A couple of blocks from Hannah’s house near a twenty-four-hour market, I spotted a teen couple on the sidewalk. The boy wore jeans and a sweatshirt, hood pulled over his head. The girl wore the same, though her jeans rested lower on her hips and her sweatshirt fit more snugly.
They were easy to spot, especially the girl. She reminded me of a colorful moth—maybe an elephant hawk-moth with its yellow wings and pink spots—as she flitted from streetlight to streetlight, laughing, weaving, casually flirting with the boy who walked beside her. She moved from one pool of light to the next, unconcerned about the darkness beyond and of the creatures in it that could grind her wings to dust.
Yeah, I was in a foul mood.
The girl was only a few years older than Leo. Legally an adult, but not by much. I recognized her from the yearbook photo. Hannah Zimmerman.
The boy moved in a straight line that Hannah bobbed around, touching first his right elbow, then popping up on his other side to brush her fingertips against his left shoulder. The boy was mesmerized by her, and her carelessness became his own.
They seemed on a course for the market, so I pulled in the lot and waited. The couple stopped in a puddle of light twenty or so feet from where I was parked. I got out of the car and leaned against the door, preparing to call out Hannah’s name in my best nonthreatening mom voice.
Before I could, the young woman approached me. As she did, she pulled her boyfriend along by the hem of his sweatshirt.
Hannah turned up the wattage on her smile. Dark and pretty, Hannah was probably used to getting what she wanted. Right now, I apparently had something she wanted. I figured it was either drugs or beer, and the location made me guess the latter.
Hannah nudged her boyfriend forward. Hands thrust in his jean pockets, he flushed as he kicked at an invisible mark on the asphalt with his right sneaker. I had no doubt whose idea this was.
“We were wondering if, like, you know, maybe you could buy us some beer.” The boy’s face flushed, his words nearly lost in his mumbling.
The mom in me couldn’t help it. “Do you think it’s really a good idea to be approaching strangers in convenience store parking lots?” Or, for that matter, drinking beer.
The boy looked chastened—I got the feeling he wasn’t as committed to this as his girlfriend—but Hannah looked irritated.
She switched off her full-wattage smile. “Who are you, my mother?”
So . . . pretty, but not very original with the comebacks.
I reminded myself that I wanted something from this girl. “Your name’s Hannah, right?”
The girl draped a hand on her boyfriend’s shoulder, nails sky blue and filed to points. She tried for flippant. “Buy us a twelve-pack and I might answer that.”
I considered threatening to tell her parents, but that seemed a sure way to end what I hoped would be a productive conversation.
“Let me rephrase: Your name is Hannah Zimmerman, and you claim your art teacher pressured you to have sex with him.”
I kept my tone as neutral as my mood allowed.
“Mr. Larkin? Yeah, that’s what happened.” Hannah seemed unconcerned that her boyfriend was within earshot. “I was, like, failing, and Mr. Larkin asked me to stay after class. He said if I gave him a hand job, he’d give me a B. And if I had sex with him, he’d give me an A.”
I allowed myself a second of relief. That she had called him Mr. Larkin made me doubt the rest of her story. “Just like that?”
Her smile was predatory. “Totally. I guess his wife’s a bitch or whatever.” Even though I hadn’t introduced myself, I had no doubt Hannah knew who I was. Who else would be here, in a convenience store parking lot on a Friday night, asking these questions?
“So, did you accept his offer?”
Hannah looked at the boy, while he stared at the pavement. “Mr. Larkin’s hot for an old guy, so the hand job, sure. But, like, I have a boyfriend. I wouldn’t have sex with him.”
“And then Mr. Larkin gave you a B?”
“Actually, he gave me an A.” Her smile edged toward a snarl. “I guess he really liked it.”
She was eighteen years old, but she was also pretty much a kid, so I decided against punching her.
“How much?” I asked.
Her face scrunched in on itself—the pert nose, the perfect brows, the glossed lips—so she acquired that just-sucked-a-lemon look. “What?”
“Let’s cut the crap. You didn’t sleep with my husband.”
“I told you, it was just—”
“No, it wasn’t. Not even that. So you got something out of it, and my guess would be money. How much?”
She aimed to look offended, but the sneer ruined it. “I’d never do that.”
Coming here, I had intended to make a play to Hannah’s conscience: Mr. Larkin could lose his job. You wouldn’t want that, would you? But I realized Hannah wasn’t the kind of girl who had a conscience.
I reached into my purse and pulled out five twenty-dollar bills. “Was it more than that?”
I had her interest. “Hyperthetically, what if I had, like, been paid to make some shit up?”
Of course, she meant hypothetically. No wonder she was failing most of her classes. I pulled out two more twenties.
“Let’s talk hyperthetically.” I felt a little bad for mocking her, so I softened my tone. “You’ve already been paid by whoever hired you, so anything I give you would be like a bonus. I’ll give you forty bucks for every hyperthetical detail I find useful.”
I needed to stop doing that.
Hannah thought it over, but only for a few seconds. “Okay, maybe someone asked me to start the rumors, but I didn’t mind. Like I said, Mr. Larkin’s hot.”
I remembered Brooklyn’s story about Hannah in her bloodied ballet slippers, digging a grave for her dead dog. And I thought about how ill-tempered I had been at her age. That and a couple of deep breaths kept me from giving in to my anger. Not that it was easy.
Hannah’s boyfriend continued to stare at the ground, his eyes focused on a small weed growing in a crack. He used the toes of his sneaker to grind it into the blacktop.
I turned my attention back to Hannah, handing her forty dollars. “Who asked you to start these rumors?”
She shrugged. “Some bald dude I met in the parking lot.”
I kept my expression neutral even as the words settled against my eardrums like spikes: Some bald dude.
“He gave me a few hundred bucks,” she said. “I told you two things, so is that worth eighty?”
I gave her forty. “Can you describe this man? I mean, other than being bald.”
“He was a big guy. And old. Like forty or fifty.”
I handed over two more twenties. I tried to calculate how much more information I could buy.
“Do you remember anything else about this man? His car? His clothes?”
“No.”
“Did he have a scar?”
I held my breath as she considered the question. “I don’t know. Maybe.” When I didn’t hand over any cash, she added, “Come on, I should get something for that.”
I gave her another twenty. “Did he say anything about why he would want you to start the rumors?”
She shook her head. “He said something like, ‘You wanna make three hundred dollars?’ Then he told me to start telling my friends I’d had sex with Mr. Larkin. That was it. When I agreed, he told me he’d know if I didn’t keep my end of the bargain.” Hannah’s face lost the sneer, and she wrapped her arms around herself. “He looked kinda creepy when he said that. Then he walked away, off campus. I never saw his car, and he never came back.”