“Who?” I ask automatically.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” is all she says, and turns away.
“Sophie.” She freezes when I call her name. “Sophie Nantes, right?”
She doesn’t turn back to me, but I can see her stiffen.
I swallow hard. “Congratulations on the Optimal Stars Scholarship.”
She does turn around then, just for a moment. Just enough that I can see the way the words have taken her whole face and funneled it down into a hard look of hatred.
—
Back in my day, the Game was an open secret, a tradition everybody knew about, even the teachers. But sometime around my senior year the Game took on a new dimension: instead of just the prettiest girls, the hottest girls, the senior boys started targeting the weirdos, the loners, and the unpopular girls, too.
But by then it wasn’t just about the pictures anymore. The big scheme was in the shakedown that came after: money, blowjobs, and behind-the-stadium handjobs demanded as payment to keep the photos from getting back to parents, sisters, teachers.
That’s what happened to Becky Sarinelli. And if Condor took the photos, he must have been the one to release them, too.
Which means: Becky was one of the few girls who didn’t pay up.
It doesn’t totally surprise me to find out the Game is still going on. Things like that have a way of carrying down, generation to generation, twisting the way viruses do, becoming more powerful and bleeding across borders to high schools around the world.
But Monty mentioned money and flashy cars, and I can’t see that he would have talked that way about any of the local boys. Even the richest kids in Barrens are still lucky to inherit their father’s old Ford when they turn sixteen.
So what kind of men is the Game attracting now?
It shouldn’t matter. Joe’s right. I should focus on what Optimal is doing now. Monty and his girl problems don’t come within a hundred yards of my business.
Except I can’t shake the feeling that they do.
Every time I close my eyes, I walk back through Kaycee’s paintings and stop behind the largest one of all: a girl barely etched in pale color, a screaming mouth and eyes rolling wide like a panicked horse, and around her, a group of men, tall and narrow as tombstones. White teeth, clean angles. Flash.
Chapter Thirty
Monday morning, Flora comes to hail me at our brand-new office behind Sunny Jay’s, where Condor works. Now not only is Condor across from me at home but he is next to me at work as well. Flora waves her arms overhead like an aircraft marshal trying to get me to wheel-in right.
“Environmental Testing Labs sent results of their tests,” she says, before I’ve even cleared the door. “We’ve been calling.”
“Already?” I ask. Normally getting results from ETL is like waiting for aliens to come to Earth with gifts.
“Lead,” she bursts out, before I can ask. “Lead five times the legal limits.”
“Is it true?” I turn to Joe.
He responds by wordlessly passing over the report: preliminary investigation of the chemical and hard metal composition of the Barrens, Indiana, public water supply. The document is short and straightforward: the reservoir is filthy, contaminated not just by lead but by trace amounts of mercury and industrial pollutants with unpronounceable names. Of course, the report makes no claims about the source of the pollution—it will be our job to link it to Optimal—but this gives us more than enough to take a formal complaint to the judge.
So why don’t I feel like celebrating?
This evidence is enough to justify closing up shop and heading back to Chicago. We could easily do the rest of our work there, from our own homes and our own beds. I could get the hell out of here. And yet…
All I can think about is Kaycee. Coughing up blood. The dizzy spells, the passing out.
“Who’d you have to rub-and-tug to get these back so quickly?” I ask. There is the abstract truth: documents and numbers and theories. And then there is the real truth: Gallagher’s ruined crops, the wreckage of his life savings; little Grayson, with a soft head and a malformed brain; Carolina Dawes and her son’s itchy rashes.
“Actually, I can’t take the credit on this one,” Joe says. “Your prosecutor friend Agerwal leaned on them himself. It turns out he was serious about taking corruption out of Monroe County.”
“An honest politician. Who knew?” Everyone’s watching me, waiting for me to look happy. I keep rifling through the stack of pages, turning the words and charts back and forth. “What are the symptoms of lead poisoning again?”
“Skin irritations, for one. Rashes, like people have complained about.” Joe ticks the symptoms off on his fingers. “Long-term exposure can lead to birth defects, major cognitive disorders.”
“And Gallagher’s complaints about his yield are in line with the agricultural effects,” Flora puts in. “It all fits.”
“It fits with what people are reporting now,” Portland speaks up. Thank God I’m not the one who has to say it. “But it doesn’t fit with what happened to Kaycee Mitchell.”
Joe frowns. “Not you, too,” he says to Portland. Then: “You guys, this is a slam dunk. CEAW’s going to funnel some more funds into another round of testing. In the meantime, we can get out of here. If I never see a cornfield, or a shotgun, again, it’ll be too soon.”
“Snob.” I try to make it sound like a joke, but I can’t even force a smile. My mouth is dry. Tongue like a sock. I should be thrilled, but there’s too much miring me here in Barrens: the freaking barn fire, and Monty, I believe, wrongfully accused. My dad falling apart before my eyes. Brent kissing me all the time like I’m his girlfriend or something. Misha. Condor and his daughter and her hula-hoop.
Shariah and her baby’s tiny head. Lilian McMann’s daughter, in nothing but her socks.
The bribes.
The Game.
“What about a corruption case?” I blurt out.
Joe shoots me a puzzled look. “Why do you think Agerwal took an interest? He’s all over it already. I spoke to him this morning, and gave him your notes—on Pulaski and the connection between Optimal and Clean Solutions. Clean Solutions looks like a money dump, just like you said. Any luck, we’ll be home in Chicago right in time for dollar oysters at Smith and Wollensky.”
I can hear how truly excited Joe is about getting home—back to his life in Chicago, where a gay black man blends right in. Where he’s easily juggling a rotation of seven boyfriends and can be seen with any one of them in public. Back to the perfection of his city apartment, filled with fabulous eccentricities, a state-of-the-art sound system, matching wineglasses, and an odd “water feature” that’s essentially just a fountain.
It’s another reminder of how different he and I really are. The prospect of returning to my condo—brand-new, impeccably clean, modern, and practically empty—fills me with dread.
I know now that there’s a hole inside me. A hole that can’t be patched or filled with files or paperwork or legal cases or new clothes or miles or happy hours or bartenders.
This was never about the water. It’s not even about Kaycee, not really.
It’s about me.