What We Saw(48)

I only need the truth.

Emboldened by my plan, a strange urgency takes hold. I walk around the living room like a detective in search of evidence. I quietly pull open the drawer of an oak end table next to an overstuffed couch, covered in a quilt. Remote controls. Loose change. A pack of peppermint chewing gum. I slide the drawer closed. It sends up a loud squeak, and I freeze for a moment, my heart pounding. I glance at the bathroom door. Still closed. Water still running. Music still playing.

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, silently.

What are you doing?

What am I looking for? A filing cabinet filled with folders full of secret documents? A handwritten account of events labeled, “Dooney’s Party: One Week Ago”? I take a moment to imagine Stacey, fresh from a shower, finding me in her living room, unannounced. I picture her wrapped in a towel, hair wet, screaming, the friendly old man next door and his Doberman racing to her aid. Me, on a gurney, explaining to the police, my parents, and Ben how I came to be mauled by a dog outside Stacey Stallard’s trailer, and Sloane Keating’s smug little smirk, floating above us all as her cameraman captures every moment.

This is crazy.

I turn to go.

As I do, I glance through a door on the other side of the living room and come to a dead stop. This is a bedroom—Stacey’s it seems. There’s a purple comforter she must have gotten when she was just a little girl, covered in stars and clouds. But it isn’t the bed that catches my eye. It’s the walls. The afternoon sun streams through sheer white curtains, bathing the room in a soft glow. I walk to the door of the room and step inside.

Every vertical surface is covered with birds. Each one is a pencil sketch in the center of a page. Delicate, detailed, every one of them seems to be in motion. A beak digs into down or carries a twig, wings spread, tail feathers flutter. Not a single one of them is still. The very walls seem to ripple with the ready pulse of a thousand tiny heartbeats, as if at any moment, the entire flock might startle and take to the skies, carrying the whole room—this perfect aviary of art—and me away with it.

My mouth hangs slightly open. Turning slowly, I take in owls and orioles, jaspers and jays, sparrows and starlings. Hundreds of intricate, finely hatched feathers, dappled wings, and shining eyes somehow lit from within.

My gaze settles on one drawing centered over the bed. This is the sketch I saw from the living room. It’s larger than the others and I recognize the subject immediately. This is the hawk from the trees behind the school. The details are so deftly rendered it looks like a black-and-white snapshot of the bird I saw through the geology classroom window. I can almost feel the rush of the air from her wings.

Stacey has captured it perfectly.

This drawing is more than painstaking precision. Her pencil strokes somehow show the raw power of wings. It holds something else, too: the longing I heard in her voice all those years ago when I asked her why she liked birds so much.

Because they can fly.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Stacey has found me exactly as I’d feared she would. I turn to see her in the doorway, holding a dusty-blue towel around herself, her hair dripping onto her shoulders. There was something dreamy about the Stacey who watched birds out my window when we were kids, her head in the clouds. This Stacey has both feet rooted in trailer park carpet. No clouds. All spikes.

“I’m sorry. I just—the door—it was open, and I—” I sputter, flailing for an explanation.

“Get out!” She steps backward into the living room, making space for me to pass.

“Stacey, please. I just want to know about the party.”

She gives a short, bitter laugh. “Know what, Kate? You were there.”

“But I don’t—I wasn’t—there the whole time.”

Her eyes flash fire. “Oh really?” She scoffs and shakes her head.

“Yes.” I choke. “I was . . . I was too drunk to stay.”

“Ben sure wasn’t.” She flings these words like acid, and every inch of me is singed.

“You’re wrong.” My heart pounds. Stacey gives her head a quick shake. She leans against the doorway. Her arms are so thin, reeds crossed against her chest, pinning the towel in place.

“I was too drunk to stay, too,” she sneers. “Didn’t even know what happened when I woke up. Saw it all online. Sure you can find it, too.”

My stomach lurches. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re an idiot.” She points at the front door again. “Get out.”











twenty-seven


MY EYES FLOOD as I roar away from Stacey’s trailer. I can barely see the gravel road that leads out of Coral Creek. When I reach the Walmart blacktop, I pull in beside a leafless sapling sticking out of a planter that separates parking lanes. It is wired to stakes that are thicker than its own trunk—a stunned captive, surrounded by asphalt, doomed to struggle for breath in the haze of a thousand tail pipes.

I scramble for my phone. I’ve seen Ben’s tweets in my feed, but maybe I missed something? Tapping to his Twitter account I scroll through the posts. There are just a few from this past week, and I get to last Saturday’s tweets faster than I expect to.

The first one is a selfie. He’s just gotten dressed for the party. His hair is perfect. One hand holds the camera, the other points into the mirror. His face is a flirty smirk, lips closed, eyes full of mischief: @BCody17: Getting turnt w/my #buccs.