“Ha! He’s useless.” She crosses her arms. “I wouldn’t spend too much time around him,” she says like Jed wrote her lines.
“Why not?”
“He’s not good enough for you.” Good enough for me or good enough for you?
Episode 49:
All the Girls
That morning when the students arrived at school, they found that all the girls’ lockers had been marked with a slash of blood, which was identified as animal. The principal was appalled but refused to confirm that the girls had been targeted specifically.
“It was just completely random,” he said. “It was a silly high school prank.”
Clementine comes through for Friday so easily, it makes me wonder if I am imagining that your mother is controlling. On Thursday evening your mother says, “You can take the morning off to visit Clementine’s school.”
Jed offers to drive me. I think he just wants an excuse to miss work but I accept it, like I accept everything from him, because it’s easier to see myself as sane if I have a man beside me.
On Friday morning he is waiting outside the staff cabin in his big black truck, looking just-woke-up pale and fiddling with his keys.
I pass the dry patch in the garden. It looks bigger, but I don’t have time to investigate it. The vultures are still circling. The sunlight is starting to bake the grass, bringing up the smell of mulch and dead wood. All I want is to get out of here, as quickly as I can.
I climb into his truck and pop a Dramamine. We pull past your parents’ house, dip down the drive and wind along the road to Happy Camp.
“What is it that you’re doing for Clementine?” he says once the ranch is no longer in the rearview mirror.
“I’m talking to her class.” I was so focused on the other part, on trying to get her to tell me about you, that I completely forgot I will have to talk first. I feel the slip of motion sickness, like the world is coming untethered. I should have taken the Dramamine earlier.
“About what?”
“About writing.”
“You’re a writer?”
I loosen my seat belt. “I am if it means I get to talk to Clementine.” He keeps quiet, and finally I allow, “I probably should have prepared something.”
He glances over at me with a ringer’s smile on his face, and I wonder what would happen if we just kept driving. I almost say it out loud. I look ahead at the bends in the road and imagine a place where it straightens out, widens into a highway, eight lanes across, where you can get more than static on the radio stations, where the real people live. I feel like Jed would be a different person off the ranch, and I wonder why he doesn’t leave, and then I let myself imagine he is staying for me. I wonder if you ever felt that way.
“How well did you know Rachel?”
“We’ve been over this.”
“Yesterday you said you rode together all the time. But you told me Addy never let you ride the horses.” As I speak, I wonder why I am always letting him off the hook, confronting him about everything, giving him a chance to defend himself. It’s like I want him to be innocent so badly that I am not giving him another option.
“Addy didn’t know about it.”
“But then you must have known Rachel better than you said.”
He takes a moment to craft his answer. “You came out here because of her podcast. Think how compelling she mighta been in person. Yeah, we spent some time together. Yeah, we shot the shit. But I told you, I don’t even think she liked me.”
“Then why did she hang out with you?”
“Because, Sera, out here there ain’t a lot of options.”
I set my jaw. I feel awkward, but I need to ask the question. “Did you sleep together?”
“I mean, o’ course we did.” His answer catches me off guard, and I don’t know what to say, what to think. You slept with Jed.
His truck slows as the road opens to reveal Happy Camp. “You want me to come in with you?”
“You don’t need to.”
“I don’t mind.”
“You don’t have to.” His eyes are pulsing. “Do you want to?”
“I can.”
We park in the lot next to the police station and approach the school. Home of the Indians, Heart of the Klamath. There is no security. The school is smaller than the ranch. I remember what Tasia told me, how you were asked to leave. There is a crooked patch of dead grass outside the window, marked up to look like a football field, and I can’t blame you if you did make up stories, just for something to do.
I follow Clementine’s directions to her classroom. When we get there, I peer through a small square window cut into the door. Clementine stands at the front next to a stained whiteboard. She has written the words “ontological” and “epistemological” on either side with a weak dry-erase pen.
She points to the board. “What is an example of an ontological truth? Anyone? Anyone?” She scans the classroom, hopeful even though there are only six students, then glimpses me through the glass. “Oh, just a minute. Hold on. Our special guest is here!” She comes to the door. She is surprised to find Jed there with me. “Oh,” she says. “Jed. You’re here.”
“I was headed out this way anyway.” He lies unnecessarily.
She brings us to the front. All six students are girls; two are your nieces. Their eyes follow Jed and their lips stretch in easy, pleasing smiles.
I have nothing prepared but maybe that is for the best. I have nothing to say to these girls anyway. Looking at their bright, clean faces just makes me sad. I think of Alissa Turney. I think of Laci Peterson. I think of Florence Wipler, who disappeared in these very woods. I think of myself. And all I want to say is Be glad. Just be glad you’re here. You don’t need anyone to tell you anything. You’re still here.
“Everybody, this is Sera Fleece.” Clementine beams hopefully. “She’s a writer and she’s going to talk to you about writing.”
I got here on a lie and I have nothing to say. The sooner this is over with, the better, and I can join Clementine for lunch and ask her about you. But first I have to get through this.
“Thank you.” I smile unevenly. Jed folds his body into a too small desk.
The students are younger than the high school students I remember. Their expressions are unset, their faces still emerging, flecked with pimples. Once you get past a certain age, people love to ask: What would you tell your younger self? If you could go back and talk to your younger self, what would you say?