abby. Thank God. Otherwise we all would have been in trouble in high school. You especially.”
That’s another point to Misha. I smile as sweetly as possible. “True. And smoke isn’t fire. But sometimes where there’s one, there’s the other…No one wants to hold Optimal accountable. In fact, no one will even entertain it.”
“We’re proud of Optimal here,” Misha says pointedly. “I don’t see how that’s a problem.”
I pick my words carefully. “They’ve bought a lot of love, is all I’m saying.”
I’m worried she’ll get angry. Or maybe I’m hoping for it—a crack in her veneer. But this only seems to amuse her. “Last time I checked, that wasn’t a crime.”
“Well, that depends on who’s buying,” I say.
“The problem is that people think in black and white. They think they can have the good without the bad. But everything that’s good for one person is probably bad for someone else. Life isn’t like the Bible says it is. It isn’t a choice between good and evil. It’s about choosing which evils you can stand.”
“So you admit Optimal is evil.”
That, at least, gets her to smile. “All I’m saying is that if Optimal has made mistakes, do a few rashes here or there mean we should shut down the biggest employer in the area?”
“We’re not just talking about rashes, and you know it. We’re talking about chemicals that cause major damage. People aren’t disposable. People shouldn’t have to sacrifice their lives and their health to put food on the table.”